The Witch Elm by Tana French

Author:Tana French
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2018-10-08T16:00:00+00:00

* * *

They came the next evening, which moved me more than I could have told them even if I had wanted to. I got the message across by giving Sean shit for having gained a few pounds and giving Dec shit about Jenna—“Man, there’s what, half a million women in Dublin? At least one of them has to be single and sane, but no—”

“And have low standards,” Sean pointed out.

“There’s that.”

“What are you on about?” Dec demanded, injured. “I’m employed and I’ve got all my hair. That’s more than a lot of blokes.”

“You’re a narky bollix,” I told him. “I wouldn’t put up with you.”

“I’m not a— Melissa. Honestly, now. Am I a narky bollix?”

“You’re lovely.”

“See?”

“What else is she going to say? She’s a nice person, you’re sitting right there—”

The kitchen table where we had spent so many teenage evenings, loaded now with bright-patterned serving bowls—pasta, salad, Parmesan—and scraped plates and half-full wineglasses, tousled orange flowers and tarnished silver candlesticks. Hugo was laughing, chin propped on his woven fingers, candlelight flickering in his glasses, “—they’ve always been like this—” aside to Melissa, who was laughing too, sunshiny in a yellow dress. I threaded my fingers through hers on the table and gave her hand a squeeze.

“At least I’m not a fat bastard,” Dec said, to Sean.

Sean stuck out his belly and gave it an affectionate pat. “All muscle.”

“Jesus, dude,” I said. “You’d want to get onto that or you won’t fit into your wedding dress.”

“He won’t fit into the wedding photos—”

They had brought Hugo presents, the same way they had brought me presents in the hospital: fancy chocolates, books, DVDs, Armagnac—even I had forgotten that he liked Armagnac, but Dec had a long story about how when we were fifteen we had raided the booze cupboard and practically killed ourselves on swig after massive swig of it, no one willing to be the one who backed out: “Toby looked like he was about to explode, bright red, tears coming out—I called him a big pussy-boy, excuse the language, and went for it, right? next thing I know the room’s actually going round, I thought I was having a brain hemorrhage— I know you knew, Hugo, the three of us were gee-eyed, but fair play to you, you never said a word—”

“Well,” Hugo said, smiling, leaning sideways to fumble the bottle out of the present bag, “now you can have all the Armagnac you like, and enjoy it properly. Toby, would you fetch glasses?”

Sean and Dec got up with me, to clear the table. “The garden’s in bits,” I said, nodding towards the doors as I passed. “We’ve been trying to put stuff back in, but I think we might actually be making it worse.”

“It’ll grow back,” Sean said. “A load of grass seed, bunch of wildflower seeds . . .”

We hadn’t mentioned Dominic all evening. Sean and Dec had stayed far from it: asked Hugo about how he was feeling and how his treatment was going, told funny stories

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