‘Maybe he’s designed an app that’s gone on to make an absolute fortune?’ Melissa said helpfully. ‘Just about everyone in my class wants to design an app from their garden shed and sell it for, like, two billion by the time they’re twenty-one.’
‘He must be sporty too, I think,’ said Nancy, getting up and walking over to a bookshelf in the kitchen, which was dotted with photos. ‘Judging by this shot of him windsurfing, at least.’
‘Can I see?’ Melissa asked, following her and peering at the photo over her shoulder. You couldn’t see Sam’s face, though, which was annoying.
‘He’s in great shape, I’ll say that much for him,’ said Nancy, staring pensively at the photo. ‘Although I did notice a golf trophy in the hall on the way in. But let’s try not to hold that against him.’
‘You can see his face more clearly in this one,’ said Melissa, picking up a photo of a guy in cap and gown, posing in a graduation photo and awkwardly holding up a scroll, as you do. She was really enjoying this impromptu game of detectives – Nancy had a way of making even mundane things seem really interesting. ‘And look at this,’ she added, spotting a framed certificate of a college degree, which was just behind the graduation pic.
‘This is so to certify that Sam Williams graduated cum laude with a Bachelor of Commerce degree, in the year of Our Lord two thousand and nine,’ Nancy read out loud. ‘Which would make him roughly in his thirties, give or take.’
‘Isn’t he handsome?’ said Melissa, staring down at the graduation photo.
Nancy took a good long look at the picture over her shoulder, as if she were assessing a Tinder profile. ‘Yes, I suppose he is,’ she said thoughtfully.
‘Isn’t it funny that there aren’t any wedding photos about the place?’ Melissa added innocently.
‘And I’ll tell you something else,’ said Nancy. ‘I don’t think this guy has kids either.’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘Well, just take a look around you,’ said Nancy, waving her hand across the sun-drenched kitchen, with its sleek chrome table, high metallic stools and hard-as-nails flagstone tiled floor. ‘Just look at all these sharp edges and pointy stools. Not very child-friendly, now is it? And there isn’t a single photo of kids around the place either. The spare room upstairs certainly doesn’t look like a bedroom for a child, now does it?’
‘Do you want to know what I think?’ Melissa said.
‘What’s that?’
‘I think you’re getting a bit of a crush on this Sam Williams, whoever he is,’ she teased.
‘Oh now, don’t be daft,’ Nancy said, batting it away.
But she blushed bright red when she said it, though, Melissa noticed. Just like she always noticed everything.
Susan
ST MICHAEL’S WELLNESS CENTRE
The sun shone brightly for the first time in months, and crocuses were beginning to stick their heads up from the rolling lawns Susan could clearly see from her bedroom window. St Michael’s was a huge Victorian house close to the Dublin Mountains, surrounded by acres of soothing, calming parkland. Susan had come to learn that the whole ethos of rehab there was that patients would ultimately feel ‘safe, healed and well again’.
Safe, she’d thought bitterly, when she initially signed the official registration forms. Is that all they thought was wrong with her? That she felt a bit unsafe? That all she needed were a few pills and a comforting hand to hold before she could be released back into the wild again?
After a few days at St Michael’s, though, her opinion started to shift a bit. Because there really did seem to be a sense of security about the place, which somehow seeped inside your bones. You were trusted, for one thing. You could even lock the bathroom door behind you if you wanted to.
‘That’s a pretty huge thing for a place like this, you know,’ as Emily, a recovering alcoholic, had told her. Emily was about Susan’s own age and had been battling ‘the demon drink’, as she called it, for so long, she was a veteran of institutions like this.
‘Last place I was in, they didn’t even let you go to the loo on your own,’ she’d confided to Susan in the semi-private room they were sharing. ‘Can you imagine? Tying to pee with a nurse looking at you? Having a shower while you’re being supervised? Just in case anyone I knew had smuggled in vodka and I was trying to drink it in the bathroom. The last place I was in, they didn’t even allow me to have toiletries, just in case I’d suck the deodorant out of a bottle.’
‘Why would you want to do that?’ Susan asked, mystified.
‘For the booze hit, you eejit.’
‘Okaaay,’ Susan said warily, not too sure what to make of her new roommate.
‘So what are you in for anyway? You seem fairly sane. Compared to some of them around here, anyway. Mind you, that’s not saying too much. I got talking to a guy yesterday who’s in here because he has a fear of cockroaches. Katsaridaphobia, they call it. Can you believe that’s actually a thing?’
‘Is he the guy who had a jam jar with a cockroach trapped inside at the dinner table last night?’ Susan asked.
She’d seen him all right. You couldn’t fail to notice this long, lanky, wiry guy, who was like an edgy ball of tension, utterly fixated on a jam jar with a cockroach crawling around inside. Utterly gross.
‘Apparently there’s method in his madness,’ Emily went on. ‘Roach Boy was telling me that this way, at least he always knows where the cockroach is. He’s harmless, though, really. Most of them in here are, you’ll find. We all just need a bit of time out from the outside world, that’s all.’
Susan had bonded with a few of the other patients too, most of whom were surprisingly open about their reasons for being in St Michael’s in the first place. On her very first day there, Doctor Ciara had suggested she attend the group therapy session, which was held every day in a bright, warm sunny room, with tea, coffee and even plates of biscuits on the side. Susan went along purely because anything was better than being left alone in a two-bed room with nothing but her own memories and thoughts.
Some of the other patients’ stories made her heart twist in her chest. There was a girl called Rose, who was just eighteen years of age and who was bravely battling bulimia.
She’s exactly the same age that Ella would be now, Susan thought, as she listened to the poor girl, gaunt and grey-looking, talk about the ‘urge to purge’ she still felt after every single meal. Emily spoke in turn too, talking matter-of-factly about her lifelong battle with alcoholism.
‘I’m fifty-two days sober now,’ she told the circle, as the others, Susan included, gave her an encouraging little round of applause. ‘But it’s a huge struggle for me, every single hour of every day. Booze blanks out the dark days for me and I have to be honest – a cup of Nescafé and a Hobnob doesn’t quite cut it in the same way. So I have to constantly remind myself that booze took everything from me. My husband, my home, my job, even any chance I might have had to have kids. Drink robbed me of the life that I should be living and I have to deal with that. It’s not easy, but I think – I hope – that I’m getting there.’
Roach Boy was there too, jam jar firmly embedded in his lap with a fat-looking cockroach crawling around inside. Then there was a huge, burly guy, who everyone called Bungalow Bill, because he’d set fire to the bungalow he lived in, with his wife and mother-in-law inside. It was a miracle they survived – apparently he’d almost killed them. Bill spoke bravely about his depression and was candid and open about how just getting out of bed every day felt like climbing Kilimanjaro.
He gets it, Susan thought, as she listened quietly to his story. This total stranger has just described how I feel every single hour of every single day.
‘And now let’s give a warm welcome to Susan, our newest member,’ said Dr Ciara, to a polite smattering of applause. ‘Is there anything you’d like to share with us this evening, Susan? This is the circle of trust, and remember, no matter what you say, no one here will judge you.’
A l
ong pause as every eye swivelled towards her.
They’re all wondering why I’m here, Susan thought, suddenly feeling very alone and vulnerable and nervous. This lot have probably all been here for weeks so they already know each other’s stories inside out. They’re so comfortable with each other that they can sit around in their dressing gowns and bare feet. And they’re looking at me now, in my neat little Zara dress and sensible pumps, unable to fathom what someone like me is doing here.
‘I don’t think you’re a boozer,’ Emily said, thinking aloud. ‘You haven’t got that red-faced, puffy, bloated look about you. Jammy bitch.’
‘And she’s like, what, a size twelve?’ said Roach Boy, sitting in the corner. ‘No eating disorder going on there either. No offence, love,’ he added hastily.
‘She seems too together for it to be depression,’ said another voice.
‘Nahh. She’s all shaky and trembly. That’s some class of an anxiety disorder, mark my words,’ said Bungalow Bill sagely, folding one pudgy, tattooed arm over the other.
Anxiously, Susan looked to call-me-Ciara for support as the rest of the group openly speculated about her, but Ciara just gave her an encouraging nod back, as if to say, ‘Come on, you can do it. Name it, claim it and tame it.’
Say it out straight, Susan thought, forcing herself to be strong. If everyone else in this room can be open about what they’re going through, then why can’t I?
‘I’m Susan,’ she eventually said in a wobbly voice, as the hum of chatter died down and it seemed every eye in the place was focused on her. ‘And I’m here because I think I’m having a nervous breakdown.’
Silence, while they all digested this. Then a snort of derision as some wag sitting across from her said, ‘Sure that’s nothing. I have a nervous breakdown every morning before breakfast.’
‘Just take a few Xanax and go on lie on a beach for two weeks,’ said another dismissively. ‘That’ll sort you out.’
‘There’s people in here with far worse than that, love.’
‘I almost burned my own wife and mother-in-law to death and the prison services sent me here instead of Mountjoy jail. Jaysus, I’d kill to have nothing worse wrong with me than a little nervous breakdown.’
‘Yeah, what the hell are you doing in here anyway? Just about everyone I know has had a Nervy B.’
‘Now come on, let Susan finish,’ said Ciara sternly. ‘Fair is fair, everyone gets their turn in our circle of trust.’
‘But I didn’t used to be like this, you know,’ Susan said defensively, as attention swivelled back to her. ‘I know you’re all looking at me now, thinking that I don’t have a right to be here. Not compared with what most of you are going through. After all, I’m just a normal, suburban wife and mum, and up until a year ago, I had it good. I had a lovely husband, who I loved very much, and two beautiful daughters, the light of our lives. I had a job I enjoyed and enough spare cash to be able to treat my two girls. Up till a year ago, my life was pretty good and – no offence or anything – but the thought of being in a place like this, opening up to a roomful of strangers, would have sent me screaming for the hills.’
‘Thanks very much,’ said Roach Boy dryly.
‘Shhh!’ Ciara said, cutting him short. ‘Let the woman speak. Keep going, Susan, you’re doing great.’
‘But then, during the spring of last year,’ Susan went on, surprising herself at how much easier it was to open up to people she barely knew than to some people she’d known for decades, ‘my whole life as I knew it got flipped on its head.’
‘What happened?’ Emily prompted.
Susan really had to brace herself for this one. ‘It was on a Friday,’ she managed to get out, after several deep, soothing breaths. ‘Just a normal, ordinary Friday afternoon. I was at the bank where I worked, and my daughters were in school – or so I thought. Frank – that’s my husband – was at work too; he’s in the army and he was on duty at the barracks in Rathmines, not far from where we live. Ella, my eldest, was in sixth year and was supposed to be studying for her Leaving Cert, but Ella was never much of a one for schoolwork. My youngest, Melissa, now she’s a real A-student and works so hard I sometimes have to drag her away from her desk, but Ella just dances to the beat of her own drum. Sorry . . . ’ she said, breaking off as a stab of pain that was so sudden and sharp almost winded her.
‘I keep talking about her in the present tense,’ she said quietly, looking directly at Ciara. ‘Can’t help it.’
‘Keep going,’ Ciara replied soothingly. ‘You’re doing great.’
‘Anyway, I’d been bickering with Ella all week,’ Susan went on. ‘About how this was the biggest exam she’d ever have to face and that if she didn’t want to end up working in Poundland, that she’d better knuckle down and start studying. But with Ella I might as well have been talking to the wall. She was such a wilful girl. She was bright and well able to get through her exams, if only she’d apply herself. She’d wanted to do politics and economics at college and what kills me is that she’d have been a born natural at both, if only she’d . . . well, if only she hadn’t gone and . . . ’
Susan had to break off there, as some kindly soul from the edge of the circle passed her down a cupful of water.
‘My Ella was an activist, you see,’ she went on, gratefully taking a sip of the water and picking up the threads of her story. ‘And had been ever since she was a small child, really. She cared about things with such intensity. She was always going off to protest marches and was so passionate about the causes she stood for. Whereas other teenagers her age spend their Saturdays trawling about H&M and Topshop, Ella would be outside furriers’ stores in town handing out flyers about how fur is murder.’
‘She’s not wrong there,’ said Rose, the young girl who’d admitted to bulimia earlier. ‘Fur is murder, isn’t it?’
‘Shh,’ Bungalow Bill hissed. ‘Let the woman finish, will you?’
‘But even when I didn’t agree with whatever stance Ella was taking on whatever issue,’ Susan went on, slowly getting more comfortable the more she spoke ‘she still made her dad and me so proud, every day. Mind you, dinnertime in our house could be like a battlefield at times. Ella would debate you to death about whatever was on the news that day. When Donald Trump got elected, the joke in our house was that we’d have to physically restrain her from protesting at the US embassy. She was smarting over Brexit for months and, as Frank used to say to me, “If she’s like this now, can you imagine what she’ll be like when she’s old enough to vote?” Oh, she was the most wonderful, special girl,’ Susan went on feelingly. ‘I know every parent thinks their child is perfect in every way, but my Ella really was.’
‘So what happened to her?’ Emily asked warily.
‘What happened,’ Susan said, as the warm glow she got from talking about her perfect child started to ebb and instead the panic and darkness rose to constrict her throat, ‘is that Ella . . . was taken from me . . . by someone who . . . he . . . his name was . . . is . . . and he . . . I can’t. I’m sorry.’
Deal with facts, not emotions, she told herself, as her voice cracked and, in spite of herself, she began to shake uncontrollably. It’s easier. It’s cleaner. And it’s just about all I can handle right now. She took a breath and tried again.
‘On March twenty-ninth last year,’ she forced herself to say, in a weak, trembling voice, ‘my Ella, my angel, my perfect girl, my force of nature, died on a stretcher in the back of an ambulance with absolutely no one there to comfort her. No family, no friends, no one. She was just seventeen years of age and now . . . now I honestly think I’m going to lose my mind without her.’
Somehow, barely even knowing how, Susan managed to stand and stumble blindly from the room, to total silence from behind her.
Jayne
19 PRIMROSE SQUARE
Dear God above, Jayne thought. It wasn’t if she’d asked for very much, was it? Her only hope was that Jason and Irene w
ould sit at her dinner table having a friendly chat with Eric and sharing a nice, convivial evening – nothing more. The perfect way, she’d thought, for them to really get to know each other over a lovely, relaxed meal.
But everything was wrong.
Almost from the minute Jason and Irene barged through her front door, the tension was practically pinging off the four walls, all directed squarely at poor, patient Eric. Just about every comment that passed Irene’s lips might as well have come with barbed wire wrapped around it. Nothing was right for her and all she did was snipe at everyone around her – even poor little Melissa, who was doing nothing more than sitting innocently in the crossfire.
And as for Jason? Honestly, there were times during that abysmal night when his behaviour bordered on downright rudeness and Jayne found herself staring at Tom’s urn on top of the telly more than once, thinking, Thank God you’re not here to see this, love. You’d die all over again.
From the minute Eric first greeted him, Jason eyed him up and down warily, drinking the other man in from head to foot. The way Eric towered over him, the long, silvery white hair, the flowing linen shirt, the fact that he was barefoot, and seemingly quite comfortable with it.
Jason pointedly didn’t shake the hand Eric offered him, just snorted and said, ‘Bare feet? In Ireland? In early March? Are you soft in the head or what? You’re not in Florida now, you know.’
Jayne had wilted with embarrassment, but Eric just gave a benign little nod.
‘It sure is great to meet you folks,’ he said in that beautiful, deep, drawling accent, completely surfing over the jibe. ‘I’ve heard a whole heap about you from your mom. I really hope we can all get along just fine.’
‘We don’t say “Mom” in this country,’ Jason replied sniffily. ‘It’s “Ma”, actually.’
‘It sure seems I have a lot to learn,’ Eric said, with a warm smile in Jayne’s direction, as she served up a selection of antipasti for starters: bruschetta and mushrooms stuffed with pesto, and fresh-from-the-oven garlic bread on the side. Eric had prepared all this himself earlier on, and as much as Jayne prided herself on being a great cook, she had to admit they were absolutely gorgeous.
The Secrets of Primrose Square Page 13