The Boatman's Wife(66)
No sooner than she was in the front door, she was overwhelmed with nausea. She made it to the bathroom just in time before throwing up. Though there was hardly anything to throw up, because she hadn’t eaten. She felt awful.
As she sat back on her heels, a thought occurred to her. She began to count back the days and weeks, and cold realisation flooded her entire body. She wasn’t sick from exhaustion. She was pregnant.
Chapter Nineteen
Mullaghmore, 16th November 2017
Lily parked at the top of the lane. She wanted to imagine herself walking in Connor’s footsteps to his grandmother’s house. She pulled her coat tight about her, but left her hood down. The rain had stopped, although the air was cold and damp. It smelt so different from home here. Not so far from the sea, and yet all scent of it gone. Around her were muddy fields, trees, and ditches thick with undergrowth. There was so much green and earth in Ireland.
The lane was full of potholes brimming with rainwater. Lily walked right through them, seeing Connor as a little boy running through them too. It had always irked her he’d had no pictures of himself as a boy, whereas he’d been made to sit down by her parents and look through photograph album after photograph album of her as a child. She was an only child, so of course her parents had obsessively documented everything in her life – from her first steps, to her first days out lobstering with her father. But Lily had not seen one picture of Connor. Would Connor’s grandmother have pictures of him as a child? Could she handle seeing them?
Lily wasn’t sure what to expect. Noreen had intimated that Rosemary Kelly was a strange and reclusive figure, but she hadn’t come all this way for nothing. There were no other houses down the narrow lane, so Lily knew Rosemary’s had to be the only cottage facing her. A grey stone cottage with shuttered windows, a green door, and a wild garden.
Lily walked up to the front door and knocked. Waited. Knocked again, but nobody came. She walked around to the back of the house. The yard was empty, but she could see tyre tracks in fresh mud. Clearly, Connor’s grandmother wasn’t in. There was no shutter on the back window, and Lily peered into it, but the cottage was full of shadows. She couldn’t see anything, apart from a crystal hanging in the window.
On a whim, she put her hand on the back door and turned the handle. To her surprise, the door opened. She stood on the doorstep, not sure what to do.
‘Hello there,’ she called out, pushing the door open a bit more. ‘Hey, is anyone home?’
No answer. She took a step onto the doormat. It was as if she just couldn’t stop herself. She had come so far that she couldn’t walk away now. Another step, and then she was inside. She held her breath, taking in the tiny cottage kitchen. She had been expecting a sad, miserable interior, suited to an outcast old lady, but the downstairs of Rosemary Kelly’s cottage was the exact opposite. A slate floor covered in bright rugs, a big kitchen dresser packed with cheerful crockery, and on the wall, paintings full of energy and light. She liked them, which surprised her as Lily had never liked modern art. This might have been the kitchen table which Connor would have sat at as a little boy. She placed her hand on its worn surface, feeling emotion swell up within her.
Lily lifted her hand and pressed it to her chest. She was dying to go upstairs, but she was aware she was trespassing. How would it look to Connor’s grandmother if she came back and found her already inside her home? She should come back later.
It was as she was turning towards the door to leave that she saw it, and was unable to stop herself from crying out in shock.
There, on one of the shelves of the kitchen dresser, was a framed photograph of Lily and Connor on their wedding day. Lily picked it up and stared at the picture, her eyes misting with tears. They looked so blissfully ignorant of what lay ahead. She traced her finger, outlining Connor’s face: the big, open smile, his eyes so bright with life. The two of them together under the willow tree back home, and behind them, the blue ocean. Lily remembered squeezing into her white dress, all frothy and lacy, and how she’d felt like a princess as her daddy had walked her down the aisle. Her daddy had told her he couldn’t be happier for her. Lily closed her eyes, letting the tears trail down her cheeks. She missed Connor so much, but she also missed her daddy. The storm had taken them both from her.
She put the picture back down on the dresser. Rosemary Kelly knew about her. Connor hadn’t hidden his life in Maine from his grandmother unlike the secrets he had kept from Lily. The knowledge that Connor hadn’t trusted her with the truth about Eve and the baby really hurt. Had he thought she was too judgemental to cope with the truth?
Lily walked briskly back down the lane. The last thing she wanted was to run into Connor’s grandmother while she was feeling so raw and upset. She’d return later.
Back in the rental car, she turned the key and started the engine. She was struggling to fit her Connor with this other Connor, who’d got into a car drunk and killed his pregnant wife with his own recklessness. But then, everyone had a dark side. Look at her father. Because he’d been greedy to get as many lobsters as possible, he’d risked Ryan and Connor’s lives. Her daddy, who she’d idolised her whole life, had been responsible for Connor’s death. She wasn’t sure how she’d ever get past this fact and return to any kind of normal life back home.