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

by Meaney, Roisin

  For a second, Tilly was tempted to tell her. To blurt it out, right there in the kitchen: I’m going to propose to him today. I’m going to ask him to marry me. She almost said it, but she didn’t. Wait till it was a done deal. Wait till she and Andy could tell Laura, and everyone else, together.

  She returned Evie to her seat at the table. She checked her face again in the mirror – and as she slicked on another layer of lip gloss, a horn sounded on the road outside. Her heart gave a whump. She took up the picnic basket – chicken wings, potato salad, apple buns, pink lemonade, sun block. She bent to kiss Evie, waggled her fingers at Laura. ‘See you later,’ she told them. ‘Try not to miss me.’

  ‘Enjoy,’ Laura replied. ‘Live for the moment.’

  Live for the moment. It sounded like a sensible way to go about things. Don’t worry about the future, enjoy what you have.

  On the other hand, you could enjoy what you had, and plan for the future too. She walked out to the blue car, swinging her basket happily. She was a princess, and her carriage awaited, with her prince behind the wheel.

  ‘We need to swing by Fitz’s,’ he said, as she climbed in. ‘Dad forgot his reading glasses.’

  No ‘You look lovely’. No ‘Nice to see you’. She turned to place the basket on the back seat, and reached across to kiss him. Princes weren’t perfect, only in fairy tales. ‘That’s fine,’ she said, rolling down her window. Nothing could ruin today: she wouldn’t let it.

  They drove along the village street. Andy pulled up outside Fitz’s and Tilly ran in with James’s glasses, and found him restocking shelves with beer bottles. ‘Thanks, Tilly,’ he said. ‘Can I give you anything towards your picnic? Nuts, crisps, fizzy water?’

  ‘I think we’re all set,’ she told him, pleased that Andy had mentioned the picnic at home. Back in the car she smoothed her skirt over her knees as they turned for the cliffs, trying to still the butterflies that insisted on fluttering madly inside her.

  She’d been to Jackson’s Lookout once before. It was during her first summer on Roone, when Andy had offered to show her the famous road sign that pointed out to sea, the one nobody could explain, the one that had kept reappearing each time Kerry County Council removed it. After three attempts, the council had given up, and the sign remained in place, one of Roone’s more visible mysteries.

  They’d puffed their way up the steep road – no car at their disposal then – which had become, after half a mile or so, a narrower path with grass running along its middle. They’d reached a turnstile and climbed it, and made their way around the edge of a field to a second turnstile, and from there along an earthy track through a small wooded area that eventually petered out and brought them to a grassy space, roughly half the size of a tennis court.

  Jackson’s Lookout, Andy had announced, and Tilly had walked to the safety fence at its edge and had seen the sign on the cliff side of the fence, and had read ‘The Statue of Liberty 3,000 miles’. There had been nobody there that time; she prayed it would be equally deserted today. But even if it wasn’t, they’d find a spot out of earshot of whoever else was around.

  The old car struggled up the hill, engine straining loudly. ‘Fingers crossed,’ Andy said, shifting down a gear, pressing hard on the accelerator, leaning forward in his seat as if that would make a difference. They reached the top, just about, and abandoned the car at the turnstile. No other vehicle was in sight, which Tilly took as a positive sign.

  The route from the road was much as she remembered. Grazing cattle in the field – could they be the same ones as before? – lifted their heads as Tilly and Andy skirted its edge. Sunshine dappled the earthy path in the little forest. At Jackson’s Lookout, the road sign stood proud, still telling anyone who cared to know how far away they were from America.

  And nobody else was there. They had it completely to themselves. Good omen.

  They positioned themselves on the blanket Andy had brought along. He poured lemonade into paper cups; she applied sun block and ordered herself to stay calm. They ate. They drank. They lay in the sun, fingers loosely entwined.

  She told him about a couple in the B&B who’d left a porn magazine behind them in their room. ‘Laura was raging: the boys could easily have found it.’ She asked if he’d heard the woman being interviewed on the radio earlier that morning whose daughter had won half a million euro in the Lotto last year sometime, and been killed in a road accident the following day.

  He told her about the trio of newborn pups that Bugs Deasy’s sister had discovered abandoned by a roadside just outside Killarney, and the gold ring Maisie Kiely had spotted on the beach during one of her morning walks that turned out to belong to her neighbour, Bernie Madigan, who’d lost it a year earlier.

  ‘Never,’ she said.

  ‘True as I’m here.’

  She put sun block on his nose, and on the tips of his ears, and surrendered the last apple bun to him. He tried and failed to teach her how to belch at will. And every so often they fell silent, and she thought, Now! Do it now!

  And she found that she couldn’t. She found that her nerve had completely deserted her.

  She wasn’t sure, was the ugly naked truth.

  He called her baby, and honey, and occasionally Tills, which she secretly adored. He told her he missed her, when they were on different sides of the world and he was just a face on a screen. He seemed perfectly content in her company – when they were out with his friends he would hold her hand or put an arm around her, or drop a hand casually onto her knee. He did and said all the right things – but still she wasn’t sure that he was where she was.

  He kissed her hello and goodbye, and hugged her often, but didn’t attempt to venture further, like he’d done the previous summer. It might be a response to her pulling back: he might be showing her that he was willing to wait – and having decided that wedding night discoveries would be so romantic, she should have been happy with that, shouldn’t she? But contrary creature that she was, she found his lack of urgency disconcerting.

  Love was mentioned between them, often it was said. Maybe more on her part, or she would generally be the one to give it first mention, and he would echo the sentiment – but who was counting?

  She was. She was counting.

  She was in no doubt about her feelings for him. What she’d felt for the man who’d used her so horribly, which she’d foolishly imagined to be love, seemed so pale and pathetic now in comparison to how she felt about Andy. A schoolgirl crush the other had been, no more than that. This was different. This was the real thing.

  Andy just had to catch up. He needed more time, that was all. Their brief periods together meant a slower deepening of his feelings. It was a blow, but not the end of the world. She’d learn to be patient, and wait for him. Next year it would happen, or the one after that. They were meant to be together; of that she was still certain.

  They finished the picnic and packed up. He carried basket and blanket back to the car. And all the way back to Walter’s Place, as he hummed along with the radio, she had to pretend to have a hay fever attack as she pressed a tissue to her nose and eyes and fought with tears that wanted so badly to fall.

  Eve

  THEY MET IN THE HOTEL LOBBY, AS EVE WAS HEADING home after her shift. Susan and her little boy were descending the stairs. ‘We were just about to have a bite to eat in the garden,’ she said. ‘Would you care to join us? I could use some adult conversation’ – so Eve went with them, having no objection to being treated to her lunch. They ordered a sharing platter of cold meats and cheeses and salads, and a little basket of chicken pieces for Harry.

  ‘We leave tomorrow,’ Susan told her. ‘We’ve had a lovely holiday, haven’t we?’ and her little boy, whose nose was a bit pink from the sun, nodded.

  ‘Are you going back to Dublin?’ Eve asked.

  Susan shook her head. ‘Not right away,’ she said. ‘We’re taking a little break from Dublin.’ She gave a quick smile, gone as quickly as it had appeared. ‘It’s com
plicated.’

  Sounded complicated. A little break, right after a two-week holiday. Eve decided to change the subject. ‘I’ll be helping out here with the owner’s birthday party in a couple of weeks. He asked if I wanted to do an extra shift.’

  Susan looked doubtful. ‘Will you? Are you sure you want to work that night? Won’t your friends be at the party?’

  Her friends, who were also Andy’s friends. The friends she’d been steering clear of lately – and who, it had to be said, were keeping their distance too, maybe thinking she needed time alone to grieve. ‘They’ll probably be there,’ she agreed.

  ‘And wouldn’t you rather be enjoying yourself with them instead of working?’

  ‘Not really,’ Eve told her. ‘I’m not in the mood for a party these days.’

  Susan’s face changed. ‘Oh, Eve – of course you’re not. I didn’t think, sorry.’

  Eve felt a twinge of guilt. Susan had meant because of Hugh – and it was a factor, certainly, but not the only one.

  ‘Actually,’ she said lightly, ‘I’m pregnant.’ Not having planned to blurt it out to someone who was little more than a passing acquaintance, but Susan was leaving tomorrow, and she didn’t strike Eve as a gossip. And it wouldn’t matter anyway if she said it to Laura, who knew already.

  ‘Oh …’

  Eve could see the indecision in her face. To congratulate or commiserate? ‘It wasn’t planned. It was – a spur of the moment thing. Nobody knows yet.’ She paused. ‘Not even the father.’ Felt weird to say it. The father.

  ‘I see. And … how do you feel about it?’

  Eve considered. ‘I feel OK, I think. I’ve decided to keep it.’ That was enough, she thought. Any more, and she might give away too much.

  ‘Right.’ Susan gave her another fleeting smile. ‘Well, I wish you good luck. Hope things work out for you.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Susan wouldn’t talk. She wasn’t the type to go running around with news. Eve skewered a cube of grilled halloumi, wondering if she could chance another of the fat green olives, even though she’d had at least four already, and Susan none at all. Her appetite was back with a vengeance, which she should probably be glad about, but she didn’t want to end up like one of those women who put on a ton of weight when they got pregnant and never managed to lose it again.

  ‘How’s Imelda doing?’ Susan asked.

  Everyone Eve met asked her that, and to everyone she gave the same response. ‘She’s coping.’

  She’d seen Imelda in the village the day before. Eve had been emerging from the fish shop when she’d spotted Imelda crossing to her side of the street. Well within calling distance, just a few doors away, but Eve had drawn back. Her rage of the other morning had abated, but still she felt resentful of the man who was staying where he had no business to be.

  Imelda had had her hair cut. It was soft around her face, the way Nell always did it. Eve watched her hitch the strap of her bag higher onto her shoulder, like she’d seen her do a million times before. She wore her grey jacket, although the sky showed no sign of rain.

  When Imelda had heard what Derek Garvey had done, she hadn’t asked Eve why she’d waited so long to tell someone. She hadn’t asked her anything at all. ‘Listen to me,’ she’d said. ‘You will never have to go back to that house. Do you hear me? You will never have to set foot in that house again. I promise you that. Hugh and I will sort everything out.’ And they had. Hugh and Imelda had saved her.

  Looking at her the day before, Eve realised that she’d lost weight since Hugh’s death. She remembered when Imelda would eat a full slice of apple tart and follow it with another, laughing, calling herself a little piggy. Eat away, Hugh would tell her, I love to see a woman who isn’t afraid of her food.

  Watching her entering the supermarket with her new haircut, Eve’s eyes had filled with tears. Stop it, she’d commanded. Stay strong. She doesn’t need you, she’s made that perfectly clear, and you certainly don’t need her. Eve had seen the man too, earlier in the day, rolling his case past the hotel as she’d glanced out of a bedroom window.

  In the hotel garden a pair of birds set up a sudden lively chirping. ‘Sorry,’ Eve said. ‘I don’t know why I told you all that, about me being pregnant, I mean.’

  ‘No need to apologise. It’s good to talk sometimes.’

  Susan wasn’t talking though. She wasn’t telling Eve why she’d come to the island without her husband, and why she wasn’t returning to him now. She was attractive, with large eyes and a full mouth that didn’t look fake, and shiny dark hair whose cut, Eve guessed, had cost a lot more than Nell charged.

  They finished eating. Dessert was offered and declined. Eve rose to her feet. ‘Thanks for this,’ she said. ‘It was a nice treat. See you next time you’re around,’ and Susan smiled and wished her well again. Eve waved goodbye to the little boy, who hadn’t uttered a single word all through lunch.

  She walked home by the main beach. It was the day of the island’s annual barbecue and she’d planned to stay away, but suddenly she was curious to see it. She could hang back by the dunes where she wouldn’t be noticed.

  The beach was more crowded than usual, as it always was on barbecue day. Most of the island’s population turned up every year, even if it was only for an hour or two – the village street pretty much shut down from three to five – and it looked like plenty of tourists were taking advantage of the festivities too.

  Men and women stood around in clusters; others sat on deckchairs or rugs. Children chased one another about on the sand, or built castles of varying complexity. Further along, a beach volleyball game was in session. Bright umbrellas were dotted about the place, beneath which babies slept and grandparents dozed.

  The dark green drinks tent was there as ever: Eve remembered Hugh helping to man it each year. The smell of roasting meat drifted on the breeze to her from the big barbecue pit, making her mouth water although she wasn’t hungry after the lunch.

  From her vantage point she scanned the scene, picking out familiar faces. There were Janet Brown and Nuala Considine at the water’s edge, batting a small ball from one to the other, and pretending not to notice that a few tanned foreign boys standing nearby were eyeing them up.

  Her boss from the hotel was there, his trousers rolled to reveal white calves as he walked by the water’s edge with an old woman whose face Eve knew. Margie or Maisie, she thought. Big floppy hat on her today. Walked this beach from end to end every day of the year, pretty much, along with a few of her equally energetic buddies. People tended to live well into old age on Roone: the oldest person on the island was currently Patsy McDonagh, whose ninety-fifth birthday had been celebrated in March. Hugh had been one of the unlucky ones, taken well before he should have been.

  No sign of Nell. Staying away, Eve guessed, for the same reason Imelda was. She couldn’t locate Laura either, but there were Gavin and James, not too far from the drinks tent. You couldn’t miss Gavin with his lanky build, and the shapeless grey hat he insisted on wearing in the sun, much to Laura’s mortification. His three girls were playing in the sand at his feet, and further along his twin boys – no, Laura’s boys, not his – were kicking something around, she couldn’t tell what. Getting so tall now, must be eleven or twelve.

  She turned her gaze to the sea – and there was the group she’d been hunting for. They stood chest high in the water, in the formation of a rough circle, and threw an inflatable beach ball around, diving and leaping to catch it. She saw Tilly launching herself upwards in a red swimsuit, bringing an arc of water with her as she met the ball in mid-air and palm-slapped it across to Bugs.

  Eve thought of her first beach barbecue, and the dark green swimsuit she’d bought a few days beforehand in Tralee, with money Imelda had given her. She remembered playing in the sea in just such a way with Andy and his friends. Early stages with him, their relationship so new that every look brought butterflies, every smile made her insides melt, every kiss was a tiny burst of joy.


  She’d been on Roone for over a month, and against all her expectations she was growing attached to the island. She was also beginning to realise how lucky she’d been to end up in Imelda and Hugh’s house – and to her astonishment and growing delight, she was also falling in love. The very last thing she’d anticipated when she’d been banished, as she saw it, to a place she knew nothing about, tossed aside for the entire summer while the Garveys got a break from her.

  Minutes passed. She stood there, watching them.

  Watching him.

  Their shouts and whoops carried across to her, along with the excited shrieks of little children, and spatters of laughter from others. The sun beat down, making her head hot, causing sweat to trickle slowly down her back. She gathered her hair and swept it over a shoulder. She was overdressed in a long-sleeved T-shirt and jeans. She felt like an outsider, looking on from the sidelines while everyone else had fun.

  After a few more minutes she turned and walked away, the sounds of merriment following her.

  Susan

  ‘RING ME WHEN YOU LAND.’

  ‘I will of course.’

  ‘And don’t stay away too long. London’s only an hour from Kerry, and Gav can pick you up at the airport.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘You might come for Christmas, you and Harry. Just a thought.’

  Christmas. She couldn’t imagine it in the July sunshine. Last Christmas Day the three of them had gone to a hotel for brunch with friends, an annual event that Luke tolerated and Susan enjoyed, and Harry had thrown up in the car on the way home, the start of a tummy bug that had resulted in them cancelling their dinner reservation at another hotel and eating smoked-salmon sandwiches by the fire as Harry, swaddled on the couch, watched Elf and ate nothing. This year, who knew where they’d be on Christmas Day?

  It was almost half past noon. They stood by Susan’s car, fifth in line to board the ferry, which was approaching. Harry kept a tight grip on the end of his mother’s dress, a melting cone clutched in his other hand. Susan watched rivulets of ice-cream run over his fingers and drip onto the ground, narrowly missing his small canvas shoes. He always took an eternity with his food. She could have urged him to eat it faster but she said nothing. There were bigger things to worry about than sticky fingers.