The Space Between Us

by Anna McPartlin

  ‘Fine, thanks,’ she said, and that was the end of that.

  When she got up to leave, Clooney stood up with her.

  When she left he waited a moment or two before he made his excuses, leaving Paul and Eve to fight over the remote control, and Gina and Gar to glower at one another. He caught up with Lily in the corridor. They walked to the lift together. ‘Going down,’ he said, pushing the button.

  ‘You wish!’ she joked, and he laughed.

  They walked to the car park together and, just as they were about to part, he asked her if she wouldn’t mind getting something to eat with him. Clooney knew that Declan was away, that Daisy and her friend were fed, that Scott was working late in his grandfather’s garage and that she was going home to heated-up leftovers followed by washing and ironing.

  ‘I’m sick of eating on my own,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said.

  ‘Two old friends grabbing a bite to eat … please,’ he said, and pouted. ‘I’m so lonely.’

  Lily had always been a sucker for a sad story. ‘OK. I’m giving you an hour.’

  ‘Is that an hour from now or from the time I order?’

  She thought about it for a minute, then concluded that she’d take note of the time and decide later, depending on whether or not he was boring.

  ‘I’m never boring,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll be the judge of that,’ she said, and he followed her to her car like a playful puppy.

  Clooney was bored and he hated being bored. Paul was busy planning a wedding and moving his fiancée to Ireland. Gar wasn’t available to anyone, and of the friends Clooney had once had in Ireland none remained. V Kill P lived in London, his school mates had all moved abroad and his college friends lived around the country. He’d never stayed in Ireland longer than a week or two before his dad was diagnosed with cancer so he had never bothered staying in touch. When he’d returned last time, he was busy with his dad, busy with Eve, and with Eve came Gar, Gina and Paul. Now he was busy doing nothing most of the time but sitting on his sister’s balcony. Clooney was more of an action guy than a profound thinker. He wasn’t a reader. He had broken his ties with Stephanie and had finished his contract in Afghanistan. He wasn’t going back there and wasn’t sure where he would go next. Time would tell, and until then he would sit alone in an empty, modern, cold, unfamiliar apartment waiting for the appropriate times to visit his bored, moody, frustrated sister. Tick tock tick tock tick tock tick tock.

  Lily pulled up outside a restaurant that she was unfamiliar with. It was on a main road and there seemed to be a lot of parking. They got out and she followed him inside. The place was quaint, old-style Italian, with gingham tablecloths, candles in red glassware and wood counters. The smell of tomato sauce and pizza hit them, and for the first time in a few days, Lily felt hungry. Since that night on the swing she had been deprived of sleep and off her food. Her mind was constantly racing. She’d been questioning everything about herself and her life, and things she hadn’t noticed for years had started to become huge problems. Like earlier in the week at breakfast time.

  ‘Mum, I’m thinking I’ll have a spinach omelette. Dad, I’m working on a vintage BMW today,’ Scott said.

  ‘Year?’ Declan said.

  ‘It’s an early V8.’

  ‘Mum, I’m in the mood for pancakes but only if we have the proper syrup,’ Daisy said.

  ‘A 501?’ Declan said to Scott, then glanced at his wife. ‘Make mine a grill, easy on the pig, though. I have a morning meeting and I don’t want to have bacon breath.’

  ‘A 502,’ Scott replied.

  ‘Nice,’ Declan said. ‘I’ll bet it’s belonging to one of the Brownes. They made a ton of money exporting butter in the fifties through to the seventies. The father was a huge vintage-car enthusiast. I’m sure his sons have followed suit. I worked on some of those beauties myself back in the day. Oh, and, Lily, can you make sure the egg doesn’t break? It was broken yesterday.’

  No ‘please’. No ‘thank-you’. When the hell did I become a bloody dogsbody?

  ‘I’m making a grill,’ she’d said. ‘You are all either in or out.’

  Her family stopped what they were doing or saying around the table and looked up at her.

  ‘You’re joking. Right?’ Scott said.

  ‘Seriously not funny,’ Daisy said.

  ‘What’s this?’ Declan said.

  ‘I’m not a chef. This is not a restaurant. Do you want a grill or not?’

  The two kids looked at one another and then at their father. He mumbled something to them about her hormones, belittling her, as he so often did, and they laughed together.

  For a long time Lily would have either let it go or made a joke, but that morning she had thrown the pan that was in her hand across the kitchen. It hit the wall and gouged out a piece of plaster. Declan and the kids were stunned.

  ‘Kitchen’s closed,’ she said, and walked out of the room.

  When her week’s nursing was over and her week off had begun, she had faced a dilemma. She wanted to visit Eve, and see Clooney, Gar, Gina and even Paul – she hadn’t clicked with him as well as Eve had in the past. She’d always thought he was too quiet, aloof, and she’d sometimes found him cold, but it was nice to be close to the people she’d grown up with and had been apart from for so many years. She couldn’t tell Declan, not just because of his hatred of Eve but because he didn’t like Lily to have friends of her own. He didn’t like her to stray off her daily routine. He had to know where she was at all times. Every day was the same if slightly different: there was a day planner on the fridge that was to be adhered to and it left little room for personal time. Lily hadn’t really noticed that her life had been eaten up with responsibility and, although it had bugged her that her mobile phone was used as a tagging device by her husband, she had never felt truly trapped before. If she left it to ring more than five times, he questioned her.

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘In the supermarket.’

  ‘Why did it take you so long to answer?’

  ‘For God’s sake, Declan, I had to fish the phone out of my pocket.’

  ‘Who are you with?’

  ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Would you like a word?’

  ‘Don’t get smart. You know I worry.’

  Every time Declan questioned or harassed her about where she was or where she was going, what she was doing or who she was with, he told her it was because he worried. For too long she’d accepted his harassment as a symbol of his love, albeit an annoying one. But something was changing in Lily. For the first time in years, her eyes were open and she was looking at her life through a different lens, one that was not so rosy. If I knew I was set to leave this earth soon, would I do it all differently? Over the years she had helped Declan build her prison. She had become a wife and mother in the same year. When all her peers had been out drinking, carousing and expanding their minds with drugs or books she was breast-feeding, sleep-deprived, the woman behind the man who would some day become a heart surgeon.

  In her determination to excel in everything she did and to fulfil Declan’s dream of marrying a dedicated housewife, she became the best housewife she could be and that took time. Lily Donovan made Nigella Lawson look like a slacker. From early on she cooked different meals for her husband and kids. It had made sense when Scott was a baby and a fussy eater and Declan was a resident, working every hour God sent. Then Daisy had come along: she was another fussy eater who happened to have polar opposite tastes to her brother. At that stage it had been easier to feed the kids different food but at the same time. So at five every evening Lily’s children had had their meal. She had cleared away their plates and reset the table so that when Declan called or texted to tell her he was leaving the hospital she could prepare a fresh meal for him. Declan liked two courses on weekdays and three at weekends. For a long time, when the kids were small and there was more housework, Lily and Declan couldn’t afford a cleaner. When they could afford
one Declan offered to pay, but Lily had a perfect routine, everything was in its place, her home was hers to control, and she didn’t like the idea of having someone pick up after her family. She’d heard terrible stories from the neighbours about cleaners who had stolen from them or, worse, commented on a child’s dirty underpants left on the floor. She didn’t like the notion of anyone commenting on her children’s underwear so, between cooking breakfasts, packing lunches and presiding over two sittings for dinner, she’d clean the house and do the garden, according to the requirements of each season. She’d run her kids to and from school, rugby, ballet, football, piano, friends’ houses, parties, discos, bars, nightclubs and the pony club. Every moment of every day was accounted for and there was no room for her to deviate from that schedule.

  In the early days and up until the mid-noughties, Lily had worked the night shift, which meant she always worked one week on and one off. On the weeks she worked, she’d be home for eight in the morning and meet Declan in the doorway on his way out. She’d rustle up breakfast and lunch for the kids and pack their bags. When they were gone she’d sleep for five hours. When she woke she’d clean, shop, garden, pick up the kids, ferry them around, feed them at five, and then prepare dinner for Declan. Her night shifts affected Declan’s breakfast for two weeks out of every month. When her shifts changed to twelve-hour days, he was utterly horrified. She had set the bar so high that he couldn’t see why she would let the perfect little world she’d created slide so that she could nurse ungrateful strangers. Declan got used to being able to read the planner on the fridge and know where his wife was at each and every moment and what she was doing. Over the years he’d slowly become more and more clingy and demanding of her time. Any deviation from her daily schedule caused him a kind of angst that left little room for rationality.

  Lily had filled her days with so much work and responsibility, and she’d spent so many years making excuses for her husband’s controlling nature and paranoia, that she hadn’t allowed herself to look at her life for what it was. A fudging prison sentence. It became apparent to her when she was forced to plan her daily escape from her home and duties so she could go to a funeral or visit her old friend. And because she was undergoing an inner crisis and behaving erratically, one minute throwing pans across the kitchen and the next arriving in her husband’s office with gourmet picnic baskets, Declan was confused. He didn’t know that she was simply using him as an excuse to be in the hospital, but he did sense that something was up. He considered early menopause and, in case her madness wasn’t medical, decided to keep a closer eye on her. His phone calls increased, which meant she often had to leave Eve’s room to answer her phone and make up a plausible lie. With each day that passed it got harder. Why can’t you just give me five minutes’ peace? When he was forced to go to London for a weekend conference Lily was delighted: she was badly in need of respite. He had tried to talk her into going with him but she was steadfast in her refusal. He behaved like a spoilt child and she ignored him. When he realized he wasn’t going to get his way, he demanded she come upstairs and perform her duty as his wife. He sometimes used sex as a weapon but only when he was really pissed off. If Lily was being dogmatic and/or defiant he would unzip his pants and tell her to suck him off. Nothing like a woman on her knees sucking cock to put her in her place.

  He grabbed her by the back of her head and pushed himself into her. ‘Deeper.’

  How about I bite it off ?

  ‘Harder.’

  Halfway up or at the neck or base?

  ‘Come on, swallow it!’

  I mean, what’s the point in biting the tip off or even half of it when I could chow down on the whole lot. I’ll swallow it all right – they’ll have to cut me open to get it out.

  When he was just about to come, he pulled her off him by her hair, threw her on to the bed and pounded into her as though he was drilling a hole in the earth’s crust. When he was finished he rolled over and turned on the TV. She got up and showered. Before she left the room he told her that sometimes she was such a disappointment in bed it left a bad taste in his mouth. You don’t leave such a great taste yourself, Dicknose.

  Lily didn’t care. She would be free of him for three whole days. The conferences on Friday and Saturday were intense, the evenings involving scheduled group fun, and Sunday was a golf day. Declan couldn’t make calls during the conferences and previous years dictated that if he tried to ring his wife in the evening or on the golf course he would be forced to do so in front of a crowd. There was always one who would later make jokes about it. Lily’s husband had treated her like an unpaid prostitute but he would be away for three days, and when she left him sulking in their bedroom she skipped down the corridor with a song in her heart. Free Nelson Mandela, Mandela will be free. Oh, Nelson Mandela!

  Now, in the restaurant with Clooney, she placed her phone on the table in front of her. Just in case. She looked around the room for somewhere quiet where she could take a call after no more than five rings if she needed to. She saw an area that had been cordoned off. That’ll do at a pinch.

  ‘Are you scoping the place out?’ Clooney asked, amused.

  ‘Something like that.’

  They looked at the menus. Clooney wanted pizza. ‘It just smells so good.’

  Lily favoured a pasta dish, something spicy with lots of chicken. Her body craved protein.

  ‘When did you last have a meal?’ Clooney asked, as he watched her inhale her dish.

  ‘A few days, maybe a week,’ she said, as a matter of fact.

  ‘You’ve lost weight,’ he said. ‘You’re skin and bone.’ He picked up her hand and put his finger and thumb around her wrist. There was room for two more wrists in the circle his fingers created.

  ‘Is that why you asked me to dinner? To feed me up?’

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘my intentions were purely selfish.’ He laid her hand back on the table. ‘Are you OK?’

  She could see he wasn’t asking to be polite or because he couldn’t think of anything else to say. She could see that he was concerned for her and had a genuine interest in how she was. Those steely eyes were looking straight through the lovely happy Lily façade and right into her soul. She was either going to avert her eyes and break contact long enough to form a lie or she was going to hold his stare and admit that she wasn’t OK.

  ‘I’m great,’ she said, looking over his shoulder towards the window.

  ‘Liar,’ he said, and changed the subject. They began talking politics.

  She noticed that when she spoke he actually listened, and even when they didn’t agree he didn’t dismiss her opinion or patronize her. They debated American foreign policy. She argued for pulling out of Iraq and Afghanistan and, much as it pained him, he argued against it.

  ‘If you saw the damage done.’

  When he argued it was with passion, but without inflated ego, and he wasn’t vitriolic. It made a nice change. He was gentle and happy to be hanging out, exchanging ideas.

  Lily made him laugh.

  He liked her turn of phrase: ‘I made a buggery-balls of it to be honest.’

  He liked her sunny disposition: ‘There’s always something to be grateful for. Like shoes and the Stereophonics.’

  He was especially enamoured of her penchant for innuendo or a good dirty joke. ‘Did you hear the one about the horny pilot?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘As the plane began to descend towards the airport, the captain announced: “Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking, we are now arriving at Dublin airport. On behalf of the staff and crew, I’d like to thank all of you for flying with Aer Lingus. We hope you had a pleasant flight.” He forgot to turn off the intercom. He turned to his co-pilot and said, “Christ, Bernard, I really shouldn’t have eaten that curry before we took off. When we land I’m going to go to the hotel, take the biggest shit of my life and get a blow-job from Jenny, the new stewardess.” The pilots laughed. Jenny, who was seeing to the passengers, darted towards th
e cockpit, tripped over an old lady’s walking stick and landed on her back. The old lady looked down at her and said, “No need to rush, dear … he said he’s going to have a shit first.” ’

  Clooney laughed and Lily bit her lip the way she always did when she was pleased with herself. While she was talking and laughing, Lily had managed to finish her pasta. It was the first meal she hadn’t just chased around with her fork in days. She marvelled at her empty plate.

  ‘Want some dessert?’ he asked. She was about to say yes when her phone rang. He saw the fear register in her eyes, the look of panic that crossed her face when she saw her husband’s name on caller ID and realized that where they were sitting was no longer quiet but bustling with people. One ring and Lily registered the caller. Two rings and she knew the restaurant was too noisy to pick up in. Three rings and she was standing and looking around wildly. Four rings and she was running to the front door. Five rings and she picked up in the car park.

  ‘Hello?’ A large truck passed her on the main road. Oh, God, why did I choose a restaurant on a main road? What kind of fool am I?

  ‘Where the hell are you?’

  I could say I’m in the garden and a truck passed the wall, no, no. He’ll ring the house to check up on me if he hasn’t already.

  ‘Can you hear me?’

  Oh, fudge cake, bugger-balls, think, think, think … OK, OK, OK, go old school, Lily.

  ‘Hello?’ Lily said loudly.

  ‘Yes, hello, can you hear me?’ he said.

  ‘Declan?’ she said, as though she was straining to hear.

  ‘I can hear you perfectly. Where are you?’ He was clearly annoyed. Someone in the background was talking to him. ‘Just give me a second, will you?’ he said, to whoever had dared to address him while he was on detective duty.

  ‘Declan? Declan?’ Lily said. ‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ She sighed and hung up. Then she turned off her phone. Her hands were shaking. Don’t be ridiculous, Lily, just calm down. You are not doing anything illegal. You are just having dinner with an old friend. Relax.