by Lucy Clarke
Farther up the beach, Mia had picked up a smooth white stone the size of a mussel shell and told herself that if she skipped it six times, then she’d go to her mother. She pulled back her arm and flicked her wrist; the stone bounced across the water like a jumping fish, sharp and bright, six times. She’d turned and begun to walk back to her car, but halfway there she’d stopped, her legs refusing to take another step. Instead, she found herself bending to the ground, gathering the next pebble. She bargained with herself that it must skip seven times to be sure. Then eight … then nine …
Finally, when the phone rang again, it was Katie leaving a message in a broken voice to say their mother was dead.
Mia had next launched her cell into the sea. It skipped once and sank.
Now, Katie said, “When you finally arrived, I poured us gin and tonics. Do you remember? We sat at the kitchen table. You asked me how it was at the end. I told you that it was peaceful. I told you that I’d sat on the edge of Mum’s bed, holding her hand, and she’d just slipped away, like she was sleeping.” Katie cleared her throat, fighting back tears. “But I think you know that’s not the truth.”
Everything began to recede: the noise of the nearby club, the heat in the air, the feel of the phone pressed against her cheekbone. All she focused on was Katie’s voice.
“Mum’s death was not peaceful. The morphine dose wasn’t strong enough. She was in so much pain at the end that she bit through her bottom lip. She was terrified, pleading, begging whatever God she thought was up there, not to let her die. And do you know what she kept saying, over and over?”
Please, Mia thought. Don’t do this.
“I’d been at her bedside for weeks and the last thing she said to me was, ‘Where is Mia?’ ”
The receiver slipped through her fingers, clattered against the metal base of the phone booth, and was left dangling from a dark wire.
*
Mia flicked the light on in her room. The window had been left wide open and the thin curtain billowed in the breeze. She hugged her arms against her middle. Her throat was choked with tears and she closed her eyes. On the backs of her eyelids Finn’s e-mail waited. “If you’re not careful, Mia, you could end up alone, wondering what happened to everyone in your life. Just like your father.”
She wanted to reach through the sky, grab Harley by the throat, and ask, Was this how you felt?
Swiping away her tears, she moved to her backpack and searched roughly for her journal. Pulling it free, she opened it and slipped from the front a photo of her and Katie. They were riding a seahorse merry-go-round on the pier, their hands linked. She stared at the picture, remembering that day vividly when life tasted sweet and easy.
Without hesitating she tore Katie from it.
Then she placed the journal on the desk and sat down in front of it. Her hands were trembling. She flattened out an empty double page and began to write, ink flowing across the paper like a dark river.
29
Katie
(Bali, August)
Together they read the remaining pages of the journal. Katie asked this of Finn—she could not face it alone. They sat on the edge of the hotel bed, an inch between their bodies, the white soles of her feet resting on the polished wooden floor, their heads angled towards the journal.
The lamp cast a warm orange glow over the pages, illuminating the precise flicks and measured curves of Mia’s handwriting. They swam deep into those final entries, Finn’s back stiffening as he read of Mia’s reaction to his e-mail: “What he wrote was true—I just never realized Finn saw it, too.” They learned of Noah’s violent nightmares and of Mia’s decision to ring Katie—but of that final phone call, not a word had been written.
Katie took the corner of the thick cream paper between her finger and thumb, and turned it.
“Is this it?” he asked.
“Yes.” The last entry. It filled only one side of the double page. She’d seen the entry once before in London: it was an outline of a woman’s head, and within it were a tangle of intricate sketches. She tilted it towards the lamp to see the minute images more clearly.
“Do you understand what they mean?”
She hadn’t, not when she’d first seen them all those months ago. But now, as she studied the images, they began to make sense to her. A sketch of a forearm tattooed with a wave. Two figures pressed together in a corridor. A hangman with six blank dashes, starting with the capital H. The stars falling out of the sky onto a red rock. A hand clamped over a passport. A screaming face with blood dripping from the lips. An empty phone dangling from a wire.
Her gaze moved carefully over each of the drawings, as if making a visual cast to preserve. Just an inch from the bottom she noticed three words written in Mia’s minute hand. “How I am.”
She swallowed. “This is how Mia saw herself.”
She trailed her thumb across the entry towards the center of the journal. The opposite page had been torn out and she touched the remaining rough edge.
“Why is there a page missing?” Finn asked.
“I don’t know.” She’d thought about this before, wondering whether it had been another drawing or if Mia had simply made a mistake and removed the page. In darker moments she’d considered that Mia might have written a suicide note on it, which she’d torn out but which had never been found.
There were some questions, she realized, that would never be answered.
“That’s it,” he said. “The end of the journal.”
She nodded.
“How do you feel?”
Her palms were damp and her body felt stiff from the tension she’d been holding. She had read it all, cover to cover, and now she felt empty. A breeze curled through the room, lifting the edge of the page. She stared at the weave of dark images again. “I wasn’t there for her. Not when it counted.”
Her fingers moved to the front of the journal and slipped free the torn photo of Mia riding the seahorse merry-go-round. She looked at Mia: eight years old, her face flushed with spring sunshine, her expression lighthearted, wistful. Her sea sister. “I was in this picture once,” she told Finn.
Finn took the photo, resting it in the flat of his hand.
“I don’t know when she ripped me out. Maybe after our argument. Maybe months before.”
“Katie,” he said softly, “she knew you loved her.”
But hadn’t her love for Mia always been a hair’s breadth from hate? “I was jealous of her. She was bold and fearless and stuck two fingers up at the world, never caring what anyone thought. I always wished I could be more like that.” She looked at Finn squarely. “And I was jealous of her friendship with you.”
His eyes widened. “Were you?”
“Mia and I were close as kids. We did everything together. You probably won’t know this, but I taught Mia to swim.”
“Really?”
“When the weather was good, we’d cycle down to the beach after school. Mum would read and Mia and I would swim in the bay. She never complained about the cold, or was frightened when the sea was rough. She was fearless in the water.”
“I can believe it.”
“I told you once that I almost drowned at Porthcray.”
“Yes.”
“It was Mia who saved me.”
“What happened?”
“She’d wanted to swim out to a buoy—it marked a lobster pot about 300 feet offshore. Mia was only eleven. I said it was too far, but she went anyway and she made it look so easy. Later, when she’d gone crabbing on the rocks, I decided to do it, too.”
“Why?”
“I suppose I needed to prove to myself that I could. It’s an odd feeling being an older sister and suddenly noticing your younger sister is almost as tall as you, or no longer needs a head start when you race along the beach. I wasn’t ready to be caught up to.” She smoothed her hair behind her ears and continued. “So I swam out to the buoy. I was fine reaching it, but when I headed back for shore, I realized that the tide had turned.
You know what it’s like at Porthcray—when the water rushes out, the current slides with it. Stupidly, I tried swimming against it. But I just got dragged farther and farther out.” She remembered the muscular grip of the current twisting around her and the cramp that seized her calves. Even now she sometimes woke drenched in sweat, dreaming of it.
“Mia saw me from the rocks. There was this old windsurfing board at the edge of the bay that we used to play on. She managed to haul it into the shallows and paddle out to me. If she hadn’t, I honestly think I’d have drowned. I remember lying facedown on the board, clinging to it. Mia told me, ‘It was just a current. You’re meant to swim across it.’ It was one of the first things I’d taught her about the sea.”
Katie sighed. “I never thanked her. Maybe I felt humiliated, I don’t know. But I do know that afterwards I stopped going in the water, stopped spending time with her. I’m not sure how to explain it, but it felt like something between us had shifted. I remember Mia started middle school the week after that. I wouldn’t even sit next to her on the bus on her first day.” She looked directly at Finn. “It was you who filled that empty seat. Do you remember?”
He nodded.
“The moment you stepped onto that bus the two of you just clicked. I saw it immediately. She no longer needed me.”
“She did. Mia looked up to you.”
Katie laughed at that. “I was the boring, safe one—remember?”
“That’s what you let yourself believe, but that’s not what I see. You say Mia was fearless and bold—but what about you? You were the one who left home and set up a new life in London. Mia stayed in Cornwall. And now here you are traveling the world. You two weren’t as different as you think.”
She could hear the shallow draw of her breath. “We were awful to each other.”
“You were sisters.”
The past tense of “were” stalled her thoughts. She would never be a sister again.
Never.
She’d never dance with Mia barefoot in the living room. She’d never float in the sea beside her, listening for the songs of mermaids. She’d never feel Mia within her arms and breathe in the warm scent of jasmine. In losing Mia, Katie realized she’d lost part of herself.
“I thought we’d have more time … I thought things between us would mellow over the years. I had this ridiculous fantasy that one day we’d move back to Cornwall and live close by. I even pictured us bringing up our children together. Mia said she didn’t want any, but I imagined her with three black-haired, wild-eyed little kids, who would tear through her house barefoot.” She paused, waiting for the hard lump in her throat to subside. “We wasted so much time.”
Now she had reached the end of Mia’s journey and there was nowhere left to go. It was up to Katie to decide the truth of what happened. The word “suicide” had always fluttered in her thoughts like a moth she kept brushing away. She felt its wings opening wider, the dusty brush of its tips settling over her heart. If she had believed wholeheartedly that Mia hadn’t jumped, wouldn’t she have pressured the British Consulate into investigating further? Wouldn’t she have used every resource and contact available to her to find out exactly what happened on the night of Mia’s death? Perhaps she never made those moves because there was a part of her that always held suicide as a real possibility.
“Finn, I need you to answer something for me. I haven’t asked you this question before, but now I need to. And I need you to give me an honest answer.” She drew a breath. “Do you think Mia committed suicide?”
“Neither of us can possibly know for sure—”
“But we both have opinions based on our knowledge. And I need to know yours. You traveled with her. You understood her. You were her best friend. I need to know whether you think Mia killed herself.”
*
Finn stood and moved onto the balcony.
Katie set the journal aside and followed. The moon was high and bright, bathing everything in cool silver light. The wind had picked up and she wrapped her arms around her middle.
Finn sank his hands deep into his pockets and said, “You really want to know?”
“I have to.”
“When I found out she’d died, I couldn’t believe it. Everything I knew about Mia told me there was no way she would’ve jumped.” He shook his head. “But then there was Harley. I’d seen how the knowledge of his suicide affected her. It was like his death set her life on a course she couldn’t alter. And my e-mail compounded that.”
She heard the soft tap of his foot against the bottom of the balcony railing. “Since I’ve been in Bali and we’ve talked, I understand much more about Mia. I think she felt like she let down everyone she cared about—Grace, Noah, you, me. And seeing that picture in the journal,” he exhaled, the air pushing out through his lips, “I don’t think she even liked herself anymore. I want to believe she didn’t jump because otherwise it means I failed her.”
Katie gripped the balcony rail, feeling the small bones in her hands pressing hard against it. When she looked at Finn, his features were set, the moonlight casting his eyes into shadow.
“I’m sorry, Katie. But I think Mia did commit suicide.”
*
The ground seemed to sway and tilt, as if she were standing on the bow of a boat. For months she had been searching for answers. And now, all the hope and tension that had been building each day of this trip unraveled at high speed. Her fingers slid from the railing as her legs gave way.
She was aware of Finn’s hands guiding her into a seat, felt the give of the cushion beneath her, heard the scrape of a second chair being pulled close to hers. He believed that Mia committed suicide.
And then Katie realized that she did, too.
Choked, grief-stricken sobs escaped her throat. She pictured Mia on the edge of the cliff, on the edge of a decision. She saw her sister standing with her shoulders drawn back, her feet bare, fear flickering in her green eyes. There was no note because perhaps she still hadn’t decided if she was going to do it. Perhaps while standing there, listening to the lonely whispers of the wind, she remembered the hiss of Katie’s words—and stepped forward.
“It’s my fault,” Katie cried, over and over.
“Katie,” he said firmly, taking both of her hands and squeezing hard enough to force her to look up. “Neither of us will ever fully know Mia’s reasons. But it was her choice. It is not your fault. Do you understand me? It is nobody’s fault.”
She swallowed back her tears and tried to nod.
“We’re going to get through this together.”
She focused on that last word, like an island in an otherwise empty sea. Her mouth was suddenly searching for his, her hands clinging to him. Through the briny taste of tears, she could feel his lips moving with hers, kissing her, soothing her. She needed to hold tight to him, stop herself from drowning.
Then she felt cool air reach her lips as he lowered his chin and rested his forehead against hers. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I can’t do this.”
She pulled away, covering her face with her hands.
“It’s not the right time. There’s too much—”
“Please. Don’t explain.” She couldn’t bear to discuss it. She stood abruptly. “I’d like to take a shower and go to bed.”
“Don’t do this. Don’t make things awkward between us. Christ, Katie, we’ve been through so much. I’m not prepared to kiss you when neither of us really knows what we’re feeling.”
“I know,” she said quietly.
“Okay, then. Good. Let’s just—”
“No, I mean I know what I’m feeling. I’ve always known.” There was nothing to stop her from being honest. To mask how she felt seemed pathetic after everything else they’d said. “I love you.”
His eyes widened: he’d had no idea. “But you broke up—”
“With you. Yes.”
“Why?”
“Mia.”
He frowned.
“She needed you more than I did.”
“But I thought … you said it was just a bit of fun.”
“I had to tell you something.” She smoothed her hair back behind her ears, then looked Finn in the eye. “I was in love with you. I still am.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
She felt the dull blow to her stomach because, didn’t that say it all? “I’d like to be alone now.”
“Let’s not—”
“Please.”
Finn was quiet for a moment, considering her request. “If that’s what you need. We can talk more in the morning.”
“Yes.” They both moved through the room towards the door. She opened it and he stepped into the corridor.
“So I’ll see you tomorrow for breakfast?”
“Yes,” she said, with a smile designed to reassure him. But she had no intention of being there.
30
Mia
(Bali, March)
Mia ground the base of the vodka bottle into the sand, then inched closer to the fire. Red and orange tongues of flame licked at the wood, breathing drifts of sweet, charred smoke skyward. Her shins and cheeks burnt from the heat.
Someone was playing the bongos and the slap and bounce of their hands was like an itch in her head. Most of the people gathered around the fire were travelers from the hostel who would be drinking hard until dawn.
She rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand; she hadn’t slept in 36 hours. When she’d finished writing in her journal last night, she’d stepped out of the hostel, surprised to find dawn breaking. She’d begun walking, comforted to see other faces emerging into the new day: three men carrying fishing rods, a woman weaving bamboo leaves on her doorstep with the weak dawn light on her lined face. Mia had walked for hours, until the soles of her feet were dirt black and chafed. When she’d returned to the hostel, Noah’s room was bare and his rental car gone.
She imagined him on a plane, hunched forward so the seat didn’t aggravate the wound on his upper back. Was he flying home to Australia? Or to a country he’d never visited, one that held no memories? She felt his absence like a hollowness in her chest.