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