The Space Between Us

by Anna McPartlin

  Eve had left for St Martin’s that same September in 1990. For the first year she studied for a BA Hons in Fashion, but when she realized she was not as talented as some of her peers, she changed to Jewellery Design and found her niche. The course lasted three years and, although she had enjoyed her time in London, when she graduated she took a job with a jewellery design house in Paris and lived there for three years. Eve wasn’t much of a party girl. She was determined to succeed in her work and spent endless hours at her desk. She loved what she did, and eventually she felt she had learned enough to go to America to design her own line. She wanted to set up an international business. Life was good and she was content, until her dad died. Those precious two months had changed everything: she had slowed down and reconnected with her dad, her brother, her old friends and her home.

  After a long silence of many years Eve had found many friends on Facebook. Her old teenage boyfriend Gar Lynch contacted her first, and then she got in touch with their mutual pal Paul Doyle. Gar had married Gina McCarthy, who was two years older than Eve. They had grown up around the corner from one another and had been friends until Eve was twelve when Gina had ended their friendship: Eve and Lily were too young for her now, she’d said, and slammed the door in their faces when they had come to ask if she wanted to play. Despite that, Eve had always liked Gina, and she was pleased to learn that Gar had ended up with her. Through Facebook she discovered they had two kids, two dogs, one cat and a boat. They had stayed in the same area because Gar couldn’t think of any reason to move. ‘Sea air, good schools, great restaurants, the best pub in Ireland and it’s on the DART line. It’s perfect here,’ he’d said, via personal message.

  She learned that, after college, Paul had moved to the UK but had returned home during the boom years. Despite a strained relationship with his parents he had stayed local too. Gar had explained that Paul had come out during his second year at Trinity College. Everyone had been surprised: he was a brilliant rugby player, hard as nails and always with girls. The lads thought he was a legend. Eve thought he was a major slut, a nice one, but the word was that if you wanted to retain any dignity or your virginity it was best to steer clear of Paul Doyle. She had been in London when he came out and missed all the drama. Later she heard from Gar and Gina that there had been plenty of it. Paul’s father had gone on a bender for three days and nights, ending up in A&E with a split head and no memory of how it had happened. His mother had threatened to swallow an entire packet of sleeping pills only to be talked out of it by the local priest, who promised to pray that her son would escape eternal damnation. The priest had turned out to be a paedophile, which Mrs Doyle seemed to take better than her son’s sexuality.

  Paul had lived with a guy called Paddy for years and the first anyone knew of the relationship ending was his change of status on Facebook. He was great company but he never talked about his personal life, and in the three years since Paddy had vanished no one knew who Paul was with. One evening twelve months previously Eve had tried to extort information from him.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Ah, come on, tell me something.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I need distraction.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I don’t want to.’

  ‘You’re a crap gay.’

  ‘You’ve no idea.’ He smiled at her and changed the subject.

  During her stay in Ireland she even caught up with Ben Logan. He’d contacted her through Facebook six months before her dad’s diagnosis. She’d thought long and hard about whether or not to accept his friendship. She’d even polled some of her American friends.

  ‘Never ever befriend an ex,’ Debbie said.

  ‘Absolutely befriend him – it’s not like you’ve anything going on here,’ Marsha countered.

  ‘It’s dangerous,’ Debbie said.

  ‘How is it dangerous?’ Marsha said. ‘He lives there, you live here, and it’s just a little flirting on the net. God knows, she needs to do something.’

  ‘So why can’t she just buy a dress and go on a date?’

  ‘I’m in the room,’ Eve reminded them.

  Despite Debbie’s warning, curiosity won. Having procrastinated just enough to ensure that no one, especially Ben, thought she was too eager, she accepted his request and immediately trawled through his photos and updates. Still short and still a total ride. His hair was tight and he was tanned. Oh, Ben, you’ll always be Glenn Medeiros to me. It was clear he went to the gym and his eyes still shone when he beamed into the camera lens. He owned a chain of organic supermarkets across Dublin, Wicklow, Galway and Cork. He was married to a woman named Fiona. From the photos it appeared that they went on lots of holidays and had no children. He messaged Eve a few hours after she’d accepted his friendship.

  Hey, Blondie, Didn’t know if you’d accept, glad you did. Congrats on all your success. I always knew you’d do it although surprised you ended up in jewellery but then again I thought I was going to be a rock star and ended up in the food biz. How’s life? Do you ever get home? Ben AKA Glenn M. XXX

  She’d responded in a friendly way, congratulating him on his supermarket success and his marriage. She told him she hadn’t been home in years, wished him well and politely signed off. After that they had made comments on one another’s updates, tagged each other on photos from the past or funny YouTube videos, until Eve’s dad got sick.

  Eve was at home when he rang the house and asked if she wanted to meet for coffee. She’d spent most of that week running in and out of the hospital and setting up her dad’s room at home. She hadn’t contacted Gar or Paul so she was amazed that Ben had tracked her down. ‘How did you know I was here?’ she asked incredulously.

  ‘I thought I saw you in Donnybrook so I decided to call.’

  ‘I was nowhere near Donnybrook.’

  ‘Well, then, it must be Fate,’ he said. He still sounded like the boy she had loved and lost one summer twenty years ago.

  Her heart skipped. He’s married, Eve, so just behave.

  They’d met for coffee near the hospital and even though she worried that it would begin awkwardly it didn’t. They were as easy with each other as they always had been.

  ‘So, posh supermarkets,’ she said.

  ‘So, cheap costume jewellery.’

  ‘That’s only a tiny part of the business and I prefer the term “affordable”. And weren’t you supposed to be a tortured poet turned rock star?’

  ‘You were right and I was crap, but weren’t you supposed to be the next Coco Chanel?’

  ‘Things change.’

  ‘But you haven’t changed a bit.’

  He’d looked at her approvingly and Eve’s heart had skipped another beat.

  Eve didn’t melt easily. She wasn’t conceited or vain, and she rarely felt beautiful, but she saw beauty in the strangest faces, and working in high-end fashion for many years hadn’t changed that. To most of those close to her, though, Eve was beautiful. At five foot eleven, she was slim, with an athletic build, creamy skin, natural blonde hair and green eyes. Eve could have been a model if she hadn’t despised cameras. She had cut her hair into a short crop in her early twenties and had worn a version of it ever since, not because it was trendy but because it was handy. She lived in jeans, vest tops and blazers and rarely wore makeup. She had never been girly; she didn’t have millions of shoes, and the only piece of jewellery she wore was a gold disc around her neck with her mother’s name on it. She had to watch her posture because on the rare occasions when she let herself go she slouched. When Eve looked in the mirror she didn’t see what others saw. In fact, the only time she felt beautiful was when she saw herself through Ben Logan’s eyes. Sitting in a coffee shop in Dublin, twenty years after they had split up, on the worst night of Eve’s life, she blushed.

  Since their reunion they had met regularly, at first for coffee, then lunch, then dinner, drinks at a bar, and when they slept together it was on the understanding that he
loved his wife, she loved her life, and neither of them wanted anything from each other except a little distraction. They both knew that her time in Ireland was finite. They were absolutely confident that no one would get hurt.

  Eve hadn’t considered that her time at home and her father’s death might change her, or that the life she’d built in America would no longer sustain her or, more importantly, that she would no longer be able to sustain it.

  At first she denied that she wanted or needed a different life but, deep down, she knew she didn’t want to be a captain of industry any more. She didn’t want to design jewellery. She didn’t want to promote or sell it. Her life had been so stressful for so long that she hadn’t noticed she was a workaholic with little or no quality of life. It occurred to her that if she died no one would really notice and that scared her. I’m so sick of being alone.

  Her board of directors were happy to buy her out. They had plans for the company that she had attempted to block so her change of heart was a dream come true. America had treated Eve very well but her hometown was calling. Six months after they had buried her father at sea, she moved back to Ireland, with two suitcases and a crate of books on design. Clooney isn’t the only one who travels light. She also had a fat bank balance, which was something nobody else seemed to have in Ireland, two brownstone buildings and a penthouse apartment overlooking Central Park. Eve’s accountant had been responsible for those purchases. She’d lived in the penthouse and rented out the brownstones. Clooney and Eve were different in many respects but they had one thing in common: neither was interested in accumulating things.

  She rented an apartment overlooking the sea, ten minutes from where she had grown up. She joined a local gym and signed up for yoga classes.

  She’d meet Gina for coffee but only when her kids were in school – Eve had never liked kids. As far as she was concerned they were noisy little people who constantly interrupted interesting conversations with banal comments like: ‘Mum, Mum, Mum, Mum, Mum.’

  ‘Mum is talking.’

  ‘Mum, Mum, Mum, Mum, Mum.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I, I, I am … I like cheese.’

  Eve wouldn’t pretend to like children because it was the acceptable thing to do and some people valued her honesty, although others did not. She hung around with the people who did. Happily, Gina had accepted Eve’s position and was grateful for chat without childish interruptions.

  Eve played golf with Gar and talked about the banking crisis, the consequences of an IMF deal and whether or not Ireland should burn bondholders. He was sure the country would recover but that it would take several years. He worked in exports so had one of the few relatively safe jobs, but he was considering moving his family to Australia.

  ‘Whatever happened to this place?’ she asked.

  ‘We got greedy and messed it up,’ he said sadly.

  He didn’t want to go but he was worried about mortgage increases, taxation and his children’s future. His and Gina’s pensions were all but gone. He wanted to live in a country where his kids had half a chance of getting a job when they grew up.

  So typical – I get back and my pals leave.

  She played tennis with Paul once a week. Afterwards they’d have dinner and sometimes they’d take a Sunday walk on the cliff. He didn’t share Gar’s concerns. He was resolutely positive about everything. It would be hard for a few years and then we’d right ourselves and be better than ever. Paul was an optimist but then he, like Eve, had no kids to worry about, and although he’d taken a heavy pay cut in the Justice Department, his four-bed semi-detached house was nearly paid for, he hadn’t amassed personal debt during the boom years, and still had a few quid in the bank for a rainy day. Paul was not typical but he never had been.

  One day as they walked along the cliff he pointed at the sea. ‘You don’t need to spend money to have a good time,’ he said.

  ‘Or to kill yourself,’ she replied. She was referring to a local man in his forties who had jumped off the cliff the week before.

  ‘You always have to bring things down.’ He shook his head.

  ‘Just keeping it real,’ she said.

  ‘It’s not like you to think of the little people, Eve,’ he said, and he was right. Eve was more often than not too wrapped up in her own world to notice the people around her.

  ‘Maybe I’m finally growing up.’

  ‘It’s too late for that,’ he said, and they walked on.

  Paul was right. She often behaved like a spoilt madam because she was used to getting her own way, but when it came to Ben, she couldn’t help but act like a teenager.

  She had been home for a month before she contacted him again. Their affair had been based on Eve having an exit date, and before she had left it had been clear that his business was in trouble. Posh supermarkets didn’t do well in a recession.

  They met in another coffee shop, but this time he was drawn and fidgety. He was uncomfortable around Eve and it made her sad. She told him she only wanted to catch up, which eased the tension a little, but not completely. He had closed two shops, and if he couldn’t turn things around in the other three, he faced bankruptcy. He couldn’t afford to pay off the suppliers and close the shops. All he could hope to do was trade through but it was becoming more and more difficult and he was running out of ideas. He was a mess and she sympathized. He needed to focus on his business, restructure, negotiate with dying banks and prepare his wife for the possible loss of their livelihood. She told him she’d be there for him if he needed a friend. He thanked her and left.

  After that they spoke on the phone a few times. Things were up and down. He found an investor but then the investor fell through. He had plans that were doable but only if he could secure credit. He was a fighter: he’d find a way. She listened to him and made suggestions. She offered to look at the books. He accepted, and she picked them up from his accountant. She spent a week making notes and working out how the business could survive. She thought she’d found a way of changing it to suit the climate so she left a message to talk to him about it. The plan would involve a big change she wasn’t sure he was ready for, but it was nice to offer a solution. He didn’t get back to her right away and she didn’t want to press him.

  Their relationship had changed. She accepted that. Besides, she was busy de-stressing – after all, that was why she’d walked out on her life. But there were days when she was so bored and lonely that she believed she’d made a huge mistake. Then she’d think of Lily. She’d rehash that summer all those years ago, who did and said what to whom and where it had all gone wrong. A combination of bad memories and regrets made her head hurt, so she’d lie down on her hard white sofa and look out of her floor-to-ceiling windows on to the sea her dad’s ashes floated in. She’d stare at a passing ship moving slowly in the distance until she was sound asleep.

  Naps were becoming Eve’s new ritual. Her new life was all about relaxation yet she was still suffering from the anxiety that had plagued her since her dad had died. Her head often felt as if it was going to burst and the hole in her heart tore a little wider every day. She thought she might have a brain tumour or a heart problem so she saw a doctor.

  ‘You’re in perfect health.’

  ‘Tell that to the pharmacist who practically accused me of painkiller addiction when I tried to buy my fourth box of Solpadeine in a month.’

  ‘When did you last have an eye test?’

  ‘Years ago.’

  ‘Well, it’s time for another.’

  ‘What about the hole in my heart?’

  ‘You don’t have a hole in your heart.’

  ‘Well, it certainly feels like I do.’

  ‘Have you ever considered that you may be experiencing grief?’

  ‘My symptoms are physical, not emotional.’

  ‘You’ve lost your father, you’ve walked away from your business and life in New York, and you’re starting again in an alien environment during a recession.’

  ‘My fathe
r is dead almost a year. My business was my life in New York and I’ve no intention of starting anything here. Instead I’m enjoying a well-earned if slightly ahead-of-schedule retirement.’

  ‘People can grieve for years, you know.’

  ‘I’m not people. There’s something wrong with me.’

  She booked herself into a private hospital and had a battery of tests. She was checked from head to toe, inside and out and, other than a prescription for reading glasses, she was given a clean bill of health. Stupid doctors, what the hell do they know?

  She spent a lot of time reading or on the Internet. Sometimes she’d stalk people she knew on Facebook. One day she tried to find Lily. She keyed her married and maiden names in, but she wasn’t there. Even if she was, Eve probably wouldn’t have done anything about it. There had been a moment at her father’s funeral when she thought she saw Lily, but as the woman had drawn closer Eve had realized she was nothing like her old friend. Gar had mentioned Lily and her husband Declan once when Eve had first returned home. He’d told her that Declan was a heart surgeon and they had two kids, but he didn’t know much else. They had gone to college in Cork and disappeared off the scene after that summer. Paul had heard that in recent years they’d moved to Killiney, which was only up the road, but were never seen around. Eve pretended she wasn’t particularly interested but she was, and when she’d got home she’d Googled Declan Donovan. His private practice details and the hospital he was associated with came up a lot but otherwise nothing. There was a picture in which he looked older, of course, but otherwise the same. Eve had wanted to print it off and burn it, but that would have been childish so instead she gave the screen the fingers. Screw you, Dicknose Donovan. I hope you die roaring. She’d Googled Lily but found nothing. She wondered if Lily had ever Googled her or thought about her the way she thought about Lily. Probably not. After all, Lily had a full life with kids and a husband. Eve was pretty convinced that she couldn’t have cared less if Eve lived or died.