ANNE DOUGHTY is the author of A Few Late Roses, which was nominated for the longlist of the Irish Times Literature Prizes. Born in Armagh, she was educated at Armagh Girls’ High School and Queen’s University, Belfast. She has since lived in Belfast with her husband.
The Girl from Galloway
The Belfast Girl on Galway Bay
Last Summer in Ireland
An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published as A Few Late Roses in 1997
This edition published in Great Britain by HQ, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2019
Copyright © Anne Doughty 2019
Anne Doughty asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Ebook Edition © September 2019 ISBN: 9780008328818
‘This book was immensely readable, I just couldn’t put it down’
‘An adventure story which lifts the spirit’
‘I have read all of Anne’s books - I have thoroughly enjoyed each and every one of them’
‘Anne is a true wordsmith and manages to both excite the reader whilst transporting them to another time and another world entirely’
‘A true Irish classic’
‘Anne’s writing makes you care about each character, even the minor ones’
For Peter
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
About the Publisher
OCTOBER, 1995
My mother never talked about the past. What happened long ago was over and done with, water under the bridge, as far as she was concerned. She was wrong, of course. You can’t ignore the past. It always remains part of you. It shapes your present and your future and if you do try to ignore it, you could well end up as she did, bitter and disappointed and so out of love with herself and the whole world that she cast a dark shadow all around her.
That was how she nearly ruined my life.
Even in her dying my mother managed one final, bitter act. The morning after she died, my brother remembered the sealed envelope she had deposited with him some years earlier. He assumed it was a copy of her will, the provisions of which she’d quoted so many times we already knew them off by heart. It was indeed her will. But with it was a document he had not expected, a letter of instruction, handwritten in her own firm and well-formed copperplate.
‘Jenny dear, what in the name o’ goodness are we gonna do? Shure I had it all arranged with her own man and the undertaker down the road from the home. Hasn’t she upset the whole applecart?’
I knew he was badly shaken the moment I snatched up the phone in the bedroom where I was already packing. The steady, well-rounded tones that made him such a success with the patients in his Belfast consulting rooms had disappeared. I hadn’t heard Harvey sound like this since we were both children.
‘What d’ye think, Sis?’
I wasn’t surprised he’d had arrangements already made. For two years she’d been bedridden and almost immobile. She’d been at death’s door so many times that the kind-hearted staff at the nursing home became embarrassed about calling us yet once more to the bedside.
‘What exactly does it say, Harvey?’ I asked.
‘“I wish to be interred with my own family in the Hughes apportionment situated in Ballydrennan Churchyard, County Antrim, and not with my deceased husband George Erwin in the churchyard adjacent to Balmoral