Chapter 5
IT WAS EARLY WHEN SHE ENTERED THE ROOM, NIGHT not quite folded up and put away.
She closed the door with a soft click and leant against it, waiting for her eyes to adjust, the studio lit only by the dawn sky that was casting a pale luminescence through the big end window, lending the place a ghostly quality.
At length she slipped her feet out of her slippers and padded past the large mirrors to the far end of the room, bare toes curling against the chill of the floor. The air was frigid too, her breath coming out like fog as she unrolled her mat in front of the big window.
She planted her feet hip width apart on the rubber, arms resting by her sides. For a scatter of seconds she just stood, her gaze directed outwards as she began to deepen her breathing, skin prickling with goosebumps.
She welcomed the cold. It made her feel something.
The trees that bordered the garden were jagged and black against the first grey fingers of light in the sky. Through a cracked-open side window came the familiar chirrups and cheeps of the robins and blue tits and thrushes and sparrows, the early risers that populated the trees.
The sky continued to lighten. Still standing at the top of her mat, she dropped her shoulders, lifted her ribcage, tightened her abdomen, tucked in her pelvis. Her adjustments automatic, born of long practice and many hours spent on the same mat she stood on now.
When the cold began to take feeling from her toes she swept her arms above her head on an inhale.
Her palms came together as she curved into a gentle back bend.
On an exhale she folded forward, feeling the familiar sweet release in her lower back as her hands found the mat.
She inhaled and rose to a halfway lift, neck long, back straight.
She exhaled and folded again. She continued with the rest of the sun salutation, taking three long breaths in downward-facing dog, feeling the peace beginning to settle over her.
She pulled off a sweatshirt and cycled through several more salutations before moving on to the warrior poses, following them with a series of hip-openers, inhaling, exhaling, her heart pumping now, the cold forgotten as she gathered momentum.
More poses followed, chair, bridge, cat and cow, fish, bow, camel, plank, locust, dancer, plough, flowing from one to the next, not allowing herself to stop until finally, spent, she came to a panting halt.
She pulled on the outer layer she’d removed earlier.
She rolled on to her back and surrendered into her final relaxation, while beyond the window the sky shuffled off the last of the night.
Only here, on this mat, could she calm her mind now.
Only yoga was keeping her from shattering into a million pieces.
Not ice that had caused his car to swerve across the road and ram into the tree at the other side, halfway between the village and Susan’s house.
No ice there, not that evening. Possibly an animal, she was told, a fox or a badger appearing suddenly in front of him, causing him to veer away in an effort to avoid it.
Speed may have been a factor, they said, going too fast to correct the manoeuvre before hitting the tree. Tyres probably not helping either, treads worn, no grip when it was needed. I should replace those tyres, she remembered him remarking a few days before Christmas, but he hadn’t replaced them.
Died instantly, they said. As if that was supposed to comfort her.
Three weeks without him.
She got to her feet and rolled up her mat and left the studio.
Back in the apartment she filled a bath.
She undressed and climbed in, welcoming the warmth that began to spread through her body as she stretched out.
She closed her eyes and returned to the night of the accident and its aftermath, to the series of disconnected images that were all she could remember, called back by some masochistic impulse, compelled to relive the horror of it again and again.
The plastic seats in the morgue, too-bright strip lighting overhead, someone draping a heavy jacket over her party dress.
Sweet tea, her mouth horribly dry. Everything too loud: Marian’s sobs, the scrape of a chair, the click of heels, someone clearing a throat.
Damien on a slab under a sheet, his face hidden from her, a hand all they would reveal.
Cold and stiff, the hand that had never been cold.
His new wedding ring still in place. With this ring I thee wed.
His parents’ house later in the night. Kathleen’s face raw and ugly with grief, Brendan rocking on his chair, the light gone from his eyes, his builder’s hands useless in his lap.
Her parents showing up at some stage. Her mother pale and weeping, her father grim-faced, embracing her wordlessly. A glass of something golden in her hand, setting her throat on fire, making her cough, sending heat to her frozen fingers and toes.
A woman with auburn hair offering Lydia two white tablets.
For sleep, she said. Warm milk, Lydia’s head woozy, no memory of falling asleep or returning to Chance House, but waking in her bed, their bed.
Her wild anguished cries as the night came back, as the huge, crushing realisation that he was gone almost drowned her.
Her mother appearing, holding her, Shush, shush, dear. Rubbing her back, Shh.
Three weeks without him.
The evening before the funeral, the horrendous wake in his parents’ house.
The closed coffin inside the sitting room window, also closed.
The air too hot, heavy with sweat and alcohol and perfumes that collided.
The hideous patterned carpet, green and red on brown.
Strangers’ hands reaching for hers, again and again and again.
The feeling of wanting to be anywhere but where she was.
Wanting to walk out of her life and into someone else’s.
Father Phil reciting a decade of the rosary at the end that Lydia didn’t join in with. Nothing to say to God ever again.
The funeral. Walking up the aisle of the church with her parents, a cruel stab of memory – lilac dress, flowers, happiness – prompting a wail of unconscionable grief, causing her father’s arm to tighten around her waist.
Father Phil pressing her hands between his own, his face as full of sadness as all the others, preparing to bury the man whose marriage he’d celebrated a little over a week earlier. My heart goes out to you, he had whispered, his mouth close to her ear.
Her family and friends from Dublin, hugging her in turn. Aunts, uncles, cousins. Old neighbours, some of whom she hadn’t seen for years.
Mourners from the village and its surrounds. Greta from the café pressing her hand, Gareth pulling her into a brief hug, Susan on the verge of tears, shaking her head wordlessly, Susan’s brother Andrew. Hold on, he had murmured, just hold on, but she didn’t want to hold on.
Everyone had known Damien. That was it. Everyone had grown up with him, had watched him go from a boy to a man, had seen the lovely man he had become. Everyone had adored him, because it was impossible not to. He left a gulf in his wake, a chasm so wide it threatened to swallow them all.
She would be nothing to them now. Without Damien, what did she mean to them? She didn’t care. Nothing but his absence mattered.
When the bath water began to cool she rose from it and patted herself dry. She brushed her teeth and swirled mouthwash. In the bedroom she dressed in the uniform of tracksuit bottoms and sweatshirt she wore now. Who cared?
Three weeks without him.
After the funeral, her parents had brought her back to Dublin.
She’d stayed with them for a week, eating little and sleeping less, spending much of the time in bed or slumped in an armchair, wrapped in a throw and staring at a wall, not seeing the courtyard outside the window, impervious to the little pond at its centre, the border of artificial lawn, the canopy over built-in seating.
All the time her heart had bled as she’d struggled to endure the unendurable. Where are you? she had cried silently. Where did you go? How could you leave me?
Her friends had dropped around, nobody knowing what to say. Brona had brought the roasted salted almonds they both loved, and had cried with her as the almonds had sat untouched. I’ll come, she’d promised, when Lydia told her she was going back.
Her parents had wanted her to stay longer in Dublin.
What are you going back for? her mother had asked, the words slicing like a sharpened blade through Lydia.
Nothing left for her in the west now, apart from a big half-finished house by the sea that called to her each night as she lay sleepless in her childhood bedroom and wept for Damien.
She’d yearned for it, the place where he’d been, where they’d been.
The place where she’d become engaged to him, the place where they’d got married.
The place she’d been happiest. She’d been desperate to go back, to be among all the things he’d left behind, even as she knew the absence of him there would break her heart all over again.
My apartment is sold, she’d reminded her parents. The only place I have to live in is Chance House. It was solely in her name now, hers to do with as she chose – but what could she do with it? No more destination restaurant, not without Damien.
Sell it, her father had said, as if reading her mind. It’s far too big for you on your own; it makes no sense to keep it. Stay with us until you find another apartment here.
I can’t sell it until it’s fully renovated.
Of course you can. A developer won’t have a problem with an incomplete renovation.
No, she wouldn’t do that. She hated the thought of leaving the house in its unfinished state. Brendan had begun the renovation, and Brendan would finish it – if he still wanted to. Lydia would stay there for as long as it took for the work to be done, and then she would think about what next to do.