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

by Meaney, Roisin

  And then, without thinking about it, she’d found herself pulling out of Nell’s grip and marching towards him. Tilly, Nell had called – but she’d kept going. Something, some instinct, had propelled her in his direction. Something she couldn’t control had made her lift an arm and slap him across the face, hard enough to create a hot sting in her palm. She’d had no thought then of Nell witnessing it, with Tommy still in her arms. God, the thought of Tommy seeing that, seeing her hit his big brother, made her want to bawl all over again.

  Immediately afterwards she’d whipped around and blundered away through the crowd, and Andy had rushed after her. Tilly, he’d shouted, wait – but she hadn’t waited, she’d kept going, her palm still smarting, shocked and appalled by what she’d heard, what she’d done. She couldn’t think beyond getting away, getting back to Laura.

  He’d caught up with her before she’d reached the gates – she couldn’t outrun him in her party shoes. He’d caught her arm to halt her, and she’d rounded on him and screamed: Go away! Let me go! Leave me alone! Loud, harsh screams that had hurt her throat. She’d had a sense of more heads swinging around to stare at them, and he’d dropped her arm then and let her go.

  She’d rushed back along the coast road, her head reeling, unable to process properly the implications of what had just occurred. She’d made her way back to Walter’s Place, stumbling along in her heels, careful to avoid eye contact with the few people she passed.

  She’d expected Nell and James and the children to catch up with her. They’d been about to leave: unless they made a big detour they’d have to come this way. And what if Andy had opted to go with them, determined to try to talk to her again? She’d steeled herself for another encounter – but they must have taken the long way home, because there was no sign of them, or of him.

  She couldn’t bear the thought of the news flying excitedly around at the party. You’ll never guess what I just heard! You won’t believe it! She imagined the pity they’d all feel for her, Andy Baker’s innocent girlfriend who’d come all the way from Australia to discover he’d been cheating on her. Her only consolation was that she wouldn’t be there for the fallout, for the accusations and the protestations, for whatever further ugliness this horrible situation would throw up when word spread throughout the island.

  She could never come back to Roone after this. Never, ever, ever. If she wanted to see Laura and the others again, they’d have to meet somewhere else. The thought of having to abandon the island that she’d hoped to make her home was unbearable, almost as awful as her other loss. So much had changed in an instant, all her dreams wiped out, her future as good as obliterated.

  He says it wasn’t him, Laura had told her when morning had finally come, when Tilly was cradling a cup of tea and shaking her head at anything more. He admits he walked her home from a party because she’d had a lot to drink, but he swears nothing happened.

  I got horribly drunk, and he looked after me, Eve had said, that morning they’d met her on the beach. He walked her home. Like old times, she’d said. Reminding him of what had happened, what they’d done, right in front of Tilly. Getting a kick out of it, probably.

  Do you believe him? she’d asked Laura, and her sister had turned back to the frying pan without replying, because guests were waiting for breakfast, and because it gave her something to do when she couldn’t give Tilly the right answer. Clearly she didn’t believe him, and neither did Tilly.

  She’d been such a fool to trust him, to imagine that she’d found someone who truly loved her. In the end, he’d turned out no better than John Smith.

  How could he? How could he have slept with his old girlfriend, knowing how Tilly felt about him? Oh, she hated him. She despised him for breaking her heart so cruelly and denying her a future on Roone, with or without him.

  ‘I think you need to make a move,’ Gavin said. ‘I mean, if you’re still determined to go.’

  His voice pulled her back to the present. He’d insisted on driving her to the pier, and now the ferry was loading up, and she must at all costs avoid looking across to where the ice-cream van was parked, even though she’d have to pass within ten yards of it to reach the boat.

  ‘I have to go,’ she told him. ‘I have no choice.’

  He didn’t argue. He took her case from the back and wheeled it onto the ferry. ‘Listen,’ he said, in the green T-shirt with a koala bear on the front that had been her gift to him last year, ‘nothing has been proven, that’s all I want to say. It’s her word against his, so let’s wait and see, OK? The truth will come out, Tilly.’

  It was cold comfort. Nothing had been proven: this much was true, but every cell in her body knew that Eve had spoken the truth. Still, he was doing his best to make her feel better. She hugged him tightly and told him goodbye, and he hugged her back and kissed her cheek. ‘See you tomorrow,’ he said, but he wouldn’t see her tomorrow: he might never see her again. She watched him returning to his white van, needing to get back to start his morning deliveries.

  She recalled his many kindnesses. Welcoming her into the family when she’d first arrived; leaving his vegetable patch to help her anytime she went out to take bed linen from the clothes-line; bringing her little chocolate gifts like he brought to Laura. She’s so chuffed, he’d told her, to find she has a sister. You have no idea. A pushover with his children; the most loving father on the planet. Biggish front teeth, lending to his many smiles an endearing childlike quality. The fondness she felt for him, as close to her as any brother could be.

  Last evening she’d turned off her phone, after Andy’s first attempt to call her. This morning there had been eight missed calls from him, along with three voicemail messages that she’d deleted without playing them. She’d phone Laura from Dublin – maybe from their father’s house – and let her know that Gavin didn’t have to cross to the mainland tomorrow.

  Keep strong, Laura had whispered, as she was saying goodbye. Don’t let this break you – but Tilly, feeling utterly broken, could give nothing in reply. They’d been standing on the road by Gavin’s van, and Tilly had been terrified that Andy would appear from the house next door, but he hadn’t – which had stupidly made her feel worse.

  She became aware that it was raining. Not heavy rain, this was the soft gentle kind, tiny whispery drops so you hardly needed an umbrella. She avoided the steps to the rail, where she and Andy had stood on the day she’d arrived. She still refused to look in the direction of the van they’d spent so many afternoons in together. Would he continue working there now, knowing that all of Roone must be whispering about him? Oh, let him do what he liked. Let him go back to Eve if that was what he wanted: she was welcome to him.

  She hauled her case over to a space under the top deck where another, large and lime green, already stood. A little further along, seated on a bench, she spotted the Italian man she’d met last evening on her way to the hotel. Straw hat covering the head that was tilted slightly forward, hands folded together in his lap.

  She’d told him that she and Andy were getting married. Next year, she’d said. Serve her right for lying. Serve her right for believing they had a future together. Serve her right for being a stupid innocent dreamer.

  She could avoid the man. She could cross to the other side of the boat for the duration of the short journey – but she found she didn’t want to. She found herself walking towards him, not away.

  He turned at the sound of her steps. His face lit up in recognition. ‘Signorina,’ he said, rising to his feet, sweeping off his hat, ‘Buon giorno.’

  ‘Hello.’ She indicated the bench. ‘Can I sit with you?’

  ‘Certo, certo, you sit, please.’ When she was settled he resumed his own seat, returned the hat to his head. ‘The rain, she comes again,’ he said.

  She shrugged. ‘I don’t mind the rain.’ It could rain till Doomsday – it could pelt down for all she cared.

  Leo the ferryman arrived then, the worn strap of his leather bag crossing his yellow oilskin. He t
ook money from them and pulled tickets from his book. ‘You enjoyed your holiday?’ he enquired of Tilly, and she said yes, it was lovely, praying he wouldn’t mention Andy, and he didn’t. Seeing in her face, maybe, that things hadn’t gone according to plan. ‘Safe journey home,’ he told her. ‘See you next summer, please God.’

  When he’d moved on, her companion tilted his head at her. ‘You have nice party in the ’otel? There was dancing?’

  She shook her head, not having the heart to keep pretending. ‘Not really. I … finished with my boyfriend.’ He didn’t need details. ‘That’s why I’m leaving today.’

  His smile faded and died. ‘Signorina, I am very sorry to ’ear. You go back to Australia?’

  ‘Yes, tomorrow. I’m going to Dublin now.’ She hesitated. ‘My father lives there.’

  ‘Ah.’ He nodded. ‘I too go to Dublin, to the airport. Perhaps we go together.’

  ‘How are you travelling?’

  ‘I take first the bus, and after the train, and then another train.’

  ‘I’m going by bus all the way,’ she said. ‘There’s a direct one to Dublin from Tralee. It’s a bit slower, but it’s cheaper too.’ After an hour on Gavin’s computer, checking out all her options, she was an expert.

  ‘Then, if I ’ave enough time for my aeroplane, I too will take the bus,’ he declared, ‘if you are ’appy that we will travel together.’

  ‘I’d like that,’ she said. There was something likeable about him, something open and honest about his face, and talking to him might keep her mind off Roone and everything associated with it.

  ‘Your name, please,’ he said, ‘I forget it’ – and she told him Tilly, short for Mathilde. ‘And you are Mr Conti.’

  ‘Gualtiero,’ said.

  She repeated it uncertainly. ‘I might not remember.’

  ‘Then,’ he said, ‘I will say it again,’ and he gave one of his sweet smiles.

  ‘Tell me about Italy,’ she said, as they left Roone behind them, as tiny droplets of water continued to fall on them.

  Time passed. The ferry docked and they boarded the waiting bus that took them to Tralee, and from there they found the one for Dublin, and as they moved further from the island, as they crossed the country from west to east, he spoke of his restaurant and the village where he lived, where bakeries opened at dawn and closed at midday, and meals could last for hours, and the setting sun was a glory to see on a spring evening.

  He seemed to sense that she wanted him to go on talking. He told her of his lost wife, and his two sons, and the little dark-eyed granddaughter with her grandmother’s smile who called him Nonno, and a nephew who’d returned from a holiday on Roone with his wife last summer – They stay with Laura, where you stay – and who’d thought that Gualtiero might like to paint the sea there.

  When he finally ran out of things to tell her, she spoke of the parents she’d thought were hers until she’d found out, almost by accident, that they weren’t, and the little brother and sister whom she loved, but who had no blood connection to her. She told him of the Indonesian restaurant where she’d begun working at weekends while she was still at school, and the owners who felt like family at this stage, and who held her job open for her each time she travelled to Ireland. She told him of her best friend Lien, whose grandparents had moved to Australia from China in the 1950s.

  She recounted meeting her birth mother, and how they hadn’t connected at all, and of her journey a few months later in search of the sister she’d been told about who lived on a small island off the Irish coast, and how she’d found a brother-in-law and a clutch of nieces and nephews too.

  She didn’t tell him about John Smith. She made no further mention of Andy. A few times he’d wander into her head, and then she’d have to stop talking and look out of the window of the bus, blinking, until she could breathe him away. When this happened, her companion sat back and remained silent, and gave no sign at all that he’d noticed anything amiss.

  They said goodbye on a busy street in the middle of Dublin. The further east they’d travelled, the heavier the rain had become: now it was pouring down, but she didn’t care. ‘I wish for you ’appiness,’ he said, kissing her on both cheeks, and Tilly watched him climb into a taxi, and tried to remember what happiness felt like.

  After Roone, Dublin was a shock. So crowded and noisy, so many people scurrying past, toting umbrellas or with hoods pulled up, all looking as if they knew exactly where they were going. Nobody catching her eye, nobody saying hello like everyone did on Roone, no smiles that she noticed. The roads were clogged with every type of vehicle, cars and vans, buses and trams, and cyclists whose lives seemed to be in imminent danger as they swerved around the puddles and wove through the lanes of traffic.

  She crossed a street with a wave of other pedestrians as the waiting vehicles growled at them. She bought two sausage rolls in a bakery and sat on wide stone steps to eat them, rain dripping from the ends of her hair as she watched Dublin rush by. She saw a man walk past who reminded her of Andy – something in his stride, in the tilt of his shoulders – and she swallowed a giant lump in her throat and tasted the saltiness of more tears, and forbade them to come out.

  She wheeled her case across a bridge and saw people sitting on the ground with damp paper cups placed in front of them. One held an opened newspaper over his head; others seemed impervious to the rain as it streamed down on them. A little dog huddled quietly beside its owner on a sheet of soggy-looking cardboard, head resting on forepaws. It reminded her of Charlie, the dog at Walter’s Place, and Captain, his brother, living in the house next door. She smothered a swoop of despair.

  Outside a building with enormous stone columns she spotted a policeman. She showed him her father’s address and he directed her to a nearby street and told her to take a bus from there. ‘Not sure which number you need,’ he said. ‘Anyone will tell you.’

  ‘Hop on,’ the driver of the first bus told her. ‘Stay close. I’ll tell you when to get off.’ His accent reminded her of Andy’s and James’s. She sat on the seat right behind him, next to a man with a young boy on his lap. The boy, who looked about Tommy’s age, pulled absently at the gold-coloured bracelet on his father’s watch as the bus trundled out of the city centre. Tilly peered through steamed-up windows as they crossed a different bridge, as they passed a park and a cinema and a church and more shops, and long terraces of red-brick houses.

  The journey seemed to take ages. The floor of the bus was dotted with small puddles. Giant windscreen wipers swept across the glass, making her eyelids heavy. The man and the boy got off. She wondered if the driver had forgotten about her, but just as she was about to ask him, he called out the name of her father’s street. She got hastily to her feet, almost losing her balance as the bus braked sharply. ‘First left,’ he told her, pointing, and she thanked him and manoeuvred her case carefully down the step.

  The gate was unexpected. Not in itself – every house on the beautiful tree-lined road had gates – but this one was more like a shop shutter, a solid metal expanse that completely blocked any view of the house behind it, apart from its black-slated roof into which a large skylight was set.

  An intercom was mounted on the wall. She could press the button and talk to her father. She peered at the gate again. So forbidding it looked. She checked the house number, hoping she’d got it wrong, hoping his house was one of the others, with normal gates and manicured lawns behind them, but she hadn’t got it wrong.

  She sneezed. She was wet through. Water trickled from her hair down the back of her neck. What if he sent her away – what if he refused even to let her in? She’d thought she could handle it, but now she was unsure. Another rejection, on top of last night? And really, what were the chances that he’d want to see her, in the face of his complete indifference to her up to this? Did she need further confirmation that he didn’t want to know?

  Maybe not.

  As she deliberated, a silver car approached and pulled up at the gate. The win
dows were blacked out. She remained where she was, feeling exposed, and oddly guilty. The driver’s window slid down, and a man looked out.

  His face was familiar. She’d seen it online enough times to know it. He looked older though, and thinner.

  ‘I’m Tilly,’ she said, because he wasn’t saying anything. ‘I’m your daughter.’ She sneezed again. ‘I need a bed for the night,’ she said.

  They stared at one another for what felt like a long time. He didn’t blink, or smile; neither did she. Eventually he did something in his car that made the big metal gate rumble aside.

  ‘You’d better come in,’ he told her. He slid his window up and drove on, and she pulled her case after him, the wet making her feel cold, although the day was mild.

  The house was big and built with bricks in varying shades of orange and red. Three steps led to the front door, which was glossy black and panelled, with lots of glass around it. Gravel the colour of sand, a tiered flowerbed running along one side. A giant rust-coloured pot by the door had something green and white trailing from it.

  Tilly hauled her case up the three steps. She watched him get out of his car and shut his door and press his key fob. Locks clicked, lights blinked.

  He walked across the gravel to where she waited. He was taller than her by a few inches, but he stooped a little. His hair was unkempt; he hadn’t shaved in a while. Nell could have tidied him up. His eyes were the same colour as Tilly’s, the same colour as his little son’s. He opened the front door without comment, and stood back to allow her to enter.

  She stepped in. The hall was spacious, with small black and white tiles on the floor. Walls covered with paintings. Fancy chairs with striped padded seats. A sculpture of a man’s head and shoulders on a wooden stand, bronze it looked like. Presumably someone famous, but she didn’t recognise him. She thought it odd to have something like that in a private house. White doors opened into other rooms. Stairs swept upwards in a curve.