Excerpt from The End of the World Is a Cul de Sac by Louise Kennedy, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

1980
Audrey's hair is cut in a pageboy style, her fringe full and bouncy. She is wearing a light blouse with shoulder pads, and a Black Watch kilt over leather boots. There's a pair of scissors in her hand. The tape she has just cut hasn't yet touched the ground and looks as though it's swirling about her, like the ribbons gymnasts dance with. Behind them are two brand-new Ford Sierras, all curvy windows and bubbly lines. They will be recalled in a few months because of a fault with the carburetor, and Marty will almost lose the business for the first time. His suit is loose at the waist, the creases in his trousers sharp.

The photograph was a centerfold in the local paper, other businesses placing an advert around it to congratulate them on the new showroom. The one on the bottom right is for the legal practice where Audrey works part time. "Wishing Audrey and Marty all the very best," it read, the Mullen & Kilcoyne logo bent over a drawing of the scales of justice.

1983
Treasa Callaghan is holding the camera and has already appointed herself godmother.

Audrey is propped against pillows holding Shona Bridget McGuigan, who arrived at 11:04 a.m. while Marty was in the Innisfree Cafeteria beside the hospital chapel, moving pieces of currant scone around a plate. Shona is a fine child, nine pounds four ounces. A remarkable weight for a baby who arrived five weeks early. Bridie Lynch has swung one ample bum cheek onto the bed and is regarding the pair suspiciously. She may have left school at fourteen, but she knows when her daughter is trying to hide something. Audrey is watching Marty, who is out of the frame. He's sitting on the windowsill, looking down over the town. To the west the sky is almost black, a cold blue to the east. Three watery rainbows are arching over the town, over the fairy fort in front of his mother's council house, over the crow's nest on the old Polloxfen building, over the mock-Gothic tower of the courthouse. Unless you counted the night of the Chamber of Commerce Annual General Meeting, he hasn't been near Audrey in over a year, and even then he hardly put a hand on her. He had come in quietly and sat up against the headboard until an antacid tablet started to work on the reflux caused by his hiatus hernia. She had climbed onto him without a word and by some trick of her thumb and finger taken him in, rocking in his lap until he filled her. It was like having sex with someone else. Not that he has ever had sex with anyone else. Audrey wishes they'd all just go, so she can figure out where the pay phone is and try calling Matt Kilcoyne again.

1976
There's a heat wave. A wedding car is parked to the right of the cathedral. The rear passenger door is open and Audrey is waiting, fishtail train spread across the melting tarmac, lace almost blue in the implausible sunlight. Treasa Callaghan is meant to be holding the train, but the head bridesmaid is eleven feet away, up on her toes, her mouth to Marty's ear. Marty is looking at the wedding car. Treasa Callaghan has just told him Audrey is wearing a baby-blue garter under her dress. Later in the hotel in Westport, when he puts his trembling hand up her satin nightgown, he'll feel a ruched rash on Audrey's thigh, where the elastic has eaten into her skin in the heat. She'll flinch, but he'll be so nervous about finding the right hole he won't ask if she's all right or think about the garter again until forty years later when he sees this photograph.

1986
In homage to Jungle Book, Shona is naked except for a fat nappy and a banana skin that is opened on her bobbed hair. She is lying across Marty's chest, her cheek against his. Marty knows the exact date on which this photograph was taken. June 22, 1986, the Sunday of the Connaught final. Galway beat Roscommon 1–8 to 1–5. He missed the first half to let Shona finish watching her video; Shona is a daddy's girl. Only three people know Marty isn't her daddy. He is fairly confident about that, because he called out to Matt Kilcoyne's house in the Lower Rosses the day Shona was born. It didn't take much to warn him off, which had annoyed Marty; the wee rat could at least have fought for them. On the way back up to the hospital, though, he fretted briefly that he might have just kicked Matt Kilcoyne's bollocks into his mouth.

From THE END OF THE WORLD IS A CUL DE SAC by Louise Kennedy, published by Riverhead Books, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright © 2023 by Louise Kennedy