how two unpromising scraps of life had turned into the most beautiful children he’d ever seen. Molly placed her head on his shoulder and Lewis cuddled up in the crook of his arm. Oh, what he would give to be back here, on this sofa every night, with his children in his arms.
His hand was on the front door latch when Sarah called his name. He turned and she padded noiselessly up the hall, the now empty wine glass pressed to her chest, her hair fallen from the ponytail. ‘Between us, we’ll take care of her, Ian. And everything’s going to be all right. Try not to worry.’
Her blonde hair, back-lit by the lamp on the hall table, was like a halo. Goodness shone from her, pure and bright. Why hadn’t he fought harder to save his marriage?
When the children were in bed and the house was finally quiet for the night, Sarah threw together a stiff gin with out-of-date tonic she’d found lurking in the bottom of the fridge. Standing over the kitchen sink she swallowed the bitter drink in one, grimaced, and waited for the alcohol to slow her racing pulse and unscramble the thoughts inside her head. Bisto rubbed his back against her leg and meowed.
‘Oh, I’m sorry, Bisto. I’ve forgotten to feed you, haven’t I?’ He meowed again as if he understood. She spooned half a tin of cat food into his bowl and he gobbled it down appreciatively.
She’d got home late last night from the Europa Hotel and then lain in bed for hours, tossing and turning, unable to sleep, replaying over and over her meeting with Cahal.
She remembered every little detail of his changed appearance; the smattering of grey hairs in his dark sideburns; the deep zig-zag crease across his brow; the slight slackness of the skin on the back of his tanned hands. She’d noticed too the things that hadn’t changed like the barely visible, half-moon- shaped scar on his cheekbone, a war wound from a long-ago hurling match. Lying in the darkness staring at the digital clock display, as the minutes and hours ticked by, sorrow and anger welled up like twin demons. She tortured herself with scenarios of what might have been. The life they might have had. All the old regrets came rushing back and with them came anger. She had been a fool to believe in him. For all his talk of love, his promises had been empty. He should not have come back. He should not be here, invading her space and making her question the life she had so painstakingly constructed.
After a restless night, she’d been exhausted all day at work, on edge the entire time, expecting him to walk through the door at any minute. Yawning, she rinsed out the glass and decided on an early night.
Upstairs, in the bedroom where she’d slept alone these past eight years, she changed into her pyjamas and opened the heavy bottom drawer of a mahogany chest – one of many items that Ian, in his haste to shed his old life like a skin, had left behind. Under a pile of lycra gym wear she’d bought after the divorce and never worn, she found the old shoebox that was home to her special things. She sat down on the bed with her legs crossed and took off the lid.
Under the black-and-white photographs she found the small, hand-carved green-and-blue lacquered box that she’d owned for so long she could no longer remember how she’d come to possess it.
She opened the hinged lid that didn’t quite fit properly. Inside was a magpie assortment of tarnished trinkets collected in her youth, which she could not bring herself to throw away. Pieces of insubstantial jewellery from old boyfriends; a thin silver bracelet she’d bought with her first pay packet from her Saturday job in the hairdressers; a silver alloy and marcasite bracelet with a broken clasp that had belonged to her maternal grandmother.
Finally she found what she was looking for. Her fingers closed around a twist of tissue paper, yellowed and crisp with age. She set the box on the bed, unravelled the paper and a delicate necklace and a ring, both dirty with neglect, fell onto the dove grey satin bedspread. She picked the necklace up and stared at the tiny pendant that hung from the chain, browned with tarnish like coffee stains.
Cahal had given it to her on her nineteenth birthday, a silvery disc suspended within a half-moon-shaped arc. Back then, the silver had gleamed bright and shiny like her hopes. The pendant had peculiar markings on it, resembling hieroglyphics, that didn’t at first seem to make any sense.
‘Let me show you,’ he said. He flicked the little disc with his nail, sending it spinning, and conjuring out of thin air the words ‘I Love You’. She gasped silently and watched the words floating in the space between them. But, as soon as she touched the pendant, they were gone.
She placed the necklace in the palm of her left hand, closed her fingers around it and sighed. For six months, she’d worn that necklace nestled between her breasts, never taking it off even to shower or bathe.
‘Mammy,’ said a voice and Sarah, looking up, blinked back tears and smiled at her thin and willowy daughter, dressed in fleecy tiger print pyjamas to ward off the chill of the cold March night.
‘What’re …’ she croaked, cleared her throat and found her voice. ‘What’re you doing out of bed, Molly?’
‘I couldn’t sleep. When I lie down my throat gets all tickly and then I cough and cough.’ She coughed as if to prove her point and her whole body shook. Her face was as white as the stubborn pockets of snow that still clung to the north-facing pavement outside. She sat down beside her mother and looked at the things on the bed.
‘If it’s not any better in the morning, you might have to go to the doctor’s.’
Molly shook her long hair, thin like Sarah’s but a lighter shade of blonde, and picked up one of the photographs that were spread across the bed. ‘Who’s this?’ she said, holding up a picture of two women, in fifties-style skirts and buttoned-up cardigans, leaning against a railing with a shoreline as backdrop.
Sarah craned her neck to see more clearly and smiled. ‘Oh, that’s your nan and Aunt Vi.’
Molly frowned. ‘It doesn’t look like Aunt Vi.’
‘That’s because it was taken a long time ago.’ She took the picture from Molly and peered at it. The women’s full skirts flared in the wind and they fought to hold the skirts down in an effort to protect their modesty. Maybe that was why they were laughing so hard. She smiled, warm memories of her mother flooding back. ‘Look how young they both are. I think it was taken when your Gran and Grandad were going out together, before they were married. I guess Grandad must’ve taken the picture.’
‘Aunt Vi was really pretty,’ said Molly, sifting through some more photos.
‘Yes, yes, she was,’ said Sarah, wondering how the carefree girl in the picture with the tiny waist and shapely legs had turned into such a worrier. And why too, she had never married.
Losing interest in the photographs, Molly plucked the ring off the bedspread. She held it between her finger and thumb and observed, ‘This is really dirty.’
‘Yes,’ said Sarah, dropping the photograph. ‘It’s been in the box a long time. It’d come up fine with a bit of gold polish though.’
‘What is it?’
Sarah swallowed. She had not shown the ring to anyone in over twenty years. She told herself that talking about it now was harmless. It was a relic from her personal history; that was all. But still, her voice caught in her throat when she said, ‘It’s a Claddagh ring.’
‘What’s a Cla-da ring?’ said Molly, stumbling over the unfamiliar syllables.
‘It’s a friendship ring. Sometimes people use them as wedding rings. It’s named after a little village in Galway. Here, let me show you.’ She held out her hand and Molly dropped the ring, cold as clay, into the palm of her hand.
‘The heart in the middle stands for love,’ she said, holding the ring up to the light, its history told in the rounded corners of the soft metal and the many little scratches that covered its surface. ‘The two hands holding the heart mean friendship, and the crown here, on top of the