The gin sisters promise, p.1
The Gin Sisters' Promise, page 1
THE
GIN
SISTERS’
PROMISE
ALSO BY FAITH HOGAN
My Husband’s Wives
Secrets We Keep
The Girl I Used to Know
What Happened to Us?
The Place We Call Home
The Ladies’ Midnight Swimming Club
THE
GIN
SISTERS’
PROMISE
Faith Hogan
www.headofzeus.com
First published in the UK in 2022 by Head of Zeus Ltd,
part of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Copyright © Faith Hogan, 2022
The moral right of Faith Hogan to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN (TPB): 9781800241374
ISBN (E): 9781800241367
Head of Zeus Ltd
5–8 Hardwick Street
London EC1R 4RG
WWW.HEADOFZEUS.COM
This is for the Scannan Girls and the Beehive Gang – the very best tribe a girl could wish for. It is also for Anne Regan, always a Beehiver – kind, considerate and just lovely.
‘There is another world, but it is in this one.’
W.B. Yeats or Paul Éluard
Contents
Also by Faith Hogan
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
The G(georgie)I(Iris)N(Nola) Sisters Club
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
Author’s Note
About the Author
An Invitation from the Publisher
THE G(GEORGIE)I(IRIS)N(NOLA) SISTERS CLUB
RULES:
1 No boys allowed
2 Always use the Secret Code Knock
3 Never tell the Secrets of the GIN Sisters Club
4 Secret Ice-Cream Fridays
5 Forever Friends
We the
G – GEORGIE
I – IRIS
N – NOLA
Sisters solemnly swear to abide by the rules – always.
20th August 1993
Prologue
Ballycove, Ireland, Twenty-Eight Years Ago
The saddest funeral I was ever at. That’s what the mourners had whispered as they’d left the remaining Delahayes standing by Iseult’s grave. And now, perched at opposite ends of the living room, Iris and Georgie were drowning in their own grief, but it was little Nola – just seven years old – who needed her father the most and there was no way round it; there was nothing left of him to give. He was suffocating when he knew he should be comforting his children.
The cry that emitted from Nola came as gasping gulps, as if she was going under, smothering in the cold waters of despair. She was far too small for her feet to touch the bottom of her grief, far too young to navigate these treacherous waters.
Iris heard her first. The choking sobs startled her from her own wretched melancholy. ‘Nola,’ she cried, fearing the worst. Panic gripped her; she couldn’t remember seeing Nola since they set off for the funeral earlier. But that wasn’t right. Of course she’d seen her. Nola must have sat in the church pew at the end of their row, stood next to her and Georgie by their mother’s grave. She must have been there in the car when their father had driven them back to Soldier Hill House.
Sheer horror propelled Iris from the window seat. How could she have forgotten about little Nola? In the hall, Georgie too was racing to find their youngest sister, panic etched across her features, only just edging past the devastating grief overhanging each of them. They crashed into each other at the foot of the stairs.
‘Where is she?’
‘Oh, God.’ Georgie was frantic, her eyes wide, a slight odour of sweat emanating from her clothes, a mixture of the painful day and the near-consuming fear reflected in Iris’s eyes. Another gulp came from the alcove, just outside their father’s study, and their eyes dropped to the pathetic bundle of dark clothes lying on the floor. Nola. In her best dress, the one their mother picked out for Christmas Day. Maroon velvet, too heavy for a July afternoon, too festive to mourn your mother in.
‘He just left me here.’ Nola wheezed between disconsolate sobs. ‘First Mammy and now Daddy. All I wanted was for him to put his arms around me, like Mammy did, and tell me everything would be all right, but it won’t be all right now, will it? It’ll never be all right again.’
‘Come here.’ Iris pulled Nola into her chest roughly. Georgie too fell on top of them, bundling Nola in their weeping cocoon so she could hardly breathe. But somehow, the familiar scents of her sisters – washing powder, the faintest remains of their mother’s perfume, which they’d all applied that morning, and that slightly tangy end-of-day smell that you only got in the summertime – were strangely comforting. ‘We’re all here together. That’s the main thing, Nola. That’s all that matters now. We’ll be okay. Everything will be fine – you’ll see.’
‘But you’re going to leave. You’ll go off and forget about me and then I’ll be here alone, with Daddy, and I can’t stand it.’ She was gulping down the words now, almost hysterical with grief and pain and maybe fear too.
‘We’re never going to leave you, Nola,’ Iris said, ‘I promise. How could we possibly ever leave you?’
‘We couldn’t,’ Georgie said solidly in that way she had of saying things that let Nola know she’d never let her down. ‘We’ll always be the Gin Sisters, remember?’ Georgie said using the abbreviation of the initial letters of their names that their father had coined.
‘Oh my God, yes! We can make our own little club, just us, with a promise that means we’re always going to be together. Nothing will ever come between us.’ Iris was flushed, trying hard to make things better for her younger sister. There had been too much sadness already today. She found herself smiling at her own silly idea.
‘Really, our own club? The G-I-N Sisters – get it, gin sisters?’ Nola scraped her hair from her eyes, drying off some of the tears that stained her cheeks. ‘I love that idea.’ She breathed out slowly.
‘We’ll need a constitution.’ Georgie pulled a mock-serious face to make more fun of it. She could always be depended on to be the strong one.
‘Yes, Georgie, you can write it up. Now, quick, go and get some paper and a pen, Nola.’ Iris fell back on her heels; she’d do anything to make Nola feel better. The poor kid, they were all too young to lose their mother. But Iris felt she had some additional gravity because she had just become a teenager, even if Georgie always tried to rub it in that she was one year older, but Georgie would never be the maternal one among them – they both knew that. Whereas everyone said Iris was cut out to be a wonderful mother someday, and in truth it was the only ambition she had in life.
Beyond the door, she heard the muted sounds of her father shuffling about, and Iris imagined him filling up a tumbler of whiskey and slouching in the large armchair with that photograph of their mother that he’d taken long before they’d ever had children or, it seemed, worries. Still, it was better that he was here and not down in the distillery where it seemed he could lose track of time entirely. Delahaye Distillery, his life’s work, was becoming an all-consuming distraction, maybe his only way to cling on at this stage.
‘And no boys.’ Georgie was scribbling down the club rules to Nola’s subdued delight. Georgie already knew that Iris was in love with a boy called Myles who didn’t even know she existed and probably never would.
‘Eugh, of course no boys.’ Nola scrunched up her face.
‘And ice-cream every Friday.’ Iris tried to make her voice sound as if she really could be happy again one day.
‘Just for us,’ Nola said on a breath that was still ragged, but at least her little body had stopped shaking. ‘And you’ll never leave me?’
‘We promise we’ll never leave you,’ Georgie and Iris chorused together. Anything else was unthinkable.
1
London, November, Present
Iris closed her front door behind her with a kick that felt like a final exclamation mark on a very long day. It had been that way for a while. Her sister Georgie would probably say that work should fulfil you but, Iris thought irritably, not everyone could be as lucky as Georgie when it came to finding a career that could jam up all the other cracks in her life. She pushed the notion of her sister from her mind as quickly as it had arrived. It was automatic now. She didn’t waste time thinking o f either of them anymore. What was the point when there was no forgiving or forgetting the hurt they’d caused her all those years ago? It was much better not to think of them at all.
Iris groaned. Her head was throbbing. She wasn’t tired, just irritated with another day like every other. She was sick to the back teeth of reminding people to turn up to dental appointments they didn’t want to keep. She was bored of having the same conversations about the cost of root canals and crowns and children’s braces. Becoming a receptionist at a busy London dental practice probably wasn’t anyone’s burning ambition. It was a job, a way to make a living – nothing more, and if she could afford to throw in the towel she would have left years ago. But someone needed to earn a steady wage in the house. In fairness, her employers were generous with her wages and a hefty Christmas bonus was always thrown in to keep her there for another year. Maybe she was expecting too much from life.
She was early. She’d meant to stop off at the fish market – they were having homemade fish and chips for dinner. Myles’s favourite. She hoped it would pull him out of the distanced silence he’d put between them over the last few weeks. But in the rush to catch her morning train, she had forgotten her purse and so she’d come directly home.
Though she didn’t think so at the time, later, she wondered if maybe she knew that this was it. The day she’d dreaded since the very first day of her marriage to him.
His bag stood ready at the foot of the stairs. Myles was a cameraman, freelance for a news channel. It paid a pittance but gave him access to all the big news stories and held a certain glamour he’d leaned on more these last few years, now that his looks were beginning to fade.
‘Iris.’ He stopped, dead still in the hallway, as if he’d been confronted by a raging lion on the savannah instead of his wife home from work on a wet and miserable Wednesday afternoon. ‘I…’ he started. ‘You’re early. I wasn’t expecting you yet. I’m…’
‘Yes?’ Iris waited, working to keep her face blank while the words please, please, please don’t do this exploded in her mind. Iris folded her arms about herself. Perhaps it would stop her trembling when she heard the worst. Of course, she knew what it was. It was a woman – younger, prettier and probably with enough money to make up for the loss of the house and their savings that leaving her would cause him.
‘I’m leaving you. I’ve met someone else.’ His words were faltering, but she hardly noticed because it felt as if the world had already started to spin away from her. ‘She’s called Amanda… She’s—’
‘Please, Myles, please don’t do this. Don’t leave me for some bit of skirt that’s going to be by the wayside in a matter of weeks. Come on, we can work through this…’ She was pleading, but she might as well have been reciting a shopping list, because he just went on gathering up his belongings. His keys. His watch. And then in the kitchen, he hovered for a minute before picking up four of the fresh scones she’d baked that morning. She watched him, wordlessly now, because she’d run out of things to say, or was it that she didn’t know where to start or where to end?
‘It’s not like that… This is different.’ He dragged a hand through his hair. For a moment, his expression seemed to dip into something like anguish and Iris experienced a dart of panic. Could he really be in love with someone else?
‘I’m begging you, Myles, please, don’t do this. What do you want me to do? I’ll do anything, anything for you to stay.’ She was shrieking, unable to control either the words or the desperation. Hysteria pummelled against her ribcage where her heart should have been.
His restraint silenced her, suddenly, as if a plug had been pulled from the very heart of her. And for a moment, the only sound in her world was the low buzz of the refrigerator.
‘You need me, Myles, don’t you see?’ She took a step closer to him, and tried not to notice that he took a step back from her. ‘This is us, Myles.’ She waved her hand around their little semi. ‘Twenty-three years of us! We’re meant to be together. Think of everything I’ve given up for you, everything—’
‘Oh, please, Iris, I’m sick and tired of hearing the same old saga. No-one asked you to follow me to London or to cut your family out of our lives.’ He spun around with a look of pure disgust as his eyes travelled over her. She felt the power going from her legs, could hardly stand straight beneath his loathing stare. ‘That was all you, all your doing. We might have been millionaires if your old man included us in his will, but that’s never likely to happen now, is it?’ He shook his head, as if it had been that simple, when they both knew there was so much more to it all than that. There was so much more to them. ‘And as for those crazy sisters of yours – you can’t blame me for falling out with them.’
‘All right, all right, let’s forget Georgie and Nola. This isn’t about them; it’s about us. Look at how far we’ve come. Most couples don’t make it past…’ She stopped, because suddenly, she knew there was something else. Something she hadn’t figured into this scenario in all the times she’d played it out in her worst nightmares. If it was possible to imagine anything worse than Myles leaving her, she had a feeling that there was even worse to come.
‘No. I can’t do this anymore. Iris, there’s something you should know…’ His voice became almost a whisper and she had to lean forward to hear him properly. ‘Amanda is pregnant.’
It felt as if she’d been slapped across her face. She reeled backwards and fell against the wall, felt herself drift slowly towards the ground. Could you actually die of shock? Or of a truly, truly breaking heart? ‘Pregnant? How on earth could that be?’ Myles wasn’t ready to be a father. He’d told her that so often, it was like a mantra. It was always next year, or the year after, or after I get this job finished or when we have more money. Of course, there were times when she had pined for a child, but she told herself nothing was more important to her than Myles.
‘We are having a baby.’ He said it so simply, he might as well have been talking about the football results.
‘But…’ She felt the words that she had intended to say trickle away from her. Myles was going to be a father. It had all been for nothing. It was the annihilation of her very soul. She let her body go, floated up above it and watched as it fell about her like a puddle to the floor. Pathetic. He bent and picked up his bag, stepped over her, like someone else’s rubbish on the pavement. He stood for a second that could have lasted a lifetime or might not have happened at all. And then he was gone.
*
The house was desolately quiet. The hours somehow drew themselves out into days and then one week fell into a second and there was still no contact from him. The stillness clawed at her imagination. Here, in the pristine tidiness of a life spent ignoring the ever-widening gap between hope and acceptance, it seemed as if the silence was taunting her. Could she really go on like this forever? She was still a young woman, just forty. Forty, had seemed to be ancient to her when her own mother died of septicaemia all those years ago, but now, women her age were starting companies, starting families, starting over. Women her age were looking forward, but all Iris could do was look back.
She played her relationship with Myles over in her mind from that very first day. She’d had a crush on him long before he ever noticed her, but then at the village fete, it seemed the sun shone extra bright and he’d ambled up to the Delahaye Distillery table. Iris still felt butterflies in her stomach when she thought about that first time he’d walked her home and kissed her at the gate. Long and lingering, much too grown up for her age. She’d been a kid, just sixteen and never been kissed. God, how had they ended up here?
He’d been gone a month and still wretchedness flooded her; it felt as if she was drowning most days. And strangely, she knew, the worst part wasn’t losing Myles, rather it was the fact that he’d betrayed her so badly. A baby. She had always wanted a family but somehow, for Myles, there had never been a right time. Today she rolled out of bed after midday and staggered towards the hall mirror. She examined her reflection: prematurely grey hair, pallid complexion – the most fresh air she got these days was rushing for the London Underground. She tried smiling, but it didn’t seem to fit her anymore, rather it was an unnatural use of her muscles, which had gotten out of the habit of joyfulness. She’d even lost weight, not that she needed to, but her wedding ring slid up and down her finger now as if it too wanted to get away from her. What did it matter if she faded away, miserable and alone, really? She should reach out; she should have people to reach out to. Wasn’t that what you did in times of crisis: find a shoulder to lean on, share your misery and halve it in the process? Friends and family. Hah!
