Page 7 of Family Secrets in Inishbeg Cove

Lucy screwed up her face and looked at her mother in bewilderment. ‘Mum, you’ve been to enough funerals to know the wake is usually soon after someone dies and the funeral the following day.’ Irish funerals tended to happen quickly.

‘I know, but it’s just that that is the day of the launch,’ she admitted, holding her head in her hands. ‘If it could be delayed by a day, it would really help me out hugely.’

‘What?’ Lucy cried. ‘I can’t believe I’m hearing this!’

‘Surely you’re not still planning on going to the launch after everything that has happened?’ Faith was dumbfounded.

‘Of course, darling. I’m the marketing director. This is the biggest event we’ve ever done. I need to be there.’

‘No, you don’t, Mum.’ Faith shook her head vigorously. ‘You need to be here paying your respects to Nanna.’

‘Okay, okay.’ Madeleine put her palms up to face them and exhaled heavily. ‘I won’t go to the launch,’ she conceded, ‘but I do need to go to Dublin Port in the morning. There is a problem with the books – they’re stuck in customs.’

‘Are you serious?’ Lucy asked incredulously, just as Faith burst into tears. The situation seemed to be going from bad to worse with every word that left their mother’s mouth. Why was she getting this so wrong?

‘What?’ Madeleine cried, clearly confused. ‘I’d be back down again by evening-time, so I’ll be here for the wake on Wednesday. That’s the most important part anyway. You won’t even notice I’m gone.’

The girls looked at one another in disbelief and shook their heads.

‘Just when we think you can’t shock us any more, you do!’ Lucy shrieked.

‘I can’t believe I’m hearing this!’ Faith cried. ‘We need you, Mum. We need you here with us in Inishbeg Cove.’

‘All right.’ Madeleine sighed, clearly frustrated. ‘Let me try and sort it out with my team remotely.’

5

It was almost 2 a.m. when the sisters finally went to bed, knowing they needed to conserve their energy for the difficult days ahead. Once the morning arrived, they would be thrown into a flurry of funeral plans. Irish funerals tended to be big affairs to which the whole community was invited. Most people in the village would come to offer their condolences and pay their respects, even if they hadn’t known the deceased person particularly well: it was a way of showing support to the family at a difficult time. The sisters would need to get the house ready for the mourners: the villagers would expect sandwiches and mugs of tea, and some of the older people would take a glass of brandy or whiskey. Elizabeth had been well liked in Inishbeg Cove and a lot of her friends would come to pay their respects.

The sisters had been staying in the same bedroom they had slept in since they were children. The room had two cast-iron single bedstands which Elizabeth had decorated with pink gingham patchwork quilts that she had hand-sewn for them when they were small. She had kept the dolls they had played with when they were younger on the shelves, as well as all the old Enid Blyton books they had devoured whenever they came to stay.

They lay there in the darkness, listening to the soothing crash and roar of the Atlantic as it battered the headland outside the cottage. The ocean’s tune had been the lullaby of their childhood, and it always transported them back to happier times.

‘I’m exhausted but I know I won’t sleep,’ Lucy said, staring up at the shadows on the ceiling.

‘I feel the same,’ Faith replied. ‘The idea of planning her funeral is overwhelming.’

‘At least she told us what she wants.’

In her final days Elizabeth had instructed the girls on the details for her funeral. She told them that she wanted a simple mass with no fuss. She wanted to be buried in the same grave as her long-deceased husband Henry and her son John – the girls’ father, who had died when they had been aged four and two. Elizabeth had never got over his loss. She had picked the readings herself with Father Byrne when he came to sit with her recently. She had also chosen the music, and she had strictly forbidden anyone to do a eulogy. The girls had laughed when she had told them that; she had always been a no-nonsense type of woman, and yet, for all her practicality, there was a warmth and kindness to her that had made them feel loved all their lives.

They fell quiet then, but even though Lucy couldn’t see her sister’s face in the darkness, she sensed a hesitancy in Faith, as though there was something she wanted to say to her.

‘Did you call Kyle to tell him that Nanna had passed?’ Faith ventured eventually.

Lucy exhaled heavily, her heart sinking as it always did whenever she thought about her husband and the mess she had left behind her in Dublin. ‘No. I haven’t been able to face it, to be honest. I haven’t spoken to him since last week.’

Just two weeks ago, she and Kyle had had a huge argument. She had been so upset that she had stormed out, got into her car and started driving. She didn’t stop until she reached Inishbeg Cove. When Lucy had arrived at the cottage, distressed and upset, Faith had rallied around her sister. Lucy told her boss that she was going to work remotely while she stayed with Elizabeth in Inishbeg Cove. Her colleagues knew how ill her grandmother was, and how she had been travelling up and down to the village on the weekends, and they had told her to take as long as she needed. So, Lucy had also moved into Elizabeth’s cottage to help Faith care for their ailing grandmother. Kyle had been calling her every day, begging her to talk, pleading with her to hear him out, but she didn’t have the headspace to deal with him on top of everything else. When they had last spoken on the phone, she told him that she needed space to figure things out and had asked him to stop calling her.

The days had blurred together as the girls cared for Elizabeth; they took her to appointments, had difficult conversations with her doctors, and were there to let the home care nurses into the house. Lucy knew that Elizabeth relished having both girls under her roof again, although this time, instead of her caring for them, they had been caring for her. On days when the weather had been kind, they had taken her out in her wheelchair down to the cove for walks and let her breathe the hearty air into her tired body, glad to see the sea breeze put a little colour in her face. They had been so busy focusing on Elizabeth’s declining health that Lucy had been able to push Kyle and their marriage difficulties out of her head. She knew she would have to deal with their situation eventually, but focusing on caring for her dying grandmother had taken priority.

The two weeks that the three women had spent together, although sad, as they knew Elizabeth was nearing the end, had been some of the most special days. Lucy couldn’t help thinking that life had a funny way of working out sometimes. If she and Kyle hadn’t argued, she would have continued commuting up and down to Inishbeg Cove at the weekends and she would never have had the quality time that the trio had spent together.

‘You should probably let him know,’ Faith counselled.

‘I guess…’

‘You’ll need to talk to him eventually, y’know? You can’t avoid it forever.’