In Haymarket Books it is quiet for a Friday afternoon. Conor has had a few browsers but no buyers. There were two children at the story time that morning but at least it was two more than last week, he thinks to himself wryly. He is just coming out of the stockroom with a box when she comes rushing in through the door.
“I don’t know what to do, Conor – I can’t stop it – I just can’t help it!”
“What, what are you talking about?”
“Taking things, shoplifting – I can’t seem to stop. I know it’s the wrong thing to do but I can’t stop doing it.”
“Where are the children?” He comes out from behind the till and guides her into a chair. He goes over to the door and turns the sign to ‘Closed’.
“I dropped them over to Andrea’s.”
“Do you want to tell me what happened?” he says, coming back over and bending down on his hunkers in front of her.
“I’ve done it again since the day I got arrested, I can’t help myself. I don’t know what to do, Conor. I’m frightened by what it’s doing to me. I . . . I . . . just don’t know. I don’t know why I do it . . . I can’t seem to stop – I hate it, I hate what it’s doing to be me – I don’t need to steal things but I just can’t seem to help it.”
“How long has it been going on for?”
She sighs. “Too long.”
“How long?”
“About twenty years.”
“What?”
“The first time it happened, I was so disgusted with myself. Really, really horrified that I could do something like that, and I swore I would never do it again and I didn’t for a long time. And then just after Celeste was born, she was a few weeks old and I don’t know if it was the hormones or what but I just kept crying all the time. From the moment I woke up in the morning, I would cry until I went to sleep that night. I’m not exaggerating – people say they run out of tears – well, that never happened to me. I stole something then too. It was just a magazine. I knew I was doing it. Then after I had Maisie it just seemed to get out of control. I would get these urges and it was like as if I had no control over myself. It was like watching myself from up above. I knew it was wrong, I knew I didn’t need the stuff that I was taking, I knew I could afford to buy it if I really wanted it that badly, but I couldn’t stop myself from picking it up and hiding it in Maisie’s buggy or my handbag or wherever I could get away with.”
“How have you kept it such a secret for all these years?”
“I suppose I just never got caught. I hate myself so much. I hate the way I do this. The way I can’t control myself, the buzz I feel straight away after I do it and then the sinking and sickening guilt and hatred I feel about myself for days afterwards. So I do it again to make myself feel better and then I feel good for a little while but end up feeling even worse after the buzz wears off, and on and on it goes and I can’t seem to break the cycle. I know it sounds crazy – if I was listening to me I would think ‘that woman is bat-shit crazy’ – it doesn’t even make any sense. I don’t know why I do it; I know it’s wrong. One time when Dot was small, we came home from the supermarket and I discovered she had taken a packet of jelly tots and stuffed them into her coat pocket. I was horrified because I was worried that whatever it is that is wrong with me, I had now passed it on to her. I marched her back to the shop and explained what had happened to the manager and made Dot apologise and the manager laughed and said it happens all the time and that I was very good to bring her back in with it, to teach her that stealing wasn’t okay. And I was nodding and agreeing with him while he told me what a great mother I was teaching my children that it isn’t okay to steal, and there I was stuffing things in my own pockets all the time.” She pauses for a minute. “I only did it maybe twice after that but then, after Maisie was born, I don’t know . . . It’s like a compulsion and I can’t stop it. It’s like there is something horrible inside me and it has to come out and that is how it gets out. It’s awful. I hate it, it frightens me. I think if I can do that and have no control over myself then what else can I do? What else am I capable of?”
“It must be stress-related,” Conor says. “You said after Celeste was born that you couldn’t stop crying – but what happened the first time to make you do it?”
She shifts her feet on the floor in front of him and won’t meet his gaze. She is feeding the chain on her watch through her fingers again.
“Something happened, didn’t it – something must have happened to trigger all of this?”
“Stop, Conor please, I’m not able . . . ”
“What happened, Ella?”
“I said stop!” she screeches.
He sits back on the floor, taken aback by her outburst.
“Okay, Ella, here’s the way I see it – you’re in a spot of bother right now – potentially you could serve a prison sentence if the judge decides to make an example of you. You’ve been doing this for years – there is an underlying issue here – you said yourself it happens whenever you’re stressed. Look, I’m worried about you. Ever since the shoplifting incident and losing your job you’ve been fading away. I thought it was just going to take time for you to readjust but there’s more to it, isn’t there?”
She remains infuriatingly silent.
“Look, Ella, I’m trying to help you here but there’s something you’re not telling me which is fine but you need to tell someone or else you’re never going to break the cycle here. I can’t do any more for you, it’s up to you now.”
“If I tell you, will you promise not to judge me?” she says in a small voice.
“I promise.”
Chapter 46
November 1993
“Litre bottles of vodka, flagons of cider, crates of beer . . .”
They pile it all into the trolley and go to the checkout. They roll their eyes when asked for ID, like people who don’t have the time or patience for this. There is a party in Conor’s house and everyone is going.
They reach his house and he lets them in. They follow him into the living room where bodies are strewn around the floor.
Later she is sitting on the sinky sofa, wedged between a guy snoring beside her and Eric Keogh who has been pestering her all night by flashing quiz questions at her and then making an irritating buzzing sound when she gets the answer wrong: ‘ZZZZZZHH – too bad but the answer is Chaucer’ or ‘ZZZZZZHH – too bad but the answer is chimera’ or ‘ZZZZZZHH – too bad but the answer is Saturn’.
She catches Conor’s eye and pleads for him to rescue her. He reads her signal and comes over. “Here, Ella, I need to talk to you for a sec.”
She jumps up off the sofa and a small splash of her vodka hits her jeans, leaving a dark stain. “In the kitchen,” she orders him. She can feel Eric’s eyes boring into her back as she walks. “That fella is such a stalker,” she says as soon as they are on the other side of the door.
“Who?”
“Stalky Eric. If he was any more of a stalker, he’d have the head of a daffodil on him!”
“Ah, he’s all right.”
“Ah, I know he’s harmless but, God, he’s irritating – he won’t leave me alone. He keeps firing questions at me. I know we’re all trying out for the quiz team but I just want to be on TV. I don’t give a shit about it otherwise!”
“He’s a nerd.” He takes a gulp of beer. “You know what they’re like – they’re not good on the old social skills.”
“Any sign of zee Germans?” she says then.
Conor really likes this German exchange student and is gutted because she hasn’t shown up yet. She sees the disappointment on his face every time the bell goes and he opens the door to find she is not standing outside.
“Not yet but she said she’d definitely come.”
Conor’s flatmate comes in then and pours them both an electric-blue-coloured shot. “Everyone is doing it – come on, you have to!” he says.
She takes it from him and knocks it back. It burns the whole way down but she starts to fe
el nicely woozy afterwards.
The door opens again and a guy comes in and takes a beer from the fridge and, through the open door, Conor can see the two girls have just arrived.
“Oh my God, she’s here! I didn’t think she was going to come!” Conor says excitedly to Ella.
Ella turns to look at them. One is tall and has long blonde wavy hair down to her waist. She is wearing a long gypsy skirt with ragged ends and layers of beads. She has a free-spirited, bohemian look about her. This is the girl that Conor has been telling her about. Her friend is darker-skinned with black-cropped dark hair and a strong nose.
“Well, go on, go over there and talk to her!” she orders.
“What am I going to say?” he says anxiously.
“I don’t know, ask her does she want a drink or something!” Ella laughs.
Conor does as he is told and Ella watches him for a minute. She can tell by his exaggerated hand actions and the way that he is laughing at something that the girls are saying, that he is nervous. She pours herself another vodka, mixes it with 7Up and goes back into the sitting room.
Immediately Eric comes up beside her.
“So it looks like your ‘friend’ has eyes for another girl.”
She knows from the way he uses the word ‘friend’ that he thinks he’s being smart.
“Yes, and that is why he’s my ‘friend’,” Ella retorts.
“Oh, I don’t know, I’d say you give it to him whenever you’re having a dry spell. I know what you girls are like – you want all the cock you can get yours hands on.”
Ella looks at him in disgust. “What are you talking about?”
“Girls like you going around in your short dresses, thinking that you’re so pretty and popular and then laughing at guys because you think you’re too cool to talk to them. You love yourselves – I know you all want it. That’s what all you girls want.”
“You’re disgusting. Your mind is perverted, do you know that?”
“Stop acting all pious and pretending to be innocent – everyone knows that you’re a big prick-tease, Ella Wilde.”
“Do you not have an off-switch? Shut the fuck up, Eric, and leave me alone!” she shouts as a few heads look over at them.
“Are you okay?” Conor asks, coming back over to her.
“Yeah, I’m fine – Eric is a freak.”
She goes into the kitchen with Conor.
“I know he is into you but I didn’t think he was that bad.”
“Well, you should have heard what he just said to me!”
“Yeah, well, just ignore him. Here, I want you to come over and meet Leni and her friend Heike.”
She goes over and Conor introduces her to the girls. They chat for a while and it’s clear that the feelings that Conor has for Leni are mutual. Her face is slightly flushed and she keeps twisting her hair around her finger as she talks to him. Ella is happy for him, he deserves it.
“I’ll just grab another drink and I’ll be back over in a sec,” Ella says after Heike excuses herself to go to the toilet. She wants to give them a chance to be alone together for a minute.
She makes her way back over to the table where the drink is in the kitchen and sees her vodka is almost gone, She opens someone else’s bottle and pours it generously into her glass. It doesn’t taste so strong after a few. She starts chatting to a girl from DramaSoc who is rounding up a crew to head on to a club. They are mainly Conor’s friends but she knows a few of them.
“We’re heading into town – are you coming?”
She wouldn’t mind leaving now and getting away from Eric but she feels bad for Conor. “Nah – you go on, I’ll stay here.” She hears ‘Today’ by The Smashing Pumpkins playing on the CD player. “I love this song!” She runs into the living room and starts dancing with Leni and Heike. She grabs their hands and they start twirling to the music.
Out of the corner of her eye she catches Eric staring over at her. He gives her the shivers so she turns away.
She lets go of the girls’ hands and Conor spins her around, then she loses her balance and collapses in a heap of laughter on the floor. The room is starting to circle around her head and Conor has to help her back up. When she tries to walk it is like walking through the sea – she wants to go straight but she can’t seem to manage it.
She goes up the stairs, past two girls rolling a joint on the bottom step, to use the toilet. The small bathroom is spinning. She pulls herself up, stumbles forward and bangs her head off the towel rail. She raises her hand to rub her forehead and tries to right herself again. She feels dizzy and needs to lie down. She pushes open Conor’s bedroom door and climbs on top of the covers on his bed, and closes her eyes to stop the spinning. A while later she is woken by someone taking off her clothes. Conor, it’s Conor helping her into bed. His hands are all over her now, going inside her bra. Why is he doing this? She tries to sit up but he pushes her back down again on the bed.
“Conor? What are you doing?”
He is being rough and insistent now and tugging at her belt. He undoes the buckle and fires the belt so it clatters against the MDF wardrobe.
“Stop!” she says firmly but he is holding her wrists above her head. “Stop!” she screams. “Stop it now!”
He takes a pillow and holds it over her face so she can’t breathe. She is inhaling the faint smell of men’s hair gel on stale bed linen. She tries kicking at him but he is too strong for her. She is pinned against the bed and he is on top of her, pressing her down. She can feel the metal from the buckle on his jeans digging into her thigh. Then he is inside in her and she can’t believe it. Her whole insides tense up and pain shoots through her. She is screaming into the pillow but all that comes out is a muffled sound. The music is booming up from downstairs still – she can hear drunken voices roaring along with it. She can barely breathe as she twists from side to side to try and get out from underneath him but he is too strong for her. The more she fights, the more the pillow presses down, smothering her face, so she stops moving. He is moving in and out vigorously, roughly grinding against her. She can’t believe that this is happening. She can’t believe that this is happening in Conor’s bedroom – only upstairs from where everyone else is.
Eventually he quietens and rolls off her. The pressure pushing the pillow against her face finally stops but she doesn’t dare to lift it off. She can’t bear to look at him – she is afraid of what she will see in his eyes. She lies there catching her breath and hears him buckling his belt and then, in quick footsteps, he walks out of the room and back down the stairs.
Seconds later the front door slams.
It is only then that she dares to lift the pillow off her face and looks around the darkened room. She knows she is going to be sick. The alcohol, lack of oxygen and shock has come together in a potent mix and she vomits all over Conor’s bed and then again on top of a pile of his clothes which are strewn around the floor. With shaking hands she manages to put back on her underwear and her jeans and makes her way down the stairs. The girls who were rolling the joint earlier are now gone. She opens the front door and runs out into the night sky.
Conor calls over to her flat the next day but she pretends to be out. She can’t face him. She can’t face anyone. No doubt he is wondering why she left without saying goodbye. She wonders if he knows that it was her who got sick all over his room. She is sore everywhere. It stings every time she has to go to the toilet or when her underwear rubs against the chafed skin. She has blue-black bruises on her thighs from where he forced her legs apart. Not to mention the pounding headache that she has had ever since. She knows she should probably go to her doctor but she’s too embarrassed. What would she say? I drank too much, got the spins, needed to lie down and then someone came into the room while I was passed out and had sex with me? She feels so stupid to have lost control like that. She doesn’t cry. She won’t give the bastard the satisfaction.
After avoiding Conor for a few weeks, she eventually comes clean to him and tells him t
hat it was her who got sick all over his bedroom. She apologises for walking out and leaving his room in a state like that but she says that she was too drunk to think straight. She doesn’t tell him what else happened that night. He doesn’t care anyway – things are finally starting to happen between himself and Leni and he is in love. She can’t remember ever seeing him so happy.
She withdraws from the quiz team. She can’t bear to look at Eric’s sneering face. Conor can’t understand why, so she just says that she is sick of looking at nerdy Eric, which is true in a way.
Three weeks later she is late and she knows. She buys a cheap pregnancy test in a chemist in Donnybrook and she does it in the toilets of the pub across the street, throwing it into the sanitary bin afterwards. It confirms what she already knows. It is bad enough living with the memories of what had happened that night and how she had let it happen, but now to be carrying his baby is too much to take. She knows what she has to do. There is no doubt in her mind.
That evening as her dad is reading his paper, she sits down on the couch beside him. He lowers it and looks at her over the top and says, “Well, what do you want?” in his usual good-natured way. She asks him for money to go to London to see a friend. “Do you think I’m made of money!” he says in his pretend annoyed groan. He is used to funding her social life. “Bring me in my cheque book – how much is it that you think you’ll need?”
Into the Night Sky Page 23