by Laura Elliot
‘I will.’ She nods vehemently.
‘And that you’ll give it to me... unopened.’
‘Are there more?’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh, Mum.’ Ali holds me, a subtle role reversal. I’m glad of her comfort.
I read the letter on the tube as it powers underground then races through the blustery May sunshine. Love letters for my eyes only. Why did I take such a risk? It didn’t seem risky at the time but that’s the arrogance of youth, its sense of invulnerability. It calmed me down, this physical act, the construction of a fantasy with blocks of words. But, by the following day, my skin was on fire again. My ears attuned to his voice, his laughter, his step, his gaze.
* * *
Darling Max
I can’t sleep. My back is too hot even for the sheet. But you’re okay. Your skin is used to the sun. What were you thinking when we lay together on Table Rock? I still can’t believe it, just you and me lying there with the ocean shining around us.
It was Jake who suggested we swim to Table Rock. We’ve never done that before. It’s so far away on the other side of the bay. He really believed he could make it. Barry was the first to turn back, then Karin, Reedy, Hart and Daryl. When Jake decided it was too far he yelled at me to swim back with him. I kept going. I knew I could reach the rock and rest there before heading back. That’s what the strong swimmers do. Then the sea got choppy and the rock looked even further away. I was going to turn back when you swam alongside me and suddenly I felt like I could swim to the other side of the world.
You reached the rock first and pulled me up beside you. I couldn’t stop panting for ages. We just lay there side by side without talking. Then our breathing became the same and your chest was rising and falling just like mine. The water on your body looked like jewels. Even when I closed my eyes I could see those jewels sparkling under my eyelids.
‘Well, my lovely mermaid, are you ready for the swim back?’ you said after a while.
I stood up and so did you. I didn’t slip deliberately. It was the rock, all that seaweed. You caught me. I know it was only to steady me but it was like you’d given me an electric shock. The smell of the sea was on your skin and I could feel every part of you, even… well… I’m not really sure if you were… it seems weird to think you were hard, like Jake got when we kissed in the cave. Then you let me go and dived straight into the water.
Karin was furious when we came back. I was dripping wet but she wouldn’t even let me dry off.
‘Walk,’ she said, as if I was a dog and flounced off down the beach in a temper.
‘You frightened the life out of my mother,’ she said when I caught up with her. ‘She was worried sick in case you got drowned and took my father down with you. So was I. Not that you cared.’
When I looked at Joan she just lying there with her sunhat over her face. She hadn’t even looked up when we came back. I told Karin to stop getting at me. The only reason she was in a temper was because she hadn’t been able to keep up with us. It was the wrong thing to say.
‘You think you’re so brilliant at everything.’ She started shouting at me. ‘But you’re not. You’re just a big, clumsy whale who keeps trying to attract my father’s attention all the time.’
I hit her. I’m sorry, Max. Sorry it was your daughter I hit. But not one bit sorry I did it. O my God! It was awful afterwards. I was sure she’d hit me back. I wish she had. That would have made us even but she ran back up the cliff path to the cottage and wouldn’t come out of her room for ages.
I apologised when she let me in. I told her I was going to ring Mum to collect me. She stopped sulking then and said we should let bygones be bygones and she was sorry she called me a whale. We’ve made up our row… for now.
I’m not going outside tonight. Her insults stick like glue and I feel like one now. A big, clumsy whale that you all feel sorry for.
I’m so unhappy. I’d definitely go home if it wasn’t for you. I can’t stop thinking about Table Rock and when I slipped. My skin is shivery every time I move. I’m not sure if it’s the sunburn or thinking about how you pulled me into you real close and how I could have kissed you if I’d moved my face just a tiny inch closer.
Goodnight, Max. I love you.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
* * *
The passengers on the tube check their iPhones or stare blankly into space. Some cling to tradition and read neatly folded newspapers. A man speaks loudly on his mobile about the groceries he must pick up from Tesco Express but the years are falling away from me. Curling like onion skins until all I can remember are those heady sun-filled days and star-dazzled nights. How many letters did I write? Four? Five? All of them are in her hands and primed. Where will they explode next?
* * *
It’s almost a relief when Brian rings. He stammers when he tells me about the letter, uncomfortable and embarrassed by this glimpse into his mother’s screwed-up teenage mind. He only read the opening paragraph. That shows a lack of curiosity he must have inherited from his great-uncle Donal. Unlike Ali, he doesn’t want to know the back story of my youth. I told him enough when I visited him in Slí na hAbhann. He has a pottery to run and more orders coming in for the Willow Passion collection than he can handle. But Karin Moylan is pushing my buttons one by one, determined to expose me before the eyes of my family.
Brian agrees to scan the letter and email it on to me. Then he will burn it in his kiln. 1400°C should do the trick, he says.
My Darling Max
Tonight we looked at stars. My hands shook when you gave me your binoculars and showed me the path of the Milky Way. You named the constellations. I can only remember a few like Orion and Gemini. But I remember what it was like when you put your hands on either side of my head and pointed my face towards Venus.
‘The first star of evening and the wonderful Goddess of Love,’ you said. Your breath tickled my ears. A shooting star fell from the sky. You said it happens all the time and that the heavens are always in a state of flux.
We sat on the bench and you told me more about India. How you were almost killed by an elephant and watched a dead man being burnt. I could have stayed there forever listening to you. God! If anyone knew. I feel as guilty as anything writing this. You kissed me. 3!! times. Oh God… oh God… 3 times!!! You opened my mouth with your tongue and it was so different to the way Jake does it. Like I’m dreaming what’s happening and there’s arrows shooting through me. I wanted so much for us to lie on the ground and keep kissing forever.
It was so dark I couldn’t see your face. You told me I was special and beautiful. No one ever said I was beautiful before. Well, Jake did but he said ‘weirdly beautiful’ and that’s not a compliment, not as far as I’m concerned. You said it properly and that’s when you kissed me for the 3rd time. That one was deeper. A bit scary and it hurt a bit, the way you were holding me so close but I didn’t pretend.
I nearly threw up when Karin came out. We’d stopped by then. Thank God we had. If she’d seen… I can’t even think about it. She came out in her nightdress, all hot and bothered, even though you showed the stars to her as well. The Big Dog star and the Big Dipper and the rest of the ones we’d looked at together. She said looking at stars was more boring than swimming and we should all go to bed. And we did. I’m going to try and be nicer to her. I’ll tell Jake that she likes him. It’ll stop him bothering me. I can’t stand to think of him ever coming near me again.
I won’t sleep tonight. Your lips on mine… oh Max… what’s going to happen when I go home? I can’t stop thinking and thinking… if only I was ten years, even three years older. Then I’d be grown up enough to know all about signals from men and what they mean.
Yours forever
Nadine
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
CHAPTER 55
JAKE
Eleanor was relaxed but determined to make a full recovery. It still felt strange, the newness of talking to her without that bristling sense of busyn
ess that always used to surround her. Her bungalow was cosy, a word he would never have attributed to his childhood home. He knew Cora was responsible for the softer lighting and vases of fresh cut flowers, the wholesome meals she prepared for him when he visited.
It was days after her stroke before he remembered Cora’s admission about Sea Aster’s planning permission. Perhaps, in the confusion of that day, he had misunderstood. Eleanor had never given any indication that she had changed her mind and had always rejected his attempts to pay rent on the basis that he was maintaining the property until the conversion could begin.
She was relaxing in the back garden, a rug over her knees, when he called to see her after the UK tour. Cora carried out a tray of tea and scones then discreetly withdrew.
‘Enough about that,’ Eleanor said when Jake asked too many questions about her health. ‘I wanted to talk to you and Nadine together but she shows no inclination to return home.’
‘She is at home – ’
‘For goodness sake, she’s living in a shipping container. That hardly qualifies as a home unless you’re an unfortunate immigrant seeking asylum.’ It would take more than an ischemic stroke for Eleanor to lose her interruptive skills.
‘What do you want to talk to us about?’
‘I’ve come to a decision. I’m gifting Sea Aster to the two of you. A fifty-fifty split.’
‘Are you joking?’
‘Have you ever known me to have a sense of humour?’
‘But… that’s very generous – ’
‘Call it generosity, conscience money, motherly love, whatever,’ she said. ‘I’ve been doing a lot of thinking since my stroke.’ She began to cry, a sudden loud outburst that startled him.
‘It’s okay… it’s okay.’ He patted her hand and glanced helplessly towards the house. ‘Will I call Cora?’
She blew her nose vigorously and her voice, although muffled when she spoke again, carried all its old authority. ‘Don’t bother Cora. A few tears here and there never did anyone any harm. I’ve already spoken to my solicitor about changing the deeds. He’ll be in touch with you in due course.’
‘But you can’t… what about your plans for First Affiliation?’
‘Dead in the water. I don’t miss it.’ He thought she was going to cry again but her voice hardened. ‘That’s the extraordinary thing. I thought leaving the party would be akin to an amputation. All my limbs were in place last time I checked. They may not be working as well as I’d like but time and physio will take care of that. I need a second chance, not a second home.’
How could he possibly repay this debt of gratitude? Or even find the appropriate words to thank her.
‘Nadine won’t come back.’
‘She’ll still be the mother of my grandchildren, even after your divorce comes through. I don’t want any arguments. Sea Aster belongs to both of you. Decide between yourselves how to work that out. Get rid of that ugly wall in the hall and open it up to the light. I want my grandchildren to have a base they can call home when they visit.’
Nadine was equally stunned when he rang her that night.
‘Do you think her mind is… you know… affected?’ she asked.
‘She’s one hundred per cent lucid,’ he reassured her. ‘I suspect she was planning to do this even before her stroke.’
‘You know I can’t possibly live there.’
‘The house will be yours as much as mine.’
‘I’m sorry, Jake. Sea Aster means nothing to me. She’s always going to be there – ’
‘Only if we let her.’
‘You think you can banish her that quickly? I don’t. Once the deeds have been gifted to us I’m signing my half over to you. It’ll be my property. I can do as I choose with it. Has she been in touch… texts, phone calls… letters?’
‘Nothing,’ he replied.
‘No contact at all?’
‘Apart from a message I put on her answering machine when I came back from London. I threatened her with a court injunction if she contacts any of us again.’
‘That must have her quivering in her little blue shoes.’
‘You don’t have to be sarcastic.’
‘Do you seriously think she’ll pay a blind bit of notice to a threat like that? What solid evidence have you got that will convince a judge she’s staking our family.’
She waited for his reply and when none was forthcoming she said, ‘What she’s doing goes way beyond that fling you had with her. I met her when I came home to see Eleanor. We took afternoon tea together.’
‘Afternoon tea?’
‘Just because we hate other doesn’t mean we can’t be civilised.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘Because it had nothing to do with you.’
‘Nothing―’
‘She’s convinced I’m responsible for her father’s death.’
‘That’s ludicrous. How could you be responsible… ?’ He stopped, remember the comment Karin had made about Nadine destroying her family. He had brushed her words aside, believed them to be another example of her heightened sense of drama, her unbounded need for attention. Now, as Nadine cut across his surprise, he tried to pull together the strands of that holiday. To search beneath the sun-trapped days on the beach and the headiness of having two beautiful girls vying for his attention. What else had been going on in Monsheelagh Bay that would have led Karin to make such a brutal accusation?
‘Maybe the past would have stayed buried if you hadn’t brought her back into our lives,’ Nadine’s voice had a flattened certainty that chilled him. ‘That’s that part I find impossible to forgive.’
CHAPTER 56
NADINE
I can’t forgive him… but I wonder if Karin Moylan ever left me. Unfinished business. I pushed those stolen letters to the back of my mind as the years passed but when the memory reared up I’d feel the sudden clutch of panic, knowing they were in her hands. Gradually, the words I wrote were bleached from my mind but not their substance. No, that would never fade.
I tense every time Jake rings. As yet, he hadn’t mentioned anything about letters being dropped anonymously through his letterbox but I’m haunted by the knowledge that there’s one more out there. That’s all I wrote before sanity and the slam of a door closing saved my soul.
The final letter arrives. Samantha rings on behalf of her twin. Sam doesn’t have the vocabulary necessary to express extreme embarrassment. She emails a copy. I read it quickly, the last spoonful of medicine gulped down before my stomach turns.
* * *
Dear Max
It was a signal. I know it was, even though you were looking at Joan when you said, ‘There’ll be a shower of meteors tonight. The sky should be magnificent.’
She didn’t say anything. I’m not sure she even heard you. It’s like she was stoned out of her mind only she wasn’t. She wasn’t even drunk. She just seemed separated from us by a massive black cloud. I can’t figure out how she can look really nice at times and then her face sags like she’s wearing some kind of sad skin mask.
Karin said the only stars she wants to see are in the cinema. She’s hardly spoken to me since the picnic by the river when we saw the kingfisher. Did she really expect me to lie to you about her age? I still feel your fingers in my hair when you put that feather there. I wish it hadn’t blown away. I’d keep it forever. You gave me that same look tonight, kind of sly, like you didn’t want them to see and you said, ‘Fireworks in the sky. You don’t know what you’re missing.’
I wasn’t going to go out. I wanted to and I didn’t. I couldn’t decide. I kept going to the window and looking out. I saw you staring up at the sky. The cottage was quiet, like it was holding its breath. But that was me, I guess. I wore my jeans and my jumper, even though it was warm. I was afraid yet not afraid. Is that how drug addicts feel? All fog-brained up with wanting and not wanting?
You were right about the meteors. They were like arrows of light in the sky. I could see the Milky
Way all stretched out like spilled milk being brushed with a feather. A kingfisher feather. You said I was a poet as well as an artist and I’d be famous one day.
‘Always remember tonight,’ you said and kissed my forehead. I closed my eyes and you kissed my eyelids, like you wanted to seal what we’d seen there forever. My knees were shaking so much I was afraid I’d fall. I was frightened but you told me not to be. You said you wouldn’t hurt me and when you kissed my neck it was as if all those meteors were exploding inside my head. You knelt down on the grass in front of me and then I knelt too, even though I knew I shouldn’t. I didn’t want to think about Joan or Karin or Jake or anyone but you, kneeling there like you were praying in front of me and we kissed like that, I don’t know how many times, more than 3 definitely, and then I was lying on the grass. It was damp and ticklish on the back of my neck. I was glad I had my jeans on because they’re really difficult to get off but not my jumper… you pulled it over my head and my hair was all tangled in it. That’s when I got scared. You were heavy on me and wouldn’t listen when I said stop. I couldn’t breathe. I kept on thinking of Joan and her sad face and that what we were doing was going to make her even sadder. Not that she would find out. I’d never tell her. Not ‘til my dying day. But what if she guessed that you were touching my breasts, my nipples… oh my God… or if Karin knew. She’d kill me absolutely kill me stone dead. All I felt was frightened, like I didn’t know you anymore. I wanted you to tell me you loved me but you didn’t ‘cause you were breathing so fast and kissing me all the time and then we heard the door slam. You said it was the wind. I was glad because it made you pull my jumper back on. Everything was different, even the sky. You shook me and said, ‘Jesus Christ, if you say anything…’
Why were you so angry with me? You’re the one who hurt me, not the other way round. I was glad the wind blew the door closed but now I’m scared all over again. What if it wasn’t the wind? I wanted to look in at Karin and see if she was awake but I didn’t. I heard your bedroom door close. You’re in the next room lying beside Joan. Why did I go out tonight? Why does what we did feel awful and exciting at the same time? I hate myself. I really do. What would have happened if you’d taken off my jeans? Oh my God… oh my God! How will I face Karin in the morning? I hope it rains tomorrow night and all the meteors have fallen. I’m going to be strong from now on.