The Boatman's Wife(26)

‘Hey, are you even listening to me!’ Jesse said, giving her a poke, but looking amused.

‘Sorry, I’m a bit spaced out, the joint and the swimming,’ she said, coming back to look into his rich brown eyes.

Jesse gave her a slow, lazy smile.

‘Yeah, that was great,’ he said, cocking his head on one side. ‘So, your place or mine?’

He was so confident, a part of her wanted to push him away for his audacity. And yet it didn’t put her off him. There was a rebel spirit inside her. Countering the voice in her head telling her to stop. Why couldn’t she do what she wanted, just for once?

‘Mine,’ she replied, looking down at the table at Hargadon’s, counting the grains of old wood in time to the steady beat of her heart.





Chapter Seven





Rockland, Maine, 1st November 2017





Does your wife know who you really are, Connor Fitzgerald? I don’t want you to ever forget not one day goes by when I don’t want to get you back for what you did. You’re not welcome in Mullaghmore ever again. So, don’t ever think you can come home with your new wife. Because if you do, I swear I’ll kill you.





Lily stared at the email. Read it yet again. She knew it by heart, and her instincts told her the content was too specific to be spam.

Lily had become obsessed. The last twelve days, she’d spent hours trying to work out who’d sent the email, but when she googled ‘[email protected]’, nothing at all came up. It had to be what she’d heard called a ‘guerrilla account’. Set up temporarily and never used again. Even so, she felt the mention of ‘shamrock’ pinpointed an Irish connection.

She’d also been trying to find Connor’s grandmother, Rosemary. All she’d had to go on was Connor’s surname, which was Fitzgerald, and the place name of Mullaghmore. She’d already searched the internet endlessly for Fitzgeralds, but there were none in either of the two Mullaghmores in Ireland, because most likely his maternal grandmother had a different second name.

She had searched for Mullaghmore on Google Maps. One Mullaghmore was a mountain in the north of Ireland, so it had to be the other one, a village in County Sligo. The first images which came up were of the ocean, huge waves, and sites about surfing. This had to be Connor’s Mullaghmore, because he had loved surfing. She remembered he’d said he had learnt as a teenager in Ireland, which had always surprised her. It wasn’t a country she associated with surfing, but Connor had told her the place where he grew up had some of the biggest waves in the whole of Europe.

‘Swells up to thirty metres,’ he’d said, eyes shining.

Lily had clicked on a website called Wild Atlantic Way and read about all the allures of Mullaghmore as a holiday destination: a small fishing village with stretches of beaches, views of sea cliffs and a castle. She was stunned by the images of this place. It looked so beautiful, and Connor had never told her this. Yes, he’d talked about the sea and surfing, but he had made it sound like he’d grown up in a boring country village.

There was no doubt in her mind that Mullaghmore was the place where Connor had been raised. She looked up Mullaghmore again on Google Maps, and went to satellite view. The village was on the edge of a peninsula, jutting right out into the blue ocean. She could see the slim gold curve of sandy beaches, and the white lines of surf. What struck her most was all the green, and so few houses. Just one road appeared to wend its way around the coast. She zoomed in to Mullaghmore itself. She could see an old walled harbour, and the main road running along the seafront. There seemed to be very few businesses: a sailing club, a B&B, and a hotel. As she pulled out again, she got a sight of just how beautiful the landscape might be. The green fields. And the white foaming edge to the land told her there were cliffs.

Lily took up another piece of paper and began scribbling again.

What does the email mean? Who wrote it? Why? Why?





She tore the piece of paper out of the pad, scrunched it up and threw it across the room. Why had Connor never shown her the nasty email? How could it possibly be meant for her Connor? Kind, loyal, funny, honest Connor.

Lily closed her eyes. Right in the early days of their relationship, when they’d gone for all those romantic strolls on the beach together, she remembered Connor talking about Mullaghmore and his grandmother.

One day, the summer after they were married, she and Connor had been walking in the sea. The water had been thick with bladderwrack and lush, honey-coloured fronds of kelp.

‘The seaweed here is so rich,’ Connor commented. ‘We should harvest it.’

‘Ourselves?’ Lily asked. She loved eating seaweed. Often had a craving for the kelp bars that Maine Coast Sea Vegetables made with sesame seeds, or their apple-smoked seaweed, which tasted so much better than jerky.

‘My gran used to hang dulse seaweed up on the line to dry it out, and then put it in her stews,’ Connor told her. ‘We could start a seaweed business one day.’

‘Sure, but lobstering is better money,’ Lily pointed out.

‘Yeah, but I really like the idea of harvesting sea vegetables. Have you ever had a seaweed bath?’ Connor asked her.

‘Sure, I love the seaweed soaps Mom gets,’ Lily said. ‘Made from Maine seaweed, too.’