‘But that was years ago.’
You could almost call it a lifetime. In the year of her engagement, Pat had spent the summer working in Resolve. Her passage had been booked before Ger proposed to her, and everyone had urged her not to waste the ticket. Besides, they’d said, a few months in the States would pay for a fancy trousseau.
Gently, Pat had tried to change the subject but Cassie had been unstoppable. ‘Oh, come on, Pat, why don’t we scoot over and see how Resolve has changed? Didn’t you say you worked with Erin’s gran in a clothing factory?’
‘Well, yes, love. I did.’
‘There’s a whole garment district now. Great stores. Places to go. And since Erin’s gran couldn’t get to the funeral, she’d love us to stay with them.’ Sensing reluctance, Cassie had hurried on: ‘There’ll be lots of people you know. Well, families, anyway. I mean, Lord knows why my lot chose Canada when practically every Finfarran emigrant takes off for Resolve.’
‘I was only there three months, Cassie. Nobody would remember me.’
‘That is so not true! Erin says you and her gran were best buddies over there. And think of all the people who sent their condolences. Oh, Pat, let’s do this. I want to meet my US relations properly. We’ll have a ball. Say you’ll come.’
That was Cassie. Her enthusiasm was so infectious that you always found yourself nodding. So, feeling uncertain but far too tired to argue, Pat had agreed. Now, in the silence of the library, the cat stirred as the clock struck the hour. Turning her gaze from a case of classic crime stories, Pat saw it was time to go to her party. Tomorrow, she thought, she’d be flying home to Finfarran and, despite everyone’s kindness, crossing the Atlantic Ocean hadn’t made things better at all. In fact, just as she’d feared it might, being in Resolve had stirred up memories she’d far rather forget.
Chapter Two
March had come in like a lion, battering Ireland’s west coast with a fierce Atlantic gale. The Finfarran Peninsula had taken the brunt of it, and as Hanna Casey drove to her job in Lissbeg Library, the winding country lanes were strewn with debris blown from the hedgerows. In fields on either side of the roads, uprooted trees lay at crazy angles and, here and there, corrugated panels had been wrenched from the sides of barns. Yet, lying awake in her bed before dawn, Hanna had become aware of a change. The icy northerly wind had veered away from the peninsula, and now a southerly breeze had brought a morning as mild as milk.
This was typical March weather in Finfarran, what local people were accustomed to call ‘four seasons in a day’. By this evening another storm could bring sleet, or even snow. But, for now, Hanna revelled in the rain-washed morning, the spangled celandines gleaming in the ditches, and the iridescent, mother-of-pearl sky.
She drove into Lissbeg, joining the flow of traffic streaming down Broad Street. Passing Fitzgerald’s butcher’s shop, she saw the upstairs blinds had been raised. Pat and Cassie Fitz must have arrived home from the States. Hanna was glad to see that the town had suffered little storm damage. It would have been awful if Pat had come home to find slates off her roof. Turning into the car park, Hanna pulled into the space marked ‘Librarian’ and went through an arched gateway into a paved courtyard. The town’s former convent and school buildings were now the Old Convent Centre, home to a mix of amenities, including the public library and a walled park, which had been the nuns’ private garden. An iron-bound door, once the school entrance, now led to council offices; a smaller door to the left accessed the library, housed in what had been the assembly hall.
At first Hanna had found it bizarre to work where she’d giggled and yawned as a schoolgirl. Her mother had been to the convent, too, as had every generation of girls in Lissbeg till the nuns had closed the school in the 1990s. Now the dark assembly hall had been extended to include exhibition space and a reading room, large windows and glass partitions flooding it with light. Glass-fronted cases incorporated in the heavy oak panelling still contained books left by the nuns, but the public library’s collection was kept on metal shelving ranged in parallel rows down the room. Hanna’s desk was at the front, its back to the glass wall that divided the library from the exhibition space. Next to the staff loo at the end of the hall there was a slip of a kitchen, where she and her assistant brewed tea and coffee and hung their coats.
With an eye to the weather, Hanna had worn a warm jacket this morning, and put a folding umbrella into her bag. Having hung both in the kitchen, she plugged in the public-access computers, then went to her desk to log on to her own and check the morning’s emails. She’d hardly sat down when the door opened and Cassie Fitzgerald came in, looking remarkably wide awake for someone who’d flown from New York.
‘Welcome back! When did you arrive?’
‘You know what? I have no idea! It felt like we landed in the middle of the night, and then we had the drive from Shannon.’
‘You must be exhausted.’
‘Well, I crashed for a couple of hours and now I feel fine. Pat’s still asleep, though.’
‘How was the holiday?’
‘Good. Great, in fact. I guess if I didn’t feel needed here I might even have stayed on.’ A look of surprise crossed Hanna’s face and Cassie went on hastily, ‘But you’ve still got a job for me, right? Because I’ll definitely be around while Conor’s away.’
Conor, Hanna’s library assistant, was going on a course, and it hadn’t been easy to find someone to take on short-term, part-time cover. There was one day based in Lissbeg on offer, plus two more driving the mobile library, and everyone available had turned out not to have a suitable driving licence, or wanted to change the hours, which couldn’t be done. Then Cassie had suggested herself and Hanna had agreed at once. The timing was ideal and she had had a second reason to be pleased. She’d always been fond of Pat, who was her godmother, so it was great to hear that Cassie planned to spend more time in Finfarran. Ger had been a cross-grained, miserly little man, and the marriage had never looked easy. But Pat was shaken by her loss and Cassie’s company would help.
Hanna smiled at the eager figure by her desk. ‘That’s absolutely fine. I cleared the paperwork last week, so we’re good to go.’
‘Brilliant. And my whole week’s sorted. The salon at the Spa Hotel has a vacancy for a stylist, so I grabbed that to fill the other two days.’
‘The Spa in Ballyfin?’
‘Yep. Pat’s planning to sell Ger’s car, but she’s said I can use it while I’m here.’
‘Poor Pat – she’ll have plenty of decisions like that to make.’
‘I know. Ger left her everything. I bet Uncle Frankie’s nose is well out of joint.’
Aware that a woman reading nearby was in earshot, Hanna stuck to business and asked if Cassie could start work at once. ‘Mobile days are Wednesdays and Fridays, when you’ll pick up the van from the County Library in Carrick, so if you come in tomorrow you can get accustomed to how I run things here.’
‘No problem.’ Cassie took out her phone. ‘I got some great pix over in Resolve. Look, that was the farewell party. Only forty-eight hours ago – no wonder Pat’s still asleep.’