Page 51 of Coming Home to Inishbeg Cove

Chapter 32

Sarah

I turned the key in the lock of the post office door, ready to close up for another day. I began walking home towards the cottage but, rather than going straight there, I found myself crossing over to walk along the cove to clear my head.

Since we had had our big argument, not a word had passed between Greg and me. I hated every minute of the silence; the atmosphere in the house was awful. We had never gone to bed on an argument before, so this was uncharted territory. It seemed we both felt strongly that we were right, and I didn’t know how we would ever reach a compromise.

The wind whistled in my ears as I walked through the dunes and eventually reached the smooth brown-sugar sand. The sea boiled and frothed, surging onto the beach with an angry hiss. A gull swooped low over the water before soaring upwards again in the sulky sky, trying to gain traction on the choppy wind.

When I reached the old smugglers’ caves at the other end of the beach, I turned to come back. My legs were starting to tire, and I was feeling the weight of my bump with every step I took. Then I spotted Penny Murphy in the distance, sitting on the rocks and staring pensively out at the water. There was something about the way she sat perched there, that reminded me of one of the illustrations in a copy of The Little Mermaid my mother had bought me as a child. Although I didn’t know Penny well, I could tell that something was bothering her.

‘Hi, Penny,’ I called as I got closer, my words barely audible above the wind.

She startled. Clearly, she had been lost in her own world.

‘Hi, Sarah. Sorry – I was miles away,’ she called back.

‘Well, there’s nowhere better than the cove if you need to do some thinking,’ I said.

‘You look out there and, no matter what’s going on in your world, the ocean still washes in and out and the sun rises and sets above it every day.’

I stopped walking, sensing that perhaps there was more Penny needed to say. ‘It certainly puts everything into perspective, doesn’t it?’ I agreed. ‘What might seem important or big in our world right now is nothing in the grand scheme of life. We’re only dots in the book of time. It’s reassuring, in a way.’

‘How are your babies doing?’ she asked, nodding towards my bump.

‘They’re good.’ I automatically placed my hands on my abdomen, as if to reassure myself that they were still in there. ‘Obviously it’s a bit risky at my age, but hopefully everything will go all right.’ Automatically, I crossed my fingers behind my back, like I always did whenever I thought about the future and getting these babies here safely.

‘They’ll be with you before you know it,’ Penny remarked.

‘Well, hopefully not too soon,’ I replied cautiously.

‘Sorry, I didn’t mean that—’ she said quickly. ‘Sometimes I don’t think before I speak.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ I said. ‘I knew what you meant. Mind if I sit down? My back aches if I stand for too long these days.’

‘Of course,’ she said. I eased myself down onto a nearby rock.

‘Oooh, that’s better.’ I sighed with relief. ‘I think I saw your husband with your little girl in the playground yesterday.’

‘Yeah, that would have been Joe.’

‘Will you be staying on in the village for a while?’

She shook her head. ‘We’ll be heading back home to Dublin soon.’

‘It’ll be nice to get back home. I’m sure you’re looking forward to it?’

Her gaze dropped and she looked out at the lead-grey water. ‘Yeah. We have to get back to normal eventually, I guess.’

If she was looking forward to returning to Dublin, she certainly didn’t show it. Her demeanour was lacklustre.

‘As the saying goes, all good things must come to an end...’ I replied.

‘I have to say, I’ll miss this place when I’m gone. It’s funny – when I was younger and came home from college in Dublin at the weekends, I couldn’t wait to get away again, but spending the summer here has really allowed me to see the village for the amazing place it is.’

‘I think it’s only when we get older that we truly appreciate things like where we came from, where we belong, our family and our roots.’

She nodded. ‘You think you want something so badly, and you spend so long chasing after it, but then you get it and you realise it’s not what you wanted at all.’