Sisters and Lies Read online

  Back in the apartment, a defiant Donnagh was still holding the postcard, staring at me. ‘Look, Rachel, at this stage, I don’t really care if you believe me or not. And, by the way, you haven’t exactly been one hundred per cent honest yourself, Miss Famous Writer.’

  ‘How did you …?’

  ‘Well, there’s this thing called the internet, see. You happen to be all over it.’

  I remained quiet for a second, embarrassed that he had found me out. Then I said, ‘I believe you about the postcard. And I’m sorry if I jumped to conclusions.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ he said, his voice softening a little. ‘Apology accepted. Now, if you don’t mind, I need to get to work.’

  ‘Donnagh,’ I said, as he turned for the door.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I really am sorry. I’m not thinking straight, these days.’

  He sighed and laid a hand on my shoulder. ‘I understand, Rachel, but please try to remember we’re on the same side here.’

  For a second neither of us said anything, a strange new energy occupying the air.

  I withdrew my shoulder and hastened towards the kitchen.

  By the time I returned to the hallway, Donnagh had gone.

  33.

  Evie

  I didn’t remain with Donnagh in the hotel all night. I slipped out as he lay sleeping and caught a taxi home. After my alcohol and cocaine high had worn off, all I felt was revulsion. That should never have happened. That had been a terrible mistake.

  The obvious thing would have been to go to bed and sleep it off, but for some reason I knew that was not a good idea – and anyway, my body was still too stoked with tension. Instead I pulled on my runners and went for a walk in the semi-light, hoping the fresh air would help clear my head. It was very early on a Sunday morning and London looked beautiful – wrapped in the kind of pink-red haze that made me think of a Turner painting.

  Here and there stragglers from the previous night’s revelries wobbled into my pathway – drunken lads swigging out of open cans, girls carrying their sandals, mascara and eyeliner running down their faces.

  I found a tiny coffee shop that was open, went in and ordered a double espresso. Anything that might keep me awake – anything that might stop me falling …

  The siren call of home was summoning me – Xanax, my bed. Oblivion.

  But I needed to avoid that scenario. The last time I’d taken to my bed like that, after Janet had moved out, I’d spent nearly a week there and had nearly lost my job. I couldn’t risk that. Not this time.

  When we were still friends, Janet had called those episodes ‘depression’ and had urged me to seek help. ‘Evie, hen, this can’t be right. The way you’re either out caning it or shut up here in your room. Don’t you think maybe a little therapy might help?’

  Janet had been a one-woman promotional package for psychotherapy ever since she’d attended a shrink herself about a year earlier. She’d attributed to it all kinds of wonderful things that had happened in her life: becoming a trainee teacher, meeting Patrick, getting over issues she’d had with her mother.

  But I was having none of it. ‘It’s not depression,’ I’d snapped back. And even if it was, I couldn’t understand how ‘getting help’ was going to actually help me. What could it do? Bring back my mother? Make my father care for me? I had melancholia of the soul. The condition of being human. I was pretty sure there was no doctor who could cure that.

  I continued walking, feeling the drugs and alcohol sweat themselves out of my system.

  Sunday morning. Coming down.

  Christ. When had I become such a cliché?

  Ironically, that song had been playing in the taxi as I’d made my way back from the hotel a few hours earlier. The perfect score to my stupidity. I’d never listened to the words before, always thought there was something a little irritating about the tune, but now, as I pounded the London streets in the pink and red half-light, snippets of Kris Kristofferson’s words came back to me.

  His talk of sleeping city sidewalks; fading dreams; wanting to get stoned …

  My sidewalk wasn’t sleeping as such. It was more populated with zombie people: the homeless; the immigrant workers; the still-drunk brigade from the night before.

  But I knew now what Kris Kristofferson had been getting at.

  The loneliness.

  The sheer unadulterated emotional pain of it being just you and your hangover and nobody around to love you. To care for you.

  I would have done anything at that moment to have Mammy around: ‘There, there, darling, this will make you better.’ I had a sudden blinding memory of being eight, sick and feverish, and Mammy feeding me broth, flying it into my mouth, like an aeroplane. ‘You’ll be fixed soon,’ she’d soothed, laying a cool flannel on my head. ‘Soon you’ll be right as rain.’

  I continued walking, the desire to go home and take a load of sedatives now virtually overwhelming. Who cared if I lost my stupid job? Everyone knew I hated it.

  I could sell my flat, take the money and go on a big trip around the world, visit all those places I’d intended to see but had never got round to. It would be brilliant – I could go to an ashram, meet a dashing foreigner, like Julia Roberts does in Eat Pray Love, and come back all spiritually cleansed and loved up. For a moment or two, I actually convinced myself that that was a real option.

  But, as I continued to walk, reality kicked in. I had panic attacks in railway stations. I had no sense of direction. And, in any case, what did it matter what country I was in? At the end of the day nothing would have changed. I would still be me. Mammy would still be gone. For a second the pain of her loss caused me to stop and bend over. Why did it still hurt so fucking much?

  I continued to pound the pavement, trying to block out all thoughts of my mother. Of Donnagh. But it was proving impossible. What the fuck had I done?

  Back there, in the hotel bedroom, I’d thought what I was doing was empowering – some kind of post-modern take on revenge. So why did I feel so dirty and ashamed?

  Images from the previous night skittered across my brain. Donnagh’s tongue all over my body, the top of his head bobbing as he sucked on my breasts. I touched them protectively. He hadn’t said anything about the scars – the silvery-grey lines that circumnavigated the edges from the surgery. Perhaps he hadn’t noticed them – it had been dark. Or perhaps he hadn’t wanted to ruin the mood.

  He’d seen my breasts without scars too, when we were younger, though he probably wouldn’t remember that. It had been a long time ago, twelve years to be precise. At a PE class in the local pool when he’d yanked down my swimming costume in front of the whole class for a dare. He’d called me ‘Saggy Tits’, then told me I was a ‘disgusting fat cow’. I wondered what he’d say if he found out the breasts he’d been sucking on last night were those same saggy ones. That I was the same fat cow.

  ‘How did you feel at that moment?’ The psychiatrist’s voice came back to me suddenly – the only therapist I’d ever gone to see, following my suicide attempt at college. She’d somehow managed to coax the swimming-pool story out of me, and I’d been forced to unpick it. Slowly. Like a knot.

  I’d felt humiliated. Exposed. Like I might die a little death from the shame. But I didn’t say any of that. Instead I shrugged. Told her I preferred not to dwell on it.

  She’d frowned at me, as if I’d said something wrong, then proceeded to probe me with questions. Had it made me ashamed of my body? Of my sexuality?

  ‘I was already ashamed of my body,’ I told her. ‘And my sexuality.’

  ‘But this cemented things for you. This assault.’

  ‘It wasn’t an assault,’ I said, and she’d just stared at me, then started scribbling frantically in her notepad.

  ‘How would you describe it then, Eveline?’ she had asked.

  And I hadn’t been able to respond to that. Because I hadn’t been able to think of a word for what Donnagh had done to me. Did such a word even exist?

  I th
ought about all of this now, as I walked through a dawn-lit London, my feet moving quickly across the grey slabs of pavement.

  If what Donnagh had done to me was so bad, if it was assault, why had I gone to bed with him the previous night? Why had I allowed him to stick his dick into me? What did that make me? A slut? A victim?

  I sat down on a nearby bench and started to cry. I had betrayed her – that childhood Eveline. I had let her down. I was a coward. No, worse than that. I was a hypocrite. I had served myself on a plate to Donnagh, then complained when he’d eaten his fill. I wasn’t a victim. I was an accomplice. Yes, he had fucked me. Treated me like a slab of meat. But the ugly truth was, I had wanted it.

  I had wanted to come undone.

  34.

  I walked around for as long as I could, trying to stave it off, but eventually I had no choice but to return to the flat. The walls seemed unbearably close and the rooms cramped, like jail cells with no windows. I longed to talk to someone, anyone, but of course Janet and I weren’t speaking and Rachel was on a book tour in New Zealand.

  Jesus, she really was becoming famous. I’d attended one of her events about six months earlier and had seen for myself the kind of zealot-like adoration she attracted. I joked that if she wanted to start a cult she’d definitely have the numbers. ‘I could design your logos. Maybe something involving a tattoo or a Doc Marten …’

  Rachel had laughed and said she’d stick to writing, though she did enquire if I was ‘doing anything artistic, these days’ in a fake it-doesn’t-really-matter-if-you’re-not voice. Even though I knew it did.

  But she needn’t have worried. I’d been attending a local art college for the past few months, doing a ‘foundation art course’ in the evenings. If I passed, there was a chance I might be accepted onto their part-time degree programme, possibly escape the hell-hole that was Business Matters.

  ‘Sounds great, Evie,’ Rachel said, after I’d filled her in. ‘What exactly does it involve?’

  ‘Oh, lots of things – design, fine art, photography, film. I’m going to have to submit a project in a few months’ time.’

  ‘You mean like Tracey Emin’s bed or something?’

  ‘Yeah, exactly like that,’ I said, and we both laughed. ‘Actually I was thinking more along the lines of a video installation. I’ve got a friend who’s good with AV stuff. He’s going to help me choose a camera.’

  ‘Evie, I’m so sorry – you’re breaking up on me, what did you say?’

  ‘I said I’ve got a …’

  But then a booming announcement interrupted me, and Rachel said, ‘I’m really sorry but I have to get on this flight, sweetie.’

  ‘It’s fine. Go. Enjoy yourself on the tour.’

  And she’d said goodbye then, telling me she’d call when she got there and that she loved me, asking me to take care of myself.

  ‘Bye,’ I’d said, staring at the phone, feeling empty. In comparison to her dazzling career, my silly little art course sounded ridiculous. My tutor was a pretentious git who thought he was Damien Hirst, and I was deluding myself if I thought it could lead to greater things, like a career. In reality, it was nothing more than a tether, something to stop me floating away …

  When I got home after my dawn walk, I succumbed, inevitably, to an all-out Xanax and bed binge. My front-door buzzer went a number of times, but I ignored it. I had a horrible feeling it was Donnagh and I couldn’t face him. What would I say? I never wanted to see him again.

  Monday morning loomed and I tried to drag myself out of bed but I was so zonked from all the drugs I didn’t have the energy. I called in sick, knowing Nigel would lose his mind. But I didn’t care. I just took more Xanax and went back to bed. This continued for two more days until I finally accepted I had to face the firing squad.

  As I got dressed on the Thursday morning, crippled with a dread I couldn’t even put a name to, Janet’s voice sounded in my head again: Evie, they can fix this. It’s not the eighteenth century. People can help you get through it.

  I had ignored her advice, said she needed to stop watching Dr Phil.

  But now as I looked in the mirror her words haunted me, and I wanted to yell at her and say she was wrong: that there was no fixing me.

  I was broken.

  Always had been.

  Always would be.

  Didn’t she understand that?

  That was just the way it was.

  35.

  Rachel: day nine, 11.30 a.m.

  It was preposterously stupid, but after finding the postcard, I decided to try to contact my father. I rang International Directory Enquiries, remembering the ancient address Evie had used to track him down, then nearly fell over with shock when I heard that, yes, a Jean Durant was still listed for that address and would I like to be put through?

  ‘Um, okay,’ I mumbled, but in the end all I got was a voicemail. I left a tongue-tied, garbled message, nearly forgetting my own number, then hung up.

  I had thought it would be impossible to re-establish communication with him after so many years, but it had taken me less than five minutes. If I could do it so easily, had Evie been able to do likewise? Feeling shaky I walked into the kitchen to retrieve a glass of water only to find Donnagh standing there. ‘I thought you’d gone to work,’ I said.

  ‘I did go, but then I couldn’t concentrate so I came back here. I was worried I’d upset you. I was thinking we could go to the hospital together to see Eve.’

  I stared at him, a little surprised by the offer. It had occurred to me a few days earlier that I’d never actually seen him at the hospital at the same time as me, and assumed he was operating to a different schedule. Recently, though, I had suspected he wasn’t going at all.

  ‘Donnagh, are you sure? You don’t need to do this for my sake, you know.’

  ‘I know that, Rachel. I want to. And I also wanted to apologize for being such a prick earlier – about the postcard. It was only natural you would think I sent it.’

  ‘It’s forgotten,’ I said, trying hard to sound like I meant it. Maybe I had.

  We travelled in Donnagh’s hire car (a top-of-the-range Audi) and for a moment I was reminded of how wealthy he was, how strange it was that he had chosen to live in my sister’s tiny flat. But then I gave myself a stern talking-to. What was all that about us being on the same side now? I really needed to stop second-guessing him. I needed to start giving him the benefit of the doubt.

  ‘A penny for them,’ Donnagh said, almost as if he could intuit what I was thinking.

  I glanced in his direction, and was caught off-guard by his profile – the hard beauty of it, the perfect sweep and curve of his face. ‘Oh, nothing. Just thinking about Evie.’

  ‘Of course,’ he said, changing gear. ‘And I bet you’re wondering why I haven’t been to see her.’

  ‘You haven’t?’

  ‘Oh, come on, Rachel, you know I haven’t.’

  I shrugged my shoulders, trying to feign nonchalance. ‘I just thought you were busy at work.’

  ‘You think I’m an arsehole, more like.’

  ‘I didn’t say that.’

  ‘Didn’t need to.’ Donnagh sighed. ‘The thing is I have been busy at work. Manic, as it happens. But that’s not the reason I haven’t visited Eve. Nor is it because I couldn’t be bothered.’

  ‘Why then?’ I snapped, realizing that I was angry with him. Angry for his neglect of my sister.

  He paused, then looked in my direction. ‘If you want to know the truth, it’s guilt. She was driving my car. I was the one who pursued her.’

  ‘Pursued her?’

  ‘Romantically, I mean. I asked her out on a date. I kept asking her out on dates. If it wasn’t for me, she probably wouldn’t be in this mess.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, breathing deeply. For a second back there, I’d thought he meant he’d pursued her in a car.

  ‘And there’s something else I haven’t told you.’

  I turned to him.

  ‘You remember when
you asked me about the postcard, and I said we weren’t at that stage yet. The love stage.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, I lied about that. We were. I was.’

  ‘Why would you lie about it?’

  Now it was Donnagh’s turn to shrug. ‘Because I wanted you to believe me about the postcard. That I didn’t send it.’ He stopped for a moment, took a deep breath. ‘And because it was too painful,’ he said quietly. ‘Better to pretend Evie didn’t mean anything to me. Keep working. Pretend all of this wasn’t actually happening.’

  ‘So why the change of heart?’

  ‘You,’ he said. ‘You love your sister so much. And you’re facing the pain head-on. Like I should be doing. Instead of being such a fucking coward.’ He seemed to wipe something off his cheek.

  ‘But you’d only known her a little while. How could you love her? It was too soon.’

  Donnagh glanced at me, taking his eyes off the road for the merest second. ‘I don’t know why,’ he said, ‘but I did.’

  Later I watched through the glass of the intensive-care unit as Donnagh stroked Evie’s hair, and whispered to her words I couldn’t hear. Donnagh loved Evie? Was he for real? Or was he just bullshitting me? It occurred to me that I’d forgotten to ask him if he felt the love was mutual. If Evie had harboured similar feelings …

  Finally, about thirty minutes later, he emerged, red-eyed and exhausted-looking.

  ‘You heading back to work?’

  He nodded grimly.

  ‘Time for a quick coffee first?’ I said, trying to sound friendly. I was damned if I was going to let him walk away without getting to the bottom of his latest admission.

  ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Why not?’

  In the canteen, I poured coffee into two polystyrene cups, paid for them, then brought them over to where Donnagh was sitting. ‘It probably tastes like piss,’ I said, ‘but I wasn’t sure if you drank tea.’

  Donnagh smiled wanly. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘How are you holding up?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m okay,’ he said. ‘Just a little shocked, I guess. All the wires and tubes and that … I didn’t expect her to look so frail.’