by Sanjida Kay
‘Have you talked to Bethany yet?’ Amy asks. ‘I need to book it, if she’s coming, or find a smaller place if she isn’t.’
‘I’m on my way to see her.’ I hesitate. ‘Amy, have you thought any more about—’
My sister’s voice sounds raw, as if she’s been crying, but her tone is final: ‘We don’t want him to come with us.’
This area, once so rundown with abandoned factories and the remnants of the boat-building industry, is going through a resurgence. Though I guess not for the boat yards. There’s a new tapas bar on the opposite side of the Avon that looks like it should be in San Francisco; blocks of flats have sprung up: with their white walls and jaunty-coloured window ledges, they’re reminiscent of cruise liners; the old gasworks has been converted into luxury penthouses, all steel and sepia-tinted glass. The flat my father used to live in during the week, when he was working at Bristol University, is perched up on the hill behind – he’s letting me stay there for now. Bethany, after she left home, had a better offer and went to stay with one of Dad’s friends – some prof with a posh house in Clifton – instead. Now she’s renting one of those apartments nearby that were swanky about a decade ago. It’s off Caledonian Road and is so close to the studio, we could hang out, if she liked me more than she does.
When I call my sister, she answers on the first ring, with a ‘Haaaaay’, like I’m her favourite person. ‘It’s Mr Nick Flowers.’ She sounds far too chipper for this hour in the morning – and for a conversation with her brother, when we haven’t actually spoken much for months.
‘Do you want a coffee? I’m passing – on my way to work.’
Only a small lie, as I’m walking in the opposite direction, but I don’t expect Bethany will stop long enough to figure it out.
‘I’m with Joe,’ she says, like I should know who that is.
Her boyfriend? That was fast; she hasn’t been in Bristol long. I can hear a man’s voice in the background.
She laughs. ‘Chill. It’s my brother.’
A jealous boyfriend?
‘We’re about to do HIITs on the towpath. Joe thinks you’ll distract me. So yeah, get us an espresso from that caff past Wapping Wharf. Make that two – Joe wants one. Apparently caffeine blitzes fat.’
I duck down Gas Ferry Road, alongside Aardman Animation and Tamsyn’s studio, and come out by the place Bethany’s talking about, which is basically a shed on the waterfront. As I reach the river, a girl with a swishy blonde ponytail in a kayak speeds past. Bethany and Joe are doing short sprints and then pausing. Joe is holding a phone that beeps when the intervals start and stop; I figure he must be her personal trainer. He’s wearing baggy black shorts and nothing else: he’s completely ripped. I hate him already. Bethany is in Lycra and a baseball cap and shades, as if she really is famous and might be papped at any second. I sit on a stone bench with the espressos and wait for them. When they stop for a few seconds in between their shuttle runs, Bethany drapes an arm around Joe’s shoulders and takes a photo of the two of them. He’s glistening with sweat, she’s all cleavage popping out of her sports bra, the sun sparking off the edge of her Oakleys. Joe pulls away and counts more loudly to the next interval, as if he’s annoyed with her for not taking this seriously.
When they’re done, they jog over, breathing heavily.
‘Hi, I’m Joe,’ he says, putting out his hand to shake mine. ‘Thanks for the coffee. Can I give you some cash?’
Bethany waves this away on my behalf. So he’s polite as well as good-looking; he has brown, curly shoulder-length hair, large dark eyes that slope down at the corners, designer stubble and a massive grin. He looks like a puppy and it’s impossible to dislike him, especially as he pulls a T-shirt out of his back pocket and puts it on, so that I don’t have to stare at his abs. I can’t remember ever actually seeing mine, even when I was a kid.
‘We’ve got another half an hour to go,’ says Bethany, taking a sip of coffee. ‘Got to get my money’s worth,’ she adds, elbowing Joe. She finishes sending the photo to Instagram and shows us the picture. The likes are already flooding in. She has one of those blue ticks next to her name, so you know she’s the real Bethany Flowers, and she’s got more than 100K followers.
‘It’s not like you to be sociable at this hour.’ She looks at me pointedly, as if to say, Or after all this time. ‘It’s the anniversary, isn’t it? It’s coming up soon.’
I nod, my throat suddenly dry. I tell her about our plan, to go away together to Italy.
‘Frankly, I’d rather hack off my own arm with a blunt penknife, but I get why she doesn’t want to be here. I’m not going, Nick. I’ve only just started this new job at the BBC and I can’t ask for time off already.’
‘Italy?’ says Joe, sounding childishly excited. ‘Whereabouts?’
Bethany rolls her eyes.
‘An island off an island. It sounds pretty cool. Remote, rural. The “real” Italy.’ I do air quote marks. ‘Beautiful sandy beaches. Pizza every day. Beer; no, hang on, what do you drink? Prosecco on tap.’
Joe does a thumbs up at me behind Bethany’s back. I think back to last week. It was the first time I’d been to Amy’s house for, well, ages; it was the first time she’d asked me to babysit for over a year, and I’d shown up late. It reminded me of what I’ve been missing: my family. I might find it hard to be with them some of the time, but I can’t manage another year like this one.
‘I’ll tell her you won’t speak to your new boss about taking a week off so that you can be with your family for the anniversary of the death of your three-year-old niece,’ I say.
‘You shit.’
‘Whoa,’ says Joe. ‘Bee, you’ve got to be there! Family is the most important thing there is,’ he adds, his expression earnest.
That was too much. I change tack. ‘Anyway, aren’t you freelance? And the star of the show? It’s good for your image if you aren’t always available.’ She narrows her eyes, trying to assess whether I’m taking the piss. It might still be regional telly, but the new show she’s presenting has almost a million viewers. ‘With your powers of persuasion you’ll have your new telly chief wrapped around your little finger in no time.’
‘Stuart Linfield is the exec, and there’s no way. Quit now, before you come up with any more crap.’
‘I don’t want to be there on my own?’ I make it into a question, as if I’m trying out the line for size.
‘Ah,’ she says, punching me on the shoulder, ‘that’s the real reason.’
‘Come on, where’s your sense of adventure? At the very least, you’ll get a tan.’
‘Sense of self-preservation more like.’ She pauses. ‘Is Dad going?’
I shake my head and for a moment there’s silence while we both look at our feet. If our father hadn’t been looking after Ruby-May, our niece would still be alive, an almost-four-year-old, believing in unicorns and dreaming of being an astronaut. I don’t say it because, well, it wouldn’t help, but I think about it all the time; and I guess Bethany probably does too.
She avoids my eyes. ‘Probably for the best.’ She suddenly swings round. ‘Hey, Joe, why don’t you come with us?’ He looks floored and glances at me, but Bethany carries on talking. ‘I’ll need to keep training. And we could do those photos you were talking about for the book. Nick’s a photographer. He’ll take them. Joe wants to write a book,’ she tells me, speeding up, her words scrambling out of her. ‘He’s got to write a synopsis and add some photos, to pitch it to a publisher. We could shoot them on the beach. I’m going to write the introduction.’
‘It doesn’t seem appropriate,’ says Joe, pushing his hair off his face.
I notice he’s wearing an Alice band, like Lotte’s, but it’s not particularly girly on him, in spite of his long hair.
‘You don’t need to be there for the… for the anniversary. Just come for a few days. Two or three. Think of it like a working holiday. We’ll come up with the pitch. We’ll do our workout in the mornings and you can chill in th
e afternoons.’
‘What do you think?’ Joe asks me.
‘Don’t talk to him! He knows nothing.’ Bethany glances at her watch, which is one of those bands that measures your heartbeat and the number of calories you’ve burned. ‘I’ll let you know if my boss okays it. We need to finish up at Joe’s studio. See you around.’ She slaps me on the back and jogs off. Joe, a small line deepening between his eyebrows, shakes my hand.
‘Nice to meet you, Nick,’ he says, and sprints after my sister.
My sister. Always hustling. I sit back down on the stone bench and finish my espresso. Joe seems like a nice guy and it might make Bethany less intense if he’s there for a couple of days. Bethany has puppy-like traits, not because she’s adorable – she certainly isn’t – but because if she doesn’t have regular exercise she’s insufferable. A bit weird, though. If Joe comes, there’ll be two people there who aren’t part of our family – him and Luca. Two and a half, if you count Chloe. I text Amy to tell her that Bethany is thinking about it and wants to bring a friend for a couple of days. I’ll let them work out the room arrangements.
A couple of swans float past and I get transfixed by the patterns on the water, coloured lozenges reflecting the Haribo-bright terraced houses on the hill opposite, broken by slashes of black and splinters of bright-blue sky. The sun is warm on the back of my neck, but I feel a chill seeping through me from the granite block I’m sitting on. It’s such a cliché, but I can’t believe I’ll never see Ruby-May again. It’s like she’s with me, at the periphery of my vision. Sometimes I have imaginary conversations with her, or I worry she might get too close to the river. Which is really fucked up.
ONE YEAR AGO, SOMERSET
4
NICK
When I finally walked up the driveway that afternoon, swinging my purple unicorn and whistling, I saw the lights first. Blueand-red, silently flickering against the white walls of The Pines. It took me a moment to realize what they were, because I couldn’t see the police car; but my body knew before my mind caught up, my stomach immediately cramping into a knot. It was hot and so silent, I thought at first the place was deserted. I remember standing there for a second, panting in the heat, sweat trickling down my back, and then I started running.
Bethany told me later that when she couldn’t see Ruby-May, she tried to wake Dad. As she bent over him, she smelt the alcohol on his breath. There was a glass of Merlot on the table next to him, and the almost-empty bottle, hot from the sun, was at his feet. He barely stirred.
She started looking for Ruby-May. It’s a big garden. I think I said that already. She walked right round it. She looked in the house or, at least, downstairs. She walked back out and through the orchard. She checked the Wendy house, she peered into the treehouse, although Ruby-May wouldn’t have been able to climb up to it. She searched the ruins of the cottage, tearing her shins on brambles, pushing her head into the hearth and the remains of the old bread oven. She scrambled over the stone wall and ran across the field at the bottom of the garden, frightening the black calves. She tore through the edge of the woods and splashed down the stream, burning her arms on the giant hemlock that Dad never got round to eradicating.
The place was eerily quiet. Chloe and Luca were still inside; Amy, Matt, Theo and Lotte were still in Clarks Village, trying on shoes, and I was still on the train, drawing nearer to The Pines. All of us were completely unaware of Bethany’s growing fear.
It was as if Ruby-May had never even been there.
PART II
10 AUGUST, ITALY
5
AMY
They’d set off this morning, at 5 a.m., Bristol damp and shrouded in fog, and flew into blazing sunlight, ice-white clouds and brilliant blue skies. The children were tired and whiny on the plane, but after croissants and muffins at the train station in Pisa and slices of pizza by the harbour in Grosseto, they’d grown increasingly excited, shrieking as they were sprayed by sea water on the boat, screaming at a flock of seagulls that tailed them. Chloe had ignored everyone, keeping her headphones clamped over her ears for the entire journey. Amy, although she’d been irritated with her, remembered all too well what it was like being a teenager and wanting to distance yourself from your younger, annoying siblings. Nick had said some last-minute work had come through and he’d booked a later flight: he was due to arrive the following day.
It was mid-afternoon by the time they arrived on the tiny Tuscan island: Isola del Piccolo Giglio – Little Lily Island. Carlo Donati, a dark blond-haired teenager whose family owned the holiday house, collected them from the port in a pickup. He slung their luggage into the back with ease. Theo begged to ride in the front, and Luca went with him; Matt drove the rest of them over in the people-carrier they’d hired. Amy tried not to worry about the lack of booster seats for the children – at six and eight years old, they still needed them.
Now they pass a vineyard with a terrace cafe and then they drive between two sandstone pillars onto a rough track, veering quickly down another one and through an olive grove.
‘Maregiglio,’ says Carlo, grinning at them as he jumps out of the truck. ‘Mean “Sea Lily”.’
It’s perfect, Amy thinks.
Her first thought is that Ruby-May would have loved it and she bites down on the inside of her cheek and swallows hard to get rid of the lump in her throat. She stands on the rough green grass of the olive grove in front of the house and looks out towards the sea. It’s so blue, the sky and the water seem to have merged. There’s the gentlest of breezes and the leaves of the olives turn like a shoal of silver fish. She can smell salt and oregano, baked by the heat.
She’d been anxious since she booked it. She’d found the house through an online company that lets people rent out their own properties via the website. She’d been worried it was too risky, or that it wouldn’t match the description, which had been written in terrible English, or that the travel arrangements would fall through. But it had all gone to plan, and in the warmth and sunlight her tiredness and her spirits lift a little.
Carlo reverts back to Italian and speaks to Luca, who translates. He tells them that the house has been converted from farm buildings – his family live over the brow of the hill. Maregiglio is built from faded strawberry-pink stone and honey-coloured cement. There’s no garden, only a water trough planted with bright-red geraniums next to a mounting block at the front; they’re surrounded by the olive trees.
Carlo gestures for them to follow him. The house runs along two sides of a square bisected by a stone archway. They troop through it to a patio and a swimming pool; on the opposite side of the pool is what had once been another, smaller barn and is now a studio apartment. When Amy had looked at the details of the property online, she’d thought Joe could have it.
‘It’s gorgeous,’ says Bethany, flinging out her arms and inhaling deeply. ‘You’re amazing, Amy!’ She doesn’t give her a hug, though, like she once would have done. She sticks her hand in the pool to test the temperature.
‘It’s stunning. Thanks so much for having me along,’ says Joe. ‘Where’s the beach?’
Luca says, ‘Il cavalluccio marino. The name of the beach mean the seahorse. It is down there,’ he adds, pointing through the olives, and Amy notices a thin, sandy path snaking between the wizened trunks. ‘But it is steep. Carlo say it is not safe; we must not take any of the paths down the cliff. We only follow the road.’
Carlo and his friend start unloading their luggage, and Luca, Joe and Matt join in.
‘Which room is mine?’ asks Chloe.
Amy scrutinizes her, not sure if she’s being difficult or simply direct. Chloe was four when Amy got together with Matt, and as Amy was only twenty-five herself, she’s never felt like the girl’s stepmother. Sara, her real mother, is too much of a force of nature for her even to attempt to compete with. Amy loops her arm through Chloe’s.
‘Let’s go and choose our rooms together,’ she says.
Chloe had been the same age then as Ruby
-May would have been now, she thinks. She finds it hard to avoid these thoughts; they constantly snag at her, a running commentary about Ruby-May and what stage she’d be at in her life. Amy wonders if she’ll carry on doing this every day until Ruby-May would have turned eighteen, twenty-three, thirty-six, fifty-five.
‘You and Dad should have this one – it’s the biggest,’ says Chloe, as they look in one of the bedrooms.
‘Too late, I’ve bagsied it,’ says Bethany, pushing past them and dropping her case on the floor.
‘Auntie Bee!’ says Chloe.
‘It’s okay,’ Amy says. ‘Matt and I can go at the other end, next to Lotte and Theo. You can have the other room here or the one upstairs.’ She’s aware she’s skirting round the real issue: that she’s hardly seen or spoken to her sister for almost a year.
‘This one! I’ll be neighbours with my wicked step-aunt,’ says Chloe.
Bethany flings open the window and takes a photograph of herself with the pool in the background.
‘Come on, girls, let’s get in,’ she says, pulling her top over her head and exposing a flat, toned stomach and a lacy magenta bra.
Chloe giggles and disappears into her room. If Chloe and Bethany are in the downstairs bedrooms, next to the pool, that means Nick and Luca can have the two smaller rooms upstairs. She and Matt and the children can go in the two bedrooms above the sitting room in the other wing of the house. But how typical of Bethany to choose the best room. She doesn’t want to fight with her sister, though – she still isn’t sure she even wants her to be here – so she heads back out to tell Luca where he’ll be staying.