If Walls Could Talk: The Dunmara Story

Book 1: The Dunmara Story

by Jean Grainger

Genres: Historical Fiction; International Crime & Mystery; Women's Fiction

Synopsis

Dunmara, County Clare, Ireland

Orla can't believe the bombshell her husband of thirty years has just dropped. The future she imagined is gone, and she's forced to redefine her entire life while grappling with something from her past that doesn't quite add up. An opportunity to attend a wellness retreat with her best friend at Dunmara House seems like exactly what she needs to find her way forward.

Connecticut, USA, 1969

Jeannie is part of the first ever intake of women to Yale University. Her father thinks it's a waste of money, but Jeannie knows she has what it takes to be a novelist—she just needs a chance. While America is at war in Vietnam, and all over the country people are clashing, her life unexpectedly takes her to Ireland, where a course is set that will ripple through generations.

Standing since 1689, the stately Dunmara House in Ireland has seen life in all its guts and glory. Now, as two women's lives become entwined across time, the old house slowly reveals its secrets.

Perfect for fans of Kate Morton, Lucinda Riley, and Diana Gabaldon, this evocative time-slip novel weaves past and present into an unforgettable story of love, secrets, and resilience that will stay with you long after the final page.

Connecticut, USA, 1969

Jeannie is part of the first ever intake of women to Yale University. Her father thinks it's a waste of money, but Jeannie knows she has what it takes to be a novelist—she just needs a chance. While America is at war in Vietnam, and all over the country people are clashing, her life unexpectedly takes her to Ireland, where a course is set that will ripple through generations.

 

Standing since 1689, the stately Dunmara House in Ireland has seen life in all its guts and glory. Now, as two women's lives become entwined across time, the old house slowly reveals its secrets.

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Release date: April 22, 2026

Print pages: 358

Sample

PROLOGUE Dunmara House, County Clare, Ireland I’ve seen dark times. Darker than you can imagine. And I’ve seen wonderful times – times so good that it was impossible to conceive another tear would be shed under my roof for all eternity. But the wheel is always turning; nothing stays the same. That is both comforting and terrifying, I know. I stand on a cliff above Dunmara town on Ireland’s western seaboard. I can see it all. In medieval times, it had tiny cobbled streets and wood-framed houses. Now it’s a bustling place with a town square. Three banks, three hotels, seventeen pubs and four supermarkets, all leading to a long, glorious white-sand beach that stretches for five miles on the coast of County Clare. Like the town, I too have changed. At the start, I had no walls – there was no house at all. Just the land, wild and sacred, cruel and beautiful, covered in the bounty of trees and the shelter of stones. But I can adapt. I know that about myself. I can be whatever is necessary in any given time: a sanctuary, a home, a fortress, a keeper of secrets, a prison, a place to be free. I’ve braced myself for attack so often I’ve lost count. I’ve been battered and bruised. I’ve wondered many times if this was the end, but it never seems to be. And those who live beneath my roof are my people. I wrap my walls around them. I protect them. Whether they choose me or I choose them, I’m never quite sure. What I do know for certain is that no matter what comes, I can survive as long as the people I protect, protect me in return. I don’t need to be spectacular, though I have been in my time. Oh, you should have seen me then. I was something to behold and no mistake. I was truly magnificent once upon a time. I have seen love stories. Plenty of them. Some destined to succeed, others doomed to fail. Passions so powerful they would frighten you and marriages as cold as stone. Betrayals? Oh yes. I’ve kept silent company on those dark nights of the soul, when my people paced my floors, not knowing what the future held. Fearful, watchful. Anticipating. I’ve played host to great gatherings of soaring intellect, where ideas took flight. I’ve housed the smallest of minds, which saw no way but theirs. Every generation thinks they have the monopoly on suffering, on wonder, on terror, on excitement. But from my perspective – centuries of silent observation – I know that to be wrong. No single generation understands that, regardless of the numbers etched on a calendar, people are just the same. What drives them in this time – love, passion, revenge, greed, kindness, empathy, jealousy, duty – is precisely what drove them when I first came to be. These days, I am old. So very, very old. And I’ve been alone now for quite a while. I never know when this all will end. Maybe it never will. Or maybe my time is up? Nobody knows. Not even me. But I don’t mind if the ivy creeps, and the squirrels scamper, and the birds nest in my eaves. I protect them, offer shelter, and they are company. I like company. It’s nice not to feel alone. Especially now. So I’m glad you’ve come to join me too. Dark clouds are gathering again. I can always sense it. I feel the cold wind rush through my draughty windows, and the small door in the backyard shakes upon rusty hinges. The water tries to seep into my stone pores as the rain beats down. But I resist. I dream of sunshine on my face and the happy laughter of my new people, secure within my sturdy walls. I am ready. As always. To face the next chapter.

 

CHAPTER 1 Dunmara, County Clare, Ireland ORLA The thing Orla Moriarty wanted to do more than anything else at that exact moment was laugh. It was an odd reaction, she realised, even as her brain tried to process the information coming from his so-familiar mouth. She knew laughing was not the right response, and honestly, it wasn’t funny. Not really. Not at all, in fact. But nonetheless, like so many other things in her menopausal body, her reactions were unpredictable. Her husband of thirty-one years, Bernard Moriarty, stood in front of her, in his puddle-brown corduroy trousers, shapeless from years of wear on the farm, his old, waxed jacket, shiny with use, hanging from his thick shoulders. Unruly hairs sprouted from his ears and nose. Everything about him was so familiar – like an old sofa or a pair of well-worn shoes. But right at this moment, as her life changed forever, Orla realised she didn’t really know him at all. ‘So that’s it, and, like, you know…I’m sorry, like…’ He addressed his feet, giving her a view of the bald patch on the crown of his head. ‘And sure in the long run, it might be for the best… And sure you probably heard something anyway, so it’s best to be up front. And I won’t put you out of the house or anything… We’ll sort ourselves out as far as that goes.’ Orla gazed out the window at the cattle grazing in the field, feeling removed from the fact that her life was, at this very moment, exploding. Why am I so calm? She didn’t know. If someone had asked her in advance of this bombshell how she would react, she would have told them she would be distraught, or angry, or sad. Something. But no. She felt still. Like she was watching a film of this happening to someone else. Maybe I’m in shock? She didn’t think so. She refused to look at her husband, who wasn’t exactly cap in hand but was as close as he would get to it. Her golden retriever, Austin, named after Austin Clarke, her favourite poet, watched them from his basket beside the range like it was a tennis match, his liquid brown eyes going from her to Bernard. At least he won’t want custody of Austin, she thought. Bernard didn’t like dogs in general, and he thought Austin in particular was far too coddled. For Austin’s part – out of loyalty to her, Orla was convinced – the dog couldn’t stand Bernard. Their farm was coastal, and the view from her kitchen window was spectacular. And today it was bright and sunny, though bitterly cold, so it looked its very best. The lush green meadows, the sapphire-blue sky. The fields gave way to steep cliffs, below which the wild Atlantic crashed relentlessly. Dunmara, their seaside town, was a ‘jewel in the crown of the Wild Atlantic Way’ – or at least that’s what the sign said on the way into town. Some bright spark in Dublin had decided to market the coastal road – the actual road, from Donegal in the north all the way down to Cork on the southernmost tip of the country, a road that had been there since God was a child – as a tourist attraction. Now all anybody who came here could talk about was whether or not they’d ‘done’ the Wild Atlantic Way. Orla mentally shook herself. Surely she should be thinking about the matter at hand? Not the tourism vision of the Irish government? Bernard Moriarty, her husband of three decades, the man who didn’t know if he took sugar in his own tea because she always made it for him, who had zero chance of being able to identify a washing machine in a lineup of domestic appliances, who had never even heard of co-parenting, let alone engaged in it, was leaving her. He was leaving her. The irony was what was making her laugh. She looked at him as he continued to examine the toes of his new runners, the ones their twenty-two-year-old daughter, Clíodhna, had screamed laughing at when she saw them two days ago because her father looked nothing short of ridiculous in Adidas Yeezys. Bernard had been highly indignant at his daughter’s merciless teasing and had huffed and puffed and told her to shut up and that he could put whatever he wanted on his own feet. ‘Don’t let Kanye West see his shoes on you, Dad. He’ll set fire to his whole business. I can just see the headlines. “Middle-aged balding Irish farmer with a beer belly and no sense of style destroys iconic footwear branding in a single day.”’ Clíodhna had howled, wiping tears from her eyes. The sight of her father’s new shoes had caused such paroxysms of laughter that she struggled to breathe. ‘Maybe Kanye should run a new ad campaign. Everyone is wearing Yeezys – Brooklyn Beckham, Rihanna, Jay-Z, the Kardashians and…you!’ she’d shouted, throwing herself down on the sofa and pulling a cushion over her face as her whole body shook in hysterics. Bernard had stormed off and hadn’t even eaten his dinner. And it was his favourite too – shepherd’s pie and peas. Orla probably should have said something, defended her husband from his daughter’s vicious mockery, but she didn’t. Because he was making a holy show of himself in the shoes and she was mortified by him. But she could never say that. Over the years she’d got into the habit of not saying what she thought about him, and she’d defended their father to his children as if on autopilot. Not because she thought he was deserving of her defence, but because… Well, she didn’t really know why. Because maybe in some rulebook it said mothers should defend fathers from their children’s wrath, or ridicule, or whatever it was the kids wanted to throw at them. Did Bernard ever defend her, she wondered? Was there any need for him to? She didn’t think so. The kids and she got on well, and she’d realised in the very early days, when they were only tiny tots, that you got a lot further with honey than vinegar, something she’d learnt from her own mother, who was acidic and cruel in her child-rearing. Orla loved her kids, told them they were magnificent, and she could count on one hand the number of times she’d had cross words with them. She built them up, vowing that no child of hers would be made to feel like a disappointment. She would never allow one of hers to feel as she had been made to feel all her life. Oh God, she’d have to tell her mother that Bernard was leaving. The thought – not the idea of him actually going but having to tell Ursula Daly that he was leaving her – sent an uncomfortable spurt of adrenaline into her bloodstream. She was a grown woman, but her mother had a way of making her feel like a child, and a very unsatisfactory one at that. So it was going to be awful. Not that Ursula had ever liked Bernard. She thought him an ignorant lump, and she was right. But no doubt it would be all Orla’s fault that she couldn’t even hold on to a poor specimen of a husband like Bernard Moriarty. Yet another failure to add to the long list of Orla’s shortcomings according to her mother. Ursula had disapproved of her only child her whole life. When Orla was in the school choir, Ursula was sure her daughter was the one singing off-key. She’d claimed it was a fluke when Orla passed her driving test the first time. Orla’s Leaving Cert results were so good because they marked everything easier nowadays. And when she got pregnant at twenty with Bernard Moriarty – a local lad she didn’t really know that well and the first person she’d ever slept with – her mother said she wasn’t one bit surprised, that she was no better than she should be and that the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. Orla never knew what that was supposed to mean, given how piously religious Ursula generally made herself out to be. It hurt when Orla saw women her age having cups of tea with older women relatives, laughing and sharing confidences. She wished her mother was like that, but she wasn’t. Orla had no idea why. In fact, Orla would have grown up believing she was unlovable if it wasn’t for her dad, Johnny Daly. God, how she missed him. It had been five long years since he died. He’d have been the one she’d have gone to about Bernard. He’d have wrapped his arms around her and told her she’d be better off without that big ignorant lump of a husband, he’d have brought her a slice of apple sponge from Niall’s café, and they would have laughed together about it. Why did he have to die and leave her stuck with Ursula? Once again, Orla forced her mind back to the here and now. Bernard was leaving her. He was standing in front of her saying their marriage was over. At least she had the kids. And the house. She’d have to face the whispers and the pity, but that would pass. By rights, her three grown-up children should probably be moved out, but the housing crisis, the cost of rent and the fact that they liked living at home all conspired to keep the Moriarty children still under their parents’ roof. The truth was Orla hadn’t encouraged them to go. The thought of sitting with Bernard across the dinner table night after night, saying nothing, or listening as he went on about TB testing or the artificial-insemination man being late or the cost of silage or the eejits in the government, was enough to make her want to jump on the bus to Shannon Airport and leave forever. She never would, of course, but she’d be lying if she said the thought had never occurred to her. When Clíodhna or the boys were at home, at least there was someone around to talk to. The children were hers far more than they were Bernard’s. He never saw them as real people; he had no idea of their likes or dislikes. They were just there – like the cattle. If he did venture an opinion, it was a negative one. Clíodhna was too uppity, Naoise too lazy, and Ferdia was useless because he had no interest whatsoever in farming. He even hated their names, but Orla had insisted on calling them after characters from Irish mythology. She loved all the old stories her father had told her when she was small, and she vowed then that if she ever had children, she would name the boys after the handsome brave warriors of those pre-Christian times and the girls after the strong, powerful women who were never subservient to men. Bernard had wanted to call Ferdia after himself, Bernard Junior, but she vetoed that right away. She didn’t often put her foot down, but two Bernards in the house were two too many. And she’d flat refused when he wanted to call their baby daughter Sian after his mother. By the time Naoise arrived, Bernard didn’t have an opinion. ‘People won’t be able to pronounce those mad old names,’ he’d grumbled. ‘There’s nothing difficult about them at all,’ Orla argued. ‘Everyone knows how to say them, and if they don’t, my children will teach them. Clee-oh-nah, Fer-dee-ah, and Nee-sha…’ She’d enunciated theatrically. ‘We’ve a tribe of Celtic warriors.’ Bernard had just harumphed and shovelled his dinner into his mouth like he’d done every night for thirty-one years. Where had she gone, Orla wondered, that woman who put her foot down? It felt like a long time ago, and agreeing and smoothing things over had since become her default modus operandi. They were alone now, the two of them. He must have timed it this way. Clíodhna was still at school, teaching Fourth Class in the local primary, St Finnian’s, although there was a chance one of the boys might be back soon. Naoise, the youngest at twenty-one, farmed with his father, although there was murder between the pair most of the time because they were like oil and water, and Orla constantly had to intervene. Ferdia, the eldest, told his parents at age five that he hated farms and would never go to one – despite the fact that he lived on one. He had stuck to his word and now did something with computers that nobody fully understood. He’d started a company that was bought by a bigger company, and then started another one, so by any standard, he was very successful. Not that anyone would know to look at him. He wore black jeans, runners and a grey T-shirt almost every day. He had a car, but only a normal one, not a big Mercedes or something, and worked mostly from home, apart from trips to Munich, Los Angeles and Barcelona every few weeks. Why Ferdia in particular hadn’t moved out, Orla had no idea. He had plenty of money and had insisted on setting up a direct debit to an account for her a few years ago, but she never checked it. Like his siblings, he appeared to be happy to stay. But neither Ferdia nor his siblings were here now, and part of her longed for one of them to walk in right this minute and make this stop. Her husband looked so…well, so…unattractive. His grey hair wasn’t sexy like some older men’s was. It was a nasty salt-and-pepper colour and didn’t have a style as such – just kind of bristly and stuck out. He had brown eyes and a ruddy complexion from a life spent outdoors on the west coast of Ireland. His teeth were yellow – he was not careful about dental hygiene and had not darkened the door of a dentist in decades. Bernard wore the same clothes – well, variations on a theme – every day and had done as long as Orla had known him: soft flannel shirts in various shades of brown check and baggy, shapeless corduroy trousers, the pockets stretched from carrying huge bunches of keys and his cash-filled wallet because he didn’t believe in credit or debit cards. On his feet, when not in Kanye West’s mad-looking runners, he wore green wellington boots. He was, she supposed, like every other middle-aged, paunchy farmer in Ireland. Hardly a catch by anyone’s standards. But he was leaving her. For another woman. A younger but – though she was trying to be objective here – not really a better-looking woman. She still didn’t trust herself to speak. If she laughed now, it would be awful. Though a thought occurred to her. Why shouldn’t she? Was she afraid of offending him? Afraid of upsetting this man who was upending her life after thirty-one years? And why did she want to laugh? This was awful. She was going to be what they used to call a deserted wife. Typical, she thought, blaming the woman. Why was he not a deserting husband? Sensing she wasn’t going to respond – he probably assumed she was so upset she couldn’t – Bernard carried on in his usual mumbling way. Nobody was ever going to accuse Bernard Moriarty of being a raconteur. He was inarticulate and more or less permanently irritated. Orla couldn’t remember the last time she’d heard him laugh. He only ever smiled when he won money on a scratch card or heard about someone getting their ‘comeuppance’ – that was a favourite phrase of his. Almost everyone was in need of getting one, according to him. ‘Paula has a flat up over the hairdresser’s’ – he was rambling on again – ‘so we’ll live there, and I’ll just come to the farm every day. No need to be doing dinners and that. I’ll go over to… Well, I’ll go home to Paula for my dinner. The shop beside the bookie’s does dinners now. Paula will be busy during the day in the salon, but I can get a plate of something. So no need to be worrying about that side of it…’ Orla bit back a sarcastic laugh. What she would love to say was ‘Well, Bernard, that’s a huge relief. Because the main worry I had about the ending of our marriage, so you can shack up over the hairdresser’s with some floozie young enough to be your daughter, was always going to be “How will Bernard get his dinner?”’ Floozie? God, she sounded like her mother. Women were either floozies or martyrs or gossips or idle. Ursula rarely, if ever, used complimentary adjectives to describe anyone, but her most venomous attacks seemed to be reserved for her own gender. Until now, Orla had never said the word floozie in her life. And to be accurate, Paula O’Leary wasn’t a floozie anyway; she was a nondescript woman of about thirty-five who ran the local hairdresser’s – imaginatively called Paula’s. No ‘Curl Up and Dye’ or ‘Get the Snip’ for Dunmara – no need for any such frivolous punning, no. Paula was the hairdresser, so the shop was called Paula’s. She called it a salon, but that was stretching it a bit. A fifteen-foot-square room on the ground floor of her house with torn brown lino and pink plastic trays full of curlers that smelled of chemicals and bleach didn’t deserve the lofty title of salon, but maybe Orla was just being bitchy now. Was Paula O’Leary a femme fatale? Orla didn’t think so. She was grand. Not gorgeous or hideous, not fascinating or dull, just grand, ordinary. Pleasant enough when you went in for a blow-dry or to get a colour done, offering the usual harmless hairdresser talk: ‘Going anywhere on holidays?’ or ‘Did you see EastEnders last night?’ Orla didn’t ever go on holiday – farmers didn’t, apparently – and she almost never watched television. If she did watch something, it would not be a soap opera set in London where people were forever getting the wrong ends of sticks and crying. She liked documentaries and loved archaeology and history. If she had free time, she read more than watched TV. She usually brought her book to Paula’s and made a point of opening it and starting to read before Paula came over, so her signal was loud and clear: Don’t waste your chit-chat on me. Everyone local went to Paula’s. In the summer months, when Dunmara was teeming with holidaymakers and unrecognisable from the grey, someone else to cut her hair. Paula always said Orla had lovely dark-brown hair, silky but not flyway, and she hadn’t gone grey yet, which was amazing. It was she who suggested Orla cut her hair into a bob. Orla had been unsure at first but now liked it, and everyone said it suited her. She was small, barely five feet, and curvy, and she had been afraid the bob would make her face look too round, but it didn’t. Ferdia and Naoise had teased her and called her Dora the Explorer, but it was good-natured. Maybe Bernard expected her to move on, go someplace new? After all, he couldn’t leave; this was his farm – his family had been landowners here for generations. His mother was from a wealthy Protestant family. She’d married his father, a Catholic, and had to convert and was effectively cut off from her family. But even the association with Anglo-Irish gentry meant Bernard had the sense of entitlement from both sides. But why should she leave Dunmara? She’d lived all her life in this town, which sounded pathetic, she realised. As a child she’d lived with her parents in Dunmara town itself. Her dad was an odd-job man around the town, and everyone knew and liked him. This had been the landscape of her life since she was a baby. The town was named after Dunmara House, a rambling, dilapidated old place that dated from about the seventeenth century, located on the other side of the town, overlooking the horseshoe bay. She and Austin liked to walk in the woods beside the house on fine days. I might go there after Bernard goes. Be nice to get a walk in peace, she thought. But as that idea popped up, it began to rain. They said in Ireland you could get all four seasons in one day, and it was true. The sky that had been blue a minute ago was now grey, casting shadows over the land. The wind had picked up, putting white horses on the waves and making the cows turn their backs to the ocean. In the summer, Dunmara teemed with life. Tourists, Irish families mostly but lots of foreigners too, flocked into it, and the place became almost cosmopolitan – tapas bars and massage places, a surf school and several fancy restaurants. But in winter it was totally different. Most of the businesses were shut, and the population shrank to a small handful of locals. The Moriarty farm overlooked the strand at the other end of the bay. Orla could see the full length of the beach from her sitting-room window, but now it was deserted as the sideways rain of the west of Ireland made the beach look forbidding and dark. There really was nothing quite like an out-of-season holiday town in the rain. ‘And I was thinking…’ Bernard spoke again, and Orla was dragged back to the reality of the situation. He was colouring, she noticed. About time for him to be feeling some bit of shame. ‘…that you’re earning a fine wage out of George’s and ’tis high time that shower of layabouts were giving something up for their bed and board, so you could keep your wages and get a few bob off them…and you’d be grand, money-wise, like, if I left you the house…and there’d be no need to be getting Niall Hogan or anyone like him involved.’ Orla wondered if she was dreaming, if she was going to wake up to find herself laughing at the very idea of her boorish husband, Bernard Moriarty, leaving her for Paula O’Leary. That this was all a figment of her mad imaginings and he wasn’t standing in the middle of their kitchen, looking at his stupid new shoes and going on about how her boss, George McDowell, was paying her well for working in his accountancy office, and how she could keep her own money, and their children should pay rent, and he’d give her the family home just to keep solicitors out of it. Like all farmers, Bernard was mortally terrified of losing one square inch of his land. Not a single syllable of genuine apology. Not a whisper of explanation of how this had even happened. Not a shred of acknowledgment about how much it would hurt her, embarrass her, disrupt her life. A creeping truth forced its way into her consciousness, and it was one she had to acknowledge. She might feel embarrassed and worried about the future – that much was certainly true. But was she sad that her husband was leaving her? Would she miss being Bernard Moriarty’s wife? She poked at it like it was a sore tooth, to see how much it hurt. The truth was it didn’t hurt at all. She didn’t love him; she never had. She knew that. But she was surprised at how little she felt for him. Her concerns about her altered circumstances were practical and from the fear of what people would say. Not how she would live without him. She watched him, trying to be objective. He was no company, so it wasn’t like she’d miss chatting with him. The truth was that he was physically gross, so she wouldn’t miss him touching her. What would she miss really? The respectability of being his wife maybe? The illusion of the happy family? ‘How did this happen?’ she heard herself ask. ‘How did what happen?’ Bernard asked, nonplussed. ‘The affair.’ ‘Ah, well, it’s not an affair. I…’ He was still talking to his new shoes. ‘Well, presumably it started out as an affair? I mean, I sincerely hope you didn’t just decide to spring this plan on both myself and Paula O’Leary. She does know you and your Kanye West shoes are moving into her flat? Or is she going to be as astonished as I am? Wondering what Bernard Moriarty, the middle-aged farmer from out the road, who always gets his hair cut at the barber’s, is doing lugging black bin bags up her stairs?’ She could hear the sarcasm in her voice. She wasn’t usually sarcastic, not aloud anyway, but this occasion warranted it. ‘Well, we… Well, we…’ He looked even more uncomfortable than he had the time his sister Briget came back from a hippie retreat in West Cork and told him his sacral chakra was not balanced. Briget had put her hand four fingers below Bernard’s belly button to show him where his Svadhishthana was. As she did so, she explained it was the chakra associated with sexuality and pleasure and that his was seriously blocked, and that because of it, he was missing out on a life of energy, vitality and joy and instead was stuck with a lack of creativity, poor sexual function and emotional instability. This was all at full volume at a funeral for an elderly neighbour, and the whole parish was a witness. Briget was daft as the crows, but Orla liked her. Bernard, on the other hand, would rather have bowel surgery in the woods than spend five minutes with his sister. ‘Of course she knows…’ he muttered now, his brow knitted in bad temper. She wasn’t going to make this easy for him, and it was what he was used to; he was accustomed to her smoothing the way for him in everything. But not now. However much it went against her nature, she would not make this easy for him. ‘So how did it happen?’ she asked again. ‘It doesn’t matter how, or where. The thing is, it’s happening, and so now we have to just sort out –’ Austin didn’t growl exactly, but he sensed the tone change and was on alert to protect her. He straightened, and although his hackles were not strictly up, he was not in his usual give-me-cuddles-and-play mood. In that moment Orla had never loved him more. ‘Actually, Bernard, it does matter. It matters to me. I think I’m entitled to some answers after thirty-one years.’ Bernard sighed through his hairy nose, as if she were being a very irritating child who wouldn’t stop asking questions. ‘Lookit, Orla, it happened. All right? And I’m sorry if you’re upset about it, but it just happened, and now we have to make the best –’ ‘Where did it “just happen”?’ She cut across his reiteration of the same thought as earlier. Bernard wasn’t a fast thinker. ‘Where?’ His whole face wrinkled in frustrated confusion, as if she’d asked him to explain quantum mechanics rather than answer a perfectly pertinent question to the matter at hand. ‘Yes.’ She enunciated slowly. ‘Where? Where did you and Paula O’Leary get the notion that you would be a good match?’ He looked like a rabbit dazzled in the headlights, but realising she wasn’t going to let it go, he harumphed and said, ‘At the point-to-point in Tralee. I gave her a tip for a horse, and it came in, and she won a few bob, and…’ His voice trailed off. ‘So began a beautiful love story?’ Orla’s eyebrow was arched, she could feel it. The kids teased her about her ‘do you think I came down in the last shower’ eyebrow. ‘Well, yeah, sort of. We had a few drinks to celebrate her win and…’ Orla realised something then. ‘You didn’t go to the races in Tralee this year because you couldn’t drive after getting your hips done, so…’ Those were the longest few months of her life, when Bernard had his left hip replaced first, and as soon as he was able, his right. She’d had to drive him everywhere. The doctor told him five years ago that he should buy a new tractor – the old one was the cause of the wear and tear on his hips – but he was too stingy and ended up having to get both hips replaced. He sighed. ‘It wasn’t last year.’ ‘So how long has it been going on?’ She still didn’t believe it. Not that their marriage was over – she wasn’t sure that had ever really started. But that Bernard was actually leaving her for a younger woman. She hadn’t thought he had it in him. ‘Since before Covid,’ he admitted. Orla did a quick calculation. Before 2020, the year the pandemic stopped the entire world? ‘Are you serious?’ He nodded. ‘Was Paula the only one?’ Something outside of herself made her ask. ‘Look, Orla, there’s no point to –’ Her voice was almost unrecognisable as she cut across him. ‘Bernard, was Paula O’Leary the only person you cheated on me with?’ Suddenly she realised something. The odd rumour, the rare snide remark that she told herself was nothing, were coming to the forefront of her mind. The thing Audrey had tried to tell her but stopped. Now that Orla remembered it, her best friend had looked a bit awkward that day in the café. She hadn’t imagined it. Audrey knew something. He rubbed his stubbly grey chin and his brown eyes looked weary. ‘No.’ ‘Who else?’ He exhaled, gazing at a spot over her head. ‘Mary Keating’s child is mine,’ he said quietly. Mary Keating worked for the council; she was a housing officer and hard as flint if you needed to get a council house. She’d never had a boyfriend to the best of anyone’s knowledge. Then all of a sudden, she was pregnant and had a baby boy. No explanation, no sign of a man. The place was confounded, but Mary was stoic and silent at the best of times, and on this subject, she remained absolutely tight-lipped. The child must be four or five by now. Orla swallowed her response. Time for that later. She managed to ask, ‘Any others?’ ‘No. Well, not here…but there’s a child in England too. I haven’t seen her in years. The mother, I mean.’ He was lying. She didn’t know how she knew, or what he was lying about, but he was still lying to her. Orla sat down heavily at the kitchen table. The range was giving out a deep ambient heat, and the new red-check tea towels she’d bought in Aldi last week were folded over the bar. Two loaves of soda bread were cooling on a wire rack, and Austin was now back curled up in his bed beside the old stove. She pushed away the notebook with the short story she’d been working on. The publisher of the magazine that had run some of her other writings had sent her details to a Canadian magazine, and they wanted a piece from her now. They’d even offered to pay her, which was a first. She’d been so excited when she got the email yesterday. And she’d started on it today. She didn’t work for George on Mondays or Tuesdays, so she wrote on those days. She’d dreamt up the beginnings of a story, blissfully unaware that her life was about to come crashing down around her ears in the next ten minutes. Nothing had changed in this house in decades: the kitchen chair she was sitting on that had been there since Bernard’s parents redecorated the farmhouse in 1959; the worn stone floor, shiny with footfall; the big scarred table, where a million meals were eaten, covered now with a tablecloth; the old pine dresser filled with the chinaware that had belonged to Bernard’s mother, as well as all the post for the last few weeks, the latest edition of The Farmer’s Journal, a ceramic chicken full of eggs, and Clíodhna’s make-up bag, because her daughter used the mirror in the kitchen to put on her face before school as the light was better than in her north-facing bedroom. Orla Daly had come into this house as girl of twenty. Not in love – not really even in like – but they’d had to marry. Ferdia was on the way, and Bernard said they’d be grand. Old Mr and Mrs Moriarty were still alive then. From the first day she’d arrived, Orla had looked after the house. She was shown by her mother-in-law how to cook great big dinners for all the men working on the farm – a three-course meal every day to sometimes ten or fifteen working men during calving or when they were making silage. Weeks turned to months and then years. She’d nursed first her mother-in-law and then her father-in-law, kept them out of the county home. They both died under this roof, three years apart. Then the kids grew up, went to college, came home again, and now here she was. She’d assumed this was how her life was going to be until the day she died. Apparently she was wrong. ...