she thought about it, the desire to overeat wouldn’t go away.
‘Ed?’ she yelled down the stairs. ‘Ed.’
‘Yes?’
In tears of frustrated fury, she said to him, ‘Tell me about the day-patient option.’
‘… Right.’ He took a few moments to compose himself. ‘Four weeks, Monday to Friday, ten a.m. to four p.m. You’ll have one-on-one every day with a counsellor, go to lectures and be under the care of a dietician. You’d get an eating plan. They’d prefer if you were residential so they could monitor your food. But this is better than nothing.’
‘Starting when?’
‘Tomorrow.’
‘Okay. But only because you’ve forced me. You’d better ring Henry and break the happy news.’
‘You ring him. You have to take responsibility for this,’ he said.
Despair surged but she picked up her phone and stared at Henry’s number. This was so difficult. Then, taking a nervy breath, she hit call.
SIXTY-THREE
Fifty years of age today. A half-century, surely old enough for all of her struggles and worries to be long behind her? So where was her lovely life? Her happy marriage? Her feelings of contentment? Why was she in bed, alone, the curtains drawn, with no intention of getting up?
After poor Cara had been ferried off in the ambulance on Friday night, Jessie had hoped they could knock the whole sorry shambles on the head and go home early. But Rionna and Kaz were insistent that, no, the murder-mystery weekend could be salvaged. They’d thought they were helping: it just meant that Jessie’s agony was prolonged by another thirty-six hours of ‘great fun’.
During the excruciatingly long hours of Saturday and Sunday, she didn’t address a single word to Johnny. Because she was having such ‘fantastic craic’ with the others, she reckoned nobody had noticed.
That mattered: she had her pride.
Johnny worried about money, she knew that. But it was her fiftieth birthday: that was surely a big deal.
It was disgraceful to be that upset about spending a weekend in a crappy hotel. First World problem if ever she’d heard of one. But this wasn’t simply a tantrum. Since forever, Johnny and the kids had behaved as if she was a bit of a tyrant: she gave orders and, after much complaining, they complied.
Until now she’d always felt it was affectionate. Not any more. Now she was wondering if they despised her for real.
It didn’t take much to pitch her back into her younger self, always hovering on the outside, wondering if everyone was laughing at her.
Johnny had said some very weird things during that horrific weekend of his parents’ wedding anniversary: he’d talked about feeling hollow and worthless. She’d been concerned, but when the Hagen Klein drama had blown up, she hadn’t had time to address it. With the benefit of hindsight, it had sounded like the beginnings of a confession.
Over the past four days, she’d been visiting and revisiting the possibility that he was seeing someone else. He really could be and the idea was horrible.
She should ask him. But maybe she didn’t need to: maybe his behaviour was proof enough.
As soon as they’d got home from Gulban Manor, she’d chucked his razor and toothbrush out of their bathroom and onto the landing. Let him figure out that that meant he should sleep elsewhere.
When Monday morning had rolled around, she drove herself to the office, leaving him to make his own way. The entire day had passed without her speaking to him. Several couriers showed up, bearing orchids or bottles of wine from various business acquaintances. In other circumstances, she’d have loved the whole circus.
Now it was Tuesday morning, her fiftieth birthday, and she couldn’t face going to work. This had literally never happened before. Even after Rory had died, she’d shown up every day unless there was an emergency with the kids.
‘Mum, are you awake?’ Dilly stuck her face up close to Jessie’s, then darted off the bed. ‘Mum’s awake!’ she shouted down the stairs.
Oh, here we go.
In they came, her five children, singing ‘Happy Birthday’, their faces radiant in the light of a cake bearing fifty candles. Bringing up the rear was Raccoon Man, Johnny. The whole scene could have been lifted from a movie about a happy family.
This was Johnny’s transparently pathetic attempt to fix things. He’d probably had to bribe the kids to be nice, because, let’s be honest here, none of them gave a shite about her either.
Except Dilly.
And Saoirse.
And maybe Ferdia.
‘Happy birthday, Mum! Blow out the candles.’
As she did, a tear escaped. Trying to be discreet, she wiped it with her knuckle.
Johnny