Page 26 of The Secret Bookshop in Ireland

Ciara nodded. ‘And the occupants of the cottages that seem to have been done up. It’ll be nice to find out who they are.’

They had walked back to the old bookshop and then gone to bed, both tired after the long day.

Ciara got out of bed and went into the kitchen, finding it deserted. Her mother must already be either in the garden or walking Brian up the lane. She looked out the window, noticing it was, again, a lovely day and then heard Brian bark down in the back garden.Ma must have been up early, she thought, making herself a mug of tea and a slice of toast. Then she had a quick shower, got dressed and went downstairs. She opened the back door to let Brian in before she went into the shop, finding her mother looking at something on the counter.

‘Look at this strange thing I just found,’ Maureen said.

Ciara looked at the object, which was a box covered in dust and cobwebs. ‘Where did you find it?’ she asked.

‘I shifted a pile of books over there at the back of the shop to tidy them up a bit,’ Maureen explained, ‘and there it was in an old tea chest behind the works of Thomas Hardy. Whoever tidied the books probably didn’t see it.’

‘There’s something written on it,’ Ciara said and wiped some of the dust and cobwebs off the top of the box. She stared at the words that she had just revealed. ‘“The box of dreams”,’ she read out loud. ‘How amazing. It looks very old. What should we do with it?’

‘Open it,’ her mother whispered.

‘It’s very dirty,’ Ciara said, wiping her fingers on her jeans. ‘And I can’t see how to open it. Where is the lock?’

‘There, on the side,’ Maureen said. ‘Looks like you need a key, but I think a screwdriver would do the trick.’

‘I don’t have one,’ Ciara said, looking around for some kind of implement.

‘I’ll look upstairs,’ her mother offered. ‘I think I have something in the knife drawer that might open it.’

Ciara looked at the box while her mother ran upstairs. It wasn’t very big but looked solid with a padlock that hung from two metal loops held together by the lock. She stared at the letters that seemed to have been written in black ink. ‘The box of dreams,’ she muttered. ‘Are they Martha’s dreams, or someone else’s?’

Then her mother arrived back waving a rusty screwdriver. ‘I found this at the back of one of the kitchen cupboards.’ She handed it to Ciara. ‘Go on, give it a go.’

‘Okay.’ Ciara put the screwdriver under the loops, using it as a wedge. She twisted the screwdriver and, with a little force, managed to wrench the lock off the box. Then she slowly opened it to reveal a pile of papers, old black-and-white photos, some small boxes and an array of ribbons and cards and old coins. ‘Not what I’d call a treasure,’ she said and lifted the piece of paper at the top of the pile. ‘This is about the history of the O’Tooles and the O’Byrnes. Very interesting,’ she said. ‘Listen to this: “Before the arrival of the Normans in eleven sixty-nine, the ancestors of the O’Tooles lived on the rich lowlands of what is now County Kildare. They were related to the O’Byrnes.The two families were, therefore, connected not just by later alliances and marriages but by blood.This may explain why, despite occasional tensions, they co-ordinated their actions so closely throughout later mediaeval times.”’ Ciara drew breath. ‘A bitof local history, I suppose. The O’Tooles must have been an important family in Kildare during the Early Middle Ages.’

‘And what happened then?’ Maureen asked. ‘How did they end up here?’

Ciara shrugged. ‘No idea. But I think, as far as I remember from my history lessons in school, that the Normans came and took their land and chased them into County Wicklow. There were a few Vikings rattling around too, but they kept to the coastal towns. In fact, the name Wicklow is from the Nordic name for inlet, I read somewhere.’ She tapped the piece of paper. ‘That’s all that’s written here, anyway. Weird to think Oisín and Liz can trace their family all the way to over a thousand years ago.’

‘Eerie,’ Maureen said with a little shiver. ‘And then of course, Martha Fitzgerald’s ancestors must have been Norman.’

‘You’re right,’ Ciara replied. ‘That didn’t occur to me until you said it.’

‘Fitzgerald is a Norman name,’ Maureen said. ‘All those Fitz-something names are Norman. What else is in that box of dreams?’

‘Lots of things,’ Ciara said. ‘I want to bring it upstairs to go through it all. It must be Martha Fitzgerald’s mementoes. Things she collected over the years. It might tell us what connection she had with Dad’s family.’

‘I hope it won’t reveal anything terrifying,’ Maureen said, looking worried. ‘He was so frightened at the mere mention of her name.’

‘I want to know everything, good or bad,’ Ciara stated, lifting the box. ‘But I think the box of dreams is something good, like someone’s wishes and aspirations. I also think that Martha meant me to find it.’

‘I hope you’re right,’ Maureen said. ‘But now, we should go through the shop and decide what to do with everything that’s here. You can examine the box later.’

‘Okay,’ Ciara agreed. ‘I’ll just put it upstairs and clean it up a bit. I’ll be back in a minute.’ She took the box and went upstairs to the kitchen with Brian following behind her, as if the discovery of the box had startled him.

As Ciara carefully put it on the kitchen table and wiped it clean with a damp cloth, she saw that the box was made of wood and had an intricate pattern inlaid on the lid. It looked old and beautifully made, as if it had once contained something very precious. Ciara polished it with a dry cloth, promising herself to look at all the things in it with her mother later, when they had gone through the contents of the shop, a task that seemed more pressing than looking through the old box. ‘I’ll deal with it later,’ she said to Brian. She grabbed a broom and a few rags to use for dusting and went back downstairs with the dog padding behind her.

‘We’re back,’ she announced as she entered.

Maureen didn’t reply. She was going through the books on the shelves by the window, muttering to herself. Then she turned around and looked at Ciara, her eyes wide with wonder. ‘Look what I found,’ she said, holding up a leather-bound volume. ‘An early edition ofPride and Prejudiceby Jane Austen with beautiful illustrations. I think they’re from the eighteen forties, judging by the clothes in the pictures. There’s alsoSense and SensibilityandEmmafrom the same period. And here is a whole stack of Charles Dickens. Not that early but in such good condition. In fact, the whole shop seems to be full of the classics. I feel as if I have stepped fifty years back in time. Martha must have specialised in the old masters and nothing else.’

‘I saw some works of Maeve Binchy and Joseph O’Connor over there,’ Ciara argued and pointed to a set of shelves bythe door. ‘And Christine Dwyer Hickey and other contemporary Irish authors.’

‘Yes, maybe,’ Maureen said. ‘The books are all good quality fiction, in any case. I’ve seen some James Joyce and the poems of William Butler Yeats, too. There is such a huge collection of really good works here. What a shame this shop closed down.’