at the moment, though. Hope began to think that the original idea of Matt driving her Metro via the ferry to Ireland ten days earlier to get the cottage shipshape hadn’t been such a good idea. Travelling with the children was always a nightmare and she could have done with some help. It would also have been nice to have some reassurance that it didn’t rain all the time and that this downpour was unusual she hoped.
But Matt had insisted that someone had to do some work on the cottage because the lawyer had mentioned it was a bit ‘uncared for.’ And he’d also been keen to meet the artistic community people he’d been corresponding with, in relation to working in their centre, as soon as possible.
Hope tried to concentrate on the road, which wasn’t easy with Millie yelling. Their progress since landing had been slow to say the least. Just when Hope was panicking about being stranded without their luggage, her five suitcases had finally turned up. Battling through the small but incredibly crowded airport with two fractious children, she’d picked up the sturdy four-wheel drive vehicle she’d booked in advance and had just managed to hump all their cases into it without giving herself a hernia when Millie decided to throw a tantrum.
A visit to the ladies, bribery involving biscuits and juice, and the purchase of a cuddly bear in an Aran sweater had all been useless. Millie had decided she was not in a good mood, wailing so hysterically that a cluster of little old ladies disembarking from a coach at the airport doors had looked at Hope as if she was wearing a sign saying ‘unfit mother.’
True to form, Millie had yelled and cried at full blast for the last hour as her harassed mother read the map, worked out where she was going and made it out past the lunchtime rush in Killarney. Trying not to mow down pedestrians had been the biggest problem. People in Killarney just seemed to walk out in front of the car, not caring that she was a few feet away from them in a deadly piece of all-terrain vehicle with bull bars on the front. Did they look right and left before crossing the road? No, they just threw themselves blithely into the traffic, hopping over puddles and treating the passing cars like nuisances. The Irish were all mad, she decided darkly. She wished Matt had been able to collect them but as the Metro had burst a gasket and was currently languishing in the local garage, it made more sense to rent a car because they’d need transport until the Metro was fixed.
Toby sat quietly in the back, strapped in carefully. Millie, feeling liberated because the car seats were coming later, kept trying to remove her seat belt until Hope had to stop the car and attach her even more firmly. Outraged at being unable to move so freely, Millie decided to roar even more.
Finally, Hope could stand it no longer. The rain had practically stopped and they all needed a bit of fresh air. A
few miles outside Killarney, she stopped the car by a gate at the side of the road, got out and unhooked the children.
It was windy and there was still a fine mist of rain that dampened the children’s hair immediately, but Millie didn’t care. Delighted to be free, she bounced over to the big rusty gate, surprising the herd of muddy black and white cows huddled next to the ditch.
‘Cows,’ she said as happily as if she’d just discovered a herd of rare beasts.
Toby clung to his mother nervously. He wasn’t keen on big animals and when he’d been taken to the zoo, he’d sobbed at the sight of the elephants. Millie, on the other hand, had had to be restrained from clambering up the monkey enclosure, waving her ice cream enticingly.
‘It’s all right, darling,’ Hope said now, hoisting Toby onto her hip and carrying him to the gate. ‘They’re friendly.’
As if to disprove this point, one of the cows lurched towards the gate in investigative mode.
Millie squealed with delight and Toby hid his face in Hope’s shoulder, shuddering with fear.
‘Mummy, will we have cows?’ demanded Millie excitedly.
Hope had absolutely no idea. If cows were included in the property, Matt hadn’t mentioned them. His memory of Uncle Gearóid’s had included a quaint cottage covered with old fashioned roses and an expanse of wild looking garden out the front. He’d been a bit woolly on the other details although the lawyer’s letter had mentioned four bedrooms, a kitchen with a genuine iron range and a bathroom with an antique claw foot bath. It all sounded lovely, but then, so did novels about the Middle Ages where nobody mentioned the pain of not having dentists and how women routinely died in agonizing childbirth. Hope thought about her lovely, only-just-paid-for modern freezer and the shower in their house in Bath where you’d swear you were being stabbed with millions of exquisite tiny needles when you turned it on at full blast. She didn’t hold out much hope for a quaint cottage having such a marvellous plumbing innovation. But then, who knew? Uncle Gearóid could have been a modern sort of man with a passion for Bang and Olufsen stereos, giant kitchen equipment with icemakers, and a jacuzzi. The unknown was exciting, Matt had said before he left.
However, on the phone since then, he’d sounded a bit dreamy and short on facts about things like plumbing and installing two phone lines for the e-mail so he could correspond with the office. Men liked the unknown, women didn’t, Hope decided.
‘It’s so unspoiled,’ he’d said the night before over a crackly phone line. ‘You’re going to love it.’
Mind you, he’d thought she was going to love the black lace thong underwear he’d purchased for her birthday on a trip to Bristol. Sam had insisted that if you wore thongs for two weeks, you never went back to normal knickers again. Hope had given up after two days.
Still, they had the house in Bath. If the rural writing retreat proved too rural, she could always up sticks and bring the children home. So, they had rented it out for a year but Hope was sure she’d find a way round that. That’s what lawyers were for.
‘Come on,’ she said now in bright Mummy-speak. ‘Back to the car, we’ve got a bit longer to go and then you can explore our new home!’
The children clambered back into the car and Hope strapped them in, thankful they’d fallen for her faux enthusiasm. Back on the road, she admired the scenery and tried to pretend that it didn’t look very bleak. Beautiful, certainly, with those majestic purple mountains looming in the horizon and a faint mist covering them like icing sugar rained down by some heavenly cook. Everywhere was astonishingly green in the rain but a tad desolate. Not really like the idyllic, sun-drenched place she’d seen in the Discover Ireland travel book.
So far, Hope couldn’t imagine the sun ever shining in this remote part of the world. She liked visiting romantically desolate spots for cosy weekends, enjoying going for a walk in the woods as long as there was a glorious hotel complete with log fire in the bar when they got back so they could roast their wet socks, giggle over a couple of hot ports and plan what to wear for dinner.
Real life desolation all the time was a different proposition. The scenery around her looked so…well, untamed. The countryside around Bath was green too, but it seemed more laid out and more normal. Here, the fields were all sizes with stone walls and briar hedges going off in all directions. The drivers were all mad too: she’d nearly been forced off the road by some little old man in a van who could barely see over the dashboard and at least six flashy new cars had overtaken her in exasperation on dangerous bits of road, obviously furious to be behind a hire car going at a respectable forty miles an hour.
At a tiny crossroads with no signpost at all, she consulted her map again. If it was to be believed, she had to take the right turn, follow the road for a few miles and then she’d come to a town. She drove carefully until she came to the first signs of habitation.
‘Quaint,
