No Way to Say Goodbye - Anna McPartlin [0]
ANNA McPARTLIN
PENGUIN BOOKS
PENGUIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
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First published in Ireland as Apart from the Crowd by Poolbeg Press 2006
This edition published in Penguin Books 2010
Copyright © Anna McPartlin, 2006, 2010
All rights reserved
The moral right of the author has been asserted
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
ISBN: 978-0-14-104534-4
Contents
1. Only twenty miles
2. Who is who?
3. The new neighbour
4. New town, new man?
5. Looking down
6. Meeting the people
7. Past and Present
8. Sunday, bloody Sunday
9. All is forgiven, Brinkerhoffs
10. Back to back
11. Knowing me, knowing you
12. A diamond day
13. Rear window, hard ground
14. Every day is like Sunday
15. A kiss is just a kiss
16. Digging for digging’s sake
17. I hate to say I told you so
18. Beauty and the Beast
19. People in glasshouses
20. Facing up to those who would look down
21. My, oh, Mia
22. Holding on, letting go
23. Sacrificed
24. Clean up, clean out
25. To know you is to love you
26. Down but not out
27. Those left behind
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
To Mom
I remember the days when the power in your legs and arms had gone, all hope for a bright future was lost and you in a home with your radio playing on.
I remember your face and the smile in your eyes.
I remember your faith and the lesson that hope never dies.
To my godchildren, Conor O’Shea and Laura Kerins.
For you I wish the best this world has to offer but when the shit hits the fan, and it will, Bannie will be there.
1. Only twenty miles
It was a rainy afternoon in south Kerry – driving rain reminiscent of the opening credits of a Hollywood action or end-of-the-world movie when, if given to fantasy, one might have expected a muscular, sinewy and scantily dressed male to power through the deluge with a damp and distressed girl in his arms and a gun in his back pocket. What he would do with the girl or the gun, and what the girl and the gun had to do with the rain, would be left up to the imagination of the fantasist. Still, Mary thought, there’s nothing like the image of a wet man with a purpose to brighten up an otherwise boring indoor day.
She sat on the window-seat and pulled back the curtains to watch water hit water and slide from the decks of the boats bobbing fiercely by the pier. Mr Monkels, her large yellow Labrador, lay with his head on her lap. He was peeved because rain meant no walk and he loved his walks, even though his advanced years meant that they were little more than a series of rests. Mary smiled