The Space Between Us

by Anna McPartlin

  Adam insisted on driving to Westport in his brand new BMW even though there was a perfectly good train service. Eve needed a lot of leg-room up front so Clooney and Lily felt captive in the back, especially when he got lost and it added another hour to the four-hour journey.

  It was dark by the time they arrived. Lily was asleep in Clooney’s arms. He gently woke her in time to see the light fade from pink to navy blue over the mountains. The Atlantic Coast Hotel was a beautiful building that seemed to be cut out of rock. They walked into Reception and were greeted with smiles. To the right there was a roaring fire, a small library and big cosy chairs, and to the left the Fishworks Bar and Café from which wafted mouth-watering smells, chatter and clinking.

  As they checked in, Paul appeared, followed by Simone. He was wearing white towelling slippers and raised his hands in the air. ‘You’re here,’ he said, and hugged them all, prompting Eve to ask if he was drunk already. Simone explained he had spent the last two days having every ayurvedic treatment he could fit into his schedule. ‘He’s just had a psychic enema.’

  ‘Sounds painful!’ Clooney said.

  ‘It’s sublime,’ Paul said, and hugged Eve again until she threatened to kick him.

  He didn’t care a jot. He was on cloud nine.

  ‘What’s the name of that treatment?’ Clooney asked.

  ‘Don’t worry about names,’ he said. ‘I have you all booked in with Dr Thomas.’

  ‘You can shove that,’ Eve mumbled, just as Paul’s mother came out of the lift.

  She ignored Paul’s friends. ‘You do know they have an actual function room on the fourth floor?’ she said.

  Paul just smiled at her.

  ‘Yes, he does,’ Simone said.

  ‘So why aren’t we using that?’

  ‘Because the wedding party is small enough to use the Blue Wave restaurant, which is also on the fourth floor and we love it,’ said Simone, smiling sweetly. ‘We’ve very fond memories of it, and it’s everything I’ve ever dreamed of.’

  ‘If you’d used the function room we could have invited some people to this thing,’ his mother said.

  ‘By people she means neighbours, and by neighbours she means the people from her church who think I’m a homo.’

  ‘My advice, Mrs Doyle, is to have a psychic enema and get over it,’ Eve said.

  Paul laughed.

  His mother scratched her nose and then her ear. ‘You were always a cheeky bitch, Eve Hayes – good to see some things don’t change.’ She looked at her son. ‘At least, some things don’t change,’ she said, barely concealing her grin before she walked into the Fishworks Bar and Café.

  ‘Oh, my God, she can smile!’ Simone said. ‘It’s a miracle.’

  Later when they were stuffed with the best fish pie ever made, the girls were on their second bottle of wine and the boys on their third creamy pint of Guinness, Gar and Gina floated in. They, too, were in a trance-like state. Gina ordered salmon and told the girls about a procedure Dr Thomas had recommended.

  ‘He’s amazing,’ she said. ‘Seriously, he’s given me dietary advice, he’s made me think about how I live and how I feel, and recently it has not been good. He’s told me the best times to sleep and wake according to my body type – and the treatments, my God, I haven’t felt this relaxed in years!’

  ‘As soon as we’ve eaten we’re going upstairs to make the most of it,’ Gar said.

  ‘Yes, we are,’ Gina agreed.

  ‘The man’s a genius,’ Gar said, and clinked his pint glass with the lads’.

  Lily had suffered tension headaches and backache for years. She couldn’t wait for her consultation. The only doctor Eve wanted in her life was Adam. They stayed up late drinking and listening to the local musicians play. All but Eve danced jigs with the locals and even she was involved in the last dance when four locals insisted on lifting her in her chair and carrying her around the room, much to Adam’s horror.

  ‘Easy, easy, easy,’ he repeated, trying to keep up with them and steady the chair.

  Eve was too merry to feel fear. ‘All right, that’s enough. Drop the nice lady with the brand-new shoulder!’

  Around two o’clock they disappeared into their respective rooms and, consumed by exhaustion, Clooney and Lily fell asleep quickly.

  Adam came out of the shower to find Eve looking out at the harbour. She seemed at peace, gazing at the sea and mountains. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked, resting his hand on the shoulder he had recently reconstructed.

  ‘I’m good,’ she said. ‘It’s beautiful here.’

  He agreed, and they went to bed.

  Lily was first in with Dr Thomas, followed by an eager and fascinated Adam. Both came away from their consultation with a little more insight into themselves and their bodies. Adam was especially impressed, and keen to read as much as he could on ayurvedic medicine. Dr Thomas gave him a book, which he read in bed after a massage that had left him with an enormous sense of wellbeing.

  ‘You’ve got to go to him,’ he said to Eve, who was reading Marie Claire in the bath.

  ‘No.’

  ‘He’ll make you feel better.’

  ‘You make me feel better.’

  He read from a pamphlet: ‘ “Ayurveda revives the memory of our immune system, which allows our body to rekindle our intrinsic ability to heal ourselves through treatment and/or prescriptive ayurvedic herbs and oils.” ’

  ‘Not interested.’

  ‘It can help with post-surgery convalescence.’

  ‘Don’t care.’

  ‘Headaches.’

  ‘Really, Adam.’

  ‘It’s profoundly relaxing and your body has been through a huge trauma. It’s doing a great job healing but this is an opportunity to help it along. What’s the worst that could happen? You have an hour-long massage and come out covered in oil? Boo-hoo. I’m asking you to do this for me.’

  ‘Right, fine. Jesus, I thought all Western doctors were supposed to be anti-alternative medicine.’

  ‘I’m not all Western doctors and ayurveda is the mother of all modern medicine so stop whining.’

  She walked into Dr Thomas’s small office with her heart beating fast. She couldn’t understand why she was so nervous but she was and it was uncomfortable. Dr Thomas was Indian, with a young face and a big smile. There was nothing to fear, and Eve was not the fearful type but still her heart raced, and when he took her hand in his she couldn’t control its tremor. Very much like her experience in hospital, he asked her question after question, but this time he did not adhere to a list: one question led to another that was more specific, depending on her previous answer. In some cases it was a question she’d never been asked before. Despite herself, she found that she was opening up and engaging. He examined her tongue, looked into her eyes and took her pulse. He explained pulse diagnosis at great length as he held her wrist between his fingers and thumb. Suddenly she felt the desire to pull away and then she saw the look in his eye: it was too late to pull away.

  ‘You told me that you suffer from headaches but they are not too bad,’ he said.

  She nodded and her heart raced again. Here we go.

  ‘They are bad,’ he said.

  ‘I went for tests a few months ago and got the all-clear,’ she said.

  ‘It’s time for a second opinion.’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘Today I’m going to get rid of the headache you pretend you’re not having, and when you go home you need to go for a CT and/or an MRI scan.’

  She sat silently because when the staff of St Martin’s Hospital had questioned her about her headaches she hadn’t been entirely honest with them. She hadn’t mentioned the balance and vision problems she had experienced before the collision with the taxi in New York. The balance problem wasn’t an issue when she had been lying in a bed twenty-four hours a day and seven days a week. I was given the all-clear. When her vision became blurred after reading for hours on end, she’d told herself it was because she needed gl
asses. I was given the all-clear. She didn’t mention the changes she’d experienced in her sense of smell because everything had smelt weird in that hospital. Shit smelt like roses and Chanel No. 5 smelt like baby puke. I was given the all-clear. She had reasoned that she was on a lot of drugs and had been locked in that tiny room for so long that it was possible all she needed was fresh air and a fresh perspective. I was given the all-clear. If she had told one of the endless interns who had asked endless questions that one of the reasons she had stopped working and sold her shares in her company was because she found it hard to concentrate, her memory was spotty, her spatial awareness was completely out of whack and the smell of cat pee made her crave bacon, they would have kept her in that tiny room and she couldn’t have borne it.

  ‘It’s time to get to the bottom of it,’ he said, and looked at her sympathetically, as though he could read her mind. He went on to prescribe a Talam treatment to alleviate migraine and a Kizchi massage to ease her body’s tension and promote healing.

  Even though Dr Thomas had basically told her what she had already guessed back in New York, she enjoyed the two treatments and felt decidedly better and more relaxed after them. She wasn’t sure if it was the magic of ayurveda or that she no longer had to pretend that there wasn’t a problem, but Eve felt calm and ready.

  I got the all-clear but they were wrong.

  Adam was a happy bunny when she returned. He’d spent the afternoon reading a few more of Dr Thomas’s books. ‘How would you feel about a trip to India?’ he said.

  ‘Great,’ she said.

  That night they all had an early dinner, and everyone disappeared afterwards to be with the ones they loved and to rest for the busy wedding day ahead. They woke up early and had a leisurely breakfast. Adam stayed in bed reading. Clooney swam lengths of the beautiful azure-blue pool. Lily and Eve sat in the hot tub, watching him glide by under the water.

  ‘He was always like a fish,’ Eve said, and Lily nodded.

  ‘Are you going to tell me what’s on your mind?’ Lily said.

  Eve laughed and said that there was nothing.

  ‘Are you going to tell me what you threatened to do to Declan?’ Lily asked then.

  Eve’s smile faded. Lily was looking at her with a mixture of bewilderment and awe. ‘I just reasoned with him,’ she said.

  ‘Nobody reasons with Declan.’

  Eve just shook her head.

  ‘We’ll have to talk about it some day,’ Lily said.

  ‘I know. Just not today.’

  Lily smiled at her friend and hugged her, even though she knew it would make Eve uncomfortable. She pulled away as Clooney appeared, hanging on the side of the pool. He slipped into the tub beside Lily. Eve made her excuses and left them to it. One day in the very near future she would tell her friend about the day that she had gone into Declan’s office and sat in front of him for the first time in nearly twenty years. She’d tell Lily that at first Declan had been his usual sneering self but she had soon put a stop to that. She’d tell her that Declan had said she was a very silly woman if she thought that pleading on Lily’s behalf would do any good.

  ‘When have I ever pleaded for anything, Declan?’ she said.

  His eyes narrowed. ‘What is it that I can do for you, Eve?’

  ‘You can give Lily her kids back, sell the house with a view to giving her half the proceeds without delay and before the divorce, which you’ll agree to as soon as possible.’

  He threw back his head and laughed.

  You were always theatrical, Declan.

  ‘That bitch is not getting my kids or my money or a divorce. She can live in a rat-infested pit for all I care. She made her flea-bitten bed and now she can rot in it.’

  ‘Or you can do what I say,’ Eve said.

  Declan leaned forward. ‘And why would I do that?’

  ‘Because if you don’t, I’ll go to the press and say that when I was eighteen years old my best friend’s boyfriend raped me at a party. I’ll go on record telling them that the boy is now a very important cardiac surgeon here in Dublin. It will take them approximately two minutes to work out who the boy was.’

  ‘You’re lying.’

  ‘Try me.’

  ‘It didn’t happen like that.’

  ‘It happened exactly like that.’

  ‘No. We kissed and –’

  ‘And you raped me and you hurt me.’ She took out the copy of the hospital record that Adam had made for her and threw it on his desk. ‘And I have the proof.’

  He opened the file and looked through it, then at her. He wasn’t so smug any more.

  ‘It didn’t happen like that. I was drunk. You were into it.’

  ‘I don’t care if you believe you’re innocent of my rape or justified in raping your wife. I don’t care what you think or how you feel, and your employers, patients and the rest of the country won’t care either.’

  ‘You’ll destroy me,’ he said.

  ‘You say that like I should care.’

  ‘You’ll destroy my kids,’ he said.

  She laughed. That old chestnut, you son of a bitch? ‘I don’t give a crap about your kids,’ she said, and he believed her. ‘By five o’clock this evening I want to see Lily dancing around the kitchen celebrating that you’ve finally decided to do something decent and you’re sharing custody. In two months’ time I want the house to go on the market and you will accept the first realistic sum offered. I will be involved in the sale. You will be judicially separated as soon as possible, and the proceeds of the house sale will be divided evenly at that stage. When the time comes you will give her an uncontested quick divorce.’

  ‘You think you have it all worked out,’ he said.

  She got up. ‘Don’t cross me, Declan, because I’ve been waiting twenty years to fuck you up.’

  She left him alone to stare at the report on his desk.

  Thank you for taking me to the hospital all those years ago, Billy. Wherever you are.

  The wedding was beautiful, and it was a dream day. Gar was a handsome best man and his speech started a little rough but in the end it was both funny and touching.

  ‘I wanted to start off light so I went on line and checked out bisexual jokes but there aren’t any. I suppose bisexuals are too busy riding all around them to be thinking up jokes.’

  Paul’s mother’s face fell and the room became deathly silent, which meant that everyone could hear her when she muttered, ‘For God’s sake, do we have to listen to that today of all days?’

  Simone broke into a huge grin. She laughed, a real, genuine laugh, and Paul followed. Like a Mexican wave, that laugh rippled through the crowd. Gar sighed and wiped the sweat from his forehead. He spoke about growing up with Paul and how intimidating it was to be a friend of someone who was a brilliant sportsman, intelligent and, of course, so handsome that every girl in Ireland wanted to be with him. Eve and Lily made coughing and choking sounds.

  ‘Yes, all right, nearly every girl, including my wife.’

  Gina raised her glass. ‘Yeah, you betcha!’ she said. Paul’s mother seemed happier with that part of the speech.

  He talked about how private Paul had been and that, although he understood it and accepted it, this had created a distance between them over the years. Sometimes he had missed his best pal even when he was in the same room. When he looked as if he might cry, he turned to Simone and smiled. ‘But then you came along and you took him out of the dark room he’d locked himself into and you brought him out into the light. I’ve never seen him happier or more content, never freer or more open.’

  Simone smiled and tears filled her eyes.

  ‘You complete him,’ he said. He winked at the crowd, who groaned at his faux sentimentality.

  Paul’s dad spoke warmly about his son. He didn’t mention his sexuality because there was more to Paul than that, and although he agreed his son was private, he was a great man to keep a secret. He was honourable and patient. At that he glanced at his wife. It wasn�
�t conscious but the crowd laughed, and when he realized what he’d done, he laughed too.

  Paul’s mother raised her glass. Fine, I’ll be the punch-line today but when I’m in Heaven and you’re all screaming in a fiery pit then we’ll see who’s laughing.

  Simone’s father wasn’t as happy with his daughter’s choice of husband as he tried to pretend. He was valiant in his attempt to celebrate but he was no actor. His speech was short and he mostly spoke about how fantastic she was, how open and vulnerable, and how he’d do jail time if anyone ever hurt her. He didn’t welcome Paul to the family, as Paul’s father had Simone, he simply wished them luck and told his daughter that, no matter what, he would always be there for her. Simone didn’t seem to notice his thinly veiled threats to her new husband, and if she did, she was a much better actor than he was. She gave him a big hug and told him she loved him. Paul’s mother looked like she was ready to stand up and punch him: she felt entitled to judge her son but no one else, bar God, was eligible to do so. Paul was a gentleman and offered his hand to Simone’s dad. When the two men shook, the crowd clapped.

  Simone made an excited breathless speech full of thank-yous and warmth as usual. Paul remained silent.

  The meal was delicious and far superior to the usual fare provided at weddings. The room looked on to the Croagh Patrick Mountain, which swept down into Clew Bay, and as the hours passed the light changed and the window revealed a series of beautiful landscapes.

  Clooney, Lily, Eve, Adam and Gina shared a table, and when the music kicked off, Eve and Adam danced slowly while everyone else threw themselves around at a faster tempo. She put her arms around Adam’s neck. ‘Thanks for fixing me,’ she said.

  ‘Well, I did tell you I’m the best in the business.’

  ‘I didn’t mean that.’

  It was a perfect day and one that Eve Hayes would remember fondly for the rest of her life.

  Eve’s benign meningioma tumour was diagnosed in a private clinic. It was a Wednesday afternoon and she was alone. The tumour, although believed to be developing slowly, was inoperable, due to its size and location. It was damaging cells and exerting pressure within her skull.