The One I Love (24 page)

“Can’t wait.”

“And you know that if things are a little bleak in the nursing-home, there’s plenty of room at my place,” Jane said. “The house is so empty without Kurt and Irene.”

Leslie couldn’t believe Jane’s kindness, which took her by surprise. Looking around at the people she now had in her life, she was moved to tears.

Elle squeezed her hand. “You’re not alone any more, pal.”

“I know,” she said. She wiped away her tears and opened the bag of sweets. “Who wants some?”

They all dug in and even though Leslie was too nervous to eat she felt full.

Chapter 11

Simple And True

Like a rainbow after a shower

I don’t regret a day, not one single hour
.

Ah bring on the bigger things I can’t help but follow
,

without you by my side my heart would be hollow
.

Jack L,
Universe

July 2008

Breda had refused to get out of bed since the television reconstruction of Alexandra’s disappearance. Her daughter Kate gave her bed-baths and her husband sat with her and encouraged her to eat the food that Kate and Eamonn’s wife Frankie took turns to cook and deliver. She’d take a few bites but only when her husband pleaded with her and only to satisfy him. It was not Breda’s intention to starve herself or to cause pain to the people she loved, and if she could have summoned the mental and physical strength to get up she would have.

“Look, love, it’s shepherd’s pie,” Ben Walsh said to his wife, raising the fork towards her mouth. “Frankie made it according to your own recipe.”

Breda closed her eyes and opened her mouth, the food fell in and Ben cleaned off the tiny amount that fell out with a tea-towel. She didn’t chew. Instead it just sat in her
mouth until it had melted enough for her to swallow.

“Eamonn’s downstairs. Would you like to see him?”

She blinked a few times and he wondered if her eyes were dry or whether she was now resorting to communication through the medium of rapid eye movement.

“Kate will be over tonight with fresh clothes and she’ll help you wash,” Ben said, “and I’ll be downstairs so maybe afterwards you could come and join us for a while. I can put a duvet on the sofa. What do you think, love?”

Breda closed her eyes, then opened them and nodded slightly.

Ben smiled at her. “Great,” he said, “great stuff. I’ll tell the kids.”

He took the tray off the bed and walked outside, closing the door behind him.

Breda lay there motionless, waiting for sleep to come.

Ben joined Eamonn downstairs. Eamonn hung up from a call and turned to his dad. Taking the tray from him, he noticed that the shepherd’s pie was not even half eaten. “We need to get a doctor out here,” he said.

“I know,” Ben said, “we will.”

“When?”

“When your mammy says it’s okay.”

“Dad, my mother is in no fit state to decide that.”

“She’s just sad, son.”

“No, Dad. She
was
just sad, but now it’s more sinister.”

Ben walked outside and lit a cigarette. Eamonn followed him, grabbed a plastic chair and sat beside him. “You can’t hide from this, Dad,” he said. “You could hide from Alexandra but not this.”

Ben stayed silent because his son was right. He had
hidden from the reality of the loss of his daughter for months. He had pushed her away into a tiny corner of his mind because to think about her and to allow himself to feel the emotions he had felt those first few weeks would be unbearable. His pain had become anger, and in the absence of an aggressor he had turned on Tom. He had loathed him since that day more than a year before when Alexandra had walked out of her door and vanished from plain sight. He had decided that even if Tom was working when they’d lost her, and even if he had loved Alexandra, his love hadn’t been enough to keep her safe. He didn’t care that it was cruel to blame the man who’d driven himself half mad to find her, because the only time he had felt better in the past year was when he was making Tom feel worse.

Eamonn coped by pretending that Alexandra hadn’t been as happy as she had pretended to be and that mentally she wasn’t capable of accepting her life as it was. She had forfeited a career she’d worked hard to succeed in for a baby that never came. She had tried hormone tablets and four rounds of IVF, acupuncture, herbs and tonics. She had given up smoking, joined a gym, changed her eating habits, and although she maintained a happy and casual façade, he had known she was lying: he had known that she was desperate to be a mother and that every single month and every negative test was eating away at his sister until there was little of the real her left. At least, that was what he told himself because it was easier to believe she had chosen to walk away from her life or even that she’d thrown herself over Dalkey pier than face the horrifying alternatives. And so, while he didn’t hold the same anger as his father, a large part of him held Tom accountable for the loss of his sister.

The difference between Eamonn and his father, while they were sitting on plastic chairs in the back garden, was that since the reconstruction and his wife’s subsequent withdrawal Ben had understood that Tom was as helpless in the disappearance of Alexandra as he now found himself in the face of his wife’s mysterious illness. All the anger that he’d built up to protect himself from true suffering was slowly dissipating, the pain was slowly returning and he found himself experiencing the darkness that Tom had been experiencing all along.

“Call the doctor,” he said to his son, after the longest time, “and call Tom.”

“What are we calling him for?” Eamonn said.

“Because your mammy’s fond of him and he’ll come,” Ben said.

Eamonn nodded, got up and walked inside with his phone to his ear, leaving his father alone to smoke and breathe through the pain that finally he allowed himself to feel.

Tom arrived just as Kate was leaving. She hugged him and thanked him for coming and he told her he was delighted to be asked. He had attempted to make contact with Breda a few times over the previous five weeks but had been told it would be better to stay away. Ben came out from the sitting room and, much to Tom’s surprise, offered him his hand. He shook it.

“I owe you an apology,” Ben said. “Alexandra, well, it wasn’t your fault any more than it was mine or her mammy’s. It was just something terrible that happened.”

Tom didn’t know what to say. His hands shook and his lip trembled. “Thank you.”

Ben slapped his back. “Breda’s upstairs. The doctor’s been and he gave her something to sleep but she’s been awake a while and I know she’d love to see you.”

Tom walked up the stairs and into Breda’s room. It was lit by one lamp at the side of her bed. The room smelt of fresh blankets and Breda smelt of Kate’s perfume. She was thinner than ever and her veins stood out more. He sat in the chair by her bed and took her hand in his. She looked at him but he wondered if she saw him at all. “I’ve missed you,” he said, “and I’m not the only one.”

She tried to smile as it was the least she could do for poor Tom who was kind enough to visit her.

“I’m scared,” he said, after a minute or two. “I’m scared that you’ve let your mind go to the dark place and that you’ve got stuck there. Have you got stuck there, Breda?”

Tears welled in her eyes and she nodded.

“You need to come back,” he said. “You need to be strong because we can’t lose you too.”

“I’m sorry,” she mumbled, and even her mumble sounded raspy.

“Don’t be sorry. Just come back.”

“I can’t,” she said.

“Why not?”

“‘The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.’”

“I don’t understand. What does that mean?”

“It means if a broken spirit pleases God that is what I’ll give him.”

“Breda, you lying here is not going to bring Alexandra back.”

“But maybe it will,” she said, and licked her dry lips.

“This is madness.”

“No,” she said. “This is all I can do. I have no choice. My body feels broken but as sad as I am my mind is strong.”

“You have to talk to your family.”

She blinked and inhaled and licked her lips again. “They don’t understand.”

“
I
don’t understand.”

She attempted to grip his hand with hers. “I can’t be expected to go on.”

“You’ll get help now,” he said.

She nodded, but she knew it was too late, that nothing and no one could help her now.

“Whatever the doctor says, you’ll do,” he said.

She blinked.

“You’ll be okay,” he said, “and we will find her.”

She blinked again because Breda had said all that she was going to say.

Leslie woke up in her ward. It took a while for her to come around, and when she did the effects of morphine made the back of her head feel as if it was being swallowed by her bed. She thought about attempting to sit up but couldn’t even garner the strength to move her head so that she could look down at herself. Through the narcotic-induced mist she could feel pain but not enough to call someone or seek attention. Her head and heart were both heavy, her insides desecrated, her breasts gone. She didn’t realize it but her finger was pressing on a button administering morphine. Her bed was quickly beginning to feel like a tomb and she heard herself screaming, “Ah, for fuck’s sake, this is how I’m going to die?”

A nurse appeared quickly, removed Leslie’s finger from the button and attempted to settle her. “Just relax, everything went well, you’re in good hands,” she said.

“The fucking bed is swallowing me!” she screamed.

“The bed is not swallowing you.”

“Save me, you fuck-faced motherfucking fucker!” Leslie said, and the woman in the bed opposite laughed.

“Okay, everything’s fine, I’ve got you,” the nurse said calmly.

“I’m dying. I’ve been dying all my fucking life!”

“You’re not dying.”

“Has anyone ever told you that you look like a frog?”

The woman in the bed opposite put her hand over her mouth to stop herself laughing again.

“It’s the meds talking,” the nurse said to the woman, who was clearly enjoying the meds talking and was looking forward to hearing more from them.

“Nurse?”

“Yes, Leslie.”

“I’ve gone blind.”

“No, love, you’ve just closed your eyes.”

Leslie fell into a deep sleep after that and didn’t wake up for another twelve hours. When she did wake she had absolutely no memory of the incident ever taking place.

Jim was the first person she remembered visiting. He was reading a newspaper when she woke. “What’s going on?” she asked.

“President Sarkozy has decided to postpone a trip to Ireland to discuss the EU Lisbon treaty.”

“Oh,” she said, “I forgot to vote.”

“Well, you had other things on your mind.”

“Yeah,” she said, and suddenly she felt like crying – her face was a little numb so she didn’t realize that she actually was.

“You’re going to be all over the place,” he said. “It’s perfectly normal.”

“Nothing about this is normal,” she said.

“In a few weeks you’re going to feel so much better.”

“But I’m going to look so much worse.”

“No,” he said, “you’re going to look like a new woman, a woman with a massive weight taken off her shoulders.”

“I’ll have no breasts,” she said. “I haven’t even looked yet, I’m too scared.”

“Take your time, allow yourself to heal, be kind to yourself and then when the time comes if you’re not happy you can get implants.”

“Like Pamela Anderson.”

“No. Most definitely not like Pamela Anderson.”

Leslie would have laughed but she was too sore. The drains coming out of her stomach and chest had blood and pus spewing into bottles and it was as uncomfortable as it was unsightly. When the nurse fixed her bed, the sheet covering a bottle fell away revealing its horrible contents to Jim but, if he saw it, it certainly didn’t faze him. Of course, he had witnessed that and more, even if it was more than ten years before.

After he left Leslie was sick into a bowl for an hour, every part of her ached, and with every retch her newly stitched skin pulled and burned. When the woman with the trolley asked her if she wanted some toast Leslie pointed to the bowl before leaning in for another spew.

“Say no more, my dear,” the woman said. “I’ll catch you on the way back.”

Elle waited until the third day before visiting her friend. She did this because when she checked Google it told her that day two following an operation was the worst day and she didn’t want to make Leslie’s life harder than it already was. She arrived with grapes, magazines and a book about self-discovery. She was on her own because Jane had to meet their accountant. She was nervous, unsure what she should say, and for once she was quiet.

“Are you all right?” Leslie asked.

“Shouldn’t I be asking you that?”

“Yes.” Leslie smiled.

“I didn’t sleep,” Elle admitted. “I couldn’t make my mind stop.”

“I’ve been there.”

“Sometimes it feels like my mind is on a treadmill and I’m trying to reach the stop button but I can’t, and with every second that passes, I feel like I’m about to fall off.”

“What kind of things do you think about?” Leslie asked, glad that they weren’t talking about the operation.

“Oh, I don’t know – work, Jane, Kurt, me, a woman in the Sudan lying on a dusty floor dying of AIDS as we speak. I think about her and how bloody unfair it is. A horse found slashed to pieces, starved and burned, and I think about that poor gentle animal’s suffering. A young boy aged sixteen stabbed in London on his way home from a football match. I think about him and the family he’s left behind. A woman who is promised a new life only to be consigned to sexual slavery. I think about her and
the hell she endures day in day out. I think about Alexandra and where she could be and what has been done to her, and I think about you and how sad your life has been, all that you’ve lost and all that you’ve missed out on. I think about how brave you are and dignified and kind. I think that if I could be like anyone in the world it would be you and I think flat-chested women are huge on the catwalk right now, that kind of thing,” Elle said, and smiled at her friend.