Free Secrets of the Lighthouse by Santa Montefiore

Conor? He has not buried his pain like Ida and Finbar. He carries it around like a burning coal in the heart of his heart. If I had known he loved me so much I would never have done
what I did. Oh, Conor, my love, why didn’t you love me like this when I was alive?
    He now spends most of his time in Dublin, and yet the films he worked so hard and with such enthusiasm to produce have dried up like thirsty hydrangeas. He’s drinking too much and partying
too hard, in the hope that the noise of people and music will distract him from the pain in his heart and the nagging of his conscience. When he takes the children to Ballymaldoon he stays away
from the castle. He rides out over the hills, his black hair like a mane in the wind behind him as his horse jumps the stone walls and ditches. He walks up the beaches, a dark and lonely figure
against the white sand and wild sea. He doesn’t know that I’m right beside him for I leave no footprints, and when I reach out to take his hand I am as cool and intangible as the wind
itself.
    He doesn’t venture into town. The Pot of Gold is full of gossip and he cannot bear the condemning glances and the whispering. They were suspicious of him right at the start, when he bought
the castle all those years ago. He was a townie from Dublin with an English mother and an Irish father, and as much as he thought of himself as Irish, the full-blooded Irish will always say that an
Anglo-Irishman is Anglo first and Irish second. This simply isn’t the case with Conor and never has been. He loves Ireland with all his heart and there’s no space in there for England.
But they resented the fact that he didn’t socialize or throw lavish parties for the locals, and worse, that he didn’t attend Mass. But Conor is not a religious man, although he is a
deep thinker and I know he feels closer to God in nature than in a church. I wonder now whether he feels God has betrayed him – whether he doubts there is a God after all. I would like to say
that I know, now that I am dead; but I have chosen to remain attached to the earth so I am as ignorant of God as he is. I only know that we don’t die, for I am proof enough of that. But where
we go after, I will have to wait and see. Right now, I have eyes only for those I love; I daren’t raise them to heaven in case I’m tempted away.
    When Conor married me, I was a dreamy Irish girl with aspirations to being an actress. We met on the set of a film he was producing in Galway. I had a small part and everyone said I caught his
eye because I wanted to better my career. But the truth is we fell in love. I appealed to his romantic and creative nature and he to mine. He said I was the sort of girl who inspired poems and
paintings and songs. But as much as I desired, I was not the sort of girl who could take the lead in a big film. So, I threw myself into Ballymaldoon Castle and into the nurturing of our two
children and settled with the poems Conor wrote about me and the painting he commissioned to hang on the wall above the grand fireplace in the hall. Conor was everything I wanted and I knew that as
long as I was with him, I would never desire anything more. I wouldn’t lament the actor’s life I had so readily given up and I wouldn’t dream of fame and adulation because if I
was the light in Conor’s eyes I wouldn’t need to shine in anyone else’s. But love is a strange thing. Sometimes, however much love a person gets, it is somehow never enough.
    When I can no longer bear the heaviness of Dublin, I fly about the tall trees and hills of Connemara and my heart sings with joy. I glide upon the surface of the lake where clouds are reflected
on the water like scenes from my life that I view with detachment, as if they belong to somebody else. I stand on the clifftop, overlooking the ruined lighthouse where my life ended. I watch from
afar as I cannot bear to go there. I linger in the places I love: the castle, the sailor’s church, the