The Sandycove Knitting Circle

Chapter 1

My feet ached and throbbed in the too-high heels Mom had given me for my birthday, just after my best friend Caitlin had first been diagnosed with cancer two years ago now; she died a year after diagnosis.

Perhaps Mom was trying to cheer me up, but I wondered if she really believed a six-inch heel made you more ‘marriageable’.

‘If you’re comfortable, people will think you’ve stopped caring,’ Mom had told me.

‘You’ll be invisible. How are you ever going to find a husband wearing those unflattering flat shoes? ’

Mom was stylish and therefore the kind of woman for whom shoes cured most things. Except, as they were impossible to walk in, these shoes were woefully inadequate at even being shoes. And they were definitely unable to cure grief.

Not that I was publicly grieving, of course.

I had promised Caitlin I would be brave and strong and get on with having a good life.

And, anyway, our family weren’t big into displays of emotion.

It all stemmed from our matriarch, my Granny Annie, who emigrated to Boston when she was nineteen, married into the Daly family of the paper mill business, and then, when her husband – my grandfather Patrick Daly – died, brought up their only child, my mother, all on her own – while still running the mill.

‘I didn’t have time to grieve,’ she once told me – a lesson well learned by my mother, who had never shown an ounce of self-pity, even though she’d been married three times and her last husband had left her for a man called Cosmo.

But we weren’t fully robot, you understand, just part machine, like the Terminator.

My little brother Johnny was the emotional one in the family, crying enough for the rest of us, weeping through books, power ballads and Hallmark movies and even demanding hugs from my grandmother.

Even now, at the age of thirty, he insisted on them, hanging in there for longer than strictly necessary.

Now he lived in Los Angeles but he’d fly in to see us and complain about the ice-cold winter wind which whistled along Washington Street.

Meanwhile, now I was thirty-two, Mom had decided I should be married and I had cautiously begun to think she was right. I did need a distraction, and I wouldn’t mind having something else to think about that wasn’t work, or frantically booking my Pilates classes on the gym app before anyone else.

Marriage wasn’t so outlandish an idea because I did have a kind-of, sort-of boyfriend called Milhouse Bartlett the third, or Mil for short.

Anyway, Mil and I had been seeing each other for the last couple of years, on and off, casually and all that, and sometimes more than casual.

He came with me to Caitlin’s funeral and he joined us at Granny Annie’s beach house last summer for her seventy-fifth birthday.

Mil was your usual Bostonian from a certain class, the Brooks Brothers-shirted, brogues-wearing, tie-sporting, clean-cut kind of guy who was very familiar to me.

And, God knows, a bit of familiarity could be very soothing at times.

Milhouse and I weren’t in each other’s pockets and, anyhow, his pockets were the last place I wanted to be.

I liked the fact we didn’t make demands on each other and instead, when we spent time together and went out to dinner or he’d come over to mine, he talked about how he still hadn’t been made partner or the fact that his father had forgotten his birthday or that his mom preferred his older brother.

But I’d never considered marrying him until Mom began stoking the embers of marriage and it began to strike me that it wouldn’t be totally awful to get hitched, as they say.

It would be a bit of an adventure and a diversion from ordinary life, with all those gloriously time-sucking activities planning a wedding involved – all those hours spent searching for a dress, planning the invitations, choosing the menu or the wine.

But because Mil and I weren’t joined at the hip, it was my awesome PA Tara who was with me, at the awards, clapping away as each nominee was called out and trying not to yawn.

My feet throbbed and I kicked off those killer heels under the table.

Really, Tara should have been nominated, because without her, my business wouldn’t have survived the last year.

All the time Caitlin was in the hospice, Tara had kept everything going and sometimes I felt a little disconnected from the business I had set up.

I had to focus and get back on it. I used to wake up buzzing with ideas, already planning while brushing my teeth, ready for the day.

Now, I sometimes wanted to think of anything but work.

I had lost my focus and I had to get it back.

The Kerry-Anne Daly Foundation was named slightly ambitiously, considering I’d only been twenty-two when I started it, a decade earlier.

My plan had been to find amazing small businesses who needed a push, advisors and mentoring, and investors.

I supported the businesses, found them the right people and got them on their way – a kindergarten for small companies.

Taking a percentage of their profits after five years or a share option, it had all been working really well.

I hadn’t dropped many balls, just the odd one over the last year.

There was one young businesswoman for whom I just couldn’t find an investor.

Her business was called Fancy Plants, a plant subscription service, and I just couldn’t make the pitch work, but, like I said, I was off my game lately.

Sometimes, I woke up in the middle of the night, in a sweat, worried I’d never be on my game ever again.

And then I’d stare at my digital clock as the night slipped away and dawn would be breaking, and then there would be Pilates and coffee and a banana and another working day stretched ahead.

Tara gave me a look. ‘Are you okay?’

‘Never better!’ I smiled back at her, my cheeks now aching along with my feet.

I was in my tight black off-the-shoulder dress (a Mom cast-off), hair blow-dried poker straight, and my make-up done professionally.

I had looked in the mirror before I left my apartment and thought that I looked so different to how I felt inside – so neat and put-together. Inside, I was a bit of a mess.

She shot me another look. ‘No one’s that happy. Especially after the year you’ve had.’

‘I’m fine!’ I was getting a little fed up of being asked how I was. Caitlin wouldn’t want me to wallow.

‘You know I am worried that you aren’t fully grieving…’

‘So you’ve said.’

Tara was so sweet and now I’d lost my BFF, she seemed determined that I was in need of some nurturing. But I was fine. We’re made of stern stuff, us Dalys.

I had hosted Caitlin’s anniversary memorial the week before, because her mom wasn’t up to it.

And who else was going to make sure that Caitlin’s favourite cake was served and we played all her favourite songs, including Whitney Houston’s ‘I Have Nothing’, which had everyone sobbing?

Someone had to remain upright and thank everyone for coming, and that had to be me.

‘But have you cried yet?’ Tara had asked, dabbing at her red eyes at the memorial.

‘Of course I have!’ And I had. But just not very much, or not enough to satisfy everyone around me.

Tara had produced her phone. ‘I’m giving you the number of a grief counsellor. You have to talk it through.’

‘Tara, please.’ I’d smiled at her. ‘I’m okay. Just like always. Caitlin told me she wanted me to get on with my life and that’s exactly what I’m doing.’

And now, at the awards, a week later, they were announcing our category. Tara and I immediately arranged our faces into ones of cool indifference.

‘And the winner is…’

We made eye tentative contact.

‘The Kerry-Anne Daly Foundation!’

‘YES!’ Tara rushed to her feet like a rocket in Cape Canaveral. Grabbing me under my armpits, she hauled me upwards. ‘Go on…’

‘My shoes!’ I had to dive back down and struggle to put them on. ‘You’re coming with me,’ I said, now re-shod, but she shook her head.

‘No way. It’s your award.’ She pushed me off and I weaved through the tables, friends and associates, investors and even old clients patting me on the arm as I moved through, soaking up the applause.

In the movie of my life, this would perhaps be the closing credits.

Professionally successful, having so often been the only woman in the room, managing to survive life’s slings and arrows – including this last year, my annus horribilis, the worst of my life – and keeping a business going for ten whole years. I was here. I had made it.

At the podium, my mother’s best frenemy, Mitzi Callaghan, who ran one of the largest interior design companies in Boston, presented me with the award. ‘Ah, Kerry-Anne,’ she said in my ear. ‘I am so pleased you won.’

I took the award. ‘Thank you, Mitzi.’

‘It was about time you did,’ she went on. ‘You’ve been the bridesmaid so often at this thing, and now you’re finally the bride.’ There was a pause. ‘Not an actual bride, obviously.’

My professional smile plastered on, I gazed out at the audience and leaned into the microphone and said something like this: ‘We are all so lucky to be working in business and helping our clients achieve their goals. There is nothing more satisfying…’ I paid tribute, of course, to Tara and our clients and mentioned how much joy and privilege I received from working with them.

I turned to leave the podium and there was Mitzi again, her eyes gleaming, like Tom eyeing Jerry. ‘Did you hear about Audrey?’

Audrey was Mitzi’s daughter, who was my age and was arrested for speeding on the freeway when she was fifteen, and then at college was in a sorority which was known for the wildest parties, and once ran through the Harvard quadrangle naked for a bet and was married for twenty-four hours in Las Vegas, before getting a quickie annulment.

She was now working with her mother and buying cushions for rich people.

‘She’s engaged,’ went on Mitzi. ‘Isn’t it wonderful? He’s a European prince. Old money.’

You had to hand it to Mitzi, she was able to impart information so quickly it was like a meeting with a spy in the old East Berlin. ‘Great news, Mitzi.’

‘It’s about time you girls settled down. All this gallivanting. I’m just lucky Audrey was always so steady. And now she’s bagged herself a real-life prince.’

I felt like stabbing her with one of the heels of my shoes. In fact, one gave way, and I staggered slightly, and then managed to turn, still smiling, and find my way back to Tara.

My foundation was in profit, I was turning away potential investors, I had given a total of three TED Talks (none had gone viral), I wrote articles in national newspapers about investment.

I was attractive, even without make-up (kind of).

I was in shape, my hair was blonde. Well, again, kind of.

I dressed well, my teeth were straight and I could talk to anyone.

I read actual books, could converse on most subjects and knew the names of the entire senate and congress, as well as the Billboard top ten.

I couldn’t cook, but that’s why restaurants were invented.

I had it all. Except, why did I feel so incredibly flat, like a forgotten bottle of champagne that has been left for a week in the icebox?

I smiled as though I was on top of my world, but I was thinking of Caitlin and how she’d told me to go and enjoy life for the two of us.

I’m trying Caitlin, I said to her. I’d started doing that lately, talking to her.

Which I think was making things worse. Our last conversations together in the hospice were mostly late at night, when the whole world seemed to be sleeping except for us, and we talked and talked.

Caitlin had a list of things she wanted me to do: read her favourite book – ‘It will change your life’ – have a vacation, look after myself and also end things with Milhouse.

She had never liked him particularly, but I wasn’t sure how serious she was because she was on morphine by that point and she also confessed to once stealing my navy J. Crew dress for a trip to the beach.

‘So that’s where it went!’

‘I’m sorry.’ And then we began to laugh. My best friend, dying, and the two of us laughing together, just like we always had.