Page 3 of Christmas Magic at Inishbeg Cove

Margo laughed. ‘That must have been my brother Paul’s doing – that’s Conor’s father. I asked him to make the place cosy for you but I didn’t think he’d go to all that trouble.’

‘He even had the stove lighting and a plate of mince pies left out too.’

‘I’ll have to call him to say thanks. Anyway, Faye, I’d better go, Martin is drowning in potato peels in the kitchen and I have about a hundred presents to wrap here, but put that laptop away now, do you hear me? I want you to relax and enjoy Christmas this year.’

‘I promise you I will once I have my inbox up to date.’

Come on, Faye,’ Margo urged. ‘There’s more important things in life than work. You have to have to learn how to switch off. The last thing you want to do is burn out.’

‘It’ll only take me ten minutes to catch up on my emails and then I’ll be able to properly relax knowing I’m on top of my inbox.’

She heard Margo sigh heavily down the phone. Her boss was used to her ways. ‘Okay, but you have to promise me that that will be the end of it then. I don’t want to see any more emails from you until we get back to the office in January.’

‘I won’t,’ Faye lied, making a mental note not to copy Margo in on any more emails. She planned on getting stuck into strategizing their revenue streams for the first quarter of next year so that was something she could work on without Margo knowing.

She had just picked up her laptop again when she heard a knock at the door startling her. Who on earth could that be? She pushed her laptop aside, pulled back the throw that she had covering her legs and got up to answer it, still holding onto her glass of wine. Cautiously she opened the door and was relieved when she saw Conor standing there.

‘That’s parked around the side there,’ he said handing her back the keys. Snow was swirling around him and settling thickly on his hair and shoulders.

She had forgotten about her car. She noticed that his tractor was parked outside.

‘Oh, thank you so much… I really appreciate it.’

‘Don’t mention it. You’re all settled in then,’ he said nodding towards the glass of wine.

‘I’m getting there.’

‘Right, so, I’d better head on, I don’t want to get stranded on the headland in this weather. Goodnight.’

‘Goodnight,’ she said, shutting the door against the force of the wind.

She had just sat back down and was getting back into the flow again when the lights flickered. Oh no, she thought looking up at the light bulb, don’t you dare…. They blinked again and then darkness descended on the cottage. The only light available was coming from the orange glow of the stove. She got up, pushed aside the curtain and peered out the window. She saw the whole headland seemed to have gone dark, so she knew the power cut must be affecting more than just her. Using the torch on her phone she rooted around in the drawers and finally found a torch in the cupboard under the sink but when she went to switch it on it wouldn’t work. She wondered how long the power would be out for? If this happened in Dublin, ESB Networks would have crews out straight away repairing the damage, but here in this remote village, she knew she could be waiting days for the power to be restored. Even if there was a crew available, she doubted they’d be able to access the village in these conditions. There was nothing else she could do but go to bed and pray that the cottage would be reconnected overnight. She used her phone to guide her way up the stairs and then slipped under Margo’s crisp sheets and cursed her boss once again for dragging her to this godforsaken village.

3

When Faye woke the next morning, she was relieved to hear that the ferocious wind had finally died down. It had kept her awake for hours the night before as it rattled the windows in their frames and howled down the chimney. At one stage during a particularly vicious gust, Faye had begun to worry that the roof might lift off, but the old stone cottage had held firm.

She pushed up her eye mask, climbed down from the bed and padded over to the sash window that looked out over the cove. The room was cool and the floorboards were chilly against her bare feet. She pulled back the curtains and was immediately met with dazzling white light. The landscape was thickly coated in powder as far as the eye could see and snow topped the hedgerows like a layer of icing fondant. The sky was pristine blue and the morning so calm that it was like the storm the previous night had been a figment of her imagination. She walked over to the light switch and flicked it to see if the power had been restored but it was still out. She heard her tummy grumble and she realised she had hardly eaten anything. She had been planning on stocking up in the village grocery store when she arrived so she hadn’t brought any food with her, but now she wished she had. She had demolished the mince pies that had been left on the table by Margo’s brother to welcome her and she had found a protein bar in her handbag but that had been it. There was no way her car was going anywhere in this snow so she would have to walk into the village and she estimated from her spin in Conor’s Land Rover the day before, that it was at least five kilometres there and back. Because she hadn’t paid any attention to the weather forecast before leaving Dublin, she hadn’t brought snow boots or even wellingtons. The only footwear she had with her were a pair of designer trainers that wouldn’t be much use in this weather. And what was she going to do without electricity? Her phone would run out of charge soon, not to mention her laptop… The timing couldn’t be worse; with today being Christmas Eve she knew the ESB probably only had a skeleton crew in operation. Inishbeg Cove was so far off the beaten track that it could take days before they managed to restore electricity to the remote village. She was grateful to have the stove so she had some form of heat and thankfully the cottage had a gas hob so at least she would be able to use that to cook and make coffee until the electricity came back, but she had brought no food with her and there weren’t many logs left in the basket. She would need to venture out in the snow unless she wanted to starve or freeze to death over Christmas.

She dressed, put on her coat and pulled a woollen bobble hat over her glossy, dark waves. She opened the door to find the snow had built up right past her knees and she realised she would be soaked to the skin if she tried to make her way through it in the jeans and trainers she was wearing. She went back inside and rooted around in the drawer and found a roll of black sacks. She pulled off two and then slipped one around each leg. She found some string in the drawer beneath and used it to secure the plastic bags around her thighs. She looked at herself in the mirror; she looked a right state with the bin liners billowing around her legs. She would be mortified if anyone saw her, but she had no other choice. She locked the cottage and stepped out into the snow, hearing it crunch beneath her feet. She turned right and began walking down the road she had come up the day before. The wind had more bite up here on the exposed headland and it nipped at her skin. Although she was moving downhill, she had a hard time trudging through the snow and taking care not to slip because the bin liners didn’t give her much grip. She knew it would take her hours to reach the village at this rate. She heard an engine coming behind her and turned around to see a tractor which was about the only vehicle which would make it down this hill today. She stepped to the side of the road to let it pass, when it came to a stop beside her. She looked inside and realised it was Conor.

He opened the door of the tractor. ‘Where are you off to?’ he called out to her over the heavy thrum of the engine.

‘Into the village to get some supplies.’

‘I can give you a lift if you want?’

‘Would you mind?’ she asked gratefully. ‘It will take me ages at this rate.’

She stepped up into the tractor and wrinkled her nose at the smell. The cabin stank even worse than his jeep had the day before and the passenger seat was dirty and covered in dog hair but beggars couldn’t be choosers and she was just thankful to have a lift into the village.

‘Nice bin liners,’ he said.

‘What?’ she asked. It was difficult to hear him over the heavy engine as they ploughed slowly through the snow.

‘I said nice bin liners,’ he repeated.

She rolled her eyes at his sarcasm. ‘Well I wasn’t expecting to be staying in the Alps,’ she quipped as she untied the string and took the black sacks off her legs. She looked out the window at the pristine white fields rolling down towards the sea. Everything looking clean and new, like on the first day of creation. She might be able to appreciate the beauty of her surroundings if she wasn’t stuck here in the middle of nowhere with no electricity.