Page 34 of To Hell With It
I lost count of how many people were in the pub. I guessed around fifty, maybe. I could see Mrs O’Callaghan amongst the villagers. She was sandwiched between Ellie from the bakery and Ted Kelly, who used to run the post office before it closed down. She was in the room, but her eyes were somewhere else, probably with Mr O’Callaghan. Niall was stood not far from them, with a glass of whisky (I assumed) in his hand and a look of something I couldn’t quite place on his face. Grief, I supposed.
Maggie Ryan was perched on a chair by the buffet table. Her husband, Ron, was by her side holding a plate of mini pasties, and she looked like she wanted to let out a silent scream.
I had often wondered why she would stay in an unhappy marriage – what was the point? It wasn’t like they had children to think about. They lived on their own with nothing keeping them together, so why did she stay?
Maggie Ryan fascinated me and I’m not even sure why. She was extraordinary and ordinary at the same time, but she was desperately unhappy, I could see that.
Why else would she do the things she did? It wasn’t for the money – Ron had been on a good wage as a salesman before he retired and she didn’t want for anything, so it must have been because she was unhappy with him. She couldn’t have loved him. Not having all that phone sex with other men.
I wanted to ask her all these questions. I’d had plenty of opportunity over the years when she’d come into the shop, especially because Niall would always leave me to serve her. He didn’t like Maggie, I knew that, but I didn’t know why. Maybe he’d phoned her hotline once and she’d rejected him? Maybe that was what it was. But he always went into the back storeroom to count the stock whenever she came in and wait until she’d left before he came out.
I asked him once and he flat out denied it, which was an obvious lie because there was not enough stock to count three or four times a week, which is how often Maggie Ryan would come in.
I made my way over to Niall and touched his arm gently.
‘I’m sorry about your dad, Niall,’ I said. ‘I hope you’re OK.’
‘How are the woodlice?’
He took me by surprise.
‘They’re … they’re good. Still alive.’
‘You got them all out then?’
‘I just brushed them off.’
He nodded but didn’t say anything.
‘Niall?’
‘Yep?’
‘Was that why you were at the shop so early that morning I phoned for my keys, because your dad had died?’
‘Yep,’ he said again.
‘Why didn’t you say anything?’
‘You needed my help.’
‘Your dad had died.’
‘Exactly. He wasn’t going anywhere. Well, I guess, technically he already had.’
‘I would never have called if I’d known.’
‘Then how would you have got back in?’
‘I suppose I would have waited for Jack to wake up.’
‘Then he would have seen you naked.’
‘I wasn’t naked.’
‘Semi-naked then.’
‘I had a T-shirt on.’
