‘It’s fine,’ Megan said quickly, holding a hand up in the international ‘all fine’ gesture.
He still looked alarmed.
‘Really fine,’ she said. ‘I’m OK, honestly.’
She handed him the money plus a generous tip. When you didn’t want to communicate, Megan had learned it was best to hand out big tips. It was like saying, ‘I’m not a rude bitch because I’m famous, really, but here’s a large tip, just to make sure you like me.’
‘Very good,’ the driver said.
It was clearly the only English he spoke. Poor man. He wasn’t at home here either, she thought, hauling her stuff out and shivering in the chilly night air.
Megan couldn’t actually remember the first time she and Pippa had come to stay with Nora. Their aunt and her narrow, quirky house in Golden Square had always been a part of their lives, it seemed. Yet she knew it wasn’t always so. It was only when Dad died that they’d begun to stay with their aunt for long periods of time. It was clear, though nobody had ever said as much, that Mum hadn’t coped well with her husband’s death, hence Nora had stepped in to take care of her little nieces.
Golden Square, with its endless cycle of interesting tenants downstairs, and various motley dogs, cats and even once, a parakeet, had filled the gap left by Megan’s father. Yet everyone appeared to forget that it was Nora’s brother who’d died. She had every right to be as devastated as Mum, yet she never said anything about her own grief. She’d simply moved into their lives, being there when she was needed, for summer holidays, for Christmases, her pain on hold while she did her duty.
Nora must have been watching out for Megan now because the front door opened and Nora appeared silhouetted in the hall light, trying to restrain two barking dogs.
‘Hello,’ called Megan, hauling her wheeled hold-all along the narrow garden path. The taxi driver had barely accelerated off with a roar of tyres, before the tears started rolling down her cheeks.
Nora gave up holding back Cici and Leonardo, opened the door wide and welcomed Megan into her arms, the dogs jumping eagerly around them.
‘You’re here now,’ Nora said softly. ‘It’ll be all right, Meg, you’ll see.’
Hearing the diminutive name she’d preferred when she was a kid made Megan feel even sadder. She’d had such plans for her life and what had they come to? ‘Oh, Nora, everything’s a disaster. I’ve ruined it all,’ she said.
‘Nonsense,’ Nora replied, deciding that now wasn’t the time for the lecture. She pulled the hold-all the rest of the way inside, called the dogs in and shut the front door. ‘You made a mistake, people do. You feel terrible right now, but you will feel better soon.’
Despite her tears, Megan felt familiar anger prick. Nora still talked to her as though she were a child. This was the destruction of both her life and her career, not a schoolgirl escapade. She was twenty-six, not a kid.
‘Come on upstairs. I’ve just made myself some lemon and chamomile tea, there’s plenty in the pot for two. And Bondi Vet is on later. They’re all repeats; tonight it’s the one about the parrot on Prozac, you’ll love it.’
Nora adored animal shows, everything from wild animals being secretly filmed in the bush to domestic cats being rescued from mad people who didn’t feed them: she watched them all.
Megan thought of how she’d hoped that tonight she could talk to someone who loved her and would understand. Perhaps she could finally unburden herself and tell Nora everything. But no, they were going to watch animal programmes. Still, it was better than having Nora lecture her.
‘Great,’ she said, with an enthusiasm she didn’t feel. What she’d really like was a cool glass of white wine and a hot bath, but neither seemed to be on the menu.
The dogs split the loving between them, with Cici appointing herself carer of Megan and sitting on her lap waiting to be adored. Leonardo, shaking with the excitement of the evening, lay on the couch beside Nora, his velvety grey head on her knee.
Nobody could resist a double bill of Bondi Vet and with Cici there to hug, Nora could see her niece visibly relax. Megan kicked off her shoes and folded her feet up under her on the big armchair, rearranging Cici so she was snuggled close to her. Pretending to watch the television, Nora secretly watched Megan.
Her beauty had come as a surprise. Marguerite was pretty in a blonde, girlish way, and Pippa took after her. Fionn himself had been tall, attractive and had an air of great strength about him, but he was no matinee idol. And yet along had come Megan, a genuine beauty even when she was a child. There had been no teenage anxieties for her about her looks, no acne or teeth problems, nothing. She’d grown from a slight fairy of a child with cool blonde hair and enquiring dark olive green eyes into a slight fairy of a woman, with a sheen to her skin, an inner glow that marked her out. People had stared at her when Nora took the two girls out; nobody had ever assumed Nora was their mother, which might have been hurtful except that Nora had no problems with her own lack of beauty. It was like the length of your legs: there was nothing whatsoever to do about it.
It had been no surprise that film and television people had been enamoured of Megan. Even as a child playing a little gangster in a stage version of Bugsy Malone, she was luminous.
But not so luminous now, Nora thought. Megan was wearing what all young women seemed to wear these days: those loose, boyish jeans, flat little lace-up runners and an enormous grey sweatshirt that dwarfed her. Her skin had a greyish tinge, she looked skinny and, without any make-up, the ultra-blonde hair looked cheap and, Nora hated to even think it, tarty.
Nora had read the single interview given by someone close to Katharine Hartnell in a newspaper a client had left at the surgery. Devoid of most of the usual celebrity cover-up, it had sounded heartfelt and terribly sad. There was no blithe dismissal of a lowly actress trying to infiltrate a solid movie-star marriage. Just the assertion that this had split the Hartnells up and that her husband’s betrayal had shaken Katharine to the core.
No, Nora decided. She wouldn’t say anything to Megan tonight. What could she say, anyway? She wasn’t equipped to counsel Megan over this. It was so far outside Nora’s comfort zone that she wouldn’t have known where to start.
But she felt, as her eyes stared unseeing at the Sydney vets trying to save a dog bitten by a snake, that she’d let her brother down. This wasn’t what he would have wanted for one of his beloved daughters.
You need good-quality flour to make decent bread. Never underestimate a nice cake of soda bread with freshly churned butter for when you’re tired and ready to sink down beside your own fire. Or a good wholemeal to set off a piece of cheese when you need energy.
It took me a long time to learn how to make good bread because my mother never measured a thing. She just threw handfuls in. Flour, some buttermilk left over from churning…I have my recipe here and I can tell you, we got more out of the flour than just bread. We got linen sheets!
I never thought we were poor, you see, Eleanor. We had exactly what everyone else in Kilmoney had, which was next to nothing. But that wasn’t poor. There was this little old creature who lived in a tumbledown shack on the coast road, and we all thought she was poor. You’d see her at Mass on a Sunday with her dress inside out and not much of a dress, either. She was as thin as a consumptive and hadn’t a tooth in her head. Lord help us, that was our vision of poverty. We always had food to eat from our garden, the hens, the ducks and the cows, and as long as someone had the loan of a donkey to go to the bog, we’d turf for the fire. Your aunt Agnes could turn her hand to anything, and she kept us neat.