Lola's Secret (28 page)

And if she could stop the pain she knew Alex’s family would be feeling now, she’d have liked to have done that too.

Rosie’s call had come before ten
A
.
M
., three days earlier. Lola had spoken to Alex the night before, for an hour. They’d discussed politics, argued about religion, talked about their families, and finally said good-bye.

“Talk to you again tomorrow,” he’d said. “Good night, Lola.”

“Good night, Alex.”

They didn’t say “I love you,” but she knew she loved him and she knew he loved her. When you got to their age, you knew these things.

The call had come in on her mobile phone. “Lola, it’s Rosie.”

“Rosie!” Her voice sounded strange, as if she had a cold. “Darling, are you all right?”

“It’s Papa. Lola, it’s Papa. He’s—”

“He’s what, Rosie?”
Please be sick, Alex. Be sick, be in hospital, be in an ambulance, be anything but—

“He’s dead.” Rosie was crying so hard she could barely speak. “He died in his sleep. I went down this morning and he—”

Lola waited. She didn’t breathe, didn’t move. She just waited.

Rosie couldn’t stop crying. “Lola, I’m so sorry. I’ll have to call you back.”

Lola stayed where she was. For the next hour, she sat there on her bed, the phone beside her, waiting for Rosie to call back. She didn’t cry. Not yet. She didn’t go out to the kitchen, though she could hear Margaret moving around, hear the kettle boiling. As she waited for Rosie to ring again, she sat still, listening to all the sounds of life around her. The birds outside her window. A tune playing faintly on the radio. She wouldn’t cry. She wouldn’t. Not yet.

Rosie was only slightly calmer when she called back. “I’m so sorry, Lola. I’m so sorry.”

Lola chose to believe she was apologizing for crying. “You mustn’t say sorry for that. Of course you have to cry. You have to make all the noise you can about your papa, laugh and shout and cry and—”

“He was so happy these last few months. He was happy anyway but he was different happy. He loved talking to you so much. Thank you, Lola.”

“You don’t have to thank me. It was the easiest thing in the world.” She said it out loud then for the first time. “I loved your father very much, Rosie.”

The words triggered Rosie’s tears again. “I don’t want him to be dead, Lola. I want him here. I want him back.”

She was saying all the things Lola couldn’t yet, putting words to her feelings. It made it easier to hear Rosie say them, to be the one saying the soothing things, to tell her that Alex had said so many times how much he loved his daughters, his whole family, how proud he was of them, the joy they’d brought him.

“Will you come to his funeral, Lola? Please. So we can meet you?”

“Of course,” she’d said.

She cried alone, many times, during the three days that followed that call. She cried for all that would be lost to her and Alex now, the conversations, the memories. She cried for their lost years. For the lonely nights that she knew would now lie ahead.

She also cried tears of gratitude. For the unexpectedness of life, bringing them back together again, even briefly. For all the small, seemingly unconnected events that had come together to allow her and Alex to reconnect. She traced it back and back, marveling even through her grief. If Patricia and Luke hadn’t moved to Clare five years earlier, none of this would have happened. If Luke hadn’t become interested in computers, it wouldn’t have happened. If he hadn’t set up that system in the charity shop for them all, if he hadn’t installed that photographic program, if Lola hadn’t kept that photo of Alex, if Luke hadn’t known how to use the Internet to find people, if Alex hadn’t tried to ring her on Christmas Day …

So many tiny steps coming together to make so many other wonderful things happen. Was it fate, or magic, or both?

As the flight attendant announced they would soon begin their descent into Melbourne, Lola felt a touch on her hand.

“You okay, Mum?” Jim asked.

“I’m fine, darling, thank you.”

She leaned forward and watched through the window as Melbourne appeared in the landscape beneath them. She pictured the scene in the airport, Rosie waiting at the gate, checking the monitors for their flight arrival. She had insisted on coming to collect them. “Papa would kill me if I didn’t,” she’d said.

The next day, after the funeral, Ellen and Glenn would fly into Melbourne airport too. That had been Bett’s idea. They were all staying in the same hotel in the center of the city for three nights. They’d go and see a musical one night. Take a tram ride one day. Perhaps a museum, an art gallery. They would also take a day trip to Brighton together. Bett’s idea again. In the past three days, Bett had been a constant presence by Lola’s side, listening to her talk about Alex, the man she’d known all those years ago, the man she’d connected with again, too briefly. About all she had loved about him, had been loving again, about what their plans would have been if they had managed to meet in person again.

“Let’s still do them,” Bett had said. “In his memory.”

Lola knew that today would be a very sad day, for Alex’s family, for herself. But there would also be laughter too, she hoped. Shared memories of him—a loved father, grandfather, friend. Perhaps there would even be new friendships made, between her family and Alex’s family. And who knew what small event would happen today that would set all sorts of others in motion in the future? In the way something as small as a brief conversation in a supermarket queue with Alex fifty years ago had somehow led to her being here, on this plane, her son on one side, her grand-daughter on her other side, about to land in Melbourne for his funeral.

Yes, life really could be extraordinary, Lola thought. She gazed around the plane. All these people here together, so ordinary on the surface, but who knew what each of them had done in their lives or hoped to do in the future? She knew a little of what was going on in Bett’s head, in Jim’s head, in both their lives, but surely they had their secrets from her too. If she was able to ask every single passenger what their greatest hope in life was, or their greatest fear, would there be hundreds of different answers? She was sure of it. And what about all the hotel guests she had met in her life? People she’d had the briefest of dealings with, a greeting at the reception desk, a casual conversation in the dining room? All those different lives and loves and fears and hopes and dreams. Perhaps it was as well that people kept their inner lives secret. Imagine the cacophony if all their hopes and dreams and worries were being broadcast. “Will I ever fall in love?” “Will I get the job I want?” “Will I have children?” “Will I be rich?”

What would be the most common thought? she wondered. “Will everything be all right?”

There was no way of telling. Lola knew that from experience. But yes, the chances were that everything would be all right. It was just a matter of taking the good with the bad—not only in life’s experiences, but in the people you met, in the luck you had, in the thoughts you had. There was no secret to a perfect life, because there was no such thing as a perfect life. It was a matter of finding a place for yourself in your own particular galaxy, a spot in your own solar system of family and friends. The freedom to move in and out of each other’s orbits, pull toward each other sometimes, away from each other at other times.

That was how it had been for her, Lola realized. For all of her family and friends, too. All of them leading their own separate lives, yet always staying connected. All of them alone, with their own fears and worries and hopes, yet finding comfort, entertainment, and, yes, love, in the closeness of others.

The plane began its descent. Lola took Jim’s hand and then Bett’s hand in hers and squeezed. She felt their squeezes in return.

She didn’t know what today would bring, but after eighty-five years, she could predict it a little. There would be sadness and sorrow, but perhaps there would be some happiness and joy too. They would all meet new people. Hear stories. Share thoughts. Eat a little, drink a little.

Lola shut her eyes, knowing one thing for sure. Moment by moment, layer by layer, new memories would be made today, for all of them. And what more could anyone ask of a day—or of life itself—than that?

My big thanks to:

John Neville, Noel Henny, Padraig O’Sullivan, Anthony Murphy, David Healy, Rachel Tys, Marylou Jones, Frances Brennan, Kate Strachan, Dominic McInerney, everyone at the Clare Library in South Australia, especially Heather Lymburn, Candice Ellis, Charles Cooper, Lurlene Simpson, Trish Jones; Val Tilbrook, Claire Giles, Alda Jones, Suzanne Uphill, and all the Friends of the Library, Mayor Allan Aughey, Jo Kelly, and all at the Melrose Rural Women’s Gathering.

My two families, the Drislanes and the McInerneys, and all my friends, with special thanks to Max Fatchen, Austin O’Neill, and Lee O’Neill.

My agents: Fiona Inglis, Jonathan Lloyd, Kate Cooper, Gráinne Fox, Christy Fletcher, and Anoukh Foerg.

My publishers around the world: everyone at Penguin Australia, especially Ali Watts, Arwen Summers, Gabrielle Coyne, Bob Sessions, Peter Blake, Louise Ryan, Sally Bateman, Carol George, and Debbie McGowan; Trisha Jackson, Helen Guthrie, Ellen Wood, David Adamson and all at Pan Macmillan in the UK, and Jen Smith, Hannah Elnan, and everyone at Random House in the USA.

My big thanks, as ever, to my sister Maura for all the help, laughs, and encouragement she gives me.

And finally, and as always, my love and thanks to my husband, John.

Random House Reader’s Circle:
This novel picks up with some of the same characters your readers came to know and love with your earlier novel,
The Alphabet Sisters
. What made you decide to revisit this family, especially Lola Quinlan?

Monica McInerney:
Lola has always been one of my favorite characters. I loved writing her scenes and dialogue in
The Alphabet Sisters
, seeing the world and family life through the eyes of a woman in her eighties. She’s wise, outspoken, witty, cheeky, flamboyant, just so much fun to write. I didn’t know my own grandmothers, so I think in many ways Lola also became the grandmother I’d loved to have had myself—the only problem being that she was fictional.

In October 2010 I was in Australia on a month-long promotional tour for my novel
At Home with the Templetons
. Throughout the tour, readers kept mentioning
The Alphabet Sisters
to me, telling me how it had made them laugh and cry and how they had loved Lola, in particular. I was so touched to hear that, because it has always been a special book to me, too. On the last week of the book tour, a missed flight meant I had to unexpectedly spend a night in a motel in my hometown of Clare, the setting for
The Alphabet Sisters
. I went to sleep thinking about being back there, about the Quinlan family from
The Alphabet Sisters
, and about Lola herself. I woke up at 5
A
.
M
. with the entire plot for
Lola’s Secret
in my head. I leapt out of bed, made a cup of tea, and got my notebook. I also have to confess that I put on some lipstick—I was never able to write any of Lola’s scenes unless I was wearing a garish red lipstick like she favors! For the next hour, I wrote pages of notes. As soon as I got back home to Dublin, I started writing the book. It poured out of me, day and night, and I finished it in less than six months. It’s the fastest I have ever written one of my novels. I enjoyed every minute of it, too. It was like being in Lola’s own company the entire time, as though she was telling me the story and I was simply writing it down.

RHRC:
Do you have plans to feature any of the family members or guests again in future novels?

MM:
I’d definitely like to revisit the Quinlan family one day. As a reader, I often wonder myself what becomes of the characters in books I’ve finished, and as a writer, the great thing is you can write it and find out. I’d like to bring Lola back home to Ireland and see what she thinks of her home country sixty years after she was last there.

RHRC:
You grew up in the Clare Valley of Australia, where the book is set. Are any of the locations or characters in the book based on people or places in real life?

MM:
I love setting my novels in my hometown. So far, the Clare Valley has appeared in five of my novels—I think it’s a way of me visiting and being there, even when I’m on the other side of the world. The Valley View Motel is fictitious, although there are several motels in the town of Clare. I worked as a kitchen hand, waitress, and cleaner in one of them in my teenage years, so I certainly borrowed some experiences from that, for both
The Alphabet Sisters
and
Lola’s Secret.
As a teenager, I also used to haunt the charity shop in the town’s main street, looking for books and vintage clothing. I loved eavesdropping on the conversations between the volunteers, usually older women. So that fed into
Lola’s Secret,
too. I’ve also experienced those scorching 100 degrees Fahrenheit December days in South Australia, the feeling of hot dry heat that’s like opening an oven door every time you step outside. All of those real-life memories found their way into the fictional story.

RHRC:
What was your writing process like for this novel? Have your methods changed over time?

MM:
Each book is so different. That surprises me about the writing process, even after nine novels.
Lola’s Secret
arrived unexpectedly and flowed out of me, as I mentioned earlier. I knew all the characters already and it was a joyous experience to spend time with them again. I knew how each of them would react in any situation. I am writing my tenth book at the moment, and it’s a very different experience. I’m getting to know each of the characters slowly, and the plot is unfolding in the same way. I try to write at least two thousand words every day. Writing a book is sometimes like building a house, you have to do it brick by brick by brick.

RHRC:
Lola defies many stereotypes of the elderly, including technophobia. Have you known any seniors in real life who love the Internet as much as Lola and her friends do?

MM:
I’m surrounded by them! I’m also so far behind them when it comes to technology it’s embarrassing. My ninety-five-year-old father-in-law here in Dublin uses the Internet, sends email, and also rings and texts on his mobile phone. My seventy-two-year-old mother in Australia Skypes, sends emails, and texts all seven of her children and many of her grandchildren, too. My husband and I recently had visitors from Australia. I met them in the center of Dublin, and they said how much they liked our house. “But you haven’t been there yet,” I said, puzzled. They cheerily explained that they had looked it up on Google Earth the previous night on their laptop while they were using the free WiFi in their hotel room, which they had booked over the Internet. They are in their mid-seventies. My local library has a trio of computers and every time I’m there I see elderly people blogging, researching family trees, watching videos. I can barely make calls on my cellphone (and it is a very long way from being a smartphone, let me tell you!).

RHRC:
If she were here right now, what advice do you think Lola would have for yourself or your readers?

MM:
Be kind to yourself and be kind to others. And try to laugh as much as you can.

RHRC:
What have your experiences been with book clubs? Are you part of one? Do you ever speak at book clubs?

MM:
I’ve been involved in book clubs from both sides, as a member of one here in Dublin for several years, and recently, as the guest of a book club discussing my previous novel
At Home with the Templetons
. I loved both experiences and they have also been so helpful for me as a writer. It was a revelation to see the different reactions my book club members had to the same book. We argued so forcefully about different aspects of characters, plots, finales, etc. There was never a discussion in which everyone felt exactly the same way about a book. I found that fascinating. It underlines to me what magical objects books are—they really do change to suit whoever is reading them, because we all bring our own hopes, experiences, opinions, and selves to each book we read.

The book club discussing my novel
At Home with the Templetons
didn’t hold back either. It was a very lively evening. Several readers were angry (with good reason, I must admit) with one of my characters’ actions, and I had to defend and explain why she had done what she had done. Another was upset that I kept two of the main characters apart for so long. I thoroughly enjoyed the discussion. I felt like a lioness defending my cubs.

RHRC:
What are some of your favorite books you’ve read recently?

MM:
I’ve read and enjoyed so many different sorts of books this year:
The Hunger Games
trilogy by Suzanne Collins is aimed at young adults but has so much in it for all ages about morality, media, celebrity, and politics. I read all three back-to-back, I couldn’t put them down.
How to Be a Woman
, a funny feminist memoir by English columnist Caitlin Moran, is a book I’ve given to my friends, sisters, nieces, even my mother to read—it’s challenging, opinionated, comforting, invigorating, and very funny. I loved the 1950s classic of New York life,
The Best of Everything
by Rona Jaffe. Irish writer Sebastian Barry’s
On Cannan’s Side
was so moving and also enlightening about Irish emigration and many important moments of modern American history. I also loved a beautiful collection of poetry called
The Taste of River Water
by Australian writer Cate Kennedy.

RHRC:
Can you tell us anything about what you’re working on next?

MM:
I’m back writing the big family comedy-drama I was working on before I suddenly got the idea for
Lola’s Secret
. It’s been bubbling away in my subconscious for the past year and I am now nearly halfway into it. I’m enjoying writing it very much. I wanted to explore a different kind of family setup with this book, one with stepsisters and stepbrothers. I’m fascinated with the different dynamics and loyalties within a blended family, especially when an event forces everyone to face up to their true feelings. It revolves around one main question: Can you forgive someone you’re not sure you ever loved in the first place?