The Book Club

by Roisin Meaney

Genres: General Fiction

Synopsis

The stunning new novel from the beloved bestselling author.

A tragic accident leaves the tight-knit book club in the small seaside town of Fairweather reeling. Then stranger Tom McLysaght arrives in the community, and the members of the club find their lives changing in ways they never could have imagined.

None of them realise that Tom is hiding a secret. On the surface, his move to Fairweather was to escape his highflying life in London and to put some much-needed distance between him and his ex-fiancée - but deep down Tom knows that there are some things he cannot run from.

As the months pass with book club gatherings, secrets are shared and hurts begin to heal. New friendships might be the last thing on their minds but the members of the book club are about to discover that opening themselves up to other people might be the only thing that will help them all to live, and to love, again.

(P)2021 Hachette Books Ireland

Release date: June 10, 2021

Publisher: Hachette Ireland

Print pages: 320

Sample

AFTER ACCOMPANYING HIM FOR MOST OF HIS journey, drumming on the car roof, spattering against the windscreen, turning potholes into puddles and gutters into rushing miniature canals, the rain finally stopped as he passed a grey rust-spotted sign that read Welcome to Fairweather. Fair weather my foot. He hoped to God he hadn’t signed up for six months of rain.

He fished the page with his scribbled directions from the door pocket and propped it on the steering wheel. He drove slowly until he found the church – a weary-looking tinsel-draped Christmas tree still on show outside – and the sharp curve to the right afterwards, and the narrow road off to the left after that, all as promised.

He negotiated the rutted lane cautiously. Wouldn’t want to meet another vehicle: one of them would have to reverse, and he was in no mood. His stomach growled. All he’d eaten since breakfast was the sausage roll he’d picked up when he’d stopped for petrol a couple of hours back, having refused Joel’s offer of an early lunch before setting off from Kildare.

Fairweather had to have at least one chipper. He’d find it once he’d sorted his digs. The thought of food – a hot slab of battered cod, shiny with oil, a pile of vinegar-drenched chips to accompany it – brought a rush of saliva. The Jeep brushed past a dripping wild hedgerow and lurched into a small hollow on the road, and climbed out again. Bloody hell, where was it? How far down the lane had she said? Half a kilometre? A kilometre?

And then he rounded a bend and there it was, pushed back several metres from the lane, and surrounded on all sides by shoulder-high hedging. He pulled in before the smaller of the two gates, ignoring the larger open one that led into a paved driveway: better wait until he was officially installed before making himself at home.

He switched off the engine and remained where he was, tilting his head this way and that, clenching and releasing his shoulders, rotating wrists and ankles. Undoing the kinks, loosening everything out. Something cracked, softly and not unpleasantly, in his neck.

Past four o’clock, the light draining already from the cloud-filled sky, pulling colours with it. Eleventh of January, still a long way to go to a stretch in the evening. He looked out the passenger window and saw a path beyond the gate that led straight to the front door, from whose glass side panel yellow light spilled. The walls of the house looked white in the dusk – he’d thought pale blue from the website. Not that it made a difference: they could be black for all he cared.

It was a lot bigger than he needed. A window on each side of the front door, three set into the second storey. Altogether too big a house for a man on his own, but he didn’t care about that either. What he cared about was rent he could afford, and being left alone. He didn’t imagine a lot of folk were looking for a long-term let in a place like Fairweather, not at this time of the year. Glad to get him, maybe. Glad to get anyone.

Was that a curl of smoke from one of the two chimneys? He recalled a working fireplace in the description, so hopefully his new landlady had thought to light a fire in it. Open fires were a rarity in central London, and Joel and Sarah’s house had none, but Tom was a fan of the real thing.

He shifted his gaze to what he could see of the property on the far side of the high hedge. Similar in size to his but stone-fronted, with ivy fanning upwards from one corner. A maroon-coloured car was parked outside, turned in his direction. Six years old, the numberplate told him.

We live next door, she’d said in her last email, not explaining who ‘we’ were, and his heart had dropped. He’d thought the house to be more isolated, not a sign of the other in any of the photos. Too late to pull out by then, his deposit and first month’s rent paid. He’d just have to hope they left him alone.

Beyond the two houses the lane petered out, a line of trees beyond. Just one set of neighbours, at least. He took his phone from the door pocket and selected Joel’s number. Landed, he texted. All OK. Will be in touch. Pre-empting the call that would come otherwise. Just checking, his brother would say, and Tom would be compelled to give an account of the journey and the house, and he had no appetite for that just now.

Safe trip, Joel had said earlier, having taken the morning off work to say goodbye. Standing by the gate as Tom banged closed the boot. All the best, Joel had said, giving a hug to the brother who was putting pretty much the width of the country between them. The brother who was beginning again, or attempting to.

Beginning again. Shifting gear, taking his life in an entirely new direction, and leaving so much behind. Could he? Was it possible? Did he have the energy, the will for it?

He had no idea. He also had no other option, having leant on Joel and Sarah for more than long enough. Come back if it doesn’t work out, Joel had said, but back was the last direction Tom was planning to go. Onwards, not back. Never back.

He stepped from the Jeep, leg muscles stiff, spine putting up a mild protest. The damp air had a clean, sharp tang to it. The sea couldn’t be far away. He’d caught glimpses of it as he’d drawn closer to his destination, white slices of it on the horizon when he’d rounded a bend, cut off by a rise in the land a second later.

He’d never lived on the coast before. You couldn’t count Dublin, the nearest coastline a half-hour drive from the city centre square where he’d grown up. The house flashed for an instant through his mind’s eye – the Georgian elegance of it, the steps climbing from the path to the black front door, the panelled sash windows, the wrought iron balconies – before he shunted it away. Never again.

He wondered how far the sea was from this house, and if there was a beach within walking distance. Not that he was planning a swim at this time of the year – leave that to the local fanatics, bound to be a few – but he liked a walk, and beaches had that wide-open feel he craved these days.

He closed his door, the startling loudness of it making him realise how utterly quiet the place was. No birdsong, must be gone to bed already. He cocked an ear and heard nothing but the staccato drip, drip of rainwater from leaves – and then he slowly became aware of another more distant sound, a kind of low rhythmic rising and falling.

He tried to identify it. Traffic on a distant motorway, the sound of it travelling far in the silence? Machinery of some kind in a local manufacturing plant? Whatever it was, it didn’t intrude. On the contrary he found it soothing, like the bass notes in a soft jazzy tune.

He opened the boot and hauled out the canvas bag that held his clothes. Everything else could wait until tomorrow. He pushed at the small iron gate, which was ajar, and which didn’t budge. He crouched to examine it and saw the bent hinge that was responsible for tilting the other end onto the path. A simple fix, if anyone could be bothered.

He scanned the overgrown lawn beyond the gate, the unkempt hedges on either side, the weeds that pushed between the paving stones of the drive. Some kind of briar had climbed halfway up the double doors of the garage to the left of the house.

He wondered if the neglect on the outside was mirrored inside; might account for the low rent. Place could be riddled with damp if it had lain empty for a while, which the condition of the outside suggested. Central heating had been mentioned, along with the fireplace, but central heating had to be switched on to make a difference. Had he signed a six-month lease on a dump?

He hoisted the little gate and swung it open. His boots were loud on the path. He’d never lived in a place so quiet. He sniffed smoke as he approached the front door: at least one room should be warm. He shifted his bag from one hand to the other and reached for the doorbell.

‘I’m here.’

The disembodied voice startled him. He turned to see her rounding the side of the house. She wore a silver-grey hat whose shallow brim shadowed her eyes and a coat the colour of raspberries that stopped at her knee, and dark boots beneath. She was shorter than him by a good eighteen inches. Between that and the failing light, he couldn’t make out her features with any clarity.

‘I saw you coming,’ she said. ‘I was looking out for you.’ She extended a gloved hand. ‘I’m Beth Sullivan.’ Cool, unsmiling. He wished he could see her eyes properly.

‘Tom McLysaght,’ he told her. ‘Pleased to meet you.’

Her gloves were soft leather. Her grip was firm. He felt a yawn rising, and stifled it. He’d been awake since before dawn, lying in Joel’s spare room while he’d waited for morning to peel away the dark. He hoped she wouldn’t hang around. He’d be happy to be let in and left to find things for himself.

She pulled off a glove and took a key from her pocket and pushed it into the front-door lock. ‘I have a fire lit.’

‘I can smell the smoke.’

She made no response. He followed her into a hallway that felt no warmer than the outside. Behind the door was an old-fashioned wooden hallstand, its various knobs and hooks bare. Walnut, he thought. Stairs climbed up on the left, carpeted in an oatmeal shade. Black and white tiles on the floor, paper on the walls the colour of milky coffee, with a small green leaf print.

‘The heating should have come on,’ she said, mouth pursing as she touched the radiator with her ungloved hand. ‘I’ll have to investigate.’

Heating on the blink. Good start. He dropped his bag by the hallstand and left his jacket on.

‘Sitting room, dining room, downstairs toilet,’ she said, indicating doors as she passed but leaving them unopened, to his relief. Seemed she didn’t want the grand tour any more than he did. ‘Kitchen,’ she said, entering the room at the end of the corridor, flicking on the light. ‘There should be plenty of everything you need, saucepans and crockery and the like.’

He saw cream worktops and units, and a white sink, and dark red tiles on the floor. White roller blinds were pulled down on the two windows, one of which faced her house, the other set into the back wall. A red kettle on the hob. A wooden bread bin on the worktop, empty.

‘Your keys,’ she said, taking them from her pocket and placing them on the table. ‘Back and front doors. The garage doesn’t have a key – it was lost years ago and never replaced.’

‘OK.’ Presumably burglary not an issue in Fairweather.

Older, he thought, going by the maturity of the voice, the faint suggestion of jowls, the skin that was slightly pleated around her mouth. The hat covered her hair completely, so no clues there. Still slightly disconcerting that he couldn’t tell if she was looking directly at him or not.

‘The back door lock sticks a bit; you have to jiggle the key. You’ll find some fuel in the shed. I can let you have more turf when you need it, we have plenty to spare, but coal and briquettes you’ll have to get yourself at the petrol station you passed on the way into town. We have a man who delivers good dry logs, four euro a bag. Let me know if you want him to call here.’

‘Right.’ He tried to keep up. Her voice didn’t change. Was her accent a Kerry one? She didn’t sound remotely like the two brothers in the Dáil, but he suspected a bit of artistic licence there.

‘What else? Bin collections. We stopped the service for this house, so feel free to put your waste in our bins. Recycling is blue, organic brown, everything else green. We keep them in the side passage; come in our big front gate and you’ll see them. I’ve written the collection days for you.’ Pointing to a folded page lying next to the keys. ‘There’s a bottle bank in town, at the end of the prom. You can bring your glass and cans there.’

‘OK.’

Both gloves off now, a gold ring visible on her left hand, a diamond one next to it. A husband next door then, to explain the ‘we’. Wife in charge, by the look of it.

‘You’ve got three bedrooms upstairs. I’ve made up the bed in the main room. More sheets and pillowcases in the hot press, and towels too. Help yourself to whatever you find.’

‘Thank you.’ Sarah had given him towels and bed linen. They’re not normally provided in an Irish rental, she’d said, but they were here. He might not have heat, but he had sheets.

His landlady had crossed to the back door. ‘I’ll show you the boiler,’ she said, disappearing. ‘Mind the step.’

He followed her out and down a shallow step to a paved patio. The rear garden beyond it was narrow and long – a hundred yards? Two hundred? – and every bit as neglected as the front, with its own overgrown hedging and weed-filled lawn, and shrubs to one side that were lopsided and misshapen for want of a secateurs.

On one side of the patio was a concrete shed, and beyond it a dark green oil tank. She opened the shed door and he saw a large boiler on the wall inside.

She took a slim torch from her coat pocket and aimed it at a dial. ‘The clock is wrong – I didn’t notice when I set it to come on earlier. At least it’s not broken.’ She made some adjustment, and seconds later a soft thrum sounded. ‘It doesn’t take long to heat up. Anyway, like I said, there’s a fire in the sitting room.’ She fiddled with a dial before turning back to him. ‘Are you familiar with this type of boiler?’

‘Yes.’ He wasn’t. He’d figure it out. There wasn’t a machine or a device that had defeated him yet.

‘Well, it’s on now. I suggest you leave it on overnight, and set it as you wish in the morning. There’s plenty of oil in the tank for the next few months.’

‘And how do I pay you for it?’

She gave a dismissive gesture as she closed the door. ‘Don’t worry about that.’

‘… Thank you.’ Free oil, free turf, reasonable rent and sheets on the bed. He wasn’t doing too badly so far.

‘The solid fuel is in there,’ she went on, pointing to a small wooden shed on the far side of the patio.

‘Right.’

‘This house isn’t mine,’ she said, back in the kitchen. ‘It belongs to my granddaughter, Lil. The electricity account is in her name. Are you alright with that, or would you prefer to put it in yours?’

‘I’m fine with that.’ He wondered where Lil lived, and why she’d surrendered her house to him, and why her grandmother was here showing him around instead of her. ‘So the bill will come here, to this address?’

‘It will. Feel free to open it, and we can add it on to your rent. I took a meter reading when I was lighting the fire – it’s on that page with the bin days, and I’ve kept a note of it too, so we can work out how much of the next bill is yours. The meter is located at the side of the house, key is in that drawer. Please feel free to check it.’

‘OK.’ He wouldn’t bother. He doubted that she was trying to pull a fast one.

‘Utility room,’ she said, and he walked after her into a little space off the kitchen. ‘Washing machine, tumble dryer. Manuals are gone, I’m afraid, but they’re pretty straightforward. Ask me if you have any questions. There’s a clothesline out the back if you’d prefer to hang out your laundry. You’ll see it tomorrow in the daylight. Pegs on the shelf.’

‘OK.’

They returned to the kitchen. From what he’d seen of it so far, the place appeared to be in good enough nick. No ominous patches on walls or ceilings, no damp whiff, no obvious signs of disrepair. Then again, he hadn’t seen a whole lot of it.

‘Garage is through there,’ she said, pointing to a door that hadn’t registered with him, tucked into a small alcove. ‘I’ve put milk in the fridge, and there’s tea in that caddy. I forgot sugar, but if you need it tonight come back with me and I’ll give you some.’

‘I’m OK,’ he told her. ‘Is there a takeaway nearby?’

‘There is, on the way into town. Go back up the lane and turn right. There’s another one at the other end of town – you can walk to it in ten minutes on the cliff path, but not in the dark, when you don’t know it.’

‘The cliff path?’

‘Bottom of the garden, turn left. You’ll need a torch around here – do you have one?’

‘No.’ He’d never thought of a torch.

‘I’ll leave you this one until you get your own.’

‘Thank you.’

She was perfectly civil, but her tone remained impartial, almost curt. She was supplying all the information he needed but she hadn’t smiled once, or given him more than a passing glance. It would seem that the sign at the edge of the town was the only welcome to Fairweather he was getting. On the upside, he didn’t think she’d be dropping in for tea and a chat.

‘You’ll get your bearings soon enough,’ she said. ‘It’s not that big a place, and the natives are generally friendly.’

Again, no hint of a smile. He couldn’t tell if she was joking.

‘What do you do, if I can ask?’ Tilting her head to look at him properly for the first time. Her eyes, he saw now, were a definite blue. Her face was striking rather than beautiful. Regular features, good bone structure. She looked after herself.

‘I’m between jobs,’ he said carefully. ‘I’m hoping to pick up work here.’

‘What kind of work?’

‘Handyman stuff. DIY, repairs, that kind of thing.’

‘Plumbing? Electrical?’

‘Any of that, as long as it’s not too big a job. Painting too. Houses, I mean, not pictures.’

‘How about computers, phones, that kind of thing?’

A beat passed. He decided he could admit to it. ‘Yeah, I know my way around them too.’

She held his gaze for another few seconds. He began to feel uncomfortable. Was she waiting for more information?

‘I can turn my hand to most things. I’ve always been like that. I used to take stuff apart as a kid, and put it back together. I like knowing how something works, and I catch on quick.’

She nodded. ‘You could have dinner with us this evening, if you’d like a home-cooked meal. Beef casserole. We eat at six.’

He was thrown by the sudden shift of topic, and by the offer. A dinner invitation was the last thing he’d expected, and the last thing he wanted. He imagined sitting down with her and her husband, trotting out the lies, or the half-truths, he’d prepared about what had led to his coming to Fairweather. Trying to avoid giving away anything more than he had to. No, couldn’t do it, not this evening.

‘Thanks, but it’s been a long day and I’m wrecked. If you don’t mind, I’ll just grab a takeaway and crash.’

Something, a sort of grimace, flitted briefly across her face – had he insulted her with his refusal? ‘Suit yourself,’ she said, in the same cool tone. ‘Do you have any questions?’

‘Not really.’ He’d forgotten about half of everything she’d just told him, but he’d figure things out as he went along.

‘If that’s it, I’ll bid you goodnight. You have my mobile number if you need to use it.’

‘I have.’ He wondered if he should call her Beth, or stick with Mrs Sullivan. Maybe best to use nothing for the moment. He walked back through the hall with her and waited for her to leave.

She opened the door and turned back to fix him with another direct stare. ‘One thing I should mention. You’ll hear it eventually, so it may as well come from me.’ She paused. She made a small movement with her mouth, a kind of twitch, and a brief pressing together of her lips. ‘Lil, my granddaughter Lil, has lived with me for the past two years. In that time, this house has remained empty.’ She blinked, twice, without taking her eyes from his face. ‘There was an accident, and she moved in with me.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he put in – but she wasn’t listening.

‘She doesn’t talk, which is why I’m here now instead of her. You’re bound to meet her in due course, but she won’t talk to you. It’s best that you know this, so you’re prepared. If you have any problems with the house, or any questions, kindly bring them to me.’

He nodded.

Her eyes remained on his face for a second more than was comfortable. ‘Goodnight then,’ she said, stepping out. ‘I hope you sleep well.’ She pulled the door closed, and he heard the faint sound of her retreating steps.

He folded his arms, digesting what he’d just been told. An accident of some kind, a granddaughter who didn’t speak. Weird. Lil has lived with me, she’d said. With me, not with us – so that meant, didn’t it, that it was just the two of them next door? Husband gone to his heavenly reward, or made his escape via the divorce courts.

He’d imagined Lil an adult when he’d heard that the house belonged to her – but now he thought she might be a child who’d inherited the place after whatever accident had occurred, and was living with her grandmother because she was too young to be on her own. Or maybe she’d been injured in the accident, and couldn’t live independently any more. The grandmother’s sketchy account told him very little.

He looked up the stairs. They disappeared into a darkness that now seemed slightly sinister. His forehead was clammy: he ran a sleeve over it. He touched the radiator and found it to be hot. At least the heating worked. He let his gaze roam about the space, noting the ceiling spotlight that was out, the not quite accurate meeting of two lengths of wallpaper, the fruit carved into the sides of the hallstand.

It looked bleak with nothing hanging on it. Hallstands should never be empty: they should be full of things. He took off his jacket and propped it on a hook. It didn’t make much of an improvement.

He felt gloom descending. What was he doing here? What the hell was he doing here? He should be married now. He should still be living in London, working in the job he’d loved, with no money worries and a full social life. Instead here he was, unemployed and miles from anything and anyone familiar, with the last of his savings to live on.

He opened the door on the right, next to the radiator. The sitting room, he thought – but he was wrong. This room held a mahogany dining table and six chairs, and a sideboard that didn’t match, and three shelves set into an alcove with nothing at all on them.

The floor was wooden. The walls were papered in a blue-green shade, with paler rectangles here and there where paintings or photos must have hung. This was a room for family meals, or maybe dinner parties; not for him with his single plate.

He closed the door. He stepped across the hall and found the sitting room, which was altogether cosier. Cream walls, a pair of grey tweed couches and a red armchair, a cream marble fireplace in which sat a nicely reddened coal fire, a large wicker basket nearby full of turf and logs. A rug in patched terracotta and ochre shades covered at least half of the wooden floor. A television hung on the wall above the mantelpiece; an empty bookshelf was set into the alcove on the right of the chimney breast.

He tried out a couch and found it comfortable. He pulled the heavy grey curtains closed. This room he would use in the evenings, to watch television or search YouTube for something diverting.

He thought again of how much quieter his life had become. He hadn’t gone near his usual social media sites since August. He’d closed all his accounts, ignoring the questions that had started to come in as word of what had happened got around. He hadn’t had a night out in five months, hadn’t set foot inside a pub or a restaurant. He couldn’t remember the last gig he’d been to, the last film he’d seen in a cinema.

Back in the hall he looked up the stairs again. What the hell was spooking him? What could there possibly be to fear up there? Nothing but empty rooms, and a bed prepared for him with clean sheets, and fresh towels in the bathroom. With any luck, she’d left him a bar of soap too.

He pulled his jacket on again. He’d hunt down some food, and maybe he’d find an off-licence, and after that he’d have an early night. A soak in a bath if there was one, and if the heating did a proper job with the water. Melt away the nameless unsettlement he’d felt since her mention of an accident, fill the silence with the comforting everyday sound of water running through pipes.

On the point of leaving the house, he remembered the two keys on the kitchen table. He returned and retrieved them, and locked the back door. He threaded the keys onto his Jeep key-ring, which until this morning had also held Joel’s spare house key. Hang on to it, Joel had said, but Tom had taken it off and handed it back.

He opened the front door and stepped outside. The last of the light was draining from the sky, a thin crescent of moon rising. He searched for stars and found none, or nearly none. Too cloudy – but he bet that on a clear night, with no competing street lights, they’d crowd out the sky here. He zipped up his jacket, feeling the bite of a January evening.

He decided to have a quick look around the back again, go to the end of the garden, see what there was to be seen while he still could. In the passage he brushed against wet hedging; plenty of clipping to keep him busy. Maybe he should ask permission – but why would she object to his improving the place?

He rounded the corner and saw the rear garden disappearing into the near darkness. The light from the kitchen window was muted by the pulled-down blind, and the sliver of moon didn’t help much. He’d left her torch on the kitchen table, and he couldn’t be bothered going back in for it.

He walked to the edge of the patio and squinted down into the high grass. Was there no pathway through it? He prodded about with a boot and discovered a flat stone set into the ground. He stepped on it and searched for another, and one by one he found the rest of them. They made little difference to his progress, the grass having pretty much closed in around them, and the ends of his jeans quickly became damp. He persevered through the gloom and was approaching the end of the garden – he could make out a low wall and a gate ahead – when a movement off to his right, a quick flash of something, a small rustling sound, caught his attention.

He turned and saw a gap in the hedging, roughly the width of a door. Beyond it, in the neighbouring garden, he discerned the looming shape of a biggish building, a shed or cabin of some kind. Must be set right up against the garden wall. He saw the shine of windows, three of them. They emitted no light from within, reflecting only the faint illumination that came from the sky.

‘Hello? Is someone there?’

His voice broke through the stillness. No response came. It might have been an animal, a dog or a cat. But wouldn’t an animal react in some way to a human voice, either by approaching or darting away? He felt a small crawling in the skin of his scalp, imagining someone, or something, watching him silently. Waiting to pounce.

He shook off the feeling. Cop on, he told himself. It was his imagination, fired up by the empty house, and an accident associated with it that hadn’t been explained, and a night that was darker and quieter than he. . .