Excerpt from The Love Object by Edna O'Brien, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"Courage, courage, courage," he says, confident that the anguish will turn to laughter before long. By about nine she decides to go back to the house and he assures her that a table will be kept for the hungry ones. Then he dashes to the counter and takes from a jug two roses, which he gallantly gives her, along with his card.


The villa is dark, dark as a tomb, and she runs in and switches on all the lights.

"They'll come in the next five minutes," she says, quite convinced, and even dares to stare up at the wall clock with its spiderlike hands. They do not come. They will not come. The patron of the restaurant is her one friend. He will help her with the formalities, he will talk to the police for her, he will see to it that the divers go down. But what then? What then? she asks, her voice quivering. With each fresh admission she feels that the measure of her delirium is heaped full and that she cannot bear it, yet mind and body dart to the next awful minute. She walks all around the table touching its surface, then into the bathroom and out again, and back and around the table, and then into the two bedrooms, first her own, then theirs, and draws back the covers ceremoniously as if for a honeymoon couple. The clock and woodcuts on the wall are askew and she sets about straightening them. Then she commences a letter to the owner of the villa, who lives in Madrid, explaining why she has had to leave sooner than expected. By doing this she is admitting the worst. She is very calm now and her handwriting clear as a child's. She thinks of Penny's parents, whom she has never met, foresees their grief, their shock, their rage, their disbelief. How could they lose such a daughter, Penny, Penelope, the embodiment of cheer and sunniness? Her father, being an army man, will probably take it better, but what of her mother, the overweight woman whom Penny described as being psychic? Maybe she already knows, has seen her daughter in the depths of the ocean, among the preying fishes. Then, with a grief too awful to countenance, she sees Mark with the bloodshot eyes and recalls his renunciation of her.

There is a beam of headlights in her drive and immediately she rallies, concluding that it is the police, but as she rises she hears the small friendly hoot that is their signal. All of a sudden she feels ridiculous. They come in, bright, tousled, and brimming with news. They tell how they met an Englishman with a metal detector who took them on a tour of the island, showed them old ruins and burial grounds, and how later they went to a hotel and swam in the pool but had to hide underwater each time a waiter went by. They are giddy with happiness.

"Did you sail?" she asks Mark.

"We did, but it got a bit dangerous," Mark says, guessing how she must have panicked. Together he and Penny tell her of a beautiful restaurant where they have been; tables tucked away in corners, the cloths, the flowers, the music, and above all, the scrumptious food — sweet mutton, zucchini and potatoes cooked with mint and butter.

"We're going to take you tomorrow night," Penny says with a smile. It is the first time they have looked at each other since the outburst and Eileen now feels that she is the younger of the two and by far the more insecure. Penny has forgiven her, has forgotten it. The day has brought her closer to Mark and she is all agog.

"We've booked a table," Mark says and wags a finger at Eileen to indicate that they are taking her, that it is to be their treat.

"I think I should go home," she says, lamentably.

"Don't be silly," he says and the look that he gives her is full of both pity and dread. She is on the point of telling him about the day, the scrubland, the youths, the storm, her frenzy, but his eyes, now grave and moist, beg her not to. His eyes ask her to keep this pain, this alarm, to herself.

"What did you do?" he asks nevertheless.

Excerpted from The Love Object by Edna O'Brien. Copyright © 2015 by Edna O'Brien. Reprinted with permission of Little, Brown and Company.