Sleep Sister: A page-turning novel of psychological suspense (9 page)

B
irds sang
from trees whose leaves had yet to fall and the swallows, preparing to migrate, congregated on the electrical cables stretching along Estuary View Heights. This was an ordinary day turned extraordinary but Beth McKeever was unaware of anything other than a quickening of her heartbeat ― a reflex so familiar she hardly noticed it ― when her mobile phone rang and she realised the caller was Peter Wallace. He was in Germany on a business trip with her husband and, unable to think of any reason why he would call her in the middle of the afternoon, she wondered if something had happened to Stewart.

‘He’s fine, can’t wait to go home,’ Peter reassured her. ‘I’m ringing about Sara. Has she been in touch with you today?’

‘No,’ Beth replied. ‘I haven’t seen her since the day she came home from Africa. Why?’

‘I’m anxious to contact her. I’ve left messages on her phone but she hasn’t rung back.’

‘You know Sara.’ Beth shrugged, unsurprised. ‘She probably headed off to photograph something or other that caught her fancy and has forgotten that time exists. She’ll be in touch when she comes back down to earth again.’

‘We’d an argument before I left. Nothing too serious… she went off the deep end over something…’ He hesitated, as if reluctant to discuss his marital problems with her. ‘We haven’t spoken since Friday. I spent the weekend in the Oldport Grand before leaving for Germany. Did Lindsey tell you?’

‘No, she never mentioned anything about the weekend. What did Sara do to annoy you this time?’

‘Oh, it’s not worth discussing.’ He sounded offhand but she knew by the slight inflection in his voice that he was lying and it annoyed her that she was still so attuned to his emotions.

‘Would you mind driving over to Havenstone to check if she’s there?’ he asked. ‘She’s deliberately avoiding me, but I need to speak to her. Tell her to call me.’

Instant action and no questions asked. Just like his late mother, Beth thought. She told him she was busy. Dinner to make, children to collect from school, homework to correct and she was leaving early to take Connie out for the night. It was her mother-in-law’s birthday and Beth had booked two tickets for the Abbey Theatre. Busy, busy, boring him. She heard it in his sharp intake of breath. Not that she blamed him. She was boring herself and this awareness sharpened her tone.

‘I haven’t time to sort out your domestic squabbles, Peter. Buy Sara some flowers when you come home or book a restaurant.’

‘I appreciate how busy you are.’ He ignored her irritation. ‘But it won’t take long if you leave now. You know where to find the spare key. Please, Beth. There’s no one else I can ask.’

‘I’ll call in on my way home from the school run and give you a ring. How’s the trip going?’

‘Good, so far. We’re looking at a pretty impressive piece of machinery. We’ll probably invest. Thanks, Beth. Talk to you later.’

She hurried from the house to her car and joined the queue of parents trying to find a parking spot close to the school. Paul and Gail were being escorted across the road by the lollipop lady when she arrived. As always, the traffic was frenetic for about twenty minutes when the school gates opened but it showed no sign of easing as it snaked through the village. A trench was being dug along Main Strand Street and a stop–go system was in place. It was easier for Beth to detour and take the shortcut along the estuary shore. She would call at Havenstone on her way to the theatre.

At four o’clock Robert, her eldest son, rang the doorbell in successive blasts in case his mother had developed chronic deafness since he left for school that morning. He treated Beth to an obligatory grunt when she enquired about his day. A routine question, a routine response. Since his fourteenth birthday, Robert’s grunt was capable of expressing either joy or anguish and, after a year of communicating with him in this fashion, Beth interpreted this one to mean he was not in danger of imminent expulsion. He was followed soon afterwards by Lindsey, who headed straight for the kitchen, piling a plate high with crackers and peanut butter.

‘I don’t want any dinner,’ she announced. ‘I’m going to Melanie’s house to work on my French project. Her mother is making coq au vin.’

‘Forget about coq au vin,’ Beth warned. ‘You promised to babysit. I told you I was taking Granny Mac to the theatre for her birthday.’

‘Babysit?’ Lindsey sounded outraged. ‘They’re seven and ten – some babies! Anyway, I never promised. You just assumed I’d do it without even asking if I’d other plans. You
never
remember anything I tell you.’

Beth sighed. ‘Despite your best efforts, Lindsey, I haven’t started suffering from senile dementia yet. You made a promise. I expect you to keep it.’

‘All I’m trying to do is get honours French in my Leaving. Is that a crime? Ring Melanie’s mother if you don’t believe me. There’s six of us meeting there. Why can’t Robert look after the
babies
?’

Robert’s grunt expressed agreement and a phone call to Joanna Murray assured Beth that six young people were descending on her house in thirty minutes. She was up to her elbows in garlic, chicken and wine. She sounded surprised and politely amused by Beth’s obvious anxiety.

‘Okay. You can go,’ Beth told her daughter when the call ended. ‘I’ll collect you from Melanie’s on my way back from the theatre.’

‘But we’ve arranged to walk home together,’ Lindsey wailed. ‘Why do I always have to be different to everyone else?’

‘All right! All right! But I want you in here by ten thirty. Is that understood?’

‘
Heil
Hitler.’ Lindsey goose-stepped towards her bedroom, her right arm outstretched, her left bent in a salute. She returned shortly afterwards in leggings and a skirt that was, by Beth’s estimation, shorter than a tutu. The front door slammed and peace of a certain kind settled over the house. Since she’d turned sixteen, Lindsey had developed a staying power that constantly challenged her mother. Such rows exhausted Beth but Lindsey seemed to gather energy from them, forcing her into roles she had no desire to play: prying, suspicious, nagging.

‘Oh yuck!’ moaned Paul, inspecting the dish of cannelloni Beth had removed from the oven. ‘Dog’s vomit for dinner again.’

The beginnings of a headache tightened across her forehead. Sixteen years since she’d last walked out of her front door without a thought or care. Was this motherhood? she often wondered. This obsessive anxiety that clung like a dank paw to her shoulder. Get a life, Mother. Get a life, Lindsey’s familiar refrain mocked her. Sara had a life. A career as a photographer. A fine old house Beth had once coveted. A husband she had once cherished. Bad old days, Beth, she warned herself, checking her watch. Five minutes fast as usual. She ruffled Gail’s hair when her youngest child entered the kitchen, her spelling book in hand, with an expression that demanded instant attention.

The house had been just as chaotic the last time her sister had called. Sara had taken a taxi from the airport, arriving unannounced just as Beth had been preparing the evening meal. She’d been exhausted and pale after her flight but anxious to tell Beth about her experience in Malawi. She’d sat at the kitchen table while Beth chopped vegetables and attended to constant demands from Gail. The little girl had been in a fretful mood, refusing to sit on her aunt’s knee and tugging repeatedly at Beth’s hand whenever the sisters tried to talk.

Sara, unable to endure the interruptions, had pressed her palms against her cheeks and asked, ‘Why is it never possible to have a sane conversation in this madhouse?’ She’d tried to smile but it had been a fleeting grimace that only emphasised her annoyance. ‘Ask Lindsey to look after the younger ones and come back to Havenstone with me,’ she’d added. ‘We need to talk, Beth.’

A prolonged roar from upstairs had startled them. Paul did not believe in suffering in silence, especially when he’d accidently slammed the bathroom door on his fingers. By the time he’d been consoled and his bruised fingers soothed with arnica, Sara had left. Beth had promised herself she would call into Havenstone later that night but when the house was finally silent she’d been too tired to move. Sara’s nervousness, her anxiety as she fought for Beth’s attention had begun to blur – to become just another scene from a fraught and tiring day. Beth was startled to realise that a week had passed since then. Sara would be cool with her when they met. She had no idea what it was like to run a home with four tempestuous children and remain upright at the end of each day.

The traffic was even heavier in the evening, snarling in from the city and forming a bottleneck through Oldport. Beth became part of the slow-moving tailback until she reached the gates of Havenstone and turned into the driveway. The old house had once blended into its country landscape but now it sat arrogantly above the newer housing estates, an anachronism in a village gripped by suburban bliss and blight. The march of progress. But who was she to complain? Ten years previously, when she and Stewart had moved back from London, they’d set up house in that mushrooming belt: third right, first left after the tasteful granite slab carved with letters that spelt Estuary View Heights.

An evening mist hung over the grass as she drove up the avenue. Rooks, disturbed by the car, whirled above the trees, raucously calling down the night. The blinds were drawn on the windows and the chiming doorbell had an echo that belonged to empty spaces. Sara could be on a photographic commission, capturing the play of shadow and light on the slopes of a mountain. Maybe she was photographing winos huddling around a bottle in a dingy back alley, focusing her camera on their wizened hands, old shoulders drooping, the bleak urine stains on the wall behind them. Or perhaps not. Perhaps she was in a luxury hotel enjoying the attentions of a lover. Champagne in an ice bucket, fluted glasses, curtains closed against the intrusive twilight. Sara’s lifestyle had always remained a mystery – vaguely exotic, filled with foreign travel and photographic exhibitions where sophisticated strangers shook Beth’s hand and moved a step backward when she confessed to being a housewife and mother of four.

The spare key was hidden under a terracotta plant pot at the back of the house. She debated searching for it but Connie, a punctual woman, was waiting and Beth was already twenty minutes late. She rang Peter from her mobile and told him that Sara was not at home. She fought against old yearnings as she pictured him running his hand through his dark hair in frustration at the antics of his elusive wife, yearnings that seemed incapable of being erased by time. Familiarity didn’t have to breed contempt but it should be capable of overlaying a memory and replacing it with newer ones. So many years had passed. Yet nothing in that passage of time seemed capable of eradicating the night when Beth Tyrell, twenty-seven years old and at the height of her career, finally laid her past aside and opened her heart to joy.

Did she glance in the rear-view mirror as she drove away? Afterwards, Beth tried to remember that final instant when she pressed the accelerator and drove out through the gates of Havenstone. There should have been an omen to alert her: a banshee wailing through long, wild hair, dogs howling, a murder of crows, mirrors falling, splintering. Such an ordinary day turned extraordinary. How could she not have noticed that the earth had shuddered and signalled the breaking of her heart?

P
eter was puzzled by time
. How it could pass so relentlessly while he was still trapped in glass? Her face… Such stillness. A peaceful passing, the right concoction of pills. Nothing left to chance. No note. No clues. How could Sara do this to him? To leave without a sign that acknowledged their sixteen years of marriage.

A month had passed since he’d held her cold hands against his lips. Today, he would scatter her ashes from Pier’s Point. His mother-in-law had refused to attend. Marjory had written a curt note to that effect. An unchristian ceremony was of no interest to her. She had wanted her daughter’s body buried in consecrated grounds. How could she pray to a mound of ash, she demanded in the terrible days following Sara’s death. She’d been supported by Albert Grant, who’d argued for her, softly persuasive, gently threatening, unsuccessful.

‘Sara discussed this with me once.’ Peter had remained firm. ‘She was very specific about a cremation. She wanted her ashes scattered into the sea off Pier’s Point and that’s what I must do.’

‘It’s not right, Peter. It’s barbaric.’ The older man had shaken his head. ‘Marjory needs a place where she can mourn her daughter in peace.’ He’d pounded his fist on the table. For an instant the smooth mask of the politician had slipped, replaced by savage grief. ‘For God’s sake, man, is it too much to give the poor woman a grave in Anaskeagh that she can tend with flowers and pray over?’

‘Pier’s Point is where I first met Sara and that is where I will lay her to rest.’ Peter’s sympathy for Marjory had kept him calm but he’d remained adamant. ‘I’m determined to honour her wishes.’

‘Peter’s right.’ Beth was present during the argument. ‘Sara wouldn’t want to be buried in Anaskeagh.’

Anger had darkened the politician’s face. ‘Unlike you, Beth, your sister loved her hometown. How dare you presume to speak for her.’

‘I’m not presuming… I know.’ Flint in her eyes, those wonderful slanting eyes that had once captivated and charmed him. She’d tried to comfort her mother but Marjory had pulled away from her and bent to kiss Sara’s face once more.

In the small cremation chapel she had sat stiffly beside her brother and fluttered her dead-leaf hands when her daughter’s coffin had rolled out of sight behind red velvet curtains. Beth, on her other side, remained dry-eyed throughout the short ceremony, Peter’s own desolation reflected on her face. She had apologised repeatedly to him for not entering Havenstone that night. She was rushing, late for Connie, worried about Lindsey, stressed. Her voice faltered as she realised the futility of what she was saying. Sara had been dead by then but it was the aloneness of her death that would forever haunt them.

H
e had resisted ringing
Sara before he left for Germany, still furious with her but clear about his intentions. A clean break. This time he would see it through. She could have Havenstone. The house meant nothing to him. It was impregnated with her presence. Not with children, most definitely not with children. He had been down that road too many times to indulge the fantasy. The glossy hardwood floors, the cold marble fireplaces, a beautiful, treacherous staircase where he had fallen as a child, the scar still faintly visible on his right cheek – that was Havenstone, his inheritance. Child unfriendly. She was welcome to it.

His resolve remained firm throughout Monday as he’d inspected computerised systems with Stewart. Later that evening, he’d taken Beth’s call in the hotel bar where he’d been having an after-dinner drink. Havenstone was empty, she’d said. His wife was not at home. A young woman had sat at a white piano and played a medley of love songs. Her voice had the late-night rasp of too many cigarettes, a husky decadence at odds with her long blonde hair and fresh complexion. When the music ended, she’d eased her body into the bar stool beside him and touched his hand, asked if he would like a particular tune. A tired cliché to which he’d responded in kind, glad he didn’t have to play any new games.

‘Emma from Essen,’ she’d said, and so he remembered her name. She’d worn a low-cut glitter top and many rings on her fingers. If she was in the mood she chatted up tired businessmen and drank champagne from the minibars in their hotel rooms. She carried a packet of condoms in the back pocket of her leather trousers, a precaution she had taken since she was sixteen.

‘The same packet?’ Peter had asked, already bored with their conversation.

‘What do you think, silly man?’ She’d laughed deep in her throat.

Young women like Emma confused him: so much confidence, so little charm. Yet her laughter had reminded him of Sara, as seductive as the midnight music she’d played on the white piano, and he’d been tempted to kiss her glistening lips, to sate a momentary passion that had flared when she’d moved closer, willing him to breathe in the subtle promise of her youth.

Stewart had disapproved of Emma from Essen. The production manager disliked the challenge of strange cities, the edginess of new experiences, resenting the time he was forced to spend away from his family. When Peter insisted on another drink, he’d shaken his head and retreated to his bedroom. No doubt he’d expected to find Emma at the breakfast table the following morning but he’d made no comment when Peter came down alone. A moral victory against temptation but one that was based on lethargy rather than virtue. At least Peter could be thankful for small mercies. He was faithful to his wife in death, if not in life.

A
t night
, unable to sleep, he joined the world of the insomniac. He opened a bottle of whiskey, watched old films and educational programmes on The Learning Zone. He read newspapers and remembered nothing, drew up business plans, which he shredded before morning. By the light of dawn he saw her wraithlike figure flitting by on the edge of sight. In the mirror above the mantelpiece he saw her phantom smile and cracked the glass with his fist. The following morning he stared at the crack. He had no memory of the previous night but the bloodstained bandage on his hand told its own story.

His visits to Della Designs were becoming more irregular. When he did make an appearance he found it difficult to concentrate on what people were saying to him. Jon Davern, the company accountant, treated him as carefully as a convalescing invalid, insisting that everything was under control. When Peter, suspicious of such forbearance, demanded to know exactly what was under control, he shied away from the spreadsheets the accountant placed on his desk. His life seemed suspended, unreal, as if he was waiting for a signal to awaken and take control of it again.

He removed Sara’s clothes from her bedroom and took them to a charity shop in Oldport. He gave Beth a folder of photographs of Anaskeagh he had discovered in the studio. Her name was written on the front of the folder and also on the cover of an old chocolate box containing letters.

‘Sara must have wanted you to have these,’ he said. ‘You’d better take them with you now. In fact, take whatever you want. I’m clearing everything up to the attic.’

‘The only thing you should clear out is the whiskey,’ Beth replied. ‘It’s not going to solve anything.’

‘You’ll have to allow me to be the judge of that,’ he said and she agreed, unwilling to enter into an argument with him.

He checked the last emails Sara had received. Her London publisher acknowledged an attached file of African photographs. An email from Albert Grant reassured her that he was always there for her. She was not to worry about Marjory, whose health, thought frail, would remain stable as long as those she loved took care of her. Jess O’Donovan had also written, her email filled with witty anecdotes from the Malawian village where the nun worked. The villagers loved Sara’s photographs and looked forward to the publication of
Silent Songs from an African Village
.

He had been away on an overnight trip to London when she’d got back from Malawi and she’d left Havenstone again before he’d returned. Another assignment, she’d said, vague on the phone as to when she would be back. Assignment or assignation? he had wondered, but his jealousy was a jaded emotion. He’d come home late from work two nights later and seen a light shining in her studio. Her pale, cold face when she’d greeted him, her frenzied gestures as she’d worked had told him she was in the grip of a manic energy that always excluded him. Weary of arguments, he’d left her alone and later, in the chilling aftermath of her death, he’d seen the last photographs she had taken. Moody shots of rocks and a configuration of slabs that reminded him of a dolmen. She’d taken the photographs at night and the moon, shining above the looming boulders, added a surreal, almost pagan appearance to the desolate landscape.

T
he McKeever family
were waiting for him on Pier’s Point. Beth huddled into the collar of her coat, her short dark hair fluttering around her face, her eyes dulled with grief. She stood beside her husband and gripped the rail of the jetty as Peter scattered Sara’s ashes on the water. A pewter sky merged with the sea and eddies of fine grey dust were bathed in the early-morning stillness. Seagulls ran across the shallows, tracing twiggy prints in the estuary mud. It seemed appropriate to pray but no prayer seemed appropriate. Beth was an atheist who refused to contemplate a god, merciful or otherwise, and Peter was indifferent to religious dictates. Lindsey read a poem she had written, simple words that reduced her to tears before she finished. She tore the paper and flung the pieces into the water. Lapping rhythms soothed them as Connie McKeever fell back on old rituals, reciting tried and tested decades of the rosary, forcing them into long-forgotten responses.

He walked home alone, refusing Beth’s invitation to join them for breakfast. On Estuary Road he took the shortcut through the field at the back of Havenstone. The outlines of a slip road that would eventually lead to the new motorway were visible in the distance, arching steel edifices and the arms of high yellow cranes bent over iron girders. A woman walking along the estuary shore caught his attention. The wind gusted suddenly. She lifted her hand to push back her hair and, in that gesture, Sara came to mind with such piercing clarity that he was forced to look away. Is this how it’s going to be, Sara? he raged into the emptiness of the morning. Did you spare a thought for what I would find when I entered your crazy bedroom of mirrors? I won’t have it. Do you hear me? Leave me alone, Sara. Can you hear me? Leave me alone.