The Space Between Us

by Anna McPartlin

  Bushy Head was hanging around outside the house last night. I wanted to go out to her but Ben said he’d do it. He went outside and they sat on the wall and they were there for ages and I was looking out the window wondering what the hell they were talking about and then she just walked off. He came back in and told me that he’d explained to her that she was worth more than standing by a pole looking into the house of some guy who didn’t care about her. I told him he should give up marketing and become a psychiatrist. He said he reads those books all the time. He got into them after his sister died and his mother was so depressed that they had her on suicide watch for a while. I didn’t know that – he hadn’t mentioned it before. It’s very sad, and now I feel bad about not meeting her. Maybe I’ll suggest going over soon. Anyway, I’m not sure his little talk worked because I saw Bushy Head again in the village today and I don’t think she has any good reason to be there so we’ll see.

  How’s Colm? Do you remember any more from that night?

  Love you

  Eve

  PS Gar split up with his Bray girl. Don’t know why but I’m meeting him and the lads on Tuesday night so I’ll fill you in next Sunday. Paul was seen in town with a girl who looked like a supermodel and it turns out she is a model! Don’t know any more than that – it was Declan who told me someone saw them and Paul is being really coy about it. SICKENING.

  PPS Declan’s fine. I’m being much nicer to him, you’ll be happy to hear. He really misses you and he’s doing a lot of overtime at his dad’s garage to try to get money for college. I called down there the other night to ask him to Ben’s next gig. I think I interrupted a fight with his dad but I might be wrong because his dad was really nice to me and told me I could stay for a coffee if I wanted to. I said no but then Declan insisted. He must really miss you if he wanted me to hang around!!!! So I did and it was weird. You know the way we normally only really ever slag one another off? Well, instead of doing that we actually had a real conversation. We talked about the thirty-two-year-old woman who jumped off the cliff on Tuesday because her boyfriend left her and it was deep. I finally get what you see in him. (Ha-ha at last.)

  Ben Logan’s funeral was a huge affair. Family, new friends, old friends, acquaintances, neighbours, work colleagues, staff, suppliers and even some creditors and competitors turned up. The church was packed to the rafters, forcing many to stand outside. It was a bright hot July day and between the hymns, speeches and the sermon, birds could be heard twittering loudly from the trees that lined the church grounds. Not one person had a bad word to say about him. Every second story that was told brought peals of laughter or tears of joy and desperate sadness. Ben Logan had been a blessing to all who knew him. He had been kind, considerate, caring, friendly and funny. He was a good and fair boss, a friendly neighbour, the kind of friend who stays in your life for ever even if you haven’t seen him in a long while. The music was poignant, and when a young girl by the name of Rosy Carey sang Eric Clapton’s ‘Tears in Heaven’, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house. Ben’s dad spoke about the son he had cherished and lost, focusing on how Ben after an initial flirtation with being a bad boy had turned into the boy his mummy could lean on after his sister had died tragically, aged ten. He knew in his heart that she’d be waiting on the other side to greet him and, quoting from the song, he was confident she’d know his name when she saw him in Heaven. He spoke about Ben’s determination, his love of music and travel. He spoke about his beautiful wife Fiona and the happiness she had brought into his life. He talked about how generous Ben was, even managing to joke about Ben’s organ donations.

  ‘There will be five lucky recipients of Ben’s organs … well, four – let’s face it, his liver’s a dud.’

  The congregation laughed, thankful for the momentary pause in heartbreak.

  At the graveyard a friend of the family played and sang Blink 182’s ‘I Miss You’ as they put what remained of Ben into the ground.

  Lily had squeezed into the back of the church, and in the graveyard she stood slightly apart from the crowd. She had no real business there. She had never spoken to Ben Logan when he was alive; he was just the boy from the bowling alley who couldn’t seem to take his eyes off Eve. That relationship had begun and ended one summer when she was down the country so the only memories she’d formed of him were through the descriptions in Eve’s letters. Those letters had been Lily’s long-time lifeline with her old friend; she had kept every one in the shoebox her son had stuck his nose into, along with some pictures of them together when they were young and inseparable.

  Fiona spotted her and thanked her for coming. She asked how Eve was and Lily told her that it would be a long road but she’d be fine. Fiona seemed happy to hear it. She had accepted Eve’s story and Lily was happy now to play her part in the lie. Fiona asked Lily if she would like to join them in the hotel but Lily made her excuses and left. She would later report to Eve that he had been a very popular, good man who was loved and cherished and would be missed every day thereafter.

  Eve knew that, despite the depth of her feeling for Ben, their time together should have remained in the past. Although her feelings for him were real, their relationship was not. She realized in the first few days when she was lying in hospital that she hadn’t really known him. If she had gone to that funeral she would have been as much of a stranger to him as Lily was.

  ‘Even the best people make mistakes,’ Eve said, referring to Ben.

  ‘Yes, they do,’ Lily agreed.

  ‘I was just so tired and lonely.’

  ‘You don’t have to be lonely any more,’ Lily said.

  In that moment Eve saw that Lily was her friend again. She waited until Lily had left the room, then raised her blanket to cry in peace.

  ‘Is she crying again, Anne?’

  ‘She is, Beth.’

  ‘Jesus, I’ve never met one like her!’

  ‘Just leave her be, chicken. There by the grace of God go I.’

  Ben’s old band mates had stayed on for the afters. Billy had travelled from America to be there. Tom, Ben’s cousin, had travelled from France. Finbarr and Mark lived close by and they had remained close all those years. Theirs was a tragic and long-overdue reunion. They joined the rest of the mourners in a hotel in South Dublin where they drank and sang and told stories about a boy and man they knew, loved and would miss.

  Fiona was on medication, as was Ben’s mother, prescribed by the same woman, Ben’s aunt Celia. She was a GP and a great believer in medicating during times of stress. ‘After all, stress is the number-one killer after road accidents,’ she said. Ben’s dad looked at his sister as though she was insane. She didn’t seem to notice that she’d said anything inappropriate, just crossed her arms over her substantial chest and pursed her lips. Lots of people were inappropriate in their attempts to comfort the mourners, who had sat for hours on end in the church shaking hands with a seemingly endless line of people who squeezed their swollen hands a little too hard in an effort to convey that they’d meant what they’d said.

  ‘At least he didn’t suffer,’ Lorna O’Loughlin said. ‘If he had suffered it would have been a desperate situation altogether.’

  If Fiona hadn’t been so altered by the drug, she might have asked how much more ‘desperate’ Lorna thought the situation could get. Her husband, who hadn’t even turned forty, had been hit by a drunk driver – he was dead, his organs were gone and he was about to be buried in a fucking hole in the ground. But she didn’t say any of that. Instead she nodded, and Lorna was delighted to have helped with her words of wisdom.

  ‘Thank God he didn’t see it coming,’ Michael Hannon said to Ben’s mother. What the hell does that mean? She hoped he’d move on quickly.

  ‘It would have been worse if it was cancer,’ a random person said. Huh.

  ‘At least he died when he was still living,’ another one said, winking as she squeezed Ben’s dad’s hand. What in Christ’s name?

  At the reception it was clear that Fi
ona hadn’t eaten or slept properly in over a week and was fading. Ben’s mother had just buried her second child and everyone who knew her was acutely aware that it would be a long time before she came back from losing him, if ever. She sat there quietly holding Fiona’s hand. She didn’t speak or drink tea or have a sandwich or a piece of cake. She just picked a spot on the wall and stared at it until she could go home or Celia gave her another little white pill. Ben had been his mother’s rock. As his father had said in the church, Ben was the one she had leaned on. He had been her friend and confidant. There wasn’t a week gone by when he hadn’t visited his parents and, although he got on famously with his father, his mother was one of the true loves of Ben’s life. She knew that, his wife knew it, and so did his friends and family. It was a running joke.

  ‘Fiona, do you take Ben and his ma to be your lawful wedded husband?’

  It was one of the things that had made Ben so likeable. For those who weren’t quite as deeply in despair, Ben’s funeral was the perfect celebration of his life. The drink flowed and the musicians played and laughter followed tears followed laughter.

  All the while Billy sat watching the crowd lament his old friend and band mate. Billy had left Ireland for America when he’d won a J1 visa in some sort of lotto. His departure had put the last nail in the coffin of a band that had been struggling for a long time. Initially his decision had been met with resentment but over the years his band mates had all come round. He had set up his own electrician business, and, while he might not have been Donald Trump, he employed thirty guys, lived in a nice house and could support his four kids comfortably. He had been the last band member Ben had reconnected with, again via Facebook. They had only been in touch for two years but during that time they had shared with each other the things that they didn’t share with anyone else. Maybe this was because they had always had a special connection – it had made Billy’s abandonment all the more terrible in those early days – or maybe it was because they weren’t next door to each other so it was easier for Ben to tell Billy that his business was going under and that he was terrified he was falling in love with the girl who had broken his heart when he was nineteen. Billy had heard the extraordinary story of the accident and who had been involved. When it was relayed to him that Ben’s dealings with Eve were purely professional, he remained silent. Ben had told him in a recent email that Eve had returned to Ireland but that they had agreed not to see one another. He wanted his marriage to work and was beating himself up about the affair the previous year. He had questioned everything about himself, his wife and life. Why did I open this can of worms? Why did I think we could just be friends? How can I do this to Fiona? How can I do it to myself ?

  Billy had been there in the aftermath of Eve all those years ago. He had been the friend to pick up the pieces. Ben had mourned Eve as though she had died. She had been so cruel and careless with his heart that she had all but destroyed him. If Billy’s decision to move to America had been the final nail in the band’s coffin, Ben’s broken heart had been the first. Billy couldn’t bring himself to dislike Eve, despite what she had done to his friend, because he had kept her secret all those years. It was only when he’d unburdened himself and told Ben about the day that followed their break-up that Ben, having punched him in the face, had decided to make contact with Eve again.

  ‘OK, I deserved that,’ Billy had said. ‘Just don’t do anything stupid.’

  The first time Ben had had sex with Eve, and much later that evening when he was working at budgets on his computer, he saw that Billy was online and he messaged him.

  Did a bad thing with Eve

  Not going to pretend to be surprised

  I love my wife

  Apparently you love your dick more

  When did you become Captain Judgement?

  After I made the same mistake you did and lost my first wife, my first house and my dog

  When Eve had returned to Ireland and made contact with Ben he had nearly suffered heart failure and, even though she assured him that she did not expect them to take up from where they left off, he had known deep down that it was inevitable. He had contacted Billy online.

  She’s back

  If you want your marriage to work stay away

  Ben assured him he would but over the next while he did admit that they were in contact.

  She’s just giving me business advice I swear

  I’ll buy that when I sustain a head injury

  I’m not saying I don’t want her. I haven’t met up because I don’t want to put temptation my way. All our dealings are via email

  Keep it that way

  That was the last session of instant messaging between the two men. Even as Billy had signed off with a warning, he had known that Ben wouldn’t be able to help himself around Eve and it was just a matter of time before he’d see her. He had considered a number of scenarios that would bring about the end of Ben’s affair and/or marriage but not one had come close to death.

  The bar in the hotel was stuffed with mourners. Fiona, Ben’s mother, father and brother were sitting in a corner. The two women were silent, while the men were talking to the stream of people still approaching to shake their hands. The old band members sat together in a corner reminiscing about the good old days when they’d dreamed of becoming rock stars. It was well into the night before one of them brought up the fact that Ben had been with Eve on the night he died.

  ‘Of all the people to be with on that night,’ Finbarr said.

  Billy was very confident that he was the only one in the room whom Ben had confided in so he said nothing.

  ‘Eve Hayes,’ Tom said. ‘She was a real beauty back in the day.’

  ‘Seriously banged up now,’ Mark said. ‘Fiona said she was in an awful way.’

  ‘Still can’t believe she was going to step in and save the business,’ Tom said. ‘Still, Fiona saw the business plan Eve had sent on email and it was really impressive.’