‘Nell, don’t beat yourself up. You were overwrought, they’d have seen that.’
She shook her head sharply. ‘I was mean to Imelda. How could I be mean to her, when she’s so—’ She broke off, coughed away the threatening tears. She lifted a cloth from the sink and squeezed it out. ‘I’m not without fault here, is what I’m saying. I believed Andy because I had to, because he’s James’s son, and my stepson. I – I told myself I believed him.’ Her voice still full of wobble, wiping down the draining board, which didn’t need it. ‘I wanted to believe him, but – I had no proof. How could I be sure that he hadn’t … done what she said? I couldn’t be sure, that was the thing. I’d lie awake beside James, and it would be running around and around in my head, and it tormented me. I felt so disloyal.’
The woebegone expression on her face made Laura want very badly to hug her, but it might be too soon for a hug. Instead she cleared the table and ran water into the sink and added washing-up liquid. She rolled up her sleeves and pulled on Nell’s yellow rubber gloves and washed what needed washing, and Nell took a tea towel and dried it.
The kettle was boiled, and tea made. Mugs were set out, cookies taken from the oven. They didn’t say much. They tiptoed around one another. They were careful with words, but Laura knew it was going to be alright.
They drank tea and ate warm cookies. Little by little they inched closer. Bit by bit they forgave, and were forgiven.
Susan
HER PHONE RANG. IT WAS MONDAY EVENING, AN hour after Harry’s bedtime, and four days after the news of Luke’s retirement had broken. She was reading a book Rosie had passed on, a romance set in small-town America of the fifties. She was engrossed in prom dances and Dairy Queens and jukeboxes and station wagons, and rolled-up newspapers landing with a thump on porch steps.
‘It’s me,’ he said, his voice pulling her back to the second millennium. ‘How are you?’
‘I’m alright.’ She made no mention of the job.
‘How’s Harry?’ he asked.
‘He’s doing OK.’
He wasn’t really. In the last few days he’d begun to suck his thumb again, something he hadn’t done in over a year. He’s a quiet little fellow, isn’t he? Angie had said when Susan had picked him up earlier. I wonder if he needs to be around other kiddies.
‘You’ll have heard,’ he said.
‘Yes.’
‘I’ve retired.’
‘Yes.’ She played with the corner of her bookmark. ‘Is it what you want?’
An infinitesimal pause, which she didn’t miss. ‘What I want is for you to come back. You and Harry.’
I have decided to do this in order to spend more time with my family.
‘I’m just afraid you’ll regret it, and resent me because of it.’
His sigh was heavy. ‘Susan,’ he said, ‘I’ve never been good with words, you know that. I’m better with paint – but I’ll try. I thought I could live without you and Harry, but it would appear that I can’t. I thought that as long as I could paint, it was all I needed, but I was wrong. Without you, it’s not coming out right. It means nothing. It’s all nonsense.’
‘But if I—’
‘Hang on,’ he said. ‘Let me get to the end of this, because if I stop I mightn’t be able to pick it up again. I’m not doing this just because you left. I’m doing it because it’s time I gave up. It’s time I sorted the nonsense from what matters. I want you to come home, Susan. I love you and I need you, and I need our son, because it’s also time I learnt how to be a father. I mightn’t be much good at it – Laura would tell you I was lousy at it, and she’d be right – but I’ll see what I can do. I’ll try and do better, for you and for him.’
With every word she felt an unravelling within her, an easing of the tightness she hadn’t realised was there, until it began to loosen.
‘There’s another reason,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell you when I see you.’
‘Can’t you tell me now?’
‘I’d rather not.’
She thought about that. She remembered him telling her he had things on his mind, the day she’d left him and taken Harry with her. It felt like he might finally be ready to let her in. It felt like that.
‘How does that sound?’ he asked.
‘It sounds … hopeful. It sounds promising.’
She’d have to hand in her notice, so soon after starting in the china department. No, she wouldn’t hand in her notice: she’d bring Harry in with her in the morning, and she’d tell them she had to quit, right then. She would imply some kind of family emergency, which wasn’t far from the truth. I can’t go into it, she’d say, but I must attend to it right away. They’d probably be put out: she’d take it. They might say she’d have to forfeit her earnings in return for leaving them so abruptly. She’d do her best to look disappointed.
Her mother wouldn’t be pleased at this development. Her mother would have to lump it.
Rosie and Ed would get their top floor back. She’d send them something lovely from Dublin.
‘Are you still there?’ he asked.
‘I’m still here.’
‘Do you believe me? Do you understand what I’m saying?’
‘… I do.’
She’d said I do to him before, the day she’d taken him as her lawful wedded husband. It hadn’t gone according to plan, not according to her plan, not the way she’d envisaged it going – but he was trying to make amends now. Was he softening as he got older, or had it taken her absence, like he said, to make him realise what mattered?
And what was he going to tell her when he saw her? What was it that had driven a wedge between them and forced her away? So many questions that still needed answers.
‘Will you please come home?’ he asked.
‘No,’ she said.
Imelda
EVE. WHAT WAS TO BE DONE WITH EVE?
I was so sure, she’d sobbed. I really thought I was pregnant, Imelda. I wasn’t lying, I wasn’t trying to get him into trouble, or to come between him and Tilly. You must believe me – and Imelda had promised her she did, and it was the truth.
It drove me crazy, she’d wept. I was still trying to get my head around Hugh, and it was like another thing crashing down on me. I felt like I was on the brink of exploding, all the time. I said things, I did things – I was so awful to you, so awful, and Imelda had held her and told her it was all forgiven and forgotten, all in the past.
I know she tried counselling before, Dr Jack had said, when he’d phoned to tell them what they already knew, but I really do think it’s what she needs. A false pregnancy is often a reaction to a psychological trauma, and I think she’s deeply unhappy because of all she’s gone through. Until she learns to acknowledge and confront it, she can’t put it behind her, can’t get better. It won’t be easy, but she’ll have to give it another go.
So this all came about because of her past?
Well, without investigating it, without her opening up, it’s hard to say exactly what caused it. He’d paused. Hugh’s death may have been a contributing factor – that would have been traumatic for her. They were close, weren’t they?
They were, yes.
It was a relief, of course, to find out that there was no pregnancy, no baby on the way. Eve must see that. On some level she must see it, or she would eventually – but for now she was inconsolable. She hadn’t left the house since she’d taken the tests Imelda had bought, since they’d seen the evidence for themselves. She hadn’t got dressed since not pregnant had appeared in the little window, twice.
It was almost, Imelda thought, as if she’d lost a baby.
Going to see Nell, once they’d had confirmation from Jack, had been something Imelda had dreaded, but a phone call had seemed cowardly, so she’d taken her courage in both hands and driven over. And thankfully, Nell had made it easy.
I’m sorry, she’d said immediately. I’m so sorry, Imelda. I had no right to speak to you like I did.
No, you were upset, I unde
rstand perfectly—
And when they’d got past that part, and Imelda had delivered the news, Nell had gone straight to Andy’s room to tell him, and right after that she’d phoned James, who was at work, while Imelda had moved on to Laura’s house. And now that they all knew, word would spread, and soon everyone would stop talking about it, and in time people would forget that Eve Mulqueen had thought herself pregnant one summer, and had named Andy Baker as the father.
But in the meantime Imelda must talk to her, and convince her that counselling was necessary. She’d tell her that they could try someone new, that they could keep trying someone new until Eve found the right person. It would take time, and it would surely be costly, but the money was there, thanks to Hugh’s careful planning.
‘I could use your help,’ she told him now. ‘I’m not at all sure I can handle this on my own’ – but Hugh was gone and couldn’t help. She heard a scratch at the kitchen door and opened it to let in Scooter, who went straight for her food bowl.
‘Good idea,’ Imelda said. She took two salmon cutlets from the fridge and wrapped them in oiled tinfoil with salt and pepper. She scrubbed and pricked four potatoes that had come from Gavin’s garden and put them into the microwave. She switched on her computer while she waited for the oven to heat up, and found a message from Gualtiero.
Hello Imelda
Here is Gualtiero, home after my holiday in Ireland, so I write to say once again thank you very much for your good kindness to me. The restaurant is OK, and my customer happy to see me again, and in Italy the sun is shining and the sky is blue, and the jasmine is many. I would like very much if you will come to see it. I will look forward to it when you have the time, and when you are ready.
Be happy!
Your friend
Gualtiero
When the potatoes were half cooked she took them from the microwave and put them into the oven along with the salmon, an idea beginning to form in her mind. She set the table and filled a small saucepan with water, and cut florets from a head of cauliflower. She went upstairs and tapped on Eve’s door.
‘Come in.’
She lay in bed with the curtains drawn. She’d put in a brief appearance for a toast-and-tea breakfast and skipped lunch, like she’d done for the past three days, despite Imelda’s coaxing. She rose again each evening for dinner – but only, Imelda suspected, to keep her happy. The air in the room was what Imelda’s sister Marian would have called whiffy.
Imelda took the chair by the bed. ‘Dinner won’t be long,’ she said. ‘Ten minutes or so.’
‘Thanks.’
She remained where she was. The room wasn’t dark. The curtains, chosen by Eve a few months after her arrival on Roone, were tangerine with splashes of navy. They were no good at all at blocking out the light, but Eve had said that was precisely why she’d chosen them. I don’t like the dark, she’d admitted, and Imelda could well understand that – but now she guessed that Eve would prefer to shut everything out, including the daylight.
‘I’ve had an idea,’ Imelda said, leaning forward a little in her chair. ‘I haven’t really thought it through yet, but I wanted to run it past you, to see what you think.’
No response.
‘I was wondering,’ Imelda went on, picking her words carefully, ‘if we should … take a little trip. Just the two of us, just for a week or so.’
Still no reply – but she wasn’t saying no. It was enough to be going on with.
‘I thought we might go to Italy.’
Eve remained quite still, but Imelda sensed a new alertness in her, a more attentive quality to her listening.
‘We could fly to Rome, my treat. I’ve always wanted to visit Rome. You could look online and find somewhere nice for us to stay.’
‘Rome,’ Eve murmured.
‘It looks so beautiful in photos, and there’s so much to see – and I’ve heard the food is just wonderful.’ She let a beat pass. ‘You can blame Mr Conti, my visitor, for putting the idea into my head. When he spoke about Italy, I mean.’
‘I wasn’t nice to him,’ Eve said. ‘I was rude. I didn’t like that you had to put him up. I thought he should have left when he heard about Hugh. I thought it wasn’t fair on you.’
‘Oh, sweetheart, I didn’t mind – well, of course I got a bit of a land when he turned up. He did offer to leave, after I told him about Hugh, and I tried to find him somewhere else on the island but every place was full, so I decided it wouldn’t be the end of the world if he stayed. And he was a nice man, and he was company for me.’
Eve was silent for a while. Imelda was about to rise when she spoke again.
‘The thing is, I didn’t want you to have company. I wanted you to … need me. I felt – left out when he was here.’ She paused. ‘God, that makes me sound so selfish, doesn’t it?’
Imelda reached across to rest a hand on the girl’s shoulder. ‘Eve, love, please don’t be too hard on yourself. This is a horrible time for both of us. I’m sure Gualtiero – Mr Conti – didn’t even notice if you were a bit … short with him.’
How completely alone she must have felt. Pregnant as she thought she was, still grieving for Hugh – and Imelda, mired in her own sadness, and preoccupied with Gualtiero’s presence in the house, hadn’t sensed her trouble, hadn’t seen the crisis that she was living with. How abandoned she must have felt, first by Hugh, and then by Imelda. Little wonder she’d turned to Laura.
‘So what do you think about Rome?’
‘… I’d like it. I haven’t been there.’
She hadn’t been anywhere. Her mother, by the sound of it, had never been in any state to take her and Keith on a holiday – and the Garveys had gone away each summer and dumped Eve with whoever would take her in, which was how Imelda and Hugh had got her. Twelve weeks of respite fostering on Roone that had turned into a permanent thing, or at least until her eighteenth birthday two years ago, when she’d officially stopped being the responsibility of the social welfare system.
Considered an adult at eighteen. Assumed to be able to lead an independent life, when the truth was that she was still all over the place, still with so much bottled-in, unresolved emotion. Fooling everyone into believing that she was fine, even those who should have noticed.
Imelda got to her feet. ‘Get dressed so and come down. We can make plans over dinner.’
It wasn’t the way she’d thought it would go. Certainly not nearly as soon as this – and not with Eve, or with anyone. She’d imagined slipping away in the springtime: maybe not next spring, maybe the one after. A small quiet place in the mountains, in Gualtiero’s village or in another one.
She’d imagined booking into a little family-run hotel, somewhere with a nice garden where she could sit in the shade and read her book and listen to birdsong. Ideally it would be close to a forest where she could walk now and again, to breathe in the pure oxygen-rich wood-scented air, different from the clean saltiness that surrounded them on Roone, but just as nourishing for the soul.
This wasn’t the plan at all. This was nothing like she’d imagined. But Eve needed something to pull her out of the darkness in her head – and Rome, with its fountains and statues and art galleries that she’d seen only in pictures, might do. Rome, with its Colosseum and its Vatican, with its dazzling culture and its rich history and its wonderful food, might just do it.
And there was a chance that they’d take a bus or a train to Gualtiero’s village on one of the days. It might or might not happen; she’d play that bit of it by ear – but however the trip went, Imelda would broach the subject of counselling when the time felt right, and Eve might be open to giving it another try.
And maybe, after all, Imelda did need Eve. Maybe she needed her, like she’d needed Gualtiero, to take her mind, even temporarily, off her great grief.
Ten minutes later Eve appeared in the kitchen, her hair damp from the shower, her laptop tucked under an arm.
And over dinner, they began to plan.
Tilly
‘I am.’ Tilly pulled clothes from her case and threw them into a pile on the floor. ‘But I’m glad to be home.’ She was. She felt she’d never truly appreciated it till this day, but now it was the only place she wanted to be.
‘Fancy heading out somewhere?’ For her eighteenth birthday last year Lien’s parents had presented her with a new silver Hyundai Getz. ‘We could go to the mall.’
The mall, with its crowds and bright lights and jolly piped music. Usually Tilly loved it: she and Lien would dip in and out of their favourite places, and finish up in a coffee shop with skinny lattes or flat whites – but today she wasn’t in the mood.
‘I’m still a bit jetlagged,’ she said, although she wasn’t. She’d slept from Dublin to Dubai, and again from Singapore to Brisbane, and she hadn’t done too badly last night either, her first night home. She sat on the edge of the bed that had been hers since childhood, recalling the bigger, softer one she’d been given in her father’s house.
She’d woken from her nap around six. In his big kitchen she’d found eggs and cheese and made an omelette. She’d eaten it at the counter, taking in the shining surfaces, the absence of dishes in the sink, the tiled floor that hadn’t a mark on it. Either he was a pretty impressive housekeeper, or he had someone coming in.
Afterwards she’d studied the paintings on the walls in the hall, and found none that she thought might be his own. She’d peered into the other ground-floor rooms, and come upon a small sitting room with a television. She’d watched a black and white film set in a travel agency, her mind not really on it, alert all the time for a step outside the door that she’d left ajar, but he hadn’t reappeared. She’d gone to bed early, sure she’d sleep, but sleep hadn’t come. Instead she’d found herself back in the hotel garden, listening to her future falling apart, over and over again.
The Birthday Party: The spell-binding new summer read from the Number One bestselling author Page 29