This Must Be the Place
Copyright © 2016 Maggie O’Farrell
The right of Maggie O’Farrell to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Excerpt from ‘Snow’ by Louis MacNeice, published by Faber and Faber. Reprinted by permission of David Higham Associates. All rights reserved.
With thanks to the Telegraph Media Group for permission to replicate their cover.
Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.
First published as an Ebook in 2016 by Tinder Press
An imprint of Headline Publishing Group
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library.
eISBN: 978 1 4722 3030 0
Cover images © Historic Map Works/Getty Images
HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP
An Hachette UK Company
Carmelite House
50 Victoria Embankment
London EC4Y 0DZ
Contents
The Strangest Feeling in My Legs
Down at the Bottom of the Page
Where Am I and What Am I Doing Here?
The Kind of Place You’d Have Trouble Getting Out Of
Severed Heads and Chemically Preserved Grouse
The Dark Oubliettes of the House
A Jagged, Dangerous Mass of Ice
When All the Tiny Lights Begin to be Extinguished
Gold-Hatted, High-Bouncing Lover
About the Author
Author pic © Ben Gold
Maggie O’Farrell is the author of six previous novels,
After You’d Gone
,
My Lover’s Lover
,
The Distance Between Us
, which won a Somerset Maugham Award,
The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox
,
The Hand That First Held Mine
, which won the Costa Novel Award, and
Instructions for a Heatwave
, which was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award. She lives in Edinburgh.
Praise for Maggie O’Farrell:
‘Unputdownable’
Guardian
‘Impossible not to love’
Irish Times
‘O'Farrell is hard to beat’
Scotsman
‘Deliciously insightful’
Independent
‘Masterful... holds you on an exquisite knife-edge’
Marie Claire
‘I was entranced… what a brilliant storyteller she is’ Esther Freud,
Daily Telegraph
‘Terrific’ Audrey Niffenegger
‘Exquisitely sensual’ Emma Donoghue
‘Beautifully written and thought-provoking’
Grazia
Magazine
‘A masterful gift for storytelling’
Observer
‘An entirely encompassing and beautiful read’
Heat
‘Spellbinding’ Barbara Trapido
By Maggie O’Farrell and available from Tinder Press
After You’d Gone
My Lover’s Lover
The Distance Between Us
The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox
The Hand That First Held Mine
Instructions For a Heatwave
This Must Be the Place
About the Book
Meet Daniel Sullivan, a man with a complicated life.
A New Yorker living in the wilds of Ireland, he has children he never sees in California, a father he loathes in Brooklyn and a wife, Claudette, who is a reclusive ex-film star given to shooting at anyone who ventures up their driveway.
He is also about to find out something about a woman he lost touch with twenty years ago, and this discovery will send him off-course, far away from wife and home. Will his love for Claudette be enough to bring him back?
THIS MUST BE THE PLACE crosses continents and time zones, giving voice to a diverse and complex cast of characters. At its heart, it is an extraordinary portrait of a marriage, the forces that hold it together and the pressures that drive it apart.
Maggie O’Farrell’s seventh novel is a dazzling, intimate epic about who we leave behind and who we become as we search for our place in the world.
Acknowledgements
Thank you, Mary-Anne Harrington.
Thank you, Jordan Pavlin.
Thank you, Victoria Hobbs.
Thank you, Christy Fletcher.
Thank you, Jane Morpeth, Hazel Orme, Georgina Moore, Yeti Lambregts, Vicky Palmer, Barbara Ronan, Amy Perkins, Cathie Arrington, Laura Esslemont, Kate Truman and all at Headline.
Thank you, Ruth Metzstein, for being my final reader, Simon Vickers, for guiding me through the mysterious world of auction catalogues, Dan Friedman, for transatlantic support, Morag McRae, for the loan of the headless lady, Louise Brady, for patience and kindness, Moira Little, for reasons she will know, Daisy Donovan, for always being ready to answer peculiar questions, Sarah Urwin Jones, for tea and encouragement, B. Marguin, for French dialogue consultancy, and Katharine Hamnett, for her generosity over the grey dress.
Thank you to Falko Konditorei, for putting up with me for long periods of time.
Thank you, Rob and Janet, of Lancrigg, Grasmere, for providing me with a haven, yet again.
Thank you, Juno.
Thank you, Iris.
Thank you, Saul.
And thank you, Will.
I also owe an enormous debt, in more ways than one, to Antonia and colleagues at the Dermatology Daycare Unit in Lauriston Place, Edinburgh, who help people like Niall every day of the week.
for Vilmos
World is crazier and more of it than we think,
Incorrigibly plural.
Louis MacNeice, ‘Snow’
The Strangest Feeling in My Legs
Daniel, Donegal, 2010
T
here is a man.
He’s standing on the back step, rolling a cigarette. The day is typically unstable, the garden lush and shining, the branches weighty with still-falling rain.
There is a man and the man is me.
I am at the back door, tobacco tin in hand, and I am watching something in the trees, a figure, standing at the perimeter of the garden, where the aspens crowd in at the fence. Another man.
He’s carrying a pair of binoculars and a camera.
A birdwatcher, I am telling myself as I pull the frail paper along my tongue, you get them in these parts. But at the same time I’m thinking, really? Birdwatching, this far up the valley? I’m also thinking, where is my daughter, the baby, my wife? How quickly could I reach them, if I needed to?
My heart cranks into high gear, thud-thudding against my ribs. I squint into the white sky. I am about to step out into the garden. I want the guy to know I’ve seen him, to see me seeing him. I want him to register my size, my former track-and-field-star physique (slackening and loosening a little, these days, admittedly). I want him to run the odds, me versus him, through his head. He’s not to know I’ve never been in a fight in my life and intend it to stay that way. I want him to feel what I used to feel before my father disciplined me: I am on to you, he would say, with a pointing finger, directed first at his chest, then mine.
I am on to you, I want to yell, while I fumble to pocket my roll-up and lighter.
The guy is looking in the direction of the house. I see the tinder spark of sun on a lens and a movement of his arm that could be the brushing away of a hair across the forehead or the depression of a camera shutter.
Two things happen very fast. The dog – a whiskery, leggy, slightly arthritic wolfhound, usually given to sleeping by the stove – streaks out of the door, past my legs and into the garden, emitting a volley of low barks, and a woman comes round the side of the house.
She has the baby on her back, she is wearing the kind of sou’wester hood usually sported by North Sea fishermen and she is holding a shotgun.
She is also my wife.
The latter fact I still have trouble adjusting to, not only because the idea of this creature ever agreeing to marry me is highly improbable, but also because she pulls unexpected shit like this all the time.
‘Jesus, honey,’ I gasp, and I am momentarily distracted by how shrill my voice is. Unmanly doesn’t cover it. I sound as if I’m admonishing her for an ill-judged choice in soft furnishings or for wearing pumps that clash with her purse.
She ignores my high-pitched intervention – who can blame her? – and fires into the air. Once, twice.
If, like me, you’ve never heard a gun report at close range, let me tell you the noise is an ear-shattering explosion. Magnesium-hued lights go off inside your head, your ears ring with the three-bar high note of an aria, your sinuses fill with tar.