Sisters and Lies Read online

  I nodded, pulled out my key and opened the door before I had time to second-guess myself. Next thing I knew, I was guiding Donnagh through the messy communal space, up the staircase and towards my flat.

  Inside, he closed the door quietly, then spun me around to face him and kissed me hard. ‘You’re so beautiful, do you know that?’ he murmured. He directed me towards my couch, where we half sat, half lay, still kissing.

  He took his time. There were no grubby attempts at removing my top, at putting his hand between my legs. For ages it was just his lips on mine, one hand gently brushing against my shirt.

  At some point, though, he began upping the ante: hands tracing the outline of my breasts, then slowly unbuttoning my top.

  I let him. I felt like I was in a dream. Or, if not a dream, a trance, something from which I would eventually wake. But not now, not yet.

  ‘Your breasts,’ he said quietly, but with the faintest touch of wonder. He was staring at them as if they were precious jewels, encased within the lace and cotton of my bra.

  ‘Mmm,’ I said.

  He cupped one, pulled the bra down ever so slightly, so that the nipple was revealed. ‘Let me taste …’ Suddenly he had my nipple in his mouth and he was sucking. The feeling was exquisite: pain and pleasure perfectly mixed.

  That was when I jolted.

  A memory.

  ‘No,’ I heard myself say, pushing his head back with my hands.

  ‘Okay,’ he said, and removed his mouth. He attempted to steer it back towards my lips.

  ‘No,’ I said, out of the trance now. I pushed myself into an upright position and began rebuttoning my top.

  ‘Eve, are you okay?’ Donnagh had sat up too and was staring at me.

  ‘Yes, yes, I’m fine,’ I said. ‘But I have an early start tomorrow.’ I let the implication hang.

  Donnagh stood up.

  I got to my feet to face him.

  Carefully, he took my hands in his. ‘I’ve scared you, I think. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to go so far. It’s just that I’m so attracted to you.’

  I felt my gaze drop, but Donnagh reached his hand under my chin and lifted it. ‘You know I really like you, Eve, don’t you?’

  I didn’t say anything. I could barely move.

  ‘Well, I do. And I want to get to know you better. Will you allow me to do that?’

  I tried to speak, but it was as if I’d been struck dumb.

  ‘Eve, I’m sorry. Was it too fast? Is that the problem? Did I go too fast?’

  ‘Yes,’ I whispered.

  ‘I apologize,’ he said, pressing hard on my hands. ‘I shouldn’t have done that. Come out with me on Saturday night, and I’ll make it up to you, I promise.’

  His eyes were shining, whether out of adrenalin or contrition, I didn’t know. He looked so tall and beautiful and earnest, standing there.

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I’ll come.’

  After he had gone I sat on the couch, hugging my knees close to my chest. I felt as if I was dreaming because surely that couldn’t have been real. I couldn’t have just made out with the boy who’d tortured me at secondary school.

  I gazed down at my breasts, then cupped the left one with my hand. The way Donnagh had looked at them, like stolen treasure. If only he had known that they were reconstructions, not the ones I’d been born with. In my defence, I hadn’t had a boob job in the traditional page-three sense: no implants had been inserted. Instead I’d had a breast reduction and lift. But it had still involved a scalpel. It had still involved being cut open.

  It had taken me two years of solid saving to afford it. After the rhinoplasty I’d briefly toyed with the idea of not getting my boobs done. I’d dreamed of breast reduction since I was fifteen, but the reality of surgery had hit home. It wasn’t like popping to the dentist for a filling. It was a big deal. Did I really want to be sliced open like that? Filleted like a fish?

  Yet something continued to pull me towards it. A memory. A trauma.

  I’d gone to the best surgeon I could find, an old Etonian type, who practised in London’s Harley Street and was reputed to do all the top celebrities. He’d taken one look at my saggy 34Gs, and said that, yes, I was an ideal candidate. All I needed to do was sign on the dotted line and pay. We agreed that a nice natural D cup would work best. They would be perky but wouldn’t swamp my frame; they’d be in keeping with my personality, rather than being vulgar.

  I had checked myself into the hospital, telling nobody, not even Rachel. Especially not Rachel. She would have been apoplectic. She already thought the nose job was insane and would never admit that it had realigned my face. Instead she’d bandied around phrases like ‘inner confidence’, ‘knowing your own worth’, and ‘not giving into patriarchal concepts of beauty’.

  I had wanted to hit her. She was so full of shit sometimes. What would she know about the torment of being born ugly? Of having a nose that people pointed and laughed at? What would she know of a body that oozed over the edges of your clothes, like an overstuffed pie?

  Nothing. That’s what. Absolutely nothing.

  So I had kept it to myself. All the fear and loathing and stress, I had locked it inside me and refused to let it out. All would be well. I trusted the surgeon. Things would be fine. I would be fine.

  When I woke up, though, I feared I had made a terrible mistake. The pain was like nothing I had ever felt before. Shooting stars of agony exploded across my chest, making me gasp. I could barely hold down a cup of water as nausea swept through me, while the pain in my arms and shoulders meant I could do nothing for myself.

  I stayed in the hospital for a few days, paying through the nose for the pleasure, and cried when I looked down at my bandages and saw that they were filled with blood.

  ‘All perfectly normal,’ said the surgeon, as if he had just taken my temperature, not sliced me open.

  ‘But I feel like I’m dying,’ I mumbled.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, smiling. ‘Everyone feels like that when they come round. We’ll up your pain relief and soon you’ll feel like a different woman.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said, deciding to trust him.

  After he left, I allowed myself to cry, the pain and fear mingling. I wanted someone to say it would get better. Mammy, Rachel, Artie.

  But Mammy was gone. So was Artie. And even if they weren’t, would they even recognize me now? Was I the same person I had always been? Or was I an imposter?

  The truth was, I honestly didn’t know.

  15.

  The next day, the day after I’d kissed Donnagh, I felt as if I’d downed ten bottles of vodka and snorted ten grams of coke. Everything around me felt blurry, unreal. I was practically holding my hands out in front of me to feel my way through the mist. Had Donnagh and I nearly had sex?

  Even the lads at work noticed.

  ‘Earth to Eve?’ George shouted in my ear, and I jumped a little in my chair, whereupon they all started laughing.

  ‘What?’ I snapped.

  ‘Do you want to come to the pub tonight? It’s Bob’s birthday.’

  ‘Oh, right,’ I replied, thinking it over. ‘Fine, yes. That sounds good.’

  ‘Fair enough. We’re going to head off around half five. In the meantime, sign this, and if you have a few quid handy, stick it inside.’ George shoved a large card in front of me.

  ‘Will do.’ I smiled apologetically, trying to say sorry for being so tetchy. I found a tenner in my purse and shoved it into the envelope, then wrote some anodyne message in the card, something about sixty being the new forty. Or the new thirty. Or maybe even the new twenty. I handed it to George.

  ‘Five thirty. Don’t be late,’ he said, mock-sternly. ‘I don’t want to be waiting outside in the cold while you do your face.’

  ‘Of course, Sergeant Major,’ I said, and gave him a little salute. ‘My face will remain exactly as it is.’

  During the day a text arrived from Donnagh: Sorry again if what I did last night was too full on. You must re
alize it was only because I like you.

  When I didn’t reply, he sent me another.

  I meant it when I said I wanted to take you to dinner. Does Saturday night suit? Around 7 p.m.?

  I stared at the texts for ages, the words eventually swimming in front of me.

  ‘Eve, are you sure you’re okay? You’ve been staring at your phone for the past fifteen minutes.’ This time it was my shyer colleague, Tom, looking over at me, his forehead bunched up in concern.

  ‘Oh,’ I said, feeling my cheeks redden with embarrassment. ‘It’s nothing.’ Then I snapped my mobile shut and buried it in my handbag, making a big show of getting back to work, click-clacking really loudly on my keyboard.

  A few hours later we moved on to the pub. Bob, whose birthday we were celebrating, was the quietest man on the planet so I knew it wasn’t going to be a raucous affair. I just hoped it was lively enough to keep my mind off what had happened the previous night, and the two texts waiting to detonate in my handbag.

  But, sadly, it was even duller than I’d expected. Bob drank his bitter and stayed mostly silent, while the rest of us desperately grabbed onto the legs of any conversation we could think of. At some point, after we’d discussed how evil Nigel was for the third time, I made my excuses and fled to the Ladies. The messages were still there, unanswered, blinking at me.

  What was I going to do? I had told Donnagh I was going to meet him on Saturday, but how could I possibly do that? Not after what had happened in my flat. I applied a bit of lipstick and stared at my face. To the outside observer I probably looked normal. But inside I felt as if everything had turned to quicksand. As if I was turning to quicksand.

  I walked out of the loo, and took a deep breath. I didn’t know how long I could go on making polite conversation. I’d thought the company would distract me from everything but somehow it was making me feel even more jittery.

  ‘Oh, my God, I’m sorry.’ Without realizing it, I had walked straight into the arms of a man carrying two pints of lager.

  ‘You’re fine, don’t worry,’ he said, and something in his accent registered with me. It was only when I looked up that I saw why.

  ‘Jesus Christ, Artie,’ I said, feeling as if I had been winded.

  Artie Columb. My former boyfriend. My soulmate.

  ‘Evie,’ he said, looking equally shocked.

  ‘I’m so sorry. Did I spill beer on you? Here, let me get you another drink.’

  ‘No, don’t be worrying, you’re fine.’

  ‘Really, seriously, let me get you another.’

  ‘Evie, honestly, you didn’t spill anything.’ He was staring at me as if he couldn’t quite believe I was real. ‘Is that actually you?’

  ‘It is,’ I said quietly. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I’m just having a pint with some lads from work.’

  ‘From work? You mean you live around here?’

  ‘Well, yes, just down the road in Lewisham, actually. But I work in Greenwich.’

  ‘Jesus,’ I whispered, hardly able to take in this new information. ‘And there I was, thinking you were still back in Leitrim. You know I work in Greenwich too? And live very near here – in Woolwich.’

  ‘Go on out of that!’ Artie said, his eyes widening. ‘Talk about a small world.’

  ‘I know,’ I said, smiling. ‘Are you an engineer here – same as back home?’

  ‘Yes,’ Artie said. ‘Except at least here there’s work. The recession wiped us out in Ireland. We were about as much use as –’

  ‘Tits on a bull,’ I finished, recalling the phrase. One of Artie’s favourites.

  ‘Exactly,’ he said, and we both laughed. ‘Look, let me leave these drinks down, and then I’ll come back over so we can chat properly.’

  He made to walk off but I stopped him. ‘Listen, tell me if I’m being cheeky or whatever, but would you like to get out of this place? Have a proper chat, I mean.’

  I watched a flicker of uncertainty pass across his face. ‘Well, I was just about to head home after this drink …’

  ‘Okay,’ I said, shrugging. ‘It was just a thought.’

  He paused, as if weighing something up. Then: ‘But if you give me a minute or two, I’m sure I could find someone to take this pint off my hands.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes, why not? It’s been six years after all.’

  My mouth curled itself into a smile.

  ‘Listen, will we meet out the front in two minutes? Give us both time to grab our jackets.’

  I looked over in the direction of my work colleagues. Bob was gazing silently into his pint, while Tom was surreptitiously picking his nose. ‘Sure,’ I said, positively beaming.

  A short time later we were off.

  16.

  Rachel: day five, 7.30 a.m.

  That morning I didn’t go immediately to the hospital. Didn’t even check the papers as I usually did for any sign of a ‘leak’. Instead I walked around the nearby park for a bit, trying to get everything straight in my head.

  So Donnagh hadn’t known who Evie was. She had kept her identity hidden from him. But why? In what part of Evie’s fucked-up mind had that seemed like a good idea?

  I walked on and on, my brain beginning to hurt with the exertion of trying to figure it all out. Was it something to do with Donnagh being from Leitrim? The fact that they’d gone to the same school together? Did Evie feel he would judge her if she revealed her cosmetic surgery to him?

  In a bizarre way, that made a strange sort of sense. Anyone who really knew Evie (which wasn’t many people) was aware of how secretive she could be. For most people, hiding your true identity because you’re afraid your boyfriend will remember and dislike you sounds insane. For someone like Evie, it sounded borderline reasonable.

  I grabbed a large black coffee off a street vendor and kept on walking, imagining how this would have played out in Evie’s head. She’d have recognized Donnagh, of course, from their schooldays. Then she’d have been shocked and probably flattered when she realized he fancied her. I wondered when she’d clocked the fact that Donnagh hadn’t recognized her. When it had dawned on her she could get away with not revealing who she really was.

  I knew how she would have justified it. She’d have convinced herself that if she told Donnagh the truth – that she’d had surgery, changed her name – he would be disgusted. He’d think she was a freak. Better to wait a while, see if he really liked her. If he did, he’d understand. If he was an idiot, she’d find out soon enough, and no harm would have been done either way.

  Well, she’d been wrong about that. Very fucking wrong.

  The problem wasn’t so much Donnagh thinking Evie was a freak, more that that was what she thought of herself. It was where all her problems stemmed from. As a kid, she’d been so creative, brilliant at anything to do with writing or art. But after puberty, when she’d gained a lot of weight, something fundamental had shifted. She’d still loved art – studied it all the way through secondary school – but somewhere along the line she’d begun to hate herself. She dealt with it by retreating into exams, into perfectionism, suddenly obsessed with gaining maximum points in the Leaving Cert so she could become a doctor.

  It seemed an odd choice to Mammy and me. Yes, Evie was good at science – she was good at all subjects – but she’d never shown any particular interest in medicine. Art was her real passion.

  But she couldn’t be dissuaded. Every evening she’d study for hours on end, ignoring me or telling me to feck off when I’d come asking for outfit advice for whatever guy I was trying to impress at the time. ‘Oh, Rachel, you’d look good in a sack. Wear whatever you like.’

  But the truth was, I didn’t care about getting fashion advice – I just wanted to bring Evie out of herself a bit, make her see she could be smart and have fun too. It didn’t seem healthy, all the studying she did.

  Mammy didn’t think so either. ‘Rachel, maybe you could take her to one of those discos you go to. Find her a
nice boy …’

  And I’d feigned outrage, because Mammy had never encouraged me to find a nice boy – probably because she knew I only liked the bad ones.

  But, of course, nothing we did made a blind bit of difference. Instead Evie continued with her manic schedule of studying, going on to achieve a perfect score in the Leaving Cert, and gaining a place in medical school at Trinity College Dublin, just like she’d hoped. Except that was where the fairytale came crashing to an end. A year and a half in, having lost half her body weight, Evie attempted suicide, forcing her to drop out of the course and return to Leitrim to get better. The psychiatrist in charge had diagnosed chronic depression and anxiety, which she linked back to Evie’s being bullied as a teenager.

  We were aware, of course, that Evie had experienced some problems through school, knew there were a few jealous arseholes determined to bring her down. We’d even tried to intervene – me by going to her school one day and offering to beat them up; Mammy by making an appointment with the school principal, determined to sort it out. But on both occasions Evie had accused us of interfering – no one liked a snitch and could we please just stay out of it, she’d handle it herself. Which, very reluctantly, we did. And as the months passed, Evie appeared to grow happier, even going as far as to say that the bullying had ‘settled itself down’.

  It was only after the suicide attempt at Trinity that Mammy and I discovered she’d been lying to us. The bullies had never gone away, as Evie had implied. Far from it. They’d found even more ways to bring Evie down.

  Just thinking about it, all these years later, still made me feel sick with guilt. Sure, I’d tried to help Evie at the start, with my macho ‘beat ’em up’ talk. But shortly afterwards I’d fallen pregnant and had my own troubles to contend with – which meant I hadn’t been there for my sister. Not properly. Perhaps if things had been different, I could have stopped her trying to take her own life. Saved her from the coma, even …

  I thought again of me and Evie as teenagers, of me appearing at her school one hometime, demanding she tell me the names of her tormentors so I could confront them. And her turning to me, her entire body shaking, and whispering, ‘Rachel, can’t you see that that will only make it a hundred times worse? Please just leave it. Please just let it go.’