“Bird! Big big bird!” Abi squealed. And ran after it.
At the same instant that David shouted her name, she was gone. He flung himself forward onto his stomach, horror almost taking him over the edge after her. In his nightmares or caught unawares in the daytime, he could always replay every blow on her body as he watched the cliff tumble and toss her like a ragdoll from outcrop to ledge to boulder. He knew she was screaming but above the roar of the wind and the sea, he couldn’t hear her. Her body jarred to a stop on a narrow ledge about ten feet above the stones of the beach.
Unlike the searing, indelible memory of Abi’s fall, David never fully recalled what he did then. His next clear memory was of scrambling sideways across from the shallower slope of the cliff. Of seeing her lying still, her body shaped as it shouldn’t have been shaped. Of frantically yelling her name. Of seeing blood on her head and her coat.
The next vivid picture burned on his brain was of gathering the tiny body into his own childish arms, feeling her bones shift where they shouldn’t have shifted. Over most of her head her gossamer blond hair was sticky and red. The elastic bobble had hung on, but it was red and sticky too. Her arms were floppy and he had to hold onto them, hold them in to her side to stop them trailing over the ledge.
He had to get her back the way he had come, but one look at the perilous jagged rock that he had crossed hardly knowing he was doing it, told him that it would be impossible as long as he carried Abi. He tried to remember watching his mother taking a pulse. He placed his fingers on Abi’s wrist. There was a faint flutter.
“Hang on, Abi, hang on!” he urged desperately.
He would go down. Somehow he would get down. He was shifting her slight weight to test his footing over the edge when he looked below. The breakers were slavering up the cliff face towards him. The tide was coming in and there was no way down except into the maw of the sea.
He sat holding his sister in his arms, her blood smeared across his chest, her crushed head supported in the crook of his arm. The sea came closer, at one point snapping at the edge of the precarious piece of rock where he sat frozen in body and mind. He kept checking the thread of pulse, told himself it wasn’t getting weaker.
He prayed.
Once, he moved slightly, shifting her weight. He was startled to look down and see her blue eyes open, staring at him. A spume of spray soaked them and when it receded, she was still looking at him.
“Abi?” he said.
Even as he watched in desperate hope, the shine left the vivid blue, the colour flattened, the spark went out. He buried his head in her little blood-soaked coat. He was wet to the skin, cold to the marrow and a hundred years old when he realised that his sister had died in his arms.
Later, he knew he had crouched there for two more hours before they were found. He became numb and dangerously cold. The power and the glory were in the brutal beauty all around him, the boiling Atlantic, the squalling gulls, the defiant needles of rock.
Abi would be forever a little child. For ever and ever, amen.
He would never be a child again.
35
DAVID WAS SITTING on the edge of the sofa. He leaned forward to set one arm loosely around Robyn’s shoulder where she sat on the floor at his feet. Her chin rested on her arms, folded along his knee. That he would have to carry this burden always, stunned her to silence.
“If it had been winter, I would have died too,” he said finally.
As the silence lengthened, his thumb rose to touch her cheek.
“You’re the only person I’ve ever told about Abi. Even Tim doesn’t know.” He took a shaky breath. “Funny. It got easier as I told it. I didn’t think it would. I’ve always been too frightened.”
“Frightened? You?”
“Oh yes. Me.”
Across the car park, the early staff were already arriving at the back door of the hotel. There was a question she had to ask, but she wasn’t sure how to ask it. She tried.
“David, I was close to giving up. If it wasn’t for you, I might have. Yet you’ve dealt with this and me as well. You’re a very, very strong person.” She looked up into his brown eyes. He waited for her questions patiently, as if he knew there would be many. “How… how have you lived with this? I mean …” She shrugged, perplexed. “I’m covered in scars,” – she touched her cheek and smiled a little – “I mean metaphorically, not just real ones. But you’re not. You’re an amazingly effective human being. How?”
“You think I’ve no scars? It would take years to count them! But seriously, think about it. What way leaves you with the fewest wounds – making peace with the past? Or making war with it?”
She let this sink in, taking it deep into the empty spaces within herself, the places that used to be filled with hatred and hopelessness, and that were now open to love and wonder. So many questions surfaced and swirled in her head and she would ask them. But now wasn’t the time, and it certainly wasn’t the time for platitudes. She stood and gently tugged him to his feet.
“I don’t deserve you,” she said.
“On the contrary. I’ve always thought we richly deserved each other.”
She rumpled the quilt under her arm and pulled him towards the door. “You’re coming to the bed and you’re going to sleep.”
Cold air nudged its way in as Robyn opened the front door an inch to swing the ‘Do not disturb” tab onto the door handle. David was in bed before her. He was quiet but his eyes followed her as she pulled back the covers. His arms opened and she slid into them. Curled up with him, warm against him, arms and legs twined with his, she listened while his breathing slowed into sleep, the rhythm of his heart tapping against her cheek.
As she grew drowsy, her last thought was of little Abi. Would her hair have darkened to the near black of her brother’s? Exhaustion captured her before she could topple into a crater of questions which could never be answered. It hadn’t crossed her mind to wedge a chair against the door.
When she woke, David had gone from her side. She yawned and stretched. She had never before woken to such peace of mind. She pulled on her bathrobe and went in search of him.
He was in the sitting room, by the window, absorbed in a book he had found. He had pulled on a pair of jeans and sat with his ankle across his knee, the book balanced on his leg. He was so engrossed that at first he didn’t hear her. She glanced at the open page.
“I see Ferrari and Jaguar are more interesting than me,” she huffed.
He looked up and laughed, snapping the book shut. “A mere time-filler until you decided to wake up. Books don’t go to sleep on you.”
She went to him and wove a kiss into the unruly waves on his head. “I seem to remember you doing quite a lot of sleeping yourself.” She indicated the window, where the evening was already dimming to darkness. “We seem to have missed out a whole day.”
He stood and gripped her shoulders. “I tell you what we’ve missed out on. Food! Do you realise how long it’s been since we ate?” He screwed up his face and bared his teeth. “Just as well you woke up. You might have been dinner!”
She patted his stomach. “I’m so scared,” she said calmly. “You should have eaten the biscuits on the hospitality tray.”
He held up two empty shortbread wrappers. “Been there. Still hungry.”
“Looks like we’d better visit the dining room then, before the situation gets out of hand.”
They didn’t say very much as they ate. Robyn enjoyed the surroundings, the people, the hum of conversation. She took particular delight in watching David’s food disappear into him at speed.
As he scraped the last of a crème brulée from the dish, she asked: “Where are you putting all that?”
He grinned, licking the spoon. “Hollow legs.”
The night was chilly as they left through the main hotel foyer.
“Let’s walk,” Robyn said. “The grounds are lovely even in the dark.”
The light from the hotel faded as they crossed the woo
den bridge and found a bench facing the stream. They sat side by side, not touching, taking their time to settle into each other’s silence. The starlit night smelled of grass and water, the air drifting lazily, the sounds of the hotel far away across the lawn.
“David?”
“What?”
“Abi.”
“Yes?” Only a breath of hesitation.
“Is your father buried in the same grave?”
They were both still looking straight ahead. “He is.”
“Is that why you didn’t want me to go to the funeral? Because I would see her inscription? And people would mention her?”
“It was one reason. But the reason I gave Tim to tell you was also true.”
Another silence.
“It must have been specially hard for your mother. To see the grave opened again, I mean.”
He looked away. “She has scars.”
Robyn touched his knee lightly. “It must have been dreadful. Just after…”
He took a deep breath and turned back to her. “It was. At first they were thankful they hadn’t lost both of us. But it became clear very quickly what had happened. The cot side was down. Abi couldn’t do that herself. She was dressed. She couldn’t do that herself either.” He gave a tight laugh. “Anyway, I told them it was my fault.”
“You were a child. Why are you still so hard on yourself?”
He looked surprised. “I couldn’t be hard enough on myself.”
She let that go. “I’d like to visit their grave.”
“I’ll take you. On one condition.”
“What’s that?”
“That you take me to your father’s.”
She stiffened. “Why?”
“Because you need to be sure that all the anger is gone. And you need to forgive him.”
She stood up and whirled round on him. “Don’t preach at me! Who do you think you are?”
He was quite calm. “You know exactly who I am.”
She walked away across the lawn to the deeper darkness of the trees. Behind her, he was silhouetted against the hotel lights. She walked round the trunk of an oak tree and leaned against it. A car purred along the road beyond the hedge.
She could never forgive her father. The very memory of him still turned her stomach. How could David suggest it? In that quiet way he had, he appeared beside her.
“I know what I’m talking about.” He dropped onto his heels. “My mother ended up in hospital with a nervous breakdown. I went to pieces as well. I was sent to school, but I wasn’t really there. I had to repeat the year. There was no moving on, no forgiveness, for a long time.”
Robyn touched his arm. “Forgiving yourself must have been the really hard bit,” she said.
His head was bowed, his voice so low she bent to catch his words. “I haven’t yet. Not really. It still goes on. Every day. Every single bloody day.”
Robyn put her hand on his shoulder. “Did Abi look like you?”
He pulled a stalk of plantain. “Some people said she was beginning to.” He chewed the stalk and she waited, knowing there was more. “My father forgave me, but he found it very difficult. Even more so than my mother. It was always between us. He had prayed for a miracle, and she happened.” David pressed his fingers into his eyelids, his voice bitter. “But I was able to reverse a miracle. How’s that for power?” He stood and walked a few paces. She followed. “The night he died, I was all screwed up and I needed to talk to him. He was looking at photos of Abi. I had disappointed him again. And he spent the evening with Abi. Not with me.” His voice was hard, final. “Forgiveness has to be unreserved. Otherwise it’s a canker. It taints your life.”
“My father’s dead,” she said. “How can I forgive him? He’s beyond it.”
He took her shoulders and gave her a gentle shake. “But you’re not. It’s two way. There’s giving and receiving. All you have to do is give it. How or where or if it’s received isn’t your problem.” He thought for a minute and then held her out from him to see her face. “And your mother’s not dead, is she?”
She pushed him away, her expression hard. “She may as well be.” She walked round the tree. When she faced him again her chin was up, her eyes accusing. “Have you forgiven Angus Fraser?”
He replied instantly. “No. Not yet. I can’t even think about it. But I’ll have to face it some time.” He threw out his hand in a helpless gesture. “I didn’t say I didn’t have work to do as well.”
She turned her back to him to look out across the dark lawn to the lights on the drive near the hotel entrance. He came up behind her and his arms stole round her waist, his head bent to her cheek.
“I need you, Robyn,” he said softly. “You know the worst of me and love me anyway. I need you now more than you need me.”
It didn’t matter where they went. The next day, in a field somewhere – anywhere – they lay on their stomachs, heads together, like the hands of a clock pointing to a quarter to three.
Robyn twirled a buttercup, tickling his nose. “When I asked you if you’d chosen colour, you said ‘eventually’. I know why you said that now.”
He rolled onto his back and studied the clouds. “Living in Enniskillen, I’d often heard about the Remembrance Day bomb. We used to pass the war memorial with the doves on it. One for each person who died.” He paused, thinking. “So many bad things have happened to so many good people. I remember hearing of one man burying his only son. He’d been murdered. Pointlessly. He was in tears. He said ‘Bury your hatred with my son.’” David rolled onto his stomach again. Robyn picked grass out of his hair. “And it hit me one day. I must’ve been about eleven. Bad things happen to good people. But turn that round. Good people can make bad mistakes too.”
Robyn sat up, leaves sticking to her clothes. She pulled her knees up to her chin. “Yes,” she said slowly. “I think I know what you mean. Just because of what you had caused to happen, it didn’t make you a bad person.”
He spat out a piece of grass. “So I decided to fight back. I was going to be who I was meant to be.” He sat up. “When you get blown off course, you can choose to stay lost –” he raised a hand above his head “– or you can reach for heaven and steer by the stars.” He looked away across to the road where they had left the car. “But I couldn’t bring Abi back.”
They sat in the middle of the field, two figures in the grass, still and quiet. Hoping it would work. Making it work.
David turned on his mobile phone. He had been keeping it switched off and checking it for messages occasionally. There was a text from Tim. David grinned and showed it to Robyn.
“Where r u, u big moron? Ring me,” Tim had sent.
David thumbed back, “Talk later.”
They were swaying idly, side by side on swings.
“I suppose,” said Robyn slowly, “that’s what you were trying to get Penny to see.”
“Get her to see what?”
“That she could row herself back. Like me.” She gave herself a little push with her feet and leaned backwards. “Just because someone has made you a victim, you don’t have to be a victim for the rest of your life.”
He stopped swaying and stood up. “Vicious circles can be broken.” He put his hands in his pockets. “But I failed her too.”
She hung forward in the swing, her arms round the chains. “You mightn’t have succeeded. But you were the only one who tried.”
He kicked a pebble. “The vicious circle was just too tight.” He leaned against the metal upright of the swings. “It taught me something though.”
“What?”
“All she needed was for someone to care.” He scuffed the ground. “But caring can come too late.”
The next afternoon they spent in the deep comfort of a sofa in the hotel lounge. David rang Tim. Tim didn’t waste time.
“Are you with La Daniels?”
“Yea.”
“Is she all right?”
David glanced across at Robyn, at the sparkle in her ey
es, her sculpted cheekbones.
“Tim wants to know if you’re all right,” he said to her.
“Tell him you’ve kidnapped me and I’m desperate to be rescued.”
Before David could speak, Tim said sharply, “I heard that. This isn’t funny. When’ll you be back?”
“I don’t know. A couple of days maybe.”
“You need to get back here, Davey. You need to sort yourself out. What are you going to do?” His tone was fizzing with exasperation and more than a little anger. “You’ve decisions to make before you mess up big time.” There was accusation too. “And a few people want some explanations about what you’ve done. You shouldn’t be away right now, man. Whatever the reason,” he added.
“I hear you. How’re things there?”
“OK. Plenty of talk about what happened. Everyone’s still in shock. They’ve got a sub in for Fraser’s classes. He was buried yesterday. The Head went. Nobody else did. Apparently there were only three people there.”
There was a silence. Then Tim said: “I don’t expect you’ll mind. Chloe and I have got together.”
“You and Chloe?”
“You’re not the only one with hormones.”
“It’s just…”
Tim broke in. “You know, for someone who has more brains and balls than anyone else I know, you can be as blind as a bat sometimes. And you’re doing it again now. Get back here. Reality’s waiting for you.” He waited a beat then added “Both of you.”
When David ended the call, he sat in thought, tapping the phone on his chin.
“Everything all right?” Robyn asked.
“Tim and Chloe are an item.”
“At last. I thought they were ideal for each other.”
His brows climbed. “Did you?”
“Tim’s carried a candle for Chloe for a long time. You were in the way.” She cocked her head. “Didn’t you realise?”
He didn’t answer that. “I don’t think he approves of you and me.”
“A lot of people won’t.”
“Too bad!”
Youthful impetuosity was still part of who he was. She replied carefully.
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