Sleep Sister: A page-turning novel of psychological suspense (10 page)

T
hree mornings a week
, before the family woke, Beth drove to the Oldport leisure centre. Earlier in the summer, when she’d originally joined the swimming club, she’d hoped to tone up and lose some weight. It had also allowed her to steal precious time for herself before the day began. Her motives had changed since then. In the painful cramp of muscle, the shudder of breath in her lungs, she was able to snatch a short respite from the clamour of guilt and grief that filled her days.

Carrie Davern always set the pace during the early-morning sessions, her arms pumping energetically, focused on laps and time. She was a competitive swimmer, an ambitious, toned woman, whom Beth avoided whenever possible. Their husbands worked for Peter and this tenuous link was the only interest the two women had in common. Most of the early-morning swimmers had already left the pool and headed to the changing rooms as Beth completed her last lap. She debated swimming one more length but the energy that had fuelled her for the previous forty-five minutes suddenly seeped from her.

Carrie was already limbering up for a busy day in her estate agency when Beth entered the changing room. ‘You’ve really increased your time, Beth.’ She tilted her head towards the hairdryer, finger-combing her red hair into shape. ‘I’m glad you came back to the club. It’s good to exercise when you’re trying to get your life back on track again. How are you coping, you poor thing?’

‘I’m fine, thank you.’ She winced away from Carrie’s patronising tone. Her thinly disguised curiosity about Sara and the circumstances surrounding her death was a constant affront to Beth. Women, already dressed, slung sports bags over their shoulders and shouted goodbye to each other.

Carrie switched off the hairdryer and sat beside her on the slatted bench. ‘It’s such early days yet and you’re obviously still in shock. We must invite you and Stewart to dinner soon. Maybe Peter too, if he’s in a fit condition to come. I’m worried about him. He’s drinking heavily—’

‘Don’t worry about Peter,’ Beth quickly interrupted her. ‘Everything is under control in the factory.’

‘That’s not what I hear from Jon. I sympathise with Peter, I really do, but there’s far more than his own feelings at stake here. It’s been over two months now, so it’s time he was pulling himself together. Have you seen the state of Havenstone? So sad. I believe he’s going to put it on the market. I’ve told him I’m interested. He’s promised to notify me as soon as he makes up his mind. The sooner the better. Sara must be turning in her grave – oh dear, how insensitive of me. Forgive me, Beth – I forgot about the cremation.’ She smiled apologetically and patted Beth’s hand. ‘Did Sara ever indicate why she was so troubled—’

‘Stop it, Carrie!’ Beth pushed herself to her feet. ‘I’ve no intention of discussing my sister with you now, or ever. As regards dinner, forget it. Stewart and I are busy for the foreseeable future.’ She walked into the shower stall and slid the glass door closed.

‘Our husbands could be out of work if Peter Wallace doesn’t pull himself together.’ Carrie stood outside, a woman unable to leave without the last word. ‘That’s a fact, Beth. Ignoring it won’t make it go away.’

Without replying, Beth turned on the shower. The urge to stand still, paralysed by the force of water, came over her. What if she never moved again, if she dissolved into the enveloping steam? No dragging backward, no reaching forward. A moment of nothingness absorbing her into an infinity where she would cease to exist. Was that how Sara felt? Was that the urge that had driven her into her bedroom of mirrors and the darkness beyond? There was no answer to this question and, knowing she would never be able to ask it, Beth raged quietly into the cascading water.

Even now – when women talked openly in the media about traumatic childhood experiences, and crimes of the past were exposed in unflinching documentaries – she found it impossible to confide in anyone. The blood and tears, the sighing terror, the smell of earth and the moon casting its light on the birthing stones of Aislin’s Roof – and, later, back in Cherry Vale, the disgust on her aunt’s face as she stared down at the young Sara – these were scenes Beth could only endure through silence. With Sara, it should have been possible to reach into the past. But the clumsy efforts she made were always met with resistance, defeated by the frozen stillness of her sister’s face, her suspended breath whenever that lost night was mentioned. Then Beth too would fall silent, fearing Sara would collapse under the leaden atmosphere her words created.

Was that what Sara had tried to discuss with her on the last afternoon they’d been together? Was it the reason why she’d asked Beth to call to Havenstone? ‘We need to talk, Beth… We need to talk…’ Hindsight was a stick constantly beating at Beth’s chest and, yet, within those all-consuming emotions, a treacherous thought sometimes slipped through her grief. The fleeting sense of release. Freedom from a weight she had carried for too many years. This shameful emotion added to her distress and was instantly banished as she turned her attention to the house or garden. No lack of choice there. She ran a tight ship, an organised housewife who could account for every minute of her day.

Oldport was beginning to stir as she drove home from the leisure centre. The newsagent was open and Woodstock, where Judith Hansen, back from the airport with boxes of fresh irises and chrysanthemums, was unloading flowers from her van. The younger children were awake and clamouring for attention, and the older two glowered their way downstairs after repeated calls.

When she returned from the school run, she opened the door to Lindsey’s bedroom. This converted attic, with its slanting ceiling and posters of rap stars glowering from the walls, was her daughter’s private domain. Lindsey demanded the right to live in squalor and pinned defiant ‘Keep Out’ notices on the door whenever Beth uttered fumigation threats. Since Sara’s death she spent all her free time there, playing aggressive rap music – a rhythm with an incessant beat that vibrated inside Beth’s head until she banged on the door and ordered her to lower the volume. This, at least, was familiar territory for both of them. Without replying Lindsey would lower the sound, gradually increasing it again when Beth had gone downstairs.

Clothes, towels, magazines, CDs and various hair products were strewn across the floor. Study plans for her Leaving Certificate were pinned to the wall above her desk. A neat, detailed plan, the corners already curling from neglect.

Beth searched methodically through the clutter for scraps of tinfoil, scorched spoons, burned matches, strawberry stamps, magic mushrooms, weed, opiates, anything that would help her to understand Lindsey’s mood swings. They could be explained by the shock of Sara’s death but Beth was certain they were caused by more than grief. Tearful outbursts followed by giddiness, thunderous rows with Robert over some imagined slight, her silences so deep that Beth could only stand on the outside and wait for them to pass. Resisting the urge to tidy up, Beth gave up. A warehouse of drugs could remain undetected beneath this clutter.

She was leaving the room when a row of books caught her attention, their precise arrangement on one bookshelf arousing her suspicions. After a quick search she discovered Lindsey’s diary hidden behind her collection of Harry Potter books. She opened it without hesitation, her eyes scanning each entry, but all they contained were brief mentions of the weekends Lindsey used to spend in Havenstone. Shopping sprees with Sara, visits to the cinema and theatre, what Sara cooked for dinner, recipes Sara had shown her how to cook, advice Sara had given her about boys ― always keep them guessing ― the jokes they had shared. Beth came to the last entry, written two weeks before Sara’s death. Nothing since then. No outpourings of grief, no fond memories or scribbled words of love. Beth closed the diary and eased it back into its hiding place.

She closed the door quietly behind her and entered her own bedroom. The pillow still bore the imprint of Stewart’s head. She fluffed it up and shook the duvet. The radio played quietly in the background as she worked. She would vacuum the carpet, maybe give it a quick shampoo, clean the bathrooms, change the sheets... Stop…
Stop
… She sank to the edge of the bed and clutched her face in her hands. This feeling of running her life on autopilot was increasing. At night, when she finally sat down, she was unable to remember where the hours had gone, or what she had done with them.

She shuddered, her shoulders drawing inwards, her skin tingling. Her uncle was in the room with her. She could hear his voice. He would touch her if she moved. She must stay still, so still – a statue, stiff, unbreakable.

Her breath steadied. There had to be a trigger. There always was. Recognising it was the only way to control these panic attacks that came without warning since Sara’s death. She lifted her head, aware for the first time that he was being interviewed on radio. Since his appointment to a junior ministry he was regularly in the media and the interviewer, polite but insistent, was demanding an answer to his question. As always, Albert Grant was as adroit as an eel at ignoring it. Calmer now, Beth recognised the interviewer – Greg Enright. Last night she’d watched him on television. Some investigative programme about the closure of a hospital… Or maybe it was about corrupt land deals. She couldn’t remember and now, knowing Greg Enright’s tenacity would be equally balanced by her uncle’s evasiveness, she switched off the radio.

She shivered, remembering his words of condolence on that horrific morning in Havenstone. How he had clasped her firmly in his arms and said, ‘A sad time for us all, Beth. Be kind to your poor mother. Her heart is broken.’

His hair was white, as thick as she remembered, and still brushed back in the same glossy sweep. Age had distinguished him, giving him a stately air of assurance – a man who understood power; how to acquire, how to use it. A scream had rammed in her throat as she’d pulled away from him and tried to comfort Marjory. But what comfort could she give? What words could she use to ease Marjory’s grief? Both knew that the wrong daughter had died.

Beth opened a drawer in her dressing table and untied the faded ribbon on the chocolate box she’d taken from Havenstone. It was filled with the letters she had once written to Sara, the pages yellowed and much folded. She had forgotten how often she’d written to Sara, as if, in those far-off years when she’d first come to Oldport, she was making amends for leaving her sister behind. She wrote about the village, the raucous women in the factory, their jokes and turbulent love lives. The snobbish, gossiping women in the office. Through these letters Sara came to know the tough and bossy Della Wallace and the maternal Connie McKeever, who had loved their father in sickness and in health. She knew about the boys Beth had dated, the rows with Marina, the heady rides on the back of Stewart’s motorbike, and Peter with his paint-streaked jeans and honey skin – he filled the pages with his deeds. She wrote about Havenstone and the light-filled studio where he immortalised her eyes in oils. In these letters there was no mention of homesickness and loneliness – and how she cried at night, remembering. She created a fantasy world and Sara came to Oldport to claim it, armed with her fragile beauty and the memory of a bloodstained oath the two sisters had promised never to break.

F
or weeks after Sara died
, Lindsey had cried at night until her throat felt as scratchy as sandpaper. Somewhere, hidden behind a press, lost in the post and still to arrive, there had to be a note. Sara loved her. How many times had she told her? Millions. How could she go without a word, a sign, anything?

She had avoided Havenstone since then but Peter was so insistent on the phone this evening. He wanted to give her jewellery belonging to Sara. All Lindsey wanted was an explanation. Why… Why… Why?

The fastest way on foot to Havenstone was the shortcut through Bailey’s Field. Estuary Road had been closed to traffic since work on the new slip road began. All the old cottages along the shore were deserted, waiting to be demolished, along with the garage where her father used to have his motorbike serviced in the old days. Her mother said it was a disgrace that a local amenity should be destroyed in the name of progress. Lots of people agreed. Last year, they mounted a campaign and carried banners with ‘Swans or Road Rage – Your Choice’ printed on them. Sara had held an exhibition of her estuary photographs. Brilliant images of birds skimming the water at dawn and swans swimming down the centre of the road when it flooded during the spring tides. It was impossible not to imagine them supplanted by cars and fumes and noise. It made no difference in the end but, for the moment, it was the perfect hideaway for the garage gang.

She stopped outside the old garage and tried to peer through the cardboard on the window. Impossible to see inside. On Friday nights her mother believed she was still involved with the study group. She never bothered checking any more, which was perfectly fine by Lindsey. The garage gang was her salvation. The one good part of a sick, mixed-up world.

In the garage no one worried about the Leaving. They were too busy dancing and having a good time. All that studying and trauma for what? Kev Collins had set up the sound system and got the electricity working. The black cardboard stopped the light shining across the estuary. It was cool dancing with the candles and the cobwebs. Kev knew how to get E and that was no big deal either. The double standards imposed by adults drove her crazy. By all means drink beer and throw up over the pavement. Multicoloured puke was learning about life. By all means buy drugs from a pharmacist in a white coat and overdose without leaving a note – that was learning about death. Ecstasy was not addictive, unlike heroin or coke. It was a buzz drug, recreational – the happy drug. Everyone was entitled to happiness.

Lindsey found it hard to remember how much she’d once hated Oldport with the cold wind blowing off the estuary and screeching seagulls swooping over the garden. She’d been six years old when her parents had moved there from London. Her father had promised her new friends, a long garden with a swing and grass, not concrete, like the playground outside their flat. They would have a big house where she wouldn’t hear the next-door neighbours shouting, even if they were the same as the Binghams, who had a row every Saturday night and smashed plates. But there was no grass in Estuary View Heights, no swing ― only mountains of mud and men on scaffolding, who whistled at her mother. Then Sara came and scooped her away from the mud and the sickening smell of paint.

‘You’re such a beautiful little princess,’ she’d said. It was the first time anyone had called Lindsey beautiful. Her aunt knew all about being beautiful. She had golden hair and silver spirals in her ears. She smelled of flowers. She took Lindsey to Havenstone where there were new dresses and toys waiting. They played pretend games and explored the garden at the back of the house, hiding in the crab-apple orchard and wild bushes. In bed, with the old trees bending creaky into the night, she’d told Lindsey the story about a princess with a secret. When the princess could no longer carry it inside her head or in her heart, she knelt on the edge of a bottomless well and screamed it into the black depths.

‘Sometimes silence is more important than honesty,’ she’d said, closing the book of fairy stories and smiling down at Lindsey sitting on the bed beside her, the fluffy pillows propped behind them. ‘Sometimes it’s necessary to carry secrets inside us so that those we love don’t suffer our pain.’

Then Marjory had come to visit and everything had changed. Even at six, Lindsey had known her relationship with this grandmother was different. Loving Granny Mac was as effortless as breathing, but this tall thin woman had glittery eyes and long fingers that pinched Lindsey’s shoulders. Every time she’d made noise Marjory had pressed her hands to her forehead. Lindsey was spoiled and demanding, she’d said. Even if her father came swanning back to Oldport as the production manager of Della Designs, it was only because of Peter’s generosity and family links.

She’d been just as nasty to Beth, going on and on about bad blood and how she’d rubbed salt into her mother’s wounds by marrying a McKeever. They were bred from generations of poor, ignorant fishermen and now she was carrying their seed and breed into another generation. Her voice had been so sharp it made Lindsey sink deep into the sofa, wishing she could disappear and not have to listen to grown-ups fighting like the Binghams.

Sara had begged them to stop. ‘Let bygones be bygones,’ she cried. ‘Why drag up the past every time you meet each other?’

After they had returned to the new house her mother had said Marjory was just being jealous and to pay no attention. Lindsey understood jealousy. When Robert was born she’d been so jealous she’d hoped he would be carried up to heaven by an angel. But she also knew the difference between jealousy and cruelty. Marjory had said a cruel thing. Granny Mac’s husband had drowned when his fishing trawler sank to the bottom of the sea. A year afterwards, she’d met Lindsey’s other grandfather and fell in love with him. Lindsey had wanted to know about the old days but Granny Mac had said it was all a long time ago. A long foolish time ago. She was as bad as Lindsey’s mother when it came to talking about the past.

She still found it impossible to like her Tyrell grandmother, who insisted on being called ‘Marjory’ because she did not want to be associated with grandmotherly labels. She never came to visit them now. Beth had to go to Anaskeagh if she wanted to see her. No chance of that. Lindsey had never been to Anaskeagh. Not once. Sara had said it was a wonderful place but Beth had hated living there so much she’d run away. How could two sisters carry such different memories of their childhood?

The old photographs her mother had taken from Havenstone had offered Lindsey her first glimpse of Anaskeagh. The river running through the centre of the town writhed like a snake and the small houses hunched together had dark narrow lanes running behind them. The shapes behind the houses could have been children playing. It was hard to be certain because they seemed different each time Lindsey saw them. In some photographs her mother looked really young and pretty with her flowing black hair, her Cleopatra eyes, and her legs in skintight jeans. She was sitting in long grass, her hand outstretched, as if she wanted to snatch the camera from Sara. Her face was angrier in each shot. Big leaning rocks surrounded her. Lindsey had asked where it was and her mother had said, ‘Hell on earth.’

‘Why was it “hell on earth”?’ She’d been disturbed by the passion in Beth’s voice.

‘Places are not hell,’ she’d replied. ‘It’s people who turn them into hell.’

No wonder she never wanted to talk about Anaskeagh. Lindsey figured her memories were horrible. She’d done cruel things to Sara and now she was riddled with guilt. She’d forced Goldie, a lovely little cocker spaniel, underwater and tried to drown him. Lindsey saw him in the photographs, curled up beside a high rock, the sun on his coat turning him into a blob of melting butter. When Sara had told her the story about her pet dog, Lindsey had cried. She couldn’t believe that anyone, but especially her mother, could do such a cruel thing.

Two months had passed since Sara’s death but Lindsey still saw her everywhere. A flick of blonde hair, a smile, a gesture, so many reminders. Passing Woodstock one day on her way to meet Melanie in the Coffee Stop, she glanced through the window and saw Sara’s ghost standing beside the freesias, her arms filled with dried reeds. When she threw back her head, laughing at something Tork Hansen said, Lindsey’s skin lifted in goosebumps. The sound of her laughter carried out through the open door. It was loud and free, unlike the laughter of a ghost, which would surely be a thin, terrifying sound.

Later, on her way home from the Coffee Stop, the woman was still in Woodstock. She carried a baby in a sling and Judith Hansen kept making coo-che-coo noises. ‘Planting Thoughts’ was printed on a van parked outside. The laughter was still on her face when she left the shop. Up close, she no longer resembled Sara. Younger, her shoulders were too broad, her hair wild and yellow, the colour of grapefruit, rippling down her back.

H
er uncle looked
haggard when he answered the door, the skin sagging under his eyes, his stare bloodshot. He took her into Sara’s bedroom where her jewellery box lay open on the dressing table.

‘Take whatever you like,’ he said. She wondered if he was thinking about the row. How could he forget it? Had they made up before Sara died, apologised to each other over the phone? She wanted to ask but how could such a question be phrased? Did he feel guilty? Her mother did. So did Lindsey. He, too, had to cope with the
why
. But she was unable to feel sorry for him. That night… The row… A hand seemed to clamp on her brain whenever the memory slipped through Lindsey’s defences.

She lifted a charm bracelet from the jewellery box. It looked so old-fashioned but all those little charms must have a story. Sara had never worn it, as far as Lindsey knew, and that made it easier to choose. Her uncle fastened it on her wrist and asked if she’d like tea. He had bought cupcakes. She shrank from having to make further conversation with him and muttered an excuse about the amount of studying she had to do. He stood in the doorway and watched as she walked down the driveway. The charm bracelet tinkled as Lindsey slowly released the breath she’d been holding and began to run.