Anybody Out There? (Walsh Family) Read online

  MARIAN KEYES

  Anybody Out There?

  For Tony

  Contents

  Prologue

  There was no return address on the envelope, which was…

  Part 1

  1

  Mum flung open the sitting-room door and announced, “Morning, Anna,…

  2

  After she’d washed me, Mum took the bandages off my…

  3

  After I got my diploma in PR, I got a…

  4

  Dinner chez Walsh was from the local Indian takeaway and…

  5

  The August before last, Candy Grrrl was preparing to launch…

  6

  Helen was clattering away at the ancient Amstrad, which lived…

  7

  Actually, I’m not really that odd at all—well, no more…

  8

  A barrel-chested man slung a hamlike arm around my neck,…

  9

  I woke up in the narrow bed in the sofa-filled…

  10

  While I waited to see if Aidan Maddox would find…

  11

  Mum fought her way over to my bed.

  12

  When Rachel arrived on Saturday morning, the first thing Mum…

  13

  For our one-drink date, Aidan and I went to Lana’s…

  14

  On Saturday afternoon, a taxi drew up outside chez Walsh.

  15

  After Jacqui had decreed that Aidan would be a hard…

  16

  On the flight from Dublin to New York, my injuries caused…

  17

  I slept heavily and dreamlessly, probably thanks to the pills.

  18

  The security guards couldn’t believe I was back. No employee…

  19

  What are you doing for Thanksgiving?” Aidan had asked.

  20

  Coming in to work this morning (second day back) I…

  21

  The best in landlubberly eye care! I stared at my…

  22

  Less than a week after he first asked me to…

  23

  In the darkness, I woke with a bump, my heart…

  24

  Anna, where are you?” It was Rachel.

  25

  I used to dream of a white wedding.

  26

  I checked Aidan’s horoscopes. Hot Scopes! said:

  27

  Got the plaster off my arm today. It doesn’t look…

  28

  It finally happened. Aidan finally showed up.

  29

  Rachel looked blank. Like she wasn’t listening to me, then…

  Part 2

  30

  About a week after my husband died, I was in…

  31

  I hope you are keeping well. Listen, it’s gone to…

  32

  My shooting electricity pains woke me up at their usual…

  33

  I had a second shower, got dressed—in a swirly patterned…

  34

  I hope you had a “good” weekend. If you see…

  35

  Outside Diego’s, Leon and Dana were emerging from one cab…

  36

  There were pages and pages of these sorts of testimonials…

  37

  So like I said, two burly bozos came into office…

  38

  I checked my watch again. Only four minutes since the…

  39

  People were sitting down and holding hands with the people…

  40

  In the corridor, I was devastated with disappointment and couldn’t…

  41

  But later on, at home, I wondered if Leisl might…

  42

  I was trying to remember if Aidan and I had…

  43

  Monday morning. Which meant the Monday Morning Meeting. And here…

  44

  Another e-mail arrived from Helen.

  45

  The flash of red caught me by surprise. Blood. My…

  46

  All week, I was on tenterhooks waiting for the Mitch…

  47

  Ashamed to tell you, Anna. Trailing Detta Big, most boring…

  48

  Still no word from Mitch by Sunday morning and I…

  49

  The first message was for Mitch.

  50

  I called Neris Hemming’s number as soon as I got…

  51

  Via a series of cunning lies—I told Rachel I was…

  52

  Neris Hemming’s office.”

  53

  Friday, the ninth of July, my birthday; I was thirty-three.

  54

  I woke on Saturday morning with a horrible hangover. I…

  55

  Aidan? The spiritual place? Should I go today?”…

  56

  Before hitting my desk, I did a quick dash into…

  57

  Rachel, you have to go to the beach,” I said.

  58

  A couple of nights later, by accident—but an accident that…

  59

  God, Anna. Disastrous week. Mum went to the shrine at…

  60

  Mitch and I stood patiently in line while I eyed…

  61

  Candy Grrrl’s new range of cleansers was called Clean and…

  62

  On the train, Mitch and I rocked shoulder to shoulder…

  63

  All set for tonight?” Nicholas asked. “The full moon?”…

  64

  I contacted you on July 6 so that I could…

  65

  In the Friday-afternoon haze, Teenie and I sat on the…

  66

  Lauryn reappeared.

  67

  Anna, it’s me, your mother, it’s urgent—”…

  68

  She insisted on regaling me with stories about how great…

  69

  I swear to God, I thought I could see an…

  70

  I couldn’t come up with a pitch for Formula Twelve.

  71

  Last night, got call from Colin. Said he had info…

  72

  Hey, Nicholas,” I called down the corridor. “Thanks for your…

  73

  Joey in love was compelling viewing. A dinner had been…

  74

  The arrival of fantastic news!!!

  75

  Franklin leaned over my desk, flicked a furtive look at…

  76

  All right, all right, keep your pants on! Just ’cos…

  77

  It felt like the night before the most important day…

  78

  I stared at the phone, then a tangle of outrage,…

  79

  They’re not here yet,” Franklin said breathlessly, taking me by…

  80

  Leon was already there. I slid into the brown vinyl…

  81

  Anna. Anna!” I was brought back to the present by…

  82

  I settled down to wait. In a way, it felt…

  83

  I washed and got dressed as usual. My mouth was…

  Part 3

  84

  I woke up in the wrong room. In the wrong…

  85

  My buzzer jolted me awake—every cell in my body got…

  86

  Rachel brought me up to speed on everything that had…

  87

  All I can remember from that time was that my…

  88

  The day I’d got Janie’s letter a massive e-mail had�
��

  89

  Wearing the more expensive of my two charcoal suits, I…

  90

  Anna, it’s a miracle,” Mrs. Maddox gushed. “I was dead.

  91

  Anna, this new ‘quantum leap’ skin care? What do you…

  92

  Where’s that invitation?” Mum shrieked. “Where’s that fecking invitation?”…

  93

  Chopper’s taken off,” the man with the walkie-talkie said. “Blythe…

  94

  Check them out. They’re Jolly Girls for sure,” Jacqui muttered.

  95

  As soon as January clicked over into February, the anniversary…

  96

  The bags containing our dinner had arrived. Rachel plonked a…

  97

  Which one of you stole my Multiple Orgasm?” Mum opened…

  98

  Neris Hemming here.”

  99

  Mitch looked like a different person. Literally, like a different…

  100

  Take a look!” Jacqui hiked up her skirt and pulled…

  101

  Jacqui? Jacqui?”

  102

  Jacqui changed into an elegant Von Furstenberg–style wrap dress. With…

  103

  When we touched down at Logan Airport I was the…

  Epilogue

  Mackenzie married some dissipated heir of a hundred-million-dollar canned-goods fortune.

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Other Books By Marian Keyes

  Credits

  Cover

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  There was no return address on the envelope, which was a little weird. Already I was slightly uneasy. Even more so when I saw my name and address…

  The sensible woman would not open this. The sensible woman would throw it in the bin and walk away. But apart from a short period between the ages of twenty-nine and thirty, when had I ever been sensible?

  So I opened it.

  It was a card, a watercolor of a bowl of droopy-looking flowers. And flimsy enough that I could feel something inside. Money? I thought. A check? But I was just being sarcastic, even though there was no one there to hear me, and anyway, I was only saying it in my own head.

  And indeed, there was something inside: a photograph…Why was I being sent this? I already had loads…Then I saw that I was wrong. It wasn’t him at all. And suddenly I understood everything.

  Part 1

  1

  Mum flung open the sitting-room door and announced, “Morning, Anna, time for your tablets.”

  She tried to march briskly, like nurses she’d seen on hospital dramas, but there was so much furniture in the room that instead she had to wrestle her way toward me.

  When I’d arrived in Ireland eight weeks earlier, I couldn’t climb the stairs, because of my dislocated kneecap, so my parents had moved a bed downstairs into the Good Front Room.

  Make no mistake, this was a huge honor: under normal circumstances we were only let into this room at Christmastime. The rest of the year, all familial leisure activities—television watching, chocolate eating, bickering—took place in the cramped converted garage, which went by the grand title of Television Room.

  But when my bed was installed in the GFR there was nowhere for the other fixtures—tasseled couches, tasseled armchairs—to go. The room now looked like a discount furniture store, where millions of couches are squashed in together, so that you almost have to clamber over them like boulders along the seafront.

  “Right, missy.” Mum consulted a sheet of paper, an hour-by-hour schedule of all my medication—antibiotics, anti-inflammatories, antidepressants, sleeping pills, high-impact vitamins, painkillers that induced a very pleasant floaty feeling, and a member of the Valium family, which she had ferried away to a secret location.

  All the different packets and jars stood on a small, elaborately carved table—several china dogs of unparalleled hideousness had been shifted to make way for them and now sat on the floor looking reproachfully at me—and Mum began sorting through them, popping out capsules and shaking pills from bottles.

  My bed had been thoughtfully placed in the window bay so that I could look out at passing life. Except that I couldn’t: there was a net curtain in place that was as immovable as a metal wall. Not physically immovable, you understand, but socially immovable: in Dublin suburbia brazenly lifting your nets to have a good look at “passing life” is a social gaffe akin to painting the front of your house Schiaparelli pink.

  Besides, there was no passing life. Except…actually, through the gauzy barrier, I’d begun to notice that most days an elderly woman stopped to let her dog wee at our gatepost—sometimes I thought the dog, a cute black-and-white terrier, didn’t even want to wee, but it was looking as if the woman was insisting.

  “Okay, missy.” Mum had never called me “missy” before all of this. “Take these.” She tipped a handful of pills into my mouth and passed me a glass of water. She was very kind really, even if I suspected she was just acting out a part.

  “Dear Jesus,” a voice said. It was my sister Helen, home from a night’s work. She stood in the doorway of the sitting room, looked around at all the tassels, and asked, “How can you stand it?”

  Helen is the youngest of the five of us and still lives in the parental home, even though she’s twenty-nine. But why would she move out, she often asks, when she’s got a rent-free gig, cable telly, and a built-in chauffeur (Dad). The food, of course, she admits, is a problem, but there are ways around everything.