Jenny scanned the study, clocking the wine stains on the floor and the dark patterned blemishes running down Shane’s foreign editions.

  ‘Sorry about the mess,’ she muttered.

  ‘It’s OK, we’ll just call the landlord.’

  Jenny half snorted, half laughed. ‘Stop it. I’m in a perilous state of mind. Making me laugh could push me over the edge and I’ll never come back.’ She then ran her hand through the thickness of his mane, playing with its texture. ‘Look at your hair, with its speckles of grey. Surprised Joan didn’t turn it white.’

  Shane had to fight the instinct to recoil. Would Jenny turn into her mother? Was she already like Vera? Was she a covert, furtive narcissist, keeping the traits secret? Heredity was a patient spider, spinning in the shadows, often unknown even to its host. But no, Jenny could never be accused of being cruel. She was kind, non-judgemental and humane. While with Vera… even Joan would agree that her deity was an unpredictable and demanding idol, capable of hurling thunderbolts when blue skies were needed. You never oppose such a divinity; you offer everything without question.

  Jenny flopped down into the two-seater. Her toes pointed inwards, and it looked as if it meant something disheartening about her. Shane perched on the armrest, admiring her smooth shoulders and clavicle. Though he’d never thought Jenny was perfect. He knew her flaws. Jenny hated confessions. She liked to be right all the time, especially when she was wrong. Again, it was her family. She’d grown up in a house where her mother ensured that everyone had to battle each other for her affections and assistance. Because of this, the law within Jenny’s family was, everything, no matter how big or small, was on a need-to-know basis. So it wasn’t that Jenny liked to hide things. It was just that Jenny felt that some things were better off as lonely facts.

  Shane moved from the side of the sofa and crouched before his wife. His hands rested on her thighs. He felt a sudden wave of regret for her. Today’s launch should have been one of the highlights of Jenny’s year. But the odds were fairly high that it had ended up being one of the worst days of her life.

  ‘You know I didn’t want to hurt you, right?’

  He wanted to say more. To explain. To make her realise that they would be better off without the house because it demanded too much of them. It always had. He needed her to understand that when the gods want to punish us, they grant our wishes. But before he could put it into words, Jenny spoke.

  ‘You’re a good man. And you did the right thing. I tried to do the wrong thing.’

  ‘I’m over it. Don’t worry.’ Or rather, I’m beyond it now.

  Shane had pretended to forgive Jenny before. He’d pretended to forgive her for leaving him when he was eighteen.

  33

  Seventeen Years Ago

  In the days that followed Shane’s expulsion from university, Jenny opened a distance between them, claiming that she was unwell after the exams and needed time alone. She insisted it had nothing to do with his cheating and that soon they would figure out a plan to neutralise this great shame. But at the end of the week, Shane received a handwritten letter from Jenny, telling him that she had left college and had gone away, travelling for a year, and that they – as a couple – were finished.

  Shane called into her house but Vera, with a strangely subdued fury, told him, ‘Jennifer is abroad and doesn’t want people to know where – especially you, young man. Now, I’m not getting involved in any ridiculous lovers’ tiff. So… I’m sure you understand the tricky corner I’ve been painted into.’ With that, the door closed.

  For the rest of the summer, Shane wandered through his house, ignoring his parents, disinterested in books, passing from his bedroom to the living room to the kitchen. He’d find himself standing at the upstairs window, facing the night, waiting for morning.

  Over the next year, Shane worked on building sites with a roofing firm. With mainstream social media still more of an idea than a reality, the only information he could glean was whenever he came across one of her friends. All they could ever tell him was that the last they had heard, she was living in Toronto.

  After almost a year on the building sites, Shane studied nights to get a TEFL certificate and, just before Lorcan died, moved to eastern Europe and later Dubai and Malaysia to teach English. Life had to go on; which it did, with several girlfriends – there was Hannah, a student in Poland; Yaz, a cellist in Dubai; and Moon, the Israeli trust-funded dropout in Penang. As the years flipped by, he assumed that Jenny had continued to travel, married someone talented and ended up doing something like owning a little shop in a beautiful warm city, selling urns to fascinating people, while a nanny looked after her spectacular children.

  Then, eight years after being expelled from college, Shane returned to Dublin. Meeting up with friends, they ended up in a club that was infamous for having about ten people outside at any one time, all being denied entrance. It was the type of place you told people you went to.

  There, he saw her: a striking twenty-five-year-old in elegant hostess regalia, holding a tray of four champagne flutes behind the velvet ropes of the VIP area. She moved among the crowd with a wistful, sedative vibe; as if she were drifting and dozing in the quicksand, like an alligator in a swamp, plotting the next drama to inflict upon the world.

  Shane slipped away from his friends and ordered bottle service from a table. As she approached, he checked her out. Jenny, nipples blunt and protuberant beneath her black blouse, looked like a slinky bank teller in a dusky silk skirt that stopped just above her knees.

  Wielding her beauty like an AK-47, she presented the bottle to him. Her brown eyes reminded Shane of the Shiraz and he stared into them, already hard. He immediately wanted to consume her, to take her inside of him, to eat her like the Eucharist. He wanted to protect her, to be – without her ever knowing it – her reward for falling back to earth, for abandoning her absurd idea of leaving him, for once again becoming his desire.

  ‘Well,’ she whispered, sounding calm but her face electrified.

  ‘Well, well, well,’ he murmured and hoped it sounded funny and not sleazy. ‘Lightning strikes twice.’

  Jenny looked rather sad. ‘But it doesn’t really, does it? Lightning never strikes twice.’

  ‘Actually, it does. Some have been hit three times. There’s a metal compound in blood that certain people have too much of. So, let’s call it déjà vu.’

  ‘It would depend on what you’re about to do to me.’ She laughed wickedly.

  He’d always liked her laugh. It made him want to fuck every other man out of her. He couldn’t even blink. She’d blossomed into an even greater beauty; the kind that age would never diminish. He could picture those angles calcifying into stone.

  She said, ‘Hey, you’re making me self-conscious.’

  ‘I was just thinking how little you’ve changed all these years.’

  ‘Nah, Shane, I need to lay off the Pringles.’ She patted her tummy, acknowledging that she had gone up a size while also showing that she didn’t care. ‘So, why are you here?’

  ‘I’m back from teaching English abroad. I’m taking time out. Believe it or not, I’m about to publish a book. Investigative journalism if you please. On-the-ground gonzo-type thing, about a big news story I was part of in India. But hold on – why are you here?’

  ‘I’m at work. This is what I do now. Well, one of the things.’

  ‘But your family. And… again – your family?’

  ‘Oh, you know the drill: rich girl manages to make a struggle out of being privileged.’

  ‘Yeah, well I’m here to rescue you.’

  ‘I need rescuing?’

  ‘Someone took you away from me. Stole you away. Because there’s no way on this earth that you would’ve left me – us – of your own free will. I’m here to take you back.’

  ‘Shane… when I left at the end of college… when I wrote you that note… it was cruel and terrible. But I wasn’t well. College… home life… to be honest, I think I had a breakdown. And it went on for years. That’s the most I’ve ever said about it. Because I can’t even explain it to myself. I just needed to go. I needed to go until I came back. And I’ve been back five years. Working in a shop during the day. Here three nights. Studying the other evenings. What’s left of my family doesn’t speak to me. See, I left them too. And like you, they were pissed about it. But unlike you, they don’t want to talk to me. Basically, everything’s been shit for about eight looooong years. Everything’s been shit… without you.’

  ‘Why didn’t you get in touch?’

  ‘Anytime I met someone who knew anything about you and your whereabouts, the anecdote always included some mention of your latest girlfriend. So, you were happy. Great.’

  ‘There weren’t that many. None were serious. I mean, Yaz was sort of—’

  ‘Shane, the fact is that hearing about your girlfriends only meant that you’d forgotten about me. I wasn’t gonna hurt myself by getting in touch, even though I deserved to be hurt.’

  ‘I would’ve left them immediately.’

  ‘Why didn’t you… I mean, why didn’t you get in touch?’

  ‘I tried to.’ His voice rose a little, as he felt the injustice of being labelled a deserter when he’d actually fought to the bitter end. Sipping wine to compose himself, he explained. ‘I tried at the start, but you weren’t answering. Then, I was on the other side of the planet most of the time… and, well you know there were others. I had to face up to the fact that you were done with me and if I was to have any hope of moving on… of finding happiness… then, I needed to stop looking for you. In other words, I decided, eventually, that I didn’t want to know about you. So, I stopped asking. I stopped looking. I mean, are you online now or anything like that?’

  ‘Yes! I’m a blogger. For this shit.’ Jenny nodded over at the VIP enclosure where he vaguely recognised a touring rapper and her clique, their faces bright with ecstasy-wonder as they lay about the sofas, trying to prove that they didn’t notice all those people outside the ropes noticing them. ‘Ten thousand followers, if you’re counting. And I am.’

  ‘Jesus. I had no idea.’

  ‘Well, it’s nothing really. I take a selfie with whatever celebs are here – they all agree because they love being famous. It means that they exist. I stick ʼem up and wait for my loyal editors to buy them from me. And then companies give me stuff – clothes and tech – and if I like them, I plug them. Though, they’re free, so I always like them. That’s it. But I’ve plans. I’m getting a degree in interior design and… well, you’ll never guess who’s helping me set up my business?’

  ‘Who?’

  She paused. ‘Actually, I’ll tell you later.’

  ‘There’s going to be a later?’

  ‘Shane, I feel as if I was just driving by and out of the corner of my eye I saw you and thought, Oh my God, that’s Shane Smith, and then here we are, me giving you a lift and you making small talk about how I haven’t changed – but I have – and me pretending not to be flattered – but I am – and then you say “thanks” for the lift and I say “bye”.’

  ‘We’re never dull, so that’s not how it’s going to happen.’ Shane leaned across the table. ‘So, tell me, how is it going to happen?’

  ‘You’re going to tell me that you’re single and free and no one in the last eight years came close to what we had. And I’m going to tell you the same. Then I’m going to get my coat and leave early. And we’re going to go back to my flat. And you’re going to make me come. And then you’re going to make me come again. Then you can come. And then we’ll fall asleep, and I’ll have the best night’s rest I’ve had in eight years, and in the morning you’ll still be there, and I won’t be afraid. The fact is, I like to daydream and, in my daydreams, my fantasies – well, you’ve always been in them.’

  ‘I never forgot you, Jen, even when I tried. Not for one day. I always had hope. And when all is lost but hope – then, suddenly, all is saved.’

  For eight years Shane had tried to convince himself that ‘love’ was a short word because it was a meaningless word – a rubbish word. But then he ended up finding Jenny in a swanky nightclub, and there were suddenly no other words.

  34

  Now

  6.47 pm: It had been seventeen years since Shane had found her serving celebrities in that nightclub; seventeen years they’d been back together. Seventeen years a supposed team. As he crouched before her on the floor of his study, Jenny sat forward on the sofa, placed her hand on the back of his head and pulled his face to hers.

  ‘Jesus,’ Shane said in mock surprise. ‘Are you trying to flirt with me?’

  Their mouths locked. A moment later, Jenny pulled back.

  ‘Wait,’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Do you need me?’

  ‘I need to fuck you. So… yeah?’

  Her face clouded. ‘Lovely.’

  ‘What? That’s the highest compliment I could pay anyone. What do you expect from me – some chick bullshit about emotions and feelings?’

  She suddenly laughed, demonstrating how she still had the ability to switch from gravity to joy with just the twitch of her lips. Jenny’s mirth set Shane off, and he felt like a teenager who had just been dared to lock himself in a closet with a girl. They slipped off the sofa onto the floor where Jenny straddled him, one leg pulled free of her trousers. He wrapped his hands around her and tested the elasticity of her underwear’s waistband as Jenny’s fingers slipped between the buttons of his shirt to touch the smooth-stone hardness of his ribs. Her thighs were soft and warm, and Shane experienced the buzz of knowing that you’re only midway through an excellent movie and there was much more to come. Pulling up his shirt, she kissed his stomach, following a gun-powder trail of dark hair leading down.

  Shane whispered, ‘Here? On the floor. With the curtains open? You sure?’

  She unbuttoned her blouse and took it off. ‘Do I look like I don’t know what I’m doing?’

  Flipping her over, so that she lay under him, Jenny was presented to Shane as if she were a platter of food; diminutive pale breasts with shell-pink prominent nipples, the perfect little crease between buttocks and thighs. He reclaimed her by exploring her, measuring her, sampling her. They kissed and Shane wanted to be eighteen again. Or twenty-six, when they’d reunited and married. Or just to sense how he’d felt up to three days ago, before the crash. It was like he was next to a wormhole where his youth, his mistakes and his triumphs all glistered before him, just out of reach. It was as if Jenny could be the vessel to bring him back to the time when he believed that he was the man most likely to change the entire fucking world.

  Jenny whispered, ‘C’mon, let’s do it.’

  She had always called sex ‘doing it’. When they were young, it sounded a little repressed. But ever since they’d married, he liked it a lot. Now he wanted to fuck her to death. He wanted his cock to touch her heart. He wanted to fuck her, fuck her, fuck her forever. And when he came, he nearly had a whiteout from the surge of pleasure.

  *

  7.25 pm: Shane lay on the ground, panting, recognising a sacred truth that only men of a certain age can receive from an unblushing woman; that life is of the flesh and if there was nothing more to it than that, then sometimes it was enough; enough to make it worthwhile to get up in the morning and struggle on and on and on.

  ‘You OK?’ Jenny asked, standing above him, fixing her hair.

  ‘If God comes to me on my deathbed and says, where would you like to go back to – I would say, this moment.’

  ‘It would be perfect if this peace and calm could last forever.’

  ‘It will,’ Shane said. No. It won’t.

  Shane knew that there would never be harmony as long as Vera and Joan were entangled in their lives. The problem with Jenny’s family was that their personalities had never evolved. They were the exact same people they had been ten, seventeen, twenty-five years ago. Marriage, having children, separation/widowhood, the death of a brother/son – none of these things changed them. They basically lived their lives as if on a train that goes round and round on circular tracks… and from that train, they occasionally flung cluster bombs into the quiet, peaceful living rooms of those whose lives they touched. Yet, they themselves were never marked by the indignities they caused. Instead, they had the delicious dramas that their cluster bombs created, to gleefully scrutinise in Vera’s kitchen over vodka and wine.

  Jenny helped Shane pull up his trousers and then she fixed his collar. It was a thing of hers – to always dress him after daytime sex. But for the first time it made him feel old, as if he needed a helping hand, as if from here on in, life would be a worsening struggle.

  She said, ‘Oh yeah, Otto – what you gonna do?’

  Shane muttered, ‘Forgot about him.’

  ‘Look, whatever Otto is, he isn’t a bullshit artist. He doesn’t play games. He said it’ll make sense when he sees you so… it’ll make sense.’

  ‘Well, I want this sorted. So… I better go.’

  35

  7.40 pm: In the kitchen, Jenny poured two glasses of wine and buttered a cracker. With hands full of Shiraz, her laptop tucked under her arm, and a buttered cracker between her teeth, she turned the lights off with her nose. Climbing the stairs, she heard the spraying water. Shane was taking a shower before heading out to Otto; his lingering was probably a power-play.

  She opened the en suite’s door, swallowed the rest of the cracker and called out, ‘Your wine’s on the sink. Decided on a title yet?’

  ‘Major feels for Bad People from Good Homes.’

  ‘I like it.’

  ‘My phone’s out there. Will you text Otto? Pretend you’re me. Tell him I’ve left and am on my way. Precisely that. Cold and impersonal. And be sure to spell his name with a small o, please.’