The Space Between Us Read online

  ANNA MCPARTLIN

  The Space Between Us

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Contents

  1. Introducing the one and only Eve Hayes

  2. Will the real Lily Donovan please stand up?

  3. The strangest thing happened

  4. Only the lonely

  5. The things we do and don’t say

  6. If this is the end

  7. And death shall have no dominion

  8. One day, one month, one year, one life

  9. The rocky path to freedom

  10. The blame game

  11. From Paris to Peru

  12. Where Croagh Patrick meets the shores of Clew Bay

  Acknowledgements

  To all my friends: this world would

  be a sorry place without you

  1. Introducing the one and only Eve Hayes

  Sunday, 1 July 1990

  Dear Lily,

  You’ve been away a week and it feels like a year! So, what’s been happening on the home front? Well, not too much, really. You know the weirdo who works at the bowling alley? (The one who looks like Glenn Medeiros, not the one who picks his nose and eats it.) Well, he followed me from the chipper to the harbour and I could feel him behind me but I didn’t let on until I realized that it was getting dark and there was no one else around. Then I turned on him and said, ‘What do you want?’ He pointed to his bike which was chained up just ahead of me and said, ‘I want my bike.’ MORTIFIED. Anyway, we got talking about music, he’s an REM fan (yawn, isn’t everyone?) and out of nowhere he said he liked me! Just like that. I said he was too short for me to like that way. Was that mean? You are my filter when it comes to social contact with plebs. He looked hurt but for God’s sake I’m five foot eleven. What’s he – about five foot six? We’d look so stupid together, plus there is that issue of him being weird. He said, and I’m not joking, ‘We’ll be the same height when we lie down!!!’ Think about it, Lily … he’s talking about sex! The cheek of him. So I mentioned his weirdness and he denied being weird. Instead he said he was different and being different was sexy. Can you believe it? I said yeah, maybe if being different is being fantastically good at something or being totally original and having some sort of vision, instead of getting a perm, wearing his sister’s blouses and standing on street corners shouting out really bad poems. That really seemed to knock him. He wasn’t pushed about the perm or the blouse comments but the poetry hit hard. I felt bad because he looked like I’d stuck a pin in him. I said sorry but he looked like he was about to start crying. Then he called me a stuck-up blonde bitch and stormed off. I sat on the wall and tried to eat my chips, which were now cold so I ended up giving most of them to a dog that had been licking another dog’s shit on the beach. Then Gar, Declan and Paul arrived. Declan seems to be in an awful way without you. He was asking me if I’d heard from you. I said just that call you made from the phone box on Wed night and he said you’d rung him then too.

  How is everything in Dingle? Is waitressing getting any better? Is the money good enough to stay? I really miss you. It’s so lonely here without you. Gar keeps trying to get back with me and I’ve no intention but, and don’t kill me, I did kiss him last night. It was stupid and I was a bit drunk and he was nice and told me my eyes were so green they shone like emeralds. I know – puke – but when you’re drunk that kind of thing makes you feel amazing. Well, at least it made me feel amazing until we kissed and I realized I just don’t want to go back there. I really like Gar as a friend but that’s it. I made some stupid excuse that I had to go so now I have to face him and talk to him sober!

  Do you think if the tips are good and you do well down there you can come home for August? I just can’t believe this could be our last summer together and you’re down there and I’m up here and it’s so completely boring without you. I know your mother is broke but couldn’t she ask your father for some money? How much does it cost to phone Greece to remind him he has a kid in Ireland who wants to go to college and needs help with the fees? It’s not like he’s been there for anything else in your life and I know it hurts. So sorry for bringing it up but it has to be said. He owes you.

  I’m using my time to research. I spend a lot of my days in the library. The lads think I’ve lost it but I love the library. I’ve been reading about fashion through the ages and it’s really interesting. Dad bought me a new and much better sewing machine to make up for you leaving, and on Thursday I bought loads of oversized clothes in the charity shop so that I can rip them apart and start again. I wouldn’t be caught dead in anything I’ve made to date – the material is way too naff – but it’s something to do.

  Clooney is never really home and when I do see him he’s with a different girl every time. Dad seems amused by it. I’m not. He’s changing and since he started in that stupid college radio he goes around the place like he’s Bono or something. It’s pathetic. The one he was with last night was a state. She had big wild black hair, like Kate Bush gone wrong, a million bangles, and her T-shirt hadn’t been washed in about a year. They slept in his room because Dad was away. I wonder if Dad would be amused by that. It’ll cost my bro! The next time he annoys me I’ll charge him twenty quid for my silence. Anyway, she calls him my fluffy Cloudy!!! Can you believe it? It’s sickening. Watched Young Guns 2 (with TV up loud) again last night. OK, so name who you’d go out with in order of preference: Emilio Estevez, Kiefer Sutherland, Lou Diamond Phillips, Christian Slater?

  I’d go for

  1. Emilio Estevez (really cute in a serious way)

  2. Lou Diamond Phillips (exotic)

  3. Kiefer Sutherland (I liked him in Lost Boys but in YG2 he was just there)

  4. Christian Slater (does he really talk like that?)

  Right, have to go, I’m pulling apart a size-sixteen pair of dungarees. Don’t know what I’m going to make yet but I’m hoping for at least three pieces out of it.

  MISS YOU, MISS YOU, LOVE YOU.

  Your best friend,

  Eve

  PS Paul told me that Glenn Medeiros from the bowling alley (his real name is Ben Logan) writes those poems about his dead sister. Now I feel really bad. She died when she was ten. That’s what that poem (the one he keeps repeating in the funny voice) – ‘Ten, Ten, Never Again’ – is about. I still think it’s weird. I miss my mum but I don’t make up poems about her death.

  I was five, she was alive,

  I was seven, she was in heaven!

  PPS What’s the weather like down there? It’s been raining here for three days solid. Sick of wet hair. Thinking about doing a Sinéad O’Connor. So much for summer.

  On 1 July 2010, twenty years after eighteen-year-old Eve Hayes had sat down at her bedroom desk one rainy Sunday afternoon to write a letter to her best friend Lily, a much older and wiser Eve sat at that same old desk. It was raining just like it had been all those years before. Eve’s mind drifted back to that day, as it often did when she felt sad or lonely. At the time a week had felt like an entire year. She smiled at the memory of her desperation. She had missed her pal so much that her heart hurt, and she’d walked around like a zombie because she’d lost sleep engaging in all-night conversations with Lily in her head. Eve would say something like Hey, Lil, this time next year we’ll … and Imaginary Lily would finish Eve’s sentence … be millionaires. They were both big fans of Only Fools and Horses and had the dialogue down. Eve would call Lily a plonker. Imaginary Lily would call Eve a saucy old git. When Eve got bored of basically calling herself names, she’d tell Imaginary Lily about her everyday happenings and annoyances, like, for example, the morning she’d thought that her brother Clooney had died on the toilet: he hadn’t responded when she’d banged on the door and sworn at him while considerin
g whether it would be better to pee in the kitchen sink or under the tree in the back garden. The sink had won. Can you believe it, Lily? I peed in my own kitchen sink. I couldn’t really do it in the garden because it’s overlooked by the Noonans’ and we all know that Terry ‘the Tourist’ Noonan is a perv with a set of binoculars and a second-hand Polaroid camera he carries at all times. So not risking my rear end hanging on his wall!

  Clooney had emerged from the bathroom ten minutes later, with a girl and a smug look on his face, while Eve had been up to her elbows in bleach and Fairy Liquid. She’d wanted to punch him but then eighteen-year-old Eve had often wanted to punch twenty-year-old Clooney. Instead she’d just screamed that she was straight telling Dad when he got home. He had laughed at her, and in her head when she told Imaginary Lily she had laughed too. Lily and Clooney were thick as thieves.

  Back then, and on the advice of their guidance counsellor Mrs Moriarty, Lily had decided to go to medical school and become a GP. She liked the notion of being a doctor, and there was no way she was going to be a gynaecologist because she and Eve both agreed that fannies were disgusting. Besides, a GP practice was child-friendly and Lily had wanted to be a mother as far back as Eve could remember; they had been friends since they were in nappies. Lily had carried around a doll until she was ten. She called her Layla and treated her like a person. When Lily’s teacher Mrs Marsh began to worry that Layla was some sort of psychological crutch for Lily, her mother put a stop to any more nonsense talk by giving the doll to charity. Lily cried for one week solid and Eve tried to soothe her by giving her friend her own precious monkey but, even as she handed Monkey over, she knew Layla was irreplaceable to Lily. And so, having confirmed that to be the case, she took Monkey home, cuddled him all night and promised she’d never let him go again.

  Eve had always been determined to become a designer. She’d been sewing since she was twelve. She loved finding material, drawing patterns and making clothes. Also, she had the perfect model in Lily, who was tiny and petite and, no matter how unlikely the design or ensemble was, she would always wear Eve’s creations.

  As the years went by Eve’s work improved. In the fifth year she won a design award and was commissioned to make four debs’ outfits and a Communion dress for her dad’s second cousin. Even before she’d received her Leaving Cert results, she had secured herself a place in St Martin’s College of Design in London on the basis of her portfolio.

  Lily was the cleverest girl in her class. She sailed through school and never had to work too hard, which meant she could take extra lessons in photography, art and piano. She was good at everything, even sewing, although she lacked Eve’s flair.

  ‘You’re going to make it,’ Lily would say to Eve.

  ‘Yeah,’ Eve would agree. ‘Somewhere Coco Chanel’s shitting herself.’

  They both knew that Lily would study medicine at the university of her choosing. She based her first preference on where her boyfriend, Declan, wanted to go, which upset Eve: Lily had never talked about leaving Dublin to go to college but Declan favoured Cork. Eve thought that was an excuse: everyone knew that UCC was easier to get into than UCD. Lily would have sailed into UCD, Trinity or even the College of Surgeons but Declan would have to fight tooth and nail to get Cork. Lily insisted she was going to the same college as Declan, and pointed out that as Eve was going to London it was none of her business. But still …

  It was an exciting time, full of promise, and the only real difference between the girls was that Lily was desperate to grow up while Eve was slow to embrace change. Twenty years ago, that summer was supposed to have been the last the girls spent together, but Lily needed to earn money for college: the only way she could do it was to go and work for her uncle in his restaurant 228 miles away. Eve often wondered in the years that followed what would have happened if she had followed Lily. Would we still be friends? She remembered the little mantra she’d say every night before she fell asleep. Goodnight, Lily, I miss you, I miss you, I love you. And conceded to herself that teenagers were mental.

  The old desk looked out over her back garden and past it to the large old trees, the swing and Terry the Tourist’s empty bedroom window. It had been years since she’d seen him. His family had moved after Leaving Cert but Eve’s friend Gar had heard he was a press photographer in the UK, which made sense. Why take pictures of death in a war zone when you can look up some celebrity’s dress outside the Ivy?

  Absentmindedly, Eve traced the initials she’d spent a good hour or two carving into the table: BGML Ben ‘Glenn Medeiros’ Logan had come into Eve’s life as Lily had left it. That summer twenty years ago Eve had fallen in love, made a huge mistake, told the truth, lost her best friend and grown up.

  The old desk was the last of the furniture that would be taken by the movers. They were on a break, sitting at the back of their van eating sausage sandwiches from the local Centra shop. Eve had been left to roam around the house she’d grown up in one last time. She left her old bedroom and made her way downstairs. The red paint had faded, leaving intermittent vibrant squares on the parts of wall that had once been covered with family photos. They were all gone but Eve could see them as clearly now as if they were still there.

  There had been one of her mother, father, Clooney, Eve and Lily. Eve, at two years old, was sitting on her father’s shoulders. Her mother had her arms wrapped around four-year-old Clooney and Lily was holding Clooney’s hand. It was summer and they were standing, freckled by the sun, under a blue sky and everyone except Eve was grinning. The oval shape had been home to a picture of Clooney and Eve hugging in their school uniforms on her first day at primary school. He was squeezing her tightly while Eve was battling to escape his bear-hug. The largest square had held the family portrait Eve’s father had commissioned when her mother had become ill. The family sat in a line on the sofa in their best clothes, Mum at one end, Dad at the other, Clooney and Eve between them. She had been six, Clooney eight – Eve remembered the photographer getting annoyed because she refused to smile when he said, ‘Cheese!’

  ‘You can’t help but smile when you say the word,’ he had said.

  ‘That doesn’t make sense,’ Eve told him.

  ‘Why won’t you smile?’

  ‘I don’t feel like it.’

  ‘I can’t take your picture if you don’t.’

  ‘Yes, you can. Just press the button.’

  ‘It’ll only be for a second. I assure you it won’t break your face.’

  ‘Why won’t he just do it and go away, Mum?’

  Her mother told the man that Eve loathed having her photo taken. ‘We all have our pet hates,’ she said.

  ‘Look, love, I’m not asking the child to take over the controls of a plane or jump into the River Liffey. I’m just asking her to move the corners of her mouth up towards her eyes.’

  Her father told Eve to smile in the voice that he always used when he meant business. The photographer poised the camera. Just as it clicked she stuck out her tongue. Clooney thought it was funny. Her father warned her to be good, but Eve was having none of it and her mother was tired so the photographer was asked to take another shot whether Eve was smiling or not. He did so: the others looked like they’d won the lottery and Eve looked like her dog had died.

  The rest of the photos were pretty much the same, and from them, it would have been easy to think that Eve had grown up a miserable little girl, but the opposite was true. She was mostly delighted with life, herself and the world around her. The only time she stopped being delighted was when a camera was pointed in her direction. After her mother died that hardly ever happened because it turned out that her father hated the camera every bit as much as his daughter did. Every cloud …

  Eve moved from room to room, memories floating in and out of her mind. Even though the kitchen had been refurbished, when she stood where the large table used to be and closed her eyes, she could smell her father’s tomato-and-chilli sauce burning. She could see him standing over it, stirring vig
orously and wearing a ladybird apron. He kept flinging pasta at the wall, insisting that when it stuck it was ready to eat.

  ‘Kids, we have lift-off!’ He spooned out the pasta and sauce.

  Clooney, Eve and Lily had sat down and started to eat. Her dad had been taking apart an old radio he’d found in a skip and eating his dinner at the same time. Somehow he’d fixed it while he was clearing his plate. Eve’s father had always done his best but Eve had once overheard her aunt say to her uncle Rory: ‘God love them, those kids would eat fried maggots if their daddy served them with a smile.’ And poor Lily, well, she’d thought the sun, moon and stars shone out of Eve’s dad. He was kind to her and she called him Danny, not just because that was his name but because it sounded like ‘Daddy’. Eve had copied her friend so Dad became Danny to her too. There wasn’t a memory in the house that Lily wasn’t part of.

  As she moved to the glass doors that led to the stone patio, she was humming ‘Senza Una Donna’, the old Paul Young and Zucchero song. Clooney had sung ‘Scent of Madonna’ to make Lily laugh and annoy Eve – Eve had been easy to annoy as a teenager.

  Scent of Madonna,

  Gives me pain and some sorrow,

  Scent of Madonna,

  She’ll still smell bad tomorrow!

  ‘Dick.’

  ‘Evey, don’t call your brother a dick!’

  ‘Well, tell him to stop acting like one.’

  ‘Clooney, stop annoying your sister.’

  ‘I’m only singing.’

  ‘No, you’re doing my head in!’ Eve said.

  ‘It’s hardly the end of the world, Evey.’

  The back garden was overgrown, the old tree-house long gone, but the big old oak tree was still there. Eve leaned against it and looked at the house. She remembered her mother living in her bedroom for months before she died. Eve was allowed to visit once a day, and only for a few minutes near the end. She always brought Lily, who would stay silent and stroke Eve’s mother’s hand.