ERIN KAYE
Always You

To my big brother, Jim

Contents

Cover

Title page

Dedication

Chapter 1 1992

Chapter 2 2012

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Backads

About the Author

Also by Erin Kaye

Copyright

About the Publisher

Chapter 1 1992

‘So, have you told your father about us yet?’ Cahal lay on his back, head propped up by two pillows, staring at a patch of green mould on the ceiling. A chipped saucer, full of ash, balanced precariously on his athletic chest.

‘Have you told yours?’ said Sarah, tracing her finger around the whorl of thick, black hair that surrounded his left nipple. The room smelt of cigarette smoke, stale beer and sex – the smell of sin. Golden February sunshine filtered through the thin floral curtains and ‘Goodnight Girl’ by Wet Wet Wet played quietly on the radio. The laughter of high school kids on their lunch break floated up from the street below.

‘Yep.’ He brought the stub of a roll-up to his lips, pinched between nicotine-yellow finger and thumb. His chest rose as he inhaled, stilled, then deflated slowly as a plume of grey smoke escaped from the corner of his mouth.

Sarah propped herself up on her elbow, and pulled the slightly musty duvet around her naked, shivering shoulders. She tucked a lock of long, blonde hair behind her ear. ‘What did they say?’

He stubbed the cigarette out on the saucer with a faint fizzing sound and carefully placed the saucer atop the bedside table. ‘Not much.’

‘Oh,’ she said, disappointed, and sank back down on the bed again.

He rolled onto his side and the well-defined muscles beneath his pale skin flexed. ‘Don’t take it personally. They aren’t that interested in anything I do.’ But though he smiled, his eyes, the same blue-green colour of the sea in Portstewart bay outside, were sad.

Sarah frowned. ‘Not like my Dad. He rang the flat the other day, you know, asking me what mark I got in that psychology paper. He’s always ringing me. Or if not him, Aunt Vi. I wish we didn’t have that phone. You manage perfectly well here without one. He insists that I come home every weekend. You’d think I was twelve, not a grown adult.’

He cocked his head in reply and was quiet for a few moments. Sarah waited, used to the way he always thought before he spoke, a trait that lent everything he said an air of authority. ‘I wouldn’t knock it. At least he cares about you.’

‘He cares too much,’ grumbled Sarah. ‘He didn’t want me to leave Ballyfergus. He wanted me to go to Queen’s in Belfast and live at home.’

A pause. ‘So why didn’t you?’

‘I had to get away. Living in that house was suffocating. I had to attend church twice on a Sunday and my father always had to know exactly where I was, and who I was with. My aunt was even worse. And if I was ever late, oh, what a carry-on. You’d have thought Jack the Ripper was on the loose.’

He grinned lopsidedly, a dimple appearing in his left cheek, and revealed the crooked tooth in his lower left jaw that would’ve been an imperfection in anyone else. He placed a hand, rough and hot, on her hip. ‘So you escaped?’

‘Something like that.’

The smile faded from his face. ‘I did too.’

‘What were you escaping from?’

He stared at the wall for a few moments and said at last, ‘My family have lived in Ballyfergus and worked on the docks for three generations. I’m not knocking the town, or them, but I wanted something more out of life. It wouldn’t have been possible before for people like me to go to university but the grant system’s changed all that. So long as I work every holiday and keep my job in The Anchor bar, I should be all right.’ He smiled and looked at Sarah. ‘You should’ve seen my Ma and Da’s faces when I told them I was going to university.’

‘They must’ve been pleased.’

‘They were astonished. No one in my family has ever got past O levels, Sarah, never mind gone on to uni.’

Sarah stared at him thoughtfully. ‘There’s far more to you than meets the eye, Cahal Mulvenna.’

‘You think so?’ he laughed, his dark eyes twinkling.

She knitted her eyebrows together. ‘You give the impression of being one of the lads. You act like all you want to do is get pissed and have a good time.’

He grinned. ‘Well I do want to have a good time. You’re only young once. And sure there’s nothing wrong with that.’

‘But you’re not the pisshead you pretend to be. Beneath that exterior, you’re actually quite determined and focused, aren’t you?’

‘This is my chance to make something of my life. I’m not going to screw it up.’ He paused and twirled a lock of her hair around his index finger. ‘You know I’ve never met a girl like you before.’

‘But there have been other girls?’ she teased, looking at him from under her eyelashes. Beneath the covers she found his leg and rubbed his hairy calf with her foot.

‘A few,’ he acknowledged, letting go of her hair and slipping his hand under the covers.

‘Tell me about them.’

‘Ach, now, you don’t want to know that.’ His hand made contact with her ribcage, then moved swiftly down her smooth, boyish hip. ‘You must’ve had your fair share of boyfriends,’ he said, looking up at her questioningly from under long lashes. ‘I bet I’m just one of many.’

She stopped rubbing his leg and stared at him. Didn’t he realise what he meant to her? She’d dated a few boys, but she’d never loved any of them. ‘I’ve had boyfriends,’ she said, looking at his chest, and feeling her face colour. Her voice dropped. ‘But I never slept with any of them.’

His hand stilled and his voice softened. ‘What?’

She raised her eyes to meet his. ‘I never loved any of them, Cahal. Not the way I love you.’

‘Oh, sweetheart,’ he said. ‘You never told me.’

‘You never asked.’

He gathered her to him in his hard arms, and pressed his lips to her temple. Coarse dark stubble rasped against her face with painful, exquisite discomfort. ‘Sarah, Sarah, Sarah,’ he intoned like a prayer, his voice breaking up like static on the radio. ‘I love you too.’

Sarah’s heart swelled with happiness and with the sense of power and protection that his love instilled in her. Every breath was in time with his as if they were one, and in that moment her world contracted. Everything she’d ever wanted, everything she would ever want, was in that small square room, with the tired wallpaper, the wardrobe with one door missing, the creeping mould on the ceiling.

‘If you’d loved someone before me,’ he said into her hair after a long silence, ‘I’d be jealous, you know.’

She laughed. ‘How can you be jealous of someone who happened in the past?’

In reply he kissed the top of her head and held her closer. The still afternoon wore on and they lay for a long time, listening to the sound of traffic and conversation drifting up from the promenade below. And yet she was not at peace. She pressed her face into his chest and closed her eyes but all she saw was her father’s face, sporting the reproachful, wounded expression she knew so well. A police detective, he saw the world in terms of black and white, and was crystal clear about who was on the side of good – and who wasn’t. And the Mulvennas, low-class and of dubious background, would, she suspected (though she had never asked), fall on the wrong side of her father’s carefully calibrated moral fence. Cahal’s father had even served time in prison.

His voice broke through her thoughts. ‘What’re you thinking?’

She blushed, glad that her face was pressed against his chest, so he could not see. ‘Isn’t it weird that we grew up in the same town and never so much as spoke to each other before?’

He pulled away and looked into her face, smiling. ‘I suppose so. But that’s Ulster for you. Two different cultures, not so much rubbing along as steadfastly ignoring each other.’

‘Except when they’re trying to murder each other.’

‘Yeah,’ he said and gave a little laugh. ‘I saw you once, you know. In your grammar school uniform in the library. Last year, when I was home for my gran’s funeral.

‘I used to go there for peace and quiet to revise for my A levels.’

‘I thought you were beautiful even then. I watched you for ages, pretending to choose a book off the shelf. I never thought a girl like you would look at a guy like me.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because you’re an uptown girl,’ he said, referring not just to the fact that she lived in a house on what locals called ‘The Hill’.

‘Well, maybe I like a downtown guy,’ she said playfully.

Cahal sat half upright, his elbow digging into the pillow, and looked down at her. His face was serious. ‘You haven’t answered my question.’

‘What question?’ she said, knowing full well what he meant.

‘Have you told your family about us yet?’

‘I told my little sister that I was seeing someone.’ She raised her eyebrows in the faint hope that this might satisfy him.

‘And the rest of the family?’

She twisted a lock of hair around her forefinger and examined the split ends in the shaft of sunlight that sliced through the ill-fitting curtains. ‘Not yet.’

‘You said you would.’

‘The right moment hasn’t … presented itself.’ He opened his mouth to speak but she silenced him with a smile. ‘But I will. I promise. But back to your parents. They must have said something about me?’ His left shoulder twitched. She sat upright and stared at him. ‘What? What did they say?’

He stared at her for some long moments as if weighing something up in his mind. ‘My Da asked me if you were David Walker’s daughter.’

‘And?’

‘He said I had no business walking out with the daughter of an RUC man.’ RUC stood for Royal Ulster Constabulary.

‘Oh,’ said Sarah, feeling slighted, and her head sank back into the pillow. Having a father in the police had always been a point of pride, of honour. Never before had anyone attempted to make her feel as if it was something to be ashamed of.

‘It’s not personal,’ said Cahal, seeing her unease. ‘You have to understand that my father has a certain, how shall I say it, disregard for the law and those who enforce it.’

‘Hmm,’ said Sarah, only partly mollified. ‘And what did you tell him?’

‘You really want to know?’

She nodded.

‘I told him to mind his own effing business.’

She blinked, suddenly so proud of him for standing up for her against his father that her throat swelled up and she found it hard to speak. ‘You did?’ she squeaked.

‘Pah,’ he said, brushing off his father’s objections like dandruff. ‘I’m not having a layabout like him telling me what to do.’ He smiled then and placed his palm on her cheek, his big hand curled around her face like one half of a shell. ‘I know what I want, Sarah. I want you. And I’m not going to let anything, or anyone in this world, come between us.’

‘Me neither, Cahal.’

‘Do you mean that, Sarah? Do you really, really mean it?’

Her heart pounded in her chest. ‘With all my heart and soul. I have never loved a man as I love you and I never will again.’

‘Stay there,’ he said, as a wide, triumphant grin spread across his face. He jumped out of bed and crossed the room in two strides, the gluteal muscles in his tight, stark white buttocks flexing as he walked. Above his backside, a narrow waist widened into a deep, strong back and broad triangular shoulders. She propped herself up on both elbows and butterflies born of lust, not nerves, made her stomach churn.

He crouched down and rummaged in the bottom of the wardrobe, his muscled body vulnerable in a crouched position, like Atlas preparing to take the weight of the world upon his shoulders.

He stood up, faced her front on. ‘Found it,’ he grinned, holding out his closed right fist. His knuckles bore dark red crusty scars from hurling, a game she’d never seen until yesterday, when she’d stood on the sidelines astounded by its pace and warrior-like qualities, the sticks brandished like swords.

He came over and knelt on the bed, seemingly oblivious to the chill in the room, which the early spring sunshine did nothing to dissipate. If she breathed out hard enough, her breath misted. She sat up, leaned against the pillows and pulled the covers up to her chin.

‘I want you to have this,’ he said and he held out a small gold ring in the palm of his calloused hand.

She hesitated.

‘Go on. Take it.’

She picked it up and examined it. It was a curious design featuring two hands entwined around a heart with a crown on top, all wrought from pale yellow gold. The edges of the ring were worn with age, like the weathered sandstone gargoyles on Ballyfergus town hall that had fascinated her as a child.

‘It belonged to my grandmother on my father’s side, Sarah. It was her wedding ring.’

Sarah breathed in sharply and her heart began to pound.

‘She left it to me when she died,’ he went on. ‘By tradition Claddagh rings get passed down the female line but she never had a daughter of her own, and she never got on with my sister. So I got it.’

‘It’s … it’s beautiful.’

He smiled, his eyes all glassy and bright. ‘I want you to wear it, Sarah.’

‘I … I can’t. It’s a family heirloom.’

‘Exactly.’ He stared at her intensely, and the quietest of silences settled between them. And then he said, ‘That’s why I want you to have it. You are my family now.’

Her whole body flooded with happiness. ‘Oh, Cahal.’

He plucked the ring from her open palm. ‘Will you wear this ring as a token of my love?’

She gasped and, letting go of the covers to reveal her naked torso, clapped both hands over her mouth at once. Under her fingers, her face burned, and she felt foolishly giddy. She stared into his eyes, steady and calm and the giddiness evaporated. Her hands dropped onto the bed cover and she said solemnly, ‘I will.’

He took her right hand and slid the ring onto her third finger. ‘There,’ he said and grinned. ‘You see the way the heart faces inwards towards your heart?’

Her hand trembled. ‘Yes.’

‘That means your heart is taken.’

She smiled. ‘Oh Cahal, that’s so sweet.’

‘And it is taken, isn’t it?’ His right eyelid twitched.

‘Completely and absolutely. Forever.’

He squeezed her fingers tightly in his and kissed the back of her hand. ‘You understand what this means, me giving you this ring?’

She looked at him blankly.

‘Claddagh rings are passed down from generation to generation. And one day I hope it will seal our marriage.’

She looked at her hand but she could not see the ring, only the blur of tears in her eyes.

He slid in beside her then and pulled her fiercely against his hard cold body. They wriggled down under the covers and both held their arms aloft, forming a tent-like space underneath the duvet where it was warm and dim like a cave.

‘This is our world, Cahal, under this duvet. Under here it’s just you and me, and the rest of the world doesn’t matter.’ She tried to forget about what would happen when Cahal graduated in the summer. ‘Just each other. In our wee world.’ In the dimness, his pupils were large and black. The space was filled with the smell of him and already his body was radiating heat like a furnace.

He inched forward but she placed a hand on his chest. ‘Promise me you’ll never leave me, Cahal.’

He smiled easily and, moving closer, teased, ‘Of course I’ll never leave you, you eijet.’

She pressed her palm against his flesh. ‘You have to say it. You have to say the words.’

‘Sarah Anne Walker. I’ll never leave you. Not so long as I have breath in my body.’

The next day, Sarah strolled down the corridor, clutching a folder to her chest and thinking of Cahal. Rain battered the glass walls of the building and the wind howled around it like a demented ghost. She felt guilty about the three lectures and tutorial she had missed yesterday, even more about spending an entire day in bed. But it had been the most wonderful day of her life. Cahal wanted to marry her.

‘What are you smiling about?’ said a male voice and she started.

It was Ian Aitken, one of her oldest friends from Ballyfergus. She clutched the folder even tighter across her breasts – tender from Cahal’s passionate, rough love-making – as if it might hide the guilty secrets of her heart.

‘Nothing.’

‘I missed you at the Physics Society talk last night,’ he said, staring down at her with pale blue eyes, his gaze as resolute as his character. His ginger hair was carefully combed in a side parting and his terribly unfashionable dark blue jeans had a crease ironed down the front of each leg. ‘I only went because I thought you’d be there.’

She chewed her lip and looked away. ‘Sorry. Had some work to catch up on.’ She glanced up into his face and gave him a quick smile. That bit at least was true. She’d left Cahal’s flat in the late afternoon and gone home and started an assignment.

After a moment’s hesitation his face relaxed into a forgiving smile. She felt as if he could see right through her and she blushed. She could not see him approving of a full day spent in bed. Ian was conventional, old-fashioned even, in his outlook.

‘Have you got time for a coffee, Sarah? I haven’t spoken to you properly in ages.’

‘Sure,’ she said brightly.

‘Come on then,’ he said and fell in beside her as she walked, his clean, white trainers squeaking on the floor. ‘You haven’t been avoiding me, have you?’ He sounded a little wounded.

‘Don’t be silly. Why would I do such a thing?’

They got coffees and sat facing each other, the rain pattering relentlessly against the window. She arranged her bag and folder on the floor, then crossed her hands primly on her lap, feeling like she was about to be interviewed. Conscious of Cahal’s ring on her finger, where she had never worn one before, she hid her right hand under her left.

They chatted about inconsequential things and then Ian leaned back in the low chair and folded his arms across his chest. ‘Is it true that you’re still seeing Cahal Mulvenna?’

She frowned crossly. It was impossible to keep anything private in the small uni community. ‘Yes. What about it?’

He looked at the floor and his features twisted into a grimace. ‘How long have we known each other, Sarah?’

‘All our lives?’

‘Almost. You were seven when we moved to Ballyfergus. I remember the first time I saw you.’ He unfolded his arms and leaned forward, his big hands dangling awkwardly between his long legs. ‘At first, I thought you were an angel.’

‘I’m no angel.’ She shifted uncomfortably in the chair, recalling Ian as a child – a bookish redhead with brown freckles splattered across the bridge of his nose. He’d annoyed her so much with his intense wide-eyed stare, that she’d stuck her tongue out at him.

He smiled. ‘I found that out later, didn’t I? The first time I saw you, you wore a pink dress and white ankle socks. I’d never met a girl with such blonde hair. Or such a stubborn character.’

‘Me? Stubborn?’

‘Oh yes. Don’t you remember how you refused to participate when Mrs Banks took Sunday school because you’d taken a dislike to her? You spent months sitting in the corner, staring at the wall.’

‘She was horrible. She told me I was vain and that vanity was a sin. She told me that, if I didn’t mend my ways, I’d burn in hell.’ Sarah pouted crossly. ‘I’ve never forgiven her for that.’

He laughed indulgently. ‘See what I mean?’

Sarah laughed too. In spite of getting off to a bad start, she and Ian had eventually become friends, more through circumstance than a natural affinity in character. Their fathers knew each other through their jobs in the police – as young men they’d served together in Ballymena – and the families often socialised together. She wondered what Cahal would’ve been like as a little boy. If they’d met, she was certain that they would’ve recognised kindred spirits in each other and become instant, inseparable friends, she thought with a smile.

When Ian’s laughter faded, she said carefully, ‘You know, Ian, that was a long time ago. I’ve grown up a lot since then.’

‘We’ve both grown up. But some things never change, Sarah.’ His eyes were bright and shining. ‘And some people never change.’

‘I have.’ It was a challenge and they both knew it. Their eyes locked.

He stared, unblinking. ‘I don’t know about that. I think that underneath you’re the same Sarah you always were. I know I’m the same.’

‘Yes,’ she said and it was simply an observation, meant as neither criticism nor praise. Ian had always seemed so certain of himself, even as a child. And now that he was an adult, he reminded her more and more of her father. Conservative. Steadfast. Staid.

He looked away. ‘About Cahal,’ he said, picking his words carefully. ‘Are you sure that he’s right for you?’

‘Really, Ian,’ she snapped, her patience worn thin, ‘I don’t mean to be unkind, but it’s none of your business.’

His face fell, and she felt mean for hurting him.

‘You know that I care for you, don’t you, Sarah?’

She swallowed and looked away. ‘Yes.’ She’d dated him the previous summer and it had been a mistake. She’d never seen a guy so happy, nor so heartbroken when, three months later, she’d finished the relationship. She’d given him hope and even now, when she was with someone else, he had not relinquished it.

‘Well, it’s just that since you started seeing him, you’ve become quite distant. I’m worried about you.’ He wasn’t worried; he was pissed because she was dating Cahal and not him.

She gave him a tolerant smile that belied the irritation she felt inside. ‘Well, you don’t need to be. I …’ She sought for the words that might accurately describe how being with Cahal made her feel – whole, complete, sated – and settled for, ‘I’ve never been happier in my entire life. I’m sorry that I haven’t had much time for our friendship lately.’

‘I feel like I’m losing you, Sarah,’ he said glumly.

She reached for the coffee cup and tried not to show her exasperation. He talked as if she was his to lose. She suspected that he’d followed her to uni. He’d got straight A’s. He could’ve gone anywhere, yet he turned down places at St Andrews and Durham to come to The University of Ulster at Coleraine, which filled a fair whack of its places through clearing. Sarah’s reasons for being here, on the other hand, had nothing to do with grades. She needed to be far enough away from home to achieve the independence she craved, yet close enough to keep an eye on her little sister, Becky.

‘I’ll always be your friend, Ian. You will always be able to count on me. But going to uni is all about growing and changing, not holding on to the familiar,’ she said, rather pointedly. Ian had surrounded himself with people who were almost carbon copies of his geeky friends at home.

His eyes flashed. ‘Well, I think it’s important to keep old friends and stay true to who you are.’

‘And I think it’s important to expand your horizons, to question who you are and what you’ve been brought up to believe.’ She took a sip of milky, lukewarm coffee. ‘We should be opening our minds to new experiences. Being a student isn’t just about getting grades, Ian. It’s about learning in the broadest sense.’

He looked at her as if she’d just spouted forth ancient Greek, then focused on her hands cradling the cup. His brows knitted together – he cocked his head to one side and squinted. And making no attempt to hide his dismay said, ‘Did he give you that ring?’

She set the cup down and twisted the ring between the finger and thumb of her left hand. A sudden burst of rain hit the glass wall of the building like peppercorns.

‘It’s just a ring, Ian,’ she said, trying to make light of it. Why did she say that? The ring meant everything to her. Cahal meant everything to her.

‘You really are going over to the dark side, aren’t you?’ he said, though there was no humour in his voice.

Sarah inched forward in her seat and lowered her voice. ‘Don’t be like that, Ian. You should be more open-minded. We only fear those who are different from us because we fear what we don’t understand.’

But she had never feared Cahal. She’d been inexorably drawn to him. She thought back to the first time she’d seen him all those months ago, playing the bodhran drum in The Anchor bar.

The sound came from a small room at the front of the bar. She fought her way through the crowd blocking the doorway and stood there, transfixed by the scene in the smoke-filled room. Musicians sat on the wooden benches on either side of the fire dancing in the grate, the air filled with such music – the moving cadence of the fiddle, the high, sweet tones of the flute and the fierce, primeval beat of a drum. And it was Cahal, the drummer, who caught her eye. His head was down, his entire body vibrated in time to the wild pulse of the small round drum balanced vertically on his left thigh. With an expert flick of his right wrist, a stubby, double-ended stick skimmed the skin of the drum while his foot pounded out the beat on the floor.

Dark curls, damp with sweat, fell over his forehead and muscular thighs filled the legs of his faded, ripped jeans. Her breath caught in her throat – and her heart turned over. The spirited rhythm made her heart stretch and contract like a bellow. He’d looked up and smiled at her through the fog of smoke, a cigarette in the corner of his mouth, ash falling unheeded to the floor. And she’d stared back into those black, glittering eyes, knowing that her life was changed forever…

Ian coughed and ran the flat of his hands down the long, slim thighs of his jeans, as if brushing something off them. ‘I understand the likes of Cahal Mulvenna perfectly well, Sarah,’ he said coldly. ‘But clearly you don’t. I’m really surprised that you’ve been taken in by him.’

She opened her mouth to defend him but someone beat her to it. ‘Hi, Sarah.’

At the sound of Cahal’s voice, Sarah jumped up and spun around to find him standing there with damp patches on the thighs of his pale blue jeans and across the broad shoulders of the battered brown leather jacket he always wore. His hair, wet from the rain, was plastered to his chiselled features. Just the sight of him was enough to set her heart pounding.

‘You’re soaked through!’ she cried and put a hand on the sleeve of his jacket.

He acknowledged her touch with a look and Ian with a nod of the head. Then he grinned at Sarah and ran a hand through his hair. A black curl fell in front of his face. It took all of Sarah’s self-restraint to resist the urge to reach out and brush it from his brow. She wished she was in bed with him right now, away from prying eyes and interfering busybodies like Ian.

‘Aye, it’s wild out there all right.’ He tossed his head and the curl flopped to one side. ‘Listen, have you got a minute, Sarah? There’s something I need to talk to you about.’ Cahal stared pointedly at Ian and Sarah looked at the floor.

Ian stood up, taller than Sarah by several inches, but the exact same height as Cahal – the only thing, as far as Sarah could see, that the two had in common. ‘I was just leaving.’ He turned to go, then paused and gave Sarah the faintest of smiles. ‘See you around, Sarah.’

‘Yeah, see you, Ian.’

As soon as he was gone, Cahal said, with a twinkle in his eye, ‘S’pose he was giving you a wee lecture about the evils of associating with a guy like me?’

She put a hand over her mouth and giggled. Then she bit her lip to stop herself from laughing. ‘Don’t. Ian’s all right, really.’

Cahal made a sound like a neighing horse. ‘He’s a boring sod.’

‘There’s worse crimes.’

He shrugged, grabbed her hand and pulled her down onto a seat by both hands. ‘I didn’t come to talk about him.’

‘What then?’ she said, slightly alarmed by the firmness of his grip.

He spoke quickly, the words tumbling out, one of top of the other, totally unlike his usual measured way of talking. ‘I’ve been thinking. You know the way I graduate this summer?’

She stared at the rain running in rivulets down the glass. It was all she thought about these days. Although they kept separate lodgings, they practically lived together, rarely spending a night apart. And even though it was months away, the thought of it made her palms sweat with panic. ‘I don’t think I could bear for us to be separated,’ she said, and bit her bottom lip to stop it quivering. Tears were not far away. ‘I don’t think I could live without you.’

He grabbed her shoulders and squeezed. ‘You don’t have to, Sarah.’ He grinned into her face. ‘What if I got a job right here in the university?’

‘What job?’

He pressed his palms together as if praying and touched his bottom lip with his fingertips. ‘Lab technician. I’ve just been talking to my tutor and he says they’re looking for a replacement for Phil Lynch – he’s taking up a post in Edinburgh. They need someone to start after the summer and he thinks I would be ideal. He’s more or less offered me the job, Sarah. What do you think?’

‘Oh, Cahal,’ she said, clasping her hands together and crying with relief. ‘That’s wonderful.’

‘I’d get a decent starting salary. Enough for the two of us to live on. We could move in together.’

‘Oh.’ What would her father say to living in sin? And Aunt Vi?

‘Or,’ he added hastily, seeing her reaction, ‘we could get married. Whatever you want.’

‘Married?’ she said, her head filling immediately with images of her in a white dress and Cahal by her side in a penguin suit, both of them smiling, delirious with happiness.

‘Yes. And then we’d never have to be apart ever again.’

She threw her arms around him and pressed her face into his warm, damp neck. He smelled of cigarettes and last night’s curry. Her stomach churned with desire. ‘Oh let’s, Cahal. And then no one, and nothing, can ever come between us.’

Chapter 2 2012

Carnlough beach, at the foot of Glencloy and just twelve miles north of Ballyfergus, was bleak on this bright but bitter February day. Carved out of the landscape by a massive ice age glacier, the glen, framed on either side by gently rising hills, swept gracefully down to meet the beach like a vast, winter-faded green velvet skirt. On its northern hem, the buildings of Carnlough village, mostly hewn from local limestone, clustered like pearls. An icy wind blew down the valley from the west, chilling the four people walking on the shingle beach.

Sarah’s nose was red with the cold and spits of cruel rain speared her left cheek like painful darts. Sarah’s sister, Becky chatted away beside her and, up ahead, Sarah’s children – eleven-year-old Molly and nine-year-old Lewis – stumbled gracelessly along the coarse sand, hindered by ill-fitting wellies. Molly, blonde-haired and grey-eyed, was very like Sarah. Lewis, with short red hair standing up in spikes and brown freckles sprinkled liberally across his face like hundreds and thousands, was the spitting image of his Dad.

Not for the first time, she wondered idly what Lewis might have looked like had she married Cahal instead of Ian. He might’ve had dark curly hair instead of red, and blue-green eyes instead of pale, almost translucent, blue ones. And then, just as quickly as the thought came to mind, she pushed it crossly away, annoyed that she had allowed Cahal to occupy her thoughts even for a second. He had done the thing he promised never to do – he had left her. She would never forgive him. In the same way her father used to dampen down the coal fire every night with a layer of slack, she buried her curiosity under a layer of determination not to think of him again.

‘So,’ Becky was saying, ‘after watching me for ages at the bar, this guy comes over and starts chatting. He was a postgrad. Nice looking. A few years younger than me I’d say, but that didn’t seem to put him off.’

A sudden gust unwound Sarah’s navy and grey cashmere scarf and whipped it in her face. She secured it round her neck again. ‘What were you wearing?’

‘Oh, my grey dress.’

Sarah knew the one – slinky jersey with a v-neck as deep as the Grand Canyon and a skirt that stopped mid-thigh. Becky liked to wear it with black fishnets and killer heels. She had even been known to wear it to work, though with flat boots, thank God, not heels.

‘Anyway,’ Becky went on, ‘we had a few drinks. Well, more than a few drinks.’

Sarah glanced at Becky, taking in the bags under her eyes and her rather carelessly applied make-up. Was that last night’s make-up with a fresh layer slapped on top?

Becky grinned and dug her hands deeper into the pockets of her padded red duvet coat, which made her look big and plump compared to Sarah. But the figure underneath the coat was more curvaceous than fat and, while she was well-upholstered, it was in all the right places. ‘And he was so hot. You should’ve seen his pecs.’ She pursed both lips together and pulled a crude, lustful face in the manner of Dawn French.

‘It wasn’t his personality you were interested in then?’ said Sarah with a raised eyebrow.

Becky chuckled. ‘Well, let’s just say the rest of him wasn’t a disappointment.’

Sarah opened her mouth, but Becky didn’t wait for her to ask the question that was on the tip of her tongue. ‘He had a flat up near the university. We went there and I drove home this morning.’

Sarah stopped dead in her tracks. ‘Becky! You said you’d stop picking up strangers in bars and sleeping with them! He could’ve been an axe murderer for all you know.’

Becky wrinkled her nose and the crystal stud in her left nostril glinted like a dewdrop. ‘He wasn’t a stranger. Well, not really. I’d seen him in the uni café a few times and we spent all evening talking. I wouldn’t have gone home with him if I didn’t think he was sound.’

Sarah tutted and shook her head. She understood Becky’s desire to rebel against their strict upbringing – hadn’t she done it herself? – but this behaviour was positively reckless. Lowering her voice, Sarah said, ‘What if he had an STD or HIV?’

‘I’m not completely stupid, Sarah. We used a condom. Condoms, I should say,’ she added, and gave Sarah a saucy smile.

‘They’re not always safe,’ said Sarah sniffily, not that she knew much about the subject. Since the divorce from Ian eight years ago, she’d not had much need for contraception. She squinted into the wind. Eight years of celibacy. What a depressing thought.

‘Have you met anyone nice lately?’ said Becky, as if she could read Sarah’s thoughts.

Sarah gave her a weary look. ‘You know I haven’t.’

‘You’re never going to meet someone if you don’t get out on the dating scene,’ said Becky gently. ‘I’ll go out with you. We’ll hit Belfast together!’

Sarah bit her lip and kicked sand with the toe of her boot. ‘I know,’ she said quietly.

‘So what’s stopping you?’

Sarah shrugged and looked ahead. Lewis, oblivious to the cold and the sharp needles of rain, twirled his navy hat in his hand, his red head exposed to the elements. ‘The kids. Work. Running the home. Lack of time.’

Becky glanced at her sharply. ‘And the real reason is?’

Sarah took a deep breath and smiled wryly. Becky would not let her away so easily. But how could she possibly explain that the love she had known with Cahal had been so perfect, so all-encompassing that she knew she would never experience the like of it again? And even if it were possible to love another man like she had once loved him, she would not take the risk. His betrayal had hurt too much. ‘I’ve been so disappointed in love. I guess I’m scared to give it another chance.’

‘Oh, Sarah,’ said Becky. ‘It makes me so sad to hear you talk like that. But you and Ian have been divorced for a long time now. You must put all that behind you.’

Sarah looked away guiltily and failed to correct Becky’s assumption about Ian. ‘I’m really happy with my life. Honestly. A man isn’t the be-all and end-all. You mustn’t worry about me.’ She linked arms with Becky and said brightly, ‘So tell me, are you seeing this guy again?’

‘I doubt it. We didn’t swap numbers or anything.’

‘Didn’t you like him?’

‘I did like him but he … well, it was just a one-night stand.’ She ducked her head. ‘I don’t expect him to appear on my doorstep bearing a dozen red roses.’

How could he, when he didn’t even know where she lived? Sarah sighed, exasperated. She slipped her arm out of Becky’s and turned her back to the wind, so that she could see her sister’s face more clearly. She chose her next words carefully. ‘You jumped into bed with him too quickly.’

Becky guffawed. ‘Oh, Sarah, that is so old-fashioned. People sleep with each other on first dates all the time.’

‘Do they?’

‘Yes and anyway, I like sex. A lot of the time, that’s all I want. I don’t want them to marry me.’

‘But you would like to be in a long-term relationship. You told me you’d like to settle down one day and have a family. And if that’s what you want, you’re going about it the wrong way.’

Becky came to a halt, turned her back to the wind and whipped a packet of cigarettes and a lighter out of her pocket. She put a cigarette in her mouth and, after several attempts at lighting it, the white tip burned like a cinder.

‘I wish you wouldn’t,’ sighed Sarah. ‘Do you want to end up like Mum?’

‘Oh, come on, give me a break.’ Her hazel eyes, the same as Mum’s, flashed under thin, arched eyebrows. ‘Mum didn’t die from smoking. A blood vessel in her brain burst. And she never smoked a cigarette in her life. You have to stop worrying so much.’

‘I can’t help it.’

‘Come here,’ said Becky and she put one arm around Sarah’s shoulders and gave her a big, rough hug. ‘Better?’ she said, holding the cigarette at arm’s length, her breath sour with the smell.

Sarah smiled, feeling for a rare moment as if the heavy mantle of responsibility that she felt towards Becky had been lifted – as if she was the little sister and not the other way round. ‘Yeah.’

They started walking again. The edges of Sarah’s coat flapped like black wings, and the feeling of lightness evaporated, as if blown away on the breeze. She took a deep breath. ‘To get back to the subject in hand, the problem with sleeping with someone on the first date is that you completely destroy any sense of mystery. Men like a bit of intrigue. If you just give it all out on the first date, you spoil the romance, or rather, the prospect of romance.’

Though she had slept with Cahal on their first date, she did not feel any sense of hypocrisy in dishing out this advice to Becky. Her relationship with Cahal had been different from the start.

‘Did you enjoy the seisiún?’

She’d returned to her friends and had not seen him come up. He leaned against the bar and crossed his ankles. Her friends all stared while she blushed and groped for words.

‘I could see it in your eyes,’ he went on, staring at her as if she were the only person in the room. ‘The way you connected with the music. The way it connected with you.’

The music had touched her. ‘I thought it was beautiful.’

‘I’m Cahal by the way.’

‘Ca-hal,’ she said, trying out the unfamiliar name. ‘Sarah. How did you learn to play like that?’

He shrugged as if his talent was nothing. ‘I’ve tickets for a Chieftains concert next week. Will you come with me?’

She did not hesitate. ‘Yes.’

‘So says Miss Celibate.’ Becky grinned to take the sting out of her comment.

‘That’s not fair. I did have a sex life once,’ said Sarah.

‘And you will do again,’ said Becky confidently.

Sarah smiled doubtfully. ‘Seriously, you should think about what I said.’ She spied Lewis’ hat on the ground, picked it up and shook the sand off it. ‘What happened with that promotion at work? Weren’t you to hear this week?’

Becky sighed. ‘I didn’t get it.’

Sarah’s heart sank. It was the third promotion Becky had been knocked back for. She worked as an admin assistant at Queen’s University Belfast, a job she’d taken straight after leaving school with three good A levels. Sarah had tried to encourage her to go to uni but Becky, under the influence of a no-good boyfriend at the time, had refused.

‘They recruited externally,’ Becky went on. ‘You know, I’m really cross about it. I wouldn’t have minded, but you should see the nerd who got the job. He can barely switch on the computer. Has to ask me every little thing.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Sarah and glanced furtively at Becky. The nose piercing was a recent one and it still looked raw and sore. ‘Did you get any feedback on why you didn’t get it?’

Becky shook her head. ‘Just vague feedback about not being right for the job. My boss said I should’ve got it, but it was up to the interview panel, not her. And I didn’t know any of them.’

They walked on, arms linked. Up ahead, Molly veered left, onto the seaweed-strewn pebbles at the top of the beach, and Lewis trailed in her wake. ‘Have you thought that how you present yourself might have something to do with not getting the job?’

Becky sighed crossly. ‘I’m an admin assistant, not a model. Surely what I do is more important than what I look like?’

‘It ought to be. But the thing is,’ said Sarah tentatively, ‘first impressions are ever so important. Everyone who knows you thinks you’re lovely but to someone meeting you for the first time, well, they might not think so.’

‘Why not?’ snapped Becky, shaking off Sarah’s arm.

‘The piercings and the tattoos and the dyed hair. They give out a message, Becky. Quite an aggressive one. Why don’t you let your hair go back to being brown? It’s the most gorgeous chestnut colour.’

Becky lifted her chin and her eyes narrowed. ‘I’m not going to change the way I look just to fit into other people’s idea of what’s acceptable. And I wish you would stop trying to change me into a clone of you. Just because you have it all – the house, the kids, the high-flying career. And the figure and looks.’

Sarah gasped in surprise. ‘How can you possibly say that? I’m a single mother struggling to run a home and hold down a full-time job. I’d hardly call that having it all.’

Becky blushed. ‘Well, you did have it all until you got divorced.’ There was an awkward pause and she sighed. ‘I just wish you would stop telling me how I should dress and what I should do.’

Sarah looked away, chastened. ‘I don’t mean to boss you around. I just want things to work out for you. In and out of work.’

Becky sighed and patted Sarah’s arm. ‘I’m okay, Sarah, really. I’m happy the way I am. You don’t have to be so protective. You’ve been mothering me ever since Mum died.’

Sarah swallowed, the mere mention of their mother bringing a lump to her throat.

The rain had stopped. A shard of sunlight broke through a chink in the pale grey, skitting cloud – and just as quickly vanished again. In the blank canvas of the sky, Sarah saw the stark grey-whiteness of the hospital ward where her mother had died.

She perched on the edge of her mother’s bed, the metal bedframe digging into her thigh. Crisp white sheets crunched between her fingers. The low hum of equipment, like a beating heart, filled her ears. The room was hot and smelt of floor polish and the fragrant sweetpeas that Dad had picked from the garden two days ago and which now sat, wilting, on the bedside table. Fear, terrible fear, ballooned in her chest.

‘Sarah.’

She leaned over her mother’s body, already still, like a corpse. She held her ear close to her mother’s lips, her heart tight and cold in her breast, and waited.

‘Take care of Becky.’ Her mother’s breath was a caress, like a summer’s breeze. ‘You’re sister and mother to her now.’

The last words her mother had said to her.

Becky’s quiet voice cracked through the memories. ‘It wasn’t right of Mum to ask you to take care of me,’ she said, harbinger of a message that Sarah stubbornly refused to own. ‘You were little more than a child yourself.’ Becky paused. ‘You must know that.’

Sarah looked away, her heart heavy with old, well-worn guilt. There was logic and truth in what Becky said. But her mother had asked. And she had promised. She’d spent the rest of her life trying to fulfil that promise. Such a contract, so solemnly made, could not be broken, despite Becky’s plausible arguments to the contrary. She blinked to clear her vision. ‘But if I don’t look out for you, who will?’

‘I’m thirty years old, Sarah,’ smiled Becky, ‘I think I can look after myself.’

Sarah returned the smile but knew in her heart that this wasn’t true. Becky was always borrowing money off her, though to be fair she did pay it back – eventually. She’d been thrown out of accommodation twice in her early twenties for not paying her rent and she was still living in a rented flat with no prospect of buying somewhere of her own.

Becky bent down, picked up a couple of glassy, grey, sharp-edged stones and stood up again, holding them in her mittened palm for Sarah to see. ‘Do you know they found evidence of Neolithic people living in this bay? They made tools from this flint. It’s over two hundred million years old.’ She turned the stone in her hand and gazed dreamily along the beach. ‘It’s amazing to think that we’re walking in the footsteps of Stone Age humans who lived over six thousand years ago. They reckon they lived in caves up there on the hill.’ She pointed at the green plateau that rose high above sea level. ‘And came down to the seashore to forage for shellfish.’

‘How do you know that?’

Becky slipped the flintstones into her pocket. ‘I quite often go to the library at lunchtime. I like the idea of learning about our ancestors by the evidence they left behind.’

‘Well,’ said Sarah, pulling the collar of her coat tighter. ‘I wouldn’t have fancied running about in nothing but animal furs, trying to kill your dinner with a bit of stone tied to the end of a stick. It must’ve been a bleak existence.’

Becky laughed. ‘A short one too, by all accounts. They rarely made it past forty.’

The age at which their mother had died. And their father, whom Sarah had believed invincible, had fallen apart.

It was shortly after the funeral. She was filling a glass with water at the kitchen sink, her swollen eyes gritty and sore from crying. Dad was in the back garden bringing in the washing, an expression of grim determination on his face. When he came to Mum’s favourite pink nightdress, he unpegged it tenderly and stood for some moments with it clutched against his breast.

Suddenly, he dropped to his knees on the damp grass, wooden pegs spilling out from the bag in his hand like kindling. Sarah rushed to the door but stalled at the sound of his sobbing, coming through the opened window. A kind of mewling, like a cat caught in a trap. It was unbearable, a private moment of grief never meant for sharing. Quickly, she turned and walked away.

Sarah’s heart pounded in her chest. It astounded her how, all these years later, she could still be so unexpectedly ambushed by moments of grief. She pushed the image resolutely out of her mind and focused on the present.

The children were absorbed by something in the seaweed which Molly was poking with a big stick. ‘Hey,’ she called out. ‘Time to go.’ She peeled back the sleeve of her coat to consult her watch and said to Becky, ‘We’d better make tracks. If we don’t hurry up we’ll be late meeting Dad and Aunt Vi for lunch.’

‘And we’ll never hear the end of it if we are,’ said Becky, rolling her eyes.

Lewis came over and held up fingers, as red and stiff as a cooked lobster. ‘My hands are cold, Mum.’

Sarah smiled indulgently. ‘No wonder, sweetheart, when you refuse to wear gloves.’ She put her arm around him and kissed his coarse hair.

‘Last one back to the car’s the loser,’ cried Becky and she set off across the shingle followed by the children.

By the time they’d all made it back to the car and driven the short distance to the Londonderry Arms Hotel in the middle of Carnlough village – where good home cooking was the order of the day and attracted clientele from the length and breadth of County Antrim – they found Aunt Vi and Dad already seated at a table by the window.

‘Thank goodness, you’re here at last,’ was the first thing Aunt Vi said from behind steel-rimmed glasses, her right hand splayed on her sternum like a starfish, her lined face full of anxiety. ‘We were getting worried.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Sarah, peeling off her scarf. ‘Lewis, don’t leave your coat lying there on the floor. Put it on the back of a chair. That’s a good boy.’

‘Come and sit by me,’ Dad said to the boy, patting the seat beside him. ‘Molly, pet, you sit on the other side.’

Sarah and Becky shed their outdoor things and filled the two remaining seats beside their aunt, who was still bristling with annoyance.

‘Sorry Aunt Vi,’ said Sarah again. ‘We didn’t mean to be late. We were on the beach. We lost track of time.’

‘That’s okay, love,’ said Dad, staring wistfully out the window, with eyes the palest shade of sky blue. ‘Your Mum used to love walking on the beach here.’

Sarah smiled at him warmly, taking in his white dentures and thinning white-grey hair. His gnarled hands lay motionless on the table – the skin across his knuckles was wrinkled and papery. An old man’s hands.

Becky said softly, ‘Yes, Dad, I remember. We used to take a run up the coast most Sundays in the summer. We’d get an ice cream and eat it over there, on the harbour wall.’ She pointed through the window to the limestone harbour constructed in the 1850s. The white stone had weathered, tinged now with a golden yellow, reminding Sarah of another childhood treat.

‘Do you remember Yellow Man?’ she said, referring to the brittle honeycomb toffee that had been one of the highlights of ‘a day up the coast’.

‘Oh, yes,’ said Becky. ‘I loved that stuff when I was little.’

Aunt Vi jumped into the brief lull in the conversation. ‘All I’m saying is that you should’ve phoned.’ She glanced at the mobile phone poised squarely on the table in front of her, like a reproach. ‘Or texted.’ Despite the fact that she cut a decidedly old-fashioned figure with her steel grey hair scraped back in a bun and a stern black roll-neck, adorned only with a simple gold locket, she was surprisingly up to speed when it came to cutting-edge technology.

Becky said, ‘Who’s for a drink?’ and caught the eye of a waiter.

Sarah lowered her voice and said patiently, ‘We were only ten minutes late, Aunt Vi.’

The children chattered excitedly to Dad and Aunt Vi said, folding her arms across her chest, ‘Ten minutes is a long time when you’re waiting for someone. Anything could’ve happened for all we knew.’

Dad looked up sharply. ‘That’s enough, now, Vi,’ he said gently.

Aunt Vi unfolded her arms and pushed up the bridge of her glasses and soon everyone was distracted by ordering drinks and food.

‘Well, Molly, you’ll be moving up to the high school after the summer,’ said Becky, when the waiter had left.

‘I hope she’s not in the same class as those nasty girls,’ said Aunt Vi under her breath. Sarah hoped so too. Lately, some girls in her class had been picking on Molly.

‘I can’t believe you’re growing up so fast,’ said Becky. ‘Next thing we know you’ll be a teenager!’

Molly sat up straighter in her chair and beamed. ‘Mum says I can cycle to school and back every day.’

‘Even in the winter?’ quizzed Aunt Vi. ‘When it’s dark?’

Sarah bit her tongue, reminding herself that Aunt Vi couldn’t help herself. She’d moved in shortly after their mother died – and with her came a new era of curfews and surveillance on a par with the secret service. Dad, stricken with depression, had pretty much let Vi take charge of the running of the house and the raising of his daughters. Sarah didn’t blame him for it – he’d done the best he could.

And, on the whole, Aunt Vi had done a good job, certainly the best she knew how, considering she’d never married or had children. There was no doubting Vi’s love for Sarah and Becky, nor her compassion – she had given up her job as matron in Coleraine hospital to help her brother raise his two motherless daughters.

‘Lots of kids cycle to the high school, Aunt Vi,’ she said cheerfully. ‘She’ll have good lights and a helmet and a fluorescent vest for when it’s dark. And she’s done her cycling proficiency.’

Molly nodded vigorously and a look of genuine fear crossed Aunt Vi’s face as she gazed upon her great-niece. Sarah felt a wave of compassion for her. ‘Honestly, Aunt Vi, we wouldn’t let her do it if we didn’t think it was safe.’

After they’d eaten, Dad gave the children two pounds each and they went off in search of Yellow Man. It wasn’t long before they came running in, clutching bags of mustard-yellow toffee that shared a close resemblance in appearance, if not in texture, to natural sponge.

‘We just saw Daddy!’ cried Lewis.

‘With Raquel,’ said Molly, breathlessly.

‘Where?’ said Sarah, glancing at the door.

‘In Daddy’s car,’ said Lewis.

‘They waved but they didn’t stop,’ added Molly.

Inside, Sarah bristled. How could Ian drive past his own children without pulling over, if only for a few moments? That would be down to Raquel, of course. She had no time for Molly and Lewis.

‘I can’t stand that woman,’ said Aunt Vi; Sarah shot her a warning look. She was no fan of Ian’s new wife either but, for the children’s sake, she tried to hide it.

Dad asked to see the hoard of Yellow Man and pinched a bit out of Molly’s bag, which resulted in lots of loud laughter and good-humoured recriminations.

‘She’s so common,’ mouthed Aunt Vi to Sarah over the noise.

Sarah leaned across the table to Aunt Vi and said quietly, ‘Like it or not, Raquel’s their stepmother now. We all have to make the best of it.’

Her aunt snorted. ‘Some stepmother. She’s never there half the time they’re at their Dad’s. Honestly, Sarah, I don’t know what Ian ever saw in that woman.’

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