by Marian Keyes
Pawing around, she hit a switch, and suddenly she could see. She was in the beautiful room in the beautiful house in Italy.
There was her phone. It was only 1.23 a.m. – Liam was probably still playing pool.
Then she remembered her dream – it was what had woken her.
God, it had been horrible. In it, she and Liam didn’t love each other any more. They’d made an abnormally calm decision to break up.
‘We got carried away,’ he’d said. ‘Getting married, that was mad stuff. You’ll have to move out.’
‘That’s grand. I never liked the flat anyway.’
It had been awful – and it didn’t make sense. She loved Liam. And she loved the flat. She really needed him to hold her and hug away this shaky fear, but she couldn’t go sneaking around the house at this hour of the night, trying to find him. He’d be embarrassed. And so would she.
Would it be okay to send a text?
Baby I had a bad dream. Can you come to bed? I love you xxx
Knowing she’d see him soon dispersed the last few smoky threads of the nightmare.
She waited and waited, until after a long time she felt sleepy again and decided it was safe to go back to sleep.
SIXTY-SEVEN
‘What about Mum?’ a voice whispered.
‘Let her sleep.’ Another voice – Ed’s.
Cara opened her eyes. Italy. Tuscany. In the world’s most comfortable bed, in the world’s most perfect bedroom, in the world’s most beautiful house. Ed, Vinnie and Tom were up and dressed and peering down at her.
‘Hi, Mum,’ Tom whispered. ‘It’s ten past eight. But that’s Italian time. It’s only ten past seven in Ireland. We’re going to pick fruit for breakfast.’
‘I’ll come.’ Cara was suddenly energized. Throwing on a loose dress, she slid her feet into sandals and followed them down the stairs.
Outside it was still cool, and dew sparkled on the leaves. The sun, a long way from its height, cast a pale yellow light. Carrying their wicker trugs, they made their way to the orderly rows of ridges and trees, where colourful butterflies swooped and fluttered.
‘What fruit is here?’ Tom asked.
‘Cherries,’ Ed said. ‘Peaches, probably. Tomatoes.’
‘Tomato isn’t a fruit.’ Vinnie was always ready with the scorn.
‘Actually, it is,’ Ed began.
‘Nooooo, one of Dad’s explanations!’
But everyone laughed.
Someone looking on, Cara realized, would think she lived a perfect life.
To be fair, it was all here – the beautiful setting, the good man, the two beloved children, enough food, enough love.
It was just that she couldn’t feel it properly.
Since this whole drama had kicked off, it was as if the real Cara wasn’t entirely aligned with reality. Her outline kept slipping, like a wonky contact lens that wouldn’t sit on the iris. When other people were around, she could do the back-and-forth talk, but lately it felt like muscle memory, rather than genuine engagement. Now and again both her selves overlapped perfectly, clicked into place, and suddenly she was there, in the moment. Intense feelings would surge through her, both good and not-so-good, then her outline would detach again.
She was living her life a short distance from herself.
And what had this to do with eating too much and making herself sick? If what her counsellor Peggy said was true, she’d been doing that to change her mood. Now she had no way to alter her feelings, and she had to make sense of them again.
But, as she kept telling herself, it was early days. It would be a mistake to try to understand everything now. She should just keep treading water, keep living, until things became clearer.
‘I want to pick the cherries!’ Tom ran towards a ladder under a tree.
‘I’ll get the peaches,’ Vinnie said.
‘I’ll get tomatoes,’ Cara said.
‘They’re not fruit!’ Vinnie insisted.
She laughed. ‘They’ll do for lunch.’
While Ed instructed the boys on how to know if a fruit was ready to pick, Cara tried to pluck the tomatoes mindfully from their vine, feeling their firm weight in her hand. Something Peggy had said came back to her: ‘The purpose of food is to feed your body. Nothing else.’
Unexpectedly she had one of those rare moments of alignment: these plants had come from the earth to keep her alive. Briefly, she knew her place in the cycle of life.
It happened again, when Tom and Vinnie displayed their baskets. The pale pinky-orange fuzz of the peaches, with their distinct, sweet smell, and the shiny purple of the cherries were beautiful.
Maybe everything would be okay.
Back at the house, the French windows were thrown open. Dilly and Nell scurried back and forth, carrying stacks of plates to the long table under the wisteria trellis. Jessie, in a floaty kaftan, was cooking something hot and spitty on the stove, Saoirse and Robyn blitzing smoothies. Johnny and TJ manned the coffee machine while Bridey was busybodying about and Ferdia decanting what looked like home-baked granola into a heavy ceramic bowl. The only person missing was Liam.
‘Look at you, my little hunter-gatherers!’ Jessie exclaimed, when she saw them. ‘You’re like an ad for wholesome living. Photo. Where’s my phone?’
Examining the contents of the trugs, she lavished praise on Vinnie and Tom. ‘You got great stuff. Look at these peaches.’ To the room she called, ‘I could do fried peaches, with honey. Have we honey? Course we’ve honey! And pistachios?’
‘Bougie!’ Bridey yelled.
‘I’m with Bridey,’ Johnny said. ‘Settle the head.’
‘I just want Nutella,’ Vinnie said. ‘I could easily eat that giant jar and not even feel sick.’
Nervous laughter rose and suddenly no one was looking Cara’s way. They must be thinking Vinnie had inherited whatever was wrong with her – the overeating part anyway. It was mortifying.
But early days, she reminded herself. Early days.
‘So, what can I cook for people?’ Jessie asked. ‘Cara?’
Immediately everyone cocked an ear.
‘Two-egg omelette, please,’ she answered politely. ‘With tomato.’
‘Cheese?’
‘No, thanks.’
Jessie was about to start twisting her arm – as a feeder, it was her automatic reflex. Then she remembered. ‘Coming up.’
The daily food plan, drawn up by the hospital’s dietician, was meant to stop the dips and spikes in Cara’s blood-sugar levels that apparently led to binges. Maybe it was working, because she’d had no cravings for sweets or chocolates for the last few weeks. Which was the maddest thing ever because in those months before Gulban Manor it had been literally her every thought: what chocolate she’d buy, when she’d buy it, when she’d eat it. Now she seemed to have freedom.
But who knew that freedom could feel so … flat?
SIXTY-EIGHT
Robyn was a mean girl, Jessie observed. Saoirse’s gratitude towards her for being her friend was painful to witness. It reminded Jessie of her own teenage years, a time she never wanted to remember.
Robyn was also lazy. She’d scarpered when the breakfast clear-up needed to be done, then appeared poolside in a bikini, where the bottoms were pulled right up her bum.
‘What’s that about?’ Jessie asked Johnny, as they stood by the window, washing the pans. ‘Why didn’t she just buy a thong?’
‘It’s the look, I think. They were doing it on Love Island.’
‘But what if they all fancy her?’
‘So what?’
‘But what if they all, you know, get turned on?’
‘So what?’
‘But what if they get erections?’
‘Who?’
‘Well … you.’
‘Don’t. That’s horrible.’
Doubtfully, she looked at him. ‘I think all men are dirty yokes, raring to go, day or night.’
‘I won’t get an erection.’ He looked towards th
e pool where Ed was in a splashing war with all the younger kids. ‘And neither will Ed.’
‘Liam?’
‘Time will tell, if he ever appears.’
‘Ferdia?’
‘Ah, yeah, course. He’s that age. Where is he anyway?’
‘Knocking something down with Seppe and Lorenzo. A wall, I think.’
‘That’s all very wholesome.’
‘Look at the bunnies,’ Jessie said indulgently. ‘Little Dilly.’ She was the cutest thing, small and sturdy in her mermaid swimsuit with the ruffles on the bum. And Bridey, ever the catastrophist, in a yellow floatsuit.
‘What’s the deal with Bridey and the flotation tubes?’ Johnny asked. ‘She can swim.’
‘She says you can never be too careful.’
Robyn stood up to rearrange her bikini.
‘Why’s your woman’s bum bothering you?’ Johnny asked.
‘I just want everything to be nice. Because I’m nouvy, Nell says.’ She added, ‘I really love Nell.’
As if Jessie had summoned her, Nell popped up into their line of vision wearing a white bikini.
‘God!’ With a soapy hand, Jessie clutched Johnny’s bare arm. ‘Look at Nell.’
‘Now I’ve an erection. Though it seems like you’re the one with a boner for Nell.’
‘Johnny, don’t say “boner”.’
He was squinting at Nell. ‘What’s different about her?’
‘The hair. Not pink any more. Look at it there, a blonde cascade, tumbling down her back. Oh, here we go …’
Robyn – maybe threatened by Nell’s clean-cut sexiness – stood up again and tucked her bikini bottoms even more tightly between her bum cheeks.
‘There’s no more room up there! And where does she think she is?’ Jessie demanded. ‘Nikki Beach? This is a family holiday and there will be no erections! I’m going to patrol the side of the pool with a metal pipe. I’ll be the erection police. Any evidence of twitchy mickey, I’ll hit it a whack with my pipe.’
Johnny laughed. ‘“Twitchy mickey”. You’re the very best.’
‘Oh, yeah?’
His smile faded. ‘Oh. Yeah.’ He slid his arms around her waist and pulled her hard against him.
‘Woah. What’s with the sudden mood change?’
‘My sexy, beautiful wife.’
‘Am I, indeed? Hey, Johnny? Is that …?’
‘Twitchy mickey? Your fault. Going to whack it with your pipe?’
‘… I’ll deal with it another way. Come on.’
‘Seriously?’ They’d been so much nicer to each other since the terrible row over her birthday but daytime sex hadn’t happened in years.
‘They’re all in the pool, no one will miss us. Let’s go.’
‘1.23 p.m., lunch. Salad, 1 tbsp dressing, ½ med avocado, 2 med slice sourdough, sml bunch red grapes, sparkling water.’ Cara typed it all into her phone to report later to Peggy.
When Cara had first seen her food plan, she’d panicked: there was so much. She’d put on tons of weight.
Apparently – so Peggy said – her body was so confused by all the food restricting, then bingeing, she’d been doing that it needed to relearn that a regular, steady supply of nourishment was guaranteed.
In addition, Peggy insisted that many of Cara’s binges had been triggered not by cravings but by actual old-fashioned hunger.
Maybe there was something in that. She’d always skipped breakfast to cut her daily calories. But by mid-morning, she’d get such a voracious need for food that she ate much more than the average breakfast.
In their first few sessions together, Cara had found Peggy far too bossy. She reminded her of a primary-school teacher, with her air of absolute conviction that she knew best. Now, though, Cara liked it. It was a comfort to be in the care of a counsellor with such confidence.
Now she needed to input her ‘mood after eating’. No need to even think about it: horribly self-conscious. For the first time in for ever, she was in a swimsuit, without a sarong concealing her hips and thighs. It was a sturdy navy one-piece with a built-in stomach-flattener, a million miles from Robyn’s day-glo little bikini, but still.
Maybe if only Ed and the boys were here, it would be okay. But with all these people around the pool, especially Robyn …
Cara could read her mind: the girl’s expression veered between disgust and pity for Cara. She could almost see Robyn deciding that she would never become a dumpy woman with cellulite. And maybe she wouldn’t. Not everyone was weak like Cara.
Oh, God, here came Liam, another person who made her feel vulnerable. She suspected his judgement of her thighs was savage. But it gave her a small gleam of pleasure to know that her judgement of him was equally unforgiving. There he was behind his sunglasses, thinking no one could see him checking out Robyn.
Johnny’s opinion, she worried about far less. He was all talk and, actually, a very kind perso– Jesus! With an involuntary suck of breath, she almost choked on her own epiglottis. It was Ferdia, shirtless, in a pair of board shorts. She took in his long, lean body, his hair dark against his pale skin. His shoulders and arms were adorned with various tattoos, a fuzzy dark line led from his belly-button down to his waistband and it was just all a bit … much.
‘Swit-SWOO!’ Dilly yelled at him.
Ed looked up. ‘Ah, here.’ He laughed softly. ‘I suddenly feel incredibly inadequate.’
‘Where were you all morning?’ Bridey demanded of Ferdia.
‘Knocking down a wall with a lump hammer!’ He grinned. ‘It was cool.’
‘He thinks he’s all that,’ Robyn said. ‘It’s cute.’
‘What does that mean?’ Dilly asked.
It means Robyn fancies Ferdia.
‘He looks like a man from a magazine,’ TJ declared.
‘A model!’ Bridey said.
‘Don’t tell him,’ Jessie pleaded. ‘He’ll rear up on us.’
It was too late. They’d grabbed Jessie’s Vogue and found an ad for Armani aftershave. ‘Ferdia!’ They tapped the page with wet fingers. ‘You look like him.’
‘No, his hair needs to be wet.’ Dilly was studying the picture. ‘And he needs water drops on his bosoms.’
‘Get in the pool,’ Bridey ordered. ‘You need to have swimming pool on you.’
Ferdia obliged, then sat on the edge as they fluttered around, styling him, using their fingers to comb his wet hair back from his face.
Vinnie grabbed the magazine. ‘You have to sort of half close your eyes. Yes, like that! You look so stupid!’
Urgently Tom said to Cara, ‘Mum, can I have your phone? Thanks.’ Then, ‘Ferdia, make love to the camera.’
Tom clicked off picture after picture. ‘You need to lift one of your legs.’
‘Like this?’ Ferdia hoisted one leg high into the air and the kids dissolved.
‘No, your foot on the ground and your knee bent. Yes, like that.’
‘Glorious!’ Dilly cried. ‘We’re in raptures.’
‘What’s this aftershave called?’ Nell asked.
‘Poo!’ Dilly shrieked, then laughed so much she tumbled onto a lounger, where her small, solid body convulsed with hilarity.
‘Smelly!’ Tom cried.
‘Smelly poo.’
‘Fart,’ Vinnie called. ‘Fartface!’
‘Gobshite,’ Liam suggested, but apart from a barely audible Ah, now from Johnny, he was ignored.
‘Fartface,’ Ferdia declared, then gave a wildly overdone smouldering look. ‘By Armani.’
The kids screamed with delight, so helpless with laughter that they decided to tumble on top of each other.
When so many children had climbed onto Jessie’s lounger that she was balanced right on the edge, she got off and shoved two together. ‘Now there’s room for all of us.’
Dilly, TJ and Bridey clambered onto her, their damp little bodies squirming until they were comfortable. All that could have made Jessie happier was Saoirse joining them, but Saoirse was temporarily lost to he
r. There was no point even thinking about Ferdia. Ferdia was a man now.
‘Any room for me?’ Johnny asked.
‘Course!’
Fresh squirming started, as everyone got comfortably tangled again.
‘Whose leg is that?’ Jessie rubbed her foot against someone. ‘It feels really hairy. Is it Daddy’s?’
This prompted screams of laughter from the girls. ‘That’s Dilly’s leg!’
‘And she’s not hairy!’
This is all I want, Jessie thought. All I ever wanted.
‘Sorry, Mum!’ TJ accidentally elbowed Jessie in the ear. ‘Are you okay?’
‘Fine, fine.’ Happier than I could ever have imagined.
SIXTY-NINE
Late afternoon, as the heavy air vibrated in the heat, Cara was halfway between awake and sleeping when her phone chimed softly.
‘What’s that?’ Saoirse raised her head groggily.
‘Nothing. Sorry.’
It was time for the second of her three daily, hospital-mandated snacks. She had to eat every three hours to keep her blood-sugar levels steady, thereby foiling any ambush attempts by cravings. But eating when nobody else was, felt embarrassing. Even the word ‘snack’ made her uncomfortable: it was what kids in kindergarten got given, not grown women.
Worst of all, she wasn’t even hungry, which felt like the greatest waste of calories ever.
In the kitchen, searching for her bag of raw nuts, she opened a cupboard – and stumbled across a stash of Italian biscuits. In fright, she slammed the door shut but not before she’d glimpsed images of thick chocolate, mini-marshmallows and crunchy hazelnuts.
Her heart was thumping. She hadn’t been looking for biscuits – she hadn’t even known they were there – but still she felt guilty.
Processed sugar wasn’t part of her eating plan. Not yet. And maybe never.
Shocked with herself, she moved away. How come she’d opened the very cupboard that was packed with biscuits? Was she trying to sabotage herself?
Peggy hadn’t wanted her to come on this holiday: it was too soon to put her into an environment she couldn’t control. Cara had been confident that she wouldn’t lapse. Now, though, she understood Peggy’s concern.
