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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2018
Copyright © Fionnuala Kearney 2018
Cover design by Ellie Game © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018
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.
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Source ISBN: 9780007594016
Ebook Edition © October 2018 ISBN: 9780007594023
Version: 2018-11-14
NOW – 3rd June 2017
From The Book of Love:
‘I love you because you found me.’
I’m wide awake when I shouldn’t be. Completely still, I’m sitting bolt upright on the edge of our bed, ears pricked for any hint of her. There’s nothing but familiar sounds from the old building echoing in the silence. A fly buzzes around the bedroom window. Through the oak floorboards, from below in the kitchen, the fridge motor whines. The pipes groan in the walls like a quick, expectant heartbeat. Even the house misses Erin.
Standing, I stretch tall, my hands just about touching the ceiling. Then I start my sweep of 44 Valentine’s Way, my early walkabout. The children’s bedrooms get a mere glance, nothing new there but another fine layer of dust. I head downstairs, my left hand tracing the original, deco style, curved staircase. At the bottom, just to the right in the study, the desk lamp that sits next to a pile of architectural drawings is switched on. A glance past them, to my paper diary, brings a stabbing memory of Erin, months ago, trying to convince me to digitally diarise everything onto my phone. I resisted, laughed, ignored the jibe about my Jurassic ways and reminded her that it was she who’d dragged me kicking and screaming to the written word in the first place.
Today’s date, with a spidery doodle right in the middle of the page also confirms Lydia’s birthday party tonight. My sister will have staff, borrowed from the cafés she owns, bearing trays of minuscule canapés and warm prosecco. She’ll be floating through our group of friends, and some of hers whom I don’t know, with a painted smile firmly in place, pretending everything’s fine.
The phone ringing in the hall makes me flinch but I don’t move, sensing it will be another hang-up.
‘Hi,’ Erin says from beyond the doorway. ‘We’re not home right now. Leave a message.’ My voice pitches in, ‘If anyone cares, I’m not here either’ and she giggles just before the beep and the final click. I walk to the hall – hear her laugh resonate, almost bounce off the walls, and wonder how days without her seem so achingly exhausting. It’s always been like that. From that first moment I saw her, and her ridiculous dancing, to the last time we spoke, she has lived in my soul. She just moved in, took up residence. No discussion. No permission. No regrets.