What She Never Told Me Read Online Free

light of the winter sun brings out the colours of the fields and farmland, the deepest greens, the darkest yellows. It’s the kind of day that makes you want to stay in Ireland forever.
    As we pull up in front of the terminal, Angela leans across and hugs me and I disintegrate into tears. It feels like a severing.
    She turns the engine back on. ‘I’m not leaving you here like this. I’m going to put this thing in the car park and I’ll come in with you,’ she says.
    I hate goodbyes. Maybe it’s an Irish thing, the last-minute rush of emotion that never fails to hit as you realise you’re leaving yet again. I like to jump out of the car with a quick wave and rush into the terminal without a backward glance. But, this time, I’m grateful that she’s going to stay with me until it’s time for me to walk through the barrier.
    We sit at one of the cafés on the departures floor and reminisce about my mother.
    ‘I have to admit it was a bit of a shock when my father called me in Liverpool to say he was getting married. I’d just come off a night shift at the hospital and I was exhausted, and there he was telling me he’d met a woman he was going to marry, and my own mother only a few years dead. I burst into tears,’ Angela says.
    I smile. I hadn’t been too happy, either, when my mother told me she was going to marry Dermot and we were going to go and live with him.
    ‘And when I met her for the first time, I thought she was a bit too full of herself, a bit too expensive looking and far too young for my father. There was a good fifteen years between them.’
    I can’t help laughing now. My mother was expensive looking. I didn’t know what style was when I was young, but she had it. She could buy a cheap scarf at Clerys or Arnotts and loop it around her neck in a way that made her look like a film star or one of those models you saw on the covers of magazines.
    ‘I was convinced he was making a big mistake,’ Angela says, encouraged by my laughter. ‘And I don’t think I was the only one. It was a lot for my father to take on, a single mother – we called them “unmarried mothers” in those days – and a ten-year-old child. But they made a great go of it. He was floundering after my mother died and Marjorie turned out to be the best thing that happened to him.’
    ‘He was good for her, too. He was lovely. I still miss him,’ I say, and the tears come back into my eyes. ‘Sorry, sorry, I’m such a mess at the moment.’
    ‘That’s not surprising,’ she says softly. ‘You’ve had a lot on your plate. First Sandy going and now your mother.’
    ‘Yeah, I know. But it feels like more than that. It’s as if I’ve lost everything that’s been keeping me on an even keel and I have nothing left inside. And after I saw Mamma’s brother the other day at the funeral, I kept thinking about all the things I should have asked her and won’t be able to now.’
    ‘Like what?’
    ‘Like what her life was like before she had me, for a start. Who her friends were. Whether she got on with her brother. And . . . well, you know . . . my father.’
    Angela nods. ‘It’s a shame she never talked to you about all that.’
    ‘I used to ask her to tell me what he was like, what he looked like, but she always managed to make me feel I was being a pest, asking too many questions. I used to ask her where he lived and she always said she didn’t know.’
    ‘Maybe she didn’t.’
    ‘Maybe. But I never really believed her. I think she knew exactly where he was and just didn’t want me to have any contact with him. Anyway, you know how it is – you come up against a brick wall over and over again and eventually you give up. I just hoped she might have left something with the solicitor, a letter or even just a piece of paper with his address on it.’
    ‘It’s an awful pity my own father is gone. He might have been able to tell you a lot. I always had a feeling he knew much more than he let on. Of course, we