Free The Spinning Heart by Donal Ryan

as Spanish Point where the search party was organized. I’ll never forget that drive; the last time I had hope. There were no mobile phones that time, so I kept thinking we’ll get there now and they’ll have him, wrapped in thick white towels, shivering and crying from the shock and the cold. If there had been a longer road, I’d have made John English take it. I’d have stayed in that car forever, safe with hope. I knew the minute we pulled up there was no hope for my boy – no one seemed to be hurrying . I screamed at them all to get back into the sea, to hurry, hurry, he’ll be halfway to America, but they only looked sadly at me and then out at the rolling blue and shook their heads. He was never got for a finish. The greedy Atlantic ate him and kept his little bones.
    I charged like a madwoman off up along the coast road towards Quilty for miles and miles that day, looking out at the ocean, as if I might spot him, treading water and waving his little hand, waiting to be rescued. There was a second search party raised to find me . I came to a little church with a lovely name: Star of the Sea. I went in and knelt down and blessed myself and bowed my head and anyone looking on would have thought I was praying to God for my lost son. I wasn’t, I was cursing Him. You bastard, I was saying, you bastard, just because your son was killed, have we all to suffer forever? Have you not had enough revenge? And your boy only stayed dead three days. Will my boy be back on Sunday, the way yours was? I never went to Mass again. I stayed away from God and Clare for twenty years. Now I’m thinking of going to live in Clare, and not that far from where Peter was lost, in a new hotel as a live-in housekeeper. I’d be head of housekeeping, actually, if you don’t mind.
    My husband blamed me for Peter’s death. It was my brother took him off fishing. It was I left him off that day with his littleshorts on him, slathered with sun-cream, with his rod and his bag of sandwiches and sweets, hardly able to talk with the excitement of being allowed go fishing in the sea with his uncle and his brothers. If he’d been there, Michael said, he’d have warned him of the dangers, he’d have had my brother well told not to take his eyes off him for a second, he’d have done the world of things I didn’t do. The list of things he’d have done got longer and bigger over the years until we couldn’t see each other at either side of it, and he left and never came back and the only difference was the noise of him was gone. There was no more and no less pain. We pass each other every now and again; we only barely nod. The children don’t tell me what they talk about with him. I don’t care. He’s gone very old-looking lately.
    I haven’t a penny left. Michael sent money every single week until the last one left home, and then the envelopes stopped. I worked for years and years below in Thurles in the Town End Hotel. I was let go last year and they gave my job to a skinny little young wan. I went in and said it to Mary Wills, the personnel manager. Oh, that wasn’t your job we gave that girl, Bridie, you were never a manager you see, she’s been taken on as an accommodation manager . It would have been against the law to make me redundant and then to give someone else my job, so they made up a new name for my job and gave it to that little strap. Next thing didn’t I see an ad in the paper for interviews for jobs in a new hotel that was opening. Anyone could go, all you had to do was go in as far as Nenagh to the Abbey Court and wait your turn to talk to some little madam in a short skirt who thought she knew it all. Your CV isn’t very varied Bridie, she smirked at me. I haven’t had a very varied life, I told her. I never missed a day of work though, or looked for a rise, or left a speck of dirt in a room. I didn’t even want their poxy job, but I have it got now, and theoffer of living in and having all my meals there. You could