Chapters (40)
- Cover
- About the Author
- PENGUIN BOOKS
- Dedication
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-one
- Twenty-two
- Twenty-three
- Twenty-four
- Twenty-five
- Twenty-six
- Twenty-seven
- Twenty-eight
- Twenty-nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-one
- Thirty-two
- Thirty-three
- Thirty-four
- Thirty-five
- THE BEGINNING
‘They’re from everywhere,’ said Jem. ‘Some from here. Then you and a few friends from home – like Peter Wallis, remember? And Terence and Ellie. Then there’s Dad and his lot from America. Juliet’s parents from Cork, her sister and family plus about twenty of her cousins and friends from Dublin …’
‘Six, actually.’
‘Whatever. They’re arriving on Thursday afternoon. The others are probably arriving on Friday morning.’
‘Are most of them staying here?’
‘God, no. We’ve only got the one extra room, and you’re in that. Juliet’s friends are bedding down in the living room and we’ve borrowed a tent and a huge blowup lilo as well. But all our various parents are staying in hotels in Montpellier. Much better that way, don’t you think?’
‘Not the same hotel?’
‘Mum’s staying in the same hotel as Juliet’s parents. They get on pretty well. They can swap stories about what we were like as babies or something. Dad’s staying in a hotel on the other side of town.’
‘Remember the last time we saw him, in your flat in London, and he got drunk and kept telling us how much he loved us really?’
‘How could I forget? Juliet’s never met him and I’ve only seen photographs of his kids. I never expected him to come over for this – I won’t believe it till I see him standing there.’
Irene finished off her roll and reached for another, Juliet filled up her mug with coffee. A faint breeze touched her face, rippled through her tired body.
Her room was at the back of the house overlooking the garden. It was small, cool and dark, with bare floorboards, wooden shutters, a wide window sill on which someone had put a jam jar full of deep scarlet flowers that Irene didn’t recognize, and a high and narrow iron bed pushed against the wall. Apart from that there was just a chair over which Irene could drape her clothes, and a square, unframed mirror at eye level. Irene pushed the violin and the photograph in its swathes of bubble wrap under the bed, her suitcase up against one wall, and then sat with her back against the pillows, staring dreamily out of the window. Jem and Juliet’s voices floated up to her, an emphatic tone, a faint guffaw, a clink of glasses and plates being cleared from the table. The hot day drifted slowly on.