The Birthday Party: The spell-binding new summer read from the Number One bestselling author by Meaney Roisin

Author:Meaney, Roisin [Meaney, Roisin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC044000, FA
ISBN: 9781473643055
Publisher: Hachette Books Ireland
Published: 2019-06-26T16:00:00+00:00

Imelda

IT WAS GUALTIERO WHO’D RAISED THE ALARM. Abandoning everything – his easel, his canvas, his folding table, his paints, his green suitcase – to scramble from the rocks to the road and flag down a car, to communicate somehow in his inadequate English, in his profoundly shocked state, the awful plunge into the sea that he’d witnessed.

The small coastguard station at the north of the island had been quickly alerted: within minutes a lifeboat had been dispatched to the area. The news was relayed to local fishermen, who’d turned their trawlers in the same direction. As word had spread further, various other craft had begun to appear. Before long the sea was alive with activity, everyone searching, all bent on the same terrible task.

‘Try to drink this,’ Imelda said, placing the glass in his unsteady hands. ‘It will help.’

His teeth beat a tattoo against the rim. Some of the liquid spilt on his white shirt, more splashed onto the table. She doubted that he got any at all into him before he lowered the glass. ‘Sorry,’ he said.

‘Please don’t apologise, Gualtiero.’

She wondered if he was in the kind of shock you shouldn’t ignore. Did he need something stronger than brandy? Should she call Dr Jack? Hugh would have known what to do – he’d always been good in a crisis. She tended to go to pieces but that wasn’t an option here, not with one of them already on the verge of falling apart.

‘Would you like me to get the doctor?’ she asked.

‘No, no doctor, I am OK. Thank you, Eemelda. Grazie.’

He didn’t look OK. He looked far from OK, his face still registering the awfulness of what he had witnessed. The vitality drained from it, his pupils huge, his shoulders hunched. Such a land she’d got when he and Sergeant Fox had shown up on the doorstep, the sergeant towering over him, his grip tight on Gualtiero’s elbow.

Saw someone go over the cliff, he’d told Imelda. Gave him a fair old fright.

Saw someone go over the cliff, saw someone drop into the water pretty much right in front of him. She couldn’t imagine how horrifying that sight would have been for anyone, let alone someone whose wife had been taken by the sea.

‘Try some more brandy,’ she urged, and he raised the glass to his lips for the second time, and managed a little better.

‘I do not ’elp,’ he said eventually, when he became steadier, when the life began to creep back into his face. ‘I just go, very fast, with no ’elp’ – and she saw the awful guilt taking over, now that the shock was receding.

‘There was nothing you could have done,’ she assured him. ‘It would have been far too dangerous to go into the water there; you would have been risking your own life if you’d tried. It was better to do what you did, to go for help.’ She saw how little difference her words were making. He might have saved a life, but instead he’d run away: that was all he could focus on.

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