Sleep Sister: A page-turning novel of psychological suspense

by Laura Elliot

  ‘Make me. Why don’t you take down Charlie and make me?’

  ‘I’ll break that cane across your back if you give me any more of your lip. I don’t know what’s come over you lately. Cheek! That’s all I get from you. Apologise at once.’

  ‘He’s a creep and he can stuff his stupid job up his arse for all I care.’

  For an instant Marjory was too shocked to move. Then she reached for the cane and struck Beth across her legs, lifting her arm to strike again.

  Beth laughed. She was no longer afraid. Charlie was a piece of bamboo, a thin cane with a hook that only came to life in her mother’s hand. It was important to scream, to shout insults, to fling plates against the wall in sudden outbursts of fury so that Marjory would hurt her, hurt her so much that she would no longer feel trapped beneath her sins.

  Neither of them noticed Sara entering the kitchen. The younger girl pushed between them, crying at them to stop. Too panicked to avoid the cane she took the force of the blow on her face. Her hair spilled over her hands as she clutched her cheek. Outside in the yard Goldie barked furiously.

  ‘This is all your fault,’ Marjory panted. She avoided looking at Beth as she ran a dishcloth under the cold tap and bent over Sara, gently dabbing at the blotch that was deepening into an angry red weal. ‘You’re nothing but trouble.’

  ‘It’s not my fault!’ Beth screamed. ‘You’re the one holding the cane yet all you ever do is blame me for everything. Everything. I hate you so much it makes me sick.’ She spat out the words as if they were pebbles in her mouth. ‘I’m taking that job in Hatty’s, and you’d better not try and stop me, or…’ Her voice shook, unable to utter the words, knowing she would never be able to empty herself of them. Not that it mattered. Marjory had stopped listening. She helped Sara to her feet and tried to bring down the swelling that had already closed one of her eyes, smoothing back her blonde hair, crooning her love.

  Beth battered cod and haddock and ladled chips into white paper parcels. The smell of fish clung to her, a pervasive scent on her clothes and her skin, no matter how often she washed herself and doused her body in Apple Blossom talcum powder. Marjory demanded half the money she earned. The rest was hidden in the dressing-table drawer beneath her underwear. When her uncle visited Fatima Parade she willed herself to think of other things. His suit had tiny, fine hairs that tickled her face when he greeted her, enveloping her in his bear-hug embrace, jovial and kind, as Marjory rushed to plump the cushions on his favourite armchair and make him tea. Beth imagined his fingers grubbing about in her mind, searching out her thoughts, the knowledge they shared visible only to each other. The bicycle he gave her for her fourteenth birthday sat shining and unused in the coal shed, waiting. Soon she would cycle it for the first time. It would carry her far away from Anaskeagh. Such plans, counting her money, studying the map of Dublin, checking that her bike was oiled and the tyres remained firm, gave meaning to her days. Everything else, the normal things she always did, was performed in a dream state, as if her mind had already fled and only her body waited to follow.

  Sara never stirred as her sister eased from the dip in the horsehair mattress and opened the bedroom door. It was four o’clock in the morning when Beth stepped into the kitchen. With her hand she felt along the kitchen door, lifting Charlie from the hook. In the coal shed she wheeled the bicycle through the yard where the bath still hung, gleaming palely in the gathering dawn. Goldie stayed in the shadows as Beth leaned the bicycle against the wall and hunkered beside him, feeling his withdrawal, growling low in his throat when she touched him.

  ‘You’ll never be able to forgive me, will you, you old mutt?’ Her throat tightened in a spasm as the dog continued to strain away from her. She thought of Sara snuggling deeper into the mattress and then, deliberately, allowed the image to fade. Sara was not going to be her cross. She refused to carry her into her new life.

  At Cherry Vale she dismounted. She lifted a large stone from the rockery and flung it towards the bay window. Glass shattered. A light was switched on upstairs. She cycled out through the gates, head down, her feet pumping to the same frantic rhythm as her heart, and headed towards Clasheen, which was twenty miles away and led to the Dublin Road. She did not glance back as the distance between herself and Anaskeagh lengthened. When she reached Clasheen she flung the bicycle and the cane into a ditch.

  ‘Bye bye, Charlie!’ she shouted, hearing it strike the leaves and sink out of sight. Beyond the hedgerows the sky began to glow. A new day was beginning, caught in the stillness between dawn and morning. A truck lumbered towards her, heading for Dublin. She lifted her hand and it slowed.

  ‘You look like someone in search of adventure,’ said the driver when she climbed aboard.

  ‘How did you guess?’ She slung her duffel bag, packed tightly with her clothes, onto the seat between them. Clouds trailed across the rising sun, mountain squiggles on a blood-red painting.

  Chapter 7

  The small terraced house with the yellow door was in darkness. Beth knocked twice, relieved when a light flashed on at an upstairs window. The wind blew the rain into the wooden porch where she was trying to shelter. She heard footsteps on the stairs and a boy in his late teens opened the front door. He had pulled on a pair of jeans and was still struggling with the zip. When he saw her standing outside with the rain in her hair, her clothes sculpted to her body, his hands paused, as if frozen with embarrassment, then he gave a quick jerk and the zip slid into place.

  ‘Does Barry Tyrell live here?’ She tried to speak calmly but her teeth chattered as she swayed forward, exhausted from the effort of hitching lifts to Dublin and walking long distances between them.

  He nodded, the sleep still in his eyes and the warmth of four safe walls behind him. ‘You’re Beth,’ he said, opening the door wider and beckoning her forward without hesitation. ‘I’ve seen your photograph.’

  ‘Is he here?’ she repeated. ‘I’ve been looking everywhere for him.’ Rain ran from her coat and formed a puddle on the hall floor. She heard footsteps crossing the landing and her father’s voice on the stairs. He was wearing a pair of rumpled pyjamas. His beard was bushier than she remembered, a balladeer’s beard, which he chewed in mortification when he saw her. ‘Beth! Jesus, Mary and holy Saint Joseph! What the hell are you doing here?’ he demanded.

  ‘Don’t blaspheme in my house, Barry Tyrell.’ The Cardigan’s voice was soft but it was also firm enough to demand attention. Her hair was dyed so black it shone with a hard blue sheen under the hall light. She clutched the lapels of her dressing gown across her chest and surveyed Beth. ‘Can’t you see the poor child is half dead from exhaustion? Come into the kitchen, love, and get them wet clothes off you.’

  ‘How did you know where to find me?’ her father demanded.

  No one interrupted Beth as she described how she had searched for the house where her father used to live only to discover it had been replaced by a building site with a hoarding around it. An old man with string on his coat waved his hands towards the hoarding and shouted insults at an invisible army of speculators who were tearing the soul out of his city. He’d taken her to a nearby pub where Celtic Reign played every Wednesday. The bar manager, seeing her distress, had rung the singer in Celtic Reign, who had given him her father’s new address.

  ‘He’s gone to live in the sticks,’ said the manager, scribbling down the address. ‘There’s not too many buses go to Oldport but let’s have a look and see.’ He took a timetable from behind the counter and ran his finger over a page. ‘If you rush you’ll just catch the last one.’

  Beth didn’t mention the tears and the despair that had swept through her as she’d tried to follow his directions to the bus stop or how the city had swamped her with its indifference. Nor did she describe her terror when the bus had headed northwards, racing through grey housing estates and out into the country, brushing against overhanging branches and swerving around corners until her stomach had heaved and she’d been afraid she was going
to throw up over the seat.

  ‘If you’d had the decency to write Beth a letter and tell her where you’d moved she wouldn’t be tramping the little legs off herself searching the city for you.’ The Cardigan spoke sharply to Barry then turned to the young man who had answered the door. ‘Stewart, you get up them stairs as fast as your legs can carry you and wake your sister. Take no nonsense from her. She’s to bring down that flannelette nightdress from the hot press and make room for Beth in her bed.’

  Beth listened to the raised voices above her. An argument was taking place between Stewart and his sister, who was obviously furious over being woken in the middle of the night and told to share her bed with a stranger. A door banged and he reappeared with a tall, sulky girl in tow. She was older than Beth and flashed a hard look at her before sighing loudly in Barry’s direction.

  ‘You want my bed and my clothes for your daughter. What next?’ Dramatically, she held her wrists forward. ‘My blood? Go on, take it. You’ve taken everything else.’

  ‘Be quiet, Marina, and sit down.’ The Cardigan placed a towel over Beth’s head and began to dry her hair. ‘No one wants your blood but some manners would be appreciated around here. Barry, bring that pot of tea over to the table and get some heat into the poor child.’

  Barry pushed at the sleeves of his pyjamas and glanced at The Cardigan. ‘Well, we’d better let her stay the night,’ he said, pretending he was glad to see Beth when it was obvious that he wanted her to vanish from his life as suddenly as she had appeared.

  Marina did not believe in pretence. ‘Your father’s to blame for everything,’ she stated when they were alone in her bedroom. She forced a bolster down the centre of the bed to separate them. ‘Parasite! All we need now is his other daughter – and his wife – then we’ll all have the perfect happy family.’

  The Cardigan’s name was Connie McKeever. She was a supervisor in a local clothes factory where her son also worked. Over the following days she did her utmost to make Beth feel welcome, advising her to ignore Marina, who, she sighed, had a tongue sharp enough to cut through steel.

  ‘I’ll talk to Mrs Wallace about getting you a job in Della Designs,’ she said. ‘I’m sure we’ll be able to fit you in somewhere on the production line.’

  High green railings surrounded Della Designs and the bars across the windows reminded Beth of a squat, ugly prison. The factory was silent on the outside until the doors opened and she was swept into the clack of machinery, music booming over the loudspeaker, the smack of irons and the steaming smell of freshly pressed fabrics. Female voices rose and fell like water over her head. She was petrified by the noise and the rows of women in blue overalls who ignored her, their hands moving with such speed at their machines that she wanted to turn and run weeping back along the road she had taken. Connie escorted her up wooden steps and into her employer’s office. Mrs Wallace laid down the rules in a rasping voice. Beth would go on a month’s trial and train as a machinist. There would be no smoking in the Ladies. Flirting with the boys in Dispatch was strictly for after hours. Punctuality was next to godliness, she said, and as for slacking off at the machines or absenteeism, she shook her head threateningly. No words of warning were necessary. She simply jerked her finger towards the exit door.

  ‘I’ll leave her in your capable hands, Connie.’ She waved Beth from her office as if she were swatting a fly from her sight and picked up the telephone.

  The glass front wall of her office overlooked the production floor. Nothing, Beth was to discover, escaped the hawkish gaze of Della Wallace. Stewart was an assistant to the production manager. He attended night classes in electronics and read technical manuals, propping them against milk bottles on the kitchen table and staring with fierce concentration at the pages whenever Beth sat down beside him. He blushed when he caught her eye, as if he, like Marina, hated having to speak to her. She soon realised this was shyness rather than hostility and a slow friendship began to grow between them.

  ‘Is Marina giving you a hard time?’ he demanded one day when he discovered her in tears at her machine.

  Beth shook her head. ‘I’m just homesick,’ she admitted, not mentioning the letter that had arrived the previous day from her mother. Bitter and short, the words had jumped from the page, shocking her with their venom. ‘Since you have refused my request to return home and insist on living with your adulterous father in his whore’s house I no longer recognise you as my daughter.’

  She had burned the letter, watching the notepaper blacken and curl the words into ash.

  At night, when she tried to sleep, the bolster firmly established as a no-man’s-land between herself and Marina, she heard creaking noises from the bedroom next door. A rhythmical, boisterous sound that forced her head deeper into the pillow. She suspected that Marina was also awake, restlessly turning away from the evidence of her mother’s lovemaking.

  ‘If my father was alive he’d break every bone in your father’s pathetic body,’ she muttered one night after the sounds from next door had ceased. Beth pretended to be asleep. She knew the story of Marina’s father. How he’d drowned at sea, his body swept ashore many miles from where his fishing trawler had sunk. When Marina called her a culchie parasite it no longer hurt so much. She realised she was simply a target for Marina’s anger, nothing more.

  Oldport was different to Anaskeagh yet many things reminded Beth of home. On sunny mornings the sea had the same fierce glitter but it flowed into a calm estuary. The land around it was flat, miles of fields filled with straight rows of vegetables and flowers for the markets in the city. It had once been a fishing village, but the old harbour beyond the estuary was no longer in use, and the remains of sunken fishing boats could be seen at low tide, arching from the water, smooth and sleek as seals. The biggest difference was the sense of space. Beth could look in all directions, unlike in Anaskeagh where the headland loomed over everything.

  In the evenings, Connie’s house was filled with noise and music. Barry practised his tin whistle, Stewart played his records and Marina giggled in a high trilling solo whenever Peter Wallace entered the house. He was Stewart’s best friend, the son of Mrs Wallace, and Connie had known him since he was a baby. She called him her ‘almost son’ and treated him the same as the rest of her family, scolding him when he teased Beth or flirted with Marina.

  ‘Keep your eyes to yourself if you don’t want them scratched out,’ warned Marina one night after he left. ‘Peter Wallace is madly in love with me. He’s going to immortalise me in oils.’

  ‘Oh! So that’s what it’s called nowadays?’ said Connie, overhearing. ‘In my day it was called ‘getting a girl into trouble’. You concentrate on your studies, Marina McKeever and you’ll be far better off.’

  ‘You should know all about trouble.’ Marina cast a belligerent look towards Barry, who was watching television. ‘When’s he leaving? I’m sick of putting up with strangers in my dead father’s house.’

  ‘Stop your nonsense, Marina. I won’t have it.’ Despite the firmness in her voice, Connie looked distressed.

  ‘And I’m sick of all this.’ Marina’s chin jutted. ‘You’re the talk of Oldport… Living with a married man when my father’s hardly cold in his grave. Don’t give me any lectures about morality unless you understand what it means.’

  From the frying pan into the fire, Beth thought. Trouble and strife, no matter where her father laid his head. She wanted to return to Anaskeagh and climb to the top of the headland with Jess. She longed to see Sara, to snuggle against her in the dip of the mattress, to hold her warm and cosy as they drifted off to sleep. But Anaskeagh was also her dark shadow and she knew she would never return to its shade.

  Chapter 8

  Beth had spent six months on her machine when she discovered that a typist had been sacked for arriving late. She approached Mrs Wallace and told her she had studied shorthand and typing for a year before leaving the Star of the Sea Convent.

  ‘If you give me a chance to show you what I ca
n do you won’t regret it.’ She tried to sound confident under the astute gaze of her employer and succeeded.

  ‘A week’s trial,’ agreed Della Wallace. ‘One mistake and you’re out on your ear. Start on Monday.’

  The office staff ignored Beth. It was the first time anyone from the factory floor had become part of the clerical section and her sudden promotion upset the insular pecking order that existed in the company. The machinists were also suspicious of her.

  ‘Stuck-up cow,’ said Marina. ‘She thinks she’s too good for us since she moved up with the la-di-das.’

  Marina had been expelled from school for smoking. She did it openly during her commerce and bookkeeping class and blew smoke rings at her teacher. Shortly afterwards, she joined Della Designs, sulking as she sewed collars onto coats, only brightening up when Peter came to the factory to tease the older women and whisper in her ear. She ignored Beth, making jokes about culchies and bog accents when she walked past. Sandwiched between the factions in the factory and the office, Beth kept her head down. The sales manager’s secretary had become engaged. She flaunted a large solitaire and confided to her friends that she intended conceiving a baby on her honeymoon. When her job fell vacant, Beth would be ready to take it over.

  At the weekly disco, called the Sweat Pit by those who packed the small parish hall, Marina danced with her friends until the music slowed and she could twine her arms around Peter’s neck. She confided intimate secrets to Beth across the bolster. She ‘did it’ regularly with him on bales of blue velvet material in the stockroom. She posed nude for him in his artist’s studio when his mother was out. She was his Mona Lisa. She laughed at Beth’s shocked expression and tossed her long dark hair. ‘When he finishes art college he’s going to become a famous artist and we’re getting married. I’m going to live in Havenstone – then we’ll see who’s the la-di-da around here.’