Sisters and Lies Read online

  Janet’s eyes widened. ‘What?’

  ‘It’s a long story. It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘I don’t know, Rachel. You hear such horror stories.’

  ‘Janet, it’s not like you to be such a wuss.’ And I whispered, ‘When we first met, you were bringing home strange men every night of the week.’

  Janet flicked her eyes towards the kitchen, where Patrick was tidying up. ‘That’s all in the past now, Rachel. I’m a completely different person. And, anyway, my point is you could have stayed here with us. In the spare bedroom, I mean.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said, a huge wave of guilt hitting me. ‘Look, I’m sorry I said that just now. I don’t know what came over me.’

  Janet shrugged. ‘It’s okay. You’re under a lot of pressure.’

  Suddenly a thought occurred to me. ‘Do you remember Evie saying anything about a college course before she crashed? You mentioned something that day in the sandwich bar and it triggered a memory.’

  ‘What kind of memory?’ Janet said, her forehead creasing a little.

  ‘Well, before I went on the book tour she told me she’d started a new art course. Trouble is, the telephone line was really bad and I was completely distracted, about to get on a flight. I can barely remember a word of what she said.’

  ‘It’s quite possible,’ Janet replied. ‘When the mood was good, Evie often did evening courses – upholstery, oil painting, anything art-related.’

  ‘And this new one?’

  ‘Sorry, Rachel, I don’t have a clue. Remember, I hadn’t spoken to Evie for a few months before the crash.’

  ‘You’re sure?’ I said, barely concealing my disappointment.

  ‘Yes, I’m sure,’ she said, then drew me in for a hug. ‘I have a friend who’s a policeman if you want to do any background checks,’ she said, into my hair.

  I looked at her in confusion. ‘You mean to find out about Evie’s art course?’

  ‘No, you eejit. To find out more about Donnagh. Make sure he’s clean.’

  I couldn’t stifle a laugh. ‘You’ve been watching too many Nordic noirs, missus.’

  ‘Fair enough. But I just want to make sure you’re safe. After everything that’s happened.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said, withdrawing from her embrace and reaching for the door handle. ‘But I promise this guy is so clean he’s squeaky. He puts the toilet seat down and everything.’

  ‘Wow, he really is one in a million, then, isn’t he?’ She was smiling, but I could see faint traces of worry in her eyes. ‘Just promise me you won’t get too close to him. We don’t know anything about him.’

  ‘I have no intention of getting close to him.’ Or to any man, I thought. If I couldn’t have Jacob, I didn’t want any of them. I would get by perfectly fine on my own.

  22.

  Evie

  The coma continues. I have still no idea what happened to me – except what I mentioned earlier about crashing into a wall in Lewisham. And it still sounds ludicrous. I mean, I haven’t driven since Artie first taught me years ago – and I don’t own a car. Why would I have decided to take up driving now? Why Lewisham? None of it adds up.

  I’m trying really hard to think, to collect my memories in a bundle and sift through them. But it’s like holding onto snowflakes. As soon as I touch them, they melt away, right there in my hands.

  On the physical front, I’m still unresponsive. Well, externally at any rate. Internally, I’m a bloody riot.

  I’ve been experiencing really bad panic lately, when my heart thumps and my skin prickles and I feel all clammy and terrified. Then at night I have these … well, delusions, I suppose you’d call them, where I’m convinced I’m up and walking around, with no end in sight. During these episodes, the world seems very dark and very cold and I don’t know where I am or where I’m going. But at least I’m walking. I’m moving. I’m me again.

  That’s when I jolt ‘awake’ and reality kicks in: I’m not walking. I’m in a coma. My legs don’t work. None of me works.

  I may never get out of here.

  Cue another panic attack.

  This is literally how I pass my days.

  But even with all of that I’m still determined to get to the truth of how I wound up in here – I’m still determined to trace my tracks.

  I believe I’m up to the point now where Artie and I said goodbye at the wine bar: I remember walking slowly to my flat afterwards, my head full of him – the way he smelt, the way he moved – wondering how I could possibly have let him walk away.

  And my obsessing didn’t get any better the next day. I mean, what were the chances of us having bumped into one another like that? It was almost as if Fate was intervening. Serendipity.

  I’d left him the previous night, positive I’d never see him again, but what if I’d been wrong? What if this was the universe’s way of telling me to grab that opportunity by the horns and run with it?

  ‘Bollix,’ I could practically hear Janet say. ‘He’s getting married, Evie. He’s moved on.’

  But that was all very well for Janet to say. She was loved up and content in her life. I was nearly thirty and alone.

  Now I had the chance to rectify that. Who could possibly blame me for what I was about to do? No jury in the land would convict me. I dug out Artie’s card from my handbag, flooded with relief that I hadn’t thrown it away. I’d just send him a quick email, thanking him for the wonderful evening. Then maybe suggest a casual drink one night after work. It was hardly Fatal Attraction territory. I mean, I wasn’t going to start boiling Shannon’s pet bunny or anything.

  Not yet, at any rate.

  So that was what I did: I sent off a jaunty email to Artie’s work address, telling him how much I’d loved bumping into him, and would he like to do it again sometime? Possibly this week. Then I’d practically sat on the computer, like a hen with an egg, waiting for an answer.

  Eventually, five long hours after I’d sent the original email, I got a reply.

  Eveline, it was so good to run into you the other night too. And, yes, Shannon and I would love to meet up with you. How about dinner this Thursday night at our place? Would that suit?

  I stared in horror at the invitation. What was he talking about? I had obviously meant it to be just the two of us, not him, me and his bloody perfect-sounding girlfriend. Quite frankly, I couldn’t think of anything more nightmarish. But what was I going to do? Ask him if we could keep her out of it? Tell him I wanted a quiet tête-à-tête, just me and him? Why didn’t I just ask him to call the wedding off and be done with it?

  Confused, I spent the rest of the evening mulling over what to do, trying to find a way to see Artie but cut out the annoying fiancée without appearing rude.

  As I did so, another text landed in from Donnagh.

  Hey, gorgeous, hope you’re well. I’m back from Chicago next week. Are you still up for dinner on Saturday? DF

  I sighed. This man didn’t give up, did he? It was like one of those David Attenborough programmes on the telly: hungry lion pursues unsuspecting, slightly stupid wildebeest. Well, I was damned if he was going to devour me, like he did every other woman. I wasn’t that bloody thick.

  For a second, my thoughts skidded back to that night outside my flat when Donnagh had shown up with the new pair of shoes. I felt flooded with shame just thinking about it. How could I have let him do that to me? All those intimate things. What had I been thinking?

  I closed my eyes and turned my thoughts back to Artie. He was everything Donnagh was not: kind, gentle, humane. Being around him had made me feel good about myself for the first time in half a decade. I needed to see him again. I didn’t think I could go on if I didn’t. Anyway, maybe having dinner with him and Shannon wouldn’t be so bad. In terms of lions, Shannon seemed like the less dangerous option.

  The minute I got into work, I typed Artie a reply:

  Sorry, only seeing your email now. What a lovely idea! What time should I come round to your place?

  I
wanted to make myself sound casual. Like I did this kind of thing all the time. Like it was no big deal.

  About twenty minutes later, my inbox pinged.

  Great! Shannon is dying to meet you. Shall we say 7.30 p.m.? I’m attaching my address and a map below. By the way, S wants to know if you have any special dietary requirements.

  I looked at the email, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. Dietary requirements? Did the desire to consume Artie whole count? I suspected not.

  Thanks. 7.30 sounds grand. And, no, I eat everything …

  I could almost hear Janet adding the punchline: ‘She adores men’s hearts.’

  I arrived at Artie and Shannon’s door at 7.28 p.m., feeling as if someone had pulled my innards out and wrapped them around my waist. I thought meeting Donnagh had been terrifying, but this seemed to be on another level altogether.

  I’d spent hours and hours preparing for that moment, ransacking my wardrobe so I would look ‘just right’. I suspected Shannon, a psychologist, wouldn’t be so naive as to enter a ‘who’s the more glamorous’ competition. And if I went over the top it would come across as needy and insecure. I had to judge this one perfectly.

  In the end I went for a floral tea-dress with a pair of Chelsea boots: feminine enough to show off my (fake) tanned legs but not so try-hard that I looked as if I wanted to steal Shannon’s fiancé.

  Which, of course, was exactly what I wanted to do.

  But I wasn’t going to show my cards just yet.

  I rang the buzzer, and a woman’s voice came on the line. ‘Eveline, is that you? This is Shannon. Just press the door. We’re number twenty-one, on the second floor.’

  I did as I was told, and made for the stairs, feeling my legs turn to jelly. Suddenly everything felt wrong. My make-up; my dress; the bottle of Merlot I had thought would be perfect but now felt cheap and unoriginal. I took deep breaths as I walked slowly up the stairs. Why did I keep landing myself in these excruciating reunions with people I should long since have forgotten?

  ‘And you must be Eveline!’

  A tall, remarkably blonde woman was standing in front of me, smiling widely. She was wearing a pair of jeans and a tight white T-shirt, the only blast of colour a slim turquoise necklace that appeared to be made from shells.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, panting from the stairs exercise. ‘You’re Shannon.’

  ‘That’s me,’ she said, holding open the door, then taking my coat and the bottle of wine. ‘Come inside. Artie’s cooking up a storm.’

  ‘Artie can cook?’

  ‘Kind of,’ Shannon said, half smiling. ‘He’s definitely enthusiastic.’

  As we walked into the sitting room, Artie popped his head out from between two sliding glass doors. ‘Evie, you made it. Sorry, just at a slightly delicate moment with the barbecue.’ I could see smoke billowing behind his head.

  ‘Jesus, are you okay out there?’

  ‘I’m grand. This always happens. Shannon will look after you for a few minutes. I’ll be there in five.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said, and when I turned around, Shannon was holding a glass of prosecco in my direction.

  ‘Don’t worry about the smoke. That always happens,’ she said, handing me the glass. ‘You do drink alcohol, don’t you?’

  ‘God, no,’ I said. ‘Never touch the stuff.’

  Shannon’s smile wobbled. ‘Would you prefer some fruit juice? Or maybe some sparkling water?’

  ‘No, no, I was just …’

  For a second Shannon didn’t say anything, then all of a sudden she slapped her palm against her forehead. ‘You were joking, weren’t you?’ she said, with another wide smile. ‘Sorry. I’m still struggling with the Irish sense of humour.’

  ‘It’s a tricky thing, I suppose.’

  ‘Yes. All the irony and euphemism. Everyone saying the exact opposite of what they mean. And I’m the big thick Yank who takes it all literally.’

  I smiled. At least she knew how to do self-deprecation. That was something.

  She grinned and linked my arm. ‘Come sit down on the couch and tell me all about yourself. I’m dying to hear.’

  Obeying, I plonked myself beside her, sneaking a look at her tanned profile when she turned her head.

  She wasn’t beautiful exactly, her chin was a bit ‘chinny’ and her nose a little too long, but something about her radiated attractiveness. Her smile was infectious, her movements were open and inviting, as if she was comfortable in her own skin, and wanted me to be too. I had a brief desire to lay my head on her shoulder and ask her to rub my hair.

  ‘So, I want to know everything. Artie has only told me snippets.’

  I bet he has, I felt like saying. Extremely small snippets.

  ‘Um, not much to tell,’ I lied, my mind suddenly blank. For some reason all I could think of was a sign I’d seen earlier on a colleague’s desk: Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. From The Art of War, Tom had informed me, when I’d asked him about the quote’s provenance. Sun Tzu.

  ‘Well, I work for a business magazine in Greenwich. I live in slightly less glamorous Woolwich.’ I paused for a second. ‘My favourite colour is purple.’

  Shannon laughed. ‘You’re hilarious.’

  ‘Okay, the barbecue has been rescued.’ Artie was standing in the living room, wearing a red pinny and an even redder face. ‘Now for the next important question. Eveline, how do you like your steak cooked?’

  ‘Um, I don’t mind. Medium, I guess.’

  ‘I can do it well, if you’d prefer?’

  ‘No medium’s fine,’ I said. ‘Unlike most Irish people I don’t require my meat to be incinerated before eating it.’ I smiled at Shannon to demonstrate that this was yet another example of my biting Irish wit but she wasn’t looking at me. Instead, she was gazing at her fiancé adoringly.

  ‘Wait till you see this one’s version,’ Artie said, pointing his thumb in the direction of his girlfriend. ‘She likes it practically mooing on the plate.’

  Shannon smiled and gestured, as if to say, ‘Who – me?’

  ‘Don’t deny it,’ he said, fluffing her hair as he walked back out onto the balcony.

  ‘Oh, I won’t,’ she said, with a huge grin. ‘I have a great taste for blood.’

  23.

  Possibly because Shannon seemed like a decent human being, despite the slightly scary blood comment, the dinner was even more excruciating than I’d anticipated.

  ‘Artie tells me you guys dated as kids.’ She was ladling more potato salad onto my plate and I was trying to stop her.

  I flicked a glance at Artie, and for a second, the merest second, he looked away. ‘Um, well, we were twenty-one and twenty-three respectively, so I wouldn’t say we were kids exactly …’ Had I just used ‘respectively’? At eight o’clock on a Thursday? At a barbecue?

  ‘Yeah, but even so it wasn’t serious, was it?’

  ‘Um …’ I wanted to say it had been deadly serious, that we’d talked about marriage, children, spending our whole lives together ‘… no, I suppose it wasn’t,’ I mumbled. I noticed Artie was still refusing to look at me, and that he had barely touched his food.

  ‘So what happened? How did you wind up in London?’

  ‘Er, Shannon, I’m not sure Eveline wants to go into all of that.’

  ‘Oh, my God, sorry. Feel free to ignore me.’ Shannon was looking genuinely contrite. ‘I’m just being a nosy old psychologist as usual.’

  ‘No, no, it’s fine,’ I said. ‘The truth is my mother died and I needed to get away. I couldn’t cope with Leitrim, all the memories it held.’ I was looking at Shannon but really I was addressing Artie now. I wanted him to understand that I’d been totally fucked up after Mammy’s death. Obviously. Or I would never have let him go.

  ‘I’m so sorry to hear that,’ Shannon said softly. ‘How awful. I take it she was young?’

  ‘Forty-nine,’ I said, hearing a tiny wobble in my voice. We were all silent for a second.

  ‘Eveline, tell Shannon
about your job. She’s really interested in journalism.’

  Shannon looked quizzically at him but I knew he was trying to lighten the mood, deflect the talk from the past, from Leitrim.

  And so I told her about my dead-end job and my awful boss Nigel, hamming it up for comedy purposes. Then I told her about my flat, and finally about Rachel.

  ‘OhmiGod! Rachel Darcy is your sister?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. I hadn’t meant to play the famous-sister card so soon. Once people knew about her, they tended to lose all interest in me.

  ‘She’s fantastic,’ Shannon said, as if she meant it. ‘I’ve actually recommended her books to my clients. Especially Sanctuary, the one dealing with the aftermath of her abortion. It’s incredibly moving.’

  ‘Yes, it is,’ I said, accidentally pushing my chair back so that it made a violent screeching sound. I was proud of what Rachel had achieved but, frankly, I had enough to deal with, never mind her teenage termination. I didn’t have the stomach for any more ‘woe is me’ family history.

  ‘Who’s for dessert?’ Artie said, as if he had read my mind.

  ‘Is it tiramisu?’ Shannon said, gazing up at him with doe eyes.

  ‘Yes, it is. Specially made today, using the finest Italian espresso.’

  Shannon groaned.

  ‘I’ll take that as a no, then,’ he said, and she slapped him playfully on the hand.

  ‘You’ll bring me an extra large portion or you’ll face the consequences.’ She was beaming at him now, like he was some kind of god.

  I had lost my appetite. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. It suddenly dawned on me why Shannon and Artie had invited me round for dinner. And it had nothing to do with war or enemies. The truth was, they were happy. They were in love. This wasn’t a sepia-toned memory of a love shared back when Artie and I were kids. This was real. This was now.

  ‘You’ll stay for coffee at least?’ Shannon said, when I told her it was time for me to leave.

  ‘No, no, you’re so kind, but I have to be up early. I’d better go.’