The Space Between Us

by Anna McPartlin

  They lay together facing one another, lost in their own little universe. He was tracing Eve’s collarbone with his finger and she was cupping his cheek in her hand. She knew his world was collapsing. His wife was crying somewhere and what Eve and he had was a fantasy, merely his way of escaping the pressure cooker that had become his life and her way of escaping her head. She didn’t talk business. She didn’t say anything that would burst their bubble. Instead they lay in each other’s arms, talking about the past as a means of avoiding the present.

  ‘Call me Glenn,’ he said.

  ‘Glenn,’ she said.

  ‘I remember the first time you called me by my actual name,’ he said.

  ‘We were fooling around in a park,’ she remembered, with a smile.

  ‘It was the night I knew you were mine.’

  She laughed. ‘You always did have a head too big for your body.’

  He pulled her into his arms. ‘I loved you then, Blondie.’

  Eve felt like crying so, instead of ruining the mood, she changed the subject.

  ‘Gulliver Stood On My Son,’ she said, and laughed.

  ‘What?’ Ben said, feigning disbelief. ‘That was a great band name!’

  ‘Yeah, it had Hall of Fame written all over it.’ She giggled.

  Ben loved to hear her giggle.

  ‘I remember that gig where you went from “Long Way Back” to a rendition of “Nothing’s Gonna Change My Love For You” as I walked into the club. It was so cheesy,’ she said.

  ‘It was funny,’ he said.

  ‘It was awful.’

  ‘You loved it.’

  ‘Yeah, I did.’

  Ben had had to fight with the band all day to get them to do it. They were rehearsing in Billy’s dad’s garage when he’d floated the idea.

  ‘No way,’ Mark said, and put down his sticks.

  ‘No fucking way,’ Finbarr said, from behind his keyboard.

  ‘I’d rather cut my knob off than do anything by Glenn Medeiros,’ Billy said, taking his bass off and lighting a cigarette.

  ‘Ah, come on, it’s for my girlfriend,’ he’d pleaded. It was the first time Ben had called Eve his girlfriend and he liked the sound of it.

  ‘Rusty knife,’ Billy said, pointing to a toolbox in his dad’s garage. ‘Knob.’ He pointed to his penis.

  ‘What about you, Tom?’

  ‘Yeah, whatever.’

  ‘Nice one.’

  ‘No, no, no and fuck no,’ Finbarr said.

  Billy just kept pointing to his penis and making a snipping gesture. After a long discussion, they agreed on the basis that Ben would do all the gear after gigs for the rest of the summer. He was desperate for it to be spontaneous, and he knew Eve’s bus wouldn’t get her there until at least five minutes after they were already on stage so he had asked Terry the Tourist Noonan for a picture of her.

  ‘I don’t have one.’

  ‘Liar.’

  ‘I swear.’

  ‘I saw you taking one the other day.’

  ‘I was looking past her.’

  ‘Give me the picture.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Give me the picture or I’m going to report you for being a pervert.’

  ‘I’m not a pervert.’

  ‘Yeah, well, the guards don’t know that and frankly neither do I.’

  ‘Fine,’ Terry had said, and he’d gone up to his room and brought down a collection. Eve at school. Eve on a bike. Eve lying out in her garden. Eve sitting by the harbour. In the one that was clearest she was leaning against a wall.

  Ben took the picture from him. ‘If I ever see you taking a picture of my girlfriend again I’ll throw a bowling ball at your head and call it an accident,’ he said.

  Terry nodded. ‘Fair enough,’ he said.

  Ben had given the picture to the guy at the door. As soon as Eve entered, he radioed the stage hand, who signalled to Mark on drums. He’d changed tempo, and by the time she was standing in the middle of the room, Ben was belting out the Glenn Medeiros classic to her as if she was the only girl in the room. He could still see her eyes lighting up, the smile that crossed her face, the way she’d hidden her face and then raised her hands in the air. She had loved it and it had been worth doing all the gear for the entire summer just for that moment.

  ‘What are you thinking about?’ she asked now, bringing him back to her.

  ‘You,’ he said.

  ‘Sing me the song you wrote for me,’ she said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Ah, come on!’

  ‘I’m not a singer any more.’

  She pretended to sulk.

  ‘I’ll say it.’

  ‘Oh, like those bad poems.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘She’s the one to avoid,

  strong, beautiful, a living android.

  She talks, I flinch, she makes me think.

  She chews me up and spits me out;

  she makes me scream, bleed and shout.

  This battle’s lost but I’ll return,

  when she is mine my war is won.’

  Eve sang the chorus loudly and badly while punching an arm in the air.

  ‘It’s a long way back,

  you know I’ll keep on coming,

  it’s a long way back,

  without you I’m nothing.’

  On cue, they burst into Glenn Medeiros’s ‘Nothing’s Gonna Change My Love For You’.

  ‘You’ll always be Glenn Medeiros to me,’ she said.

  He seemed sad. ‘I do love my wife.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘But you’re the one that got away.’

  ‘No,’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, nodding. ‘That last night together I told you I loved you. You burst out laughing in my face and it was like I was being knifed.’

  ‘I didn’t mean it. I was nervous and drunk and scared.’

  ‘Scared of what?’

  ‘I don’t know. You? Love? Leaving? I just wasn’t ready.’

  ‘Billy told me,’ he said.

  ‘I guessed,’ she said.

  ‘If I could do it again I’d know better.’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ she said sternly, and he knew she meant it.

  They’d never spoken about what had happened that night and they never would. They lay in silence. He held her hand. His eyes were full. She pursed her lips and he wiped away a stray tear. They stared at each other and engaged in a full conversation without saying one word.

  Around ten they were hungry and neither of them wanted take-out. Eve rang a local bistro and was promised a table if they made it there for last orders at half ten. They jumped into the shower, got dressed and decided not to take a car so that they could have a little wine with dinner. They walked along the dirt road that led from Eve’s apartment towards the village. It was quiet and dark. They were alone and wrapped up in one another. Every now and then they would stop in some little nook in the old stone wall that separated a farmer’s field from the narrow road. He’d pull her to him and they’d kiss, hold on tight and kiss again.

  ‘We’ll miss our reservation,’ she said.

  ‘I wish we could just stop here and now in this moment for ever,’ he said, stroking her cheek.

  ‘Time to go,’ she said, pulling him away from the wall. They began walking hand in hand down the road again. He was pensive and she could feel his thoughts slipping away from her and back to his wife. ‘Don’t leave me yet,’ she said to him.

  He smiled. ‘I’m right here,’ he said.

  The car came towards them and Eve could see its lights. Suddenly her legs were buckling and Ben’s hand was ripped from hers. She didn’t black out, but it was all so surreal, like a pleasant dream morphing into a nightmare. One second she was looking at Ben, and the next she was sitting in the passenger seat of a car with her two broken legs poking out through the smashed windscreen. Her shoulder felt strange, and when she looked at it, it seemed to have
disappeared. She couldn’t move her arm. She looked back from her shoulder to her twisted legs and the road ahead and then to the drunken man who was driving. She smelt the stale odour of whiskey before she saw him. She had to focus hard to do that. He was weaving all over the road and her broken body rocked. He was mumbling to himself as though he was alone. Where’s Ben? She tried to turn to look in the back seat to see if he was there but she couldn’t move her body. Where’s Ben? She tried to talk but she couldn’t seem to connect mind and mouth. She tried desperately to find her voice and focused hard to be heard.

  She heard herself whisper, ‘Where’s Ben?’

  He didn’t respond. Instead he turned on the radio. Eve’s heart was beating so loudly it seemed to reverberate in her eardrums. Still she felt no pain but, looking at her twisted legs resting on the bonnet of his car, she knew it was coming. She remembered what her yoga teacher had said about breathing and control, so she took a deep breath and then she let it go. In her head she said one word over and over. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Until it finally reached her mouth in a whisper: ‘Stop.’

  He looked away from the road he was driving all over and towards Eve. He was angry. ‘You wanted a lift, I gave you one,’ he said.

  She was confused. Did we ask for a lift? Once again she looked straight ahead just to confirm one more time that her broken limbs were hanging out of his missing windscreen.

  ‘Ben?’ she said.

  ‘You were in the middle of the road!’ he shouted at her, before wiping his nose on the sleeve of his woollen jumper. It was too dark and she couldn’t make out its colour.

  Lights flashed in front of them. The car swerved from left to right even though the driver seemed so focused on the road ahead. She wondered if he had noticed her broken limbs. On the steering wheel she saw the Nissan emblem. When they passed a streetlight or an oncoming car she could see that the bonnet was red, that he had a red beard and huge hands. On his left hand he wore a large gold Claddagh ring.

  ‘Stop, stop, stop, stop, STOP!’ she said, until the whisper became a shout.

  He steadfastly ignored her, continuing to mumble while turning the sound on the radio up. She realized her right arm was undamaged so she could use it. She grabbed his jumper and pulled at it.

  ‘Please!’ she screamed. ‘Stop!’ She couldn’t think of or bring herself to say anything else.

  ‘You wanted a lift!’ he shouted at her. ‘I’m giving you a lift. What more do you want?’

  ‘To stop,’ she said, in a voice and tone that sounded foreign to her.

  ‘Fine,’ he bellowed. ‘Bloody women, never know what you want!’

  He stopped the car in the middle of the road. He got out of the driver’s seat, arguing with himself. He passed his smashed windscreen and her twisted legs and made his way to the passenger door. He opened it with a jerk and she felt herself falling. Oh, God, he’s going to drag me. She steeled herself for the agony that was coming. He grabbed the arm that was missing its shoulder and pulled her. She screamed and begged, using only one word over and over. ‘Please!’

  He let the arm with the missing shoulder go, took her by the back of her neck and pulled again. She felt the glass cut deep into her burning, pounding legs.

  ‘Please.’

  Her legs were so long that he had to twist her to get them through the hole in the windscreen. She saw them bend and felt another snap.

  ‘Please.’

  He had a good grip on her now and pulled from under her arms. He pushed on the place under her shoulder-blade where her shoulder now rested and for a moment she thought – hoped – she would die.

  ‘Please.’

  She felt her legs thud to the ground. He dropped her torso so that she was lying facing up at the stars. It was a clear night, beautiful, the same night that she had been with Ben, kissing against a wall like teenagers.

  ‘Ben?’ she said.

  He ignored her. ‘You wanted a lift,’ he said, pointing at her.

  She lay motionless.

  ‘I gave you a lift,’ he said, pointing to his car. Again he rubbed his nose.

  She remained motionless.

  ‘And it’s the last lift you’ll get from me,’ he said, got into his car and disappeared, leaving Eve in the middle of the road.

  She realized quickly that if she stayed there she’d be killed. She also knew that three limbs were badly damaged but she had one good arm. You can do this, Eve. You’re strong, remember? It’s either pull yourself to the side of the road or become roadkill. Simple. No choice. Just do it. Eve began to pull herself slowly towards the ditch at the side of the road. Every move was torture, every minute seemed like an hour, and she cried all the way. When she was on the verge she lay still, looking at the stars and praying that any car which could have killed her minutes before would now find her. Where’s Ben?

  She heard a car pass but the driver didn’t see her, then another and another. She tried to wave with the one arm that still worked but she couldn’t. She was so tired. This is where I die. I hope you’re OK, Ben. I’m so sorry about that night. It was my biggest and stupidest mistake. I think I love you. I think I’ve always loved you. She closed her eyes and let go.

  Big lights shone down on Eve and she heard voices before she could open her eyes. When she did, it was hard to focus on the faces looking down at her. She could hear a conversation but it was muffled – as though she was on the phone and the signal was bad. One of the faces she was trying to focus on was talking to her and with every blink he was becoming clearer. The other one was sticking her with something, which felt good. Suddenly it was as though the signal cleared.

  ‘You’re OK now, love. We’ve got you. Can you hear me?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘Nice one,’ he said, smiling down at her. He turned away. ‘She’s back with us, Brendan.’

  Brendan said something that Eve couldn’t make out.

  ‘What’s your name, love?’ said the other.

  ‘Eve,’ she said.

  ‘Well, Eve, we’re going to move you now.’ And the memories of her being dragged out of the car and crawling across the road flashed into her mind. Every nerve seemed to scream in preparation for pain like she’d never known.

  ‘No,’ she begged.

  ‘It’s OK,’ he soothed her. ‘You’re in good hands. We won’t let anything else bad happen. Isn’t that right, Brendan?’

  Another face appeared. ‘That’s right, Tony.’

  Eve opened her eyes and focused on the white roof of the ambulance. She could feel that she was tied to a board. Although she couldn’t see the wires and tubes she knew they were there. There was a mask over her mouth and she felt the cold crisp oxygen move in through her nose and warm breath escaping through her lips.

  ‘There you are!’ Tony said, removing the mask for a second. ‘Back with us.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you believe in God?’ he asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, we were on the way to another accident when we saw you and that’s a miracle in my book,’ he said.

  ‘Luck,’ she said, and searched her mind because she knew she was forgetting something important. Something, something, something.

  He laughed. ‘Maybe,’ he said, and moved to put the oxygen mask back on her face.

  Another accident. She stopped him with her good arm.

  ‘My boyfriend,’ she said. Suddenly she was eighteen again and Ben was the boy she loved.

  ‘Who’s your boyfriend, love?’ she heard him say.

  ‘Glenn Medeiros,’ she said, although in her head she was saying the words Ben and Logan.

  He smiled at her. ‘We’ll do this pick-up and then we’ll find Glenn.’ And he placed the mask back over her mouth. She disappeared again.

  When the ambulance stopped and the doors opened, Eve could hear people talking loudly and hurriedly.

  ‘We did what we could.’

  ‘We did our best.’

  ‘Is he alive?’


  ‘We weren’t sure what to do.’

  Eve knew it was Ben and she waited for what seemed like an eternity. Come on, Ben. You can do it. You’re strong too. You can do it. You can do anything and you’ll be fine. They loaded him into the ambulance. She couldn’t see him.

  ‘Is he OK?’ she asked.

  ‘Just worry about yourself, love,’ Tony said.

  ‘Is he OK?’ she asked again.

  ‘Just relax,’ Tony said.

  ‘He’s mine!’ she shouted. ‘He’s with me, he’s mine!’

  ‘All right, OK, I understand, he’s OK, relax now.’

  And Eve disappeared for the final time on that journey.

  In A&E she was alert again under glaring lights and surrounded by people. They were all busy and she was trying to work out if she was in pain or dead from the neck down. Someone lifted her arm and she heard herself scream. Not dead from the neck down then. That’s positive. She was still secured to a body board and it was suffocating. Voices came and went.

  ‘Hang in there, Eve.’

  ‘Well done.’

  ‘We’re going to give you more pain meds – you’re doing great.’

  ‘OK, we’re going to move you to X-ray.’

  ‘Good girl.’

  ‘I’ll be in the other room and just outside. OK? Stay still. I know you will.’

  ‘Well done. Now I’m going to take you back. It’s OK, Eve, stop screaming, we’re going to get you more pain meds.’

  She saw the first detective at three a.m., according to the notes. He asked her if she could remember any details of the incident. He apologized immediately, and told her that if she didn’t remember anything it was perfectly fine, he could talk to her another time. She didn’t want him to go anywhere because she remembered so much and she wanted him to know it before she forgot an important detail or died.

  ‘He was driving a red Nissan. I know it was a Nissan because I saw the emblem was on the steering wheel. He was taller than me and I’m five foot eleven, so maybe he was six foot one or two. He had red hair and a beard and when I say red I mean ginger. He had allergies, his nose was constantly running. He had big rough workman’s hands. He was wearing a Claddagh ring and his breath stank of whiskey.’ She was pleased that she had regained the ability to speak in sentences.