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Also available from KATHLEEN McGURL
The Emerald Comb
The Pearl Locket
The Daughters of Red Hill Hall
KATHLEEN MCGURL lives near the sea in Bournemouth, UK, with her husband and elderly tabby cat. She has two sons who are now grown-up and have left home. She began her writing career creating short stories, and sold dozens to women’s magazines in the UK and Australia. Then she got sidetracked onto family history research – which led eventually to writing novels with genealogy themes. She has always been fascinated by the past, and the ways in which the past can influence the present, and enjoys exploring these links in her novels.
When not writing or working at her full-time job in IT, she likes to go out running or swimming, both of which she does rather slowly. She is definitely quicker at writing, even though the cat tries to disrupt the writing process by insisting on sharing Kathleen’s lap with the laptop.
You can find out more at her website:
http://kathleenmcgurl.com/, or follow her on Twitter: @KathMcGurl
For my sons, Fionn and Connor McGurl
Contents
There was something about Ireland that made it look and feel completely different to England as I drove through it in my hire car, on the way from Dublin airport south-west towards Ballymor. I mean, the motorways were much the same except that the road signs showed place names in Irish as well as English, and the distances were given in kilometres. And the fields and woods either side of the motorway were green and lush, as they would be back home during a rainy summer. But there was something foreign about it all that I could not quite put my finger on.
Perhaps it was to do with the way houses were dotted randomly across the landscape, whereas in England they’d all be grouped into villages, apart from the odd farmhouse. Or was it the ubiquitous whitewash of the cottages, or the colourful shopfronts and lack of chain stores in the small towns I passed through once I’d left the motorway and headed deep into County Cork.
I found myself pondering all this as I drove onwards. Anything to take my mind off the last conversation I’d had with my boyfriend Dan, just before I’d left for the airport that morning. I wanted to blot the memory of his expression of disappointment and hurt from my mind. And there was the other thing I wanted to forget all about as well, during this trip. I’d deal with it all when I went back home. This week was to be purely about me-time.
After all, it wasn’t as though Dan hadn’t had fair warning I would be going on this trip. I’d been talking about the possibility of doing it for ages. I’d originally suggested that he might come along as well, but he’d said