Kitabı oku: «The Sea Sisters», sayfa 5
Katie invited a dozen school friends; the boys headed straight for the water and the girls basked in the early-evening sun. Mia left to explore the next bay along with Finn, who was the only person she’d thought to invite. They spent their time digging for lugworms or chasing each other, swinging thick ropes of seaweed above their heads. They rejoined the party only when they could smell the burgers cooking, and then took their loaded plates to the rocks where they sat together eating and throwing the occasional scraps to the cocky gulls that gathered nearby.
Mia watched Katie moving seamlessly from friend to friend, checking that they had enough food, that their drinks were full and that they were enjoying themselves. She noticed how the girls brightened as soon as Katie joined them, and the boys’ gazes would linger on her. One of the party, a diminutive girl who’d earlier been caught unawares by a wave that soaked the bottoms of her jeans, sat alone, deflated after the incident, her paper plate sagging on her knees. Noticing her, Katie slipped apart from the group she was with and sat beside the girl. She touched the damp line of the girl’s jeans, and then whispered something that made her laugh hard enough to forget the cool denim at her shins. When Katie stood and reached out her hand, the girl took it and then followed Katie as they moved to rejoin the larger crowd.
Mia was impressed. At 15, when most teenagers were awkward and temperamental, Katie had an intuitive ability to put people at their ease. From her vantage point on the rocks, she saw Katie join their mother beside the barbeque as she heaped the last of the blackened sausages onto a spare plate. As they stood close, their blonde heads leaning towards one another, their gazes levelled at the sea, it suddenly struck Mia how similar her mother and sister were. It was more than their physical likeness, it was a likeness etched into their personalities. They shared a gregarious manner and a gift for understanding people, both able to read gestures and expressions in a way that was entirely alien to Mia.
The realization of their similarities unsettled Mia, but it wasn’t until years later, when her mother’s cancer was moving into its final stages, that she understood precisely why. Mia was visiting home and had swung into the drive – three hours late according to the schedule Katie had emailed her. A headache thumped at her temples and alcohol fumes emanated from her pores.
When she let herself in, Katie was coming down the stairs holding a leather weekend bag at her side. ‘Mum’s sleeping.’
‘Right.’
Katie reached the bottom step and stopped. Up close, Mia could see her eyelids were pink and swollen. ‘You’re three hours late,’ Katie said.
Mia shrugged.
‘An apology would be nice.’
‘For what?’
Katie’s eyes widened. ‘You’ve delayed me by three hours. I had plans.’
‘I’m sure your boyfriend will understand,’ Mia said with an arched eyebrow.
‘Don’t make this about us, Mia. It’s about Mum.’ Katie lowered her voice. ‘She’s dying. I don’t want you to look back and regret anything.’
‘What, like the way I regret having you as a sister?’ It was a childish, dirty remark, which Mia didn’t feel proud of.
As Katie moved past her, she said to Mia, ‘I have no idea who you are.’
In that comment she had hit upon the very thing that had always troubled Mia: if she didn’t take after her mother the way Katie did, then it could only lead Mia in one direction – Mick. And since all she knew of him was that he had abandoned his family, the second question she had circled in her journal was: ‘Who am I?’
Glancing up, she saw that the shadows of palm trees had clawed their way across the beach. She stood, dusting the sand from the backs of her thighs, knowing it was time to answer those questions.
As she moved along the beach, her gaze was caught again by the lone surfer paddling for a wave. He rode the liquid mountain as gracefully as a dancer, arching his body and turning his hips to catch the right motion. Mia watched him, rapt, and still didn’t move off as he paddled back in to shore, letting a small ridge of white-water carry him almost to the beach. Then he slipped from his board and stood, hooking it beneath his arm as he waded in.
The man, who looked to be just a few years older than her, had a closely shaven head and a dark tattoo that stretched across the underside of his forearm. He squeezed a thumb and forefinger against the corners of his eyes, flicking away the salt water and blinking. He set his board down, removed his ankle leash, and then turned back to the ocean where a final blaze of red sky fringed the horizon. He stood with his arms loosely folded over his chest, his chin raised. The posture was stoic, resolute, yet somehow contemplative, too. Mia was intrigued by the way he watched intensely as if he were in communion with the ocean.
Minutes passed and the red sky faded to a warm orange glow, and still he did not move. Mia knew she should go but, as she stepped forwards, the man turned sharply.
He looked directly at her and his expression was one of affront, as if she had intruded on a moment intended for him alone. There was no hint of his mouth softening into a smile, or his eyebrows rising in acknowledgement. Thick lashes shadowed dark eyes and the intensity of his gaze bore into her. His eyes held her fixed and she felt heat rising in her cheeks. For a moment, she thought he was about to say something but then he dipped his head and turned back to the horizon.
She moved on, leaving the beach in his watch. She followed a narrow footpath, which eventually brought her out in front of a row of beach-front properties. Sprinkler systems kept trimmed lawns fresh and green, and large cars with tinted windows were parked on tarmac driveways. Mick’s house, number 11, was two storeys with a terracotta roof, stonewashed walls and blue shutters framing the windows. Bright tropical plants grew in curved flower beds that bordered the path to the front door, and she caught the sweet smell of frangipani in the air.
She hovered awkwardly at the edge of the driveway. Her heart was beginning to pound and she shoved her hands in her pockets to stop the trembling of her fingers. For every minute she waited, her anxiety doubled. The visit wasn’t simply an exercise in curiosity; it was far more crucial to her than that. Mia had always felt like an outsider in her family, and had taken a strange comfort in the idea that somewhere in the world was her father, a man she was just like. She had come to Maui to hold up a mirror to him, wondering if she would see herself in its reflection.
She drew in a long, steady breath, and then placed one foot in front of the other. When she reached the front door she steeled herself and pressed the bell.
7
KATIE
California/Maui, April
Katie glanced up at the floodlit sign for San Francisco International. A rush of passengers with luggage trolleys weaved around her, and a busy procession of taxis, minibuses and coaches ducked in and out of drop-off bays. A car horn hooted twice. Headlights were flashed. A door slammed. Then overhead, the roar of a plane taking off filled the sky.
She slipped her phone from her pocket, dialled, and walked into the airport.
Ed answered. She could hear a tap running in the background and imagined him standing in a towel, smoothing shaving foam over his face.
‘It’s me.’ She hadn’t spoken to anyone in two days and the weakness in her voice startled her. She cleared her throat. ‘I’m at the airport.’
‘Where?’
‘San Francisco.’ She hesitated. ‘I’m flying home.’
She heard him turn off the tap. ‘What’s happened? Are you okay?’
When she had set out on this journey, she knew Ed had questioned the wisdom of her decision. It was one thing for Mia to travel to far-flung corners of the world, but Katie was cut from a different cloth and he’d doubted she’d be able to cope so soon after losing her sister. ‘I can’t do this,’ she admitted.
‘Katie—’
‘I really wanted to. I can’t bear to think that …’ She broke off as tears slipped onto her cheeks.
‘It’s okay, darling.’
She swiped at the tears with the back of her hand. It wasn’t okay. She had only been in America for twelve days. Leaving England she’d felt certain that retracing Mia’s route would bring her closer to understanding what happened, yet the further she travelled, the more distance she felt from Mia. She hadn’t danced till dawn in San Francisco’s downtown, or swum in her underwear in the Pacific; she hadn’t the energy to hike into Yosemite to look down from the tops of waterfalls, or gaze up at age-old redwoods; neither did she have the courage to stay in the colourful hostels Mia and Finn had visited, or put up a tent beneath a sky of stars. She could no more travel like her sister than she could understand her.
Instead, she had found herself drifting from hotel to hotel, ordering fast food or room service to avoid eating out, and watching films long into the night simply to put off sleeping. She spent her days driving along empty coast roads, then parking up and sitting on the bonnet of the car with a rug around her shoulders, listening to foam-crested waves smashing against rock.
Memories of Mia lined Katie’s days. Some she invited in to provide comfort, as if she wouldn’t feel the cold space of Mia’s absence if she could wrap herself in enough of them. Other memories arrived unannounced, carried on the smell of the breeze, or freed by a song playing on the radio, or emanating from a stranger’s gesture.
Ed, gently and without reproach, said, ‘It was too soon.’
He was right – had been right all along.
‘Have you bought your ticket yet?’ he asked.
‘No.’
‘I want you to put yourself on the next flight home. Don’t worry about the cost. I’ll take care of it. I just want you back here, safely.’
‘Thank you.’
‘God, I’ve missed you. Why don’t I arrange to take some time off? We can lock down in my apartment for a few days. I’ll cook for you. We’ll watch old DVDs. We can go for long walks – it’s feeling more like spring now.’
‘Is it?’ she said distractedly.
‘Your friends will be pleased. Everyone’s been worrying about you. My inbox has never been so full! Once you’re home, you will start to feel better. I promise.’
Returning to England, to his apartment, to his arms, was what she needed. She should be in a place where her friends were only a Tube stop away, where she could find a supermarket without the need of a map, where she knew the cinema and gym schedules so that every free hour could be filled. This new world that she had stepped into was too big, too remote from what she knew.
‘Ring me as soon as you’ve booked. I’ll pick you up.’ He paused. ‘Katie, I can’t wait to see you.’
‘Me too,’ she said, but even as she ended the call, an uneasy disappointment settled in her chest.
She hoisted on Mia’s backpack, familiar now with the technique of throwing it over her shoulders, and found the queue for the ticket desk. It snaked around a maze of barriers and she joined behind a family whose toddler lay asleep on top of a stack of black cases on their trolley.
The queue shuffled forwards and Katie moved with them. When it paused, she unzipped the side pocket of the backpack and pulled Mia’s journal free. She trailed a finger over its scuffed corners and down the bent and worn spine. The cream leaves had thickened and browned from the spilt beer and she thumbed through the wrinkled pages.
Finding the journal had been a gift so precious that Katie had wanted to treasure every word of it. She had been reading an entry a day, but now that she was leaving Mia’s path there was no reason not to read on. She turned to the page she’d left off at – Mia and Finn driving through the furnace of Death Valley – and began to read.
She learnt about the man-made beauty of the Hoover Dam and a little roadside stall that sold the best beef tacos Mia had ever tried. She read that Mia and Finn shared a warm beer as they watched a turkey vulture circle above the Grand Canyon. She discovered that they’d hiked in Joshua Tree National Park, scaling huge red boulders to secure the best views.
Mia, you seemed so happy: what changed? You were experiencing all these incredible things with Finn, yet ended up in Bali alone. Why were you on that cliff top in the dead of night? Were you thinking about what I’d said? Did you do it, Mia? Did you jump? God, Mia, what happened to you?
Her gaze burnt into the journal as she snapped through page after page. It was like cracking open Mia’s chest, pulling back the bones and flesh, and looking straight into her heart. Everything Mia had felt or experienced was laid bare. Katie ignored the weight of the backpack pressing down on her shoulders and rushed through sentence after sentence, swallowing entries whole in her impatience to understand. Then she came across a name in the journal so astonishing that she placed a hand to her mouth to contain her gasp.
Mick.
Mia wrote that she planned to visit their father, who neither of them had seen in more than twenty years. Mick’s name was weighted so heavily with disappointment for their mother that Mia and Katie had never felt any desire to contact him. Until now. She flicked on, hoping Mia’s idea of visiting had been concocted on a whim.
But more details followed. Mia had stuck a scrap of lined paper in the centre of a double page with what must be his address written on it. Surrounding it was a splattering of words, facts, musings. She noticed that two questions had been circled in black pen: ‘Who is Mick?’ and ‘Who am I?’ The questions pricked at her thoughts and a memory burst into her mind.
Two months before Mia went travelling, she’d woken Katie at three in the morning. ‘Lost my keys,’ she had slurred, a finger to her lips. Kohl eyeliner was smudged beneath her eyes and a pair of scuffed heels dangled from her hand.
‘Oh, Mia,’ Katie sighed, helping her through the doorway. ‘Why do you do this to yourself?’
‘Because,’ she answered, staggering past her and into their lounge, ‘I am a fuck-up.’
Katie had left her for a moment and gone into the kitchen. She gripped the cool edges of the sink and closed her eyes. Several times a week she would find evidence of similar nights out – the front door slamming at an ungodly hour, her medicine box raided and the headache tablets missing, the aftermath of late-night snacks littering the kitchen worktop. The drinking and the dark moods that followed were a reaction to losing their mother, so Katie never mentioned her disrupted sleep or the mess she cleared up in the mornings.
As the older sister, making sacrifices for Mia came naturally to her. When Mia was 6 and refused to speak in the school nativity play, it was Katie who’d gone onstage, holding her sister’s clammy hand and saying the words for her. When Mia, at 17, thought she might be pregnant, it was Katie who’d raced back from university and missed her summer ball. When Mia spent her student loan on a trip to Mexico and couldn’t cover her rent, it was Katie who’d lent her the money – never minding that she was short herself. It was as if their personalities were balanced on a seesaw: Mia had claimed the wild, high ride and Katie was left on the ground. She loved her sister fiercely, but lately she’d found herself resenting her, too.
Music suddenly blasted from the lounge and Katie thought immediately of their neighbours below, a serious couple with a baby.
‘Mia—’ she began, marching into the room – and then stopped.
Mia was dancing in the space between the sofa and coffee table, her hair swaying down her back. She closed her eyes as she swirled to the music; it was a soul track from one of their mother’s old albums. Mia’s fingers stroked the air as if feeling her way through a stream of notes. She spun round, the skirt of her dress filling with air. When she opened her eyes and saw Katie, she grinned and extended her hand.
For a moment, Katie glimpsed the eight-year-old Mia, mud streaked and soaked, dancing in their garden in a summer downpour. Katie found herself being pulled forwards, drawn into the music, drawn into her sister. Her shoulders began to loosen and her hips swung beneath the silken touch of her nightdress. She smiled as Mia took her other hand, spinning her beneath a raised arm.
They made each other laugh with silly moves and outrageous gestures. Mia jumped onto the sofa using it as a podium, her bare feet sinking into the leather cushions, her fingertips stretched towards the ceiling. Katie remembered a sequence from a childhood dance routine they’d learnt in front of her bedroom mirror and executed it now with such serious precision that she could have been ten years old again. They collapsed on the sofa, laughing. Mia wrapped her arms around Katie who accepted the gesture for what it was – a rare burst of affection made accessible by alcohol.
When the track ended, the room sank back into silence. They stayed in each other’s arms, their hearts thumping from the exertion. In the darkness, Mia said, ‘You remind me so much of Mum.’
‘Do I?’ Katie said softly, cautious of chasing away the intimacy that had fallen on them like a beam of sunshine.
‘You two could have been sisters.’
A long silence stretched between them, and was broken by a question pitched by Mia. ‘Do you ever wonder why Mick left us?’
Surprised, Katie sat up. ‘He left because he was selfish.’
‘Maybe there’s more to it than that.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘He was flawed.’ Through the window, the flashing blue lights from a police car passed. ‘Why are we even talking about him? He never cared about anyone but himself.’
‘How do we know?’
‘He abandoned us. That’s how.’ Katie stood.
Mia tucked her feet to her side and Katie saw that her soles were filthy.
‘Have a glass of water before you sleep.’
As she left the room, she heard Mia say, ‘What if I’m like him?’
Katie paused, not sure if she’d heard right. When Mia didn’t speak again, she continued to bed.
At the time, she had dismissed the remark as a drunken rambling, rather than considering that Mia could have been voicing a real fear. Now, eager to find out where Mia’s journal entry about Mick led, she flipped overleaf.
Stuck on an otherwise clean page was the stub of a boarding card from a flight to Maui. Mia and Finn had gone there the day after the entry was written.
‘How may I help you?’ A woman with a buttercup-yellow scarf knotted over her blouse smiled at Katie from behind the ticket desk. Katie had reached the front of the queue.
‘I’d like to book a flight, please.’
‘Certainly. And where will you be flying to?’
Glancing down at the journal, she wondered if Mia’s decision to see Mick was somehow tied to what happened in Bali. If she flew home now, she would have no choice but to accept the authorities’ account of Mia’s death. She’d never know the truth.
She closed the journal carefully. ‘I’d like a ticket to Maui.’
*
It was dawn when Katie stepped from the plane into the sweet, humid air of Maui. Tour operators draped leis of fresh hibiscus flowers around their guests’ necks, and Katie slipped quietly through the perfumed crowd and into a taxi.
She rolled down the window and felt the warmth in the air loosening the tension in her neck and shoulders. She was dropped off at the Pineapple Hostel on the north shore of the island. The owner, who wore three silver rings in his bottom lip, told her, ‘Dorm 4 is empty. Go along the hall, up the stairs and it’s on your right. The bathroom is opposite. Enjoy. Mahalo.’
Katie thanked him and followed the brightly painted corridor. She passed cheaply framed photos of towering waves ridden by windsurfers, and beneath each the location was printed in white letters: maui. She thought how surreal it was to be here, knowing almost nothing about the island, when a different decision just hours ago would have seen her alighting back into freezing temperatures in London.
It was her first experience at a hostel and she was relieved to find the dorm clean and airy. There were four bunk beds with bright green sheets and yellow pillows, and she set her backpack against the nearest one, claiming the bottom from habit.
When Katie was 9, Mia 6, they had asked for canary-yellow bunk beds for Christmas. They didn’t need to share a room – there were two other empty ones in the house – but Katie liked the idea of having someone nearby as she fell asleep, and Mia liked having something wooden in her room she could climb. There was no argument as to who slept where: Katie wanted the bottom bunk so she could tuck a sheet into the corners of the mattress above, making it drape down like the canopy in a princess’s room, and Mia was delighted by the top so she could pretend she was on the highest deck of a ship. She stuck stars on the ceiling for the sky and dragged in the blue bath mat, which became the sea. She’d call Katie up, who was less confident negotiating the flimsy wooden ladder, and they’d sit with their legs crossed, describing the things they saw in the water.
Now, Katie took her mobile from the backpack and switched it on. It beeped immediately, with three new messages from Ed. She sat on the edge of the bunk bed, her neck craned forward, and called him.
‘Katie! Where are you? I’ve been worried about you.’
‘My flight left almost immediately. There wasn’t time—’
‘You’re at Heathrow? Already?’
‘No. Listen, Ed,’ she said, placing a hand to her forehead. ‘I had chance to think. I’ve decided to carry on with the trip.’
‘Where are you?’
‘Maui.’
‘Maui! What the hell is going on?’
‘It felt wrong giving up.’
‘You can’t just fly off to God knows where without telling anyone! It’s not safe. You’re acting like Mia.’
She knew the comparison was meant to chastise her, but privately she felt pleased by it. She pulled off her ankle boots and socks with one hand, and placed her bare feet on the wooden floor of the dorm. It felt wonderfully cool.
‘We should be making these kinds of decisions together,’ he continued. ‘You need to talk to me.’
‘I’m sorry. You’re right. I hate being apart, I really do. It’s just I’ve realized exactly how much I need to do this.’
‘A few hours ago you called to say you’re coming home. And now you’re in Maui and it’s all back on. I’m honestly not sure if you’re in the right state of mind to be doing this.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘The Katie I know is decisive and level-headed.’
‘Yes, she is. But she’s also just lost her sister and deserves a little leeway.’
‘I’m not arguing with you, Katie.’
‘So show me that you support me.’
‘I support everything you do. I’m just finding it difficult to believe that travelling alone is the best thing for you right now. I’m worried you’re chasing ghosts.’
‘And I’m worried,’ she said levelly, ‘that if I come home now, I will have let Mia down.’
There was a strained silence. She turned her engagement ring with her fingers, the diamond glittering in the light.
‘Our invites went out today,’ Ed said.
She had ordered them through a design company that were laser cutting the edges with flowers. She hadn’t realized they’d be sent so soon.
He added, ‘The wedding is in four months.’
‘Yes.’
‘You’ll be home in time?’
‘Of course.’
‘Because,’ he said, his voice softening, ‘I’ve no idea what I’d do with a hundred Cath Kidston tea-light holders if you’re not.’
She smiled. ‘I’ll be home.’
She put the phone away and lay down on the crisp green sheet with Mia’s journal. Despite Ed’s concern, for the first time since she’d left England, she felt as if she was thinking more clearly.
She opened the journal at the page with Mick’s address and trailed a fingertip over the unfamiliar words. It was strange to think of her father living nearby; she imagined a large modern house, a man with silver hair, a wardrobe of smart suits.
When they were girls, Katie and Mia would sometimes talk about their father in low voices after dark. Mia would lean over the edge of the bunk, poking her head under the princess canopy to ask, ‘What is Daddy like?’ Katie thought she was being clever by making up abstract comparisons that kept Mia confused for days. ‘He is like Moby Dick,’ or, ‘He reminds me of the songs in Mum’s David Bowie album.’ When Mia asked what she meant, Katie would just shrug and tell her to read the book or listen to the record.
The real reason she avoided giving a proper answer was because she didn’t know what their father was like. Her memories were pieces of two different puzzles that wouldn’t slot together. She held a few crisp, wonderful recollections – like the one that played out in their old kitchen in North London where the red-tiled floor was freezing underfoot, even in summer. Katie was meant to be asleep, but had come downstairs to ask for a glass of milk. Not finding either of her parents in the lounge, she had wandered towards the kitchen where she heard music playing. Her mother was being swirled in her father’s arms, laughing wildly. She watched for a moment; she saw the glint of her father’s gold watch where his shirtsleeve ended, caught the smell of his aftershave mixed with a sweet tang of whisky, saw her mother’s hair coming loose from a tortoiseshell clip. Spotting Katie, her father stopped dancing. Fearing she might be told off for being out of bed, she began to yawn, but he took her by the hand and spun her, too. She laughed as she’d seen her mother do with her head thrown back and her mouth open.
There were other memories, though, that she had been careful not to share, like the time when Mia was 2 and she needed seven stitches across her right temple. Katie and her mother had been at a ballet performance and, during the interval, when Katie was pirouetting in the drinks lounge, her mother’s name was called over the tannoy. At the front desk, the theatre manager said, ‘Grace Greene? Your husband is on the phone.’ Katie watched the colour drain from her mother’s face and her eyes grow frighteningly wide as she held the phone close to her ear.
After that she remembered the evening in frames, like the illustrations in a comic book. She recalled a taxi ride in the dark. A hospital desk she couldn’t see over, even on tiptoe. Her sister lying in a bed with polished metal sides. Her mother’s pale hands clasped around her bag as she spoke to their father.
He said that Mia had tripped on the landing and fallen down the stairs, but over time other clues surfaced that suggested something entirely different. A nurse mentioned a motorbike; a neighbour had said her father’s name and used the word ‘irresponsible’.
They returned from the hospital the following day to find that their father and his belongings were gone. It wasn’t the only change. As time went on their mother seemed listless and vacant and, when she took her evening bath, Katie would hear her crying above the gush of the water.
Even as a child she could see the link between Mia’s accident and their father’s leaving. She remembered standing in the doorway of their mother’s bedroom, watching as Grace dabbed concealer on the dark circles beneath her eyes, and asking, ‘Did Daddy leave because of Mia?’ Her mother had dropped the gold make-up pot, taken three paces across the carpet, grabbed the top of Katie’s arm with one hand and slapped the back of her thighs with the other. Three months later, their belongings were in boxes and they took a coach to Cornwall.
Now, turning the pages of the journal, she had an uncomfortable feeling that this meeting with Mick would somehow be entangled with the rest of Mia’s trip. Stretched on her bunk she read swiftly but closely. She didn’t notice two other travellers coming in and out of the room, or hear the tropical rain begin to beat against the window. She simply continued to read, utterly absorbed in the pages of the journal as Mia recounted what happened the evening she arrived at their father’s house.
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