Maeve Binchy - Tara Road

'Yes, so did I for a little while, but it wasn't the moon after all,' Ria said.

'Greg has told us how wonderful your home in Ireland is, I'm so sorry you won't be able to go on living there,' Heidi said.

'It's only a house, Heidi, only bricks and mortar,' Ria said.

'That's such a very wise thing to be able to say.' Heidi was admiring.

'I'm just practising, rehearsing my lines,' Ria admitted. 'I think that if I say it often enough then I might believe it when I walk around it and have to say goodbye to it.'

'And do you know where you'll go?'

'House property is very expensive in Dublin at the moment, so we'll get a good price for it but then we won't be able to buy anything in the area. I imagine that we'll have to move out a long way.'

'It does seem such a waste. He and you got along so well when he was here… but then I'm only saying things you must have thought a thousand times in your head.'

'A million times, Heidi.'

John and Gerry said they really would miss her in their shop. Ria was to go home, set up a food export business, get written up in Bon Appetit , and they would be amongst her first clients.

'That's what I love about America. You really do believe dreams come true here,' Ria said to them.

She telephoned Gertie just before they left.

'I can't believe you're coming home early for Jack's funeral, you changed your tickets and all to be here.'

'Well of course I would, Gertie. You'd do it for me if things were different.'

'Thank you, Ria, and you do know that Jack was always very admiring of you. Remember the party in your house that he came to where he drank lemonade and helped serve the food?'

'I do indeed, Gertie.' Ria bit her lip.

'They're taking him to the church tonight,' Gertie said. 'You wouldn't believe all the lovely flowers. Jack was very popular and well-liked in his own way.'

'Of course he was, and we'll see you tomorrow morning,' said Ria, who would be hard put to it to find one person who could say one good word about the late Jack Brennan.

Sheila Maine slept in the plane. Kelly and Brian played cards and watched the movie. Annie and Sean whispered plans for the future to each other.

Ria could not sleep. Her mind was full of pictures. The funeral, and the sustained pretence that Jack Brennan had been very different. The meeting with Danny to discuss their future. Arranging to sell Number 16 Tara Road. Finding a new place to live. The whole business of starting to cook for a living. Meeting Marilyn face to face after all this time.

Ria hoped she would like her. She knew so much about her now, more than Marilyn even dreamed she knew. There was a time when Ria had thought she would hate her, when she heard of Marilyn taking over her garden, her house, her friends and her daughter. That was when she had thought Marilyn cold and unfeeling, wearing a prickly armour about her son's death and shutting out so much goodwill everywhere.

But the summer had changed that. Now she was touched by little secrets she knew about this woman. How she had a bottle of hair colourant labelled in her own writing 'Special Shampoo'. How she had inexpensive discount toilet tissue in her storeroom, and instant cake mixes in her larder. Ria knew that Marilyn's friends had been hurt and repelled by her, and that her love of the garden was not considered admirable but obsessive.

And Ria also knew a far bigger secret. Something that would never be told. She knew what had happened on the day of Dale Vine's accident. To know that would never make Marilyn stronger, it would ruin everything. She had reassured Hubie that it would never be mentioned and he believed her.

Ria hadn't told everyone else that she was coming home. She would meet them all at the funeral anyway.

Marilyn had promised to have breakfast ready for them when they arrived at Tara Road. They would have time for that, to get changed, and then they would all go to the church together. Ria smiled as she remembered their conversation. 'The one good thing about this dreadful accident is that you and I get a chance to meet. Otherwise we would have passed in mid-air again,' she had said to Marilyn.

'I think there's a lot more than one good thing about this dreadful accident,' Marilyn had said. 'Not of course that any of us will ever admit it.' Marilyn had been in Ireland for two months. She was learning.

Just then the captain announced that due to weather conditions they were being diverted to Shannon Airport. He apologised for the delay which would not be more than a couple of hours. They would certainly be in Dublin by 11.00 a.m. ' My God ,' said Ria. 'We'll miss the funeral.'

'I'm going to that eejit Jack Brennan's funeral,' Danny Lynch said.

Bernadette looked up. 'Who was he?'

'A drunken bully. His wife Gertie was always in and out of Tara Road. If Ria and the children were here they'd have gone; I suppose in a way I'm going to represent them.'

'That's very good of you,' said Bernadette. 'You're always thinking of other people.'

'I met Lady Ryan on the road,' Nora Johnson told Hilary. 'She said she was going to Jack's funeral.'

'Well, I suppose like the rest of us she's only going as a bit of solidarity for poor Gertie.'

'She never had the civility to throw the time of day to poor Gertie,' Nora sniffed.

'Ah, be fair, Mam, didn't we all say that Gertie should have thrown him out years ago?'

'We did and we were right, but we didn't say it with the scorn that Lady Ryan did. She treated Gertie like dirt, like something she found stuck to her shoe.'

'You never liked her, Mam.'

'Do you?'

'She's all right, she's funny I suppose and she jazzes us all up,' Hilary admitted grudgingly.

'No she doesn't, she pats you all on the head, and you're all worth ten of her.' Some of Nora's opinions would never change.

The delay at Shannon Airport seemed interminable. Sheila Maine telephoned her sister. 'If we're not in time for the church, we'll go straight to the graveyard,' she said.

Gertie wept her gratitude on the phone. 'Oh Sheila, if you knew how kind everyone's being. And if only poor Jack knew how much it turned out that people loved him.'

'Well, of course he did. Didn't everyone know you had a great marriage?' Sheila said.

Ria rang Marilyn. 'It seems we won't have that breakfast after all,' she said.

'Then you'll never know what a bad cook I am,' Marilyn said.

'I wish you didn't have to leave tomorrow, that you could spend a couple more days.'

'I might easily do that. We'll talk later… Oh and another thing… Welcome home!'

'Jimmy, would you sing "Panis Angelicus" at the funeral?' Gertie had asked on the phone.

'Now you wouldn't want me croaking away …’ he began.

'Oh Jimmy, please. Jack just loved that hymn, he really did. It would make it lovely for me if you sang it.'

'I think it's more a wedding hymn really, Gertie, rather than a funeral one.'

'No, it's about Holy Communion so it would be equally suitable at both.'

'Well, if you'd like me to then certainly I will,' said Jimmy Sullivan. He put the phone down and raised his eyes to heaven. 'If there is a God, which I gravely doubt, then he should smite us all to the pit of hell for our hypocrisy.'

'What else can we do?' Frances shrugged.

'We could have the balls to say that Jack was a mad bollocks and that the world is better off without him,' Jimmy suggested.

'That would be great consolation to the widow and children,' Frances said.

There was a black-edged notice on the door of the launderette saying that Jack Brennan, proprietor, had died and giving the time of the funeral Mass, so quite a few of the customers came out of respect to Gertie.

The church was crowded when Gertie, her mother and her children arrived. Some of Jack's family, long-estranged, had turned up, with dark suits and white shirts and awkward handshakes. Gertie, pale and wearing the black dress she had borrowed from Hilary, walked up the aisle looking proudly from side to side at all the people who had come to say goodbye to Jack. At least now he might know that he had worth in people's eyes. Surely he was somewhere where he could see all this.