Page 120 of The Last Love Song
With a click of her heels, she rode off along the beach.
After a good burst over several hundred feet, Helen feltgreatly improved. She tried to reason why seeing Con and Sorcha together had upset her so much. She had accepted that, although she was a little in love with Con, there was no chance he would ever give her a second look. Perhaps, she reasoned, it was that Sorcha O’Donovan had everything she didn’t: a loving family, popularity, and effortless good looks. Well, now she had Con Daly too.
Helen pulled Davy’s reins and brought him to a stop, before taking a moment to enjoy the vastness of the Atlantic Ocean. The expanse of grey-green water stretched as far as the eye could see. Some days, it was as still and glassy as a millpond. On others, the waves thrashed and roared like a vicious mythical creature. Today, the water lapped gently against the sand, and the vista would not have looked out of place on a postcard sent from a Mediterranean shore. Helen stared at the ocean for a long time. It was beckoning, alluring...She shook her head. Helen turned Davy around on himself, before taking a leisurely trot towards home.
As she approached the dunes, she saw a figure giving her a wave. Was it...? Yes. Con Daly.
When Helen waved back, Con began to coax her over.
‘Helen McCarthy!’ he called. ‘I want to talk to you.’
A small surge of adrenalin washed over her, and she steered Davy towards Con’s dune. He made his way down onto the beach and gave the horse’s nose a scratch.
‘Ah, you’ve got yerself a fine fella here, Helen.’
‘Thank you, Con.’
‘How is he at being tied up?’
‘He’s good.’
‘Well then, why don’t you hop on down? We can leash him to my hut. I was thinking we could share a hot drop?’
Tea with Con? This was not an opportunity Helen was going to turn down. ‘Okay.’ She dismounted her stallion andled him by the reins through the dunes to the shack Con called home.
‘Ah, ’tis a far cry from your own palace, Helen, but it’s mine. Here.’ He took Davy’s reins and attached him to a stretch of nylon rope, which in turn was connected to a timber post emerging from the sand.
‘Will he be all right here, Helen?’ She nodded. ‘Grand. Come on in.’
Helen followed Con into the small, dank abode. There wasn’t much within its four walls, save for a battered old sofa, with an indentation where Con clearly slept. She also noted a stove with a small fire burning.
‘Have a seat, Helen. I won’t be a minute with your tea.’
‘Thank you.’
Con produced a pair of grimy-looking mugs from a battered cupboard and placed the kettle on top of the stove.
‘I often look up at the hall and think of you, Helen McCarthy.’
Helen’s cheeks were immediately red-hot. ‘Oh, do you?’
Con nodded. ‘You must get lonely up there, all by yerself.’
‘You must get lonely too.’
He shrugged. ‘Ah, it’s not so bad down here. I’ve only the one room! But if I were rattling around that grand house all day, I know I’d end up driving myself mad.’
Helen tried to force a giggle, but some spittle caught in the back of her throat, and she ended up coughing loudly. ‘I have an aunt,’ she managed, recovering herself.
‘Ah, so you do.’ Con poured the boiled water into the mugs, before steeping some pre-used leaves.
‘Here we are.’ Con handed Helen her tea and sat close to her on the sofa, so that his leg was lightly touching hers. Butterflies began to flap in her stomach. ‘We’re cut from the same cloth, aren’t we, Helen?’
‘What do you mean, Con?’
‘We’re both different. Not afraid to follow our own path.’
Following the same path as everyone else was pretty much all Helen had wanted to do for her entire life, but she understood where Con was coming from. ‘I suppose so.’
