Sleep Sister: A page-turning novel of psychological suspense (5 page)

She wondered what Connie would say if she knew about the hash. Peter said it was a winding-down smoke and Beth wouldn’t be so uptight all the time if she shared an occasional joint with him. It annoyed her that he saw her like that, especially when he painted her in so many different images, none of them human, some not even animate.

‘You mind what I’m saying, Beth Tyrell,’ Connie warned. ‘Peter Wallace has a tongue that would charm snakes from a basket. But easy words are soon forgotten.’

Forgotten by whom, Beth wondered. She never forgot anything he said to her. Every casual compliment was branded on her mind. Words as airy as thistledown, blown carelessly in her direction, floating light, without substance.

Della Wallace also disapproved of their Saturday sessions. She usually found some excuse to enter the studio, cold with Beth for encouraging her son, sarcastic when she looked at his work. Her attempts to undermine his confidence infuriated Peter. Her presence was a constant reminder of the future she planned for him. The thought of working in the factory filled him with dread.

Beth was unsympathetic when he complained. ‘It’s your own fault. This studio, the way you live. It’s all laid on for you. Maybe you should move out and let your mother know you’re serious – that’s if you are serious.’

‘Of course I’m serious. It’s all I’ve ever wanted to do.’ She had annoyed him and it pleased her that she could reach beyond the charm and confidence he displayed so effortlessly.

Every Saturday afternoon Beth wrote to Jess and Sara. Only Jess replied.

D
ear Jess
,

I was sorry to hear you only achieved three honours in your Leaving Cert, especially as you made three novenas to St Jude. An honour per novena is an extremely poor return on your investment. If God intends on making you his bride he should do a better job of looking after your interests.

Dad’s been unwell. Something to do with his breathing. He’s not playing his tin whistle so much now. Connie bossed him into going to the doctor and he ended up in hospital for tests. He’s fine again but my mother didn’t want to know when I phoned. She wouldn’t even let Sara come to Dublin to visit him. He’s home again and back at work. Says he’s as fit as a fiddle but he misses Sara something awful. If you see her, tell her she’s to write back to me.

And now for my confession. Will you still be my friend if I tell you I’ve lost my faith? When you hear God’s voice in the wind (how those words haunt me) I hear silence. But that’s all right. It doesn’t make me sad or anything. I’m an atheist now. I debated between becoming atheist or agnostic but I chose the former because I don’t want any uncertainties in my life. It’s strange, not believing in anything, but it makes me feel free.

However, I still believe that our friendship is stronger than faith.

D
ear Beth
,

Your loss of faith saddens me but I agree – our friendship is indeed stronger than faith or, as in your case, the lack of it. With your permission I will pray for your conversion back to the one true religion. My novitiate begins in September. I’m coming to Dublin with Mammy to buy everything. You should see the list of things I need! Glamour personified.

Latest news flash from Anaskeagh.

1. Your mother has opened a boutique on River Mall. It’s called First Fashion; a most appropriate name since it’s the first time fashion ever got its nose inside Anaskeagh.

2. Your uncle has become a county councillor. Big party in Cherry Vale. All the nobs went.

3. His creepy son Conor, he of The Thousand Chinese Burns, is studying law in University College Dublin. God help the criminals, that’s all I have to say on that subject.

4. Saw Sara on Anaskeagh Head last week taking photographs with the camera you sent her for her birthday. I asked her to reply to your letters but she told me to mind my own business. Sorry, Beth.

5. Best news last – I’ve persuaded Mammy to book us into the Oldport Grand when we come to Dublin on our shopping spree. I want you to spend every spare minute with me. Imagine – four years since we’ve seen each other. A lifetime ago.

Counting the minutes until I see you.

C
atherine O’Donovan
no longer had time to read books or study stars. The farm was losing money and when she took off her wellingtons in the evenings it was to change into the flat white shoes she wore on her night shift at the Anaskeagh Regional Hospital. She looked tired when she arrived in Oldport. Beth wondered if she ever felt lonely. Jess was her second child to leave home. Her oldest daughter sold second-hand clothes from a market stall in London. In Beth’s opinion, bartering from a second-hand junk stall was a far more civilised existence than getting up in the small hours of the morning to chant at a non-existent God.

‘Will you miss Jess when she goes into the convent?’ she asked Catherine.

‘Of course I will,’ Catherine replied. ‘But I’d have more chance of stopping a tornado in its tracks then making that young lady change her mind.’

She enjoyed being back in the hospital where she had originally trained but she had to keep on her toes to understand the changes that had taken place, particularly the drugs. She shivered just looking at the labels.

‘I did my training with your Aunty May,’ she said. ‘The pair of us were great pals in those days.’

‘I didn’t know you were friends with May.’ Beth was surprised.

‘Not any more.’ Catherine smiled ruefully. ‘May’s been cutting a lot of old ties since she became a councillor’s wife.’

Beth’s mouth clenched. Her pleasure in hearing about Anaskeagh was always marred by the mention of
him
. Even after four years, his name still had the power to terrify her.

Catherine lifted the heavy fringe from Beth’s eyes.

‘Don’t cover them up, honeybun. They’re beautiful. Are you happy since you left Anaskeagh?’

‘Very happy.’

‘The truth, Beth.’

‘It is the truth. Honest.’

‘Then why do you have the saddest pair of eyes I’ve ever seen on a young girl’s face?’ She took out her photographs of Anaskeagh and handed them to Beth. The familiar farm, the O’Donovan children with their big bones and cheeky grins. Sara was included in some of the photographs. How tall and leggy she looked, playing Hamlet in the school play. She was dressed as the Blessed Virgin in a Lourdes tableaux, which was performed in the Star of the Sea assembly hall. Her eyes stared past the adoring crowd at her feet. Another photograph showed her dancing at the Anaskeagh Feis, ringlets bobbing as she did her reels and jigs. Beth handed the photographs back without a word. The older woman held her close when she began to sob.

‘Come home, honeybun. Your mother misses you.’ She sighed when Beth shook her head. ‘Young people… Why do they always hurt the ones who love them most?’

‘Mum doesn’t love me so I can’t hurt her.’

‘Of course she loves―’

‘No, she doesn’t. Not the way you love Jess. Anyway, I don’t want to leave Dad. He pretends he’s all right but he keeps losing weight and he doesn’t have the breath to play his tin whistle any more.’

Catherine frowned when Beth told her about the hospital tests. The questions she asked added to Beth’s uneasiness but it was difficult to think dark thoughts when Jess was around.

She laid out her new clothes on the bed and giggled, holding up a thick pair of knickers with elasticated legs. Beth snatched them from her and waved them over her head.

‘Black knickers! This looks like a serious mortal sin, Sister Mary Wham! Shame on you.’

‘Black everything,’ sighed Jess. She fitted on one of her dresses and admired herself in the mirror.

‘You look more like the bride of Dracula than the bride of Christ,’ declared Beth. ‘And your boobs have disappeared.’ She prodded her friend’s chest. ‘Is this a miracle of the flesh – or just bad tailoring?’

‘Oh shut up and be serious for a minute.’ Jess’s eyes were solemn, accusing Beth of making fun of her. ‘You think this is all one big joke, don’t you?’

‘Of course I don’t, Jess.’ But it was difficult to understand this all-embracing need her friend described. It transcended the loneliness she must feel at leaving her family, of never falling in love or having babies of her own. A life that had become so alien to Beth she was afraid it would separate them. They would no longer be able to talk and laugh and simply be happy being together. ‘It’s just… Oh, I don’t know… Do you still hear His voice calling you?’

‘Just my own voice,’ Jess replied quietly. ‘That was all I ever heard. And it always told me the same thing. My life belongs to Christ. I can’t see myself living any other way.’

Beth felt like crying because her friend spoke and looked like a stranger, pale and stalky under the voluminous black folds. This was actually going to happen. She was going to become a bride of Christ. Even the words sounded crazy. What would it be like to experience the kind of love Jess described? Consuming, adoring, safe.

On their final night in Oldport they went to a local pub called The Fiddler’s Nest to hear Celtic Reign playing. Peter Wallace joined them, pulling his chair close to Jess and flirting with her. Her vocation was a crime against mankind, he declared. She was too earthy, too vibrant to be incarcerated behind high walls. Saints were all mystery and soul. Jess was all heart and curves. She enjoyed him, giggling into a gin and orange and getting quite tipsy.

All heads turned when Marina McKeever entered. She had returned to the tomb of the living dead for a short visit. She wore a flouncy skirt and a cropped top that showed off her tanned midriff. She no longer wore falsies in her bra or any bra at all, for that matter.

The photographs she showed Jess and Beth had been cut from a trade magazine for medical aids. She had modelled an acne face wash, a surgical shoe for fallen arches and tablets for indigestion. Her ambition was to do an advertisement for chocolate.

‘Subliminal sexual desire,’ she said. ‘It’s what everything’s about these days, darlings.’

She giggled in disbelief and tossed her shaggy hair at Peter when she heard about the cat paintings. ‘Oh – you’re such a pseud, darling. But you can show me your silly etching any time you’re in London.’

Beth envied Marina. She envied the way she clicked her fingers at sex, laughing and batting her false eyelashes at all the men in the pub. Beth wondered how it would feel to do it on a bale of blue velvet material – or on a sighing bed in the darkness of a London flat. Her stomach heaved at the image that came into her mind. She pressed her hand against her mouth and slowly the choking feeling went away. Love was red dresses and swirling music. A rainbow of dreams.

She wanted to tell Jess about the terror of those moments when the atmosphere in the Sweat Pit changed, grew quiet, expectant. The deepening breath of the young man beside her, knowing he was going to put his hands on her skin and how the horror would swoop through her chest. It didn’t matter where it happened – the back seat of a cinema, the shelter of the sand dunes, the dark shadows in the back of a car.

‘You’re a raving lunatic,’ Billy Brennan from dispatch had yelled after his one and only date with her. When he parked his car on Pier’s Point, the sloping estuary jetty, and forced his hand inside her blouse Beth had released the handbrake. His frantic efforts to stop the car entering the water had been successful, but only just.

‘You could have fucking drowned me.’ He was unable to stop shaking as he drove her back to Main Strand Street.

‘So I could.’ Beth laughed her terror away. ‘Imagine what a loss that would be to humanity.’

In the office the young women knotted scarves around their necks to cover love bites, slyly showing them off to their closest friends. Over coffee breaks and lulls in typing, Beth listened to their conversations, hoping to find a clue, something to reassure her that her fears were normal.

There had been others besides Billy Brennan. Men from Della Designs or those who danced with her in the Sweat Pit. But when Stewart took her for a ride on his new motorbike it should have been different.

Stewart had changed from the painfully shy boy she had known when she first came to Oldport. His slouching, lanky frame had filled out and his powerful hands no longer looked too big and awkward for his body. He was not handsome in an obvious way like Peter Wallace, with his honey skin and luminous eyes, but she liked how his strong square face came to life when he laughed.

‘Since when did you join the Hell’s Angels?’ she asked when he arrived home one Saturday in leather and parked a motorbike outside the house.

‘I’ve been saving for this for years.’ His excitement was palpable as he stood beside the gleaming bike. ‘What do you think?’

‘A Harley Davidson – it’s fantastic.’

‘Want a ride?’

‘What are we waiting for?’

He placed the helmet over her head and steadied her on the pillion.

She allowed herself to feel the speed, the roar of the engine throbbing beneath her, his body shielding her from the wind that rushed past, singing in her ears. She held tightly to his waist as they left Oldport and headed towards Skerries. Black suited him, she decided, unsure whether it was the novelty of the motorbike or the image of him, dark and vaguely threatening in his biker boots and jacket, that lifted her spirits. Impulsively, she tightened her grip, hugging him closer.

‘Like it?’ he shouted.

‘Love it,’ she shouted back.

He pressed her hands briefly and she felt a sudden shiver along her arms, as if his touch triggered some dormant emotion, rushing it free in the exhilaration of the moment.

The house was empty when they returned. Connie and Barry had gone to the cinema and would not be home until late.

She sat on the sofa with Stewart, mugs steaming on the coffee table, sharing a plate of biscuits and reminiscing about the first night they met.

‘I can still picture you when you came into the house. As if you wanted to cut us in half with your eyes.’ He smiled, speaking so low she could hardly hear him. ‘God, you were terrifying, standing there in that skimpy coat with the rain running out of your hair. I think that was when I fell in love with you. Or maybe it was five minutes later when you smiled and I realised you were the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen… You must know how I feel, Beth. You
must
.’

She glanced down at her hands as they began to tremble, a faint vibration that she tried to control, tightening them into fists as he leaned towards her. He held her shoulders, his eyes warming her, drawing her to him. A waiting space opened between them, questions asked and answered in the silence. He slid his arms around her waist. She felt the hard contour of the sofa underneath her, the ridge at the edge pressing into the back of her knees.

‘I’m crazy about you.’ He muttered the words into her neck, his breath warm on her skin. She heard again the shyness in his voice. The effort it took to say what he needed to say. He kissed her, softly at first, then pressing more firmly, moving, searching for some response and she heard a moan deep in his throat, terrifying her with its force. Her breath shortened, catching dry.

‘No! Leave me alone – leave me alone.’ She pushed him away and sprang to her feet. Only when she saw the scratches on his face did she realise she had torn his skin.

‘I’m sorry, Stewart… I’m terribly sorry… I can’t stand it… You mustn’t… Mustn’t…’ She gripped the arm of the sofa, willing the horror away.

For an instant he seemed dazed by her reaction. He tried to speak but couldn’t get the words out. Abruptly, he stood up. ‘I thought – ah, forget it. I’ve been a fool.’ He grabbed his jacket and slung it over his shoulders. She could smell the new leather, hear the faint creak it made when he walked up the hall and out the front door.

Stewart should have been different. He was not Billy Brennan or the other faceless young men with whom she sought oblivion from the haunting past. Stewart was her friend. His passion should not threaten her. But his hard cold strength overwhelmed her, crushing her into nothing.