‘Great, and what condition was Saoirse in?’
‘The usual one.’
‘Intoxicated.’
‘That’s the one.’ Elizabeth stood up and walked down the hall to the kitchen. Her sun trap. Her heels against the marble floor echoed loudly in the empty high-ceilinged room. Everything was in its place. The room was hot from the sun’s glare through the glass of the conservatory. Elizabeth’s tired eyes squinted in the brightness. The spotless kitchen gleamed, the black granite counter tops sparkled, the chrome fittings mirrored the bright day. A stainless steel and walnut heaven. She headed straight to the espresso machine. Her saviour. Needing an injection of life into her exhausted body, she opened the kitchen cabinet and took out a small beige coffee cup. Before closing the press she turned a cup round so that the handle was on the right side like all the others. She slid open the long steel cutlery drawer, noticed a knife in the fork’s compartment, put it back in its rightful place, retrieved a spoon and slid it shut.
From the corner of her eye she saw the hand towel messily strewn over the handle of the cooker. She threw the crumpled cloth into the utility room, retrieved a fresh towel from the neat pile in the press, folded it exactly in half and draped it over the cooker handle. Everything had its place.
‘Well, I haven’t changed my licence plate in the past week so yes, it’s still the same,’ she replied with boredom to another of Marie’s pointless questions. She placed the steaming espresso cup on a marble coaster to protect the glass kitchen table. She smoothed out her trousers, removed a piece of fluff from her jacket, sat down in the conservatory and looked out at her long garden and the rolling green hills beyond that seemed to stretch on for ever. Forty shades of green, golds and browns.
She breathed in the rich aroma of her steaming espresso and immediately felt revived. She pictured her sister racing over the hills with the top down on Elizabeth’s convertible, arms in the air, eyes closed, flame-red hair blowing in the wind, believing she was free. Saoirse meant freedom in Irish. The name had been chosen by their mother in her last desperate attempt to make the duties of motherhood she despised so much seem less like a punishment. Her wish was for her second daughter to bring her freedom from the shackles of marriage, motherhood, responsibility… reality.
Her mother had met her father when she was sixteen. She was travelling through the town with a group of poets, musicians and dreamers, and got talking to Brendan Egan, a farmer in the local pub. He was twelve years her senior and was enthralled by her mysterious wild ways and carefree nature. She was flattered. And so they married. At eighteen they had their first child, Elizabeth. As it turned out, her mother couldn’t be tamed and found it increasingly frustrating being held in the sleepy town nestled in the hills she had only ever intended to pass through. A crying baby and sleepless nights drove her further and further away in her head. Dreams of her own personal freedom became confused with her reality and she started to go missing for days at a time. She went exploring, discovering places and other people.
Elizabeth, at twelve years of age, looked after herself and her silent, brooding father and didn’t ask when her mother would be home because she knew in her heart that she would eventually return, cheeks flushed, eyes bright, and speaking breathlessly of the world and all it had to offer. She would waft into their lives like a fresh summer breeze, bringing excitement and hope. The feel of their bungalow farmhouse always changed when she returned; the four walls absorbed her enthusiasm. Elizabeth would sit at the end of her mother’s bed, listening to stories, giddy with delight. This ambience would last for only a few days until her mother quickly tired of sharing stories rather than making new ones.
Often she brought back mementoes such as shells, stones, leaves. Elizabeth could recall a vase of long fresh grasses that sat in the centre of the dining-room table as though they were the most exotic plants ever created. When asked about the field they were pulled from, her mother just winked and tipped her nose, promising Elizabeth that she would understand some day. Her father would sit silently in his chair by the fireplace, reading his paper but never turning the page. He was as lost in her world of words as she was.
When Elizabeth was twelve years old her mother became pregnant again and, despite the new-born baby being named Saoirse, this child didn’t offer the freedom her mother craved, and so she set off on another expedition. And didn’t return. Her father, Brendan, had no interest in the young life that had driven his wife away so he waited in silence for her in his chair by the fire. Reading his paper but never turning the page. For years. For ever. Soon Elizabeth’s heart grew weary of awaiting her mother’s return and Saoirse became Elizabeth’s responsibility.
Saoirse had inherited her father’s Celtic looks of strawberry-blonde hair and fair skin, while Elizabeth was the image of her mother. Olive skin, chocolate hair, almost black eyes; in their blood from the Spanish influence thousands of years before. Elizabeth resembled her mother more and more with every passing day and she knew her father found that difficult. She grew to hate herself for it, and along with making the effort of trying to have conversations with her father, she tried even harder to prove to her father and to herself that she was nothing like her mother – that she was capable of loyalty.
When Elizabeth finished school at eighteen she was faced with the dilemma of having to move to Cork to attend university. A decision that took all her courage to make. Her father regarded her acceptance of the course as abandonment; he saw any friendship she created with anyone as abandonment. He craved attention, always demanding to be the only person in his daughters’ lives, as though that would prevent them from moving away from him. Well, he almost succeeded and certainly was part of the reason for Elizabeth’s lack of a social life or circle of friends. She had been conditioned to walk away when polite conversation was started, knowing she would pay for any unnecessary time spent away from the farm with sullen words and disapproving glares. In any case, looking after Saoirse as well as going to school was a full-time job. Brendan accused her of being like her mother, of thinking she was above him and superior to Baile na gCroíthe. She found the small town claustrophobic and felt the dull farmhouse was dipped in darkness, with no sense of time. It was as though even the grandfather clock in the hall was waiting for her mother to return.
‘And, Luke, where is he?’ Marie asked over the phone, bringing Elizabeth swiftly back to the present.
Elizabeth replied bitterly. ‘Do you really think Saoirse would take him with her?’
Silence.
Elizabeth sighed. ‘He’s here.’
The name Saoirse had brought more than something to call Elizabeth’s sister by. It had given her an identity, a way of life. Everything the name represented was passed into her blood. She was fiery, independent, wild and free. She followed the pattern of the mother she could not remember, so much that Elizabeth almost felt as though she were watching her mother. But she kept losing sight of her. Saoirse became pregnant at sixteen and no one knew who the father was, not least Saoirse. Once she had the baby she didn’t care much for naming him but eventually took to calling him Lucky. Another wish. So Elizabeth named him Luke. And once again, at the age of twenty-eight, Elizabeth took responsibility for a child.
There was never as much as a flicker of recognition in Saoirse’s eyes when she looked at Luke. It startled Elizabeth to see that there was no bond, no connection at all. Elizabeth had never planned on having children – in fact she had made a pact with herself never to have children. She had raised herself and raised her sister; she had no desires to raise anybody else. It was time to look after herself. But at twenty-eight years old, after having slaved away at school and college, she had been successful in starting up her own interior design business. Her hard work meant that she was the only member of the family capable of providing a good life for Luke. She had reached her goals by being in control, maintaining order, not losing sight of herself, always being realistic, believing in fact and not dreams, and above all applying herself and working hard. Her mother and sister had taught her that she wouldn’t get anywhere by following wistful dreams and having unrealistic hopes.
So now she was thirty-four years old and living alone with Luke in a house that she