Sisters and Lies

by Bernice Barrington

  ‘Thanks,’ Artie said, casting me one final sorrowful look, then turned on his heel and walked into the Tube station. By the time I’d wiped the tears from my eyes, he was gone.

  For days afterwards, I couldn’t sleep. I paced around my flat, wide-eyed and wild, unable to cope with the loss. I felt as if someone had flayed me alive so that every nerve was now raw and exposed to the world. My whole body was tingling.

  At some point during that mad period, Donnagh texted me, asking if I wanted to meet up. The words barely made sense to me. I was almost delirious from crying and lack of sleep – but somewhere in the back of my mind an idea formed: perhaps Donnagh could be the answer to all of this. How else was I going to stop thinking about Artie? I figured I needed something extreme to snap me out of the morass into which I’d fallen: some kind of shock therapy. And Donnagh was nothing if not shocking. Maybe he’d help me cope with these feelings.

  Of course it was madness. But it seemed like the lesser of the two evils because, one thing was for sure, if I didn’t find a way to prevent myself obsessing about Artie – about all that I had lost by casting him aside – I really would go mad. And though Donnagh was terrifying and predatory, losing my reason would be worse. Nothing was as scary as that.

  I texted him back, and made plans to meet him in a bar – where I proceeded to get legless. As did he. Afterwards, we went to a club and did a few lines of coke, before returning to Donnagh’s apartment to finish what we’d started. The sex was messy, drunken, dirty. High on drugs and drink, I didn’t have any inhibitions so I sucked, caressed, kissed, bit and did whatever else Donnagh asked me to do with not a care in the world. It was only the next morning when I woke up in a tangled mess of sheets that reality hit me.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  I was tiptoeing out of the door when I heard Donnagh’s voice boom after me.

  ‘Eve?’

  I turned to face him, blushing scarlet.

  ‘Are you trying to escape?’

  ‘No,’ I said, feeling about eight.

  ‘Then why are you carrying your handbag?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ I hung my head.

  ‘Come back to bed,’ he said. ‘I’ve got something I want to show you.’ He pulled back the duvet to reveal a huge hard-on and I felt a sudden sensation of terror.

  ‘I think I should be going,’ I said, panicky now, not sure I could really go through with this.

  Donnagh got out of bed, naked, walked over to where I was standing and took my handbag from me. ‘Baby, you’re going nowhere.’

  Then he led me back to bed.

  Afterwards, he rolled a joint and we smoked it together. The depression and anxiety that had been hovering over me since the Artie debacle were gradually receding.

  ‘Do you smoke much?’ I asked.

  ‘Occasionally, but I try to keep it to a minimum. You?’

  ‘The same.’ Which was, of course, a lie.

  ‘You’re a sexy bitch, do you know that?’ Donnagh was nibbling at my shoulder, and as he did so, I found myself touching his hair. I had expected it to be rough, but it was soft, like a baby’s. Everything felt surreal.

  And, oh, the temptation to blurt out everything. To tell him who I was. Would he still call me a ‘sexy bitch’ if he found out I was the fat little swot he had bullied for years? The girl he’d humiliated at the side of the swimming-pool. Yet something held me back from saying anything.

  Self-destructive. That was what Janet had called me, a week before our big fight over Patrick. ‘You’ve got so much going for you and you’re throwing it all away, Evie,’ she’d said. ‘People would give their right arm for what you’ve got.’

  ‘And what have I got?’

  ‘I’m not going to spell it out for you.’

  ‘Course you’re not,’ I sneered.

  ‘Fine, be like that,’ Janet had said. ‘But the only person you’re hurting with this behaviour is yourself. Nobody is going to swoop down from the sky and save you. You have to do that yourself.’

  ‘You don’t understand.’ I’d felt wounded. ‘You haven’t lost your mother. You have a father who actually cares about you.’

  ‘Evie,’ she said, her voice softening, ‘I know you’ve had some terrible blows. But taking lots of drugs and shagging random men is not going to fix that. It’s just going to make things worse. Why don’t you see a counsellor? I can help you find one.’

  I’d thought suddenly of the useless eejit in Trinity, her middle-class tweediness. I couldn’t bear the thought of another person in open-toed sandals asking me to ‘stay with the feelings’.

  ‘Thanks for the offer,’ I’d replied, ‘but if I want to blow eighty quid on something utterly pointless I’ll go to Harvey Nichols.’

  ‘Christ, there’s no reasoning with you, is there?’ Janet had snapped, and stomped off to her room.

  Now, in Donnagh’s bedroom, I was getting dressed in the previous night’s clothes, sparkly top and skinny jeans, when Donnagh came up behind me and put his arms around my waist. ‘We should make this a regular thing, Eve, if you’re up for it.’

  ‘Hmm,’ I said, still woozy from the joint we’d smoked. ‘Why not?’

  ‘I’ll text you during the week, yeah? We can hook up at the weekend.’

  ‘Sure,’ I said, as breezy as someone who was having a careless fling.

  Donnagh kissed me hard on the mouth. ‘Stay beautiful,’ he said, slapping me lightly across the backside. His phone began to ring at that exact moment, and he grabbed it from the bed: ‘Donnagh Flood speaking.’

  I watched him, his body drenched in light as the sun shone through the huge glass window. He looked like a sun god – beautiful and big and imposing.

  I tried to say goodbye but he wasn’t looking at me. He had turned his back and was lost in conversation. I doubted he even noticed me leave.

  A pattern began to emerge. We would meet on a Saturday night, take quite a lot of drugs together (well, I would: Donnagh tended to stick to alcohol), then go back to his apartment and have sex. Then, on the Sunday, we would smoke a joint, have more sex, and I would go home. He didn’t seem to suspect anything, and I was almost past caring. In a way, meeting Donnagh at the weekend was just an excellent way of passing the time. Since Janet had gone I’d been so lonely, and after the Artie fiasco I hated being alone with my thoughts. At least with Donnagh I was doing something: I wasn’t getting stuck inside my own head.

  Sometimes, a lightning flash of realism would surge through me and I would be jolted. It had happened earlier in the week when I’d been watching a programme on Amsterdam’s red-light district. If Janet had been there, I’d have turned it over – women who slept with lots of different men were a bit too close to the bone for my liking – but instead I’d been glued to it, like some kind of voyeur.

  ‘Many of the women are trafficked here from impoverished regions outside the EU,’ an earnest Dutch academic was explaining. ‘They come here thinking they are going to be dancers or performers, but instead are forced into the sex trade.’ It cut to a shot of women in the familiar red windows, their flesh squeezed into leather hot pants, schoolgirl uniforms, sexy-secretary get-ups.

  ‘Mostly I just feel numb,’ a prostitute was explaining, in Moldovan. ‘I turn off my feelings. I take drugs. I try not to think.’

  Her words hit me with the force of a brick. I thought of Donnagh, his huge thighs wrapped around me, pushing in deeper and deeper. It wasn’t a violation because I allowed him to do it to me. Yet my body refused to respond. It was as if everything was frozen down there, as if I was a female Antarctica.

  It wasn’t Donnagh’s fault. It was the same with every man I’d brought into my bed since I’d left Artie and Ireland. They could never bring me to the places he had. No matter how hard I tried, it was as if I couldn’t get back there. All that was over now. That part of me was gone.

  47.

  It was the third Sunday in a row that we had done the clubbing/sex/joint in bed thing. I turned o
n the television and rolled myself a joint, feeling guilty about it, as I always did. But I promised myself I would cut down when the thing with Donnagh had run its course. Either that or I would finally wreak my revenge. I would tell him who I was, perhaps when he was tied to the bed wearing handcuffs, then leave him, naked and vulnerable.

  Yes, that would be good.

  Make him suffer.

  Yet each time we met my grand plan failed to materialize. I would just go along with things. Party with him. Sleep with him. Almost as if I was grateful to be sleeping with him. Almost as if I wanted his approval.

  ‘Come on, let’s do something for the day,’ Donnagh said, all clean and buffed from the shower.

  ‘Like what?’ I said. After that disastrous party, I was terrified of going anywhere with him.

  ‘I dunno. Do you throw Frisbee?’

  ‘Um, not really.’

  ‘We could go to a football match?’

  I made a face.

  ‘Will we just get breakfast and see from there?’

  ‘Sure,’ I said, trying to sound nonchalant. It was just breakfast. How hard could that be?

  Hard, was the answer.

  Mick and Gemma Flaherty just happened to swing by.

  ‘How did you know we were here?’ I asked, faint with panic that they would properly sniff me out this time.

  ‘Donnagh texted us to join you. Are we interrupting a romantic day or something?’

  ‘No, no,’ I blathered, turning puce. What the fuck was he up to?

  ‘So, Eve, where did you say you were from again?’

  ‘Leit–’ I stopped myself. ‘Clare,’ I bumbled.

  ‘Whereabouts in Clare?’ continued Mick. ‘I have relatives in Ennis.’

  Darts of terror needled my innards. Where was I from? Think, think, think. ‘I’m from Lisdoonvarna,’ I said, trying to sound cool. I had been there once, on a geography trip to the Burren.

  ‘Ah, Lisdoon,’ Gemma said. ‘Great craic for the Matchmaking Festival, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah,’ I said, still suspicious of her, given the weird conversation we’d had in the Ladies.

  ‘You must have spent your life in the Hydro.’

  ‘Ah, yes, the Hydro.’ I smiled weakly. I had no idea what the hell she was talking about.

  ‘I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this,’ said Gemma, ‘but you remind me of someone.’

  ‘Oh?’ I felt as if someone was squeezing my neck extremely tightly. ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘Well, that’s the thing. I don’t know,’ she continued. ‘It’s like I’ve met you before. But I can’t have done, can I?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ I squeaked.

  ‘Maybe it’s someone famous,’ she muttered.

  ‘I think she looks a bit like Kate Winslet,’ Donnagh interrupted.

  ‘Who’s she again?’ said Mick, chomping a sausage.

  ‘Jesus, Mick, where have you been living for the past fifteen years? The one who starred in Titanic. Kate fuckin’ Winslet.’

  ‘Oh, yeah, her.’ He peered at me intently. ‘I suppose you do a bit.’

  I dropped my eyes to the floor, terrified I’d reveal myself if he held my gaze much longer.

  ‘You look like Angelina Jolie,’ I said suddenly to Gemma, hoping flattery would take the heat off me.

  ‘Oh, go on out of that! I do not!’ she said, patting her hair.

  ‘You know Gemma won Miss Leitrim 2005?’ Donnagh said, a smirk on his face.

  ‘Oh, yes, of course,’ I said, then stopped myself. How could I possibly know that? All three were staring at me now, clearly wondering the exact same thing. I felt a rivulet of sweat run down my back. Think again. Quickly. ‘Um, this is kind of embarrassing but I googled you after I met you at the party.’

  ‘Oh, yeah?’ said Gemma. And the others started to laugh.

  ‘You have a stalker on your hands there, Gem.’

  Gemma’s lips pursed.

  ‘Yeah, sorry. It’s the journalist in me. Anyway, there was a picture of you with your crown and sash and everything. You looked really beautiful.’

  ‘Thanks,’ she said, seeming to relax a little. ‘But it feels like a lifetime ago now – before I had babies when I still had a waist.’ She patted a non-existent tummy.

  ‘Don’t mind her, Eve,’ said Mick. ‘She’s always been a stunner, and well she knows it. A bit like yourself, I’d say.’

  ‘Not exactly,’ I said, looking at the floor again, just praying this stupid brunch would end soon.

  ‘Eve has hidden depths,’ Donnagh said suddenly. ‘She doesn’t like talking about her past.’

  I raised my eyes to meet his, but he was munching a piece of toast, as innocent as you like.

  ‘It’s because she’s French, I reckon. She likes to add a bit of mystery. Isn’t that right, Eve?’

  ‘Hmm.’ I began to tremble. Did he know something? Was he playing me? The awful truth was, I honestly couldn’t tell.

  Later, when I went to the loo, I noticed Gemma and Donnagh huddled outside, smoking. They both looked very tense, almost as if they were having a row. But they quickly reverted to normal as soon as they saw me.

  Later, in the car, Donnagh told me Gemma thought Mick was having an affair.

  ‘Is he really?’ I asked, relieved the focus had been diverted from me.

  ‘Maybe,’ Donnagh said, not taking his eyes off the road. ‘But I can’t entirely blame him.’

  ‘What are you talking about? Gemma’s absolutely gorgeous. And she seems, um, nice, I suppose.’

  Donnagh threw me a sideways glance. ‘No, she doesn’t, Eve. She’s a pain in the butt.’

  ‘Yeah, but it’s still a pretty shitty thing to do. He must be a bit of an arsehole.’

  Donnagh’s face tightened. ‘Hey, that’s my best friend you’re talking about. And you’ve only just met him. It’s not as simple as that.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I muttered, suitably rebuked. ‘I just didn’t warm to the guy, but if you say he’s decent …’

  For a moment, there was silence, then Donnagh glanced across again, a funny look on his face. ‘Sometimes I wonder about you, Eve Durant.’

  ‘You do?’ I said, feeling my insides flip. By complaining about Mick, had I inadvertently revealed myself? ‘What do you wonder?’

  ‘I wonder what happened to you to make you so suspicious. You seem so wary sometimes, particularly of men.’

  I was dumbstruck by the irony.

  ‘Eve.’

  ‘I’m not wary,’ I said eventually. ‘I just didn’t warm to Mick, that’s all.’

  Donnagh sighed. ‘Look, I admit he has his faults, and he can be a bit loud and brash sometimes, but Gemma is the real problem. She’s the selfish and manipulative one.’

  The harshness of his tone surprised me.

  ‘She uses people. She takes what she wants.’

  ‘Is that why you broke up with her?’ I asked quietly.

  ‘What?’ Donnagh flicked his eyes to meet mine.

  ‘When you were a kid. She told me you used to go out together.’

  ‘Oh, right, yes, we did.’ He changed gear in the car.

  ‘Yeah, well, I realized what she was like years ago, but Mick, well, he wasn’t quite so lucky.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘Me?’ said Donnagh, his voice rising a little. ‘What can I do? If he’s sleeping around, nothing I can do about it.’

  ‘Will you cover for him if need be?’

  Donnagh shrugged. ‘I suppose so. As I said, the guy’s my best friend.’

  I was breathing deeply. I seemed to have got away with things for the moment, but this couldn’t go on. It had to stop.

  ‘But he will get caught,’ said Donnagh.

  ‘Why do you say that?’ I stammered.

  ‘Because everyone gets caught eventually,’ he said. ‘In fact, some people want to get caught.’

  ‘That’s not true.’

  ‘Isn’t it? The thing is, it’s just a
matter of when.’

  48.

  Rachel: day twelve, 3 p.m.

  I had been seized by a depression so out of control I could barely breathe. Mammy was gone, Evie was teetering on the verge – and now Jacob, my beloved Jacob, had left my life too. Or, rather, I had pushed him away. Without him, I felt completely untethered. For the briefest moment, I toyed with the idea of jumping off Evie’s balcony – joining Evie and Mammy in the dark ranks of unconsciousness.

  But, of course, I did nothing of the sort.

  Instead, after wallowing in self-pity for several hours, I’d finally got out of bed and tried to pick up my detective work where I’d left off, looking for clues around the apartment that I might have missed.

  But my heart wasn’t in it and after a while, with absolutely nothing to show for it, I finally abandoned my project and went to the same park Jacob and I had been in the previous day. I walked in circles until eventually I plonked myself down on a wet bench. In the distance, an old man, an artist, was painting the same horse-chestnut tree we’d stood under during the rainstorm. I watched him for a while, trying to come to terms with everything that had happened, that might happen.

  Jacob and I were over. That much was clear. And as for my detective work, that had come to a dead end too. I’d found nothing. Or nothing useful, at any rate. And even if I had done, what difference would it have made? Could it conjure Evie from her coma, like some runic spell?

  Of course not.

  After that I continued walking, tears plopping down my cheeks and onto my chin. I had tried hard. Too hard perhaps. And what had I to show for it? Nothing but a bunch of hurt, aggro and stress. Perhaps it would have been better if I hadn’t tried. If I’d followed DI Ainsworth’s advice at the beginning and left well enough alone.

  At some point, I saw that the old man was packing up his easel and brushes and thought he was gesturing towards me – as if he was trying to say hello. All of a sudden I found myself walking in his direction, childhood thoughts coming back to me of my dad, of oils, of canvas, and then the man was backing away from me, clearly bewildered. ‘I’m sorry,’ I muttered, coming out of my trance, looking into his bemused eyes. ‘I thought I knew you from somewhere.’