by Marian Keyes
A stunned silence followed. Had they actually found a solution to a mini-crisis that was an improvement on the original situation?
‘Well!’ Jessie was radiant with pleasure. ‘Fair play,’ she said to Ed and Liam. ‘Both of you marrying such resourceful women.’
While Cara laughed off the compliment, Nell looked literally sick.
‘It’d be very handy if you were having an affair,’ Jessie said suddenly.
‘What would?’ Cara sounded mystified.
‘Having the key to Johnny’s flat. Knowing the schedule. You could time your meet-ups for when no one was staying there.’
Cara rolled her eyes. ‘Yeah, I’m definitely affair material.’
‘You’re too hard on yourself,’ Jessie said. She looked at Ferdia. ‘Isn’t she?’
Ferdia squirmed. But he didn’t want Cara to be embarrassed.
‘Do you mind?’ Ed said. ‘I am here.’
Everyone laughed, except – Ferdia noticed – Nell.
She muttered something about going to the bathroom and left the table. Seconds later, so did Liam.
Ferdia decided to follow and found them in the kitchen.
‘… no one can get a place to rent in Dublin,’ Nell was saying. ‘All because landlords are Airbnbing flats to tourists.’
‘Why shouldn’t Johnny get the most he can from his investment?’ Liam’s face was close to Nell’s.
‘Johnny isn’t hurting for cash. But thousands of people in our city can’t afford a flat.’
‘So he should just give money away because of the greater good?’
‘Actually, yes.’
‘That’s bullshit.’
‘He’s hardly going to be destitute,’ Nell called after him, as he strode off towards the front door. Then she noticed Ferdia. ‘What do you want?’
In the face of her righteous ire, Ferdia suddenly felt afraid. ‘Just to say that Airbnb is only one reason why no one can rent a place. We need much more social housing and an end to –’
‘I know. But it doesn’t help either, does it?’
Chastened, he slunk away.
THIRTY-TWO
Jessie yawned as her elbow almost slid off the table.
‘Go to bed, babes,’ Johnny said. ‘I’ll look after things.’
But Cara and Ed were still there and some weird shit was going on out in the hall with Nell and Liam.
‘Ah, no, we’ll head off,’ Ed said, decent as always.
‘Okay. Sorry. Just wrecked.’ She said her goodbyes and trailed up the stairs. Unexpectedly, she felt sober, sad and unable to stop thinking about what it had been like after Rory had died so suddenly, all those years ago.
The first year afterwards was a blur. She’d taken almost no time off work. Not because of her, very real, need to keep earning but because – and it took her a long time to understand this – she didn’t believe that Rory was actually dead.
The kids were far better than her at expressing themselves. Two nights out of three, Ferdia woke with nightmares. Saoirse, barely two years old, far too young to understand concepts such as ‘alive’ or ‘dead’, yelled the house down whenever she was away from Jessie. She read that children who lost a parent at an early age, even if, like Saoirse, they were too young to remember them, would always feel a loss, even if they couldn’t consciously attribute it. They were more likely than others to experience depression in later life.
She worried all the time about the kids, and any energy left over, she gave to her job. She wasn’t as effective as she’d once been – her concentration was terrible, her ability to grasp facts slippery – but it mattered as much to her as it ever had.
Her head knew Rory was dead but her true self had no clue.
One of the few feelings she remembered from those first twelve or eighteen months was embarrassment, at once again being a bit of an oddball. By falling in love with Rory, him falling in love with her, and going on to have a little boy and a little girl, she’d felt that she finally fitted in. No more pompous boyfriends with strange hobbies. No more being sniggered at by other women, either. Courtesy, once again, of Rory were the first real girlfriends she’d had in years – his sisters, Izzy and Keeva. But suddenly she was a young widow, enraged by the logistical challenges of life without Rory. Getting Ferdia to school and Saoirse to crèche, making time to collect them – well, she and Rory had had a system. Now that she was doing it all on her own, she was furious.
‘I have to do everything!’ she complained to her grief counsellor.
‘What else are you feeling?’
‘Worry. For Ferdia and Saoirse.’
‘What about you?’
‘I’m pissed off that I’m working full-time and I’m basically a single mother.’
‘Anything else?’
‘There is nothing else.’
The few tears she cried during that first year were of frustration or exhaustion, never grief.
Eventually she got a nanny, choosing a man, so the kids would have a consistent male presence in their lives. It wasn’t enough to quiet her crushing guilt at her failure to be both a mother and a father to them, so she overcompensated, organizing far-too-frequent treats, always striving to be ‘fun’, but feeling like she was single-handedly pushing a giant stone up a steep hill.
During those months it seemed as if the weather was always misty and grey.
One ordinary afternoon, during the second year of Rory’s absence, she was in her car. She automatically reached across to hold Rory’s hand – they’d always been great hand-holders. When it wasn’t there waiting for hers, the full impact of his forever absence hit her. He’s gone. He’s dead. And I won’t get to squeeze his hand later today. Or tomorrow. Or ever again.
The shock felt like a physical blow and shunted her abruptly into a new phase of life without him. He was dead and she was ruined. She would never fall in love again. She had her children, her business and her friends, and they would have to be enough.
Trying pre-emptively to ward off disaster, she worked harder than she had when Rory was alive, travelling incessantly to and from PiG shops around the country. Now and again, a frantic feeling seized her with sudden force. It would come on without warning, a type of panic, a sense that there was something she’d left undone, which would have catastrophic consequences if it wasn’t addressed. While she tried to identify this urgent task, the juddering agitation tried to burst from her body, struggling against skin, too violent to be contained. At the height of the fear, a voice in her would howl, Oh, my God, Rory is dead.
Those were the only times she’d understand the truth and it was terrifying.
Even so, she rarely cried. She numb-walked through her life, now and again jolting against the appalling reality in a horribly bruising way.
‘Am I doing it wrong?’ she’d asked Johnny. ‘Being a widow?’
‘You’re doing it the only way you know how,’ he’d answered.
Because that was the thing about Johnny: no matter what she needed or wanted, he was always there.
THIRTY-THREE
‘I’m sorry,’ Liam said, for the hundredth time. ‘You won’t stay in Airbnbs because you have a moral objection. Because I love you, I won’t use them either when I’m with you. I didn’t actually lie. I just kept something to myself.’
‘But you said you agreed with me!’
‘Yeah, because I’d just met you. At the start of a thing, you’d agree with whatever the other person says.’ He hadn’t done anything that every person on earth hadn’t done at one stage or another. All the same … ‘I’ve disappointed you.’ He looked sick. ‘I hate that. But – I’m sorry to break it to you, Nell – I’m only human.’
She swallowed. It would have been far nicer to hold on to her starry-eyed version of the two of them, but maybe she had to grow up a little. ‘Okay. Is that the worst thing I’m going to discover about you?’
‘Definitely.’
She sighed. ‘Tell me about this week in Italy.’
‘Is it anywhere near Florence?’ Her knowledge of Italy was sketchy.
‘Yeah. About an hour’s drive. I can show you on the map.’
Suddenly excitement was fizzing in Nell’s veins. ‘Liam, could we go to the Uffizi? The art gallery? It’s got Caravaggio’s Medusa, Botticelli’s Primavera – paintings I’ve wanted to see since forever.’
‘Sure! Whatever makes my baby happy.’
‘Would Jessie be pissed if we went off for the day?’
‘You kidding? Jessie loves an outing.’
‘Oh, wow.’ Joy spread through her, right into her fingertips. ‘Liam, Liam.’ Her words were tripping over each other. ‘How about I get tickets for us all? To say thanks to Jessie and Johnny. And Violet and Lenore can come too. How great would that be?’
‘Paige might die of the shock.’ His laugh was wry. ‘The girls getting some culture while they’re with me.’
Monday morning, 6.47 a.m. and it was already mayhem. Johnny was leaving for Amsterdam, for meetings with Indonesian food wholesalers, and he couldn’t find his charger.
‘Mum, where’s the milk?’ Saoirse yelled from the kitchen.
‘In the fridge,’ she yelled back.
‘It’s all gone.’
How?
‘Jessie, I’m going to miss my flight.’
‘Look in your case.’
‘I’ve looked.’
‘Look again.’
‘Mum,’ Bridey this time, ‘Camilla’s frothing at the mouth!’
‘Again? Take her out the back!’
Jessie dived towards Johnny’s bag, unzipped an inside pocket and handed him his charger. ‘There.’ Thundering down the stairs and into the kitchen, she wrenched open the fridge, took out one of the two cartons resting in the door and slammed it onto the counter.
‘It wasn’t there a minute ago,’ Saoirse said faintly.
Where the hell were the school lunchboxes? Not in the dishwasher, not on top of the freezer. Tearing open drawers, she eventually found them in a cupboard with the frying pans. Why? Quickly buttering bread for the sandwiches, she rummaged in the fridge. ‘Where’s the sliced cheese?’
‘Vinnie ate it all on Saturday,’ Bridey said.
‘Mum! Grozdana is here.’
Already? Grozdana was her personal trainer.
Jessie stuck her head into the hall. ‘Grozdana, hi, five minutes!’
With fumbling hands she made four peanut-butter sandwiches. Johnny came to kiss her goodbye and she jutted the side of her face at him. ‘Your ear,’ he murmured. ‘Always my favourite part of a woman.’
‘I’ll kiss you properly when you come home. Which is when?’
‘Tomorrow night.’
‘Bunnies!’ she commanded. ‘Be nice to Dad, he’s away for two days.’
‘You be nice to him,’ Bridey said.
‘I’m making your effing lunches!’
‘Bye,’ Johnny said.
She flung the sandwiches into the lunchboxes, along with apples and protein bars, then hurtled upstairs to change into her gym stuff. First World problems, that’s all this was. And to think she had someone to do her cleaning, laundry and afternoon childcare. How hard would life be if she hadn’t?
Pulling on her leggings, she looked at her phone. A text had arrived late last night, from Nell: So excited for Italy. Can I take you guys to the Uffizi? On me? Just let me know numbers x
Jessie felt weak. An art gallery. Christ, no, they were not an art-gallery family. She despised her little tribe – especially herself – for being so uncouth. But after that terrible Sunday afternoon in the National Gallery a couple of years ago, when the kids had been almost murderous with resentment and she’d been bored to the point of panic, they’d steered clear of art. ‘Johnny,’ she’d said quietly. ‘I’m hating every second of this.’
‘Thank God,’ he’d replied.
‘Johnny. I think we might be … a family of peasants.’ Looking for a more positive reframing, she’d said, ‘Maybe we’re a sporty family.’
But they weren’t that either. They didn’t play golf or tennis or any other middle-class sport. The kids played games at school but only because they had to. None of them displayed an actual aptitude.
So what did Jessie, Johnny and their family actually stand for?
Neither she nor Johnny was interested in the novels that people discussed earnestly. Although she dutifully bought them, cookbooks were the only books she enjoyed. Johnny loved Lee Child and got the new one every year, for his summer holidays – and that was him for books.
They weren’t theatregoers either. All that clattering around on wooden floors and speaking far too loudly – she squirmed with embarrassment for the actors and longed to leave in the interval.
Other than that, though, what did they do?
Get-togethers. Jessie had seized that word. They were a sociable family. She was a sociable person. Tentatively she tested that idea. Yes, it was true. And, no, there was no shame in it. She’d reply to Nell after Grozdana.
But what if Nell booked the tickets in the meantime? Then they’d have to go.
God, no, that would be the very worst. She couldn’t run that risk.
Thanks, Nell, you’re a pet, but we’re a crowd of philistines here. Work away without us xxx
FOUR MONTHS EARLIER
* * *
JUNE
Nana and Granddad Casey’s fiftieth wedding anniversary in Mayo
THIRTY-FOUR
She squeezed Ed’s hand. He turned, they smiled at each other in the sparkle-lit night, then went back to watching the stage. It wasn’t his birthday for another three weeks but this gig was her gift to him. Fleet Foxes had a special place in both their hearts and the gods were conspiring to make tonight perfect. The rain had held off – having an outdoor gig in Ireland was always like playing Russian roulette – and the weather was properly warm.
Unlike other gigs, no one was dancing into her and slopping their beer everywhere. She already knew all the songs inside-out, but hearing them live was different, enhanced. When they played ‘The Shrine’, an image of eagles flying past white-tipped mountains against a too-blue sky flashed in her head. What was that from? A movie she’d seen as a young kid? Something about the height of the mountains, the feelings of awe and fear they generated, felt very young.
In the break before the next song, she pulled Ed’s head close to her mouth. ‘That made me feel nostalgic for a life I didn’t live. High in the mountains. Maybe in Nepal.’
‘It reminded me of Cannery Row. Even though I haven’t read it.’
Solemnly, she nodded. ‘I get you,’ she said.
‘I know you do.’ His teeth flashed in the darkness.
The mood here tonight was perfect. Everyone seemed happy, and no one was messy drunk and shouting rowdy requests at the band …
Another song began. She tried to hold onto the poetry of the lyrics, but the next sentence came, equally enthralling, until all she had was the feeling, and none of the meaning. But the meaning was the feeling. How profound was that?
‘Y’okay?’ Ed asked.
‘I feel a bit stoned,’ she called, over the noise of the band. ‘Just from the music.’
His sidelong smile, the way his eyes crinkled, the bat of his lashes tipped her into a momentary wonder.
‘What?’ he asked.
‘You’re mine.’
‘Of course I am.’
‘Good. Thank you, Ed. Good.’
They held the gaze a moment longer, then both dissolved into laughter.
‘Two glasses of wine,’ he said.
‘Cheap date
. Always was.’
Song after song played, an unending chain of beauties, each better than the one before. But suddenly it was over, the band were thanking Dublin, then leaving the stage. In alarm, she said to Ed, ‘They haven’t played “Mykonos”.’
She and Ed had discovered the first album in their early days of falling in love. Nearly every track was great, but ‘Mykonos’ was special.
‘Encore,’ he said. ‘They’ll do it then.’
‘You promise?’ she asked.
‘I can’t.’ Ever literal. ‘But I’m ninety-nine per cent certain. Oh, they’re back. Here we go …’
When the guitar chords of ‘Mykonos’ started, she turned to Ed. ‘You were right!’
He was already reaching for her. She pressed her back against his chest and he held her tightly.
After the second encore, even when the lights went up and people began drifting to the exits, she didn’t want to leave. ‘Are they really gone?’
‘Really gone this time, honey.’
‘Oh, Ed,’ she said. ‘That was just … I don’t have the words … like amazing.’
‘It was. Totally. Thank you for this.’
‘You had a good time? Because you deserve the best time. It was like a spiritual experience. Wasn’t it?’
He laughed. ‘I don’t know what they’re like. But if it felt like one, then ipso facto, it was.’
‘It felt like one.’ She was definite about this. ‘Ipso facto indeed!’ Then she began to laugh. ‘The state of me. “Woman Explodes From Her Own Intensity”.’
‘Be as intense as you like. So what now? We go for a drink?’
She shook her head. ‘Just want to go home and listen to the first album again. I want to listen to nothing else for the rest of my life.’ Then, ‘Oh, Ed, sorry! It’s your night. This is your date. You get to decide.’
‘We’re on a date?’
‘… Yes. Even though it’s a cringe concept, yep, we’re on a date.’
He laughed. ‘In that case, I just want to go home with you.’
