Salt Sisters

by Katherine Graham

  Katherine Graham

  Salt Sisters

  What secrets is this seaside village hiding?

  First published by Quartz Books 2021

  Copyright © 2021 by Katherine Graham

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  First edition

  ISBN: 978-1-8383195-1-9

  This book was professionally typeset on Reedsy

  Find out more at reedsy.com

  For Beth – my lifelong best friend from the very beginning.

  And Igor, my North Star. You made it all possible.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  We got off the plane and walked into the airport terminal, where I promptly threw up.

  The river of passengers diverted as people shuffled and side-stepped around my puddle of vomit. I pressed my face against the cool of the tiled wall.

  ‘There, there.’ My best friend Adam rubbed my back, glancing nervously about.

  A combination of vodka and sleeping pills had knocked me out right after take-off from Hong Kong. I’d blacked out for the entire flight, drowning in a deep sleep where I couldn’t dream and couldn’t wake. Couldn’t picture Amy’s face clearly.

  The last leg of the journey was in sight and the closer we got to home, the higher the waves of nausea rose in my chest. Every so often I had to stop and rest against a seat or grab a handrail and close my eyes to avoid being sucked under the swell, taking deep breaths and riding it out until it washed away. The floor was unsteady beneath my feet.

  ‘Just give me a moment,’ I said.

  Adam had taken care of everything. He had packed my suitcase while I lay on the bed, swinging between body-racking sobs and staring silently at the wall, while his husband Thierry had pulled some strings to get us two seats in business class on the next flight to Heathrow.

  Was that only yesterday? It already felt like a lifetime ago. Yesterday morning, when everything had been normal, when I’d woken up and drunk my coffee like normal. I should have gone to Pilates and met friends for brunch, just like any other Saturday. Maybe spent the afternoon shopping. But then I’d checked my messages and my world had imploded.

  Soon, we were in the hire car motoring up the A1, my forehead resting on the passenger window. Life was inexplicably continuing. People were making journeys, running errands, going for days out. Going on as if nothing had happened. The sun was offensively bright.

  I was drowsy, and despite sleeping for twelve hours straight, I was exhausted. My head pounded and my body ached with the effort of just sitting.

  We turned off the motorway and onto narrow roads bracketed by tall hedgerows, and my internal GPS flickered to life: I knew these country lanes like the lines on my hands. Adam was taking the tight corners cautiously, but I would have been whizzing through.

  The sea was just coming into sight – we got a glimpse here and there as we swung around narrow bends – and I knew that under different circumstances I would have been stretching in my seat by now, craning my neck to see it. Instead, there was a quiet dread, that sick feeling in my stomach that I couldn’t shake, and a heaviness that wouldn’t go away.

  We finally arrived at the village. Seahouses was little more than two dozen streets knotted together above a harbour that opened up onto the vast blue of the North Sea. I directed Adam to Amy’s house, a detached stone cottage that had been the village post office at one time. He pulled up outside and switched off the engine, looking at me to see what was next. It was so quiet.

  This was really happening. I would never see my sister again. Never speak to her, or hear her voice.

  We had shared an entire life and for years, we had come strictly as a pair. Amy was the only person who had been there since the beginning, who truly knew me. But then there were all the things we’d never got to say. And now the years ahead of us, the decades stretching in front that we had taken for granted, all that time had been so abruptly and cruelly cancelled.

  Everything that we would ever do together, all of it was already done. It was only me from now on.

  We stood on the doorstep, and I asked Adam to give me a moment. I had to pull myself together – the last thing I wanted to do was to collapse in tears the second I saw the kids. But the longer I thought about them, just on the other side of the door, the higher my panic grew – how would they cope without their mum?

  The shock was rising once more, beating in my chest and tightening its hands around my throat. I leaned against the door frame, trying to catch my breath. Adam sniffed loudly, and I knew he was trying to hold back his tears.

  Eventually I raised a hand to knock, but before I could, the door opened.

  ‘My darling girl!’ Auntie Sue wailed, opening her arms for me.

  I buried my face in her shoulder, weeping into her soft sweater. Her smell, the curve of her waist and the solidness of her were all so familiar. She held me out at arm’s length, just to get a good look at me, then pulled me in tight again.

  ‘And you must be Adam.’ She took his hand. ‘Thank you for bringing her home.’

  Adam gulped.

  ‘It’s no problem at all.’ His voice tightened. ‘And I’m so sorry for your loss.’

  I took a deep breath.

  ‘How’s Mum?’

  Auntie Sue looked at me warily.

  ‘Well, you know your mum… She’s handling things in her own way.’

  She turned back and ushered us through the hallway into the kitchen, where everyone was gathered.

  The pain in the room hit me like a wave of despair. Amy’s husband, Mike, was sitting at the table with my youngest niece, Betsy curled up to him on one side and her brother, Lucas on the other, both of them softly sobbing. Hannah, their eldest girl – how old was she now? I quickly did the arithmetic and worked out she was thirteen – was sitting across from them with her feet on the bench, hugging her knees to her chest. Their faces were raw, red, and dripping with salty tears. I wanted to throw up again.

  Mum was standing at the counter, cocooned in an enormous orange cardigan. She flung herself onto me.

  ‘Oh, Izzy darling, it’s the most terrible thing!’

  I looked over her shoulder and saw that she had been stirring raisins into a large mixing bowl. Smudges of flour streaked the countertop.

  ‘Is that… a cake, Mum?’

  ‘Yes, darling. Fruit cake – your sister’s favourite. Nobod
y feels like eating anything, of course, but I thought if I made a nice cake, we might at least get our appetites back, and I wanted to do something useful…’

  ‘Mum,’ I said softly.

  She avoided my eyes.

  ‘Amy has died, Mum. Do you understand that?’

  ‘Izzy!’ Auntie Sue hissed. ‘That’s quite enough!’

  I sat on the bench next to Hannah and wrapped my arms around her. She wiped at her tears with her sleeve.

  As Mum calmly went back to her cake, Auntie Sue put the kettle on, and she and Mike tried to fill me in on what they knew so far. As they recounted the details between them, the youngest kids started wailing again and we listened to the story through Betsy’s sobs.

  Mike had come back from the pub, expecting Amy to be waiting at home. Hannah had been sleeping over at a friend’s and the younger kids had been upstairs watching a movie. His supper had been on the kitchen table. Amy had left her book, her reading glasses, and half a glass of wine in the living room. Her slippers had been left by the door and her car keys were gone. Mike asked the kids where she was, and they said she’d told them she had to pop out quickly, but hadn’t said where she was going. They couldn’t remember how long she’d been gone.

  Mike didn’t worry too much, not at first, assuming Amy was running an errand. Perhaps something had come up with one of her community groups, or someone had needed a nurse. It wasn’t unusual for either of them to leave the kids home alone for a short while. Lucas was eleven and was a sensible boy, more than capable of keeping an eye on Betsy, who was already eight. As the night wore on, Mike tried to call Amy, but her phone went straight to voicemail. When she still hadn’t called or come home by midnight, he knew something was wrong.

  He called her best friend, then Auntie Sue, and even the pub to see if she had shown up there. Nobody had seen her. He then phoned the police, who told him that someone would be there shortly. Mike assumed this would be to take a report and get more details. But when an officer came to the door with his hat in his hand, he knew something awful had happened.

  Amy’s car had skidded off the road and crashed into a tree, on a country lane just outside the village. Nobody had seen the accident, but a motorist had arrived soon after and called 999. He’d tried in vain to give first aid to Amy as she lay there, trapped in the crumpled wreck of the car, unsure if she was still alive. When the ambulance got there, they couldn’t find a pulse.

  I looked around the kitchen: my sister’s kitchen, in her home, with her family – all of it was hers, and all of it was her. She would walk through the door any minute now, if only I wished it hard enough…

  I watched the door. Amy didn’t come.

  Adam parked the car outside The Ship. It was a last-minute reservation, made after I had explained to him stony-faced that we would not be staying at my mum’s. Thankfully, there were two rooms available, both with a sea view.

  Seahouses had two pubs – The Ship, at the top of Main Street and The Castle, out by the caravan park. Anyone desiring accommodation grander than a tin can on wheels was limited to the dozen rooms at The Ship.

  We were both wired, despite our exhaustion, and decided to have a scotch in the bar after dumping our bags. It had been after 11 p.m. by the time we had left Amy’s, when all three children had finally gone to bed and Mike had insisted, red-eyed, that we should go and get some rest.

  The Ship was a traditional pub, perched above the harbour and decorated with antique equipment and memorabilia from the local fishing trade. Every inch of wall space in the bar displayed an array of brass dials, gauges, and maritime gear. It was the closest pub to our house, and Dad had always insisted it attracted a better class of clientele. Most of the regulars were fishermen. He used to bring us here when Mum had evening classes, and sometimes on Sundays for lunch if nobody wanted to cook. It was the pub where Amy and I – and every other local teenager – had ordered our first drinks, getting sloppy drunk on pints of snakebite.

  I didn’t recognise the woman behind the bar, but I knew Seahouses people and I knew she would be a talker, so I sent Adam up to order. She was quite taken with the handsome out-of-towner, smiling and flicking her hair. I heard her ask where he was from and what brought him to Northumberland, and when Adam explained quietly that we were here because a family member had sadly died, I saw a flash of understanding on her face. News of Amy’s accident had spread quickly.

  I necked two whiskies and took a third up to bed with me. Adam tucked me in, and I cried fresh tears at how lucky I was to have him.

  ‘Are you sure you don’t want to stay at your mum’s? I don’t know what happened between you two…’

  He folded the duvet down around me, just like my dad used to do. I closed my eyes.

  ‘You have no idea.’ I barely got the words out before sleep finally came.

  That night, I woke countless times. Every time I dozed off, I was yanked cruelly back to the surface. The same nightmare came to me again and again – Amy was there, but I couldn’t see her face clearly; she was right in front of me, but I couldn’t touch her; she was talking to me, but her words were muffled, as if she was underwater. Amy. My Salt Sister, now lost forever.

  Chapter Two

  A knock at my door woke me. The bed looked like a fight scene: I was face-down on the pillow with the duvet knotted around my legs.

  Adam brought me a coffee and a bacon roll before heading out to explore. My appetite hadn’t returned, but the caffeine was much needed. The bags under my eyes were as big as my matching luggage.

  My phone pinged. There were messages of sympathy from some of the Hong Kong group, who had heard the bad news from Thierry.

  I scrolled back to the last message I’d had from Amy. She’d tried to call me on Friday night, just as I’d been arriving at the bar. I’d already been running late – the traffic had been terrible – so I’d let her call go to voicemail and sent a text:

  Sorry! Can’t talk now, I’m out. Everything OK?

  She’d replied: No worries. I had a quiet half-hour and just thought I’d try you. Enjoy your night and talk soon?

  I’d texted back: Sounds good. Speak tomorrow xo

  Nothing out of the ordinary – we were both busy, and the time difference made it difficult to find occasions when it was convenient for both of us to talk.

  When I’d first moved to Hong Kong from Zurich, before I’d met the people who would eventually become my friends and while I’d still been settling in at work, Amy and I had had a regular standing call. Every Friday night, I’d phone her when I got back to my quiet little apartment in that new and strange city. I’d tell her about my job – my big promotion at the bank that had been too good an opportunity to turn down, even though it meant moving to the other side of the world – and she would tell me about her day at the hospital and how the kids were doing.

  But then I’d made friends and started going out more, and work had become so much busier, and then Amy’s shifts had changed and she’d had to work on Friday afternoons. We’d never set a new time for our regular catch-up and had tried instead to snatch conversations in the small gaps of our equally hectic schedules.

  Hong Kong had seemed so superficial at first, impossible to crack – I thought I’d never fit in, never be one of the it-crowd. I’d come so far and still had not quite made it. But then I met Adam, and he introduced me to Chiara, the Italian glamazon, and Mathilde, a kind-hearted Parisian cool-girl, who took me out and introduced me to more people. And one day, when I looked around and saw the life that I’d made for myself so far away, I realised I’d found what I’d been searching for.

  But had it pulled me away from Amy?

  I caressed her name on the screen. How had we not found the time to talk? What had we both been so busy doing all the time?

  Out of habit, or longing, or disbelief, I sent her a message:

  Sorry we missed each other. I wish we could talk now xo

  The icon stayed grey. Undelivered. Unread. Amy would never see
it.

  The rest of my messages were in a new group chat:

  Mum added you to the group: We love Amy

  Mum: Darlings – we are all waking up this morning and remembering our loss. Just understand that this is the saddest you will feel. The pain will never go away but it will not, cannot get worse than this.

  Mum: I invite you to a shared simple meditative experience: take the sitting lotus position, hold the memory of Amy in your left hand and place your right hand to your heart centre. Take ten deep, cleansing breaths.

  Mum: The embodied soul is eternal in existence, indestructible, and infinite, only the material body is factually perishable (Krishna, Bhagavad Gita).

  Mike: Thanks Anne. We will certainly need some deep breathing to get us through this.

  Hannah: But meditating won’t bring Mum back

  Auntie Sue: Meditation isn’t for everyone! The most important thing is that we are all here for each other. Love Auntie Sue. x

  Mum: Actually, studies show that mindfulness and practicing meditation can improve mental well-being after traumatic experiences by two thirds.

  Mum: I’ll do an energy cleansing today. There’s so much sadness in the house and some crystals will help.

  Auntie Sue: Anne! I told you it’s not for everyone! Love Sue. x

  Mike: Maybe it can wait until tomorrow? The police are here.

  I pulled on yesterday’s outfit and ran over to Amy’s house. Mike was in the kitchen with two police officers – a woman who looked like she should be serving in a canteen rather than fighting crime, and an unfeasibly young-looking man who was possibly on work experience. They stopped talking as I came in, and Mike introduced me.

  The dinner-lady-policewoman explained that although Amy had drunk a glass or two of wine, it almost certainly hadn’t put her over the limit. There would be a post-mortem to confirm it and check that there were no other substances or health issues that could have impaired her driving. There would also be forensic tests of the car and the scene of the accident, but in cases like this, she said, the post-mortem usually revealed the whole story.