by Clarke, Lucy
Her breath felt short, harder to grasp. Traffic fumes and the heavy sweetness of rotting fruit filled her throat. A man passed, smoking a clove cigarette, and she swerved away from the cloying smell, the pavement seeming to tilt beneath her. She knocked into a thin boy spinning a yo-yo from a finger, who stared at her through large, curious eyes.
She began to run. The road was uneven, a deep rut jarring her pace. A pair of feline eyes watched suspiciously from the bonnet of a parked car as she raced on, skirting broken pot plants and sagging bin bags. She ducked into a side street leading to the hostel. She flew in through the entrance, past the reception desk, and along the darkened corridor.
She reached her room and stopped. Her stomach was knotted tightly, her pulse skittering with anxiety. She realized that she couldn’t go in; she couldn’t be alone.
She retraced her steps and found herself in front of Noah’s door. It was unlocked and she slunk into the warm darkness, trying to steady her breathing.
His voice, sleepy and questioning, asked, ‘Mia?’
‘Yes,’ she told him, gently pressing the door closed with her fingertips. ‘It’s okay. Go back to sleep,’ she whispered, slipping off her clothes and sliding into bed beside him. Her heart was racing. She wanted to press her body into the warm curve of his and let her heartbeat slow into his rhythm.
But she lay still, her arms tucked at her sides like wings, her ankle lightly touching his leg – just enough to connect them. He murmured something – a question perhaps, or a reservation – but she made no response and simply waited until she heard his breathing shallow as he was drawn back towards the comfortable folds of sleep. She sighed, relieved. Above, the ceiling fan cut through the warm air, and she began counting the strokes to stave off thought.
By the time she’d reached thirty-two, Finn’s email had clawed its way back into her mind and settled there. She imagined him typing the message, the pale light of his computer screen bleeding the warmth from his eyes. He had chosen his words carefully, stripping her down to her bones to reveal what she feared most: ending up like her father.
Mia could taste the bitter truth in his warning. She felt the symmetry of her and Harley’s lives running through her veins like blood. He had been caught in a spiral of self-destruction, driving away the people who loved him – just as she was. She bit down on her lip as she thought of the hurt she’d caused Finn. It was cruel of her to have left him for Noah, but unforgivable to lie that she was coming back. She wanted to put her face next to his, nose to nose, and tell him how sorry she was. But she knew it was too late for that. Through the open window, she could hear traffic and voices, and beyond that she caught the faint rhythm of waves breaking.
She didn’t know how long it had been since she’d drifted into sleep, but she woke to a sharp blow across her chest. She lurched from the bed, winded. Noah was flailing, his powerful body thrashing beneath the sheet like a trapped animal.
‘Noah!’
A string of mumbled, unintelligible words spilt from his mouth as he writhed, caught in the grip of a nightmare.
She backed towards the wall and groped for the light switch. The fluorescent bulb fizzed into life and she shielded her eyes from the glare, blinking.
He seemed to shake himself awake, yanking the sheet from him and staggering to his feet. His body glistened with sweat and he was breathing hard. He spun round, his eyes wide and startled. ‘What did I do?’
She was pressed flat to the wall. ‘You had a nightmare.’
‘Did I … did I hurt you?’
There was a dull ache in her chest where his arm had swung out. ‘No. I’m fine.’
‘What are you doing here? You shouldn’t be here.’ He turned away from her and moved towards the window. He placed his palms at the edges of the glass, like a prisoner desperate to leave. She saw that the dressing on his upper back had ripped off and his wound looked pink and tender.
She crossed the room slowly and placed her hands on the base of his back, just below the smooth cleft of his buttocks. His skin was burning.
‘Noah?’ she said, but he would not turn and face her. Whatever the nightmare was about, it still clung to him. She thought of his protests that she could never stay the night: ‘This happens often, doesn’t it?’
His jaw tightened and she saw from his reflection in the window that his eyes were screwed shut. There was something desperately vulnerable about the thin trail of blood that was beginning to seep from his wound. Placing her hand on his forearm, she stroked her fingers back and forth, skimming the dark edges of his tattoo. ‘It’s okay,’ she told him softly.
The gesture seemed to undo him. His shoulders started to shake and he hung his head.
‘Oh, Noah,’ she said, threading her arms around his waist. She held him close, felt his sweat cooling against her skin. It scared her to see him like this. ‘What was the nightmare about?’
She felt his body tense.
‘Noah?’
He didn’t answer.
‘It was about Johnny, wasn’t it?’
He pulled away.
‘You can talk to me.’
He said nothing and she saw how similar they were then, each weighed down by their private grief. They could help each other, she believed that. ‘I know you lost your brother. Tell me about him. I want to help.’
‘Please go.’
‘What?’
‘I can’t deal with this.’
‘Noah, I only want—’
But he had already crossed the room and started picking up her clothes.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked, anxiety spreading like a dark kiss along her chest. ‘Noah, please—’
‘You’re pushing me, Mia. Trying to get inside my head. I can’t do it. I should never have started this. It was a mistake. I’m sorry, Mia, but it was a mistake.’
He passed her clothes back to her and she put them on, leaden. As she turned, she saw his backpack propped against the desk. It was packed. ‘You’re leaving?’
‘Yes.’
‘When?’
‘Tomorrow.’
‘Were you going to tell me?’
He looked at her, the darkness of his gaze concealing so much. Then he opened the door onto the corridor.
She moved through it.
‘I’m sorry,’ was all he said.
27
KATIE
Bali, August
Katie stepped out onto the balcony. A bird nesting in the hotel gardens flew off, startled, its dark wings lapping at the night sky. She wrapped her hands around the wooden railings and inhaled the smells of frangipani and cooling earth.
Finn joined her. Neither of them spoke. She listened to the far-off call of the surf and the breeze stirring the trees. She hadn’t yet read on in the journal as he’d asked her to do. Everything was rushing forward, pulling out of her reach. She needed to centre herself, to think.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, his voice having lost the intensity of earlier. ‘I should have told you about my email sooner. I was ashamed.’
She understood a lot about shame; it lived within her like a second heartbeat. She had told no one about Mia’s phone call. Instead, she had lived with the shame of that conversation, feeling its inky guilt sliding through her veins. ‘I haven’t been completely honest with you either.’
He turned towards her.
She could feel his gaze on her, but she wouldn’t look up. She stared into the darkness as she told him, ‘Mia called me. It was the day before she died. We hadn’t spoken since Christmas when I told her I was engaged. Three months – that’s how long it’d been.’ She sighed. ‘When she finally rang, it was to ask for money.’
‘Because I hadn’t given it to her.’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you lend it to her?’
‘I didn’t even consider it.’ Katie closed her eyes and felt the night press against her skin. She thought of their conversation, the one she had been playing back in the bottomless depths of grief ev
er since.
‘What did you say?’
She glanced over her shoulder towards the lit room where the journal lay. ‘Do you know why I didn’t read her journal when I first found it in her backpack?’
‘You said you wanted to keep Mia’s memory alive.’
She laughed a single sharp note. ‘That’s what I told myself. It’s funny what you can make yourself believe. But the truth is, Finn, I’m a coward. I’ve never sat down and read it in one go because I didn’t want to know what Mia had written about our last conversation.’
Katie thought of the dark truth she’d so coolly released, and the sound of Mia’s breath catching in her throat as it hit her.
‘I could not bear to read that it was my words that led her to the edge of that cliff.’
28
MIA
Bali, March
Mia slotted her credit card into the payphone and punched in Katie’s number. She waited. Hard bass beats from a nightclub pumped down the street, drumming inside her chest. Opposite, a street light flickered, sending strobes of orange light across the kerb where a scrawny dog nosed an empty food carton.
‘Katie Greene speaking.’ Her work voice was crisp and professional.
‘It’s me.’
‘Mia?’
‘Yes.’
There was a pause. ‘I’m at work.’
‘Can you talk? Just for five minutes?’
She sighed. ‘Wait a moment.’
Mia heard Katie telling a colleague that she’d be back shortly; then there was the sharp click of heels across a hard floor, the sucking sound as a door was pushed open and then the rush of London traffic speeding across the phone waves.
‘It’s freezing outside,’ Katie said. ‘I can’t be long.’
Mia couldn’t imagine the flat cold of a winter’s day in London, when here it was night and the air was still so warm her cotton vest clung to her skin. ‘How are you?’ she asked banally, unsure how to begin.
‘Fine.’
‘Sorry I haven’t called in a while.’
‘It’s been three months,’ Katie said.
‘Has it?’ Mia wrapped the phone cord around her wrist, twisting it tightly until she felt the blood flow to her fingers restricted. She couldn’t think of what she wanted to say. ‘How’s work?’
‘Fine.’
‘And Ed?’
‘You didn’t ring to ask about Ed. Or work. What do you want, Mia?’
Mia pulled the phone cord taut and felt the cool prick of pins and needles in her fingertips. She didn’t want to ask Katie for money – she’d rather hear her chat about her life in London or reminisce together about some small detail of their childhood – but there was no one else who could help. She needed her passport back so she could get out of Bali. It was over with Noah. Her friendship with Finn, ruined. There was only Katie … she needed Katie to do this for her. ‘I need to borrow some money. About a thousand pounds. It’d be a loan.’
‘Is this a joke?’
‘I’d pay you back within a few weeks, once I’ve got work.’
There was a long, weighted pause. Up ahead, a group of young men in rugby shirts stumbled from the nightclub, cheering and jumping onto one another’s backs. They were drunk, jubilant. Mia suddenly longed to be surrounded by a group of friends, feeling the warm caress of alcohol flooding through her body.
‘Do you know how many engagement cards Ed and I were sent?’
The non sequitur threw Mia and she hesitated.
‘Thirty-seven. The flat was filled with them. I had to prop some on top of the fridge as the windowsills were filled. My workmates took me out for dinner to celebrate. Ed’s sister came from Weybridge with flowers and a bottle of champagne.’ There was a pause. ‘But you … you,’ she repeated, a quiet fury contained in the word, ‘couldn’t even bring yourself to say congratulations.’
‘Katie—’
‘You haven’t been in touch for three months. I thought my sister would be the person I shared all this with. I wanted to ask your opinion on wedding dresses and venues and a hundred other details. But you never called – not even to find out if we’d set a date. And now you ring me, at work, to ask for money. What do you think I should say?’
Mia’s wrist ached. She released the phone cord and the skin beneath was yellowy white. She flexed her fingers slowly, feeling a creaking pain as the blood began to circulate. ‘I don’t know.’
‘You’re travelling. You’re having fun. Meeting new people. I understand that – but honestly, how hard can it be to make time to pick up a phone? You didn’t even call on Mum’s birthday. It was three weeks ago. She’d have been 54.’
The numbers on the dial seemed to swim in her vision. How could she have forgotten that? February 14th. Valentine’s Day. The postman always said their mother was the most popular woman on his round. The date hadn’t registered with Mia this year. Recently, time seemed to have been weaving circles around her and she’d lost track of days and weeks.
‘Have you nothing to say?’
Mia could feel perspiration sliding down the backs of her knees. She wanted to explain that she thought about their mother every day; that birthdays had never meant anything to her. She could feel the words rising up and blocking in her throat, like bubbles surging against the lid of a bottle.
‘Jesus, Mia, don’t you care?’
‘Yes, I care!’ she cried, slamming her hand on the phone console. ‘Just because I forgot her fucking birthday, it doesn’t mean I don’t care!’
‘And what about me?’
‘What?’
‘It’s not just about honouring Mum’s birthday – it should be about us, being there for each other.’
‘I am.’
Katie’s voice was quiet. ‘You left.’
‘I needed to get away.’
‘From what?’
From you! she wanted to scream. Because I fucked your fiancé out of spite and I couldn’t look at you, knowing it!
‘What’s pathetic is that I wished you’d asked me to go travelling. Did you know that? I actually wanted to come with you.’
‘That’s crap. You’d never have quit your job. Or got on a plane.’
‘I would have, Mia. If you’d asked me. But you didn’t.’
‘Don’t try and push guilt on me.’
‘Push guilt on you?’
She could hear Katie’s footsteps and the receding sounds of traffic. She imagined her sister walking onto a side street and moving past a row of tall Georgian houses, their front doors black and glossy.
‘I’m the one who protects you,’ Katie was saying. ‘That’s what I do. I was handed the role of older sister: sensible, protective, reliable. You were handed younger sister: wild, independent, selfish.’
‘That’s bullshit.’
‘Is it? Who took care of everything after Mum died? I organized the funeral, sold Mum’s house, found us a flat, tried helping you find work.’
‘You weren’t protecting me,’ Mia said, anger burning in her throat. ‘You were controlling me, shrinking down my life so it could fit into a neat little package beside yours.’
‘Is that what you think?’
‘I don’t see how snatching my best friend was protecting me,’ she said, and then the words were out there, like a firework launched into the sky. ‘Why him? Out of all the men you could pick from, why Finn?’
She heard Katie’s footsteps stop. Mia held her breath, waiting for the explosion.
But there were no bright lights or loud bangs. Just three words delivered as quietly as smoke: ‘I loved him.’
Love? Mia’s head spun. She reached out a hand and held onto the phone console. Her palms were damp. ‘No.’
‘I never planned to fall in love with him, but I did. I really loved him.’
Mia bit down on the inside of her cheek, pressing her teeth hard into the soft flesh. The metallic taste of blood filled her mouth.
‘It was excruciating because I saw what losing Finn did to y
ou,’ Katie continued. ‘You were a shadow. I hardly recognized you. And then, Christ, Mum got ill. It was terrible for all of us, but I think it was particularly hard on you. And you wouldn’t let Finn or me support you. I hated seeing you hurting like that. I felt like there was no choice: I had to let him go. I did it for you, Mia, because I was trying to protect you.’ Katie paused. ‘And I had to protect you from Mum’s death, too.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Even as Mia said the words, a cool feeling crept over her skin.
‘That morning – when she was dying – I left four messages asking you to come to the house to say goodbye.’
‘I lost my—’
‘Mobile. Yes, you said. Come on, Mia. We’re beyond this.’
Mia’s ear was burning where the phone pressed against it. She wanted to rip it away, snap the cord with her hands and fling it into the street.
‘You weren’t at the house with me because you couldn’t cope with Mum dying. I understood that, but I kept calling because I didn’t want you to regret not saying goodbye.’
Mia had been walking at Porthcray all morning, her mobile wailing in the pocket of her fleece. A week of southwesterlies had washed in mounds of seaweed that lay rotting on the shoreline, making the air taste sulphuric. She picked her way over them, listening to each of Katie’s messages and knowing that 3 miles away in her family home her mother was dying. Her mother who’d told Mia that her eyes were like polished emeralds, who had treasured a story Mia had written about a snow leopard when she was 6, who’d assured Mia she didn’t mind what she did with her life as long as she was happy. She couldn’t die.
Further up the beach, Mia had picked up a smooth white stone the size of a mussel shell and told herself that if she skimmed 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 skim 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.