‘Look, you just did it!’ Ivan pointed out.
Elizabeth stopped and looked back on her track, visible by her footprints. True enough, she had crossed the road at Flanagan’s, walked on the opposite path and crossed over once again to get to her office, instead of staying on the same path. She hadn’t noticed that before. She looked back at Flanagan’s pub. Mr Flanagan stood at the door having a cigarette. He nodded at her strangely, appearing surprised she held his stare. She frowned and swallowed the lump that had formed in her throat as she stared at the building.
‘Everything OK, Elizabeth?’ Ivan asked, cutting into her thoughts.
‘Yes.’ Her voice came out as a whisper. She cleared her throat, looked at Ivan in confusion and unconvincingly repeated, ‘Yes, I’m fine.’
Chapter 35
Elizabeth passed a gobsmacked and disapproving Mrs Bracken, who was standing at the door with two other elderly women, all with pieces of fabric in their hands. They tutted as she trudged by, with paint in clumps in the ends of her hair, which was rubbing against her back and causing a beautiful multicoloured effect.
‘Is she losing her marbles or what?’ one of the women whispered loudly.
‘No, quite the opposite.’ Elizabeth could hear the smile in Mrs Bracken’s voice. ‘I’d say she’s been on her hands and knees looking for them.’
The other women tutted and wandered away, muttering about Elizabeth not being the only one losing her marbles.
Elizabeth ignored the stare from Becca and the shout from Poppy, ‘That’s more like it!’ and marched into her office, closing the door softly behind her. Shutting everything out. She leaned her back against the door and tried to figure out why her body was shaking so much. What had been stirred inside her? What monsters had awoken from their slumber and were bubbling away under her skin? She breathed in deeply through her nostrils and exhaled slowly, counting one, two, three times until her weak knees stopped trembling.
Everything had been fine, if not mildly embarrassing, as she walked through the town looking like she had dipped herself in a pot of rainbow-coloured paint. It had all been fine until Ivan said something. What did he say …? He said … and then she remembered and a chill ran through her body.
Flanagan’s pub. She always avoided Flanagan’s pub, he said. She hadn’t noticed until he brought it to her attention. Why did she do it? Because of Saoirse? No, Saoirse drank in the Camel’s Hump, on the hill, down the road. She remained leaning against the door, thinking until her head was dizzy. The room spun her and she decided she needed to get home. Home to where she could control what went on, who could enter, who could leave, where things had their own place and where every memory was clear. She needed order.
‘Where’s your beanbag, Ivan?’ Calendula asked, looking up at me from her yellow-painted wooden chair.
‘Oh, I got tired of that,’ I replied. ‘Spinning is my new favourite thing now.’
‘Nice,’ she nodded with approval.
‘Opal’s really late,’ Tommy said, wiping his runny nose along his arm.
Calendula looked away in disgust, straightened her pretty yellow dress, crossed her ankles and swung her white patent shoes and frilly socks while she hummed the humming song.
Olivia knitted in her rocking chair. ‘She’ll be here,’ she rasped.
Jamie-Lynn reached out to the centre table to grab a chocolate Rice Krispie bun and a glass of milk, and as she coughed and spluttered, her glass of milk spilled all over her arm. She licked it off.
‘Have you been playing in the doctor’s waiting room again, Jamie-Lynn?’ Olivia asked, glaring at her over the rim of her glasses.
Jamie-Lynn nodded, coughed again on her bun and took another bite.
Calendula wrinkled her nose in disgust and continued combing her Barbie’s hair with a small comb.
‘You know what Opal told you, Jamie-Lynn. Those places are full of bacteria. Those toys you like to play with are the cause of you being ill.’
‘I know,’ Jamie-Lynn said with food in her mouth, ‘but someone’s got to keep the kids company when they’re waiting for the doc.’
Twenty minutes passed and eventually Opal showed. Everyone looked at each other with worry. It looked as though Opal’s shadow had taken her place. She didn’t float into the room like a fresh morning breeze as she usually did; it was as though every step she took she was laden down with heavy buckets of cement. The others all quietened down immediately, seeing the deep blue, almost black, colour that followed her in.
‘Good afternoon, my friends.’ Even Opal’s voice was different, as though she was being muffled and held back in another dimension.
‘Hello, Opal.’ The replies were soft and hushed, as though more than a whisper would knock her to rubble.
She gave them a gentle smile, acknowledgeing their support. ‘Somebody who has been a friend of mine for a great deal of time is sick. Very sick. He’s going to die and I’m very sad to lose him,’ she explained.
Everyone made soothing noises. Olivia stopped rocking in her chair, Bobby stopped rolling back and forth on his skateboard, Calendula’s legs stopped kicking, Tommy even stopped sniffing the snot back up his nose and I stopped swinging on my chair. This was serious stuff, and the group talked about what it’s like to lose people they love. Everyone understood. It happened to best friends all the time and each time it happened, the sadness was never less.
I couldn’t contribute to the conversation. Every emotion I have ever felt for Elizabeth gathered and swelled in my throat like a pumping heart receiving more and more love every moment and growing bigger and prouder as a result. The lump in my throat prevented me from speaking just as my growing heart prevented me from stopping loving Elizabeth.
As the meeting was ending, Opal looked to me. ‘Ivan, how are things with Elizabeth?’
Everyone looked at me and I found a tiny hole in that lump for my sound to seep through. ‘I’ve left her until tomorrow to figure something out.’ I thought of her face and my heart pumped quicker and grew, and that tiny hole in the lump in my throat closed.
And without anyone knowing my situation, they all understood it to mean ‘not long now’. By the way Opal quickly picked up her files and fled the adjourned meeting, I figured it was the same case for her.
Elizabeth’s feet pounded on the treadmill that faced the back garden in her home. She looked out at the hills, the lakes and mountains spread before her and ran even faster. Her hair blew behind her as she ran, her brow glistened, her arms moved with her legs and she imagined as she did every day that she was running over those hills, across the seas, far, far away. After thirty minutes of running and running yet staying in the same place she stopped, left the small gym panting and weak, and immediately began to clean, scrubbing furiously on surfaces that already sparkled.
As soon as she had cleaned the house from top to bottom, had wiped away all the cobwebs, cleared every darkened hidden corner, she began to do the same with her mind. All her life she had run from shedding light on those darkened corners of her mind. The cobwebs and dust had settled and now she was ready to start clearing them. Something was trying to crawl out of that darkness and now she was ready to help it. Enough running.
She sat at the kitchen table and stared out at the country spread before her, tumbling hills, valleys and lakes with fuchsia and montbretia lacing them all. The sky was darkening earlier now that August had arrived.
She thought long and hard about nothing and everything, allowing whatever was niggling her mind to have a chance to step out of the shadows and show itself. It was the same niggling feeling she ran from while she lay in bed trying to sleep, the feeling she fought while furiously cleaning. But now she sat at the table a surrendered woman, with her hands held high, stepping away from her weapon and allowing her thoughts to hold her under arrest. She had been like an escaped criminal on the run for so long.
‘Why are you sitting in the dark?’ a sweet voice called out to her.
She smiled li
ghtly. ‘I’m just thinking, Luke.’
‘Can I sit with you?’ he asked, and she hated herself for wanting to say no. ‘I won’t say anything or touch anything, I promise,’ he added.
That twisted her heart – was she really that bad? Yes, she knew she was.
‘Come over and sit down,’ she smiled, pulling out the chair beside her.
They both sat in the darkened kitchen in silence until Elizabeth spoke. ‘Luke, there are some things that I should talk to you about. Things I should have spoken to you before but …’ She twisted her fingers, trying very carefully to decide how to word what she was saying. When she was a child, all she wanted was for people to explain what had happened, where her mother had gone and why. A simple explanation would have helped years and years of tortuous wondering.
He looked at her with big blue eyes from under long lashes, chubby cheeks that were rosy and a glistening upper lip from a runny nose. She laughed and ran a hand through his snow-white hair and left it resting on the back of his hot little neck.
‘But,’ she continued, ‘I didn’t know how to say them to you.’
‘Is it about my mom?’ Luke asked, his legs swinging below the glass table.
‘Yes. She hasn’t visited us in a while, as you’ve probably noticed.’
‘She’s gone on an adventure,’ Luke said happily.
‘Well, I don’t know if you could call it that, Luke,’ Elizabeth sighed. ‘I don’t know where she’s gone, sweetheart. She didn’t tell anyone before she left.’
‘She told me,’ he chirped.
‘What?’ Elizabeth’s eyes widened, her heart quickened.
‘She came to the house before she went away. She told me she was going away but she didn’t know for how long. And I said that’s kind of like an adventure and she laughed and said yes.’
‘Did she say why?’ Elizabeth whispered, surprised that Saoirse had the compassion to say goodbye to her son.
‘Mm-hmm,’ he nodded, kicking his feet faster now. ‘She said because it was best for her and you and Granddad and me because she kept doing the wrong things and making everyone mad. She said she was doing what you always told her to do. She said she was flying away.’
Elizabeth held her breath lightly and remembered how she used to tell her baby sister to fly away when things were tough at home. She remembered how she watched her little six-year-old sister as she drove away to college and told her over and over again to fly away. All her emotions caught in her throat.
‘What did you say?’ Elizabeth managed to force out, running her hand through Luke’s baby-soft hair and feeling and overwhelming urge to protect him more than anything for the first time in her life.
‘I told her she was probably right,’ Luke replied matter-of-factly. ‘She said that I was a big boy now and it was my job to look after you and Granddad.’
Tears fell from her eyes. ‘She did?’ she sniffed.
Luke lifted his hand and delicately wiped her tear.
‘Well, don’t you worry,’ she kissed his hand and reached out to hug him, ‘because it’s my job to look after you, OK?’
His reply was muffled as his head was pushed against her chest. She let go of him quickly to allow him to breathe.
‘Edith will be home soon,’ he said excitedly after he had taken a deep breath. ‘Can’t wait to see what she got me.’
Elizabeth smiled, tried quickly to compose herself and cleared her throat. ‘We can introduce her to Ivan. Do you think she’ll like him?’
Luke wrinkled up his face. ‘I don’t think she’ll be able to see him.’
‘We can’t keep him to ourselves, you know, Luke,’ Elizabeth laughed.
‘Anyway, Ivan might not even be here when she gets back,’ he added.
Elizabeth’s heart thudded, ‘What do you mean? Did he say something?’
Luke shook his head.
Elizabeth sighed. ‘Oh, Luke, just because you’re close to Ivan it doesn’t mean he’ll leave you, you know. I don’t want you to be afraid of that happening. I used to be afraid like that. I used to think that everyone I loved would always go away.’
‘I won’t go away.’ Luke looked at her caringly.
‘And I promise you I won’t go anywhere either.’ She kissed him on the head, then cleared her throat. ‘You know the things that you and Edith do together, like going to the zoo and the cinema, things like that?’
Luke nodded.
‘Would you mind if I came along sometimes?’
Luke smiled happily. ‘Yeah, that’d be cool.’ He thought for a while. ‘We’re kind of the same now, aren’t we? My mom leaving is kinda like what your mom did, isn’t it?’ he asked, breathing on the glass table and writing his name in the fog with his finger.
Elizabeth’s body grew cold. ‘No,’ she snapped, ‘it’s nothing like that at all.’ She stood up from the table, switched on the light and started wiping down the counter. ‘They are totally different people, it’s not the same at all.’ Her voice trembled as she scrubbed furiously. Looking up to check on Luke she caught sight of her reflection in the glass of the conservatory and froze. Gone was the composure, gone were her emotions, she looked like a possessed woman hiding from the truth, running from the world.
And then she knew.
And the memories that lurked in the dark corners of her mind began to creep ever so slowly into the light.
Chapter 36
‘Opal,’ I called gently from her office doorway. She seemed so brittle and I was afraid that the slightest noise would shatter her.
‘Ivan.’ She smiled tiredly, pinning her dreadlocks back from her face.
I could see myself in her shining eyes as I entered the room. ‘We’re all worried about you – is there anything we, I can do to help?’
‘Thank you, Ivan, but apart from keeping an eye on things around here, there’s really nothing anyone can do to help. I’m just so tired. I’ve been spending the past few nights at the hospital and I haven’t allowed myself to sleep. He’s got only days left now; I don’t want to miss it when he …’ She looked away from Ivan and to the picture frame on her desk, and when she spoke again her voice was trembling. ‘I just wish there was some way I could say goodbye to him, to let him know he’s not alone, that I’m by his side.’ Her tears fell.
I went to her side and comforted her, feeling helpless and knowing that for once there was absolutely nothing I could do to help this friend. Or was there?
‘Hold on a minute, Opal. Maybe there is a way you can. I have an idea.’ And with that I ran.
Elizabeth had made last-minute arrangements for Luke to sleep over at Sam’s house. She knew she needed to be alone that night. She could feel a change within her; a chill had entered her body and wouldn’t leave. She sat huddled up in her bed, wearing an oversized jumper covered by a blanket, desperate to keep warm.
The moon outside her window noticed something was wrong and guarded her protectively from the darkness. Her stomach cramped with anticipation. The things that Ivan and Luke had said today had turned a key in her mind and had unlocked a chest of memories so terrifying that Elizabeth was afraid to close her eyes.
She gazed out the window through the open curtains at the moon, then allowed herself to drift …
She was twelve years old. It was two weeks since her mother had brought her for a picnic in the field, two weeks since she had told her she was going away, two weeks of waiting for her to come back. Outside Elizabeth’s bedroom a screeching one-month- old Saoirse was held, hushed and comforted by her father.
‘Hush now, baby, hush …’ She could hear his gentle tones getting louder and then quietening as he paced the floor of the bungalow in the late night hour. Outside, the wind howled, squeezing itself through the windows and door locks with a whistling sound. It raced in and danced around the rooms, taunting, teasing and tickling Elizabeth as she lay in her bed, hands over her ears, tears falling down her cheeks.
Saoirse’s cries got louder, Brendan’s pleas got louder
and Elizabeth covered her head with her pillow.
‘Please, Saoirse, please stop crying,’ her father begged, and attempted a song, a lullaby that Elizabeth’s mother always sang to them. She clamped her hands over her ears harder but still could hear Saoirse’s cries and her father’s tuneless song. Elizabeth sat up in her bed, her eyes stinging from yet another night of tears and lack of sleep.
‘You want your bottle?’ her father asked gently over the roars. ‘No? Ah, love, what is it?’ he asked in a pained voice. ‘I miss her too, love, I miss her too,’ and he too began to cry. Saoirse, Brendan and Elizabeth all cried for Gráinne together, but all feeling alone, in their bungalow blown by the wind.
Suddenly headlights appeared at the end of the long road. Elizabeth leaped out of her covers and sat at the end of her bed with her stomach twisted in excitement. It was her mother – it had to be. Who else would be calling all the way down here at ten o’clock at night? Elizabeth bounced up and down at the end of her bed in delight.
The car pulled up outside the house, the car door opened and out stepped Kathleen, Gráinne’s sister. Leaving the door open with the headlights still on and the wipers moving violently across the windscreen, she marched to the gate, pushed it open causing it to creak, and banged on the door.
With a screaming Saoirse in his arms Brendan opened the door. Elizabeth rushed to the keyhole of her bedroom door and looked out into the hall at the action.
‘Is she here?’ Kathleen demanded, without a hello or a kind word.
‘Sshh,’ Brendan said, ‘I don’t want you waking Elizabeth.’
‘As if she’s not already awake with all that screaming. What have you done to the poor child?’ she asked incredulously.
‘The child wants her mother,’ he raised his voice. ‘Like us all,’ he added in softer tones.
‘Give her to me,’ Kathleen said.