Chapter 1

The sea had the last word on the Prom, always. It slapped against the wall, hissed back through the rocks, and sent salt in a fine mist over everyone stubborn enough to keep walking in Galway’s sideways wind. Aisling Byrne kept walking. Hood up, trainers soaked, she paced the last twenty yards with a ten-year-old muscle memory tightening her chest and, at the end, wheeled and smacked the grey Salthill wall with her palm like it owed her an answer. “Three months,” she told the sea, breath fogging. “Three. I’ll fix it.” She pocketed a small, smooth pebble and headed for Harbour House. Inside, lights blazed like warding charms. Her mam, Bríd, hugged her, smelling of turf smoke and lemon oil, then set the kettle going with the efficiency of a field marshal. “Grant people ring today,” Bríd said, button misaligned on her cardigan. “We’ll know where we stand.” “We’ll stand either way,” Ais said, laying out brown soda bread and jam with a chef’s steadiness. Her thumb snapped the rubber band on her wrist—a quiet metronome—then she kissed her mam’s cheek and took a market list to Spanish Arch. The stalls steamed with rain and oranges. She was comparing mussels when she looked up straight into the years she’d avoided. Cian O’Malley, talking boat electrics with the lads, head bent, shoulders broader than memory. He looked up; their eyes caught; politeness arrived like a chaperone. “Ais,” he said. “Back, so.” He nodded at a small crate. “Those mussels. Smaller, sweeter. Mind the salt if you’re doing cider.” “White wine and fennel,” she said before she could stop herself. “Fair play.” His mouth tugged at one corner. A flash of blue-and-gold bunting snapped overhead, last summer refusing to quit. “And the Gaels?” she asked, because the air needed something ordinary. “Still breathing.” His eyes flicked to her basket. “Feeding Galway, are you?” “Harbour House. Pop-ups. Breakfasts. Three months.” He nodded and stepped away before the past could tangle their feet. “Good luck with it.” “And with your season,” she said. “Promotion would be handy.” “Would, aye.” He was gone into the market’s bustle, and she bought the mussels he’d pointed to because he was right, damn him. Bad news travelled in threes. A WhatsApp dinged: Fixtures are up. Away-away-home-away—turnarounds so tight they squeaked. An email chimed: GRANT APPLICATION UNDER REVIEW. THANK YOU FOR YOUR PATIENCE. Then Niamh arrived at Harbour House with rain on her shoulders and a county “algorithm” printout in her hand. “Smell of politics off it,” the school principal said, dropping into a chair. “Declan Harte’s name is on nothing and everything.” Bríd poured tea like triage. Ais skimmed columns the way she scanned covers: numbers to be turned into timing and heat. “Two days between Rounds Two and Three? Who signed that off?” “The same lads who move venues when it suits their brother-in-law’s parish,” Niamh said. “Appeal—but make noise while you do. A festival. Give the county a crowd to answer to.” “A Sea & Soil Weekend,” Ais said slowly, the rubber band ticking. “Fishers and farmers and hungry people with tenners. Demos, raffles, kids’ stalls. Fund the training lights while we’re at it.” “That’s a mountain in a month,” Bríd said. “You’ll need the captain,” Niamh said. “He’ll get in your way if he thinks it’s a circus.” “I’ll get him carrying tables,” Ais said, too quick, too honest. “Or I’ll get out of his way and do it anyway.” The Storm Lantern filled the way churches do in weather. Máiréad O’Malley sat at the centre like a general disguised as a grandmother, cardigan as armour, eyes sharp with pride and mischief. Ais put her sign-up sheets on the bar and pitched with a voice that didn’t shake: “Sea & Soil Weekend. A fundraiser and a roar. Vendors, music, kid crafts, and a training-lights jar on every surface that’ll keep one.” Cian stood at the edge, arms folded, the frown-line like a pencil mark. He listened and did not interrupt. When she finished, the room held its breath. “The club’s broke,” came a voice from the back. “Question,” Ais said. “Are we a parish that can make enough noise to be heard in the county office? If not, I’ll go home and bake scones and keep my mouth shut.” Máiréad lifted her mug. “We’ll make a noise,” she said, gentle as a blade. “And if Declan Harte doesn’t hear it, I’ll sing it down his chimney.” Laughter went up like kindling catching. “Cian,” she added, easy as rain, “you’ll help the girl with permits and power.” “That’s not my remit,” he said, without heat. “It is when I say so,” she returned, the pub legend showing through the knitting. Cian’s eyes found Ais; he lifted one shoulder: I’m not fighting your gran. She lifted hers: I’m not asking you to. Pens started, names filled lines. The room hummed with the best sound Ais knew—people making themselves useful. They finished with a plan and a list of problems that felt almost friendly now they had faces. Ais stayed behind to stack chairs. Cian tested extension leads with a small device that beeped like a conscience. “Kitchen pop-up Thursday,” she said. “Trial service.” “I’ll look at your exterior lights in the morning,” he said. “If you’re stringing bunting and fairy lights, you’ll want clean power.” “Look, yes,” she said, wary. “I’m not hiring you.” “You couldn’t afford me,” he deadpanned. Her glare made him grin. “I’ll do it for the price of not dying when someone plugs a fiddle into a bad socket.” “Safety’s sexy to me these days.” Harbour House’s kitchen came alive like a boat pushing off: a tilt, a slide, water under everything. Ais laid out mussels on ice, shaved fennel to a whisper, set cream cold. She chalked a menu in neat lines—Mussels, White Wine & Fennel • Brown Butter Hake • Carrot & Dill Slaw • Apple Tarte Fine—and, without thinking, drew a small arrow beside “Hake,” the way Cian drew set plays on napkins. Service took the world down to heat, knife, pan, breathe. Seamus ran plates like he’d been born with a tray in his fist; Bríd called tickets like a general; Niamh drifted between tables giving people jobs they hadn’t known they wanted. When Ais looked up, Cian filled the back doorway with a length of cable in his hand and an expression that said, If you don’t let me fix this, I’ll expire of professional shame. “Your outdoor socket is a disgrace,” he announced mildly. “One kettle and you’re in darkness.” “Fine,” she said. “If you’re staying, there’s a freight of fairy lights that need checking.” His headtorch made a neat pool of light on old brick. The tester beeped; her spoon tapped; the rhythms nested. He came to the pass once, set down a strip of safe sockets, and nodded at her sleeve. “Salt,” he said, and it sounded like, You look like yourself. After the last tarte, he was at the sink, washing, because he was that kind of man. For one heartbeat their shoulders leaned, not-looking and looking. “Good job,” he said. “It needed doing,” she said. Niamh stuck her head in. “Fixtures tweak rejected,” she said crisply. “Declan himself. ‘We cannot favour one parish over another.’ Wouldn’t that burn your sauce.” “Then we’ll do it on their date,” Ais replied. “Louder.” Practice on Thursday was meant to be light. It wasn’t. Lads who sleep in vans between shifts seldom are. Eoin took a clumsy elbow and split his eyebrow; kindness flooded the hall—too many hands, too much kitchen roll, not enough calm. “Stop,” Ais said, hand on Eoin’s shoulder. “Sit. Someone call Aoibh. Someone else get the first-aid kit. No crowding. You—” she pointed at Dara, a single dad with steady eyes—“hold pressure. Not too hard. There. Breathe.” By the time Aoibh arrived, the chaos had melted into order. Later, in the pub, with Eoin proudly wearing steri-strips, Cian found Ais by the back door where the air was cool. “You’re good under pressure,” he said. “I’m better with a pan,” she said, and he smiled like he knew the difference. “We should get proper training,” he said. “Bleeding, fainting, the lot. If the county won’t give us fairness, we’ll get ourselves competence.” “I know someone,” she answered. “Sinead Kelly in ED. And an anaesthetics doc—Ravi Menon—who’s brilliant with practicals. I’ll ask Aoife Kavanagh to connect.” “Do it,” he said, without hedging. “I’ll find a date that keeps the hall.” When the grant office emailed again, it said nothing with banners. SUPPORTING COMMUNITY SPORT, the header sang, while the body said, We’ll be as slow as suits us. Ais’s jaw set. “They want us tired,” she told Bríd. “They want us to stop asking.” “Then we’ll sing louder,” Bríd said. “And put their logo in tiny print.” The smear arrived sideways: a post claiming the festival had no safety plan, would block emergency access, that the kids’ stalls were “a hazard.” A lurid photo from another county stuck beneath. Comments did what comments do. “He’s pushing,” Ais said. “Trying to spook us.” “Declan?” Niamh asked, as if the name weren’t stitched across the nonsense like a brand. “Or one of his lads. Fine. We answer with a plan. Stewards, barriers, routes. Signed by Orla. Shared with the Garda.” She looked at Cian. “And your mate with the traffic-light trailer.” “Safety,” she said, helplessly smiling. “Very sexy.” “Wait till you see my switch.” “Language,” Bríd said primly, but her eyes were laughing. They worked until the work became a kind of happiness. At midnight, bunting lay along the hall like hymnals. Rain had washed the square. Ais leaned against the Storm Lantern’s damp brick; Cian stood half a step away, hands in his pockets, like the old days belonged to other people. “You left because you thought I’d tie you down,” he said, not accusing. “And I let you because I didn’t want to be the anchor.” “I left because I was afraid if I loved you and this place I’d stop being good at anything else.” She watched the bunting flutter. “It was a stupid fear. It felt true at nineteen.” He let the truth sit. “I should have asked you to stay. Or gone with you.” “You had a season. And then another. And a family that leaned.” She swallowed. “You were never the thing that would have drowned me, Cian. You were the thing I was afraid of losing if I failed.” Rain beaded his lashes. “Tell me what you need now.” “I need you to back me in front of the lads. Tell me if I’m pushing the wrong way. And I need this to be ours, not mine.” “Grand,” he said, and the word, on his mouth, made her laugh. “We’ll do it together.” They did not kiss. Consent wasn’t only for heat; it was for hearts. So she said, “Tell me one thing you’re afraid of about Sunday,” and he said, “That I’ll play to not lose,” and she said, “Then we’ll draw a play to win.” He laughed, soft and breaking open. Under bunting, they held their nerve and the night held them back. They built the thing the way Irish towns have always built anything worth keeping: by getting out of each other’s way and then stepping back in with a plate when someone forgot to eat. The committee chart Siún taped up in the Storm Lantern drew a crowd like it was a horse in the pub. Names went in boxes: Vendors; Stalls; Stage & Sound; Electrics; Stewarding; First Aid; Kids’ Zone; Permits; Press; Clean-up. Under “Tea,” Máiréad wrote, with ruthless clarity: Everyone. “Sea & Soil is a festival, not a siege,” Ais said, voice crisp. “We’re keeping days humane. One long Saturday, two shorter Sundays, smaller nights in the week. If you can only give an hour, we’ll take the best hour you have. If anyone tells you to go home to your kids, listen. We’re not burning out the people we’ll need next month.” “You heard the woman,” Cian said from the corner, surprising himself. “If we want to last ‘til the lights come on, mind your knees and your marriages.” Laughter. The hum began. Dara signed up for Stewarding and Kids’ Zone both; Siún put him in Stewarding and said without looking up, “You can’t be two places at once, love—your wee one’s grand with Maeve in the crèche corner, and we need your voice at the gates.” “I can do a two-hour block after naps,” he said, and she nodded, writing it in. Useful. The room breathed. At Harbour House, bunting unfurled like sailcloth. The smell of paint and polish lifted years off the walls. Ais set spreadsheets next to shopping lists, a pencil behind her ear, the rubber band ticking time against her wrist. In the evenings, she wrote set-lists the way Cian drew plays: an order of operations, a flow. Mussels at minute zero; chorde of music at minute seven; raffle draw at thirty; raffle winner to the front, photo against bunting, back to the band. Divide the night into beats and make sure each beat lands. The box arrived like a bad idea. Bríd was clearing the attic and came down dusty, hugging the thing like a half-forgotten sin. “These were in your old wardrobe,” she said, hair full of insulation. “You can bin them. Or not.” She closed the lid as if it could stop a heart. “I’ll bin it,” she lied, even to herself. That night, the kitchen made weather. Steam haloed the lights; pots hissed; the oven door exhaled apple and sugar. Cian, who had promised to “just check the switches,” took over the corner like a quiet storm. He tested load on the new strip; he tied cables up out of reach; he labeled things as if the labels could save lives. “Menu test,” Ais announced, and the room settled into the pleasure of being bossed. “Family style. One plate per table. Feedback goes to Seamus, who’ll write it down and not argue. If you fill out a comment card ‘more of everything,’ I’ll feed you a carrot raw and make you say sorry.” “You heard the chef,” Seamus said, hand already out for the cards. “Be specific or be ignored.” Hands moved; shoulders brushed; the rhythm nested. Cian reached across her for a colander and paused. “This okay?” he asked, the question light as the brush of his forearm against hers. “It is,” she said. Consent as ease. The colander sang against the pot, mussels clattered, and a hush went up at the first bowl: small shells, plump meat, broth like the sea softened by cream. Someone clapped. Ais rolled her eyes and smiled. “More salt?” Seamus asked on cue. “Less salt,” Cian said, not even tasting, just reading the set of her mouth. She snorted. Caught. They moved without bumping, like people who knew the other’s size in a room. After service, they found themselves alone at the pass with the stillness ringing. Rain clattered the window; the fairy lights hummed. He set a hand on the steel, not on her. “I kept the napkins too,” he said, voice almost apologetic. “Did you now,” she said lightly, though her stomach did a small, mean twist. “I didn’t read them for years—superstitious—but the day we lost the county semi, I took them out and reminded myself I can draw a new play.” He looked at her, nothing sly. “I was twenty.” “I am indeed.” He smiled at the floor. “Less hair. More headtorches.” “Your headtorch is a menace,” she said, because something in her was about to break. “You point it at people and they tell you their sins.” He had the audacity to look pleased. “Useful.” “Deal,” she said, the word neat, her breath a little wild. “Now go home, O’Malley. You’ve a day job and I’m about to turn into a pumpkin.” He laughed, but he did as he was told. When he was gone, she opened the box again and took out the ferry stub. She slid it under the chalkboard where only she would see it, a small, stubborn map of a disaster that could yet be something else. The grant committee replied with the smoothness of a department that thinks “community” is a word you write on a banner. We appreciate your passion. Unfortunately, due to volume of applications— She closed the email and opened another. Aoife had replied with speed. Sinead Kelly could do the Wednesday evening. Dr. Ravi Menon could take a late slot, make the practicals sing. The hall was free if they could swap with the ladies’ circuit class; Orla texted: Swap done. Bring biscuits. She breathed out. If they would not give them money, they would give themselves skill. “This is not hospital,” Sinead told the room. “This is you being clever where you are. No heroics. First, do no additional harm. Second, phone the people you’re paying for, which is us.” Dr. Ravi, the sort of man who makes nervous people laugh by not being embarrassed, held up a bright-red training kit. “Bleeding control is just good plumbing,” he said. “Find the hole. Press hard. If it’s a limb and it’s truly catastrophic, we’ll show you a tourniquet. If you faint, you’ll be in good company—the number of doctors who hit the floor the first time they saw blood would pack this hall twice.” They practiced, grimacing and giggling, on dummies and each other’s sleeves. They learned to speak calmly around fear. They tried on the language like jerseys: “I’m going to press now; you’re safe; you’re doing grand.” When, during questions, someone said, “I’d be scared,” Sinead said, “Me too. So I practice when I’m not scared. That’s what tonight is.” The room eased in a way Ais recognized from kitchens after service, when everyone had done something hard together and proved they could. Cian watched with attention like a hand cupped around a candle. He mouthed Thank you at Ais across the heads and she felt it land. Outside, the wind pushed the flags to life. Ais stood under the eaves with Ravi and Sinead, who each accepted tea because to refuse would be to insult the parish that had just adopted them for an hour. “No personal charting,” Ais said, ticking the consent box because lines mattered. “No names. No photos of anyone without permission. But we’ll put this on the fundraiser programme as a free workshop—skills are part of what we’re raising, not just the lights.” “You’ve built something without waiting for permission,” Sinead said, amused and impressed. “I like you.” “Tell the grant committee,” Ais said sweetly. They all laughed. Away games come like weather—you prepare, you grumble, and then you go because this is what you said you’d do. The bus smelled of damp jackets and coffee; the lads told gentle lies with their feet up; the physio tape flashed pale in the aisle like flags. Cian sat near the front with a clipboard and made little lines no one else could read. He felt the bones of the team under his hand and the shake in them he could not steady alone. He texted Ais: Bus left. Will bring back all your boys in vaguely usable condition. Her reply came in a photo: a tray of brown-butter blondies cooling beside stacks of posters. He grinned, it hurt less to, and typed, Save one for the captain. She wrote, Earn it, and a tiny, involuntary heat walked up his spine. The pitch was bad and the whistle worse. Two soft frees against them, one clean tackle called dirty, a yellow that should have been on the other lad. None of it wicked enough to throw a chair for; all of it exactly sufficient to sandpaper resolve. They lost by one. On the bus, the quiet was not shattered. It sat with them like weather sits—inevitable and accepted. Back in Galway, the rain came obediently sideways. Aisling, who had tracked the little line of the score on her phone, stood under the pub’s back eaves as if she could keep water off the whole county. When he pushed the gate, she looked up and the ache in her was like the ache in him wearing her face. “Hard and small,” he said. “I’ll make better small choices next week.” “Come inside,” she said. “Or we can stand here and agree with each other that rain is wet.” They stood. And then his hand did the thing a hand must do if the mouth is to be believed: it hovered. “This okay?” he asked, not a murmur, a question you could hear over rain. “Blondie?” she said, and laughed when he groaned. “Marry me for the recipe,” he said, and then, to save both their faces, added: “I’ll sign a prenup wherein you keep the whisk.” “Bring me the fixtures officer’s head on a plate,” she said, light but not. “We’ll talk.” They ate, leaning against brick, and made a plan out of ruin. “Stage load-in Friday,” he said. “Generator on a separate circuit—no backfeeding into the hall. I’ll show Colm the layout.” “What’s the lobster called?” “Máiréad,” she said, deadpan. “You’re dead when she hears.” “She named the pub a lantern; she’ll outlive a crustacean.” Siún went brisk. “I’ll do a thread,” she said. “Fact-check, maps, steward numbers, Orla’s sign-off, Garda note. Nothing defensive—just: Here’s our plan; you’re invited to use it in your parish. Then we don’t feed the trolls. We feed each other.” “And if Declan shares it,” Cian said, jaw ticking. “He won’t,” Niamh said, rolling her eyes. “He’ll send it from his nephew’s cousin’s dog’s page and then deny internet exists.” “We answer with competence,” Ais said, squaring. “And with cake.” They ran out of hands that day. A supplier pulled out with a tight email about “overcommitment.” The band for Friday caught the flu. The hall’s back door refused to consider itself a door. Ais stood with her clipboard and felt a tear of anger she did not have time for begin its descent. Cian, who had taken three calls in ten minutes and said “no bother” like a spell, looked up and read her as if she were a schematic. “We’ll ask for help,” he said simply.