Page 1 of The Book of Irish Secrets
ONE
On her forty-ninth birthday, Claire Fleury decided to run away from home. It wasn’t much of a home to run away from, as the only other occupants were her ex-husband’s cousin and her cat, but with the arrival of a package one morning, she knew exactly where she would go.
‘Someone sent you a present,’ Finola said when Claire came home that afternoon. ‘It arrived just after you went out this morning. I put it on the shelf in the hall. Hang on, I’ll get it.’
‘Who could have sent me a present?’ Claire asked. ‘Not Hugh, that’s for sure.’ Claire thought of the last letter she had received from her ex-husband. The one she had found on the mantelpiece one stormy night three years ago. He hadn’t even had the nerve to tell her he was leaving her in person. She still remembered every word in that letter.
Dear Claire,
When you read this, I’ll be on my way to Malaga to look at a small apartment that I’m planning to buy. I have already organised to work remotely and thefirm has no objections. As you know I love sunshine and warm weather and I’ve been thinking of moving to Spain for a while, even though you weren’t very keen on the idea.
I know you will think it cowardly of me to take off like this without explaining face to face. But I just couldn’t bear another row and more accusations back and forth. I don’t know whose fault it is that our marriage turned out to be so loveless, possibly mine, but I can’t carry on like this any more.
I want you to sell the house once Finola has moved out. She was only meant to stay for a week or two so she will probably leave as soon as she has found a flat or a little house for herself. My solicitor will be in touch about the divorce and how we can divide our assets and so on, but per the prenup, it should be pretty simple.
I hope you’ll have a good life once everything is finalised. I’ll be in touch when I’m settled.
I hope we might be able to stay friends when we are no longer husband and wife.
All my best wishes,
Hugh
His departure had been a huge shock and Claire had cried all night after reading that note, soaking the pillow and her wild curly hair with her tears. She grieved for the end of a marriage that hadn’t been happy but had still felt like a safe haven. But eventually, when she had thought it through, she felt calmer and more able to look at things realistically. She realised that she and Hugh were horribly mismatched and had never really agreed on anything. Hugh was the typical alpha male with conservative views about practically everything, especially equality between men and women. Before they married, she had thought she could change him but that had proven to be impossible. She had fallen for his handsome face and charm and hadn’t worried too much about his domineering ways. They had never been a family, just a rather sad, childless couple when the romance had faded. And his letter spoke volumes about their relationship: cold, unloving, impersonal. The only silver lining had been finding Finola.
‘Who could it be from?’ Finola asked as she went to fetch the parcel.
‘Maybe my sister Marian in Australia?’ Claire suggested, looking quizzically at the open door to the hallway.
Finola came back seconds later. ‘No, it’s from someone in Ireland. It has Irish stamps and was delivered by An Post.’
Claire took the parcel and looked at it for a moment. It was wrapped in brown paper and bore a stamp from the An Post Christmas collection from five years ago: a robin sitting on a branch of holly. She turned it around and looked at the sender. It seemed to be from the solicitor who handled Auntie Rachel’s estate after she died. ‘But it looks as if Auntie Rachel wrapped it and put the stamp on it. The solicitor said that she had nothing worth any money and I gave what she left in the nursing home to charity. They must have found this afterwards.’ Claire tore open the brown paper and discovered a thick leather-bound book witha faint F in gold on the front. ‘What on earth,’ she muttered and opened it, flicking through the pages. ‘It’s some kind of diary. There are photos too. And then, look, some kind of family tree.’
Finola went behind the sofa and looked over Claire’s shoulder. ‘“The Fleury family before the rift”,’ she read. ‘What does that mean?’
‘Oh,’ Claire said, her heart racing as she realised what the book was about. Her great-aunt Rachel, her grandfather’s sister, had looked after her since she was a little girl. Her parents had died in a terrible car crash and Auntie Rachel, although quite old, had stepped in and looked after Claire and her brother and sister until they were adult enough to manage on their own. ‘I’ve never seen this book but it seems to be about the Fleurys in Kerry.’
‘Another Fleury family?’ Finola asked.
‘Yes,’ Claire said. ‘A family I never met. I always knew I had family on the south-west coast of Ireland, but when he was alive, my father refused to even mention “the other Fleurys”, as he called them, and Auntie Rachel said she had been sworn to secrecy and we were never to mention them to her, ever. We only knew there had been a feud that started a long time ago.’
‘Something enormous must have happened,’ Finola said, looking intrigued.
‘Yes. I always wondered what it was.’ Claire looked at the first page of the big book, felt the worn leather cover, and ran her fingers over the intricate embossing. She opened the book slowly to see careful, beautiful flourishes in black ink. It smelled faintly of the lavender cologne Auntie Rachel had used and Claire felt the spirit of her great-aunt somehow floating around her, settling on her shoulders like a feather-light shawl. ‘This is her handwriting, that spidery, neat writing she had. I never knew she had a diary. She must have kept this in secret.’ Claire stared at Finola, her eyes full of tears. ‘Darling Auntie Rachel. I havea feeling she wanted me to go and find our long-lost relatives. I wish she had told me when she was still alive.’
Rachel had passed away after a long illness. Claire’s brother, Patrick, and her sister, Marian, both lived abroad so Auntie Rachel had been Claire’s only close relative. They had always celebrated Christmas together in Auntie Rachel’s house and Sunday lunch there was something Claire had looked forward to every week. Then Auntie Rachel had become ill and had spent the last two years of her life in a nursing home until she died in her sleep just before Christmas. Claire could still see Auntie Rachel in her mind’s eye: the specks of green around her irises, the feel of her warm hands as she clutched Claire tightly as a child and the slight scent of lavender that wafted around her. She always wore long dresses and beautiful knitted cardigans. Claire still missed the feeling of calm when they took long walks together.
Now there was nobody Claire felt close to, except Finola, who had become her best friend and confidant ever since Claire’s husband had left. But despite the close friendship, Claire felt restless and discontent. It was time to try something new and challenging in a place that was more inspiring that the suburbs of Dublin. Could this mystery, this book, be the key to finding it? Had Rachel sent the book to Claire to send her on a journey? Was it her way of telling Claire to go and find out the truth about her family?
Claire knew where they were. The Dingle peninsula in County Kerry. Her distant cousins lived in Magnolia Manor, the family mansion near Dingle town. Claire knew it was a beautiful place with huge grounds on the edge of the Atlantic.
Auntie Rachel had let a few facts slip out about the family feud, which Claire felt were important clues. One of them was Claire’s dark curly hair, blue-green eyes and pale, freckly complexion. Auntie Rachel sometimes mumbled that Claire wasa throwback to the Fleurys of earlier generations. Another thing that made the old woman emotional was Claire’s musical talent – nobody seemed to know where it came from. Playing the piano was Claire’s favourite hobby and she could sit at the piano for hours making up tunes or getting lost in a piece by Beethoven, Chopin or Debussy. ‘Just like my brother and our father,’ Auntie Rachel would mumble, wiping away a tear. ‘My father used to get lost in music like that. I think it helped him forget his sadness. He never recovered after the row that split the family apart.’ But then when asked what she meant, Auntie Rachel would change the subject and talk about the weather or the price of groceries that kept going up.
Forbidden fruit is the most enticing, so Claire had tried her best to find out all she could about the Kerry branch of the family when she had been a child. Magnolia Manor had always seemed like a magical, mysterious place to her as she grew up, a place inhabited by glamorous people who led a charmed life just like in the movies.
Then, when she was fifteen, she had read about the boating accident that had killed Liam Fleury and his son, Fred, and left three little girls fatherless. She had looked at the photos of the funeral and felt a stab of pity for Fred’s wife, Patricia, who now had to bring up her daughters on her own. Sylvia Fleury, Liam’s wife, had looked courageous and dignified as she walked out of the church behind the two coffins. How tragic, Claire had thought, to lose both one’s husband and son at the same time.
She often wondered how they were managing and now, more than thirty years later, as she was preparing her escape from home, she thought about those women and what they must have been through. How had they coped with the trauma that must still be lingering even after all these years? She knew about the family from reports in the press from time to time. The daughters had all moved back to Dingle and now lived near themanor, she had read, when Violet, the youngest daughter, had married Jack Montgomery, an actor and now a director of some well-known movies. There had been quite a bit in the media about them at that time.
