Christmas. No wonder Elizabeth hated it so much. Knowing that everyone else was surrounded by boisterous clans squashed around tables on mismatched chairs while she and her mother sat in Sunday silence scraping at plates. Of course, her aunt and uncle had issued invitations to join them and her three cousins but her mother always refused. ‘We’ll just have a nice quiet family Christmas. The two of us. Let them get on with it.’ As an adult Elizabeth understood her mother’s pride and all the guilt she must have endured, but as a child she felt she was being punished. She always thought her mother had put appearances – the house, her hair, new school shoes – above her actual happiness.
Nobody, certainly not her own mother, had ever sat her down and told her the story of her father in detail, but over the years she had gleaned the main thrust of the tale.
Her mother, Patricia, had nursed her grandmother until she died, at which point most people considered her to have missed the boat when it came to men. She was the spinster sister and aunt, nothing more. But then, out of the blue came news that she was dating and almost before people had time to absorb that fact came word of a wedding. Her mother had left Buncarragh to begin her newly married life. However, within a suspiciously short space of time she had abruptly returned, carrying the baby Elizabeth in her arms. There was no sign of any husband. The rumour mill went into overdrive. The husband had beaten her, the mother-in-law had driven her out, there had never been a wedding. The fact that she had retained Keane as her surname only added to the mystery and scandal. Nobody knew the truth. When Elizabeth was older she had tried to talk to her mother about what had happened to her father but was always given the same stock answer: ‘He died very young, but he was a lovely man, a kind man.’ If Elizabeth persisted her mother assured her that he had been an only child and that there was no other family. She imagined her family tree as a couple of bare branches with an ancient vulture perched on one of them.
It was only three months since the funeral and yet the sight of Convent Hill still seemed strangely unfamiliar. The size of the houses increased along with the gradient until she reached number sixty-two. The street lights spluttered on as she pulled up outside the home where she had been reared. Lots of spaces. People must still be away, she thought. Getting out of the car the rain felt good on her face as she looked up at the house that still managed to appear imposing. Three storeys tall and double-fronted, it had been built for a bank manager but her grandfather had bought it when the shop had started to do well. She remembered her mother telling her how Uncle Jerry and especially his wife Auntie Gillian had tried to get it after her granny had died. But their mother’s will had been very clear: Jerry got the shop and Patricia got the house.
The rain streaked down the dark glass of the windows and dripped off the windowsills. Elizabeth struggled to remember ever being happy here and yet she knew she had been. Balloons had been tied to the black railings that separated the house from the street and small girls in candy-coloured dresses had been deposited by mothers in heavy winter coats. One of her earliest memories was her mother taking her by the hand across the street so that they could admire the lights of their own Christmas tree through the dining-room window. So long ago. Elizabeth felt as if these were the memories of another person, her life was so removed from this house, these people, the town of Buncarragh.
She thought of where she lived now. A cramped two-bedroomed walk-up apartment above a nail salon on Third Avenue. Her own and Zach’s lives stuffed into a space not much bigger than her childhood bedroom. She was glad her mother had never come to visit. Seeing it through her eyes would have ruined it for her because, despite its many limitations, Elizabeth loved her little nest. The warm glow of lamps in the evening, the morning sun that squeezed through the gaps of the surrounding buildings to fill the tiny kitchen, Zach sitting proudly at the rickety desk he had found on the street and inexpertly painted himself, but most of all the sense of achievement it gave her. Life after Elliot hadn’t been easy and there had been sleepless nights when she thought her only option might have been to return home to Buncarragh, so every time she turned the key in her own Manhattan front door, it felt like a victory.
Now she was searching for the keys to Convent Hill in her overstuffed handbag. Around the worn stone steps outside she noticed the green trim of weeds. She hoped the lock wouldn’t be too stiff but the key turned easily. Probably Auntie Gillian sniffing around for what she wanted to take. Elizabeth was considering what her aunt might have coveted when she noticed the absence of the two rose bushes in pots that had stood sentry on either side of the shallow porch. That bloody woman. She pushed the door open with a small grunt of irritation and felt for the hall light switch. An untidy mound of post lay on the ground in front of her and more had been placed by someone on the thin hall table. Everything looked the same: the gold and green patterned carpet runner going up the stairs; Cinderella herself had fled from the ball on those steps, pop stars had greeted adoring fans as they made their way from jumbo jets down to the tarmac. The framed Chinese prints still hung on either side of the living-room door; the narrow passage still led past the stairs to the kitchen, which had been her first port of call every day returning from school. So familiar that it was like looking at her own face in a mirror and yet something had changed. Mixed in with the comforting smells of furniture polish and coal fires were the unfamiliar scents of damp and neglect. Nobody lived here and that realisation struck Elizabeth with a greater force than she had expected. She felt as if something had been stolen from her.