He laughed. ‘I never knew a woman who didn’t like spending men’s money!’
Fran tittered and said he was a dreadful tease. Had the remark been made by anyone other than her uncle, Cassie would have jumped on it at once. But she was in his home, drinking his vodka, so it didn’t seem the moment to call him out for dumb-ass misogyny. Especially as Fran seemed happy to play along. ‘The point is that I know you want to be there for Pat, Uncle Frankie, so I’d like to feel that you and I are a team. Fran, too, obviously. You know?’
Frankie’s face showed no expression. Then he knocked back his whiskey and put down the glass. ‘Of course I do.’
‘Great. So we’ll keep in touch?’
As she reached for her phone to give Frankie her number, the atmosphere in the room still felt slightly strange. Cassie worried that what she’d said had been pompous. With a feeling that she was out of her depth, she said that her dad and Uncle Jim had wanted to stay around longer.
Keying her number into his phone, Frankie said he believed her.
Eager not to let the side down, Cassie assured him that Sonny had promised to call Pat often. ‘Uncle Jim too.’
‘I wouldn’t doubt them.’
He handed her phone back to her and, with nothing left to be said, Cassie stood up. Frankie did, too, and his heavy arm swung around her shoulders. As he walked her to the door she could feel his fingers through her sweatshirt, and it struck her that he was twice the size of Ger. Fran had remained seated in the conservatory, her beaded glass of vodka in her hand.
Cassie drove home in darkness, pulling up now and then to check the ghostly white finger posts that glimmered in the maze of country roads. When she reached the motorway she increased her speed till she came to the turn that took her back to Lissbeg. It was raining, so the streets were almost empty, but light shone from uncurtained windows, and in Broad Street music was playing in the pubs. Driving round to the rear of the shop, she left the car in the shed Ger had used as a garage, and crossed the cobbled yard to let herself in the back door, which opened onto a narrow passage. The blinds were down in the shop and, having turned the light off in the passage, she groped her way past the counter to the door at the foot of the stairs. Treading quietly, Cassie went up, thinking that, to be fair to Mary Casey, the steps were steep and the sharp turn was awkward. There was a brave sliver of moon shining through the landing window, though; and, when she switched off the light at the top of the stairs and went into the warm kitchen, the old-fashioned lamp and the easy chairs, the seascape on the wall and the worn, scrubbed table seemed to be welcoming her home.
Chapter Nine
The sun shone brilliantly for Cassie’s first mobile-library run. The following day, on her first shift at the salon, she described it to Margot. ‘A girl from the County Library in Carrick came along to show me the ropes. That’s where the van’s based.’
‘Where do you take it?’
‘North side of the peninsula on Wednesdays. I love all the winding roads to the north, and the high cliffs beyond the forest. Don’t get me wrong, the other side’s cool as well. I just like the contrast.’ She explained that on Fridays, when she took the southern route, her last stop of the day would be Ballyfin. ‘That one’s all winding roads as well, but on both days, once I’ve finished work, I shoot down the motorway, leave the van in Carrick, and pick up my car.’
They were standing in the staff room, having met each other coming up in the lift. Cassie peered in the mirror at her fringe. ‘Well, it’s not actually my car. It was Ger’s. Pat gave up driving ages ago. I’d hoped she’d want to take it up again, now she’s on her own, but I don’t know.’
‘She’s a bit old for that, surely? If she hasn’t driven for years.’
‘She’s a very competent little lady under that sweet exterior. And getting out of the house would do her good. I’m trying to convince her to join the library’s book club. She needs to get back in the swing of things.’
‘Maybe what she needs is a bit of time.’
‘Or a bit of encouragement. Like, she slotted right back into life over in Resolve. It was ages since she’d been there, but she remembered everything. The layout of all the streets and the numbers of buses. The whole thing.’
‘It must have changed since her time, though?’
‘Sure. Erin says it’s probably doubled in size. Even the Shamrock Club’s moved on a bit. Though apparently not that much!’
They went through to the salon, where Margot checked the appointments. ‘The thing about a hotel salon is that guests expect us to be like room service. So we get more walk-ins than bookings. But there are some things you can anticipate. Obviously, if there’s a wedding on, we know there’ll be lots of updos. And hen parties often go for the whole hog – colour, perms, you name it. Then they’re back next morning, hyperventilating, expecting you to put everything in reverse. If that happens, leave them to me. I’ll put manners on them.’ Margot scrolled down the screen. ‘Otherwise, it’s mostly wash-and-blow-dries and the occasional trim. Oh, and guys wanting cuts, but they never book.’
‘And it’s all guests?’
‘Yeah. Even though there’s times when we’re practically sitting watching tumbleweed. I think it’s crazy, especially in winter, because people from town would come in. But the manager’s adamant. We’ve got to be “exclusive”.’
Having dismissed the manager with air quotes, Margot suggested coffee. ‘I have a lady at ten, so you’ll be doing walk-ins. Sharon, the receptionist, should be here in a minute. She covers the beauty parlour as well as the salon, and her kid sister Kate is our junior. Keep the kid working – she tends to slope off.’ Turning away from the computer screen, Margot grinned at Cassie. ‘Let’s have our coffee on the terrace. We might as well catch what sun we can, given the month that’s in it, and I’ll nip back in when I hear the lift.’
The terrace wrapped round two sides of the hotel’s top floor and the view was spectacular. Leaning on the rail with her coffee, Cassie craned her neck to look at the mountains towering high above the little port. Beyond them were the roads she’d driven yesterday in the van, then the sparsely inhabited farmland between the ocean and Finfarran’s ancient stretch of deciduous woodland, which was fringed with conifers tall as church spires. The mobile library had specific stopping places, not all of which had made immediate sense to Cassie. But she’d soon realised that a church had an adjacent hall, which hosted a day-care centre, and a guest house, which had once been a forge, owned a forecourt that accommodated the van.
Some of the villages she’d passed through had had few houses and no shop or pub. One, close to the end of her route, had a name that had caught her eye. She asked Margot about it. ‘Do you know a place on the far side of the mountain called Mullafrack?’
‘Well, yeah, but there’s nothing there.’
‘I know, but there must have been once.’
Margot shrugged. ‘It’s awful land that side of the mountain. There might have been people farming it way back. Not now.’
Mullafrack was where Jack Shanahan’s people came from. He’d told her the name but she’d forgotten it till she saw the sign by the road.