Люси Фоли - The Guest List

‘I didn’t leave just because he broke up with me,’ I say, quickly. ‘It was …’ I take a big drag on my cigarette. My hand’s trembling. ‘I guess if Callum hadn’t broken up with me, none of the rest would have happened.’

‘None of the rest?’ Hannah asks. She’s sitting forward, interested.

I don’t answer. I’m trying to think of a way to go on, but I can’t find the right words. She doesn’t push me. So there’s a long silence, both of us sitting there and smoking.

Then: ‘Shit!’ Hannah says. ‘Is it me or has it got quite a lot darker while we’ve been sitting here?’

‘I think the sun’s started to set,’ I say. We can’t see it from here as we’re not facing in the right direction, but you can make out the pink glow in the sky.

‘Oh dear,’ Hannah says. ‘We should probably make our way back to the Folly. Charlie hates being late for anything. He’s such a teacher. I reckon I can hide for another ten minutes but—’ She’s stubbing out her cigarette now.

‘You go,’ I say. ‘It’s fine. It’s not important.’

She squints at me. ‘It kind of sounded like it was.’

‘No,’ I say. ‘Honestly.’

I can’t believe how close I came to telling her about it all. I haven’t told anyone the other stuff. Not even any of my mates. It’s a relief, really. If I’d told her, there’d be no taking it back. It would be out there in the world: what I’ve done.

AOIFE

The Wedding Planner

Seven o’clock. The table is laid for dinner in the dining room. Freddy’s got supper covered, which means it’s a free half hour. I decide to pay a visit to the graveyard. The flowers need refreshing and tomorrow we’ll be run off our feet.

When I step outside the sun is just beginning to go down, spilling fire upon the water. It tinges pink the mist that has begun to gather over the bog, that shields its secrets. This is my favourite hour.

The ushers are sitting up on the battlements: I hear their voices floating down as I leave the Folly – louder and slightly more slurred than earlier, the work of the Guinness, I’ll bet.

‘Got to send them off with a bang.’

‘Yeah, we should do something . Would only be traditional …’

I’m half tempted to stay and listen, to check they aren’t plotting mayhem on my watch. But it sounds harmless. And I’ve only got this brief window of time to myself.

The island looks at its most starkly beautiful this evening, lit up by the glow of the dying sun. But perhaps it will never seem quite so beautiful to me as I remember from those trips we took here when I was a child. The four of us, my family, here to stay for the summer holidays. Nowhere on earth could possibly live up to those halcyon days. But that’s nostalgia for you, the tyranny of those memories of childhood that feel so golden, so perfect.

There is a whispering in the graveyard when I get there, the beginnings of a breeze stirring between the stones. A harbinger of tomorrow’s weather, maybe. Sometimes, when the wind is really up, it seems to carry from here the echoes of women from centuries past performing the caoineadh, their keening for the dead.

The graves here are unusually close together, because true dry land is in short supply on the island. Even then, at the outer edges the bog has begun to nibble away at it, swallowing several of the graves until only the top few inches remain. Some of the stones have moved closer still, leaning in toward one another as though sharing a secret. The names, the ones that remain visible, are common to Connemara: Joyce, Foley, Kelly, Conneely.

It’s a strange thing when you consider that the dead on this island far outnumber the living, even now that some of the guests have arrived. Tomorrow will redress the balance.

There is a great deal of local superstition about the island. When Freddy and I bought the Folly a year or so ago, there was no other bidder. The islanders were always mistrusted, seen as a species apart.

I know the mainlanders view Freddy and me as outsiders. Me the townie ‘Jackeen’ from Dublin and Freddy the Englishman, a couple who don’t know better, who have probably bitten off more than we can chew. Who don’t know about Inis an Amplóra’s dark history, its ghosts. Actually, I know this place better than they think. It is more familiar to me in some ways than any other place I have known in my life. And I’m not worried about it being haunted. I have my own ghosts. I carry them with me wherever I go.

‘I miss you,’ I say, as I crouch down. The stone stares back at me, blank and mute. I touch it with my fingertips. It is rough, cold, unyielding – so far from the warmth of a cheek, or the soft, springy hair that I recall so vividly. ‘But I hope you’d be proud of me.’ I feel it as I do every time I crouch here: the familiar, impotent anger, rising up in me to leave its bitter taste in my mouth.

And then I hear a cackling, from somewhere above me, as though in mockery of my words. No matter how many times I hear it, that sound will never cease to make my blood run cold. I look up and see it there: a big cormorant perched on the highest part of the ruined chapel, its crooked black wings hung open to dry like a broken umbrella. A cormorant on a steeple: that’s an ill omen. The devil’s bird, they call it in these parts. The cailleach dhubh , the black hag, the bringer of death. Here’s hoping that the bride and groom don’t know this … or that they aren’t the superstitious sort.

I clap my hands, but the creature doesn’t budge. Instead it rotates its head slowly so I can see its stark profile, the cruel shape of its beak. And I realise that it is watching me, sidewise, out of its beady gleaming eye, as though it knows something I do not.

Back at the Folly, I carry a tray of champagne flutes through to the dining room, ready for this evening’s drinks. As I open the door I see a couple sitting there on the sofa. It takes me a moment to realise that it’s the bride and another man: one of the couple that Mattie brought across on the boat. The two of them are sitting very close together, their heads touching, talking in low voices. They don’t exactly spring apart on noticing my entrance, but they do move a few inches away from one another. And she takes her hand off his knee.

‘Aoife,’ the bride calls out. ‘This is Charlie.’

I remember his name from the list. ‘Our MC for tomorrow, I believe?’ I say.

He coughs. ‘Yes, that’s me.’

‘Sure, and your wife’s Hannah, isn’t she?’

‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Good memory!’

‘We were going through Charlie’s duties for tomorrow,’ the bride tells me.

‘Of course,’ I say. ‘Good.’ I wonder why she felt the need to explain anything to me. They looked rather cosy together on the sofa but I’m not here to cast any moral judgement upon my clients, or even to have likes and dislikes, to have opinions on things. That isn’t how this sort of thing works. Freddy and I, if everything goes well, should simply fade into the background. We will only stand out if things go wrong, and I shall take care to ensure they will not. The bride and groom and their nearest and dearest should feel that this place is theirs, really, that they are the hosts. We are merely here to facilitate everything, to ensure that the whole weekend runs smoothly. But to do that I can’t be completely passive. It is the strange tension of my role. I’ll have to keep an eye on all of them, watch for any threatening developments. I will have to try and stay one step ahead.

NOW

The wedding night

The sound of the scream rings in the air after it has finished, like a struck glass. The guests are frozen in its wake. They are looking, all of them, out of the marquee and into the roaring darkness from where it came. The lights flicker, threatening another blackout.