Grown Ups

by Marian Keyes

  ‘You gave me a fright!’ His heart was pounding hard.

  ‘What are you doing out here?’

  ‘Having a fucking heart attack, thank you very much! Why are you here?’

  ‘I’m stuck. On my work thing.’ She took the lounger next to him. ‘I came out to ring my friend.’

  ‘Work away.’

  ‘Ah, no, I’ll wait.’

  They sat without speaking, the only sound that of the sea roaring and pulling. When his heartbeat slowed down, he said, ‘Nice parents-in-law you’ve got.’

  Her clothes rustled as she shrugged. ‘They’ll be dead soon.’

  He snorted with involuntary laughter. ‘Did you really say that?’

  ‘I dunno. Did I? So, what are you doing, sitting out here on your own?’

  The darkness made it easier to admit things. ‘Sammie’s going away on Tuesday. We’re officially done, and I feel, you know …’ He felt rather than saw her nod. ‘Aren’t you going to hit me up with some patronizing shizz about young love?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m only thirty. I’m young.’

  ‘To me, you’re old.’

  Quickly she sat up and swivelled her body so she was on the edge of her lounger, much closer to him. ‘Here’s some “patronizing shizz” for you, Ferdia: you haven’t a clue.’

  ‘That’s totally an old-person thing to say.’

  After another long silence, he asked, ‘So what’s this job? What do you do?’

  ‘Set designer. For the theatre.’

  Oh. He’d had a vague idea she did some sort of painting and decorating thing. Set designing sounded more interesting. ‘You like it?’

  ‘Love it. It’s all I ever wanted to do.’

  ‘How does someone even get that sense of purpose? I haven’t a clue what to do with my life.’

  ‘You’re studying what? Sociology and economics? You must have picked them for a reason. Did you?’

  ‘… Yeah.’

  ‘So?’

  He was reluctant. There was a chance this story could make him sound sanctimonious and he didn’t want her mockery. ‘Remember 2008, the financial crash? I was ten. I was going to this private school, and in the first term back after the summer, five kids just disappeared. They’d be there one day and next day they were gone. No one told us why. We never got a chance to say goodbye – they just left like normal one day and never came back. It was weird and kinda … awful. Mum’s business was in trouble, shops kept being shut down, so I was waiting to be one of the disappeared.’

  ‘Wow.’

  ‘You know who Keeva is? Barty’s mum? She’s a nurse. I heard her telling Granny Ellen that lots of men were showing up in A and E with botched suicides. They cut their wrists but did it wrong, stuff like that. Then Barty’s dad’s company went into receivership and it was really bad. They’d have been kicked out of their house if Izzy hadn’t jumped in to help. Then one of my mates from school, his dad hanged himself because he owed so much money.’

  ‘Jesus,’ Nell murmured.

  ‘I used to watch the news, trying to understand why decisions by some people made life so hard for a ton of others. I wanted to “help” so … economics and sociology seemed like the right mix. But nearly everyone on my course wants to be either a social worker or to make a fortune working for a multinational. I want to work for a cause, one I believe in. Or at least I did.’

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘Last summer I volunteered for Feed the World and all I saw was the inside of a warehouse. I litch didn’t meet one human I was supposed to be helping. And I know that’s really uppity, me saying, “I’ll decide how I’ll do my compassion.” I’m just saying.’

  ‘Aaaah, you’re after the “warm glow”, right? “I’m a good person and I’ve made life so much better for these lovely poor people.” That it?’

  To his surprise, he laughed. ‘You got me. I totally want my warm glow. Does that make me a terrible person?’

  ‘Feed the World is a huge charity. You’ve a better chance of getting your glow on if you work for a smaller one. Lot of grassroots activism, volunteer if they can’t pay you.’

  ‘Why didn’t I think of this?’ Answering his own question, he said, ‘In college, it’s all been about a career path, getting a place with one of the huge charities.’

  ‘Go local. Try the Refugee Council,’ Nell said. ‘Helping people like Perla from last night.’

  ‘She was totally great. Like, she’s so normal? What age is she?’

  ‘Twenty-nine.’

  ‘That’s not so old. When I saw her first I thought she was, you know, forty, but after she had wine and loosened up, yeah, she just seemed regular. It was hard listening to what she and the little girl went through. All because those religious loons hate women.’

  ‘Speaking of hating women …’

  Her change of tone made him glance up. He could see the flash of her teeth and eyes.

  ‘What’s your beef with your mum?’

  ‘What?’ That was none of her business. How fucking dare she? ‘You haven’t a clue.’

  ‘So explain it.’

  He was explaining nothing.

  They sat without speaking. He could hear his own breathing, angry and fast. After a long pause he said, ‘She shouldn’t have got with my dad’s best friend.’ That would shut her up.

  ‘Is that the part that bothers you? Would you have minded if it was a stranger?’

  Spluttering with injustice, he said, ‘She was with both of them at the same time.’

  ‘She wasn’t.’

  ‘She was. Everybody knows. I heard Izzy and Keeva talking about it, like, years ago.’

  ‘She wasn’t. She really loved your dad. She was devastated when he died. Have you ever talked to her about this? You should. It’ll change your mind.’

  All of a sudden, in the strangest turn of events, he believed her. Just the smallest shift in attitude changed his mum from a conniving cheat into an ordinary woman whose husband had died far too young.

  Now he didn’t know how to feel.

  ‘Did she know that Johnny fancied her?’ Nell asked. ‘Yes. Was she flattered? Yes. Does that make her a bad person?’

  ‘It makes her pathetic.’

  ‘How pathetic? She was thirty-four, which sounds ancient to you, but it was no age to her. She was entitled to a life. You’re all about rights for women, but you don’t cut your own mum any slack.’

  FORTY-SEVEN

  ‘Johnny … Johnny …’

  Jessie’s voice pulled him up from the depths.

  ‘Babes, it’s too bright …’

  Reality came at him in flashes. I’m in Mayo. For my parents’ wedding anniversary. I’ve never felt so depressed.

  ‘Babes.’ Jessie plucked at him. ‘You need to do the blind.’

  He opened his eyes and immediately squinched them closed again. What was happening?

  They’d got so drunk last night. They’d tumbled into bed without pulling down the blinds and now savage sunlight was glaring in at them.

  ‘Please,’ she whimpered. ‘Do the blind.’

  With one eye open, he stumbled to the window and merciful dimness calmed the room.

  ‘Thanks,’ she whispered. ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Four seventeen.’

  ‘In the morning?’

  ‘Yeah. Have we paracetamol?’

  ‘Some in my bag. Can I have some too?’

  He scrambled through her handbag until he located the tablets and filled a glass from the bathroom tap.

  ‘Bathroom water, mmm.’ Her eyes stayed closed as he held the glass to her lips.

  I’m a hollow man. A fake. Full to the brim of nothing.

  ‘Christ.’ She groaned. ‘We’ve to climb Croagh Patrick in the morning. Today. It’s arranged. I’ve the stuff in for the sandwiches.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘We’ll go to sleep for coupla hours. Wake up again, be grand.’

  I want to go back to sleep and never wake up.
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br />   She gave him a little shake. ‘’Kay?’

  ‘No.’

  That shocked her into opening her eyes. If she mocked him now, there was a real fear that he would actually cry.

  She looked into his face. ‘What is it, sweetie?’

  You only married me because your other husband, a much better man, died. My job consists of being a borderline conman. I’m forty-eight, I still want my dad’s approval and he’ll never give it.

  I try to be a father to Ferdia, but I’m just like my dad. Ferdia hates me and the girls think I’m a joke.

  ‘I’m a hollow man.’

  Her eyes flared with alarm. ‘That’s only the hangover talking. And seeing your ma and pa. You know that.’

  She was wrong. ‘I’m pointless.’

  ‘No, babes, no … that’s … Look. It’s just a hangover. But there’s no need to come on the climb. Stay in bed. Sleep.’

  I’m a very weak man, with too many failings.

  ‘Jessie, do you love me?’

  ‘Of course I love you, you giant eejit!’

  He turned on his side, letting tears leak into his pillow and she spooned herself against his back, holding him so tightly that he eventually felt safe enough to tumble down into sleep.

  Whispers and hushed voices and tiptoed footsteps, tapping lightly up and down the hall.

  ‘Daddy. Daddy.’ It was Dilly, breathing her sweet breath over him. ‘I brought you some flat Coke.’

  ‘Are you really sick?’ TJ was behind her. ‘Or just hungover?’

  ‘I’m sick,’ he croaked.

  ‘Told you,’ Dilly hissed at TJ.

  ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Nine o’clock. So, Dad, we’re staying here with you today. We’ve decided that instead of Making Memories, we’ll mind you. Bridey and Saoirse are going to Make Memories, if that’s okay, so Mum has company. Now sit up and drink your flat Coke.’

  ‘We brought you a straw, even though it’s a single-use plastic,’ TJ said. ‘All they had in the house. It can be your guilty pleasure.’

  ‘Go on the climb,’ he said. ‘I’ll be grand.’

  ‘We want to stay with you. We’ll check on you every half-hour. But if you need us, then summon us. We couldn’t find a bell –’

  ‘And even if we could have, we thought you had a hangover so a bell would be bad –’

  ‘But you can hit this glass with this fork.’ Dilly demonstrated and the glass vibrated and hummed. ‘And we’ll come.’

  ‘We could read to you,’ TJ offered.

  ‘… Dad … what’s wrong with your eyes?’

  ‘Hayfever,’ he managed.

  ‘Quick,’ Dilly instructed TJ. ‘Get a tablet from Mum.’

  TJ hurried off and Dilly placed her cool, small hand on his forehead. She sucked in her breath and said, ‘You’re burning up.’

  ‘Am I?’

  ‘Noooo. But that’s what people say when you’re sick.’

  FORTY-EIGHT

  In the house next door, Ed awoke alone in bed.

  ‘Cara,’ he called weakly. ‘Cara.’

  The house hummed with emptiness.

  Slowly turning on his side, his phone said it was 9.07 a.m. Maybe they’d already gone up the mountain.

  Would they have done that? Left him all alone?

  He felt unusually low. Last night had been one of those rare ones where too much emotion and too much alcohol had turned everything shadowy and toxic. That mood still lingered, this morning.

  He needed liquid, but the kitchen was miles away. On the Casey Family WhatsApp, he stabbed out Bring me pint weak milky tea. 4 sugars. Begging here.

  Minutes elapsed and no one showed.

  Berocca: would that cure him? Usually he spurned tablets, but this was an emergency. If he could just get to the bathroom, to Cara’s washbag. She always had tablets, a pill for every ill. On rubbery legs, he crouched on the floor, hunting through her toiletries. What had he here? Dioralyte, that would do. And some Nurofen, that was also good. And … What was this? A flattened, crumpled piece of waxy cardboard.

  Slowly he unfolded it. It was an empty ice-cream carton, a big one.

  He went hot and cold. Underneath the carton – Cherry Garcia flavour – was the torn wrapper from a packet of Lindt biscuits.

  Fuck. There was no more avoiding this.

  Everyone seemed to think that he noticed nothing. With his optimism and gratitude for the small stuff, he was – affectionately – painted as a bit of a joke.

  But Ed noticed plenty.

  It was in Kerry at Easter that he’d first sensed something was wrong with Cara. On the Sunday night, when the two of them were settling down to sleep, he caught a faint whiff of something sour, a throwback to when the kids were babies. The smell of sick. The logical thing was to ask her, but instinct told him to say nothing. Not yet. From then on, he had been alert.

  Immediately it was obvious that she was hiding something. From the very first night they’d met, she’d either been abstaining from sugar or fighting a drawn-out battle. This binary state had become a fixed part of their lives. But lately neither had been happening. No more cheery statements, like, ‘Fifteen days without chocolate! Am I skinny yet?’ Nor were there any sheepish orders for him to produce whatever emergency chocolate he had stashed about the house, her saying, with desperate hope, ‘Look, the weekend is ruined. I might as well eat what I want and get back on the horse on Monday.’

  Then came the morning, maybe four weeks ago, when he’d been hunting in the bathroom for a fresh razor, unwilling to believe he’d actually run out. He’d opened the door of a high-up, rarely used cupboard and found himself face to face with a collection of about twenty bars of chocolate. The incongruity of those shiny, colourful wrappers, lurking in the dark space, made him feel as if his world was falling away.

  Shortly after that, he’d once again caught a faint whiff of sick from her.

  A long time ago, she’d told him about her eighteen months in Manchester, when she used to binge-eat, then make herself vomit. Seized by a tender sorrow for that lost girl, he’d elicited a promise that if she ever felt drawn back to it, she would tell him. But, as far as he knew, it had been consigned to her past.

  Until now.

  He was a scientist: he dealt in facts. The simplest explanation was the one most likely to be true: Cara was overeating, then making herself sick. Bulimia. He might as well call it by its correct title. She was bulimic? She had bulimia? Either way, he’d hoped it would go of its own accord, because he didn’t know what to do.

  He’d come to accept that a thread of darkness ran through Cara, like an underground stream. Once upon a time he’d thought that their love might lift her permanently into the light. But although she frequently seemed content, there were times when she withdrew emotionally, leaving him going through the motions alone, waiting for her return. This was one of them.

  In the last few weeks, he’d spent a lot of time online. Cara was right about one thing: overeating was an addiction. So, apparently, was bulimia. A study said that sufferers had similar dopamine abnormalities in their brain to people suffering from cocaine or alcohol addiction. But, as far as Ed could see, food was nothing like as dangerous as alcohol or drugs. Drugs and drink could kill, but food only became an issue at the extremes, if a person was morbidly obese or dangerously thin. Cara was neither.

  He’d held out hope that she’d snap out of this as suddenly as she’d started.

  But yesterday when he’d come back from fetching Ferdia and his mates, he’d found her in the kitchen hurriedly, furtively, crunching something in her mouth. Her cheeks bulged and her eyes were frantic. She didn’t explain what was happening – and he hadn’t asked.

  Why not?

  Because he hadn’t wanted to shame her. If she wasn’t ready to tell him, was it right to blow her cover? He sensed it would be a bad idea to force it, a little like waking a sleep-walker.

  However, finding these wrappers – stashed in a place where she tho
ught he wouldn’t look – meant something needed to be done. He was worried for her health, he was worried about what her trouble with food might be doing to Vinnie and Tom, but it was more than that. He and Cara were best friends. Even when she disappeared into herself, he was prepared to wait it out. She knew he would – it gave her solace, she’d once told him.

  But by doing whatever she was doing now, she’d removed a part of herself entirely from his reach.

  The Berocca forgotten, he climbed back into bed.

  FORTY-NINE

  When Johnny woke again, he felt less apocalyptic. News reached him that the climbers hadn’t set off yet. According to TJ, Ed was ‘in a bad way’: ‘Auntie Cara said she’d never seen him so drunk as he was last night. We’ve all been swimming while you and Uncle Ed were sleeping. But Uncle Ed’s getting up now.’

  ‘You know what, bunnies? I’m coming on the climb.’

  ‘No!’ Dilly yelped. ‘You’ll have a relapse if you get up too soon! I’m getting Mum.’ She pointed at TJ. ‘Don’t let him out of that bed!’

  But as soon as she’d scampered away, TJ nodded towards the shower. ‘Go for it.’

  Jessie was waiting when he emerged from the bathroom. ‘You sure about this, babes?’ She was more solicitous of him than he ever remembered her being.

  ‘The shower helped. Maybe the exercise and the oxygen will too. You only regret the things you don’t do. Right?’

  She paused. ‘I’m a nightmare. How do you put up with me?’

  Surprisingly, considering how drunk so many of them had been the previous night, there was a big turnout for the climb. Apart from Nell, who had some deadline, everyone was there – even Ferdia and his cohort.

  Perhaps it was the weather. The sky was a perfect blue and the heat of the sun was cut by a balmy breeze.

  Assembling in the car park at the foot of the mountain, Johnny had to bend over, his hands on his knees, waiting for the dizziness to pass.

  ‘State of you!’ Ferdia mocked. ‘D’you need a sick-bag?’

  ‘Call yourself young.’ Johnny strove for a cheery voice. ‘In my day, we wouldn’t have been up until six in the evening.’