Over her head, high up on the hill she heard the church bell ring out: nine bells. She imagined, in the little houses along the way, people resting up in their armchairs, tuning in to hear the nine o’clock news of the day. The headlines a melody of prison strikes and foreign wars – Ballycove seemed to be insulated in some ways from those terrible atrocities. This thought, while it unsettled, also made her feel a little more at home, as if, by some happy miracle she had settled into a comfortable chair before a roaring fire and here, everything would turn out well in the end.
It was with the intention of catching the evening news, or at least the tail end of it, that she decided to move more quickly. She called to Dora, who was dawdling by a lamp post. ‘Come along, we can’t stay out all night.’ She was looking back, when she should have been looking forward, not expecting to run into someone else on the empty street. But that is exactly what she did. She turned the bending corner, half aware that she was following the uneven footpath, mostly feeling slightly punished at the notion that she too would like to be sitting in the front room of her mother’s cosy cottage watching the day’s news unfold on the slightly too large TV screen. When Bam.
For a moment, she wasn’t entirely sure what had happened, but then, she felt steadying hands upon her shoulders. They were large, strong hands that seemed to anchor her in spite of herself. Behind her, she heard Dora, suddenly, too late, spring to her defence. The little dog came trailing bravely, if a little uncertainly, yapping her loudest bark in defence of her treasured mistress.
‘I’m sorry.’ The voice was local. She stood for a moment, looking up, perhaps a little dazed, until she realised, it was Alan – the local parish priest. They sidestepped about each other for a moment, but she had the overwhelming feeling that if this was the worst that could come to you on an evening walk, then surely Ballycove was exactly the kind of place she should be rearing her son.
The cottage was even cosier when Lucy pushed in the front door than it had been when she was leaving. There was the faint aroma of home baking in the air and the low drone of her mother’s snores before the television in the sitting room. Niall had taken himself off to bed, according to her mother, with a wedge of apple pie and a tall glass of milk – probably still angry with Lucy for bringing them here.
They spent the rest of the evening in front of the fire, half dozing off while a current affairs programme played out with only a passing interest for either of them. At eleven, Lucy felt her eyes begin to close and she knew she needed to be in bed because soon she would drift off to sleep and there was nowhere in the whole world that seemed more inviting than her little bed, snugly made up in the cosy room of her childhood. It was as she was just getting in between the sheets that her mother tapped lightly on the bedroom door.
‘Can I come in?’ she whispered softly.
‘Of course,’ Lucy said and she could feel the warm drowsiness of sleep rest upon her words.
‘It’s just… I’m sorry, this time of night, to be bothering you, but I’ve been thinking of it since earlier, and I wasn’t sure…’ Her mother’s words faltered and something in her eyes made Lucy stop. Something was wrong. This wasn’t about tucking her in and making sure she had everything she needed.
‘What is it, Mum?’ she said softly but beneath the calm she felt a prickling panic rise from deep within her.
‘It’s probably nothing, and I should have mentioned it before, probably, but… well, it’s not the kind of thing you just say… but since you’ve taken that sample, I…’
‘It’s okay, just tell me.’ Dear God, the panic was beginning to overtake her now. There was something really bad coming; she just knew it.
‘I found a lump,’ Jo said softly and her eyes began to fill with tears that might have been sitting behind them for some time, but now they cascaded down her cheeks. ‘About six months ago, but Dr O’Shea, well he said it was nothing, just a cyst. Then, when you took that blood sample earlier, well I haven’t been feeling right for ages. Oh, Lucy, I’m so afraid,’ she said finally, the sobs now taking over her whole body so she was silently shaking with the overwhelming emotion.
‘It’s okay; it’s going to be okay,’ Lucy said softly, putting her arms around her mother and knowing, only too well, that there were no guarantees that anything would ever be okay again.
Part 2
May
9
Jo
Not being particularly religious, Jo wasn’t sure who to thank when the first of May turned up warm and blue-skied. She woke with the expectant thrill of summer on her windowsill; the swallows had arrived late the previous evening and on the air was the irrefutable contentment that a new season was upon them.