...

‘Thanks.’ Michael pushes the map back into his pack.

‘You wouldn’t want to come on in for the exposition of the sacrament first?’

‘No… thanks,’ says Michael appalled by the invitation. He and his father have never been church goers. ‘Primitive mumbo jumbo’ Dad calls it.

‘Well, we’d both better be getting on or we’ll be properly soaked.’

‘Cheers,’ says Michael, turning away.

As Michael walks, he hears the old woman’s Irish voice in his head. ‘Come on in …’ she said. His mother said it, just like that. ‘Come on in and have your tea’, ‘Come on in or you’ll catch your death of cold’, ‘Come on in …’

Michael smiles at the recollection. Deep inside him something seems to flicker, unclench, open. It takes him a moment to identify the feeling but suddenly he knows. It’s more than recognition, it’s hope.

..

The first page of Coral's short story Dublin Bay, as it appeared
in The Dubliner (October 2001).