The Ballroom Café by Ann O'Loughlin

it will not be requiring your custom.’
    ‘That is a bit harsh, Miss O’Callaghan. We are, after all, still family.’
    ‘I am not related to you. The day my husband died is the day I stopped having any connection with your family. Tell your mother she might be Michael Hannigan’s sister, but she is no friend of mine.’ Her voice was prim and her mouth so pinched she was spitting out the words like bullets.
    ‘My mother is ill and wondered would you visit. She wants to make things right.’
    Ella staggered back before shaking herself, rising up and covering the space between them in one long stride. ‘You tell your mother she was not there for me when I needed support. What she was good for was spreading the gossip and wrongly accusing me. I loved my husband, not that anybody in Rathsorney thought that by the time she was finished. Tell your mother she was responsible for my husband, her only brother, taking his own life: she has to live and die with that.’
    James McDonagh retreated, his hands in the air. ‘Don’t shoot the messenger. Couldn’t you find something in your heart for my dying mother?’
    Ella O’Callaghan, a woman who abhorred bad manners, spat on the ground, the glob of saliva landing on the rug to the left of James McDonagh. ‘Get out! Get out and don’t even come back to tell me that interfering bitch is dead!’ she choked.
    James McDonagh would have answered but for the strong voice that interrupted from the doorway.
    ‘Please leave, Mr McDonagh, and realise that some pain of the past can never be assuaged.’
    Roberta was standing straight, her walking stick propped behind her back. She stepped back to allow James McDonagh to walk past.
    ‘And please remove your tractor from Roscarbury Hall. It is quite unsightly,’ she added, as he quickly marched out the front door. Roberta looked at her sister, who had slumped into the armchair. She saw Debbie come down the stairs and she called her, closing the drawing room door as she did. ‘My sister is in a bit of a state. Will you bring her a coffee when you next come down?’
    Debbie made to push past into the drawing room, but Roberta put a hand out to stop her.
    ‘She could do with a few minutes. Put a few sugars in the coffee, please.’
    Roberta wrote a note, propping it against a jug on the kitchen table. The hall table was unthinkable during café hours; neither of the sisters wanted the nosey parkers of Rathsorney knowing their business.

     
    You drew him down on us. How dare you? You have opened up our house to the public. What do you expect? Undesirables will come too. R.

     
    Debbie presented Ella with a hot mug of sugary coffee. Ella said she might take a bit of time in her room. Mary McDonagh, Michael Hannigan’s sister, she had not heard from since her husband’s death. That she should try now to make amends for causing the pain that had festered and swelled over the last decades was no surprise.
    Mary McDonagh was a pious, church-going woman who would leave nothing to chance in her quest to make it directly to the pearly gates. That she had done a wrong to Ella O’Callaghan all those years ago was clearly on her mind as a reason she might trip on the path. Ella remembered it was the Weiss yellow-framed flower brooch with the aurora borealis stones that set Mary off. A practical and dour woman, Mary McDonagh saw the alluring brooch at Ella’s neck. A small piece, a cluster of yellow crystals circling the iridescent stones of a little flower, it relied on the sparkling stones to give it a delicate brilliance that was both captivating and beautiful. For Ella it was exquisite in its simplicity. Mary McDonagh thought it was a very expensive piece of jewellery for the wife of a soldier to be wearing, especially when he was away. She took to visiting Ella at all times of the day or night when Michael Hannigan was on manoeuvres, and though she never collated any physical evidence of a woman cheating on her husband, she was convinced