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

by Meaney, Roisin

  ‘Dinner?’

  ‘I’d really like to meet him; Laura says he’s lovely. Or tomorrow night would be good, if he’s not up to tonight.’

  Dinner at Nell’s. The two of them driving there in Imelda’s car, being observed by whoever they passed. She imagined the nudges, the whispers that would fly about: Imelda Fitzpatrick driving around with a man, Hugh not three months in the grave.

  ‘I’m – not sure,’ she said. ‘Maybe we could leave it off for the moment, Nell.’

  ‘Of course, whatever you think. Ring if you change your mind.’

  She installed him in the sitting room with a cup of sweet tea and two biscuits on the saucer, and a rug across his knees although the day was warm. In the two weeks he’d spent in the house he hadn’t once taken up her invitation to use the sitting room, opting instead to go directly upstairs following the short stroll he took each evening after dinner. Now she showed him the TV remote control, although she doubted he’d use it. ‘I’ll be in the kitchen if you need me.’

  ‘Thank you, Eemelda. I am much trouble for you.’

  ‘Not in the least, please don’t think that. Try to drink the tea.’

  The kitchen had never been cleaner. Each time he washed up after a meal he scrubbed the draining board and all around the sink. All her glasses shone – she suspected he cleaned things he hadn’t used at all. The cutlery tray in the drawer had definitely been rinsed out, the fridge shelves wiped down. For the first time that she could remember, the wall tiles around the cooker were free of food stains. There wasn’t a crumb to be seen on the worktops.

  The floor was equally spotless: the mop that she pressed into service once or twice a week was now being used faithfully every night. Ingrained in him, she supposed, with his restaurant. She wasn’t sure whether to be embarrassed that he was showing her up, or pleased with her pristine kitchen.

  She fed Scooter, who was standing pointedly by her empty bowl. She turned on the radio and tuned it to a local station that she hardly ever listened to. When the news came on, it was the main item: a clifftop tumble shortly before noon on the island of Roone; lifeboats and trawlers, pleasure craft and a helicopter combing the area.

  They featured a comment from Sergeant Fox. Everything possible being done, he said. No developments yet, everyone hoping for a positive outcome – but at this stage, hours later, it would take a miracle, she thought, for someone to be brought alive from the sea. The rough waves at that exposed end of the island were very different from the placid waters that washed in from the bay on the other side, where most of Roone’s beaches were located.

  Who could it be? Gualtiero’s split-second sighting hadn’t been enough for him to make out the gender, or to know whether it was a child or an adult. She prayed for it to be nobody she knew. Let it be an unfortunate stranger who’d wandered too close to the edge, not realising the danger.

  No, they must have realised. To get to the cliff edge they’d have had to climb the safety fence. Relishing the risk then, maybe, showing off for the benefit of others – but she dismissed that notion too. Witnesses would have come forward if they’d been at the top of the cliff; they’d have raised the alarm like Gualtiero had, but he seemed to have been the only one who’d seen anything.

  So maybe there had been nobody to impress. Maybe the person had gone there alone, on a final journey. Oh, horrible, horrible thought. Walking to the edge of the cliff and not pulling back. Stepping off, dropping into the void, wanting only to put an end to a life they could no longer cope with.

  A few had done it over the years, Nell had told her, but never an islander. Those born on Roone, she’d said, grew up with a respect for and an affinity with the water: it would never have been considered as a means to end it all. But there had been tortured souls from elsewhere who’d seen it as their escape route, who’d travelled to the island with no intention of leaving it alive.

  Every effort was made to ensure safety at the cliffs. The fence was diligently inspected at regular intervals, and reinforced when necessary. Notices were up all over the place, warning of the dangers and forbidding trespass. Roone children were raised with threats of dire consequences if they were found anywhere near the cliffs. Accidents could be avoided – but if someone was desperate enough, they found a way.

  She left the kitchen and went out to the garden. Scooter was nosing now at something under the bay shrub: at the sound of Imelda’s approach, she lifted her head and pattered towards her, tail wagging. Imelda knelt and embraced her, and rested her head against the comfort of the animal’s warm flank. She’d never been a dog-lover until Scooter had become part of the household, and found her way into all their hearts.

  Kneeling on the grass, she recalled her own suicidal imaginings in the first unbearable days after Hugh’s death. Driven nearly out of her mind with grief and shock, she couldn’t say she hadn’t considered the notion of following him. But that was as far as it had gone. The knowledge of the sadness she’d cause in turn for her sister and Vernon, and Hugh’s family and friends who’d welcomed her to Roone, had brought her to her senses. The grief she’d be passing on to them had stopped her travelling any further down that horrendous path.

  Anyway, when it came down to it, she doubted that she’d have had the courage.

  She rose to her feet. She picked a dozen anemones, pink and purple and scarlet, that Hugh had planted in the autumn. Back in the kitchen she arranged them in a small glass vase. She’d give them to Gualtiero when he emerged, and tell him to put them in his room.

  And just under an hour later, while James was packing the paints and other materials into the green suitcase, while the islanders were waiting and hoping and praying, some at the scene, others in the church, or sitting silently at the bar of Fitz’s pub, or huddled around radios in one another’s houses, Willie Buckley, lobster fisherman, scouring the water from the deck of his boat, lifted an arm suddenly and shouted, ‘Over here!’

  Tilly

  ‘I HOPE THEY CATCH THEM,’ THE WOMAN IN THE GREEN skirt said. ‘They should be strung up, giving us all the fright of our lives.’

  ‘Strung up is right,’ her companion in the yellow cardigan agreed, shopping basket tucked between arm and waist. ‘Jail is too good for them.’

  ‘I’d say it was those Spanish youngsters – did you see the gang of them on the street a while back? Nearly knocked me over with their pushing and shoving.’

  ‘And that poor man who saw it, Imelda’s uncle. I heard he was so shook they had to give him oxygen. It could have killed him if he had a dicky heart.’

  ‘He’s Imelda’s uncle? I thought he was a foreigner. Was he here for Hugh’s funeral? I don’t remember him.’

  The man ahead of them in the queue turned around. ‘He’s not her uncle. She’s just putting him up for a while. He’s from Russia, or Bulgaria, somewhere over that side anyway. He was stuck for a place, and she took him in.’

  Both women digested this information in silence while Tilly, positioned directly behind them, wondered how much longer it would take to check out the few items Laura had asked her to pick up on her way home. In the meantime she was doing her best not to look as if she was paying the conversation any attention at all, let alone storing it up to replay for Laura and Andy later.

  ‘He’s a class of a painter anyway,’ the green-skirted woman resumed. ‘You’ve seen him around the place, Annie.’

  ‘Would he be the low-sized stocky fellow with a straw hat?’

  ‘That’s the one. He was on the rocks above the beach the other morning when we were doing our walk. I thought he had a look of Walter Thompson about him.’

  ‘Walter? He doesn’t look one bit like him.’

  ‘No, I know he doesn’t, but there’s something in him that puts me in mind of Walter all the same.’

  ‘Maybe it’s the hat.’

  ‘The hat? I never in my life saw Walter Thompson in a straw hat.’

  Her companion gave an impatient cluck. ‘I know that. I’m just saying
this fellow wears a hat too.’

  The queue inched forward. Roone’s only supermarket struggled to cope with the increased traffic to its premises during the summer months. The woman in the yellow cardigan shifted her weight and moved her basket from one side to the other. ‘Well, I hope the sergeant finds out who did it anyway. Those boyos should be taught a lesson.’

  ‘True for you, Annie.’

  A scarecrow it had been, not a person, that had tumbled over the cliff edge the day before. Taken that morning, or possibly the previous evening, from Michael Brown’s strawberry patch. Flung from the top of the cliffs to spin and somersault its way down, and land with a splash just a short distance from where Imelda’s unfortunate guest had been painting.

  An investigation was under way but realistically, the chance of finding the culprit, or culprits, was slim. With the island as full as it was, people coming and going daily on the ferry, there were so many opportunities for someone to enter the field at the rear of Michael’s farmhouse and uproot the scarecrow.

  A cruel trick though, to throw it off the cliff – and a dangerous one. A missed step, an imbalance during the throw, and the scarecrow might not have been alone in its tumble.

  Tilly eventually reached the top of the queue, and her groceries were checked out in silence by the young girl at the till. She left the supermarket and headed for Walter’s Place, swinging her bag. Normally she and Andy walked back together after he shut the ice-cream van – living next door to him had its advantages – but today she’d told him to go ahead, not wanting to delay him before his evening shift at Fitz’s.

  As she passed the hotel she saw the flapping bunting and remembered the upcoming birthday party there. It had seemed comfortably distant when Andy had told her about it on her arrival in Ireland, but it was now just a week away. The days were flying past, just ten more till she flew home. Ten more days of trying to swallow her disappointment that she was not going to be anyone’s fiancée, not this summer. Ten more days of trying to convince herself that it wasn’t the end of the world.

  The stop-off at the supermarket had made her late for dinner: by the time she reached Walter’s Place her stomach was rumbling.

  But there was no dinner, and no Laura, and no girls or Gavin. Ben and Seamus sat across from one another at the table, paler than usual, their freckles standing out starkly.

  ‘Poppy fell down the stairs,’ Ben said.

  Tilly looked at him in alarm. ‘What? Is she OK?’

  ‘They brought her to the clinic. Mum and Dad brought her.’

  ‘Where are Evie and Marian?’

  ‘At Nell’s house. Mum said we had to wait here for you.’

  She set her groceries on the table and found her phone. She dialled Laura’s number, but it was Gavin who answered.

  ‘She broke her arm,’ he told her, sounding frighteningly sombre. ‘She’s getting a cast on it now. Other than that, she’s OK. Bit of bruising, but otherwise alright.’

  ‘Thank God. How did it happen?’

  ‘Not sure. Laura was tidying the boys’ room, and Poppy was with her, but she just … got away from her.’

  Poppy, the youngest of the five, the child who’d been born while Laura was undergoing treatment for breast cancer. Turning three in ten days, the same day that Tilly was to leave. Rushing about, like all little children, whenever she got the chance. Down the stairs on your bottom, Laura was constantly saying to her, but still she’d fallen.

  ‘How’s Laura?’

  ‘She’s … OK.’

  But Tilly could imagine her distress, so protective of all her kids. Beating herself up now, no doubt, for having taken her eyes off the child for a second. ‘How long more do you think you’ll be?’

  ‘Not long, I’d say. Are the boys with you?’

  ‘Yes. I’ll collect the girls from Nell’s and feed them.’

  ‘Thanks, Tilly. See you soon.’

  She hung up and turned to the twins. ‘She’ll be OK,’ she said. ‘She broke her arm, which is nasty, but it can be fixed. They’ll be home soon.’

  They looked unconvinced. Their freckles still looked darker than they should. Ben nibbled at a nail; Seamus’s hands were clenched into fists on the table. A pair of softies. Underneath that big-boy bravado they were still children, not turning twelve till November.

  ‘Did the new people arrive?’

  ‘Yeah. Mum was here.’

  Tilly wondered if any of the guests had witnessed the fall, or its aftermath. ‘Will you two go and get the girls then, and I’ll do dinner?’

  But the girls, when they appeared, had already been fed by Nell, who sent a dish of macaroni cheese back for the others. While the boys ate, Tilly put Evie and Marian to bed, fielding worried enquiries about their little sister.

  ‘Her arm got broken,’ she told them, ‘so she’s getting a special bandage on it to make it better.’

  They weren’t satisfied.

  ‘Did it break off?’

  ‘Did it smash in pieces?’

  ‘How will she hold Rabbity?’

  Rabbity, the tatty, adored toy rabbit that Poppy was never without. ‘She can hold things with her other hand,’ Tilly said, ‘until the broken arm gets better. That’s why we have two arms,’ she added, in a burst of inspiration, ‘in case one gets broken.’

  They digested this. ‘The old man only had one arm,’ Marian said.

  ‘What old man?’

  ‘In Nell’s house. But he died.’

  Tilly puzzled it out. They were referring to Hugh, whom they would have encountered in his niece Nell’s house. Hugh, who at fifty-something would have seemed old to them. Hugh, whose right arm had ended at the elbow, thanks to the thalidomide drug his pregnant mother had been prescribed for her morning sickness.

  ‘That was different,’ Tilly said, wondering how to explain further, but thankfully they didn’t pursue it. There were more questions about Poppy’s status that involved hugging, and clapping, and scratching itches that couldn’t be reached with the working hand. There were stories of their own mishaps, plenty of them, until finally they grew silent, and slept.

  Tilly returned to the kitchen and took rashers and sausages from the big freezer for the guest breakfasts, and checked that the tables in the dining room were ready for the morning. You heard what happened, she texted Andy. I won’t be going to the pub tonight. His response was immediate: See you in a bit. Nell’s making scones for Laura, I’ll drop them over.

  The others returned as she and the boys were washing up. Poppy, a red bloom on one cheek, her small right arm bound from above the elbow to wrist in a pale pink cast, was asleep against her father’s shoulder. Her mother was white-faced and grim.

  ‘My fault,’ she said, as Tilly had known she would. It was later, and they were alone in the kitchen. Gavin had brought Poppy upstairs; the boys were in the sitting room. ‘It was my fault. I didn’t keep an eye on her.’

  ‘Laura, don’t say that. It’s impossible to watch small kiddies all the time. I remember when Robbie and Jemima were that age – they were always falling and bumping themselves. Ma used to say she needed eyes in the back of her head.’ But she could see Laura took no comfort from it. She could see her go right on hating herself.

  ‘Won’t you try and eat something?’ she asked.

  ‘We’ll need help tomorrow morning,’ Laura said – had she even heard the question? ‘I want to stay in bed with Poppy. I know it’s not necessary but I want to, just for one morning. We’ll have to find someone to give you a hand.’

  ‘I can do it,’ Tilly said. ‘The boys will help’ – but again Laura pursued her own train of thought.

  ‘We could ask Eve – she’s done it before. Can you call her? I haven’t got the energy. Her number’s in my phone.’

  Eve, of all people. Tilly’s heart sank – but this was no time to be awkward. She found the number and called it. It was answered on the fourth ring, just as she was beginning to hope it wouldn’t.

  ‘Laura.’
<
br />   ‘It’s not Laura, it’s Tilly.’

  Silence.

  ‘Look,’ Tilly said, ‘there’s been—Poppy fell down the stairs, and we need someone to help out here tomorrow morning. It would—’

  ‘Is she OK?’

  ‘She will be. She’s got a broken arm and some bruising to her face.’

  More silence.

  ‘It would only be for about an hour and a half. Just to get the breakfasts cooked and served.’

  ‘What time?’

  ‘Around eight?’

  ‘I’m working in the hotel. I start at nine.’

  ‘Oh …’ First Tilly had heard of it, but the news came as a relief. ‘Right, no worries. I’ll tell Laura.’

  ‘No, hang on – I’ll see if I can go in a bit later. I’ll call you back.’ There was a click, and she was gone.

  Tilly reported the conversation to Laura, who groaned. ‘I forgot about the hotel.’

  ‘She’s ringing them. She’ll call back.’

  She did, not five minutes later. Laura took the call, and Tilly heard, ‘You’re a doll,’ and ‘I really appreciate it,’ and it looked like she and Eve were going to be thrown together for over an hour.

  They’d be busy. Breakfasts were always hectic; there wouldn’t be time for awkwardness.

  ‘How’s the patient?’ Andy asked later, calling by with warm scones.

  ‘She’ll live.’ It was past nine, and Tilly was alone in the kitchen. The boys, unusually, had gone to bed without being asked. Gavin was watching the news in the sitting room, and Laura was upstairs with Poppy, who shared her parents’ bedroom when Tilly was about.

  She piled the scones onto a plate and covered it with a clean tea towel. ‘You off to the pub now?’

  ‘Yup. You need help in the morning? I could swing by.’

  Of course he could: why hadn’t they thought of him? ‘Eve is coming,’ she told him. ‘Laura got me to call her.’

  ‘Right,’ he said, crossing to the dresser, taking a glass from it. ‘You’re sorted so.’

  ‘She’s working in the hotel,’ Tilly said. ‘Did you know that?’