The Transatlantic Book Club (Finfarran Peninsula #5) - Felicity Hayes-McCoy Page 0,5
come in tomorrow you can get accustomed to how I run things here.’
‘No problem.’ Cassie took out her phone. ‘I got some great pix over in Resolve. Look, that was the farewell party. Only forty-eight hours ago – no wonder Pat’s still asleep.’
As Hanna swiped through them, the photos became more erratic. Decorous shots of smiling women with platters of food, and a musician in a bright green waistcoat degenerated into increasingly crooked selfies of Cassie and Pat in party hats. ‘It looks like you had quite a night.’ The next shot was another selfie, this time of Cassie and a red-headed boy holding up pints of Guinness. ‘Who’s the young man?’
Cassie shrugged. ‘Just the guy who set things up for the music. His name’s Shanahan. His grandma runs the club’s quilting guild. The family came from near Ballyfin, generations back.’
Faced with such a statement, the instinctive reaction of most of Hanna’s neighbours would be to establish certain facts. Which branch of the Shanahan family was in question, what village the specific household had come from, and the exact date on which they’d left Finfarran. But Cassie had stopped abruptly, as if regretting having volunteered the information, and, having spent most of her adult life in London, Hanna had lost that particular native instinct and gained a cosmopolitan sense of tact. Instead she exclaimed at a photo of a large cake covered with glitter, held aloft by a lady wearing two bouncy shamrocks, like rabbit’s ears.
Cassie giggled. ‘It was humungous! And Pat had to cut it with a ceremonial knife. I mean, the whole thing was crazy, but people were so kind.’
‘So the holiday was a success?’
‘I hope so. I don’t know, really.’ Cassie’s nose wrinkled. ‘I haven’t dealt with grief before. It has stages, doesn’t it? Denial and anger and stuff. And, eventually, acceptance? I don’t know how long it’s supposed to take.’
Hanna suggested it might not be that simple.
Intent on what she clearly viewed as a project, Cassie frowned. ‘I can’t understand how Pat came to marry Ger. She’s such a sweetie and he was just an old crab. Don’t you think?’
Aware that the woman reading nearby was now unashamedly eavesdropping, Hanna hesitated. While enquiries about antecedents were the accepted norm in Finfarran, direct questions like this one were not. Nevertheless, gossip, whether harmless or malicious, was an inevitable part of daily life. As a divorcée who’d returned to the town she’d grown up in, Hanna’s own marriage had been the subject of covert speculation, and she knew how distressing it could be. She was about to issue a quiet reproof to Cassie when she was struck by a memory of standing on a dais, exactly where the library’s Popular Fiction shelving stood now. She was a seventeen-year-old schoolgirl enduring reproof from Sister Consuelo, an ancient nun whose remit had included ‘Pastoral Care’. The experience was humiliating, and as soon as Hanna had been released she’d forgotten whatever the lecture had contained. What had stayed with her, however, was a fierce sense of resentment. Eager to avoid a similar reaction from Cassie, she settled for a smile and the recommendation that she get a good night’s sleep before coming to work.
For the next while, Hanna was immersed in emails, but later she wondered if her brisk change of subject had been either kind to Cassie or fair to Pat. Many private dramas were played out in this public space, where much could be learned from people’s choices of books and films, where they sat and who they met here and, like most local librarians, Hanna’s instinct was to keep her eyes open and her mouth shut. But that was the wisdom of experience, and Cassie was impetuous and young. With a pang of fellow-feeling for long-dead Sister Consuelo, Hanna returned to her work. But the hamster wheel at the back of her mind kept turning. With luck, Cassie would have more sense than to go about asking indiscriminate questions. On the other hand, having not been warned, it was possible that she wouldn’t. And what would happen then?
Chapter Three
As Pat came downstairs she noticed the guest-room door was open and, judging by the look of the kitchen, Cassie had eaten and gone out. It was practically lunchtime but Pat discovered she was craving a real breakfast. Not a fry or anything heavy but maybe some toast and an egg. She could scramble the egg, throw in a bit of parsley, and call it brunch.