The Space Between Us Read online

  She went back into the restaurant and sat down. She was still flushed and despite her pep-talk she was still trembling slightly.

  ‘Does Declan normally have that effect or is it just that you’re with me?’ he asked.

  Lily shook her head. ‘We were having such a nice time, Clooney.’

  He knew she wanted him to let it go so he pretended to do just that. What the hell is going on?

  After surveying the menu they agreed that two coffees would be a healthier option than dessert. Lily felt a little sick having eaten more than she had in days and also because of the phone call she had handled so badly. He’s going to lose his mind. Clooney knew that she was itching to go. Her entire demeanour had changed as soon as she had seen Declan’s name light up on her phone. He had noticed that when she came to visit Eve she was constantly looking at her watch and she jumped every time a staff member walked into the room and made a reference to her being there, most especially when they mentioned her husband. Like the time when Marion had come in to take Eve’s pulse.

  ‘Hey, Lily, you here again? Declan must be taking advantage of this.’

  ‘We’re both way too busy to be fraternizing here … Besides, I have to go.’

  ‘You’ve just got here.’

  ‘Busy-busy. I’ll see you soon.’

  Or the time when Abby had come in to give Eve her heparin shot and noticed Lily sitting there.

  ‘Lily, fantastic. I was going to mention the Heart Foundation Ball to Declan but I know you deal with the diary – can we put you down for two tickets?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘Great. I’ll mention it to him when I see him later.’

  ‘Oh, no, no, don’t, it’s fine. I’ll just check our diary and get back to you.’

  ‘Oh. OK.’

  ‘I’ve got to go.’ And she was gone.

  Clooney wasn’t the only one who had noticed it. Eve had too. ‘Just leave it, Clooney, it’s none of our business,’ she’d warned.

  He agreed but there was something about the way Lily was reacting that bugged him. Is it fear?

  That question had been answered in the restaurant.

  Clooney had ordered a taxi to pick him up during their coffee and as soon as it came they paid the bill – Lily insisted on going Dutch. They walked outside together. He leaned in to kiss her cheek and she backed away, alarmed.

  ‘I’m sorry, I was just saying goodbye,’ he said, embarrassed.

  ‘I know. I’m sorry. I’m just tired,’ she said. She hugged him and pulled away quickly. ‘I can’t go into the hospital tomorrow or Saturday so I’ll see Eve when I’m back on days on Monday.’

  ‘OK,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell her.’

  Lily watched him get into the taxi and drive away before she got into her car. She took her phone out of her pocket and put it on the seat beside her. It remained off. She exhaled, gripped the steering wheel and cried.

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

  Wednesday, 25 July 1990

  9 a.m.

  Dear Eve,

  When you walked in on Declan and his dad arguing did you hear shouting or what? Was Declan acting weird? What did he say? I can’t seem to get him on the phone the past few days. His father told me he was out but I know he was there because he always waits on my calls. Tell him I’ll keep trying but please ask him to write to me if there’s something wrong. OK? Thanks for being good to him. I knew if you gave him a chance (it only took two years) you’d like him. He is very deep and emotional. Please let him know I love him and miss him. I hope he’s OK and I can’t wait to see him when I get home.

  I can’t believe I’ve been here nearly one month already. Only another month to go and I’ll be coming home and we’ll all be preparing to go off to college. I know your course starts in early September but at least we’ll have a few days together before you go. If it’s sunny we should go up on the cliff together and bring a blanket and a picnic and we’ll walk to the gap in the fence and head down the grassy slope that takes us to our special place. We can lie on our blanket looking out towards Wales and daydream about your life in London and mine in Cork. We can reminisce about all the good and bad days we had as kids.

  Me getting my nose broken in basketball – bad

  Me getting to know Declan as a result of that broken nose – good

  You stuck in bed for two months with glandular fever – bad

  Getting your first sewing machine and discovering your love of design – good

  So much has happened to us in the past eighteen years and most of it has been shared experiences. It’s amazing really when you think about it. I remember it all, don’t you? All that time we spent on those two swings in your back garden daring each other to touch the sun. The time you picked up Sarah Potter’s dog Franko’s dog-doo and wrapped it in a Cadbury’s wrapper and left it on Terry the Tourist’s gatepost and he picked it up and when he realized what it was he wiped his hand on his jacket and screamed like a girl. I wee’d myself laughing. When we snuck out of our bedrooms in the middle of the night and met Gar and Declan in the golf club and we stayed out most of the night. The first time we ever drank together and you kept repeating, ‘Follow,’ and bursting out laughing as though it was hilarious. These are the memories that will keep us close when we are far away from each other, these are the memories that keep you close to me now.

  Well, I might as well admit it, you were right about Colm. He tried to kiss me on Monday night so give yourself a big round of applause. I’m really pissed off. I told him time and time again that I only liked him as a friend, and after our conversation last week I really thought he’d got me but he hadn’t. There was a bonfire in the woods at midnight so we left work together and walked through the woods and as we were walking he started acting weird. One minute we’re happily talking about a funny incident in the restaurant and the next minute he’s telling me that I’m making a mistake with Declan and I’m too young to be thinking about settling down. I couldn’t believe it. First I’ve never said anything about settling down (that I can remember and it’s incredibly uncool to bring up something disclosed by a drunk person who has admitted time and time again to memory loss), and second, who is a sixteen-year-old to tell an eighteen-year-old what’s what? And please don’t side with him. I know your views about life and love but you spend another two years with Ben and then talk to me about moving on. Anyway, I told him it was none of his business and he said it was because he was really into me and then he kissed me. One minute we’re talking and the next his tongue is down my throat. I pushed him off and I was hopping mad. He apologized because he could see I was steaming but I really wasn’t in the mood to hear it. He told me he’d never try it again and that he just thought that if we kissed I’d see that we could be good together. I’ve kept telling him over and over since I arrived that I only saw him as a friend and that I had a boyfriend, so how stupid does he have to be? And I know you saw it coming and you’ll say, well, that’s boys for you, but come on. I was nice to him, I liked him, he was my friend – does that mean I led him on? Because seriously, as we were getting close to the bonfire that’s what he said. He walked off in a huff and I just didn’t have the heart to go to the party so I came back here. My head was bursting with our argument, I kept thinking about it over and over and what I should have said and where it had all gone wrong. He hasn’t really spoken to me since. Work is weird. He’s being polite but he won’t make eye contact and there’s no laughing and messing around any more. Ellen noticed but she’s staying out of it. Besides, she’s really wrapped up in Orfeo. They spend most of their time together in his hotel accommodation when we’re off, and when we’re working the restaurant has got so busy that she’s run off her feet as head waitress. So in one week our little gang seems to have fallen to pieces. It’s sad and I’m sad. I wish I was home with you and Declan but it’s only another month. I can do another month.

  On the bright side Clooney arrived and he came to the restaurant yesterday
. He’s in great form and looking good. He must be lying out by the tent all day because he’s the colour of Danny’s old mahogany desk. His friends seem nice, Marty and Vince, but Vince’s girlfriend Pauline seems a bit snobby. I met them for drinks after work last night and I was having a laugh with the boys and she was giving me daggers. She looks at me like I’m dog-doo on her shoe and she definitely doesn’t share my sense of humour. It’s really timely that Clooney is here, seeing as Colm isn’t talking to me and Ellen is so busy shagging that she doesn’t have time for anyone else. The minute her relationship gets serious she drops her friends.

  I have a day off tomorrow so Clooney has asked me to go boating with them. I said I wouldn’t go because of Pauline, but Clooney said not to mind her, she wasn’t going because she hated the water. Then he announced to the lads that I was going with them and suddenly she wasn’t afraid of the water at all and she’s now going, which is painful because it’s bad enough being in her company in a large bar, never mind a small boat. Clooney thinks it’s hilarious and made that cat miaowing sound which I hate and it drives me mad. I only met her yesterday and in one day she decided she hated me. What a bitch.

  I phoned my mother on Sunday. She’s seeing someone!!!! Can you believe it? I can’t really. I think she might be hallucinating. She says he’s from the UK and he’s over in Ireland for six months working on a thesis on (you’ve guessed it) religious devotion but here’s the kicker – he’s not a Catholic, it’s a broad paper on all religions and their followers. He sounds like a smart guy and she says that what started off as a fight on the church grounds turned into lunch, then dinner and she’s seeing him again. She sounded really giddy on the phone and it was nice to hear her in such good form. His name is Albert. I hope he sticks around for a while – it would be nice to see her happy.

  OK, that’s it. I’m off to see the wizard.

  I love you and miss you and wish everyone was as easy to read as you and everyone just said it like it is like you do.

  Lily

  XXXXOOOOXXXX

  PS I showed Colm a picture of you (before the fight) and he said you were a bang, which is country-speak for beautiful.

  PPS I’ve learned how to make quiche so I’ll make it for our picnic on the cliff. Remember that time we got stoned up there with Paul and Gar and you ran around singing ‘The Sound Of Music?’ Still laugh at that.

  One last thing. Rate these horror films in order of preference: Friday The 13th, Fright Night, The Lost Boys, Nightmare on Elm Street.

  Mine are as follows:

  1. The Lost Boys (because Corey Haim is so cute singing in the bath and I love the granddad: ‘One thing about living in Santa Carla I never could stomach, all the damn vampires.’)

  2. Friday The 13th (because it was my first horror, I was staying over, your dad made sausage rolls and let us stay up watching it until after midnight)

  3. Fright Night (I love vampires)

  4. Nightmare on Elm Street (because it was amazing but it gave me nightmares for a whole month afterwards)

  XXXOOOXXX

  Every morning started at five. Eve’s dreams were often interrupted by the sound of buffing. The steady hum of the machine gliding across the floor outside her door would invade whatever reality she had created in her head. The first time it was during a particularly weird and vivid dream. The Ginger Monster’s appearances weren’t as spectacular as they had once been. Once in a while he was reduced to a drunk. When he appeared that morning it was only to dance on her grave. He was doing a jig and he was wearing Michael Flatley-type attire, which made her smile even as he hornpiped his way around her headstone and back in time for his big finish. What Eve found more disconcerting than the dancing drunk was the writing on her headstone:

  HERE LIES EVE HAYES

  SPINSTER, BUSINESSWOMAN AND TOTAL BITCH.

  THE WORLD IS A BETTER PLACE WITHOUT HER.

  Spinster? Really? Ah, come on. It would appear that even in REM sleep Eve identified herself as a businesswoman and bitch. She agreed that the world would be better off without her and a few billion others, due to overpopulation, but the word spinster really stuck in her craw. I don’t want to die single. She was contemplating the words on her headstone when the Ginger Monster seemed to reboot. He faced forward, his arms tight by his side and his legs began to hop wildly. All right, all right, I’ve seen the show. It was then that she heard the steady hum in the background and turned in time to see a swarm of bees approaching. They moved through the blue sky, and as they did, they seemed to swallow it whole so that light became darkness. She pictured outlandishly large heads, on tiny bee bodies, with large open mouths that held nothing but two sharp teeth, darkness and death. Huh, well, I’m already dead so … She looked round to the Ginger Monster who was too busy attempting a two-hand reel by himself to notice the sky had disappeared down the gullets of the killer bees and that they were heading straight for him. The hum grew louder and louder until eventually he looked up and screamed so loudly that Eve had to cover her ears. She was waiting for him to disappear but instead she woke to see the face of the woman who had been buffing the floor.

  ‘You were screaming, darling,’ she said.

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Would you like me to get a nurse?’

  ‘No, thanks.’

  The woman left her to return to sleep. The floor-buffing had become a sort of alarm clock. The sound infiltrated her dreams. Sometimes her brain allowed her to recognize it as a signal to wake and recalibrate. Oh, I’m not in the chocolate factory licking cherry wallpaper, I’m in a hospital bed, and that noise isn’t the revving of the Wonka’s wondrous boat it’s that damned buffer. Oh, no, it’s five o’clock! One eye would open then both, to reveal that she was in the small room, with the white walls that she stared at every day and the tattered poster she knew by heart:

  The Message Is the Same in Any Language!

  Operite Ruke

  Lavarsi le Mani

  Lavese las Manos

  Xin Hay Rura Tay

  WASH YOUR HANDS

  To her left was a large window with a sill wide enough to sit on comfortably. It looked out on to the staff car park. The habit had formed in the first few days: Eve would open one eye followed by the second, glance at the poster and read it, then look out of the window to see if any doctors or nurses were coming or going. If there was nothing to see she’d close her eyes. It was only then that she’d consider whether or not her body felt better or worse than the day before. Some days it didn’t wake up for a minute or two after her brain. The first time she woke and couldn’t feel a thing from the neck down, she panicked, but she quickly got used to the numbness and was grateful for it in lieu of the torturous pain she’d endured. On other days her body seemed to be waiting for the buffer to wake her: as soon as she opened one eye, the skin on her right leg began to crawl, and by the time her second eye was open the itch was so bad that she tore at the plaster hoping by some miracle that her fingers would break through so that she could scratch the healing wounds that lay beneath its solid surface. Sometimes her shoulder ached so badly that she considered what life would be like without her left arm. Can you amputate a shoulder? The dull pain in her left leg was bothersome but once it was covered with blankets, and as long as nobody leaned heavily on the bed or made any attempt to put anything near it, she felt comfortable enough.

  On the weeks that Lily was working she’d wake up to her and a thermometer. ‘Good morning, sunshine,’ Lily would say.

  ‘Morning, Lil.’

  ‘How you feeling?’

  ‘Bored, frustrated, sore, decrepit and insanely itchy.’

  ‘Did Clooney bring you that cast-scratcher?’

  ‘He found it online. They say that you can bend it as much as you want and it won’t break.’

  ‘And he broke it?’

  ‘Didn’t even get to scratch once.’

  They’d talk while Lily worked but all too soon she’d have to move on to another patient.

 
‘You’re all good. I’ll see you for your bed-bath later.’

  Then she’d be gone and Eve would be truly awake. She’d read that stupid poster, look out of the window, then turn on the TV, watch some morning show where people were unreasonably happy about badly made clothes and ponder on the long day that stretched ahead. She wouldn’t be able to relax until physio was over. The dread would kick in as soon as she’d been served breakfast because once that was over it would be less than an hour until Mica or the other physio, Norman, would come through the door and the torment would begin. At least Mica had a sense of humour.

  ‘Come on, four more and you can punch me in the arm,’ she’d say.

  ‘Five more and I can punch you in the face.’

  ‘Sorry, the face is too pretty.’

  ‘I’ll be the judge of that!’

  Norman was serious, and although he was kinder, he wasn’t any fun. Also when he moved her he’d insist on doing so after counting down in Irish – a h-aon, a dó, a trí – before each lift.

  ‘Are you ready? A h-aon, a dó, a trí!’

  Oh, just do it.

  ‘OK, here we go. A h-aon, a dó, a trí!’

  ‘That’s very annoying,’ she said one day. ‘Do you know that?’

  ‘I do now,’ he said, but it didn’t deter him when he moved her back into bed. ‘Are you right? A h-aon, a dó, a trí!’

  ‘Annoying bastard,’ she mumbled.

  He chose to ignore her.

  Physiotherapy was over by eleven thirty. After that came lunch at twelve and once lunch was over Eve would watch the TV, the wall or the window until Clooney came in around two. He’d stay till about four and then, if Gina couldn’t get in or if Lily was too busy to call or not working, she’d revert to watching the TV, the window or the wall. She read fashion magazines but even they became boring, and there weren’t enough to keep her occupied.