The Space Between Us

by Anna McPartlin

  ‘Doubtful,’ Scott said, and he and his granddad grinned at one another. ‘Dad’s too much of a snob.’

  ‘Your father is what your grandfather made him!’ Lily snapped. She was uncomfortable with her son and his grandfather making fun of Declan. How dare you? You destroyed him. It’s your fault he’s broken. It’s your fault I’ve been trying to fix him since I was sixteen. It’s your fault he never had a real chance. Suddenly Lily was crying.

  Scott and Jack glanced at one another awkwardly, neither knowing what to say. She dried her eyes and ordered her son into the car. He said goodbye to his granddad.

  Lily was quiet on the drive home.

  ‘Is everything all right with you and Dad, Mum?’

  ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘Because you’re both acting like freaks.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s not.’

  ‘Well, whatever’s going on, I think he’s going to try to make it up to you tonight.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘He’s given me fifty euro to go to the movies and Daisy’s staying with Tess.’

  ‘Oh,’ Lily said, half happy they would finally have the space to talk and half panic-stricken by what needed to be said. ‘I’ll drop you at Josh’s, then?’

  ‘Yeah. Mum?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘How’s your friend?’

  ‘She’s good,’ she said, smiling. ‘She’s good and cranky, which means she’s getting back to herself.’

  ‘I’m glad,’ he said.

  She pulled up outside Josh’s house and he got out. ‘Good luck with Dad,’ he said, and ran into the house.

  He’d seen his parents fight before, and they’d been sulking for weeks. Tonight there’ll be a big row, then Mum will give in, and by the following weekend she’ll have some nice new jewellery. He didn’t expect his life to change for ever that night but more often than not the biggest changes come unexpectedly.

  Declan had met with his PI as soon as his surgery was over. The guy had been waiting for him in his office. The pictures of Lily and Clooney were on his desk. He opened the folder and saw his wife with her head on another man’s lap. He clenched his teeth and flicked through the other pictures. They were smiling at one another, hugging, touching, sharing food, looking at one another the way lovers do. He sat at his desk, staring at the colour pictures of Lily and Clooney falling in love.

  ‘Have they slept together?’ he asked, in a calm detached manner, which suggested to the man he had hired that he didn’t care either way.

  ‘Not on my watch,’ the guy said. ‘Your wife is a very busy woman. The only time I see her sit and take a breath is with him.’

  ‘I didn’t ask you if she sat.’

  He flicked back to the picture of Lily with her head on Clooney’s lap. He had his hands in her hair.

  He wrote a cheque and told the guy to go. He left, and Declan sat in his office, swallowing hard, battling the urge to get up and tear the place apart. He practised breathing in and out and focused on being calm but he couldn’t contain himself. His blood rushed to his head, his ears burned, and his heart-rate was through the roof. He felt like he was on fire. Awash with adrenalin, he stood up and turned the table over, smashing his computer screen. He flung his chair against the wall, shattering the glass frame that held his professional certificate. He kicked the brains of the computer around the room, and when there was nothing left to break, he kicked a hole in his door. When the place was wrecked he picked up his folder of photos and exited, telling his stunned secretary to get someone to clear up the mess.

  Lily got home a little after eight. The house was in darkness. Declan’s car was in the drive but when she called his name he didn’t respond. She took off her coat and hung it up. She walked up the stairs and turned on the landing light. She went into her bathroom, had a shower, dried herself and put on a comfortable pair of trousers and a soft wool top. Then she went downstairs. She thought he might be sulking somewhere, maybe in the sitting room or his office, but they were in darkness too. The kitchen was empty. Perhaps he was canvassing the neighbours to see if they could use her services or maybe he had gone for a run. He had been running a lot in the recent past. She didn’t care. She wanted everything to be over but she had no idea how to begin the conversation that would lead to the end of the marriage. I just can’t do it any more. She was scared, too, that he’d throw her against a wall or, worse, that he’d throw himself off a cliff. He had manipulated her with that threat on many occasions: I would die without you. I swear to God, Lily, if you walk out that door I’ll cut my damn wrists. She was going to ask him to leave and he would lose it. He’d scream and shout and cry and roar, and then maybe he’d beg and threaten but she intended to hold firm. Please just go. Let me breathe. Let me be. I’m so tired. He’d ask her what had changed and the answer would be ‘Nothing’, and that was the problem.

  But, of course, that was a lie. Everything had changed. She’d reconnected with her old friend, she’d realized how short life was and she was falling in love with another man. She felt silly and bad and wrong and selfish, and doing anything for herself felt so alien she wasn’t sure that she could go through with it. What if he does cry and beg and wail and plead? Could I really let him go, knowing what he’s been through? What do I say when he brings up the kids? What if they hate me for breaking up their family? What if he says no? Do I leave? Where do the kids go? Do they come with me? Do we even have a place to go? No. He’ll have to go. God knows, he can afford it. What if he falls apart? I’m so tired of feeling sick with guilt and wishing every hour and day away. Why doesn’t he come home so we can end this? Where the hell are you, Declan?

  When it was clear he wasn’t coming home, she undressed, put on her nightdress and got into bed. I don’t understand.

  She didn’t hear him come in. She woke with his hand clamped over her mouth and nose and he was moving inside her. Her arms were over her head and he was holding her wrists in place with one hand. She heard her shoulder pop and felt a nauseating pain. She could smell the booze. She was rammed into the headboard, her neck was strained, she couldn’t breathe and her insides seemed to be tearing. He was vicious and violent, and as he attacked her, he warned her to shut her dirty mouth. She struggled to breathe and there was a moment before she bit his fingers, which were jammed into her lips, when she thought she might suffocate. She managed a quick breath before he repositioned his hand – now it bore down on her face so heavily she thought her nose and cheekbones might snap. He flipped her over on her stomach and pushed her face into the pillow. Then pain cut into her back passage.

  ‘Do you like that, you fucking whore?’ he said.

  She passed out.

  When she came round her lip was split and bleeding, she had a severe headache, her shoulder was dislocated and her anus was torn and bleeding. She got up slowly to the sounds of him taking a shower. On the bed she saw a folder. It was open, and pictures of her and Clooney were strewn across the bed. Some of them had spunk on them, others had her blood. She realized her husband was going nowhere, that there would be no talking or negotiation. She knew that if she didn’t get out, she’d either walk down to the kitchen, select the sharpest carving knife and plunge it deep into his heart, or he would rape and torture her again. She put on her flip-flops and a pair of knickers lined with a panty pad to absorb the blood. Then she walked out of her bedroom and down the stairs. She took her coat from the hanger in the hallway and, with her good arm, slung it over her shoulders to conceal the blood on her nightie. She picked up her handbag, opened the front door and walked outside.

  She got into her car slowly and carefully. She drove to Eve’s place. She’d never been there before but she knew the apartment block. She had never taken Clooney’s phone number because there was no reason she could think of to ask for it and, anyway, she had been scared that Declan would find it on her phone. She saw the building on the cliff as she turned up the narrow dirt road that Ben Logan had been killed
on two months before. She drove up to the block and parked. She got out slowly and painfully.

  Once she’d rehung the coat over her shoulders, she held it together tightly with her fist and walked to the main door. She looked on the panel and every name was there bar Eve’s. However, if Eve was going to live in an apartment it would be the penthouse. She pressed the button. When nobody answered, she pressed it again, and this time she held it down.

  Clooney woke up, answered the bell, heard her voice and buzzed the apartment-block door open. Then he waited for the lift, bouncing up and down and resting his hands on the door, willing it to open. When it did, he saw that she was bruised and bleeding and that her arm hung at an odd angle.

  ‘He raped me,’ she said. ‘He called me a whore and then he raped me.’

  Clooney brought her inside silently. She didn’t seem to know whether she wanted to sit or stand or lie down. Clooney knelt so that she was looking down at him. He took her hand. ‘You’re safe now,’ he said, and her eyes leaked tears on to her sore face. She sobbed, her lip bled again and he stood up, held her cheek against his and whispered that he had her, she was safe and there was no going back. When she was calm he asked her if he could look at her arm.

  ‘It’s dislocated,’ she said.

  ‘I know. We’re going to need to pop it back in.’

  ‘You know how?’ she asked.

  He nodded. ‘I’ve dislocated this baby four times,’ he said, pointing to his left shoulder.

  He took her arm and very slowly rotated it until it hit a thirty-five-degree angle. The pain, he knew, would be immense, and she screamed as the joint slid back into place. She sighed and rotated it slowly.

  ‘It’s OK?’ he said.

  She nodded, and plonked herself on the floor. She bent her knees and hugged them tight. He sat beside her, and when she held out her hand to him, he took her in his arms. When she cried, he rocked her there on the floor. When she fell asleep he carried her to bed. It was when he placed her under the covers that he saw the blood on the back of her nightdress. Clooney lay, watching her sleep, and thought of all the things he wanted to do to Declan. He wanted to drive to his house and burn it down with him in it, or pull him into the street and beat him to within an inch of his life, or run him over with his car or just punch him in his face. He wanted the world to know what Declan had done, to walk around the hospital and his neighbourhood with a megaphone, shouting it out. He wanted to see him stand in front of a judge and be sent down. He was angry and raw. And then a question occurred to him: Has he done this before?

  The next morning Lily woke to a running bath and breakfast being cooked. Eve’s robe was on the bed and she put it on quickly to hide the blood. She walked into the kitchen and Clooney pointed to the sofa. When she was settled with a rug over her, he placed a tray with a small plate of scrambled eggs on her lap.

  ‘Eat.’

  ‘Can’t.’

  ‘Three bites, not all at once, take your time,’ he said, ‘but please, three bites.’

  He served himself and sat down opposite her. She was playing with her food, moving it around the way she had done when they were kids. He took the fork, put the smallest piece of egg on it and fed it to her. He watched her swallow and smiled.

  ‘There’s a bath in there ready for you but we have to talk about whether or not you want to press charges before you get into it.’

  She shook her head. ‘He’s the father of my children,’ she said.

  ‘And last night he violently raped you.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘You know I won’t make you do anything you don’t want to but, Lily, this should be recorded.’

  She was crying again – silent fat tears that just kept coming, burning tracks into her face, creeping down her neck and soaking the collar of her nightdress. Clooney stood up and hugged her.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t be,’ he soothed. ‘You don’t have anything to be sorry about.’

  ‘I can’t,’ she said.

  ‘OK, OK,’ he said.

  After that he asked her if it would be all right to take some photos of her face. She agreed. He brought her into the bathroom, and when she wanted to undress, he left her alone, got some of Eve’s things for her, then walked in backwards and put them on the chair next to the bath.

  ‘We’ll buy something that fits when you feel a little better,’ he said.

  Then he picked up her nightdress and took it out of the room. When he walked into the kitchen, he looked at the blood and semen stains, folded it, wrapped it in clingfilm and put it into a bag.

  When she was washed and dressed in clothes that were far too big for her, he insisted she had her shoulder properly looked at. She agreed to see Adam, so Clooney rang him, told him what had happened and asked him to come to Eve’s place. Adam arrived within an hour. He examined her shoulder and her face. She wouldn’t let anyone near her below and he didn’t press her, on the condition that she saw a gynaecologist later. He was a bone man and, in any case, she’d been through enough. She found walking hard – she was in such bad shape that he was shaken to the core. He put her back into bed and gave her something to help her sleep.

  ‘You can’t say anything,’ she said, as he was leaving the room.

  ‘Everything will be OK.’ He closed the door.

  He joined Clooney in the kitchen. Clooney poured him a coffee and the two men sat in silence, neither knowing what to say or do.

  After a while Adam scratched his head. ‘We should report it,’ he said.

  ‘We can’t.’

  ‘We have to change her mind.’

  ‘I’ve kept the nightdress. It’s got his semen and her blood on it.’

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ Adam said. ‘I always knew Declan was an arsehole but this is something else.’

  The two men fell silent again, their minds busy running through macho scenarios in which they slew the demon and saved the damsel in distress, but the damage had been done and they were powerless to act without her consent. Even if either of them had been the type to go to Declan’s house or place of work to punch him or kick him or hit him with a baseball bat until he needed to be hospitalized, it would only have caused Lily more pain and her children distress. If they said something and Lily didn’t back their story, Declan was the kind of prick who would sue for defamation and both men knew, regardless of the evidence Clooney had kept, that Lily would never file a report. She had said so herself – Declan was the father of her children: she would never allow them to think that their father was capable of such an unspeakable act. She wouldn’t do it to them. Both men felt frustrated and impotent. Lily had told Clooney about the photos, which meant that Declan was building a case against her for infidelity.

  ‘But you haven’t been together?’ Adam said to Clooney.

  ‘No.’

  ‘You want to be?’

  Clooney sighed. ‘I fell in love with Lily when I was fourteen and she was only twelve.’

  ‘And you were never together?’ Adam said.

  ‘One summer a long time ago,’ Clooney said, ‘and I ended up driving her back to him.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘We always wanted different things. She wanted a family. I wanted adventure. She wanted a home. I prefer a tent on a beach. All she ever wanted was some stability. I couldn’t give her that.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘I think I’m always going to be the guy who leaves,’ Clooney said. ‘Can’t help loving her, though.’

  They resumed musing, each man working out a separate strategy to get Lily back into her home and get Declan out. They concluded it was impossible. If Lily didn’t threaten to charge him he’d have no reason to leave. In fact, Adam was absolutely sure he’d revel in his small victory. If Lily left him, he’d make damn sure she left with nothing.

  ‘We could bluff?’ Adam said.

  Clooney perked up.

  ‘We could say that she was going to press charges if he didn�
��t get out,’ Adam went on, as Lily walked into the room.

  Clooney wondered how long she had been listening. She sat on the sofa and hugged a cushion. ‘He won’t believe you. He knows I’ll put the kids first. He’ll play with you and then he’ll raise the stakes. He’ll call me names and tell you I like it rough, and he’ll hope that one of you punches him so he can call the guards. If you don’t, he’ll tell you to get out of his office because, you see, Declan doesn’t think he’s done anything wrong. You can’t scare someone who believes they have justice on their side.’ She was calm and even-toned. She knew the man she had married. ‘Thank you for trying to help me, though,’ she said. She smiled. ‘I’m going to be fine,’ she said. ‘I always am.’

  That day, Clooney didn’t make it into the hospital to see Eve. Instead he lay in her large bed with Lily in his arms.

  Early that evening Lily remembered Daisy was waiting to be picked up. She phoned Tess’s mother and confirmed that it was OK for Daisy to stay another night. The woman offered to put Daisy on the phone but Lily said no. She wasn’t ready to attempt to explain herself to a twelve-year-old.

  Afterwards she talked to Scott and made sure he was all right.

  ‘The old man had a serious hangover this morning,’ Scott said.

  ‘Scott, I’m leaving your father,’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m going to ask a solicitor to send him a letter asking him to leave the house but if he refuses I can’t go back. I have no money. I don’t know where I’ll be living so you and Daisy might have to stay with him for a while until I get settled.’

  ‘You sound like you’re crying. Are you crying, Mum?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ she lied. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘It’ll blow over,’ he said.

  ‘No, Scott, it won’t.’

  ‘You can’t leave him,’ he said, as though her previous words had just sunk in.

  ‘I have to.’

  ‘You need to come home,’ he said, in a voice that reminded her of Declan.

  ‘Don’t speak to me like that,’ she said.

  ‘Why are you doing this?’