The Lilac Bus by Maeve Binchy

Sometimes you just need a little Binchy.

Every Friday night Tom Fitzgerald’s lilac-coloured minibus is a meeting place for the same cast of seven, who always use it to travel home from Dublin to spend the weekend in Rathdoon. Disparate characters, who embark at an anonymous pick-up point, each one has an inner life unknown to his or her fellow passengers. There’s Nancy Morris, a real ‘Miss Mouse’ who is known for her meanness; Dee Burke–engrossed in her affair with an unfaithful hospital consultant; and Kev Kennedy who is a bit of a mystery to everyone, including his own family. Then there’s Celia Ryan. Each time she returns home to Ryan’s Bar, it is only to find her mother making a drunken exhibition of herself in front of half the local population. And, of course, Tom Fitzgerald himself has his own reasons for returning home so regularly. . .