The Oyster Festival

At seven o'clock on Monday morning, the twenty-fifth of September, Paloma Ortega stood at the top of the steps at Blackrock and looked down at the sea.

The sea looked back. It was grey and green, and it was moving.

— You promised, said Úna Joyce from the water. Before your mother comes. You said so in June.

Úna was seventy-five. She swam here every morning of the year, in rain, wind and darkness. Now she was floating on her back like a happy seal.

Paloma closed her eyes and dived.

The cold hit her like a door. For three seconds she couldn't breathe, and she couldn't think in English or in Spanish. Then she came up, shouting.

— Grand, isn't it? laughed Úna.

Afterwards, wrapped in a towel, Paloma walked with her to the end of the Prom. Úna kicked the wall there, as she did every day.

— For luck, she said. You need it this week, love.

That was true. Paloma's English course had ended ten days ago. Her student permission ended in late October. And Hanley's, the little café where she cooked, had a lease that ended on the thirty-first of October.

Everything was ending at once.

Paloma kicked the wall too, hard. She didn't know then that she needed much more luck than that. Five days later, her name was on every phone in Galway, next to the word sick.