by Faith Hogan
‘We’re going in,’ she said across her shoulder to Annalise. The key turned easily and the door groaned in thankful anticipation of their entrance. ‘Evie, it’s Grace. Hello?’ she called out towards the back of the hall. Her steps were faltering. It was strange being here like this.
‘Are you sure about this?’ Annalise sounded oddly nervous and Grace wondered if she was perhaps afraid of Evie, or afraid of what they’d find.
‘No.’ Grace wasn’t sure of anything these days. ‘But what if she’s fallen in the shower? You hear about that happening to people. Who’s going to check on her if we don’t? She wasn’t exactly inundated with family and friends at the funeral, was she?’
From the moment she entered the house, Grace could smell Paul, feel him all about her, as though he had walked from that car and come here immediately, settled himself in and was determined not to be shifted. Perhaps that was the bullishness she felt about the outside of the house; his rare, sugar-coated single-mindedness. In the drawing room, the silence of the house echoed back at her. He’d never really left Evie and that was why she talked about him as though they were still together. Had he truly left any of them? She walked to a winged leather armchair. At its back, reclining as though in repose, was Paul’s old jumper. She took it to her face, could still smell him, that light scent of Creed, citrus gold and antiseptic soap. Annalise ruptured her thoughts by calling to Evie as though she were a lost poodle, missing from her kennel. ‘Evie, we’re here, it’s Annalise and Grace, are you here?’
They walked through each room on the ground floor, and then made their way up the polished stairs.
‘Nothing has been touched here, not since we were here after the funeral,’ Grace said to Annalise who was following close behind her on the stairs.
‘Perhaps she’s been away?’ Annalise said, but her voice sounded high pitched with nerves, so Grace did not believe she meant it.
‘Annalise, I spoke to her last night on the land line.’ Grace had replaced it in its cradle, but it felt somehow portentous in her hand. The first floor didn’t look as if it had been used in over twenty years. Maybe not since Evie’s parents had lived here? It looked as if it got a spring clean once a year. Beyond that, it wallowed in a melancholy emptiness, distant ghosts and memories the only reminder that once there had been life and love here. A smaller version of the main staircase rose theatrically at the end of the long first floor corridor. Perhaps, back in the day, it had led to sleeping quarters for the servants. Grace placed her hand on the worn oak rail. She had an ominous feeling they were nearing Evie. Still she didn’t answer when they called her name. There were two rooms at the top of the house. The first, a nursery, still filled with the toys that may have been placed there a century earlier. Grace walked to the second door. She knocked lightly, then called out Evie’s name. The door opened easily. This was, without doubt, Evie’s room. Beneath a chair stood the shoes she’d worn to Paul’s funeral. Her pearls lay on the dressing table. The mirrors reflected the most inspiring view Grace had ever seen of Dublin Bay. It took a moment to orient herself in the room. The bed, a four-poster elaborate affair, dominated one wall of the room. It was draped in heavy gold and auburn fringed material, and there, lying as though in peaceful dreams, was Evie Considine. Grace took a deep breath, somehow it managed to quell the horror that rose uselessly within her. She heard Annalise stifle a gasp, backing into the hallway. Grace moved to the bedside, maybe more fearful than Annalise, but they had to do something, so she felt for Evie’s pulse. It was weak, hardly beating, but still there.
‘Call the ambulance; we need to get her moving. Ask what we should do,’ she yelled at Annalise who was punching 999 into her phone. Grace’s eyes landed on the locker, grabbed the pillbox that sat there. They were Paul’s, prescribed a year ago – sleeping tablets from what she could make out. She thrust them at Annalise and ran to the window, opened it wide. It was what you did, wasn’t it? The sea breeze incised the room, cutting expertly the dry moulded air, stealing away the morbid staleness of death. Grace prayed they weren’t too late. Annalise was giving directions as best she could. ‘Ask them what do we do? Tell them what she took.’ Grace listened as Annalise repeated their instructions. She moved Evie into the recovery position. Annalise’s face was limestone-white; she needed to get out of here. Grace took her by the arm. ‘I’ll stay here. You go down and wait outside, try and make it easier for the ambulance to find us.’ She watched as Annalise careened down the stairs, two and three steps at a time. There was a good chance she’d get sick along the way. Grace walked back to the bed, wondered if perhaps she should speak to Evie. It’s what they did in films, after all. But she had nothing to say, or at least nothing that she could think of that would entice Evie back into the world of the living. So she sat on the side of the bed and tidied Evie’s hair; it was the very least she could do for her and then she held her hand. At least she would not feel alone.
Within five minutes, the ambulance belted onto the tree-lined road below. The paramedics sounded as though they might be the width of the staircase, but soon, Grace found herself thinking that Evie Considine might actually make it. They were true blue Dublin charmers, their language littered with loves and darlings and any endearment that meant they weren’t caught out for a patient’s name. It might not sound professional, but it was certainly comforting and they knew what they were doing. Grace would stay with her until she had to collect Delilah. As she drove behind the ambulance, she left a message for Kasia to tell her about Evie. Evie’s predicament had spun things into perspective. Grace had lost Paul, but she still had Delilah. She had a reason to keep moving. All her life, she had broken up her memories into before her father had left her and afterwards. From here on, she had a funny feeling that she would see things differently. That fear that had lurked beneath her polished veneer for so many years began to melt away. She had today and she had Delilah and she knew with certainty she was lucky to have both.
‘We’ve done what we can for her. All she needs is rest,’ said the young doctor who came to speak to them after what seemed like hours. ‘She’s been very lucky. It’ll take a while for her to come around. But she will be fine.’
*
‘Can we see her, just for a minute?’ Annalise was the first to ask.
Grace would not have recognized Evie from only a day earlier. It seemed her hair had been wet and pulled from her face. The skin around her eyes and mouth stretched back as though the muscles underneath might snap at any moment. She was old and vulnerable and maybe for a moment, Grace could see why Paul could not fully walk away from her. Wires and tubes travelled ominously from her nose and hand. Her breath was a soft hum induced by the trauma of getting rid of whatever poison Evie had ingested.
*
Grace dreaded telling Delilah, but she knew she had to. Already, her daughter was talking about Evie as if they had some kind of connection. Grace wondered if Delilah was trying to measure her up. It was something her daughter did constantly; it started after Paul left them.
‘Can I go to Daryl’s house, Mum?’ she pleaded regularly, knowing that Grace had huge reservations. Not because of the saucer-sized holes in Daryl’s ears, not because Daryl’s hair was blue and his nails painted black. If his appearance was meant to throw her, it was a waste of time. Her reservations were more to do with Daryl’s mum, or the fact that she was never home. His parents ran a trendy city-centre restaurant and Daryl came low in the pecking order when it came to parental supervision.
‘Why not invite him over; he could have dinner with us?’
‘Oh Mum, that is just too square,’ and then she would trounce off, lips curled downwards sighing loudly as she went. ‘Sometimes you are beyond embarrassing, seriously excruciating?’
Doors seemed to slam all the time after Paul left them. Sometimes Grace put it down to puberty, to Delilah finding her own voice. Too often though, she felt as though her only daughter hated and resented her for letting her father slip away. ‘Dad would let me,’ or ‘if Da
d were here, then you’d let me,’ were the mantras in Grace’s ears. Before Paul died, Grace had to remind herself this was the same Delilah that she couldn’t bear to be apart from.
There was no sign of life in the house when she returned from the hospital. Una must have taken her out somewhere. Grace poured herself a large glass of vodka, added a token drop of something fizzy and sat down to consider her daughter. It was no use – all she could do was wait for her to come home.
‘We’re back,’ Una called from the hallway and Grace took a deep breath. It had been a couple of hours, but it had given her time to frame her words better than she might have earlier. She would have to tell Delilah about Evie this evening. ‘We’ve had a lovely time.’ Una was windswept. ‘We took the dogs for a long walk on the beach – I’m not sure who’s more tired, us or them.’ She put an arm about Delilah’s shoulders and gave her a squeeze and Grace noticed her daughter didn’t shrug her off. Another pang of loneliness swept through her. ‘Well, I’d better be off; maybe I’ll see you tomorrow, Delilah, eh?’ She looked meaningfully at Grace.
‘Thanks a million, Una.’ Grace got up from the kitchen table, walked towards her neighbour. ‘Honestly, where would we be without you?’ When Una pulled the front door behind her, Grace thought she could feel all cheerfulness leave the house.
‘I’m going to my room.’ Delilah’s words were toneless. Maybe Grace had been the same when her own father died. It seemed so long ago.
‘I need to talk to you; please stay here for a little while.’ Grace set about switching on the kettle, rattling about the fridge. Una would have made sure that Delilah ate – this was just an exercise in avoidance.
‘What is it?’
‘It’s…’ Grace sat heavily. ‘It’s Evie, I’m afraid. She’s in hospital.’
‘Oh.’ Delilah’s lips remained in a circle for a moment; this wasn’t what she was expecting. ‘What happened to her?’ The question Grace had been dreading.
‘She…’ Grace still didn’t have an answer. ‘She is going to be okay, we hope, but she… you know the way she was married to your dad?’
‘Yes.’ Delilah sighed. ‘Mum, whatever it is, I’m big enough to understand. You have to stop treating me as if I’m a five-year-old; it’s a joke.’
‘Okay, you’re right, of course, you’re right.’ Grace took a deep breath. ‘Evie is very lonely, especially since the accident. They say that some people can almost die of loneliness.’ She hated the frightened expression that her daughter wore, hated that she was the one giving her this news to hurt her further. ‘Well, last night, maybe Evie thought that being with your dad was better than being here and she tried to take her own life.’
‘Oh, shit.’ The words were reflexive; they meant nothing. Delilah’s hands flew to her face. In that moment, Grace moved towards her daughter, reached a hand across the table and Delilah clasped it.
‘I’m sorry. It’s a lot on top of everything else, but I couldn’t keep it from you; it wouldn’t be fair.’
‘Oh Mum.’ Heavy tears began to fall out of Delilah’s eyes; she rubbed them away with the back of her hands. ‘Is she going to be okay?’
‘I, well, Annalise and I called to her house earlier today. We found her, got her to hospital. She’s there now, hardly conscious, and she’s going to be really tired out for a while. It’s going to take a bit of time for her to recover.’ There were no guarantees, of course, but things were looking better.
‘Can we go and see her?’
‘I’m not sure, not for a little while anyway; they won’t let…’ she was going to say, ‘kids in to the ward,’ but managed to stop herself. ‘In a few days, we’ll see how she’s feeling, and then you can visit her, okay?’
‘Thanks, Mum.’ She dived across the table, threw herself across Grace, her whole body in a desperate embrace. ‘I love you Mum, you get that, don’t you? Even when I’m shouting and… well you know, it’s like,’ she took a deep breath, ‘I’d just die if anything happened to you.’ She tightened her grip, hugged her for a long time and Grace had to work hard not to burst into tears of something between relief and guilt. Eventually Delilah let her go, stepped back from her just a little, and lowered her voice. ‘We have to make sure she’s all right, Mum. We have to make sure she never gets lonely again.’
12
Kasia Petrescu
Kasia returned Grace’s call as soon as she finished her shift; she had always been able to sense bad news. Grace was worried, despite her words of reassurance. Kasia could tell; Evie had frightened her.
‘I’ll come straight away. You can go home to Delilah then and I will stay with her until someone comes to take over.’
‘She may not want us here.’ Grace was telling the truth. What did they know of Evie Considine or she of them?
‘She may not,’ Kasia conceded. ‘But maybe, when there is no one else, she might be glad of us. It is the right thing to do; it is what Paul would want.’
Kasia liked Grace. There were no questions although Kasia knew that surely one question must burn between the women. Grace reached out with the hand of kindness, even when she herself had lost so much. Kasia would sit with Evie Considine for Grace, not even for Paul anymore.
To say that Evie Considine was not the woman she had been at the funeral was at the very least an understatement. Here, without make-up and her hair in disarray, she certainly looked a lot older for one thing. Paul never really spoke about Evie. She assumed that he fell in love with each of his wives at different times in his life, and loved each of them in different ways. Looking at Evie Considine propped up silently on a mound of pillows, she looked old, fragile, and spent. It was almost two days since she’d been admitted.
‘She’s too old to be at this carry on,’ one of the matrons said and Kasia thought she wasn’t the only one who was too old to be here. ‘Rich women; more money than sense, if you ask me,’ but the words were said under her breath so the only one to catch them was Kasia.
Grace’s voice was low. ‘I’ve spoken to the doctors.’ She leaned in close over Evie who was drifting in and out of sleep now, catching fragments of their conversation, but too tired to keep up for very long. ‘They won’t let her go home because she lives alone; they’re talking about some kind of psychiatric facility. They want to send her somewhere private, to get her sorted.’
‘I can hear you,’ Evie whispered from beneath the various tubes and monitors that surrounded her. Her voice was cracked and ragged. ‘They can’t keep me here, it’s… not right.’
Grace glanced at Kasia; Evie might have no other choice.
‘Things will look different tomorrow, after a good night’s rest,’ Kasia said, keeping her voice light. Poor Evie. Kasia was glad to be here in some ways, she said so to Grace. She couldn’t relax in the flat now, not knowing that Vasile could turn up at any moment.
By ten o’clock, Kasia was glad when Grace popped her head around the door. ‘You didn’t need to come back; I would have been fine.’ But it was nice to see her, even just to say hello.
‘This is too much for you, sitting in one place. I wouldn’t have been able to when I was expecting Delilah,’ Grace confided when she arrived back in the little room. Evie was sleeping; now and again, her eyes would flutter open, a desolate and lost look hurtling across her face. She would sigh occasionally and sink back into her restless sleep. ‘Jigsaw puzzles? Sudoku?’
‘It’s not that bad really,’ Kasia fibbed. With that, a familiar sound intruded the room. A text from Vasile.
Where are you? I am coming back to the flat.
Simple as that. Kasia’s heart sank.
‘What’s up?’ Grace knew instinctively something was wrong.
‘It’s Vasile…’ Even saying his name filled Kasia with terror. ‘He’s coming back to the flat.’
‘When?’
‘He doesn’t say.’ Unexpectedly, boredom seemed to be a luxury. ‘He could be there already.’ Panic crawled across her skin as if it owned her all along. Sh
e took a deep breath, tried to steady herself. ‘I don’t want him to have anything to do with the baby.’
‘You don’t have to have him involved,’ Grace said but there was a question in her voice.
‘You must understand, he’s not a bad person, it’s just…’
‘Look, we’re all a product of what we’ve lived through. I’m not one to judge anyone.’ She smiled. ‘So, you were going to run away? Take the baby and run?’
‘I don’t really have a plan figured. He met this other girl before I had to do anything. This baby, we are family already. Vasile, he is… well, I could never be happy with him and he is not the kind of man I want anywhere near my child.’ Grace nodded as if she understood.
‘Okay, so what do you want to do?’
‘I want to disappear, but I can’t do that, can I?’
‘He doesn’t know where you are, does he?’
‘No, he will think I am at work at this hour.’ Then something occurred to Kasia. ‘I changed the locks on the apartment. Oh God, he will go mad.’
‘Okay. Okay.’ Grace walked the length of the little room over and back. ‘Okay.’ She smiled at Kasia. ‘I have an idea. I’m not sure what you’re going to make of it, but here goes.’
‘I’m listening and – how do you say it – opened for all your suggestions?’ Knowing that she had Grace Kennedy on her side, she felt she had help at her back.
‘Okay. You need to text him. Tell him the locks were changed; make something up if you have to. You lost your keys, or the landlord changed them, something to do with insurance – anything. Tonight, you have to work a night shift, but you’ll get back in the morning and let him in then. You’re not in the café; you’re doing a bit of agency work, maybe outside the city somewhere?’ She was nodding to herself, still thinking, still pacing. ‘That gives us time to clear out anything you want from the flat.’
‘What?’ Kasia felt the word drop from her lips. There was something surreal about watching Grace Kennedy, such a tiny woman, taking care of everything for her.
