Suddenly she was there, only a few feet away. I saw her dress first, black silk moving like running water, billowing as if the wind was stronger where she was standing. Next I saw her hair, blown sideways like pale flame, longer than I remembered, its ends like flickering tongues.
I blinked and suddenly she was closer, close enough to touch me. The skin of her arms was so pale, deathly pale, and translucent; I could see the bones in the hands she stretched towards me. I didn’t want to look at her face, I was desperate not to see it, but she was too close now, I couldn’t help it: her face, her lovely face, tracked with tears and scored by the two terrible empty circles that were her sockets.
I woke with my heart pounding, the last image still burning in front of me. I turned on the bedside light and waited for my pulse to slow, hearing my own breathing in the quietness of the house.
It was the fourth night in a row. The first time had been Sunday, the day after we’d been walking at Brook, but then it had only been confusing, a couple of the images – the floating material of her dress, her long hair – superimposed on another dream which I couldn’t remember at all. I hadn’t known then what I was seeing but, day by day, the scene had revealed itself. I was back on the cliff edge on Tennyson Down, the rocks at the bottom waiting to receive my broken body and Alice’s voice calling me – Kate, Kate – her hands reaching out to me, begging me to come to her, follow her over. And every day, she was closer and closer and I woke up just a fraction of a second before she touched me.
At the café I found myself watching the street more closely. Even over lunch, when there were usually now several bowls of soup to ladle out and ferry from the kitchen, and several rounds of Welsh rarebit to make, I would look up every time anyone walked past the window. I told myself it was because of Tom. On both Monday and Tuesday he’d passed the window in the afternoon, school uniform bastardised with trainers and a hooded sweatshirt, a leather sports bag – huge but empty-looking – slung over his shoulder. The first time, the window table had been occupied but yesterday there had only been a pair of old ladies taking their time over a teacake towards the back, and the front door was propped open for fresh air. I’d been standing by the counter and tensed, ready to spring out if he tried to come in, but he’d walked past without even looking.
When the women had gone and the café was empty, I got my phone out of my bag under the counter and called Helen at the office. It only rang twice before it was answered but the voice that came on the line was Esther’s.
‘Kate – hi! How’s the Island? I was thinking last night that we should call you about the flat; if you’re definitely coming back at the end of next month, we should start looking for somewhere else, right?’
‘Actually,’ I said, ‘I’ve decided not to come back.’
‘Seriously?’ I heard the shock in her voice; she was still at the age, I thought, where moving out of London was like taking retirement.
‘Yes. I’m sure it’ll be fine, though, if you want to take the lease over officially. I’ll give you a ring about that in a couple of days, if that’s all right, when I’ve spoken to the landlord. Is Helen about?’
‘I’ll try her line for you.’ She disappeared and there was a painful twenty seconds’ worth of musak. ‘Kate?’ she said, taking me off hold. ‘She’s just answered another call; can I get her to ring you back?’
I left my phone by the till but reached into my bag again anyway and undid the zip pocket. I found the dinosaur tooth and held it in my hand for a few seconds. Then, feeling foolish, I zipped it back up and went into the kitchen to put the dishwasher on.
There was a single bark from deep inside the house as I rang the doorbell. A few seconds passed and then the coloured glass of the fanlight came alive and there were soft footsteps.
‘Kate – what a lovely surprise.’ Chris’s face lit up. ‘Come in.’
‘Hello, Ted.’ I went down on my haunches and let him mug me, his soft head burrowing into my armpit then coming up to lick my neck and the side of my face. His tail was going nineteen to the dozen, its motion moving the whole of his body.
‘Come through. Ted, leave Kate alone for a minute, let the poor girl get her breath back.’ We went through to the kitchen, today lit only by lamps dotted here and there: one on the counter, another on the small wicker table by the sofa and a standard lamp in the conservatory area moved closer to the long table on which there was a chessboard with smart wooden pieces, a game in progress.
‘Have you got the car?’ he asked. ‘I’m having a gin and tonic. Can I offer you a weak one?’
I sat on the same stool as the night of the disastrous supper. Today the papers had free rein; the top of the counter was a thatch of newsprint. ‘You’ve beaten me on the crossword,’ I said.
‘Have I? I’ve been stuck on the last couple since lunchtime – can’t get ’em for the life of me.’ He dropped a couple of ice cubes into a glass.
He brought my drink over and came to sit on the opposite stool. I asked him about the books at Bonchurch and when he thought Sirene would be ready to go back in the water. Ted sat with his head heavy on my knee, occasionally giving a sigh suggesting the weight of the world was on his shoulders. I stroked his ears, letting the silky fur slip between my fingers, remembering how I’d watched Pete do the same.
‘I don’t like speaking ill of the dead,’ Chris said suddenly. ‘But I thought she was a selfish woman – Alice.’
I looked at him, forgetting Ted in my surprise.
‘I’m not saying she wasn’t charming – she could be, very. And she was good-looking, obviously, and always very stylish.’ He rustled beneath the newspapers and slid a ten-pack of Marlboro Lights across to me. ‘I never got the impression, though, that much of their relationship was about him. A lot of the time, life with her seemed to be about appeasement, as far as I could tell – trying to keep her happy.’
I thought suddenly of the photograph I’d seen in the magazine months ago, the way it had seemed to belong to a different set from those of the rest of the party, with Alice dressed so fashionably. I remembered the way Pete had been looking at her, attentive, while she looked away, and felt a stab of pain for him, mixed with a streak of unreasonable jealousy.
‘Depression can seem like that, can’t it?’ I said. ‘Selfish?’
‘I daresay.’ He lit my cigarette and then his own. ‘I don’t think she liked living here. I always had the sense that she was straining to be somewhere else.’
‘But I thought she grew up on the Island?’
‘Well, she came here as a teenager, when her father retired – lovely man. But I have to say I was surprised when they got married. Not from Peter’s side – it was clear how he felt – but from hers. She wasn’t a natural Islander, I didn’t think; I worried that she would get frustrated here. Peter’s business is in Cowes – did he tell you? He needs the water for research, trials. And his workforce is very specialised. So he couldn’t move. Otherwise I think he would have done, if it would have made her happy.’
‘I met her.’
‘Did you?’ His eyebrows went up.
‘A couple of days before she . . . went. She was on the common, looking at the water. We talked about boats – she said sailing was what kept her sane here.’
He blew out quickly through his nose. ‘That’s what I mean. Didn’t she have everything in the world to be grateful for?’ He tapped his ash and looked at me. ‘It’s him I feel sorry for. And you.’
‘Me?’
He smiled, seeing my expression. ‘Call me cynical but I suspect an ulterior motive for this visit.’
I felt my face reddening and looked down. Realising he had my attention, Ted bumped his chin on my knee and I started stroking again. There was a single thump of tail against the tiles.
‘Look,’ said Chris. ‘He’s going to be here in a few minutes – at half past. We’re in the middle of a game.’ He tilted his head at the board set up on the table. ‘We play quite often. But you’re welcome
to stay.’
‘No,’ I said, a little too quickly. ‘I won’t interrupt. I just came to say hello.’
He nodded. ‘Finish your drink, though – no need to dash off.’
I gulped down the rest of it, trying to appear relaxed. The cooker’s digital clock read 20.27. I stood up but there was another minute of petting Ted to do before I was allowed to move. We were in the hall, Chris handing me my jacket from the coatstand, when there were tyres on the gravel. Shit.
The automatic light was already on as I went outside: Pete was crossing the drive towards the door. We both stopped, eight or ten feet apart. ‘Hello,’ he said. I had a moment’s impression of him before I looked away: long legs in jeans, his navy jumper, a couple of days’ worth of stubble darkening his cheeks.
I glanced behind me but Chris hadn’t come out. I looked back at Pete. The brightness of the light made him hyper-real. He was watching me and I had a sudden flashback to my kitchen, the sensation in my stomach as he’d moved towards me. ‘I’m just going,’ I said. I held up my car keys as if they were proof.
He looked at them, then back at me. ‘Will I see you . . .?’
‘Around? Probably – maybe. I’d better go – leave you to the chess.’
He frowned, lines deepening between his eyebrows.
I got into the car and reversed out, the gravel protesting under the back wheels. At the roundabout by the war memorial at the bottom of the lane, I put the handbrake on and took out my own cigarettes, glad for once that the roads were so quiet and no one came up behind to force me to move off before I could light one. I was filled with a profound sense of loss.
I parked back at the cottage but didn’t immediately go in. It wasn’t just that I hadn’t left a light on and the house looked dark and forbidding: I needed to walk.
Bolting the gate after me, I went back across the grass, over the road and on to the harbour front. The ferry had just left and was only a couple of hundred yards out, lit up in the darkness like a fairground ride. They were playing the pre-recorded message about what to do in the case of emergency, the tinny voice just audible as the wind carried it back. The water lapped against the harbour wall by my feet, black; further out, it was yellow where the streetlights caught it. I walked up past the lifeboat office and the King’s Arms, whose low windows gave out a rosy light on to the street. There were men at the bar, and the tables in the window and by the fire were taken. I carried on past the George and into the Square.
There were only two or three lights along the pier and away from them the boardwalk stretched out into darkness, the wooden shelter at the end with its pointed roof seeming to float above the water, lights shining out from its little windows. I started walking. Apart from the sound of the water slapping against the struts and my feet on the boards, there was silence. The ferry was a long way off now. I felt exposed out over the water, away from the town, suddenly conscious that there was no way back should anyone follow me out here. But who would that be? No one knew I was here. I couldn’t be so timorous all the time.
I reached the end and leant against the wooden railing. The air carried the taint of rotting fish; the line-fishers gutted their catch here rather than at home, throwing the heads and entrails back into the water. In front of me, across the Solent, the lights of the mainland lay like a necklace along the shoreline, clustered more densely at the mouth of the Lymington River. Away from the shelter of the town, the breeze was stronger. It blustered round my ears until I turned up the collar of my coat but even then I could hear a whine in it, a gentle echo of the wind that had come crying around the house after Christmas, hurting my heart.
It took me several seconds to understand that it wasn’t the wind. It was crying, a woman’s crying, and it was coming from inside the shelter. Once I realised, I wondered how I could have mistaken it but even so there was still a moment when I questioned whether my mind was playing tricks on me and the weeping from the dream had crossed over, infiltrated my waking life.
I walked round to the entrance of the shelter, which was built away from the end of the pier to protect it from the wind. On the wooden bench inside, a woman was sitting with her head in her hands, her hair falling forward to conceal her face. I didn’t need to see it to know it was Sally: her tiny frame and the huge black coat were instantly recognisable. She seemed not to have heard me so I went to sit next to her. After a second or two she looked up. Her eyes and nose were swollen from crying.
‘What are you doing here?’ she said, and her voice was almost fierce.
‘Walking – I needed some fresh air. Are you all right?’
She ran the ball of her hand under her eyes and sniffed.
‘Has something happened?’
She looked at me for several seconds, as if she was weighing up whether to tell me. ‘Tom found my emergency fund,’ she said. ‘Two hundred pounds. I kept it in my wardrobe in the pocket of an old coat. He’d been through everything.’
The little shit, I thought.
‘I just don’t know what I can do any more. He takes money from my purse but this – how did he even know it was there? I’ve got nothing now – that was it. Is this my fault?’ she asked, turning back to me suddenly, eyes glistening. ‘Because I brought him up on my own?’
‘No. Don’t think that. You do your best for him – it’s obvious.’
‘Is it?’ She got a tissue out of her pocket and started blotting her wet eyelashes, wiping away the mascara that had transferred on to her cheeks. She pushed her hair off her face and tucked it behind her ears. ‘I’ve got to get back. God knows what else he will have done. I had a bottle of wine in the wardrobe – he’ll have had that as well.’
‘I’ll come with you – it’s too cold out here.’
We walked back along the pier together. She was preoccupied and hardly said a word but I was glad of her company. The pier seemed even longer now, a great stretch to be covered before we reached the safety of the Square again, the occasional lights along it seeming only to emphasise the loneliness. I could almost see the Crimewatch reconstruction.
Outside the Bugle, I stopped. ‘Let me buy you a drink,’ I said.
‘What?’
‘Shall we have a drink – or something to eat? Have you eaten?’
She looked at me for a moment as if I had taken leave of my senses.
‘Not to worry,’ I said. ‘It was just an idea. You should get back.’
We could have gone as far as St James’s before parting ways but I had the strong sense that she wanted to be on her own. I hung back and let her go.
Back at the cottage, I turned on my computer. The home screen of my email account told me I had one new message. Helen, I hoped, clicking into my inbox, but of course it was from Richard. Before I could stop myself I’d opened it.
I’m enjoying our game, sweetheart; it’s an amusing diversion now that all I do with my life is work and talk to my wife’s solicitors. I can use up hours thinking about where you might be. You’re not in London, I’m pretty confident of that, and you won’t be in Bristol now Daddy’s gone, will you? I think we can safely say you haven’t run into the loving arms of your mother. But don’t worry, I’ve got my ideas and I’m getting warmer all the time. I’m run off my feet at the moment but I’ll always make time for you.
One more thing, Katie: if you were ever involved with anyone else – even thought about anyone else – I’d kill you.
Chapter Thirty
The phone on the wall in the café kitchen only ever rang with calls from Mary or the greengrocer’s so when I heard Chris’s voice I knew immediately that something was wrong.
‘I’m sorry to call you at work,’ he said. ‘I tried your mobile but it’s switched off.’
‘I forgot to charge it. What’s happened?’
He paused for a moment. ‘It looks like they’ve found Alice’s body.’
The feeling like cold hands came over my skin. ‘Where?’
‘A fishing boat . . .’
‘
No – not in the nets?’ For a split second I saw her body among fish spilling out on deck, the shimmer of scales. I felt a rush of nausea and put my hand over my mouth.
‘If it is her,’ he was saying, ‘she didn’t move far from where they picked her boat up. They were fishing round the back of the Island, near St Catherine’s.’
‘Pete – will he have to identify her?’
‘The body’s been in the water for so long . . . I think it’ll be dental records.’
‘Oh God.’ I put the hand back over my mouth, tried to breathe through my nose. ‘Where is he?’ I asked after a few seconds.
‘At home. The boat radioed in just before seven; he hadn’t left for work when the police went round. They’re with him now. I’ve shut the shop and I’m coming down but I thought you should know in case you see him. I don’t know how he’s going to react.’
There were a number of people in the café so I couldn’t stay in the kitchen. I splashed water on my face but it didn’t help. I kept thinking of her body, rolling in the cold water off the back of the Island for almost five months. Dental records – what had the trawlermen seen when they brought their net up? I imagined her skeleton dragged back and forth along the seabed all through the winter, the turbulence in the water tearing away her clothes, crabs coming to feed on her flesh. I rushed to the sink and was grateful only to dry-heave.
The policemen, an officer in uniform and another in plain clothes, walked past the window just before eleven. Though the station was at the bottom of the road, I hadn’t seen police in Yarmouth more than a couple of times in five months; they had to be on their way from Pete’s. I felt so powerless, trapped in the café. I wanted to throw everyone out, lock the door and go rushing up the road, knock on doors until I found his house. But what would I do when I got there? Were we still friends? I didn’t even know that.
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