Niamh’s uncle looked confused. ‘Rugby’s my game,’ he said, in a booming voice. ‘Leinster man, me. Season ticket. Just back from Perpignan. Great game. D’you see it?’
Sandra was standing beside them slightly awkwardly and, again, Patrick felt sorry for her. He recognised something in her, something which he understood. He was about to go and talk to her when Teddy, Rosie’s father, joined him, carrying a tray of glasses filled with what looked like Aperol spritzes.
‘Fancy a drink?’ said Teddy. ‘It’s called a Cliff Topper, apparently, made with honey from our bees and raspberries from the garden. Now, I’ve had a sip, and it’s pretty good.’ He smiled at Patrick. ‘Would you like one?’
‘Yes, please.’ He sipped it. ‘Delicious.’
‘The girls are so good at all these ideas,’ said Teddy. ‘Full of them. They bring such life to a place, they really do. I don’t know what I’d do without them all. And now we have Grace brightening the place up with the bunting and the rushing about. And then my grandchildren, well, they’re like little rockets. Never stop. It’s Granddad this, Granddad that…’ He shook his head, smiling. ‘I’m a lucky man, I really am.’ He turned just as someone took two glasses from his tray. ‘Of course. Enjoy them!Slainté!’ He turned back to Patrick. ‘Anyway, enjoy the afternoon.’
Kate was standing behind him. ‘I’ll have one of those, please,’ she said, taking a glass. ‘Thank you very much.’
Teddy nodded. ‘Well, I’ve leave you to it.’ He smiled at them both, and moved on.
Kate leaned into Patrick. ‘Someone is screaming because a bee dared to hover a bit too close.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘I love bees, don’t you?’
Patrick nodded. ‘Of course…’
‘I can’t bear people who scream when one comes near, can you? They’re good for biodiversity, I always tell them.’ She smiled at him. ‘The same with spiders. I’m always the one who is asked to remove spiders from rooms. And I always use my hands, scoop them up…’ She mimed removing an imaginary spider. ‘And out it goes. Fear isn’t in my DNA.’ She laughed. ‘I’m an adrenaline junkie. It’s my poison. What about you? You like OD-ing on adrenaline?’
‘I’m not a major fan,’ he admitted. She was holding his gaze again, following his pupils with hers. It reminded him of playing hurling when he was at school, when you had to mark another player, staying close to them, anticipating their next move. Disconcertingly, she was marking him with her eyeballs.
‘Really? I would have thought you would be. Off-trail mountain biking, kitesurfing, ice caving…’
‘Ice caving? Do you mean ice carving?’ He could see her with an electric chainsaw hacking away at some gigantic block of ice.
‘No, ice caving,’ she said. ‘We did it in Norway, where you cut through the glacier where there are these tiny passageways and you have to push yourself through, the breath is squeezed out of you, and all you can think about is the million tonnes of impacted ice that’s on top of you.’ She flicked her head so her hair bounced around her shoulders as though on springs.
Kate was nice, with good hair, great teeth, like the small white Lego bricks. They were oddly fascinating. And although it was now clear to him that he had no interest in anyone but Rosie, he wasn’t being realistic. This time in Ireland was perhaps a full stop, a final curtain, a chance to say goodbye, properly, as friends, and he could properly move on because the memory of her had stopped him from fully committing to someone else. Surely it was time to make an effort and find someoneelseinteresting and attractive? Who wouldn’t want someone with an ability to crawl through a glacier?
Kate placed a hand on his arm. ‘You went swimming earlier, apparently? You should have told me. I adore swimming.’ Was she was going to tell him about the time she swam with piranhas? And true to form… ‘Have you ever been close to a shark?’ she said. ‘Last summer, a group of us were in Aruba and they had this tank, more a cage, really, and they said we could go down…’
Rosie was moving through the guests, topping up everyone’s glasses from the pitcher. He heard her voice over the sound of everyone else’s. ‘You can buy an ice cream after your swim at the Forty Foot,’ she was saying. ‘He does this amazing sea salt one and a Irish brown bread flavour…’ She laughed at something.
Patrick tuned back into Kate.
‘…And so it was one of the most exhilarating things I’ve ever done. I came out feeling invincible. You know that feeling?’
‘Not regularly.’
She laughed. ‘You’re so funny. But Seán was telling me about your bar in Boston. It’s really a restaurant, isn’t it?’ Her eyes were fixed on his, as though she was trying to hypnotise him. He wished she wasn’t trying so hard. He liked Kate but he didn’t want to talk about Fitzgerald’s, not here. Fitzgerald’s was more than a bar, it was part of him. But how could he explain that to Kate?
‘I bet the ice carving was cool,’ he said, inanely.
‘Caving.’ She looked a bit annoyed now. ‘And yes it was cool. And I bet your swim earlier was cool.’
‘Literally. I was so hot…’
She blinked at him for a second or two. ‘Yes,’ she replied, slowly, as though her batteries were running out. ‘You really are.’
Oh, for God’s sake. He might be looking for love, but it wasn’t going to be with Kate. He quickly downed his drink. ‘And you, what did you do this morning?’
‘Oh, I was with Niamh, trying to organise a few last-minute things. Filling the party favours, that kind of thing. Checking the place names. It’s not easy organising a wedding. When I get married, I am going to pay someone to do it for me.’
‘Sounds like a very sensible plan.’ He looked around at everyone, really looking for Rosie, but she’d disappeared. Seán, however, was crawling on the ground, with Isabelle and Killian on his back.
‘Oh, here’s Brian and Sandra,’ said Kate, turning to greet Patrick’s father and stepmother. ‘Are you both having a lovely time?’
Brian looked a little drunk, thought Patrick. He had that swimmy, glazed expression in his eyes, his face red from the sun, his bald head shiny. ‘I’m looking for some proper drinkzzz,’ he said. ‘None of this orange shite…’
