‘I know, I can imagine city life is a lot more appealing than being stuck in a backwater place like Ballycove, but…’
‘I know. I can always come home again.’ He smiled at her then, but in the air between them hung that one thing they never talked about. Coming home here, when his grandmother had died, Niall just wasn’t sure it would be like home anymore. Sure his mother would be here, but she’d be immersed in the practice once the papers were signed and she owned the place properly – even more than she was already.
‘This will always be your home – you know that, Niall,’ she said softly now. It was funny, but it was when her voice seemed to fade to little more than a murmur that Niall knew her words were the most important. ‘You won’t forget that, will you? Or that your mother is going to miss you more than anything in the world. You won’t forget her, in the excitement of it all…’ She closed her eyes and he knew that, sometimes, it was the worry of what would become of him and his mother that emptied her out the most.
‘Don’t be daft, Gran. I’ll never forget Mum, and I’ll never forget you either.’ He leant in and kissed her gently on her forehead. When he moved away, her eyes had closed and he knew she was sleeping. Her breath now was ragged and thready as if it was racing out of her to keep ahead of itself so it couldn’t be called to a halt until she was ready to fully let go.
Niall sat there, for a long while, just watching her breathe, knowing that, there would come a day when he couldn’t do that anymore. He hadn’t said it to either his mother or his father, but he wanted to be here when she went. He wanted to be right here, sitting on the edge of her bed, telling her that he loved her until that very last moment, because he knew he hadn’t said it often enough over the years. If anything, when they’d come here at the start of the summer, he had railed against the notion of having to spend time with her. Now, he knew, he didn’t want to hear the news when he was thousands of miles away. It turned out, he loved her a lot more than he’d ever realised and maybe, sometimes, he thought he was lucky, because if they hadn’t been here now, he’d have missed out on the stories and the sheer fun of knowing his grandmother properly at all.
Niall slipped out of the cottage just as the village seemed to be closing down for the evening and people were driving back from their jobs in Ballybrack, making their way home for dinner and calling an end to their day.
There was a rhythm to the village and over the weeks he’d been here, it seemed as if he’d managed to get a sense of it. For the next hour or so, the pier and the beach would be empty and then, once people had watched the six o’clock news, on a nice evening like this, there would be dog walkers heading out for their evening stroll.
In the beginning, everything about the place had made him feel more isolated. Everyone knew everyone and if they didn’t, as in Niall’s case, they knew enough about them to have made up their minds about you. But it was a funny thing, because once he met Dan and they became friends, it felt as if he had some proper connection to the place. Gradually, he got to know people. The kid in the chipper was called Damian – he was all right, not that Niall would exactly call him a friend, but it was nice to at least have someone sit next to him on the wall overlooking the beach some days.
And then, there was Zoe Huang.
They’d sat on the pier for almost an hour the previous day. She had just come along and plopped down next to him, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. They dangled their feet over the side, just tipping the cold water with their toes. Although summer had arrived, the sea was still icy, but it was such a warm day, the cool water was pleasant.
‘So, what do you do when you’re not sitting here on the pier?’ Zoe turned to him; she was making fun of him, but in a nice way.
‘There’s not much to do around here, is there?’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Zoe said and she lay back on the warm concrete, shading her eyes from the blinding sun overhead. ‘My father is dropping me into town on Saturday. There’s a fair on, not anything huge or as exciting as you’d have in Dublin probably, but all my friends from school will be there… if you wanted to tag along.’
‘I, oh, all right, yeah, why not,’ he said lying down next to her. The sun was warm on his skin, his feet still dangling over the side of the water. ‘I suppose it’s the one thing that this place is missing… kids our age.’
‘Well there are kids,’ she said and turned to look at him for a moment, because maybe they both knew the boys who normally hung around the boats were the kind who saw anyone who was an outsider or different as someone they could mark out to bully. ‘No, in my school there are lots of kids, just like us, you know?’