Page 73 of The Women at Ocean's End

‘Oh.’ Heather let out a huge breath and, with it, she became in an instant a smaller version of herself, right before Constance’s eyes. A tear raced down her cheek.

‘I’m so sorry.’

‘No, no, don’t be sorry. I get it now, the drinking, the distance, the whole bloody thing…’ Heather was crying now, crying as if her heart might break, crying far more than she had after they buried Dot. ‘Thank you, Constance, for telling me, you didn’t have to…’

‘I did.’ Constance was crying too. ‘I felt she wanted you to know, for so long, and then last night, she was here, Heather, and she’s so happy, but she needs you to forgive her, you know, just to understand what it was like, why she…’ That final time, their final argument, she had tried to convince Dotty to get help, to stop drinking, to wake up to what she had in life, but it had ended up with falling out so badly there had been no going back.

Constance closed her eyes, it was emptying her out, just remembering that final time.

‘Rest, Constance, you can rest now. I know, you don’t have to worry now, all we have to do is get you strong again and then…’ But maybe Heather already knew what Constance had known for almost two days.

‘There’s something else I need to tell you,’ Constance said and she smiled, because probably it seemed as if things couldn’t get much worse. ‘We were very young, we thought that we might be sent away or worse for what we’d done. We were so scared, when they thought of looking in the well…’ She sighed.

‘Oh, Constance, don’t; it doesn’t matter now.’

‘It really does.’ Constance looked at her, tried to squeeze her hand but she hadn’t the strength to pull her fingers closer. ‘I offered to go down and check if he was there. They trusted me, lowered me into the well…’

‘The same well that my mother rescued you from?’ Heather shook her head, fresh tears filled her eyes. ‘Oh, Constance, you were such a brave little thing.’

‘I was tiny, the lightest of all of us to lower down there safely anyway… But that’s not why I went, I went down to save our skins, it’s very simple, nothing to be proud of. Not brave at all, as it turns out.’

‘Constance Macken, you went down to save my mother’s skin as well as your own. You were brave and fearless and, maybe, my grandfather deserved what he got.’ Heather’s voice was strong enough for two.

‘It was so dark. He was under the water, just, there had been floods, such heavy floods so the water had risen a few days earlier. I saw his hand, reaching up the side of the well, as if trying to pull himself out of the water…’ She began to shiver now and cry as if her heart might break. ‘He was there, dead and buried in the dirty flood water, and I called back up to tell them that there was no sign of him. I looked down, tried to see his face beneath me as they pulled me up, but the water was too black. He’s still down there, Heather, in Mr Morrison’s back yard, rotting all these years without so much as a headstone.’

‘Oh, Constance, it’s all so long ago.’ Heather reached across and placed her head on the pillow next to Constance’s. ‘Constance?’

‘Yes?’

‘I think my mother would have come back and put things right with you…’

‘I don’t know. I’m not sure she could have forgiven me, I said some terrible things.’

‘No. She changed, at the end. She almost made it too, I think. She sent us both letters. Here…’ Heather held out the most beautiful envelope that Constance had ever seen. It was like looking at the ocean and the sky, like drifting off to heaven.

‘From Dotty?’ she breathed. With some difficulty, Constance managed to angle herself on the pillows; Heather perched her reading glasses on her nose and held the sheet of paper so she could read it privately. A trace of a smile played at the corners of her lips, it was as if Dot was right there next to her, come alive in those precious words that had been kept until this late hour.

Constance’s eyes swam with tears for the most part as she read the letter silently, once and then a second time, holding it to her chest because it felt as if it was the most precious thing in the world to her now. It was a beautiful letter, perfect, love palpable in every simple stroke of Dotty’s pen; heartbreaking. Even if Dotty’s timing had been terrible on the one hand, by some miracle it had arrived just in time for Constance. ‘I’ll read it to you, tomorrow,’ she promised Heather just as sleep encroached upon her.

‘Let’s close our eyes for a while, all that matters now is that you get a little rest,’ Heather said eventually.

‘It’s not really all that matters though,’ Constance murmured, but she felt content in a way she’d never felt before.

‘It is to me, Constance, it is to me,’ Heather said and Constance sighed. She felt so much better, so much lighter and happy to be here with Heather, knowing that the others were not far away now any more.

When Constance opened her eyes again, the room was at that half-light, just as dawn was breaking. She imagined the sun, creaking over the mainland in the distance, its fingers stretching across the fields, wakening cattle from their night’s slumber. The crows outside began to stir from the trees.

Constance smiled. She felt no pain, only a lightness of spirit that might carry her across the room, as if she was a slip of girl, dancing about with Dotty, pretending to bedolls, with invisibleguyson the sidelines. And then, Dotty was standing there, her hand outstretched. She was young and pretty and happy. Shewas so happy it was contagious. Constance couldn’t stay there any longer. Suddenly she was drifting from the bed, following Dotty, towards the open French doors, leading to the garden. The early light was flooding across the grass now; the blooming scents of summer roses filled the air, the dew on the grass was soft and comforting. She hadn’t walked barefoot out here in years. A light breeze seemed to carry her along to the bench where her mother, smiling, and Oisin, his hand outstretched, were waiting for her. And she was happy, so happy to leave Ocean’s End at last.

49

Heather

Heather had slipped quietly back to her own room in the silence of the night, but she knew before she even opened her eyes the following morning that Constance was gone. There was a whisper of emptiness on the air, something at odds with everything. She’d slept so deeply that when she woke she lay still for a moment, her eyes tracing around the ceiling’s familiar cracks and paint blisters. There was an odd feeling in her heart, a loneliness that pushed in against the edges of something that felt as if it could run as deep as the ocean. Grief.

She swung her legs out onto the floor, pulled the heavy cardigan Constance had lent her around her shoulders and tiptoed downstairs as if stealing away in the night.

‘Hey.’ Ros arrived at the back door just as she was going to check on Constance. ‘Everything all right?’ she asked, but she never normally came up to the house at this hour.

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