by Heidi Perks
‘Let’s drink these up and go somewhere else,’ Dom suggested.
‘Like where?’ Hannah was surprised. She hadn’t thought they’d go anywhere but the coffee shop.
‘I dunno. The beach?’
Hannah shook her head. ‘I’m always there. And besides there’ll be plenty of people we know.’
‘Then I’ve got an idea,’ he said, standing up and holding out his hand for Hannah to take. ‘Come on, let’s go.’
*****
Hannah had never been in a convertible before. When Dom took her back to his house and told her to wait in the drive she hadn’t expected him to come out dangling his dad’s car keys and suggesting they go for a drive. She wasn’t entirely sure he had permission and couldn’t imagine many fathers happily handing over the keys to their year-old Mercedes to their eighteen-year-old sons.
‘It’s fine,’ Dom laughed as he started the engine, when she’d asked him for a second time if his father knew. ‘He’s cool about it.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘My dad works for a car dealership,’ Dom shrugged. ‘It’s not even his. And I’m insured. So please, don’t worry about it.’
Hannah smiled and leaned back against the cream leather seat. As Dom accelerated and drove out of the Bay, she could feel the wind whipping through her hair. She felt wild and free, and it was exhilarating.
‘What are you smiling at?’ Dom asked, his voice rising above the sound of the wind and the engine.
‘I feel alive!’ Hannah shouted, throwing her arms into the air and laughing.
‘I need to get you out more.’
‘I want you to drive forever,’ she said. ‘If you kept going, where would we end up?’
‘I dunno. Eventually the South Coast, maybe Brighton. But it would take us a long time to get there.’
‘What’s in Brighton?’ she asked.
‘A pier, a beach … I’ve got no idea, I’ve never been. Why? Do you want to go?’
‘Yes, I want to go to Brighton!’ she laughed. ‘I want to go everywhere. I want to go to London and Cornwall and Liverpool too. I want you to drive me all around the country in your car and we won’t come back until we’ve seen all of it!’
‘You’re mad,’ he laughed. ‘But it’s a deal. This summer I’ll take you to one of those places. You choose where you want to go the most.’
Hannah looked over at him and smiled. The best-looking boy in the world was sitting next to her and he had just offered to take her out of Mull Bay. Dom was the start of the rest of her life.
‘London,’ she said. ‘Let’s go to London one day.’
Twenty minutes later they pulled off the road and onto a stony lane. Dom stopped by a gate, where he pointed to the grass on the other side and Hannah got out of the car, waiting for him to get a picnic blanket and drinks from the boot. ‘It was all I could find,’ he shrugged, passing her a can of Coke and jumping over the gate. Hannah followed him and waited for him to lay the blanket down for them to sit on.
‘I’m impressed you packed a blanket,’ Hannah said.
‘I didn’t. It was already in there,’ he admitted. ‘And I’m sure you’d be more impressed if I popped open a bottle of wine.’
‘No, I don’t even like wine.’
‘You really are different to most of the girls I’ve dated,’ Dom smiled.
‘Oh?’
‘That’s a good thing, trust me.’
Hannah watched him lay back on the blanket and close his eyes, a gesture that seemed so self-assured. She lay down next to him but couldn’t relax. They were in the middle of a field. It was a strange place to bring her, and she didn’t feel entirely comfortable being there. The heat of the sun was burning down on them and she started to feel her stomach rumbling. The cake wasn’t enough to fill her up and it was past lunchtime.
‘Can’t you relax?’ he asked without opening his eyes.
‘Yes, of course I can.’
‘Do you wish I hadn’t brought you here? Would you rather we stayed in the Bay?’
‘God, no!’
Hannah spent her life wanting to get out of the Bay so she couldn’t work out why she felt so uneasy now they had.
Dom propped himself onto his elbow and looked at her. ‘Let’s talk.’
They talked about the Bay, surfing, their friends and school. He told her stories about Cal that made her laugh, and she realised she didn’t want to be anywhere else but in the middle of a field with Dom.
‘Have you thought any more about looking for your dad?’ he asked.
‘A little bit,’ Hannah admitted. ‘To be honest, Lauren’s so up and down about it, I really don’t know what to do. One minute she’s interested, the next she’s worried about Mum.’
‘But what do you want to do?’
‘I want to find him,’ she insisted. ‘But I’m also worried. Like Lauren says, he wanted nothing to do with us, so what if he still doesn’t?’
‘You talk about Lauren a lot,’ Dom said. ‘I can’t imagine what it’s like, having a twin.’
‘It’s wonderful,’ Hannah smiled. ‘She’s the other half of me.’
‘Don’t you ever argue?’
‘Course we do. But we always get over it.’
‘You’re very different to each other,’ he said.
‘In what way?’
‘She seems a bit more,’ he waved his hand in the air. ‘I dunno, stand-offish with me. I wouldn’t know what to say to her. I find you easier to talk to.’
Hannah laughed. ‘That’s probably because you haven’t tried talking to Lauren. You didn’t talk to me much until the other night.’
‘That’s true,’ he smiled, still watching her.
Hannah wondered whether she was in heaven. She could be. As she closed her eyes then and felt the warmth of the sun touch their lids she wasn’t hungry anymore.
‘I’m going to have to go back soon …’ Dom suddenly broke the silence.
Hannah’s stomach sank. She’d never been so aware of the movements inside her gut as she had been that day. It was too soon to be leaving the sanctity of the field they’d made their private camp.
‘Do we have to?’ she whispered. ‘I like it here, away from everyone.’
Dom laughed. ‘You sound like you don’t get out much.’
‘I don’t.’
‘Is your mum really as bad as people say?’
‘What do you mean?’ Hannah asked, opening her eyes to look at him. ‘What do people say?’
‘Nothing much, just that she doesn’t let either of you do much on your own.’
Hannah didn’t answer.
‘Has she always been like that?’
‘I suppose so. She’s anxious about everything. It’s like she thinks we’re still kids, and she doesn’t want us to grow up. Sometimes I wonder if it’s because Dad left her, and she’s worried we’ll do the same. But it can be suffocating, and the tighter she grabs hold of me, the more I want to break free.’
Even thinking about the way Kathryn smothered them made Hannah angry. Both she and Lauren had always been good, never given their mum anything to worry about. She wished she would trust them enough to make some of their own decisions rather than try and control the way they lived.
‘So did your dad live with you in the Bay, before he went?’
‘No, we moved right after, I think. We used to live in a house in North London, but I can’t remember it. We were only two when we left.’
Hannah once learnt that a child doesn’t have any memories before the age of four, but she didn’t agree. There were certain things she could recall that she knew must be memories. Lauren could back her up on most of them too. Like they both remembered getting a second-hand bike for their third birthdays. Hannah’s was purple and Lauren’s was pink, and Hannah distinctly remembers crying because she wanted Lauren’s. Apparently Lauren said she didn’t mind Hannah having it but she couldn’t remember that bit.
Then there was the time Lauren fell off a swing, which
Mum confirmed wasn’t long after they moved to the Bay. Hannah could still hear Lauren’s piercing scream and see her sister lying on the grass beside the swing, her leg bent at an angle that shouldn’t have been possible.
‘You’re bound to remember things like a broken leg,’ her mum said.
But Hannah wasn’t convinced you’d remember it when it wasn’t your bones that had broken.
She couldn’t remember the house they used to live in before they moved to the Bay, though. However hard she tried, Hannah couldn’t bring to mind its rooms or the way it looked from the outside. It didn’t help that there were no photographs of it. The house itself drew a complete blank.
Yet there was something else, a little fragment of memory in the corner of her mind that never went away, although this was one Lauren couldn’t back up. Hannah swore blind she could remember someone else living with them. There were times when she pictured it clearly: someone else in the house who played with them, cuddled them, loved them.
‘It must be our dad,’ Lauren had said on one of the many occasions Hannah mentioned it.
‘It isn’t him, I know it’s not.’ Hannah was certain about that.
‘Well, there wasn’t anyone else there. Not that I can remember, anyway.’
Hannah knew it wasn’t their father because the presence she remembered was female. It first came back to her when someone once walked past her and the smell of White Musk lingered. It was such a strong feeling and she had to hold onto it to believe she was right. One time she asked her mum but Kathryn snapped at her, telling her not to be ridiculous, before laughing it off. Hannah was certain it wasn’t her imagination, though. There was someone else in their lives and whoever it was, she was certain it was someone she and Lauren had loved very much.
– Fourteen –
Kathryn waited by the kitchen window. She had pulled the shutters halfway down so she could see out but could also inch backwards without being seen when either of them approached the gate. Both of her girls were out, Lauren careering around the Bay in a car driven by a seventeen-year-old who had barely passed her test. Kathryn, of course, was none too happy about that. The facts screamed at her – young drivers were the most dangerous threat on the roads today.
But Hannah was causing her more concern. There was no summer holiday project. She had known that as soon as the lie spilled from her daughter’s mouth. When was the moment she had lost her? The moment when Hannah believed lying was easier because what she was doing was so obviously wrong? Kathryn hated that her daughters didn’t think they could tell her things. This time around she had tried doing everything right, letting them know she was always there, watching out for them, worrying about them. Wasn’t that all any normal mother would do? She was trying her best, but often she felt it might never be enough.
Kathryn wasn’t sure about any of it anymore. Faces and thoughts were coming back to her, distorting her perception of reality. Hannah was talking about things and wanting to know too much, and Kathryn didn’t have all of the answers. At least not the ones she could share with them. She was whipping up the past. Peter, Abigail, even Robert had appeared in her dreams again, all of them circling her like horses on a carousel. And how she wanted to stop the music and get off the ride, but it just wouldn’t stop. It kept spinning and spinning until it blurred into one jumbled mess and she couldn’t break any of it apart.
Kathryn reached for the tablets the doctor had grudgingly prescribed, and took two more. They wouldn’t knock her out. It took more than Temazepam to do that, it seemed, but they helped slow the ride down temporarily at least.
Dr Morgan had acquiesced to give her something to help her sleep, though anyone would surely see in her eyes she had been awake most nights. Eventually he had tapped out a prescription onto his computer, leaning forward as he waited for it to print.
‘You were on medication for a long time, Kathryn,’ he noted. ‘Prochlorperazine.’
‘Yes, it was for sickness. I had dreadful sickness as a child,’ she explained, although as she replied she realised she couldn’t remember a time when she had ever been violently sick.
‘Right, so how are you doing now, generally? Aside from the problems sleeping, of course.’
Kathryn shrugged. She hadn’t known Dr Morgan for long, not properly. She had only been going to the surgery regularly for just over a year, after Dr Simmonds had died and her mother hadn’t been aware enough to find a suitable replacement. Anyway, it made sense that she found a local doctor now, but she still didn’t like to open up too much, especially when he seemed to doubt Dr Simmonds.
Edgar Simmonds was a family friend. Kathryn had seen him since she was a young child. He was also Peter’s uncle, a fact she hadn’t found out until a while after they met. Peter didn’t see him often but still it kept Kathryn from going to Edgar’s funeral in case they did meet again.
She remembered seeing Edgar Simmonds quite often as a child, especially in her early teens. He came to the house and spoke with her in the drawing room, her mother always lingering in the corner. It’s funny how that had seemed the norm, that they had never visited his surgery, as most people would do.
Kathryn suspected that was down to her parents. Lord Charles Bretton, her father, was a member of the House of Lords, and an outspoken member of certain select committees. Her mother, famed in her own right for being his elegant wife, had appeared in many magazines in the fifties, showing off the glamorous lifestyle of the wealthy, and promoting herself as the perfect housewife. Image was everything to Eleanor, and Kathryn always knew she would never be part of the portrait Eleanor desired.
She was a pretty child, and when she was very young Kathryn had also been brought out for family photographs, smiling on her rocking horse, playing sweetly with a doll in the corner of the living room while her mother perched on the edge of the chaise longue, a glass of martini in her hand. But then she reached an age when she was ‘an awkward girl’, ‘a constant disappointment’ and even ‘an embarrassment’ to her mother – Eleanor’s own words, which had stung hard until Kathryn believed them to be almost certainly true.
Kathryn knew Eleanor didn’t want children, but had agreed to try for a son, an heir to take over the business and inherit the title. That was one particular conversation she wished she hadn’t overheard.
Meeting Robert had changed her life because he had stopped her from feeling like she was a failure, like she didn’t belong. He had shown her that she could be loved and he had done that every single day until the day he died. Eleanor didn’t like Robert, he wasn’t the son-in-law she hoped for, but by the end of Kathryn’s teens, it seemed Eleanor was ready to hand over her daughter to anyone who would have her.
She had died with Robert that day. Someone had come along and taken her too, leaving an empty shell on earth that her mother had scooped up and filled with all the strange parts that made up Kathryn. She didn’t know why she loved Eleanor as much as she did. Many had asked her. She knew it wasn’t a love that was returned, but still her mother had been there for her. Without her she didn’t see how she would be here now.
*****
Kathryn flicked up the blind and peeked out. It hadn’t taken long for the news to reach her that Hannah was with Dominic Wilson in the coffee shop. At least she could tell the gossips she was aware of the meeting, that much she knew. They had apparently shared a slice of Janice’s Victoria sponge.
‘It all looked very sweet,’ Theresa from the corner shop giggled. ‘Young love, eh?’ she said, handing Kathryn a loaf of Hovis and her change.
Young love indeed. Kathryn did her best to smile back, although it most likely came across as a grimace.
‘Of course they weren’t there long,’ Theresa droned on, loving the fact she had something to tell Kathryn about her own daughter. ‘They both left the café and went off somewhere together, although I’m sure you know all about that.’
‘Yes, of course,’ Kathryn flushed as she stuffed the change into her pocket. If the corner s
hop wasn’t so convenient she would shop elsewhere. Every time she saw Theresa’s permed blonde mop springing up and down as she bounced around the store Kathryn’s blood would boil. She had never liked the woman.
Dominic Wilson … She didn’t know that much about the Wilson family. The mother seemed pleasant enough. They would acknowledge each other and occasionally exchange a few words in the queue at the bank but they didn’t have much in common. Rosemary Wilson was the mother of two boys. Her eldest, Benedict, was twenty-one and he was in and out of the police station like he was on a piece of elastic. Only minor offences, people said, but of course once you were tarred with that brush it took a lot for the people of Mull Bay to forget. Kathryn guessed that was why Rosemary kept her head down – the shame of having a son in trouble with the police. While Dominic was the better behaved of the two boys, it didn’t amount to much, given his competition.
Kathryn was about to leave her post at the kitchen window when she caught sight of Hannah unlatching the gate. She quickly sat down at the table, clenching her hand around a mug of cold tea, and tried to appear collected. Maybe the tablets she had taken earlier were beginning to have a calming effect. She felt a little less jittery than she had done.
‘Hello, darling,’ she sang out as she heard the front door close. ‘How did your little date go?’
Hannah appeared at the doorway and Kathryn could see her shuffling her feet.
‘It wasn’t a date, Mum,’ she mumbled.
‘Oh, don’t be silly, a handsome lad like that! And you’ve been gone for hours. Where have you been, darling?’
Hannah didn’t respond, but continued nervously stepping from one foot to another.
‘Come on, you can talk to me.’
She could see Hannah’s shoulders loosen. ‘We just went out for a bit and talked. We didn’t do anything else.’
‘I’m not saying you did, honey. I just wondered where you’d been.’ Kathryn was sure her voice sounded almost shrill but she couldn’t seem to help it.