‘I had to see Daddy,’ Keelin said, starting to cry as she moved over to stand at the side of the coffin. ‘Oh Daddy, Daddy, Daddy,’ she wept. ‘I love you. I’m so, so sorry for dragging you all the way to Butlersbridge.’ Keelin’s heart felt as though it was going to break into a thousand pieces, as grief, the like of which she’d never experienced, overwhelmed her. The physical pain of it shocked her, and she sobbed aloud in her anguish.

Imelda came and stood beside her, and Keelin heard her mother begin to weep. In a gesture that was utterly instinctive, Keelin reached out and put her arm around her, while on the other side of Keelin, Brigid came and stood next to her, also slipping a comforting arm around her.

Joined together in sorrow, the three women wept over Larry’s remains, and the strife that had kept them apart for so long was temporarily forgotten.

PART THREE

Other things may change us,

but we start and end with the family.

ANTHONY BRANDT

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Felicity, I’ve gone home. I had to get out of here. You can take a lift with Keelin, John, or the Sheedys.

Imelda

She folded the note and popped it into an envelope. She’d slip it under Felicity’s door when she was leaving. She made coffee, adding two sachets to the cup to sober her up, and drank it quickly.

Time was of the essence. She wanted to be gone before the minibus arrived with the others. Keelin would argue with her about driving after drinking, let alone making the two-hour journey in the dark on a wild night. And there’d be another row. Well, her daughter wasn’t ‘the boss of her’, to use a phrase she often heard her grandchildren use on each other. Still, it would be best to be gone, all the same.

Imelda glanced around the pretty lamp-lit room. She would have enjoyed staying the night and having a room service breakfast and watching TV in bed. Tears welled in her eyes and she blinked them away irritably. She hadn’t time for tears. Was Brigid crying in her room in the Four Winds, she wondered guiltily. Were Keelin and Armand devastated because she’d revealed their secret to Marie-Claire? The memory of her granddaughter’s stricken face caused a wave of guilt to wash over her. She should not have done that, Imelda admitted, ashamed.

‘Don’t think about it all now. What’s done is done!’ she muttered. She’d need all her wits about her to drive those windy roads in the dark, until she reached the motorway. Time enough to reflect on the events of this evening when she was safely home behind her own front door.