The Ladies' Midnight Swimming Club(47)

‘It rubs off on you?’

‘Yes, I think that’s it. It infects you so you’re a part of it, without actually meaning to be and soon, you’ve been weaved into the middle of things and there are… relationships.’ She nodded towards Dora. ‘You know, since I’ve come here, I’ve probably met three-quarters of the whole local population and all I’ve met with is kindness and a warm welcome.’

‘That’s it.’ Dan shook his head. ‘That’s what I’ve been trying to put words on.’

‘For your book?’

‘No, not so much, more for my parents and my friends in London. They want me back over in London again. This…’ He waved his hands about the room. ‘This was only meant to be temporary, to get me through… I just needed…’ He shook his head. The smile that had faded earlier when they’d stood on the threshold of this conversation didn’t disappear this time. ‘I needed to breathe, I needed to think, I suppose and now… I feel as if I’ve drowned in oxygen and there’s no going back to that life.’ He was smiling broadly, sitting just next to her on the old fender, his empty glass on the floor at his feet.

‘I love it here,’ she said softly and she felt, for a moment, as if she glimpsed a chink in the life that she had always believed would unfurl before her. That life had been snatched away when Melinda Power had sauntered in and caught Jack’s eye two years earlier. And maybe, she had needed until now to see that there were other ways forward, or maybe she needed to be sitting here, with the wind howling down the chimney and the fire dancing in the grate. It felt as if something had clicked into place and it wasn’t something she could quite put her finger on, but it was the feeling of coming home, what it meant to really come home, and maybe that was as much as she needed for now.





19


Dan


It was the stark beauty of the place –that was what had caught Dan unawares. It was the biting cold of the rain and the fulsome warmth of the people. It was the fact that the more the one seemed to shroud the land around his cottage; the other enveloped him when he wandered into the village. And he wandered into the village every evening now. Sometimes, he had to remind himself that he’d only been here a couple of weeks, because everything about the place and the people had a habit of convincing you that you’d been here much longer, maybe even that you belonged here.

At this point, he figured he’d walked almost every inch of the beach. There were miles of it. Soft golden sand, stretching out as far as the eye could see. Dan never imagined that the coastline of the west of Ireland would be like this. Rather, in his imagination, he’d have considered the grey cliff face, choppy waves, chewing into jagged rocks; perhaps he’d expected the rattle of old pirate ships and the rush of mountain dew running through the ditches as well, but none of this could have captured the reality of staying in the little cottage.

He couldn’t say it had made everything better, but it had certainly improved how he felt. There was no job to go back to in London, not that he’d actually been searching for one. The only search he’d been actively pursuing since he arrived here was over at what remained of Saint Nunciata’s.

He had hit brick walls at every turn when it came to tracking down his birth mother and as each day passed his motivation to carry on searching was waning. Of course, it might be easier if he’d told people what he was about, but it turned out it was harder to break a secret the longer it had been kept. He really hadn’t been hopeful coming here that he’d actually track down anything more than the little his adoptive parents had already told him. He was a mixed-race baby, brought to London from Saint Nunciata’s babies’ home over thirty years ago for a well-to-do Catholic couple.

He’d read too many articles online – too many children who’d met the same obstacles and too many more who’d managed eventually to penetrate the layers of bureaucracy and religious secret-keeping, only to find a frightened and bitter woman who wanted nothing to do with them. The notion that he should let sleeping dogs lie was beginning to settle on him gradually. He wasn’t sure he’d ever really been that committed to finding the woman who gave birth to him anyway. What kind of woman doesn’t go looking for the child she gave up all those years ago?

‘We can’t judge those girls by today’s standards,’ Elizabeth said softly. ‘Ireland was a different place then. I don’t expect you to understand, but the girls who ended up in the convent – well, there was no choice.’ Elizabeth had tried to explain what it was like, but the sadness that passed across her face told him far more than her words. She’d been a regular visitor to the women who had lived in the convent until it was closed. Perhaps she had known his mother? They had gone to see the old building, a sprawling grey, derelict structure that had angels at the doors and serpents in the remaining stained-glass windows.

Although it was emptied over a quarter of a century ago, there was no denying its looming presence; there was an eerie feeling of ghosts who would never fully rest. ‘For some, perhaps it was better than the alternative – many of the girls came from simple farming backgrounds. Back then, a respectable man would prefer to have a dead daughter than an illegitimate grandchild.’ She shivered then, perhaps remembering things she would prefer to forget. ‘Come on, let’s walk around the old gardens, this place isn’t going to do either of us any good.’