All That I Leave Behind by Alison Walsh

Author:Alison Walsh [Walsh, Alison]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC000000
ISBN: 9781473612815
Publisher: Hachette Ireland
Published: 2015-06-03T23:00:00+00:00

I need to go and see Maeve, she thought, when she got back in the car. She wasn’t sure why she’d left it so long, but now it seemed urgent, something she absolutely had to do. Maybe she was looking for salvation, she thought grimly as she looked at her watch, calculating how long it would take to drive around the M50 and south to Bray, then back home again. Gerry would kill her if she was late. He’d already given out about restaurants having two sittings and how dare they throw you out after an hour when you’d paid good money for your dinner. She didn’t want to upset him – there was a board meeting in a few days at work and they always stressed him out. It was funny, she thought as she drove along, how that part of her brain could still work, could still mind him and look after him and care about him, while the other part … She blinked furiously. At least she could do one good thing today. Just one thing.

The road around the city was empty at this time of day, but June wouldn’t have noticed if it was jammed with traffic: she just kept driving, the white lines of the road markings disappearing under the car as she drove and drove. When she looked around to see where she was, she was almost surprised to see that she was coming up to the roundabout for Loughlinstown hospital, ten miles out of town, the icing-sugar dome of the Sugar Loaf mountain in front of her. It was as if the car had driven itself south towards Wicklow. It was funny how that happened, June thought as she drove, how your body still knew how to do the things your mind had forgotten about.

As she bumped off the motorway and down the narrow roads to Bray, June clutched the steering wheel and gritted her teeth, manoeuvring the Land Rover into a tight spot between a white van and an ancient Citroën. The act of completing the task made her feel stupidly pleased with herself. She wasn’t much good at reverse parking. When she got out, her knees were wobbly, her hands shaking as she fiddled with the car keys. She looked at the house, a granite Edwardian block with a white-painted balustrade over the porch and a shrivelled palm tree beside the red front door. ‘Elsinore’ was painted in the fanlight above the porch. It looked grand, shabby and genteel all at the same time, with the two white-painted lions that flanked the front doorstep, a riot of geraniums in pots lined up on either side of the tiled entrance.

The bell played a little tune when June pressed it. It sounded incongruous in the surroundings, a tinny ‘When Irish Eyes Are Smiling’, and when it finished there was silence. June was wondering if she’d have to press the bell and hear the awful song again, when there was a shuffling noise inside. ‘Just coming,’ a reedy voice called from the other side of the door.

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