The Girl Across the Sea

by Noelle Harrison

Genres: Historical Fiction; Women's Fiction; Siblings

Synopsis

"I need you to find out what happened to my mother. The woman who sent me across the sea to Ireland. And never came to find me."



Mairead's world is falling apart. Recently separated, she has returned to her beautiful childhood home in Ireland to nurse her dying mother. But as Brigid sits pale and papery thin, looking out over the Atlantic Ocean, she has one last request for her only daughter . . .



Brigid hands Mairead a stunning turquoise necklace and a small black-and-white photograph of her mother, Ellen, a woman she never met. She begs Mairead to go to New York, the last place Ellen was seen alive, and find out what became of her. Mairead cannot ignore her mother's dying wish.



But when Mairead arrives in America, she is shocked by the secrets she uncovers. In an old church in Arizona she discovers her grandmother was a wanted woman in Ireland, accused of murder. What lies in her family's past? And what does the turquoise necklace mean?



As she digs deeper, the trail leads Mairead to a small mossy graveyard in Ireland where she might finally learn the truth. But if she does, will she re-open old wounds, and put her own future into terrible danger?

Release date: November 10, 2021

Publisher: Bookouture

Print pages: 350

Sample

The last night they were together, Ellen left Brigid the necklace. Perhaps it was foolish to give a small child such a precious item, but it was the only legacy Ellen possessed. The necklace was a gold chain with a large pendant in the shape of a star embellished with sky-blue turquoise, pearls and rose-cut diamonds. The back of the pendant was fitted with a miniature picture frame. Ellen had inserted a small photograph of herself with Brigid as a baby in the frame.

Brigid had always loved the necklace. Her eyes would light up if Ellen put it on before she came into the nursery to kiss her goodnight.

‘Where is Daddy taking you?’ her daughter would whisper, her eyes gleaming as she reached out and touched the egg-shaped turquoise at the heart of the star pendant.

‘Just another party, my darling,’ Ellen said, bending down to kiss Brigid’s soft cheek.

‘When I’m big, can I come with you?’ Brigid asked, her breath still sweet from her bedtime milk.

‘If you wish, but they are terribly boring affairs,’ Ellen said. How different she sounded from her old self, so proper, so English.

‘How many pearls, Mammy?’ Brigid’s fingers moved to the ring of tiny diamonds sparkling around the turquoise stone.

‘Five – the same age as you,’ Ellen said, before kissing her daughter five times on her forehead and her cheeks until she was giggling beneath her.

That night had been last winter. Seven months ago. Ellen had had no inkling her world was going to be turned upside down. But she should have known. Her past was too weighted to shrug off forever. It had always been lurking in the background. A threat every time she had walked through the shopping district on Fifth Avenue, pushing Brigid’s perambulator, and then holding her little hand when she could walk. Ellen had been living a life she didn’t belong in, her day of reckoning in the shadows on every street corner on the Upper East Side. The possibility in the eyes of every stranger she met.

Now they were in their cabin on RMS Britannic on the eve of its departure to Liverpool via Galway and Cork. She had been dreading this day for weeks. Ellen could hear the clamour of the crew up above on deck. She knew it was a matter of a few hours before they would be leaving New York Port and setting off across the Atlantic Ocean. Giles was in the smoking lounge drinking brandy and playing cards. Their last words had been sharp. He had lost patience with her constant pleas to stay in America.

‘The problem with you, Ellen, is you’ve been spoiled for too long,’ he said in a low voice. ‘You’re an ungrateful wife. Look how much I am giving you!’

‘I don’t want to go! Please, Giles, please let us stay,’ she had hissed, not wanting Brigid to overhear.

‘For God’s sake, enough!’ he had snapped, causing Brigid to look up in surprise.

Tears bloomed in Ellen’s eyes, and Giles immediately looked contrite.

‘I am sorry, my dear,’ he said, taking her into his arms. ‘Trust me. You will be happy once we get settled.’ He whispered into her ear: ‘Another baby, perhaps?’ He kissed her earlobe. She felt a wave of love and despair. If only she could stay forever in the protection of her husband’s arms. He had reached out to Brigid behind her, and she felt their child join the embrace. The three of them entwined. She would have to rend them apart. How could she do it?

With Giles gone, Ellen prepared Brigid for bed. They were travelling with no servants, having decided to procure a new household once they arrived in Ireland. It was a relief to have no other witness to her despair. No judging eyes of a stern nanny upon her as she lavished her child with kisses.

Brigid was sitting up on the bed in her rosebud nightie. She didn’t look in the least sleepy as she clutched her doll Annie to her chest.

‘Mammy, I don’t like it, everything is moving. I want to go home.’

Ellen barely noticed the gentle rock of the boat in the harbour. How would her little girl cope once they were in the middle of the vast ocean? What if there was a storm? She took a breath, brushed Brigid’s soft curls with her fingertips.

‘You’re going on a big adventure,’ Ellen had told her. ‘Crossing the Atlantic Ocean! You might see whales.’

Ellen remembered the grief and panic of the journey over. How she had been saved by Giles. But the day that had stood out had been the one when she saw the big blue whale as it cut through the vast ocean right before her eyes.

Brigid was unimpressed. ‘But why do we have to go?’ she whined.

‘Because Daddy is going to help make a national cathedral in Ireland,’ Ellen explained. ‘Ireland is his home. And it’s going to be yours.’

‘And yours?’

Brigid had looked into her daughter’s green eyes. Her chest tight, and her heart cracking. If only she could be sure her secret was safe. If only she could go back.

From the spring day when her husband had announced they were returning to Ireland, Ellen had been in a tumult. Every evening, circling the courtyard garden at their apartment building, the sweet-smelling scent of crab-apple blossoms on the trees closing in on her as she smoked cigarette after cigarette, trying to work out what to do.

It had not been long before Giles had noticed her lack of enthusiasm.

‘Don’t you want to go back home?’ he asked one morning over breakfast. ‘Every Irishman I know dreams of returning one day.’

He folded his paper next to his empty breakfast plate. Raised his eyebrows at her, his brown eyes questioning. She thought the words: Every Irishman with your money, maybe. But she didn’t say them.

‘Do you not realise how lucky we are,’ he said, his cheeks flushed. ‘I’ve been selected to work on the designs for the national cathedral in Dublin, and then after that the new airport in Collinstown. Everything is grinding to a halt here. The money’s running out.’

‘Yes, of course I know,’ she said. Her husband had worked hard since they’d arrived in America. Steadily building up his reputation as an architect. Each building he’d worked on more impressive than the next. She had been so proud to look out of their top-floor apartment at Fifth Avenue and the skyline of Manhattan, which seemed to reach higher and higher with each passing year. Giles had worked on the Manhattan Trust Building and the Empire State Building, which was an amazing 102 floors. He had taken her up not long after it had opened. She had been terrified at first, but once he had convinced her to open her eyes, she had been thrilled with the view. Secretly, she admired the Chrysler Building the most. To her, it resembled a spectacular shiny tower from another world. But of course, she never told Giles that.

‘Brigid will meet her grandparents, her aunts and uncles, and her cousins…’ Giles continued to list the reasons for their return to Ireland. ‘We’ll be surrounded by family.’

Giles had always talked with affection of his family home in Blackrock, Dublin. The big white house with the ample lawn facing the sea. The past year she had noticed how much more he talked about it, how he ached for home.

‘My new position is well paid. We will want for nothing, Ellen,’ he had told her.

As she took her nightly walks around the courtyard garden, Ellen tried to imagine this new life back home in Ireland. Her and Giles with a litter of children. Family gatherings, safety and security. But it was a fantasy. Her husband’s Ireland was a world away from her own. If she returned, she risked everything.

Giles wasn’t stupid. He noticed her unease.

‘What is it, Ellen?’ he pushed. ‘Why don’t you want to go home?’

She shook her head, looking away.

‘Is it because of your family?’

On the boat to America, not long after they had first met, Ellen had told him all her family were dead. Killed in a fire. He had never asked her any more details, discerning her distress at the time. Misreading its source. Giles had been wild with optimistic hope about his new life in New York. It was this quality which had drawn her to him. ‘Go forward, and never look back.’ That had been his motto. They had lived by it the entire eight years they’d been in New York, and he had never questioned her about her past in all that time.

‘Why this sudden nostalgia for home?’ she blurted out, pushing her plate of eggs away. ‘We’re happy here in New York. You always said we’d be here forever!’

Giles had got up from the table and strode over to her. Bent down and kissed her forehead, his face a picture of concern.

‘My poor darling,’ he had said tenderly, hands on her shoulders. ‘Of course. So thoughtless of me not to think of your losses.’ He knelt down and took her hands in his. ‘But maybe it will help to go back? We could visit your parents’ graves. I will bring you to the west and you can show me your old home—’

She snatched her hands away.

‘No!’

Giles looked startled by her reaction. He stood up and pulled her up to him. She hid her burning face in his fresh clean shirt. She could still smell the soap.

‘Then we will stay in Dublin and never set foot in County Mayo again, if that is what you wish, my dear,’ he murmured above her head.

But Ellen’s heart was thumping in her chest like a panicked bird. Ireland was a small country. There would be no hiding her past if they returned.

The gentle rocking of RMS Britannic loosened her resolve. Ellen stared down at the exquisite necklace in her palm. It had been the only thing she had brought from Ireland to America eight years ago. Now she was sending it back home with her daughter. Her heart lurched painfully when she thought how poor it would be as a replacement for her, despite its worth. She clutched the necklace in her hand, the sharp points of the diamonds digging into her flesh. Maybe she could run away with Brigid and sell the necklace? They would have money to live on. But it was an impossible dream. She couldn’t stay in New York because Giles would find them.

Where to then? She had no one she could turn to for help. She knew he would find her wherever she went if she took Brigid. There was no doubt about his devotion to his daughter. But deep down there was more. Another reason she couldn’t take Brigid. If they ran away together, the truth would come out about what she had done all those years ago. She would be on the run forever. How could she tarnish her daughter’s future with her own past? How could she shame her husband?

‘Do you want to go up onto the deck and look at the stars?’ she asked Brigid, clutching on to as many moments as she could with her.

Brigid nodded, delight sparkling in her eyes.

She carried Brigid up on deck, tucked up in her shawl, and felt the rapid beating of her daughter’s heart against her skin. It was a warm night, and the sky was a deep serene blue, littered with a thousand blinking lights. The skies were never this big in Ireland. New York City hummed like a leviathan, new skyscrapers soaring heavenward. Ellen pointed out the Big Dipper, the Little Dipper and the Northern Star. She wanted so much to say something meaningful. Think of me when you look at the stars. For I will always be thinking of you.

Her child had gazed at her with sleepy eyes, nestled closer. The scent of Brigid’s skin against hers. She had breathed her in. Held her breath. She wanted to hold in this scent to her very last exhale. In that moment, she would have faced fire and brimstone if it meant she might stay with her child. But then she thought of how Brigid would react if she knew the truth. It was better to leave with her daughter still loving her than to stay and be repulsed.

Ellen ran away like a thief in the night. In darkness, one hour before dawn, just before the boat set sail, she placed the letter she’d written to Giles on the tiny locker by their bed, and laid the necklace upon it. The silver lamp was on in the cabin, casting a celestial light upon her husband and child as they slept, oblivious to her treachery.

She crept out. Although Ellen was running away, it felt as if this was the moment she had stopped running. She could never have gone back to Ireland. Because then she would have lost her daughter in an even more terrible way. She had done the best thing for her family, Ellen tried to tell herself. Brigid and Giles would now be free from her dark secret.

As the sun rose steadily above the city of New York, she walked the streets with no direction. The trapped heat from the day before began to rise from the brick and stone surrounding her. The skyscrapers gleamed bright and hard. Sweat slid down her trembling limbs. She stepped as if on hot coals. The joy of motherhood slipping from her as if life itself. She was a ghost walking block after block of the waking city. Deaf to the sounds of the streetcars, the hawking newspaper boys, and the clatter of the construction workers. Her heart was locked inside the necklace as her girl sailed across the sea. She had lost it forever and believed she would never get it back.

Mairead drove west in the lashing rain. It didn’t stop the whole way from Oldcastle to Carrick-on-Shannon. The radio wasn’t working any more in her old hatchback. The only sound was the swishing of the windscreen wipers and the relentless downpour beating on the roof as she splashed through small floods while the miles gathered behind her. She tried not to think of the same journey she had taken this time last year. Every Good Friday, she and her family made the trip west to visit her mam for the holidays. Niall next to her in the passenger seat, and Stella sitting behind. The three of them volleying trivia facts between them in preparation for the big game of Trivial Pursuit with her mam, which Niall always managed to win. Mairead gulped down the lump in her throat. She wasn’t going to cry. Not in all this rain. She had to remain focused, get to her mam’s place. Then… well, then what? Her mam wasn’t the comforting type.

She didn’t know who she was more hurt by in this moment. Her husband had done a terrible thing to her. She’d expected more support from her daughter, but Stella had rung her yesterday evening, at the last minute, to tell her she wasn’t coming home for Easter.

‘But I bought you a Mars bar Easter egg, like always,’ Mairead had complained, the first stupid thing which had popped into her head.

‘Ah sorry, Mammy, you have it,’ Stella said. Her daughter sounded so distant, even though she was only across the Irish Sea in London. Mairead could hear a voice in the background. Was it male? She wanted to interrogate Stella but knew it would only make her hang up the phone.

‘I haven’t seen you since Christmas,’ Mairead said, and she could hear the whine in her voice. Hated herself for it.

‘I’ll be back in the summer,’ Stella said cheerfully.

‘But what are you doing for Easter?’ Mairead asked, immediately wishing she hadn’t.

There was a pause.

‘I’m going to Dad and Lesley’s,’ Stella said. ‘They’ve moved into a new place in Islington. It’s not far from Hackney.’

How could her daughter let Lesley’s name fall so easily from her lips? It stung as if she’d pinched the soft skin on her throat.

‘Mammy, are you still there?’ Stella said.

‘Yes,’ she had croaked. She wanted to scream at her daughter how hurt she was that she’d taken things so well when she and Niall had broken up. But as a mother she should be glad Stella got on with Niall’s new partner. It was as if her daughter had seen it coming way before Mairead ever had.

‘It’s been nearly a year,’ Stella said. ‘You have to move on.’

‘I am,’ Mairead snapped, sounding harsher than she meant. The beeps went then. She scrambled to change the mood before they were cut off.

‘Have a lovely time,’ she said. ‘Love you.’

But she spoke to dead air. Why didn’t Stella ever bring enough change when she called her?

As she passed through Carrick-on-Shannon the rain finally stopped, and the sun pushed out from behind the clouds. The road gleamed in front of her, and she was momentarily blinded by the light. She blinked her eyes and kept going. She had driven this road so many times she could do it in her sleep. She took the turn for home and bumped down the boreen, then up the drive. Since her father had died, over six years ago now, the house and gardens had deteriorated. Her mother never had the funds nor inclination to fix things up. But whenever Mairead broached the subject of downsizing, her mother got angry. Her workshop was here, and she would never give it up. Not until the day she died.

‘But aren’t you lonely, Mam, all the way out here?’ Mairead had asked her mother last time she visited.

‘Not at all,’ her mother had said. ‘Besides, I have Alfie,’ she added, patting the head of her grey lurcher.

‘Mam, he’s a dog!’

‘Yes, and better company than most people,’ her mother said. ‘You should get a dog now Niall has gone.’

Mairead found her mother’s equation of a dog with a husband unanswerable. She shook her head.

‘I like being on my own,’ her mother continued. ‘I can focus on my work.’ She spread her arms wide, her fingers glittering with all the rings she’d set with precious stones. ‘I don’t need other people like you do, Mairead.’

Her mother had made it sound like a weakness, which was not true at all. Mairead thrived on being part of a team, which was why she loved her job so much. It was a calling as much as her mother’s jewellery design. But her mother always made Mairead feel she was disappointed she was a schoolteacher. She had never been interested in Mairead’s students’ achievements or how she was respected by her peers. She had been far more taken with Mairead’s brother Darragh’s career as a musician turned barman. Darragh had just opened his own bar in New York even though he was a complete flake, and an illegal immigrant in America. Her mother had loved Darragh’s Irish wife, Josie, an illegal too, and their two girls when she’d visited last year, but had been particularly unimpressed when Mairead had married an accountant despite the fact Niall had been able to provide so well for Mairead and Stella. He had also helped her mother out when Mairead’s father died. But her mother had always complained that Niall had the shifty eyes of a liar and Mairead had settled too soon. Now, unbearably, her mother had been proved right.

She rounded the corner, and there it was, her family home: Ballinakill Lodge. The square grey stone house solid as a rock, the sash windows glanced by sunlight, and the green grass of the front lawn thick and wild, lush with fat raindrops. She had spent her whole childhood here. A rush of nostalgia swept through her as she parked the car beneath the big chestnut tree. How she wished her father were standing on the doorstep to greet her. His gentle understanding so different from her mother’s. His invitation to take an evening stroll an opportunity to tell him all her troubles. His non-critical nods and encouraging words. So many times, she had wanted to ask her father how he had ended up with a woman like her mother. But of course, she couldn’t ask him such a question. Her parents must have loved each other, for they had been together so many years. Her father ambling across their land with his smallholding projects. Sheep one year. Bees the next. Apple trees and homemade cider another year. While her mother remained hour after hour shut up in her workshop creating such exquisite works of jewellery she was listed as one of the top designers in the whole of Ireland. She made creations she could never afford to wear herself.

And then, so suddenly, her father was gone. Mairead would never forget the darkest day of her life so far. She had been in the middle of teaching her second-year history class about the Irish War of Independence when Sister Mary Stephen, their headmistress, had bustled into the classroom and asked her to step outside. There had been a phone call from her mother. Her father had fallen off a ladder cleaning the gutters and banged his head. He was in a critical condition in Sligo Hospital.

Mairead had called Niall in hysterics and, after organising childcare for Stella, he had driven them to Sligo like a maniac. She had arrived just in time to say goodbye. Her mother had stood stony-faced and white by the hospital bed, staring off into the distance. Mairead had tried to hug her, but she hadn’t moved. When the doctor had explained that the only thing keeping her father alive was the ventilator, that he was already brain dead, her mother had instructed them to turn it off. ‘He’s gone already,’ she had barked. ‘Do it now.’

‘No, Mammy, we need to call Darragh—’ Mairead had cried out. She hadn’t been ready.

But even more astonishing was the way her mother had marched out of the hospital room as soon as they turned off the machine keeping her husband alive. Niall had put his hands on her shoulders as Mairead held her father’s hand while it slowly turned cold, and the room emptied of his life.

She had been so shocked and hurt by her mother’s behaviour. Niall had assured her that her mother was grieving in her own way; she was emotionally repressed. But who was he to say such a thing? Mairead had buried her fury with her mother, her pain at the loss of her father deep down. But now, as she stared up at the roof of the house, she imagined the moment her father had fallen off the ladder, and the image in her mind was so vivid it was all she could do not to scream. Had he been afraid as he was falling? How long had it taken before he’d been knocked unconscious? He had been a relatively young man at the time. Not even sixty years old. It astonished Mairead that her mother could go on living under the roof of the house which had killed her husband.

What was she doing here? Mairead had automatically set off for her annual Easter visit, as was her daughterly duty, but now all she wanted to do was turn around and drive off again. Keep driving somewhere she had never been before, go sit on a beach and feel sorry for herself, wallow in the injustices of her life. But it was too late. And there was something else needling her deep down. Her life felt as if it had become a series of abandonments: Stella, Niall, her father dying… But it had all begun with her mother. Pushing her away for as long as she could remember. Mairead had always been aware of the fact her mother was special, and because of this she had to put up with her strange moods and detachment. And right now she needed her mam more than ever.

Mairead heard Alfie bark as the front door opened and he came running out to leap up at her car door. There on the threshold was her mother, squinting at her with the faraway look she always had when she’d been working for hours. She was wearing a long green shirt the same colour as her eyes. It hung off her, and she looked even thinner than last time Mairead had visited. But Mairead knew better than to question her mother about whether she had been eating or not. She thought of the box of mint cremes she had bought her mother for Easter, currently sitting in the bag of food on the back seat, and knew most likely she would be eating them all anyway. She got out of the car, softly nudging Alfie away while he licked her hands in greeting. At least he was pleased to see her.

‘Hi, Mammy,’ Mairead said brightly, pulling the bag of food out the back of the car, before walking towards her.

‘I didn’t think you were coming this year,’ her mother said, her eyes dropping to Mairead’s post-separation expanded waistline. Mairead could tell what she was thinking. She gave her mother two hours tops before she commented on her weight.

‘Of course,’ Mairead said. ‘It’s Easter—’

‘I don’t believe in God,’ her mother said, turning on her heel, her clogs clopping on the flagstones as she went back into the shadows of the house.

‘Well, it’s the holidays,’ Mairead said, following her mother inside and trying not to notice the layers of thick dust on everything.

‘I didn’t think you’d come without Stella. How’s she getting on in London? She did so well to get into RADA, but I always said she had it in her,’ her mother said, and there was a gleam in her eye. She had always been more interested in her granddaughter’s acting than her own daughter’s life.

‘She’s loving it,’ Mairead said, trying to ignore the prick of hurt as she followed her mother into the kitchen and hefted the heavy food bag onto the kitchen table.

‘Jaysus, Mairead, what have you got in there? It’s just us two.’ Her mother dropped her eyes to her body again, and Mairead was suddenly aware how tight her jeans felt. And they were her big period jeans.

‘I was going to cook for you,’ Mairead said weakly.

Her mother shrugged.

‘I’m very busy,’ she said. ‘I’ve a commission to finish.’

‘Oh, what is it?’

Her mother frowned. ‘I’ll show you when it’s done,’ she said, turning away to stare out the window. A habit she’d always had when she was in the middle of creative production and didn’t want to be disturbed.

Mairead stared at her mother’s narrow back in the sea-green shirt, its soft silken contours cascading down her body. She was like a woman from another world, not her flesh-and-bone mother. Why did she feel so unwelcome in her own childhood home? She was hurt her mother didn’t ask her how she was. Had never talked to her about what Niall had done to her, apart from shrugging and saying she wasn’t surprised, which had made Mairead feel even worse.

‘Maybe I should go,’ she blurted out. ‘You clearly want to be on your own.’

Her mother turned around and looked at Mairead wide-eyed.

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she said. ‘You’re here now.’

They stood either side of the kitchen, silence pooling between them. Decades of unsaid things. It felt as if her mother could be the other side of the world, she was so far away from her. Why was she this way? What had happened to her to make her so unlike any other mother Mairead had ever known? Even Niall’s mother, who had always disliked her daughter-in-law, still made a pretence at warmth.

She remembered a time when she was little, she had fallen over and cut her knee and was crying for her mother to pick her up and comfort her. Her mam had turned and walked away, leaving it to her father to comfort her.

‘I want Mammy,’ she had sobbed. ‘Why doesn’t she love me?’

‘Of course she loves you, pet,’ her father had said, dabbing her bloody knee with cotton wool. ‘But she lost her mother when she was a little girl, so it’s hard for her—’

‘But she had Grandma,’ she’d sniffed.

‘Grandma is her stepmother,’ her father explained. ‘She had another mother before her. In America.’

Her father looked uncomfortable, entangled in too many revelations.

‘Who is she? What’s her name?’ Mairead had whispered, tears forgotten in the wake of the surprising secret.

‘She doesn’t know.’

The ghost of her mother’s birth mother had always been drifting around the edges of their family life. The reason her mother couldn’t abide her daughter’s tears, why she found it easier to kick a ball with her son than braid Mairead’s hair. It was the excuse Mairead had allowed her mother all these years. Until her father had died. Then Mairead had lost patience. Her mother had insisted on a small funeral with just family. None of Mairead’s friends could come. Mairead had lost her temper.

‘I’m grieving too,’ she’d lashed out. ‘I need support from my friends because you’ve never given it to me.’

Her mother’s green eyes had darkened.

‘Now’s not the time, Mairead,’ she said in a cool voice.

‘Why are you so cold? I haven’t seen you cry once since Daddy died. What’s wrong with you?’ Mairead ranted. ‘Why don’t you talk about your mother? Like ever?’

Her mother spoke slowly as if each word was coated in ice:

‘That is none of your business, Mairead, and has nothing to do with my husband’s funeral.’

‘He was my father too!’ Mairead raged, but her mother had walked away yet again. Always walking away from her.

Mairead crossed the kitchen briskly, pushing away those painful memories of her father’s funeral. She picked up the kettle and filled it at the tap.

‘Let’s have a cup of tea and a b. . .