Alexandra, Gone
Anna McPartlin
Language: English
Pages: 368
ISBN: 1439123330
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
LETTING GO FOR GOOD . . .
Once, Jane Moore and Alexandra Walsh were inseparable, sharing secrets and stolen candy, plotting their futures together. But when Jane became pregnant at seventeen, they drifted slowly apart. Jane has spent the years since raising her son, now seventeen himself, on her own, running a gallery, managing her sister’s art career, and looking after their volatile mother—all the while trying not to resent the limited choices life has given her.
Then a quirk of fate and a faulty elevator bring Jane into contact with Tom, Alexandra’s husband, who has some shocking news. Alexandra disappeared from a south Dublin suburb months ago, and Tom has been searching fruitlessly for her. Jane offers to help, as do the elevator’s other passengers—Jane’s brilliant but self-absorbed sister, Elle, and Leslie Sheehan, a reclusive web designer who’s ready to step back into the world again. And as Jane quickly realizes, Tom isn’t the only one among them who’s looking for something . . . or traveling toward unexpected revelations about love, life, and what it means to let go, in every sense.
In this insightful and irresistible novel, by turns profound, poignant, and laugh- out-loud funny, acclaimed Irish writer Anna McPartlin tells a story of friendship and love, of the families we are born into and the ones we create for ourselves, and of the hope and strength that remain when we fi nd the courage to leave the past behind at last.
Jane, Jane, will you please answer me for God’s sake!” Jane wondered how many times a day her mother shouted through the intercom and abused an empty room. She pressed the button. “I’m here.” “Are you planning on starving me?” “To be fair, Rose, I’ve heard that drowning is faster and less cruel.” “I want eggs, scrambled, dry and fluffy. Not wet and slimy. If I see slime I’ll throw up.” “I’ll be down in five minutes.” “I’m hungry now.” “Oh fine. I’ll go ahead and pull a plate of scrambled
she had politely and firmly told him no. He had a job and a life of his own, and it wasn’t as though she hadn’t been going to medical checkups on her own for the past eighteen years. She was in the waiting area reading a pamphlet on reconstructive surgery and picking at some trail mix when a tall, bald man in his late forties sat down beside her. He nodded hello and opened a newspaper. They both sat reading for ten minutes or so before he closed his newspaper and asked her if she had the time.
is that every now and again, no matter how rude or uninviting she may seem, call her, talk to her, be her friend even if she fails to be yours, because she has been there for me, for Mum, for Dad and Nora, and I can’t stand the idea that after everything she’s been through she should live or die alone. I know I say it all the time and in all my little notes and letters about this and that, but time is running out and I need you to know that it’s been a privilege to be your wife. And although I
image will last a lifetime.” The clock turned to midnight, and the caterer approached Jane and asked her to step outside. Standing there, with a cake the size of a shopping center, was Dominic. Elle was lighting the eighteen candles. The lighter had run out, and she kept shaking it and cursing. “We should have just got the one and the eight. Eighteen actual candles are so tacky.” “I want to see him blow out eighteen candles,” Jane said, and she grabbed the lighter from Elle and shook it hard.
man said. “Just a cry for help.” Jane nodded numbly. Tom, Dominic, and Kurt traveled in absolute silence except for when Tom rang Leslie to tell her where to meet them. At the hospital, Elle was taken away and Jane returned to the others. “You should all go home,” she said. “No way, Mum, I’m staying,” Kurt said. “I’m not going anywhere,” Dominic said. “Me either,” Tom said. “She’s going to be fine,” Jane said. “Honestly, you should go home.” Leslie appeared, coming in through the door,