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

by Meaney, Roisin

  You must use our kitchen, Rosie had said, but Susan had thanked her and declined, feeling that they were imposing enough as it was. She’d invested instead in a compact oven with two hob rings, an electric kettle and a miniature fridge, all of which she arranged on a trestle table that Ed had retrieved from the basement. By day she and Harry ate out, in one or other of the little cafés; in the evenings she cooked uncomplicated meals which they ate at a little folding table, scratched on top but otherwise sound, that she’d found in a nearby charity shop and positioned in the bay window.

  Washing up involved filling the kettle at the bathroom sink and pouring the boiled water into a plastic basin. She tried not to think of her enormous Dublin kitchen, with every convenience and appliance and gadget she could possibly need, and several that she didn’t.

  But it wasn’t all bad. Every day, Harry spoke a little more. There was still no chatter: his words were few and carefully chosen, but they were there. She was Mama, and yes was ‘es’. No was still a shake of the head – but wonder of wonders, Toby, his beloved little blue elephant, was a perfect, precise Toby.

  She helped him along. Nose, she would say, when she was showering him. Eyes, mouth, ears, touching each in turn with his small yellow sponge. He would listen silently – and later, when he was standing in his pyjamas at the window, or lying in bed after a story, she would hear them, or variations of them, echoed back. Softly, ruminatively. Trying them out. Getting a feel for them in his mouth.

  He enchanted Rosie, who was on her second marriage, and whose two children were safely reared. A man of few words is always good, she said. Nobody wants a chatterbox. Those eyes, she said. He’ll break hearts with those eyes.

  Of course he would. He had his father’s eyes.

  Susan spoke often on the phone with Laura. The news of Poppy’s tumble down the stairs had horrified her.

  Do you need me? Do you want us to come back for a while? she’d asked, but she’d been assured that the patient was being pampered beyond all reason by everyone in the vicinity.

  I’d rather hear your news, Laura told her. What’s happening?

  We’re doing fine, Susan said, and told her about the tattooed, dreadlocked teen in the corner shop who gave Harry a solemn high-five whenever they called in, and Rosie’s friend Claire who claimed to know half of London, and who’d promised to keep an eye out for a job for Susan, and the puppet show she and Harry had attended at a nearby theatre one rainy afternoon, and the little marmalade kitten that slept all day on a deckchair on the first-floor balcony of a house across the street. She pulled out the good things, and reported them.

  Last evening, Laura had told her about Eve’s pregnancy, and Andy’s part in it. I’m not breaking any promises, she’d said. You’re not in a position to tell anyone, and I need to vent. I did tell Nell, before I knew it was Andy, and now I’m terrified I’ll let it slip by accident that he’s the father. I’m just so mad at them both. I can’t stop thinking about Tilly, and what this will do to her – Nell and James too. I dread it, but it’s got to come out eventually.

  The news of the pregnancy came as no surprise to Susan, having heard about it from Eve herself in the hotel garden – but the identity of the father did. She’d met Andy at Harry’s christening on Roone, the summer before last. He’d struck her as a shy boy, with not a whole lot to say for himself, but Tilly, blushing and beaming, had seemed to have no complaints. Too bad if he’d been unfaithful to her – but that was the way of the world, wasn’t it? Love wasn’t to be trusted. Love let you down in all sorts of ways.

  She finished the washing-up and emptied the water down the toilet, and flushed it away. She’d had Ed and Rosie to dinner, her first attempt at entertaining since their arrival in London. She’d bought a cooked chicken and accompanied it with roast potatoes and garden peas. For dessert she’d assembled a fruit salad. Where there was a will to thank friends for their kindness, there was usually a way.

  She returned the crockery to the bookshelf, which she’d pressed into service as a combination larder and dresser. The cutlery she stored on the shelf below, in the empty beans tin she’d rinsed and saved. The room still smelt of the drinks Ed had made for them after dinner, using some of his sister’s excellent coffee and a bottle of Kahlúa they’d brought upstairs, and the remainder of the cream Susan had whipped for the fruit salad.

  As she swept the wooden floor, her phone rang. She followed the sound and found it in the pocket of the jacket she’d hung on the back of the door. She pulled it out and saw Luke’s name.

  Her heart did a flip that was almost painful.

  Something was wrong.

  He was dead, and someone was using his phone to tell her.

  She pressed the answer key – and found herself unable to speak. Seconds ticked by: she remained mute. A car passed in the street below. Her scalp prickled. Her face grew stiff with fear.

  ‘Susan?’

  His voice. Luke’s voice. Luke, who wasn’t dead.

  ‘Yes.’

  She heard his exhalation. ‘Where are you?’

  She hadn’t been in touch with him since her missed call on the day they’d left Roone. She hadn’t asked anyone yet to collect her things from the house. She’d wondered if she should text him her whereabouts as she’d promised, but she’d let the days pass by without doing it.

  Three weeks since they’d spoken. Three weeks that seemed like decades to her.

  ‘… London. We’re in London.’

  Another silence. She closed her eyes and pressed the phone to her ear and saw him, clear as anything. Hunched, frowning, stubbly, glasses halfway down his nose. The hair he’d woken up with, probably; he never thought to bother with a comb unless she reminded him. Paint-spotted shirt, trousers that sagged in the rear and bagged at the knee. Worn leather slippers.

  ‘How is Harry?’

  ‘He’s fine. He’s talking.’

  ‘He’s talking?’

  ‘Yes. A little.’

  Pause.

  ‘Susan,’ he said, ‘will you come home? Will you both please come home?’

  She squeezed her eyes more tightly shut, and gave no answer. Another car, more than one, sounded in the street. Somewhere, a door slammed. A siren became louder and then fainter.

  ‘Will you?’

  She shook her head. I can’t. ‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘Not if you keep shutting me out.’

  She heard a sound she couldn’t identify. A rasp of his hand along his chin, or maybe a sharper, longer exhalation. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I’m no good at this, but—’

  He broke off. She said nothing.

  ‘I miss you,’ he said. ‘I miss you around the place. I want you to come home, both of you.’

  It wasn’t enough. She crossed the room and sat on the couch, and waited for more. He cleared his throat, she heard more muffled, jagged sounds – was he crying? She’d never known him to cry, ever.

  And then there was a click that caused her to jump a little, and he was gone.

  She set down her phone. She got to her feet and paced the floor. Four steps to the bay window, seven from there to the door, five across to the alcove and her makeshift kitchen, six back to the couch. Her world had shrunk to this. She’d come from him to this.

  He missed her. He wanted her to come home.

  It wasn’t enough. He hadn’t mentioned love. He’d made no promises.

  She turned off the light and left the room, and went to the bedroom she shared with her son.

  Laura

  ‘HOW ARE YOU FEELING?’ HE ASKED, TAKING HER FEET into his hands.

  ‘I’m OK.’

  She wasn’t really. She was guilty and tired and preoccupied and fed up, and every time she saw Poppy’s pink cast she wanted to scream at something, or someone.

  Her youngest daughter’s accident had shaken her. Every time she closed her eyes she lived through it again, the sudden heart-leap of fright as she heard the series of small thumps and slaps, and at the end of it, Poppy’s wail. S
he’d raced from the boys’ room and flown down the stairs to where Poppy lay, a tumbled little screeching bundle, her arm twisted terrifyingly beneath her. Thank God Gavin had been there.

  She hardly remembered the drive to the clinic, Poppy roaring in her arms, and her own tears falling uncontrollably. Jack, when they’d pulled up outside the clinic, had probably not known which of them to treat first.

  But life went on, and Poppy was bouncing back the way children did, the cast seeming not to bother her after the first day. In an effort to corral her for a while, Laura had got Gavin to bring the playpen out of storage. They’d parked it in its old spot in a corner of the kitchen and Poppy had been installed in it along with her many furry friends, and had giggled at her sisters as they fed her raisins through the bars. It wouldn’t last, but it would give her mother some peace of mind while it did.

  Laura had also instructed Gavin to pay Eve for her help. Put twenty euro in an envelope and drop it through the letterbox at the crèche next time you’re out.

  That had surprised him. I thought she was doing us a favour.

  I asked her to come. We shouldn’t take advantage. She grudged every cent to that madam, but she wanted no favours from her. The more she thought about it, the angrier she became. How dare they? How dare Eve make Laura her confidante, knowing full well the pain she was going to inflict on Laura’s sister when the news got out? And how dare Andy do what he had done, with Tilly’s arrival just around the corner?

  Tilly. Mooning around him like a calf, making it obvious to everyone how she felt. He must have seemed like something Heaven sent, after the substitute teacher in Australia who’d taken advantage, and then skedaddled without a backward glance when his time was up, not knowing – nor caring, if he had known – that he’d made her pregnant. This new betrayal would destroy her.

  ‘Do you want a cuppa, or a glass of wine?’ Gavin asked.

  She shook her head. It was late afternoon. Evie and Marian were playing next door. Tilly was selling ice-cream, Ben and Seamus were giving donkey rides in the field. Poppy had been released from the playpen and was now on the sitting room floor, building and knocking towers of wooden blocks. Laura was having her feet massaged by her husband, and wishing for the ability to turn back time so she could rewind it to two minutes before Poppy’s fall.

  Gavin worked his way along her soles, kneading with his thumbs. ‘What’ll we do for your birthday?’

  Her thirty-second birthday, this day week. The last thing she wanted to think about. ‘No party,’ she said, although normally she adored one. Not up to it this year.

  ‘What about a little dinner? Tilly and I could rustle up a menu.’

  She thought about that, and decided it might work. A small quiet dinner party with lovely people could be just the lift she needed – although she and Tilly might handle the food. She was no great chef, but she was better than Gavin.

  ‘I could ask that sweet Italian man, the one I told you about who’s staying with Imelda.’

  He shot her a look. ‘Should I be worried?’

  That drew a smile. ‘He reminds me of Walter.’

  ‘So you said. Who else?’

  ‘Nell and James, Lelia and Pádraig. Imelda if she’ll come.’

  ‘And Tilly will want Andy.’

  Of course she would. The thought of him sitting at her kitchen table made Laura want to call the thing off. ‘I’d say he wouldn’t be bothered.’

  ‘He mightn’t – but Tilly would want him.’

  ‘He might have to work in Fitz’s, fill in for James.’

  Gavin pulled gently at each toe in turn. ‘Has the young fellow annoyed you, by any chance?’ Gav, who was normally immune to any kind of undercurrent. She mustn’t make it so obvious.

  ‘No, I just hope they’re not getting too serious.’

  He grinned. ‘Hear you, Mother.’

  ‘Well, I do feel responsible while she’s here.’

  Gavin deposited her feet on the couch. ‘I should collect the two from next door: I’d say they might have outstayed their welcome.’

  ‘Do.’

  After he’d left, Laura sat on, relishing her rare night off from cooking dinner. ‘Bring fish and chips when you’re coming,’ she’d said to Tilly. ‘It’s not often we treat ourselves.’ And after dinner they were going to break into the Ben & Jerry’s that was normally kept well hidden in the freezer for special occasions, because life was short, and you never knew what waited around the next corner.

  She watched her little daughter, giggling delightedly as she sent yet another wooden tower crashing to the floor. She recalled the premonition that hadn’t been about Eve after all. How quickly things could change. How abruptly lives could be transformed, for good or otherwise. Look at herself twelve years ago, a wife one day, a widow the next – and now it was Imelda’s turn to have her happiness pulled away without warning, her turn to have to bear the unbearable.

  For all Laura’s current concerns, at least everyone was still alive – and Imelda, in all her grief, had phoned Tilly on the evening of the accident to see if there was anything she could do. Laura would call around to her sometime in the next few days, invite her and Italian Walter to the dinner party, bring her a box of eggs, or a little bar of soap from that pretty new craft shop across the street from Nell’s salon. They didn’t have to be bosom buddies, but a little kindness wouldn’t go amiss.

  Ten minutes later, as she was flicking through one of the magazines that Nell dropped in from time to time, the sitting room door opened.

  ‘Hello,’ she said. ‘Are the rides finished?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘How much did you make?’

  ‘Thirty-six euro.’

  ‘Not bad.’ Three euro a ride, the price unchanged since they’d started up the business, the summer after their move to the island. A dozen customers on a sunny day wasn’t great, but the sunshine sometimes acted against them and kept people on the beaches – and anyway poor old George could probably do with the break. They might think about cutting down his hours next summer, just do three days a week or something.

  ‘Did you give the money to Dad?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  At the end of each season, the donkey-ride takings were divided in three. A third went into household expenses, another was set aside for a rainy day, and the rest was split between Ben and Seamus, who were saving up for a sailboat. Laura had googled Boats for sale, and was satisfied that they’d be at least twenty before they hit their target. Thanks to Nell’s tuition they were strong swimmers, but still their mother quaked at the thought of them casting off and throwing themselves on the mercy of the capricious sea.

  ‘Are the girls back?’

  ‘No.’

  Not surprising. Gavin would be chatting with James, the babysitter for the afternoon, while four small children wreaked their usual havoc. She hoped order would be restored before Nell got home from her day’s work.

  ‘So,’ she said, ‘anything else to report?’

  Of course there was something else. They hadn’t called in to enquire how she was, or to report on the donkey rides. She could read them like one of Nell’s magazines, and they looked as guilty as sin. She prayed whatever confession she was about to hear wasn’t serious. She’d had her fill of serious. Let it be a few broken eggs. Let it be something she could laugh off.

  ‘We have something to tell you,’ Seamus began.

  ‘OK.’

  ‘You’re going to be cross,’ Ben said.

  She waited. The silence stretched. This was bigger than eggs.

  ‘Tell me,’ she said eventually – and out it all came in a rush, two voices butting into one another.

  ‘We did it.’

  ‘We threw the scarecrow off the cliff.’

  ‘It was a joke. Jerry Malone bet us for a joke.’

  ‘We thought it would just – we didn’t know all the boats and stuff would come.’

  The scarecrow.

  The cliffs.

 
; Dear God Almighty.

  Laura took a long steadying breath. She set down her magazine and sat up straighter on the couch. She darted a glance at Poppy, who was curled on the floor now, babbling away to Rabbity and not paying them any heed at all. ‘Let me get this right,’ she said, keeping her voice even. ‘You took the scarecrow from Michael Brown’s field—’

  ‘No, Jerry took it.’

  She started again. ‘Jerry took the scarecrow – he stole the scarecrow from Michael’s field. Am I right so far? Did he steal it?’

  Two shamefaced nods.

  ‘And you two brought it to the cliffs – or did Jerry do that bit too?’

  ‘All of us did.’

  ‘We all did.’

  They’d brought the scarecrow, which would probably have been awkward enough to transport, all the way to the cliffs. Somehow they’d avoided being seen – hid it in the ditch maybe, when they heard a car approach. Ducked out of sight when pedestrians or cyclists came into view. Then again, who’d have taken any notice of three boys carting an old scarecrow about?

  ‘You brought it to the cliffs – and who threw it over?’

  ‘Us two.’

  A knot was forming in her chest, hard and tight. ‘You two. Not Jerry.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Don’t mumble. So you climbed the safety fence.’

  Silence.

  ‘Did you? Did you climb the safety fence?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Both of you climbed the safety fence, knowing that it was strictly forbidden ever to do that. Ever.’

  Nothing.

  ‘Am I right? Did you climb the safety fence, after being told thousands of times never, ever, to go near it?’

  Two nods.

  She tried not to see it in her mind’s eye but there it was, clear as the sky on a fine day. Her sons on the cliff edge, inches from the void, manoeuvring the scarecrow over. One stumble, one crumbling piece of cliff, and they would have been lost to her for eternity.

  ‘Did Jerry climb the fence?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No. Of course he didn’t. Jerry was sensible enough to send two clowns over instead.’