Grace After Henry E-Book

Eithne Shortall

• Herausgeber: Corvus
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

Winner of The Big Book Awards: The Best Page Turners, 2018 Shortlisted for the Popular Fiction Book of the Year: The Irish Book Awards, 2018 An Irish Independent Book of the year, 2018 Grace sees her boyfriend Henry everywhere. In the supermarket, on the street, at the graveyard. Only Henry is dead. He died two months earlier, leaving a huge hole in Grace's life and in her heart. But then Henry turns up to fix the boiler one evening, and Grace can't decide if she's hallucinating or has suddenly developed psychic powers. Grace isn't going mad - the man in front of her is not Henry at all, but someone else who looks uncannily like him. The hole in Grace's heart grows ever larger. Grace becomes captivated by this stranger, Andy - to her, he is Henry, and yet he is not. Reminded of everything she once had, can Grace recreate that lost love with Andy, resurrecting Henry in the process, or does loving Andy mean letting go of Henry?

Leseprobe

Grace After Henry

Grace sees her boyfriend Henry everywhere. At the supermarket, on the street, at the graveyard.

Only Henry is dead. He died two months earlier, leaving a huge hole in Grace’s life and in her heart. But then Henry turns up to fix the boiler one evening, and Grace can’t decide if she’s hallucinating or has suddenly developed psychic powers. Grace isn’t going mad – the man in front of her is not Henry at all, but someone else who looks uncannily like him. The hole in Grace’s heart grows ever larger.

Grace becomes captivated by this stranger, Andy – to her, he is Henry, and yet he is not. Reminded of everything she once had, can Grace recreate that lost love with Andy, resurrecting Henry in the process, or does loving Andy mean letting go of Henry?

Eithne Shortall studied journalism at Dublin City University and has lived in London, France and America. Now based in Dublin, she is chief arts writer for the Sunday Times Ireland. She enjoys sea swimming, cycling and eating scones. Her debut novel, Love in Row 27, was published in 2017.

Grace After Henry

Eithne Shortall

First published in trade paperback in Great Britain in 2018 by Corvus, an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.

Copyright © Eithne Shortall, 2018

The moral right of Eithne Shortall to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

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.

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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Paperback ISBN: 978 1 78649 319 4

EBook ISBN: 978 1 78 649 320 0

Printed in Great Britain

Corvus

An Imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd

Ormond House

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www.atlantic-books.co.uk

For Colm, of course

Grace took out her notebook and began to tut. She made a big deal of dragging a pen from her jeans pocket and clicking it into action.

‘Damp,’ she mumbled, ostensibly to herself but purposely loud enough to be heard by the two couples also inspecting this bathroom that time had forgotten but the carpet-fitter certainly hadn’t; worn, once-blue fabric, not unlike the kind that used to adorn her grandmother’s bedroom, was stapled all around the sides of the tub. Grace glanced up from the avocado-coloured toilet. She tutted again. ‘Weak gable wall.’

In the mirror above the sink, she watched the reflections of her fellow house-hunters. One couple was inspecting the patch of ceiling Grace had just spent a good two minutes frowning at, and the woman in the other pair was making panicked eyes at her partner although he didn’t pick up on this because he was too busy inspecting the boiler. Men were mad for the boilers.

‘That’ll have to be replaced,’ said Grace, standing beside him, peering into the cupboard. ‘Hasn’t been serviced since The Beatles called it a day, or so I heard the estate agent saying.’

Grace, who hadn’t a clue about boilers or whether bathrooms even had gable walls, gave him a sympathetic smile and sauntered out of the unhygienic 1970s lavatory and into the 1970s kitchen.

It probably wasn’t necessary to still be scaring off the competition. Grace and Henry had gone sale agreed on an end-of-terrace house on Aberdeen Street the previous week. It was right beside the Phoenix Park, which ticked more than enough boxes for Henry, and while the second bedroom was small the house had the kind of spacious, fitted kitchen that reminded Grace why she had wanted to be a chef. They were both mad about it. But they’d had deals fall through before. And while Henry wanted to hold out for Aberdeen Street – he was convinced the Phoenix Park house was meant to be – Grace knew the shrewd move was to keep looking. Just in case.

She checked her phone: 5.45 p.m. and no messages. He had fifteen minutes to get here. Henry was the master of cutting it fine. Grace, on the other hand, had been standing under the For Sale sign at this East Wall terrace at 5.20, ten whole minutes before the estate agent was due to arrive. Although she drew the line at queuing. She knew from experience that as soon as the door opened, everyone was going to charge in anyway.

An older couple stepped out of the kitchen as she was on her way in. Grace caught the wife’s eye. Riddled, was what she hoped her stare said. You’d buy this dump on a Monday, and it’d have fallen in on you by Tuesday.

Actually, this house wasn’t that bad. Despite its psychedelic décor and a smaller kitchen than Grace might have liked, it had a converted attic and no real signs of damp. It was worth keeping their options open.

‘Don’t think like that,’ Henry had groaned from under the duvet that morning, trying to wangle his way out of going to yet another viewing. ‘Ten months we’ve been looking. Haven’t we served our time? We’ve found our house. I don’t even want to consider another one.’

‘Well, neither do I but reality—’

‘Reality,’ Henry scoffed, making a grab for Grace’s bare legs as she sidestepped him again. ‘We might jinx it by looking elsewhere. Aberdeen Street is going to work out, I’m telling you. I can feel it.’

Grace, standing half-dressed on the pile of newspapers that continually carpeted Henry’s side of the bedroom, extracted the toothbrush from her mouth. ‘Let me guess, you’re going to tell me it’s fate.’

‘Exactly. And I feel another part of our destiny involves going to see the original Mad Max, which is having a one-off screening at the Savoy this evening.’

‘Do you know how often house sales fall through, Henry?’

‘No.’ He pushed the duvet down to his midriff and grinned at her. ‘But I bet you do.’

‘One in four. And it’s most common with first-time buyers. What if we don’t get Aberdeen Street?’

‘Aber-dream Street.’

Now it was Grace’s turn to smile. ‘I love it too, but we can’t put all our eggs in one basket. Until we have the keys in our hands, we have to keep looking.’

‘You’re right, I know you are. I’ll be there before the viewing is over,’ he said, finally making a successful grab for her leg and pulling her onto the bed. ‘Why don’t you put all your eggs in this basket?’

‘That doesn’t even make any sense.’ Grace held her brush aloft so as not to get toothpaste on the duvet but she allowed herself to be pulled back under it.

‘Jesus, Grace! You’re so cold. You’re bloody freezing!’

‘Of course I’m freezing. I’ve been in our bathroom.’

‘When we have a bathroom of our own, it’ll have real ventilation, not just a hole in the wall. And we’ll have a toilet cistern that refills . . . by itself.’

‘The dream,’ she deadpanned, before his arm reached up from below the blanket and caught her off guard. ‘Hey! Give me that back. Don’t put that in your— Gross! You absolute sicko, Henry Walsh. Get your own feckin’ toothbrush!’

Grace pushed the flower-power curtains aside and looked out the window of the front bedroom of the East Wall terrace. 5.52 p.m. House-hunters were starting to leave; some crossed the road for a better look at the roof and drainage while others headed straight for their cars. It was threatening to rain, and still no sign of Henry’s bike.

He would probably arrive just as the last lingering viewers were being herded out of the property, ruffling his helmet hair and somehow convincing the estate agent to stick around for an extra few minutes while he did a quick tour of the place. Grace envied how easily he could do that. He charmed his way into things all the time and it came so naturally he didn’t even realise he was doing it. Everyone liked Henry. He exuded self-assuredness and people wanted to be around him. And Grace was happy, proud even, that he so desperately and unremittingly wanted to be around her.

She stepped away from the window. When they moved into their own home, she would tell him how much she loved him every day. She stuck the notebook under her arm and continued into the second bedroom and then up to the converted attic. From the skylight she could see the River Liffey, flanked by lorries heading to and from the docks. It had started to rain.

‘That’s it, folks! Time to wrap it up!’

Grace peered down the attic stairs to see the young estate agent standing at the bottom of them. She checked her phone again: 5.59. Where was he?

Out in the front garden, Grace called him but it went straight to voicemail. This is Henry Walsh, leave a message. No sign of his bike from either end of the street. The last few stragglers streamed out into the rain and the estate agent shut the door behind them. Grace pushed down her hood.

‘I’m waiting on my boyfriend; he’s just running a little late.’

‘Sorry,’ said the agent, hunching forward as he pulled an umbrella from his bag. ‘We’re showing it again on Saturday.’

Grace nodded and followed him out of the garden. He hopped into his car and she sat on the front wall, damp seeping through the arse of her trousers and water dripping from the rim of her raincoat hood.

For feck’s sake, Henry! Where are you?

The rain got heavier. She pulled her hood tighter and turned her mobile phone over in her hands: 6.07. She let out a frustrated sigh. She could feel the water on her shoulders, a slight trickle running down her arm. Grace repositioned her face to express maximum irritation. She intended to make Henry feel guilty. She was soaked. He’d better have a grovelling apology ready to go. He’d want to be arriving here with a good excuse, too. Even if he knew he wouldn’t make it on time, he could have called. He could have—

A crack from above like a whip ripping the sky open. The grey clouds grew darker and the rain continued to pour. Her stomach dropped. They had fought about it so much in their early days that now Henry always called. Grace was filled with the most awful certainty that something was wrong.

´Feck it!’

The cyclist at the bike rail beside him looked up. ‘Forgot something,’ Henry told the stranger, before redoing his bike lock and jogging back to his office building. He bounded up the steps, taking them two at a time, using the handrail to propel himself onward.

‘Forget something else?’

‘Helmet. She’ll kill me if I’m not wearing it.’

Henry went to the cloakroom, grabbed the green armour from his cubbyhole and waved it at the receptionist. ‘Last time I’ll be back, I swear.’

‘Until tomorrow anyway,’ she called after him. ‘Best of luck with the house!’

But Henry was already on the staircase, winding the scarf tighter around his neck as he hot-footed it down the steps. He was dressed in a near homage to Grace. The bright red scarf she’d knitted him, and which he adored, and the helmet she insisted he wear. If he died, or suffered a terrible brain injury, what about her? It wasn’t just him anymore.

Henry had never felt so half of something as the day he bought that helmet. It was scary to love someone so much that the end of one life could mean the end of two. He had never found the words to describe quite how he felt about Grace but he tried to show it in his actions: in being her biggest champion, in wearing a helmet like others wore a ring, in not being late for this house viewing.

He checked his watch: 5.35 p.m. Okay. If he put his pedal to the metal and didn’t hit any red lights he would make it for 5.50. He only needed ten minutes to look around. Less, usually. And unless this house was significantly better than the shamelessly wide-angled photographs online suggested, his heart was still set on Aberdeen Street.

Henry unlocked his bike for the second time and stuffed A Christmas Carol into his bag. That was what he had gone back to the office for on the first occasion. He and Grace were reading it. Again. Even though it was February. Henry had brought it to work for a project they were designing – the book was just the right size for a mock-up – but he needed to have it back before bedtime. It was his turn to read tonight. Though she could whistle for it if she thought he was doing the voices.

Henry pushed off, pulling the scarf into position again. The sky was grey but he reckoned he could make it to East Wall before the heavens opened. He got stuck behind a group of tourists cycling two abreast down Dame Street and had to dismount his bike because of roadworks at College Green. The clock at O’Connell Bridge said 5.44. Shit. He’d take the quays. Fewer traffic lights and fewer cyclists. He looked right, left, threw the boisterous scarf over his shoulder once more and pushed right in unison with an articulated truck.

The quays were always jammed with industrial vehicles at this hour but at least they were moving, their massive wheels turning, the bolts the size of Henry’s head. The cycle lane was empty. He picked up speed, recalculating his arrival time: 5.55, probably. 5.53, if he stepped on it. It didn’t really matter; he just had to get there. He pushed down harder, feeling the strain in his thighs. If Henry made Grace a promise, he kept it. He loved her. Five years together and he hadn’t grown tired of this same startling realisation that boomed outwards from his chest, reverberating in every part of him. He fucking loved her! He’d tell her when he got there. He was always telling her, but he’d tell her again. He grinned to himself. They’d get that Aberdeen Street house and properly, really properly, begin their life together. His heart swelled, driving him forward, faster. He loved this feeling; he was cycling towards her.

A splash on his wrist. Henry looked up. He didn’t feel the scarf coming loose, didn’t register the pull around his neck as the wind that had been holding it in the air finally dropped and the Aran wool looped its way through the spokes. A second splash, and another.

In the spokes, suddenly, all those stitches Grace had cast and caught at night, on the bus, on her fifteen-minute breaks. They had made each other’s presents last year. They needed the money for their house. For their home. And now their home and Grace and their intertwined lives, spun as tightly as any threads, were caught, wrapping round and round, until there was no more give. Then the brakes. A sudden halt. But he hadn’t touched them.

The scarf was jammed in the brakes.

Wheels skidding, his feet down to balance but too late, too fast, too determined not to be late for Grace.

Only it couldn’t be over. Not Grace and Henry. Him maybe, but never them. And that was what sustained him. That was why he still didn’t believe it as his handlebars fell to the right, rain keeping time on his knuckles, skin pulled taut over them to a petrified shade of white.

His bike toppled but the truck kept coming and like it was nothing, like he was a crisp packet sucked up by the idling street sweeper, he was under. All noise, no light and still he closed his eyes because he knew now it was over and because he was scared. He was giving up. He who had promised never to give up. He who had said that where there was her there would always be him. But there was no Grace here. He was all alone and he was scared. He closed his eyes. He was sorry. He loved her and he was sorry.

The world shifted seismically but nothing tilted to accommodate it. The wheels turned, the rain fell, and all that love was sucked into a void. It was too late. He was gone.

Gone in the flutter of an eye. The eyes that saw through him and still loved him. Her eyes. Grace.

SEVERAL WEEKS LATER

ONE

There were moments of lucidity – the sound of Dad abruptly starting up the vacuum cleaner and Mam screaming that hoovering disturbed the moths – but most of the early weeks passed in a fugue. I didn’t leave the bed, never mind my parents’ house, if I could help it. My social circle consisted of Mam, Dad, occasional visits from Aoife and the three other mourners I met every time I went to visit Henry’s grave.

The day I came to, and regained some sort of awareness, my parents were jumping around their living room like Native Americans celebrating the arrival of rain. Everyone else’s life had continued, all but mine and Henry’s. Time kept passing, the sun kept rising and, as sure as spring follows winter, the moths had returned.

‘I got him! I got the little bugger.’

Dad froze where he stood, right in the middle of the living room – knee bent, hands raised; an impressive yoga pose for a man with a bad lower back – and Mam, from her position on the sofa, squinted at the space above the television, the same bit of middle distance that was entrancing Dad. Neither spoke. It was, I knew because The Late Late Show had just come on the telly, 9.35 on a Friday night.

‘You did not get him, Arthur, look. Look! There he is now. Looklooklooklook! Quickquickquickquick!’ Mam leapt to her feet, adopting the McDonnell family’s preferred stance when it came to the extermination of moths. ‘There he is!’

‘Where?’

‘There.’

‘Where?’

‘Theretheretherethere!’

‘I see him, I see him. The fecker! I’ve got you now, my little friend.’

‘It’s the feckin’ heat.’ Mam grabbed the two magazines from Dad’s armchair and held a rolled-up Heat in her left hand and House & Home in her right. ‘The mild winter and all the feckin’ central heating. I told you we didn’t need the radiators on in March, Arthur. I don’t see why you couldn’t just use the tumble dryer to dry the clothes. You may as well roll out the welcome mat. They thrive in temperatures above twenty-two degrees.’

This was the fourth consecutive year our house had been overrun by moths and my mother, who had reactivated her library membership to read up on them, had found her Mastermind subject.

‘Well, excuse me, Sarah,’ said Dad, momentarily distracted from the assassination by this slight on his housekeeping skills. Since retiring, Dad had developed two passions: domesticity and celebrity gossip. The week he stopped being a driving instructor, he watched Lindsay Lohan’s trial live on TMZ in its entirety. And he was so worried about her that he took to cleaning to distract himself. ‘If you want to live in a home where you have to wear your winter coat just to go to the bathroom . . .’

‘There’s nowhere else I can wear it, now they’ve eaten two big feckin’ holes in the arse of it!’

‘And whose fault is that? If you’d just hang it back like I showed you, under the plastic cover, which I got special from the dry cleaner’s, but no, you just throw it wherever you feel—’

‘I see him! Arthur! There!’

‘Shush!’ admonished Dad, his head cocked like Patch used to before he went deaf and forgot he had ears.

‘They can’t hear us, Arthur.’ Mam rolled her eyes, trying to coax me into the conversation. But I was still trying to get my bearings.

I had relinquished autonomy the moment I arrived back at our flat, drenched with rain and dread, to find two police officers at the front door. ‘Grace McDonnell?’ And I’d known then, not from what they said but how they stood, with their uniform caps in hand, as if they were already at the funeral.

It was amazing how long you could get away with ignoring everything when you didn’t care about the outcome of anything. Emerging from that apathy in my parents’ house was like coming to in a madhouse.

‘Shush!’ Dad adjusted his glasses, his eyes flickering from the middle distance above the telly to the middle distance above my head. ‘I need to concentrate.’

Mam sent her eyes skywards again. She held her own spectacles up to her face.

‘There! Arthur, behind you!’

‘He’s not, he is! He’s—sorry, love.’ Dad clambered into my chair, crushing the unopened book that lay on the armrest.

‘Get him, Arthur. Go on, get him! Get the bastard.’

‘Mam!’

She shrugged off the uncharacteristic profanity. ‘Just checking you were still with us, pet.’

‘And . . . smack!’ Dad peeled his hand off the mint-green wallpaper and presented his palm victoriously. ‘Mess with the McDonnells and you! Get! Squashed!’

And they both started shrieking, dancing their tribal dance around the rug once again. It was always the strangest things that reminded me how besotted my parents were with each other. They worked so hard to build this life, and they deserved these years to enjoy it together.

That was the point where I stood, something they weren’t used to seeing me do without coaxing, and declared that it was time I moved on. Aberdeen Street was ready; I’d signed the last papers and the keys were mine to collect when I wanted. Henry’s parents had insisted I follow through on the purchase. They didn’t want the deposit money and his life insurance would help me through the first year of mortgage payments.

Mam said it was too soon; Dad said I’d be missed and that my eyesight was a vital asset in the war against larvae. But I had to go. Every time I looked at them I wanted to apologise for the new lines on their faces.

Within a week, we had moved my stuff into the end-ofterrace on Aberdeen Street that I kept referring to as ‘our house’. The only unpacked bag was the plastic one stuffed with coats and scarves that had gotten caught on the spikes of the gate as Dad carried it in. It had burst all over the hallway and, ten days on, I still hadn’t found the energy to pick them up.

I thought I heard Henry the first night I was in this house. Thinking I saw him was nothing new, every time I went outside I was convinced I clocked him somewhere, but that was the first time I’d heard his voice. I was in the back garden, checking that the door that led from the shed to the laneway was locked. I pulled at the iron bolt to ensure it was solid, and this shot of laughter rang out.

I recoiled from the lock as if it had burnt my hand. I didn’t move another inch. I swear to God it was Henry’s laugh.

My heart pounded in my chest and I felt a wave of nausea but I ignored it. I stood, still as a statue, waiting for the sound that would not be repeated. I remained like that until I started to shiver, then reluctantly I went back inside.

There were days when my only interaction was with the man in the corner shop with the Chinese–Dublin accent who called himself Pat but whose real name was Xin. I bought bread and cheese from him and he sometimes made observations but never asked questions.

‘You’re like a vampire,’ he said, handing over the brie and baguette.

‘Because I’m pale?’

‘Because you only come out at night.’

But mostly I just sat on the floor in the hallway beside the mound of coats and watched as my phone flashed beside me. I’d been ignoring my mother’s calls for three days now. All she wanted was for me to say, ‘Yes, doing much better this evening.’ And I couldn’t. I considered lying back down on the pile of duffel and denim and wool. There was no end to how much I could sleep.

The phone stopped ringing and I waited for the single ‘ping’. The screen flashed again: You Have Nine New Voicemails. She only wanted to help, like Dad when he’d offered to buy me a coat rail. Putting into action something he couldn’t put into words. Just like Henry. The white glow faded and the hallway returned to dark. There was no bulb in the light fixture above me and I liked it like that. It reminded me of Ebenezer Scrooge roaming around his home in the dark, too stingy to pay for lamps.

Almost all of what Henry was carrying had been obliterated when the wheel of the articulated lorry returning to Dublin Port after a beet sugar delivery had rolled over him. All that had come back to me was his oil-stained backpack and a bizarrely pristine copy of A Christmas Carol. We read to each other most nights and we’d been reading that when he died. Henry was atrocious at voices but I made him do them anyway. His Bob Cratchit had me rolling around the bed laughing. We read A Christmas Carol every year, but never at Christmas. Too predictable.

Sitting with my back to the wall and my knees pulled into me, I opened the book to the relevant passage. I angled the page towards the living room so I might have enough light to make out the words.

‘Darkness is cheap and Scrooge liked it,’ I read aloud to no one, the sound of my own voice making me jump. It had been a while since I’d spoken. ‘But before he shut his heavy door, he walked through his rooms to see that all was right. He had just enough recollection of the face to desire to do that.’

Beyond the front door, people were moving: coming home from work, going to the shops, heading out for a run in the park. But I stayed in the hallway. Every other room was filled with bags and boxes; throws and cushions in the sitting room, clothes in our bedroom, books in the study, and mountains of crockery and saucepans in the kitchen. I couldn’t bring myself to unpack any of them. I couldn’t be in the same room as them. So I stayed where I was, in the darkness, right where Henry had left me.

I would have given anything to have him back: this house, everything in it, a limb, two limbs, my sense of taste. I would have cut off the last two decades of my life. I would have watched a stranger die.

I would have watched my parents die.

I dug my nails into my arm until the dents didn’t immediately disappear. The longing and aching were joined by a fresh wave of guilt. I closed my eyes until the nausea passed. But I had started down this path and I couldn’t stop. Even when I opened them I saw it.

I saw him hurrying along on his bike, worrying that I would be cross with him for being late, and that stupid scarf that I had knitted that he never wanted coming undone. I saw the red wool looping into the spokes of his wheel, going round and round until it pulled him under the truck. I heard a decisive crunch as his bones were turned to dust and the squelch like a welly coming away from marsh as his insides flattened. But mainly I saw the red, spinning round, over and over, an indistinguishable mix of scarf and blood and eviscerated organs.

‘Why didn’t you look where you were going?’

The responding silence echoed around the hallway and throbbed in my ears.

‘Why didn’t you slow down? Hmm? Why couldn’t you just do that?’

I remembered the last time I saw him: he was heading out the door of our flat, his big smiling head asking what the weather was supposed to be like and me saying it’d be windy and— No. No. No. No. I couldn’t finish that thought.

‘Henry! I’m talking to you. H—’

I choked on his name. I missed his arms and his smell and his existence. It filled me with rage how he never responded and that made my throat ache more.

‘I’m sorry, okay?’

Still nothing.

‘Henry!’

It was not a statement, but a plea. And I flinched at the desperation in my voice. Nobody had ever been coaxed back from the dead by a whinge and a nag.

‘I said I’m sorry.’

But there was only the confirmation of night. The buzz and click and finally light as the street lamp at the end of Aberdeen Street illuminated. My phone flashed again and I slid it away. I allowed my body to slump to the side, and though I was sobbing into the hood of a quilted jacket, sleep took no time. I was exhausted. I was gone before the ‘ping’ of my mother’s tenth voicemail.

TWO

´Grace likestelling this story because she likes telling everyone what a dope I was.’

‘Not a dope. More . . . cringeworthy.’

‘Great. Much better.’

‘We knew each other when we were teenagers. Henry lived in the same estate as a girl I went to school with and I’d met him at house parties. We even kissed once, actually, during a game of truth or dare, although Henry complained that I was the one who’d been given the dare so why did he have to suffer.’

‘I did not use the word “suffer”.’

‘But then Christmas Eve, a few years ago, we were both in my local. The Back Bar. Henry goes there every Christmas Eve but I’m usually at my granny’s. Only she was in England that year, staying with my uncle. So I go to the pub with Aoife.’

‘You met Aoife at Grace’s birthday.’

‘Really dark hair, yeah, dead straight. That’s her. She gets it from her mother’s side. So anyway, me and Aoife go into the Back Bar and the place is rammed. But I see Henry at the bar. Half a foot taller than everyone else. And he’s in a big group with Claire Maguire, the girl from school. She was the one who had all the house parties when we were teenagers. So anyway, I go over and me and Aoife are going on about how we haven’t seen Claire in so long and what’s she up to now, but really I’ve got one eye on Henry the whole time. And I can tell he’s looking at me.’

‘I was just keeping an eye out for my pint.’

‘And this goes on for a while. Claire’s not introducing us and I can’t see how I’m going to get talking to him and the barman is getting ready to ring the bell for last orders so I start to panic. And Aoife can see I’m panicking even though I haven’t had a chance to say anything to her but she knows I liked Henry all those years ago.’

‘Best kiss of her adolescence.’

‘Slim pickings in the Dublin suburbs more like. Anyway, Aoife suddenly goes: “Johnny Connors! Is that you? Oh my God, Johnny Connors.” And Henry’s like, “Eh, no. Not me.”’

‘I do not talk like that.’

‘And Aoife says, “Are you sure?” Like, are you sure you are who you are? She was working off the cuff. Anyway, he says, “No, wrong guy.”’

‘You’re making me sound like Father Fitzgerald.’

‘Who?’

‘From Father Ted. The boring-voice priest.’

‘Oh yeah. Ha. You do sound a bit like him, actually. Anyway, then Aoife goes, “Grace, is this guy not the cut of Johnny Connors?” And I’m thinking, “Who the fuck is Johnny Connors?” But anyway, I just go, “No, that’s Henry Walsh.” But I shouldn’t have remembered his surname. It had been years.’

‘The lips don’t forget a kiss like that.’

‘I’d clearly been Facebook stalking him. I think you were pretty flattered, Henry, some girl knew your name, made you feel like a big man. Big man in the Back Bar.’

‘So, anyway, there you have it; that’s how we met.’

‘Hold your horses there, Johnny Connors. That’s not the whole story.’

‘Yes, it is. We’ve hogged enough conversation time. Let the people eat.’

‘So we get talking anyway but the pub is closing and Henry says he’ll walk me home . . .’

‘Are they our main courses?’

‘. . . which was about three minutes down the road but grand, I say, “Yeah, great thanks.” We reach the bottom of my street and Henry takes my number and it’s clear we’re supposed to kiss but I don’t want to ’cause I hate feeling like I’m in a film, like I’m just acting out the script, so I start backing up the street towards my house, saying, “See ya round.” And Henry’s there going, “Ehhh . . .”’

‘I do not sound like that.’

‘. . . clearly trying to think of something to say, so I walk slower and then just as I’m about to turn into my garden, he go—he—he goes—’

‘Look at her. The supposed love of my life. Laughing so hard she can’t get the words out.’

‘He go— Sorry, hang on, give me a sec . . . Woo! Composure. Okay. I’m turning into my garden and he shouts, in his big Father Fitzgerald voice . . .’

‘A new detail. Great.’

‘He shouts . . .’

‘Here we go.’

‘Let’s do lunch!’

‘You’re almost on the floor, Grace. The waiter’s going to think you’ve choked on something.’

‘Let’s do lunch?! What? Who even says that??’

‘It’s really not that funny.’

‘Did you have your Filofax on you that night or were you going to put the appointment in when you got home?’

‘Look how much joy she gets from humiliating me. You all right there, Grace? Can you breathe?’

‘Let’s do lunch! Oh God, it’s so good. There I was thinking we were in some cheesy romance film, but apparently Henry thought we were in Wall Street!’

‘Her love doth overflow.’

‘Did you schedule lunch meetings with all the girls back then, or was it just me?’

‘All right, honey. Just breathe. You’re going to pull a muscle.’

THREE

´Itold you we should have phoned. She’s not going to appreciate us barging in on her.’

‘I have been phoning, Arthur, but she doesn’t answer. You’re a soft touch. That girl needs some tough love right now.’

Ding-dong!

A split second of discombobulated bliss before the familiar realisation that I was indeed lying alone on a pile of coats. The voices were not dreams. They were real and familiar and less than two feet away.

‘She can ignore me all she likes but she can’t keep ignoring reality. She can’t be late for work, not on her first day back, she’s got—’

‘We’re three hours early, Sarah. She’s not going to be late for work.’

‘Am I the only one who remembers how she looked last time we saw her? She’ll need at least three hours to sort herself out or Health and Safety will have the place shut down before she’s so much as turned on the oven.’

Ding-dong! Ding-dong!

‘Grace!’ I froze as the hinge of the letterbox pushed open. I shifted nearer to the front door so whoever’s eye that was – presumably my mother’s; Dad hasn’t bent over since 1997 – wouldn’t register me. I slid right up until my back was against it. I was basically Tom Cruise in that Mission Impossible scene where he’s trying to avoid the detection sensors.

‘Grace? It’s your mother.’

Silence. Then a low mumble from Dad: ‘Because that was really going to make her open it.’

‘Shut up, you!’ Mam hissed back.

‘You’re leaving finger smudges all over that letterbox.’

‘Are you looking for a divorce, Arthur McDonnell?’ The hinges squeaked as Mam pushed it open again. ‘Grace, we thought we’d bring you to work for your first day. Just to make sure you get off okay. And we want to see you, pet. We . . . we miss you.’

‘We have some of Henry’s stuff.’ Dad cleared his throat. ‘His parents dropped it over, things he’d left at their house they thought you might like. It’s not much – a few CDs, a girly-looking shirt—’

There was more furtive whispering, too low for me to hear.

‘Sorry. A Topman shirt.’

I shut my eyes to steady the involuntary lurch of my stomach. I had so few of Henry’s clothes. They had given them all to charity shops in the weeks I was sleepwalking around my parents’ house, lost in a stupor. The hoodie I’d been wearing for three weeks now and a coat that had gotten mixed in with mine were all I had. I took a deep breath and pushed myself to my feet. I opened the door.

‘There you are now,’ said Dad brightly, as if I’d been held up in the bathroom and he hadn’t just seen me rise from the floor through the stained glass. ‘You look . . . Well, it’s good to see you!’

I pulled at the hoodie and felt the greasy bun lobbing at the back of my head. They stepped into the hallway, kissing me on the cheek as they passed. They glanced down at the pile of coats, which betrayed the indent of a body, but said nothing. I didn’t think my mother had it in her to say nothing. So that was what you had to do for your parents to stop passing remarks: have the love of your life die.

‘You know you’re back at work today?’ said Mam, her face laden with concern.

‘Of course I know. You really don’t need to worry.’

‘I’m not worried. I’m relaxed. Amn’t I, Arthur? Relaxed?’

‘Oh, your mother is very relaxed.’

‘See?’

‘I said to her last night, I said, “Sarah, will we call to see Grace tomorrow?” And she just said, “Who?” I tried to explain you were our daughter but she couldn’t hear me over the sound of her Bob Marley record. So laid-back she’s already fallen over, that’s your mother.’

Mam turned her back on him. ‘We thought we’d drive you, Grace. We can just wait while you have a shower and get ready.’

‘I don’t really need a shower, I was just going to—’

‘That wasn’t a question, Grace. It was an order, on behalf of the citizens of Dublin. We brought some shampoo.’

‘I have shampoo!’

She shot me a sceptical look and then glanced at Dad, who produced a bottle of L’Oréal Something-or-other from the Boots bag he was carrying: ‘Ta-dah!’

‘And conditioner.’

‘Ooo . . .’ Dad pulled another bottle from the bag.

‘And a razor.’

‘Ahhh . . .’

I grabbed the haul from him and shot Mam a look. ‘You and your lovely assistant can wait here.’

FOUR

Dad drove and Mam sat in the back so I could have the passenger seat. We used to take this seating configuration whenever I was sick as a child. It made me feel like we were going to the doctor. Dad remarked on a white van hastily parked at the end of the road and I told him it was always there. He started tutting. In his driving instructor days, bad parking had been a particular bugbear.

‘Do you know the owner?’ he asked.

‘Haven’t met any of the neighbours yet.’

‘If you don’t have the patience to park, you shouldn’t be allowed on the road.’

Dad switched on the radio and sang along. ‘Little Mix,’ he explained. ‘This bit is about Zayn.’ And Mam asked questions: Was I looking forward to going back to work? What was on the menu today? Did I think it’d make me feel better?

But I couldn’t manage much in the way of conversation so she just stuck her hand around the side of my seat, squeezed mine and launched into a monologue about moths.

‘They said on the radio this morning that there’s an epidemic all over Dublin. They were interviewing this chap with a hardware shop in Cabra and he said he’s sold clean out of mothballs and can’t get another order for a week. I texted in to say they still have them in McGowan’s on the Blackrock Road—’

‘You sent that text message to me,’ said Dad, his eyes still on the road.

‘Did I? Well, feck it anyway! I’m always doing that. I tried to confirm my appointment for a breast check by text message last week and I ended up sending it to your father.’

Dad started to chuckle.

‘I will not tell you what his response was.’

‘The love doctor would like to reschedule for a private consultation in the bedroom, please dress—’

Mam clipped him on the ears. ‘They had a scientist on the radio who thought it might be connected to climate change but yer man presenting the show is one of those climate change deniers so then the whole thing got completely sidetracked and . . .’

Leaving Aberdeen Street, we skirted the edges of the Phoenix Park and came down onto the noisy congestion of the city centre quays. Everywhere I went I saw Henry – all the places we’d been, and the places I didn’t know if he’d ever been. I saw him in the lines of men who cycled into the park, the clusters who waited at bus stops, the lonely figures who visited the other graves. He was the constant mirage. And I sought it out. I did it to myself. I searched every crowd until I found him. The false hope that caused my heart to jump for the briefest moment was worth the nauseating plummet when memory came crashing in.

I watched a cyclist swerve between buses and taxis and articulated trucks. Henry had believed everything happened for a reason. But how would he explain what had happened that evening? Was he supposed to die at the age of thirty-three? What kind of reason was there for that?

The first time we met was at one of Claire Maguire’s house parties. Years before ‘let’s do lunch’ or even before our truth-or-dare kiss. Henry didn’t really remember it, but I did. He was so handsome. He had heavy eyebrows and sallow skin – well, sallow on the spectrum of Irish skin tones. He looked like he should be on telly in some American high-school drama, not hanging around Dublin suburbs where the girls all had acne and the other boys were perpetually waiting to fill out. Henry towered over everyone, and he’d towered over me as we both waited for the kettle to boil.

‘What are you making?’ I shouted over the tinny music and drunken friends.

‘Hot whiskey.’ He took a container of cloves from the back pocket of his jeans and a naggin of Jameson from the other.

‘Isn’t that a Christmas drink? It’s July!’

‘I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.’

‘What?’

‘It’s from A Christmas Carol. Charles Dickens. You should read it.’

‘I have,’ I lied, having entirely forgotten it was not originally a Muppets movie. ‘Bah humbug, et cetera, et cetera.’ Who tells people to read books at parties? That’s what I remember thinking. It was summer. School was over.

‘There’s an art to making hot whiskeys,’ he continued, as if he hadn’t heard me, which he may not have. It was loud in the kitchen. He grabbed a lemon from the fruit basket, threw it up in the air and caught it. The kind of move you could only get away with as a teenager.

‘Go on so,’ I said as the boiling water grew louder and finally clicked. ‘Educate me.’

But just as he reached for the kettle, Aoife was at my shoulder asking for the cigarettes. They were in my bag so I left to go find them. And even though I hurried back, he was gone. Half a lemon sitting on the counter where he had been.

No longer interested in tea, I went and sat with Aoife and another girl as they puffed away self-consciously and gossiped about everyone around them. I was about to go the bathroom to check my eyeliner when a glass appeared at my shoulder. I turned around to see Henry Walsh proffering a drink.

‘Thanks,’ I said, stunned.

‘Merry Christmas,’ he replied and disappeared into the crowd. The girls looked from the hot whiskey to each other, wide-eyed, trying to decipher if the party line was approval or scorn.

‘But it’s July!’ said the one who wasn’t Aoife.

The next day I went into town and bought A Christmas Carol, the same copy that had been in his backpack that evening. I started reading it on the bus home, scouring each page for a clue to Henry Walsh.

We should have gone to the cinema that night, not a stupid house viewing. Henry wouldn’t have been on the quays then. We would have met outside the Savoy, ignorant of how close to oblivion we had come. We were going to get our dream house anyway, our dream life. I made Henry come to the East Wall viewing. I made him worry about being late. I made him wear that stupid scarf.

I killed him. That was the truth. I may as well have pushed him under that truck.

‘Pet?’

The traffic lights were red. It was early morning and everyone was going to work. I yearned to be like everyone else. Nausea hit and I waited for it to pass.

‘Hey, Grace?’

Dad took his hand off the gear stick, momentarily, and placed it over mine and my mother’s. I realised then that there were tears on my face.

‘If it’s too soon to go back, we can just call your boss and—’

I stopped him there. ‘No, it’s fine,’ I said. ‘I’m fine. Just – I’ll be grand.’

‘We’ll pick you up this evening.’

‘Aoife is going to collect me,’ I said as the Portobello Kitchen came into view. ‘We already arranged it.’

Dad pulled in outside the restaurant and Mam leaned her face forward.

‘Kiss,’ she said, and I planted one on her cheek.

‘Bye, Dad.’ And I stretched over to kiss him too.

‘Good luck, love.’

The front of the Portobello Kitchen was as I’d left it – the ‘r’ broken off and hanging from the final ‘o’, and the second ‘o’ stolen, so it read: Po t Belly Kitchen. There was a sign on the door written in the style of those old ‘No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs’ notices, only this version said: ‘No Wires, No Macs, No Pods’. Below was another sign also in the handwriting of Dermot Gormley, my boss and the proprietor of the Portobello Kitchen:

That means NO WIFI you gobshites! If there’s a laptop under your arm, keep walking!!!

I pushed the door open and made my way through the melange of old school tables, which Dermot had actually stolen from a school, a Christian Brothers place that had shut down in a cloud of disgrace, and beer barrels he’d gotten from the pub next door and just started referring to as ‘stools’.

‘Good morning,’ said a young woman standing behind the counter. ‘What can I get for you?’ She was bronzed and beautiful and exuded a sexual confidence. You didn’t even need the accent to know she wasn’t Irish.

‘I work here,’ I said.

The girl frowned at me, then it dawned on her. ‘You’re Grace.’ Then it really dawned on her. ‘You’re Grace.’

I gave her a small smile.

‘I’m Christina. Tina. I’m new.’

‘Hi, Tina. Is Dermot around?’

‘He’s in the . . . He’s in his office.’

I lifted the counter top and passed through the coffee dock into the back room.

‘Dermot?’ I knocked lightly on the door of what had once been a storage cupboard but was now also the manager’s office.

‘My saving Grace!’ Dermot pushed his glasses up onto his forehead and rose from a mound of dockets and receipts to give me a kiss on both cheeks. If you asked Dermot what he did, he’d tell you he was an actor, even though he’d never had a single paid gig in his life and he made all his income from running the Portobello Kitchen. ‘It is good to have you back,’ he said, replacing the glasses and inspecting me further. ‘You look better than last time I saw you.’

‘At . . . the funeral?’

‘Yes. You looked dreadful.’ He nodded. ‘Much better now.’ He led me back into the kitchen. ‘Have you met Tina? Brazilian. She’s new.’

‘They always are.’

‘I’m hoping this one might stick around a little longer. I’m paying her more than minimum wage. And I’m pretty sure her visa depends on it.’

Dermot had been a full-time unemployed actor when his father, a butcher, died and left him these premises. The idea of killing animals for a living turned his stomach so he converted it into a restaurant. He didn’t know anything about cooking or management or HR (visa blackmail was a common tactic in his efforts to retain waiting staff) but he did like to eat in restaurants and he reckoned that was enough. Dermot had gone to the interior designer with a single word – ‘Theatre’ – and the explanation ‘Because I am an actor’ and they had decked the place out in cheap velvet.

And yet, entirely in spite of himself, the Portobello Kitchen was one of the most popular casual dining spots in the city. Dermot hadn’t realised that, these days, the jars he was using because he was a cheapskate actually cost more than glasses in most homeware shops; the carpet that was plain dirty was seen as distressed and people thought the cabaret décor was self-aware. You could charge a lot for self-awareness in Dublin. Dermot got annoyed whenever the place was busy, which was every lunch and dinnertime, and the more he tried to turn people off, the more they came back. They thought his gruffness gave the place character. There was even a parody Facebook page dedicated to Portobello Dermo.

‘Do you want to tell me about how you’re doing or . . .?’ Dermot winced at me like the words pained him. I gave him the benefit of the doubt and assumed the shaking head was involuntary.

‘I’d rather not.’

‘Thank God for that,’ he said with a sigh of relief. ‘Let’s refresh your memory of the kitchen.’

FIVE

The familiarity of the tiles and fridges and the extractor fan that Dermot had taped onto the wall himself after firing a Dutch chef who insisted it needed to be professionally fixed had a calming effect.

‘Everything is much as you left it,’ said Dermot, standing in the middle of the kitchen. ‘The freezer still makes too much noise and the customers are as reprehensible as always. We’ve started keeping the eggs in the fridge and doing the sink-or-float test before throwing them out, blah blah blah. I can’t remember which means they’re still good but you can look it up if you’re bothered. The rota is on the back of the bathroom door now. I think that’s about it. I’ll be gone for a couple of hours this afternoon. I have an audition.’

‘I promise not to poison anyone,’ I said, pulling my uniform from my bag.

Dermot shrugged. ‘You can poison the whole lot of them for all I care.’

Contents

Title

Copyright

Several weeks later

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Andy: Sixteen

Andy: Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Eight

Twenty-Nine

Thirty

Thirty-One

Thirty-Two

Thirty-Three

Thirty-Four

Thirty-Five

Thirty-Six

Thirty-Seven

Thirty-Eight

Thirty-Nine

Forty

Forty-One

Forty-Two

Andy: Forty-Three

Forty-Four

Forty-Five

Forty-Six

Conor: Forty-Seven

Forty-Eight

Forty-Nine

Fifty

Fifty-One

Fifty-Two

Fifty-Three

Fifty-Four

Fifty-Five

Fifty-Six

Fifty-Seven

Fifty-Eight

Fifty-Nine

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

Guide

Cover

Title

Start