She blushed and for the first time he could see her relative youth peep out from behind the care-worn features.
‘My life’s been...complicated. Not quite the life I ever expected, matter of fact.’
Curiosity was gnawing at him but he kept his features perfectly schooled, the disinterested bystander in whom he hoped she would confide. He could feel in his bones that the questions he wanted answering were about to be answered.
‘Why don’t you talk about it?’ he murmured, resting the cup on the table and leaning towards her, his forearms resting on his thighs. ‘You probably feel constrained talking to Brianna. In such a small, close-knit community perhaps you didn’t want your private life to be thrown into the public arena?’ He could see her hesitate. Secrets were always burdensome. ‘Not that Brianna would ever be one to reveal a confidence, but one can never be too sure, I suppose.’
‘And who knows how long I have left?’ Bridget said quietly. She plucked distractedly at the loose gown she was wearing and stared off through the window as though it might offer up some inspiration. ‘My health isn’t good: stress, built up over the years. The doctor says I could have another heart attack at any time. They can’t promise that the next time round won’t be fatal.’ She looked at him pensively. ‘And I suppose I wouldn’t want to burden Brianna with my life story. She’s a sweet girl but I would never want to put her in a position of having to express a sympathy she couldn’t feel.’
Or pass judgement which would certainly mean the end of your happy times with her, Leo thought with another spurt of that healthy cynicism, cynicism he knew he had to work at.
‘But I don’t come from here...’ he encouraged in a low voice.
‘I grew up in a place not dissimilar to this,’ she murmured. ‘Well, bigger, but not by a lot. Everybody knew everybody else. All the girls knew the boys they would end up marrying. I was destined for Jimmy O’Connor; lived two doors away. His parents were my parents’ best friends. In fact, we were practically born on the same day, but that all went up the spout when I met Robbie Cabrera. Roberto Cabrera.’
Leo stilled. ‘He was Spanish?’
‘Yes. His father had come over for a temporary job on a building site ten miles out of town. Six months. He was put into our school and all the girls went mad for him. I used to be pretty once, when I was a young girl of fifteen...you might not guess it now.’ She sighed and looked at him with a girlish smile which, like that blush, brought her buried youth back up to the surface.
‘And what happened?’ Leo was surprised he could talk so naturally, as though he was listening to someone else’s story rather than his own.
‘We fell madly in love. In the way that you do when you’re young and innocent.’ She shot him a concerned looked and he hastened to assure her that whatever she told him would stay with him. Adrenaline was pumping through him. He hadn’t experienced this edge-of-the-precipice feeling in a very long time. If ever. This was why he was here. The only reason he was here.
From nowhere, he had a vision of Brianna laughing and telling him that there was nothing more satisfying than growing your own tomatoes in summer, and teasing him that he probably wouldn’t understand because he probably lived in one of those horrible apartment blocks where you wouldn’t be able to grow a tomato if your life depended on it.
He thought of himself, picking her up then and hauling her off to his bedroom at a ridiculous hour after the pub had finally been closed. Thought of her curving, feline smile as she lay on his bed, half-naked, her small, perfect breasts turning him on until his erection felt painful and he couldn’t get his clothes off fast enough.
‘Sorry?’ He leaned in closer. ‘You were saying...?’
‘I know. You’re shocked. And I don’t mean to shock you but it’s a relief to talk about this; I haven’t with anyone. I fell pregnant. At fifteen. My family were distraught, and of course there was no question of abortion, not that we would have got rid of it. No, Robbie and I were committed to one another.’
‘Pregnant...’
‘I was still a child myself. We both were. We wanted to keep it but my parents wouldn’t allow it. I was shipped off to a convent to give birth.’
‘You wanted to keep it?’
‘I never even held it. Never knew if it was a boy or a girl. I returned to Ireland, went back to school, but from that moment on my parents were lost to me. I had three younger siblings and they never knew what had happened. Still don’t. Family life was never the same again.’