by Sally Rooney
By now it was after eight o’clock in the evening. With her head on the pillow, the woman rested her wrist on her forehead. She was wearing a thin gold bracelet, which glimmered faintly in the bedside light. Her name was Eileen Lydon. She was twenty-nine years old. Her father Pat managed a farm in County Galway and her mother Mary was a Geography teacher. She had one sister, Lola, who was three years older than she was. As a child, Lola had been sturdy, brave, mischievous, while Eileen had been anxious and often ill. They’d spent their school holidays together playing elaborate narrative games in which they took on the roles of human sisters who gained access to magical realms, Lola improvising the major plot events and Eileen following along. When available, young cousins, neighbours and children of family friends were enlisted to take on the roles of secondary characters, including, on occasion, a boy named Simon Costigan, who was five years older than Eileen and lived across the river in what had once been the local manor house. He was an extremely polite child who was always wearing clean clothes and saying thank you to adults. He suffered from epilepsy and sometimes had to go to the hospital, once even in an ambulance. Whenever Lola or Eileen misbehaved, their mother Mary asked them why they could not be more like Simon Costigan, who was not only well behaved but had the added dignity of ‘never complaining’. As the sisters grew older, they no longer included Simon or any other children in their games, but migrated indoors, sketching up fictive maps on notepaper, inventing cryptic alphabets and making tape recordings. Their parents looked on these games with a benign lack of curiosity, happy to supply paper, pens and blank tapes, but uninterested in hearing anything about the imaginary inhabitants of fictional countries.
At the age of twelve, Lola moved on from their small local primary school to an all-girls Mercy convent in the nearest large town. Eileen, who had always been quiet in school, became increasingly withdrawn. Her teacher told her parents she was gifted, and she was taken to a special room twice a week and given extra classes in reading and Maths. At the convent, Lola made new friends, who started coming to the farm to visit, sometimes even to sleep over. Once, for a joke, they locked Eileen into the upstairs bathroom for twenty minutes. After that, their father Pat said Lola’s friends weren’t allowed to visit anymore, and Lola said it was Eileen’s fault. When Eileen was twelve she was also sent to Lola’s school, which was spread over several buildings and prefab units, with a student population of six hundred. Most of her peers lived in the town and knew one another from primary school, bringing with them prior alliances and loyalties in which she had no part. Lola and her friends were old enough to walk into town for lunch by then, while Eileen sat alone in the cafeteria, unpeeling tinfoil from home-packed sandwiches. In her second year, one of the other girls in her class came up behind her and poured a bottle of water over her head on a dare. The vice principal of the school made the girl write Eileen a letter of apology afterwards. At home, Lola said it would never have happened if Eileen didn’t act like such a freak, and Eileen said: I’m not acting.
The summer she was fifteen, their neighbours’ son Simon came over to help her father out on the farm. He was twenty years old and studying Philosophy at Oxford. Lola had just finished school and was hardly ever in the house, but when Simon stayed for dinner she would come home early, and even change her sweatshirt if it was dirty. In school, Lola had always avoided Eileen, but in Simon’s presence she began to behave like a fond and indulgent older sister, fussing over Eileen’s hair and clothes, treating her like a much younger child. Simon did not join in this behaviour. His manner with Eileen was friendly and respectful. He listened to her when she spoke, even when Lola tried to talk over her, and looking calmly at Eileen he would say things like: Ah, that’s very interesting. By August she had taken to getting up early and watching out her bedroom window for his bicycle, at the sight of which she would run downstairs, meeting him as he came through the back door. While he boiled the kettle or washed his hands, she asked him questions about books, about his studies at university, about his life in England. She asked him once if he still suffered from seizures, and he smiled and said no, that had been a long time ago, he was surprised she could remember. They would talk for a little while, ten minutes or twenty, and afterwards he would go out to the farm and she would go back upstairs and lie in bed. Some mornings she was happy, flushed, her eyes gleaming, and on other mornings she cried. Lola told their mother Mary it had to stop. It’s an obsession, she said. It’s embarrassing. By then, Lola had heard from her friends that Simon attended Mass on Sunday mornings even though his parents didn’t, and she no longer came home for dinner when he was there. Mary began to sit in the kitchen herself in the mornings, eating breakfast and reading the paper. Eileen would come down anyway, and Simon would greet her in the same friendly manner as always, but her retorts were sullen, and she withdrew quickly to her room. The night before he went back to England, he came over to the house to say goodbye, and Eileen hid in her room and refused to come down. He went upstairs to see her, and she kicked a chair and said he was the only person she could talk to. In my life, the only one, she said. And they won’t even let me talk to you, and now you’re going. I wish I was dead. He was standing with the door half-open behind him. Quietly he said: Eileen, don’t say that. Everything will be alright, I promise. You and I are going to be friends for the rest of our lives.
At eighteen, Eileen went to university in Dublin to study English. In her first year, she struck up a friendship with a girl named Alice Kelleher, and the following year they became roommates. Alice had a very loud speaking voice, dressed in ill-fitting second-hand clothes and seemed to find everything hilarious. Her father was a car mechanic with a drinking problem and she’d had a disorganised childhood. She did not easily find friends among their classmates, and faced minor disciplinary proceedings for calling a lecturer a ‘fascist pig’. Eileen went through college patiently reading all the assigned texts, submitting every project by the deadline and preparing thoroughly for exams. She collected almost every academic award for which she was eligible and even won a national essay prize. She developed a social circle, went out to nightclubs, rejected the advances of various male friends, and came home afterwards to eat toast with Alice in the living room. Alice said that Eileen was a genius and a pearl beyond price, and that even the people who really appreciated her still didn’t appreciate her enough. Eileen said that Alice was an iconoclast and a true original, and that she was ahead of her time. Lola attended a different college in another part of the city, and never saw Eileen except on the street by coincidence. When Eileen was in her second year, Simon moved to Dublin to study for a legal qualification. Eileen invited him to the apartment one night to introduce him to Alice, and he brought with him a box of expensive chocolates and a bottle of white wine. Alice was extremely rude to him all evening, called his religious beliefs ‘evil’ and also said his wristwatch was ugly. For some reason Simon seemed to find this behaviour amusing and even endearing. He called around to the apartment quite often after that, standing with his back against the radiator, arguing with Alice about God, and cheerfully criticising their poor housekeeping skills. He said they were ‘living in squalor’. Sometimes he even washed the dishes before he left. One night when Alice wasn’t there, Eileen asked him if he had a girlfriend, and he laughed and said: What makes you ask that? I’m a wise old man, remember? Eileen was lying on the sofa, and without lifting her head she tossed a cushion at him, which he caught in his hands. Just old, she said. Not wise.
When Eileen was twenty, she had sex for the first time, with a man she had met on the internet. Afterwards she walked back from his house to her apartment alone. It was late, almost two o’clock in the morning, and the streets were deserted. When she got home, Alice was sitting on the couch typing something on her laptop. Eileen leaned on the jamb of the living room door and said aloud: Well, that was weird. Alice stopped typing. What, did you sleep with him? she said. Eileen was rubbing her upper arm with the palm of her hand. He asked m
e to keep my clothes on, she said. Like, for the whole thing. Alice stared at her. Where do you find these people? she said. Looking at the floor, Eileen shrugged her shoulders. Alice got up from the sofa then. Don’t feel bad, she said. It’s not a big deal. It’s nothing. In two weeks you’ll have forgotten about it. Eileen rested her head on Alice’s small shoulder. Patting her back, Alice said softly: You’re not like me. You’re going to have a happy life. Simon was living in Paris that summer, working for a climate emergency group. Eileen went to visit him there, the first time she had ever got on a plane alone. He met her at the airport and they took a train into the city. That night they drank a bottle of wine in his apartment and she told him the story of how she lost her virginity. He laughed and apologised for laughing. They were lying on the bed in his room together. After a pause, Eileen said: I was going to ask how you lost your virginity. But then, for all I know, you still haven’t. He smiled at that. No, I have, he said. For a few seconds she lay quietly with her face turned up toward the ceiling, breathing. Even though you’re Catholic, she said. They were lying close together, their shoulders almost touching. Right, he answered. What does Saint Augustine say? Lord, give me chastity, but not yet.
After graduating, Eileen started a Master’s degree in Irish Literature, and Alice got a job in a coffee shop and started writing a novel. They were still living together, and in the evenings Alice sometimes read aloud the good jokes from her manuscript while Eileen was cooking dinner. Sitting at the kitchen table, pushing her hair back from her forehead, Alice would say: Listen to this. You know the main guy I was telling you about? Well, he gets a text from the sister character. In Paris, Simon had moved in with his girlfriend, a French woman named Natalie. After finishing her Master’s, Eileen got a job in a bookshop, wheeling loaded trolleys across the shop floor to be unloaded and placing individual adhesive price stickers onto individual copies of bestselling novels. By then her parents had run into financial trouble with the farm. On Eileen’s visits home, her father Pat was sullen and restless, pacing around the house at strange hours, switching things off and on. At dinner he barely spoke, and often left the table before the others had finished eating. In the living room one night when they were alone, her mother Mary told her that something would have to change. It can’t go on like this, she said. With a concerned expression, Eileen asked whether she meant the financial situation or her marriage. Mary turned her hands palm up, looking exhausted, looking older than she really was. Everything, she said. I don’t know. You come home complaining about your job, complaining about your life. What about my life? Who’s taking care of me? Eileen was twenty-three then and her mother was fifty-one. Eileen held her fingertips lightly against one of her eyelids for a moment, and said: Aren’t you complaining to me about your life right now? Mary started crying then. Eileen watched her uneasily, and said: I really care that you’re unhappy, I just don’t know what you want me to do. Her mother was covering her face, sobbing. What did I do wrong? she said. How did I raise such selfish children? Eileen sat back against the sofa as if she was giving the question serious thought. What outcome do you want here? she asked. I can’t give you money. I can’t go back in time and make you marry a different man. You want me to listen to you complaining about it? I’ll listen. I am listening. But I’m not sure why you think your unhappiness is more important than mine. Mary left the room.
When they were twenty-four, Alice signed an American book deal for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. She said no one in the publishing industry knew anything about money, and that if they were stupid enough to give it to her, she was avaricious enough to take it. Eileen was dating a PhD student named Kevin, and through him had found a low-paid but interesting job as an editorial assistant at a literary magazine. At first she was just copy-editing, but after a few months they allowed her to start commissioning new pieces, and at the end of the year the editor invited her to contribute some of her own work. Eileen said she would think about it. Lola was working at a management consultancy firm then and had a boyfriend called Matthew. She invited Eileen to have dinner with them in town one night. On a Thursday evening after work, the three of them waited forty-five minutes on an increasingly dark and chilly street to be seated in a new burger restaurant Lola particularly wanted to try. When the burgers arrived, they tasted normal. Lola asked Eileen about her career plans and Eileen said she was happy at the magazine. Right, for now, said Lola. But what’s next? Eileen told her she didn’t know. Lola made a smiling face and said: One day you’re going to have to live in the real world. Eileen walked back to the apartment that night and found Alice on the sofa, working on her book. Alice, she said, am I going to have to live in the real world one day? Without looking up, Alice snorted and said: Jesus no, absolutely not. Who told you that?
The following September, Eileen found out from her mother that Simon and Natalie had broken up. They had been together for four years by then. Eileen told Alice she had thought they would get married. I always thought they were going to get married, she would say. And Alice would answer: Yeah, you’ve mentioned that. Eileen sent Simon an email asking how he was, and he wrote back: I don’t suppose you’re going to find yourself in Paris any time soon? I would really like to see you. At Halloween she went to stay with him for a few days. He was thirty by then and she was twenty-five. They went out to museums together in the afternoons and talked about art and politics. Whenever she asked him about Natalie he responded lightly, self-effacingly, and changed the subject. Once, when they were sitting together in the Musée d’Orsay, Eileen said to him: You know everything about me, and I know nothing about you. With a pained-looking smile he answered: Ah, now you sound like Natalie. Then he laughed and said sorry. That was the only time he mentioned her name. In the mornings he made coffee, and at night Eileen slept in his bed. After they made love, he liked to hold her for a long time. The day she arrived back in Dublin, she broke up with her boyfriend. She didn’t hear anything from Simon again until he came over to her family home at Christmas to drink a glass of brandy and admire the tree.
Alice’s book was published the following spring. A lot of press attention surrounded the publication, mostly positive at first, and then some negative pieces reacting to the fawning positivity of the initial coverage. In the summer, at a party in their friend Ciara’s apartment, Eileen met a man named Aidan. He had thick dark hair and wore linen trousers and dirty tennis shoes. They ended up sitting in the kitchen together until late that night, talking about childhood. In my family we just don’t discuss things, Aidan said. Everything is below the surface, nothing comes out. Can I refill that for you? Eileen watched him pouring a measure of red wine into her glass. We don’t really talk about things in my family either, she said. Sometimes I think we try, but we don’t know how. At the end of the night, Eileen and Aidan walked home together in the same direction, and he took a detour to see her to her apartment door. Take care of yourself, he said when they parted. A few days later they met for a drink, just the two of them. He was a musician and a sound engineer. He talked to her about his work, about his flatmates, about his relationship with his mother, about various things he loved and hated. While they spoke, Eileen laughed a lot and looked animated, touching her mouth, leaning forward in her seat. After she got home that night Aidan sent her a message reading: you are such a good listener! wow! and I talk too much, sorry. can we see each other again?
They went for another drink the following week, and then another. Aidan’s apartment had a lot of tangled black cables all over the floor and his bed was just a mattress. In the autumn, they went to Florence for a few days and walked through the cool of the cathedral together. One night when she made a witty remark at dinner, he laughed so much that he had to wipe his eyes with a purple serviette. He told her that he loved her. Everything in life is incredibly beautiful, Eileen wrote in a message to Alice. I can’t believe it’s possible to be so happy. Simon moved back to Dublin around that time, to work as a policy adviser for a left-wing par
liamentary group. Eileen saw him sometimes on the bus, or crossing a street, his arm around one good-looking woman or another. Before Christmas, Eileen and Aidan moved in together. He carried her boxes of books from the back of his car and said proudly: The weight of your brain. Alice came to their housewarming party, dropped a bottle of vodka on the kitchen tiles, told a very long anecdote about their college years which only Eileen and she herself seemed to find remotely funny, and then went home again. Most of the other people at the party were Aidan’s friends. Afterwards, drunk, Eileen said to Aidan: Why don’t I have any friends? I have two, but they’re weird. And the others are more like acquaintances. He smoothed his hand over her hair and said: You have me.
For the next three years Eileen and Aidan lived in a one-bedroom apartment in the south city centre, illegally downloading foreign films, arguing about how to split the rent, taking turns to cook and wash up. Lola and Matthew got engaged. Alice won a lucrative literary award, moved to New York and started sending Eileen emails at strange hours of the day and night. Then she stopped emailing at all, deleted her social media profiles, ignored Eileen’s messages. In December, Simon called Eileen one night and told her that Alice was back in Dublin and had been admitted to a psychiatric hospital. Eileen was sitting on the sofa, her phone held to her ear, while Aidan was at the sink, rinsing a plate under the tap. After she and Simon had finished speaking, she sat there on the phone, saying nothing, and he said nothing, they were both silent. Right, he said eventually. I’ll let you go. A few weeks later, Eileen and Aidan broke up. He told her there was a lot going on and that they both needed space. He went to live with his parents and she moved into a two-bedroom apartment with a married couple in the north inner city. Lola and Matthew decided to have a small wedding in the summer. Simon went on answering his correspondence promptly, taking Eileen out for lunch now and then, and keeping his personal life to himself. It was April and several of Eileen’s friends had recently left or were in the process of leaving Dublin. She attended the leaving parties, wearing her dark-green dress with the buttons, or her yellow dress with the matching belt. In living rooms with low ceilings and paper lampshades, people talked to her about the property market. My sister’s getting married in June, she would tell them. That’s exciting, they would reply. You must be so happy for her. Yeah, it’s funny, Eileen would say. I’m not.