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About the Author

Tish Delaney was born and brought up in Northern Ireland at the height of the Troubles. Like a lot of people of her generation, she left the sectarian violence behind by moving to England. After graduating from Manchester University, she moved to London and worked on various magazines and broadsheets as a reporter, reviewer and sub-editor. She left the Financial Times in 2014 to live in the Channel Islands to pursue her career as a writer.

Dedication

For Neil Paterson, artist poet.

And for Madge, 1922–2016. Much missed.

Epigraph

May the road rise up to meet you.

May the wind be always at your back.

May the sun shine warm upon your face;

the rains fall soft upon your fields and, until we meet again,

may God hold you in the palm of His hand.

Traditional Gaelic blessing

2007

THE ROAD RISES UP

1

People drown because they have to breathe in, they can’t not. Granda Ban told me that at the wake of a fisherman over thirty years ago. His voice tickles my ear and I’m back in that room with him and my Auntie Eileen and the fascinating remains of the blue-lipped Bart Macroom. I’ve never forgotten those words. When that night floats close, I hold my arms out and hug it to me, and I am once again that eleven-year-old girl, a girl who was out of reach of her mammy for the first time ever, a girl who thought the local fortune-teller would finally confirm her wildest dream – one day, maybe that very day, she would grow wings and fly.

–  Poor auld Macroom! He’d worked that river his whole life dreaming of landing the perfect fish and now he’ll never know there was a fine salmon on his line when he was found. Isn’t that the saddest thing you’ve ever heard, wee Mary?

I put on my best pious face and sighed. I wanted Granda to be in no doubt that I was all grown up, but my chance to shine was ruined by Auntie Eileen who tutted and phutted at him before she hustled me away. She didn’t want anyone, including her father, egging me on. Even then I had a reputation for whimsy.

I was not supposed to be in with the big men puffing on pipes and telling tales. They were enjoying the respite of a nearly natural death in 1970s Northern Ireland. The Troubles rumbled constantly overhead like a thunderstorm, only tonight there would be no visits from the RUC or the British Army because it wasn’t a wake for anyone involved in the IRA. There was every chance one of the big men would have one whiskey too many and lift me up to kiss Macroom’s dead cheek, just for the craic.