Free OUT OF THE BLUE a gripping novel of love lost and found by Gretta Mulrooney

yes.’
    ‘The freckles are the same. I heard you were over.’ He has on a dark suit, a mustard-coloured knitted waistcoat and a trilby. His white hair is luxurious and wavy and somehow familiar. It is in stark contrast to the ragged dark of his eyebrows.
    ‘I think I know you but I’m not sure,’ she confesses.
    He holds out a hand. ‘I’m Owen Farrell, your great-uncle — Bridget’s — your nanna’s little brother. We haven’t met for years. Last time I saw you, you had your leg propped on a chair and you were putting calamine lotion on your hives. The itching was driving you mental, you were twitching like a cat in a bag.’
    She shakes his large hand, the size of a shovel. ‘Come in,’ she says. ‘Are you the man who used to smoke Sweet Afton and are those your books upstairs?’
    ‘Very probably. Bridget looked after me once when my Achilles tendon went on me. I was a runner back then, ran for the county. Anyway, one day the old Achilles went twang and Bridget said I needed feeding up. I’d try and blow the fag smoke out the window above but I’d say a lot sneaked back in.’ He takes his hat off and scratches his head. ‘What books did I leave?’
    ‘Dickens, Tolstoy, George Eliot.’
    ‘They’re the companions to see you through, all right. I used to be able to read for hours but the eyesight’s not so sharp now. The Achilles tendon is in great shape, though.’ He looks around the kitchen. ‘It’s a long time since I was in here. It hasn’t changed a bit. Bridget wasn’t your one for the shock of the new.’
    He sounds like Nanna, quiet voiced. He has the same deep set, dreamy eyes and rangy frame and what she thinks of as a countryman’s walk, slow, from the hip. He picks up a brass bell with a stag’s head handle and rings it.
    ‘She got this in the flea market in Cork. I bought a boomerang the same day but I lost it soon afterwards in the fields beyond the house; it failed to come back. We went for tea and cake afterwards. I ate my first walnut whip, my first walnut too. The cream on my tongue was like velvet but I didn’t care that much for the walnut, it was fusty tasting. It was my twelfth birthday, my first trip to the city. I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.’
    ‘She must have been quite a bit older than you?’
    ‘Seventeen years. I was an afterthought, my poor mother thought I was the menopause. When she found out she was pregnant she went to see the priest and he told her I was an extra blessing from God.’ He shakes his head, grimacing. ‘I’m not sure any of the family would have agreed with him. Bridget was more like my mother than my sister. This place is yours now.’ He takes out a tobacco pouch and extracts a thin home-made roll-up. ‘Mind if I light up?’
    ‘No, go ahead. Nanna left me the cottage. It was an unexpected surprise. You don’t mind, do you?’ It suddenly occurs to her that this great-uncle might have come to raise an objection.
    He shakes his head, trimming the end of the cigarette of its ginger tobacco shreds before lighting it. ‘God, no.’ He draws in deeply. ‘Not much of an inheritance though; I’d say it would take a fair bit of work to make it sound. Are you going to keep it?’
    ‘I honestly don’t know yet. I’m still getting used to the idea of it being mine. I’m going to spend a bit of time here, get the feel of the place. It’s so peaceful.’
    ‘You think so?’ He stands with a hand on the mantelshelf, looking into the fire, pushing a crackling log further in with the heel of his boot.
    ‘Yes, don’t you?’
    ‘Well, now. I’d guess that peace is what a person brings to a place as much as anything. Make sure this fire’s damped down before you go out and when you go to bed at night, the draught works well here. D’you know about raking the ashes?’
    ‘No, what’s that?’
    ‘If you want the fire to stay in, not have to light it again the next morning, heap a big pile of ash over some hot turf. It’ll stay