As Hanna swiped through them, the photos became more erratic. Decorous shots of smiling women with platters of food, and a musician in a bright green waistcoat degenerated into increasingly crooked selfies of Cassie and Pat in party hats. ‘It looks like you had quite a night.’ The next shot was another selfie, this time of Cassie and a red-headed boy holding up pints of Guinness. ‘Who’s the young man?’
Cassie shrugged. ‘Just the guy who set things up for the music. His name’s Shanahan. His grandma runs the club’s quilting guild. The family came from near Ballyfin, generations back.’
Faced with such a statement, the instinctive reaction of most of Hanna’s neighbours would be to establish certain facts. Which branch of the Shanahan family was in question, what village the specific household had come from, and the exact date on which they’d left Finfarran. But Cassie had stopped abruptly, as if regretting having volunteered the information, and, having spent most of her adult life in London, Hanna had lost that particular native instinct and gained a cosmopolitan sense of tact. Instead she exclaimed at a photo of a large cake covered with glitter, held aloft by a lady wearing two bouncy shamrocks, like rabbit’s ears.
Cassie giggled. ‘It was humungous! And Pat had to cut it with a ceremonial knife. I mean, the whole thing was crazy, but people were so kind.’
‘So the holiday was a success?’
‘I hope so. I don’t know, really.’ Cassie’s nose wrinkled. ‘I haven’t dealt with grief before. It has stages, doesn’t it? Denial and anger and stuff. And, eventually, acceptance? I don’t know how long it’s supposed to take.’
Hanna suggested it might not be that simple.
Intent on what she clearly viewed as a project, Cassie frowned. ‘I can’t understand how Pat came to marry Ger. She’s such a sweetie and he was just an old crab. Don’t you think?’
Aware that the woman reading nearby was now unashamedly eavesdropping, Hanna hesitated. While enquiries about antecedents were the accepted norm in Finfarran, direct questions like this one were not. Nevertheless, gossip, whether harmless or malicious, was an inevitable part of daily life. As a divorcée who’d returned to the town she’d grown up in, Hanna’s own marriage had been the subject of covert speculation, and she knew how distressing it could be. She was about to issue a quiet reproof to Cassie when she was struck by a memory of standing on a dais, exactly where the library’s Popular Fiction shelving stood now. She was a seventeen-year-old schoolgirl enduring reproof from Sister Consuelo, an ancient nun whose remit had included ‘Pastoral Care’. The experience was humiliating, and as soon as Hanna had been released she’d forgotten whatever the lecture had contained. What had stayed with her, however, was a fierce sense of resentment. Eager to avoid a similar reaction from Cassie, she settled for a smile and the recommendation that she get a good night’s sleep before coming to work.
For the next while, Hanna was immersed in emails, but later she wondered if her brisk change of subject had been either kind to Cassie or fair to Pat. Many private dramas were played out in this public space, where much could be learned from people’s choices of books and films, where they sat and who they met here and, like most local librarians, Hanna’s instinct was to keep her eyes open and her mouth shut. But that was the wisdom of experience, and Cassie was impetuous and young. With a pang of fellow-feeling for long-dead Sister Consuelo, Hanna returned to her work. But the hamster wheel at the back of her mind kept turning. With luck, Cassie would have more sense than to go about asking indiscriminate questions. On the other hand, having not been warned, it was possible that she wouldn’t. And what would happen then?
Chapter Three
As Pat came downstairs she noticed the guest-room door was open and, judging by the look of the kitchen, Cassie had eaten and gone out. It was practically lunchtime but Pat discovered she was craving a real breakfast. Not a fry or anything heavy but maybe some toast and an egg. She could scramble the egg, throw in a bit of parsley, and call it brunch.
Frankie had agreed to drop a few bits and pieces into the shop downstairs for her return, and Pat had fixed with Des, who worked behind the counter, to add rashers and leave the lot in her fridge before shutting up. She’d asked Frankie for milk, eggs, and a loaf, but on opening the fridge she discovered it was crammed. For a moment she was surprised. Then her powers of deduction overcame her jetlag and she turned on her phone.
There was a text from Mary Casey, sent the previous evening. I GOT YOU SOME FOOD IN YOU COULDN’T TRUST FRANK%1E CHANCES ARE HE@LL FORGET
A second message had followed immediately: YOU@@ BE DEAD TO THE WORLD AFTER THE PLANE ILL BE OVER WHEN YOURE UP
Mary, Pat’s oldest friend, never stooped to punctuation in texts and only used capital letters. She also held decided opinions on what other people ought to want and need. Opening the fridge again, Pat was dismayed by a large ring of black pudding, a dozen eggs, a basket of tomatoes, and far more milk and fruit juice than she and Cassie could consume in a week. In the breadbin she found a cake of Mary’s homemade brown soda bread and a box containing three Danish pastries. No bread appeared to have come from Frankie.
She had the box of pastries in her hand when the door opened and Mary entered the flat, complaining bitterly, as she always did, about the stairs. ‘I declare to God, it’s like climbing a ladder to get up here from the shop! And that stairwell’s black as the hob of hell! I could’ve missed my step.’
‘There’s a light switch at the bottom and the top, as well you know. And a window on the landing.’
‘Ay, well, it’s halfway up there’s a nasty turn in the stair.’
Dumping her bag on the kitchen table, Mary nodded at the pastries. ‘I got three of them because I knew you’d fuss about keeping one for Cassie. Put two out on a plate now and let’s have a cup of tea.’
Pat gave up on her vision of a modest egg on toast. There was no use arguing with Mary Casey, especially if you were tired. She was a woman who surged through life like a battleship, seldom regarding the trails of flotsam bobbing in her wake. But, also like a battleship, she exuded strength and inspired confidence, something Pat had learned at an early age. She and Mary had been to convent school in Lissbeg together, hung out round the horse trough in Broad Street with lads from the Christian Brothers, and married husbands who’d also been best friends.
Tom had died ten years or so before Ger, resulting in a slight coolness between Mary and Pat. The idea that her friend would retain a husband when her own had been snatched away had offended Mary. It was she who had been the golden girl of the foursome, a leader where Pat had been a mere follower. Yet Tom had been taken and Ger, who, in her view, was a poor stick, had been left. God’s failure to recognise the accepted hierarchy had seemed to Mary to be a deadly insult, and in the first years of her bereavement a sense of outrage had made her less close to Pat.
But with Ger’s death the relationship had readjusted. Mary had surged back into Pat’s life, brushing aside Cassie’s presence as irrelevant. A granddaughter might be all very well, and blood might be thicker than water, but only Mary could truly understand Pat. And Pat, who had long since analysed their friendship, had come to the wry conclusion that Mary was right. No one left alive in Lissbeg knew more about the dynamics of that complicated foursome, and no one knew more than Pat herself how powerful an ally her oldest friend could be when times got tough.