Even on Days when it Rains by Julia O'Donnell

Author:Julia O'Donnell
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781407022345
Publisher: Ebury Publishing
Published: 2012-12-16T22:00:00+00:00

chapter seven

* * *

My Darkest Day

IT WASN’T UNTIL 1967 that our family finally moved into the modern age when the local council agreed to provide us with a cottage. For the first time in our lives we were going to have all the mod cons of the times.

Up till then, we were still living with the remnants of a dying era in the house my cousin had kindly loaned to us after her father had died. It still had an old-fashioned open fire, with the cooking being done in pots hanging over the burning coals. There were no electricity and no running water. The house had neither a bathroom nor even a flush toilet – the latter was a tin hut at the end of the garden. The new cottage was going to have all of those modern conveniences. If Donegal County Council had provided us with a castle, the family wouldn’t have been more excited.

All we could think of for weeks and weeks as it neared completion was our big move into this bright, spacious, modern cottage. The new dwelling was just across the road from the house we were living in, so we weren’t being uprooted from our normal surroundings. It couldn’t have been more perfect. The building of the new house provided great entertainment, and some frustration, as we watched it going up, block by block, month after month.

‘Mother, they’re starting the roof,’ Kathleen said one morning.

‘Do you think it will be ready next week?’ Margaret asked.

‘It’ll be a wee while yet,’ I replied, and their heads hung. The construction work probably seemed like an eternity to the children. And, to be honest, I wasn’t very patient myself.

When the shell was completed, we clapped and cheered.

‘It won’t be long now till we’re in our snug new house,’ I assured the children. Little did I know that the interior work was a much slower process and that the plumbing, electrical and carpentry jobs would take many more months.

In November, the house was ready for us to occupy. I’d been given a key by one of the workers, but the cottage hadn’t been officially handed over to me by the council. The weather had turned bitter, and we were freezing in the old house. I’d look over at the newly built cottage, which seemed so warm and inviting, and I’d wish that we could move in there and then. The weeks went by, the weather got colder and colder, and there was no sign of the notice from Donegal County Council. The postman occasionally called with a letter. I’d be delighted when I’d see one arriving from Francie, but there would be disappointment as well when the council’s notice wasn’t in the postman’s bag.

One day, as I peered out through the frosted window of the old house, I decided that I couldn’t wait for the council’s red tape to be sorted. We would move over lock, stock and barrel under the cover of darkness that very night. Francie was

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