The Space Between Us

by Anna McPartlin

  Scott was watching a movie. It was one o’clock but Lily was sober and ready for action. She couldn’t leave the house without Scott noticing – he’d hear the car in the driveway, plus technically she could do with his help. She went into the sitting room and reminded him that she had talked his father into allowing him to work with his grandfather from the following Monday.

  ‘I know. Thanks.’ He shrugged.

  ‘I need your help,’ she said.

  ‘With what?’

  ‘I need you to help me with a patient.’

  ‘OK?’

  ‘I’m asking you to help me for free, but if you do, I’m going to buy your silence with fifty euro,’ she said, holding up the note she’d just stolen from Declan’s trousers.

  ‘Buy my silence? Why?’

  ‘Because you can’t tell your dad.’

  ‘Is it legal?’

  ‘Of course it’s legal!’

  Scott looked at the money. ‘OK.’

  They made it to the hospital in fifteen minutes. Scott followed Lily up to Eve’s room. He waited in the corridor while she talked to another nurse for a few minutes. The nurse nodded and turned her back. He stood at the door while she woke Eve gently.

  ‘Eve.’

  She opened her eyes. ‘Lily.’

  ‘Hi,’ she said, smiling.

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘I’m sorry for being a bitch earlier.’

  ‘It’s allowed.’

  ‘How about we take a little trip?’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘To see Ben.’

  ‘I’d really like that.’

  Lily called Scott from the doorway. He pushed in the narrow trolley on to which he would help to slide Eve.

  ‘This is my son, Scott,’ she said.

  Eve smiled at him. ‘It’s nice to meet you, Scott,’ she said.

  ‘Wow, you’re in bits!’ he said, and Eve agreed that she was.

  ‘You should see the car,’ she said.

  Lily unhooked Eve from her drip. She and Scott untucked the sheet beneath her and used it to lift her from her bed to the trolley. ‘Lift on three,’ Lily commanded, and they did so. After a little negotiating they were on the way to the fourth floor. Lily had called ahead from the car, asking permission of the nurse in charge. She was waiting for them when they arrived in the corridor. ‘Keep it quick,’ she said.

  ‘We will.’

  Lily and Scott pushed Eve into Ben’s room and positioned her by his side. The area was small and they could barely fit the narrow trolley beside his bed. When Lily squeezed her hand it was shaking. ‘We’ll be outside,’ she said, and left her alone with him.

  She couldn’t touch him because they could only get her into the room with Ben to her left. She tried to reach with her right hand but she couldn’t. He had colour in his cheeks and his chest moved up and down mechanically. She watched it and when she closed her eyes she could feel her head resting against it.

  ‘I met Fiona,’ she said. ‘She seems lovely, which makes you a total dick for cheating on her, but you always said she was lovely, which makes me a total dick for being the one you cheated with.’ She waited as though by some miracle he’d answer. ‘She doesn’t know. She’ll never know. She’s yours and you’re hers, and I’m just a …’ Tears rolled down her battered face. ‘I’m just a lonely woman who wanted …’ She stopped and placed one finger on her lips, as though to silence herself while she thought of the right thing to say. ‘I’m just someone who loved you a long time ago.’ The pain in her heart sharpened as though an invisible knife was twisting inside her. It threatened to take her breath away. ‘I’m going to forget the past year, if you don’t mind. I’m going to remember you back when you were mine. It was really such a short time but I want you to know it meant so much. You were my first real love but you know that. What you don’t know is that you were my only real love, and if I had only known what I know now, I would have done everything differently that night, that stupid, stupid, stupid night. And when I dream of you I’m going to dream that we’re back at Paul’s party and you take me to the bottom of his garden, to the bench beside the pond with his mother’s dead fish in it, and we’ll kiss and hold each other, and when you tell me that you love me and that you want to come to London with me, I’ll say I love you back, and we’ll make plans to be together and it will be perfect. In my dreams I’ll be your wife, and we’ll never be by that wall on that night. There won’t be a car coming and a drunk behind the wheel. There will be you and me and children and grandchildren and all the mushy stuff you said you wanted that night when you were only nineteen.’ Eve dried her eyes with her wrap. ‘I’m sorry I was such a fool.’

  She stayed silent after that, allowing her tears to flow like a river, emptying the contents of her broken heart. She had never cried for anything or anyone the way she cried that night, and she wasn’t sure if it was the fact that she’d almost lost her own life, or guilt, or love, or the morphine, but when they came to take her back to her ward she had never felt so scared, so sad or so numb. She couldn’t touch him, she couldn’t look back, all she could do was cling to her old friend’s hand and sob. It should have been me. It should have been me. It should have been me.

  ‘Oh, Lily, please take me back and place his hand in mine just for a minute!’

  Once Eve was back in bed, Scott stood by the door and watched his mother placate her. She stroked her hair and soothed her with whispered words as she had done with him and his sister so many times over the years. He couldn’t hear what was said but the woman quietened. Before Lily left her, Eve clung to her hand. Lily bent down and kissed her forehead, then said something that seemed to make her relax. Lily covered her up to her neck and tucked her in. She turned off her light and left her staring at the ceiling, silent and calm.

  In the car on the way home Scott asked his mother what she’d said.

  ‘Oh, nothing,’ she said.

  ‘Seriously, tell me.’

  ‘I said I’d make it better,’ she said.

  Scott laughed. ‘You’ll make it better? The guy is a fucking organ donor!’

  ‘Don’t say “fucking”. It really is vulgar,’ she said, thinking of what she’d said to Clooney and regretting it.

  ‘Sorry, fudging – but come on!’

  ‘Remember when you were ten and your best friend in the whole world was moving to Kerry and you cried and cried and cried?’

  ‘What was his name again?’

  ‘Steven Maher.’

  ‘Steven Maher! God, I must Facebook him.’

  ‘Anyway, you were a lost soul and nothing either your dad or I could promise seemed to make it better. A new football didn’t work, a trip to the zoo didn’t work, a –’

  ‘OK, Mum, I get it.’

  ‘Well, it was only when he left and I held you in my arms and said I’d make it better that you quietened down.’

  ‘Maybe I was just tired of crying.’

  ‘Maybe, or maybe you knew that, no matter what it took, I would do everything in my power to make it better.’

  ‘You’re a mental case, Mum.’

  ‘Cheers, son.’

  Lily and Scott sat quietly in the car for the rest of the journey home. She was lost in times gone by and he was contemplating why the broken woman had to be kept secret from his dad. When Lily parked the car and they walked up to their front door, he turned to her.

  ‘I’m sorry for your friend,’ he said.

  ‘She’s just a patient,’ Lily tried to lie.

  ‘She’s the girl from the photos you keep in the shoebox in your wardrobe,’ he said, and handed her back the fifty-euro note. ‘I don’t know why you’re lying or being weird but I promise I won’t say a word.’

  Lily should have been annoyed with her son for invading her privacy but she was too alarmed to be. ‘You didn’t read the letters, did you, Scott?’ she said, trying hard to hide her fear.

  ‘No. A girl from the last century bleating on about rubbish? I read about three lines
and lost the will to live.’

  If he noticed her sigh of relief, he didn’t say anything.

  She shoved the fifty euro into his shirt pocket. ‘Take it. It’s your father’s, and if you ever rummage through my stuff again, I’ll tell your next girlfriend that you used to take your winkie out in the supermarket and ask old ladies if they thought you were a big boy.’

  ‘That never happened,’ he said, horrified.

  ‘Well, she won’t know that so don’t you dare use this against me in future negotiations,’ she said.

  ‘Mum, seriously, I don’t have to negotiate any more. I’m nineteen.’

  ‘Trust me, son, that’s when the negotiation starts.’

  Lily watched her son climb the stairs before she headed outside into the garden. A white half-moon hung in the black sky. She walked to the swing-set that she insisted they buy for Daisy when she was five. It was a large metal structure with two swings, featuring one red seat and one purple. It had been rooted in foundations so that it could support an adult’s weight. Lily and Daisy had spent countless summer days swinging together, but Daisy and her friends had abandoned it now. Lily still sat on the purple seat when she felt sad or playful or contemplative or was simply in search of solitude. Often when she couldn’t sleep and it wasn’t too cold she’d put on a coat over her nightdress, venture out and swing for a while, thinking about her dreams.

  One morning when she woke up to snow she wrapped up warm and put her wellies on. She trudged to the back of the garden, cleared the seat and swung as high as she could. In her head she replayed the scene of her and Eve battling, swinging faster and faster and higher and higher until their feet were touching the sky.

  ‘The one who swings highest gets a wish!’ Eve said.

  And Lily couldn’t decide on a wish but it didn’t matter because Eve’s long legs assured her win.

  ‘I love you, Eve Hayes.’

  ‘I love you, Lily Brennan.’

  Now she thought about the goodbye scene she had witnessed. She thought about Eve and how sad and sorry she had been. She thought about Ben. He’d never again see a red sky, never again dip his feet into a fast-flowing river or feel the touch of a loved one. He’d never smile or laugh or make a joke. He’d never shout or scream in joy or pain. He’d never cry or moan. No more pain or loss for Ben Logan because even as Eve had poured out her heart to him he was long gone.

  Lily looked up into the night sky as she swung, attempting to touch the moon with the tips of her toes.

  Where are you now, Ben? Are you reaching for the light or running from the darkness? Is Danny right? Are you simply gone or are the possibilities for you endless? Maybe you’ve moved on to another dimension or a parallel universe. Maybe you’ve shed your skin and you’re about to receive a commendation for a completed mission. If you knew you were set to leave this earth so soon, would you have done it all differently?

  Lily thought about the last question for a long time. If I knew I was set to leave this earth soon, would I do it all differently? The liar in Lily said, no, she wouldn’t. She loved her children, her husband and her life … but recent events had awakened in her the young girl who had been silenced a long time ago. She had been the girl with the world at her feet and the one who had thrown it all away out of guilt, fear and the overwhelming need to be everything to everyone. That girl was whispering in Lily’s ear, calling into question every choice she’d made and the kind of life she led. Are you a wife or a glorified slave? Are you an equal or a subordinate? Are you loved as a woman or as a possession? Are you free? Are you happy? Are you all you can be? Do you love or pity your husband? Do you fear him? Why do you never say no? Is this it? For better or worse till death do you part? Are you lonely? Do you miss your friend? Do you understand what happened that night all those years ago? If you knew you were set to leave this earth soon, would you do it all differently?

  On the night before Ben Logan’s family turned off his ventilator and his organs were harvested so that others could live, Lily Donovan sat on a swing in her garden and admitted to herself that, aside from her children, she regretted every decision she’d made. I hate my life.

  7. And death shall have no dominion

  Sunday, 22 July 1990

  Lily, Lily, Lily,

  We all know what happens when you drink too much. You get maudlin and that’s all that’s wrong with you. Stop over-thinking everything, and I know that’s rich coming from me but you’re just driving yourself crazy for no reason. You are the most intelligent person I know. You will sail through medical school. Six years might seem like a long time but it will fly by. When I close my eyes I can still see us playing on the swing-set and it feels like yesterday. As for your mother, we both know she is a mental case. She always has been and she always will be so anything she says has got to be taken with a pinch of salt, although having said that no one, not even a mental case, is wrong 100% of the time. I think she is right about not attaching yourself to one boy at your age. I’M SORRY, DON’T KILL ME. If you’re really concerned about money why not go to Trinity and live at home? You could see Declan at weekends and holidays. Would that really be the end of the world?

  OK, so my big news is that Ben and I have DONE IT and it was AMAZING. Danny was on a big golf day with his pals so I knew we wouldn’t see him till the middle of the night and Clooney was in town with friends. I brought Ben into the house and he spent ages looking around. He’s really nosy. He looked at all of the photos and took ages over them asking questions, the first being why I’m such a moody cow in pictures and how come you were in so many. He wanted to know about my mother and he asked loads of questions like what was our last conversation and did I remember the way she laughed or smelt, and it was weird because I’ve never really had that conversation before. I didn’t want to have it because it’s so depressing and I didn’t want the vibe to be depressing, I wanted it to be sexy but he wouldn’t let it go. He kept asking so I told him about our last day out together as a family – do you remember it? You were there too. We were six and Clooney was eight and we went to some park reserve. I can’t remember the name of it. Can you? There was a lake and barbecues and we played in the water and Clooney and Dad fished and Mum lay out in the sun. The car boot was open and the radio was on. When she was cooking she was singing along to the songs and I remember how beautiful she looked and that I stood staring at her for such a long time, wishing I could be just like her. I haven’t thought about that day in years and then suddenly it was all so clear in my head – you and me paddling and sitting in the shallow water. You had a swimsuit with a duck on it and mine had big pink polka dots. I dared you to lie straight back and let a wave wash over you and you did it and nearly coughed a lung up, and then you made me do it too for revenge but the wave didn’t cover my face like it did yours and you called me fathead and we both thought it was really funny and she warned us to be careful. Do you remember? You and Clooney chased each other around the picnic area and made Danny run with me on his shoulders. And then she collapsed just by the car. One minute she was walking and then she disappeared and someone passing noticed her and called to my dad. He had her in his arms in no time and he rocked her back and forth like she was a baby. Clooney started to cry. When you saw him cry you cried. I don’t think I did. I just stood there needing a wee but afraid to move. That was the beginning of the end for her, that day in that place I can’t remember. I told Ben about the memory and suddenly I was crying. ME CRYING???? He said that it’s good to cry every now and then, and maybe if I did I wouldn’t be so gloomy in photos. He laughed at his little joke and then he dragged me upstairs to my room. He spent ages looking around there. I had to stand in front of my knicker drawer in case he tried to open it but he didn’t. He sat at my desk and straight away he noticed that I’d carved BGML into it. He said, ‘I’m already inscribed on your desk,’ and I tried to laugh it off saying he was not. He said, ‘Well, what does BGML stand for?’ and I was trying to think so I delayed answering by saying, ‘W
hat do you think it stands for?’ He smiled and said, ‘Ben Glenn Medeiros Logan.’ He’s very quick – Gar could have been looking at that for years and not got it. I said, ‘No, it stands for Don’t Go Morning Light.’ MORONIC I KNOW. He fell around the place laughing and kept repeating Don’t Go Morning Light over and over and I went so red in the face I had to give up and say, ‘Fine, it’s you, don’t let that head of yours get any bigger or it will topple off that little body.’

  Then he lay down on my bed and he stared at me. I didn’t know where to put myself so I decided just to go for it and lie down beside him, as in, you’re not going to intimidate me, Ben Glenn Medeiros Logan. He put his arm around me and instead of kissing me he asked me to tell him another story. I didn’t want to. I still wasn’t the better of the first one. I asked him to tell me something, and he said he’d been expelled from boarding school for smoking and getting drunk when he was fourteen! He said there were four of them who used to sneak booze into the school in shampoo bottles and they’d pay the groundskeeper to buy them cigarettes. They had a key for one of the sheds and they’d get up out of bed around one a.m. and go to the shed and drink and smoke till around four. They got caught – they were being watched because they all kept falling asleep in class. He said his parents went insane and he was brought home and it was really bad for a while but then they’d just lost his sister to cancer and his mother was in an awful way anyway. He said he thinks about that time often because his mother spent most days crying, his dad was a zombie and he was so unhappy he felt sick. He said that he made a promise to himself he’d never ever feel that badly again. I told him that was a stupid thing to say, that no one can make promises like that. He laughed at me and said I was right but it would have been nice if I could have agreed to make him feel better. I said I didn’t realize that was a requirement. He kissed me FINALLY and I’ve told you before he’s way better than Gar but I mean by hundreds and thousands of miles. I took off his shirt and he took off mine and he has a really good body. Then he had my bra off and our tops were skin on skin and his chest was so warm and I could feel his heart beating and when I unbuttoned his trousers I could feel he was about to burst through them anyway, and then STUPID ANNOYING Clooney arrives home shouting out my name. I couldn’t believe it. Ben didn’t freak out like Gar had. He asked me if Clooney normally barged into my room and I said no so he just lay there smiling and he pressed his finger to my lips, and when I didn’t answer Clooney the third time he called, he stopped calling and disappeared somewhere. And then Ben was inside me. JUST LIKE THAT. One minute he’s lying beside me then he’s on top and then INSIDE!!!!! No crowbar necessary. It was unbelievable and the first time hurt and there was some blood but not enough to freak me out. Before we got going Ben made me put a towel on the bed, which was good thinking, although I was in such a rush to get going I picked up Clooney’s football towel, it’s one of his favourites. I washed it immediately but I still feel bad about it. Anyway, we did it again another two times and we’ve done it about ten times since then and every time it gets better and better. I’m blushing just thinking about it. I’m totally in love with him and I couldn’t be happier I waited to be with someone like him. That first time we lay together for ages and although I did feel sticky and was longing for a shower, when we talked and he held me in his arms I thought to myself, this is what it should be like. When I couldn’t wait any longer he talked me into joining him in the shower. You should have seen us scurry along the landing like two mice trying to avoid Clooney. We got into the bathroom and locked it and got into the shower and washed one another which was again AMAZING. We were all soapy and it was all lovely and of course Clooney tried to open the door and suddenly he’s calling my name and Ben is grinning and I’m having a heart attack so I just try to put him off by calling out that I’m sick. He wondered why I didn’t answer him when he came in, and I told him I didn’t hear him and to go away I wasn’t well. And then he asks me if I have the shits because Terry the Tourist had the shits and was hospitalized with dehydration the previous day. Ben was trying not to laugh. I said that I had pains and asked him to go away. Finally he left us alone. Couldn’t believe I’d got away with it. Now I know how Clooney feels when he’s entertaining. NOT GOOD. Anyway, the next day Ben called and I introduced Clooney to Ben and Clooney asked if we wanted coffee. I said no but Ben said, ‘Yeah, that would be great!’ PISSED OFF. So we then spent the next hour listening to Clooney go on and on about Bushy Head and how she’s ruining his life. Ben was really interested and asked loads of questions, and I just wanted to get up the stairs. Then Clooney suggested that we watch a film together and Ben agreed so we ended up watching The Terminator with my stupid brother. Later when I walked Ben out he said we’d have plenty of time and we kissed at the door and I just kept thinking, no, we don’t have plenty of time, we have one summer together. I’m going to London and as much as we want it to work out I can’t afford to come home until Christmas, which means we would have been together for less time than we’d been apart. So it didn’t make sense to me wasting time watching the stupid Terminator. We have to take every moment we have together and make the most of it. I was going to say it to him but I didn’t because I didn’t want to stop kissing and I can’t just make a point with Ben and move on – he always has to discuss it until I’m sorry I brought it up in the first place. So Clooney left yesterday and I’m thrilled because when Dad’s at work Ben and me have the place to ourselves and Dad’s working on a big project so he’s going to be out a lot. It’s bliss. Ben wanted me to go to his house the other day but his mother would be there so I said we’d be better going to mine. He asked me if I didn’t want to meet his mother and I said no not really and that seemed to hurt him, which I don’t understand. I told him that mothers don’t really like me and that he’d probably be better off keeping me to himself. He laughed at that but I’m serious. Your mother hates me, Gar’s mother thinks I’m rude and Declan’s mother ignores me. Then again she’s so stuck up she ignores everyone.