She would often arrive drunk and abusive, and willing to take anything that she could get her hands on – anything worth selling, of course, which automatically excluded Luke. Elizabeth didn’t even know if it was just the drink she was addicted to any more; it was a long time since she’d had a conversation with her sister. She had been trying to help her since she was fourteen. It was as if a switch had been flicked in her head and they had lost her to another world. She tried sending her to counselling, rehab, doctors, she gave her money, found her jobs, hired her herself, allowed her to move in with her, rented her flats. She had tried being her friend, had tried being her enemy, had laughed with her and shouted at her, but nothing would work. Saoirse was lost to her, lost in a world where nobody else mattered.
Elizabeth couldn’t help thinking of the irony of her name. Saoirse wasn’t free. She may have felt that she was, coming and going as she pleased, not being tied down to anyone, anything, any place, but she was a slave to her addictions. She couldn’t see it, though, and Elizabeth couldn’t help her see it. She couldn’t turn her back completely on her sister but she had run out of energy, ideas and faith in ever believing Saoirse could be changed, and had lost lovers and friends with her persistence. Their frustration would grow as they stood by and watched Elizabeth being taken advantage of time and time again till they could no longer be in her life. But contrary to their beliefs, Elizabeth didn’t feel like the victim. She was always in control. She knew what and why she was doing what she was doing, and she refused to desert a family member. She would not be like her mother. She had worked too hard all her life at trying not to be.
Elizabeth suddenly pressed Mute on the television remote control and the room was silenced. She cocked her head to one side. She thought she’d heard something again. After looking around the room and seeing that everything was as it should be, she turned the volume back up again.
There it was again.
She silenced the TV once more and stood up from the armchair.
It was 10.15 and not yet fully dark. She looked out to the back garden and in the dusk she could only see black shadows and shapes. She pulled the curtains closed quickly and immediately felt safer in her cream and beige cocoon. She tightened her dressing gown again and sat back down in her armchair, tucking her legs even closer to her body and wrapping her arms protectively around her knees. The vacant cream leather couch stared back at her. She shuddered again, turned the volume up even higher than before and took a gulp of coffee. The velvety liquid slid down her throat and warmed her insides and she tried once again to be sucked back into the world of television.
All day she had felt odd. Her father always said that when you got a chill up your spine it meant that someone was walking over your grave. Elizabeth didn’t believe that but as she stared at the television, she turned her head away from the three-seater leather couch and tried to shake off the feeling that a pair of eyes was watching her.
Ivan watched her mute the television once again, quickly put her coffee cup on the table next to her and jump out of her chair as though she had been sitting on pins. Here she goes again, he thought. Her eyes were wide and terrified as they darted around the room. Once again Ivan prepared himself and pushed his body to the edge of the couch. The denim of his jeans squeaked against the leather.
Elizabeth jumped to face the couch.
She grabbed a black iron poker from the large marble fireplace and spun round on her heels. Her knuckles turned white as they tightened around it. She slowly tiptoed about the room, eyes wild with fear. The leather squeaked again underneath him and Elizabeth charged towards the couch. Ivan leaped from his seat and dived into the corner.
He hid behind the curtains for protection and watched as she pulled the cushions out of the chair while grumbling to herself about mice. After ten minutes of searching through the couch, Elizabeth put all the cushions back in place to restore its immaculate form.
She picked up her coffee cup self-consciously and made her way into the kitchen. Ivan followed closely on her heel; he was so close that strands of her soft hair tickled his face. Her hair smelled of coconut and her skin of rich fruits.
He couldn’t understand his fascination with her. He had been watching her since after lunch on Friday. Luke had kept calling him to play game after game and all Ivan had wanted was to be around Elizabeth. At first it was just to see if she could hear him or sense him again, but then after a few hours he found her compelling. She was obsessively neat. He noticed she couldn’t leave the room to answer the phone or front door until everything had been tidied away and wiped clean. She drank a lot of coffee, stared out to her garden, picked imaginary pieces of fluff from almost everything. And she thought. He could see it in her face. Her brow would furrow in concentration and she would make facial expressions as though she was having conversations with people in her head. They seemed to turn into debates more often than not, judging by the activity on her forehead.
He noticed she was always surrounded by silence. There was never any music or sounds in the background like most people had, a radio blaring, the window open to allow in the sounds of summer – the birdsong and the lawn mowers. Luke and she spoke little and when they did it was mostly her giving him orders, him asking permission, nothing fun. The phone rarely rang, nobody called by. It was almost as if the conversations in her head were loud enough to fill her silence.
He spent most of Friday and Saturday following her around, sitting on the cream leather couch in the evenings and watching her watching the only programme she seemed to like on TV. They both laughed in the same places, groaned in the same places and they seemed to be completely in sync, yet she didn’t know he was there. He had watched her sleeping the previous night. She was restless – she slept only three hours at the most; the rest of the time she spent reading a book, putting it down after five minutes, staring into space, picking the book up again, reading a few pages, reading back over the same pages, putting it down again, closing her eyes, opening them again, turning the light on, doodling sketches of furniture and rooms, playing with colours and shades and scraps of material, turning the light off again.
She had made Ivan tired just watching her from the straw chair in the corner of the room. The trips to the kitchen for coffee couldn’t have helped her either. On Sunday morning she was up early, tidying, vacuuming, polishing and cleaning an already spotless home. She spent all morning at it while Ivan played chasing with Luke out in the back garden. He recalled Elizabeth being particularly upset by the sight of Luke running around the garden laughing and screaming to himself. She had joined them at the kitchen table and watched Luke playing cards, shaking her head and looking worried when he explained the rules of patience in extreme detail to thin air.
But when Luke went to bed at nine o’clock, Ivan read him the story of Tom Thumb quicker than he usually would, and then hurried to continue watching Elizabeth. But he could sense her getting jitterier as the days wore on.
She washed her coffee cup out, ensuring it was already spotless before putting it in the dishwasher. She dried the wet sink with a cloth and put the cloth in the wash basket in the utility room. She picked imaginary fluff from a few items in her path, picked crumbs from the floor, switched off all the lights and began the same process in the living room. She had done the exact same thing the last two nights.
But before leaving the living room this time, she stopped abruptly, almost sending Ivan into the back of her. His heart beat wildly. Had she sensed him?
She turned round slowly.
He fixed his shirt to look presentable.
Once facing him he smiled. ‘Hi,’ he said, feeling very self-conscious.
She rubbed her eyes tiredly and opened them again. ‘Oh, Elizabeth, you are going mad,’ she whispered. She bit her lip and charged towards Ivan.
Elizabeth knew she was losing her mind right at that moment. It had happened to her sister and mother, and now it was her turn. For the last few days she had felt incredibly insecure, as if someone was watching her. She had locked all the doors, drawn all the curtains, set the alarm.