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

in and next morning you can put the bellows in under the ashes and apply gently; abracadabra, you’ll have a flame before long.’
    She listens carefully and to the laughter that touches his voice. It stirs a memory of blue smoke rings drifting through the window. ‘I remember you now,’ she says. ‘You told me that the blue in blue cheese was made by cheese worms and that when the police put you in custody, it meant you had to stand in a bowl of custard.’
    He throws his head back and laughs. ‘What a terrible fellow I was, spinning stories like that to a child.’
    ‘We were sitting at that table, having boiled eggs. Nanna told you off and warned me I was to take no notice of you. Then she threw the window open and ordered you to lean out with your cigarette.’
    ‘She was right to tell you to ignore me.’
    ‘I didn’t eat blue cheese for years because of those worms.’
    ‘I hope you forgive me now for depriving you.’
    ‘I’ll think about it. It was very traumatising, you know.’
    ‘Oh, I can imagine. Now, d’you want a hand emptying this?’ He nudges the tub with his boot.
    ‘Would you mind? I was wondering how to deal with it. I’d planned to drag it outside.’
    ‘No need for that. It’s the least I can do after terrorising you in your early life. Open the door for me.’
    He picks the tub up by the handles, hefts it outside as she pushes the door back and throws the water in a wide arc over the bushes, then puts the tub upside down on the gravel. ‘There, now.’ He gestures at the heavy sky. ‘We had a grand July this year, but August was a washout. They’re threatening a sudden blast of summer now, so you might still get the benefit. The farmers could do with it, certainly.’
    ‘I thought I might swim tomorrow,’ she says.
    He gives her a look. ‘Jaysus,’ he says, ‘you English are half daft. That sea would chill your bones — it’s the Atlantic, remember. Next parish America.’
    She laughs. ‘I’ll give it a go, even so. I used to swim down on the strand when I was little.’
    She can recall exactly the gritty, stinging sand particles in the breeze that always blew inshore, the jellyfish that floated in every July and made her run from the sea, frightened that their pale bodies might touch her, the shock of the cold green water against her goose-pimpled legs.
    ‘Well, it’s your funeral, as the magpie said to the worm as he ate him for breakfast. I’d best be on my way, I’ve a dog who needs his evening walk.’ His cigarette has stuck to his bottom lip and he peels it off. ‘If you want to visit, you’re welcome. I’m just at the westerly edge of Castlegray, the house called Lissan. I could make one of my famous fry-ups.’
    ‘Thanks, I will,’ she says. ‘Oh, before you go, would you take a photo of me, outside? I just wanted to mark this . . . this well, I suppose it’s a kind of homecoming, isn’t it?’
    She fetches her phone and he snaps her quickly by a pot of scarlet geraniums. She likes the way he is business-like, no fuss.
    ‘There,’ he says, handing the phone back. ‘It makes a welcome change from all the sombre photographs of emigrants back down the years; tears and lamentations on the quayside. A great sign of the times, the old country opening up again. Now, I must love you and leave you.’
    ‘Your hat,’ she says, darting in for it.
    He flicks the brim and fits it on his head. ‘I felt for you,’ he says, ‘scratching at your skin. I used to get the hives too, when I was a child, big hot weals that would blister. At night they’d have me demented. I’d be poking them with a stick. My mother would give me sulphur tablets to cool and purify the blood. I still get itchy skin in spring and at the start of winter, I’m a seasonal creature.’
    ‘Me too,’ she says, ‘little runs of itchiness, there one minute, gone the next.’
    ‘We must have fiery blood, you and me.’ He glances at her, smiling.
    ‘Hives are an allergic reaction.