Make Vicki Notaro’s ‘Anywhere But Here’ your next beach read.
Dublin Author Vicki Notaro’s third novel, ‘Anywhere But Here’ has landed. Take a look at this exclusive extract if you’re on the hunt for your next holiday read.
In this exclusive extract from Anywhere But Here, tv presenter Matilda McGrath has just landed in London to surprise her husband Tommy for his 40th birthday. He spends more than half the week there working for the BBC, and she’s hoping this clandestine trip will bring them even closer.
Finally the traffic started to ease, and Matilda focused on thinking positive thoughts. She had been asked for a selfie boarding the flight; that was always a good feeling, and why she never, ever went out looking a state – fans were always ready to pounce.
The nice lady had uploaded the snap to Instagram and tagged her, too: ‘@matildamcgrath is even prettier and more lovely in real life!’ So sweet! It was the little things about work that pleased Matilda the most. And work was going well. Micheál’s kind words that morning were a rarity but gratefully received. Extending the show’s running time to compete with This Morning had been a huge risk, but it looked like it was paying off.
‘Irish people like Irish telly,’ Jacinta had said when she’d fretted about hosting an extra hour. ‘And you’re worth ten of those wans on ITV.’ Matilda really loved her job. She’d grown up wanting to be a nurse, but only because she hadn’t known Irish girls could be big-time TV presenters. It was when Bray native Laura Whitmore popped up on MTV in 2008 that teenage Matilda had discovered her life’s purpose – get on the telly, no matter what.
And she’d done it. By twenty-two she was a researcher, then a roving showbiz reporter, and at twenty-seven she landed the cover job on Tea Break, where she’d step in whenever one of the main hosts was off. When she became a full- time co- anchor with Charlie two years later, it felt inevitable. Sometimes she couldn’t believe it had been so – well, not easy, exactly, but not as hard as she’d imagined.
It was a great privilege to be on the television five days a week, entertaining the students, stay-at-home mammies and skiving remote workers. Sure, the money was verging on insulting and maintaining a gleeful disposition every morning could be tricky when Auntie Flo was in town, but the bene- fits far outweighed the downsides. She hated it when Tommy acted like her salary was just pocket money, but it also meant he never minded when she spent it all on clothes and beauty treatments. And anyway, he made enough for both of them.
God, I am really blessed with Tommy McGrath, she thought. It was difficult to get her head around the fact that this famous man she’d spent most of her life watching on television was her husband – or even that she had a husband at all. Two years in, and the word still felt strange in her mouth. Everyone else in her friendship group had known Tommy a lot longer than Matilda had, which was both a blessing and a curse. Jess grew up alongside he and Sadie thanks to their mothers’ lifelong friendship, and she thought Matilda fancying him was hilarious.
‘It’s gross, really,’ Jess had laughed, pretending to stick her fingers down her throat.
‘I mean, the man is like a brother to me and I guess I can admit he’s hand- some enough, but – ew.’ She’d shuddered dramatically.
‘He’ll always be little Tommy to me. And even years of stage school couldn’t make him a decent dancer.’
‘What’s not to fancy?’ Matilda had cried, flummoxed.
Tommy was charming, debonair and well read. Okay, he wasn’t exactly a Colin Farrell-level sex symbol – his eyes were the tiniest bit too close together – but she’d always thought he was very attractive, if prematurely grey-haired.
And it was true that he wasn’t blessed in the rhythm department – the night they met he’d tried and failed to dance with her in Krystle nightclub – but at least he was funny with his two left feet, and well able to laugh at himself. His smile took over his entire face, and when he beamed at her that fateful evening, Matilda was a goner.
It took a while to really hook him, but falling in love slowly and surely over long phone calls and emails across the Irish Sea during Covid had been very romantic. The night he proposed, Matilda was so happy she thought she would literally burst.
‘Here we are, love – Colville Square.’
She snapped out of her reverie. They were finally at the apartment and, glancing out the car window, she beamed with pride as she always did at the sight of the stucco-fronted townhouse. Of course, they only owned a unit in it, but it was still totally dreamy, and overlooked a lush green square that only residents could access.
‘Oh, thank you, sir. And I’m sorry for grumping about the traffic – I was just anxious to get here!’
The driver grinned at her in the rear-view. ‘Not at all, darlin’.
Do you need help with your bag?’ He wiggled his eyebrows at her.
‘No, I’ve got it. Have a gorgeous day!’
There were no obvious signs of life in the first-floor window; maybe she’d beaten her husband home by the skin of her teeth.
The place in London was stunning. Tommy called it a flat, but Matilda hated that word; it conjured images of dank, bedsit-like student accommodation, whereas this home was the very opposite – bright, spacious, adorned with beautiful original features and high ceilings.
Plus, it was only a stone’s throw from the high street, and the blue door made famous by the Richard Curtis movie Notting Hill. The fancy location just off Portobello Road was what had swung the purchase for Matilda, even though Tommy would have bought it regardless.
Letting herself in, she ran up the stairs to the front door. She thought she heard laughter coming from inside, but it must have been from the floor above. One thing she could never get used to there was the thin walls, and she fretted that the neighbours either side of them were privy to some of her and Tommy’s most intimate moments.
Opening the door, she heard a giggle once again. It sounded like a young man – probably the guy upstairs who drove Tommy mad listening to Miles Davis at all hours of the day and night.
She gently kicked the bedroom door, planning to dump her bag inside and go investigate. Nothing could have prepared Matilda for what she saw when the door swung open.
It seemed Tommy was in fact already home, and she registered his mouth freezing in a round O of horror before she fully took in the scene before her. Matilda’s husband was not alone. He was in bed, shirtless, and had his arm curled around someone else’s pale shoulders.
Her brain eventually caught up with her eyes, and she immediately wished it hadn’t. Because the person snuggling in to Tommy’s bare chest with a smug smile on his face was his assistant, Antoni.
