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‘Where there’s a secret,’ she says, ‘there’s shame – and shame is something we can do without.’
Neither one of us talks, the way people sometimes don’t when they are happy – but as soon as I have this thought, I realise its opposite is also true.
This water is cool and clean as anything I have ever tasted: it tastes of my father leaving, of him never having been there, of having nothing after he was gone. I dip it again and lift it level with the sunlight. I drink six measures of water and wish, for now, that this place without shame or secrets could be my home.
Everything changes into something else, turns into some version of what it was before.
‘God help you, child,’ she whispers. ‘If you were mine, I’d never leave you in a house with strangers.’
Kinsella takes my hand in his. As soon as he takes it, I realise my father has never once held my hand, and some part of me wants Kinsella to let me go so I won’t have to feel this. It’s a hard feeling but as we walk along I begin to settle and let the difference between my life at home and the one I have here be. He takes shorter steps so we can walk in time. I think about the woman in the cottage, of how she walked and spoke, and conclude that there are huge differences between people.
‘You don’t ever have to say anything,’ he says. ‘Always remember that as a thing you need never do. Many’s the man lost much just because he missed a perfect opportunity to say nothing.’
‘Ah, the women are nearly always right, all the same,’ he says. ‘Do you know what the women have a gift for?’ ‘What?’ ‘Eventualities. A good woman can look far down the line and smell what’s coming before a man even gets a sniff of it.’