OUT OF THE BLUE a gripping novel of love lost and found by Gretta Mulrooney Page A

of spray rattling into the bushes, then lies on her stomach, her arms propped on the stones, staring into the restless water. The sun and high clouds move across the surface, a constantly changing pattern of light and shade. She turns on to her back, shifting her shoulders to get comfortable and closes her eyes, the stones now acting as a pillow. The well sings quietly to itself, a constant, delicate melody. The ground is warming slowly under the sun. She can hear it breathing, stretching, stirring itself, releasing a loamy aroma. She dozes, the well murmuring behind her, little whispers of reassurance.
    A cloud passing across the sun stirs her. She stretches, bones clicking, as if rediscovering their natural arrangement. Finishing her tea, she steps around the well to a hollow at the base of a furze bush and parts the grass to see if the stones are still there. They are small white chips of shingle specially collected by her father from the beach at Owenahincha on one of her parents’ wedding anniversaries. He’d used Liv’s plastic sandcastle bucket, a yellow one with moulded turrets to carry them back. That evening, she and her mother had watched as he’d levelled the ground by the furze and arranged the stones: MOLLIE AND FINTAN. Her mother had said it was the nicest gift she could have imagined. ‘Your daddy’s one of life’s real romantics,’ she’d said to Liv, holding her on her lap, making sure she blew her cigarette smoke away from her daughter’s eyes.
    She traces her fingers along the stones, removing weeds. Once, she had asked her mother how much she loved her and her mother had said, ‘You know the well at Nanna’s? I love you deeper than the well and deeper than the deepest ocean.’ Standing by her mother’s coffin, she had understood suddenly, in a way that made her want to cry out, that a world was lost to her.
    She rearranges the grass around the stones, restoring them to their hiding place. Then she fills the water bucket and makes her way back, her right arm dragging with the weight.
    She crosses the paved area outside the kitchen and puts the bucket down by the door. There are terracotta tubs with flowers and herbs but they all look ragged and in need of attention. An archway through a trellis leads to the main vegetable plots. A spade is stuck in a ridge of upturned earth, leaning at a perilous angle. The soil is a dark, cocoa brown, the colour of the milky paste she’d mixed the previous night from a packet she’d found in the kitchen cupboard. A wheelbarrow half full of stones and shards stands next to the path, mulched leaves piled around it. She kicks through the leaves, gripping the spade and standing it up straight, slicing it deeper into the soil. The wooden shaft is warm and rough like dry skin.
    Another trellis and archway takes her to an area of overgrown fruit bushes and semi-jungle, where the juicy grass is brushing her calves. Turning and looking back through the archways, she sees order being stealthily overtaken by confusion. She is no gardener but she knows, from a time long ago when her father had appendicitis, how quickly nature wrenches back control; his small garden became unruly within a month.
    The path vanishes and she walks on through thick grass and bracken, her shoes becoming soaked until she reaches a low bank and steps with a stile crossing into a field with cows. She climbs to the top of the stile and catches her breath; even now, the vista can surprise. There, at the end of the sloping field is the glistening sea, reflecting the blue of the sky. From where she stands, she can believe the illusion that she could run down the field, straight into the waves. She holds her arms across her chest and stands, entranced.
    As she watches the swelling tide, she thinks of the first time she and Douglas went on holiday together. They took a package trip to Cyprus to celebrate their engagement and he confessed to her, as they walked down to the beach in blazing heat, that