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About the Author

Copyright Page

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To Niall, Deirdre, and Joseph

Acknowledgments

I’m indebted to quite a few people—for without them this novel would not have become real. For her editorial insights I’m very grateful to Hope Dellon of St. Martin’s Press. For believing in the story from the beginning, my agent Rowan Lawton at Furniss Lawton, and to Rachel Mills and Caroline Michel at Peters Fraser and Dunlop, who carried it further. Thanks to the members of the inaugural National Academy of Writing in London and its administrator, Rena Brannan, and especially to its director, Richard Beard.

To the members of the Kiltumper Book Club, I am grateful for their continual reminder that storytelling counts first and foremost. And I thank them for putting up with me as their facilitator these seven-plus years. Thanks to Marie O’Leary, Siobhan Phelan, and Isobel O’Dea, and especially my sister Deirdre Breen, who read the story in its first draft.

But most of all, I owe more gratitude than can be expressed in words to Niall Williams, the man who has believed in me since that first day we met in a university café in Dublin many, many years ago. Without him—and our children—I would never have had this story to tell.

Plants are always from some sort of family.

—from Swimming Home by Deborah Levy

One

The nurse who performed the X-ray had a magenta streak in her short dark hair. She had a Dublin city accent and her name began with “L.” Maybe it was Letitia? Loretta? Latara, maybe? Iris had been too apprehensive to listen. In the center of the windowless room stood an old diagnostic thing, a white metal machine. By the door was a black plastic chair with chrome legs and in the corner, a half-wall-half-glassed-in partition, inside of which L stood. Half-hidden.

It had been one of those days for Iris. That morning her editor had asked her to call in to the offices of The Banner County News and she’d arrived thinking he was going to offer her a permanent spot. He’d sat her down. What he offered was coffee. He’d never done that before. Then he propped his short legs in their beige cords against the desk (a somewhat Scandinavian-looking piece, very minimalist) and explained the newspaper was taking a new direction. They didn’t see gardening articles as appealing to the newspaper’s current market.

“Of course, I love your pieces. Even read them. But, that’s progress isn’t it?” He looked at his watch. “I’m sorry. I have to tell all the freelancers today. Not just you. There’s crosswords. He has to go, too. And the books guy.”

Iris had looked out through his wooden blinds onto the street.

“I know, Iris. Rotten luck. But it’s coming down from the board. Things are tight and we have to cut. Cut, cut. You know how it is these days.” Arthur Simmons was the son of the owner of the paper and ten years her junior, and for a moment she had thought how stupid his hair looked, sticking up like a modern mohawk. He hadn’t even got it right. And he was too old for it. And he certainly didn’t know how it was these days.

She felt he was expecting her to say something but as she hadn’t, he straightened away from the desk and looked down on her. She was looking at the fine wool floor covering.

“Are you all right?”

She had forced herself to turn her upset face to him.

“If not coffee, tea maybe?”

“No.” She ran her hands through her hair, then smoothed it. “I’ve got to be somewhere.” She stood up. “As of when?”

“Sorry?”

“When do I finish?”

“Well. Actually…” His hands were in his pockets and he rocked back on his heels. He had an apologetic look on his face. “As of today … so sorry.”

She had looked at him for one long moment. His face had reddened. Was he sorry?

“I just thought … it was going well,” she said. “I’ve been getting questions from readers, you know. ‘What’s the best time to prune an apple tree?’”

“Iris, please.”

“‘When can I move my peonies?’ ‘When’s the best time to transplant carrots?’”

He tightened his lips together, raised his eyebrows, and slowly he shook his head. Apparently, there was nothing more to say.

She walked toward the door, had her hand on the handle and was about to open it.

“Listen. Wait,” he said. “Wait … I’ll tell you what. We’re starting an online version of the paper. A blog might be perfect for you.” He paused. “I mean, if you don’t mind doing it for free…”

A pair of secateurs had just sliced through her little moment of hope.

“… just until we see what traffic it generates.” She turned back to the door. “Iris?”

“I’ll think about it.” She was about to step out into the corridor when she swung around, looked directly at him, and in a voice solid and unwavering she said, “You never transplant carrots.” And then she was gone. Out through the maze of other Scandinavian desks and past The Banner County News staff with their averted eyes. Did they all know she had been let go? Keeping pace with a thrumming in her chest, she had gone down the stairs and out into the street.

*   *   *

“Are you still having periods?”

She was jerked back by L’s question.

“Yes.”

“When was your last?”

“Two weeks ago.”

Stripped to her waist, Iris was directed to the machine and positioned, or rather her breast positioned, in place. First the right.

“Turn this way. Put your arm here. Like you’re hugging it.”

“Hugging it?”

“I know. It’s only for a bit. And I’m sorry, it’s cold.”

With Iris’s cheek turned sideways and one arm stretched around the contraption in the opposing direction, L lowered the plate. The radiographer was so close that Iris saw the butterfly tattooed behind her right ear. And she breathed in the scent of the sea off her hair.

Then the left.

It had hurt, the squeezing, but not as badly as Iris expected.

L said, “It’ll just take a few minutes to scan these.” Iris went back and waited, half-naked, on a small bench, in a blue cape of crepe paper in an airless cubicle with the door closed. Her hair clashed with washed-out blue she was sure. She reached into the rattan basket she used as a handbag and found an old lipstick and steadied her hand to put it on. “There,” she said to the back of the door.

*   *   *

People used to say Iris Bowen was beautiful, what with the wild weave of her red hair, the high cheekbones, and the way she carried herself like a barefoot dancer through the streets of Ranelagh on the outskirts of Dublin city. But that was a lifetime ago. That woman, the woman Luke had said was the most beautiful he’d known, was now wearing a blue paper cape and her best summer shoes, a pair of thinly strapped black sandals. How vulnerable she felt, half-dressed.