‘Don’t worry about us. We’ll be fine until you get back.’

‘Grandparents, eh?’ He pauses, as if he’s still trying to come to terms with the idea. ‘How do you feel about that?’

‘Adjusting. How about you?’

‘Quite chuffed, to be honest. I just wish it was under happier circumstances.’

Ali is still sleeping, the first time in weeks, I suspect. I think of Daveth. It seemed possible, for a short while, to imagine moving to Alaska with him. Ali would be in New York, I believed. Brian also has plans to travel. He talks about moving to Arizona and opening a pottery in Sedona or, perhaps, somewhere on the South Island of New Zealand. He’s inspired by space and magnificent scenery, as Stuart once was, and the twins will settle in California. But Alaska is out of the question now. My place is here with Ali. I’m not going to repeat history and be a grandmother in another continent.

I awaken during the night, our bodies spooned, and I feel something… a patter as strong as the throb of a heart beating hard against my spine.

Chapter 60

It’s dark by the time we land in Dublin airport. If Cora suspects why Ali is returning so suddenly to Ireland she gives no sign of it when she greets us in arrivals.

‘We can take a taxi,’ I accept the key from her. ‘I don’t want to drag you out of your way.’

‘It’s no trouble at all,’ she insists. ‘It’ll give Eleanor some time on her own. She thinks I fuss too much over her.’

I suspect Cora is the one who needs some free time and this suspicion is confirmed when she drives from the airport. Eleanor’s recovery is almost complete. Her dominant personality is coming to the fore again and Cora is looking forward to moving back to her apartment in Clontarf. I wonder about her quiet life and how she became involved with First Affiliation. What drew her to their certainties and intolerance? The need to belong, to be part of something greater than herself? My curiously dies away as quickly as it came. I’m tired and overwrought, exhausted already from Ali’s outbursts, her violent weeping.

The car judders as we approach Sea Aster. Mallard Cove needs resurfacing. The earlier tide overflowed the road and puddles remain in the hollows. A swan ambles towards the car, its wings flapping in the headlights. Cora slows, nervous as water splashes against the tyres.

‘It’s okay.’ I open the window and look down at the road. The wind fans the rank smell of seaweed into the car. ‘The water’s shallow and the swans are well used to avoiding cars.’

‘I was bitten by a swan when I was a child.’ Cora sounds uneasy. ‘Nasty things. I’ve never liked them since.’

Ali has fallen asleep in the back seat, her head awkwardly angled against the headrest. The boundary wall of Sea Aster comes into view, the square gatepost visible on the curve. The spreading branches soften the hulking remains of the barn but I’m still shocked at the sight of the blackened walls and collapsed roof.

A car emerges from the gates and swerves onto the road without slowing down. Water aquaplanes from its tyres. To avoid the swan Cora has moved too far over to the wrong side of the road. Headlights clash. She utters a high, frightened shriek and instinctively brakes when she sees the oncoming car. She pulls frantically on the steering wheel and her car waltzes as if the road has turned to ice. A scum of decaying seaweed, strewn under a layer of tidal water. The second car veers past without slowing, dazzling and blinding before it disappears into the engulfing darkness of Mallard Cove.

Cora’s wrists are so skinny. I never noticed them before. Frail and skinny as she struggles to control the skid. The gable ends of the barn protrude like ancient pyramids. Above the trees, the moon is a pale shimmer in the black sky. It casts down my mother’s face and my terror is reflected in Sara’s stricken features. Her awareness in that instant before the collision that there was no going back, accordion pleats imploding and crushing the life from her. She’s there now, with me, smiling before she turns away in all her loveliness… and I am suspended between the random nature of existence and the shrouded certainty of death. The screeching night and the shock of steel and stone as the car hits the wall. It overturns in a slow-motion roll before coming to rest. My eyelids flicker. I see the swan scuttling back to the water, its fat bottomed waddle, so ungraceful out of its natural habitat. My eyes close and all is forgotten.

PART FIVE

Chapter 61

Jake

When Rosanna died, the members of First Affiliation filled the church. They walked respectfully in the rain behind her coffin as she was laid to rest. Today, there were no representatives from First Affiliation. No rain, just bright sunshine as Eleanor headed the small procession making its way towards the open grave. Her grip was talon-tight on Jake’s arm and those following slowed their footsteps in acknowledgement of her shuffling walk. She had wept openly throughout the service but, now, she was more in control as she took her place by the edge of Cora’s grave.

After the burial, she mingled at the reception with the mourners, Cora’s widowed sister and her family, a few friends from Cora’s schooldays and from the department in the civil service where she worked until she retired. They were a small group, just two tables drawn together in an alcove of a suburban pub. Eleanor’s hand shook, as if affected by a palsy, when the group raised their glasses to toast Cora’s memory. Since her friend’s death she had shrunk, or so it seemed to Jake, and the effects of her stroke were more pronounced. He too felt shrunken, caved in, bereft.

He drove her home from the pub. The young Nigerian woman who had become her carer took one look at Eleanor’s face and gently coaxed her to bed. Jake drove along the Howth Road towards the city centre and found a parking spot close to the hospital.

Ali was sitting on the edge of the bed when he entered the ward. He studied her drooping neck, the fall of her hair. She had been crying again. Her bruises were even darker than yesterday. One eye was completely closed and the other, swollen but partially open, revealed the dark brown slit of her pupil when she looked at him.

‘Was it awful?’ she asked.

‘It was a nice send off.’ A platitude but true. ‘How are you?’

She made a rueful moue and pulled her hair back. ‘What do you think?’

He cupped her face and kissed her swollen lips. ‘You heard the doctor. It’s only superficial. You’ll be surprised how quickly you’ll recover.’

‘Don’t.’ She shook her head distractedly. ‘I can’t bear it if you minimise what happened.’

‘I’m not minimising…’ Jake stopped, helpless before her grief. ‘I don’t know what to say, Ali.’

‘I know, Dad. Neither do I.’ The swelling on her ankle had reduced, he noticed, but her right knee, when it peeked through her dressing gown, was still bandaged. ‘Dr Fisher says I can be discharged tomorrow.’

‘Tomorrow?’ Jake was shocked. ‘It’s only four days since – ’

‘I know… but, like you said, my injuries are superficial.’ She linked his arm and leaned heavily on him as they walked along the hospital corridor. He had no idea how she had managed to remain conscious enough to ring the help line that sent the emergency services racing to the scene of the accident. Primal instincts stronger than terror. Instincts that allowed her to ignore her injuries and concentrate on the only pain that mattered.

They stopped outside the incubation unit. As always, when Jake looked at his granddaughter with her tubes and patches, and the tiny cap on her head, he was dazed by the strength of his love. Her wrinkled monkey face, the thread veins mapping her tiny frame, her fingers, slivers of bone, sinew and muscle, he loved every part of Sara Saunders with a primal and protective passion.