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