The big living room in the biggest house you could rent on the posh golfing estate in Ballyglen had been transformed with fairy lights and flowers into a birthday bower.
The dining table was immaculately made up with the finest napkins, candles, glasses, silver and plates, all from Grace’s home. Piles of wrapped boxes sat on one side, ready to be opened.
Grace Devaney looked around the house with pride. She and Esmerelda had worked hard – well, instructed hard – to get the place into shape. This was going to be a very special birthday party, a party where the three birthday women had been through the fire and had come out the other side. Grace had it planned perfectly.
The rental agent hadn’t batted an eyelid at the list of instructions.
‘I can get you people to do all this,’ she’d said, calmly, studying the list typed up on Grace’s state-of-the-art computer. ‘You’re supplying the extra furniture, I see, and the movers will put it into place. But a butler with his shirt off . . .? We’d all love one of those, Mrs Devaney, but Ballyglen is a bit short on help of that sort or—’ The rental agent threw her head back and laughed so much that her cat’s eye glasses fell back off her face and into the nest of her purple rinse. ‘I’d have hired him myself. Personally, you’d do better with a few of the agricultural college students helping around the place. They’re all gorgeous.’
‘On the scale of, what is it – one to ten?’ demanded Esmerelda, who had very specific views on men and their beauty. She liked these Irish men more now that the country contained so many nationalities and a lusty woman could find a man with skin of any colour and a voice like honey. Variety was the spice of life, as her grandmother, God bless her in heaven, used to say.
‘Esmerelda,’ chided Grace. ‘it’s so hard to grade men.’
‘Not impossible,’ said the rental lady, fanning herself now with her clipboard. ‘These boys are all handsome and polite. But I don’t think we can ask them to serve the party with their shirts off. It would be sexist.’
She caught Grace’s eye and they grinned evilly.
‘But such fun,’ said Grace. ‘Fine. Dinner jackets for them all. Add the rental to the price.’
Since everyone had arrived, Grace had been enjoying herself thoroughly as hostess, greeting everyone, making sure all of them were happy with their bedrooms, hugging randomly, telling Ginger she was beautiful and looked so on the television.
Ginger had blushed.
‘Redheads are so darling when they blush,’ Grace said to Will, and then she chucked him under the chin. ‘He already thinks so, Ginger,’ she called out. ‘He’s besotted.’
Pat, Phil and Grace had had a marvellous time with Esmerelda recounting tales of their youth, and Poppy had listened in, fascinated.
Callie went over to Sam and Ted’s cottage and gave them a hand with India while they dressed.
‘Babies smell so delicious,’ she said, inhaling the scent of India’s little dark head.
‘We’re thinking that we might try for a second baby,’ Sam said. ‘Is that madness at my age?’
Callie smiled. ‘What’s mad about loving another child. Why not?’
At seven on the dot, everyone had to assemble and toast the birthday girls: Ginger, Callie and Sam.
Grace had made up a glorious elderflower cocktail for the non-drinkers and had champagne for anyone else.
‘Who would have thought that three such incredible women would have significant birthdays on the same day,’ Grace said, her voice clear as a bell. ‘And you have all had, let me say, interesting years.’
Everyone laughed, the three women most of all.
‘Time does not go backwards for any of us so we are not celebrating thirty, forty or fifty, but the joy of thirty-one, forty-one and fifty-one and surviving with grace and courage. That is the true mark of a strong woman.’ She raised her glass. ‘To Ginger, Sam and Callie.’
‘To Ginger, Sam and Callie.’ Everyone drank, the waiters watched and lovely dance music from Grace’s favourite era, the 1940s, came on in the background.
‘The staff,’ said Grace wickedly. ‘They follow my every silent command. Now, you must all sit.’
Everyone sat, with Grace at the head of the grouping, standing with her stick in one hand.
‘I believe they call them DLEs,’ said Grace proudly, with her bifocals on and looking deliciously eccentric with her fluffy hair and her new – shopping channel – pink lace dress dolled up with plenty of new jewellery – off the internet – accessorised with the old porridge cardigan she was devoted to.
‘DLEs?’ asked Phil. ‘I never know any of these new words.’
‘Damned Learning Experiences,’ finished Grace, like the opera singer delivering the final, triumphant note. ‘It means you have all gone through a year of learning and really, darlings, haven’t we all learned enough?’
Everybody laughed. Even the handsome agricultural students in the kitchen could be heard giggling.
‘I am a big fan of the old ceremonies . . .’
‘The old whatsits?’ said Ginger’s father, who was definitely going a bit deaf. That darned bandsaw, Ginger thought, whispering ‘Old ceremonies’ to him loudly enough so he could hear.
‘When we get back, I am taking you to get your ears sorted,’ said Grace. ‘Men always go deaf first when, in fairness, it should be us women who get deaf first so we no longer hear when we get roared at about when dinner is ready.’
Declan and Mick laughed out loud. Grace had never tolerated anyone shouting at her about their dinner.
‘Anyway, as I was saying, we need a ceremony to say goodbye to this learning year so we can usher in the new one.’
‘Is this from some new book you and Esmerelda got off the internet, Grace?’ demanded Ginger.
‘No look at me for this madness!’ said Esmerelda. ‘I do the praying like all my family.’
‘Only when you want something,’ said Grace testily. ‘I don’t believe in all that praying. I like my smudge stick—’
‘The thing that smells like the drugs the people smoke in the wacky cigarettes,’ stage-whispered Esmerelda.
‘It’s dried herbs, not that cannabis muck,’ said Grace. ‘It has cleansing properties. Tonight—’ She raised her arms like a pink-lace-and-porridge-clad goddess and gently shooed the dogs away, who had decided it was a game and wanted to join in. ‘Tonight, we all need to think of all the pain we went through, write it down on these pieces of paper in the centre of the room and burn them in the fire, then I will smudge the room, we will wish for better things. And tra la la! The old year will be gone, and the new one will come.’
‘Sounds great,’ said Poppy enthusiastically. ‘Do we wear special make-up?’
‘If you want, sweetie,’ said Grace, who had taken a real shine to Poppy from the first time she met her when Poppy, Callie and Sam had come to visit her and Esmerelda in Dublin. ‘Something ancient . . .?’
‘Egyptian,’ decided Poppy and ran upstairs to get her make-up kit. She loved the Egyptian look.
‘What’s the aim of it all?’ asked Callie with interest. Nothing surprised her anymore and she loved Ginger’s crazy old great-aunt. Grace had such spirit. Nobody would cheat on her or run a fraudulent business under her nose.
‘Ah, Callie,’ said Grace softly, ‘it helps you move on, forgive yourself and stop thinking that only you were stupid.’
Callie felt suddenly that Grace must be a witch because she had seen so clearly into her soul. She teared up at the idea of her soul so open.
‘You have a beautiful face and those eyes tell everything,’ said Grace gently. ‘Why is that a bad thing? It’s not. It’s only bad if the person with the eyes has not learned to protect themselves and if a bad person takes advantage of them.’
Callie could only nod. Grace had pretty much laid out her whole year in that statement.
Sam reached over and touched Callie’s fingers with her own.
‘Courage,’ she whispered.
‘I keep thinking that you could go back to modelling, Cal,’ said Phil, wiping away a tear.
‘Older models are in,’ said Ginger, not adding that bigger, sexy ones were too. Her billboards for the sportswear were up all over the country and if there were negative comments, Will was hiding them from her.
‘I don’t know,’ said Callie. ‘I was so young and I felt like a non-person. It’s different for you, Ginger, because you are in a position of power.’
Ginger felt her heart swell with happiness at the compliment.
‘You’re going to be helping me with my study on music on people with dementia,’ said Sam. ‘I need you. And you’ll definitely have to travel – so no time to model.’
‘Write down the pain,’ said Grace loudly. ‘Because I’m starving.’
Dutifully everyone wrote.
Ginger, Sam, and Callie were slowest.
Normally, Ginger wrote so fast but she couldn’t just now.
Liza betraying her? Working with Carla who’d done her best to humiliate her? Feeling betrayed by Will for that horrible period? And yet, Liza had done her a favour. So had Carla – without her, she’d never have met Will, and he’d always been true. It had all been terrible at the time, and yet she had risen from it all like a phoenix. Tomorrow, she was going alone to visit her mother’s grave and she was determined to face up to both the past and deal with the long-buried ache of not having a mother as she was growing up. She closed her eyes and wished that the love and friendship she had in her life would continue. She wished for strength and courage, always. Then she threw her empty piece of paper into the fire.
Callie stared at her paper blankly. ‘Jason,’ she wrote. His fraud, his life, his abandoning them, his other woman . . . the lack of money. She still worried about money, always would. The damn Xanax. That had been terrible but she hadn’t touched one since and never would again, if she could possibly help it. Then she thought of what she had now: Poppy; her family; herself. Perhaps Jason had done her a favour. She scrunched up her paper and threw it into the fire. To appreciating all that I have and to being me, always, she said silently.
Sam looked at India asleep in Ted’s arms. Joanne was right: the more noise a baby got used to, the more she could sleep when you were out or hoovering. She thought of the darkness of the post-natal depression. It had been terrifying, devastating, and yet she had come out of its black embrace. She had India and Ted, her darling sister and her family, her father and, yes, her mother too, who was trying very hard to change.
‘Pain’ was the one word she wrote on her paper; she threw it into the fire and wished for her happiness to continue. And please, please, another baby.
‘Smudging,’ announced Grace.
Ted brought India outside in case it was bad for her baby lungs.
It took a few goes for Grace to light the fat bundle of what looked like dried twigs and herbs and then the scent hit the room. It was a combination of sage and lavender and thyme and after that, nobody was sure what it was. But it had a smoky herbal scent as well as a hint of singed twigs
‘Let us let go of all the dark and sad moments of the past year and welcome in a new one,’ Grace said, entirely delighted with herself in her new Celtic priestess incarnation. She waved the smudging stick around. ‘Let us open our hearts to new happiness.’
After a bit more smudging, she put the collections of twigs and herbs down in a bowl and let it go out.
‘Now,’ she said, ‘how about we celebrate with a fabulous dinner. Boys!’ she called into the kitchen. ‘Bring on the birthday feast!’