We Are Family

by Emlyn Rees

  ‘No,’ Giles said. ‘We need to stay here. Where it’s safe.’

  ‘Even if the water gets higher – and I can’t believe it will – there’s always the attic,’ Lewis agreed.

  ‘You don’t understand,’ Bill answered. ‘The bridge is dammed. I’m frightened the same’s true of Watersbind. I’m scared that if –’

  But before Bill could explain any further, his voice began to quaver. He coughed and cleared his throat, but the same thing happened when he tried to speak again. Then he realised the trembling wasn’t emanating from him at all.

  Bill dashed to the room at the back of the house and looked out, but the waters were hurtling past there as well.

  As he ran back through to join the others, a low rumbling noise began to rise up above the cacophony of wind and rain. It wasn’t thunder, though, because it didn’t die. Instead, it grew louder, closer, like a goods train accelerating towards them down a track. A carriage clock dropped off the mantelpiece above the fireplace and smashed to the floor.

  ‘Everybody down!’ Bill shouted, wrapping his arms around Emily and pulling her to the ground.

  It was like the house was coming to life. The floorboards flexed like muscles beneath them. The walls groaned. The ceiling shuddered. Dust showered down. Candles guttered and died. Darkness, thick as velvet, swamped the room.

  Bill closed his eyes and pressed his lips to Emily’s face, as the thunder rolled on. Whatever it was coming towards them, it wasn’t going to stop. The bridge at Watersbind . . . Bill knew then that he’d been right. The reservoir had burst through and loosed its tidal wave towards the town.

  Bill understood then that he was going to die. He was going to die at Emily’s side. He’d failed to save her, but he’d reached her in time. He was glad he’d come for her and not sent Tony. Being with her and not his mother had been the right choice. He’d rather die with Emily than let her die alone. He pulled her face into his chest, and used every inch of his body to cover and protect her.

  He opened his mouth to whisper goodbye.

  But then the waters hit.

  The noise. It was like being hit by an avalanche. Like being buried alive.

  The house rocked as if from a mighty hammer blow. The air was sucked from the room as the waters rushed past. Then wave upon wave burst in, through the windows and doors. They could have been on the bridge of a sinking ship. Bill clung tight to Emily as they were thrown across the floor and up against the wall, then dragged back into a bundle of screaming limbs. They were choking, drowning in each other’s arms, as the water thrashed them back and forth.

  Then nothing.

  Wrapped in darkness, Bill couldn’t see a thing. The hand holding his moved.

  ‘Emily?’ he asked.

  He was prone, wedged into what felt like the corner of the room.

  He squeezed the hand harder.

  ‘Emily?’ he asked again.

  ‘Bill,’ she answered.

  He felt for her face, her lips . . . ‘You’re alive,’ he said. He kissed her. Elation ripped through him like sunlight through a cloud. ‘Is everyone all right?’ he called into the darkness of the room.

  A man’s voice – Giles’s? – called back, ‘Yes.’

  Josephine, hysterical: ‘Lewis! Lewis, are you there?’

  A low groan came from the other side of the room. ‘My arm . . . I can’t feel my . . .’

  But Bill wasn’t listening. He held Emily’s face in his hands. ‘It’s over now. It’s over. That was the reservoir, but now it’s gone . . .’

  He felt her hands on his. ‘I should have told you before how much I love you,’ she whispered. ‘I should have told you every day.’

  ‘Oh, my God.’ It was Giles. ‘Oh, my God. Look.’

  Bill hauled himself through the fizzing, frothing, slopping water towards where Giles’s voice had come from. He made out the shape of the window, grey against the greater dark of the room. He tried to stand, but his legs were still too weak. His skin prickled. He could sense something near the window, moving, sliding by. Like a shadow. He reached the window and dragged himself up by its sill.

  Sheet lightning crackled across the sky, flickering like a strobe. What it lit up would stay with Bill for the rest of his life. The river was less than two feet below the upstairs window ledge, rolling past. Monstrous wave chased monstrous wave, tumbling, foaming, leaping upwards in giant crests, seething forwards in a great black mass.

  But it wasn’t that which drew Bill’s eye, but the row of houses opposite, which was cracked and broken like a boxer’s teeth. Tiles had been stripped from roofs, bay windows torn off. The window from which John Mitchell had been signalling – indeed the whole top floor of the house – had vanished. Along with the top halves of the houses either side.

  Half of East Street had quite literally been washed out to sea.

  ‘God bless them,’ Giles was repeating to himself over and over again.

  Suddenly, beneath the waters, upstream, they saw two beams of light, stretching impossibly out towards them.

  ‘But that can’t be a –’ It was Emily, now standing at Bill’s side.

  ‘Car,’ Bill confirmed.

  And it was. They watched in astonishment as it floated towards them down the road, half submerged on the top of the hellish black river, somehow short-circuited, with its headlights on full beam, illuminating the water before it. Just as it drew level with them, the phantom vehicle nosedived, sending up a rush of bubbles as it vanished from sight.

  The lightning died in the sky. Darkness returned.

  Lewis cried out in pain behind them.

  Bill couldn’t see his hand in front of his face.

  ‘I’m coming,’ Emily shouted.

  But then they all froze, as simultaneously, they heard the rumbling noise begin to rise again. Bill’s face crumpled in confusion. It wasn’t possible, was it? When the reservoir at Watersbind had already burst?

  Sixteen bridges, the answer came. Sixteen bridges up the East and West Step valleys. And any one of them could have been blocked the same as South Bridge. Any one of them could have just given way . . .

  The walls screamed out. The rumbling switched to thunder. The demonic cacophony rose. Bill shouted Emily’s name, but his tongue might as well have been hacked out. He staggered through the pitch-black prison of the room, as the floor shifted and broke like an ice sheet beneath his feet. He grabbed at thin air, praying for Emily.

  Then a flash of lightning: he saw her, a silhouette against the window, arms outstretched the same as him. He ran at her.

  But his hands touched nothing but the solid wall of water which blasted past and through the room.

  Chapter XXVII

  Mallorca, Present Day

  ‘You fucking bitch!’

  Rachel held the receiver away from her ear, as the torrent of abuse continued. What the hell . . . ? She didn’t have time for this, she thought, flustered. She didn’t have time for a crank call, not when she was about to go downstairs and reintroduce herself to her brother after fifty years.

  A moment ago, she’d been watching Laurie and Bill on the other side of the swimming pool from the top window. Laurie’s explanation obviously wasn’t going well. She couldn’t hear what they were discussing, but Rachel could tell from their body language that maybe it was time for her to intervene. She’d decided that she couldn’t hide in her own home any longer. It was time to take the bull by the horns, so to speak.

  She’d been on her way downstairs when the phone had rung. Why hadn’t she just ignored it?

  ‘Hello?’ she ventured, cutting in once more. ‘Can you please –’

  Then, through the swearing, she recognised Claire’s voice.

  ‘Darling? Darling? Is that you?’ But Claire didn’t answer. She was hysterical. ‘Claire, Claire, calm down,’ Rachel raised her voice, above Claire’s sobs. ‘What’s happened? Tell me what’s happened? Has something happened to Archie?’

  Now all thoughts of Bill and Laurie
vanished, as Rachel gripped the phone with both hands. She could feel real fear building up inside her. Claire had her moments of histrionics, but Rachel had never heard her this out of control.

  ‘He’s been having an affair,’ Claire choked. ‘He’s been having an affair.’

  ‘What on earth are you talking about?’ Rachel felt as if she were falling. As if the floor beneath her had suddenly collapsed.

  ‘Sam. With her,’ Claire wailed.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Your precious Laurie. That’s who. That bitch, that . . . that . . . I called to tell her . . .’

  Rachel sat down heavily on her bed. As she did so, one of the family photographs bounced off the covers and smashed on the floor.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Of course I’m fucking sure. Sam’s just told me all about it.’

  She heard Claire emit a guttural wail at the other end of the phone.

  Rachel put her hand over her mouth, wanting to cry out herself. She felt something – fear? – adrenalin? – anger? – course right through her from the top of her head to her toes. She gripped the edge of the bed as Claire recounted what Sam had told her.

  Not Sam. Oh God, no. Not Sam. He and Claire – they were happily married, weren’t they? Sam couldn’t cheat on Claire, he just couldn’t.

  And with Laurie?

  No, it couldn’t be right. Sam didn’t even like Laurie. Then, suddenly, she thought about him the night they’d had supper here at the house and Laurie had been so subdued. Had Sam been so strange that night because Laurie was there? Because she was his lover?

  What about James? Wasn’t Laurie supposed to be in love with James? It didn’t make sense. She’d spoken to James herself. But maybe James had just been a cover. Maybe Rachel had been wrong about him, too. Snapshots of all the times she’d seen Sam and Laurie together rushed through her head as she searched for meaning.

  ‘It can’t be true –’ she half mumbled to Claire, but as she did, she thought about Laurie’s bags, all neatly packed up in her room and the truth of what Claire was saying finally sunk in. Laurie knew it was going to come out! She knew. She knew she’d have to leave.

  ‘What am I going to do?’ Claire wailed.

  Something desperate in her voice, in her cry for help made Rachel snap out of her own shock and focus. She had to think straight. This was not going to happen. She would simply not allow it. Whatever had happened between Sam and Laurie, Rachel was sure as hell it was going to finish, right now. Sam was the father of Claire’s child. What did he think? That he could just walk away?

  Well he could think again! He had responsibilities. And it was because of who Claire was that he had everything he took for granted. No, Sam was going to damn well apologise to Claire and get on with fixing all the damage he’d done. Every marriage had its ups and downs – Christ, she should know. Sam and Claire would be able to put this behind them and move on.

  And as for Laurie? Well, damn it! Laurie Vale could take her packed bags and get the hell away from Rachel’s family before she did any more harm.

  ‘Claire, calm down,’ Rachel tried to get through to her. It took all her effort to control her voice. ‘Darling, please. Stop crying. Try and pull yourself together. I’ll sort this out, I promise. Sam is not going to get away with this. Just leave it to me. Is he there with you now?’

  ‘Yes, he –’

  Rachel stood up. ‘Whatever you do, just keep him there. Everything is going to be fine.’

  Rachel slammed down the phone. Every maternal instinct told her to run to Claire, to put her arms around her, to make everything better. And yet a bigger part of her felt as if she was going to burst with anger. She felt as if she’d failed horribly. She’d failed to protect her family. This was all her fault. And she had to fix it, right now.

  She staggered down the stairs to the hallway, hardly knowing what she was going to say, but whatever it was, she was going to give it to Laurie straight. With both barrels. Right between the eyes. And right now.

  Then she saw Bill, standing before her. He had his arms folded, like a bouncer.

  ‘Rachel,’ he said.

  She stopped still on the stairs. It was the familiarity of his voice that did it. Fifty years melted away in an instant and it felt as if she’d been caught out, as if she were still the sneaky schoolgirl she’d once been. It was the solidity of him, the reality of him, his stature, even though he was in his seventies, that utterly threw her. She felt all her power draining away.

  Now, everything she’d been preparing to say to him vanished from her head. She felt as if the unity of her family, the trump card she’d been planning on showing him, had just disappeared into thin air. Instead, she felt stripped bare, as if he were seeing her at her most vulnerable.

  ‘Bill,’ she said. Her eyes locked with his and she remembered now with such clarity the last time she’d seen his face. Then his eyes became harder than ever.

  ‘You listen to me and you listen well,’ Bill said. He stabbed his finger at her. ‘I don’t know what kind of game you’re playing, and I don’t know what crazy plan you had when you got Laurie to ask me here, but I don’t forgive you. I won’t ever forgive you. You made your choice. And just because you’re widowed now you can’t expect to turn back time.’

  The coldness of his voice, his lack of sympathy, his lack of compassion overwhelmed her. Her heart raced.

  ‘You married a liar, Rachel. If you’re after some kind of salvation for your conscience from me, then you can think again. We’re not family, you and I. We stopped being family a long time ago when you walked away.’

  In fifty years, nobody had spoken to her like this. Nobody had dared to attack her, or Tony, or her integrity. Nobody had dared impose their will on her, certainly not in her own home.

  She was shaking now. All the hope she’d felt earlier had gone, all the expectations she’d had now evaporated. This was hopeless. Nothing had changed. She’d been a fool expecting Bill to have mellowed over time. How could she ever have thought that he would forgive her? She’d assumed that once they saw each other, the past would have been magically swept away. But now they were finally face to face, she could see how rash and unrealistic that notion had been. She felt all the fantasies she’d entertained about being reconciled with Bill crashing down around her. He’d just become more stuck in his ways. He didn’t want or need the same things that she did. He didn’t need forgiveness, or understanding. He would live with his hatred and bitterness until the day he died, like their mother had, firmly believing he was still in the right.

  ‘You were the one who walked away, Bill,’ she corrected him.

  Bill shook his head, as if trying to stop her words entering his ears. ‘I don’t want to discuss this. It’s too late.’

  ‘So why are you here? Why are you standing here?’ Why are you tormenting me, she wanted to ask him.

  ‘For Laurie. Because she shouldn’t have to say this for me.’

  ‘Ha!’ Rachel spat, the irony of the situation, the irony of this meeting suddenly hitting her. All the time she’d thought Laurie was helping her. But the truth was that she was bringing Bill to her to hurt her even more. Father and daughter. They were just as bad as each other. Just as selfish. Just as blinkered and stubborn. How appropriate that Laurie was named after her mother.

  ‘I think it’s utterly despicable that you have drawn Laurie into this,’ Bill continued. ‘Why do you think I kept you a secret for all those years? To protect her from you. To stop her having to know what happened to her grandparents. But I should have known you would be this devious. I should have known you would take the first chance of taking advantage of her good nature. That you hadn’t stopped being selfish, or thinking of yourself. How pathetic that you had to wait until your husband died.’

  Rachel wanted to yell out for Tony. She’d never felt so acutely that she’d betrayed him. She’d courted Bill from the moment he’d died. She’d gone behind her husband’s back and sought this. This punishment.


  She should have trusted Tony. She had when he’d been alive. Why had she stopped the moment he’d died? Because he’d been right about Bill all along. She tried to picture Tony’s face. She thought of all the photos she’d taken upstairs to protect Laurie and Bill, when they arrived at the villa. How could she? She wasn’t ashamed of Tony. Not for a moment. She should have kept the pictures where they were.

  ‘Laurie’s good nature? Laurie’s good nature?’ Rachel’s rage burst through. ‘How dare you walk into my house and say all this to me. How dare you act like you’re still in charge. I don’t have to put up with this from anyone, especially not from you. Especially when you’ve got your facts wrong now, the same as you always did.’

  It was time to put Bill straight about his own family, before he started judging hers. She stormed towards him down the stairs, forcing him back into the hall.

  ‘And after what Laurie’s done!’ she shouted. ‘You dare to lecture me about Tony, when you didn’t even know him? You didn’t even see the man he turned out to be. He was good and kind and honest and true. Unlike that vile daughter of yours.’

  ‘What on earth do you mean?’

  Rachel wanted to scream. ‘If you’d just shut up and listen for one second . . . I’ll spell it out for you, Bill.’

  Chapter XXVIII

  Stepmouth, Midnight, 15 August 1953

  Rachel sat shivering on an upturned crate, clutching a blue tin mug of tea that had gone cold in her hand, a grey army blanket around her shoulders. Her teeth chattered as she stared out at the road leading down Summerglade Hill, but it was shrouded in a darkness so complete, it was almost like a void. She tried and tried to focus on it, praying for Tony to step out of the darkness, but all she could see was a veil of drips coursing from the edge of the green tarpaulin above her, splattering on to the waterlogged ground below. She had no idea what time it was. All she knew was that this nightmare had been stretching on and on for hours.

  It seemed a lifetime ago that Tony and Bill had left her alone in the van. She’d been so terrified, listening to the howl of the wind, as the rain had drummed on the metal roof in time with the throbbing pain in her chest. She’d hoped when she’d seen some people outside the van illuminated by a shaft of lightning, that her ordeal would have been over, but it had only been the beginning.