The Lost Sister

by Tracy Buchanan

  ‘That’s too simplistic a view! Idealistic too. Real life means we can’t dedicate all of our time to one thing.’

  He looked me in the eye. ‘Whose version of real life?’

  ‘Everybody’s!’

  ‘No, it’s society’s view. It stifles us.’

  ‘So you recommend we all go live in a cave and write, paint, do whatever it is you and the others in your cave do?’

  He shrugged. ‘Why not?’

  I sighed. ‘Family. It comes back to my family.’

  ‘Bring them.’

  I laughed. ‘I’m not sure my husband would really be up for that.’

  ‘Your daughter would. She’d love it.’

  ‘I’m sure she would until it rained and her dolls got wet.’

  He smiled as he peered out to sea. ‘Children love a bit of rain.’

  I took a moment to explore his face, to take in the golden bristles on his cheeks, the way his beard glowed white beneath the moonlight. ‘I can’t believe I’m even discussing this with you.’

  ‘What’s wrong with discussing it? In fact, take it a step further. Come and meet everyone.’ He jutted his chin towards the direction of the cave. ‘The cave is larger than it looks from the outside. We’re making quite a home of it.’

  ‘You’re seriously trying to recruit me?’

  He tilted his head, examining my face. ‘Recruit. That’s an interesting word choice.’ There was an earnestness in his green eyes, a kindness in his expression. He didn’t seem deranged or weird like some said.

  ‘Who are you?’ I asked him.

  He shrugged. ‘A painter. A sculptor.’

  ‘Where are you from?’

  ‘Where are you from?’

  ‘Ah, I see, you’re a politician answering questions with more questions.’

  He laughed. ‘Very far from it.’ His face grew serious. ‘It is an interesting question though. Who are you, Selma Rhys? Close your eyes, really think about it. Block out the light. Clarity comes with darkness. Who are you?’

  I tried to grapple with the question. I saw Becky, Mike … then my mother. Her beautiful face. Those cold, cold eyes.

  ‘Who do you think you are, Selma?’ I remembered my mother once asking. ‘Just who do you think you are?’

  Fast-forward twenty years, feeling the weight of my first novel in my hands after it arrived in the post. ‘A writer, Mother. I’m a fucking writer,’ I remembered saying out loud.

  ‘A writer,’ I said, snapping my eyes open. I realised tears were streaming down my face. I wiped them away, embarrassed. ‘Warm wine always makes me emotional,’ I said with a small laugh.

  Idris stood up, putting his hand out to me. ‘Come on, come meet the others.’

  I looked at his hand, hesitating. Then I found myself taking it and standing with him in the darkness.

  Chapter Seven

  Becky

  Kent, UK

  2 June 2018

  Becky stares into the darkness of her room. She hears the gentle snores of her dogs from the landing, trying to take comfort in the familiar sound of it. But she can’t sleep. Her mind is racing. All she can see is the desperation in her mum’s eyes as she pleaded to be taken to the cave. Then the bitter disappointment when Becky refused.

  Becky looks at the time. Three in the morning. Not even light.

  Clarity comes with darkness.

  She sighs and gets up, walking to the window and staring out over the field. Summer senses her movement, as she always does, and contemplates her from the landing, her long face resting on her paws.

  ‘Oh Summer,’ Becky says to her. ‘What am I going to do?’

  Summer rises and trots over, putting her face close to Becky’s leg. Becky strokes her soft head.

  ‘Clarity comes with darkness, apparently,’ she says. ‘So why haven’t I got a clue what to do about my mum?’

  In response, Summer jumps up, her paws on the window sill as she peers out, tail wagging. She lets out a low whine, which Becky knows means ‘I want to go out’.

  ‘You want to go for a walk now?’ Becky asks.

  At the mention of the word walk, Womble and Danny suddenly wake up, alert. Becky groans. She should have known not to use that word out loud.

  ‘I can’t believe this,’ she says as they pad over, wagging their tails. ‘I’m going to have to take you all out, aren’t I?’ They grow more excited and she laughs. ‘Fine. Come on then! Maybe the darkness will give me some clarity.’

  She pulls on some jeans and a light jumper, then heads outside. She is surprised that it’s not pitch black, as the moon casts a silver light across the fields. The dogs leap ahead of her, excited at being out in the dark. Becky welcomes the cool air of night. But it doesn’t clear the cobwebs inside. Her mum is wrong, darkness doesn’t bring clarity.

  ‘Ah, another person who’s awake,’ a voice says from the darkness. She looks up to see David. He’s standing at his kitchen door, a mug in his hand. The dogs leap over the fence and bound over to him as he laughs.

  ‘Couldn’t sleep either?’ Becky asks him.

  ‘Never been a big sleeper. Not seen you out at this time of night before though.’

  ‘I’ve got a lot of things on my mind.’

  ‘Your mother?’

  Becky nods. She’d told him about it as she’d hurriedly rushed to her car the evening before, asking him to let the dogs out if she wasn’t back within three hours or so.

  ‘Want to talk about it?’ he asks now.

  ‘Only if you have another one of those going,’ she says, gesturing towards his mug.

  ‘I can certainly arrange that for you.’

  She smiles and lets herself into his garden through the gate, walking into the kitchen. There’s a lamp on, casting a soft glow around the room. She’s always liked his kitchen, full of knick-knacks picked up from his years running a pub in Ireland: ornate pint glasses, horses’ shoes, framed photos of racehorses. It feels comfortable in there, a contrast to the place she used to live in with her dad in Busby-on-Sea, which was always so sparse.

  ‘So, how is your mother?’ David asks, bringing a mug of steaming hot chocolate over to her.

  ‘Her usual defiant self. A few lies thrown in too, par the course.’

  He smiles. She’s told him about her mum over the years – small details, but enough to form a picture.

  ‘I met her doctor,’ Becky adds, blowing on her drink, steam spiralling up from the mug. She takes a quick sip, feeling the tears start to come. ‘What she said is true. They think she only has a few days.’

  David frowns, looking down at his own drink. ‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ he says with a heavy sigh.

  ‘She wants to die in the cave she ran away to.’

  He peers up at Becky, his frown deepening. ‘Really?’

  ‘Yep. It’s impossible, of course. What with all the medication and equipment she needs.’

  ‘Is it?’ He looks into her eyes. ‘Or are you just hoping it’s impossible?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  David places his mug down and drags his chair to be closer to her. Under the light of the lamp, she notices how old he looks, how tired.

  ‘I mean maybe you don’t want to do as your mother asks because she’s been doing as she wants all her life. Maybe this time, you’re in control and that feels good.’

  Becky shakes her head. ‘It’s not like that. You know I’m not like that!’

  He shrugs. ‘I didn’t know the little girl who got left behind by her mother. This is bringing all that back, I bet.’

  Becky frowns. ‘Maybe. But the fact still remains, a cave isn’t a nice place to die.’

  ‘Isn’t it? Just don’t rush into a decision you might regret. If she thinks she was happy there, for a while anyway, then it might be the best place for her.’

  I think you’ll be happy here, Becks, I really do.

  A memory comes to her of her mum smiling down at her, the cave behind her. Her mum had said that to her once. />
  David yawns.

  ‘Sorry, this isn’t exactly the conversation to have at three in the morning,’ Becky says.

  ‘I don’t mind.’

  ‘No, really,’ Becky replies, standing. ‘I’m tired anyway. We both are.’

  ‘You know I’m always here.’

  ‘I do.’ She squeezes his hand. That’s the thing with David, he is more than just a neighbour. She always finds it so easy to talk to him. It’s probably because he gives such sensible, sound advice.

  A few minutes later, Becky is back in bed, the dogs flat out on the landing. She closes her eyes and sleep comes instantly, but it’s peppered with dreams of her mum, as she was back then. So beautiful, full of curves, those blue eyes, arms wrapping around Becky’s small body. The cave again, her mum’s words: I think you’ll be happy here, Becks, I really do.

  Then the scene changes. Her mum’s sitting on a swing, crying. She peers up, sees Becky and smiles. ‘Only you make me smile,’ she hears her whisper. ‘Only you, Becky.’

  Scenes from a party next, loud music, a cake in the shape of a monkey. Everyone is smiling, happy, apart from her mum.

  Then finally, the sight of her mum running away into the darkness, a look of freedom on her face that Becky had never seen before, the cave beckoning her …

  Just as the sun begins to rise the next day, Becky makes her way back to the hospital. When she gets there, it’s eerily quiet. The light from the sun outside the vast windows is white, blinding. She heads to her mum’s room but a nurse, tired and disapproving, stops her. ‘No visitors until nine.’

  ‘It’s important,’ Becky says.

  The nurse holds her gaze. Something in Becky’s expression must make her change her mind. ‘Okay, just a few minutes,’ the nurse says.

  Becky walks to her mum’s room. Her mum is sitting up in bed, as though she’s been expecting her.

  ‘You wanted me to live in the cave with you, didn’t you?’ Becky asks her.

  Her mum nods, smiling slightly. ‘I left your dad, darling, not you. I wanted to take you with me. I fought to have you with me. Even went to court.’

  Becky frowns. ‘Court?’ She vaguely remembers talking to official-looking people, but nothing about her mum going to court. Her dad must have kept it from her. Maybe that was a good thing. ‘Why didn’t I get to live with you then?’

  Her mum’s face darkens. She sighs and looks out of the window. ‘It doesn’t matter now.’

  Becky walks to the chair by her bed, sitting down and taking her mum’s hand. ‘I’ll take you to the cave.’

  Her mum’s face lights up. Then, for the first time in a long time, Becky sees her mum cry.

  That evening, they arrive in the little car park near the cave. Becky peers behind her, anticipating a nurse chasing after them, maybe even the police. It feels so illicit, sneaking her mum out of hospital. Even more so grabbing all the medication and supplies Becky needed from the vet practice, telling Kay she’d explain everything but she needed a few days off.

  She helps her mum out of the car, shrugging the large rucksack she’s brought onto her back. Her mum pauses, shielding her eyes from the sun as she looks out towards the bay. A hidden treasure, as the tourist website describes it. Stretches of golden sand. White cliffs. But the biggest draw: the white chalk stacks extending towards the sky. Perfect photo fodder, especially at sunset. Becky remembers being there as a child, walking on the sand, feeling it beneath her toes. Her mum posing against one of the rocks as her dad took photos. Click, click, click.

  And then darker memories, glaring at the cave from a distance, its opening like the mouth of a monster who’d gobbled her mum up.

  ‘Good, the tide’s out. Let’s go,’ Becky says. Her mum nods and they step carefully onto the wooden pathway, Becky supporting her mum’s frail body.

  The café is still there. Tired-looking. Quiet before the evening rush. Becky remembers they used to go there some evenings and weekends. She’d chase her friends around as her mum sat drinking gin, dark sunglasses over her eyes, Mike silent beside her. And then those times after her mum left; the awkward meet-ups that grew more and more infrequent as the months went by. The memories still cause her pain – how desperate she was to run to her mum and beg her to come back, but her childish insolence stopped her every time.

  They step off the pathway and onto the sand, walking across the shadows of the chalk stacks slowly, surely. The next bay comes into view then. You don’t see them at first, the caves. Like hidden entrances in a labyrinth, they’re sliced into the sides of the white cliffs. The first one, smaller than the others, is strewn with rubbish, remnants of burnt-out candles. Becky wonders whether she’d have come here as a teenager if she had stayed with her mum, smoked things she shouldn’t have, curled up with boys instead of reading alone. It might have been a very different life to that she’d had in the town she and her dad had eventually moved to.

  She helps her mum limp past the first cave, then the second, which is larger but so low you have to duck to get in. In the distance, her mum’s house, the hotel, stands grand above the last cave. Her mum’s step quickens, her breath too, as they draw closer to her cave, as she’s been calling it. It’s right at the end of the bay, away from the hustle and bustle of the more popular bay, cut off by a jagged plank of white cliff.

  And then, there it is, in all its glory. The cave that swallowed her mum whole.

  Glimmers of recognition rush through Becky as she stares at it. She hears flashes of laughter, a dog barking. Fish, slippery in her hands. The sun twinkling above. And then her mum, as she was all those years ago, looking down at her with love.

  Why are they coming back now, all the good memories? Where were they when the bad ones crashed over her? The sight of her mum, tanned and strange, when she met her in the café all those times after she left them. Her dad’s anger, her mum’s nonchalance. The tears she shed when she was desperate for her mum’s arms around her, the hate that filled her when she realised she was never coming back.

  As they draw closer to the cave, Becky sees a small one that has a notice at its front: Do not enter. Risk of falling rock. Her mum’s face darkens when she looks at it.

  ‘Is it safe?’ Becky asks, hesitating.

  ‘My one is.’

  My one.

  ‘Sure?’ Becky asks.

  ‘Absolutely. Come on.’

  They walk up to the cave and pause, taking it in. Large chalk boulders are littered here and there, painted an assortment of colours, some smashed, one charred. The white clay of the cave is mossy in parts, ledges jutting out. Becky remembers standing on one of those ledges, looking out to sea.

  Painted around the edges of the cave’s entrance are different animals, and shells too. Even a child and a dog. The paint has faded slightly but it’s still discernible.

  Her mum raises her hand, touching the clay. ‘Feel it,’ she says. ‘It’s softer than you think.’

  Becky leans her hand against it and realises her mum’s right. It even crumbles beneath her palm. As she takes her hand away, she notices there are man-made dents down the length of the cave’s entrance, and a black metal plate drilled into it, as if there was once something hanging there.

  Her mum peers into the cave, a sense of peace spreading over her face.

  Becky notices her mum’s breath is laboured, her eyes hollow. ‘Come on then, let’s get you inside.’

  She helps her mum step in, the sound and smell of the sea suddenly muffling all her senses. It’s as though the cave is absorbing everything but the sea … even absorbing her. The temperature drops, and Becky notices the damp moss on the walls, the slimy vegetation. Her feet sink into the sand, wet, cold, sand flies leaping around her shoes. Rubbish congeals around the edges of the cave, cigarette butts and rotting fish bones.

  How could her mum have lived here? No wonder she wasn’t allowed to bring Becky to live here too. And how could she want to die here? But then she’s never quite understood her mum.

&nb
sp; ‘Look,’ her mum says, pointing to the wall at the back. Her eyes are alight, as if she’s seeing another place entirely.

  Becky gasps. It’s covered with people, sculpted from the rocks then painted. These faces smile out at her: a girl wearing a white dress with a book in her hand; a black man with a dog at his feet, a hammer in his hand. More and more people, nearly a dozen, including children – one tiny one with her eyes ominously scratched out. And then there she is, Becky’s mum, her dark hair a cloud around her head as she stares into the distance, pen poised over her notepad. Next to her is a half-finished painting of a man with long, blond hair.

  ‘Did Idris do these?’ Becky asks. His name echoes around the cave, making her shiver. She often heard his name that summer her mum left, whispered first in awe then in anger by people in the town, often spat down the phone by her fuming dad.

  ‘He did paint them. There,’ her mum says as she points to the back of the cave. ‘I want to be there.’

  Becky helps her over. Broken wood criss-crosses the sand, pages torn from books strewn over it, a discarded soiled cup on its side. Becky sweeps it all away and unrolls the thick sleeping bag she brought with her along with a small pillow.

  ‘I wish I’d brought more to cover the damp sand now,’ she says. ‘I didn’t think.’

  ‘It’s fine. This is perfect.’

  ‘How did you sleep here?’

  ‘On wooden planks,’ her mum replies, eyeing the broken panels.

  ‘What about the damp?’

  Her mum shrugged. ‘We didn’t mind.’

  ‘Come, sit.’ She leads her mum to the sleeping bag and helps her sit down. Her mum stares around her, a small smile on her face.

  ‘I’ll just set some things up,’ Becky says, unloading the heavy rucksack from her back with relief, pulling all the items out: some fruit, water, a flask of tea, crackers, pads, flannels. And then the pain relief. Becky takes a deep breath. Will it be enough? She pops two pills out, pours some water into a plastic cup. Then she takes it all over to her mum.

  ‘Do you want tea?’ she asks her mum after she swallows the pills.

  ‘Not right now.’

  ‘Are you comfortable?’

  Her mum closes her eyes and sighs. ‘I’m very tired.’