the flat had been delegated to an ex-employee of the Ardglass called Hassan. Cara was responsible for the broad-brush stuff but, as far as Johnny knew, it didn’t take too much of her time.
Fired up with delight about his review, he rang her. ‘Did you see our first review? Five stars! They had great things to say about you and Hassan!’
‘Oh, good.’ She sounded distracted.
‘And our bookings?’ he enthused. ‘We’re nearly full for the next two months and people are already reserving into October and November.’ Liam had been right: even with the occasional empty nights, the Airbnb income was much higher than when Marek and Natusia had been tenants. Admittedly, he hadn’t increased their rent in seven years.
‘And the income is going into –’
‘Yep. New account.’
Cara seemed stressed. Immediately he felt guilty. She had a lot on her plate and he was hardly helping. He’d been the one who’d pushed for her to do their monthly accounts, in the hope that it might focus Jessie’s mind on their spending. It had done feck-all to curb Jessie’s excesses, but poor Cara was still soldiering away. Probably – and this was where his guilt really kicked in – because she felt she ought to, as payback for all the holidays Jessie insisted on paying for. ‘You still okay to keep doing this?’ he asked. ‘It’s grand if you want to stop.’
‘It’s fine,’ she said. ‘No bother. But I’d better go.’
‘Course. Sorry.’ He shouldn’t have rung her at work. According to the latest etiquette, he shouldn’t have rung her at all. Not without having checked in advance that it was okay. God’s sake. Soon it would be illegal to say hello to someone without having first sent a telegram to see if now was ‘a good time’. ‘See you tomorrow night at Gulban Manor.’
He turned his attention to the final details of Jessie’s birthday. Her fiftieth. He wasn’t too far behind and, like, Jesus Christ and all, but how had that happened? Assuming they lived their full number of years, they were both over halfway through their lives. Even that wasn’t guaranteed: what about Rory, snuffed out at the ridiculously young age of thirty-four?
Lately life, with its unpredictable, precious qualities, had been troubling Johnny. Too much of his time was spent looking either back at the past or anxiously at the future. He’d better stop: he’d be no good to anyone if he went a bit mental. Although, from the sound of things, you got no say in it – mid-life madness was entirely out of a person’s control. You just had to roll with it.
Enough of that. So, Jessie’s birthday. It wasn’t until Tuesday, five days away, which was when themselves and the kids would have a takeaway and a cake with candles. Nice and simple. The heavier guns were being deployed for the weekend at Gulban Manor. A Wonder Woman cake had been ordered – all credit to the baker, she’d captured Jessie’s ‘take-no-prisoners’ energy.
His gift to Jessie had plunged him into a bout of soul-searching. Obviously, it had to be meaningful, but jewellery had never been her thing: she said she had ‘man’s hands, goofy ears and no neck’. Bracelets were banned because they got on her nerves. (‘All that jingling and jangling, I sound like a herd of Hari Krishnas.’)
So, following Mary-Laine’s directives, he’d bought a Fendi handbag. The one Jessie liked was adorned with furry baubles, which looked like an evil little face. He’d had to check with Mary-Laine that this wasn’t a joke. And for all its furry, evil weirdness, the bag had proved spectacularly elusive. One had finally been run to ground in Abu Dhabi only three days ago and – shredding his nerves – had arrived in Ireland that morning.
He wasn’t enjoying these feelings half as much as that lovely warm glow of pride, so he looked again at his Airbnb page. Already they were heavily booked – this weekend, all of next week and the following weekend. In fact, for the next three, four … six weekends! Many of the weekdays too. Oh, yes! As he scanned the calendar, his eye snagged on 6 August. There was something about that date … Ah, right. It was Michael Kinsella’s birthday. Funny the things you forgot and the things you remembered. Because now he was remembering that long-ago night when he and Rory had borrowed Michael’s lightweight Honda and headed for the bright lights of Celbridge. Driving home at 3 a.m., on dark, rural roads,