He looked now at the shop. It was a three-storey building and upstairs he could make out a kitchen in one of the rooms with pine units and a vase of flowers just inside the window as if sitting on a dining table. In the window next to it, the curtains were pulled so it was impossible to make out what was there, but he assumed it was some kind of sitting room, with bedrooms at the top. The shop door opening again made him start and he moved back into the shadows of the road he’d just walked along. He watched Zoe Huang pull the shop door tightly behind her and push in through the door next to it, presumably into the family home upstairs.
Niall breathed out again. What would she think if she saw him standing there watching her? That he was some kind of sad nutter? Probably. But then, after search and rescue had been called out and half the village alerted that he’d been washed out to sea, maybe that’s what everyone thought anyway. Perhaps it was time to pull himself together and change that? That notion settled on him like a growing wave of earnestness – yes, it might be time to do a bit of growing up, especially if he was going to move to Sydney.
He stopped for a moment, looked back at The Piano Man, and he realised that perhaps waiting on in Ballycove for a little longer might not be such a bad thing after all.
‘I thought you must have gotten lost,’ his mother said as he dropped the take away on the little kitchen table. ‘Was it very busy?’
‘No, not really,’ he said separating their food. They were both preoccupied and Niall didn’t want to hazard a guess at what was going through his mother’s head at this point, but he was pretty sure his grandmother was top of the list. Maybe, just behind it, was the notion of Niall heading off to Sydney. A little stab of guilt niggled at him at this thought. He pushed it from his mind as quickly as he could.
It was funny the things he missed now – not those things you’d expect, but rather small things. His dad’s coat hung across the newel post, the occasional bristle of laughter from the kitchen, the smile on his mother’s face, just because they were all together. They’d been happy, or at least that’s what Niall had believed. His mother thought so too; perhaps that’s why it had all hit her so badly. It would always feel as if they were somewhat fractured, as if they were never quite whole again and Niall just couldn’t see a way to make this better. Maybe running off to Sydney was actually the coward’s approach. Perhaps he should just stay here and make the most of things? Was it worth giving it a shot, here in Ballycove, a new start? Dan had said he had nothing to lose and maybe he was right.
‘Will you set the table pet?’ she asked and he slid place mats out for them both, popped down some cutlery and took down two glasses and a couple of cans of Coke from the fridge. ‘Thanks, love,’ she said as if he’d just undertaken some great feat, but then, he realised, that she looked so tired, even setting the table could be enough to finish her off. It was the silence of their meals that bothered him the most now. It was as if, over the last while, the small talk had been sucked from them, so now, there was only the sound of scraping cutlery and noisy chewing to punctuate their mealtimes. It was his fault of course; he could see that. In the beginning his mother had worked hard to try and keep the small talk going, but he’d bitten her head off at every turn, as much because he was angry with himself as he was with his father, but it didn’t matter, because the only one he could take it out on was his mother. Wasn’t it time to change?
‘How was your week?’ he mumbled.
‘Eh?’ she asked, a little startled. ‘It was good, thanks, busy, you know, between the surgery and Mum.’ She sat down then and poured water into her own glass. ‘And yours?’ she asked tentatively and he almost wanted to kick himself, because he could see that this is what he had made for them. He had been the architect of these uncomfortable silences that might yet have to stretch across the globe if he moved to Sydney.
‘Yeah, my week was all right, I suppose, just kicking about the village. Today was a bit weird.’ He bit off slightly too much kebab.
‘Being back in Dublin?’ She looked at him. ‘I suppose it doesn’t feel like home anymore, does it?’
‘Did it ever?’ he said and then he was sorry, because he sounded as if he was being cruel. ‘You know what I mean, compared to here, with Gran and being here all the time, not having to go to boarding school. It’s just… different,’ he settled on.
‘Yes,’ she said and smiled. ‘I suppose it is more like home than what we had in Dublin.’