It’s just like any other evening in the Sullivan household. Cody upstairs on his laptop. Leah upstairs on her phone. Elena and Richard watching TV. Doors locked, blinds down. A Friday sigh and a weekend glass of wine. AndThe Roommate, a new three-part crime drama, to dive into. Elena and Richard have always had the same taste in TV shows and Elena is glad. Some of her friends don’t watch TV with their spouses at all. Her best friend streamsReal Housewiveson her laptop in bed while her husband is downstairs watching stand-up. And that’s not to say Elena and Richard are perfect, or that watching the same shows makes them superior in any way. They don’t go for walks together, they don’t have any joint hobbies, they don’t always see eye to eye on how best to parent two tweens. But tonight, as the opening credits roll, she’s glad this is something they share. Every Friday night is the same: a bottle of vintage red, a platter of gourmet cheese, and something binge-worthy on TV. So yes, this evening is just like any other evening in the Sullivan household.
Until it isn’t.
‘The guys in IT were saying it’s very good,’ Richard says, nodding towards the screen. ‘I think there’s a premiere or event with the makers this weekend here in Dublin so it’s being really hyped up.’
‘Yeah, I saw it all over Instagram.’ Elena smears Cashel Blue on a charcoal cracker. ‘I scrolled past to avoid spoilers, and now I literally don’t know what it’s about.’
Richard takes a sip of wine. ‘Well, let’s find out.’
Onscreen, a couple are viewing a beautiful house overlooking the sea. Tick for aspirational wealth, tick for glossy high-budget, tick for American setting. For some reason, Elena particularly likes US-set dramas. Maybe it’s the vastness of the country, the diversity of the locations, or the sense thatanythingcould happen. The house on TV has a spiral staircase at the centre of the open-plan kitchen-living area, and upstairs the views out over the ocean are breathtaking. Elena settles back on the couch, ready for whatever drama is coming next as the couple on TV discuss how to make it work financially. How to afford to live in their dream home.
She looks around her own dream home – the high ceilings, the huge picture window, the teal velvet couch that cost more than the kids’ school fees combined, and mentally she pinches herself. How lucky they are. It’s not luck, Richard would say, it’s hard work. And he’s right, to an extent – Elena’s job as CEO of Ventech and Richard’s job as Global Sales Director at DGD are why they were able to buy this house mortgage-free and why they can still take four holidays a year. Hard work, nerves of steel, and the ability to firefight or fire people as needed too. Like this week in New York, when the biggest deal of the quarter almost collapsed. Elena’s team didn’t love staying till 3 a.m. to resolve it, but no way would any of them leave before she did. The firefighting is done now, and once the deal is over the line, the firing will follow.
But there’s luck involved too, Elena knows this. And privilege. They were both raised here, in South Dublin, by parents who paid for college and helped them on to the property ladder and had all the right contacts to get them their first jobs. Not that Elena and Richard knew one another back then – but when they first met at a conference in Paristhirteen years ago, they quickly realised just how much they had in common. How well they matched.
Elena wasn’t looking to meet anyone. Recently out of a problematic relationship, she planned to stay single for a while. But Richard had something she recognised. The same drive she had and a spark of fun too. A guy who worked hard but didn’t take himself too seriously. Kyle, her ex, took himself far too seriously. She mentally shakes herself. She doesn’t like to think about Kyle.
Onscreen, the couple are debating taking in a lodger.
‘That is one thing I could never, ever do,’ Richard says, crossing his ankle over his knee. ‘Have someone else living here – an au pair or lodger or student. Imagine sitting here with some stranger across from us.’
Elena nods and pushes her mouth into a smile. She knows exactly what it’s like to have a lodger and how extraordinarily wrong it can go. But Richard doesn’t know anything about what happened back then, when she lived with her ex. As far as he knows, Kyle broke up with her because he moved to London. If only it were that simple.
The house in the show is stunning – the kind of place you could imagine stretching yourself financially to get, Elena thinks, taking a sip of her wine. And indeed, that’s what the onscreen couple – Ben and Marcia – do. They take in a lodger. A tiny but very loud woman called Jane, who they find through an ad. A woman with long strawberry-blonde hair and a high-pitched voice. A memory surfaces and Elena’s stomach knots.
Maybe this isn’t the ideal TV show after all.
‘Do you want to watch something else? It’s a bit slow, isn’t it?’ she asks Richard.
He turns, eyebrows arched above his glasses. ‘What? We’re only eight minutes in. I’m enjoying it.’
OK then. She watches as Jane, the new lodger, moves into her room – a converted home office that sits between the kitchen and the garage. Jane with curly wisps of hair framing her pretty features. Jane with her false promises that she’ll stay out of their way. Jane who makes it to the couch before them every night. Jane who never puts down the TV remote, even bringing it with her to the bathroom. Jane who leaves cupboard doors open and stove rings on. Jane who says she’ll change but never does.
Just like Elena’s real-life lodger.
Just like Kristina.
Elena never thinks about Kristina, not if she can help it. It’s something she’s always taught her kids – don’t dwell on the past, keep looking forward. Of course, they know nothing about Kristina, nothing about Kyle; they don’t know why their mother never looks back.
Richard has topped up her wine and she takes a long swallow. Mild inebriation might help with the memoriesThe Roommateis stirring up.
‘Jeez, she’d do your head in,’ Richard says, and Elena tunes back in to the show. Jane is singing loudly in the kitchen, as Ben and Marcia try to focus on the TV news in the next room. Something cold slips inside Elena as she watches Jane stirring a pot of marinara sauce, singing Adele’s ‘Set Fire to the Rain’, scrolling through a retro-looking version of Facebook on a shiny iPhone. In the other room, Ben points the remote control at the TV, trying to hear a presidential address from Barack Obama.
‘How is Obama president?’ Elena asks Richard, puzzled.
‘It’s set in 2011. Didn’t you see the date at the start?’
She didn’t. She was too busy thinking about Kristina. Kristina who used to do exactly what fictional Jane is doing on TV – singing in a high-pitched, out-of-tune voice, whenever it took her fancy. Kristina with her strawberry-blonde bun and her pixie face and her grip on the remote and her obsession with Facebook.
The cold feeling intensifies.
The Sullivans’ living room door bursts open and Cody runs in. Cody runs everywhere.
‘I need more time on TikTok.’ He holds his phone out to Elena.
‘If you’ve hit your limit, doesn’t that mean you’ve had enough, buddy?’ Richard says, pausing the TV show.
Elena grits her teeth. Richard never seems to understand that if they refuse the screen time, they pay the price – Cody will stay down here chattering until they give in. She loves Cody, of course she does, but after a long week of crisis resolution in New York, she needs her Friday-night peace. Peace and couch and TV and wine. Fortunately, while Richard is quick to dole out the ‘haven’t you had enough screen time’ missives, he himself is back on his phone and doesn’t pay any further attention to Elena as she gives Cody another hour and hands back his device.
