Elizabeth raised her eyebrows and laughed nervously to herself. Since when had Luke become an expert on olives? He must have learned about them at school; he had a good memory for things like that. Luke paused and listened to the other end. ‘Well, Ivan can’t wait to meet you too.’
Elizabeth rolled her eyes and dashed towards Luke for the phone in case he said any more. Her father was confused enough as it was, at times, without having to explain the existence, or lack thereof, of an invisible boy.
‘Hello,’ Elizabeth said, grabbing the phone. Luke dragged his feet back to the kitchen. Irritation at the noise reared itself within Elizabeth again.
‘Elizabeth,’ said the stern formal voice, thick with a Kerry lilt, ‘I just returned to find your sister lying on my kitchen floor. I gave her a boot but I can’t figure out whether she’s dead or not.’
Elizabeth sighed. ‘That’s not funny, and my sister is your daughter, you know.’
‘Oh, don’t give me that,’ he said dismissively. ‘I want to know what you’re going to do about her. She can’t stay here. The last time she did, she released the chickens from the coop and I spent all day getting them back in. And with my back and my hip, I can’t be doing that any more.’
‘I know, but she can’t stay here either. She upsets Luke.’
‘That child doesn’t know enough about her to be upset. Half the time she forgets she’s given birth to him. You can’t have him all to yourself, you know.’
Elizabeth bit her tongue in rage. ‘Half the time’ was being overly generous. ‘She can’t come here,’ she said more patiently than she felt. ‘She was around earlier and took the car again. Colm just brought it back a few minutes ago. It’s really serious this time.’ She took a deep breath. ‘They arrested her.’
Her father was silent for a moment and then he tutted. ‘And rightly so. The experience will do her the world of good.’ He quickly changed subject. ‘Why weren’t you at work today? Our Lord only intended us to rest on a Sunday.’
‘That’s the whole point. Today was a really important day for me at wor—’
‘Well, your sister’s come back to the land of the living and is outside trying to push the cows over again. Tell young Luke to come around with this new friend on Monday. We’ll show him the farm.’
There was a click and the line went dead. Hello and goodbye were not her father’s speciality; he still thought that mobile phones were some sort of futuristic alien-like technology designed to confuse the human race.
Elizabeth hung up the phone and made her way back to the kitchen. Luke sat alone at the table, holding his stomach and laughing hysterically. She took her seat and continued eating her salad. She wasn’t one of those people who was interested in eating food; she only did it because she had to. Evenings spent over long dinners bored her and she never had much of an appetite – she was always too busy worrying about something or too hyper to be able to sit still and eat. She glanced at the plate directly ahead of her and to her surprise saw that it was empty.
‘Luke?’
Luke stopped talking to himself and faced her. ‘Yeah?’
‘Yes,’ she corrected him. ‘What happened to the slice of pizza that was on that plate?’
Luke looked at the empty plate, looked back at Elizabeth like she was crazy and took a bite of his own pizza. ‘Ivan ate it.’
‘Don’t speak with your mouth full,’ she admonished him.
He spat the food out onto the plate. ‘Ivan ate it.’ He began laughing hysterically again at the mush on his plate that had been in his mouth.
Elizabeth’s head began to ache. What had gotten into him? ‘What about the olives?’
Sensing her anger, he waited until he swallowed the rest of his food before speaking. ‘He ate them too. I told you olives were his favourite. Granddad wanted to know if he could grow olives on the farm,’ Luke smiled and revealed his gums.
Elizabeth smiled back. Her father wouldn’t even know what an olive was if it walked up to him and introduced itself. He wasn’t into any of those ‘fancy’ foods; rice was about as exotic as he would get and even then he complained that the pieces were too small and that he’d be better off eating ‘a crumblin’ spud’.
Elizabeth sighed as she scraped the remainder of her food from her plate into the bin but not before checking through the rubbish to see if Luke had thrown the pizza and olives in. No sign. Luke usually had such a small appetite and would struggle to finish one large slice of pizza, never mind two. She presumed she would find it weeks later, mouldy and hiding at the back of a cabinet somewhere. But if he had eaten the entire thing, he would be sick all night and Elizabeth would have to clean up the mess. Again.
‘Thank you, Elizabeth.’
‘You’re very welcome, Luke.’
‘Huh?’ Luke said, poking his head around the corner of the kitchen.
‘Luke, I told you before, it’s pardon, not huh.’
‘Pardon?’
‘I said you’re very welcome.’
‘But I haven’t said thank you yet.’
Elizabeth slid the dishes into the dishwasher and stretched her back. She rubbed the base of her aching spine. ‘Yes you did. You said, “Thank you, Elizabeth.”’
‘No I didn’t,’ Luke frowned.
Elizabeth felt her temper rising. ‘Luke, stop playing games now, OK? We’ve had our fun at lunchtime, now you can stop pretending. OK?’
‘No. That was Ivan who said thank you,’ he said angrily.
A shiver ran through her body. She didn’t think this was funny. She banged the dishwasher door shut, too fed up even to reply to her nephew. Why couldn’t he, just this once, not give her a hard time?
Elizabeth rushed by Ivan with a cup of espresso in her hand, and the smell of perfume and coffee beans filled his nostrils. She sat down at the kitchen table, her shoulders sagged and she held her head in her hands.
‘Ivan, come on!’ Luke called impatiently from the playroom. ‘I’ll let you be The Rock this time!’
Elizabeth groaned quietly to herself.
But Ivan couldn’t move. His blue Converse runners were rooted to the marble kitchen floor.
Elizabeth had heard him say thank you. He knew it.
He circled her slowly for a few minutes, studying her for signs of a reaction to his presence. He snapped his fingers next to her eardrums, jumped back and watched her. Nothing. He clapped his hands and stamped his feet. The sound echoed loudly in the large kitchen but Elizabeth remained at the table with her head in her hands. No reaction at all.
But she had said, ‘You’re very welcome.’ After all his efforts of making noise around her, he was confused to discover his deep disappointment that she couldn’t sense him. After all, she was a parent and who cared what parents thought? He stood behind her and stared down at the top of her head, wondering what noise he could make next. He sighed loudly, exhaling a deep breath.
Suddenly Elizabeth sat up straight, shuddered and pulled the zip on her tracksuit top higher.
And then he knew she had felt his breath.
Elizabeth