Clouded jade waves crested with white foam broke softly on the Nauset Beach shore. Sophie could just make out a ferry on its way to Nantucket, barely visible in the foggy grey early morning light. The deserted stretch of sand was quiet and peaceful, half shrouded in mist, the warm blustery Atlantic wind swishing through banks of reeds in the background. Surfers and holidaymakers had not yet arrived and the beach ahead was empty except for a solitary hawk hovering purposefully in the air and a lone figure in the distance, bending occasionally to gather shells or other beachcombing treasures.
Sophie walked briskly in a light blue tracksuit, the wind tugging at her long dark-blonde hair, blustering onto her sweet round face, the salt air of the marshes in her nostrils and on her tongue. At last, when she felt she could go no further, she turned for home and ambled back to Brodys’ Beach Bar where she sat alone at a windswept table sipping coffee. It was the very best time of day and sitting here, beside the beach, in the pale morning Cape cod light, with the lighthouse flickering comfortingly through the mist, she felt a small measure of calmness return to her life.
On the way back, she took a detour past the house that she and Daniel were to have lived in. She sat for a while admiring it regretfully. It was the nicest house in that quiet tree-lined road. Built in the early nineteenth century by a Cape Cod whaling captain as a retirement home, it was irregular in shape, made up of spacious old timbered rooms with shuttered windows. No one had lived there for years and it needed plenty of work. For months she had looked forward to the day when they could move in and set about the task of restoring it. Now she felt distant from it.
She drove to fleet Point and parked in the main street, calling in at the dry-cleaners, Maddox Real Estate and the bank, and lastly at the bakery to buy fresh bread.
Maggie, an elderly neighbour, was there too buying some doughnuts.
“Don’t tell on me, Sophie. I’m not supposed to, you know. It’s the cholesterol, or the sugar. To be honest I’m not sure which. But I’d rather die of a doughnut than die of boredom.”
Sophie smiled and tried to look cheerful.
“You don’t look too perky,” observed Maggie.
Hard to say the words. She’d been trying to frame them in her own head for days now. But how to let go, take what was left of her courage in her hands, turn around and take her life in an entirely different direction? How to leave it all behind – the man she had loved, a perfect lifestyle, a future home? Fleet Point – a trifle suffocating but so beautiful.”
“I’m going home, Maggie. Home to Ireland. Alone.”

Sophie discusses infidelity with her grandmother

“Your grandfather did that on me one time,” Tess said quietly as they stacked plates in the dishwasher.
“He did?”
Sophie was shocked. Tess had always given the impression that her late husband had been a paragon of virtue and devotion. In family photos, Thomas O’Meara smiled at the camera with brash confidence, his arms always affectionately around his wife’s slender waist. Tess took down one such photo now and ran her fingers over it.
“Look at him. As if butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth! The dirty old ram!” She looked at him fondly.
“That’s an awful thing to say.”
“What? Well, he was. No sense in denying it. But he was powerfully sexual. Ecstasy in bed! God, I sometimes still get the collywobbles when I think of him.”
Sophie blushed.
“Now why are you blushing? I was trying out the Kama Sutra with your grandfather before your mother was even born. Anyway that’s not the point. The point is no matter what the forces of decency, righteousness and respectability say, it is not always necessary or even wise to leave a man simply because he has taken short leave of absence from the marital bed.”
“It wasn’t just because he was unfaithful. The whole thing wasn’t right. Anyway it’s different. You were married to the same man for over forty years. He may have been overcome with hormones once or twice – but all in all he loved you and he made sure you were well provided for . . . well respected. And you were the steady rock – always faithful to him.”
Tess smiled fondly at her grand-daughter. “Do you want to know the secret of my long and deeply happy marriage to your grandfather? What kept the spark, the romance alive – until the very last moment?”
Yes! Yes, she did want to know. All around her, friends were darting from one stab at everlasting love to the next, reaching for it, never grasping it, and then lunging onwards into the next relationship, convinced that it too would be the perfect one. Perhaps she’d done the same with Daniel, allowed herself to be swept along on an initial tide of lust and rose-tinted optimism, only to scurry away at the first sign of a challenge. How had Tess stayed so happy through forty years of marriage – remained so vibrant, stayed so beautiful, sustained such optimism, held herself so connected to everything that was going on in the world?
“Well tell me, Gran – of course I want to know!”
“I had a lover!”
Sophie gaped at her grandmother. “I’m sorry, Gran . . . I don’t understand.”
“Well, my dear – you can’t be that naïve.”
“You mean you. . .”
“Had a lover! Yes, I did. Of course I did.” She said it like a person might say they liked to play a bit of golf or go horseracing. Then she was silent.
….. “Oh now don’t look so shocked. It doesn’t suit you. He was a lover in the sense that he loved me, truly and with deep passion. And I loved him back – throughout my married life – while continuing to absolutely adore your grandfather, of course. But we didn’t sneak off to Bundoran in his black Ford Anglia for dirty weekends with a Foxford rug, a flask of tea, ham and mustard sandwiches and currant cake – if that’s what you’re thinking. Though we did have one or two very pleasant picnics in Leenane. I remember one time I baked some particularly nice onion tartlets – from a recipe I’d found in the parish newsletter of all places. The newsletter had recommended using margarine – and any pastry chef worth their salt knows that the only true pastry for tartlets and quiches must be made with pure butter . . . so I substituted butter for the margarine . . . I also caramelised the onions and . . .”