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

by Meaney, Roisin

  ‘Pass me a plate, would you?’ She really could have chosen a better time for the heart-to-heart. ‘Don’t you like his friends?’

  ‘I do like them, they’re lovely, but it’s beginning to feel a bit like I’m going out with all of them.’

  Laura flipped the egg in the smaller pan before remembering that Mr Lindsay had specified sunny side up. She retrieved it hastily. ‘Have you said anything to Andy about this?’

  ‘No, I’m afraid it’ll sound needy. I want him to want to be on his own with me.’

  Ben reappeared with two cereal bowls. ‘The other man, not Mr Lindsay, the one with the beard, said he’s still waiting for his omelette.’

  ‘Blast – I knew I was forgetting somebody. Bring this to Mr Lindsay and tell Mr Kelly his omelette is on the way. Tilly, would you grate me some cheese?’

  Tilly crossed to the fridge while Laura cracked eggs into a bowl. ‘Could you get Andy to take a day off?’

  ‘Yes, I think so.’

  ‘Well, then. Say you fancy a picnic, just the two of you. Say you got the idea from the girls’ birthday party. And while you’re there, tell him how much you enjoy his friends, but you love having him to yourself sometimes too.’

  ‘You make it sound so easy.’

  ‘It is easy. Men are simple creatures, and not always that perceptive. Sometimes you have to spell things out a bit.’

  But she could see that Tilly wanted more of him than a couple of hours on a picnic. She’d waited so long for her three and a half weeks, and now they were here, and they couldn’t possibly live up to her expectations. She wanted the perfect boyfriend, the perfect holiday.

  ‘Shame you don’t have an Aussie fellow,’ Laura said lightly.

  ‘What?’ The sudden stricken look on Tilly’s face, as if she’d just been told she had a week to live.

  ‘Just that it would make life a whole lot easier for you.’

  ‘But I love Andy.’

  ‘I know. I know you do.’

  ‘And it’s not as if we’ll be apart forever. I’d move here in a heartbeat. He’d only have to ask.’

  She would. And how would that go down with young Andy Baker, who’d grown into a lean, handsome fellow? More than a couple of Roone girls, Laura bet, would gladly take Tilly’s place.

  Eve flashed into her mind. I meant to text you again, Laura had said, the day of the birthday picnic, when Eve had appeared with the girls’ presents. Will you come in for a slice of quiche? Knowing the likely response – and sure enough, Eve had turned down the invitation, telling Laura she was due at Imelda’s.

  Is everything OK? Laura had asked, and Eve had said everything was fine, and Laura had left it at that. She seemed to want to sort it out on her own. Maybe she was sorry she’d said anything.

  The grated cheese was passed over silently. ‘Thanks, love,’ Laura said. ‘You might chop some ham, and make fresh toast.’

  ‘Brown or white?’

  ‘Let’s go with two of each.’

  Laura watched her slotting bread into the toaster, looking deflated. Poor pet. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘I know it’s tough when you’re so far away from him.’ She added a knob of butter to the pan. ‘I don’t know how you’ve managed to keep it going this long, to be honest. I wish I could think of a way to make it easier for you.’

  Tilly chopped ham and tipped it into Laura’s bowl. ‘We could always get married,’ she said, and laughed.

  Married – after spending precisely two summers together. A double holiday romance, you could call it. ‘I suspect Nell would have something to say about that,’ Laura replied, smiling to take the sting out of it. ‘I’d say she might think you’re both a bit young.’

  Tilly didn’t return the smile. ‘I’m nineteen,’ she said. ‘You were nineteen.’

  Lord Almighty. It wasn’t a joke. She’d been thinking about them getting married, was considering it as a viable option. Laura poured the omelette mix onto the waiting pan, wondering where to go with the conversation. ‘I did marry at nineteen, but things were different with me and Aaron. For one thing we lived in the same town, and we saw one another pretty much every day while we were going out.’

  Silence as Tilly ran water into the sink for the pans. Laura knew she wasn’t saying what her sister wanted to hear. She cast about for something more positive.

  ‘Maybe you could move here for a few months.’

  Tilly looked at her. ‘Move here? To Roone?’

  ‘Why not? You could stay with us no problem off-season – and you’d actually have your own room. I know Andy would be in Limerick, but he could come home for weekends – or you could go there for the odd Saturday, or whatever.’

  Tilly pulled on rubber gloves. ‘What would I do here, though? I mean, I’d have to have some kind of a job.’

  ‘Where do I start? You could feed the animals and collect the eggs. You could help Gav with his vegetable plot, and his deliveries. You could look after the girls and give me a bit of time off. You could paint a few rooms – they’re long overdue a facelift. You wouldn’t earn a mint, but you’d have bed and board.’

  Tilly scrubbed at a pan. ‘Or I could live in Limerick, find a proper job there.’

  ‘Where would you stay, though? Accommodation is expensive in the cities. No, you’d be much better off basing yourself here.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Something to think about, anyway.’

  ‘Sure is. Thanks for the offer.’

  ‘And in the meantime, plan your picnic’ – and Tilly brightened up a bit, and promised she would.

  They finished the breakfasts and cleaned up. Mr Kelly of the omelette checked out with his wife, and the German mother and daughter who’d stayed two nights left too. Bed linen was replaced, towels collected, carpets vacuumed.

  After lunch Tilly disappeared, having changed into her blue dress and made up her face. ‘See you for dinner,’ she said. ‘Can I get you anything on the way back?’

  She never failed to ask. ‘Not a thing, love. Have fun.’ And off her sister went, rushing out to be with him – and again Laura hoped fervently that no hearts were about to be broken.

  So much for her supposed premonition, well over a week ago. Thankfully, nothing untoward had taken place since then. Later in the afternoon she left Gavin on duty and escaped for an hour. She’d give Susan a bit of space today, just take a walk and clear her head. She set off along the coast road, Charlie on his lead trotting beside her, delighted with his second outing of the day. The sun came and went, more clouds in the sky than in recent days. She hoped it wasn’t signalling the end of the fine spell.

  She ignored the turns for the various beaches, although normally she loved a paddle. Any bit of sun at all in the summer months and the beaches filled up. Give her a deserted stretch of sand, where she could let Charlie off his leash to run wild, where the salty breeze from the sea would blow the clutter from her mind. Today they’d keep to the roads, and Charlie would get his run another time.

  She rounded a bend and saw him immediately, some distance ahead of her. Same straw hat, same baggy overalls – but this time he wasn’t painting. No easel, no little table. His green case was there but it was unopened, propped against the low stone wall on which he sat. He faced out to sea but his head was bowed. His hands rested in his lap. She thought he might be meditating and resolved not to disturb him, to walk quietly by – but as she drew closer, she saw him dash the back of a hand to his eyes in turn.

  He wasn’t meditating. He was weeping. She was sure of it.

  Not in a noisy way. Not in a way that would draw attention to him from the casual passer-by. If she hadn’t been observing him as she’d approached, Laura might not have caught it.

  But now that she had, she couldn’t ignore it, couldn’t walk on and pretend she hadn’t seen it. Well, she could – and maybe he’d prefer it that way – but ignoring his distress seemed callous. She tried to remember his Italian name, but it had floated out of her head.

  She drew Cha
rlie closer to heel. She crossed the road while she was still a short distance from him, and came to a stop. ‘Walter,’ she called softly, not wanting to startle him. ‘Are you … is everything OK?’

  He lifted his head. With a pang she saw the reddened swollen eyes, the shine of tears on his cheeks. ‘Signora,’ he said, attempting to rise to his feet but she hurried closer, telling him no, no, he wasn’t to get up.

  ‘Has something happened?’ she asked, tugging on Charlie’s lead as he strained to sniff at this new person. ‘Are you hurt? Injured? Do you need a doctor?’ He didn’t look hurt, just terribly sad. His hat hung crookedly: she resisted an impulse to reach out and straighten it.

  ‘No,’ he said, and fished a handkerchief from his overalls and blew his nose sharply. ‘No,’ he repeated, stowing it away. ‘No doctor, grazie. I am not sick.’ He shook his head and turned to look out to sea again. ‘Today I remember,’ he said simply – and immediately she understood.

  ‘May I join you?’ she asked, and he told her please, certainly, so she took her place on the wall beside him. ‘Sit,’ she said without hope to Charlie – and for the first time in his life, he dropped his haunches obediently, sensing the moment, maybe, in the way that animals sometimes did. ‘Good boy,’ she told him, giving his head a rub. ‘Best boy.’

  She sat with the artist and watched the sea. ‘Sometimes I remember too,’ she told him.

  She heard the small rustling movement as he turned to regard her. ‘How many year for you?’ he asked.

  She looked into his dark eyes. ‘Twelve.’

  ‘For me is eleven.’

  She nodded, and found his hand, and held on. In English is Walter. Roone, in its inexplicable, magical way, had sent her another Walter.

  After enough time had passed, she said, ‘Can I tell you about my father?’

  Tilly

  TODAY WAS THE DAY. TODAY SHE WOULD DO IT.

  Say you fancy a picnic, just the two of you, Laura had said, so Tilly had suggested it that same afternoon, and Andy had laughed and said the last time he’d been on a picnic was when he was about four, and Tilly had replied that in that case it was high time he went on another. Let’s do it soon, while the weather is good, she’d said, so he’d asked Pádraig for a day off, and Pádraig had said Thursday would suit.

  And now it was Thursday, and in less than an hour he was collecting her in the rusty blue car, and they were going to Jackson’s Lookout on the far side of the island with a picnic she’d packed. And the sun was shining and everything was looking very promising, and she was going to propose and he was going to say yes.

  She loved being back on Roone. Oh, she could so easily see herself spending the rest of her life here. She adored the summery buzz of the place, with long generous daylight hours, and coaches and minibuses driving off the ferry each morning with a new group of day-trippers, and the cash registers in cafés and shops ringing from morning till closing time, and music spilling from pubs each evening, and boats of all shapes and sizes bobbing in the bay. The island was bursting at the seams, and pulsing with life.

  And it was so lovely to be reunited with Laura and Gavin and the kids, and to spend time next door with Nell and James, and their earnest little son and their gorgeous chattering handful of a daughter.

  She loved her afternoons in the yellow ice-cream van. She got a kick out of meeting the different customers, hearing the various accents of the holidaymakers and renewing her acquaintance with the Roone residents she’d met before.

  She could happily sell from a van all year round, she thought. Oh, not ice-creams in the middle of winter – but what about switching to hot food when the temperature dropped? Lelia’s café only opened at weekends in the winter. Some of the pubs offered meals, and the hotel had a full restaurant – but she figured there was still room for a little competition.

  She could introduce the population of Roone to poffertjes, the small fluffy Dutch pancakes she remembered being sold from food vans at home whenever there was a festival in town. Served warm, with a drizzle of maple syrup and a blob of vanilla cream – oh, just the memory of them was enough to make her mouth water. Or baked potatoes: they used to buy them from the vans too – and what Irish person didn’t love potatoes, filled with something hot and tasty?

  She could picture it, clear as anything. The hob, and the cast-iron pan to make the poffertjes. The stainless steel unit to keep potatoes warm, with smaller compartments for the various fillings: chilli, creamed sweetcorn, baked beans and the like. A fridge for the cold drinks. A coffee machine, and a boiler for hot water. Stacks of paper cups, cutlery bundled into serviettes.

  She could position herself at the pier, where the ice-cream van was now, or maybe at the far end of the village street, near the community hall. She could open her hatch for a couple of hours at lunchtime, and again at five or six, when people were clocking off from work, and again when the pubs were closing, and drinkers had beer-fuelled appetites. The rest of the time she could concentrate on her book, the great novel that was just waiting for the right time to make its way out.

  Funny that Laura had suggested her coming to live on Roone. She wouldn’t like to be on the island without him though: it would feel weird with him not here. Whatever Laura said about high rents in cities, Tilly would find a way to be with him in Limerick – and if today went according to plan, she’d be taking the first step in that direction.

  She’d hardly slept as she’d lain in bed last night, across the floor from Evie and Marian in their bunks. She always had to share with them in the summer, and she didn’t mind in the least. The girls were invariably sound asleep when she went to bed – and their chatter in the early morning, as she hurried into her clothes to help with the breakfasts, was delightful.

  What does Australia look like?

  Bits of it are green and other bits are brown. You can fly on a plane when you’re bigger and see it.

  Is it hot or cold?

  Sometimes it’s hot, very hot, and other times it’s cold.

  Does it snow?

  In some parts it does. Not the part where I live.

  Is there shops?

  Oh yes, plenty of shops.

  And donkeys like George?

  Yes, lots and lots of donkeys, just like George.

  Is there ice-cream?

  Oh yes. Not as nice as your ice-cream, though.

  The only thing, her only small complaint, was what she’d said at breakfast the other day to Laura: she and Andy had so little time on their own. You couldn’t count the snatches between customers at the van, and the evenings she spent with him invariably included at least two of his friends, unless he was helping his dad in the pub. She sometimes joined him then for an hour or so, but he was busy and couldn’t chat much, and she wasn’t much of a drinker, so sitting alone on a barstool with a Coke, surrounded by holidaymaking groups, didn’t hold much appeal.

  He’d taken her to the island’s drive-in cinema, if you could call it that, on her second evening, and they’d been alone in his car but surrounded by others, most of whose drivers he knew, so there was no sense of having him to herself.

  When she thought about it, she realised that the only times she’d been alone with him for more than a few minutes were during the drive from the airport to the island on her arrival, and three days after that, when Laura had shooed her out directly after the breakfasts, saying she could take it from there, and they’d gone on a hike to the small pebbly beach he’d brought her to the previous summer, Eve thinking, hoping, they’d find it deserted.

  They hadn’t – but you wouldn’t call it crowded either. They’d been having a lovely time, just messing around like a pair of kids, until Eve had shown up.

  It had been their first time coming face to face this summer. To Tilly’s private relief, Eve rarely hung around with Andy’s set, or not while Tilly was there at any rate. That morning she’d seemed in a funny mood, smirking at Tilly, flirting with Andy. The things she’d said, about getting drunk, and Andy
being her knight in shining armour. Like old times, she’d said – as if that wasn’t insensitive, with Tilly right there. It was like she was deliberately trying to get to her.

  Tilly had a dim memory of Andy telling her that Frog’s twenty-first was coming up. Sometime in May, she thought, not that she’d paid too much attention to a party that couldn’t include her. She fancied he’d complained about a hangover afterwards, and she thought she’d laughed and told him it served him right.

  He’d made no mention of walking Eve home. She was pretty sure she’d have remembered that.

  She hadn’t asked him about it after Eve’s comments on the beach, not wanting to seem jealous or possessive. She would have liked him to say something, to tell her that Eve was just up to mischief, or whatever, but he’d said nothing at all. And because he hadn’t, it had burrowed under her skin and lodged there. Precisely, she suspected, where it had been aimed.

  Like old times.

  It was OK, she told herself. It wasn’t an issue, it was nothing at all. Let Eve say what she liked: Tilly trusted Andy absolutely.

  And still, it niggled.

  She put it firmly from her head: time to concentrate on today. She’d dressed in her favourite printed shirt and pink skirt. ‘What do you think?’ she asked Evie, who could generally be relied on to give an honest opinion. ‘Will I do?’

  Evie scrutinised her carefully. ‘Yeah,’ she said eventually, and Tilly laughed and curtsied, and swept her into her arms and waltzed her around the kitchen, to the amusement of Laura, who was shelling hardboiled eggs at the sink.

  ‘Oh, to be young again,’ she said. ‘To be young and in love.’

  Tilly regarded her over Evie’s head. ‘You are young – and I hope you’re in love too.’

  ‘Indeed I am, on both counts,’ Laura declared, depositing the shells into a plastic basin. ‘Well, maybe not that young any more—’

  ‘Oh, come on – you’re thirty-one. It’s hardly ancient.’

  ‘And you’re nineteen,’ Laura replied lightly, ‘with everything ahead of you.’