Summer’s Shadow

by Anna Wilson

  Summer remembered the footsteps she had heard. Had someone started the fire on purpose?

  ‘If we’re going to blame anyone, it should be me,’ Tristan said. ‘All those books and papers up in the attic. They were perfect tinder. Becca was always telling me to clear it out. But – oh, I know, stupid and sentimental, isn’t it? – there were a lot of photos and things up there. Memories that I don’t really want to . . .’ His face was suddenly so sad.

  The photos!

  Why hadn’t she taken them while she had had the chance? She should ask him now. Although, without them as evidence, he could deny those particular ones ever existed. She plunged in.

  ‘Talking of photos—’

  Through the open window, the hall phone sliced through her words, sending her blood cold.

  Every time I try to ask him, something interrupts us!

  Tristan jumped up. ‘Phone still works, at least,’ he called over his shoulder as he climbed through the enormous open window behind them, taking a short cut through the kitchen to answer the call.

  Summer got up and leaned through the window, straining to catch Tristan’s voice. She heard: ‘. . . goodness . . . fetch him? . . . OK.’ Then a silence as the caller clearly spoke at length and Tristan listened.

  He came to the window shortly, his face drawn. He leaned against the frame, as though he needed the support.

  ‘Found him,’ he said.

  Kenan.

  Summer felt her heart fly to her throat.

  ‘Is he – he’s all right?’

  Tristan nodded, his mouth set in a thin line.

  She sat down on the back of the bench. ‘So?’ she said.

  ‘So he’s safe.’

  Summer let out a long breath. ‘Are you – are you going to go and get him? I mean . . . where is he?’

  ‘He’s not coming back. He and Becca have decided to find somewhere else to stay.’ His tone was weary.

  ‘For now, you mean?’ Summer frowned.

  Tristan shook his head. ‘She’s not coming back. And nor is he. It doesn’t much matter. We can’t stay here either. Not now. I’ll need to see about insurance, repairs, not to mention getting somewhere for you and me to stay for a while . . .’

  Summer could not speak. What did he mean, ‘She’s not coming back’? Her aunt had not been at Bosleven for the whole time Summer had come to live there.

  Suddenly Summer felt uncontrollably angry at this man who always allowed himself to be pushed around by his son – and his wife, it seemed – who was so calm, so accepting of everything that had happened. He should be screaming, raging at the loss of his family, the damage to his home.

  ‘Always liked a bit of a drama, Kenan,’ Tristan muttered.

  That did it. Summer found her voice, spiked with fury: ‘A bit of a drama? A BIT of a drama? Dragging me by the hair while a fire rages above him, blaming me for it? Running away so you’re beside yourself? Are you EVER going to tell me what’s going on—?’

  ‘OK, I’ll admit, Kenan’s made quite a statement.’

  ‘Dooooh!’ Summer slammed her fist on the bench beside her in exasperation.

  Tristan jumped at the noise and finally looked Summer in the eye for the first time.

  She crossed her arms tightly across her chest and held his gaze, challenging him.

  ‘Will you please tell me what is going on?’ she said. ‘Why doesn’t your wife want me here? Why haven’t I met her? Please—!’

  Tristan held out a hand to stop her. ‘You’re right. I have to. Explain. Stay here a minute. I need to show you something.’ He turned away from the window and walked into the shadows of the house.

  Summer went inside and waited in the kitchen for her uncle to return. The air was sharp with smoke and acrid odours from the burned house.

  When, after some time, Tristan did come back, he was carrying something in both hands, keeping it close to his body as though it were incredibly fragile.

  For one heart-stopping moment Summer thought it was the cat, but it was the tin box she had found in the attic.

  Tristan set the box down on the kitchen table. It was even more battered than it had been and blackened by the fire.

  ‘The one thing I would have loved to see go up in flames,’ he said, nodding at the tin. ‘And the only thing they saved. From all that . . . junk.’ He was talking to himself now. ‘She always had a way of getting through to me. I can see it now. Her final act.’

  Summer gasped. ‘What do you mean?’

  Tristan smiled sadly. ‘You mentioned photos, and I knew you’d found them. I couldn’t face talking about her. I kept trying to avoid it, hoping that you would stop trying to piece things together, that it would all go away. In the end she wouldn’t let me be . . . It had to come out in the end. She always said she could never leave Bosleven. Anyway, it’s all in here.’ He tapped the lid of the box lightly, averting his gaze. ‘Everything you need to know. I . . . I can’t watch you read it. I’m sorry. I know you’ll hate me. I’ve lost everything now, though, so it doesn’t much matter what you think.’

  He backed away from the table.

  ‘I’m going to go and talk to Kenan and Becca. I’m sorry, but I can’t take you with me. We’ll speak later. I – I don’t know what else to say just now. I’ll leave you to it.’

  He turned and walked out of the room without looking back.

  Summer thought back to that rainy afternoon in the attic. The cat had been there. It had acted weirdly, just as it had before last night’s fire. Had it been trying to tell her something about the contents of the box just as she now believed it had tried telling her about the fire?

  Don’t be stupid. It’s a cat.

  She wondered again where the animal was. It seemed to know how to look after itself, though, coming and going as it pleased. It must have run to safety.

  She stroked the lid of the tin and swallowed.

  Tristan had said she should ‘read’ it all.

  Letters. Must be.

  She swallowed again, feeling suddenly very thirsty.

  She got up and went to the sink, took an upturned glass from the draining board and filled it from the tap, drinking the water down in harsh gulps.

  Returning to the box, she prised open the buckled lid and, as she did so, had a sharp sensation, a vision almost, that she was standing on the edge of a cliff, as she had done with Zach only the previous day.

  She closed her eyes for a second and remembered talking to Zach about what it would be like to jump. How she had thought that one small step would mean she was lost forever. One small action now – opening the box – could change everything.

  Zach. I wish you were here with me.

  Would he have heard about the fire? Would the news have reached the village?

  She opened her eyes. This leap would take her where she had thought she wanted to go – to answers and certainty. Did she really want that now? Once she jumped, there would be not the slightest chance of scrabbling back to the safety of unknowing.

  The past was here, beneath her fingers. She thought of Zach’s gran, telling her not to keep her mother locked out, but to listen, to open the door.

  ‘That’s the only way you’ll find out what it is she wants you to know.’

  She sat down, slid the box closer to her and looked at the photos, neatly stacked in the old tin. Summer did not want to see them just at that moment. She lifted them out and put them to one side and saw an envelope at the bottom of the box. Yellowed and dirty at the edges, as though it had been read over and over.

  The handwriting was as familiar to Summer as her own.

  Only one letter?

  She picked it up. It was thin, insubstantial; not at all important-looking. She turned it over and saw that it had been slit carefully and deliberately with a knife, not torn at in a hurry. She slipped her fingers and thumb into the opening and gently withdrew the letter inside. It was comprised of two small sheets of foxed white paper.

  She unfolded it with shaking
hands and read:

  London

  16th April 20XX

  Dear Triss,

  I don’t suppose you thought you would hear from me again. I wanted to speak to you face to face, but in the end I couldn’t. I’m a coward, I suppose.

  There’s no way to break this to you gently. You have a daughter. Don’t worry. I don’t want your help and I definitely don’t want your money. I even thought about not telling you, but then I didn’t think that was fair.

  She was born last night and she is the most beautiful creature. She has big blue eyes and her lips are like a little rosebud, waiting to bloom. She is her father’s daughter, I think, although the midwife swears she’s the spit of me – ‘the spit’ – it’s what Mrs Pendred used to say about me and Becca, isn’t it? I’ve called her Summer: Summer Lamorna. Summer for the summer we had. Lamorna for the nearest beach to our beach. Our rocky beach with no name.

  I knew we would never last. I saw the way you looked at Becca when you thought I wasn’t looking. If I had known about the baby sooner, I would have said something. Then you told me it was Becca you loved, and I knew I couldn’t tell you. I wanted to keep her. More than I wanted you, by then. I was so angry with you.

  I know I’ve really messed up now because I’ll never be able to come back to Bosleven, and I love that place almost more than I love you.

  How could I be so selfish? You have to understand: I had to make a clean break. Becca would have known. (She would definitely know now if she could see Summer.)

  The only way to make sure Becca did not try and stay in touch was to have the row. I didn’t drop you in it, and of course I didn’t mention the baby. I simply told her I hated her for taking you away from me. Which of course was partly true, but not true enough to make me walk away from my sister and Bosleven. That was the sacrifice I had to make, to protect my sister and my daughter. Myself too, I suppose.

  I’m sorry. I know she hates me now: what’s worse, she thinks her twin sister hates her.

  She couldn’t be more wrong.

  I have one thing to ask you. It will probably never be necessary, and I know I am being morbid, but I’ve decided I want to name you as Summer’s guardian. I can’t bear the thought of what might happen to this tiny girl if one day I can’t be there for her. If anything happened to me I would want her to know her father. And Bosleven is her real home. It’s where she came from. She belongs there.

  I won’t put your name on the birth certificate. I won’t mention you as her father in the will either. I’ve even changed my surname. I’m just plain old Catherine Jones now.

  I hope you will feel you can do this one thing for me. For Summer.

  Please burn this letter along with the photos.

  C x

  Summer stared at the pages long after she had finished reading, her eyes opaque with tears.

  She knew she should be feeling something towards her mother for keeping this from her. Anger. Hatred. Betrayal. Disgust, even. She did not feel any of those things. The only thought that swam in and out of her mind was that she was not alone any more. She had a father. Bosleven was her home.

  ‘She belongs there.’

  Zach’s grandmother had been right: her mother had reached her. Through the thin places. Through the walls of this old house, through the shadows, she had persisted, on and on until the truth had come out.

  Then she gasped as something else occurred to her. Kenan. He was . . .

  NO!

  Her brother.

  She dropped the letter on the table as though scorched by it.

  But he hates me! Was that why . . . ? Does he know?

  She pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes.

  His mother. That argument . . .

  She made to leave the room and then stopped. She had no idea what to do next. She grabbed the photos from the table and flopped into the old armchair by the dresser. What if Tristan wanted her to go now? What if he could not bear for her to stay another day at Bosleven?

  I don’t want to leave.

  It hit her as she sifted through the images: her mother had lived here, had loved it, had said Bosleven was Summer’s ‘real home’.

  Is that why I keep seeing her? Feeling her? Hearing things?

  Then she remembered what her mother had said in the letter.

  ‘. . . “the spit” – it’s what Mrs Pendred used to say about me and Becca . . .’

  Kenan had said his mum had been back to get things . . .

  Maybe it was not her mother she had seen at all.

  Suddenly there was only one person she wanted to talk to.

  Zach. I have to tell him.

  As Summer ran down to the sea, she knew she should have waited and spoken to Tristan. He would come back, see she had gone and think she had run away too, as Kenan had done.

  She could not face him, though. Not right away. She had to get things straight. Had to speak to Zach.

  He was not on the beach. She scanned the cove. Maybe he had climbed to the Point. Maybe he was fishing. Maybe he had heard about the fire. Would he try to find her at the house?

  It was cold. The morning sun had given way to a leaden sky, thick with cloud that had raced inland on a stiff breeze. The air was damp, metallic, threatening rain.

  Summer was wild. Her head was spinning from what she had read and her heart was racing from running down to the cliffs. She did not know what she felt any more. She was flailing in a whirlpool of confusion.

  An urgent desire took hold of her: to plunge into the water, to wash everything out of her, to feel clean and fresh and new.

  She threw off her clothes and jumped into the sea in her underwear. As she fell through the ink-black water, she thought of letting herself go, of never coming up for air again. It would be the easy thing to do. She would not have to face Tristan or Kenan or Becca. Not have to make any decisions about her future. She fell and fell, her lungs tightening.

  Easier to drown than to hurl herself off the cliffs.

  What about Zach, though? What would happen if he came down and found her, floating? She saw his heart-shaped face, those blue eyes clouded with panic and fear. He did not deserve that.

  Tristan did not deserve it either.

  She pushed up, up to the surface again and gulped at the cold air, swimming quickly to the side, looking about her again, willing Zach to appear. He would know what to say. What she should do.

  Please come. Please.

  Still no one.

  She heaved herself out of the choppy water and quickly found a foothold on the rough rocks. She knew all the steps and ledges now as well as if she had been climbing over them all her life. She swept up her top and rubbed her arms vigorously with it, then flung it about her shoulders, an ineffective barrier against the chill in the air.

  A buzzing, tingling sensation crept through her: it was not real warmth, only her body going numb, but she did not care. She could not go back until she had spoken to Zach.

  ‘Think you’re so cool, don’t you?’

  She turned her head a fraction, enough to register who was there, but not enough to encourage him to come any nearer.

  ‘Don’t think I haven’t been watching you,’ Kenan shouted, raising his voice. The wind was rising, bringing with it the beginnings of a stormy shower.

  Summer felt a few drops fall on her still damp skin. She turned back to look at the water.

  What should I do? Swim away from him?

  ‘I’m talking to you!’ Kenan yelled.

  Summer turned to face him squarely. His teeth were bared in an animal snarl. She remembered him pulling her by the hair and felt a jolt of fear.

  He’s going to thump me.

  ‘Hey, OK,’ she said, holding out a hand to keep Kenan at bay. ‘I know you’re mad at me. But you have to believe it wasn’t me. The police said . . . Hey!’

  Kenan was coming closer, his eyes narrowed.

  I should tell him. That I’m his sister. That I wouldn’t hurt him or his mum or anyone
.

  ‘We’re going to sort this out, just you and me,’ Kenan said. He pulled his T-shirt up over his head. Summer saw that the shorts he was wearing were swimming trunks.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  He was hardly behaving like a boy getting changed for a casual dip in the sea. He smiled nastily, raising his eyebrows.

  ‘I’m challenging you.’

  Summer needed to talk to him calmly, to make him listen. She began wriggling into her top.

  ‘I wouldn’t bother doing that,’ Kenan said. ‘Know why? Because I’m going to race you to the Point. If I win, you have to leave.’

  ‘W-what?’ Summer’s teeth chattered pathetically against each other. The rain was falling harder now. Her hair was sticking to her cheeks.

  ‘You heard me. I know you reckon you’re a fantastic swimmer. You come down here every day with your boyfriend – that village idiot,’ he spat, ‘pushing yourself to go further and further. Climbing like a bloody monkey. This is our beach. He’s not even supposed to be here.’

  His words, his tone, his total arrogance: it was as if someone had turned a light on in Summer. A swelling rage rushed through her, hatred charging her with energy.

  ‘You never come down here!’ Summer shouted.

  Kenan’s eyes glinted. ‘Don’t I? How come I know what you’ve been up to then? You’ve tried to wheedle your way in since the day you arrived. Mum says you should never have been allowed to set foot in Bosleven. She says your mum was a slut. A cow.’

  Summer roared, chucking her top down and lunging at him, not caring she was in her bra and pants.

  He skipped to one side and laughed. ‘Let’s see who really belongs here, Summer Jones.’ He paused, raising his eyebrows in challenge. ‘We’re going to race. To the Point. And when you lose, you’ll have to pack up and leave. Go back to where you came from and leave us alone forever. If you don’t drown first, that is,’ he added. ‘But then that would serve you right. Arsonist.’ He turned and spat on the rocks.

  ‘OK. I’m up for it.’ She laughed bitterly. ‘Didn’t think I’d say that, did you? You’d like to have the guts to get rid of me, but you’re too much of a wimp! So you’ve come up with an idiotic plan. You’re going to say we were swimming together, having fun and I had a tragic accident? I don’t think so. Like anyone would believe you.’