Fionnuala Kearney - You, Me and Other People

Published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by Harper 2015

Copyright © Fionnuala Kearney 2015

Cover layout design © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2015 Images © Shutterstock.com

Fionnuala Kearney asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780007593972

Ebook Edition © 9780007593989 February 2015

Version 2015-03-25

For Aidan. For always loving me the way you do …

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Part One

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Part Two

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Part Three

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two

Chapter Forty-Three

Chapter Forty-Four

Chapter Forty-Five

Chapter Forty-Six

Chapter Forty-Seven

Epilogue

Q&A and Reading Group Questions

Acknowledgements

About the Author

About the Publisher

They say best men are moulded out of faults, And, for the most, become much more the better For being a little bad …

William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure

I should not be here. As sure as I know my name, my NHS number by heart and my daughter’s date and time of birth, I know I shouldn’t be here. Adam Hall … NC 100Z9T … The third of March 1994, 8.04 a.m., Meg Sarah-Louise Hall, born by caesarean delivery, firstborn child to my wife Beth and me. My head shakes of its own accord, my conscience nudging me, reminding me that I shouldn’t be here.

I drive by the house. There’s no parking, so I’m forced to keep going. On the passenger seat of my car, a gift sits boxed, wrapped. Today is someone else’s birthday. I spent time choosing this gift, wanting to get it right. It’s important to me, important that they know how I feel. I do a U-turn at the top of the narrow street, try again to get a nearby parking spot. About ten houses away, someone has pulled out, and I slip my car in their space.

Up ahead, there’s a party going on, the house marked by the telltale bunch of balloons on the pillar. I glance at the box. When I wrapped it earlier, I doubled over the Sellotape so that it’s unseen on the outside of the paper. Beth showed me how to do it one Christmas. ‘You have to hide it. Makes it so much neater,’ she’d said. She’s right. Hidden things are so much neater.

I open the window. Loud voices come from the house with the balloons. A woman passes by, a heavy-looking handbag slung high on her shoulder, a small package and a bottle of wine in her hands. I have no idea who she is, but she’s walking quickly, as if she’s late. Less than three feet from my car, just the width of a narrow footpath away, is a blooming jasmine plant. I inhale the heady scent, close my eyes, immediately cast back in time to my mother’s floral perfume. My left hand grips the handbrake as a childhood nursery rhyme she used to sing about Dick Whittington sounds in my head. Turn around . I glance at the gift. My bottom teeth chew my top lip. I shouldn’t be here.

I start the engine. I’ll get rid of the box and I won’t come back here. I promise myself I won’t return. I say it out loud, address myself in the rear-view mirror and speak the words slowly, like my life depends on it …

And, on the drive back, I look forward to the Sunday evening meal that awaits me. I’ll enter our home, kiss my wife. I’ll choose to have a shower to wash away my morning of madness. I’ll immerse myself in the life I love. I imagine it gift-wrapped, the outside wrapping seamless, double-sided sticky tape, or whatever it takes, to keep some of the inner content neat and tidy – hidden from the people I love.

‘My husband is a philanderer,’ I reply. She sits, her legs crossed, taking notes in her feint-lined legal pad. ‘That’s a four-syllable word for a cheating dickwit. How am I supposed to feel? He’s screwing a waitress …’ The last word tastes like Marmite on my tongue. In my head, I apologize to all the nice waitresses in the world. Aloud, I reveal how I really feel as my right hand clutches my upper left side. ‘I feel betrayed.’ I lower my voice. ‘And it hurts.’

Dr Caroline Gothenburg offers a sympathetic nodding motion. She has olive-coloured eyes, set in a wide face, flanked by titian curls; long, shapely legs encased in glossy tights – and I can’t help wondering if she has ever been betrayed in her shiny life. Lots of qualifications set in pencil-thin chrome frames adorn her wall. Bright as well as beautiful … I find myself focusing on her rather than me.

‘I’d like you to do me a timeline for the next session,’ she interrupts my thoughts. I feel crevices begin to stack one above the other on my forehead. I’m an intelligent woman. What the hell am I doing here? Glancing across her coffee table towards her neat, ordered frame, I swallow the panic creeping up my throat.

‘It will help me get to know you,’ she says. ‘Who is Beth? What makes Beth be Beth? I’d like to understand who you are, where you come from.’

A siren sounds in the distance, as if to warn me of an impending emergency.

‘Me too,’ I whisper.

In the car, my smart phone tells me I have three missed calls. One from Josh, my agent, and two from Adam. If my phone was really smart, it would delete Adam’s number. I’ve thought about it – but erasing him from my phone will not remove him from my brain. I switch on the Bluetooth, return Josh’s call and head to the nearest supermarket.

Twenty minutes later, I unload the contents of my wire basket and watch them move along a conveyor belt. Navel oranges, tuna, sweetcorn, trashy mags, a dodgy chicken wrap and two bottles of chilled sauvignon blanc.

‘Is Your Man a Love Cheat?’ screams a headline from one of the moving magazines. There are four, all with similar revelations, to reassure myself that I’m not alone, that there is in fact mass treachery in the world.