This was home, and she did have a few good memories of it. But oh, everything had happened here. For every good memory, there were ten bad ones.
She went to the big oak brass-studded door and pulled the bell chain. Far away in the house, she heard the thing echo and jangle.
She waited. And waited. Finally she rang the bell again.
At last, there was the sound of movement, and then her mother was standing in front of her, white hair awry, a blue-sprigged cream pinafore tied around her dumpy waist, a querying expression in her eyes and a vague smile on her lips. When she saw her daughter standing there, the smile dropped away in shock.
‘Orla! God in heaven, what are you doing here?’
‘Ma!’ said Orla, overcome with a mixture of relief at seeing her mother standing there, so familiar, and the realization that nothing would ever be the same again. She had survived the tempest, but she had come through it alone. Every moment since had been a living hell, trying to hold it together, focusing on getting home. Now she was finally here, she lost all control.
‘Oh, Ma,’ she sobbed. ‘He’s gone. I’ve lost Redmond.’
London, 1980
‘I am here to tell you that this. Just. Won’t. Fucking. Do,’ said a stern female voice.
Annie pulled the covers further over her head, trying to block out the world. She recognized the voice. And right now, she hated the damned voice too.
‘Go away,’ she moaned. ‘Leave me the hell alone.’
‘No can do,’ said Dolly.
‘Yes, you bloody can do,’ snapped Annie, her head emerging from the covers.
Through gritty eyes she could see Dolly, turned out in her usual sharp-fitting skirt suit – powder blue this time – standing by the windows in the dimness of the master suite. Dolly threw back the curtains and Annie winced as light flooded in.
‘Jesus,’ she complained.
‘It’s eleven thirty, nearly lunchtime. You intending to just lie there in your ruddy pit all day?’
‘That’s the plan,’ said Annie.
Dolly came over to the bed and looked down in disgust at her old mate.
‘That ain’t a plan,’ she pointed out. ‘That’s a waste of a day.’
‘So fucking well shoot me,’ said Annie, sitting up irritably and tucking the bedclothes more firmly around her.
‘Look at the state of you,’ marvelled Dolly.
Annie didn’t want to do that. But her eyes were irresistibly drawn to the dressing table mirror, where she could see a pale, frowning woman sitting up in bed, hair all mussed up and eyes red-raw from crying.
It was her.
And she never cried, right?
Ah, not true. This past few months since he’d left, it felt as though she’d done nothing