Sleep Sister: A page-turning novel of psychological suspense

by Laura Elliot

  Robert thought moving to Anaskeagh was a brilliant idea. He planned on becoming a traditional musician like their grandfather. Granny Mac had given Robert the accordion that Barry used to play and the wailing sound coming from his bedroom was doing Lindsey’s head in. When she tried to make him see that there was trouble on the domestic front he told her she was mental. Their mother just needed time to make up her mind. Lindsey’s problem was an overactive imagination, brought about by an overindulgence of E at weekends.

  ‘You’re dead for real if the folks find out.’ He knew what was going on from the school grapevine.

  ‘Everyone’s doing it,’ she replied.

  ‘I’m not.’ He could look really smug at times. ‘You shouldn’t mess around with that stuff. It does funny things to your brain.’

  She trusted him not to tell her parents about Friday nights. They shared too many secrets to break rank. Not that anyone would have cared. She remembered the fuss her mother used to make about her social activities, always checking out the scene before she gave permission for Lindsey to go out with her friends in the evening.

  She saw Sara’s ghost again. This time, the manifestation appeared outside Carrie Davern’s estate agency. The ghost was not carrying her baby in a sling, which was just as well, because she walked straight into Lindsey and almost knocked her to the ground.

  ‘I’m so sorry. Are you all right?’ She grabbed Lindsey’s arm, steadying her, a strong ghost with a solid grip. She looked thin and tense but the same wide smile lit her face.

  ‘You remind me very much of someone,’ Lindsey said as they waited for the traffic to stop before crossing the road.

  ‘I hope she’s a nice person.’ The woman stepped off the pavement before the lights changed and staggered back when a driver blasted his horn at her.

  ‘She was lovely,’ Lindsey replied.

  Tork was on the pavement stacking potted plants on stands when he saw them. For once, he ignored Lindsey, and smiled at Sara’s ghost.

  ‘How are you, Eva?’ he said, but it didn’t sound like an ordinary greeting. His mother joined him outside Woodstock and held out her arms.

  ‘Eva! I’m so glad to see you,’ she said. ‘Come in and have some tea.’

  She sounded motherly and concerned but the woman called Eva said she had to fly and drove away in a small white van.

  Lindsey felt as if she knew her from a long way back. Not just because she reminded her of Sara – that was only superficial – but through something stronger than time or memory. Sara would have understood what she meant. She would have called it ‘a meeting of dreams’.

  Chapter 29

  Jess O’Donovan came back to Ireland for the launch of Silent Songs from an African Village. Little remained of the young girl who had left for her novitiate at the age of eighteen, her suitcase packed with black dresses and voluminous knickers; her child’s face, puppy soft and innocent. Now her skin was leathery – too much sun, too little care. Her steadfast brown eyes were the only youthful thing about her. It saddened Beth, seeing this premature ageing, but she knew that Jess would dismiss her concerns as too frivolous to even warrant discussion. In famine camps in Ethiopia and Sudan she’d served out her mission. She now lived a quieter life in Malawi, working in the health centre she’d helped to establish. The years had taken their toll on her health and she’d returned to Ireland for a short break.

  ‘Burnout,’ she told Beth, who picked her up at the airport. ‘It hit like a hammer blow. Serves me right for believing I was indispensable.’

  She would stay with Beth in Estuary View Heights for a week before visiting her family in Anaskeagh. Their life paths had moved in different directions, but the friendship they had shared as children was still unchanged.

  The hotel venue where the book was to be launched was packed. No one spoke or laughed too loudly, as befitting a launch that posthumously honoured the photographer. The arrival of Albert Grant, accompanied by two of his staff and a television crew, broke the sombre mood. He kissed Beth on the cheek before she had time to turn away.

  ‘Poor Marjory is too broken-hearted to attend,’ he said.

  ‘I know. We spoke on the phone.’

  ‘Why haven’t you been to see her?’

  ‘That’s none of your business.’ She kept her voice low. ‘But Lindsey is my business―’

  ‘Dear Beth, you made your views perfectly clear when you rang me.’ He drew back, as if her fury had pressed against his chest. ‘She’s a charming young girl but why you should make such a fuss about a chance encounter outside the Dáil is beyond me. I never understood your hostility when you were a child and it’s even more baffling now.’

  ‘Is it? Perhaps you’d like me to analyse the reasons in more detail?’

  ‘Be careful.’ His fingers bit into her arm. ‘Marjory is in enough distress over Sara’s passing without you adding to her misery. She needs you now more than ever. Are you going to let her pine away from a broken heart?’

  ‘She has four grandchildren here and an open invitation to visit us as often as she likes. She chooses to do otherwise, and I never intend setting foot in Anaskeagh again for reasons only you understand.’

  He glanced across the room towards Stewart, who had driven from Anaskeagh for the launch. ‘What about your husband? A man needs his wife by his side when he’s trying to establish a new business. It would be a shame if he failed because of some misguided notions you have about Anaskeagh.’

  ‘Are you threatening me?’

  ‘Perish the thought. Family means everything to me. I’d never do anything to hurt or harm you. Whatever imagined ideas you have about the past need to be curtailed. You always were a troubled child and troublesome too. Now it’s time to support your husband, as he has always supported you.’ His fluid sincerity set her teeth on edge. He smiled over her shoulder as Greg Enright from Elucidate approached with a cameraman. Unable to listen to him being interviewed, she joined Stewart on the other side of the room.

  Sara’s photographs flashed on a loop behind Peter as he launched the book. Jess spoke movingly about her life in the village and the time Sara had spent there. Afterwards, Beth was unable to remember anything they had said. Her uncle’s presence dominated the room. She bought a copy of the book from a young woman who was selling them and turned the pages, moved as always by Sara’s stark, powerful images.

  Stewart went to bed early when they got home from the launch, knowing the two friends would talk until the small hours. Jess opened the book and named her friends from the village, their children and the staff who worked with her in the medical centre. Beth pictured Sara’s unobtrusive figure blending into the dusty landscape, knowing the precise second to capture a moment: a gesture, an unforgettable image.

  Jess closed the book and stared for a moment at the photograph of Sara on the back cover. She began to talk, hesitantly at first, about Sara’s trip to her village. How, at the end of the visit, she’d sat on the veranda of the mission house with Jess and wept as if she was releasing a terrible, wrenching sorrow. She had travelled through time and across continents for this moment of confession and, in the shade of an African night, she had opened her seal on the past.

  ‘She told me everything.’ Jess reached out to Beth when she saw her friend’s stricken expression. ‘She told me about the headland and how you helped her give birth to her child. Such a heart-breaking story, and you, my closest friend… All those years of silence. How you both must have suffered. I never thought she could have been the mother. Never. Sara had always seemed so… So unsullied by life.’

  ‘Unsullied.’ Beth repeated the word then nodded slowly. Jess was right. Unsullied children, sullied forever by shame and fear.

  ‘She spent her life yearning for a child whom she believed she had no right to seek or to love,’ Jess said. ‘She was never able to move on from the terror that gripped her when she was pregnant and then overwhelmed her on that dreadful night. How could she love what she had been determined to de
stroy? How could she recover from such an experience when there was no one to understand or help her to understand?’

  ‘I tried…’ Beth’s voice broke but she forced herself to continue. ‘I wrote letters but she never replied. She was attending boarding school for six months before I even found out she’d left Anaskeagh. And when she went to London I only traced her when Marina told me Sara had had a photographic exhibition. When we did meet again it was as if nothing had happened. Whenever I tried to bring it up she froze me out – you’ve no idea how powerful her silence could be. She swore me to secrecy that night, but how could such a devastating thing happen and never be discussed? I kept that vow until now. Not even Stewart knows… Or Peter?’

  ‘She told me about the oath you took,’ Jess said. ‘She was going to talk to you when she got home. And Peter too. She wanted to make a fresh start with him.’ She lifted a glass of wine from the small table beside her then laid it back untouched. ‘I guess the struggle was too great for her in the end.’

  ‘Oh, Jess, she came to me… But I was too busy to listen.’ The tears came at last, a river in spate as they stung her cheeks and left her gasping against her friend’s strong shoulders. Jess held her until she could cry no longer.

  ‘Who fathered the child?’ Jess finally asked the question she had been dreading. ‘Sara told me he was dead. Was she telling the truth? There was so much gossip at the time about my own brothers. That’s why Jim went to Australia. Sheila even broke off her engagement with Bernard for a while because a rumour started that he was the father. It was a difficult time, so much media attention, and the guards asking questions. Do you know his name?’

  Beth wanted to shout it out. To fling it into the light. But even as her mind rushed towards this release, she imagined Marjory’s shock, her uncle’s denials – his powerful control reducing her once again to the quaking, frightened child he had once terrorised.

  ‘She never told me. It happened so quickly I never had time to ask.’ She was speaking the truth, even though it felt like a lie. Sara never did utter his name aloud. Monster… Monster… They had both grasped that image and clung to it, as if their fantasies could detach him from the reality of his deeds.

  ‘Do you know who adopted her baby?’ she asked.

  Jess nodded. ‘I do, but I’m bound by confidentiality. I can’t discuss this, even with you.’

  ‘Just let me know if she had a happy upbringing?’

  ‘She had a wonderful upbringing. You need have no worries on that score.’

  ‘I’m glad… so glad. Does she know about her past? That she was the Anaskeagh Baby?’

  Jess shook her head. ‘Her family protected her from that information. She’s never asked to meet her natural parents but lately…’ She hesitated, then shook her head. ‘She believes her birth parents were too young to look after her. She calls them “the puppy lovers”.’

  ‘Did you tell Sara?’

  ‘I needed permission to tell her.’ Jess’s voice was laden with regret. ‘I believed there was time… That this was the start of her healing. I left it too late, Beth. I’ll always regret that I didn’t seize the moment and tell her everything.’

  Too late. How final it is when time runs out, Beth thought. A moment shapes itself and is seized or lost forever. She remembered that moment on Anaskeagh Head when she had hesitated at a fork in the path and decided to make the journey to the farmhouse, knowing instinctively, even in the midst of her terror, that she could trust the O’Donovan family. Now, so many years later, it seemed right that the young nun should have played such an important role in the life of the child who’d been thrust so arbitrarily on her doorstep.

  ‘Will you talk to Peter?’ Jess asked.

  ‘He was unhinged by Sara’s death,’ Beth replied. ‘He’s finally beginning to pull himself together. I don’t know what this will do to him.’

  ‘It will help him to understand the cross she carried.’

  ‘I don’t think I can bear it.’ Beth rocked forward and wrapped her arms around her stomach. ‘I can’t go on remembering. You’ve no idea how much Sara hated me.’

  ‘Not hated – envied,’ Jess replied. ‘She envied the safe place you found for yourself. No matter where you went you made your life secure, but she remained the child who could do no wrong. Sainthood is not an easy occupation, especially when you hate yourself.’

  ‘I’m inside her head. I don’t want to be there, but I can’t escape.’

  ‘My poor Beth.’ The nun sighed. ‘I wish I could find the right words to comfort you.’

  ‘There was a time you would have told me to put my faith in God.’

  ‘Faith.’ Jess savoured the word, then dismissed it. ‘It’s a long time since I afforded myself such a luxury.’

  ‘No more voices?’

  ‘No more voices.’ Jess replied. ‘I don’t need them now.’

  Tomorrow she had been invited to address students in Trinity College. They would ask her questions about her work in Malawi. Some would accuse her of white imperialism, imposing Western solutions on African culture, proselytising, patronising. She was used to such accusations, immune to the views of radicals and reactionaries alike. She had exchanged the rugged hills of an Irish farm for the baked dust of an African village and was only resting briefly on this green shore before returning to her real world.

  Chapter 30

  Everything was clear to him now. A mystery solved when it was too late for understanding. In the garden Sara once loved to tend, Beth told him about the headland and the leaning rocks that had briefly cradled his wife’s child. Grief and fury strained against his chest as he listened to her unfolding story.

  ‘Who was the father?’ he asked when she fell silent.

  ‘Sara never spoke his name,’ she replied. ‘There’s so much I didn’t know… Didn’t want to know.’ She shivered, her breath heavy and fast, as if she were reliving every moment she had spent with Sara on Anaskeagh Head.

  He wanted to comfort her but his own memories stormed inside him. ‘But you must have some idea―’

  ‘How can I name someone when I’ve no proof?’

  ‘She never hinted―’

  ‘She told Jess he was dead. But their daughter lives and thrives. That’s the one good thing to come out of that terrible night.’

  Aislin’s Roof, he recognised the birthing place from Beth’s description – the last photographs Sara took. He had moved them to the attic without even pausing to wonder at their meaning. She must have gone to Anaskeagh after she’d returned from Malawi. What had happened to her during the time she spent there? What ghosts had she confronted? Was that where she’d learned the truth about Lindsey? So many questions that would never be answered. He ached with the need to see her again. To talk as they had never talked when she was alive. Analysing, understanding, forgiving each other. She had lost a daughter, just as he had lost Lindsey. But, unlike him, she had carried the knowledge inside her while he, unaware, uncaring, came to the knowledge too late.

  ‘I’ve lost everything I’ve ever wanted,’ he cried. ‘My life is over.’

  ‘No,’ Beth replied. ‘It’s moving on. That’s all we can do, Peter. We have to find a way to move on from this heartache.’

  Time had not moved on for Sara. It had etched her future in a dark cavity between the rocks and an unyielding earth – and when she could no longer endure, she willed her ashes to merge with the cold tide lapping the pilings on Pier’s Point.

  ‘I need to make peace with Sara’s demons,’ Beth said when she was leaving.

  ‘Is that possible?’ he asked.

  ‘In Anaskeagh it will be.’ Her arms tightened around him then fell away again, her face taut with knowledge she was not prepared to share with him.

  Della Designs was razed to the ground. A swing from the arm of a crane. A blow in its solar plexus from a swaying demolition ball. An instant of indecision, as if brick and mortar could withstand the forces ranged against it. Then the old factory buckled, bowe
d almost gracefully, before collapsing with a dull whoosh, a mushroom cloud of dust and debris rising in its wake.

  Peter felt no emotion, no quiver of nostalgia to mark its passing. When the dust cleared, a new vista opened before him. Rows of houses, swatches of green, the distant estuary flowing under the arches. A heap of stone to mark the passing of Della Designs. His legacy, now dead.

  He walked back to Havenstone. Estuary Road was desolate. He ignored the warning signs forbidding entry. Children were fishing off Pier’s Point, just as he had fished with Stewart when they were young, searching for crabs among the rocks, building dams and channels in the soft mud. The new motorway would destroy old ways. As the suburbs edged closer to the city, Oldport was becoming another satellite town, but the pursuits of children would always remain the same.

  Chapter 31

  Noise, light, energy. Lindsey could never remember feeling so happy. She was a kaleidoscope, high and spinning through the colours. Water flowed down her throat. It ran through her hair, cold on her skin, drowning her. She rose above the torrent, flailing towards freedom where there was space to dance into infinity. The floor juddered under her feet. The garage walls opened outwards. She reached towards Melanie and Karen, her friends. One mind, one sensation, one body. Not like Uncle Albi… She could never call him that ridiculous name. He was on the radio all the time – at least that was how it seemed – but Lindsey figured she just hadn’t noticed him in the past. His voice was full of authority, boasting about all the things he did for the black spots of unemployment in rural Ireland. She supposed that was what being a politician was all about. The movers and shakers of the world. His emails had been wise and funny. He valued her opinions. He needed to understand the young voice if he was to appeal to the new generations. They held the future in their hands, he said. Young people like Lindsey with her artistic mind, which was capable of seeing beyond the obvious.