Grown Ups

by Marian Keyes

  Marian Keyes

  * * *

  GROWN UPS

  Contents

  Prologue

  Six Months Earlier One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Five Months Earlier Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Four Months Earlier Thirty-Four

  Thirty-Five

  Thirty-Six

  Thirty-Seven

  Thirty-Eight

  Thirty-Nine

  Forty

  Forty-One

  Forty-Two

  Forty-Three

  Forty-Four

  Forty-Five

  Forty-Six

  Forty-Seven

  Forty-Eight

  Forty-Nine

  Fifty

  Fifty-One

  Fifty-Two

  Fifty-Three

  Three Months Ago Fifty-Four

  Fifty-Five

  Fifty-Six

  Fifty-Seven

  Fifty-Eight

  Fifty-Nine

  Sixty

  Sixty-One

  Sixty-Two

  Sixty-Three

  Sixty-Four

  Seven Weeks Ago Sixty-Five

  Sixty-Six

  Sixty-Seven

  Sixty-Eight

  Sixty-Nine

  Seventy

  Seventy-One

  Seventy-Two

  Seventy-Three

  Seventy-Four

  Seventy-Five

  Seventy-Six

  Seventy-Seven

  Seventy-Eight

  Seventy-Nine

  Six Weeks Ago Eighty

  Eighty-One

  Eighty-Two

  Four Weeks Ago Eighty-Three

  Eighty-Four

  Eighty-Five

  Eighty-Six

  Seventeen Days Ago Eighty-Seven

  Two Weeks Ago Eighty-Eight

  Eighty-Nine

  Ninety

  Ninety-One

  Eleven Days Ago Ninety-Two

  Four Days Ago Ninety-Three

  Three Days Ago Ninety-Four

  One Day Ago Ninety-Five

  Today Ninety-Six

  Ninety-Seven

  Now Ninety-Eight

  After Friday Night/Saturday Morning

  Monday

  Tuesday

  Wednesday

  Thursday

  Monday

  Tuesday

  Wednesday

  Eight Months Later

  Acknowledgements

  Permissions

  About the Author

  Marian Keyes is the international bestselling author of Watermelon, Lucy Sullivan is Getting Married, Rachel’s Holiday, Last Chance Saloon, Sushi for Beginners, Angels, The Other Side of the Story, Anybody Out There, This Charming Man, The Brightest Star in the Sky, The Mystery of Mercy Close, The Woman Who Stole My Life and The Break. Her journalism, collected under two titles, Making It Up As I Go Along and Under the Duvet: Deluxe Edition, containing the original publications Under the Duvet and Further Under the Duvet, are also available from Penguin. Marian lives in Dublin with her husband.

  For my husband

  The Family Tree

  ‘When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown-up we would no longer be vulnerable. But to grow up is to accept vulnerability … To be alive is to be vulnerable’

  Madeleine L’Engle.

  Prologue

  Johnny Casey launched into a fit of energetic coughing – a bit of bread down the wrong way. But the chat around the long dinner table carried on. Lovely. He could die here, literally die, on his forty-ninth birthday, and would his brothers, their spouses, his own wife, Jessie, or any of the children, even notice?

  Jessie was his best hope but she was off in the kitchen readying the next elaborate course. He could only hope he survived to eat it.

  A sip of water didn’t help. Tears were streaming down his face and finally Ed, his younger brother, asked, ‘You okay there?’

  Manfully, Johnny waved away his concern. ‘Bread. Down the wrong way.’

  ‘Thought for a minute you were choking,’ Ferdia said.

  Well, why didn’t you say something, you useless tool? Twenty-two years of age and more concerned with Syrian refugees than your stepfather expiring!

  ‘That’d be a shame,’ Johnny croaked. ‘To die on my birthday.’

  ‘You wouldn’t have died,’ Ferdia said. ‘One of us would have tried the Heimlich manoeuvre.’

  Someone would have needed to notice I was dying first.

  ‘You know what happened recently?’ Ed asked. ‘Mr Heimlich? The man who invented the Heimlich manoeuvre? Finally, at the age of eighty-seven, he got to do it on someone for real.’

  ‘And it worked? He saved the person?’ This was from Liam, the youngest of the Casey brothers, right down at the end of the table. ‘Be a bit mortifying if he did it, then the person snuffed it.’

  Liam tended to bring the snark to any situation, Johnny reflected. Look at him there, lounging back in his seat with a careless grace that made Johnny’s teeth itch. At forty-one years of age, Liam was still propelling himself through life, using only good looks and swagger.

  The cut of him, with his surf-y hair and half the buttons open on his crumpled shirt.

  ‘Like Mr Segway,’ Ferdia said. ‘Invented the Segway, said they were totally safe, then died on one.’

  ‘In fairness,’ Ed said, ‘his only claim was that you’d never fall over on one.’

  ‘So what happened?’ Johnny, despite his resentment at the lot of them, was interested.

  ‘He accidentally drove one off a cliff.’

  ‘Oh, God.’ Nell, Liam’s wife, dissolved into giggles. ‘Started believing his own publicity? You know, they were a bit safe, so he got fooled into thinking they were bullet-proof?’

  ‘Got high on his own supply,’ Ferdia said.

  ‘You’d know about that.’ Liam threw his nephew a dark look.

  Ferdia glared in return.

  So the feud between those two is on again? What is it this time?

  He’d ask Jessie. She kept tabs on the various Casey alliances and grudges – it gave her life. Where was she anyway? Right, here she came. Carrying a trayful of, by the looks of things, sorbets.

  ‘Palate cleansers!’ she declared. ‘Lemon and vodka.’

  ‘What about us?’ Bridey piped up. She was twelve years of age and operated like a union rep for the five youngest cousins. She policed their rights with vigilance. ‘We can’t possibly have vodka, we’re far too young.’

  ‘On it,’ Jessie said.

  Course she was, Johnny thought. Fair play to her. Never dropped the ball.

  ‘Just lemon for you guys.’

  Sometimes Johnny didn’t know how Jessie did it. Even though Bridey was his first-born, he sometimes found her insufferable.

  Bridey issued stern instructions to the younger kids that if their sorbets tasted ‘in any way funny’ they must desist from eating them with immediate effect.

  She actually said those words. ‘Desist.’ And ‘with immediate effect’.

  It w
as at times such as these that Johnny Casey wondered at the wisdom of sending children to expensive schools. They created monsters.

  Jessie resumed her spot at the head of the table. ‘Everyone okay?’ she asked.

  Cheerful noises of assent rose, because that was how things rolled in Jessie’s world.

  But when the hubbub quietened down, Ed’s wife, Cara, said, ‘I have to say it, I’m bored out of my skull.’

  Good-humoured chortles followed and someone murmured, ‘You’re gas.’

  ‘I’m not joking.’

  Several heads jerked up from their sorbets. All conversation ceased.

  ‘I mean, sorbets?’ Cara asked. ‘How many more courses do we have to sit through? Couldn’t we just have had a pizza?’

  Okay, Cara had one or two issues. To put it mildly. But she was a sweetheart, one of the nicest people he’d ever met. Johnny’s gaze went to Ed: it was his job to keep his wife under control. If that wasn’t a very sexist thought and, yes, he admitted it was.

  But Ed looked stupefied with confusion. ‘What the hell?’ he asked. ‘Jessie, I’m sorry!’

  Jessie was dumb with shock.

  Trying to pull things back to normal, Johnny adopted a light-hearted tone. ‘Ah, come on now, Cara. After all the work Jessie’s done …’

  ‘But she did nothing! The caterers did it.’

  ‘What caterers?’ several voices asked.

  ‘She always has these things catered.’

  Jessie would never use caterers. Cooking is her thing.

  Up and down the table, the mood was of scandalized commotion.

  ‘How much have you had to drink?’ Ed asked Cara.

  ‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘Because I had that bang –’

  ‘– on the head!’ Ed finished her sentence and his relief was audible. ‘She got a bang on the head earlier. A sign fell off a shop and hit her –’

  ‘That’s not what happened –’

  ‘We thought she was okay –’

  ‘You wanted me to be okay,’ Cara said. ‘I knew I wasn’t.’

  ‘You should go to A and E!’ Jessie was struggling to recalibrate to her default personality of Nurturing and Bossy. ‘You’re obviously concussed. Go this very moment, why are you even here?’

  ‘Because Ed needs Johnny to loan him the money,’ Cara said.

  Right on cue, Jessie asked, ‘What money?’

  ‘From the other bank account,’ Cara said. Then, ‘Oh, God. I wasn’t meant to say that.’

  ‘What bank account?’ Jessie asked. ‘What loan?’

  ‘Cara, the hospital, right now.’ Ed stood up.

  ‘Johnny?’ Jessie locked eyes with him.

  He knew the drill: she’d say no more here, but there would be hell to pay later. However, he still had something in his arsenal. ‘Jessie? What caterers?’

  Unexpectedly, Ferdia glared at Johnny. Angrily he said, ‘You’re really doing this to her?’

  ‘I’m entitled to know.’

  Ferdia paused. His tone towards his stepfather had many layers. ‘You? You’re entitled to nothing.’

  In Johnny’s stomach, dread slithered, like eels.

  Everyone else was still watching Jessie: did Superwoman really use caterers?

  ‘We shouldn’t be exposed to this,’ Bridey said, in an undertone. ‘We’re children. It’s inappropriate.’

  Pinned by the collective gaze, Jessie’s eyes flicked back and forth. She looked panicked. ‘Yes, okay, yes!’ She sounded exasperated. ‘Sometimes. So what?’

  ‘And that was the day my childhood ended,’ Bridey murmured.

  ‘How did you know?’ Liam asked Cara.

  ‘I used to do Jessie’s accounts,’ Cara said. ‘A hefty payment to the Cookbook Café popped up each time we had another of these endless dinners. You don’t need to be a rocket scientist –’

  ‘I have five children, between eight and twenty-two!’ Jessie cried. ‘I run a business, there are only so many hours in the day and, Johnny, you’re never here and –’

  Cara stood up. ‘I’d better go to the hospital,’ she said. ‘Before I fall out with every one of you. Come on, Ed.’

  ‘Hey, Cara, do you really like my new hair?’ eighteen-year-old Saoirse, interrupted.

  ‘Oh, sweetie, don’t!’ Cara said. ‘You know I love you.’

  ‘That means it’s bad?’

  ‘That fringe makes your face look like the moon.’

  It did make her face look like the moon! Cara was spot-on. All the same, you can’t say that to a teenage girl.

  At Saoirse’s devastated expression, Cara looked sick with remorse. ‘I’m so sorry, Saoirse. But it’ll grow back. Come on, Ed.’

  ‘Before you go?’ Liam’s eyes were narrowed. ‘Did you really think that massage I gave you was … What was the word you used?’

  ‘“Dreamy”? No. I hated it. Forget being a masseur. You are terrible.’

  ‘Hey!’ Nell jumped in to defend her husband. ‘He’s doing his best.’

  ‘Why are you bigging him up?’ Cara asked.

  Suddenly, Liam was energized. He smelt blood. ‘Why wouldn’t she back me up? Tell us, Cara, come on, tell us.’

  ‘No, Cara.’ Nell’s voice was sharp.

  ‘Tell me,’ Liam ordered.

  ‘Don’t!’ Nell said. ‘Cara, it’ll come back on you too.’

  ‘Tell me.’ Liam’s tone was urgent.

  Then, because Cara was concussed, confused and long past caring, she told them everything.

  SIX MONTHS EARLIER

  * * *

  APRIL

  Easter in Kerry

  ONE

  Just after 7 a.m., Cara’s internal line rang.

  Oleksandr, the doorman, spoke. ‘The eejit has landed. ETA three minutes.’

  Cara turned to her trainee. ‘Vihaan. Showtime.’ She tugged at her skirt once more and ran a hand over her chignon. ‘Remember –’

  ‘Shadow you. Keep smiling. Say nothing.’

  ‘Don’t show any shock, no matter what he comes out with.’

  ‘I’m way excited for this. I hope he’s heinous.’

  ‘Stop.’ First Oleksandr being irreverent, now Vihaan. In this job, you shouldn’t even think these things.

  Flanked by Vihaan, Cara took her position, facing the front door, in the flower-filled lobby. She summoned her warmest smile and stepped forward. ‘Welcome back to the Ardglass, Mr Fay.’ Her welcome was sincere: she loved the hotel. ‘I’m Cara Casey, and this is my assistant Vihaan –’

  ‘I don’t care what you’re called, just take me to my room.’

  ‘Certainly, sir.’

  ‘Get my bags up to me. Now. Not in fifteen minutes. I mean now.’

  Cara made urgent eye-contact with Anto the bellboy. Go, go, go. ‘The elevator is this way, Mr Fay.’

  In the lift, Cara asked, in a deliberately soft voice, ‘How was your journey here this morning?’

  ‘Long. Tedious as fuck.’

  ‘Where have you come –’

  ‘Stop. Talking.’

  Outside the suite, the electronic door key worked. The Ardglass keys always did, but sod’s law would have had it failing today of all days.

  ‘Welcome back to the McCafferty Suite,’ Cara said.

  Of the fifty-one rooms in the Ardglass, this suite on the third floor was her favourite: the long sash windows overlooking the leafy trees of Fitzwilliam Square; the original Georgian coving; the bathroom with its claw-footed tub and underfloor heating …

  ‘Here’s your luggage!’ Anto and his trolley hurtled in.

  ‘The best hotel in Dublin,’ Mr Fay said, sarcastically.

  But it was the best: the best bed linen, the best food, the best spa. However, what elevated it above all the others was the service from its multi-cultural staff: intuitive and seamless, respectful but relaxed. Everyone, from skint honeymooners enjoying just one glorious night, to high-net-worth habitués of luxury hotels, was made to feel special.

  ‘Where would you like
your bags, Mr Fay?’ Anto asked.

  ‘Why don’t you just stick them up your butt?’

  ‘They wouldn’t fit, sir.’ Anto’s shtick was cheeky Dublin humour.

  ‘They’d fit up hers.’ Billy Fay pointed at Cara. But as the burn landed, she’d already bundled the pain away, before she felt a thing.

  Anto hurriedly heaved the suitcases onto the luggage rack, then scarpered.

  Cara refreshed her smile. ‘Although you’ve stayed here in the past, would you like me to explain the room’s features to you again?’

  ‘Just get out, you fat bitch.’

  Vihaan gasped.

  Cara would have to have a word with him later.

  ‘Can we send anything up to you, Mr Fay? Coffee? Tea –’

  ‘Like I said, get out and take your little Isis lapdog with you.’

  ‘Certainly, sir.’

  They left the room and headed for the back stairs.

  ‘Wow. Ling wasn’t wrong. He is the worst,’ Vihaan muttered.

  ‘He’s been travelling for maybe eighteen hours. He’s tired.’

  ‘He made Ling cry last time. That’s why you’re in so early, right? You’re the only one who can handle him? And what’s he mean with the Isis thing? I’m Hindu.’

  ‘Vihaan, sweetheart, no. Don’t let him get to you.’

  ‘And another thing! You’re not fat!’

  Their eyes locked, in sudden mirth. ‘But,’ he said, ‘you are a –’

  She tried to put her hand over his mouth. He wrestled himself away, both of them giddy from the release of all that tension. Still laughing, they came into the reception area.

  ‘Bad?’ Madelyn asked.

  ‘Oh, yeah. I’m in Isis and –’

  ‘I’m a fat bitch.’

  After a furtive scan to check there were no guests around, they laughed away the remainder of the stress.