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Published in June 2019
About the book
They have nothing in common.
The O’Reillys are loud, rich and eccentric, while the Ryans are painfully ordinary and less sure of their place in life.
But when a near-drowning on holiday in Portugal brings about a close friendship between young daughters Jamie and Sarah, the lives of the families become reluctantly intertwined.
As the years pass, Jamie starts to feel suffocated by Sarah’s jealous intensity and cracks begin to show. But what will it take to shatter the façade of closeness and harmony between the O’reillys and the Ryans? The obsessive crush? Money? The affair?
And, when the truth comes out, which family will be left whole?
Reviews
“A brilliant blend of sweeping satisfying family drama with a tense undercurrent of psychological thriller”
- The Sunday Independent
“Almost impossible to put down”
- The Irish Independent
“Sharp, compelling … maybe her best novel yet”
- Louise O’Neill
“An atmospheric sizzler”
- The Gloss
“An intelligent and fascinating portrayal of human behaviour with equally intriguing characters… quite simply a wonderful read”
- writing.ie
Extract
Loud voices drifted upstairs from the hall, along with shouts of laughter and exclamations. Sarah fiddled with her hair. She didn’t want to go down. This must be what dogs feel like at Halloween, she thought, terrified of noises and lights, believing them to have more power to hurt than bangs and flashes should.
She hated parties with people her own age – a raw awkwardness would land on her the second she arrived into a throng of those who were familiar, but now unfamiliar; wearing different clothes, in rooms and halls and houses she’d never seen before, with strange adults asking loud questions – ‘Who wants to hit the piñata first?’ – and behaving in ways she didn’t understand, as if they were all lit up with a new fire that propelled them faster, more furiously, than usual, so that Sarah couldn’t keep up or even understand what they all wanted.
How much worse would an adult party be, she wondered. There wouldn’t even be the cover of party games, or a disco, or crazy golf, where she could hide for a while under the pretence of having a purpose. Instead, it would be just be people standing around talking. Maybe trying to talk to her.
‘Come on, let’s go down,’ Jamie said. ‘I’m going to see if anyone gives me money. Some of the old guys do. They just hand you twenty quid because they don’t know what else to do.’ She went off into a fit of giggles. ‘Sarah, if anyone thinks you’re me and gives you money, for godsakes just take it! Don’t go all moral and hand it back.’
‘No one is going to think Sarah is you,’ Celine said.
By the time they were ready, the hall was full of people. Sarah stopped on the landing below Jamie’s room to watch them. The biggest rooms off the hall – three of them, that ran together through doors that could open wide, so that the three rooms became one – seemed full too from where she stood: a brilliant, fizzing throng of faces and voices, the glitter of rings and earrings, the smell of cigarettes and the darker tang of cigars. In the background was music but not distinct, just a supporting net of noise for all these other noises.
The overhead lights were off, but there were lamps and candles on every surface, so the whole place was like a thousand tiny circuses, Sarah thought, bumping up against each other, but each with its own little spotlight, and its own performers. Men with deep voices and big hands, women in sparkly jewellery and dresses like rainbows. There was a smell that was of flowers and incense and spices and perfume all mixed together. She could smell the oranges that, directed by Jamie’s mum, she and Jamie had stuck with cloves a few weeks before and left to dry out in the hot press. ‘They smell like Christmas,’ Maeve had said. ‘Like presents and rich food.’ They did.
Below her, all the little glittering spotlights and performers were joined together by webs of laughter. It seemed like everyone in that hall was laughing and laughing, as if the funniest joke in the world had just been told and Sarah had missed it, having arrived only for the bit afterwards where everyone fell about and couldn’t tell you what was so funny.
She saw Maeve, moving from group to group, taking coats, offering drinks, passing on orders to the waiters in black jackets who wove in and out around her. Luke, Alan and Ian had been asked if they wanted to help wait – Sarah had heard Maeve suggest it, saying they would be paid – but Luke had turned it down.
‘No way,’ he said instantly. ‘We’ve got better things to do.’
‘Jake?’ Maeve asked then.
‘No, thanks. I’d spill something,’ Jake said.
Stepping further down the staircase, Sarah could see into the biggest of the sitting rooms. Simon was at the furthest end, standing almost inside the huge fireplace. Behind him a fire burned, and a log fell, sending up a shower of sparks as Sarah watched, a light patter of flame. Around him were men and women, watching, listening, tuned to the movements of his body and voice. The listeners seemed to grow taller, reaching up as his voice rose, then crouch lower as his voice dropped again, as if they were puppets, dangled by the thread of his voice and hands.
He looked up as Sarah came down and caught her eye. He winked and she smiled at him. Simon was someone she didn’t, couldn’t, easily talk to. But she liked being seen by him.
The band was outside in the marquee, Sarah knew, and she decided she’d make her way there. Jamie and Celine had disappeared, and it would be a good place to try and find them.
She should have been invisible, walking through that throng of older, more fascinating people who all knew each other, but she wasn’t. First it was a man who handed her an empty glass and said, ‘Same again,’ before going back to the story he was telling, something about the races and a terrible bet he’d made. Sarah stood for a minute, wondering whether to ask him what had been in the glass, but didn’t dare. Instead she sniffed at it. A bitter smell, something sharp and sticky.
She hovered for a moment, edging from foot to foot, waiting for a break in his story so she could ask, but the break didn’t come, and so she gave up and put the glass on a side table where it stayed, a grubby reproach, as she moved on.
As she wove in and out of the tightly packed rooms, Sarah tried to work out where her parents might be, so she could avoid them. She didn’t want them to see her, all alone in this house where she was supposed to be such a friend.
The O’Reillys must have invited every single person they knew, she decided. Every single person anyone knew, by the look of things. Sarah felt bad, for a second, about her mother’s excitement – ‘Goodness! A party, at their house!’ – now that it was so obvious that there was nothing special about the invitation. But she pushed the feelings aside. She wouldn’t feel bad. Not tonight. Not when there was nothing really to feel bad about.
It happened a lot to her lately. That she would want to cry all of a sudden for no reason. Or not a proper reason. It could be the way her mother had folded a slice of fruitcake into a piece of kitchen paper and put it in her lunchbox, an unexpected treat. Finding it, the scene would recreate itself in Sarah’s mind – her mother’s thin hands, cutting, then buttering, then carefully wrapping the cake – and leave her with a thick lump in her throat, like porridge she couldn't swallow. She didn’t know why. Something to do with the effort, the silent kindness, the futility, of it. All the care and love that were laid upon her when she didn’t know what she could do to earn them or be worthy of them. It was too much love sometimes. Especially times like this, when she felt that she had failed, by her solitude, again, and that her parents would feel the wound more deeply if they knew.