Jo wasn’t sure if he’d told anyone else in the village, and somehow, that made these visits from someone who’d been a stranger only weeks earlier when he’d brought Niall back that night, all the more special. Then, when he’d finished his tea and rinsed out both of their cups, he’d offer to take Dora for a walk along the beach. Later, Jo would hear the gate creak and know that the little dog had returned weary and happy after her excursion.
Like saving herself for the occasional swim at the cove, Jo had been shoring up her energy for this day. Honestly, sometimes when she lay here alone, she knew that if she could make it out into the water with the other ladies, she’d happily come back here and close her eyes and let that be the end of it all.
What more could she really ask of life? She’d had a great run of it, enjoyed every single moment, if she was honest, and that hadn’t stopped just because she was told that she was dying. She was still enjoying every day as much as she possibly could. She had a beautiful daughter, a grandson she loved the bones of and a friend who’d remained as loyal over the years as any husband could be expected to be. She was leaving behind a village that would miss her. From the very top of it to the bottom, she knew every single person and she also knew that in some way, she’d touched every single life here in her time.
She’d had her rows, of course. She’d had a real scuffle with old Eric O’Shea, but he deserved everything he got. The village might remember her as outspoken, but mostly they would remember her as pioneering one good cause after another – or at least, that was as much as she could hope for now.
The carriage clock, a wedding present that lasted longer than her marriage, chimed out to tell her that it was too early to rise just yet. She turned over and closed her eyes again, lingering on the edge of sleep and dreams of throwing herself into the velvety Atlantic waters – it was only nine hours away. All she had to do now was rest and then with a little luck she’d go for what she knew was probably going to be her final midnight swim.
29
Lucy
They were lucky it had been the hottest August day on record in fifty years. It was one of those days when even resting your foot on the sun-burned path left you feeling as if you were risking scorch marks to the soles of your feet. Lucy had looked out at the shimmering tarmac on the road outside the surgery at lunchtime and it felt as if the whole village had retreated from the overwhelming heat. Even so, Lucy worried that it would be too cold for Jo, but at the same time, she knew she couldn’t stop her mother. Honestly, she suspected a team of charging rhinoceroses couldn’t keep her off that beach if they tried. Just after she finished lunch, she heard a light tap on the door and when she went to check she found Dan standing there with a silly grin on his face and parked outside a cross-country scrambler thing, which was somewhere between being a motorbike and a tractor.
‘I thought this might come in handy,’ he said and then angled his head to see past Lucy. ‘Is Jo still intent on going down to the shore?’
‘What do you think?’
‘I’d be surprised if she wasn’t.’ He laughed. ‘So, I thought, maybe you could bring her down on this. I borrowed it for the afternoon,’ he supplied helpfully.
‘Me, drive that? I don’t know if I can.’
‘Sure, you can,’ he said, grabbing her arm and pulling her along the garden path behind him. ‘Come on, I only learned myself earlier. I can teach you though, nothing to it.’ His enthusiasm was infectious.
‘I really don’t know about this.’ She halted at the gate.
‘What’s to know? She can’t walk all the way down there and I’m certainly not going down in the middle of a couple of dozen naked women – the whole village would have me down as a peeping Tom for the rest of my days.’
‘I suppose, there is that.’ She tried to sound serious, but then they both started to laugh. ‘Okay, let’s see if I can get the hang of it.’
‘The trick is, to go slow…’ he said starting the ignition.
‘Like everything in life,’ she murmured, and then he looked at her, caught her eye for a moment too long. She hadn’t meant anything by it, but oh God, suddenly, she realised he probably thought she was flirting with him. ‘Come on, let’s get this show on the road.’ She laughed, but it was a nervous sound and she wasn’t fooling anyone.
‘Right.’ He smiled and started the engine. He drove them along the beach, shouting and pointing towards the controls as they went. When he cooled down the engine he was still shouting, until he realised that they were almost in silence. ‘So, it’s just like driving a car, only a lot more basic. You can do that, can’t you?’