Page 34 of Coming Home to Inishbeg Cove

Chapter 21

Penny

For the next few days Tadgh didn’t come in for a coffee like he usually did, and I found my days felt a little lacklustre, as if someone had twisted a dimmer switch. I hadn’t realised how much I had looked forward to Tadgh’s daily visits to the café. I missed seeing his friendly grin across the counter as he ordered his Americano to go, and this made me confused. Was it purely friendship or did he mean something more to me? Was Ruairí right – had the old flame between us been rekindled somewhere along the line? But no. I was married and, no matter what happened, I didn’t want my marriage to be over. My feelings were all blurred and I couldn’t seem to understand them, no matter how hard I tried.

I kept replaying our last conversation on a loop inside my head. Standing in the kitchen, Tadgh had bared his soul to me, but I had responded by being blasé and offhand with him, and I felt guilty for how I had handled it. When I thought back on it, he had seemed a little broken as he had walked out the door. Maybe it was my imagination, but had there been a sheen of hurt in his eyes? I recognised the look he had given me as he had turned and left the kitchen and I realised with shame that I had seen that look once before, back when we had been teenagers trying to deal with feelings and emotions that were bigger than us.

‘I haven’t seen Tadgh in a few days,’ Ruairí remarked one day.

‘Yeah,’ I said, feeling my heart pick up speed at the mention of his name.

‘It’s strange – normally he comes in for his takeaway Americano,’ he pressed.

I shrugged. ‘Maybe he’s just busy.’

‘Hmm,’ Ruairí replied with a smile. ‘Something tells me you might be the reason, Penny Murphy.’ He wagged his finger at me.

‘It’s Penny de Paor, actually. And I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.’

∞∞∞

Instead of going straight home after work that day, I decided to walk up the cliff path for some fresh air to clear my head. If you ever needed space to think or to blow away the cobwebs, the cliff walk was the cure. I climbed the well-worn path leading from the village. Although the gradient wasn’t overly steep, my calves were beginning to burn and I had to stop to catch my breath several times. The waves rolled against the cliffs to my left. I looked across the cove to where Tadgh’s restaurant was little more than a speck on the cliff face. I imagined him busy in the kitchen, seasoning and tasting dishes to make sure they were just right, his concentration and focus intense, as it always was when it came to his restaurant.

I kept climbing until the village looked like a miniature model below me, with matchstick people and toy cars. Then I saw Ida the herbalist coming towards me in the distance. I hadn’t seen her in years. She still carried her strange staff, using it to steady herself as she descended the gravelly path. I used to be terrified of her as a child – the other children had filled my head with scary stories about her – but now I realised that, although she was a little odd, she was harmless. She stopped and bent to pick some wildflowers before walking on again. As she got closer to me, I could see that her face had grown more lined and weathered, giving her a wizened look. I nodded to her as we passed one another, but she didn’t look at me from beneath the hood of her cloak.

I climbed higher until I finally saw the old cottage ruin in the distance. It had crumbled even more since I last saw it. We had sometimes hung out there as teenagers, but the roof had now fallen in and tufts of grass grew between the stones in its walls. I got closer to where the ground levelled off, then looked out at the wild Atlantic Ocean as it rolled into the Irish coastline. Wispy clouds scudded so fast above my head, it was as if someone had pressed a fast-forward button. Standing up there, I felt as if I was on the edge of the world. It was like a metaphor for how my life was right now: I had run so far, there was nowhere left to go.

Mam’s words had been playing like a stuck record inside my head for the last few days. It had been three months since I had left Dublin. Perhaps she was right. Had the time come to admit that my marriage was over? I had given Joe enough time. If he wanted us back, wouldn’t he have said so by now? The one thing I knew for sure was that I couldn’t keep living the way I was, without a plan for the future. Even though it would wrench my heart in two, I decided that I would return to Dublin the following weekend to collect our belongings. I would ask Joe not to be at home when I called. It would make things too difficult. Then Lucy and I would return to Inishbeg Cove and stay in the village until I figured out what I was going to do. Having to start from scratch again was daunting but, no matter how painful it was, I needed to face up to reality – for my own sake as well as Lucy’s.

I glanced at my phone and saw I had a missed call from Mam. I hadn’t heard it ring over the roar of the ocean and the wind swirling in my ears. I realised she had been expecting me home nearly an hour ago and she was probably starting to worry. I fired off a quick text to say I had gone for a walk and would be back shortly, then I turned and began my descent towards the village. I knew Mam would be happy when I told her about my decision to stay in Inishbeg Cove for the foreseeable future.

I was almost at the point where the path forked: one path returned to the village, and the other cut through the dunes around the cove, eventually ending up at the restaurant. In the distance I saw the broad outline of a familiar figure coming towards me. My heart felt as though it was balancing on a tightrope. It was Tadgh.