Page 24 of One More Day
We weren’t married, I reminded him.
The fixer who can’t fix himself, said Niall, sipping on a beer in my kitchen.
That’ll do, I told him, knowing his humour was only an attempt to shake me out of my slumber.I’ll go to Donegal to get away from it all if you think it’s the right thing for me, but I mean it. This is the last Christmas I’m going to skulk around like this. After this year, it’s business as usual, whatever that may be.
He held his fist out for me to ‘bump’ which made me roll my eyes in return. Niall, as much as I love the guy, has been on way too many training courses where he’s been encouraged to ‘reach out’ and to ‘think outside of the box’ for my liking, but I wouldn’t change him for the world. When my parents died less than a year apart, each of them having fought a heart-wrenching cancer battle, he was the first person through my door, and now that Rebecca has gone tolive far away, he makes sure to call me every single day. He begged me to bring Helena and spend Christmas with him and his wife and family, but I don’t want to take his generosity too far.
Go and clear your head, champ, he told me, when I said I’d planned to escape to Donegal instead.Sometimes good things fall apart so better things can come together.
I shot him averylengthy stare for coming out with that one.
I arrive back to the cottage expecting to see Rose up, packed and ready to leave, but the living room curtains are still drawn. There is no sign of life. At least, not until her dog goes bananas at the sound of me and Max coming into the hallway.
It’s well after nine and she still isn’t up?
And that damn dog. For something so big and dopey, he really does have a deep bark that would wake the dead.
‘George, that’s enough, old boy. Hush, please,’ I hear Rose mutter to him when I stop by the living room door. ‘You’ll wake up Charlie and Max. It’s too early for so much noise.’
Early?
I’ve usually half a day’s work done by now. Should I shout a hello? Ask how she slept? What exactly are we supposed to do in this surreal situation? I cough, just so she knows I’m in the vicinity. Then I cough again, just for good measure. This is very strange.
I heard her moving furniture late last night after she crashed around the kitchen making what I gathered from thesplashes of orange sauce around the cooker this morning was some pasta dish, but this morning the house was silent again.
I wonder if she is as nervous with this as I am.
I cough again, just in case. Sometimes I like to do things in threes. Sometimes I fear I’ve been around Niall for too long with his traits and ways of doing things just for luck.
Max circles around me where I stand in the hallway then shakes his coat, making me scramble for the towel I’d left by the door for exactly this moment. I dry him off quickly, then take off my woolly hat and black rain jacket before sitting down on the stairs to take off my boots and socks which are sodden through and through.
We walked further than I’d intended, leaving the beach to skulk around the village, taking in the sights and sounds of the little main street which is decorated with snowflake lights on lamp posts and old-fashioned multi-coloured bulbs that string across in a zig-zag.
Those decorations must be almost as old as I am. A lot about this place is like time stood still. What era exactly I’m unsure of, but I guess that’s what makes it so magical. The people here live for a friendly chat, a helping hand or a kind ear. It’s the type of place where you still see old men smoking pipes outside the pub with a newspaper tucked under their arm as they put the world to rights. It’s a slower pace of life and I plan to savour every second of it.
On the way back to the cottage, a little robin skimmed over my head by the river, so close I’m sure its feet almost landed on my mop of hair, and the way it made me jumpreminded me I’m very much still alive, even though sometimes I do wonder.
That’s a sign loved ones are near, Helena reminded me when I sent her a photo of it perched by the riverbank.
I wish you were nearer now, she said, accompanied by a tear-faced emoji. That almost killed me.
I’ll see you soon, I replied, and then I waited until the robin disappeared.
I stopped in at Sean’s coffee shop where he was able to tell me all about the drama yesterday with Rose’s car, and how he saved the day by contacting Rusty who is the best mechanic this side of the county border. I get the impression that not a lot happens around here at all if that’s all he had to talk about.
‘She’s running from something or someone,’ Sean told me with his arms folded. ‘She’s got this great façade going on, but a very sad look about her. Very pretty, smart too, and friendly for sure, but I can tell when someone is running from something. Mark my words.’
‘Aren’t we all running from something, Sean? Aren’t we all?’
I let him rant on, jumping to his conclusions while I did the same in my head. Despite Sean’s grand summary, I have my own theory about Rose, and a lot of it comes down to years of listening to other people’s problems in a professional setting.
She’s masking something mega, yes; I know that for sure. There’s a reason for her coming here, but it’s anything but straightforward. She certainly seems distracted, and there’s a sense of chaos that surrounds her.
For a start, she’s messy. The spaghetti sauce on the cooker was one thing, but the way she stacked the saucepans back in the cupboard would drive anyone insane.
Plus, she’s loud without even realising it. She hums a lot for someone so badly out of tune. I know I’m no Pavarotti, but boy, I could hear her from upstairs last night when I was going to bed.
I’m still standing in the hallway mulling over our brief experience of sharing this cottage when Rose opens the living room door and finds me frozen in thought. She is wearing fluffy pyjamas which wouldn’t look out of place in the Antarctic and her thick, dark hair is bunched up on top of her head in what Helena calls a ‘pineapple’.
