This Is Now Read online

  Praise for Ciara Geraghty:

  ‘My favourite author does it again in this superbly written perceptive, poignant novel that makes you laugh and cry! Oh, I envy you the read of this. Treat yourself to a brilliant book!’ Patricia Scanlan on Now That I’ve Found You

  ‘Ciara Geraghty is a superb writer . . . Her books are meticulously researched, beautifully written, and infused with warmth, humour and human understanding.’ Irish Examiner

  ‘Heart-breaking and funny, poignant and life affirming.’ www.novelicious.com on Lifesaving for Beginners

  ‘A beautifully written, somewhat whimsical and very encouraging tale about grabbing hold of life’s reins, breaking away from the monotony of a dull routine and following your dreams . . . emotional, joyous . . . I adored it.’ Daily Mail on Finding Mr Flood

  ‘Sad, funny and wise.’ Marie Claire on Finding Mr Flood

  ‘Certain to appeal to fans of chick-lit supreme Marian Keyes.’ Herald Sun, Australia on Becoming Scarlett

  ‘Move over Marian, it’s Ciara . . . impressive and highly entertaining [with] one of the most authentic female characters I’ve read in women’s fiction for a long time . . . lots of biting humour and a darker side beneath the laughs.’ Irish Independent on Saving Grace

  ‘So funny and so much fun, it’s impossible to believe it’s Geraghty’s first . . . Warm, moving and hilarious.’ Evening Herald, Ireland on Saving Grace

  ‘I loved this . . . it’s warm, funny and made me cry (a couple of times). It is also really well written . . . you’ll want to read it in one sitting.’ Daily Mail on Saving Grace

  Ciara Geraghty is the author of six novels. She lives in Dublin with her husband, three children and their dog.

  Also by Ciara Geraghty

  Saving Grace

  Becoming Scarlett

  Finding Mr Flood

  Lifesaving for Beginners

  Now That I’ve Found You

  This is Now

  Ciara Geraghty

  www.hodder.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain in 2016 by

  Hodder & Stoughton

  An Hachette UK company

  Copyright © Ciara Geraghty 2016

  The right of Ciara Geraghty to be identified as the Author of the

  Work has been asserted by him in accordance with

  the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 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 without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be

  otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that

  in which it is published and without a similar condition being

  imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance

  to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978 1 444 73800 1

  Hodder & Stoughton Ltd

  Carmelite House

  50 Victoria Embankment

  London EC4Y 0DZ

  www.hodder.co.uk

  For Neil MacLochlainn; even if I had many sons, you’d still be my favourite one.

  Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty One

  Twenty Two

  Twenty Three

  Twenty Four

  Twenty Five

  Twenty Six

  Twenty Seven

  Twenty Eight

  Twenty Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty One

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  Stay in touch with Ciara Geraghty

  One

  There was no way of knowing what would happen.

  Swords was its usual self that Monday. A steady procession of traffic along the curves of the main street, groups of office workers arguing about where to go for lunch, reggae music floating from the barber’s, the hiss of the number 33 as its doors opened at the bus stop.

  As they approached the bank, Tara Bolton’s normally swift gait slowed and slowed until she wasn’t walking at all. She was standing still.

  Martha Wilder was a full two strides ahead before she noticed. She turned.

  ‘Will you hurry the fuck up,’ she said to Tara.

  ‘Cursing at me is not going to help.’

  ‘What about whacking you with my bag?’

  ‘Can’t you be serious?’

  ‘I am being serious.’

  ‘This is not a good idea.’

  ‘You thought it was a good idea yesterday.’

  ‘But now it’s today.’

  ‘And the day after is tomorrow. What’s your point?’

  ‘I just ...’ Tara shrugged as passers-by altered their trajectory to pass her by. Martha strode towards her, a long stream of bright red hair tumbling down her back, tamed only by a single clip at the side in the shape of a treble clef, which brought scant order to the wildness of her hair. She folded her arms across her chest. ‘What?’ she said, looking down. She had always towered over Tara but had never considered her friend small. Today she looked small. And pale, despite the immaculate make-up that gave the – false – impression of hours of painstaking application.

  Tara worried at a fingernail with her teeth, the polish coming away in long curls. She shook her head. ‘I ... I can’t do it.’

  ‘You can.’

  ‘Do you really think so?’ Even Tara’s voice was small now. It was difficult to see her as the wildly successful entrepreneur who bought companies the way some women bought shoes, then sold them for exorbitant prices after she’d given them what the financial media dubbed the Tara Touch.

  Martha nodded. ‘I do,’ she said. ‘Think of it as a business meeting and you’ll be grand.’

  Tara nodded without conviction but began to move forward. Martha did her best to match Tara’s reluctant pace.

  The bank had seen better days. The white plaster of its facade was crumbling and, inside, the carpet was worn thin, bald in parts, from the march of so many feet across it over the years. A short line of people shuffled towards a counter, behind which two tellers worked. One of them waved at Tara. ‘I’ll tell your sister that you’re here,’ she said, reaching for the phone on her desk. Martha nodded towards a bench. They sat down.

  The door of the bank opened again and an elderly man in a wheelchair appeared, pushed by a woman who seemed smaller than she was. Martha studied her without appearing to study her, as was her habit. The woman negotiated the chair through the door with little fuss and took her place at the end of the queue, making no sound. The skin of her face was taut, the colour a faded sallow, as if she didn’t spend much time out of doors. Her hands, resting on the handles of the chair, were dry and reddened and there were dark smudges beneath her careful, grey eyes.

  The man’s nurse, perhaps? From behind the shade of her sunglasses, Martha’s eyes travelled towards the woman’s charge. He had close-cropped white hair, an impeccable navy suit, a little baggy across the shoulders, and blue eyes that some might consider cold and others arresting. Martha noticed the slackness around the left side of the old man’s mouth, the way his left hand lay limp in his lap while the
right one gripped the arm of the chair before snapping open the locks on each side of the black briefcase that lay across his knees, attending to some paperwork inside.

  ‘Stop it,’ Tara hissed.

  ‘Stop what?’ said Martha.

  ‘You know what.’

  Martha moved her line of vision from the old man. It was an occupational hazard, she supposed, even though it had been two years since she’d worked as a reporter for RTÉ. ‘You certainly went out with a bang,’ Tara had conceded when the dust – eventually – settled.

  Martha shifted on the bench, glanced at the clock on the wall: 12.30 p.m. All going well, Tara would have told her news to her sister and, afterwards, her mother and be back on a plane to London by dinnertime. That was the plan and, because it was Tara’s plan, Martha never doubted it.

  The queue shuffled forward. The wheelchair creaked as the woman manoeuvred it forward, while the man pulled at a heavy gold chain draped across his navy waistcoat, inspecting the face of the watch dangling at the end.

  Someone coughed. A mobile phone chirped briefly. The tap-tap-tap of the tellers’ fingers on their keyboards. The click-click-click as Tara’s fingers worried at the clasp of her handbag.

  The front door burst open and two men dressed in black, wearing balaclavas over their faces, rushed inside, locked the door, pulled the blinds.

  Both were carrying guns.

  At first, everything seemed to happen in slow motion, Martha felt. The door crashing open, the dark blur of the men racing inside, the reach of their hands inside their jackets, the guns now, the way they smashed the CCTV cameras with the handles, the forming of words around their mouths. No sound penetrated Martha’s head. Not at first. And then, when it did, it was a cacophony of sound, a solid wall of shouting and screaming and roaring. Beside her, Tara was stiff with stillness, her hands covering her face like a child counting to ten at the start of hide-and-seek.

  ‘Shut the fuck up, or I swear I’ll put a bullet in someone’s skull.’ The gunman was solidly built. The kind of solid that hinted at steroids. His breathing was laboured and he twitched from one leg to the other. Martha could almost see the furious flow of adrenalin around his body.

  ‘Calm down,’ the skinny one said and his low voice had an edge that was sharp as a razor blade and Martha knew at once that he was in charge. ‘Go and get the manager and the other two in the back,’ he said and his accomplice nodded and headed towards the offices behind the counters.

  The other man advanced on the line of customers, who backed up until they were corralled into a corner. The two tellers stiffened behind the counter, their hands inching above their heads in a gesture of surrender. Martha knew they would have received training for this kind of scenario. Saw in their faces the inevitable clash of theory against reality. Was there an emergency button near their desks? Had they pressed it? If they had, how long would the guards take to get there? And what then? What would happen to them all then?

  The man pointed his gun towards the semi-circle of customers in the corner and the two tellers moved, fluid as dancers, from behind the counter to join them.

  This is what a gun achieves, Martha thought. People do what you want them to do without any recourse to language.

  Now the man turned and trained his gun on Martha and Tara. Martha felt her throat constrict, a pounding in her chest that must be her heart. She had never been so aware of it. It felt much too big for her body, too frantic.

  ‘Get the fuck over there with the others,’ he said. Martha stood up but Tara did not. Martha had to grip her friend’s arm, drag her to her feet, pull her across the floor. The gunman nudged the small of Martha’s back with the hard butt of his gun, and she cried out, walked faster. Tara allowed herself to be pulled along. She never made a sound.

  They dropped their mobiles and tablets into the plastic Centra bag proffered by the gunman.

  Then three people walked in single file from the back offices, their hands on the backs of their heads. Behind them, the accomplice had wrapped his arm around the neck of a woman, perhaps in her mid-forties, with dark, greying hair cut in an easy-to-manage bob. He pushed the barrel of his gun against her temple as he dragged her along. A name badge pinned on the lapel of her navy jacket read Katherine Bolton and, underneath, Manager.

  Tara’s navy eyes – the same shape and colour as Katherine’s – widened with anxiety and Martha placed a warning hand on her arm.

  The man released his hold on Katherine’s neck, pushed her towards his boss. ‘There she is,’ he said. ‘The main woman herself.’

  The gunman’s eyes slid down the length of Katherine’s body, lingering on the curve of her breasts through the cotton of her blouse. ‘Nice work,’ he said and now his voice was silky. From behind the balaclava, Martha saw the shape of his mouth lifting into a smile. Beside her, Tara swayed and Martha tightened her grip on Tara’s arm, steadied her, steadied herself. Her mind was like some volcanic eruption, bubbling and boiling: too beside itself to make sense of anything. To come up with a plan.

  The boss snapped his head away from Katherine then, cleared his throat, looked towards the door. ‘All clear?’ he asked. It was only then that Martha noticed the third gunman. He stood at the door, slighter than the other two; the gun in his hand seemed bigger than the others’, perhaps because his hand was smaller. With his face hidden behind a balaclava, it was difficult to guess at his age, but his body had the loose-limbed build of a teenage boy.

  He nodded.

  The silence that descended then was thick and hot. There was an anticipatory edge to it. An expectancy. Everybody seemed to be waiting.

  ‘Now,’ the boss said, and his tone was conversational. ‘You all know how this works. You’ve seen it on the telly, I’m sure.’ He nodded towards his second-in-command, who tossed him a bag. ‘And by the way, don’t be worrying about the guards coming because they’re not. The panic-button system was disabled before we arrived so there’ll be no interference from our lovely boys in blue, OK?’

  He looked at Katherine, held the bag out. ‘I need to make a withdrawal,’ he said. ‘You can put it in there.’ He threw the bag at her and she caught it and Martha nearly cheered. It seemed like some small display of courage, the deftness of her catch.

  It was a Nike sports bag, its familiar Just do it message written along the side like an echo of his order.

  For a moment, Katherine didn’t move, as if there were a delay between the commands given by her brain and their execution by her body. The gunman nudged her shoulder with his gun. ‘The sooner you fill the bag, the quicker we’ll be on our way, yeah?’

  Everybody watched as she slipped behind the counter, punched a series of buttons on a keyboard. The gunman in charge followed her, his gun trained at her head. ‘Hurry the fuck up,’ he shouted and there was his smile again as Katherine jumped and emitted a short, sharp grunt. She pushed her hair away from her face, squeezed her eyes closed, gathered herself, pressed one more button on the keyboard and waited.

  A click and the drawers at each of the work stations slid open. Martha thought it was the most beautiful sound she had ever heard. The neatness of the click, the hiss of the slide.

  The accomplice – the solid one – started at the sound, swinging his gun away from the group he was guarding and towards the manager, his breathing high and fast.

  ‘Take it easy, will ya?’ his boss told him. ‘We’re nearly there.’

  The room was quiet again. A dense, layered kind of quiet. The air-conditioning droned and Martha could hear the breathing of her fellow hostages and it was something of a comfort to know that she wasn’t alone.

  Katherine stepped from one drawer to the next, filling the Nike bag with cash.

  When she had emptied the last one, she carried the bag to the gunman in charge. He glanced inside, then looked at her. ‘How much?’ he said.

  ‘I ... I’m not sure.’

  ‘Make a fucken educated guess.’ His voice was strained now. High and thin.


  ‘Maybe four thousand,’ she said.

  ‘You said there’d be more than that!’ shouted his accomplice. He pulled at the balaclava, scratched his face through the material.

  Martha jumped at the sound of a door handle being pulled down. Everybody looked towards the door. The handle moved down, then up, then down again before it was released, springing back into its original position. The sound of voices outside. A conversation. The words were inaudible but the tone was one of annoyance. A second voice, clipped and assured. The conversation continued as the sound of it dribbled away.

  The third member of the gang – the one who might be a boy, standing at the door – pushed a slat downwards with his finger, made a narrow slit through which he peered onto the street. He turned back, nodded at the boss, who turned again to Katherine. He put his hand on her shoulder and she almost managed not to flinch.

  ‘Now, sweetheart,’ he said. ‘I need you to open the safe, nice and quick, and don’t give me any shit about time-delay locks, right?’

  The shake of her head was slight, seemed involuntary. Martha took a breath and it felt like a collective breath, taken by all of them. Fear had a smell and she smelled it now. It was a sour smell. The air was heavy with it.

  ‘I can’t. It’s locked and I—’ The man lunged at her, one hand around her neck, the other pressing the gun against her hair.

  ‘Kitty!’ Tara’s voice was shrill. Terror had twisted the features of her usually calm face.

  ‘No, Tara,’ Katherine screamed as the gunman twisted his head to look at her sister.

  ‘How convenient,’ he said, his tone jovial now. Martha felt every muscle in her body clench.

  ‘You two know each other.’ He grabbed a fistful of Katherine’s collar, dragged her closer to Tara. Now the muzzle of his gun pressed against Katherine’s temple. There was a click as he released the safety. He looked at Tara again. ‘Well?’ he said. Tara opened her mouth but said nothing. The man stepped closer.