SECRETS IN THE SNOW
Emma Heatherington

Copyright

HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020

Copyright © Emma Heatherington 2020

Emma Heatherington asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

Jacket design by Caroline Young © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020

Jacket photographs © Yolande de Kort/Trevillion Images and Shuttershock.com

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008355661

Ebook Edition © July 2020 ISBN: 9780008355678

Version: 2020-08-06

Dedication

In loving memory of my darling aunt Deirdre (Diddles) who left this world ten years ago. I can still hear your laugh, smell your perfume and I still smile at the wonderful memories you left us all with. This one’s for you x

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

WINTER

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

SPRING

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

SUMMER

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

AUTUMN

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

CHRISTMAS

Chapter 37

Acknowledgements

Keep Reading …

About the Author

Also by Emma Heatherington

About the Publisher

My bedroom in Janet and Michael Brown’s house in Dalkey back in 1996 had cosy clean bedding, a desk below a window framed with fairy lights, and a bedside locker with a lamp and an alarm clock all to myself.

Janet, my short-term foster mum, used to put Jaffa Cakes into my lunchbox on Fridays as a surprise treat because she knew they were my favourites, while her husband Michael would leave a filled hot water bottle wrapped in a pillow case by my bedroom door every night, and we’d play board games together at the kitchen table most evenings after dinner.

I remember closing my teenage eyes in that cosy bedroom on one particular evening and listening as the sea crashed in the distance and the wind battered the coastline while I was so toasty on the other side. All of this, combined with another sound coming from downstairs caught my ears and touched my soul.

It was Janet and Michael cooking together downstairs and they were laughing, really laughing, and it woke something within me. The sound made me smile from my heart, and then I realized what it was.

I felt safe in that moment. I felt safe and secure like I’d never been before and so I promised myself that I’d experience that sense of comfort and contentment at least one more time in my life—

—even if it took me for ever to find it again.

WINTER

1.

‘Please talk to me, Ben. Say something. This silence is driving me crazy.’

I turn on the TV and flick through the channels as the fire snaps and crackles in the hearth, the only thing to break the silence of our smothering grief on this dark, cold November day.

Ben doesn’t answer me. Instead he just wraps his favourite tartan blanket tighter around his ten-year-old body and continues to suck his thumb, a habit that has raised its head again just this week, after four years of going cold turkey.

‘Do you want to talk about her?’ I suggest, feeling my heart tug when I look at the dark rings under his eyes, his pale face, and the way he grips onto an old childhood comfort once more. ‘Is that a good idea? We can talk about Mabel and some of the good times we shared?’

He rubs his eyes and snuggles deeper into the safety of his cocoon, and I frown with despair. The din from the corner where the TV flashes jolly colours and real-time images, reminding us that life, even after the death of someone you love, does go on, while for the moment it seems all in our world is frozen in time as we contemplate our next move.

I curl up on the armchair by the window and stare out to the evening’s midnight-blue sky, then I pick up my phone and Google everything I can find on how to deal with bereavement through a child’s eyes, an action that gives me a feeling of déjà vu, taking me back to a time before now, a time before our new life here began.

My boss and good friend, Camille, texts me just as I’m searching.

‘How’s the little guy?’ she asks. ‘And you? Keep your chin up, Ro. You’re a fighter and so is Ben. You’ve got this.’

A familiar gnawing sensation clenches my insides, bringing back old fears, and my skin crawls with old anxieties rekindled by my child’s inner pain.

I want to take it all away from him. I want him to laugh again like he used to, I want him to prank me with silly practical jokes or to make me smile when I hear him singing in the shower or in front of a mirror as he plays air guitar. I want him to irritate me with his insistence on convincing me to do something he wants and that I don’t, or to make me swell with pride when his magical outlook on life wows me like only a child’s can. His ongoing silence is quite literally breaking my heart, and I’ve no idea what to do or who to turn to.

It’s been two days since Ben mumbled a reminder of how we were out of breakfast cereal, and he hasn’t spoken a word since.

No demands, no requests, no tantrums and no tears. Nothing.

For a ten-year-old boy, managing to be quiet for so long when there’s just the two of us in our little cottage on the outskirts of a tiny Irish village is no mean feat.

He hasn’t responded to suggestions of a day trip to the new outdoor ice-skating rink in town, or shown any excitement over the winter football camp he’d spent the last few weeks looking forward to, and he never even flinched when I suggested a walk by the sea in nearby Dunfanaghy, which is always a popular pastime on the weekend here, whatever the weather.

My normally hapless, clumsy, chatty and often hilarious son has gone totally silent, but at least I can completely understand why.

The breakfast cereal reminder from Ben was on Thursday which was the same day we said our final farewell to our next-door neighbour, seventy-nine-year-old Mabel Murphy, beneath a heavy, grey winter sky in a cold Irish graveyard.

But Mabel Murphy was so much more than the little old lady who lived next door. She was our saviour and our best friend in the whole world when no one else was watching us, or noticed us, or even cared about us. She pushed her way in to fill a gap in both of our lives that we didn’t even know existed when we first arrived here four years ago, numb with grief and fear and not knowing what on earth was around the corner.

‘Of all the places in the world, what the hell brings a pretty girl like you here to Ballybray?’ Mabel had called to me in her thick New York accent from across the garden fence when Ben and I made our way from the village bus stop to the cottages known as Teapot Row.

I looked over to see her standing in her garden with her hand on her hip. She wore pink gloves and a bright yellow rain coat, a burst of sunshine to brighten up what was a very wet, very grim winter’s day. My initial reaction was to ask her to mind her own business. I’d come to Ballybray to hide for a while, to self-protect, and to plan my next move in life. I’d come to reinvent in my own time and the last thing I needed was some little old lady who dressed like she was twenty years younger poking her nose in my business.

‘You do know it’s a village full of old crocks just like me who are obsessed with gardening all year round, but I love it here,’ she told me. ‘Who knows? Maybe you will too!’

Looking back through different eyes, I can see now that Mabel was certainly breathtaking in the most unconventional way. In contrast to her yellow coat and pink gloves, she wore a deep purple headscarf that framed a face which was once that of a beauty queen, she had streaks of dark mud on her high cheekbones and a figure that defied her age.

I remember fidgeting with my scruffy duffle jacket, fixing my unruly long brown hair and scrambling in my head for an answer to her question.

I knew why I’d run away from Dublin, but I’d no idea why I chose here, and even if I had, I had no intention of explaining my reasons to a stranger.

I was thirty-six years old, newly widowed, I had very little money left after buying a house I’d not yet set foot in but had simply chosen from an online brochure, I’d a world of experience, but a head full of muddle, and I’d no doubt my boho, hippy appearance probably raised questions with a lot more people than Mabel on my grand arrival to this sleepy village. I was also very guarded and fiercely overprotective of the world I’d found myself living in, and the one I wanted to create for my son’s and my future.

Ballybray, my very limited research told me, was a rural, one-street village near the north-west coast of Ireland in County Donegal, the key attributes of which were a huge lake on the south side and a wild patch of forest on the top of a steep hill known as ‘Warren’s Wood’ on the north, even though no one seemed to know who Warren is or was. The seaside town of Dunfanaghy was just down the road, which meant we would never be far from the sea, a fact that sold it to me instantly as a far cry from the inner-city concrete jungle in which I’d spent most of my own childhood.

Between those two main landmarks, there was a small grocery shop, a bakery, an ornate little chapel, a tiny primary school, a hairdressing salon, a village hall, oh and a pub whose owners had just renovated the building next door into a vintage clothes shop with a coffee corner, which to the locals was very exciting indeed as it brought shoppers to visit from near and far.

There was no doubt about it. If I’d wanted somewhere small, quiet and easy going, I had certainly chosen the right place, which was exactly what I intended. I wanted away from the smothering smog and city life. I wanted to go somewhere where absolutely no one knew my name.

Mabel, with her splash of colour and vibrant energy, stood with her pink hand still on her hip and waited for an answer to her question.

‘I – I, um, stuck a pin in the map of Ireland and this is what I got,’ I told Mabel with a timid shrug. It was as much as I was giving her. ‘I know virtually nothing about this place, but I’ve a whole lifetime to see if we like it or not. I hope we do.’

Mabel threw her head back and heartily laughed at my response, which I didn’t really find to be that funny. It was the truth. It was as simple as that.

‘You stuck a pin in a map, darling?’ she howled. ‘Literally?’

‘Literally,’ I told her, shrugging again. ‘It was a hairpin actually, but the same concept, I suppose.’

Mabel came closer to the fence between us, waved me over towards her, and when I reached her, she took my face in her gloved hands and looked deep into my soul. She smelled of outdoors, of fresh air and of new beginnings with a hint of white musk, and although I wanted to pull away, deep, deep down I also wanted so badly for someone to understand my pain without me having to spell it out.

I stiffened up at first, but despite how much I fought against it, within seconds I melted a little under her kind touch and sincere eyes.

‘You and I, my dear,’ Mabel said with a beaming smile, ‘are going to get along just swimmingly!’

And with that gesture and her few simple words, I already felt some of my darkest worries disintegrate right then and there, even if I wasn’t ready yet to let my guard down or to let her in.

I don’t know if I found Donegal or if Donegal found me, but this move, I reckoned, was far enough to close the door on a time in my hometown of Dublin I’d rather forget about, and it was near enough to get us back there again if I took cold feet and changed my mind. I loved Dublin and always would, but life was going in the wrong direction for me there, and I had to make a choice. And that choice just happened to be Ballybray.

‘My name is Mabel Murphy and I’m a blow-in too,’ she told me, ‘in case the American accent fell on deaf ears. I’m from New York, but I was lucky enough to marry an Irish man who brought me here about ten years ago.’

She took off her glove to shake my hand formally across the picket fence, and then she glanced around as her voice dropped to a whisper even though there was no one else within earshot except Ben to hear her, and he wasn’t even listening.

‘I have to warn you, though. They’re probably going to fear you as much as they feared me around here,’ she told me. ‘They don’t take to newcomers kindly, so I think we’d best stick together.’

‘Really?’

‘I’m kidding!’ she said, her beautiful face creasing as she giggled. ‘They are going to love you. It’s a wonderful place to live.’

My stomach churned and the wave of anxiety that had just punched me in the gut lingered at the very idea of being resented here, even if she was joking. I didn’t want anyone to fear me. I’d had enough fear in my old life.

‘I’m Roisin,’ I told her, trying to be mannerly despite my reluctance to become anything more than neighbour to this woman who was almost twice my age. ‘Roisin O’Connor, and this is my son, Ben. We’re hoping to make Ballybray our new home. A new start, whatever that means.’

I felt choked up at the very thought of it.

‘Well, you are very brave, Roisin O’Connor, to make a new start, and you are both so, so welcome!’ Mabel had gasped in delight, studying Ben now from head to toe, and then she smiled the most beautiful warm smile as if the very sight of him had filled her heart with joy.

I didn’t feel very brave back then, but I’d go on to hold those words from Mabel so tightly for many years to come.

‘I bet you’re about six years old, aren’t you, Ben?’ guessed Mabel, which impressed my precious son greatly. He lifted his head to listen now that she’d given him her full attention, and then looked up at me with widened eyes.

‘How did she know that?’ he asked me, before turning to Mabel and smiling a toothy grin in return. ‘Are you magic? How did you know I was six?’

I was totally taken aback by his reaction but I ignored it and clasped his hand tightly. Ben hadn’t smiled like that in for ever. In fact, he usually cowered when adults spoke to him, especially people he didn’t know.

‘When you’ve lived for as long as I have, you get to know a lot of things. Almost everything in fact,’ Mabel whispered with a wink and a nod, and we’d soon find out she wasn’t exaggerating. ‘Now, go get settled into your new home and if you don’t think I’m being too pushy, I’ll call in for a cuppa when you’re ready. I’ll keep you two right around here. You don’t have to worry about a thing.’

Mabel always reminded me how she’d read me like a book the moment we met that day. She said she could see into my troubled soul, past the outgrown bangs, the heavy mascara and the wall of defence I’d built up around me and my son. She knew I was struggling. I believe that she knew me inside out from our very first conversation.

‘We have a lot to do,’ I told her, trying my best to be polite. ‘It’s nice to meet you.’

We left her to her weeding, then Ben and I lugged our cases up the crooked pathway and turned the key in the creaky muddy green door, just the two of us, all alone in a big bad world as we took our first steps towards a new tomorrow. My hands shook as I battled with the front door key, and I bit my lip to fight back tears of absolute fear of the unknown.

‘You all right, honey?’ Mabel called, seeing how I was poking at the lock. ‘It’s been a while since that door has been opened!’

‘It’s OK, I got it!’ I called back, my voice shaking and my insides churning as I anticipated the new beginnings that lay inside.

Leave me alone old lady, I thought, even though I hadn’t the courage to say it out loud. Just get on with your gardening and leave me and my son alone.

The door creaked open and step one of our new life had begun.

2.

I’d known from the estate agent’s brochure that No. 3 Teapot Row in the village of Ballybray was a humble little home, but I also could tell that it would be safe, far away from danger or threat of the ghost of my ex-husband ever finding us again.

The sandstone exterior with cute white wooden sash windows and wisteria had caught my eye as I flicked through properties online, and I couldn’t believe my luck at the price tag. It had a small garden to the front with a little path that led to a green door – every door in the row was painted a different colour – and a back garden that had enough room for a swing and a paddling pool in summer.

We had made it this far. It was ours now, so I took a deep breath and stepped inside, trying to look at every single part of it through positive eyes.

The musty smell of the poky hallway that was just big enough for two hit me first, and I convinced myself that the tiny kitchen meant there was a lot less to clean than the house we had left behind. The living room with a circa 1970s fireplace was ‘vintage,’ rather than old, I decided. Yes, vintage was good. I could work with vintage.

‘I love it,’ I repeated to myself internally. ‘I really love it.’

Truth be told, I didn’t quite love it at first. I was absolutely petrified, but I was determined that one day I would love it with all my heart and never want to leave.

Our new home was third from the end in a row of eight semi-detached two-storey stone cottages, and I’d sealed the deal by calling up the nearest estate agent who told me my luck was in, but who also seemed baffled by my choice of destination when he heard my city accent.

I remember how I fought back tears at the enormity of it all when I walked inside and smelled the unfamiliar interior of a place I’d pledged to try to make a home for us. It was to be a brand new start, a new beginning, a place where we could be whoever we wanted to be, in a village I knew virtually nothing about and, more importantly, with people who knew nothing about me.

I would transform, I would reinvent, and most of all I would heal, because inside I was broken and Mabel knew it instantly. When the door knocked a few hours after our first meeting across the fence, Ben let Mabel in despite my efforts to ignore her, and she found me crouched in the corner of the unfamiliar living room with a face smeared in streaky tears after I’d given up unpacking clothes and given in to the terror of a future that seemed so daunting, so unfamiliar, and so utterly frightening.

‘You’re wading through treacle right now, girl,’ she told me with deep understanding, pushing back my hair and wiping my tears. ‘You’re swimming against the tide, but it won’t always be like this, do you hear me? You’re a fighter, and you’ve made the right decision coming here, I can tell. Stick with it, and stick with me. You’re gonna be just fine.’

She hugged me so tightly like an old friend would and she didn’t let go until I felt some of my worries disintegrate in her embrace.

I gave her nothing in return at first, but she never gave up on me from that day on. She brought us hot dinners when I was having a bad day and couldn’t face cooking a proper meal, she took Ben to school and sent me back to bed to rest, and she gently gave me space to do my own thing when she knew I needed it.

‘Why do you care?’ I asked her one day as she was fussing over a hem on Ben’s school trousers. Her warmth and motherly nature were alien to me, and I just couldn’t understand why she gave so much despite getting so little in return.

‘Don’t ever run away or be afraid of kindness, Roisin,’ she told me as she repaired the hem on the little pair of grey trousers. ‘You deserve love and to be loved. We all do.’

The best thing was, Mabel’s words were never insincere, because Mabel Murphy reminded me every single day since then that I’d made the right decision to move to Ballybray, and that I was going in the right direction in life.

She celebrated with me when Ben got through his first day at his new school without tears, she danced with me when I got my part-time job in the clothes shop, Truly Vintage, and she took no excuses when I mentioned how I’d always dreamed about playing the violin as a child but had never learned. Before I knew it, she’d signed me up to a weekly class at the community centre, and when I mentioned how I’d need a babysitter, she pledged that she and Ben would have a weekly movie night while I headed off with my second-hand violin case in hand, feeling full of vigour and overflowing with the magic that only playing music can bring.

Mabel steered me on the right track in every walk of life from the first day I arrived in Ballybray, and the more she told me I was winning, the more I eventually believed it.

She brought us groceries when I didn’t have the energy or inclination to go food shopping, she listened to me cry when the overwhelming waves of trauma from years gone by visited me late into the night, she made me laugh until my sides ached with her witty one-liners and stories of her days in New York city as a cabaret singer. She made me believe in unconditional love when I thought my cynical old heart had been broken for ever, and most of all, she gave me a sense of family that I’d never had before. She gave me a rock to lean on, a shoulder to cry on, and friend who was always there to cheer me on.

‘You’re like the mother I never had,’ I told her one night when she’d stood at the front row of my first concert in the community centre and clapped with a beaming smile until her hands were sore and tears dripped down her face. My grupa ceoil had played a classic but simple Irish tune called ‘The Mountains of Pomeroy’ together with tin whistles, fiddles and guitars, but to Mabel you’d have thought I’d just performed with the London Symphony Orchestra.

In return for all the love I felt from her, she told me that I made her glow inside with my warrior strength and determination to make things better. I listened to her with awe and excitement as she recounted tales of her home city of New York, of the love she shared with her late husband Peter, and by being there to share her last few years with her, she said that Ben and I showed her how to live life to the full again. We gave her a reason to get up in the morning that didn’t involve her talking to herself or to the plants in her garden. She enjoyed picking Ben up from school and she looked forward to Christmas, to birthdays and to holidays like she hadn’t done since Peter’s passing just a year before we moved to Ballybray.

‘I wish I’d come here soon enough to meet Peter,’ I used to tell her often.

She would look up at his photo on the mantelpiece, which stood alongside a framed picture of Peter’s very handsome nephew Aidan, who lived in America, and recall how much Peter had never feared she would be alone in Ballybray for long.

‘He told me he’d send me an angel,’ she used to say, clasping her frail but hard-working hands to her chest as she thought of him. ‘I like to think he knew you were coming here soon after he left. He was right. It didn’t take long.’

Now, four years later and only two days after her funeral when we’d said our heart-breaking goodbyes to Mabel, our cosy living room that was once always filled with her laughter, her wise words and her sometimes intense swearing when she really wanted to make a point, is drenched in the darkness of a dull Saturday afternoon in November.

Snowflakes hit the window, then melt and trickle down the pane, reflecting our mood as Ben and I sit together side by side in the quiet, contemplating what the hell we are meant to do without her. The TV is off again, the clock breaks the silence as it ticks back time on the wall, and we drift between staring into corners of the room, to looking out of the window to falling asleep for brief naps, and nibbling on snacks from the cupboard left over from her wake. We are a sight of misery and despair once more, yet I can’t shake it off, and neither, it seems, can Ben.

What would Mabel say if she saw us like this, I find myself wondering? I close my eyes and hear her raspy New York accent, telling me to shake off the cobwebs of the day and go do something fun.

She was a dancing-in-puddles type of woman when it rained, a ‘ditch work and let’s hit the lake for a swim’ sort when the sun shone, and she taught me to value every moment of time, knowing that nothing lasts for ever, so why can’t I continue on with how she’d like us to be?

‘How about we go outside and have a snowball fight?’ I ask Ben, trying my best to sound just a little like her. I even put on an American accent for effect, but he rolls his eyes at my efforts. At least it’s a reaction of some sort.

‘Or we could walk down by the lake?’ I suggest. ‘Feed the ducks? I bet they’re starving.’

He scrunches his nose and I give up with my ideas.

I feel deflated, sunk, and dead inside if truth be told. I feel like after almost winning a four-year-long game of snakes and ladders that I’ve landed on the penultimate square and slid right back down to number one, back in time, back to the shell of a person I was when I first arrived here.

Most of all, I feel like packing up and running away to start over again, just like I did after the last funeral I attended four years ago, when Ben was too young to care where we were going, but old enough to know not to ask too many questions.

Going to Mabel’s funeral took me right back in time to when my husband had died suddenly. Only at Jude’s funeral, I can’t say I felt the same sorrow as I do for Mabel now. In fact, all I felt then was anger and relief.

3.

‘Will I fix us some stew just like Mabel used to make?’ I suggest now to Ben, hoping and pleading with him for some sort of an answer, or that he might eat something other than toast and tea or rubbish from the biscuit tins left in by well-meaning villagers for the wake. ‘It won’t be quite as nice as Mabel could make it of course, but I’ll do my best?’

Ben shrugs his shoulders, which is good enough to make me pounce off the seat to go and attempt to make Mabel’s Irish Stew, delighted with myself that I’d bought in the ingredients just in case he’d show a spark of enthusiasm for a proper meal, and happy if truth be told, to be doing something that didn’t involve staring into space.

She used to bring us a small pot of stew every Saturday in winter, and Ben would lap it up in one go, sometimes asking for more before he went to bed, and if she had more she would leave it in for him rain, hail, sleet or snow. She’d a knack for making that stew, and even if it was simple and not very fancy, no one could make it taste the way she did.

I throw some cubes of steak into the pan just like she used to and then stir them around in a dash of oil as they brown. I quickly chop an onion, adding a splash of water, then turn it down to simmer just as she’d taught me to.

‘You’re going to need me to write this recipe down for when I go,’ she’d told me over and over again in a giddy voice. ‘It’s very, very complicated.’

I’d burst out laughing at her blatant sarcasm.

‘I’ll remember it, I promise.’ But she’d insisted on scrawling it down on a piece of paper and sticking it to my fridge. The writing has faded since that day, but I vowed I’d never take it down as it summarized her humour so dearly. There were memories of Mabel everywhere in our home, and that’s the way it would always be.

Ben turns the volume up on the TV so high it pierces my ears and I make my way to the living room to tell him off. Grief or no grief, he can’t get away with drowning me out like that, but just as I’m about to say my piece, a car pulls up directly outside Mabel’s house next door and my heart skips a beat.

No one ever visits Mabel’s house; no one except me or Ben of course, and the kind nurses who saw her through her last months as cancer dealt its final blow.

I race to the window, trying my best not to twitch the curtains, but I feel it’s in my rights to know what’s going on. I still have a key to her house, just like she had for mine, but I haven’t been able to step inside it since the day of her burial. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to do so again.

‘Who the hell is that?’ I mumble to myself, knowing that Ben isn’t listening nor can he hear me over the din of the TV. The man at Mabel’s house drives a fancy silver Mercedes 4x4, the type of car I’d only ever seen in a car showroom from a distance, and he steps out of his vehicle and then goes to the boot to fetch something. I try desperately to peel my eyes away in fear he might see me watching, but I can’t. And then I recognize his face from the funeral, even though he never did introduce himself formally to me or my son.

He’s tall, broad shouldered, with dark wavy hair. I know him. Well, I know of him, I should say.

It’s Aidan Murphy – the Aidan Murphy, who Mabel loved to brag about when I’d lend her an ear to do so. Her precious nephew, her only living relative, and the one person who lit up her life even more than Ben or I ever could or would, and he is putting up a For Sale sign in her garden!

‘Come on!’ I call out over the theme tune of some American TV show Ben is now superglued to. ‘You just cannot do that so soon! No way!’

I put on my boots, grab my coat on the way through the hallway, put it over my head to shelter from the snowfall outside, and march as best I can without slipping to the end of the pathway.

‘Excuse me, but why are you doing this so soon?’ I shout at him, recognizing a rise of panic and grief in my voice that I can’t seem to control. ‘Couldn’t you at least have discussed it with me first? Given me some notice or warning?’

‘Excuse me?’ he replies, puzzled. He blinks back snowflakes and wipes his hair out of his eyes as he stands in the blistering cold, positioning the wooden signpost in the snow-covered muddy soil in Mabel’s once impeccable front garden.

‘It’s the week of her funeral, for crying out loud!’ I continue. ‘She’s barely cold in the ground, and you’re advertising for a new occupant already? Didn’t you mean a word you said from the pulpit at her funeral? Are you totally hard-hearted, Mr Murphy?’

As I rant and rave, he stares back at me in bewilderment. I want to punch him.

‘Hard-hearted?’ he asks, laughing as he does so.

‘Yes, hard-hearted!’ I reply. ‘This is incredibly hard-hearted of you!’

He squints in my direction as the penny drops as to who I am.

‘So, you must be the enigmatic Roisin O’Connor?’ he says, nodding now in realization. ‘I heard you were great friends with my aunt, but I’m afraid this is none of your business.’

Enigmatic? What the hell is that supposed to mean? We are face to face now with only a flurry of snow and the picket fence coming between us. Well, that and our obvious difference of opinion as to what should happen to Mabel’s house this week.

‘None of my business?!’ I spit, knowing I’m not giving him a very enigmatic impression now, as I stand, almost frantically in tears. ‘I was her best friend and she was mine! She hadn’t seen you in the flesh in at least five years, and now you rock up, play chief mourner with your glamorous wife, and two days after her funeral you stick a signpost in her garden so you can earn money from her already! How could you be so greedy? How?’

I’ve never wanted to bite my tongue so much, but I can’t stop myself.

I probably know a lot more about Aidan than he realizes I do, and my impression of him isn’t, let’s say, very honourable, despite his tragic upbringing and rags to riches story that Mabel swooned over.

‘Do you have anything else to fire at me, or are you done for now?’ he asks me, checking his phone as he speaks. ‘Looks like this place hasn’t changed much at all – Ballybray was always suffocating with nosey neighbours everywhere. You’ve just reminded me why I left in the first place.’

My mouth drops open and I sigh from the tips of my toes, realizing I am very much wasting my time and that in the bigger picture it’s probably not my place any more to interfere in Mabel’s business. But to call me a nosey neighbour? Aidan is just as I’d imagined he might be. Arrogant, cold, rich, nonchalant, and far too good-looking for his own good, only unlike Mabel, I am not going to fall for his wolf in sheep’s clothing appearance. If he was as wholesome as Mabel had believed him to be, he’d have waited at least until some of her more personal belongings were out of the house before he advertised for a new owner.

In my state of distress, I hear echoes of my late husband Jude’s laughter ringing in my ears.

You need to learn to butt out of other people’s business, Roisin! Just who do you think you are? You’re always trying to save everyone else’s world when the one person you really need to save is yourself!

I feel tears prick my eyes as a ball of emotion sticks in my throat. Am I done? I probably am, if truth be told.

I’m so tired.

Mabel’s wake had been quiet but exhausting, and her funeral had wrung me out emotionally. I’ve had more than enough for one week, not to mention a young boy who has since declared to me that everyone he loves just ‘left and died’ and believes that I am probably next, before going silent on me for days.

‘Oh, just do whatever you have to do, Aidan. You’re right! It’s absolutely none of my business,’ I mumble in defeat and storm away wiping my eyes as I march through the slushy garden and back into the place I call home.

‘It was nice to meet you, Roisin!’ Aidan calls after me, threatening to really tip my emotions over the edge. ‘Keep warm! It gives this snow storm to get worse tonight!’

I don’t answer him this time, and I slam my front door behind me, the sound of it shutting giving me comfort just as it always does because I feel safe here, far away from my own past and from my own truths. I deliberately take a moment to inhale the familiarity that surrounds me, calming down in seconds. The photos of Ben on the walls at various stages of his tiny life so far and snapshots of this new chapter of my life surround me, soothing me, reminding me of how far I’ve come since I left the busy streets of inner Dublin.

I miss Mabel so badly already. She always had all the answers to my worries. She was a fiery New Yorker, a sharp-minded septuagenarian with an attitude to change the world, and a heart the size of the entire globe. She was Marmite, she was mysterious, and she was mine. She was the only person who believed that after all the hardship I’d been through, there was light at the end of the tunnel.

But now that light is out, I fear. The air has been sucked from within me and just like Ben, I feel like lying down in bed and shutting out the world, but I can’t. I have to keep going for my son’s sake, no matter how much I fear I’m crumbling inside.

I try to block out the sound of Aidan hammering in the For Sale sign that is still ringing in my ears, and I pledge to Mabel that I’ll find a way to keep going. I have no idea how, but I go back to making her stew in search of some divine inspiration. I take off my coat and boots, go to the kitchen, where I add some stock cubes to the stewing beef, some chopped up potatoes, carrots, salt and pepper, and I allow it to simmer. As it stews, I do too at the idea of a new owner moving in next door. It just seems all too final and way too soon.

The smell of the simple ingredients warms the air and when I peep into the living room to find Ben curled up on the sofa fast asleep, I put a blanket over him, turn off the TV, turn on the soft sounds of Ella Fitzgerald, and allow myself to shed a quiet tear in Mabel’s memory.

‘No weeping over me, my girl!’ I recall her telling me when I pushed her around the lakeside walk in her wheelchair just a few weeks ago. ‘I hope you know that I’ve lived a full and fruitful life, made even richer for having you and Ben beside me, so no tears please! Let there be laughter and smiles for miles and miles.’

It was easy of course to agree that there’d be smiles at the time when she was still here living and breathing, only a heartbeat away, but not so much now, when I’m empty and weak inside.

‘I mean it, don’t you dare fall on your knees again,’ she’d said sternly. ‘You’re not the person I found crouching in that corner any more. You’ve a whole lifetime ahead of you, and you’re made of tough stuff, Roisin O’Connor!’

I knew she meant business when she called me by my full name and not just Roisin. Remembering her doing so raises a smile and then my tears turn into laughter as I recall her in her glory days, out in the garden defying the elements, emphasizing that there was no such thing as bad weather, only the wrong clothes. She wouldn’t have cared that the heavens opened on the day of her funeral. In fact she’d probably have enjoyed that.

‘Put up an umbrella and quit moaning,’ she’d have told us mourners as we shivered and complained. ‘Button up your coat! It’s Ireland you’re living in, not the Bahamas for crying out loud.’

My reminiscing is interrupted by the faint smell of burning so I jump up quickly and add more water to the pot, stirring the stew frantically to try to save it.

Just in the nick of time, I salvage the dish and I swear I can hear Mabel tut-tutting at how easily distracted I am.

‘Where is your head, lady?’ she’d ask me when she’d find me daydreaming. ‘There’s time for dreaming and there’s time for doing. Which is it for you today, Roisin?’

A knock at my front door springs me back to reality and I put the lid on the pot and turn it down to the lowest setting, then play my usual guessing game as to who it could be as I walk from the kitchen through the narrow hallway. I’ve always hated the door knocking, especially at night, as it opens up old anxieties and fears from my life before I found peace here in Ballybray. I open the door and almost take a step back in surprise.

It’s Aidan Murphy.

A very cold, a very wet, and perhaps a little more humble-looking Aidan Murphy. What could he be looking for now?

4.

‘Yes?’ I say, opening the door just a little bit at first and wincing as the icy wind cuts through into my hallway.

I don’t know this man and I don’t need strangers calling at night, especially not him, and especially not after the way he spoke to me earlier.

‘I’m so sorry to disturb you,’ he tells me, peeping through the narrow slit in the doorway. ‘But do you have a minute?’

I open the door a bit more to respond.

‘Me? You mean you do want to discuss something with Mabel’s nosey neighbour after all?’ I say, enjoying my upper hand now. ‘You’re really digging a hole with your arrogance, Mr Murphy, pardon the pun.’

He at least has the grace to shudder at his earlier insult.

‘OK, OK, I’m sorry for calling you a nosey neighbour,’ he says, extending a cold, damp hand. Again, I open the door a little wider, I shake his hand, and a waft of very expensive aftershave mixes in the cold air. ‘I’m Aidan. Aidan Murphy.’

‘I know exactly who you are,’ I remind him. ‘I’ve heard a lot about you, Aidan Murphy.’

‘I’m sure you have,’ he sings in return. ‘You probably know more about me than I know myself right now, and at that I’m not joking.’

Even though he is haughty and cold in stature, now that I see him out of the flurry of snow I can tell he is indeed a very, very handsome man and a lot older than he was in the photo that has sat on Mabel’s mantelpiece for as long as I’ve been here. He’s about at least forty years old now, I guess, noticing the fine lines around his dark eyes. He looks so much like Peter, Mabel’s late husband, but from what I’ve seen so far he has none of his uncle’s manners or charm.

‘You spoke well at the service,’ I say to him jutting out my chin and folding my arms, knowing I can’t deny him that. ‘You’re a good speaker and can surely tug on emotions for someone who is so hard-hearted.’

He looks different now in his jeans and navy rain jacket, a far contrast from the slick black suit he wore for the funeral mass on Thursday. I know I should really ask him inside, but I just can’t let him away with his initial approach so easily. Mabel would hate to see my stubborn streak or old anxieties creep through, especially now – especially with her precious Aidan.

‘Thank you, that’s – that’s kind of you to say,’ he says, looking through the snow at the adjacent garden of the semi-detached cottage. ‘Look, if you don’t mind I just need to talk to you about something and then I’ll be out of your hair again for good. I’m not planning on hanging around Ballybray for any longer than I have to.’

I open the door properly and try to figure out this stranger who can barely hold eye contact with me. For someone so hugely successful in New York, he is severely lacking on people skills, but I refuse to stoop to his level, so I remember my manners.

‘You’re freezing.’ I say, stating the obvious. ‘Can I get you a cup of tea? Or some stew? You look like you’re frozen through.’

It’s a no, just as I’d imagined it might be, but at least I tried.

‘No thanks, this won’t take long,’ he says, wiping his feet on the mat.

He steps into my hallway, closes the door, and I lead him past the living room where my son still sleeps off his sadness, and into the kitchen, proud of the warm, homely smell that fills the air.

My house may be small and old in comparison to whatever mansion or posh New York apartment he lives in, but I always pride myself in making a house a home with warm colours, mouth-watering smells, and a cosy atmosphere.

‘It’s Mabel’s own recipe for Irish Stew,’ I explain to him, even though he isn’t remotely interested and didn’t ask what’s cooking. ‘She insisted on writing it down for me once, even though it’s the simplest thing to make in the world, but I only wish she’d passed on the secret of how hers always tasted nicer than my version ever will!’

I point towards her handwriting on the fridge and he leans closer to read it, his eyes quickly scanning across the gallery of photos that hang on to their place beside it with alphabet magnets. As he does so, I allow myself to take in his handsome physique, his hair damp from the snow, and I feel my hormones flutter at his good looks, but the feeling leaves me as quickly as it came. I am very, very much done with letting any man interfere with the life I plan on having here – just me and my son, where no one will ever hurt us or leave us again.

He stands up straight, having seen enough of my patchwork of photos from down memory lane.

‘Can I take your coat?’ I ask him, catching his dark eyes in direct contact properly now. ‘You’ll get a chill.’

He looks almost as tired as I am, dark under the eyes and his face pale and a little gaunt. Jet-lagged too, no doubt, and grieving, I suppose, in his own way.

‘It’s OK,’ he says, still taking in his surroundings. ‘I can’t really stay long.’

He shuffles a bit, and I pull out a chair at the kitchen table for him to take a seat, inwardly apologizing to Mabel for our bumpy start and hoping it can only get better.

‘Look, Roisin, I’m not here on a social visit,’ he tells me quickly. ‘So I’ll cut to the chase.’

‘I think I’ve already guessed that.’

‘I’ve a lot of loose ends to tie up here and my plan is to do so and get back to New York as soon as I can.’

He shifts in his chair as if his skin is crawling, emphasizing that being in Ballybray is the last thing he wants right now.

He has property in Dublin, I know from Mabel’s bragging, but I imagine he and his wife are staying in some plush hotel like the Westbury or the Merrion, in luxurious surroundings, a far cry from his much more modest beginnings here. His very beautiful wife, who Mabel incidentally couldn’t stand, is no doubt relaxing in a spa right now while he does his mundane business here in the backwaters, and they’ll have dinner by candlelight at seven and long to escape Ireland back to the glamour of their real life in New York City.

‘I’ve just this minute discovered that Mabel has left us some sort of package to open after she died,’ he says, reaching into his inside pocket. ‘So I didn’t want to open it without letting you know, as it’s very clearly addressed to us both.’

‘A package?’ I ask. ‘For me and you?’

My image of his glamorous wife disintegrates immediately and the mug in my hand almost slips to the floor, but I catch it just in time.

He’s totally lost me on the whole ‘us’ revelation. I mean, I’d imagined Mabel might leave Ben and me something small in her will to remember her by, like the tea set from Amsterdam I’d always admired, or the cushion on her settee from her home in New York that Ben loved resting his head on, but what could she have left for us now at this stage?

‘Yes. Us as in me and you, strange as it may seem,’ he says, pulling out a brown padded envelope. He sets it on the table in front of him and stares at it. ‘Even stranger is that I found it in the garden shed, which suggests she didn’t want it to be discovered straight away, not until after the funeral anyhow.’

I lift the envelope from the table and touch her distinctive handwriting with my fingertips, feeling my heart race in my chest at the idea of what might lie inside this package delivered from beyond the grave.

Mabel was always so delicate with a pen, and every letter kicks or swirls like it is ready to dance off the page. I always felt her calligraphy reflected her vibrant past as a performer, kicking her heels up to the roar of a loving crowd in New York.

I read it aloud, with my hand on my chest, unable to contain the quiver in my voice.

‘For my family – my darling Aidan and Roisin – two of my favourite people in what was such a wonderful life,’ says Mabel. ‘Please watch this short message together and do as I say – or else! Love, Mabel.’

‘Wow,’ I mutter, in total disbelief. ‘For my family? She always told me we were like her family, but … and she’s left us a message!’

Reading her words already has me choked up and I feel my heart fill up at how she considered me family, never mind the effort she must have gone to, recording a special message just for us. I lay the envelope down carefully again on the table, stuck for words for once.

‘Was she always so mysterious in her later years?’ Aidan asks me in a tone that suggests he doesn’t share my sentimentality. ‘I mean, I knew she was capable of meddling and giving her opinion to anyone who would listen, but I never thought she’d be so meticulous in her planning for after she left this world.’

My memories of my love for Mabel change quickly to anger in her defence. Meddling? Oh, I could say so much to him right now! I could ask him why he chose to abandon and ignore her in her final years, why he didn’t come to visit, knowing she was ill for months, why he had turned his back on the woman who loved him like a second mother, just the way she loved me.

‘I guess when your days are numbered, all sorts of notions go through your head,’ I tell him, holding the envelope once more and doing my best to remain neutral and diplomatic. ‘We talked a lot about death over the past few months. She had no fear of dying even though it was staring her in the face, and I thought she’d told me all she’d wanted to, so I have absolutely no idea what this is about.’

We stare some more, and then I push the envelope across the table towards Aidan. I catch his eye, wondering how surreal this moment might be for anyone looking on right now. Here we are … me – a widowed, single mum with so much emotional baggage it almost makes me slouch sometimes and who’d come to this village to find solace from a life of trauma, and Aidan Murphy, a married man of great fortune and style, who’d escaped his own many years ago to make a life of huge financial success away from his own pain.

We are worlds apart in every way, from the shiny Merc that sits outside adjacent to my battered old pick-up truck, his designer clothes to my vintage second-hand dress, and his life of glamour to my humble struggles. We have simply absolutely nothing in common except the love of an old lady who for some reason wants to push us together in some sort of quest from beyond the grave.

And wedged between us is the fact that neither of us can feel any connection to each other at all.

‘Open it,’ says Aidan, handing me the envelope in a tone that suggests he is used to doing things his way.

I almost give in, but for some reason it doesn’t feel like it’s my place to do so.

‘You’re her real family,’ I say, pushing it back towards him. ‘Your name is first on the label.’

He runs his fingers under the neck of his shirt, bites his lips, and looks me right in the eye. He curls his lips and smiles for the first time since our hasty introduction.

‘You’re feisty, just like Mabel said,’ he tells me, tearing open the envelope while holding my gaze.

I can’t answer as I inhale deeply, waiting to see what might lie inside. I can feel her breath in the air. I can hear her voice in my ear. I can smell her perfume all around me, and most of all I can feel the intensity of Aidan Murphy’s hypnotic stare.

He pulls out a silver DVD and my eyes divert towards it.

‘She’s left us a video message?’ Aidan says in disbelief. ‘God no. I can’t watch this. It would be far too—’

‘Soon,’ I say, interrupting him before he says what we’re both really thinking.

Sore may have been a better word in Aidan’s case. It’s sweet of Mabel and it’s surprising, but I do agree that it’s also going to take a lot of courage and strength to watch her talking directly to us when she’s not with us any more, especially when one of us mightn’t like what she has to say.

My own heart thumps at the thought of watching it. I’m totally lost for words and the idea of hearing her voice again, addressing me directly with whatever it was she wanted to share at this stage fills me full of wonder and disbelief at her doing this all behind my back. Mabel and I had made a pact that we’d never have any secrets. It was all or nothing between us. My mind races at the thought of what might be coming next from her.

‘Yes, soon,’ says Aidan, standing up before I can suggest we see this through right now. ‘I’ll leave it with you. I hope whatever she has to say brings you comfort and closure.’

My face falls into a frown.

‘But you mean?’ I stutter, looking up at him. ‘You mean you’re not going to watch it at all?’

He puts his hands in his pockets and shakes his head. He swallows so hard I see his Adam’s apple move and, if I’m not mistaken, I think there might be a hint of tears in his weary eyes.

‘No, I’m not going to watch it at all, Roisin. Look, I’m really sorry, but I’d better get going,’ he says, shuffling as if he needs to escape from here immediately. ‘My business here is just that, business. I don’t have any inclination to allow for any emotional attachment to Mabel or to Ballybray get under my skin.’

‘This is unbelievable,’ I mumble. ‘How could you just choose to ignore this? From your own aunt?’

I am floored by this package, but also alive with the anticipation of hearing from her again, while he, in turn, is stiff, bitter and sore.

He fidgets, pauses, and then heads for the hallway as if he can’t wait to get away from here quick enough.

‘It’s a bit of a surprise all right, isn’t it, but I’m sure it will be positive?’ I call after him, realizing that if he doesn’t watch what she has to say with me, Mabel’s efforts aren’t being received in the way she intended.

I walk after him to the door, but I don’t want him to go so quickly, leaving me hanging like this. I want to talk about it, or at least to get this over and done with and hear it so we can start building our lives without her. I want to talk about Mabel with someone who knew her as well as I did, but he’s leaving and can’t wait to do so.

‘I can’t and I won’t watch it, Roisin,’ he tells me, meeting me at last in the eye. ‘I need to get back to New York in a day or two to my … I’ll leave it with you.’

He needs to get back to New York to his wife and his big business and polar opposite luxury lifestyle.

‘Aidan!’ I call as he walks down the path towards my garden gate. ‘If you change your mind—’

‘I won’t,’ he tells me without looking back, and then he disappears into the snowy, dark night, taking a tiny piece of my heart and the chance of a final connection to Mabel with him.

I clutch the envelope to my chest, wondering if I should go ahead and watch it without him, but I can’t. It’s not what she wanted.

‘Oh Mabel,’ I mutter to myself as I make my way back to the kitchen. ‘Whatever are you planning now and what the hell is his problem?’

I run my fingers over her writing, bewildered at Aidan’s attitude, but content in knowing she hasn’t gone too far from us at all just yet.

In fact, she is very, very near.

5.

I find Ben hard at work in Mabel’s back garden the next morning, rolling a snowball into a huge mound across her tiny lawn that is now unrecognizable under the thick snow. Aidan was right about the storm. It snowed all night long and there’s a chill in the air that hints at more, though for now the sky is blue, and the white on the ground makes everything look bright and magical.

Ben is humming to himself, just as he always does when he is busy, and on the small stone table in Mabel’s garden where we used to share breakfast, lunch and lots of conversation, I see he has laid out a scarf, a hat, a carrot and some obligatory pieces of coal for his final masterpiece.

There has always been a tangible solace in Mabel’s garden and if Ben is finding comfort from being here, then that’s good enough for me, so I stand in silence watching him, delighted that he’s keeping busy in his grief.

‘The garden is like your mind,’ Mabel used to tell me when I’d find her fixing and planting at all times of the year. ‘Find the time to weed your garden and you’ll find the time to weed your mind. Believe me, Roisin, it works.’

A bird table that Ben once could barely reach is now almost shoulder high beside him as he stands back to admire his work so far, lost in a world of his own. Watching him play there with such ease, so at home, makes my heart pang for days gone by. This is the life he had grown so comfortable with; the peace, the love and the kindness. I pray every night that he never ever remembers the contrasting darkness of the times with his father before we came here.

This is his entire world, going from house to house, from garden to garden, and instead of the shouting and name calling from our life before, all he ever heard here was the sweet sounds of Mabel singing along to her old favourite records from her own heyday. She introduced us to the sounds of Etta James, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday and Dusty Springfield to name a few, and Ben spent so much time with her that he knows almost every word to every song.

Mabel had made a little hole in the hedge that ran between our back gardens soon after we moved in to Teapot Row. The hole had grown over the years into a ‘Ben sized’ opening so he could come in and out to her at his leisure, and the sight of him so hard at work now and busy in mind takes my breath away. Mabel’s garden, despite the battering rain and snow of the past few days, still looks like a palette of colour from an artist’s canvas, with various shades of green scattered around an immaculate little square of grass, framed with a salmon stone patio where my son used to sit and chat to her for hours on end.

‘You know, we won’t always be able to come in and out of Mabel’s garden like this,’ I try to break to him gently when he finally catches me watching him play. ‘It won’t happen for a very long time, I hope, but when there are new neighbours living here it won’t feel like ours any more.’

He looks up at me and pauses, then goes back to his snowman.

‘It’s OK for today, though,’ I assure him. ‘You can stay here as long as you want today.’

He ignores me and continues polishing up the snowman, so I leave him to it, having made my point.

I cross back into my own patch of nature next door and I hear Mabel’s words in my ear at the contrast of the two gardens – my unruly jungle versus her wondrous masterpiece.

‘You’ll never believe it, but lawn mowers are on offer in town right now,’ she told me one day, dropping a clanger of a hint in a way only Mabel knew how to. ‘Or you could always borrow mine? It’s really light and easy to use. You can have it any time.’

There was no doubt about it, my back garden was sometimes an overgrown mess, but there was always something else more pressing for me to do and I just never found the time to take care of it properly. I eventually did buy a lawnmower, but its outings were few and far between.

I let out a deep sigh. Without Mabel to push me into things, I realize how little I’d have done around had she not always been in my ear. I was at my lowest ebb when she came into my life, and now she’s gone, I worry I might be sliding down that same slippery slope already. I can feel it in the air. It’s a sense of fear that is so overwhelming, like a tidal wave approaching from which I can’t escape. It’s hopelessness, it’s loneliness, it’s a huge cloud, and it’s coming to get me fast.

I go inside and boil the kettle, then lean against the worktop and let the tears flow, but unlike the past few days when I’ve cried silently when Ben is around, this time I can’t help but sob from the tips of my toes for her loss. I throw my head back and let it all out, all the frustration of what brought me here in the first place and how far I’ve come since then with her help. I’m so frightened again and I don’t know what I’m going to do without her.

‘There’s a man in Mabel’s house, Mum! I swear there is! He’s in the kitchen! He knocked the window at me!’

I jump and wipe my tears, not knowing if I’m more in shock at Ben’s revelation or the fact that he has finally uttered a few words to me at last.

‘He looked cross!’ he says, out of breath and full of drama. ‘Maybe it’s the new neighbour? Is he going to sleep in Mabel’s bed? Oh Mum, I hope he isn’t angry at me! I left the carrot and scarf for the snowman over there on the table!’

I dab my eyes with the back of my sleeve and feel my heart rate slow down when I realize that it’s probably Aidan back again and not some intruder or some keen new occupants looking around. Or is it? Just in case, I race to the front door and look outside, ignoring how my face must look, like a swollen, puffy mess.

Aidan’s car is there, just as I’d suspected, and there doesn’t seem to be anyone else parked outside.

‘It’s fine, honey,’ I tell Ben, who stands alongside me, looking outside. ‘That’s Aidan, Mabel’s nephew. He’s looking after all of Mabel’s things and he doesn’t realize who you are. It’s OK. It’s all OK. Go finish your snowman, don’t worry.’

‘Aidan Murphy?’ says Ben, wide-eyed. ‘From New York City? Can I meet him, Mum? Can I?’

‘Not right now,’ I say, hushing him gently. ‘In fact, maybe we should just build a new snowman in our own garden, is that OK?’

He looks up at me, puzzled. It seems that even Ben couldn’t escape from Mabel’s tales of her wonderful nephew, but unlike how I’d chosen to imagine him with my cynical hat on, Ben had shared Mabel’s view that Aidan was some sort of real life mysterious superhero.

I feel my young son’s shoulders relax when I pull him in to me for a quick hug and the warmth of his touch soothes me instantly. A glimpse of sunshine peeps out from behind a fluffy white cloud above us, showing that maybe a break from the bleak weather might be just around the corner. Maybe if the weather changes for the better, our moods will too. I pray fervently for something to lift us from this sense of despair.

‘I just miss her,’ says Ben when we finally let go. He looks upwards, blows a kiss towards the sky and then goes upstairs to his room, and I know I probably won’t see him or hear from him again until at least lunchtime, the snowman abandoned for now.

‘I know you miss her, honey,’ I whisper after him. ‘I do too.’

She told him to do that, I remember with a smile. She told him to blow her a kiss up to the sky and that she’d catch it every time. I want to hold on to those simple connections, but since she died, so far every day is like a scene from Groundhog Day. Every day is a drag.

Ben will go back to school on Monday and I need to get back to work to keep food on the table, but I don’t know if I can. I need Mabel. Oh God, I need Mabel.

I need to hear what she has to say. I need to hear her message.

‘Ben!’ I shout to my son, who probably has headphones on by now and isn’t able to hear what I have to say. ‘I’m just popping next door quickly. I won’t be long!’

I race to the kitchen, pull open the second drawer to find the envelope that Aidan left with me yesterday, grab it and make my way next door to him. I slip and slide my way up my own pathway, race through mine and then Mabel’s gate, negotiate her path, and then I knock on Mabel’s yellow door with a sense of urgency as adrenaline pumps through me now at the thought of hearing her voice again.

‘Roisin!’ says Aidan, as if he wasn’t quite expecting to see me again. ‘I’ve told you I—’

He’s wearing a white T-shirt which is splattered with paint, and is holding an old rag in his hand. I’ve obviously interrupted a man at work.

‘You frightened my son!’ I tell him, unable to let that one go before I get down to business. ‘Do you always have to be so cold and arrogant? We were so close to Mabel, closer than you’ll ever understand, so how dare you be so rude to him when he’s struggling so badly to let her go!’

‘I beg your pardon,’ he says, wide-eyed and taking a step back from the doorway. ‘I had no idea who the kid was. I was just letting him know I was here, that’s all.’

I take a deep breath.

‘Look, Aidan, I know you can’t be bothered with me or anything to do with life here in Ballybray, but I can’t wait any longer,’ I tell him. ‘I need you to watch this, like Mabel would have—’

We both talk over each other with the same breathless urgency.

‘But I told you already I’ve no intention of—’

‘We need to watch this together, Aidan, please!’ I tell him, unable to listen to his excuses on why we should put it off again. ‘Please. I don’t want to go against her wishes by watching it without you, but I also can’t just keep wondering what she has to say. I need to hear her voice, Aidan, and then we never have to see each other again. Ever!’

Aidan guards the front door of Mabel’s house with his arm leaning on the doorframe and his other hand on the door itself. He looks as though he hasn’t slept a wink in days.

He also looks a bit spaced out with it, but I’m on a mission and I need to pin him down to do this once and for all. After we watch Mabel’s message, I don’t need to see him or disturb him or interrupt his work, nor will I ever want to.

‘It might help us both a little?’ I continue, not budging from the subject at hand, holding up the envelope as I speak. ‘Look, we can put it on and if it’s all too much we can press stop. It’s probably only a few minutes long. Please?’

He shakes his head.

‘I’m sorry, Roisin, I can’t right now,’ he explains to me. ‘I’ve a lot on at the minute and I’m not sure if I can take this all in right now. I’ve a lot going on in here.’

He points to his head and then to the paint on his T-shirt.

My heart sinks.

‘But – but it might be good for you, whatever you’re going through?’ I suggest. ‘This message is for you as much as it is for me.’

His hand drops from the doorframe and he folds his arms.

‘Roisin, I’m busy, I’m sorry!’ he tells me, shouting now. ‘Watch it for yourself. I’m sure if there’s anything in there that’s totally life changing you can shout across the fence to me before I go. Now, that’s enough. Go about your own business and let me go about mine!’

I shake my head in disbelief and put the envelope under my arm. I can’t believe what I’m hearing. He really doesn’t want to hear from Mabel? He doesn’t have time to see through her very simple wish for us to watch this together? My eyes widen. My throat goes dry and I feel tears prick my eyes.

‘You … OK, you do your thing then, Aidan, whatever it is,’ I manage to mumble in his direction. ‘And then you can swan off in your fancy car back to your fancy life and sail on without giving Mabel as much as an afterthought, but for me it’s not as simple as that. I live here and I loved her! I’m surrounded by her loss and I know yes, she was perhaps a batty, crazy old lady to some people around here, but to me she was so much more. So much more!’

I can’t stop the tears now, and once again I realize how hideous I must sound with too much to say, not to mention how I look in my denim dungarees, my hair in a messy long ponytail, and my puffy eyes that haven’t seen make-up for days.

I stomp away, deciding to do as he wishes and leave him to it, when he calls me back, his voice cracking as he does so.

‘Do you even have a DVD player?’ he shouts when I’m halfway down the path. ‘I mean, who has a DVD player these days? I don’t know anyone who does.’

I pause. I turn to face him again.

‘I do actually,’ I tell him, wiping my tears with the back of my hand. ‘We’re a bit behind the times here in Ballybray.’

I squint now under the sun as it breaks through a little more cloud and Aidan manages a faint smile beneath his tired eyes.

‘Why am I not surprised to hear that?’ he says, rolling his eyes in surrender. ‘OK, OK, Roisin! I’ll do it.’

‘You will?’

‘Yes,’ he says. ‘I’ll get changed and will be over as soon as I can. And that’s it, OK? After this we move on. We get practical. I’ve a lot to be getting on with and I’m sure you do too. Mabel wouldn’t want either of us moping over her.’

‘Yes!’ I reply, almost punching the air. ‘Oh, you won’t regret this, Aidan, I just know it! Thank you! I’ll go get it all set up! Yes!’

I slip and slide, feeling his eyes watch me for a few seconds before he closes the door, but I don’t care how hideous I might look right now. I just need to hear what Mabel has to say.

Half an hour later, Aidan still hasn’t arrived, and although I’m afraid he may have changed his mind, his lateness gives me time to chat to Ben about what Mabel has left behind for Aidan and me on this DVD. Despite my revelation, Ben has gone back into his reclusive state and is happy to sit it out and play on his Xbox in his bedroom rather than watch any of Mabel’s message.

‘Don’t you at least want to come and meet Aidan like you said earlier? Maybe he’d like to meet you too?’

He ignores me, his fingers focused on the controls and his eyes fixated on the graphics on the screen in front of him. It’s like someone has flicked a switch in him once more and it freaks me out as to how long this will last. I know his stand-off can’t go on for ever, but I also know that I need to allow him space to get used to how life is going to be very different from now on.

‘I’ll just be downstairs if you need me,’ I tell him, kissing his forehead before I head down to wait for Aidan.

I’ve pulled up my two armchairs close to the TV, I’ve pulled the curtains, I’ve lit the fire, and I have the envelope sitting, ready and waiting for Aidan’s arrival. This is a massive moment for me and I’ve never felt butterflies like it in my entire life.

My heart jumps when I hear a knock at my front door.

‘Sorry I’m late,’ he says to me with no further explanation. He has changed out of his working clothes and looks casual and cool in a pale blue hoodie, jeans and trainers.

‘That’s OK,’ I reply. ‘Can I get you anything? Tea? Coffee?’

I try not to stare. After all I’ve heard about him from Mabel over the past few years, having him here now in the flesh is slowly sinking in that he is a real, live person and not just a figment of her imagination.

‘Just water is fine.’

I show him into the living room and invite him to have a seat while I go to the kitchen and fetch two glasses, unable to stop my hand from shaking as I fill them with water from a jug. When I come back face to face with Aidan, I see his eyes full of pain and lost in memory as he waits for what might lie ahead. He may have found the last few days just as tough as Ben and I have, even though he chooses a very different way of showing it.

‘OK, let’s do this,’ I say, feeling the tension in the air like a thick fog, knowing he is keen to get this over and done with. He nods and bites his lip, still a tad unconvinced, and I press play, noticing how he grips the cushion beside him. I look at my own hands and realize I’m doing the same.

‘Oh God, there she is,’ I whisper.

And there she is. Mabel’s oh so familiar face fills the TV screen and we both gasp at the same time. It’s her. It’s our Mabel, in all her glory. Our beautiful, soulful, thoughtful friend with her soft lilac silky hair, her rouged cheekbones, her cerise lipstick, and a cheeky twinkle in her turquoise eyes. I fear I might choke as a range of emotions rushes through me – sadness, happiness, relief, joy, and a heart that’s smashed into pieces at her loss.

She looks as if I could reach out and touch her. She looks like her old self. She looks alive. Oh God. She is wearing a T-shirt that says ‘I’m back, bitches’, which makes Aidan and me laugh out loud.

I shake my head. This is mad. This is so Mabel.

She clears her throat dramatically, and then she speaks, which makes us both catch our breath again.

I don’t care so much for what she has to say now. I just want to hear her voice.

6.

‘Hey there!’ she begins, and then lets out a bold rip of laughter. ‘I bet you two weren’t expecting to hear from me again, were you? Oh, Aidan Murphy and Roisin O’Connor! My two favourite people who made my whole world complete!’

She blows kisses, starting off her message with a bang just as I expected, and within the first few seconds her vibrancy has me smiling through my tears.

‘You know, I do feel a bit like Queen Elizabeth on Christmas Day sitting here addressing my people!’ she tells us, giving us a royal wave. ‘Now, I hope you two are sitting comfortably – actually, I hope you two are watching this together like I asked you to or else I might come back to haunt you!’

She can’t stop laughing and I can’t stop grinning, even though my nerves are in pieces.

‘So, what’s this all about, then …?’ she says, asking the million dollar question we both want to know the answer to. ‘Well, I wish I could say that I’m leaving you both a set of keys to my Hollywood mansion from where I made my fortune in LA, or that I’d some big trust fund set aside for Ben, or that I’ve a holiday home in the Bahamas for you all to share, but you know I don’t. I wish I did, but I don’t.’

She pauses. Her mood dips and she looks a little more serious now as she rubs her chin and thinks before she continues. I shift in my chair and glance quickly at Aidan who hasn’t moved an inch, but unlike my state of awe at seeing her he instead wears a frown and is leaning forward, fidgeting as she speaks.

‘I have four little messages for you, one for each season for you both in the hope that it might keep you on track on your first journey around the sun without me, and then after that I’ll be out of your hair for ever.’

She laughs a little, and pauses for a moment. Then, she takes a long breath and smiles directly at the camera.

‘I know each of you might feel alone in the world right now, but please remember you are my family, Aidan and Roisin,’ she tells us, focusing firmly on the camera now. ‘We may not be connected through blood, but we are as deep as the ocean and as close as best friends can be. We are family.’

I momentarily lose my breath at the mention of the word ‘family’. I can’t look at Aidan as I fear he might be struggling too. Mabel has always known I have no immediate family to turn to in my life, and I’d never even thought of it, but Aidan is the same now too. Yes, he has his wife in New York, but Mabel was no doubt a different source of comfort to him before they lost touch in recent times.

‘I also know you are both very afraid right now,’ she says, hitting the nail on the head once more. ‘Roisin, I know you are afraid of raising Ben on your own, but you are stronger than I could ever have given you credit for. I wanted to remind you to open your heart for God’s sake and don’t be so afraid to love again, my girl! You’ve come so far and you deserve to love everything about life, I’ve always told you that and it’s not going to change now, so get those walls down and let someone love you for the wonderful person you are inside!’

I fetch a tissue from up my sleeve and lean my face into it, my heart bursting with gratitude at hearing her kind words again, even if she’s telling me off a little. And then she focuses on her nephew again.

‘And Aidan,’ she tells him softly. ‘Yes, you are raw and hurt, and maybe a little bit angry at what life has thrown at you, but you need to make changes and you need to take some time out right now! Aidan, it’s time you put your foot on the brakes and reassess where life is taking you, because I fear it’s going in the wrong direction and I believe you know that too.’

I glance across at the man beside me, constantly fearful that he mightn’t want to continue with Mabel’s message any more. He may be a lot more fragile than I originally thought and I can almost feel the stress that sits on his shoulders, weighing him down. He has a lot going on, he said. I really hope that Mabel’s words can help him as they’ve always helped me.

I lick my lips slowly, rolling my fingers on my sleeves, a habit that rears its head when I’m nervous or emotional.

‘I know that each of you didn’t like to hear what I had to say sometimes,’ she says, ‘but I’ve always had your best interests at heart. So please take some time for yourself for once, Aidan. And be brave like I know you can be.’

Her voice shakes again and her face crumbles. She takes a deep breath.

‘I know by now that I’ve already had my last winter in this lifetime and I’m lucky to have that knowledge,’ she tells us, looking a bit stronger now. ‘But some of us don’t know when we are living out our last seasons, so now that I’m gone, I’d love you to do something crazy today that makes you feel alive! Do something to awaken your senses! Do something that makes you scream with the joy of life! Go on! Do it for me! Do it together and do it for fun!’

I breathe out, imagining how I’d manage to muster up the energy to do something fun and spontaneous today when the snow is thick on the ground outside and I’ve been feeling so low that I can barely function.

The past week has been so grim, dark and quiet without Mabel living next door, and it’s pained me even to exist sometimes, but her words remind me how she always pushed me out of my comfort zone, building my confidence to help me keep going. I close my eyes knowing she is trying to do this once more.

She continues.

‘I know I’ll never roll a snowball again with Ben or argue with him over trivia at Christmas dinner, but he has so many more Christmas memories to make, haven’t you my little monster!’

She stops, purses her lips together and closes her eyes at the mention of Ben and I wish now that I’d pushed him a little more to watch this. Maybe he will when he is ready.

‘And I know that he too will be very, very brave,’ she says. She pauses and manages a smile as her eyes sparkle with tears. ‘Oh, how I love him so!’

She sheds a tear now and looks away as drips of emotion roll down her face, then she dabs her cheeks gently, purses her lips again, and breathes in and out slowly to regain composure.

‘Oh, it’s absolute balls, really, isn’t it!’ she says louder now, trying her best to force a smile through her tears. ‘It’s absolutely horrible knowing you’re going to die. It’s a load of … it’s …’

She pauses and composes herself once again. She looks exhausted, and a whirlwind of questions are going through my head, but her next words stop me in my tracks.

‘I’ve organized some of my better quality clothes that might suit your shop, Roisin. Maybe the two of you could go through them together when you feel the time is right?’ she says, quite matter-of-factly, as if she is racing towards the end of her message now. ‘And among the clothes I’ve left you both a secret gift to discover together. You can chuck the rest, or recycle them or whatever, but I hope you like the little keepsake I’ve left for you to find.’

I gasp in wonder and anticipation at what the keepsake might be, already feeling a cloak of comfort wrap around me knowing I’ve something that once belonged to Mabel to look forward to.

‘Yes, winter can be bleak and dark, but we can always find colour in our imagination,’ she says as she finishes off for now. ‘So until next season, keep safe and warm, my beautiful family. Please know you are never alone and look after each other, knowing that by doing so, I’ll never be too far away, guiding you along the way, I hope, in the right direction.’

7.

Aidan and I sit in silence for what feels like ages, taking in what we can from what Mabel had to say.

‘Are you OK?’ I ask him, trying to break the ice between us, but he doesn’t answer at first, his face changing expression rapidly as a train of thought no doubt charges through his mind.

I feel like reaching out to him with a squeeze of a hand or a tight hug just like Mabel would have done, or would have perhaps wanted me to do on her behalf, but he looks like he is in a different world and I certainly don’t think he’s the hugging or touching kind.

‘Yes, I’m fine,’ he says rubbing his forehead. ‘I’m absolutely fine.’

‘That’s good,’ I say as he stands up and stares up at the ceiling. I wait for him to ask me the same question in return but he doesn’t. I do my best to digest what I can from Mabel’s winter message just now. The reminder to us both to have fun and do something today to make us feel alive … the passing on of a keepsake with her clothing … telling me firmly to open up to love again, and there was a strong message for Aidan in a strict reminder to be brave, to take time out, and make changes. I know Mabel. I know she means business. She would have chosen her words deliberately and carefully with our best interests at heart.

Now, I’m wondering where we go from here.

‘I’d better be off then,’ says Aidan, standing up suddenly from the armchair.

‘You’re going already?’ I ask, trying to mask how abrupt I’m finding his actions. I thought we might talk about her a little, reminisce perhaps, or at least give her message a bit of time together.

‘Yes, yes, I am,’ he says, looking at his watch. ‘I’ve even more to think about now than I had before, and that’s saying something. Thanks for giving me a nudge to do so.’

I pull the curtains open, wishing I’d tidied the place a bit better now that the daylight is showing up how it needs dusting after days of mourning and neglect.

‘A shove, more like it?’ I suggest, feeling it a more appropriate description of my earlier approach. I was hardly subtle when I begged and pleaded with him not to make me wait.

‘OK, a shove then,’ he says and smiles. He holds my gaze now. ‘Clever old Mabel, reminding me how it feels to have no family to call your own.’

He swallows back emotion and presses his lips together, looks at the floor, then directly at me again.

‘You have your wife?’ I say to him, trying to remind him that he isn’t as alone as he may feel right now. ‘You have a whole new world of family with her?’

‘Yes,’ he mumbles. ‘OK, so I’d best be on my way again. Until next season, eh?’

‘Sorry?’

He brushes past me and looks out through the window.

I glance after him following his eye-line. The snow is still thick on the ground, but otherwise it’s quite a nice day out. It’s cold, no doubt, but fresh and the type of day that would give you a rosy glow in your cheeks.

‘I’ll let you know when I get the next message from her. Oh, and I’ll dig out those clothes she was talking about too so you can find your keepsake, whatever that might be.’

He turns to face me and looks straight at me with a force of determination, reminding me how he doesn’t want to discuss this any further. Mabel has certainly hit a nerve with him, but what is it he needs to change in his life, I wonder? Why does she think he needs some time out so badly?

I feel like I’ve much more to discuss with him before he walks away, but I’ve no idea why or what it might be. He marches towards the front door and I scramble in my head to find something.

‘Mabel said to have some fun,’ I say to him quickly just as his hand reaches for the handle on the door. He stops. ‘I think she’d like you to have fun, Aidan. She said to do something to make you feel alive today. Something spontaneous, something that reminds you you’re alive.’

He looks back at me as if I’ve lost the plot. Maybe I have because I’ve no idea what I’m suggesting he does, despite Mabel’s instructions.

‘Fun? Here? Like do what exactly?’ he asks me. ‘Ballybray isn’t exactly hopping with things to do, is it?’

‘No, not compared to the bright lights of New York, I suppose, but … but what was your favourite thing to do as a child when you lived here?’ I ask him, wide-eyed with hope that he might remember something. ‘You must have a happy memory of the snow? Tell me what it is and we’ll do it in Mabel’s honour!’

Aidan stammers, scrambling I know in his mind for excuses for why he can’t or why he doesn’t want to.

I recognize Mabel in my own actions, words and ideas right now. She was the best person I’ve ever met for shaking someone out of a mindset and bringing them around in minutes.

‘I – I guess I have fond memories of sledging with my dad before he died,’ he says, revealing perhaps a bit more than he intended to. ‘Up at – up at Warren’s Wood.’

I clap my hands together like I’m some overly energetic life coach.

‘Fantastic! So, Ben and I will meet you up at Warren’s Wood this afternoon then,’ I tell him. ‘Yes, let’s go sledging! All you have to bring is a towel as no doubt we’ll get a soaking! We’ll feel alive for Mabel, just like she asked us to.’

I take a step back. My energy is unfathomable and I know he is trying to fight against it just like I did with Mabel so many times, but I’m not letting it go.

‘Today?’ he asks. ‘Are you serious? Look, Roisin, I know your intentions are in the right place but sledging in the snow is the last thing on my mind right now, and I get what Mabel was saying in that she looked upon you as family, but I know absolutely nothing about you. Nothing that would make me want to stop the world today so we can go sledging.’

My cheeks burn with mortification

‘Oh, OK,’ I mutter, feeling a weight in my stomach. ‘I – I was just trying to do what Mabel told us to. Like, there’s no point in us listening to her words of wisdom if we aren’t going to take heed, is there?’

Aidan scratches his head, looks at his watch, and then back at me in wonder.

‘Have fun,’ he says and he leaves me standing there, feeling incredibly stupid for suggesting such a thing to someone so busy. ‘It’s not for me, not today, sorry. Bye for now, Roisin. And thanks again.’

The door closes behind him and I feel the room spin.

I breathe out. I want to crawl into a hole and hide, or press rewind and undo my enthusiasm and suggestion to follow Mabel’s instructions, but then I hear her words again, her reminder to do something today to make us feel alive.

Why should I ignore that just because Aidan doesn’t want to heed her? Why should I spend another afternoon staring at the walls feeling sorry for myself like it’s the end of the world?

It’s not every day we have such a thick fall of snow in Ballybray, and just because Aidan Murphy doesn’t want to go sledging, doesn’t mean we can’t. I feel a race of adrenaline pump through my veins for the second time that day, and feel some of Mabel’s old verve and drive return within me.

‘Ben!’ I call to my son, determined to snap him out of his morbid silence, taking inspiration from Mabel as I so often did before. ‘Ben, come on, get dressed. We’re going sledging in Warren’s Wood!’

I go into his bedroom to find him staring at me, the controls of his games console still in his hand and his mouth open.

‘Sledging? For real?’ he asks. ‘Are you feeling OK?’

‘Yes, for real, and yes I’m feeling surprisingly good!’ I tell him, as I find him a T-shirt, a hoodie, and a warm jacket and throw them his way. ‘We’ve been moping around for long enough. Let’s go and live a little like Mabel would have wanted us to.’

‘Cool!’ says Ben, taking me equally by surprise by automatically buying into my plan. ‘That’s the best idea ever, Mum!’

I’ve never been a ‘let’s drop everything and do something out of the norm to raise the spirits’ kind of person, but Mabel was exactly that type and I’d often wondered how she kept it going, but now I’m feeling it for real.

I know for sure that since I heard her voice again today and saw her beautiful face so full of light and life despite the grim reality she was facing when she made her recording, my own dark days of winter are already feeling a whole lot brighter already.

Whatever Aidan Murphy decides to do from now on is, just like he said, absolutely none of my business, but Ben and I are going sledging in the snow today, we’re going to have some fun, and I can’t wait.

8.

‘It’s freezing up here, Mum!’ says Ben as we trudge up the hill to Warren’s Wood, wrapped up in more layers than an onion an hour later. ‘I can’t believe you wanted to go sledging instead of just walking around the lake like we usually do on the weekend to get some fresh air.’

My woolly hat just about keeps the wind out of my ears, but the higher we climb up the gradient of the hill, the more cutting the chill on my face feels and I’m beginning to wonder if we are a bit insane for taking up Mabel’s instruction so literally on a day like today.

‘It’s important to change things up, and we mightn’t see snow like this again for years,’ I tell my son, knowing I’m trying to convince myself this is a good idea. I stop to catch my breath and turn to look down on the village below us, marvelling as I always do at the view from up here.

Ben keeps going as I take a moment to myself.

The pretty chapel steeple sits in the distance, watching over us all. I can see Ben’s school, and to the far right I see Teapot Row in all its glory, then the famous Ballybray lake that rests in the background, a place that holds so many precious memories of summer walks and morning swims on my own and with Ben and Mabel of course. The sight of it all never fails to fill me up with pride and just by taking in this view I’m reminded of how wonderful my life has been since we moved here.

I see the clothes store, Truly Vintage, where I get to spend my days rummaging through high quality old dresses, suits and hats, making them look pretty again for a second chance at life. It’s a place of peace and tranquillity to me, where I find my mind wandering as to who might have worn the clothes before and what their story might have been.

I love it when Camille goes off on her travels to her home city of Milan, or to places like Camden Market in London, and returns with all sorts of treasures to give a new lease of life to.

Everything looks so pretty in the snow, especially from up here, and I’m reminded how we sometimes need to step back from it all in life and look upon it from a distance to really appreciate what we have and how far we’ve come.

I have a job I adore, a home that is safe and warm, a healthy son who loves me, and I’m wrapped up in a community that reminds me I’m never alone. And now, although I no longer have Mabel, she has left me with a strength inside that her message has brought to the forefront once again.

I’m doing this for her, but I’m also doing it for me and Ben after spending days upon days housebound and feeling sorry for ourselves.

‘Come on, slow coach!’ says Ben in a voice I am delighted to recognize as his old self, however long it may last. Maybe he just needed some distraction and fresh air. Maybe it’s my fault having him cooped up with me moping all this time. Maybe I’m overthinking again.

I try to run and catch up, which makes Ben laugh at my efforts. I was certainly never the outdoors, sporty type and any effort to be like that never fails to raise a giggle in my son, who could run rings around me. And in fact the higher we get up the steep hill towards the woods, the more terrified I am of sledging, and I realize I haven’t exactly thought this through.

‘You’re puffed out already, Mum!’ says Ben. ‘I still can’t believe we’re doing this.’

‘Neither can I,’ I agree as I pull Ben’s little red plastic sledge behind me. I’d bought it under Mabel’s instructions when the last skiff of snow came to Ballybray, but it didn’t last long enough for us to make proper use of it. Today is different though. Today our whole village is covered in a thick blanket, and from up here near the woods it looks like a magical winter wonderland.

I stop to take another look, taking out my phone to capture such a chocolate box winter scene, and it’s through the screen on the phone that I see we are not alone in our idea to go sledging. Someone is coming behind us, pulling behind him a much bigger sledge with proper handles and a wooden base.

‘Aidan?’ I mutter in disbelief. Am I seeing things?

‘I guess I’m more afraid of not heeding Mabel than I thought I was,’ he says as he climbs the hill without so much as losing a breath. ‘Do you mind if I join you after all?’

My stomach leaps. I certainly wasn’t expecting him to change his mind.

Ben stands a few feet ahead of me as I wait for Aidan to catch up. He’s beside me in no time and is certainly dressed for the occasion in a puffer coat and black woolly hat that matches his dark, thick-set eyebrows.

‘The more the merrier,’ I say, doing my best to keep the spirit of Mabel in the air. I’m in shock on the inside, but on the outside it’s business as usual.

We clamber up the rest of the hill with just the sound of our feet crunching beneath us and the sight of our breath in front of us, neither knowing what to say nor feeling the need to make idle conversation. Mabel wanted us to have fun, yes, but Aidan so far seems as much fun as a funeral in my opinion. He has barely cracked a smile, never mind laughed at anything since we first met yesterday.

When we get as far as Ben, who is standing by the gate that leads to the mysterious wood, my son looks like he is fit to burst with excitement at our unexpected company.

‘Aidan, this is my son Ben, who was afraid of freezing solid the higher we climb this hill but who now thinks this is a much better idea than I do,’ I say when the three of us merge on the brow of the steep field. ‘Ben, this is Aidan Murphy, Mabel’s nephew who you’ve heard so much about. Aidan is visiting for a while from America.’

Ben extends a small red woolly gloved hand which makes me glow inside, and he politely shakes Aidan’s hand.

‘I think we may have got off on the wrong foot, Ben,’ says Aidan. ‘In fact, maybe we all did. I’m sorry if I frightened you yesterday. Pleased to meet you.’

‘Pleased to meet you too, Aidan,’ he says, looking up at him in awe. ‘Is it true you really have your own helicopter?’

And at that my inner pride takes a swift downward dip, especially when I see the surprise on Aidan’s face.

‘Ben!’ I say. I look back down the hilly field, which from what I can see is full of bumps and holes, and my former enthusiasm to do this is quickly waning by the second, in contrast to Ben’s mounting excitement.

‘This is going to be so cool!’ says Ben. ‘Is that the sledge that was at the back of Mabel’s shed? I saw it in there. I’m sure I did.’

Aidan pats the wooden sledge and then flips it over, examining it in great detail.

‘It is actually,’ he says to Ben. ‘It was mine when I was a kid, but I haven’t been up here with it in over, I’m guessing, around twenty-five years.’

No harm to Aidan and his touching moment of nostalgia, or the fact that this was all my idea in the first place, I’ve now decided there’s no way I’m sailing down the hill on a lump of wood or plastic that could land me God knows where.

‘Who did you come up here with?’ asks Ben. ‘Did you have a brother? I wish I had a brother.’

I roll my eyes in apology at my son’s inquisitive nature, but Aidan is all ears, and to be honest I’m shocked that he has broken his silence. Maybe coming here was a good idea for that reason only, even if I fear for my life at the prospect of flying down the hill in the snow.

‘I wasn’t lucky enough to have a brother or sister, but I always wanted one,’ Aidan says to Ben, crouching down so he is around Ben’s height. ‘I’d come here with my dad and I noticed just today that he’d written our names on the back. I’d no idea he ever did that.’

He flips over the sledge again, and I see his father’s name, Danny Murphy, and the date ‘Winter 1990’ written in black marker on the back.

‘My daddy is in heaven,’ says Ben. I close my eyes briefly. ‘He went there when I was six but I’m ten now.’

When I open my eyes, I see that Aidan has placed his hand tenderly on Ben’s shoulder.

‘I’m really sorry to hear that,’ he says to my son. ‘But can you imagine the fun he is having up there now that Mabel is in heaven too? I bet they’re having a great party and they’ll be watching over us today having fun in the snow.’

I gulp and have to look away, realizing that Aidan and my son have a lot more in common than I would ever have imagined. They both suffered the loss of their dad at an incredibly young age, and witnessing this very unexpected moment between them chokes me up inside.

Ben nods and plonks down onto his sledge, ready for action, his cheeks rosy from the cold and his eyes sparkling in anticipation.

I meet Aidan’s eye and blink a thank you to him for being so compassionate with my boy, trying as I do to recall the story of Aidan’s own life that Mabel once told me. He suffered through his childhood without his parents, just like I fear Ben has without a father figure in his life, and for a very fleeting moment I’ve been given a reminder of just how much he is missing out when I see Aidan strap him onto his sledge.

‘Look, I have to admit we’ve never done this before,’ I confess, feeling once more a bit silly for suggesting we come here and then having to watch on like a clueless idiot while Aidan takes over. ‘I’m not sure I’m even brave enough to sit on a sledge never mind ride on one, but I’ll have fun watching.’

Aidan stands up and shakes his head.

‘No, no, come on Roisin,’ he says, showing a spark of enthusiasm in my company at last. ‘I know every lump and bump on these fields, so you’ll just have to trust me, but there’s no fun in watching. Don’t worry. You’ll love it.’

He catches me glancing at his jacket which I’m almost sure I recognize.

‘I got this in the vintage shop in the village,’ Aidan says to me as he goes back to make sure Ben is well strapped in. ‘One of the reasons I turned the idea of doing this down was a lack of suitable clothing, but a drive around the village solved that problem. I couldn’t believe it.’

‘Oh really?’ I say, delighted that he has found Truly Vintage, a little huckster of a store that has fast become the pride of our village.

‘Yes, so I have to take back some of my earlier comments about Ballybray,’ he admits, looking up at me as he speaks. ‘There’s a lot more life than there was when I lived here. There’s a decent coffee corner in the vintage shop too and I see the pub does a good pizza. It’s all a far cry from the tumbleweed village I grew up in.’

He laughs nervously, standing up now and fixing the very smart jacket, which isn’t some tattered hand-me-down, but a chic piece of clothing Camille had picked up on a recent trip to Dublin. I remember admiring it when it came in to the shop.

‘That would be down to my boss, Camille,’ I tell him, delighted to hear he has found my place of work. ‘She sure does know her stuff. It’s a fantastic place.’

‘You work there?’ he says, his eyes widening.

‘Yes, all thanks to Mabel who, for want of a better word, “hounded” Camille, exaggerated how wonderful I was at everything from serving coffee to styling mannequins, and the rest is history. I’ve been there a few years now. I absolutely love it.’

When I say out loud what I do for a living, as modest as it may be, I realize how far I’ve come in the past few years. I really do enjoy my job and I adore spending hours dreaming of how these beautiful once-loved items of clothing took their first step to a new home. Were they outgrown? No longer suitable? Or has the former owner passed on? Moved away? I could spend my days making up imaginary stories about their provenance.

I go to tell him so as enthusiasm bubbles through me.

I am just about to go full fashionista on how Camille says I’ve an eye for spotting a big seller and how I’ve grown our social media following by almost 5,000 likes through my photography and quirky captioning, but then I hear a voice in my head telling me not to. This voice hasn’t made its way there in such a long time, and it makes me stop in my tracks.

‘Shut up, Roisin! No one cares about your fascination with old stuff!’ I hear Jude echo in my mind. ‘Just throw it out! It’s rubbish. I told you, I won’t live in a house with clutter. If you keep hoarding stuff, Roisin, I’m outta here for good and I mean it. You’re not a second-hand teenager on the scrapheap any more. It’s old and it’s used. Let it go.’

So I don’t share my enthusiasm with Aidan at all.

Instead I question myself for even wanting to do so in the first place. What would someone like Aidan Murphy care about my passion for my job in what is essentially an upper-class second-hand clothes store? My world is hardly comparable to his big city life and million-dollar lifestyle. He only bought the jacket out of convenience and because he doesn’t have his own with him and he wouldn’t have had time to go to the nearest designer outlet.

I feel my pulse race and my skin crawl with anxiety. This is exactly where Mabel would have told me to straighten up and be proud of what I do, but I can’t, so I look for Ben. I look for a sense of familiarity.

‘Are you OK there, Ben? Are you strapped in properly?’

I go to my son and fuss unnecessarily by checking the thin black belt is fixed properly. Aidan glances at me as if I think he has done something wrong. He hasn’t, of course, but the imposter syndrome that has haunted me since my experience with Jude has reared its ugly head again and I need to get rid of it fast.

‘Sorry, of course he’s strapped in fine,’ I mutter. ‘Don’t mind me, Aidan. Mabel always told me off for being over protective.’

Aidan looks relieved and gets back into the action.

‘OK, so there’s a mini slope at the far end of the hill, just over here to my left, and I think we should start off with that one as we don’t want to give your mum a heart attack, Ben,’ he says, totally unaware of course of the inner battle I’m fighting in my head that has nothing to do with slopes or the snow. ‘Follow me, Roisin. We’ll take it easy to begin with, I promise.’

I watch as Aidan pulls Ben on the sledge across the field and curse myself for my negative thinking.

‘Live in the moment,’ I hear Mabel tell me as she used to repeatedly. ‘This is a kind, generous man who is making an effort to do something positive in the name of friendship so don’t you dare mess it up by thinking you aren’t good enough.’

I quickly push the image of Jude and the sound of his angry put-downs out of my mind and take a deep breath. It’s a beautiful winter’s day, I’m here with my son and a man who is the closest person I will ever know to Mabel, and we’re out here to have fun in her memory, just like she asked us to.

‘Go faster!’ calls Ben as Aidan pulls him along on the sledge towards the spot he wants to make a start from.

‘No problem, buddy!’ says Aidan, pulling Ben with one hand now and smoothing back his hair with the other. ‘I’d forgotten how it felt to be up here! What a magical place!’

I lift the rope from Aidan’s dad’s sledge and pull it along behind them, following them to the far side of the field where, just as Aidan had told us, there is a much more beginner-friendly slope that won’t take the light out of my eyes.

‘Come on, Mum!’ calls Ben. ‘Keep up!’

I put an inch to my step and try and shift my mindset.

‘You have to learn to trust again, Roisin,’ I hear Mabel tell me. ‘There are people out there who won’t hurt you like Jude did. Good people who can be your friends. Open up. Relax. Learn to open your heart again to friendship that goes beyond the little old lady next door.’

‘I’m trying to, Mabel,’ I whisper internally. ‘I know you’re right. I’m trying.’

I can feel her closer again already, guiding me on as I trundle through the snow with the sound of my son’s laughter in the air. I can sense her spirit is here at the top of this snow-covered hill where we spent so many happy times together. I can feel the serenity of nature as I notice the sparkle on the snow, the chirp of birdsong and the breeze in the air. I allow it to sink in and, as I do, it fills me up inside.

I don’t want to be that weak, insecure and frightened lost soul I was when Mabel found me. I want to be brave like she reminded me I could be, I want to be confident in my beauty, my intelligence, and the abilities she believed I had inside. I want to just be myself.

‘Be careful!’ I shout to Ben when his sledge wobbles at the top of the hill and, in true pre-teen fashion, he rolls his eyes at me in return. If ever anyone took a tally of the most common phrase I say to my ten-year-old son, it would be, ‘Please be careful!’

‘He’s fine! Go Ben! You can do it!’ calls Aidan, sounding himself now very like Mabel in his approach.

I begin to relax a little more, cursing myself that I let those old feelings of fear and apprehension return, even briefly. I hate that I was reluctant to talk more about my job in the charity shop when Aidan showed an obvious interest. I love it there. I put so much creativity and passion into dressing mannequins so they look smart and appealing to the customers, who I can now chat to freely and with confidence.

‘Just be yourself,’ I hear Mabel tell me from wherever she is now.

Aidan and Ben are in a world of their own and I feel like a bit of a party pooper standing on the sidelines as they get ready for their first slide of the day. Aidan looks back at me and beckons me over.

‘I thought you’d be a bit more adventurous than this after your big suggestion to come up here,’ he tells me, flashing a white smile. ‘Come on, Roisin! Join in the fun!’

I shuffle across towards him and he takes the sledge from me into his strong arms, and then wedges it into the ground alongside Ben.

‘Here, have a seat.’

‘You have got to be kidding!’ I tell him. My heart starts to thump at the thought. ‘No way! I can just about manage ice skating on the rink in town but this … what if I don’t stop?’

He throws his head back, puts his hands on my shoulders and guides me to sit on the sledge, then lifts my two feet into place, much to the amusement of Ben who is in absolute stitches laughing beside me.

‘I think the hedge at the bottom is a good bumper,’ Aidan tells me. ‘Come on! This is a baby course. Just wait until we’re doing the big one.’

I smell his cologne again and can’t help but notice the faint dark hairs that sit below his wristwatch, his tanned complexion, and the muscular outline of the stretch pants he wears under his new second-hand coat.

He hunkers down beside me and puts his hands on my shoulders again, facing me this time.

‘Trust me,’ he says, when I’m all ready to go. ‘If I were to put you or Ben in any danger I’m pretty sure my aunt Mabel would haunt me for ever.’

My stomach flips and at that, he goes around the back, but I freeze with fear.

‘No, seriously I don’t think I can do this!’ I squeal, gripping the handles on the sledge. ‘I’m sorry I’m just a big mouth with big ideas I can’t follow through on. I need to get off.’

Again I feel his hands on my shoulders, but this time he pushes me forward and squeezes in behind me, his arms coming around by my waist where he takes my hands off the edges and takes hold of the rope. He puts his feet into two little home-made rests at the front and I try to ignore how physically close I am to him right now.

‘You’re not getting away with it that easily,’ he tells me. I feel his breath in my ear and hear Ben’s squeals of delight beside us. The heat of his body behind me makes me close my eyes and breathe out, as a flurry of emotions runs through me. I haven’t been so close to a man in years, and I try to ignore how good it feels.

‘Mum, it’s a baby slope!’ Ben shouts across at me, bringing me back to reality. ‘I’ll race you both! One, two, three, go!’

And at that, Aidan tips the sledge and we’re off before I can protest any more.

‘Woah!’ I shout as we dip over the brow of the hill and slide down towards the hedge at what I’d feared might be lightning speed but realistically is only slightly faster than I’d ride a bike. The wind lifts the stray hairs that flow around my face beneath my woolly hat and the breeze almost takes my breath away but the rush I get, even from such a modest first attempt, is enough to get my heart racing and to my surprise, I get a real buzz as we slide down the hill next to Ben with our arms in the air.

We come to a hasty stop at the bottom when the sledges chunk into a mound of snow just before the hedge, and Ben squeals and giggles beside me, then laughs hysterically when Aidan and I manage to tip over and land on our sides, leaving me totally covered in icy whiteness. I laugh until my sides are sore.

‘Are you still alive?’ Aidan asks, doing his best to clamber out of our snowy mess.

‘That was so amazing!’ says Ben. ‘I want to do it again! Get up, Mum! Again!’

Aidan helps me up, taking my hand in his and using his other hand to hoist me up gently by my elbow. His eyes dance as he steadies me, and then he helps me brush off the excess snow from the back of my jacket.

‘I want to do it again!’ I say to him. ‘That was so good!’

‘Deal!’ he says, and the three of us race to the top of the hill again, the sound of our laughter the only sound that breaks the silence of the woods behind us.

It is tranquil, it’s exciting, and it’s as if we are lost in our own world far up high from the village and far away from the pain we’ve known for the past few days.

And so we slide down the hill again and again, and before we know it, the sun that has lit up our day of fun on the slopes of Ballybray goes down, and a midnight-blue sky with a bright moon takes over.

‘That was the best fun ever,’ Ben says on repeat as we pack up, soaked through, freezing cold, but warm inside with joy. ‘Mum, I can’t believe you actually went down the steepest part of the hill on your own and you didn’t even tip over!’

The dark rings under Ben’s eyes that I’d obsessed over for days seem to have disappeared and his once pale face is now almost a tomato shade, but the best thing is how his eyes sparkle as he speaks. I don’t think I’ve ever seen my son light up the way he has today. His hearty laugh echoed in the stillness of the winter sky and the more he laughed, the more Aidan and I did too.

Mabel used to remark how my whole face changed when Ben laughed, and I think that’s why she made sure he always had plenty to smile about when we were in her company. It’s not that she felt sorry for us in any way, though I sometimes accused her of doing so when I felt she was being too kind, but more that she loved to see other people happy. Seeing and hearing my son laughing makes me happy. I think it always will.

As we pack up before we venture on and make our way back down to the village, slightly breathless and exhausted, Aidan is smiling, Ben is smiling, and I am smiling from ear to ear. I think Mabel knew exactly what she was up to when she left us the instruction to do something that makes us feel alive. The more I got to know her throughout the years, the more I realized that nothing she ever did was accidental. Every word, every conversation, every move she made had a purpose, and that purpose was always to spread kindness and joy, or to raise a smile, usually in someone who needed it most.

She knew we would need this to get us out of the stagnant misery that had engulfed us since her passing.

It’s been the most wonderful, beautiful crisp winter’s day, and we are remembering her just as she would have wanted us to. I’m cold to the bone, yet I feel like so good, as if something has awakened within me and as the moon shines down on us now, I begin to thaw ever so slightly. It’s hard to pinpoint this feeling I now have inside. Is it a new sense of hope, perhaps? Or could it be of a new beginning or at least a step towards a life here without her?

‘I have to give it to you, that was fun,’ Aidan says to me. He has a healthy colour in his cheeks too.

‘It was amazing, thank you,’ I say, and I mean it truly. ‘I’m glad you changed your mind and joined us.’

‘I am too,’ he says.

I’m so glad that Aidan had the courage to push ahead with Mabel’s wish for us to do this together, but I also can’t help but wonder where his wife is while he is here, and how she might feel if she knew he was having so much fun with me and my son here today.

As Ben shivers towards me now, I remind myself that Aidan Murphy’s marital status is absolutely none of my business and curse myself for my usual overthinking. I pull Ben closer to warm him up with a towel and, as I dry his hair as quickly as I can, I feel Aidan watching us.

‘You know, seeing you do that just reminds me of me and my mum when I was little,’ Aidan tells me, wrapping his own towel now around his strong shoulders. He dries the back of his neck and hair in horizontal strokes as he speaks. ‘I remember her doing that to warm me up around this very same spot when I was about Ben’s age.’

‘That’s nice,’ I say, momentarily sensing his sadness and still scrubbing Ben’s head to make sure it’s as dry as I can make it. ‘You must have amazing memories of your childhood here, even if Ballybray is the land where time stands still and we have DVD players and the like.’

He smirks at my nudge towards his earlier, less complimentary comments about the place he once lived.

‘It’s certainly a much more happening place now,’ he admits. ‘You really love it here, don’t you?’

‘It’s been good for us,’ I say, catching his eye again. If only he knew just how much coming here changed my life for the better.

‘There’s no doubt about it,’ he tells me. ‘I spent the happiest days of my life here too. There’s no better place to raise a child than near the coast in a close-knit rural village. I have many happy memories from here, lots of which were triggered by coming up here today.’

Ben’s brown eyes dart towards Aidan in a spark of admiration, and my stomach gives a leap when I see a look I recognize from many years ago. He looks at Aidan with such awe that it takes my breath away and even scares me a little inside. He looks at him as if he is the hero he’s been waiting for. I need to get him home.

‘OK, Ben, it’s suppertime,’ I say, wanting now to escape back to the safety of my life behind the green door, away from any possibility of my son becoming too close too soon to Mabel’s nephew.

Call me paranoid and over protective, but I’ve seen that look in Ben’s eyes before, and I’ve also seen a very different look when his father let him down. I can’t risk ever seeing that again, plus Aidan Murphy owes us nothing. He could disappear in a heartbeat, and in a few days he probably will.

‘But what about Aidan?’ asks Ben. ‘Are you going back to Mabel’s house again, Aidan? We could—’

‘I’m sure Aidan is very busy,’ I say, avoiding Aidan’s eyes this time. ‘But we’ve all had such great fun today, haven’t we? I can just feel Mabel smiling down on us already, especially at your bravery, Ben, when you tackled the biggest slope.’

Aidan pipes up, contradicting my suggestion that he may be busy.

‘We could always finish off the day with some pizza? My treat?’ he says, patting his tummy. ‘I mean, that’s if it’s OK with you, Roisin?’

‘Yes! Please Mum, please!’ says Ben.

‘Sorry,’ says Aidan, when he senses my discomfort.

I breathe out and contemplate if I even have a choice right now. I’m totally outnumbered, but in the pit of my stomach, my gut instinct if you like, I am very, very afraid. I’m afraid of this feeling of euphoria, of the companionship and the laughter, of how Aidan put me at ease every time I had a moment of self-doubt up there on the hill. It awakened something inside me that has been dormant for so long, and it scares me. But then I look at Ben and—

‘OK, how can I say no to a boy who is chatting and smiling again after days of silence?’ I say, convincing myself I’m doing this for my son’s benefit only.

But I can’t get too close to this man in any way, and neither can Ben. We are all raw, we are all vulnerable, and when the dust settles on whatever business Aidan is attending to here in Ballybray, he is going to leave again. As much as Mabel has pledged us all to be family, I know my son’s inner pain will want more and more of the beautiful moments we shared today.

Aidan Murphy has a life and a wife in America, I repeat to myself. He is not ours, and he never will be.

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