She didn’t see the envelope until she bent to pick up her shoes. There was a Ben or Seamus-sized footprint stamped onto it. She picked it up and turned it over, and saw her name.
In his writing.
‘You want tea?’
She looked up. Gavin, at the kitchen door.
‘This came,’ she said. ‘It’s from my father.’
He waited.
She opened it.
Ten thousand euro, the cheque said. Made out to nobody, the space left blank, but of course it was for Tilly. He was being a father in the only way he knew how.
She held it out. Gavin stepped forward and looked at it.
‘For Tilly,’ she said, folding it and slipping it into her bag.
‘I’ll fix dinner,’ she said. ‘Would you light the sitting-room fire?’
She walked to the kitchen, brushing drops from her hair.
At twenty past twelve Janet McHugh dropped by with a Mass card and half a dozen scones, and stayed for tea and the last of Nell’s apple tart.
At one o’clock, after seeing Janet off the premises, they had a picnic lunch of banana sandwiches and ice-cream on a spread-out blanket on the sitting-room floor.
At half past one the girls watched a DVD while Tilly cleared up and Susan walked the kitchen floor with a fretful Poppy, and Cathy Considine dropped by with a Mass card and a loaf of caraway-seed bread.
At a quarter to two Nell phoned to invite them to dinner. ‘I asked Andy to say it to Tilly this morning when they were doing the deliveries, but I’ve just discovered that he forgot. Will you come?’
At ten to two Henry Manning dropped by with a Mass card and a bottle of whiskey, and a report on the state of the hotel – roof repairs ongoing, estimated time the work would take, three weeks minimum.
‘When you come to see us again we’ll be flying it. You can drop by for complimentary afternoon tea,’ he told Tilly, and she could have hugged him for the ‘when’.
At five past two Poppy stopped crying and fell asleep, and was promptly brought upstairs by Susan, who grabbed the chance to lie down too.
At twenty to three Maisie Kiely’s son Damien dropped by with a Mass card and a jar of lemon curd from his mother, and he told Tilly by way of introduction that he’d built the shed that had been demolished by the tree.
At three o’clock Tilly and the girls baked raisin cookies.
At half past three the doorbell rang again.
‘I’m Eve,’ the girl said.
Tilly’s height, more or less. Tilly’s age, more or less. Long, perfectly straight dark red hair, pale greenish eyes. A smattering of freckles. Short red coat, grey scarf. Blue jeans tucked into ankle boots.
‘I called to see if you need any help,’ she said. ‘I give Laura a hand with the B&B when it’s open. I was away for Christmas, I only just got back. I heard the news about Gavin’s mum.’
‘I think we’re good, thanks,’ Tilly replied. ‘Susan’s here, Laura’s stepmother—’
‘I know who Susan is. And you’re Laura’s sister.’
‘That’s right …’ Was she going to have to tell her story all over again?
No, she wasn’t. ‘Did Laura tell you they named Evie after me?’
‘No.’
‘I was there when she and Marian were born. I’m Evie’s godmother.’
‘Oh.’ She must know them well. ‘You want to come in and say hello? They’re in the kitchen.’
‘OK.’ She walked ahead of Tilly and pushed open the kitchen door. ‘Hey there,’ she said, and the girls rushed to her like they’d rushed to Susan. She crouched and hugged them, and asked what Santa had brought as Tilly took the cookies from the oven and transferred them to a wire rack.
‘Where’s Poppy?’
‘Having a nap, and Susan’s lying down too … you want some tea?’ She felt obliged to ask, although she was weary from talking to strangers.
‘No thanks,’ the girl said, getting to her feet. ‘If you need help, give a shout – Susan knows where to find me. See you later, alligators,’ she said to the twins who followed her to the front door.
And then she was gone, striding down the path and hopping onto the bike that Tilly hadn’t noticed. Lifting a hand to the three of them as she cycled off.
Ten minutes later Poppy and Susan reappeared, and everyone apart from Poppy dunked warm cookies into milk.
At four o’clock Dougie Fennessy dropped by in his taxi with a Mass card and a salmon quiche from his wife Ita, and stayed for coffee and the last of the cookies.
At half past four Tilly and the girls made Plasticine snakes and played dress-up dolls and drew pictures while Susan mopped the kitchen floor and sang to Poppy.
At six o’clock everyone walked next door to Nell’s to eat roast chicken, and afterwards James, who had finished work early, drew cartoon animals for the girls.
At a quarter past seven they came home, and Susan put the twins into a bath while Tilly walked the kitchen floor with a grizzling Poppy, who they had decided wasn’t sickening for anything, but simply getting a few new teeth, and maybe pining for her mother.
By half past eight all three children were asleep. Tilly and Susan sat side by side with mugs of berry tea on the larger of the sitting-room couches, in front of the coal fire that Susan had lit earlier. Charlie lay in his usual evening spot on the mat by the fire.
‘When is your baby due?’ Tilly asked.
‘June the fourth.’
She waited, but no further comment was made. For the first time Tilly wondered if Susan was entirely happy about the pregnancy. What did she know about her? She was forty years old, according to Laura, and over twenty years younger than her husband, the man Tilly hadn’t heard her mention since her arrival on Roone, except in response to Tilly’s question about how they’d met.
Bit strange, wasn’t it, when they were having their first child together? Bit odd that he hadn’t come up once in conversation, the man that wasn’t child-friendly – and yet here he was on his third child. Three accidents – or had he and Tilly’s mother simply been a wrong combination, and had he got it right with Susan?
But Susan didn’t look like Nell had when she’d revealed her pregnancy to Tilly. Instead, there seemed to be a muted sadness about her.
‘I want a girl,’ she said. ‘I’ll call her Emily, after my grandmother.’
‘I’ll’, not ‘we’ll’. Maybe he’d given her free rein with the name.
‘Enough about me,’ she said. ‘Tell me about your family in Australia’, so Tilly told her about Ma and Pa and Robbie and Jemima, and the farm outside town where she’d grown up.
‘Do you have a boyfriend back home?’
‘No.’
Turning her head to look into the fire that had blue in it, right at the heart.
‘I nearly married someone once,’ Susan said. ‘I was in my early twenties, working in a beauty salon. I was the receptionist, and he was a rep for a cosmetics company. He’d call every so often with a delivery, and we’d chat for a few minutes. One day he asked me to go to the cinema, completely out of the blue, and I said yes. We dated for over a year, and I met his parents and he met my mother, and then he asked me to marry him.’
She stopped. A coal tumbled sideways in the fire, sending out a small sprinkling of sparks.
‘And you said no,’ Tilly said, her gaze still on the flames.
‘Actually, I said yes. We went ahead and made all the arrangements. He got me a ring and I bought a dress and we booked the church and the hotel, and then … on the morning of the wedding I stood him up.’
Silence. The fire flickered. A car horn sounded faintly on the road.
‘I left him standing at the altar,’ Susan said. ‘He was a good, decent man, and I did that to him. My mother was so angry … I handed in my notice at the salon, couldn’t risk meeting him again. I did a secretarial course and got a job in the school, and for a long time after that I avoided men – I ran a mile if someone showed any interest in me. I felt I didn’t deserve to be
happy, after what I’d done.’ She took a sip of tea. ‘And then,’ she said, ‘about five years later I met Luke Potter, and he wouldn’t take no for an answer, so I married him.’
She’d met him in her late twenties, and she’d waited till now to have his baby. Maybe they hadn’t had a choice, and it simply hadn’t happened. Or maybe they’d agreed not to have children, and this had been a mistake.
But Susan wanted a baby. She wanted a girl she could name Emily, after her grandmother.
‘What stage are you at?’ Susan asked. ‘At school, I mean.’
‘I have one year to go in high school.’
‘And then?’
Tilly turned to face her.
‘What do you want to do, after you leave school?’
‘I’m … not sure.’ What could she possibly say, without telling her everything?
‘Time enough,’ Susan replied.
‘Yes … A girl called this afternoon,’ she said, suddenly remembering. ‘She said her name was Eve.’
‘Oh yes, I know Eve. Nice girl. She went out with Andy next door.’
Tilly’s heart tripped. ‘Did she?’
‘Yes, for quite a long time. Over a year, maybe two years.’
She had long dark red hair and she was pretty, and she’d gone out with him for quite a long time. She helped Laura in the B&B, which was right next door to where he lived.
Which of them had finished it, and how long ago? Whose heart had been broken? And what did any of it matter anyway, with a return air ticket and a baby standing between them, and a miracle, let’s face it, probably not on the cards?
It was looking inevitable, her return to Australia. Nell was wrong: you couldn’t make something happen, no matter how badly you wanted it. Tilly would just have to face the music when she got home, deal with the consequences. The thought was unconscionable, but she could see no other option.
They switched on the television, and found a channel with a group of musicians playing the kind of music Tilly had heard in Bernard and Cormac’s pub on Christmas Eve. In between the tunes a man with a beard spoke in a language that sounded like nothing Tilly had ever heard. Susan told her it was Irish, and Tilly remembered Breda on the bus to Dingle talking about Irish having been beaten into her at school.
The phone rang in the hall. Tilly got to her feet.
‘It’s probably Laura,’ Susan said.
It was Laura. Gladys had been brought to the church; people had called to the house afterwards. The weather was bad in Dublin, the rain very heavy. They’d visited the zoo earlier, which sounded strange to Tilly.
‘So how was your day?’ Laura asked.
‘Lots of people called with Mass cards and food. We had dinner at Nell’s.’
A small pause, then Laura spoke again. ‘Tilly, I have something to tell you. I called to see our father this morning.’
Their father? Laura had made no mention of going to see him before she’d left Roone.
‘I told him about you. I hope you don’t mind, I thought he should know.’
‘… What did he say?’
Another pause. ‘Well, he was surprised, of course. He had no idea about you.’
‘Did he want to meet me?’
Maybe this was the miracle. Maybe he’d take her in, give her baby a home.
‘Tilly, I told you what he’s like, didn’t I? He was never going to welcome you with open arms. That was never going to happen.’
She was surprised how much it hurt. It tied in totally with what she’d been told, by Laura and her mother, but still it made her eyes hot. She couldn’t speak.
‘Listen,’ Laura said, ‘don’t feel bad. It’s the way he is, he can’t help it. He’s the very same with me. It’s got nothing to do with you, nothing.’
What if Tilly just turned up on his doorstep though? What if she did the same as she’d done here on Roone? That had worked out OK, hadn’t it? They’d taken her in, they’d let her stay. Oh, it might be a lot harder to get him to accept her, but she could try, couldn’t she? She could take a bus to Dublin on Wednesday, instead of to the airport.
‘Tilly, there’s something else … He gave me a cheque for you.’ She said the amount.
Tilly looked at the painting of Walter, ten thousand euro echoing in her head. Well over ten thousand Australian dollars.
‘That’s all he can do for his children,’ Laura said. ‘It’s all he’s capable of.’
Ten thousand euro. Enough, surely, to set herself up here in Ireland, enough not to need Laura’s help.
‘Are you still there?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you OK?’
Her thoughts raced. She could rent a place somewhere – Dingle, maybe. By the sea anyway. She’d have enough to live on until the baby was born. And then she could get a job.
‘Tilly?’
‘I’m here, I’m OK.’
‘Good … Look, I know it’s a lot to take in. Try not to let it upset you. Think of how the money will make life easier for you, with the baby coming. It will make a big difference.’
Ten thousand euro. Rent couldn’t be that high, surely? They’d only need a small place, a one-bed flat. Even just a room in someone’s house.
‘Tilly, will you put Susan on for a minute? I’ll see you tomorrow, OK?’
‘OK.’
She laid down the receiver and called Susan, and then she brought the coal scuttle out for a refill, her head still full of all she’d just been told. The miracle had happened after all: she’d got her wish to stay in Ireland, if not on Roone.
As she passed through the kitchen a flash of pink caught her eye in Charlie’s basket beside the stove. She paused to investigate, thinking it to be one of the children’s hats – but as soon as she reached for it she saw that it was a cloth doll, lying face down. She picked it up and turned it over. She took in the face, the hair, the dress.
Ah, Betsy. It looked so like her. She’d had precisely the same features. And the dress was just like the one Ma had knitted when Betsy’s original one got torn, except this one was pink, not red.
And it was stitched to her body, at the shoulders and the waist, in just the same way Ma had done. So you won’t lose it, she’d said, although Tilly had wanted to be able to take it off at night when Betsy went to bed, like she’d done with the old one.
And the hair, ragged at the ends just like Betsy’s had been, after Tilly had snipped off her braids, and immediately afterwards regretted it. Really, the similarities were amazing.
She lifted the dress, which was stained with doggy saliva, and grubby from being tossed and dragged about. The little bloomers, yes, exactly the same; these ones not very white, though. She pushed up the left elasticated leg, hardly aware that she was holding her breath – and there it was.
TW.
Tilly Walker. She clamped a hand to her mouth.
Sewn onto the thigh in the strong black thread Ma had used to stitch Tilly’s initials into the necks of all her jackets when she was growing up.
TW. Yes, yes, the final leg of the W higher than the other two, she remembered how that used to annoy her.
It wasn’t a doll like Betsy. It was Betsy.
Oh my God.
Betsy.
It was Betsy, there was no doubt. It was definitely her Betsy. The red dress faded to pink, but otherwise the same Betsy she remembered. They’d been reunited, on Roone of all places. It was unbelievable. It was amazing.
But how was it possible? How could her lost doll have turned up here, of all places? It made no sense. How could she have travelled from Australia to Roone?
And then she thought: She got here the same way as I did. She came on a plane, on the lap or in the luggage of some little girl who’d found her in Queensland and claimed her. A girl, maybe, whose parents had emigrated from Ireland like so many others, and who travelled back here every few years to see the ones they’d left behind.
And somewhere along the way, Betsy had come into the possession of Gavin and Laur
a. Maybe she’d been lost again by her new owner, and found by one of the children, and commandeered eventually by Charlie, or donated to him.
Or maybe Charlie himself had come across her, lying on a roadside or in a ditch, and dragged her home with him.
It was possible. In theory, it could happen. But the coincidence of Betsy finding her way to the same tiny island, actually materialising in the same house as Tilly, was pretty hard to swallow. It was nothing short of miraculous.
Roone is no stranger to miracles, Nell had said.
Sometimes it’s hard to explain stuff that happens here, Andy had said.
But if you poked around them for long enough, surely you’d find a logical reason for every quirky thing on Roone. The apple tree was a special extra-fertile species; the smell of chocolate at the cemetery was being blown across from the factory on the mainland. The road sign at the cliffs was an islander’s idea of a joke. Tilly didn’t believe in strange phenomena, or magic, or whatever you wanted to call it. She didn’t believe in miracles.
Lien believed. Lien would have a field day on Roone. ‘We’re not the only universe,’ Lien would say. ‘There’s another dimension out there, maybe several others. They’re all around us, and sometimes they allow us glimpses.’
When she talked like this, Tilly would smile and tell her to lay off the weed, and Lien would say Tilly was in denial, and they’d eventually drop it, and Tilly would go on believing that there was a rational explanation for everything that happened.
And yet …
There was Laura renting Nell’s house directly after Gavin, and finding the book he’d left behind.
There was the pull Tilly experienced for the island, the feeling she’d been here before.
And there was Betsy. Suddenly, after a decade, there was Betsy. Here was Betsy. Here was proof, right in her hands, that something completely remarkable had taken place.
She filled a basin with hot water. She plunged Betsy in and scrubbed her with soap until she was clean, and then she rinsed the soap away, and squeezed as much of the water out as she could, and sat her on top of the still-warm stove. She’d be dry by morning, and Charlie would find a new toy.
As she picked up the scuttle and went out to the coal bunker she felt a sudden sharp cramp in her abdomen. She dropped the scuttle and leaned against the jamb of the open back door, and bent forward to ease it.
I’ll be home for Christmas Page 35