As life transformations go, it was dazzling stuff. ‘The bigger the city the better I liked it,’ she’d said. ‘I tried so hard to make New York work for me. Who knew I’d be so much happier living on a remote peninsula, with four feral children, twelve minutes of rough road from the nearest off-licence?’
More than once, she’d said, ‘I’d have had four more kids, no bother. I was happiest when I was pregnant. But Colm and I were too tired. We’d have died.’
All of the big-city stuff had fallen away from her – blow-dries, fashionable clothes, exhausting ambition – but lit by joy and an intense curiosity about everyone, she was gorgeous. ‘How lucky am I?’ she often remarked. ‘To land up in a place where conversation is a legitimate hobby?’
Because, by Christ, they talked in Maumtully （the site of the off-licence. Also an ATM, a hardware store, a ‘gentlemen’s drapery’， a chemist/vet’s suppliers, several art galleries, approximately a hundred Aran jumper shops and one small hotel）。 Chats broke out in queues, in the middle aisle in Lidl, around a can of paint which had been mysteriously abandoned on the path in Main Street.
More than anyone, Brigit had witnessed the worst of my addiction. She’d done a lot to protect me and, at the vital moment, she was the person who realized I’d taken too many pills and rang the ambulance. That I was alive today was probably thanks to Brigit.
‘Sorry it took so long to get back to you,’ Brigit said.
‘Tell me what happened.’ Her stories were the best.
Perhaps the motor on the boat taking the botany students out to the island had broken down, so Brigit had had to drive to Galway for a new one, then row it out to the boat, along with eight tinfoil blankets because the students had suspected hypothermia? Or the hotel had had a flood on the day of Geraldine Skerrett’s wedding to the Welsh TikTok star, meaning nineteen visitors urgently needed accommodation, so Brigit and Lenehan （her eldest son） had to clean and heat their Airbnb barn at lightning speed?
‘Nothing dramatic this time,’ she said. ‘Just a series of small disasters. So, right. Luke’s mum –’
‘I’ve decided to go,’ I said.
‘Good.’ She sounded pleased. ‘It feels … right.’
I pounced. ‘Why’s that?’ I credited Brigit with modest psychic abilities. Which, might I say, she did nothing to disavow.
‘It just feels …’ She paused. ‘… the decent thing to do.’
‘That’s disappointingly prosaic.’
‘Poor Luke. And if you see Joey Armstrong, give him a wink from me. For old times’ sake … So when are you coming to visit?’
I groaned with longing for that Atlantic peninsula, a place of spectacular, twisted beauty, where lichen-patterned rocks sprouted from the land alongside crippled trees.
And Brigit’s house! Three walls were constructed from the local blue-grey stone but the rear was almost entirely glass. Befitting a busy family, the common areas were all airy, Scandi-style flow but the bedrooms, with their high wooden beds and simple quilts, were solid, cosy affairs. Whenever I visited, I slept like the dead.
The drive, though, was the issue.
‘It’s barely four hours,’ she said now.
But it felt a lot longer.
‘It’s the shite roads,’ she admitted.
‘They’re grand as far as Galway.’ That’s what we always said.
But after Galway they got narrower and rougher, until they became bumpy single-tracks, where if you had the misfortune to meet another vehicle, you had to reverse for about five miles, trying very hard to prevent your back wheels from swerving into the ditch.
（And – although I was mortified to admit to this – driving down there in the twilight scared me; I was afraid of meeting the pooka. Even though there was no such thing.）
‘Would you come for Queenie’s birthday? March the twenty-ninth? Come for the weekend with Quin.’
‘Hold on till I check … Sorry, Bridge! I’ll be in Barcelona. My anniversary with Quin.’
‘Ooooh. Barcelona for your anniversary! That sounds … serious.’
‘Hahaha, stop!’
‘But it does, Rachel.’
‘I love you, goodbye, talk soon!’
10
Friday morning, the day was dry, the sky blue. At the church, the giant car park was nearly full and Kate and I had to park right at the far end. It was almost ten o’clock by the time we got to the front entrance. The undertaker and a few other official-seeming people loitered on the forecourt, but there was no sign of any of the Costellos.