Sleep Sister: A page-turning novel of psychological suspense (19 page)

He commented on the resemblance between them. ‘You’ll never be able to disown each other,’ he said.

‘We’d never want to disown each other,’ Eva replied. She placed her arms around her mother, demanding that Liz share her happiness. She felt as if she was falling from a safe ledge. This urge to fly was the most exhilarating emotion she’d ever experienced.

Afterwards, she told Greg that she was adopted. ‘People are always commenting on the resemblance between us. Some tell me I’m the image of my aunts, that I’m a real Loughrey.’

‘Then they must be the most beautiful women in the world,’ he replied.

The Loughrey sisters were indeed a handsome trio. Annie, Liz’s younger sister, was a musician, a fiddle player, never at home. Claire lived close to Wind Fall and managed Biddy’s Bits ’n’ Pieces with her mother. When people told Eva she was made in their image she had every reason to feel proud. Except that she didn’t resemble them. An expression, imitative gestures, a head of shaggy blonde hair that broke combs and drew tears from her eyes when she tried to separate the strands. Superficial resemblances, but they satisfied her in those sparkling early days when nothing mattered except being with Greg and the slow, tender happiness building between them.

When Maria heard that her cousin was making wedding plans, she demanded to know if Eva was crazy or pregnant. Otherwise, why marry a guy who was probably a member of the Inquisition in a former life? She called into the garden centre one lunch hour to remonstrate.

‘What’s this nonsense about you and Judge Dredd getting hitched?’ she demanded, perching on an upturned terracotta pot. She clicked her fingers in Eva’s face and ordered her to get a grip. So what if he had a terrific dick, she demanded. Terrific dicks were ten a penny if one looked in the right places. It was a dismal excuse for marriage. Eva was rapidly regretting the indiscreet secrets she had confided in her friend’s willing ear.

‘Greg Enright is not the marrying kind,’ Maria stated. This was a loaded comment, backed by insider information. Eva concentrated on the clematis plants she was staking and ordered her to dish the dirt. Maria prevaricated for a while before throwing the name Carol Wynne at her. Eva tossed it back, growing angry. But being angry with Maria was a lost cause. She simply ignored it, waiting until the emotion was exhausted before returning to her original point.

Eva knew about Carol Wynne. She had seen her for the first time in Anaskeagh, a camerawoman with cropped black hair and razor-sharp eyes, nifty on her feet when she filmed doorstep interviews, sharing Greg’s excitement, the thrill of the chase. Her relationship with Greg never had a shape, easy to take up and put down again. No demands.

‘She’s dead wood,’ said Eva.

Maria groaned, demanding to be spared the horticultural metaphors. Her childhood devotion to horses had never wavered and she now ran the Ashton Equestrian Centre. Carol Wynne was one of her pupils. If Eva was going to be metaphorical then she should know that the lady in question had a tight grip once she had a horse between her knees.

Eva hauled her to her feet and ordered her off the premises. Maria would be her bridesmaid. A vision in lilac.

Shortly before the wedding Annie Loughrey returned to Ireland after a European tour and called to see them. Eva adored her aunt, who was incapable of sitting still for longer than ten minutes without exhorting everyone around her to sing and dance. Yet she always had time to listen to her nieces and nephews, who inevitably confided their problems and secrets to her whenever she came to Ashton.

‘So a marriage made in heaven,’ she said when Eva asked her to play at the wedding. ‘No rows? No dramatic break-ups and passionate make-ups?’

‘None.’ Eva shook her head, laughing. Then, without realising the thought had even existed, she said, ‘I wonder if my birth mother senses what’s about to happen in my life?’

‘This is the first time I’ve heard you mention her.’ Annie looked surprised. ‘Have you discussed this with Liz?’

‘No. And I don’t want to. It’s not important,’ Eva retorted, and brought the conversation back to the wedding, allowing the sudden unexpected yearning to fade away.

A
nnie Loughrey played
the fiddle as Eva walked up the aisle on the arm of her father. Steve grew quite emotional when he handed her over to her future husband. Although Eva had objections to this age-old ritual of being passed from one male to another, she loved Steve too much to deprive him of the pleasure of giving her away. At least on this occasion she had some control over who played pass the parcel. She suspected he was secretly relieved she would no longer be around the garden centre to bully him, but his eyes were touchingly moist when they danced together to the strains of ‘Daddy’s Little Girl’.

She and Greg honeymooned in Italy, an idyllic time that was marred only when they came home and discovered that Brigid Loughrey, Eva’s beloved grandmother, had been admitted to hospital for tests. The prognosis was bad – cancer of the bowel, which had already metastasised to her liver. She was home again, Liz explained, and refusing to embark on a programme of chemotherapy.

‘None of your nonsense now,’ said Brigid when Eva called to see her. She was still working in her tourist shop, juicing and taking a concoction of herbs, and smoking weed. No hope of a cure, she admitted, but they were better than suffering the side effects of chemo, which would make no difference in the end. ‘We’ve talked enough about me.’ She cut across Eva’s concerns and pinched her cheek affectionately. ‘What are your plans for the future? I want to know what you’ll be doing with your life when I’m no longer part of it.’

E
va intended establishing
her own garden centre. While she searched for a suitable site, she worked with Planting Thoughts. The company was owned by a friend from her college days, Gina Davies, who ran a garden-design service as well as supplying unusual and flamboyant floral arrangements for special events. Her business was expanding and she asked Eva if she’d be interested in managing the floral contracts. Eva agreed and was soon roaming the city in a Planting Thoughts van, decorating hotels and exhibition centres with exotic orchids and plants, turning dull rooms into vibrant jungles and tiger-lily sanctuaries.

Eva’s possessions took over Greg’s apartment. His sense of order, his meticulous need to have a place for everything, was impossible to maintain. She seemed incapable of moving without jogging her elbows off his stereo or tripping over the low sprawling armchairs. In the kitchen she eyed his presses of exotic cooking oils and spices with trepidation, unable to imagine herself feeling comfortable in a place where a stray orange peel on the counter or scattered breadcrumbs marred the perfect symmetry. Only in the bedroom did she feel at ease. At night, in the shadowed slant of light through the blinds, they made love on the tumbled futon. In such moments, when the terse control he exercised over his life was abandoned, she believed nothing could ever invade their happiness.

They invited his friends from
Elucidate
to dinner. Eva served lamb with a rosemary crust but they were mainly vegetarians and concentrated on the salads. They filled the apartment with smoke and hot air. Carol Wynne touched the furniture with familiar hands.

‘I believe you arrange flowers,’ she said. ‘Such an interesting hobby.’ A remark not exactly designed to inspire love. She asked Eva’s advice about her yucca plant in case she felt excluded from the conversations about political manoeuvrings and who was sleeping with whom on the coalition benches.

The conversation turned to Michael Hannon, the leader of Democracy in Action. As the leader of a small right-wing party, his profile had risen considerably in recent months. He projected a moderate image, unlike the more reactionary members of his party, and spoke in measured tones about the rights of the unborn, about women dispossessed by divorce, and the assault by the media on the traditional values of family life. He believed it was only a matter of time before his party, small yet with a powerful voice, could enter a coalition arrangement after the next election. But a rumour, too vague to be taken seriously yet floating among journalists for years, hinted that after the cut and thrust of politics, his frustration needed an outlet. When Rachel Hannon appeared by her husband’s side, her social smile never wavered. If she was a battered wife she wasn’t the type to seek restraining orders or display her bruises as evidence to sympathetic judges. Those bruises, if they existed, were hidden behind designer suits and flawless handbags. Nothing had ever been proven. Journalists who dabbled with the story found themselves facing a wall of denial from anyone they contacted. Editors, imagining libel suits and early retirement without pensions, refused to touch it. Even the producer of
Elucidate
was adamant. If Greg presented her with broken bones she would give them full disclosure. Anything less, forget it.
Elucidate
sailed close to the wind but wasn’t in the business of self-destruction. Michael Hannon remained beyond his grasp and Greg, patient and ruthless, was willing to wait.

Eva thought of wolves circling, her husband heading the pack. She listened to them talking, sharing in-jokes as they cheerfully dismantled the lives of the pompous and the powerful. She wanted them out of their apartment but it wasn’t really their apartment. It belonged to Greg, whose ordered existence had ended as soon as she’d stepped into his life.

S
hortly afterwards
, Eva saw a site with land and a derelict cottage advertised in the window of an estate agency in Oldport.

‘Where’s Grahamstown?’ she asked Judith Hansen, a florist who regularly supplied Planting Thoughts with dramatically sculpted reed and wild-grass arrangements. ‘Is it worth checking out as a location for a garden centre?’

‘Could be,’ Judith replied, helping to carry her floral arrangements to the van. ‘It’s set for development now that work on the motorway has started. Talk to Carrie Davern. She’s the estate agent looking after the site.’

Carrie Davern was a shrill-voiced, persuasive woman with a firm handshake and, Eva suspected, the jargon to make a cat’s basket sound like luxurious accommodation. She showed Eva the development plans for Grahamstown and gave her directions to the site. It sounded exactly right. The following afternoon she drove with Greg northwards from the city, over the Liffey and past the Four Courts, through Drumcondra, Swords, Oldport and on to Grahamstown. February was a mild month with the promise of spring in the air. Early daffodils splashed gold along the central verge of the carriageway and the bare hedgerows tossed in a warm southerly breeze.

When the road narrowed, Greg viewed the fields and solitary roadside pubs with increasing nervousness. He stared in amazement when she braked outside a small cottage set behind a rusting gate. A corrugated iron roof was almost hidden beneath tufts of grass and ivy. The windows had fallen in. The door had also disappeared and there was ample evidence that cattle regularly sought shelter within its crumbling walls. But Carrie Davern had made Eva see beyond the obvious and she had no problem with vision and ambition, standing positive in front of her husband, who clung to the gate for support. It squeaked as he pushed it open and entered an overgrown, dilapidated wilderness.

He demanded to know if this was a joke, hoping against hope that she would laugh and say, ‘Fooled you, didn’t I?’

She did laugh. His expression demanded some response. She took his arm and led him forward, striding purposefully towards thick hedging. Eva had a fine stride, long and decisive, shoulders back. The ankles of a colt, said Maria, which may have lacked refinement as a compliment but her friend was precise in her observations and Eva’s legs were her finest asset. They walked through a field at the back of the cottage.

‘This is what it’s all about, Greg.’ She pointed to the knee-high grass and nettles where plastic rubbish bags had been dumped and torn apart by dogs. She saw her cottage rising from the rubble, restored, the roof thatched, secure. There would be a front garden with cottage flowers spilling perfume into the air. Her office would have long windows with a back view over her garden centre as it sloped towards a small lake where, even as she watched, two swans emerged from the rushes and glided through the water.

She wanted him to share her excitement. He was thinking about leaving
Elucidate
and writing a book about global politics, how it impacted smaller countries like Ireland. Eva saw this as the ideal opportunity to move from the city. Technology knew no boundaries. Corruption could just as effectively be exposed in the company of swans and hanging baskets of begonias.

‘Can you think of anywhere nicer to live?’ she asked.

‘Yes, I could,’ he said. ‘How about hell – for starters?’

She pressed her fingers to his lips. Grahamstown would eventually have direct access to the planned motorway. She told him about the new housing estates that were being built, a new population seeking their dream gardens. The estate agent had recommended a builder, who was an artist when it came to restoring old cottages. The more Eva enthused the more Greg’s eyes glazed. He said it was too far out from work. He waved his hands towards the ruins, as if a frantic gesture would make them disappear. If she wanted to live in the company of swans why had she left Ashton? Why had she married him? In years to come maybe, when they had time to consider a family, perhaps then – but not now. Not when his career was carefully mapped within earshot of city bells.

Occasionally since their wedding she had sensed a slight air of pomposity about this man she had chosen to love; a self-righteous, hectoring note in his voice when she didn’t agree with his opinions. Now, as they stood angrily apart, she realised that they each had completely different visions of their future life together.

‘I’m suffocating in the city,’ she cried. ‘This place is perfect for my needs.’

They waded through dead ragwort, arguing bitterly. Their anger frightened them. The realisation that this was their first serious row silenced them and added to their tension as they tried to find their way forward. Below them, the swans streaked across the lake in a flapping rush of wings, then rose with ungainly energy into the air. When Greg reached towards her, she walked without hesitation into his arms and the man she loved, the man who loved her with a raw and sensuous passion, swept her into the shelter of the ruined cottage.

‘We’ll work it out,’ he said, kissing her urgently. They made love against the rough stone wall, finding an illicit pleasure in the discomfort of their surroundings. Beneath layers of heavy clothing they sought each other, laughing at the horror of being discovered even as they moaned with passion and came together, breathless.

When they left this hidden place the swans had disappeared. Perhaps there was a nest in the rushes. When they came back again there would be cygnets trailing in their wake. Eva believed it was only a matter of time before her husband believed in her dream as fervently as she did.

They conceived a child beside the lake. Having a child wasn’t part of their plan, rather a decision they would make in time when they had the space to consider another person in their lives. Weeks passed and she was unaware of tiny cells relentlessly multiplying. Every time she mentioned the cottage Greg looked blank, suddenly busy on the phone or rushing to keep an important appointment, dodging and feinting. Her dreams were overwhelming him, demanding time and energy he was unable or unwilling to give. Not that it mattered. She needed money but her ambitious plans did not impress the financial establishment. An interesting project but high risk, she was told time and again by bank managers. Every week she rang the estate agent to see if the site had sold. Luck stayed on her side. No one else sensed the potential in the land and it remained fallow.

The city air choked her lungs. When she grew pale and wilted with tiredness she suspected it was due to the pressure of traffic and working indoors. As she stabbed flowers into an oasis one morning and nausea rose in her throat she was forced to a standstill, calculating backwards.

Greg’s dismay was palpable when she told him. Too soon, he said. How could she be pregnant when they practised safe sex? She reminded him about a lake of swans and an exploding, lustful few moments against the back wall of her dream cottage. He grappled with this truth, suddenly terrified at the thought of another intrusion into his busy, ordered life.

‘It’s the last thing we need at the moment,’ he said. ‘I can’t believe this has happened to us.’

She saw his face and was unable to believe she had ever loved this man. She felt something else, vibrations of fear as this new life clung grimly to the walls of its dark protective cavity. She began to weep. He knelt before her and pressed his head against her stomach. He apologised for his unthinking words. That night when he held her, their passion was tender, a quiet loving shared with this new life they had created so unheedingly.

Their daughter was born on a silver morning in October. Greg was beside Eva throughout. She was swept high on a wave of pain, the mask flung aside because she wanted to know… to feel this moment. No epidural. The nurse told her to inhale deeply; she felt light-headed relief, voices floating above her. Fingers invading, another needle jab, pethidine. Her gynaecologist was on his way. She began to pray even though she hadn’t prayed since she was fifteen, meeting Maria and the boys by Murtagh’s River instead of going to evening Mass… Hail Mary full of grace… Blessed is the fruit of thy womb… Sweet fruit, my apple, my love.

The gynaecologist told her to push. She was hurting, tearing, bearing her body downwards as Greg called out, such joy in his voice as their daughter was placed on her stomach. Tiny fingers pressed against Eva’s flesh. A closed, wrinkled old woman’s face at the end of a long journey. Faye, a fairy child. So beautiful. So ephemeral.