Page 22 of The Elements

And now, here she is.

In my cottage. Unannounced. Unexpected. Uninvited. But welcome, always welcome.

My child. My daughter. My survivor.

Rebecca.

“How did you find me?” I ask her, sitting down on the sofa and placing my hands between my knees, for they are noticeably trembling.

I feel that I should maintain some distance between us in case I suffocate her with too much affection and she takes fright and runs away.

It’s the afternoon before wash day and I’m in my rags.

I don’t know if this will count for or against me.

Maybe she’ll think I’ve let myself go since leaving Dublin.

I don’t want her to think that Brendan has somehow weakened me; he hasn’t.

If anything, after all this time, I’ve found strength here. Without him.

“You told me where you were,” she replies, and I shake my head.

“No, I meant the cottage,” I say. “Not the island.”

“Oh, I went into the pub when I got off the boat,” she tells me. “I asked about you there.”

“And they told you?”

“Yes.”

I frown. How is this possible? Everyone here knows me as Willow Hale. But Rebecca knows me as Vanessa Carvin.

“It was weird,” she continues, glancing around, taking the place in. “All I had to say was, I’m looking for my mother, and the man behind the bar knew who I was immediately. He said I was the spit of you.”

I smile. People always said that Emma was the one who took after me; it’s nice to know that I might have passed on something to Rebecca too.

“I don’t think we’re anything alike, though,” she adds, bursting my bubble.

“Why didn’t you let me know that you were coming?” I ask.

“I wasn’t sure if I was really going to or not and didn’t want to say I would and then disappoint you. Even when I arrived on the island, I thought about turning back.”

“Why?”

In reply, she simply sniffs the air, as if she’s caught a scent of something distasteful.

“Do you have a dog?” she asks. “Is there a dog here somewhere?”

“A cat,” I tell her. “Well, it wasn’t mine. It just liked to visit. It used to sit where you’re sitting, that’s probably the scent you’re getting. Then it went out in a storm and didn’t make it home. I miss it, even though neither of us ever showed the slightest affection for the other.”

“You miss the cat,” she says, and I can’t tell whether this is a question or a statement of fact. Perhaps she’s thinking it through in her mind. Her mother is here alone, she’s lost a daughter, her husband is in prison, her other daughter barely speaks to her. And she misses a cat.

“It’s good to see you,” I tell her.

“And you,” she says, relenting a little. “I’ve missed you.”

I nod but don’t repeat the words back to her. I have to play this very carefully if I’m not to scare her away.

“And how are you?” I ask, thinking that small talk is a good place to start.

“Better than I was. But not as good as I could be. And you?”

“The same, I think.”

“You like it here?”

“I don’t dislike it.”

“You never told me why.”

“Why what?”

“Why this island?”

“Oh,” I say, laughing. “I probably never told you this, but I came here once before. Years ago, when I was just a girl. Fifteen years old, I think. It’s a Gaeltacht area during the summer and six of us from school arrived for three weeks after our Inter Cert, supposedly to improve our Irish.

It’s so long ago I can’t remember much about the place other than the fact that I enjoyed it.

It was the first time I got away from your grandparents, you see, so it was a chance for a bit of independence.

After the trial, when I knew I needed to escape Dublin, I considered London, but thought that would have been too busy.

Then I wondered whether I might go to America.

But the States would have been too far.”

“From home?”

“No, sweetheart, from you. So then I thought… here.”

Rebecca smiles. “First kiss?” she asks, and I laugh, delighted that she wants to tease me. This is the relationship I want to have with my daughter. One where we can laugh and share, like adults.

“It was, actually,” I say. “Everyone back then had their first kiss in the Gaeltacht.”

“What was his name?”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, I can’t remember! It was so long ago. Although I remember he had a mullet and looked like one of Echo and the Bunnymen.”

“Who?”

“They were a band. Colin liked them.”

“Who’s Colin?”

“The boy I kissed.”

“You said you couldn’t remember his name.”

I laugh and find my face bursting into a scarlet blush, which makes us both laugh.

This is delightful. “Fine,” I say. “His name was Colin Marley and I was obsessed from the minute I laid eyes on him. He wore a leather jacket and, along with the mullet, he had beautiful blue eyes that looked at you as if he was a little confused why you, or he, were even alive in the world. He was from Westmeath, and when I got back home we wrote to each other for a couple of months, and swore that we’d meet up at Hallowe’en in Dublin, but then he wrote to tell me that he’d found a girlfriend in Athlone, and I cried for days. ”

Rebecca looks overjoyed by this story. My mind drifts for a moment back to that boy, back to Colin.

He sat next to me in Irish class on the island and sometimes I thought he was too beautiful even to turn my head to look at.

As if he was some gorgeous Medusa who might turn me to stone if I so much as glanced in his direction.

“Your hair,” she says.

“Yes, I know.”

“It’s so short.”

“It’s convenient.”

“Actually, it looks good.”

“Do you think so?” I ask her. “I did it myself with a pair of scissors. There’s a woman below in the village who cuts hair in her kitchen, but I didn’t want to bother her.

She’d only end up yapping at me and asking me questions.

Anyway, it was the first thing I did when I came to the island. No, the second.”

“What was the first?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

I don’t want to tell her that I’ve changed my name. She’s still a Carvin, after all, and I don’t want her to feel that I’ve placed more than just a geographical distance between us.

“Have you come to bring me home?” I ask after a lengthy pause, and she shakes her head.

“No,” she tells me. “It’s up to you where you live. And you’ve been here, how long is it now? Seven months?”

“Eight.”

“And you’re not bored?”

“You’d be surprised how busy a person can keep when there’s nothing to do.

Every night, I make a full plan for the next day before I go to bed.

I go for long walks. I talk to people in the village.

And there’s always a bit of drama to keep me occupied.

” I hesitate for a moment, then decide to throw caution to the wind.

“Also, I have sex quite frequently, and that’s been a godsend.

I’d forgotten how good it can be if you’re doing it with someone who knows what he’s doing and wants you to enjoy it as much as he does. ”

Her eyes open wide, and I can tell that she’s not entirely sure she heard me correctly. I rather enjoy the fact that I’ve shocked her.

“What did you say?” she asks.

“I said I have sex quite frequently,” I repeat. “It’s nothing long term. A younger man.”

“What? How young?”

“Well, I was at his twenty-fifth birthday party in the old pub a few months back.”

“Twenty-five?” She looks astonished.

“Yes. A gentle soul. He was interested, so was I, so we both just went with it.”

“I see,” she says, and it’s clear from her expression that she thinks I have taken leave of my senses. “And is this a… is he a boyfriend now? Are you, like, dating?”

“Oh no,” I reply quickly. “Not at all. But we’ve become good friends, and the reason it works is that neither of us places any demands upon the other.

Sometimes, if I’m in the mood, I text him.

Sometimes, if he’s in the mood, he texts me.

Then he comes over, we have a drink and a chat and when we’ve exhausted all our conversation we go to bed together.

He doesn’t stay over. It’s something we both take pleasure in.

I like him, I think he likes me too. But if either of us ended it tomorrow, I’m sure that neither of us would give it another thought, and our lives would go on as before. ”

“Right,” she says, and I can tell that she doesn’t know how to process any of this. This is a conversation she never imagined having with me. I suspect she wants to place it somewhere in the corner of her mind and think about it, or not think about it, later.

“What’s his name?” she asks.

“Luke.”

She nods.

“Luke what?”

“Luke Duggan.”

A silence.

“And what about you?” I ask. “Are you seeing anyone?”

“No one special,” she says, as secretive as ever. “So, is this it? Do you live here now? Are you never coming back to Dublin?”

“I will, sooner or later,” I tell her. “Right now, I’m still taking it day by day.”

“What about the house?”

“What about it?”

“Are you going to sell it?”

“I hadn’t given it any thought. Why, would you like it?”

“No,” she says quickly. “No, I don’t ever want to set foot in it again. But if you sold it—”

“If I sold it, I would give you half,” I say, and, making my mind up suddenly, I add: “In fact, let’s do that. I don’t want to go back there either, so I’ll get in touch with someone tomorrow and put it on the market and we’ll split the proceeds fifty-fifty. How does that sound?”

She stares at me, as if she’s uncertain whether she can allow herself to believe this spontaneous offer.

“Really?” she asks. “You’d do that?”

“Of course I would. I’ve plenty of savings. And adding my half of the house into that will give me security for life. And your half will set you up nicely, won’t it?”

“It will,” she says. “But you should think about it. It’s a lot of—”

“I have thought about it. I thought about it just now. The plan is made. There now.”

“And what about… him?” she asks. “Won’t he have some say in it?”