The Book of Love

by Fionnuala Kearney

  Copyright

  Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

  1 London Bridge Street

  London SE1 9GF

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2018

  Copyright © Fionnuala Kearney 2018

  Cover design by Ellie Game © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018

  Fionnuala Kearney asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

  Source ISBN: 9780007594016

  Ebook Edition © October 2018 ISBN: 9780007594023

  Version: 2018-09-10

  Dedication

  For Eamonn and Mary and also Jim and Monica

  who once loved like this.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Part One

  Chapter 1. Dominic

  Chapter 2. Erin

  Chapter 3. Erin

  Chapter 4. Dominic

  Chapter 5. Erin

  Chapter 6. Erin

  Chapter Part Two

  Chapter 7. Dominic

  Chapter 8. Erin

  Chapter 9. Erin

  Chapter 10. Dominic

  Chapter 11. Erin

  Chapter 12. Erin

  Chapter 13. Dominic

  Chapter 14. Erin

  Chapter 15. Erin

  Chapter 16. Dominic

  Chapter 17. Erin

  Chapter 18. Erin

  Part Three

  Chapter 19. Erin

  Chapter 20. Dominic

  Chapter 21. Dominic

  Chapter 22. Erin

  Chapter 23. Dominic

  Chapter 24. Dominic

  Chapter 25. Erin

  Chapter 26. Dominic

  Chapter 27. Dominic

  Chapter 28. Erin

  Chapter 29. Dominic

  Chapter 30. Dominic

  Part Four

  Chapter 31. Erin

  Chapter 32. Dominic

  Chapter 33. Erin

  Chapter 34. Dominic

  Chapter 35. Erin

  Chapter 36. Dominic

  Chapter 37. Erin

  Chapter 38. Dominic

  Chapter 39. Erin

  Chapter 40. Dominic

  Chapter 41. Erin

  Chapter 42. Dominic

  Part Five

  Chapter 43.

  Chapter 44.

  Chapter 45.

  Chapter 46.

  Chapter 47.

  Chapter 48.

  Chapter 49.

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  A Q&A with Fionnuala Kearney

  Book Club Questions for The Book of Love by Fionnuala Kearney

  Read More …

  About the Author

  Also by Fionnuala Kearney

  About the Publisher

  1. Dominic

  NOW – 3rd June 2017

  From The Book of Love:

  ‘I love you because you found me.’

  I’m wide awake when I shouldn’t be. Completely still, I’m sitting bolt upright on the edge of our bed, ears pricked for any hint of her. There’s nothing but familiar sounds from the old building echoing in the silence. A fly buzzes around the bedroom window. Through the oak floorboards, from below in the kitchen, the fridge motor whines. The pipes groan in the walls like a quick, expectant heartbeat. Even the house misses Erin.

  Standing, I stretch tall, my hands just about touching the ceiling. Then I start my sweep of 44 Valentine’s Way, my early walkabout. The children’s bedrooms get a mere glance, nothing new there but another fine layer of dust. I head downstairs, my left hand tracing the original, deco style, curved staircase. At the bottom, just to the right in the study, the desk lamp that sits next to a pile of architectural drawings is switched on. A glance past them, to my paper diary, brings a stabbing memory of Erin, months ago, trying to convince me to digitally diarise everything onto my phone. I resisted, laughed, ignored the jibe about my Jurassic ways and reminded her that it was she who’d dragged me kicking and screaming to the written word in the first place.

  Today’s date, with a spidery doodle right in the middle of the page also confirms Lydia’s birthday party tonight. My sister will have staff, borrowed from the cafés she owns, bearing trays of minuscule canapés and warm prosecco. She’ll be floating through our group of friends, and some of hers whom I don’t know, with a painted smile firmly in place, pretending everything’s fine.

  The phone ringing in the hall makes me flinch but I don’t move, sensing it will be another hang-up.

  ‘Hi,’ Erin says from beyond the doorway. ‘We’re not home right now. Leave a message.’ My voice pitches in, ‘If anyone cares, I’m not here either’ and she giggles just before the beep and the final click. I walk to the hall – hear her laugh resonate, almost bounce off the walls, and wonder how days without her seem so achingly exhausting. It’s always been like that. From that first moment I saw her, and her ridiculous dancing, to the last time we spoke, she has lived in my soul. She just moved in, took up residence. No discussion. No permission. No regrets.

  Without realising it, I’ve approached the mahogany console table, towards the single drawer. The book seems to beckon to me. I imagine flashing lights warning me of the perils ahead, yet the comfort of it in my hand brings familiar relief; the soft nappa leather, like myself, scarred in places. I find myself fanning our handwritten pages. They smell of Erin, a vague whiff of her peony scent. I raise them to my face and inhale deeply before opening it on her last entry. In the hallway of the home we made together, I pace the tiled black and white floor. The first rays of morning light from the glazed dome in the roof above help me read her words aloud:

  12th May 2017

  Darling Dom,

  Back in August 2004, you took something from here, remember?

  Sometimes, usually lying in bed around daybreak, I wonder – no, more than that, I’m quite desperate to know – whether we might have avoided so much heartache if you hadn’t.

  I mean, what if you’d left that page where it was meant to be? What if those words had been the very words in our book of love that you really needed to say to me back then? Maybe you were honest, reached out, even asked for help. And maybe if I’d read those words of yours at that time, things might have been different? What if I’d been able to see them by holding the next page up to the light and tracing the faint imprint of your pen?

  I tried – it only works in the movies.

  I know, I know. You call me ‘The Queen of What Ifs’. But this is just one of the things that haunts me when I wake too early in those dawn-drenched hours.

  You tell me not to be silly, not to dwell on the past. You hold me and tell me everything happens as it’s meant to, not exactly ‘for a reason’, but ‘life’, you say all the time, ‘life unfolds just the way it should’.

 
; So, that missing page stayed very much missing. Absent. Gone. I never knew what it said, and you’ve never told me. And life unfolded the way it was meant to and there was heartache – but so much love too. God, there was so much love.

  There is still love.

  That’s what I cling to in those restless hours that follow night.

  I remind myself that love endures.

  Erin x

  I sit down on the first stair. The closed front door opposite seems to taunt me. ‘What if she walked in here now?’ My whisper is just about audible.

  My ‘Queen of What Ifs …’ I’d hold her, touch the soft skin on her face with my fingertips and tell her that she’s right, that it’s love that brings meaning to life.

  2. Erin

  THEN – December 1996

  ‘Because without love, you’re screwed,’ Seamus Fitzpatrick, Fitz, to his friends and audience, announced.

  Erin felt Dom squeeze her hand, followed his nervous glance across the table. Seeing her new mother-in-law’s pinched lips, she looked away and focused instead on a wet ring mark on the paper tablecloth.

  ‘We’ve another way of saying that in Ireland, you know, “screwed”, but when in Rome and all that.’ Fitz laughed; a soft, uneasy sound.

  Oh God, thought Erin. Please don’t swear. Sit down now, Dad. Sit. Please.

  She swallowed hard as his voice filled the small room. It was a private space at the back of the King’s Arms located right across the street from the registry office. It wasn’t the sort of place she’d imagined her wedding might be. Like almost every small girl, she had, once upon a time, pictured herself in an elegant gown saying her vows in a quaint village chapel. At a grand reception, there would have been a feast followed by a practised first waltz by the bride and groom to ‘their song’.

  A room in a pub, slightly sticky underfoot, with smoke-scented flock wallpaper, worn velvet seating, loops of stringy tinsel and Christmas lights with missing bulbs had never been part of the dream. And she and Dom hadn’t known one another long enough yet to have ‘a song’. Erin rubbed her hand over her belly as a familiar anxiety began to gnaw. They’d known each other long enough to create the human being that danced inside her, but not long enough to have a song. It was only Dom’s hand on hers that calmed her doubts, reminding her that she had got the most important thing right. Dominic Carter was a prince among men.

  ‘See, without love,’ her father continued, ‘you’re just two people roaming through life, wandering around in a valley of … a valley of tears.’

  Resisting the urge to pull on his sleeve, instead she prayed to her mother. Make him sit down, Mam, please.

  ‘So, it does fill me with joy …’

  She looked up and her face crumpled as Fitz started to cry.

  ‘It fills me with joy,’ he sniffed, ‘to see that you two really do love each other, so bear with me while I say,’ he peeked at her and Dom over the rim of his oval, steel-rimmed spectacles, ‘keep hold of that love and you’ll be grand.’

  Erin’s mouth twitched as she attempted a smile.

  ‘Finally, let’s raise a glass to the bride and groom. I wish you both health and happiness and family that will love and anchor you.’

  ‘Thanks, Dad,’ she touched his arm, his new, but ill-fitting, suit as he sat down.

  ‘Your mam would have been so proud of you today,’ he smiled.

  ‘Thanks, Dad,’ Erin repeated and stared at her bump. There had been no way or no gown to hide it and everyone who was there knew anyway.

  ‘Was it alright?’ Fitz asked.

  She told her father that his speech had been perfect as she, once again, looked across the circular table towards her in-laws. Sophie was scooping imaginary crumbs from the table. Gerard smiled, gave a small nod in her direction.

  ‘Perhaps I shouldn’t have—’ Her father leaned into her as he drained his glass. She crooked an arm around his neck and kissed his cheek.

  ‘I told you, Dad, it was really perfect. Thank you.’

  Three round tables of ten people squeezed into the room created the background noise that she and Dom needed. ‘You wanna get out of here?’ her husband whispered.

  ‘You know we can’t.’ She felt his sigh in her ear and shivered. There was nothing she wanted more than to get back to the flat and curl up in bed with this man and their bump.

  ‘Okay, we’ll stay a bit longer,’ he agreed. ‘But no one really expects us to hang around drinking, love.’

  ‘Let’s circulate, give it another half hour,’ she said. Pulling herself to a standing position, she dismissed thoughts of the absent music and first dance, reminded herself to be grateful to Dom for putting this together so quickly – on his own, without much help from her or anyone. ‘I’m going for a quick pee,’ she whispered before heading to the back of the function room towards the corridor and the loos. Just as she was about to turn the corner, a voice she recognised stopped her in her tracks.

  ‘She’s shameless.’

  Erin’s hand automatically protected her stomach. Every nerve ending in her body told her to turn around; that she had no business listening, but her feet had rooted to the tacky carpet.

  ‘You’re tired. We’ll go soon.’

  ‘Gerard, do not patronise me! I’m not tired. I simply can’t stand the girl.’

  ‘That “girl”, as you call her, is carrying our grandchild. Keep your bloody voice down.’

  Erin backed herself up against the wall. She tried to edge each vertebra, one by one against it, suddenly caring little for the off-white dress she had carefully chosen in a small vintage shop near Putney. Closing her eyes, she willed herself invisible.

  ‘Is she?’ Sophie hissed. ‘We don’t know that, do we, and he’s too besotted to care!’

  ‘Stop!’ her husband snapped. ‘You want to go, we’ll go, but this is not the time or the place for a scene.’

  She should walk on up there, Erin told herself. Just walk on up that narrow, dirt-brown corridor, make her way slowly past them, brandishing her bump between them. She should smile sweetly at her mother-in-law, and widen her grateful eyes at Gerard, the man who thankfully seemed to have donated most of Dom’s character. Erin knew what she should do but, instead, she pleaded with her bladder and backed into the room to mingle with their friends as best she could.

  ‘You look angelic,’ Lydia whispered.

  ‘Divine,’ Hannah agreed.

  ‘Well, I would,’ Nigel, Dom’s best man grinned. ‘Seriously, there’s something very sexy about pregnant women.’

  And with one eye on Sophie emerging from the corridor, Erin laughed.

  Later, as they were leaving, everyone made a guard of honour to an out of tune ‘Here Comes the Bride’. It was only as Dom steered her underneath, past Fitz and her brother Rob, that Erin saw Sophie waiting at the very end. She would be waiting to whisper that he’d always have a home if he changed his mind. Erin stooped low. Dom was not going to change his mind. Dom loved her. He hadn’t stopped smiling since she’d told him about the baby. And even though she had never asked it or expected it of him, Dom had asked her to marry him within days of the news. Dom had married her. Because he loved her.

  He pulled her through the arch and as she stood, she leaned into Gerard’s kiss, matched her mother-in-law’s air kiss, and gripped her new husband’s hand. At the door, she was pulled into another hug as Dom tried to help her with her coat.

  ‘I’ll call you tomorrow,’ Lydia squeezed hard. ‘Get some sleep.’

  Erin nodded. It had been a long day, but she hugged her sister-in-law back.

  ‘Look after that brother of mine.’ Lydia smiled. ‘He’s the only one I’ve got.’

  Erin nodded, pulled Hannah, her other bridesmaid, into the hug and scanned the room until her eyes rested on Fitz and Rob, who, hating goodbyes, had moved away from the door. When her father placed his fingers on his lips and blew her a kiss, and her only brother winked, Erin nodded and fought back tears.

  Nigel handed Dom t
he car keys and smiled at Erin. ‘It’s outside and all warmed up for you, love.’

  ‘Thanks, Nigel,’ she whispered. Sometimes it was the small acts of kindness from people that made her fill up. She looked at Sophie, who was wringing her hands. And sometimes, she thought, it was cutting words that did it. Against all her better instincts, she turned back to her mother-in-law and whispered. ‘I love your son and he will always know that. Always.’

  Her response was the tiniest nod, a minute jerk of the woman’s disapproving head, a cold but noticeable acknowledgement.

  In the car, they both shivered. Dom reached over and rubbed her arms with his hands. ‘Who the hell gets married in December?’ he asked, laughing. ‘Right, let’s get you home to bed.’

  She closed her eyes briefly, wanting to commit that moment to memory – his desire to keep her warm, to get her back safely. At twenty-seven, Dom’s wedding night should have involved honeymoon sex, lots of it. Part of her felt she should apologise – not just for the lack of wedding night love-making but the whole thing. The whole ‘meet a girl and within seven months find out she’s pregnant and five months later marry her’ thing. Whirlwind didn’t cover it.

  He placed a hand inside her coat and squeezed her knee, bare but for the flesh-coloured tights she’d worn with her short, fitted, lace dress. ‘Never more,’ he said.

  She laughed. ‘How did you know what I was going to ask?’

  ‘Because I can read your mind. Plus you ask me every night if I’m happy.’

  She stared out the window at the shadows of the icy fir trees that lined the edge of the street. ‘Just making sure …’

  ‘Erin?’

  ‘Uh-huh?’ She leaned forward towards the heated air coming from the front vents.

  ‘Promise me something?’

  ‘Anything.’

  ‘Believe that I’m happy. I wouldn’t be here with you, with you both, unless I wanted to be. So, after today, no more making sure, okay?’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Promise?’

  ‘I promise not to ask you if you’re happy again, unless I’m really unsure for a very good reason.’

  Dom shook his head. ‘Negotiating already! Christ, what have I done?’