She looked at me in confusion. ‘Ivan, I’ve come to give you a piece of my mind. I spoke to Benjamin today after you left and he told me you were a partner in the company. He also accused me of something else but I won’t even get into that,’ she fumed.
‘You’ve come to give me a piece of your mind,’ I repeated, looking at her. ‘That phrase is really beautiful. The mind is the most powerful thing in the body, you know. Whatever the mind believes, the body can achieve. So to give someone a piece of it… well, thank you, Elizabeth. Funny how people are always intent on giving it to the people they dislike when it really should be for the ones they love. There’s another funny thing. But a piece of your mind… what a gift that would be.’ I looped the last stalk and formed a chain. ‘I’ll give you a daisy chain in return for a piece of your mind.’ I slid the bracelet onto her arm.
She sat on the grass. Didn’t move, didn’t say anything, just looked at her daisy chain. Then she smiled and when she spoke her voice was soft. ‘Has anyone ever been mad at you for more than five minutes?’
I looked at my watch, ‘Yes. You, from ten o’clock this morning until now.’
She laughed. ‘Why didn’t you tell me that you work with Vincent Taylor?’
‘Because I don’t.’
‘But Benjamin said that you did.’
‘Who’s Benjamin?’
‘The project manager. He said you were a silent partner.’
I smiled. ‘I suppose I am. He was being ironic, Elizabeth. I’ve nothing to do with the company. I’m so silent that I don’t say anything at all.’
‘Well, that’s one side of you I’ve never met,’ she smiled. ‘So you’re not actively involved with this project?’
‘My work is with people, Elizabeth, not buildings.’
‘Well then, what on earth was Benjamin talking about?’ She was confused. ‘He’s an odd one, that Benjamin West. What business were you talking to Vincent about? What have children got to do with the hotel?’
‘You’re very nosy,’ I laughed. ‘Vincent Taylor and I weren’t talking about any business.’ Anyway, that’s a good question – what do you think children should have to do with the hotel?’
‘Absolutely nothing,’ Elizabeth laughed, and then stopped abruptly, afraid she had offended me. ‘You think the hotel should be child-friendly.’
I smiled. ‘Don’t you think everything and everyone should be child-friendly?’
‘I can think of a few exceptions,’ Elizabeth said smartly, looking out to Luke.
I knew she was thinking of Saoirse and her father, possibly even herself.
‘I’ll talk to Vincent tomorrow about a playroom/play area kind of thing…’ She trailed off. ‘I’ve never designed a children’s room before. What the hell do children want?’
‘It will come easily to you, Elizabeth. You were a child once – what did you want?’
Her brown eyes darkened and she looked away. ‘It’s different now. Children don’t want what I wanted then. Times have changed.’
‘Not that much they haven’t. Children always want the same things because they all need the same basic things.’
‘Like what?’
‘Well, why don’t you tell me what you wanted and I’ll let you know if they’re the same things?’
Elizabeth laughed lightly. ‘Do you always play games, Ivan?’
‘Always,’ I smiled. ‘Tell me.’
She studied my eyes, battling with herself about whether to speak or not and after a few moments she took a deep breath. ‘When I was a child, my mother and I would sit down at the kitchen table every Saturday night with our crayons and fancy paper and we’d write out a full plan of what we were going to do the next day.’ Her eyes shone with the fondness of remembering. ‘Every Saturday night I got so excited about how we were going to spend the next day, I’d pin the schedule up on the wall of my bedroom and force myself to go to sleep so that morning would come.’ Her smile faded and she snapped out of her trance. ‘But you can’t incorporate those things into a playroom; children want PlayStations and Xboxes and that kind of thing.’
‘Why don’t you tell me what sorts of things were on the Sunday schedule?’
She looked away into the distance, ‘They were collections of hopelessly impossible dreams. My mother promised me we would lie on our backs in the field at night, catch as many falling stars as we could and then make all the wishes our hearts desired. We talked about lying in great big baths filled up to our chins with cherry blossoms, tasting sun showers, twirling around in the village sprinklers that watered the grass in the summer, having a moon-lit dinner on the beach and then doing the soft-shoe shuffle in the sand.’ Elizabeth laughed at the memory. ‘It’s all so silly, really when I say it aloud, but that’s the way she was. She was playful and adventurous, wild and carefree, if not a bit eccentric. She always wanted to think of new things to see, taste and discover.’
‘All those things must have been so much fun,’ I said, in awe of her mother. Tasting sun showers beat a toilet roll telescope any day.
‘Oh, I don’t know.’ Elizabeth looked away and swallowed hard. ‘We never actually did any of them.’
‘But I bet you did them all a million times in your head,’ I said.
‘Well, there was one thing we did together. Just after she had Saoirse, she brought me out to the field, lay down a blanket and set down a picnic basket. We ate freshly-baked brown bread, still piping hot from the oven, with homemade strawberry jam.’ Elizabeth closed her eyes and breathed in. ‘I can still remember the smell and the taste.’ She shook her head in wonder. ‘But she chose to have the picnic in our cow field. There we were, in the middle of the field, having a picnic surrounded by curious cows.’
We both laughed.
‘But that’s when she told me she was going away. She was too big a person for this small town. It’s not what she said but I know it must have been how she felt.’ Elizabeth’s voice trembled and she stopped talking. She watched Luke and Sam chasing each other around the garden but didn’t see them, listened to their childish squeals of joy but didn’t hear them. She shut it all out.
‘Anyway,’ her voice became serious again and she cleared her throat, ‘that’s irrelevant. It’s got nothing to do with the hotel; I don’t even know why I brought it up.’
She was embarrassed. I bet Elizabeth had never said all that aloud, ever in her life, and so I let the long silence sit between us as she worked it all out in her head.
‘Do you and Fiona have a good relationship?’ she asked, still not looking me in the eye after what she told me.
‘Fiona?’
‘Yes, the woman you’re not married to.’ She smiled for the first time and seemed to settle.
‘Fiona doesn’t talk to me,’ I replied, still confused as to why she thought I was Sam’s dad. I would have to have a chat with Luke about that one. I wasn’t comfortable with this case of mistaken identity.
‘Did things end badly between you both?’
‘They never began to be able to end,’ I answered honestly.
‘I know that feeling.’ She rolled her eyes and laughed. ‘At least one good thing came out of it, though.’ She looked away and watched Sam and Luke playing. She had been referring to Sam but I got the feeling she was looking at Luke and I was pleased at that.
Before we left Sam’s house, Elizabeth turned to me. ‘Ivan, I’ve never spoken to anyone about what I said before,’ she swallowed, ‘ever. I don’t know what made me blurt it out.’
‘I know,’ I smiled, ‘so thank you for giving me a very big piece of your mind. I think that deserves another daisy chain,’ I held out another bracelet I’d made.
Mistake number two: when sliding it onto her wrist, I felt myself give her a little piece of my heart.
Chapter 19
After the day I gave Elizabeth the daisy chains … and my heart, I learned far more about her than just what she and her mother did on Saturday evenings. I realised she’s like one of those coc
kles that you see clinging to the rocks down on Fermoy beach. You know by looking at it that it’s loose but as soon as you touch it or get close to it, it seizes up and clings onto the rock’s surface for life. That’s what Elizabeth was like: open until someone came near and then she’d tense up, and cling on for dear life. Sure, she opened up to me on that day in the back garden, but then the next day when I dropped by it was as though she was mad at me because she’d talked about it. But that was Elizabeth all round – mad at everyone including herself – and she was probably embarrassed. It wasn’t often Elizabeth told anybody anything about herself unless she was talking to customers about her company.
It was difficult to spend time with Luke now that Elizabeth could see me and, frankly she would have been worried if I’d knocked on her fuchsia door to ask her if Luke was coming out to play. She has a thing about friends being a certain age. The important thing, though, was that Luke didn’t seem to mind. He was always so busy playing with Sam and whenever Luke decided to include me, it would make Sam frustrated because he couldn’t see me, of course. I think I was getting in Luke’s way of playing with Sam and I don’t think Luke was bothered if I showed up or not because it wasn’t him I was there for, you see, and I think he knew it. I told you kids always know what’s going on, even before you know yourself sometimes.
As for Elizabeth, I think she’d go crazy if I just strolled into her living room at twelve o’clock at night. A new kind of friendship meant that there had to be new boundaries. I had to be subtle, call round less yet still be there for her at the right moments. Like an adult friendship.
One thing I definitely didn’t like was the fact that Elizabeth thought that I was Sam’s dad. I don’t know how that started and without me even saying anything it just kept going. I never lie to my friends, ever, so I tried many times to tell her that I wasn’t Sam’s dad. One of the times, the conversation went like this.
‘So where are you from, Ivan?’
It was one evening after Elizabeth had been at work. She had just finished a meeting with Vincent Taylor about the hotel and apparently, according to her, she just walked right up to him and told him she had been speaking with Ivan and we both felt the hotel needed a children’s area to give the parents even more relaxing romantic time together. Well, Vincent laughed so much that he just gave in and agreed. She’s still confused as to why he thought it was so funny. I told her it was because Vincent hadn’t a clue who I was and she just rolled her eyes at me and accused me of being secretive. Anyway, because of that, she was in a good mood so she was ready to talk, for a change. I was wondering when she’d start asking me questions (other than the ones about my job, how many staff we had, what was the turnover every year. She bored me to tears with all that kind of stuff).
But she’d finally asked me where I was from so happily I answered, ‘Ekam Eveileb.’
She frowned. ‘That name is familiar; I’ve heard of it somewhere before. Where is it?’
‘A million miles from here.’
‘Baile na gCroíthe is a million miles from everywhere. Ekam Eveileb …’ she allowed the words to roll off her tongue, ‘what does that mean? That’s not Irish or English, is it?’
‘It’s draw kcab-ish.’
‘Draw Cab?’ she repeated, raising an eyebrow. ‘Honestly, Ivan, sometimes you’re as bad as Luke. I think he gets most of his sayings from you.’
I chuckled.
‘In fact,’ Elizabeth leaned forward, ‘I didn’t want to say this to you before but I think he looks up to you.’
‘Really?’ I was flattered.
‘Well, yes, because … well,’ she searched for the correct words, ‘please don’t think my nephew is insane or anything but last week he invented this friend.’ She laughed nervously. ‘We had him over in the house for dinner for a few days, they chased each other around outside, played everything from football, to the computer to cards, can you believe it? But the funny thing is that his name was Ivan.’
My blank reaction started her back-tracking and she blushed wildly. ‘Well, actually it’s not funny at all, it’s completely preposterous, of course, but I thought that maybe it meant that he looked up to you and saw you as some sort of male role model…’ she trailed off. ‘Anyway, Ivan’s gone now. He left us. All alone. It was devastating as you can imagine. I was told that they could stay around for as long as three months.’ She made a face. ‘Thank God he left. I had the date marked off on the calendar and everything,’ she said, her face still red. ‘Actually, funnily enough, he left when you arrived. I think you scared Ivan off … Ivan.’ She laughed but my blank face caused her to stop and sigh. ‘Ivan, why am I the only one talking?’
‘Because I’m listening.’
‘Well, I’m finished now so you can say something,’ she snapped.
I laughed. She always got mad when she felt stupid. ‘I have a theory.’
‘Good, share it with me for once. Unless it’s to put me and my nephew in a grey concrete building run by nuns with bars on the windows.’
I looked at her in horror.
‘Go on,’ she laughed.
‘Well, who’s to say that Ivan disappeared?’
Elizabeth looked horrified. ‘No one says he disappeared because he never appeared in the first place.’
‘He did to Luke.’
‘Luke made him up.’
‘Maybe he didn’t.’
‘Well, I didn’t see him.’
‘You see me.’
‘What have you got to do with Luke’s invisible friend?’
‘Maybe I am Luke’s friend, only I don’t like being called invisible. It’s not very PC.’
‘But I can see you.’
‘Exactly, so I don’t know why people insist on saying “invisible”. If someone can see me then surely that’s visible. Think about it – has Ivan, Luke’s friend, and me ever been in the same room at the same time?’
‘Well, he could be here right now, for all we know, eating olives or something,’ she laughed, then suddenly stopped, realising Ivan was no longer smiling. ‘What are you talking about, Ivan?’
‘It’s very simple, Elizabeth. You said that Ivan disappeared when I arrived.’
‘Yes.’
‘Don’t you think that means that I’m Ivan and you just suddenly started seeing me?’
Elizabeth looked angry. ‘No, because you are a real person with a real life and you have a wife and a child and you—’
‘I’m not married to Fiona, Elizabeth.’
‘Ex-wife then, it’s not the point.’
‘I was never married to her.’
‘Well, far be it for me to judge.’
‘No, I mean Sam isn’t my son.’ My voice sounded more forceful than I intended. Children understand these things far better. Adults always make things so complicated.
Elizabeth’s face softened and she reached out to put her hand on mine. Her hands were delicate, with baby-soft skin and long slender fingers.
‘Ivan,’ she spoke gently, ‘we have something in common. Luke isn’t my son either,’ she smiled. ‘But I think it’s great that you still want to see Sam.’
‘No, no, you don’t understand, Elizabeth. I’m nothing to Fiona, and I’m nothing to Sam. They don’t see me like you do, they don’t even know me, that’s what I’m trying to tell you. I’m invisible to them. I’m invisible to everybody else but you and Luke.’
Elizabeth’s eyes filled with tears and her grip tightened. ‘I understand,’ her voice shook. She placed her other hand on mine and clung to it tightly. She struggled with her thoughts. I could tell she wanted to say something but couldn’t. Her brown eyes searched mine and after a moment’s silence, looking as though she had found what she was looking for, her face finally softened. ‘Ivan, you have no idea how similar you and I are, and it’s such a relief to hear you talking like this because I sometimes feel invisible to everybody too, you know?’ Her voice sounded lonely. ‘I feel like nobody knows me, that nobody sees me how I really am
… except you.’
She looked so upset that I put my arms around her. Still I couldn’t help feeling so disappointed that she’d completely misunderstood me, which was odd, because my friendships aren’t supposed to be about me, or what I want. And it had never been about me before.
But as I lay down alone that night and processed all the information of the day, I realised that for the first time in my life, Elizabeth was the only friend I had ever met who had completely understood me after all.
And for anyone who’s ever had that connection with someone, even if it only lasted for five minutes, it’s important. For once I didn’t feel that I was living in a different world from everyone else, but that, in fact, there was a person, a person I liked and respected, who had a piece of my heart, who felt the same way.
You all know exactly how I was feeling that night.
I didn’t feel so alone. Even better than that, I felt as if I was floating on air.
Chapter 20
The weather had changed overnight. The past week of June sunshine had burned the grass, dried the soil and brought wasps in their thousands to swarm around and annoy everyone. Saturday evening it all changed. The sky darkened and the clouds had moved in. But that was typical Irish weather: one moment a heat wave and the next, gale-force winds. It was predictably unpredictable.
Elizabeth shivered in her bed and pulled her duvet up to her chin. She didn’t have the heating on and even though she needed it she refused to put it on during the summer months as a principle. Outside the trees shivered, their leaves tossed in the wind. They cast wild shadows across her bedroom walls. The fierce gusts blowing sounded like giant waves crashing against the cliffs. Inside, the doors rattled and shuddered. The bench in the garden swung back and forth, squeaking. Everything moved violently and sporadically; there was no rhythm and no sense of consistency.
Elizabeth wondered about Ivan. She wondered why she was feeling a pull towards him, and why every time she opened her mouth the world’s best- kept secrets flowed out. She wondered why she welcomed him into her home and into her head. Elizabeth loved to be alone – she didn’t crave companionship – but she craved Ivan’s companionship. She wondered if she should take a few steps back because of Fiona living only down the road. Wouldn’t her closeness to Ivan, albeit only a friendship, be disturbing for Sam and Fiona? She relied so much on Fiona to mind Luke at last- minute notice.