Page 40 of Coming Home to Inishbeg Cove

Chapter 26

Penny

The next morning, I woke to find Lucy snoozing beside me. Her legs were draped across mine and she lay horizontally across the bed. Joe and I had stayed up talking into the early hours of the morning. He had been at pains to tell me that he was a changed man, and after only a few hours together I could see it was a more relaxed version of Joe who was sitting in my parents’ kitchen.

Eventually we had called it a night. Joe had gone to sleep in the spare bedroom while I climbed in beside our daughter. I had folded her warm body into my arms as she snored gently, then spent several hours watching shadows creep around the edge of the window, my mind in a whir, until the sun began to rise on a new day.

I managed to extricate myself from Lucy’s limbs, climbed out of bed and wrapped my dressing gown around me to stave off the chilly morning air. I went downstairs to the kitchen, to see Joe sitting at the table with a mug of coffee clasped in his hands.

‘Morning, how did you sleep?’ I asked.

‘Great – best night I’ve had in a long time. It must be the sea air. What about you?’

‘Not great,’ I admitted.

He jumped up. ‘Let me make you a coffee.’ He boiled the kettle and began opening cupboard doors to locate the jar. He took down a mug and began to spoon the granules into it. I was waiting for him to make an annoying remark about how much he detested instant coffee, but it never came.

‘It’s a beautiful day out there,’ he said, looking beyond the window at the clear blue sky. We should take Lucy down to the cove later.’ He paused. ‘I mean, if you’d like to, of course?’ He placed the mug of coffee on the table in front of me and added a dash of milk, exactly the way I liked it.

‘Good idea,’ I said, embracing the warmth of the mug between my palms. ‘She loves the beach.’

After Lucy woke, Mam, Dad, Joe and I sat around the table eating breakfast. The conversation was stilted, not helped by the fact that Mam was pointedly giving Joe a frosty reception. I was thankful for Lucy’s chit-chat, which gave us all something to focus on.

After breakfast we left the cottage and crossed the road. The sea was like a viridian blanket stretching endlessly before us. Sunlight glistened off the water, giving it a metallic sheen. We strolled along by the sea wall until we reached the path leading down to the cove.

‘I’d forgotten how beautiful this place is,’ Joe said as we walked through the dunes. I was taken aback; I had never heard him compliment the village before. A few months after we had got together, I had been excited to bring him back home to see the village where I had grown up. I had thought that, as an artist, he would appreciate the dramatic landscapes, the vibrant colours of moss green and ochre under the gunpowder-blue sky on a stormy day, or the way the light shimmered off the water. I had expected him to be filled with inspiration after our weekend but to my disappointment, he had acted as though he could have been anywhere. Over the years, I had always thought him immune to the village’s charms.

Once we had reached the sand, Lucy threw off her sandals and ran barefoot towards the water. I looked across at Joe, and saw the sheer joy in his eyes as he witnessed Lucy’s love of the cove. We followed her down to the water’s edge, where white-capped waves rolled forward and broke with a hiss at our feet.

Joe and I sat on a barnacle-studded rock while Lucy went around, poking sticks into rock pools. As the wind rippled the grass in the dunes above the cove, I couldn’t help thinking that it had only been yesterday that Tadgh and I had hidden there as we shared a kiss. How quickly life could change tack and alter course. I felt myself blush as I thought about it.

‘She’s perfection, isn’t she?’ Joe said, breaking me out of my thoughts. We watched as Lucy toddled around, her curls peeking out from beneath her bonny sunhat.

‘She sure is.’

Suddenly he turned towards me, his face creased with an intensity he usually reserved for his art. ‘I can never be apart from either of you again.’ He reached over for my hand, and I felt my resolve weaken as I let him take it in his own. Hadn’t we both made mistakes? I was no angel either – I had kissed my ex-boyfriend, for God’s sake. Didn’t I owe it to my marriage and to our child to try again?

‘I have to go get ready for work or I’ll be late,’ I said after a while, glancing at my watch and standing up.

‘Work?’

I had forgotten that this would be news to Joe. It felt like so much had changed in the months we had been apart.

‘I’ve been working part-time in Ruairí’s café for the last few weeks.’ I felt embarrassed admitting it to him. I was sure he would scorn the idea of his wife wiping down tables in a café. He would never understand me taking a job that involved no artistic endeavour. Then I felt annoyed with myself. What did it matter what he thought? If the last few months had taught me anything, it was that I was my own person and I couldn’t let Joe’s personality overshadow me any longer. I enjoyed working there, and that was all that mattered.

‘But why are you working? I’ve never left you short of money.’ He almost seemed offended, as if my having a job reflected poorly on him.

‘It’s not about the money. I enjoy it.’

‘I guess I’m not the only one who’s changed over the last few months,’ he said, looking at me with a new admiration. It was as if he was seeing me properly for the first time. He stood up beside me and put his arm around my shoulder, and we began to walk towards Lucy. It was the most affection he had shown me in months, but it felt strange now, as if his arm belonged to a stranger instead of my husband. I wasn’t able to let go and just enjoy the moment.

When we reached Lucy, he bent to help her strap on her sandals, then we headed back towards the dunes. She reached up for my hand and then for Joe’s, and we strolled along in a trio, Lucy swinging between us. I liked how it felt; I had always looked at other families doing simple things like this with pang of regret, because my family was so different to theirs but as the three of us walked together, I finally felt like we were one of them. The togetherness that Joe, Lucy and I were experiencing right now was all I had ever wanted.

We were almost at the top of the path when suddenly Tadgh appeared, walking towards us. He had his surfboard tucked under his arm and was wearing his wetsuit like a second skin. His curly hair had been tossed around by the breeze and looked even wilder than normal. It felt as though a stone was sitting in my stomach and my heart began to pound like the wings of a bird trapped inside a cage.

‘Hi, Tadgh,’ Lucy greeted him in a sing-song voice.

‘Hi there, Lucy.’