The Boatman's Wife(31)

Frederickson continued to read her father his rights, but Lily couldn’t watch it any longer. She backed away, shoving through the crowd, feeling their pity as she turned and ran up the stairs to her old bedroom. She slammed the door behind her and pushed a chair up against it. The room was full of flashing blue light from the cop car outside. She flung herself on her bed and buried her head under the pillow. Her nightmare had just got ten times worse.

Was her husband dead because of her father?





Chapter Eight





Mullaghmore, Ireland, 12th July 1992





Niamh snuck Jesse past the cottage and across the back yard to the shed. She could hear her mam’s folk music on. The diddly-aye fiddles she adored.

‘Are we not going into the house?’ Jesse asked as she fumbled with the door of the shed.

‘Course not,’ Niamh said, turning to him. ‘My mam’s home.’

‘Seriously?’ Jesse said, laughing. ‘I mean, how old are you?’

‘Don’t be so smart,’ she said, opening the door and pulling him inside the musty shed.

‘Very cosy,’ Jesse teased, flicking his Zippo open to look around.

‘You’ll see,’ Niamh said, lighting a candle and popping it inside a lantern. She carried the lantern over to the window side of the shed, with the view of the back undergrowth, and popped it on a stool. ‘Want another joint?’ she asked, feeling nervous.

‘Sure,’ Jesse said, walking towards her. She watched him as he stepped over the loose floorboards. For a minute she imagined his weight crashing through, his foot landing on Brendan’s heavy bag.

As they shared the joint, Jesse told her more about his family. How he’d grown up more or less an only child because of the age gap with his sisters.

‘When Dad died, my mom went to live with Maisie in Boston,’ Jesse said. ‘So it was just me in the house and the boatyard. A bit lonely.’

‘Is that why you came to Ireland?’

‘I thought, why not? I mean, this was where my dad was from. My heritage, right?’

‘Is your dad’s family from Sligo?’

‘No, Galway, but when I found out about Joseph O’Reilly’s boatbuilding yard, I had to come here.’

Niamh tucked her feet up on the mattress, hugging her knees.

‘What about you?’ Jesse asked. ‘What’s your story?’

Niamh shook her head. ‘Enough stories,’ she said.

They stared at each other, and for a moment, she thought she’d got it wrong. Maybe nothing was going to happen. But then he leant forward and tucked a tendril of her hair behind her ear, before kissing her on the lips.

They sank back onto the old mattress as she tugged her jeans and then her pants off. She didn’t care if she was being too easy.

Niamh felt the weight of Jesse upon her and banished thoughts of any memories of her times with Brendan. She closed her eyes, put her hands on his hard hips and pressed herself to him. She sought to reconnect with the moment they’d shared on the beach, damp with seawater and full of longing. Jesse’s hand slipped between her thighs and he began to stroke her. She sighed from deep within her belly, felt herself opening outward, as if to the light. She pulled him to her, pulled him in.



Afterwards, she rolled them both cigarettes with her Golden Virginia tobacco and papers, lighting his before handing it to him. He put his arm around her shoulders and she nestled her head against his chest. It was a clear night, and moonlight found its way into the shed even through the dense foliage outside the window. Along with the lantern, it illuminated the side of the shed where her father’s tools still lay upon his workbench, and the half-made table leaned up against the wall.

‘Are those your father’s things?’ Jesse asked her softly, seeing her looking.

‘Yes, this used to be his workshop,’ Niamh told him. ‘He was a carpenter.’ She sighed. ‘He’s been dead ten years, but I still haven’t managed to put his stuff away.’

‘Maybe you don’t have to.’

‘Look.’ She pointed at the table. ‘It’s not even finished. I should break it up into firewood.’

‘No, Niamh,’ Jesse said, stroking her hair. ‘Don’t do that.’

They lay in silence for a while, finishing their smokes. Niamh had never been held like this before. With Brendan, they’d always been half-dressed and hurried, but here, after just one date, she was lying totally naked against Jesse’s bare skin.

Jesse stirred, but still held her as he shifted his position. ‘What happened to your father?’ he asked, in a low voice.

She had known the question was coming. Joseph O’Reilly was bound to have said something to his young apprentice.

Niamh had imagined the scene so many times in her mind. Gone over every little detail, time and again over the past ten years. Now, as she described what had happened to her father, she could see it before her, as if she’d stepped back in time.

‘It was close to this time of year, the twenty-first of August,’ she told Jesse. ‘When all our laneways are choked with tractors and harvesters. I remember that.’

It had been late on the warm golden afternoon when Daddy had set off to go fishing on Lough Melvin. He was meeting his cousin, Tadhg, at the lake. A pastime her daddy and Tadhg had enjoyed since they were boys. Even though the border between the north and south had always separated them – Tadhg living just across the border in County Fermanagh – they’d never missed their annual summer jaunts to the lough. It wasn’t even about catching fish. Niamh never remembered her daddy bringing back any to eat. The year before, she’d asked him why he kept going if he’d never caught any fish. He’d told her it wasn’t about that for him and Tadhg.