Page 11 of The Women at Ocean's End

Even the disorganisation of the place was soothing; Heather was quickly lost in shelf after shelf, picking up books she’d heard of and reading the fly covers. Some books she’d read and had forgotten about and others that just spoke to her from the spines or the slightly battered-looking covers. She picked up three paperbacks, not classics, but books that had been on her radar at some point but she had never managed to get round to reading.

‘Ah, a good choice,’ the old man said when she brought them to the cash desk.

‘I’ve never noticed this place before,’ she said as he rang up her purchases.

‘No, most people don’t. My daughter says I should call the books pre-loved, rather than second-hand,’ he said.

‘Oh no, I hate that term, much better to call a thing what it is. After all, if someone loved them that much, they’d never have parted with them to begin with, would they?’

‘I don’t know about that.’ The old man looked at her now and handed her the little carrier bag with her purchases. ‘I had a woman who called me up regularly looking for this book.’ He bent down and took a battered-looking old hardback from underthe desk. It looked like a library edition to Heather, but then she looked more closely.

‘Oh my God, is that a Maggie Macken?’ she asked, holding out her hand and taking it from him.

‘You’ve heard of her?’ The old man shook his head as if wonders would never cease.

‘I know, what are the chances? She was a friend of my family.’ It was the easiest way to describe the relationship between her and this writer who had died long before Heather really had a chance to get to know her.

‘Her books are long out of print, I mean, the chances of picking one up are so slim these days…’ The old man was talking as she turned the book over in her hand. ‘But the woman who had been looking for a copy is mentioned on the dedication…’ he said.

‘Oh.’ And Heather opened the cover to see the faded typeface that had long gone out of fashion.To Constance and Dotty, may the friendship you share last as long as the sea is hitting the shore and remember that home is always within a whisper of Ocean’s End. With love. Maggie. ‘Oh, my God.’ It felt as if she had been gut-punched.

‘All right, love?’ The man was looking at her as if she was about to collapse right across his cluttered counter.

‘I’m fine, it’s just the—’She had to stop to catch her breath. ‘It’s just the Dotty in the dedication is my mother and she died just recently.’

‘That’s…’ The old man scratched his head as if trying to figure something out. ‘That might be the biggest coincidence I can put down in all my days here…’ And he went on to explain that it was Dotty who had been ringing him up on a regular basis to find this very book for her.

‘That’s…’ Heather felt the book like a tonne weight suddenly in her hands. The idea that she had arrived in this very shop andnow had this very book in her hands. It sent a shiver down her spine.

‘A gift,’ the old man said. ‘From me, for your mother and now for you.’

‘I couldn’t possibly accept it,’ she said, but she knew she was going to buy it if he’d let her. She had no intention of leaving this shop without it; that suddenly felt as if it was the most important thing she could possibly do right now, as if it might somehow put something right in her world.

‘Of course you can, it’s not worth anything to me and I have a feeling you are meant to have it.’

‘Isn’t it rare, I mean, if it’s out of print?’

‘Probably, but no-one reads those old-fashioned romances any more, it’s all about killing and terrorising you and giving you nightmares before you go to sleep these days.’ Again he shook his head as if he’d never understand the modern world.

‘That’s really kind of you…’ She looked around the shop and, before she thought about it, she blurted out, ‘I don’t suppose you could keep an eye out for any of her other books that might come your way? I’ll leave you my card.’ But, of course, she didn’t have a card any more. ‘Well, I’ll leave you my mobile number, if that’s okay?’

‘I’ll keep an eye out, but the chances of another of her books arriving in here now, well I’d say I was just lucky to get that one. It was in a box that some lady had found under her mother’s bed, tucked away for years like guilty secrets.’ He smiled kindly now.

And for the first time in weeks, even though she couldn’t understand why it was, Heather felt as if she had something to look forward to. She pushed the door into the next coffee shop she came to, ordered an Americano and lodged herself in a deep armchair before sinking intoNever Lose Heart. This was one of the last books Maggie Macken had written, but the publisher had listed all her others – twenty-four in all. Somehow, that was anunexpected source of comfort to Heather as she dived into the story.

7

Ros

There was an exhilarating splendour about this time of the day, Ros thought, inhaling the salty sea air deeply so it filled her lungs. It was first thing in the morning, before the islanders were out of their beds. Today she was walking along the western sea-facing cliffs, taking stock and checking on the populations of sea birds nesting in the cracks below the overhang. By now, she knew where every nest was; it was her job to check and conserve wildlife on the island. This involved everything from the birds in the air, to the fish in the sea, to the tiniest species of plankton that could be endangered in the event of some heedless human interaction that disrupted the local biodiversity.

Ros hitched up her long skirt and tucked it inside the thermal leggings she wore every day to keep her warm. Here, walking along the sea cliffs and occasionally having to scramble down the sides, she knew the value of having clothes that would hold freezing temperatures at bay. She pushed from her mind the warnings about always dressing for the possibility that she might find herself stranded overnight. The PhD students she’d travelled here with had all the gear – of course, if Mummy and Daddy were paying for it, why wouldn’t they? Ros had her mobile phone, a rucksack with a few snack bars, combined with a growing knowledge of the land that was earned in all weathers with twenty thousand steps a day. Anyway, she was too young to think of dire consequences of that sort.

No, if Ros thought of the worst that could happen, she always figured those things had already spun out in her life. She held onto the notion that lightning didn’t strike in the same place twice and even if it did in her case, it couldn’t just keep on hitting the same ground.

The fact was that she’d arrived on Pin Hill Island by happy accident, more than by any real design. She had applied for what felt like thousands of jobs after she graduated with her degree in environmental science. It turned out that the environmental sector was a small one in Ireland. Everywhere she went, it seemed they’d heard about the catastrophe of the eagle’s nest and of course they’d assumed she was responsible for a senior manager having to quit her job. So, she’d drifted for a while, from one meaningless thing to another, growing more afraid to aim for what she really wanted. That was the thing about having no roots. Without her mother, or indeed any family, she hadn’t any particular place to be and no-one to answer to in almost four years. She had completed her final year in college, gone out into the world, screwed up and licked her wounds without anyone to fall back on.

And then she’d arrived here, half thinking that she might apply to go back to college and this would be a summer job, just something to tide her over and remind her what her degree had been all about to begin with.

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