‘I hate having to do this.’ Jonah, a slight sprite of a boy, stared sightlessly at his cooling cup of tea.
‘It’s hard,’ I said. ‘I know. But you’re helping her.’
‘She will lose the fucking head.’ Naaz bit her lip and reached for another biscuit. ‘Seriously, Rachel – is it okay to call you Rachel? – it’s going to be the apocalypse.’
‘It might not. Will we go?’
Murdo was already in the Abbots Quarter. When I walked in, followed by Jonah and Naaz, Ella looked stupefied with shock. Her mouth half opened, then froze. Only her eyes moved, flicking anxiously as Jonah and Naaz took their seats.
I flashed back twenty years to when Luke and Brigit surprised me by appearing one morning in this very same room and promptly blew the gig wide open. Jesus, I’d nearly died from shock and shame.
‘Morning, all.’ I smiled. ‘As you can see, we’ve been joined by two people.’ I asked them to introduce themselves.
Jonah cleared his throat. ‘I’m Ella’s boyfriend, have been for about three years. We live together.’
‘And I’m her friend Naaz. I share the house with her and Jonah.’
‘And you’ve come this morning because …？’ I looked to Jonah to kick things off.
‘Ella has been taking sleeping tablets –’
‘Because I was attacked,’ Ella interjected hotly.
Cool and calm, I said, ‘Jonah has taken the morning off work to help you. Have the manners to hear him out.’
‘But this is bullshi–’
‘Stop. It,’ Murdo ordered.
Startled, Ella did.
‘You know about her crashing the car?’ Jonah asked. ‘But even before then, things were weird. She’d been taking a lot of time off work “sick”。 She was “sick” a lot.’
‘What sort of sick?’
‘Period pains. The flu.’ He looked at Naaz for help.
‘Food poisoning,’ she supplied. ‘Glandular fever. But she diagnosed herself with the glandular fever.’
‘And the food poisoning didn’t make sense,’ Jonah said, ‘because we’d all eaten the same thing. And she wasn’t throwing up, just saying she had a pain in her stomach. Then about two months ago I was at work, she was home “sick” and she sent this insane text, that there was an intruder on the roof. I called, she didn’t pick up, I was freaking out, so I came home. She was wandering around the kitchen, saying she was making pancakes. I asked her about the intruder and she had no clue. Totally out of it. Not drunk or slurry but completely blank. There was nothing in her eyes.’
‘What did you think?’
‘I thought something like, I dunno, a stroke? But I’d already been wondering about the sleeping tablets. We’ve all heard the stories. It’s just that you don’t think it’ll ever be you.’
‘What stories?’
‘That after people have taken the tablet, they do things, they seem awake, but they’re not. And the next day they don’t remember.’
‘That happened to Ella?’
‘Well, yeah. Sometimes we’d have sex and the next day she wouldn’t remember. Or she’d call people and make plans … One night she told her mum she’d drive down to see her after work the next day. Which was mad because it’s a three-hour drive. Next morning, heading off to work, she asked me to do dinner that evening. I reminded her she was going to Waterford, but she hadn’t a clue.’
‘Another night,’ Naaz said, ‘she got into bed with me and my boyfriend, Oliver. Wearing nothing. Acting threesome-y.’
‘You wish!’ Ella exploded.
‘Ella, no. You know that.’
‘Did you call her out?’ I asked Naaz.
‘Yeah, but … she said Oliver fancied her and I was jealous.’
‘I never said that!’
‘You did,’ Jonah said. ‘I was there. But you were out of it so you don’t remember.’
‘Jonah, did you try challenging her?’
He shrugged helplessly. ‘… She’d been mugged. It affected her badly. Any time I tried to talk about the tablets, she reminded me. I was trying to be supportive, so I felt I should shut up. But we – Naaz and I – copped on that she must be taking more than the prescribed amount. So we went looking and found prescriptions from two doctors in Dublin and another from a doctor in Waterford. She’d also ordered some online. She didn’t need a prescription for that but they cost hundreds.’