Again Rachel Read online

  Marian Keyes

  * * *

  AGAIN, RACHEL

  Contents

  The Walsh Family Tree

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Chapter 85

  Chapter 86

  Chapter 87

  Chapter 88

  Chapter 89

  Chapter 90

  Chapter 91

  Chapter 92

  Chapter 93

  Chapter 94

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Marian Keyes is a phenomenon. The multi-million copy, internationally bestselling author of some of the most widely loved, genre-defying novels of the past thirty years – such as Rachel’s Holiday, Anybody Out There and Grown Ups – has millions of fans around the world. They are irresistibly drawn by her warmth and wit, fearless honesty, relatable characters and relationships, and sheer storytelling magic. Not only has Marian inspired and entertained countless readers, but also the next generation of writers too.

  As a beloved author herself, Marian is a passionate champion of storytellers everywhere, playing an active role in encouraging new voices. She has been the chair of judges for the Comedy Women in Print prize, a sponsor of the Curtis Brown Creative Marian Keyes scholarship, and most recently ran her own hugely popular Instagram Live series bringing free creative writing courses to thousands of viewers. Marian also uses her position to raise some of the most challenging issues of our time, including addiction, immigration, depression, domestic violence and the Repeal the Eighth campaign.

  Both critically acclaimed and commercially unstoppable, Marian’s fourteenth novel Grown Ups went straight to No.1 in hardback and paperback in four global territories: UK, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and was shortlisted for the British Book Awards Audiobook of the Year. In addition to her novels, Marian has written two collections of journalism, as well as been the star of the second series of her hit show Between Ourselves aired on BBC Radio 4 at the start of 2021.

  Again Rachel, the sequel to her ground-breaking novel Rachel’s Holiday, will be Marian’s fifteenth novel.

  Marian is based in Dun Laoghaire, Dublin.

  For my mother,

  with gratitude and love

  The Truth must dazzle gradually,

  Or every man be blind –

  Emily Dickinson

  Forgive yourself for the many ways you hurt yourself, when all you were doing was trying to survive.

  Anonymous

  The Walsh Family Tree

  1

  The touch of his hand, lightly circling my belly button, woke me. Still half-asleep, I enjoyed the feel of his fingers tracing lower.

  But before we could go any further, I needed to know the time.

  ‘Ten past seven.’ His voice was thick.

  The relief of sleeping through a whole night! I smiled straight into his face. ‘Now you have my full attention.’

  Afterwards, we lay together in a rosy glow. But time was passing. ‘I’ve to go, sweetie.’

  ‘Already?’

  ‘Have to drop in home, feed Crunchie, pick up a couple of things before work.’

  ‘Uh.’ There was that meaningful little pause. ‘Okay.’

  We weren’t going there, not now. ‘Have a great trip.’

  He kissed me. ‘I’ll call when I can. But it’s unpredictable.’

  ‘Don’t worry.’ I slid from the bed. ‘I hope it goes well. See you Sunday.’

  He held my wrist. ‘I’ll miss you.’

  ‘I’ll miss you too.’

  In the kitchen, I gulped a quick glass of water.

  Finley wandered in, scratching his head. ‘Hey, Rachel.’

  ‘Hey. I’m off now. See you Sunday?’

  ‘Nah, I’ll be with Mum.’

  ‘Say hi from me. And if you felt like doing an act of kindness, I’m guessing your dad’ – I pointed a finger to the ceiling – ‘would kill for a coffee.’

  Finley looked doubtful and I had to laugh. ‘Go on, you lazy brat.’

  ‘Okaaay.’

  I gave him a quick hug, then darted away into the bright spring morning.

  As soon as I pushed my front door open, Crunchie hurled herself at me in ecstatic welcome. I dropped to my knees, rubbed her ears and spoke in my special Crunchie voice. ‘Hello, you good girl, hello!’

  ‘That you, Rachel?’ Kate stuck her head over the banister, streels of wet hair tumbling down. A round brush and a hairdryer were in her hands.

  I dashed up the stairs and into the bathroom. ‘I ran out of contact lenses.’ I rooted around in the drawer.

  ‘How’s Quin?’ she asked.

  ‘Grand. Off to New Mexico until Sunday.’

  ‘Lucky him!’

  Kate was my niece, the daughter of my eldest sister Claire. She’d been living with me for the past few months because the brutal commute from Claire’s house in West Dublin to her job in a care home in Wicklow was breaking her. These days, she spent a scant twelve minutes travelling to work instead of the two-and-a-half-hour round trip which had been the norm.

  I was mad about her. She was serious, sweet, she walked Crunchie when I couldn’t and she was (very much not a Walsh family trait) a clean freak. Obviously that came from her dad’s side and while I was no fan of his, only a churl would complain about a housemate who was forever pulling a mop from the utility room and saying, ‘I’ll just give the floor a quick wash.’

  Her ‘real’ job was acting. But the universe drip-dripped work for her, in exquisitely calibrated amounts, keeping her forever on a knife-edge of uncertainty. Every
time she was on the verge of giving up, she got thrown a small part, just enough to resuscitate her hope.

  ‘Why are you up?’ I’d just remembered she wasn’t rostered to work today. (Every week, she messaged me her schedule so I’d know if I needed to commandeer my neighbours Benigno and Jasline to walk Crunchie.) With a burst of hope, I gasped, ‘You’ve an audition?’

  ‘Today? No. Bit of work for Helen.’

  My youngest sister, Helen, ran a small private detective agency. Recently, she’d been inveigling Kate to help out, especially on the unpleasant jobs, which usually involved lying in a muddy ditch for long spells of time, stealthily taking photos. It was the kind of work Helen herself used to take great pride in but lately she’d been saying, with increasing frequency, ‘Rural surveillance is a young woman’s game.’

  Her stated opinion was that, aged twenty-three, Kate was the perfect person for such hardship. ‘Twenty-somethings don’t get cold, don’t get wet and have no sense of smell.’ Helen insisted that this was scientific fact. She was a defiantly contrary person with the strongest will I had ever bumped up against.

  ‘Let me guess,’ I asked Kate. ‘She has you spying on some trickster who runs the smelliest pig farm in County Cavan?’

  ‘Haha. Nothing so bad. Townie surveillance, an insurance claim. A man who says he can’t walk because of his bad back.’

  ‘God, it’s twenty past eight!’ I gave her a quick squeeze and jumped under the shower. No time to blow-dry my hair, I’d just have to let it dry naturally and accept the accompanying wayward misery.

  To counteract the bad hair, I put on my denim jumpsuit, which made me look like I worked at a carwash. I wore it so often that my colleagues ‘joked’ that I had no other clothes. But something about the stride-y freedom it gave me, especially when paired with trainers, made me feel mildly powerful.

  Meanwhile, Crunchie was watching, her expression sorrowful.

  ‘I have to work,’ I told her woebegone face. ‘But I’ll be back this evening. It’s a lovely day out there. Run around the back garden and bark at birds, you’ll be fine!’

  Despite my little house being only fifteen minutes’ drive from work, I was still late for the morning meeting.

  I hurried up the steps of the Cloisters and through the hallway, almost tripping over Harlie Clarke, one of my charges, who was hoovering the carpet with furious resentment. A 29-year-old alcoholic, with a devotion to her appearance that almost counted as a second addiction, she looked great – up at six thirty every morning to do the full works – intricate contouring, lustrous lashes and long blonde hair, Airwrapped into sleek obedience.

  Like nearly everyone, she’d come to the Cloisters convinced she was fine. But I’d chipped away until her shell of denial had shattered. Now she couldn’t not see that she was an alcoholic and she was raging.

  ‘Morning, Harlie,’ I said.

  With a bile-filled glance, she drove the hoover towards my ankle. You know, she really had the most amazing eyebrows. Microbladed, of course, but very natural-looking. Undoubtedly done by an expert and not some chancer who’d learnt from YouTube. There were times when I itched for us to discuss beauty stuff.

  But maybe not now. I skipped away before she maimed me.

  In the meeting room, five of the seven therapists were at the table, plus three facilitators, Nurse Moze and Ted, our big boss – who glanced at his phone, shook his head and muttered, ‘Tut-tut.’

  I mouthed, Sorry, slid into a chair and twisted my damp hair into a messy bun to get it off my face.

  Moze was reading her report on the previous night. ‘Busy shift. Trassa Higgins – one of yours, Rachel? Didn’t sleep. Came down to the desk at about three a.m. We chatted, did a crossword, she went back to bed around five, but when I looked in at six, she was still awake.’

  This told me that Trassa would be vulnerable today. Which was both good and bad. Bad because vulnerable meant, like, vulnerable. Not great in a 68-year-old grandmother addicted to gambling. But good in that she might be too exhausted to maintain her shield of denial. She’d been here for well over a week and was proving to be a tough nut to crack. Today might be the day.

  ‘Simon and Prissie,’ Moze said to a chorus of sighs around the table. ‘Yep. At it again. Waldemar caught them on his one a.m. check. Behind the sofa in the rec room, this time.’

  ‘So?’ Ted looked at me, then Carey-Jane, who were respectively Simon and Prissie’s assigned therapists. ‘What now?’

  Full of regret, I shook my head. ‘Simon has to leave. He’s already had one warning. He’s not ready for recovery. He doesn’t care.’

  ‘I want Prissie to stay.’ Carey-Jane was just as resolute. ‘But we add sex and love to her list of addictions. All part of the bigger picture.’

  ‘But if Simon leaves and Prissie stays, what message does that send?’ Yasmine asked.

  Ted shrugged. ‘Who cares? We make the rules.’

  Ted could be a worry. A competent administrator and a (periodically) inspiring boss, a gleaming streak of ‘Unopposed Despot’ ran through him.

  ‘Two newbies already arriving this morning,’ Ted said. ‘And with Simon going, we can take another one tomorrow or Friday.’

  Addiction was big business. There was a waiting list – always – for the Cloisters.

  Next, each therapist gave a round-table update on their various charges, so that we all knew precisely how every single patient was doing – who was extra-vulnerable right now, who was pushing back hard – then it was time to leave for group.

  Ted caught me at the door. ‘Not like you to be late.’

  ‘Aaaahhh …’ I could hardly say, ‘My boyfriend is off to Taos for four days and we needed some together time.’

  ‘… Rachel?’

  ‘Traffic,’ I said. ‘Sorry. Won’t happen again.’

  Then I left to hoick Simon out of breakfast and tell him to pack his bags.

  2

  When people ask how I met Quin then notice my hesitation, they usually say, ‘Tinder? Hey. No shame in that.’

  But it was worse than Tinder. Almost two years ago, in 2016, Quin and I had met at a meditation retreat, a silent one, held in a big old house in the middle of nowhere. I’d gone because I was a Failed Meditator. In all my years of trying, despite the hundreds of candle flames I’d stared into, I’d never been able to stop my thoughts. Fifteen minutes really isn’t that long, I just need to empty my mind empty empty empty thinking of absolutely nothing. Hey, look, I’m actually meditating. Except if I notice that I’m doing it, does that mean that I’m actually not? God, I never cancelled that appointment with the physio, I’ll do it now, well not now now but as soon as I finish my meditation …

  By seven o’clock on that Friday evening in late March, about thirty of us were sitting cross-legged on yoga mats, slyly trying to check each other out without getting caught. We were just this mass of nervous, hopeful people. More women than men – always the way – ranging in age from twenties to sixties.

  I’d have loved to know everyone’s reason for attending, but we were literally forbidden from speaking. Also banned were alcohol, coffee, phones, electronics, books and magazines.

  Our instructors were a kind and deliciously lithe young woman (yoga, of course) and three well-meaning young men, all a bit lentilly – rough brown clothing, pale faces with sparse, whiskery beards, their hairlines already in retreat.

  Over the forty-eight hours, we did oodles of group meditation, during which I spent a shameful amount of time wondering if all three of the Lentil Boys were in love with Yoga Girl. They’d have to be, surely? She was so nice. And, of course, there was the litheness. When my mind should have been stilling, I was inspecting the unkempt trio and wondering if she ever slept with any of them. Or indeed all of them? She was absolutely beautiful, but one thing I’ve learnt is never to underestimate the confidence of the most unremarkable of men.

  As well as meditating, we did a few yoga classes, ate vegan food at regular intervals and swilled
down as much sage tea as we could stomach. A large part of Saturday afternoon was spent eating a single raisin. About half an hour in, I realized it was maybe the twentieth time I’d done such a thing: every course on mindfulness and meditation wheeled it out to demonstrate how to slow down and live in the moment. I sighed quietly. Maybe it was time to throw in the towel for good on this meditation thing.

  Late on Sunday afternoon, just as the end was in sight, one of the Lentil Boys announced a LovingKindness Meditation – an exercise in intimacy where you sat opposite another person, staring into their eyes, thinking kind and loving thoughts for ten long minutes.

  It was excruciating.

  Uneven numbers meant I ended up being partnered with the most whiskery of the Lentil Boys and from the way his pupils flared and dilated, he was clearly giving it socks with the LovingKindness thoughts. The only way to cope was to disappear deep inside myself.

  Eventually, someone chimed something chime-y – probably a Tibetan prayer bowl, it usually was – and the longest ten minutes in eternity came to an end; this was our cue to break the gaze and start with someone new. I gave a pained smile and twisted away.

  Yoga Girl called, ‘Has everyone swapped partners?’

  I looked at my new person. A man. His face was as expressive as a poker but there was something going on in his eyes. Almost a smirk. Something to do with the ‘swapping partners’ comment.

  Juvenile.

  And yet.

  I stared at him. He stared at me. I thought, I feel kindly towards you. I feel lovingly towards you.

  Holding his unblinking gaze, I decided that he was returning the kind and loving thoughts. Then I actually felt something. Some sort of relief.

  No one was more surprised than me.

  Even as I gave a wobbly smile, tears started to spill from my eyes. Heavy drops plopped into my cupped hands and there were none of the awkward pats or fumbling for tissues that usually accompany public crying. We simply sat still and held the gaze.

  When the bowl chimed, the man tilted his head, asking a silent question: was I okay?

  I nodded and smiled, dashed away the surprise tears, then turned to meet my next partner.