“Why did you do it, Ella?” the Garda asks softly.
“I – I – I – just don’t know – I haven’t been coping well lately . . . Everything has been sliding and getting on top of me. I don’t know why I did it – it’s not about the money. I could afford to buy it if I really wanted to but I don’t know . . . something just comes over me and I have to let it out and it just happens. And I hate myself for it, I hate myself so much.”
The Garda is nodding and hands her a tissue. “Here.”
“Thanks,” Ella says, blowing her nose into it. “I’m such a pathetic mess.”
“Look, I’ve seen a lot of shoplifting cases in my time as a member of An Garda Síochána and I think what has happened today is different to most of the petty shoplifting cases that come before us where someone steals something because it is something that they want, but can’t afford to buy. Sometimes there is something going on behind the surface, something a lot deeper that is trying to get out, and it manifests itself in the form of shoplifting. It can often be a cry for help and I think in your case this might be so. I think you need to talk to someone, Ella.”
Ella shakes her head determinedly.
“Okay, well, you’ll receive a summons for the district court in the post shortly and for now you are free to go on bail.”
“But what’s going to happen in court?”
“I can’t say what the outcome is going to be but shoplifting is a crime punishable by a fine and/or imprisonment. The store say they have evidence of you stealing on camera at another date, which doesn’t help matters. You are free to go for now and you should receive the summons in the next few weeks.”
A shaky Ella goes to stand up.
“Is there anyone you want to call – you mentioned your husband?”
“Oh God, I can’t – I don’t want him to bring the kids here.”
“Well, I’d really prefer if you had someone with you, Ella. I can call him for you if you like – it might be easier if I tell him?”
She nods. “Okay,” she says in a whisper.
Chapter 5
Dan is walking down the strand with the children. The two older girls are clambering over rocks while he pushes Maisie’s buggy along on the flat sand below them. Every now and again they stall in a ridge and he has to manoeuvre the buggy around it. It’s a nice day, he thinks. The wind is chilly but the sun sits in a periwinkle-blue sky. He feels his phone vibrate in his pocket and, after fishing it out, holds it up between his shoulder and ear as he walks.
“Is that Dan Devlin?” the woman on the other end asks.
“It is.”
“This is Garda Bernice Moore calling from Pearse Street Garda Station.”
“How can I help you?” He stops walking with the buggy and turns his back to the wind.
“I have your wife here – Ella Wilde.”
His first reaction is panic. “My wife? Is she okay?”
“Don’t worry, she’s okay, but she is in a spot of difficulty and she has asked for you to come down to the station to accompany her home.”
“What’s happened? Is everything all right?”
“I’d rather you came to the station first and then we can explain everything.”
“Sure, okay, I’m about thirty minutes away. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
He can see the worry on the small faces of Celeste and Dot as they follow the Garda through the warren of offices down towards the back of the station. Maisie, in his arms, seems to be the only one not perturbed by the situation they find themselves in.
The female Garda who is escorting them stops outside a room and tells Dan, “She’s in here,” then turns to the children and says, “Would you girls like to follow me up here? I think we have a few biscuits in the canteen that you might like.”
Dan nods wordlessly and hands Maisie over to her. He watches momentarily as they follow after the Garda while he takes a deep breath, then pushes open the door leading into the small room where Ella is being questioned.
“What’s happened?” Dan asks as soon as he sees her. Her eyes are red-rimmed and she is shaking uncontrollably on the plastic chair.
“Ella has been arrested for attempted shoplifting,” Bernice says softly.
“Well, you’ve got that all wrong for a start! There is no way Ella would shoplift!” He turns to Ella to back him up.
“Unfortunately, I know it might come as a shock to you but she has admitted to the crime. We are releasing her on bail so she is free to go now but she is in a very distressed state and I would rather she had some company leaving the station.”
Ella looks up at him and he immediately knows that it is true.
“Ella, are you okay?”
She nods. She is almost unrecognisable from the woman in their kitchen earlier on that same morning. The woman that is his wife. There is a vacancy in her eyes.
“Okay, let’s get you out of here, yeah?”
“I’ll be in touch, Ella, as soon as I have further details,” says the Garda.
She nods and follows Dan to collect the children and then outside to where he has parked the jeep. Having spent the last hour in a small windowless room, the sun blinds her eyes. She climbs up into the passenger side and Dan starts the engine. She stares out at the scenery, which flickers in silhouettes past the window. They drive home the rest of the way in silence. Even the children for once are quiet.
They wait for the electric gates to part and then drive in and pull up in the driveway.
Dan lets them into the house and they climb the stairs to the living room with Dan carrying Maisie in her car seat. Still nobody speaks. Ella sits down on the sofa. She is shivering violently now. Her teeth are rattling against each other. Dan gets a blanket from their bedroom downstairs and puts it around her shoulders and makes her a strong cup of coffee before going back up to the kitchen to fix the girls something to eat.
“So are you going to tell me what the hell is going on?” he says, sitting down on the ottoman in front of her later that evening after he has put the girls to bed. “I mean, why would you shoplift?”
“It was a mistake – I never meant to take it.”
“Well, then, why do they have you on camera stealing a bag there yesterday, Ella? What is going on? I don’t get it – I just cannot understand why you would feel the need to steal? It’s not as if we’re short of cash!” His voice is raised and she can hear the contempt in it.
“I’m sorry,” she sobs. “I hate myself for doing it.”
“But I just don’t get it! Why would you do such a thing? What the hell is wrong with you?”
“I don’t know – I can’t understand it myself.”
“You don’t know – is that all you’re giving me here? Come on, Ella, even you must see that that’s a bit of a weak explanation! I really expected you to tell me that they’d got it all wrong or at the very least that you had a plausible explanation – I don’t know – maybe you were carrying out some research as part of an assignment for work or something – but the fact that you can offer me no reason for what you did is just too much for me to get my head around. And then me having to bring the kids into a Garda station – they were afraid of their lives, Ella! Celeste asked me when I was tucking her up in bed if you were going to gaol!”
“I’m so sorry, Dan – I never meant for you all to be brought into this.” She starts to sob.
“Oh, sorry if we all gatecrashed on your solo run there, Ella! Well, why the hell then were you going around acting like a one-woman Bonnie and Clyde! And what happens next? I mean Celeste had a fairly valid point – are you going to wind up in prison? Am I going to have to be bringing the kids to visit you in gaol next?”
“Please, Dan, stop!”
“What, Ella? You don’t like hearing this? Well, why didn’t you think of your children before you started going around lining your pockets? I can’t believe you’ve brought all this onto our doorstep for no reason other than . . . you see, that’s the problem here . . . �
�� He stands up and draws his hands down over his face. “I don’t even have a fucking reason! Jesus Christ, Ella, what have you done?”
When she wakes the next morning she looks around the living room. She is still wearing the same clothes as yesterday. They feel crumpled and grubby against her skin. It takes a while for her to remember what had happened the previous day. Then it hits her like a train slicing through the countryside. Her head is thumping like it would after a wild night out except there was no alcohol involved yesterday. She looks up at the clock on the wall and sees it is almost eleven o’clock – she can’t remember the last time that she slept in for this long.
She sits up and listens but there is no sound coming from the rest of the tower. It is eerily quiet. She gets up and climbs the stairs to the kitchen. She notices Dan’s car isn’t in the drive – he must have taken the three children out somewhere. She pops two paracetamol, then fills a glass with water and sits down at the breakfast bar. The Sunday papers are sitting waiting for her on the kitchen table. Her face is on the front page of three of them. ‘TV Presenter Arrested for Theft of €35,000 Bracelet.’ Another says ‘Ella’s Wilde Rampage’ and then goes on to say that she clearly feels that her six-figure salary isn’t enough.
She turns them all face down on the counter-top.
Her phone starts ringing then. The first call she fields is from her dad, followed then by her sister Andrea and of course they both assume it was a mistake and rally to her defence. She loves them for that but she has to tell them that it’s true and then she has to go through the same disbelief and the ‘but whys’ that she went through with Dan.
The next phone call is from Malcolm, her boss at the station. He doesn’t waste time getting straight to the point.
“Ella, I saw the papers. Do you mind telling me what the hell is going on?”
“I’m sorry, Malcolm – I’m really sorry . . .”
“So it’s true then? For God’s sake, I assumed you were going to tell me it was a set-up or something!”
“It was a mistake, Malcolm, I – I – I didn’t mean for it to happen . . . ”
“A mistake – how can you say that?” his voice booms. “It says here, and I quote, ‘Ms Wilde was also caught on the store’s CCTV camera taking a designer handbag in recent days.’ What am I meant to do now? I can hardly have you fronting a show which grills politicians who falsify expense claims in the Dáil, or puts it up to the fat-cats heading Government quangos that they’re being overpaid! This won’t sit well with the viewers, Ella. I’ve worked in television for a long time and I can tell you that they’re not going to like this at all.”
Ella can almost imagine him pointing a finger into the empty air beside him.
“We’re a state-owned broadcaster, Ella – the tax-payers pay our salaries! How do you think this will look to them? Our show fights the fight of the common people –we uphold moral values and disdain theft, fraud and greed.”
“I know but I never meant for it to happen –”
“I’ve spoken with the board and we’ve made a decision. We can’t have you back, Ella, I’m afraid. It’s not going to wash with the public and the whole show could go under if we had you back – you do understand that, don’t you? Something like this is contagious and we have to limit it – do you understand what I’m saying?”
“But you can’t let me go just like that – I haven’t even been convicted yet. I’ve worked there for almost twenty years – you can’t just throw me over like that!”
“You know just as well as I do that when you’re in the public eye fronting a TV show you have a responsibility to uphold – it’s the first thing you learn when you get a job like that.”
“So that’s it, is that what you’re saying?”
“I’m sorry, Ella, I really am, but the shareholders won’t tolerate it. The Evening Review is the station’s flagship show and if our presenters don’t have integrity then our show doesn’t have integrity.”
The blood is coursing loudly in her ears, her throat feels like it is closing tighter. She hangs up before she has to hear him say anything else.
Malcolm’s words are left ringing in her ears like music after a bad nightclub. She feels totally panicked. This cannot be happening. It can’t be. Her job is everything to her, it’s the only job she has ever known, and without it she’s nothing.
“Ella, it’s Conor.” His voice comes in over the intercom. “Can you let me in?”
She gets off the chair and lifts the handset to buzz him in through the gates. Then she takes the stairs down to the hallway and when she opens the door he is standing there.
He throws his arms around her and draws her into a strong embrace. “I saw the papers – are you okay?” he says, holding her by the elbows and bending his knees so that his eyes are level with hers.
“No, Conor, no, I’m not.” Her voice breaks into tears and he wraps her in his arms again.
He follows her upstairs and takes a seat while she makes the coffee.
“What happened?”
“The same as you read in the paper – I walked out of the shop with a €35,000 bracelet on my wrist. And the bag the day before.”
“Did you just forget to pay or something?”
She shakes her head. “I wish that were true, Conor,” she takes a deep breath, “but I did it. I deliberately took them.”
He looks at her in amazement. “But I don’t get it – why would you do that?”
“I don’t know, Conor, I don’t know why I did it.”
“Is there something else going on? You and Dan aren’t having money problems, are you?”
“No, not at all.”
“But then why would you steal something?” he asks, bemused.
“I can’t explain it – it’s like I got this urge and I couldn’t help myself – it overcame me and I had to do it. Does that make any sense?”
“Not really, if I’m totally honest with you.”
“I know, it doesn’t really make much sense to me either.” She wipes her eyes with a tissue. “Since Maisie was born I haven’t been feeling like myself. I’m not sleeping at night and I don’t know but I just feel really anxious all the time. I keep worrying about things that will probably never happen.”
“Why do you think that is?” he asks softly.
“I don’t know. I just don’t know.” And she doesn’t know. It’s all she can think about, yet she can’t put into words exactly how she is feeling. “I think I’m just tired.” She flops down into a chair beside him. “Malcolm called. The shareholders want me gone, I’ve lost my job.”
“Oh God, Ella, I’m really sorry.”
Chapter 6
Ella wakes before the alarm even has a chance to sound. She waits for it to go and then she pounces on it with her hand, feeling a hollow victory. Her head is fuzzy with tiredness, like it is covered in a layer of felt and she can’t see out properly through the fibres. She got out of bed seven times to check on Maisie during the night and each time the baby had been sleeping peacefully, but the worries of cot-death continue to torment her. The bed is empty on his side. He slept in the spare room again last night. He hasn’t slept beside her since she was arrested. Taking a deep breath, she pulls back the duvet and gets out of bed.
The tower is chilly this morning and she wraps her robe tightly around her, belting it twice. With quick steps, she searches out the rugs that are draped across the cold flagstones as she makes her way into the bathroom. She pulls down her pyjama bottoms and sits on to the toilet seat.
He comes blustering through the door a minute later and stands in front of the sink. She notices that he is already dressed for work. Without looking at her, he grabs the toothpaste and tries to pump out some of the gel. It is stuck and she hears him grow frustrated. He has to push the bottom of the container upwards to squeeze the last of it onto his brush.
“We need more toothpaste!” he growls back at her.
“I’ll get some in the supermarket later,” she says
, making a mental note to buy some.
He starts brushing his teeth and her eyes watch his even strokes hypnotically as he moves his brush up and down. When she is finished, she walks to the sink to wash her hands. He steps to the right to let her in while at the same time spitting out his toothpaste into the sink beside her. He sticks the brush under the flow of water before giving his teeth another quick brush before a final spit.
She turns to him and takes a deep breath inwards, “Dan, I –”
But he isn’t listening and then he wordlessly rushes out the door. She hears the thump, thump, thump of his feet on the stairs, the thump of the hall door as he pulls it closed, followed by the thump of his car door. The engine starts and when she goes to look out the porthole-shaped window, she can see him making his way down the winding drive. Here we go, she thinks, another day. And the familiar knot of anxiety in her stomach winds itself tighter.
As she climbs the circular staircase upwards towards their kitchen, she can feel the weight of her body with every step. Yet again she finds herself wishing that they lived in a normal house. The circular walls and vaulted ceilings seem to be moving in closer towards her today, squashing her in between them. Sometimes she wishes they lived in a square house, with straight lines and angles, a house that wasn’t upside down, where you walked in and didn’t have to climb up twenty-six steps to reach the kitchen.
Into the Night Sky Page 3