The Forgotten Secret. Kathleen McGurl

but if you want a wider choice or non-fiction there’s only me, unless you go to the Easons over at Navan. You said you were new to the area? Moved to Blackstown, then?’

      ‘Nearby. Clonamurty Farm.’ I explained for the second time that morning my inheritance. Ryan had passed the farm but had not known Uncle Pádraig. It didn’t surprise me – there were so few books left in the house it was clear Uncle Pádraig had not been much of a reader.

      ‘Well, you’re very welcome. Good to see a new face in town. And I hope to see you in here again soon.’

      ‘Of course, I owe you some money, don’t I?’

      ‘Ah, you do, so. I’d forgotten already.’ We both laughed, and I turned to leave.

      ‘See you soon, then.’

      ‘Aye, I’ll look forward to it,’ he replied, holding the door open for me.

      I was in a fabulously positive mood by the time I returned to the farm. I’d made two friends – Janice and Ryan – stocked up on food and reading material, and even better, Electric Ireland had done their stuff and the power was back on.

      ‘A pretty good first day, all round,’ I told myself, as I settled with a cup of tea (with milk this time) on the battered old armchair in the sitting room. That broken spring dug into my bum again, and I shifted position to try to get more comfortable. It was no good.

      ‘I’m going to have to do something about you, aren’t I?’ I said, to the chair, then shook my head. It was only the second day living alone, but I was already talking to the furniture. I stood up, put my tea on the mantelpiece, and knelt down to take a close look at the chair. It was old – probably late Victorian, and had an old nylon stretch cover over some other layers of upholstery. Definitely a great project for me, to strip it back, fix that spring, and reupholster it, assuming the woodwork was sound. I’d left all my upholstery tools in England, of course, but there was a barn outside with a workshop at one end.

      No time like the present, I thought, and I went out to the barn. Those tabby cats I’d seen on my first visit with Paul were hanging around in the yard, and came scampering over to greet me as I walked across to the barn. There was another house a couple of fields away – I guessed they came from there, or at least went there for their food.

      The barn looked as though it had once been a cowshed, but the stalls had been removed. In Uncle Pádraig’s time it had been used to store farm implements, and a rusty old plough still stood in one corner. He’d sold his tractors long ago when he sold the land and gave up farming. At one end was a workbench, with a battered old chest of drawers beneath and some tools hanging from nails on a board above the bench. There’d be no specialist upholstery tools here of course, but I’d be able to make do until I could order new ones online.

      Sure enough I found a sturdy wide-tipped screwdriver that would do as a ripping chisel, a short-handled hammer and a pair of pliers. Enough to start stripping back the chair. I took them inside, gulped down my cooling cup of tea, and set to work.

      First I removed the hideous nylon cover. Underneath was ill-fitting brown velour that had been stapled on. Probably some amateur attempt at upholstery. I wondered if Uncle Pádraig or Aunt Lily might have done it, as I prised the staples loose and pulled them out with the pliers. And under that layer was a well-worn corded cotton in a swirling floral design. Possibly the original. This was properly tacked on, with a layer of calico beneath, and I knew under that would be the stuffing, probably horsehair. It was a dusty job and I began to regret doing it inside. I should have taken the whole thing out to the barn.

      It was as I removed the cover on the left wing that I discovered the hole. It went in behind the fabric of the back, deep into the chair between the frame and the stuffing. Some tacks had come away leaving a gap you could slip your hand inside. I couldn’t resist – and although the thought crossed my mind there could be decades-old dead spiders in there – I pushed my hand in and felt around. It’d be a marvellous hiding place. Perhaps there’d be a wodge of old bank notes inside?

      I felt a flutter of excitement when my fingers brushed against paper – there was definitely something in the hole. It could, of course, be simply newspaper stuffed in to pack a gap. But even old newspapers could be interesting. I gripped the paper between two fingers and gently drew my hand back out. There was something solid folded into the paper as well. Carefully I extracted the little bundle from the hole and took it to the table to inspect it in better light.

      Definitely more interesting than old newspaper – the paper was a birth certificate dated Christmas Day, 1920. Folded inside was some sort of medallion, with an inscription on the back: James Gallagher, 1910. I’d seen something like it before. My cousins had had them. It was a communion medallion, given to a child when they made their first Holy Communion. Who was James Gallagher? And why was his medallion tucked inside a chair along with a birth certificate for someone else?

      My grandparents had married in 1926 and, as far as I knew, moved into Clonamurty Farm around the same time. So these items in the chair were from before their time. What was their story?