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 her. 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.
‘What?’ Ed had walked in.
Her lips felt numb. ‘I … aaaah …’
‘What’s happened?’ His eyes flicked over and around her, as if he was expecting evidence of a binge.
A terrible thought occurred. ‘Did you come here to spy on me?’
They still hadn’t fully recovered from the terrible things they’d said after her seizure. They were polite and pleasant but it felt to her that they were both acting.
‘I came to see you were okay. Finding your snack and all.’
He looked surprised, then wounded. Suddenly she felt ashamed. ‘Sorry, sweetie.’
Johnny appeared, followed by Dilly, TJ, Vinnie and Tom. More people were straggling behind them. All at once the entire household was passing through the kitchen, drifting back to their rooms for a snooze.
Ed moved towards Cara, but she slipped away. ‘I’d better ring Peggy.’
He had to let her go because Peggy was the person Cara trusted to keep her on the straight and narrow. Nothing could get in the way of that relationship.
As his wife disappeared up the stairs, Ed stood in the kitchen wondering if he’d ever felt so lonely before. For the last five weeks, terror had invaded his dreams: Cara could have died. It rocketed him into wakefulness with a gasp and a pounding heart. She’s dead.
His life had become like Sliding Doors. In one version, the real one, Cara was still alive. In the other, she’d died on that Friday night.
He was experiencing this holiday through the prism of the second version. Even though she was here, alive, he understood how close death was. Everyone was attached to life by the most slender of threads. It was just crazy good fortune that they didn’t snap, snap, snap, one after the other, sending people tumbling into the void.
He couldn’t stop watching Vinnie and Tom – Vinnie creating mayhem in