by Sanjida Kay
‘It’s almost the… the – it’s nearly a year since…’ says Nick. ‘I was thinking we should do something.’
It’s as if her younger brother has said exactly what she was thinking.
‘We could go away,’ Amy says. ‘Hire a holiday house and be away for… be away for—’
‘A holiday?’ Matt says. ‘Really?’
‘I can’t be here,’ she says. ‘You know that.’ Her voice rises.
The thought of being in this house, pretending to be cheerful for Theo and Lotte, fills her with a kind of panic. What would they do? Buy flowers, field condolences, all whilst trying not to think of her daughter as she last saw her, her lips swollen, her skin grey, her fingertips wrinkled…
Matt covers her hand with his own.
‘And we can’t go to Somerset.’
‘No,’ he says. ‘Shall we talk about it later?’
‘Italy. Italy would be perfect. It’ll be sunny. It won’t be remotely like here. The children will love it – they’ll have a good time. Somewhere with a beach.’
‘There won’t be any flights or villas left,’ says Matt. ‘We’ve left it too late.’ He’s been eating mechanically. It’s a new habit, to make sure he has ingested enough ‘nutrients’ to satisfy his doctor. He methodically spears the last of his peas onto his fork and takes a gulp of wine to force down the food. She can’t be bothered to talk to her GP any more.
‘No one will be able to reach us. I won’t have to speak to anyone asking how we are.’
‘We could get something online,’ Nick says. ‘Loads of people are letting their houses privately now, on Airbnb, that kind of thing.’
Matt reluctantly sets down his fork, as if he’s accepted that he’ll have to discuss Ruby-May’s anniversary in front of Amy’s brother.
‘Do you mean the… the five of us,’ Matt says, gesturing towards Nick, ‘plus Chloe?’
Chloe, Matt’s daughter from his previous marriage, is almost sixteen. Amy nods doubtfully. She might not want to come. Matt hasn’t counted Bethany. Or their dad.
‘I’ll ask Sara.’ Matt still sounds unconvinced. ‘That’s if we can find flights, and somewhere to stay, at such short notice.’
‘It’s in a month, not next weekend,’ Amy says and Matt gives her a dull look. She never used to speak to him like that, and she wonders if Matt mentioning his ex-wife has set her off.
‘What if,’ Nick says, swallowing his pasta, ‘what I meant was, what if we all went? The whole family. We should do something, you know, on the day. Together.’
He can’t say the word, either. An anniversary has always been a joyful occasion: the anniversary of when she and Matt first got together, their wedding anniversary.
‘All of us?’ Matt asks again.
‘It’s not like we’ve seen each other much. It might help, you know?’ Her brother clears his throat. ‘I’m not sure how – well, how else are we going to get past this? We’ve only got each other, since Mum left, and Dad…’ He tails off.
‘Including Bethany?’ Matt’s lips are set in a thin line.
‘I’ll talk to Bee,’ Nick says.
Matt glances at Amy to see how she’s going to react. When she doesn’t say anything, he picks up the plates and balances them in a messy tower, stacking them on top of the forks.
‘Come on, guys. She needs to be there.’
Matt carries the debris from their meal into the kitchen. Amy squeezes her eyes shut.
‘Amy, she’s your sister. She’s devastated by what happened. Have you even seen her?’ Nick asks.
She shakes her head. ‘A couple of times since the funeral. She thinks I hate her.’
‘Understandable,’ Nick says. They sit in silence for a moment. She doesn’t know if he means it’s understandable they haven’t met up, or understandable that she can’t bear being with her sister any more. ‘I know what she’s doing, from following her on Instagram,’ he adds. ‘You two were always closer than me and Bee. You can’t let that go.’
He’s right, of course. Her sister, who is thirty-four, is only two years younger than her. Nick was the baby of the family. He’ll be thirty this year. The kitchen door slams as Matt goes into the garden. He used to love it: on fine evenings he’d potter about out there, mowing the lawn, digging over flower beds, scrubbing the algae from the patio paving stones. Now it’s feral: a riot of bindweed and brambles; there are holes in the trampoline netting, and ash saplings have invaded the plant pots.
‘And what about—’
‘We can’t leave him behind.’
‘I can’t, Nick.’
‘It wasn’t his fault.’ Nick sounds like a robot. She’s lost count of the times he’s said that to her.
‘I don’t know how you can even say that. After what happened.’
He sighs. ‘He’s our dad. He’s getting older. We need to look after him.’
‘That’s not the point. If he’d only accepted that it was his fault and apologized.’ Nick looks down at his hands. ‘No. There’s no way he can come with us,’ she continues. ‘And don’t even think about asking Matt. He’d kill Dad, if he turned up.’ She takes a sip of her wine and rubs her eyes. ‘It’s a good idea to go away, though. I don’t want to stay here with the kids on my own.’
The credits to The Show start rolling over Bethany, her male co-star and the new girl – Tiffany – who seems to have replaced her. Bethany is waving manically.
‘Bethany Flowers,’ Nick says in a faux announcer’s voice, as if their sister were a movie star. And then in his normal voice he adds, ‘I don’t think she likes being on regional telly. Not quite the viewing figures. Do you want me to ask her about going on holiday?’ He glances sideways at her. ‘Assuming Matt agrees.’
Amy nods. ‘He’ll have to. I’ll speak to Luca too.’
‘Luca?’
‘His family live in Italy. He might come for a few days, help with Lotte and Theo, so we can have a bit of a break, and then he could go and visit them. He should be with us anyway. He’s almost part of the family, after all this time.’
Luca is studying for an MSc in child psychology and helps them with the school run when he’s not at university. He used to look after Ruby-May while Amy is at work. Nick nods, although Amy wonders if her brother has spoken to Luca since last year. He might not even have talked to him when they were in Somerset for Ruby-May’s birthday. The police had already arrived by the time Nick turned up. She can see the top of Matt’s head silhouetted against the darkening sky. He’s sitting on a broken bench just below them.
‘You can ask Bethany. Just don’t mention it to Dad. I should check on the kids,’ she says.
‘I’ll go,’ says Nick, ‘seeing as I’m meant to be babysitting them.’
‘If Theo is still awake, don’t stay there chatting to him about spaceships,’ Amy says. ‘Or Star Wars, Star Trek or intergalactic space flight, in any way, shape or form.’
She watches Nick hesitate at the bottom of the stairs, as if bracing himself, and then he jogs heavily up. She goes to the window and stares down at her husband, wondering if they can resurrect this evening, maybe put a film on. Go to bed early and try and summon up some passion, or even some semblance of feeling for each other. She should go out to him. She wonders if he knows about the bottle of gin in the garden shed (that one’s from Tesco and tastes even worse). But as if he feels her watching him, he returns to the kitchen, walking with the slow, stooped hunch of someone much older, and starts stacking the dishwasher. She’s relieved she won’t have to pretend, and pours another large glass of wine. She drinks it fast, without tasting it.
ONE YEAR AGO, SOMERSET
2
NICK
As far as I know, it happened like this. To my shame, I wasn’t there when it mattered.
Of course you weren’t! Bethany would interject, if she were here now. You’re always bloody late!
They’d all travelled down on the Friday and I could have got a lift, but I was working. I planned to go t
hat Saturday morning but, thanks to my catastrophic timekeeping, I missed my train. The next one left an hour later and stopped at every hole in the wall and that, I guess, is why I wasn’t there when it counted. Still, at the time, I was pretty pleased with myself, because I’d found this toy unicorn with purple fur, massive sparkly blue eyes and a rainbow horn that I knew Ruby-May would love. I still have it. I suppose I should give it away, but I don’t like to think of another child playing with it.
It was 15 August, the day before Ruby-May’s third birthday, and everyone had gathered at Dad’s. The Pines is a rambling farmhouse that our parents, David and Eleanor, converted years ago, and although it no longer has the land it came with, it still has a huge garden. It sits on the lower slopes of the Mendips in Somerset, the woods behind, green fields gently falling away in front of it. On a good day – and 15 August, with its clear blue skies, was one of those days – you can see over the tops of the seaside towns of Clevedon and Weston-super-Mare and all the way across the Severn estuary to Wales. It’s where we grew up, Amy, Bethany and I.
That afternoon, Amy, my eldest sister, and her husband, Matt, drove to Clarks Village in Street. The Clarks factory, where they make their famous, sensible shoes, is there, as well as an outlet mall. They took their oldest two children with them, Theo and Lotte, so they could buy them a cheap pair each, ready for the new school term at the start of September. Amy wanted to pick up some extra things for the party too – she’d made the birthday cake and she had some sliced white for the children’s sandwiches, but she thought she’d get a quiche, posh crackers and cheese, and sparkling soft drinks made out of insane combinations of fruit and flowers, which no one in their right mind should buy. At least that’s what I imagine she wanted. I can’t believe she would have given Ruby-May a bought cake back then, even though afterwards she couldn’t manage to heat up a ready-meal. Or eat. They left Ruby-May behind. The toddler would have caused chaos in the shop, and as she was only going to nursery in the autumn, she didn’t need new shoes.
Our middle sister, Bethany, had offered to look after Ruby-May. Bethany’s good with children. She’s a TV presenter, so you can imagine that her over-the-top energy, disregard for rules and ability to perform on demand goes down well with small people. So that afternoon, as I was inching across the countryside, Brean Down a gleaming Arthurian mound in the distance, Blade Runner: The Director’s Cut playing on my iPhone, Amy, Matt, Lotte and Theo were in Street looking at shoes, and Bethany, Ruby-May and Dad were at The Pines. Dad is in his seventies now and is not as sprightly as he was. He spent most of the afternoon dozing on a wooden sun-lounger in the herb garden at the front of the house: it’s a real suntrap.
I should mention at this point that they weren’t the only people at The Pines. Matt’s teenage daughter, Chloe, from his previous marriage, was sunbathing next to Dad. After a while, she grew bored and went indoors – to do her homework, she said, but she was probably attempting to hook up with her friends over the lousy Internet connection. I found her half-empty glass of lemonade later, abandoned by the garden table, with a striped straw and a drowned wasp in it.
The only other person who was there that day was also inside. Luca – Amy and Matt’s ad-hoc childminder. The master’s degree he’s studying for is in child psychology, although I’m not sure how relevant that is, but his ability to relate to kids is probably why Ruby-May loved him so much. Matt has to leave the house by 7.30 a.m., and Amy has a part-time job as a charity fundraiser, so for three days a week Luca took Lotte and Theo to and from school, and looked after Ruby-May. I guess he’d have taken her to nursery that September, if things had turned out differently.
I learned all of this later. At the time I wouldn’t have known the minutiae of their daily lives and I’d never met Luca. I usually just turned up with sweets and caused chaos. That’s what uncles do, right? Anyway, Luca was there to celebrate Ruby-May’s birthday and maybe have a break from Bristol and enjoy the countryside. That morning he’d got up early and gone for a run.
At least, that’s what the police told me.
Luca is tall and rangy, and I imagine him loping through the dawn-stretched shadows across the dew-soaked fields. He said he spent the rest of the day in his room, studying.
I say his room, although it was actually Eleanor’s, our mother’s. She used to paint there because it has the best light in the afternoons – it’s at the front of the house, but at the far corner. You can see part of the herb garden from one of the windows, and glimpse the lines of thyme that she sowed in the cracks between the paving stones. Now it’s the spare room: Dad painted it white, even the floorboards, and a rug covers the worst oil-paint stains. When the sun warms the wood, I can still smell the linseed.
I don’t go in there much.
I’m procrastinating.
So, as I was saying, Bethany was playing with Ruby-May. They would have gone outside. Bethany doesn’t like being cooped up or staying still. And it is an amazing garden if you’re a small child and you’re fearless, or haven’t yet learned to be fearful. Bethany would have been tearing around the place: hide-and-seek in the orchard, singing and swinging Ruby-May on the rope strung from the large tree in the corner, racing across the lawn, mooing at the cows in the field at the end. She doesn’t have the patience for imaginary games, so they probably avoided the wooden Wendy house with its teaset laid out ready for a pretend birthday party; and I can’t believe she’d have gone near the ruins of the old cottage, after what happened there when we were kids. She also avoided the pond.
The pond is large, for a garden. In summer, when the water level dips, it still comes up to my waist. Our mother designed it: that August, the flags had finished flowering, but there were water lilies and dragonflies patrolling its borders. Eleanor used to sit on the sloping bank on a mossy bench and paint it. Once we were born, she refused to have it filled in, although Dad said a child can drown in just two inches of water. Maybe even then he didn’t quite trust our mother’s maternal instincts.
Dad had the local builder put up a low fence around the pond: it’s high enough to deter a small child, and he installed a gate with a Yale lock on it. You need a key to open it. Eleanor hated it and stopped painting the water lilies. No loss to the art world, I thought, when I was younger. It’s not like she’s bloody Monet. But I know now that some artists still hold it against my father. It was all part of the story they told about him: how he tried to lock Eleanor up, hedge her in. Control her. Make her look after her own children.
That afternoon Bethany saw she had several missed calls. The phone signal is terrible at The Pines. Because she works in TV, there’s no such thing as a weekend. The producers, the researchers, her agent all call her any time of the day or night. I thought it was an affectation back then. Bethany was working on a high-profile TV programme called The Show. Very meta. It was prime time, BBC1, but a new co-presenter had just been brought in, who was younger, bouncier, bubblier and mixed-race with a Scottish accent – the BBC was trying to up its diversity quota. Tiffany McKenzie. I thought Bethany was being an insufferable diva and didn’t want to share the spotlight; I didn’t realize what she was going through.
Sometimes, in the early mornings, it’s as if there’s a film projected against my eyelids: Ruby-May is a blonde blur, streaking through the orchard, her long hair stretched out behind her; the grass is preternaturally green, sun sparks off the red Katy apples and a cloud of rooks is flung across the sky.
Bethany woke our father and deposited Ruby-May on his lap. She told him to look after his granddaughter for half an hour while she went inside and made some calls on the landline.
It was more like an hour by the time she’d finished talking to her agent, the director of the shoot, the producer, the executive producer and then her agent again, to complain about what the director, the producer and the executive producer had said, and no doubt she also had to coordinate with her personal make-up artist, because The Show had axed hair and make-up during the latest rou
nd of cost-cutting.
The garden was unusually quiet when she went back out, blinking at the harshness of the sun after being cosseted by the dim light filtering through the mullioned windows into our dining room. She walked round the house to the herb garden and saw that Dad was still there, slumped in the sun-lounger, fast asleep.
There was no sign of Ruby-May.
JULY, BRISTOL
3
NICK
I’m walking to the studio when Amy calls. For once, I’m not late. I meant to get in early, though, to Photoshop the pictures from last week’s shoot and catch up on invoices for Tamsyn. The lowlying mist over the river is rapidly being burned off by the sun. I pass Underfall Yard and head towards the marina. Tamsyn’s studio is near Spike Island, an artists’ cooperative, where my ex-girlfriend Maddison makes her hip screen-prints, and almost next door to a historic ship, the SS Great Britain. I took Ruby-May, Lotte and Theo there last year for one of my uncle-outings. Ruby-May loved it: she ran around the ship screaming, pretending to eat the fake jellies and occasionally getting lost by hiding in the cabins (I didn’t tell Amy that part), but Lotte wasn’t so keen, and she and Theo had nightmares for a week afterwards. There’s a butcher’s room with models of flayed animals strung from their heels, including a dolphin. The kitchen was swarming with stuffed rats and smelt of fish, and the neighs of a panic-stricken horse reverberated through the dark hold. Quite clever really, but I suppose living on a ship a few hundred years ago (I don’t actually know when, I didn’t read the blurb) was pretty grim. Amy had been annoyed: What were you thinking, Nick?
Amy tells me she’s found a beautiful house, on an island off the coast of Italy, that’s ‘incredibly reasonable for August’ and is big enough for all of us. It’s got a swimming pool and it’s near a quiet beach. There are direct flights to Pisa from Bristol, and then you catch a train to the coast and a ferry. She’s got it all worked out. I’m surprised that Amy’s found somewhere so fast, but I guess I shouldn’t be, as she always used to be dynamic and organized. Before. I know it was my idea that we gatecrash Amy’s holiday, but I’m not sure I can afford it. ‘Incredibly reasonable for August’ sounds like code for ‘too much for a photographer’s assistant’. I have to be there, though. I’ll ask Tamsyn for some extra work or an advance on my laughable salary. I wonder whether Matt is happy, or at least not suicidal at the prospect of a holiday with the Flowers.