Page 15 of Family Secrets in Inishbeg Cove

Faith bristled. ‘Stop trying to fix me, Mum! I’m not broken. I’m happy with my life just as it is.’

‘Well, if you ask me, you’re throwing your life away.’

‘Nobody asked you!’ Faith snapped.

‘But your savings won’t last forever,’ Madeleine protested. ‘You’ll have no buffer if something goes wrong, and how are you going to explain the gap in your CV to your next employer? Oh yeah, I took a few months off because I fancied it…’

‘I’ll tell them I took a few months off to care for my dying grandmother,’ Faith interjected.

‘I think many employers would look at that as a positive quality in a prospective job applicant,’ Lucy backed up her sister.

Madeleine shook her head despairingly. ‘If I had known you had quit your job to take care of Elizabeth, I would never have allowed you do it.’

Faith laughed. ‘I’m a grown woman – you don’t get a say, unfortunately. Besides, I have no regrets. I got to spend precious time with my grandmother; no job or money could ever make up for that.’

Madeleine turned back to Lucy then, trying a different tack. ‘And what about you? Don’t you need to get home to Kyle?’

Kyle had been notably absent over the last few days. Madeleine had expected him to come to the funeral but there had been no sign of him, and now it seemed that Lucy wasn’t in any hurry to get back to Dublin to see him either.

Lucy’s gaze darted to the floor and her cheeks reddened. ‘H-he’s at home. He c-couldn’t get the time off work,’ she stammered.

Madeleine’s suspicions were confirmed. She didn’t want to pry but there was something up with those two, she was sure of it. Perhaps she was reading too much into it, but she prided herself on her intuition. She glanced at Faith, who looked equally uncomfortable, so she dropped the subject.

‘So, neither of you is planning on returning to Dublin in the foreseeable future?’ Madeleine repeated despondently.

They shook their heads.

‘Well, do you think one of you could drive me back to Dublin?’ she chanced.

The girls looked at her in disbelief.

She sighed. ‘Fine, I’ll get a taxi.’

‘It’s not that we wouldn’t drive you home, Mum, but you live by yourself,’ Faith explained. ‘How will you manage the stairs and getting groceries?’

‘Well… I-I mean … I could…’ Madeleine scrambled for an answer.

‘No, Mum, it would never work. You’ll have to stay here with us until you’re back on your feet again,’ Lucy said.

Madeleine sagged in defeat, knowing that they were right. She was all out of options. She was stuck in Inishbeg Cove for the foreseeable future. She had no job. Nothing to do to pass the time. She couldn’t even do something as simple as go for a walk. She was stuck inside the four walls of Elizabeth’s cottage. She felt panicked at the thought.

Madeleine never stopped. She never came up for air. Ever since her husband had died, she had worked and worked without ever raising her head to look up. Now she had nothing to do or nowhere to be and she was lost. Without her job, she was no one. She had no purpose. Her work was her entire identity.

14

Faith and Lucy strolled down the winding boreen that would take them into the village. It was a beautiful, crisp day and the sea glistened like a sapphire in the distance as the December sun sat low on the horizon. A strip of soggy moss grew along the middle of the road and tangles of brambles filled the hedgerows. They were running low on essentials in the cottage and needed to restock the cupboards, but instead of driving to the shop they had decided to walk as they both needed the fresh air. The atmosphere in the house was tense, to say the least. Since their mother had come home from hospital, the girls felt as though they were walking on eggshells around her. Madeleine had only been home a day and was already cracking up – the woman did not like being idle. They knew the loss of her job was hitting her hard, but it was making her unbearable to be around. She kept trying to get up and do things, like cooking or cleaning, and the girls had ordered her to sit down before she did any more damage. They had hidden her laptop because they didn’t want her to get too stressed and had instead given her a book to read, hoping it would occupy her until they got back, but Madeleine had tossed it aside, grumbling something beneath her breath.

‘Mum isn’t coping too well with being laid up,’ Faith remarked as they walked. ‘It’s going to be a lonnnng few weeks.’

‘I can’t believe she thought she could head back to Dublin and take care of herself. She is certifiably crazy.’ Lucy snorted. ‘Does she honestly think she could manage on her own?’

‘She’s always been fiercely independent,’ Faith agreed.

‘Independence is one thing, but the woman is deluded.’

‘She has never spent this long in Inishbeg Cove. Six weeks being laid up and not being able to get out and about is going to be hard on her.’

‘It’ll be harder on us,’ Lucy quipped.