‘I’m sorry it’s come to this,’ Laura said. ‘I’m sorry you’re so sad. If it’s any comfort, I don’t doubt that he misses you.’
It’s not what I want, he’d said. Just remember it’s your choice, not mine, he’d said – and yet there had been no word from him, no call, no text, nothing at all in two weeks.
‘He’s a fool,’ Laura said.
She couldn’t deny it. And she was a bigger fool to love him, but she did.
‘It’s just—’ Laura broke off.
Susan kept her eyes on Harry and said nothing. Don’t ask me to ring him. Don’t ask if he’s rung.
‘You know what he’s like,’ Laura said. ‘You know how stubborn he is.’
‘Of course I know that.’
‘… I just hate the thought of you not being together any more. I – I don’t think he’ll cope, without you.’
Susan looked at her. ‘Maybe he should have thought of that,’ she said quietly, ‘while he was pushing me away.’
Laura made no reply. The ferry arrived, its apron running onto the slip. The familiar horn sounded, long and low, as cars on the deck started up and began to disembark. ‘Finish your ice-cream, pet,’ Susan said to Harry, and he handed the limp wafer wordlessly to her. She deposited it in a nearby metal bin and cleaned his hands with a wipe.
Laura’s hug was tight. ‘Sorry. I’m just concerned, for both of you. For the three of you. Look after yourself. Don’t forget to ring when you land.’
‘I won’t.’
‘Goodbye to my best little man,’ she said to Harry, pressing her lips to his forehead. ‘See you soon, sweetheart.’
They boarded the ferry, car wheels doing a double clank as they drove onto the apron. In her rear-view mirror Susan saw Laura walking back towards Walter’s Place, to where Gavin and her children awaited.
Why couldn’t she have found someone who would look at her the way Gavin looked at Laura? Why hadn’t she met a man who would give her foot massages before she asked for them, and return from anywhere with chocolate for her, and always, always, put her first?
A rap on the window: she slid it down and paid the ferryman, and took her ticket. They were flying from Dublin so she could leave her car at her friend Trish’s house. A car in a city the size of London, she suspected, would be more of a liability than an asset. She’d have to decide what to do with it at some stage, but for now it could stay in Dublin.
I’m sorry I won’t be able to bring you to the airport, Trish had told her. There’s a meeting I can’t miss at work – but Susan was more than happy to drop the car keys through her friend’s letterbox and take a taxi to the airport, with a driver who wouldn’t ask how things were going, or wonder aloud whether Susan thought she and Luke would ever get back together.
The ferry got going. She turned in her seat to Harry.
‘Hi sweetie,’ she said.
‘Hi,’ he replied.
Her heart jumped.
His first word.
Had she imagined it?
‘Hi,’ she said again, hardly daring to breathe.
‘Hi.’
He was speaking. He was communicating verbally with her. Laughter bubbled out of her. An answering beam lit his face. She clapped her hands: his miniature palms patted lightly together. Her little mirror image.
‘Hi!’
‘Hi!’
She made a game of it, ducking out of sight, popping up with another ‘Hi!’ Each of his responses, accompanied now with a gurgle of laughter, added to her delight. Back and forth they went, mother to child to mother to child. Somewhere in the middle of the bay he yawned and ran out of steam, and the game was over.
She took her phone from her bag. She had to tell Luke. She had to ring him now, before she could think too much about it, and decide it wasn’t a good idea. She pressed his number and listened to the ringing tone. A quarter to one, her watch told her: he’d be having lunch, if he still did things the way they’d always done them. She imagined him reaching for the phone. He’d pick it up and see her name on his screen. He’d know it was her.
The rings stopped. She waited for him to speak, suddenly nervous, already regretting her impulse – but instead she heard a click. Luke Potter, his recorded voice said crisply. Leave a message. She disconnected – this wasn’t something for an answering machine – and looked again at Harry, and saw that his eyes had closed.
Missed call, his phone would tell him, in the event that he really had missed it. He’d check to see who’d tried to contact him, and her name would pop up.
She didn’t think he’d ring her back.
In a little under six hours, she and Harry would be on the plane to London. She’d debated giving herself enough time to fit in a return visit to the house to collect more things, but in the end she hadn’t been able to face it, afraid of what seeing him again might do to her. She’d get someone, one of their mutual friends, to call. She might ask Denise, who was calm and steady, who’d be good in a tricky situation. Susan would give her a list, and tell her where to find things. She wouldn’t look for anything they’d shared, anything they’d bought together – what would any of that do but remind her of what she’d lost?
She’d have to let him know before she sent someone to the house. He never responded to callers if he could help it. Not a problem when she’d been there, but now she’d need him to let in whoever it was, to open the gate and allow access. She’d text him, and keep it short. She’d say what had to be said, and no more.
She sat in her car as the ferry sailed on, trying to rekindle her euphoria over Harry’s milestone, but it would appear, for the moment at least, that that was lost to her too.
Laura
JUST CHECKING IN, SHE TEXTED. HOW ARE THINGS? GIVE a shout if you’d like to meet up for a chat – and within seconds, I’m fine floated back. Just that, nothing more. She’d dumped her pregnancy at Laura’s door, she’d lumbered Laura with her secret – and ever since then, she appeared bent on shutting Laura out.
It wouldn’t do. Her lack of communication, her non-committal responses to each of Laura’s texts, was only causing the suspicions in Laura’s head to grow stronger, and she’d had enough. There was nothing for it, she decided, but to drop by the apartment above the crèche and have it out with Eve, and get to the truth of it. She’d do it today, just as soon as she could escape.
The breakfasts were served, the rooms cleaned, the laundry bundled into the washing-machine. Guests paid up and left; Gavin arrived home from his vegetable deliveries. The boys had scampered off earlier, their morning chores dealt with. Poppy was put up for her nap, Evie and Marian settled in the orchard with their dolls and their tea sets, within earshot of the open kitchen window.
Charlie the dog was pottering nearby, cocking a leg at apple-tree trunks and nosing among the windfalls scattered around what they all called the magic tree, well accustomed by now to its multiple crops each year. Up the field, chickens scratched and clucked in the coop; in his adjacent sty, Caesar the pig finished off the breakfast leftovers.
George the donkey stood inside the five-bar gate, waiting for Michael Brown from the neighbouring farm, who came by without fail each morning with an old clothes brush for the shaggy coat, and half a carrot in the pocket of his jacket.
In the kitchen Gavin spooned coffee into three mugs while Laura grated beetroot and apples for a lunchtime salad, and Tilly filed and polished her nails.
‘Cathy and Leo have a new grandchild,’ Gavin told them. He always came back with some bit of news after his rounds.
‘Oh, it’s arrived. Boy or girl?’
‘Boy.’
‘Any name?’
‘Not yet, not that they’ve been told. Annie Byrnes had a fieldmouse in her kitchen yesterday. Hopped out of the log basket at her.’
‘Lord, poor Annie. She must have lost her reason.’
Lunchtime came. Children were assembled. Ben and Seamus reappeared, clamouring for food. When everyone had been fed and the boys had gone ou
t to set up for the donkey rides, Tilly cleared the table and then vanished. Laura eyed the stack of washing-up and decided to trust that someone else would look after it. ‘Gav, will you hold the fort here for a bit? I want to head out for a cycle.’
‘Sure. Who are we expecting?’
‘A couple and a trio, but nobody’s due for another few hours. I won’t be that long.’
‘Take your time,’ he said. ‘No rush.’
She hugged him. ‘See, this is why I stay with you.’
The day was another fine one. Such a run of sunshine they were getting, lovely how it put everyone in good humour. Lapping it up they were, turning their faces to the sky so they could soak it in.
Cycling through the village on the faithful old bike that had travelled with her from Dublin, Laura passed groups of brightly dressed foreign teens – on a day trip from Tralee or Killarney, more than likely, where lots of them spent a summer month learning English. Jostling each other, calling out to one another, full of youth and laughter and bravado, males and females pretending not to eye each other up. What was that song about the boys watching the girls and the girls watching the boys? Same the world over, everyone looking for someone.
At the far end of the street she turned left and cycled the hundred yards or so to the crèche, located at the rear of the community hall. A familiar place for her, a busy spot every time she’d dropped or collected the girls, children and parents milling around, Eve in the middle of them – but today it was remarkably quiet, given its proximity to the bustling village.
Wouldn’t fancy it, Laura thought, living alone in such a secluded place. Peace and quiet were all very well, many times she craved it, but she’d go dotty in this absolute stillness, this constant, almost eerie silence. Not good for Eve, she thought, especially not now.
No garden to speak of either, the car park on one side and a little play area for the kiddies on the other, bordered by a wooden fence, with sandpit, swings and a slide. A small patch of green beyond it for them to run around in but no flowers anywhere, no shrubs or trees. Eve’s predecessor had always filled a hanging basket in the spring and hung it on the fence, but Eve hadn’t kept up the practice. Shame.
She lifted the door knocker and let it drop with a thump. She waited, and when nothing happened she did it again. With still no response, she stepped back and regarded the two sash windows overhead. One was open, three or four inches of sunshine getting in.
‘Are you there, Eve? It’s Laura.’
No sound, no sign of her. Laura took her phone from her pocket and placed a call, but it went straight to voicemail. It’s me, she said when the beep sounded. Just popped around for a chat. Sorry I missed you. Give me a call, really would like to check in with you.
What now? She mounted her bicycle, undecided. She could cycle by Imelda’s house, five minutes further on: she might meet Eve on the road. Might as well, now that she’d come this far – but her trip proved fruitless, with no sighting of the girl. Mightn’t be spending as much time there these days, with the secret she couldn’t reveal.
She cycled on, deciding to return home by a circuitous route that bypassed the village. Such a pleasant day to be out and about; pity to cut it short.
On one of the back roads she approached the tiny Church of Ireland cemetery, filled mostly with Thompsons, Walter being the last of them to be laid there six years earlier. Hard to believe he was gone that long. All the changes since then.
She drew to a halt and dismounted. She propped the bike against the cemetery gate and walked in. There was a different quality to the silence here. It was, she decided, the benign silence of good, decent souls at rest. She stood before Walter’s grave and remembered him.
‘You’ve got an Italian doppelgänger,’ she told him. ‘He’s staying here on Roone, painting the sea. He doesn’t look particularly like you, but he has your way about him. I think you’d have got on.’
Back on the coast road she pulled into the verge to allow a large camper van to pass her by, a French sticker on its rear. She stood for a few moments to watch the sea, visible across a field to her left, and sparkling in today’s sunshine. The immensity, the glory of it. She didn’t think she’d ever again be able to live in a place without a sea view from at least one window.
She pedalled on, past a family group with a double buggy – heading for the donkey rides, hopefully – and a trio of teenage girls in frighteningly skimpy shorts, and a stern-looking couple with a pair of terriers on leads. She passed an elderly and very upright woman in a beautiful pale pink summer coat who reminded her of Nell’s elegant mother-in-law. ‘Fabulous day,’ she called as Laura cycled past, and Laura agreed that it was.
Back home, she leant her bicycle against an apple tree. The rides were in full swing, with a healthy number of waiting children. Good old George, still earning his keep, for however long it lasted.
In the kitchen Gavin was shelling peas into a bowl with Poppy on his lap, helping herself. Evie and Marian were decorating one another’s faces with the paint sticks that Nell had given them for their birthday.
‘Such beautiful ladies,’ Laura said. ‘Maybe you could do Dad next.’
Gavin didn’t return her grin. The look on his face drew her closer. ‘What’s up?’ she asked quietly.
‘Someone went over the cliff,’ he murmured. ‘I just got a call from James.’
And even as her heart constricted with fear at the news, even as her mother’s brain was instinctively establishing her children’s whereabouts – girls here, boys outside – she was reminded of the darkness that had passed through her a week earlier. The advance notice of some terrible badness, and now it had arrived.
And she knew it was Eve. Eve had gone over the cliff.
Imelda
IT WAS GUALTIERO WHO’D RAISED THE ALARM. Abandoning everything – his easel, his canvas, his folding table, his paints, his green suitcase – to scramble from the rocks to the road and flag down a car, to communicate somehow in his inadequate English, in his profoundly shocked state, the awful plunge into the sea that he’d witnessed.
The small coastguard station at the north of the island had been quickly alerted: within minutes a lifeboat had been dispatched to the area. The news was relayed to local fishermen, who’d turned their trawlers in the same direction. As word had spread further, various other craft had begun to appear. Before long the sea was alive with activity, everyone searching, all bent on the same terrible task.
‘Try to drink this,’ Imelda said, placing the glass in his unsteady hands. ‘It will help.’
His teeth beat a tattoo against the rim. Some of the liquid spilt on his white shirt, more splashed onto the table. She doubted that he got any at all into him before he lowered the glass. ‘Sorry,’ he said.
‘Please don’t apologise, Gualtiero.’
She wondered if he was in the kind of shock you shouldn’t ignore. Did he need something stronger than brandy? Should she call Dr Jack? Hugh would have known what to do – he’d always been good in a crisis. She tended to go to pieces but that wasn’t an option here, not with one of them already on the verge of falling apart.
‘Would you like me to get the doctor?’ she asked.
‘No, no doctor, I am OK. Thank you, Eemelda. Grazie.’
He didn’t look OK. He looked far from OK, his face still registering the awfulness of what he had witnessed. The vitality drained from it, his pupils huge, his shoulders hunched. Such a land she’d got when he and Sergeant Fox had shown up on the doorstep, the sergeant towering over him, his grip tight on Gualtiero’s elbow.
Saw someone go over the cliff, he’d told Imelda. Gave him a fair old fright.
Saw someone go over the cliff, saw someone drop into the water pretty much right in front of him. She couldn’t imagine how horrifying that sight would have been for anyone, let alone someone whose wife had been taken by the sea.
‘Try some more brandy,’ she urged, and he raised the glass to his lips for the second time, and man
aged a little better.
‘I do not ’elp,’ he said eventually, when he became steadier, when the life began to creep back into his face. ‘I just go, very fast, with no ’elp’ – and she saw the awful guilt taking over, now that the shock was receding.
‘There was nothing you could have done,’ she assured him. ‘It would have been far too dangerous to go into the water there; you would have been risking your own life if you’d tried. It was better to do what you did, to go for help.’ She saw how little difference her words were making. He might have saved a life, but instead he’d run away: that was all he could focus on.
Her phone rang, startling her, startling both of them. She saw Nell’s name on the screen.
‘How is he?’ she asked. ‘I heard he was there.’
As always, it had taken no time for word to get around. Imelda walked into the hall, pulling the kitchen door closed behind her. ‘He was painting at the bottom of the cliff: it sounds like he was very close to where the poor creature went in. He’s very shaken, but he doesn’t want me to get the doctor. I’ve given him brandy.’
‘If he’s able to say no to the doctor he’s probably OK. How are you? Do you want me to come around?’
It was Monday, her day off. ‘Thanks Nell, but it’s not necessary. Is there any further news? Have they found … anything?’
‘Not that I’ve heard. I’ll let you know.’
‘Please do – and Nell, he left all his paints and things behind him. I wonder – could someone possibly collect them for him?’
‘I’ll sort it,’ Nell promised. ‘Tell him not to worry. Would you like to bring him over for dinner later?’
The Birthday Party: The spell-binding new summer read from the Number One bestselling author Page 16