Last Christmas at Ballyclare by Emily Bell

Author:Emily Bell [Bell, Emily]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Romance, Contemporary, Holidays, Clean & Wholesome, Holiday, Small Town & Rural, Women, General
ISBN: 9781405952682
Google: ByGtEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2023-10-18T23:00:00+00:00

18

Aileen had really tried to break herself of the habit of staying awake until the girls came home. But it was easier said than done, especially in the dead quiet of the countryside, where the slightest thump or step sounded like foxes ruining her garden or, unlikely but not impossible, burglars. It was one o’clock in the morning now. How the tables had turned. It used to be the girls who couldn’t sleep at Christmas, while she sat downstairs praying for them to conk out so that she could do some last-minute wrapping or collapse in front of the TV. Aileen had had a text from Doon, but she looked out of the window all the same to check for her car, which was still missing. She got back into bed, sighing, and switched the radio on to RTE Lyric Through the Night. It didn’t matter that the girls were both grown up; she would always feel anxious until they were home. Perhaps it was a legacy of the months and years she had spent watching out of that same window for Dan.

After Dan had started the course of lithium, things had seemed to settle down – initially at least. He got up, got dressed and went to work, came home for the girls’ bedtime and kissed them goodnight. But within a year the highs and lows began to return, and one day Aileen discovered an unopened package of medicine in Dan’s bedside drawer. When she asked him about it, as carefully as she could, she found out he hadn’t been taking the lithium for months.

‘It makes me feel – nothing. Numb,’ he said.

There are worse things than feeling numb, she thought, but she held her tongue; of course she didn’t know what it was really like for him. The gulf between them had never felt wider.

The dose was changed and then a new drug was tried, but every time she thought they were out of the woods a new crisis loomed. Aileen had planned to return to work as a teacher once Natasha started preschool, but she quickly realized that she couldn’t; Dan’s state was too unpredictable.

Three years went by in this way, until 10 August 1997, when she came home to find him gone.

It was a Sunday. They had all been to Mass in the village that morning. Then Aileen had dropped them home in the car and had driven up to Dublin to see her mother, who was still very low and lonely after her father had died of a heart attack the year before. She had wanted to take the girls, but they had complained so much at the idea that Aileen couldn’t face the battle and said they could stay home. They had never really bonded with her mother any more than they had with Dan’s parents, which made her feel sad. But she knew they would have a marvellous time with Dan, who was in good spirits that day. The forecast was for twenty degrees; there was talk of building a dam in the stream.

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