Page 220 of The Missing Sister

‘I remember when you were little, Maggie,’ I said to my niece. ‘And here you are, a grandmother!’

‘I remember you too, Auntie Merry,’ she smiled at me. ‘I can’t tell you how delighted Mam was when Uncle John rang to tell her you were back.’

A glass of whiskey was pressed into my hand, and I was introduced to so many children and grandchildren of my brothers and sisters that I gave up trying to work out who was whose.

I found my own children in the New Room, where Jack was chatting to a crowd about rugby, while Mary-Kate was talking to a handsome young man.

‘Mum,’ she called to me, ‘this is Eoin, who’s your brother Pat’s son.’

‘Will you be joining us in a song, Mrs McDougal?’ he smiled at me, taking his fiddle out of its case.

‘Please, call me Merry. It’s been a long time since I’ve sung the old songs, but perhaps after a few drops of whiskey,’ I said.

Bill came up to me, his face already flushed pink from the drink, and flourished his mobile phone at me.

‘Merry, ’tis Nora! She’s on the phone from Canada!’

I pressed the phone to my ear and immediately removed it when I heard a familiar high-pitched shriek of excitement, as if Nora was trying to shout across the Atlantic Ocean.

‘Hello there, you eejit! Where have you been all these years?’ she cried.

‘Ah Nora, it’s a long story. How are you?’

I let her chatter wash over me, as Eoin struck up a tune on his fiddle. More people gathered in the room, their feet stamping and hands clapping along. My little brother Pat pushed his two young granddaughters into the centre of the circle, and they began to dance, their identical curls bouncing as their legs performed intricate steps and hops.

‘Oh my God, Mum, that’s just likeRiverdance!’ Mary-Kate smiled. ‘Aren’t they sweet?’

‘We never had the money to go and learn properly, but be glad I never sent you to Irish dancing lessons, it’s brutal,’ I giggled.

John offered me his hand and led me into a dance, and I was surprised as muscle memory took over and I remembered all the steps. Ellen and her husband were dancing beside us, and with a hop, we switched partners.

‘Ah, ’tis the song they played at our wedding,’ said Ellen’s husband Emmet. ‘You were only a slip of a thing back then.’

As invisible hands poured drops of whiskey into my glass, the dancing, singing and laughter went on, and my heart felt fit to burst with happiness, surrounded by my family and my own children in the house that I had grown up in, the music of my homeland thumping in my veins. And knowing at last that I was free from the man who had haunted me for thirty-seven years...

Later, needing some air, I pushed through the crowded rooms and made my way out of the kitchen door. Facing me across the courtyard was the old farmhouse where I’d lived up until the age of five, and where I now knew Nuala and her family had lived before us. The barn next door to it had obviously been recently rebuilt, but the sound of young calves still emanated from within it.

‘What troubles this place has seen,’ I whispered to myself as I wandered across to the side of the courtyard, beyond which we used to hang the washing every day. Now the area had been lawned and turned into a garden, with flower beds and a thick fuchsia hedge growing along one side to give shelter from the winds that swept along the valley. There were some children playing on the swings and slide in one corner, and I sat down in one of the ageing wooden chairs placed around a table. The view down the valley towards the river was quite beautiful, not that I’d ever fully appreciated it as a child.

‘Hello there, Merry. Mind if I join you?’

I turned around to see Helen, looking as immaculate as the last time I’d seen her.

‘Of course not, Helen. Sit down.’

‘Thank you so much for inviting me tonight. Everyone’s been so welcoming, treating me like a long-lost relative.’

‘Youarea long-lost relative,’ I chuckled.

‘I know, but ’tis still strange that we lived not far away from you, went to school together, and yet I’ve never set foot in this house before tonight. Mammy would have strung me up if I had.’

‘I don’t think it’s possible for us to begin to know what our ancestors went through,’ I sighed.

‘’Tis only sad that no one talked of it much outside their own families, because they were too frightened. Some of them wrote about it when they were older, or made deathbed confessions, but ’tis important for the young to know what their forefathersandmothers did for them and understand how long-held family grudges began.’

‘I agree. I wonder what Hannah and Nuala would think if they could see us sitting here right now?’ I said. ‘In an Ireland that feels to me as if it’s being modernised by the day. I was only reading this morning that there’s been a move to legalise gay marriage.’

‘I know! Jesus, who’d have thought it? I’m hoping Hannah and Nuala are sitting up there together and feeling proud of what they began. ’Twas the start of a revolution in all sorts of ways.’