Barefoot Over Stones

Alison and Ciara meet at college in Dublin and soon become firm allies, sharing a flat and facing the world together. Ciara is all that Alison aspires to be – sassy, confident and fearless. Although their backgrounds could not be more different, they find solace and humour in each other’s company.

That is, until gorgeous Dan Abernethy, a young medical student, enters their lives, and everything changes irrevocably. Friendship loses out when love turns Alison’s world upside down and a terrible betrayal threatens the closeness known only to best friends.

It is only when tragedy strikes many years later that Alison and Ciara are able to discover the redemptive power of true friendship.

Liz Lyons is a graduate in English and History of Trinity College, Dublin. After graduation she spent ten years working in the Irish book trade as a bookshop manager.
Barefoot Over Stones
is her first novel. Born in Cork in 1970, she lives in Co. Meath with her husband, son and two daughters.

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Acknowledgements

Part One

Michaelmas House, Caharoe, Co. Cork 2005

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Part Two

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Epilogue

Many thanks to my editor Francesca Liversidge for the enthusiasm and warmth she has shown to me and to
Barefoot Over Stones
and to Jessica Broughton and Joanne Williamson for all their help. Thanks to my publisher Eoin McHugh and Lauren Hadden, my lovely future editor, for being so good at what you do. It is a pleasure to work with you both. Sincerest thanks to the Gill Hess team, Simon Hess, Eamon Doran and Nigel Carr in sales and to Declan Heeney and Helen Gleed O’Connor in publicity for all you hard work on my behalf. Thank you to all the great booksellers who supported a new name and got behind
Barefoot Over Stones
. I wish to acknowledge the kindness of Donagh Long, who gave me permission to use the lyrics of his song, ‘Never Be The Sun’. Thank you to friends and family who read bits or all of the manuscript at various times and offered their encouragement. Warmest thanks to Siobhan and Conor Hackett for their incredible support. Thanks for putting me on the right track! I appreciate the kindness and goodwill of the book club girls. May the wine never run out! Thanks to Joan Gough for childminding and for allowing me time to work. Love and gratitude are due to my children for being as patient as they could be when their mother was scribbling. I want to sincerely thank Mary Lyons for her unstinting support. My Cork and Meath families deserve an award for spreading the word. Keep up the good work! Finally, a special thanks to my husband Noel Gough for believing in me and holding us all together.

You may not always shine as you go

Barefoot over stone

You might be so long together

Or you might walk alone

And you won’t find that love comes easy

But that love is always right

So even when the dark clouds gather

You will be the light

Today I buried Dan. I wore a blue dress that he always liked and I was careful with my hair, curling it softly around my face to cover the hollowness I knew it showed. I shook every offered hand and murmured in appreciation at the slow river of kind and sympathetic words. My eyes were red and sore, bitten by three days of constant tears. The harrowing spectre of grief has come to settle like a silent friend at my side.

I felt the heartbreaking shudders of my daughter’s body against me as her dad’s coffin first bobbed and then disappeared out of sight. I held her tightly as she stood overwhelmed by the flood of unexpected loss. Mam and Dad flew home to be with us within hours of hearing the news. They stand at either side of me. They fear I will fall under the weight of this. All three of us united in a parent’s instinct to take the part of our suffering child, to stop the pain before it enters the heart of our cherished charge.

It is more than a decade since the summer it all began. I knew in my heart you would not come. But I still scanned the crowd for your face and looked back one last time to the deserted grave before we were driven back to Michaelmas, to the house that has always been home.

Even tonight if I close my eyes I can take myself back to those evenings on the beach at Aughasallagh. I could not believe it when you turned up at the cottage there. I hadn’t even told you exactly where we were going. His uncle’s place somewhere in Kerry was all I said. But in truth I didn’t know myself. I left all that to Dan. I was in the kitchen drinking tea, still half asleep and lulled by the soft low voice of the morning radio. Dan’s textbooks and notes were strewn across the breakfast table and his abandoned cigarette was smoking itself out on an overflowing ashtray. You bustled into the kitchen ahead of Dan as if you owned the place. Your ancient purple knapsack was slung over your shoulder and you had a plastic carrier bag struggling to contain the shuddering cackle of a few bottles of cheap wine.

Dan was furious when he followed you through to the tiny kitchen. A week to his final exams and you, of all people, had arrived on the doorstep of his hideaway. He blamed me for inviting you even though I absolutely hadn’t. I put it down to the fact that you guessed I would be lonely while Dan studied day and night and you had made it your business to ask around and find out exactly where we were. You always knew the right thing to do; one of the reasons you had me in your thrall. As much as I loved Dan and wanted to be with him, sitting with him as he smoked and cursed about how much study he had left to do had not exactly been the holiday of a lifetime.
Then you arrived, filling the house with chatter and gossip and driving Dan up the wall. His face wrinkled in unspoken anger and I knew we had better get out of the house before he blew a fuse.

The weather was glorious and we headed giddily to the beach every day of that week. We swam lengths together along the line of the strand, both terrified of the rough currents of the Atlantic and their merciless strength. From the depths of your backpack you would produce some mangled and dog-eared bodice ripper and in full dramatic voice read out the more jaw-dropping passionate encounters. I collapsed in heaps of helpless laughter. We got disapproving looks from the locals with whom we shared the beach but that merely egged you on, your delivery gaining confidence with every aggressive sigh.

We walked the mile or so to Daly’s shop when hunger struck and made makeshift lunches with their fresh white bread and hunks of cheese and ham. I made sure that we bought enough so that I could make a supper for Dan when he arrived pale-faced and exhausted from hours of study. He would devour every last scrap of food and then produce slabs of Dairy Milk chocolate from our cottage stash. When you thought the time was right you would wordlessly nudge a picnic mug of wine in his direction and he would drink it greedily; our three-way harmony thankfully restored.

And I picture now the three of us sitting there preserved in the treasure box of returning memory. The punishing heat of the sun has long since subsided. The taste of the too-sweet wine is on my lips. Sand is gritty between my toes and the excited shrieks of children in the water beyond can be heard like grace notes to our idle chatter. Dan’s head is cradled on my lap. The wine is taking hold in all of us and I am becoming quieter while you two are just getting started, as usual. That night, like many others, the topic was the state of the nation.

‘Charlie Haughey was a gangster and he nearly ran this country into the ground. Sure even Gay Byrne said this morning on the radio that it will take years to undo all the mistakes of the last decade.’ Your face crumples in disdain at Dan’s wine-fuelled righteousness and I know that you revel in fanning the flames.

‘That man talks through his hole, Dan, and you’d want to catch yourself on ’cause you’re beginning to sound a bit like him.’

Dan rises gleefully to the bait and on you both go until the incoming tide drives us back reluctantly to the darkness of the cottage.

I think now that it is always like this. All is clear and certain the moment before our world changes. A day, an evening or maybe just a single hour when we think we can see for ever.

Tell me, Ciara, can you remember it too?

D
UBLIN
1990

The Daisy May on Camden Street had definitely seen better days. The paintwork was scuffed and the windows were permanently steamed up. The menus looked as if they had survived the trauma of decades. But the café had its fans and a steady trade of coffee-slugging students who seemed to hold its comfortable shabbiness in real affection. Alison had fallen for the Daisy May during her first weeks in Dublin. She had clung to its friendly warmth between lectures on days when there was much to read and little to keep her in Mrs Duggan’s miserable digs.