Also available from KATHLEEN McGURL
The Emerald Comb
The Pearl Locket
The Daughters of Red Hill Hall
KATHLEEN MCGURL lives near the sea in Bournemouth, UK, with her husband and elderly tabby cat. She has two sons who are now grown-up and have left home. She began her writing career creating short stories, and sold dozens to women’s magazines in the UK and Australia. Then she got sidetracked onto family history research – which led eventually to writing novels with genealogy themes. She has always been fascinated by the past, and the ways in which the past can influence the present, and enjoys exploring these links in her novels.
When not writing or working at her full-time job in IT, she likes to go out running or swimming, both of which she does rather slowly. She is definitely quicker at writing, even though the cat tries to disrupt the writing process by insisting on sharing Kathleen’s lap with the laptop.
You can find out more at her website:
http://kathleenmcgurl.com/, or follow her on Twitter: @KathMcGurl
For my sons, Fionn and Connor McGurl
Contents
CHAPTER 8: Kitty
CHAPTER 9: Maria
CHAPTER 10: Kitty
CHAPTER 11: Maria
CHAPTER 12: Kitty
CHAPTER 13: Maria
CHAPTER 14: Kitty
CHAPTER 15: Maria
CHAPTER 16: Kitty
CHAPTER 17: Maria
CHAPTER 18: Kitty
CHAPTER 19: Maria
CHAPTER 20: Kitty
CHAPTER 21: Maria
CHAPTER 22: Michael 1849–1860
CHAPTER 23: Maria
CHAPTER 24: Michael
CHAPTER 25: Maria
CHAPTER 26: Kitty, 1849
CHAPTER 27: Maria
CHAPTER 28: Michael
CHAPTER 29: Maria
AUTHOR’S NOTE
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Copyright
There was something about Ireland that made it look and feel completely different to England as I drove through it in my hire car, on the way from Dublin airport south-west towards Ballymor. I mean, the motorways were much the same except that the road signs showed place names in Irish as well as English, and the distances were given in kilometres. And the fields and woods either side of the motorway were green and lush, as they would be back home during a rainy summer. But there was something foreign about it all that I could not quite put my finger on.
Perhaps it was to do with the way houses were dotted randomly across the landscape, whereas in England they’d all be grouped into villages, apart from the odd farmhouse. Or was it the ubiquitous whitewash of the cottages, or the colourful shopfronts and lack of chain stores in the small towns I passed through once I’d left the motorway and headed deep into County Cork.
I found myself pondering all this as I drove onwards. Anything to take my mind off the last conversation I’d had with my boyfriend Dan, just before I’d left for the airport that morning. I wanted to blot the memory of his expression of disappointment and hurt from my mind. And there was the other thing I wanted to forget all about as well, during this trip. I’d deal with it all when I went back home. This week was to be purely about me-time.
After all, it wasn’t as though Dan hadn’t had fair warning I would be going on this trip. I’d been talking about the possibility of doing it for ages. I’d originally suggested that he might come along as well, but he’d said no, he couldn’t take that amount of time off from his job. I was disappointed at first that I’d be on my own, but after what had happened I was relieved. It’d be good to have the time and space on my own to get my head straight.
Anyway, it’d be easier to concentrate on my research into my ancestor Michael McCarthy without Dan around.
*
It was late afternoon, the weather overcast but thankfully not raining, when I finally drove into the pretty little town of Ballymor in west Cork. My online research had described it as a typical small town in the south-west of Ireland, nestled amongst bleak moorlands and craggy hills, about ten miles from the coast. I easily found O’Sullivan’s pub and guest house, where I had booked a room for the next ten days. It was the nearest accommodation to Michael McCarthy’s place of birth I’d been able to find. The pub was situated in the middle of town, opposite an old, grey-stone church, just off the central square. Next door was a bookmaker’s, then a gift shop, both with brightly painted shopfronts, then a small branch of Dunnes Stores in a more modern building. There were a couple of parking spaces in front of O’Sullivan’s. One was free so I pulled into it and heaved my luggage out of the boot. The pub had two bow-fronted windows with leaded glass, with a door to the side and an Irish tricolour hanging from a pole mounted between the first floor windows. I looked upwards, wondering if one of those windows would be my room. It was clearly a very old building, with warped windows and a wonky roof line,