The Birthday Weekend

by Zoe Miller

Genres: Romantic Suspense; Suspense

Synopsis

What happened on vacation was supposed to stay on vacation - but that was before a body was found . . .

Socialite Lucinda Oliver planned a lavish celebration for her fortieth birthday - a weekend escape at a coastal town with her sister Stella and her closest friends. The weekend was to end with a blow-out party and a special announcement, one Lucinda had been dropping hints about for weeks.

But before Lucinda could reveal her secret, she went missing. And now, six months later, her car has been found submerged in the Atlantic Ocean.

Devastated, Stella decides to gather Lucinda's friends once more, in that same coastal town - the first time they've all been together since her disappearance. Haunted by the argument she had with her sister the last time they saw each other, Stella is reluctant to revisit her memories. But then she begins to suspect that one of the group knows the truth about Lucinda's accident.

Which one of them is lying? Stella vows to find out, discovering that what happened to her sister links back to another birthday celebration, ten years ago...

Release date: March 7, 2024

Publisher: Hachette Books Ireland

Print pages: 416

Sample

The images are stalking her again, shredding her heart. Lucinda’s car disappearing over the edge of Wolf Head on a stifling summer’s evening, taking her with it. Her sister, trapped for ever in the coffin of her scarlet Mini Cooper, shrouded for eternity in her floaty yellow dress. The car hitting the water with force, and spinning around helplessly under shifting fathoms of steel-grey Atlantic waters, at the mercy of the deep ocean tides. Wolf Cove, The Lookout, Lucinda’s birthday weekend, that last argument with her …

They speed in front of her vision like a disjointed video clip on fast forward, recklessly accelerating until it suddenly snaps.

Stella blinks. It takes her a moment to realise she’s at home in her apartment in Portobello. The pages of a budgetary forecast she’s been trying to study have slipped from her hand and are drifting down to the oak floor. She sits for a moment, breathing slowly.

It’s painful to breathe. Painful to move around in a world without her sister. And six months after Lucinda’s accident, nightmare images are tumbling in more frequently. She scoops up the report and goes over to the kitchen to get some wine. She’s lifting a glass out of the press when her intercom chimes.

‘Who’s there?’ she asks bluntly, unable to summon necessary politeness. She’d cast off her work clothes and pulled on a tracksuit as soon as she came home from the Women’s Rescue office on Percy Place, glad to be discarding the brisk, efficient and relentlessly exhausting façade she’d hidden behind all day. She hasn’t the energy for anyone right now.

‘Stella?’

She freezes. She knows that voice. ‘What is it?’ she asks, hoping it’s merely a form she hasn’t filled in properly.

A mountain of red tape had accompanied Lucinda’s accident. Bureaucratic officialdom and functionary forms holding boxes to fill and tick: a cold, clinical, crappy summary of her sister’s life, a million miles away from the warm, rich, mercurial extravaganza of contradictions that once embodied the living and breathing Lucinda.

‘Sorry for disturbing you but I need to talk to you,’ he says.

She stays silent. She has nothing to say to this man. She can’t bear to feel exposed to him again.

‘It’s urgent,’ he says.

Her throat constricts. ‘Come up,’ she manages to say, pressing the entry button. She goes out into her hallway and leaves the door to her apartment ajar. No doubt he remembers to take the lift up to the third floor and that her penthouse apartment is the door on the right.

She wonders what else he remembers.

She goes back into the living room. Against the picture window, the softly lit room is reflected against the dark January night. She stands in the middle of it, like a bereft and broken survivor struggling to remain upright. She straightens her spine and wraps her arms around herself as a sort of shield against whatever is ‘urgent’. From behind her, she hears the soft click of her door closing, the tread of his feet down the hallway and into the living room. A pause. The hairs on the back of her neck rise. She turns slowly to face him. Chief Superintendent Hugh Connell of An Garda Síochána, attached to Kevin Street Divisional Headquarters in the south inner city, is clad in a bulky navy jacket, his hair speckled with beads of mist, and he carries in the scent of damp January air along with his authority.

While the investigation of Lucinda’s accident was coordinated from the office in Kenmare, Hugh is her liaison in Dublin. He phoned her regularly during those early weeks, checking in with her to see if she’d like any further support, then finding gentle ways to tell her that the investigation had stalled. She’d always found him to be kind, polite and considerate within the boundaries of officialdom. Until the night three weeks ago when he’d found her on Portobello Bridge, staring blankly down into the canal and he’d brought her home and stayed the night. They’d both agreed the following morning that it had been a big mistake.

‘Sorry to intrude,’ he says.

Even in the muted light, she sees the compassion in his eyes. Her scalp tightens.

‘Maybe you’d best sit down,’ he says.

‘No,’ she says, the empathy in his voice causing a spike of fear to shoot up inside her. Loss and fear go hand in hand, she’s found out, nipping in unison at your heart. ‘What’s happened?’

‘They’ve found something,’ he says. ‘In the sea off Wolf Head. It appears to be Lucinda’s car.’

The inside of her head bursts into a long, silent scream. She’s aware that she’s about to slump, like a marionette whose strings have been cut. Hugh must have been expecting it, must have delivered plenty of alarming news in his time, because he catches her before she falls.

She sits on the sofa, her shaking legs hidden by a crimson throw. He hands her a glass of brandy, the mellow aroma drifting up to her nostrils.

‘Medicinal,’ he says. He knew where to find it. He’d brought it up from his car that fateful night, intending to drink it at home, alone, he’d said, because it was the anniversary of his wife’s death from a brain tumour. Instead they’d shared most of it, as well as their darkest thoughts and deepest fears, before falling into bed and finding solace in each other’s bodies. Before he’d left the following morning, he’d shoved the bottle into the back of the kitchen press, apologising for crossing his professional and ethical boundaries.

She hasn’t touched it since.

He sits down at her table, his bulky winter jacket slung over the back of a chair. Hugh is forty-ish, of medium height and stocky, but his sense of self and his quietly confident bearing make him appear strong, invincible. His straight dark hair sticks up in clumps, like an upturned brush. ‘Can I call a friend for you?’ he asks.

She senses his unspoken words – I don’t want to find you on a bridge again staring down into the water. She meets his gaze, forcing on the armour she’s acquired to face the world. ‘No, thanks. Just tell me what’s happened.’

He sighs and rubs his face. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says, ‘I know this is upsetting. Earlier today a car was spotted below the surface of the sea off Wolf Head by local fishermen, Eoin Fitzmaurice and his son, Tadhg.’

She takes a large gulp of brandy, relieved that it is already taking a tiny edge off her panic. ‘Go on.’

‘They were up on the head with a new drone when they saw something in the water, less than half a mile out. Eoin zoned in and realised he was looking at the underneath of a car a few metres deep. He zoned in further again at a different angle, and when the sea had calmed, he was able to make out a red car with a side stripe.’

A crump in her chest. The sense of something extinguishing inside her – the tiny flame of hope that a mistake of some kind had been made.

Hugh is talking: ‘Current forecasts indicate that wind speeds are increasing over the next twenty-four hours and the sea will be too rough to attempt any kind of safe rescue, given the location of the car so close to submerged rocks.’

She gasps at the image of Lucinda’s car being hurled against the rocks.

‘Sorry,’ Hugh says. ‘Not something I haven’t imagined a million times. What happens next?’

He gives her a look filled with concern before continuing. ‘Garda divers are preparing to go down to Kerry and liaise with our colleagues, the Navy and the Coast Guard so that they can prepare for a multi-agency recovery mission as soon as conditions are favourable. That’s likely to be Saturday. We’re not yet releasing any specific information about the car but people, including the media, are bound to make the connection. Stella,’ he pauses, ‘I know this will be a traumatic time and you have my deepest condolences.’

‘Thank you.’ She puts down her glass on the low table and drops her face into her hands. Her skull feels like it’s fracturing into a million pieces. When she eventually looks up, Hugh is regarding her with empathy in his eyes, but he has made no move towards her, conscious, she guesses, of what happened the last time he comforted her.

‘How come the car wasn’t spotted before now?’ she asks, her voice flat.

‘From what I know, the local fishermen have always kept an eye out. They’re speculating that the car had been further out to sea in deeper waters. Then, over the months, it was shunted in by the shifting tides, but it was a combination of factors this afternoon. It was sunny in Kerry today, the sea was clear, and whatever way the current was running and dragging the water …’ He hesitates, wary, she guesses, of the picture his words are painting. ‘It was unfortunate they were prevented from doing a full search at the time of the accident.’

She nods. A freak storm had surged in from the Atlantic that nightmare Saturday evening and settled in for a few days, making it too dangerous to undertake any rescue or recovery attempt in the seas around Wolf Head. It was almost a week after the accident by the time it was safe enough for the Coast Guard to search, and by then there had been no sign of the car. Or of Lucinda.

‘The Kerry division won’t release anything official until I confirm next of kin have been informed,’ Hugh says. ‘But something might leak out onto social media, I guess the division won’t be able to contain it beyond tomorrow morning. Is there anyone you need to contact now or would like me to talk to?’

‘No, thanks,’ she says. Her parents are dead. There are relatives in England on her father’s side, and a few far-flung cousins on her mother’s, but nobody close enough to need advance notification, except Britt. ‘I’ll talk to Britt, my mother’s cousin, although chances are, she already knows. She lives in Kerry, about twenty kilometres up the coast from Wolf Head. And Lucinda’s friends who were at the party that weekend – I’ll let them know.’

Hugh outlines the steps that will be involved in recovering the car.

‘I’m going down,’ she says. ‘I want to be there when Lucinda’s body is recovered.’

‘I can arrange transport for you.’

‘No, thanks. I’ll be fine.’ She looks at him defiantly, challenging him to suggest she’s in no fit state to undertake the almost five-hour drive from Dublin to Wolf Cove.

‘I’m sure you will,’ he says. ‘But don’t try to be too much of a hero. Even our caped crusaders need a helping hand now and again.’

Their gazes meet. She remembers the feel of his hot skin against hers and looks away. She recalls the trail of their hastily discarded clothes running from the living room through to her bedroom. She thinks of the following morning, when he brought her coffee, and she had her duvet clutched up to her chin to cover her nakedness – hilarious in itself, given that he’d pretty much seen everything the night before.

A big mistake.

The mind loves playing tricks on us, she decides, if she can remember such contrary moments in the middle of the black news she’s trying to absorb. Wanting him gone, she puts down her glass, shrugs away the throw and gets to her feet. ‘Thanks for your help, but I won’t hold you up any longer. I’ve calls to make.’

Hugh stands up and puts on his jacket, looking official all of a sudden. ‘Text me when that’s done so I know everything is covered before the news is released.’

‘I will.’

He hesitates at the door. ‘Are you sure you’re okay?’

‘I’m perfectly fine.’ He seems at such a loss that she tacks on another fib for good measure. ‘Honestly.’

‘Let me know when you reach Kerry and where you’re staying. I’ll advise the team down there and have them liaise with you.’

In the stillness after he’s gone, a sudden, visceral hunger for Lucinda swamps her, a craving to touch her skin and hug her, talk to her. She feels dizzy and untethered.

All along, Stella had clung to a faint hope that Lucinda’s car hadn’t gone over the edge after all, taking her with it. That the sighting had been a mistake. She’d staved off the worst of her bleak moments by imagining her sister out there in the world somewhere, getting her act together. Maybe on a retreat in a Tibetan monastery, or learning hula dancing on a Hawaiian island. Now that there’s no hope Lucinda might be kicking her heels up in some far-flung, exotic part of the world, Stella is gripped by an urgent need to find out exactly what happened to cause Lucinda to drive off Wolf Head on a Saturday night.

She recalls the conversation she’d had with her sister two weeks before the party weekend.

‘I went off the rails big-time. But I’m finally getting my life back on track.’

‘What happened, Lucinda?’ she’d asked anxiously.

Her quirky smile. ‘Oh, you know me, Stella darling. The black sheep of the family, living a madcap life while my wonderful sister puts the country to rights. I don’t deserve you, but I’m happy now that my past sins won’t catch up with me, and I’m getting my act together.’

She can’t help thinking about Lucinda’s comment – past sins. Stella hadn’t followed this up at the time, too caught up in her own problems, finding it convenient to go with the flow of Lucinda’s carefree air. After the heartbreak of her sister’s accident, she’d filtered those words out, too frozen with pain to go there.

Or, her deepest fear, could the accident have had anything to do with the argument they’d had that morning, the spiteful words Stella had hurled at Lucinda? Had Lucinda been more upset than she’d realised when Stella had threatened to cut short her weekend and go home to Dublin? Could it have made her too preoccupied to focus properly on the thin ribbon of road at the summit of Wolf Head? What if Stella’s harsh words had driven Lucinda off the edge?

Or did Lucinda’s friends know more than they were saying?

Caz, Maisie, Eddie, Janet and Aaron, Lucinda’s closest mates. They had all been friends for years, some since school, others since college. Five years younger, Stella had felt a little apart from them and their love for high-octane partying. They’d always celebrated their various milestone occasions, including a week in Santorini around the time of their thirtieth birthdays. Stella had been invited on the trip, but had had to turn it down on account of a month-long residency at Boston College as part of her MPhil in Gender and Women’s Studies.

Then early last July, Lucinda had asked Stella if she’d like to come to the party weekend in Wolf Cove. Caz, Eddie and Janet had turned forty in the previous few months, Lucinda would be forty at the end of July. They hadn’t all been together like that since the crazy week in Santorini, she’d said, and they were going to have a blast, all of them chipping in for the expense. Eddie’s girlfriend Sasha was also coming, she’d said. The plan was that the weekend would culminate in a mega joint fortieth birthday gala celebration on the Saturday night, the eve of Lucinda’s birthday, at which, she’d said, she had a special announcement to make.

It had never happened.

The days in The Lookout that surrounded the accident are still blurry in Stella’s head, details eluding her. She has no idea what kind of announcement Lucinda had planned to make, but she remembers the charged feeling running through the weekend. Lucinda and her friends partied their way through Thursday and Friday, each day more frenzied than the one before. Stella mostly observed the madness, wondering how her patience and fake smile would last the wildly accelerating pace. Had something been simmering behind the scenes that she’d been unaware of?

She’d sensed something had gone amiss in Santorini, ‘Totes savage,’ Lucinda had said afterwards. Stella guessed by her widened eyes it had been a lot fiercer than savage, but Lucinda had refused to be drawn on it. ‘What happened in Santorini stays in Santorini.’ She smiled ruefully.

Still, after that, the group of friends hadn’t all been away together until the weekend at The Lookout.

Stella picks up her glass of brandy and chucks the rest of it into the sink. She feels like she’s waking up from a long sleep.

‘Whatever you want me to do, just shout,’ Britt Butler says. ‘I’m always here for you, chicken.’

The term of endearment coming from practical, no-nonsense Britt rushes warmly through Stella’s veins and floors her. ‘God, Britt, is this really happening?’ She has the urge to scream and howl and weep snotty tears, but that will have to wait. She has things to do. She tightens her grip on her mobile. Her call had been no surprise to Britt, who’d already heard the news from Eoin Fitzmaurice. He’d given her a quiet heads-up, Britt said, because Lucinda is family. Family in the spirit of the word, Stella privately acknowledges, even though she was no blood relative of Lucinda’s.

One of Lucinda’s demons.

‘You were the planned baby,’ she’d say to Stella. ‘I was the dumped one. The foundling.’

‘You were the chosen one,’ Stella would reply. ‘I’m so glad to have you for my sister.’

Stella pulls herself back from that twisty rabbit hole.

‘It’ll be tough, Stella,’ Britt’s voice is a mixture of pragmatism and concern, ‘but I hope it won’t be as shocking or painful for you as the days following the accident, and that it helps you get some sense of closure.’

‘I’m coming down,’ Stella says.

‘I’ll have the guest room ready, if that suits you.’

‘Thanks for the offer.’ Stella hesitates, an idea that has been churning away since Hugh left firming up. ‘I thought I might stay in The Lookout,’ she says, ‘and ask you to join me there. If it’s available.’

The name of the house scores painfully across her brain, like the point of a scalpel. The flamboyant, almost vulgar house overlooking the sea that Lucinda had rented for the party, situated on the laneway that leads up to Wolf Head.

A short pause. Britt says, ‘The Lookout? Is that wise, Stella? I know it’s convenient to Wolf Head and I’d be more than happy to join you there, but would it not be full of sad memories for you?’

Exactly. Being down there again might help Stella remember the chain of events that led to the accident. Does she know more than she realises? What else is hiding in the recesses of her mind, buried under months of frozen, compacted grief? But that was only the half of it. ‘I’m also thinking of asking Lucinda’s friends if any of them want to join me,’ she says.

‘Lucinda’s friends?’

Stella can’t blame Britt for the note of surprise in her voice. An invitation to the depths of Kerry at such short notice and in cold, grey January, for what was surely going to be a sad occasion, was a far remove from a lavish weekend celebration at the height of summer.

‘I know how much I want to be there, and they might also want to be there, for Lucinda.’

‘How are they all doing?’

‘I haven’t seen any of them since that weekend. I hadn’t the energy to …’ She tails off. Lucinda’s friends had sent texts in those early weeks, which fizzled out after Stella had barely engaged with them. She’d been so emotionally drained that she hadn’t had the bandwidth to cope with smothering displays of sympathy, never mind to witness their grief or take it on board in addition to her own.

Then she’d also begun to wonder if one of them was trolling her.

‘I can fully understand you needing your privacy, pet,’ Britt says.

Stella’s vision blurs from the tears in her eyes. She’d also kept Britt at arm’s length, rebuffing her offers to come to Dublin to see her. Conscious of the wobble in her voice she says, ‘I hardly spoke to Lucinda’s friends after the accident. I was in shock. I’d like to give them the opportunity to be there, and it’s a chance for me to talk to them properly. I was hoping you might check with the landlord and see if The Lookout is free.’

‘Sure, pet,’ Britt says, in calm tones, which Stella is grateful for. ‘The landlord is in London but Tricia Dillon is the caretaker. I’ll get on to her the minute I hang up. Once the news breaks, you can be sure the rooms in The Pier and any available beds in the area will be grabbed by media hounds and whoever else might be sniffing around.’

The small village of Wolf Cove, down below Wolf Head, doesn’t boast a hotel, just The Pier, a few B&Bs and summer property lets scattered around the hinterland. Tricia was the owner of The Pier, a gastropub in Wolf Cove that also offers rooms on the first floor.

‘Thanks, Britt, you’re a star. I hope to be in Kerry early tomorrow afternoon. Send me a text when you know. I’ve other calls to make now.’

‘Will you be travelling alone or coming with a friend?’ Britt asks her.

Stella’s three-year relationship with an actuary called Leo had been supposed to lead to marriage and babies but had come to an abrupt halt the previous spring when she’d found him in bed with Davina, one of her friends from college. She’d also allowed it to alienate her from their friendship group, Stella doing the withdrawing, lest they had to pick any sides. She had ignored social invitations in case they included Davina, and sent bland replies to their messages of concern in the aftermath of Lucinda’s accident.

An image of Rex O’Neill tipping his glass to hers with his cheerful smile swims into her thoughts. Just friends, she knows he could be a help in shoring up the difficult days that lie waiting for her. Rex, with his breezy good humour and air of easy confidence, who always looks as though he can handle anything without bothering to sweat the small stuff, may be the right person for her to have at her side for support, a kind of relaxed buffer between her and Lucinda’s friends.

‘I’ll be coming down by myself, Britt, but I might have a friend joining me later.’

After she’s spoken to Britt, Stella makes short calls to her colleagues, explaining her absence. Everyone in the Women’s Rescue office had gently and kindly put a supportive ring around her since Lucinda’s disappearance, giving her a reason to get up every morning and put one foot in front of the other.

She goes into her bedroom to pack her bag for the weekend. From her chest of drawers, she picks up a framed collage of photos of herself and Lucinda, her heart splintering as she absorbs the images taken at various milestones in their childhood.

Five-year-old Lucinda, her wide smile showing two rows of perfect pearly teeth as she stands beside the crib where baby Stella is cocooned in pink softness.

A Christmas photo of them in matching red pyjamas, ten-year-old Lucinda’s arm around her shoulders, Stella, round and chubby at five, her arm clutching Lucinda’s waist.

Adolescence found Stella passing her sister in height, five feet six to Lucinda’s five feet three. Lucinda kept her blonde hair at shoulder length, whereas Stella’s mousy colour and flyaway style is now a choppy, dark-blonde bob. Just last year, Lucinda had heartily approved of the new look Stella was flaunting, saying it brought out her heart-shaped face and beautiful dark grey eyes.

Stella replaces the frame and subsides on the bed, her insides eviscerated.

After their childhoods, their lives had diverged.

Stella had chosen the academic route, a BA in Social Sciences at University College Dublin, followed by the MPhil in Gender and Women’s Studies at Trinity. Having worked with various charities to help support and empower marginalised women over the years, she was now the CEO of Women’s Rescue, a registered charity set up to support and improve the lives of women and children adversely impacted by drug abuse, whether by a family member or their own addiction. When her parents died, the proceeds of their estate had been split evenly between Lucinda and Stella. Stella used her inheritance to buy her apartment in Portobello, lured by its convenience to the city centre and the huge picture window overlooking the canal.

In contrast, Lucinda had always flitted on the edges of a precarious livelihood. After school, she studied Fashion Design with Styling at Greenfield College of Further Education in south city Dublin, surprising everyone when she dropped out just before the Easter term, heading to London for a few months with Caz. However, nothing daunted Lucinda, and in the months after her return, her interest in the world of fashion and styling had led her into a successful career as an underwear model at the height of the Celtic Tiger era, which then launched her into celebrity status just as social media was beginning to take off. She’d moved into the world of PR and event management, before returning to fashion. She’d used her inheritance to set herself up as a freelance fashion stylist and influencer, based in her rented apartment in Malahide, a lot of her work generated and supported through social-media platforms and regular engagement with her thousands of followers.

Amassing followers and increasing her traction had been Lucinda’s bread and butter, so much so that sometimes Stella had found herself teasing her sister about dipping into Instagram to see what Lucinda was up to. The sisters hadn’t met up on a regular basis, caught up in their totally different worlds, but they’d always spent Christmas together and made sure to take time out to treat each other for birthdays, weekends away, and any celebrations. Stella was happy that Lucinda was following her heart’s desire, and she knew Lucinda was proud of her successes, bringing her out for a surprise meal when she’d been appointed to her CEO role early last year. And if Stella had sometimes worried that Lucinda was still renting in an increasingly volatile housing market, Lucinda had gently laughed off her concerns, telling her that she would always land on her feet.

Stella pulls her case out of the wardrobe, along with two pairs of jeans. From her chest of drawers, she plucks freshly laundered sweaters.

If it’s anything like the news of her disappearance, her sister’s adoring flock of social-media followers will be all over it as soon as the discovery off Wolf Head breaks, sparking a fresh outpouring of grief. After the accident, some of Lucinda’s devotees had even made the long journey to Wolf Head, placing bouquets on the cliff top clo. . .