BALLYKISSANGEL
The river was a good venue for hard conversations, Siobhan had always thought. Something about the water always moving softened the awkwardness of lulls, filled in the gaps with a bit of reassurance.
"Are you still with him?"
Siobhan shook her head. "Even a baby couldn't get me settled down," she admitted.
"She's adorable," said Benny, his voice soft but cool. "Although if it's true it's over between you and him, you might've mentioned her."
"Perhaps it's not so much over as it never truly started," Siobhan conceded. She braced her arms on the wall of the bridge and looked down at the water. "I meant to tell you, really. Only we spent so much time talking of the past, it was hard to see where the present fit in."
Benny inhaled. "Confession time for me as well," he said.
Siobhan looked up.
"I've a son."
Siobhan blinked. "Little?"
Benny shrugged. "Twenty?"
"Ah," she managed. "One of those broken engagements?"
He nodded. "The first."
"And where's he, so?"
"Still with his mother in Glasgow. Thinking about applying to the Dick Vet."
"What are his considerations?"
Now he turned to face her. "If I go back there to teach sonography, they might give him a break on expenses."
Siobhan made a sad smile. "Funny world."
"Goes on moving beneath our feet in spite of us," Benny agreed. "I love it in Cilldargan, you know. But it is a chance to catch up a bit on the parenting I didn't always do."
Siobhan put a hand in the bend of his elbow. He returned the touch.
"I'll miss you," she said.
"And I, you." He breathed deep. "Who'd ever have bet I let you get away twice?"
Down on the banks, a fisherman was cursing something similar. Siobhan moved her gaze to the water once more. If she stared long enough, it almost seemed to sit still - as if the bridge itself was the thing travelling.
Frankie grinned across a spoonful of soup as she watched the diplomatic relations begin to crumble between Kieran and Aisling in the parlour. The boy kept denying the girl access to the crayons unless she made some effort to speak the colours' names. Her limitations had resulted in a strange picture, with a blue sun shining down on a red tree.
Frankie glanced at Ambrose now. "Clever game. Was it your idea?"
He nodded, sheepishly.
"You make a good governess," Frankie teased. Then she caught a case of his seriousness: "So when'll you break it to the superintendent?"
"I...I haven't decided."
"You have, though."
He looked up.
"You're a family man again now. It wouldn't be right to take these kinds of chances."
Ambrose blushed. "I'll have another charge shortly enough," he admitted.
Frankie's eyes went wide. "You and Niamh?" she gasped.
He chuckled. "No. My father's moving back into town. He bought up the old Quigley manor; has Liam and Donal cleaning it up now. He's okay, but he's weak; he worries about the future. There are plenty of rooms, so...I've a place to live. So do Niamh and Kieran if they choose."
Frankie's spoon tumbled into the soup.
Ambrose leant in. "I'd never have found him again without your help. I can't thank you enough."
Frankie felt an embrace coming on. She stalled it with a touch of her own. "That's lovely," she managed. "A family again."
Ambrose nodded, an uncertain fog in his eyes.
IRISH SEA
Niamh sank into her ferry seat, toying with the pen she'd bought special for signing the papers. It had proven relatively painless: Sean had wished her well in his pouty, guilt-slinging manner, and she had indulged in a few self-congratulatory chocolates as she drove away from the solicitor's.
The trip had offered a nice break from the stress of waiting for that telephone to ring, or wondering how long she would stay in the pub - and whether her chosen manager would accept the terms of her offer. She plucked a few pills of lint off the upholstery, and allowed herself just a few hours' more permission not to think on it. She found "I'll Follow the Sun" playing in her mind, and made no effort to banish it.
She thought of the heavy trunk she had brought back with her, at no shortage of expense or inconvenience. It had sat in storage for two years, unused, and without a destination. Sean had suggested a dozen ways to be rid of its contents - charity, individual sale to collectors, the bin.
She could never bring herself to do any of it. She could never explain why. But tonight, as the sunset beckoned her home, she knew she had been right.
BELFAST - THREE YEARS EARLIER
Assumpta lay awake on the floor of her new, as-yet unfurnished flat. Beneath her lay a few cheap quilts procured secondhand from a charity shop, folded double. Over her draped her mother's afghan, still smelling of the pub - smoke, beer, chip fat, dog hair, oil soap.
She hoped the smell would fade soon.
It was the smell of the stage where, not one month ago, she had lived out the actor's nightmare: where one lands helpless in the middle of a play, without a clue of her lines, of her direction.
Some small, naïve part of her had written the script long ago: perhaps not on the day they met, though she recalled it now, wondering if this was how some people believed in that at-first-sight business. She had first noticed his droopy shoulders set against the unlikely backdrop of his height; and then his voice; and then the silhouette of his nose...
No, the script had come some time later. Perhaps in the play rehearsals, as she secretly cheered Enda Sullivan's ankle trauma.
The script had been simple: if Peter ever had the stones to say,
"I love you,"
Assumpta's reply was to be,
"I love you, too."
One line. One line in a script, and she had failed to deliver it.
"Oh, would you take that thing off..."
What if she had told him? Why on earth, in the moment, could she not conjure what she'd always imagined she would say?
She knew, of course. It was for him. It was for his vocation, for what he was always meant to be.
She felt her chin beginning to quiver, felt heat behind her eyes, against the back of her sinuses.
Solitude was an easier venue for tears. She allowed them now.
Tomorrow she would audition at the melodrama theatre, see if her damned glibness and stupid tearfulness could be put to some use. And surely, back home, Peter would go on in the work he'd been called to do.
That missed cue, that lost chance...she reminded herself now. She could have said she loved him, or she could have proven it.
She had chosen well.
MANCHESTER - 2001
Assumpta waited on the stoop of the Clifford house, a hungry Fionn sloping against her own tired legs. Kate must have gone, and Peter must not have returned; there had been no answer at the door.
It had grown dark out. She had moronically left her keys inside. And the kibble...
She reminded herself now that she wasn't listening for the buzz of a vehicle engine, nor for Fionn's sooner reaction to the same from farther away.
Even thus reminded, the footsteps took her by surprise.
She sprang to her feet, discovering now they had gone off asleep in disuse. The resulting stumble sent her aground, bruising a knee and annoying the dog.
Peter took a pitying look, helping her alight. "You okay?"
She flinched at the pain, then nodded. Unconvincing. Poor actress.
"I got a call," she said. "A job offer, of a sort."
His eyes went wide. "Oh?"
Adrenaline was washing in from the stumble. She felt strangely powerful. Brave. "I'm only saying yes if you're coming with me," she said, her head jittering between a shake and a nod. "Because I love you. I can't live without you. Three years was long enough."
"Okay," whispered Peter, startled. "Tell us what you know."