Cora stood up and linked his arm, and they went home together to Bootle.
During the long night that followed the relatives were allowed to see the patient once, a few at a time. Alice went in with Fion and Maeve.
Orla was lying peacefully still, long, dark lashes resting on her white cheeks, lips curved in a slight smile. Fion gasped. ‘I’ve never seen her look so beautiful!’
‘She looks about sixteen,’ Maeve whispered.
Alice said nothing. She bent and kissed the cold, smiling lips, and wondered if she would ever kiss them again.
In a hotel room in Majorca, which smelt of strangely scented blossoms and chloride from the pool below, and where the blue, luminous water of the Mediterranean could be seen from the balcony, Cormac put down the phone. ‘No change.’ He sighed. ‘There are times when I wish I smoked. I have a feeling a cigarette would be a great help at the moment.’
‘It would also be very bad for you,’ Vicky said primly.
‘I’ve heard there are people around who say the same thing about sex.’
‘Oh!’ Vicky looked nonplussed. She was sitting up in bed with nothing on, a sheet chastely covering her breasts – she’d only been a married woman for a matter of hours and nudity took some getting used to. ‘Oh, they can’t possibly be right about sex.’
Cormac grinned. ‘If those people are so very wrong – about sex, that is – then I assume it would be OK if we did it again.’
She blushed. ‘It would be OK as far as I’m concerned.’
‘As we are the only two people whose opinion matters, I suggest we do it immediately, though it will be necessary for you to remove that sheet.’
Vicky removed the sheet.
The hospital was very quiet. Occasionally a baby cried, there were footsteps in other corridors far away. Outside the room where Orla lay, her husband, her children, her sisters and her mother hardly spoke, and when they did it was in subdued murmurs. Mr and Mrs Lavin had gone home long ago.
Fion felt ashamed of how much she longed to be at home, under her own roof, with Jerry’s warm body in bed beside her and the kids safely asleep not far away. They weren’t the sort of couple who lived in each other’s pockets, but she badly missed her husband right now. She squeezed the hand of Maeve, sitting beside her.
Maeve must have been having the same thoughts. ‘You really appreciate your own family in situations like this,’ she whispered. ‘I shall never feel irritated again if Martin changes Christopher’s nappy wrongly or complains about the car.’ He still did occasionally.
‘We’re ever so lucky, sis.’ Fion sighed. ‘We’ve got everything.’
‘I know, but it’s a pity it takes a tragedy to make us realise it.’
Sunday afternoon, and Micky and Alice were persuaded to go home and rest. Jerry drove them. It was still raining heavily and the clouds were even greyer than they’d been the day before. Jerry stopped at the end of Pearl Street, where Micky got out, and Alice said quickly, ‘I think I’ll go and see Bernadette before she leaves for the hospital. She sent a message to say she was going this avvy.’
‘Are you sure? I’ll take you home if you prefer. It’s no trouble.’
‘It’s kind of you, Jerry, luv. But I prefer Bootle to Birkdale at the moment. Anyroad, me own car’s around here somewhere.’ She couldn’t possibly go back to her smart bungalow at a time like this, even though she would have liked to get rid of her hat, collect a mac and change her suit for something more comfortable. She got out of the car, kissed Micky and almost ran, not to Bernadette’s, but to the dark, silent salon in Opal Street,
where she let herself in and sat under the middle dryer –something she hadn’t done in years.
She hadn’t realised she was quite so tired. Almost immediately, she fell awkwardly asleep, a sleep full of horrible dreams, which she couldn’t remember when she woke up, but she knew her mind had been preoccupied with things unpleasant.
Jaysus! Would the rain never stop! She could see nothing, not even her watch, because by now it was completely dark, but the downpour sounded even heavier, as if the rain was bouncing off the pavements.
It would have been better to have gone to Bernadette’s, where she could have slept in a proper bed, had something decent to eat, not be stuck here with nothing but her own miserable thoughts to keep her company.
Mind you, what other thoughts could you expect to have at a time like this? Alice found herself dredging up every single memory she could of Orla. Orla being born, walking for the first time, saying her first word, her first day at school – she’d come home and informed her mother she was the prettiest in the class, as well as the cleverest.
‘Arrogant little madam.’ Danny chuckled when he was told – she’d been her grandad’s favourite, as well as John’s. Alice had never had a favourite. She loved all her children the same and would have felt just as devastated had any one of them been in hospital in a coma.
‘Oh, I feel so
sad
!’ The sadness rolled up into a ball at the back of her throat. In a minute she’d make a cup of tea – except there’d be no milk. At weekends Patsy usually took home what was over in case it went sour.
Perhaps it wouldn’t be a bad idea to turn the light on, go round to Bernie’s who might be home again by now. She was only making it worse, sitting by herself in the pitch dark, longing for a drink. She was about to heave
herself out of the chair when the key turned in the lock and someone came in. She held her breath. It was a man, she could just make out his bulky form against the window.
He reached for the light, turned it on and uttered a startled cry when he saw her. ‘Alice! I am feeling a definite sense of déjà vu.’
‘Who are you?’ For some reason, she didn’t feel the least bit frightened.
‘Have I changed so much?’ the man said dejectedly.
She stared at him. He wore a well-cut tweed suit and looked about fifty. Once he had been handsome, still was in a way, but his face was deeply lined, his expression careworn. Iron-grey hair, slightly receding and wet from the rain, was combed back from his forehead in little waves. He was smiling and it was a nice smile that involved his entire face, including his very blue eyes, which were dancing merrily in her direction. Despite everything that was happening in her life, despite the fact that she didn’t recognise the man from Adam and he had just walked uninvited into her salon, that somehow he had a key, Alice smiled back.
‘I remember doing precisely the same thing,’ the man said. ‘Coming in, finding you in the dark – oh, it must be twenty years ago. You gave me a fright then. Mind you, this time I deserve it.’
‘Neil!’ She stared at him in disbelief. Suddenly he looked achingly familiar and she couldn’t understand why she hadn’t known him straight away.
‘Whew! Recognition at last. How are you, my dear Alice? If you knew how many times I have longed for this moment you would be deeply flattered.’ He came and sat beside her.
‘How did you get in?’ she stammered. ‘Well, I know
how you got in. I mean, how did you get the key? No one’s supposed to have it.’
He dangled the key in front of her eyes. It was attached to a St Christopher medal keyring that she remembered well. ‘This is my original key. I forgot to give it back and have kept it all these years. I was hoping it would fit, that you hadn’t had the lock changed, because I wanted to see the flat. I intended sneaking in and out so no one would know I’d been, but you seem to make a habit of sitting under a dryer in the dark.’
‘What if there’d been someone living upstairs?’
‘I knew there wasn’t,’ he said surprisingly. ‘I heard from a friend in Bootle that the flat was vacant, but when I phoned I was told it was badly in need of decoration. I wanted to see exactly how bad it was in case I could manage it myself.’
‘Patsy said someone had phoned.’ Alice frowned. ‘Have you taken up painting and decorating?’
‘Only of the upstairs flat.’ His smile faded. ‘Things haven’t gone exactly well for me over the last few years, Alice. In fact, nothing’s gone well since I left Liverpool all those years ago. I suddenly decided I’d like a little bolt-hole to hide in when I felt particularly low. And what better place than the one where I spent the happiest years of my life.’
They’d been happy years for her too. Looking back, the time they’d spent together seemed unreal. The flat had also been her bolt-hole, a place where she’d felt able to leave all her troubles outside and relax in Neil’s arms. It felt like a million years ago.
‘Would you mind having me as your upstairs tenant a second time?’ he was saying. ‘It would only be for occasional weekends.’
‘I don’t think I would mind that at all, Neil,’ she said, and wondered if she was still dreaming and, if so, how
much of the past had been a dream and how much had actually happened. At what point in her life would she wake up?
He smiled at her delightedly. ‘Well, now that’s settled, enough about me. What about you, Alice. How are Cormac and the girls and your multitude of grandchildren? How many do you have now?’
‘Seven,’ she said automatically. ‘No, eight.’ She’d forgotten about the tiny girl who’d been born the night before. Her eyes filled with tears when she thought about Orla, whom, incredibly, she’d almost forgotten since Neil had arrived. Just as she had done the other time he found her in the dark, Alice started to cry. She told him about Orla, the baby in the incubator, the wedding yesterday. Time fell away, the years merged to nothing, as he held her hand, patted her cheek and agreed that it was all quite unbearably sad, but that one day, a long time off, it would be bearable again, incredible though that might seem right now.
‘God works in mysterious ways that I don’t pretend to understand,’ he said.
‘Me neither.’ She sighed. ‘What time is it?’
‘Just gone nine.’
She must have been asleep for hours. Her neck ached from having been in an uncomfortable position and she had pins and needles in her legs. ‘I’d better be getting back to the hospital.’
‘Can I come with you?’
‘Oh, yes, please’. She didn’t care if it sounded too eager, she just wanted him there. She didn’t care about anything much at the moment. It didn’t matter that she was fifty-seven and he was ten years younger. It didn’t matter if they got back together again though she had a feeling it was what he wanted. Nor did it matter if they
didn’t. It would be nice to have him in the upstairs flat again, but if it all fell through, that didn’t matter either.
Nothing mattered except the moment, now, when she was about to return to the hospital to see her child who would shortly die.
She got tiredly to her feet and went over to the window. The street lights were reflected, wobbling slightly, in the wet pavements. ‘It’s stopped raining,’ she remarked. ‘The stars are out.’ She noticed that Neil’s bones creaked as he came to stand beside her. Together, they watched the stars.
Then one star, more vivid than the others, left its mates and shot across the sky. Alice turned off the light so she could observe more clearly the bright, twinkling point passing over the earth, soaring silently towards who knew where. She pointed. ‘See that one! It must be a shooting star.’
‘I can’t see anything.’ Neil shook his head.
Alice knew then that Orla was dead and, for the Laceys, nothing would ever be the same again. The star had been her daughter’s final flamboyant gesture to the world.
She held her breath. One day, very soon, she would go abroad, to a place that Orla would have enjoyed. She would go by herself, but she wouldn’t feel lonely, because Orla would be with her in her heart. She’d like that.
‘I hope Micky was with her when she passed away,’ she murmured softly. ‘Or at least I hope he saw the star.’
MAUREEN LEE IS ONE OF THE BEST-LOVED SAGA WRITERS AROUND. All her novels are set in Liverpool and the world she evokes is always peopled with characters you’ll never forget. Her familiarity with Liverpool and its people brings the terraced streets and tight-knit communities vividly to life in her books. Maureen is a born storyteller and her many fans love her for her powerful tales of love and life, tragedy and joy in Liverpool.
Born into a working-class family in Bootle, Liverpool, Maureen Lee spent her early years in a terraced house near the docks – an area that was relentlessly bombed during the Second World War. As a child she was bombed out of the house in Bootle and the family were forced to move.
Maureen left her convent school at 15 and wanted to become an actress. However, her shocked mother, who said that it was ‘as bad as selling your body on the streets’, put her foot down and Maureen had to give up her dreams and go to secretarial college instead.
As a child, Maureen
was bombed out of
her terraced house
in Bootle
A regular theme in her books is the fact that apparently happy homes often conceal pain and resentment and she sometimes draws on
her own early life for inspiration. ‘My mother always seemed to disapprove of me – she never said “well done” to me. My brother was the favourite,’ Maureen says.
As she and her brother grew up they grew apart. ‘We just see things differently in every way,’ says Maureen. This, and a falling out during the difficult time when her mother was dying, led to an estrangement that has lasted 24 years. ‘Despite the fact that I didn’t see eye-to-eye with my mum, I loved her very much. I deserted my family and lived in her flat in Liverpool after she went into hospital for the final time. My brother, who she thought the world of, never went near. Towards the end when she was fading she kept asking where he was. To comfort her, I had to pretend that he’d been to see her the day before, which was awful. I found it hard to get past that.’
Maureen is well known for writing with realism about subjects like motherhood: ‘I had a painful time giving birth to my children – the middle one was born in the back of a two-door car. So I know things don’t always go as planned.’
My middle son was
born in the back
of a car