The Birthday Party: The spell-binding new summer read from the Number One bestselling author

by Meaney, Roisin

  She stomped along, full of misery and rage. Since Hugh’s death, nothing had gone right. She remembered climbing the safety fence at the cliffs when she’d first come to Roone. She remembered standing at the edge, wondering what it would be like to step off. How would it feel, sailing through the air, knowing that her life was almost over, that the bad things would never hurt her again?

  Serve Imelda right if she did it. Serve them all right, all the tight-knit locals in this godforsaken place. She pictured them shaking their heads at her funeral, saying what a lovely person she’d been, and how sad that it had gone this way. She pictured Imelda, full of guilt, telling Nell she should have seen that Eve was in trouble. It gave her some grim satisfaction.

  At a crossroads she turned in the direction of the old fishermen’s cottages, the roads and lanes of the island as familiar to her as any local. Even a complete stranger couldn’t get lost on Roone, with its loop road that hugged the coast, and series of smaller ways that criss-crossed within it. Just keep going, keep moving in the same direction, and eventually you’d find yourself back where you’d started.

  The route she’d chosen went past the lane that led down to the small pebble beach that Hugh used to love, the one that Eve had often visited with him. We met on that beach, Imelda had told her, the morning of the first full day of my holiday.

  So much for that. So much for all the stories of her and Hugh that she’d shared with Eve. Look at her now, the merry widow.

  She’d go down and fling stones into the water, she decided. It might help to burn off her anger. Might even strip off and go for a quick dip if nobody was there. It wasn’t a popular spot, even at the height of the summer: most people went for the bigger sandy beaches.

  She started down the rutted slope, slithering a bit when it got pebbly underfoot. She reached the end of the lane and turned onto the little beach – and spotted them immediately.

  They weren’t the only ones there. A pair of women, both wearing navy trousers, sat well back from the water on metal-legged folding chairs, heads bent over their books. Further along, a solitary older man lay on a brown blanket, eyes closed, palms open to the sky.

  Beyond him a younger man stood by the shore beside a tousle-haired toddler in a white dress, who lifted small fistfuls of pebbles and flung them straight-armed into the water, chuckling delightedly with each series of little plops. A couple of distant heads bobbed in the sea, one topped with a red swimming cap, or enthusiastically dyed hair; at that distance Eve couldn’t be sure.

  And midway along the beach, between the man on the blanket and the little stone-throwing girl, Tilly stood calf-deep in the water, holding up the ends of her long red dress, hair lifting slightly in the small breeze. Andy crouched on his hunkers, a foot or so back from the water’s edge, wearing cut-off jeans and a T-shirt.

  As Eve watched, Tilly kicked water in Andy’s direction, and he leapt to his feet. Tilly backed away, giggling, and the water rose to her knees. She lifted her dress higher, halfway up her thighs now. He stepped out of his flip-flops and waded in, and gave a sideswipe to the water, sending it flying in a wide arc towards her. She screamed and gathered her dress into one hand, and splashed him back.

  Eve stood where she was, feeling trapped, exposed. The beach wasn’t long: if either of them glanced in her direction, they couldn’t miss her. When it happened, when Andy turned and spotted her, she felt forced to lift a hand – and after a second’s hesitation he waved back. Tilly turned at that, and saw Eve, and waved too.

  Damn. Damn it. What to do? Just walk away now?

  No. She wouldn’t do that. She wasn’t in the mood to do that. She made her way along the beach, past the two readers and the supine man, some demon inside her imploring her to say it out, to scream it out: I’m pregnant with Andy Baker’s baby.

  She didn’t, of course. She remained silent as she approached them. ‘Hi there,’ she said, eyes swivelling from one to the other. Tilly’s dress was splotched with darker blue patches. They clung to her thighs, and to her flat-as-a-boy’s stomach.

  ‘Hi,’ they both echoed, Andy’s response coming a millisecond after Tilly’s.

  ‘Long time no see,’ Eve said to Tilly.

  ‘Sure is.’

  Just that, no more. Eve dismissed her and turned to Andy. ‘How’ve you been, stranger? Haven’t been talking to you properly since Frog’s party.’

  Did the mention of it cause him to flinch, or did she imagine it? ‘I’m OK,’ he said. ‘How’ve you been?’

  ‘Fine. Never better. I don’t think I thanked you properly for walking me home that night.’ She glanced at Tilly, something fizzing around inside her like a firework. Go on. ‘He was my knight in shining armour,’ she said. ‘I got horribly drunk, and he looked after me.’

  ‘Really.’ It wasn’t a question. There was a silly stiff smile on her face, the kind of smile you paste on when you’re trying to let on you’re not bothered. ‘That was nice of him.’

  ‘Certainly was,’ Eve agreed, catching his eye again. ‘Like old times, wasn’t it?’

  ‘How’s Imelda?’ he asked, too quickly.

  ‘She’s great. She’s doing amazingly well, actually. Amazingly well. I’d say she’s nearly back to her old self.’

  His T-shirt was grey, and wet like Tilly’s dress where the water had landed. He wore a thin leather wristband she hadn’t seen before. His shorts were a couple of inches too long: if she was still with him, she’d fix them.

  He’d cut himself shaving, a short red line running along his left jaw. She’d kissed such cuts better, once upon a time. She’d kissed the scar on his cheek countless times. The kissing they’d done, once upon a time.

  ‘How are you getting on in the ice-cream van?’ she asked. He’d started working there shortly after Hugh’s death. Eve had passed it a few times on her way to the cemetery with Imelda, but had yet to stop at it.

  He shrugged. ‘It’s OK. It’ll do for the summer.’

  ‘What time do you start?’

  ‘Around noon.’

  ‘Must drop down some afternoon,’ she said, ‘for a sneaky cone.’

  He made no response. He was dying for her to leave; they both were. It was so obvious she wanted to laugh.

  ‘Right,’ she said, wiggling her fingers at Tilly. ‘Behave yourself,’ she told her. ‘Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.’

  Neither of them smiled at that. ‘See you,’ he said. ‘Bye,’ Tilly said.

  Walking away, Eve could sense their eyes on her. She probably shouldn’t have mentioned the party. She hadn’t planned to – it had just come out. Felt good, though. Give him something to think about. Give Tilly something to question him about. Or maybe she’d say nothing, in case it made her sound jealous. Maybe she’d just wonder silently about her boyfriend walking his drunk ex home.

  Like old times. That had been a good line. That had been inspired.

  What would he do, she wondered, when she told him of her pregnancy in a few months’ time? Would it finish things between him and Tilly, even if he didn’t want to be a hands-on dad, even if he wanted nothing to do with it? Because he’d have to tell Tilly, wouldn’t he? If they stayed together she’d find out eventually, one way or another, that he’d been unfaithful, that he’d fathered a child with Eve while he and Tilly were together, while Tilly was miles away in Australia.

  Poor old Tilly. Eve tried to feel sorry for her, and failed.

  Susan

  SHE SLID THE BOLT ACROSS ON THE GATE AND PUSHED Harry’s buggy into the field ahead of her. A picnic, Laura had said on the phone the evening before. All the mess outside. With this fine weather we’d be mad not to – and Susan had said yes, of course they would come.

  A week, she and Harry had been on the island. A week of pottering from the hotel to the nearby beach and back again, and taking coffee in the garden with Tilly and Laura one afternoon, and having Tilly take Harry out another time for ice-cream with the girls while Susan went for a massage in the hotel spa. A week of
early nights and morning lie-ins, and concerned phone calls from her Dublin friends, and none from Luke.

  She was glad she hadn’t made the acquaintance of many islanders on her previous trips to Roone. Here she and Harry were mainly anonymous, able to sit on a beach full of people without anyone coming over to chat, or paddle undisturbed at the water’s edge. Here she could lie low, and give herself time to think and plan.

  But today was the birthday picnic for Evie and Marian, her step-grandchildren, and there had been no avoiding it, so here they were.

  It was already in full swing. An assortment of rugs and blankets had been spread out on the grass by the little orchard. Not far from this a line of children waited for a ride on the donkey’s back, the operation overseen by Ben and Seamus, old hands at it by this stage.

  More children were clustered around the chicken coop at the top of the field. Still more peered over the walls of the pigsty to the left of the coop, with pot-bellied Caesar no doubt eyeing them warily from within. Charlie the dog bounded happily between the various groupings.

  ‘Let’s get you out of this,’ Susan said, unclipping Harry and abandoning the buggy by the hedge. As they made their way towards the house Evie and Marian came racing over, pink-cheeked and sweating in their party dresses. Susan kissed them and exclaimed at their finery and handed over their presents, a pair of musical jewellery boxes she’d found in Roone’s newest craft shop.

  ‘Where’s Mum?’ she asked.

  ‘In the kitchen. Can Harry come with us?’

  Susan looked down at her son. ‘You want to go with the girls?’ He nodded, and the three of them scampered off.

  ‘Susan!’

  She turned and saw a group of women seated under the shade of a big umbrella by the orchard, and Nell making her way across from there in a loose green dress. Nell Baker, Laura’s neighbour and closest friend on the island, whom Susan had met on every one of her visits to Roone, but whom she hadn’t yet encountered on this trip. Nell, a stepmother like herself, having married a man who was already a father, like Susan had done.

  Nell, whose husband James adored her. Lucky, lucky Nell.

  ‘Laura told me,’ she murmured, embracing Susan. ‘I’m so sorry. How are you?’

  ‘I’m doing fine,’ Susan told her, because nobody really wanted to know how you felt. Nobody wanted to hear that you’d cried in the bath for the past six evenings while your child slept in the adjoining bedroom. Nobody wanted you to tell them how many times you’d checked your phone, or rehashed your final conversation with your husband in your head, searching for ways you might have managed it better. Nobody was really interested in how often you imagined you heard a voice that wasn’t there, or fancied you caught the tang of turpentine in the air.

  Two nights ago she’d rung her mother.

  Luke and I have decided to separate, she’d told her. Put like that, it sounded more civilised, more of a business transaction than the collapse of a fifteen-year-old marriage.

  Oh, Susan. Oh, that’s too bad. Where are you, dear?

  Exactly the kind of reaction she’d anticipated, the gleeful eagerness in her mother’s voice belying the sympathetic words.

  I’m on Roone, she said, with Laura and her family. I just needed to get away. Her mother had never been to the island: she and Laura had never been introduced. Harry and I are going to London next week. We’ll be staying with Rosie and her husband till we find a place of our own. I’ll be in touch from there.

  Oh, but – London? Why don’t you just come home, Susan? You can—

  Mum, thank you, but I’ve made up my mind.

  Had she? Did she know, even now, if she was doing the right thing?

  She’d never lived in London, but she’d been there plenty of times. She’d gone for weekends with friends before she’d married; later she’d travelled with Luke to gallery openings and exhibitions, or meetings with art dealers, or awards ceremonies. If she found herself with time on her hands, Susan would stroll through Covent Garden, or sit at a lakeside café in St James’s Park, or work her way through all the departments of Harrods.

  The buzz and style of London had always appealed to her – and now her friend Rosie was living there, having moved from Ireland a year previously when she’d married Ed, her Jamaican-born financier boyfriend. Stay as long as you like, she’d said, in response to Susan’s enquiry. Our house is one of those tall skinny ones – you and Harry can do your own thing on the top floor.

  Susan would find a job: that was the first plan. She’d brush up on her secretarial skills – there had to be something online for that. Once she felt confident enough, she’d sign up with an employment agency. She was forty-two, not too old by anyone’s reckoning – and look at all the jobs there must be in London.

  She didn’t need to work. Since she’d become his wife, Luke had arranged for a generous sum to be paid into her bank account each month, most of which she hadn’t managed to spend, with him also insisting that she use their joint account for household expenses. After walking out on him, she’d assumed the monthly payments would cease – but upon checking her bank account the day before, she’d seen that the usual deposit had been paid in.

  Money he could give. Money wasn’t his problem. He wrote Tilly a cheque for €10,000, Laura had told her, when his second daughter had been brought to his attention. Money he had in spades, and he had no problem sharing it around, but it wasn’t what any of them wanted from him.

  And even if she could manage without earning a salary, she needed to find something, just part-time while Harry was in a crèche, and later in school, to keep her from going back and back and back, to stop her tormenting herself with what-ifs and why-nots. She needed a distraction. She needed a job.

  ‘Come and I’ll introduce you,’ Nell said, so Susan was presented to the other women, none of whom she could remember meeting in the past. ‘Laura’s stepmother,’ was how Nell put it, and Susan wondered if she would still be able to lay claim to that title after she and Luke made their parting official. Did you go on being a stepmother if you divorced your stepchild’s parent? Not that it mattered: she and Laura would remain close, whatever their on-paper relationship. Her connection with the Connolly family on Roone would stay strong, even if her ties to the Potter family in Dublin were severed.

  A space was made for Susan, a chair found. The table around which they were seated was littered with cups, teapot, milk jug and wine glasses. ‘Tilly and Laura will be out in a minute to get you something,’ Susan was told. In the small talk that followed, nobody mentioned Harry’s father, and Susan guessed that Nell wasn’t the only one who’d been made aware of the situation.

  ‘There you are – it’s bedlam!’ Laura cried, emerging from the house with Tilly, both of them laden with various foodstuffs, Tilly also managing a fresh teapot – and bedlam it was, but in the open air the noise was nicely diluted, party spills would soak harmlessly into the grass, crumbs would shake easily from the blankets, and the little guests – a multitude: had Laura rounded up all the four-year-olds of Roone? – certainly looked to be having a good time.

  ‘What would you like to drink?’ Tilly asked. ‘Tea? Coffee? Wine?’ and Susan said she might chance a glass of white wine. Four o’clock in the afternoon, far too early for alcohol – but one glass wouldn’t hurt, and it might blunt the edges of her unhappiness for an hour or two.

  The children were assembled, and the picnic got under way. Baskets of cocktail sausages and chicken nuggets and chips were distributed, along with promises of ice-cream once the first course had been disposed of. Sun cream was reapplied to faces and arms of protesting youngsters; the dog in his excitement overturned a bowl of crisps, and was promptly handed over to Gavin with instructions to keep him at a safe distance.

  Tilly brought portions of quiche to the adult table, and was urged to join them. ‘I’ll wait till the kids have finished,’ she told them. ‘You sit,’ she added to Laura, ‘I’ve got this,’ so Laura sank into a chair and was poured a
glass of wine without being asked if she’d prefer tea.

  ‘She’s a treasure, that girl,’ one of the mothers observed when Tilly had moved off. ‘Any sign of Andy popping the question?’

  ‘They’re too young,’ Nell replied quickly, although the query had been directed at Laura. ‘Tilly’s only nineteen.’

  ‘I was nineteen,’ Laura murmured, and Susan remembered the wedding she and Luke hadn’t attended, because he couldn’t stomach the thought of his daughter marrying an unemployed bricklayer. You should still go, Susan had said. You’re her father – but he’d remained adamant. She’s known him a wet week, he’d said. What can he offer her? And Susan had thought, Love, but hadn’t said it. Luke never met his daughter’s first husband, never laid eyes on him until Aaron was lying in his coffin. How sad was that?

  The subject was changed. Talk turned to upcoming holidays. One family was going to Portugal, another to France, a third to Mayo. Nell said she and James hoped to travel to Venice for a few days in the autumn: ‘His mother has promised to come and look after the kids.’

  The wine was cold, and a little sweeter than Susan went for. She watched Harry sitting silently among his chattering companions, but laughing when they laughed, and seeming perfectly content. It will come, she told herself. He’ll speak when he’s ready.

  ‘There’s Eve,’ Nell said, and heads swung around to see her standing at the gate.

  ‘Why doesn’t she come in?’ someone wondered.

  ‘I’ll go,’ Laura said, and hurried across the field.

  Susan had met her in the hotel the day before. It had taken her a minute to place the chambermaid with the beautiful red hair who’d tapped on her door to ask if she wanted the room cleaned – and then it had come to her.

  You used to help Laura in the Bed & Breakfast. I’m Susan, her stepmother. We met a few times – and Eve had greeted her cordially, although she hadn’t appeared to remember her. I’m just doing this for the summer, she’d said, emptying the wastepaper basket, putting fresh towels in the bathroom. I run the crèche normally.