by Jill Mansell
Then there was no distance between them at all. With barely a judder to show that contact had been made, the jet ski scooted off across the bay with its plume of water fountaining out behind it. And there was Ronan left in its wake, face down in the water and quite still.
The sound of screams filled the air. Clemency pushed back her chair and jumped up as, with a crash, Marina’s easel and box canvas went flying. The paint palette clattered to the ground along with Clemency’s mug of hot chocolate. Marina, having let out a cry of anguish, was already racing along the harbour wall to the spot on the quay where the distance to Ronan’s unmoving figure was shortest. Running behind her, Clemency saw that two speedboats were being launched, but it was too late to stop Marina. Kicking off her deck shoes, she dived off the end of the quay and swam towards Ronan’s inert body.
Sick with terror, Clemency watched as she reached him and turned him over, a cloud of blood spreading through the water around his head. Oh Jesus, please no. The urge to dive in was almost overwhelming, but the speedboats had reached him now; there was no room, she’d only be in the way. Together they were working to haul Ronan into the nearest boat, and now – oh thank goodness – there were signs of life. Marina had lifted his face out of the water and he’d begun to splutter and choke. But how severe was the damage to his head that had caused all the bleeding?
Having raced back to the harbour wall and half stumbled down the last of the slimy stone steps, Clemency was there to greet them when the boats reached the shore.
‘I’m fine, I’m fine.’ Ronan didn’t look remotely fine, but at least he was able to say it. Blood from the wound at the back of his head was leaking down his body, but with help he was able to step out of the boat on to the sand. One of the GPs from the surgery on the Esplanade had arrived and was already checking him over. Marina, who’d been brought to shore in the other boat, was watching him anxiously, oblivious to the pink bloodstains that covered her own sodden white top and linen trousers.
Reaching her, realising how violently she was trembling, Clemency said, ‘Are you OK? You were incredible.’
‘I wasn’t, I just did it.’ Marina was pale and breathing rapidly. ‘I thought he was dead.’
Clemency hugged her tightly; for a few seconds they’d both thought he was dead.
‘Right,’ said the doctor, accustomed to treating injuries sustained whilst surfing in St Carys. ‘It looks worse than it is, but we’d better get you along to A and E to be on the safe side. Let them check you over and give you an X-ray.’
‘I’ll take him,’ volunteered one of Ronan’s surfing friends. ‘My van’s a mess anyway, so a bit of blood won’t make it any worse.’
‘Here.’ Someone else produced a blanket.
‘Clem?’ Ronan beckoned her over. ‘I’m OK, I promise. I’ll see you later, all right?’
Clemency nodded. ‘I’ll take Marina home. She’s pretty shaken up.’
‘Yes. Of course.’ Evidently still a bit dazed himself, he looked over at Marina in her bloodstained clothes. ‘Marina. Thank you. I can’t believe you jumped in like that and saved me. Come here …’
And now he was gesturing towards her, but Marina stayed where she was.
‘I’m a strong swimmer, that’s all. Anyone would have done the same.’ Her voice wavered as she added, ‘I’m just glad you’re all right.’
Ronan was bundled into his friend’s van and driven off to the local hospital. Returning to the café, Clemency collected her own bag and Marina’s painting equipment from Paddy, who’d righted the table and cleaned up the mess from the spilt paints and hot chocolate. Then they walked together in silence back to Marina’s cottage.
Once inside, Clemency saw that Marina was still shivering. ‘Have a hot shower. Get yourself warmed up. I’ll make you some soup.’
‘I don’t want soup.’
‘OK then, maybe coffee with a dash of brandy in it.’
‘That sounds a bit more like it.’ This time Marina managed a glimmer of a smile.
‘No problem. Now take off those wet clothes,’ said Clemency. ‘They need to go in the washing machine if we’re going to get the bloodstains out.’
‘It really doesn’t matter. They didn’t cost much.’
‘But if we get the blood out, they can be your lucky clothes,’ said Clemency. ‘You saved Ronan’s life.’
For a moment, tears glimmered in Marina’s eyes, then she turned and made her way upstairs. Leaving Clemency to think through everything that had happened this afternoon. She felt as if she needed some time to carefully consider each separate detail she’d seen and heard.
And when Marina came back down to the living room twenty minutes later, freshly showered and wrapped in a towelling dressing gown, Clemency knew she had to ask the question that was uppermost in her mind.
‘Here you go.’ She placed the cup of freshly ground coffee laced with cognac on the table next to Marina’s side of the sofa.
‘Thank you. Mmm, delicious.’ Marina smiled and put the cup back down. ‘Better than soup.’
‘Can I ask you something?’
‘Of course! Is it about the painting?’ Marina indicated the half-finished canvas propped up against the wall. ‘It’s a present for Paddy and Dee, to hang in the café. I thought they might like—’
‘It’s not about the painting,’ Clemency interrupted. ‘It’s about Ronan.’
‘Oh …’
Something about the Oh … made her think she might be right.
‘When the jet ski hit him and he was lying in the water, you said something. Gasped something. And I didn’t understand at first because it didn’t make any sense.’
Marina didn’t reply. She swallowed audibly and looked down at her hands, clasped together in her lap.
‘But you definitely did say it,’ Clemency continued. ‘I heard you. When it happened, you leapt out of your chair and you said, “Billy …”’
More silence. Marina remained still. Finally she tilted her face up and back, but the tears slid down anyway.
Gently Clemency said, ‘Who’s Billy?’
Marina was wiping her eyes with the sleeve of her dressing gown. ‘He was my son. My baby boy.’
‘And now?’
Marina nodded slowly, with a mixture of fear and relief, and Clemency wondered how it must feel to keep a secret like that for so many years.
‘And now,’ Marina said simply, ‘his name is Ronan.’
Chapter 18
‘You have to promise me one thing,’ said Marina. ‘Ronan must never know.’
Clemency nodded. ‘I promise.’
Did she fully understand? ‘Seriously. I mean it.’
‘I know. Me too. God, though.’ Clemency was gazing at her in stunned realisation. ‘It’s incredible.’
‘I can’t believe I said his name.’ Marina shook her head; in that terrifying split second, she’d heard herself utter the word she hadn’t spoken aloud for so many years. The subconscious certainly had its ways of playing tricks on you. But when your son was floating face-down in water, motionless and possibly dead … well, clearly anything could be blurted out.
‘That’s why you dived in,’ said Clemency.
‘I’d have done the same for anyone,’ said Marina. But maybe not so unthinkingly, so blindly, and without the all-encompassing desperation.
‘Then afterwards, when Ronan wanted to thank you, he beckoned you over so he could give you a hug. But you wouldn’t go, you stayed where you were.’ Clemency had evidently slotted all the pieces of the puzzle into place. ‘And that’s why you wouldn’t go to him. Because it would have been too much, too emotional … you were scared you might give yourself away.’
This was true. It was exactly why she’d stayed rooted to the spot. Marina nodded, because Clemency had found her out and there was no point in even attempting to deny it. Then she stopped nodding and looked directly at her. ‘You’re his girlfriend. I know I keep saying this, but you mustn’t tell him.’
‘An
d I won’t. OK, my secret isn’t anywhere near as big as yours,’ said Clemency, ‘but I’m not really his girlfriend. I just got fed up with Belle being so smug and superior, so I asked Ronan to play along for a couple of weeks.’
‘Oh. Really?’ Marina smiled briefly. ‘That’s a shame. I meant it when I said you made a great couple.’
‘Well, we’re just friends. But you mustn’t tell anyone either.’ Clemency’s eyes sparkled. ‘And that makes us even.’
Marina took another sip of cognac-laced coffee. ‘So many secrets,’ she said ruefully. ‘We all have them. We don’t mean to, but they just come along and take over our lives. And then we have to learn to live with them, which isn’t always easy either. I did a bad thing and the guilt never leaves me, but at the time I couldn’t help myself.’
‘Oh no, you mustn’t think like that,’ Clemency blurted out. ‘You should never feel guilty about giving a baby up for adoption!’
Marina nodded; along with millions of other people, Clemency had watched the popular TV programmes about long-lost parents and children being reunited. ‘I know, I do know that.’
‘You did it because you weren’t able to look after him,’ Clemency rushed to reassure her. ‘You wanted him to have a better life. And he has had a fantastic life—’
‘Actually, when I said I’d done a bad thing, I wasn’t talking about giving my son up for adoption,’ said Marina.
That stopped Clemency in her tracks. ‘No? Oh! You don’t have to tell me anything. Really.’
Marina smiled, because obviously Clemency was longing to know. ‘It’s OK,’ she said. ‘I want to. We’ve got this far, you may as well hear the rest.’
How she’d envied the other girls at school, whose parents had been less strict than hers. Her friends were allowed to go to the park together, they were allowed to meet up in the shopping centre on Saturday afternoons. And on Saturday evenings they all went along to the local nightclub, where they danced and gossiped and flirted with boys.
Marina hadn’t been allowed to do any of that. Well, she’d still been Mary then. Her mother suffered from her nerves and spent her time in a state of high anxiety, panicking about everything imaginable, whilst her father was an out-and-out bully, who ruled the house and forbade any form of dissent.
It had been kind of ironic, then, that having been banned from going to all the usual places where teenage girls might reasonably encounter members of the opposite sex, she’d met Ellis Ramsay in the local library.
In the reference section, at that. It was a small room, separated from the rest of the library, for people who wanted to work or study in complete silence. She’d gone there because in those pre-internet days, she needed to use the reference books to help with her A levels. Plus it was a lot more restful than studying at home.
She’d noticed him there for several weeks, but no contact had been made between them until the afternoon of the hiccups.
Good old hiccups. The more you tried to suppress them, the louder they got. And the other people in the room all found it utterly infuriating; with each new hic, they turned to fix her with unamused glares. Well, all except one of them. The industrious boy who surrounded himself with medical textbooks and was a prodigious note-taker wasn’t looking annoyed. He was smiling, mainly with his eyes but a little bit with his mouth too. He had close-cropped black hair, flawless dark brown skin and the whitest of teeth. And when Marina did another hic, louder than all the rest, he took a packet of Polos out of his jacket pocket and discreetly rolled one across the wide desk in her direction.
What was it her mother had always told her about accepting sweets from strangers?
Marina had smiled back. He’d shrugged and mouthed, It might help. She’d popped the Polo into her mouth, promptly hiccupped again and almost swallowed it whole.
Outside the library, doubled over with laughter, she’d coughed and spluttered and wiped her streaming eyes on the handkerchief he lent her.
‘Are you sure you’re OK?’ he said when they’d both regained control. ‘I was all ready to perform the Heimlich manoeuvre if you’d choked on that Polo.’
‘I’m fine. Thank you anyway.’ Marina went to return his handkerchief, before hesitating and wondering if that was rude. ‘Sorry, um …’
‘It doesn’t matter.’ He put his hand out to take it, but Marina shook her head.
‘No, let me wash it for you. I’ll bring it back tomorrow, if you’re going to be around then.’
‘I have to take my grandmother to a hospital appointment. I won’t be here before six.’ He had a lovely gentle way of speaking.
Recklessly, Marina said, ‘Doesn’t matter. I’ll wait.’
‘What’s your name?’
‘Mary.’
‘Hello, Mary.’ He had the most dazzlingly infectious smile. ‘It’s very nice to meet you. I’m Ellis.’
The next evening she waited outside the library and returned the laundered handkerchief. The way his face lit up when he saw her made her flush with happiness. His full name was Ellis Ramsay, and he was a medical student down in London, staying with his redoubtable Jamaican grandmother up here in Durham during the Easter holidays and revising hard for his end-of-year exams.
Which was good, because it meant she carried on going there every day too, getting far more extra studying in than she would otherwise have done.
It was Mary’s first real-life teenage crush, intense and overwhelming, and she felt it would last for ever. When the library closed each evening, they headed over to the local park, sitting on a secluded bench and talking, until one evening her neighbour Mr Williams happened to pass by and give them a long, cold stare. He looked from Ellis to Mary and said, ‘Does your father know about this?’
Mary, feeling her face heat up, had replied, ‘We’re not doing anything wrong,’ but inwardly she’d been terrified that Mr Williams would tell her father what he’d seen. From then on, they gave the park a miss and took to walking in the nearby woods instead. And when Ellis kissed her for the first time, it was romantic and beautiful and perfect.
The following week, his grandmother went to a funeral in Cardiff, staying there overnight and for the first time leaving her house empty. Instead of visiting the library, Ellis and Mary crept in through the back door so no one would spot them, and spent the evening together in Ellis’s narrow single bed. Ellis only had one condom and they made love twice. But it was OK, it was a safe time of the month.
Ten days later, the time came for him to return to London. Even as they kissed and hugged and said their emotional goodbyes, Mary sensed they were unlikely to see each other again. Like a huge firework display exploding out of nowhere and lighting up the night sky, their dazzling relationship had run its natural course and was fizzling out. If Ellis hadn’t been leaving, they would probably have carried on meeting up for a few more weeks, but it was almost easier this way. The mutual infatuation was fading and no harm had been done. She would miss him for a while, but not desperately and not to the point of anguish. They both had exams coming up; it was time now to concentrate on those.
‘Except there was something else to concentrate on,’ Marina told Clemency. ‘I was pregnant.’
‘You must have been petrified,’ said Clemency.
Petrified was an understatement.
‘You can’t imagine. It was horrendous. I wanted to run away, but there was nowhere to go.’
‘What happened?’
‘Well, I did pretty badly in my A levels. I spent a lot of time feeling sick and trying not to throw up. And I wrote a letter to Ellis.’ Marina shook her head. ‘To let him know. I didn’t have the address of the new place he was living in, down in London, so I put it in a sealed envelope and took it to his grandmother’s house. When she wouldn’t give me the address, I asked her to send the letter on to him. She told me she would, but I don’t know if she ever did. Anyway, I never did hear back from him.’
Clemency shook her head in sympathy. ‘You poor thing.’
‘Honestly, I felt like a robot. Just getting through each day was an ordeal. But as the weeks passed, it became kind of obvious and my father challenged me. I was five months gone by then, and he hit the roof. That was when they packed me off to stay with my father’s cousin in Coventry. I’d brought the worst kind of shame on the family. I was trying to send my mother into an early grave. And no one else must ever find out,’ said Marina. ‘I’d refused to tell them who the father was, but at some stage while I was away, Mr Williams from next door happened to say something about seeing me in the park that time with Ellis. Except he didn’t know his name, just his skin colour. So that went down well.’
‘Oh God,’ Clemency sighed.
‘Anyway, I gave birth to Billy and he was just the most beautiful little thing you’d ever seen.’ Marina’s eyes abruptly swam with hot tears. ‘We only had a few days together in the hospital. The adoption was all set to go ahead. I still wish I hadn’t let it happen, but back then there just didn’t seem to be any other choice. My heart felt as if it was physically breaking.’ She paused and swallowed hard. ‘On the fifth day, I had to say goodbye to him … well, that was the worst day of all. The social worker was very kind; she told me I was doing the right thing, giving Billy a better start in life with a family who’d give him all the love in the world. And I was rocking backwards and forwards, saying they couldn’t love him more than I did. But it was too late, they took him away anyway. And that was it. I was sent home to get on with my life as if nothing had ever happened. Except everything had happened … Oh dear, sorry …’
‘Don’t you dare apologise,’ said Clemency.
Marina wiped her leaking eyes and managed a crooked smile. ‘That’s the worst of it over. It makes me cry every time I think about it. But I’ll be fine from now on, I promise.’