‘Dad loved a party,’ Suki had said. ‘He’d love this one. Did you buy enough drink, Tess? I might make us pink gins, wouldn’t that be lovely? Dad would like that.’
At the time, Tess had been so grief-stricken that she’d simply gaped open-mouthed at her sister and said nothing. How could she think of making pink gins when their father was dead? Darling, darling Dad. But then that was Suki all over: try and find the fun element to everything. The fun element meant you could avoid thinking about the actual sadness.
For years, this had annoyed Tess beyond measure. Now, Tess felt sorry for her older sister. She didn’t think Suki had ever mourned their father properly; had ever mourned anything, for that matter. Suki didn’t do the past, she was too busy rushing towards the future with both hands held out, like a child about to receive a birthday present.
Tess looked round the church today, at the couples and families who had come to pay their respects. She had nobody with her.
A soprano launched into ‘Panis Angelicus’ and Tess felt the tears well up inside. Music did that to her, grabbed her heart and twisted it. She had to stop thinking like this. It was stupid, futile. She’d think instead of Kitty and Zach. She’d hugged Zach this morning before he’d gone to school and he hadn’t pulled away and said, ‘Oh, Ma,’ the way he sometimes did. It was as if he knew she was sadder than she should have been over the death of an old lady with dementia.
Seventeen-year-olds were supposed to be totally self-absorbed, and Zach could be that way at times. Yet he was remarkably intuitive. She’d never told him about Cashel or why Anna Reilly was a special link with the past, but somehow, she thought he understood. He was a wise old soul, as Suki liked to say. Pity Suki hadn’t been to see them for so long, then, Tess thought crossly.
Finally, the funeral was over and the priests, the coffin and the chief mourners were coming down the church. Tess tried to hide behind the crowd of people because she didn’t want Cashel to see her. She’d come to pay her respects to his mother, nothing more. The tradition at local funerals was for people to throng around the bereaved and offer their sympathies after the coffin was loaded into the hearse. Today, there were hundreds of people in a big crowd around the entrance of the church and it took Tess quite a while to emerge. She had no plan to go to the graveyard. Instead she was going to head back to the shop, which she’d shut for the morning. That was on her mind as she finally made it outside and looked instinctively towards the hearse where Cashel and Riach stood. At that instant, Cashel saw her.
Tess was in the middle of a group of people pushing out of the chapel and yet she still felt as if she was all alone with Cashel’s harsh gaze upon her. Nobody else had ever looked at her the way he’d looked that last time, with revulsion in his eyes. And that was the way he looked at her now. Instinctively she winced as if she’d been struck.
‘Sorry, sorry,’ she muttered, as she tried to escape the group of people coming down the steps towards Cashel and Riach. But the crowd was moving as one and Tess was carried inexorably towards the two brothers. Catching sight of her, Riach smiled sadly, before realizing that his brother was standing like a piece of granite beside him. Riach reached out for her, leaning past the crowd of mourners. Tess clasped his hands in sympathy, but she was too aware of Cashel beside him, glaring at her, and she pulled away quickly without saying anything.
Turning back into the crowd, she jostled her way towards the steps of the church, where she could see an escape route. Her heart was pounding and she knew her face was red and flushed. She shouldn’t have come. It had been a mistake. She could have mourned at Anna’s grave another time.
Riach might have told Cashel she was coming, but that didn’t mean she was welcome.
Tess barely saw the people she bumped into in her haste to disappear, until one of them spoke to her.
‘Tess, how are you?’ ventured Danae, having noticed her flushed skin and shocked expression. ‘You look a little unwell.’
‘I’m fine,’ stammered Tess, even though she knew she was anything but fine.
She couldn’t stop now. If only she could make it to the shop. Silkie would be waiting for her, she could hold her tight and sob her heart out, then she would be fine. Right now all she needed was to be as far away from Cashel Reilly as possible.
Cashel had often wondered what he’d do if he saw Tess Power again after all these years. He’d thought about it many, many times, wondering what he’d say to her. He simply hadn’t thought he’d see her at his mother’s funeral.
And in that instant, that electric glance had told him that it wasn’t all over, that he’d never, ever forget.
He wasn’t sure what he’d thought she’d look like: older, dried out, maybe. That’s what he’d wanted. For her to have diminished for having turned him down. And yet she was none of those things. Tess Power looked older, naturally, but despite the black clothes in honour of his mother, she had a glow about her. Her fair hair curled as wildly as ever, but it was short now, probably some chic salon’s work, a messy look that cost a fortune.
She looked strangely more like her sister Suki than she used to, a little like the photographs of their long-dead mother, despite the Power colouring. When they were kids, she’d always looked different, softer than other girls, and she still did, but there was no mistaking those cheekbones, the full lips. Being older suited her: her face had lost the puppy fat of youth, enhancing the elegant beauty that had been there all along.
He’d watched, stunned, as she’d come towards the group of people surrounding him and Riach. He had to hand it to her: Tess Power had guts.
That morning, Riach had muttered about everyone in the town coming, including ‘all the old pals from school …’
Now, Cashel realized what that phrase had meant: Tess.
Mechanically, he shook hands and accepted condolences from the hordes of people lined up to talk to him.
‘I knew your mother, she was a wonderful woman,’ they all said.
‘She’ll be sadly missed in the village.’
‘It’s a mercy really, Cashel, she wasn’t herself.’
He let the words flow over him. People did their best in times of pain, they tried to find the right things to say, but when you were hurting it was all so meaningless.
He remembered Tess and what it had been like all those years ago and the things his mother and Riach had said. They’d done their best to console him, but that too had been meaningless.
‘You’ve clearly made your mind up, so go. I suppose you’ll forget her,’ Riach had said nineteen years ago, none too confidently.
His mother had been more prosaic. ‘If you want to go off and leave Tess this way, Cashel, then you must do it. Remember that I’m here for you. Avalon is here for you. Wherever you go, you can always come back. And wherever you are, you’ll always have our love.’
That love was being buried today.
The funeral director, recognizing who was in charge, gave Cashel a nod to signal that it was time they left for the graveyard.
Cashel nodded in return. It was time.
A fine mist began to descend upon the graveyard as the ceremony ended. The gravediggers had moved forward to the edge of the grave, ready to start filling in the earth. Cashel couldn’t remember the last time he’d been at a graveyard ceremony. When he was a child, many kids of his age had been to every funeral their mothers had been to. It was the Irish way: children were taken to funerals, perhaps in an effort to help them understand the cycle of living and dying. In the countryside, there was no escaping death