Life Before Us

by Roisin Meaney

Genres: Women's Fiction; Romance

Synopsis

The new novel from the Number One Bestselling author about chance and falling in love.


Meet George and Alice ...


Three facts about George
His daughter Suzi is the best thing in his life.
His job teaching in the local primary school comes a close second.
He's never tried online dating but there's a first time for everything.

Three facts about Alice
Her boyfriend of six months has a wife she knew nothing about.
She never thought that at the age of thirty-two she would be returning to her childhood home town -- jobless and homeless.
While her heart might have been trampled on, somewhere deep inside she's still holding out for love.

One fact about love
It's everywhere - or nowhere - depending on where you look.

This is the story of George and Alice, two lonely hearts unknowingly orbiting each other's lives. But will their paths converge - and what will happen if they do?

(P) 2022 Hachette Books Ireland

Publisher: Hachette Books Ireland

Print pages: 356

Sample

IT WAS GOOD NEWS. NO, IT WAS BETTER THAN THAT. It was great news, marvellous news. Liz and Emmet were thrilled. She’d never seen them looking so happy. Middle of September, they’d told her, and this was the middle of March, so Liz was just three months gone. Married ten years, probably time for them to start a family. All good.

Well, mostly good.

The only tiny thing, and it really was of no consequence, was that Alice would have to find someplace else to live. Not that they’d said anything, not yet, but a baby would make them a family, and a tenant would become surplus to requirements. They’d been glad of her when she’d moved in, glad of the help with the mortgage repayments on their newly acquired house, but now, ten years later, Emmet had his own company, and Liz’s move to the bigger dental clinic would have helped too. They didn’t need Alice any more.

At her lunch break she rang Tina and told her. ‘I’ll have to find a new place to live.’

‘Or maybe you won’t,’ Tina said. ‘When is she due?’

‘September.’

‘There you go. You and Chris will be moved in somewhere by then.’

‘What?’ She laughed. ‘What are you on about?’ Waiting for more. Lapping it up. Letting on it hadn’t crossed her mind, despite the big obstacle.

‘You’ll be going out a year in September, won’t you? More than a year. Of course you’ll be living together. I’d say it’ll happen in the summer.’

‘You’re forgetting about his mother.’

‘Not for a second – but it’s time he cut those apron strings, Alice. He needs to live his own life.’

‘She can’t be left on her own, though. Not full-time, I mean.’

‘And that’s why they invented nursing homes.’

‘Ah, Tina, he couldn’t do that to her. She’s only in her sixties.’

‘Alice, have you actually met the woman yet?’

‘No …’

It was ridiculous. She knew it was. Six months without laying eyes on his mother or setting foot inside his family home. Give it another while, he’d say, anytime Alice hinted at a meeting. She’s going through a rough patch – so he and Alice had never spent a night there.

The other option was to bring him back to Liz and Emmet’s house, but Chris had vetoed that too. It would put you in an awkward position, he’d said, when Alice knew it wouldn’t, but he’d stood firm. Instead he’d told her about a pal with an apartment in the docklands, so they met there whenever the pal was out of town. It was, Alice supposed, furtively exciting, even if the place was shabby, and not very romantic.

But Tina was right; something had to change. The more she thought about it, as Friday afternoon crawled by, the more she resolved to move things along. She wouldn’t nag, she’d simply ask, firmly, to meet his mother, even if it was just briefly. She’d do it this weekend.

The thought of the weekend caused a happy leap inside her. Their first away together, Chris’s first time to have Saturday and Sunday off work since they’d started going out. A neighbour coaxed to keep an eye on Mother, everything in place. They were only going as far as Courtown in Wexford, because he’d spent holidays there as a child. He’d booked them into a little hotel; she felt another flare of excitement at the thought. Their first time waking up together, in a bed they could stay in all day if they wanted. Twenty past two, the clock on the wall told her. A couple of hours and she’d be off home to get ready.

And then her phone rang, and she saw his name on the screen, and instantly she felt a clutch of alarm. He knew better than to ring her at work unless it was urgent, particularly when they were meeting later. Please let his mother not have taken a turn. Please let him not be calling to cancel the weekend.

She swept a quick glance about the silent waiting room. Three out of four heads were bent towards their devices, everyone engrossed, except for David Ryan, seventy-two and prone to mouth ulcers, who was gazing off into space, arms folded.

She lifted her phone and pressed answer. ‘Hi,’ she said, in the undertone she used when she took a personal call at work. ‘All OK?’

‘Are you in a relationship with Chris Delaney?’

Unexpected. Not Chris, a female voice, the question snapped out, hostile-sounding. Was it his mother, using his phone to tell Alice to leave her son alone? No, the voice was surely too young, too healthy. And then another thought flashed into her head: something terrible had happened to Chris. This was a medic, or maybe one of his colleagues, ringing to break bad news to Chris’s girlfriend. Not hostile, just stressed.

She swivelled her chair to block out the patients. ‘Is something wrong?’

She heard a kind of snort, or maybe a throat clearing. ‘Is something wrong?’ Her question repeated, the voice now filled with what sounded like scornful incredulity. ‘You could say that. You could put it that way.’

Alice’s stomach clenched. This was no medic, or work colleague. This wasn’t that. She gripped the arm of her chair. The waiting room was far too quiet. She imagined ears pricked behind her. ‘What? What’s happened?’ And why the anger, from someone who must be a total stranger? What on earth had Alice done to deserve it?

And then it came.

‘What’s happened is Chris is married. He’s married to me. I’m his wife.’ Each final word snapped out, in that same tight, infuriated tone.

Alice frowned. What she was hearing made no sense. Of course it wasn’t true, she knew that – and then she twigged, and breathed out.

‘Tina – God, you had me fooled. Look, I have to go, there are people here. See you next week.’

‘Don’t hang up! Don’t you dare hang up!’

Louder. Shriller. On the point of disconnecting, Alice tensed again. ‘Tina? Seriously—’ She darted a glance around the back of her chair. No change in the postures, but she sensed the listening ears. ‘Cut it out, Tina,’ she murmured. ‘Joke over.’ But hang on – it couldn’t be Tina, not on his phone. What was happening? Was this real, or some nightmare? She couldn’t think straight.

‘I’m not Tina. My name is Janice Delaney. I’m married to Chris Delaney.’ Every word deliberate now, and all too clear. Every word causing Alice’s heart to set up a sudden unpleasant thumping around the back of her throat. ‘He’s a guard stationed in Store Street. We’ve been married for eight years. We have three children, and we live in Newbridge. I just found a text to you. Looks like he was about to take you away for a dirty weekend, after telling me he was going to be working double shifts. He’s in the shower right now, getting all clean for you.’

Not Tina. Not an ill-judged practical joke from her friend.

This was not happening. This could not be happening.

Alice ran a tongue over lips that had dried, searching for something, anything to say. Her fingers were cold, icy. Her shoulders ached. Behind her someone sneezed, making her start.

‘Well? Do you believe me now? Any more you need to hear?’

‘I—’ She stopped, breathed, began again. ‘I – I didn’t know.’

‘No, I dare say you didn’t. None of the others knew either, until I broke the news to them.’

She closed her eyes. Others. She was one of others. He was married, and she wasn’t even special enough to be the only one he’d been unfaithful with.

‘His … mother,’ she said.

‘What about her?’

‘He told me she’s sick. He – he said he lives with her.’ What did it matter now? ‘Look, forget it, I don’t know why—’

‘His mother is hale and hearty and living in Fermoy with his father. Anything else?’

His father, still alive. Chris had told Alice the man had died twenty years earlier of a heart attack, aged just forty-five. She didn’t bother mentioning the brother and sister who were supposedly living in Australia. They probably didn’t exist – or did, and lived in Galway.

All lies. Every single word a lie. Every ‘I love you’, every ‘You’re the one I’ve been waiting for.’ Just a joke to him, just a diversion from his wife and three children, safely situated thirty miles away in Newbridge.

Wife. Three children. She felt a sudden unpleasant, nauseous lurch. She might be sick, might throw up right there. She took a breath, willed her stomach to behave.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m … I don’t know what to say.’ What a fool she’d been to believe him. What a fool he’d made of her.

‘You just stay away from my husband! You hear me?’

‘Well, I … of course I—’

‘Right. Now go off and cry your eyes out, and find a single man for yourself.’ And abruptly, the call was ended. Alice sat unmoving, stunned, trying to take it in, her mind reeling with the impossible information she’d just been given. He was married. He was a father of three children. He was a married man. She’d just spoken with his wife.

His wife. He had a wife. It wouldn’t sink in. It couldn’t be true.

But she’d never met his friends, his work colleagues, any members of his family. He’d kept her out of his world entirely. I want you all to myself, he’d say, and of course she loved that, and put up no objection.

She looked at her phone screen, at the two of them in the little Greek restaurant he’d taken her to for her thirty-first birthday in October, six weeks after they’d met. For once she’d looked halfway decent in a snap – hair freshly cut and highlighted, blue dress she’d splashed out on, face bright with the excitement of a budding romance.

Next birthday I’ll take you to Greece, he’d promised that night – but he’d known it wouldn’t happen, couldn’t happen. His flings, his … affairs – God, the word made her cringe – had by their nature to have a short shelf life, before the duped woman started asking questions he couldn’t answer. By Alice’s next birthday he’d have moved on, having found a way to dump her in the meantime. He’d be bringing someone else to that grotty apartment, spinning them the same lies about sick mothers and dead fathers, and love that didn’t exist.

A door opened behind her. She dropped her phone onto her lap and swivelled to face the room as a patient emerged from one of the surgeries and made for her desk.

She greeted him with a voice whose forced jollity made her cringe. She felt as if she’d been picked up and shaken roughly, and set down again any old way. Her hands trembled as she called up his file and tapped her keyboard and handed over the card terminal, fake smile frozen in place. She doubted her legs would work if the need arose.

Dearbhla, assistant to Philip, appeared at the surgery door. ‘Now David,’ she said, and he got to his feet as Dearbhla threw a quick smile in Alice’s direction – and inexplicably seemed to notice nothing amiss.

For the remainder of the afternoon, time played tricks. Minutes became elastic, stretching out endlessly, taunting her with their snail-slow progress. How could a day possibly be this long? She felt numb, and yet also perilously close to tears as her traitorous mind insisted on replaying the short, impossible phone conversation.

Somehow she got through it. Somehow she took calls and made appointments, and spoke with patients and filled forms. All the tasks she’d been carrying out at the clinic for over a decade, the routines she usually didn’t have to think twice about, but which felt today like near-insurmountable challenges.

Each time she opened her mouth, she was afraid her voice would betray her. Every smile felt grotesque, pulling her mouth in a direction it didn’t want to go. A few people looked at her in mild puzzlement – or maybe she imagined it. Nobody commented, nobody remarked on the distraction that she felt must be obvious to them all.

Above all else, she wanted to talk to him. She needed to hear his voice, needed him to reassure her that it had been a joke that had gone wrong, that he was terribly sorry. But she was too afraid to call his phone, in case he wasn’t the one who answered.

Janice. My name is Janice Delaney. I’m married to Chris Delaney. How could it be, how could there be a wife when she, Alice, had imagined herself married to him, had planned their wedding and their honeymoon, had window-shopped for a going-away outfit, for Heaven’s sake? Far too soon to be thinking about marriage, but they got on so well. Right from the start, from the rainy September evening he’d stopped to change her flat tyre, they’d clicked. They’d been so easy together. ‘Driving around with a tyre like that is an arrestable offence,’ he’d said. ‘Lucky I’m a guard – hang on while I get the handcuffs out of the boot.’ The first of many times he’d made her laugh. Finally, she’d thought, he’d shown up. The one she’d been waiting for, the one she’d almost given up on.

Fool. Such a gullible, trusting, stupid fool she’d been. All the lies she’d swallowed without question, all the last-minute phone calls he’d made to cancel a date, blaming work or his mother, when in all likelihood it had been a sick child, or another family issue needing his attention.

The owner of the grotty apartment would surely have known of Alice’s existence, though. She imagined him and Chris sniggering about her, and she felt another stomach lurch.

She wondered how many women his wife had found out about, how many texts she’d intercepted. Shouldn’t a garda be smarter than that? Wouldn’t a man of any intelligence delete all incriminating texts? Unless – horrible thought – he wanted to be caught. Unless that was all part of the game for him. Maybe he got a kick out of the drama, the accusations, the apology, the promise never to do it again.

How could his wife still love him? How could she love someone she couldn’t trust, someone whose phone she had constantly to check, waiting for the next betrayal? Stayed with him because of the children maybe, or out of habit, or fear of being alone.

Or maybe – a fresh, equally unsavoury thought rose up – they had the kind of marriage where affairs were permitted, on both sides. Maybe they each made these phone calls, whenever one of them grew tired of their current dupe. Maybe they laughed together afterwards, replaying the conversations, detailing the innocent party’s shock and confusion. Alice’s head buzzed as she searched for answers only he could give her.

By twenty past four the waiting area had finally emptied out, with just one patient left to emerge. She carried out the usual end of day tasks: tallied the cash takings for Philip to bank on his way home, added the card payments to the relevant file, straightened the chairs and bundled the magazines and leaflets neatly on the low tables. Organised Alice, dependable Alice. Hoodwinked, deceived Alice.

‘Enjoy the weekend with lover boy,’ Dearbhla said, a few minutes later. ‘Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.’

Alice thought of the small packed case that sat waiting at home, the weekend that wasn’t going to happen, lover boy who was no more. She said nothing: no way could she trust herself to go there. ‘Do you have any plans?’

Dearbhla made a face. ‘We haven’t a hope of getting out. Gary’s teething, so I couldn’t inflict him on a babysitter. Three nights of Netflix and popcorn, that’ll be the height of it. Conor’s offered to hold the fort if I want to go out with the girls, but I’d feel mean deserting him.’ She zipped up her jacket. ‘You OK, Alice? You look pale.’

‘I’m fine, just a bit tired. Didn’t sleep so well.’ That much was true, too wound-up about going to Courtown. Too excited about their first break together.

‘Oh dear. Make sure Chris pampers you all weekend.’ And then she was gone, home to spend three nights in with a man who almost certainly didn’t cheat on her, and a son who might be teething but who’d curled tiny fingers around Alice’s thumb only last week. Lucky Dearbhla.

Her laptop shut down, her coat and bag retrieved, her indoor soft-soled shoes exchanged for boots, Alice left the building. A sharp wind snapped at her coat hem: she hurried to her car, fishing out keys. As she got in, her phone rang. Her heart leapt. What if it was Chris? What if it was all some horrible sick joke?

She pulled it from her bag. It wasn’t him. She ignored the swoop of disappointment and pressed the answer key.

‘I’m glad I caught you,’ Kate said. ‘Just wanted to wish you well for the weekend. Are you out of work? You finish early on Friday, don’t you?’

Kate. She couldn’t speak. She was literally struck dumb.

‘Alice? Hello? Can you hear me?’

She thought again of her weekend case, packed with the clichéd lacy underwear and hold-up stockings, and the same blue dress she’d worn to the Greek restaurant, because he liked her in it. Matched her eyes, apparently.

‘Alice? Are you there?’

‘I’ll pick you up at six,’ he’d said, so her plan had been to hurry home and shower, scrub herself from top to toe, dress in specially washed jeans and new top. Make up her face, spray perfume.

‘Alice, I don’t know if you can hear me, but I’m getting nothing, so I’m going to hang up and—’

‘He’s married,’ she said. Blurted it out, just like that. ‘His wife phoned me at work today.’ The words, spoken aloud, turning it into reality. Causing her to squeeze her eyes shut, tighten her grip on the phone.

And Kate, marvellous Kate, didn’t miss a beat.

‘Bastard,’ she said calmly. ‘Come to me for the weekend.’

‘No, I can’t. Thanks, but—’

‘Why can’t you? Don’t think about it, just come.’

She couldn’t. All she wanted to do was go to bed and curl up in a ball, and stay there till Monday morning. The house blessedly empty, the other two gone for a weekend with Emmet’s father. ‘No, Kate.’ She searched for excuses. ‘You’ll be working.’

‘I can get cover. Come on, no point in staying at home and moping. You’ll be better off here.’

And suddenly her defences crumpled. She felt a wave of exhaustion – from shock, she thought. She tipped forward and laid her head wearily on the steering wheel, eyes still closed. ‘I can’t think,’ she said.

‘Where are you now?’

‘Just leaving work.’

‘Go home,’ Kate said. ‘Make yourself a cuppa, or have a lie-down. Let the traffic ease off, leave around six, or half past. You’ll be here in a couple of hours. I’ll have dinner ready.’

It would be better, wouldn’t it, to be with Kate? To be with anyone would be better than staying alone, with nothing to come between her and this horrible new situation.

‘OK,’ she said.

‘Drive carefully,’ Kate ordered. ‘Doesn’t matter if you’re late. Mind yourself, Alice.’

‘Thank you,’ she whispered, and hung up before she could fall to pieces. She drove to Liz and Emmet’s, car radio blaring. She let herself in and stood in the hall, thinking of how happy she’d been as she’d left for work, calling a cheery goodbye to the others, who’d just told her they were pregnant. It felt like a million years ago.

She imagined having to break the news to them – and she’d have to tell them the truth. She couldn’t lie and say he’d simply broken up with her: they’d see through that, or Liz at least would. They’d be shocked and sympathetic – and pitying. Their pity would be unbearable. She thought back to her conversation with Tina earlier, how both of them had assumed that she and Chris would be living together by the time Liz and Emmet’s baby arrived.

Tina. She’d have to tell Tina too, and Dearbhla, and others. She imagined people asking how the weekend had gone. A fresh wave of misery hit her – and then, about to climb the stairs, she stopped, struck by a new thought.

Maybe it wasn’t true. Maybe none of it was true. Why should she believe this woman, this complete stranger? Maybe she wasn’t his wife at all, maybe she was an ex-girlfriend, and jealous of Alice. Maybe she worked with him, and had managed to get hold of his phone, and checked his texts and found Alice’s, just like she’d claimed on the phone, but maybe she wasn’t married to him. Maybe it was all lies.

Alice could ring him now, and ask him outright. She took her phone from her pocket and found his number. Call him, she commanded silently. Ask him. You deserve to know.

But she couldn’t do it. She wasn’t brave enough. What if he really was married, and he admitted it? She didn’t think she could bear that. She’d wait till six, and see if he showed up.

She went upstairs, hope battling with despair. She opened the door of her room and saw her case, sitting by the window where she’d left it. She sank face down onto the bed and lay there, mind in turmoil. What to do, what to do, what to do.

Eventually she forced herself to sit up. She regarded the waiting clothes, folded neatly on her chair. She unzipped her boots and stepped out of them. She shed her work clothes quickly, letting them drop to the floor, her skin tightening as it met the unheated air of the room.

In the bathroom she stood beneath the hot water, shampooing, conditioning and soaping. Don’t think, she ordered. Don’t torture yourself with imaginings. All you have to do is wait.

By ten to six she was ready. Dressed, hair styled, face on, just as she’d planned. She sat huddled in her coat in the darkening sitting room, case at her feet, and watched the street through the half-closed venetian blinds.

Time passed. It occurred to her that he might have called while she was in the shower. She checked her phone and saw no missed call, no voicemail waiting to be heard, no unread text. She heard the chime of bells from the church on a nearby road announcing six o’clock, each peal seeming to mock her. Fool. Fool. Fool.

Five past six. A streetlight on the path outside flickered on. She watched passers-by move into and out of her field of vision. Ten past six. She flexed her calf muscles, pushed off her shoes to massage her feet. Again she found his name in her phone; again she ducked away from calling him. The dark shape of a car slowed outside, quickening her heartbeat, before the sweep of its headlights guided it into the driveway next door.

A quarter past six.

He wasn’t coming.

She stemmed the wave of despair. Get going; don’t think about it. She left the house and pulled the front door shut. She got into her car and turned the radio on again, loud. She drove out of the city, along with everyone else who was escaping for the weekend.

It began to rain as she approached the motorway exit for Naas, the first drops on the windscreen serving to release her tears. For the next ninety minutes the rain fell, as dusk turned to darkness and she cried all the way to Kate’s town.

At last, at last, her motorway exit appeared. She changed lanes and drove up the ramp to the roundabout at the top. Her eyes burnt from crying, and still she couldn’t stop. She dashed at the tears as she exited the roundabout and made for the town, whose streetlights she could see up ahead, putting out their orange rays.

And as she approached them, it happened.

A cyclist appeared suddenly, crossing right in front of her. She slammed on the brakes, heart leaping – and then time stopped, or seemed to stop as the car crawled towards him, second by excruciating second, and her foot pressed the brake to the floor, her whole leg rigid with the effort, but the car kept crawling, crawling, inching forward in slow motion, getting closer and closer to the cyclist, who turned his head slowly, slowly to look at her, and there was nothing at all she could do to avoid the impact, and when it happened she felt a thump, and heard a loud terrifying shout, and at the same instant there was what felt like an explosion as her airbag whooshed out from its compartment and slammed painfully into her chest, punching the breath from her and thrusting her back against the seat, her head slamming into the headrest. And still the car went on moving – how could it still be moving? How was it possible, with her foot pressed so hard to the floor? – and it took what felt like an eternity to come at last to a long, screeching halt, the cyclist left somewhere behind.

The radio blared on. She jabbed, fumbled for the off button, and when she found it the silence was immense. She sat there, rigid with shock. What had just happened? No cars passed, or came towards her. The air seemed hazy, cloudy – smoke? God, was it smoke? She sniffed, and smelt nothing but the rubbery deflating mass of the airbag. Why was there no sound from the cyclist? Had she killed him? She whimpered with fright. She had to move – she had to go back and see.

It took several attempts to release her seatbelt, her fingers clumsy and uncooperative, and to push the soft puddle of airbag out of her way. She wrenched the door open and half fell out, heart pounding, breath coming in short, loud, panicky bursts – and there on the road, fifty feet behind, more, a hundred feet, picking himself up slowly, thank God, thank God, thank God, was the cyclist.

She stumbled, lurched, wobbled her way back to him, barely able to remain upright in her fright. ‘Oh God, oh God,’ she gasped, as she approached, the words difficult to get out, so breathless with panic she felt. ‘Are you alright? Did I hurt you? I’m so sorry—’

He got to his feet, glaring at her. He was taller than her, but then so was everyone. He had a cut on his cheek; the blood that trickled from it looked black in the sodium light. ‘You idiot! You broke the lights!’ he snapped – and only then did she see the traffic lights that she’d driven straight through in her distress.

‘I’m sorry,’ she repeated, fresh tears spurting. ‘I didn’t, I’m so — Are you OK?’

‘Of course I’m bloody not OK! You could have killed me!’ He half hopped, half hobbled across to his bicycle, lying at the far side of the road.

‘Oh, please let – please let me help—’

‘Stay away!’ he commanded. ‘You’ve done enough damage.’ He righted it, groaning with the effort, and she saw that its front wheel had been badly buckled by the impact. He turned to fix her with another fierce stare. ‘Just get lost, would you?’

‘But – you should get to a hospital, I can take you—’

‘I said get lost!’

‘Well, at least let me pay for the—’

‘Jesus!’ he yelled. ‘Do you want me to call the guards and have you arrested for dangerous driving?’

That silenced her. That would be all she’d need to make this the absolute worst day of her life. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she whimpered again, and he made no response to this. She stood where she was and watched as he limped away, keeping his left foot clear of the ground, using his damaged bicycle for support. She wanted to ask his name, get his number so she could sort out whatever damage she’d caused to him and the bike, but she didn’t dare follow him.

She saw him pause, and lean against a garden wall. He must be weakening; he might have internal bleeding. He needed help. She must help him, whether he wanted it or not. As she took an uncertain step in his direction he pulled out a phone, and a few seconds later she heard the murmur of his voice. She held back, unsure of what to do: he hung up and spotted her, and immediately began limping off again.

She looked around to where she’d abandoned her car in the centre of the road, driver’s door open, lights still on. She tottered back to it, feeling fragile as a convalescent, still in danger of imminent collapse. Was she in shock, could she even drive? Would she have to ring for help, like he had?

As she got in and pulled her door closed, another car came towards her, the horn h. . .