Chapter 2
‘That is so gross, Mam.’
‘What on earth are you talking about?’ Caroline Healy continued drying the dishes as she took them out of the dishwasher, knowing right well what her daughter meant. Perhaps a bouncy castle was a step too far for Freya.
‘Mam!’ The girl rolled her eyes in the annoying way that intimated her mother was stupid. ‘I’m about to be twelve, not two. My friends will laugh at me.’
‘They won’t. Your friend Lily had one last year.’
‘Are you for real?’ Freya stood, hands on hips, a mirror image of how Caroline stood when she herself was annoyed. ‘For your information, I am not getting up on it.’
‘Don’t worry. Dad and I will have great fun on it after a few glasses of wine.’
Freya’s mouth opened wide in horror. ‘You wouldn’t dare.’
‘Oh, I would. We would,’ Caroline said, knowing her husband, Cameron, wouldn’t be caught dead on a bouncy castle. ‘I’m not letting one hundred and fifty euros go to waste.’
Freya’s face was puce with anger. She was like her father that way. Allowing little things to irk her. Not that the bouncy castle was little. It took up most of the back garden lawn.
‘Why don’t you start inflating the balloons?’ Caroline suggested. ‘Dad will help when he gets home.’
‘I don’t know why you couldn’t have got me a balloon arch. All my friends had them for their birthdays.’
‘Do you know how much that costs?’
‘No, but I wouldn’t have to pay for it.’
Caroline took a deep breath, drying her hands as the doorbell rang. ‘Answer the door, pet.’
‘Mam, it’s too early! My friends can’t be here already.’ Freya looked down at her tracksuit bottoms and pyjama top. ‘I’m not even properly dressed.’
‘They won’t be here for ages. You have plenty of time to dress. Go answer the door.’
Caroline followed her daughter from the kitchen out along the hall, fingers crossed.
She flicked her long fair hair over one shoulder.
She’d heard it made you look sexier. Her white T-shirt had damp patches across her chest from the dishes, but at least her jeans were clean and helped give her bum and legs some sort of shape.
Freya opened the door. Turned round. A smile filled her face with happiness. ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you.’
‘Where do you want this?’ The man’s arms were loaded with an arch of gold and white balloons.
‘The garden!’ Freya clapped her hands with glee. ‘This is awesome.’
Caroline hoped her husband wouldn’t ask her how much it had cost. She couldn’t be dealing with his interrogation. She was aware she spent more than he earned, but you only live once – or YOLO, as Freya put it.
The man was staring at her open-mouthed. She wondered if her damp T-shirt was now see-through.
‘Is that okay with you, Mrs Healy?’ he asked. ‘Will I bring them through the house or what?’
She grabbed a rain jacket from the cupboard under the stairs and slipped her bare feet into trainers.
She stepped outside flashing her brightest smile, the one from Turkey that Cam had objected to but she’d had it done anyhow.
‘I’ll show you round to the back garden.
Freya, you can fix your hair and put on your party clothes. ’
‘Don’t make a show of me,’ Freya muttered before flouncing up the stairs like the diva child she still was.
To the bewildered man at the door, Caroline said, ‘Okay, follow me.’
Cameron Healy parked his jeep, idling the engine, admiring his house.
The red-brick two-storey with its feature window framing the atrium inside had cost a small fortune, though less than architect Thomas Clarke had quoted.
Cameron was glad he’d hired someone else, and he’d been clever in how he’d approached the whole thing.
Yet he’d still ended up drowning in debt.
Soon a horde of twelve-year-olds would be running amok around the place, pawing the glass, trampling on his neatly mowed lawn.
He looked at the laden sky. The weather forecast wasn’t great.
He silently hoped for the promised deluge so they’d have to remain inside.
The glass could be cleaned and the lawn would survive.
He’d agreed to having the party at the house, even though Freya had initially wanted to go bowling followed by a trip to the cinema.
Caroline was adamant that a party was an ideal way to show off the house to Freya’s friends and their parents.
His pride had ruled his head, but he was regretting now that it wasn’t bowling and cinema.
He shivered as he locked his ink-black Range Rover Discovery. Pity Freya hadn’t been born in the summer, he thought. October was too miserable.
At the front door, he noticed a smudge on the brass knocker. He used his sleeve to rub it. Caroline was slipping. Maybe she was making a point, hoping he’d let her have a cleaner. No way was that going to happen with his current debt. Then he wondered if perhaps there had been an early visitor.
His eye went to the Ring camera on the wall beside the door.
He’d check the footage later to see who had called.
Then he remembered that he’d switched it off remotely earlier in the day because of his important meeting – on a Sunday morning too, for God’s sake.
The whoosh of notification messages would’ve been a distraction.
Inside, there was silence. Blessed silence.
He wandered into the kitchen, noticing it was a bit darker than usual. Before he flicked on the light, he caught sight of the monstrosity outside in the garden.
No! She couldn’t have. Could she?
‘Caroline? Caroline!’
He ran out the back door to find his wife conversing with a stranger who was smoking a cigarette.
When the man spied his approach, he threw the cigarette onto the grass – Cameron’s precious grass – and stomped it out with the toe of his boot.
The pristine lawn was now covered with a fucking bouncy castle and an obnoxious arrangement of glitzy balloons. And a cigarette butt.
‘Good God almighty,’ Cameron swore under his breath. ‘What’s all this?’ He tried to keep his voice half normal but found it impossible to mask his anger.
The man stepped back. ‘I was just leaving.’
‘And who are you?’
‘I delivered the balloons. I’ll be off now, Caroline.’
‘Thanks. Freya loves them.’
As the man scuttled away, Cameron reached out and grabbed his wife’s arm. He jerked her towards him, then swung her around to face the inflated monstrosity. ‘He called you by your name. You seem very familiar with him.’
‘He was just delivering the balloons.’
‘I don’t care about balloons. What’s the meaning of that eyesore?’
‘I thought it would be fun for Freya and her friends. Keep them occupied.’
‘Jesus, Caroline, a bouncy castle? For fuck’s sake. It ruins the aesthetic of the garden, not to talk about the damage it’s doing to my lawn.’
‘Your lawn?’ She tried to wrangle out of his grip, but he held fast. ‘Come on, lighten up. It’s only for a few hours. We can have a bounce on it too. It’ll be fun.’
‘Are you losing your mind? I’ve had a stressful client meeting. I rushed home so that I could be here to welcome our guests, and this is how I’m greeted.’
‘Strictly speaking, they’re Freya’s guests, not ours.’
‘But what will their parents think of this?’ He pointed at the lurid blow-up castle that wasn’t a castle. Some sort of unicorn, if he was correct. The noise of the motor was giving him a headache.
‘Can’t you chill out?’ She disengaged her arm and made to go back into the house.
He grabbed her again. ‘Don’t you dare walk away from me.’
‘I need to check on Freya. She asked me to help with her clothes.’
He let her go. ‘And take off those trainers at the door before you drag muck in all over the floor.’
Once she’d gone, he unknotted his tie and wrapped it tightly around his hand until the blood stopped. Then he unwound it and bundled it up into his pocket.
Rage bubbled like a pot of boiling water neglected on a stove, and he wondered how he could contain it for the rest of the day. It was all Caroline’s fault, he thought.
His daughter ran out of the house towards him, and he plastered a smile on his face.
Were those tears in her eyes?