The Anniversary

by Roisin Meaney

Genres: General Fiction; Women's Fiction

Synopsis

By the end of the weekend, everything will have changed. But for better or for worse?

After 26 years of marriage Lily and Charlie separate. Lily is moving on with her new fiancé, Joe, and Charlie with his new, younger girlfriend, Chloe. Even Lily and Charlie's grown-up children, Polly and Thomas, have come to terms with their parents' new lives.

But when Lily's mother dies, Lily and Charlie decide to get the family together for one last weekend in the old family summer home—a weekend that just happens to be their 30th wedding anniversary.

As the whole family gathers with their respective partners, home truths come out, and secrets are divulged. By the end of the weekend, everything will have changed—but for better or for worse?

Release date: June 28, 2018

Publisher: Hachette Ireland

Print pages: 384

Sample

WHEN THE TELEPHONE RINGS SHE’S READING, OR trying to. Her eyes slither across the page, gathering up the words but not taking in the sense of them. She’s doing her best to concentrate, but the department circular is as tedious and long-winded as official documents tend to be – is there a competition to see which of them can bore the fastest? – and her head anyway is in Land’s End, where the rest of her will be in two days.

And then the telephone rings, its electronic burr jumping suddenly into her office, causing the document in her hand to give a little answering jump. She lifts the receiver, throwing a glance towards the window that looks out on the schoolyard and the back gate. A room with a view it is not – or rather, the view isn’t exactly edifying.

‘Yes.’

‘It’s Enid,’ her secretary says. ‘She wants to talk to you. She’s insisting.’

Enid, for crying out loud. Her third call this week – or is it her fourth? Has the woman nothing better to do?

‘Tell her I’m in the middle of something. Say I’ll call her back tomorrow.’

‘She says it’s very important.’

Lily sighs. It’s always very important with Enid. ‘Take a message, Norah. Say I’ve just gone out.’

‘I’ve already told her you’re here, I’m afraid.’

And there it is again, the polite obstinacy, the almost-defiance that Norah usually manages to insert into every one of their exchanges, however brief. Norah hadn’t appreciated having her inefficient filing system changed when Lily came to power seven years earlier: her manner since then has veered dangerously close to insolent. One of the days she’ll cross the line, and Lily will seize her moment and send her packing, union or no union.

‘Right. Put her through – but please hold any other calls until the afternoon. Say I’m in a meeting and can’t be disturbed. No exceptions.’

There’s a small click and Enid is on, breathing noisily into Lily’s left ear. Big-chested, multi-chinned Enid, the current chairperson of the PTA. A mole to the left of her lower lip spouts a trio of long dark hairs that Lily’s repulsed gaze is drawn to each time they meet. You’d think she’d bleach them at least, if she can’t bring herself to yank them out.

Lily lets her wait, her eyes still on the yard, clocking the latecomers, the usual suspects who scurry in every morning. There go the two O’Neills, couldn’t be on time if they tried – not that they try very hard. And here comes poor old Babs Harty, the last in a long line of Hartys, looking as patched-together as the siblings that preceded her. A miracle she makes it to school at all, given the chaotic home situation. Those seven unfortunates should have been taken into care years ago, with a mother who drinks like a fish and curses like a sailor, and a father in jail more often than he’s out.

And now Ivy Lyons is pulling up to the gate in her BMW, right on schedule at ten past starting time, looking brazenly across the yard to the office window as she drops off her two darlings. Lady captain in the golf club, her husband Victor’s restaurant the only Michelin-starred place for miles around. The Ivys and Victors of the world make their own rules; a wasted exercise trying to challenge them, so Lily doesn’t bother.

She swivels her chair from the window, regards instead the framed photo of Poll and Thomas on her desk. ‘Enid – what can I do for you?’

‘Oh, good morning, Mrs Murphy.’

Mrs, never Ms, despite it being employed on every written communication from Lily, despite Ms L. Murphy, Principal clearly displayed on Lily’s office door. Women like Enid have no time for Ms.

‘I’m sorry to bother you again’ – she isn’t: she loves bothering people, she lives for it – ‘but I’m afraid there have been one or two complaints regarding the play the fifth years were taken to see last week.’ Mannish voice thick with importance, stuffed full of it. Lily imagines the mole hairs bobbing along as she speaks. ‘I felt I should pass them on to you, Mrs Murphy.’

You bet she did. The woman thrives on a bit of controversy. ‘What exactly is the problem, Enid?’ As if Lily doesn’t know exactly what the problem is.

‘I understand there were some – profanities.’

Ah, profanities. The terrible F-word, the same F-word Lily overhears in the school corridors multiple times every day. Throw it around like confetti, some of them. She turns a deaf ear, or she’d be forever pulling them up.

‘I’m afraid, Enid, I have no control over that. As you know’ – she probably doesn’t, her darling Conrad not yet in fifth year – ‘the play is on the Leaving Cert programme, and as such can hardly be avoided. I can only suggest that the parents take the matter up with the Department of Education and Skills. I can give you contact details if you want them.’

Silence. Not the correct answer. Lily tilts the photo a fraction to the right, noting how happy her children look in it. Poll is about three years old then, which would make Thomas five or six. The two of them on the beach at Land’s End, wrapped in Kitty’s towels. Wet hair, wide, wide smiles. Poll’s adorable little teeth, her freckly face that American guests at the B&B always went mad for.

‘I’ll pass that information along then,’ Enid says eventually, managing to drench the words in resentment, and off she goes to be important somewhere else. Roll on the AGM in September: with any luck someone new will step up for chairperson and push her off her perch.

For the rest of the morning Lily deals with letters and emails, and returns missed phone calls, and ploughs through the various circulars in her in-tray. When the bell rings for lunch she makes her way to the staffroom, conscious, as she pushes open the door, of the usual tiny adjustment among those already assembled. After seven years at the top she’s well accustomed to the shift of gear her promotion caused. She’s not one of them any more, and they’re not about to let her forget it.

She’s at a loss to understand it. She doesn’t throw her weight around, she’s fair in her dealings with them, she backs them up when there are problems with parents – even if she privately sides with the parents – but in spite of all this she’s acutely aware that she’s not popular. Respected, yes. Liked, not so much. The fact that she’s the most efficient principal the school has had in a long time doesn’t seem to matter.

She tells herself it’s for the best. She’s their boss, not their friend: trying to be both would never work. And she has plenty of friends outside school.

‘Lily – coffee?’

She sees Yvette by the sink. Her deputy, and the closest thing she has to an ally here. ‘Yes please.’

She takes a seat and peels the lid from her yogurt tub, recalling the murmurings among the staff when she and Charlie had broken up. Nothing said to her face – well, she’d never made a formal announcement, knowing they’d hear about it soon enough, and they had. She could tell in the more considered way they looked at her, in the low-voice conversations that tapered off whenever she appeared.

And when Chloë entered the equation, they heard that too. The news didn’t take long to spread, some no doubt delighted to be passing it on. Lily ignored the pitying glances, pretended she didn’t hear the occasional sniggers. She told herself it was the price she paid for having climbed to the top of her profession, for getting the more generous payslip each fortnight.

‘Phew.’ Yvette deposits two mugs on the table and lowers herself slowly into the chair beside Lily. ‘Remind me how many more decades to the weekend.’

‘That tough?’

The younger woman gives a smile that’s more of a grimace. ‘Counting the hours at this stage, if I’m honest.’

Eight months pregnant with her fourth child, going out on maternity leave in nine days. Her husband Eddie is a painter and decorator, in theory if not exactly in practice. Not a great name as a worker, and Lily has overheard staffroom whispers of him enjoying the drink a bit too much. She pays no heed to the whispers, never has.

‘You all set for the weekend?’ Yvette asks.

‘As set as I’ll ever be. I’m thinking of heading off a bit early on Friday, maybe around two – will you hold the fort?’

‘I will, of course.’

She’s blessed with Yvette, reliable and conscientious – but when she goes out Lily will be left with Marian, next in line and the obvious choice to step up. The only problem with this is that Marian and work have never been properly acquainted. Marian is the last to arrive each morning – Traffic was dreadful again! – and the first to vacate the car park after school, and Lily has been forced on more than one occasion to talk to her about parental complaints of uncorrected homework and erratic testing. Roll on Yvette’s return, sadly not till January.

After lunch she meets with a couple whose son isn’t doing as well as they’d hoped, and tries, without being too blunt, to make the point that it might have something to do with the fact that he’s not as intelligent as they’d hoped. The mother becomes tight-lipped, the father huffs and puffs. None so blind as devoted parents with big ambitions for their rather dull offspring.

When she finally gets rid of them, fifteen minutes before the end of the school day, she checks her silenced mobile and sees a missed call from Agneta, who’s left a voicemail. Of course she has.

Lil, I’ve found the most adorable florist – you’ll have to meet her. She does amazing bouquets. Call me.

The trouble is, Lily couldn’t give a damn about bouquets, amazing or otherwise. The difficulty here is that she wants a quiet wedding – her second, in her fifties: who makes a fuss about that? – whereas Agneta wants precisely the opposite. Lily is sorry she ever told her she was getting married again – but of course she had to be told, because Agneta will be the only non-family member there on the day. If she’d only stop trying to turn it into something Lily doesn’t want it to be.

She’ll return the call tonight, and she’ll be persuaded to go and meet the adorable florist, and no doubt she’ll end up ordering a horrendously expensive bouquet that’ll be in the bin a few hours after she marries Joe – unless Agneta whisks it off to be frozen or dried or something. Yes, she can see that happening. How on earth did they ever become friends, let alone the very best of friends?

She tidies her desk and checks the time. Eight minutes before she needs to take up her position by the back door to monitor the going-home behaviour. Usually Yvette’s job but Lily took over a couple of weeks ago, when standing for any length of time became an issue for her deputy. She sits back and closes her eyes and returns to the weekend ahead of her, and travels in her mind’s eye to Land’s End.

Six of them, two couples and two singles, to be divided between the five bedrooms. Thomas is easy: he’ll take the small back twin. Charlie, she knows, will be hoping for the green room with its sea view, the one that was Lily’s growing up, the one he and Lily were allotted after the children outgrew the summer holidays at Land’s End, and Kitty reclaimed her family bedroom at the top of the stairs. The green room is pretty, the second best in the house. He’ll want it, but he’s not getting it.

She’ll put him in the back double beside Thomas, nice quiet corner room with two windows, and let Poll and Aidan have the green room. If he complains she’ll say she thought Aidan should have the sea view for his first stay at Land’s End: nothing he can object to there.

Which leaves her and Joe in the main bedroom.

Of course it does. Where else would they go?

It’s just.

Stop. Don’t be ridiculous. It’s a bedroom, that’s all. It’s a bed and a wardrobe and a chest of drawers and a wingback chair, all of which have seen better days, and a bedside rug that came from America nearly fifty years ago, and a beautiful bay window that looks out on the Atlantic.

It’s the room her grandparents slept in, and after them her parents. And now it’s Lily’s turn, and Joe’s. His first time to stay overnight at Land’s End – and if her plans for the place work out, probably his last.

Her plans for the place – as if she was embarking on a big project, when nothing could be further from the truth. Her decision hasn’t been arrived at lightly: plenty of soul searching and sleepless nights went into it. What she’s planning will be no cause for celebration – on the contrary, she expects her news to be received with some dismay – but it does seem the only logical way forward.

She feels a tiny bit guilty, keeping Joe in the dark along with the others. They’re getting married in a matter of months, pledging to spend the rest of their lives together. They’re already sharing her house in the city – he moved in last December – so it’s hardly fair not to let him in on this now. Then again, he has no ties to Land’s End, no sentimental attachment at all to it. No, best to wait, and tell them all together. At dinner on Saturday maybe, when everyone’s finally landed. Yes, that should work.

In the meantime, there’s the main bedroom. There’s her mental block with the main bedroom.

In twenty-six years of marriage, she and Charlie never slept there. With her mother still in residence, it simply wasn’t an option – and by the time it became necessary to move her out, Lily and Charlie were well separated.

And now Mam is dead, gone from them six weeks ago, slipping away as they sat around her nursing home bed with its awful shiny blue coverlet. And even though it’s been two years since she occupied the bedroom at Land’s End, it will still feel like hers. It will still smell like hers. Everything in it will be a reminder of her.

Nonsense. It’s just a room. Get over it.

At least Chloë isn’t coming. Be grateful for small mercies. Although as mercies go, Chloë’s absence from the weekend gathering is a pretty humungous one.

She opens her eyes and checks the time. She tidies her desk and leaves the office and makes her way to the back door.



SHE MOULDS A NOSE, EASING IT OUT CAREFULLY FROM the globe of the face, forming its curves and dips and little whorls. The clay is cool and wonderfully smooth. She inhales its wet, slightly metallic scent, feels it at the back of her throat, can almost taste it. A smell she’s grown to love, a smell that never fails to lift her to a more contented place.

Not her favourite smell of all though. That has to be the sharp, almost antiseptic perfume of the sea that tumbles onto the pebble beach not a hundred yards from the front gate of Land’s End, and the seaweed that washes up with it. The scent that inhabits the house too, lodging in every nook and cranny, so even lying in bed there she feels like she’s floating on water.

Two years, more than two, since she set foot in the place, but not a single day has gone by since then when it hasn’t wandered into her thoughts. She can still call it perfectly to mind when she closes her eyes, the big sprawling blue house by the sea. She can walk through it in her head, identifying every bump in the wall, every threadbare bit of carpet, every creaking floorboard – and now she craves to see it again in reality.

And she will see it again, the day after tomorrow. The thought prompts a great joyous leap in her chest. She’s going back and she can’t wait, even while the prospect of the visit has her completely torn, even if it will also be drenched in sadness. Land’s End without Gran in it, without even the possibility of ever seeing Gran in it again, isn’t something she can dwell on for long, but still she wants to go. Now, more than ever, she wants to walk through the rooms and remember all the good times.

‘Tea?’

She turns. Emma is at the sink, filling the kettle. ‘Go on.’

‘Lemon and ginger?’

‘Vanilla chai. Thanks.’

She dips her fingers into the bucket of water that sits at her feet. She rubs her palms together and turns her attention to the mouth. Today she’s working on Felicity, a sixty-four-year-old matron in a busy maternity hospital who dreams of riding a camel across the Gobi desert. Felicity can be sharp-tongued, particularly with the younger nurses, but she’ll stay past clocking-off time, long past, if anyone needs her.

When she was fifteen, Felicity fell in love with her Spanish teacher, who didn’t reciprocate. She never found anyone else, unless you count Gregory. On her days off, Felicity dresses up and goes dancing in the afternoons with Gregory, who paved her driveway one sunny long-ago summer, and who’s been trying to get her to marry him for the last twenty years.

Poll names every head, gives each of them a story. It makes them feel real to her as she forms their features, as she carves out ear lobes and decides on eyebrows and noses and cheekbones. The only problem with creating lives for them is that she misses them when they’re complete, when she has to let them go and move on to the next.

Sometimes she finds herself thinking about them, wondering if they’ve ended up in good homes. Where is Belinda, the twelve-year-old asthmatic prodigy who speaks five languages and who’s already read Anna Karenina in the original Russian? It wouldn’t be everyone who could handle Belinda. And what about Thaddeus, at a hundred and thirteen the oldest man in Ireland, still swimming in the sea every day? Poor Thaddeus wouldn’t be happy in the middle of a city, not at all.

They all take time, and lots of patience. This is her fifth attempt at Felicity. It’s not always easy, getting the features to match the image in her head, the image that she can see so clearly in her mind’s eye – but once she gets there, it’s worth all the false starts. Once she gets there, they can almost talk to her. They can almost breathe.

The tea is made. She cradles her mug, inhaling cinnamon. ‘Did I mention how much I can’t wait for the weekend?’

‘Once or twice.’ Emma tucks dark brown hair behind an ear, leaving a turquoise streak on the lobe. ‘Two sleeps to go. Family group though – you sure you can handle it?’

‘I can handle it. We all get on fine.’ More or less. More with Mum, less with Dad. Fine with Thomas.

‘Remind me, has Aidan ever seen the house?’

The mention of his name brings a glad skip of her heart. ‘No, this’ll be his first time.’ And maybe his last: the notion courses through her, like a shard of ice.

‘It’s by the sea, isn’t it?’

‘That’s right. About half an hour west of Galway.’

‘Nice. Bit chilly yet for a swim though.’

‘I’ll pack the togs, just in case.’ Of course she’ll swim. You can’t go to Land’s End and not swim. ‘Your ear is blue, by the way.’

Emma blows on her tea. ‘Duly noted, thanks.’

Her ears – and other exposed parts – are generally quite colourful by the time she finishes her day. Emma turns photos of people’s houses, or their gardens, or their children, or their pets, into beautiful watercolour images. She has a waiting list, but takes her time with each commission. She can afford to: her husband, Tom, runs his own successful courier company. For the long weekend they’re flying to New York and staying in an apartment overlooking Central Park, and turning the weekend into a week.

The studio belongs to Emma. She and Poll met in hospital five years earlier, when Emma underwent an emergency appendicectomy on the same day that Poll had her tonsils out. After their respective surgeries they ended up in neighbouring beds – and when Poll mentioned, somewhere along the way, that she’d recently graduated from art college and was looking for studio space, Emma offered to share.

I don’t need rent, she said, but someone to chat to over a cuppa when I take a break would be nice. The rest of the time I have to have complete silence. No talk, no music, no radio. You OK with that?

Poll was OK with that, more than OK. She couldn’t imagine conversing with anyone while she created her heads – it would be like inviting someone she hardly knew into the bathroom to watch her brush her teeth.

The arrangement suits them both perfectly. They work in the same space five days a week – and if asked, Poll would say they’re friends, but neither of them has ever suggested going for a drink after they finish up, and no cards or gifts are exchanged at Christmas or for birthdays. Their relationship is primarily a business one, with two ten-minute chats thrown in each day, during which time details of their respective lives trickle out. It works for both.

They finish the tea and resume their silent labours. Poll works on Felicity’s smile, pokes a dimple into a cheek, tweaks the eyes to give them a more melancholic quality. Maybe the matron is thinking of all the babies she’s delivered down the years, or the ones she never had herself. Maybe she’s pondering Gregory’s latest gift, a diamanté brooch in the shape of a teddy bear that she’ll definitely only be wearing on their dancing afternoons. Generous, clueless Gregory: if he’d only stop trying so hard she might say yes. He doesn’t need to set her world on fire; she gave up hoping for that a long time ago.

This Felicity is working. This Felicity might be the one.

Pottery is Poll’s salvation. Working with clay keeps her demons at a safe distance; at work she can believe herself happy. She is happy, or as happy as she can ever be.

Aidan makes her happy too, of course – or he used to, until the demons got wind of it and decided that enough was enough. She’s fighting them like she always fights them, but she’s never beaten them yet, and she isn’t hopeful now.

As she refines Felicity’s chin she scrolls back in her head and calls up her first encounter with Aidan. She can remember every word of their conversation. She was two years out of college, sharing a house with a couple of friends, and working three evenings a week and every weekend in the bar of a small hotel owned by acquaintances of her parents. The work was easy enough and the wages covered her bills, her clay and other knick-knacks required for the heads, but with weekdays spent in Emma’s studio she was left with precious little free time.

She was also running out of space to store her heads. She made every effort to find customers for them. She took photos and posted them on social media, and asked everyone to share. She gave sample heads to friends, who promised to display them in their workplaces. She took a stall at any craft event that came up. She did what she could to spread the word, but sales remained sporadic, and brought in a pittance.

Whenever one of her parents – usually Mum – asked about finding an official outlet for her work, Poll would say she was still building up a collection, when in reality her collection was well and truly built.

You’ll have to find a gallery to take them, Emma told her. You’re a hopeless businesswoman – you should be asking three times the price.

What? But I can hardly sell them as it is.

That’s because the right people aren’t seeing them. You should call to that gallery on Portland Avenue – Tom and I have got some lovely stuff there.

Poll cringed at the thought of visiting a gallery, any gallery, but particularly the one on Portland Avenue. She admired it as she passed on her way to the studio each day. It looked classy and terribly expensive, with its pale grey façade and burgundy door, and its pieces of pottery and jewellery beautifully presented on glass shelving inside the window. She’d never ventured in. She’d have liked a browse, but she felt intimidated by its polished appearance.

I don’t think my stuff would fit in there, she said. It’s not posh enough.

Rubbish. No such thing as posh art: it’s all in the eye of the beholder. Your heads are delightful – lots of people would adore them. Come on, you have nothing to lose by trying, and the owner’s friendly. Imagine if you could earn enough from sales of your heads – you could give up the bar work and have a bit of a life outside here.

Making a living from her art: it was the dream, wasn’t it? It was so wonderful it almost scared her. Wasn’t it worth putting herself through a bit of mortification to pull her dream a little closer?

She deliberately made no contact with the gallery owner in advance of her visit. Just turn up, Emma advised. Easy to put you off in an email if he’s busy. He’ll be curious to see what you have to offer if you call there in person.

She decided to bring along three of her favourite pieces. She had it all worked out, her script prepared in her head – and on the day, nothing went to plan.

As she approached the gallery, an emerging man pushed the door open with some force. Poll stepped back hastily to avoid a collision but the edge of the door struck the cardboard box she was carrying, knocking it out of her grasp, and her precious pieces – Hattie and Gordon and Chester, the three she was most proud of – were smashed to smithereens.

She subsequently disgraced herself by weeping without restraint in the middle of a rather chilly afternoon until the owner emerged with a paper cup of water and ushered her inside, waving off the still-apologising man who’d caused the catastrophe.

When she’d recovered her senses somewhat she saw a wide mouth, dark-rimmed glasses, a flop of sandy hair. He gave a tilt of his head towards the box, which she still clutched. I’m guessing the contents were breakable.

She nodded, not yet trusting herself to speak, blotting at her face with her sleeve. She could hardly look at him. Talk about making a fool of herself before they’d even met properly.

So what was it?

Pottery. I – make heads. From clay. God, even that sounded ridiculous. Her script had fled from her mind the minute the box crashed to the ground.

Clay heads, he repeated. Human heads?

Yes, but smaller. Caricatures, really.

Are they mounted?

Yes – at least, they have a wooden base, but they’re on springs. They sort of – bob.

Bobbing heads. For the first time, he smiled, a sudden beam that softened his entire face. He no longer looked stern, he looked … lovely.

It gave her courage. It makes them seem more alive. When they can move, I mean.

I’m sure it does. Do you have any pictures on your phone?

Yes, she had plenty – but when she searched for her phone, it was to discover, to her horror, that she’d left it behind at the studio. Talk about seeming even more amateurish.

Still he didn’t look put out. I assume you have others though.

She took him in properly for the first time. Greenish eyes, or between brown and green. Copper might be a better description, or bronze. The glasses looked expensive. All of him looked expensive.

And then, inevitably, the demons kicked in. Look around, they said. Couldn’t she see his gallery was far too classy for her clownish heads? He must be accosted every other day by idiots like her, hoping to impress him with their pathetic endeavours. Get out, they urged her, before she completely humiliated herself.

He was waiting. She had to say something.

I’m sorry – I think I might have … got it wrong. Suddenly she wanted to get away, bury this awful episode and forget about it forever. The bar work wasn’t that bad. Only a handful of artists made a living from their art – how conceited to imagine she might be one of them.

Why don’t you let me be the judge of that? he asked. Can you call by tomorrow with some more?

He still wanted to see them. He wanted her to come back. The demons were momentarily silenced.

Yes, she said, trying not to let an idiot grin erupt on her face. Cordelia, she was thinking. And Jason, and maybe Heather. When – what time would suit?

Around now would be fine.

Thank you, she said. For your help, I mean.

No trouble.

And for agreeing to – look at my work.

It’s what I do, he said. Another smile. He had a really good smile.

He hadn’t asked her name. She didn’t know his. I’m Poll Cunningham, she said, putting out a hand.

His grip was f. . .