One Night Changes It All

Saving a teenage boy during storm sets off a chain of events that splinter's Enya's life in two

- SAKSHI MEHTA

'I wish she was here,' Flora says suddenly. 'I wish I was setting a place for her at the table.' 'Why don't you? It could be like Gráinne Mhaol.' Their mum loved telling that story, she re-enacted it, character voices and all.

Gráinne O'Malley, famous in Irish legend and known as the 'pirate queen,' was denied a place at the table in Howth Castle by Lord Howth. Because the denial was a breach of the Irish traditions of hospitality, she kidnapped their child, the heir, and he was only returned on the promise that the gates never be closed at the dinner hour and that they would always lay a place at the table for unexpected dinner guests.

Enya drives too close to the edge, trees brush her car. Flora's voice in the car with her gives her the confidence to keep going.

Flora says, 'Why didn't I think of this before? I need to rearrange the seating again. Oh Enya, I'm excited. Mum is coming to dinner!' Her mum.

Enya pictures her wading into the sea. Cupping the sea water with her hands and bathing her arms in it to acclimatise to the temperature.

She would have loved gathering on Christmas Day with her girls and grandchildren. She had been the very essence of life, and to her, life had been a celebration.

As the rain pelts down on Enya's windowpane she imagines, not for the first time, the panic and agony of her mother's last minutes. The

waves crashing over her, the salt in her eyes, in her mouth, the current pulling her down. The roar of the water, waves chomping at her, icy waves biting into her flesh. How the pain in her chest would have stopped her from fighting. The storm sounds like a violent sea.

Enya feels like she's being pulled down too, as if she's alongside her mum.