Ghostbird

by Carol Lovekin

  ‘You think I should, though.’

  ‘I don’t think anything. Cadi, I could be anyone, right? You hardly know me and I’m almost certainly full of you-know-what. Ask your mother.’

  ‘Will you wait?’

  ‘Dim problem. I’ll unload the bike and pump up the tyres. The chain could do with a drop of oil too.’

  Violet sat at the table smoking. ‘I’d started to worry.’ Her blue cardigan draped round her shoulders like a security blanket. ‘I went round to Lili’s. She’s got a visitor. I didn’t like to intrude.’

  ‘Has she?’ Cadi frowned. ‘I didn’t see anyone.’

  ‘It looked like the woman from the white house. I saw them in the garden the other day. I didn’t even know Lili knew her.’

  ‘Me neither.’

  ‘Where have you been?’

  ‘For a ride. I took Lili’s bike.’ Cadi began undoing her wind-blown plait.

  ‘You didn’t go to the lake?’

  Cadi tugged at her hair.

  ‘Cadi?

  ‘No, Mam, I didn’t go to the lake. I went up on the Carregroad, but actually, what if I did go to the lake. You know I go there. Get over it.’

  Violet stubbed out her cigarette. ‘No, I don’t know anything of the sort. I trusted you to do as I asked.’

  ‘I trusted you to tell me the truth.’

  Violet lit another cigarette.

  ‘Before you say anything else, please, can we not fight? And do you have to smoke? It’s horrible.’

  Violet’s fingers trembled. ‘This isn’t the best time for me to give up, Cadi. And I don’t know what you want me to say.’

  Cadi dragged a chair round the table, closer to her mother. ‘Yes, you do.’

  Violet kept her head down, her hands on the edge of the table, rigid as claws.

  The smoke from her cigarette made Cadi’s eyes sting. Refusing to move, she blinked and swallowed. Passive smoking seemed like a small price to pay for her mother’s attention. ‘Why is it so hard, Mam? Is it because he killed himself? Is it because of me?’

  The scrape of the chair on the floor as Violet pushed it back set Cadi’s teeth on edge. For a moment she thought her mother was leaving. Instead, Violet slumped sideways.

  ‘No, it’s never been about you.’ She looked up, and Cadi saw the purple curves under her eyes. She smiled, and Cadi was reminded of the photograph Owen had shown her. ‘Do you remember the strawberries?’

  Cadi pushed her loosened hair off her face. ‘What strawberries? What are you talking about now?’

  ‘The day we had a picnic in Lili’s garden and you ate so much sugar it’s a wonder your teeth didn’t fall out.’

  Cadi hesitated. A glass bowl, cut like diamonds, glinting in the sun.

  Even if she did remember, she wasn’t about to let Violet go off on another tangent. ‘What’s it got to do with anything?’

  ‘What, what, what: all these questions. My head’s spinning with them.’

  ‘And mine’s empty of answers.’ Cadi felt mutinous.

  ‘Listen to me, will you?’

  Cadi’s hands began to shake. ‘Why? You lie all the time. You and Lili have kept me in the dark for years and you wonder why I don’t give a damn about a stupid bowl of bloody strawberries.’ She flung back her hair – tangled wings in the smoke-laden air. ‘Is this how it’s going to be from now on? You and Lili still lying, year after year, pretending everything’s normal?’

  Violet crushed another half-smoked cigarette into the ashtray. She touched the ends of Cadi’s hair.

  Cadi jerked away. ‘Don’t.’

  She did remember the strawberries. Cadi held onto every happy memory she had as carefully as if it was a baby bird fallen from its nest. It hurt to acknowledge how few there were. Violet’s deceit had eaten into Cadi’s good memories like acid.

  ‘Lili won’t mind.’ Violet had placed a glass bowl on the table under the tree, filled to the brim with lipstick-glossy strawberries. She piled them into dishes and hadn’t said a thing when Cadi spooned heaps of sugar on top and the wasps began to wake up. After they’d eaten every last one, Violet gathered bowl and dishes and spoons together.

  ‘Go away,’ she said, flapping her hand at a wasp.

  ‘Mam,’ Cadi said. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Whatever for?’

  Cadi had wanted to say, for making an effort, but thought it might sound sarcastic. ‘For this.’

  ‘Nonsense, it’s only a few strawberries.’ Violet put out her hand and touched Cadi’s hair, and the moment had felt unexpectedly lovely.

  Raindrops splashed against the window.

  ‘It’s not about those memories,’ Cadi said. ‘We have to sort out the ones I don’t know about.’

  ‘I don’t know how to.’

  ‘Stop saying that!’

  Before Violet could speak again, Cadi took a deep breath. She hesitated. It might upset her, at least it would be honest, and a start…

  ‘I sometimes wish Lili was my mother and not you.’

  ‘I know.’

  Startled, Cadi swallowed. ‘Well, it’s not my fault I was born. It wasn’t Teilo’s either.’ Violet’s hands lay on the table like white twigs and Cadi resisted the urge to touch them. ‘Dora’s death was an accident. It might have been different if he’d been able to tell someone. Maybe he wouldn’t have killed himself and I’d have had a dad.’

  The bluntness was deliberate. At any moment her courage might fail and the meadowsweet she now smelled every waking moment might sweep through the house and smother them. She noticed how low her mother’s head was bent, and thought she must be crying.

  Violet never cried and wasn’t about to start. She took another cigarette from the packet and lit it. As she exhaled, she looked at it as if it were a curiosity. ‘God knows why I do this.’

  ‘Don’t change the subject. I won’t let you.’

  ‘I’m not,’ Violet said. ‘Really, I’m not.’

  Everything about her softened: her face, which always appeared to Cadi like a mask, was now scribbled with little lines. Not deep ones like an old woman, they were tiny, as if someone had brushed her face with cobwebs.

  ‘If I promise I’m not running away,’ she said, ‘will you let me be by myself for a little longer? And then I’ll tell you anything you want to know.’

  Cadi didn’t answer.

  ‘Please?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ Cadi said. ‘I’ll go round to Lili’s.’

  ‘What about her visitor?’

  ‘What about her?’

  Violet smiled.

  ‘I’ve spent my life minding my own business,’ Cadi said, ‘and look where that’s got me.’ She stood up.

  ‘Thank you, Cadi.’ Violet smiled and someone who didn’t know her might have thought it a poor effort.

  ‘You’ve got an hour,’ Cadi said. ‘Not a minute longer.’

  Sixty-seven

  Curious about Lili’s visitor, Cadi eased open the door.

  A woman with hair the same shade as Cerys’ sat at the table opposite Lili.

  ‘Where did you spring from?’ Lili said.

  Cadi stared at the red-haired woman.

  ‘Hello, Cadi.’ She held out her hand. ‘Pomona, nice to meet you.’

  Cadi avoided the hand, feeling unexpectedly out of place. Her rudeness, she saw, embarrassed Lili. She didn’t care.

  ‘Do you want a cup of tea?’

  Cadi said nothing.

  Reaching for the kettle, Lili topped up the pot.

  ‘Help yourself,’ Pomona said, nodding at a plate of éclairs next to a vase overflowing with flowers.

  Ignoring the cakes, Cadi picked up her book from the armchair. ‘I’ve been looking for this.’

  ‘You left it behind yesterday.’

  ‘I read that when I was twelve,’ Pomona said. ‘I couldn’t make up my mind if I wanted to be Jane or Helen.’

  Cadi eyed Pomona, wondering why she was there.

  ‘Helen was so good.’ Pomona smiled.
‘I always wanted to be good.’

  Cadi stared and Lili frowned. ‘Is everything alright?’

  ‘Fine.’ This time Cadi didn’t even bother crossing her fingers.

  Lili poured tea. ‘There you are.’ She frowned again. ‘Sit down; you’re making the place look untidy.’

  ‘Sorry, I’ve changed my mind.’ She dropped her book onto the armchair and crossed to the door. ‘Later.’

  ‘Cadi!’

  The door swung half open behind her.

  ‘What was that all about?’

  Cadi heard the confusion in Lili’s voice and hovered in the lea of the wall.

  ‘She seemed okay to me.’ Pomona’s words drifted through the door. ‘Bit distracted maybe.’

  ‘Believe me, I know my niece. Something’s definitely up.’

  Well, aren’t you the smart one. Cadi’s throat was drying up again, like burnt paper.

  She checked her phone. Forty-five minutes left. She would text Owen; tell him he may as well go home. Ducking under the window, she made for the gate, turned down toward the lake path, feet dragging in the dust.

  Lying down by the Sleeping Stone, she watched the sky pour light over the grass like water, and waited.

  Sixty-eight

  Knowing a thing logically wasn’t the same as understanding it emotionally.

  Somewhere in the past hour, Violet had found herself in her daughter’s shoes. The room turned cold and Violet disliked being cold. She didn’t like the sun much either but right then she needed to be warm. She stepped outside, unsure what to do and began walking in the direction of the village.

  Rounding a bend she saw him. Backlit in the bright sunshine he looked taller. The back doors of his van stood open and Violet saw Lili’s bicycle.

  ‘For God’s sake, what now, Owen?’

  ‘I brought Cadi back.’

  ‘Back from where?’ Alarm coursed through her. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘She was up on the Carreg road and got a puncture. I saw her and offered to help.’

  ‘She went off with a complete stranger?’

  ‘Well, it was a challenge, I admit.’

  ‘That isn’t funny, Owen.’

  ‘No. Sorry. She’s fine. I explained I knew you and Lili, and offered to call you.’

  ‘She’s my daughter, Owen, what did you think you were up to?’

  ‘I wasn’t up to anything. I fixed her tyre and brought her back, that’s it.’

  ‘Why didn’t she tell me?’

  ‘Maybe she’s got more important things on her mind.’

  Had she been anyone else, Violet might have said thank you. It’s what a rational person would have said. She was so off-balance, she couldn’t even summon anger. Cadi had been talking to Owen. Almost to herself she said, ‘I can’t think with you here. I’m going back to the house. Follow me please, I need you to explain.’

  Violet strode back to the house and leaving the front door open for him, walked through the house and out into the old garden. She didn’t want Lili to see her.

  ‘I hardly ever come out here,’ she said. ‘It feels haunted.’

  ‘Ghosts.’ It wasn’t a question and she remembered how he rarely asked them. ‘I was never that keen on them myself.’

  With his dark hair falling over one eye and his arms as brown as a sparrow, he reminded Violet of a vagabond, unsuitable and dangerous, and her heart lurched.

  She worried the scar on her hand, took hold of her thoughts. ‘You’d never think this garden had been created by the same person who made Lili’s, would you?’

  Lili’s garden: created by Hopkins women and loved by Gwenllian who had loved Teilo so much she could never find fault. A place full of spells and moths and perpetual midnight.

  ‘When the moon shines on Lili’s garden even I can believe in magic.’ Violet pulled her cardigan tight around her shoulders. ‘But in here, it’s different, it’s like I’m being watched. Only I can’t see anyone.’

  He saw her eyes – darting here and there as if she feared the garden itself. Other than an ancient wooden bench, there was only the long grass to sit on. He sat with his elbows on his knees.

  They were a little at a loss with one another.

  ‘I don’t know why you’re here, Owen. I’ve decided you probably don’t want to make trouble, but I still don’t think you’re here by chance.’

  He pulled up a stalk of grass and chewed the end. I know exactly what I want.

  ‘It must be lonely,’ he said, ‘keeping everything bottled up. I haven’t forgotten, you know. Whatever the reasons at the time, it meant something.’

  ‘Of course I’m lonely. Why would you think saying it makes a difference?’ Her voice sounded harsh. ‘You know she isn’t yours, don’t you? I can’t believe you ever thought she might be or that I wouldn’t have told you.’

  He held her gaze and nodded. ‘She could have been. I needed to be sure, that’s all. And that day on the seafront, I didn’t mean to hurt you, Violet.’

  ‘I know.’ She bit her lip. ‘It’s all so confusing.’

  ‘We’re both confused.’

  ‘There are days when I can’t bear who I’ve become.’

  He waited, sensing the words piled up inside her.

  ‘You didn’t tell her anything?’ Violet pulled the blue sleeves of her cardigan down, wrapping her fists into the cuffs.

  ‘Of course not – what do you take me for?’

  ‘You said you might. You scared me.’

  ‘I said a lot of things. We both did.’

  His phone beeped. He glanced at the screen. Cadi: Go home cowboy. I’m fine.

  ‘Sorry, it’s a mate.’ He put the phone away.

  Violet ran a finger across her scarred hand. ‘I think if I don’t talk to someone, I’ll go properly mad. It may as well be you.’ She tilted her head and looked sideways at him. ‘Owen, if you had the chance to keep someone from being hurt, would you?’

  ‘It would be the decent thing, I guess. If I could.’

  ‘Sometimes it’s for the best then?’

  Owen almost took her hand. With anyone else he wouldn’t have hesitated. But this was Violet with her fragile, cut off heart.

  ‘Lili thinks I ought to have told Cadi the truth from the start.’ Violet knotted her hands tighter into the fabric of her cardigan. ‘When she first met me, I think I made her afraid. How ironic is that, Lili the witch scared of me?’

  ‘You can be scary.’

  Violet shrugged. ‘She didn’t trust me. She was too concerned for him, her precious brother. She knew. Right from the beginning, Lili knew exactly who I was and that’s why she was afraid of me.’

  And now you’re scared of her and Cadi’s on your tail too. He didn’t say this.

  ‘I never wanted to harm Cadi. I wanted to protect her.’

  ‘I know.’

  Violet flinched. ‘You don’t know anything about it.’

  ‘I know what Cadi told me.’

  ‘She must have been desperate.’

  Her voice sounded confrontational again and he frowned. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘I didn’t mean it like that. I mean she must have needed to talk pretty badly, to anyone. Even a stranger. Especially a stranger.’ She fiddled with a strand of her hair. ‘And how come she hasn’t spoken to Lili about any of this?’

  ‘Maybe she has.’

  He sensed her reluctance to let down her guard, how she changed the subject as if it was a pair of shoes.

  ‘What’s happening with your house?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’ He leaned back on his hands, his legs stretched out, crossed at the ankles. ‘It needs a lot of work.’

  ‘Do you want to live there?’

  ‘Up until today, I couldn’t give a damn. And then Cadi said it would be nice if I did it up. Like that’s all it would take. But it’s made me think.’ He sighed. ‘I don’t know, Violet. Family stuff, it’s complicated.’

  ‘You don’t say.’

  ‘I can show you if y
ou like.’ He pulled up another blade of grass. ‘Compared to this place, mind, it’s a dump. This is a lovely house. I remember them both from when we were kids. There was a tree house somewhere, and a swing.’ He turned and pointed to where the oak loomed behind a thicket of hollyhock and delphinium. ‘Teilo’s mam would bring us bara brith loaded with butter, and jugs of lemonade.’

  ‘This garden feels as haunted to me as the cottages; I can’t stand it.’

  ‘It’s only a garden, Violet.’

  ‘It isn’t though, is it? It’s a memory, like the lake.’

  Sixty-nine

  I lost something…

  Her wings open and close and in the stillness of the garden, the ghost feels the air change, and the scent of lake water and meadowsweet on the breeze.

  Can you see me?

  Out of focus, the lake shimmered in front of her and Violet saw herself walking into the water, diving down into the darkness, through the weed and the roots of water-lilies, as quiet as a fish. ‘We aren’t supposed to bury our children.’

  ‘No.’

  She couldn’t look at him. Instead, she fixed her eyes on a shambling stand of meadowsweet, trying to erase the image of the water. The sickly scent of the flowers encroached and out of the blue, it made her want to cry.

  ‘They never found her bangle.’ What little control Violet still clung to, was in danger of slipping away. ‘She was wearing a silver bangle. They said they looked for it.’ She swallowed and shivered. ‘I don’t think I can bear it.’

  ‘You can.’ Owen kneeled forward on the grass, making the space between them a little less. ‘Violet, I’m not going to tell you you’ve got choices, because you know you do; we all do. All I’m saying is if you make the wrong one now, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life.’

  ‘I have no life. I have nothing.’

  ‘You’ve got Cadi.’

  She saw him hesitate. He took a breath. ‘And if you want me, you’ve got me now.’

  She raised her eyebrows. ‘You say that like you come as a pair.’ She tried to read his mind and couldn’t.

  ‘I think you need to tell Cadi your story. Give her a chance to tell you hers.’

  Violet trembled. She leaned forward, hands tightly clutched in her sleeves, one knee hard against the other as if she might fold herself up. ‘I let him take her.’ She waited for him to say it wasn’t Teilo’s fault: that she couldn’t have stopped him, and she shouldn’t blame herself. He said none of these things. With a single movement he was at her side on the seat, holding open an arm.