by Julie Corbin
‘How’s life? Do you enjoy being a wife and mother? How are you?’
I fiddle with a spoon, start to hum, pick up a pile of tumble-dried children’s clothes and fold them. I’m on my fourth T-shirt when he stops my hand with his.
‘How are you?’
I don’t take my hand away. He feels so warm, so overflowing with heat that I want to take off my clothes and sunbathe.
‘Tell me.’
Of late I have been feeling bloodless, like there’s nothing in my veins but now colour rushes to my face and floods my cheeks. ‘I’m managing,’ I say at last.
‘Look at me.’
I look.
‘Tell me,’ he says.
I shake my head.
‘Grace?’
‘What?’
‘I’m your friend.’
‘Are you?’ It’s a whisper and he leans forward to catch it, pushes my hair back from my face.
‘Tell me,’ he says.
‘I don’t lie to you,’ I tell him. ‘I don’t lie. Not to you.’
‘Oh, Grace.’
That’s all he says – oh, Grace – and then he reaches across the table and I begin to weep, not to cry, but to weep heavy tears that crack me open like footprints on an icy pond. He stands up and lifts me off the bench, rests his back against the wall and holds me against his chest while I weep his shirt wet. He says nothing, just holds me, strokes my hair and when I’m finished he takes my hands, leads me into the living room and sits me on the sofa. He gives me tissues, hunkers down in front of me and rubs my knees.
‘You’re freezing,’ he says. He pulls the blanket off the back of the sofa and wraps me in it, swaddling me up like a baby so that in spite of myself I giggle.
‘You’re a good dad,’ I tell him.
‘Mostly. Not always.’ He smiles at me, smooths his fingers over my swollen eyelids. ‘So tell me. What’s going on with you?’
‘I see her,’ I say at once. ‘I see Rose. Mostly in my dreams and she’s drowning and I can’t save her but then other times I see her on the beach or in the garden and in my girls – I see her in my girls. I was fine until I came back to Scotland.’
‘You’re tired, Grace.’ His face is solemn, his jaw tight. ‘That’s all.’
‘It’s not just tiredness.’ I clutch his hand. ‘I do see her, Euan. I do.’
‘Ghosts don’t exist. You’re exhausted from young children. You don’t eat enough. Listen!’ He holds my face close to his. ‘I would bet all the money I had that Rose didn’t die by your hand.’
‘You would?’
‘Yes. I would. You’re a good person. A better person than most. There is no one I know who is a better person than you. I mean that.’ His tone is compassionate and urgent. It feels like balm, like forgiveness. ‘You have to let this go. Otherwise it will destroy you. And it will affect the girls and Paul.’
I nod. ‘I can’t tell Paul. I’ve never been able to tell him. The doctor says I have depression.’
‘You don’t.’ He looks fierce. ‘You just need to be kind to yourself. You need to move on and you need to eat.’ He goes into the kitchen. I listen to him as he opens the fridge and the cupboards. I rest my head against the back of the sofa and for the first time in years I feel like I can just be. I feel warm and cosy and I rub my cheeks against the soft edges of the blanket.
Euan comes back. He’s made scrambled eggs for us both. ‘Now don’t say you don’t like them,’ he tells me. ‘Because I know you do.’
My stomach gives an appreciative rumble at the sight of the food. I take the plate from him and swallow the saliva that fills my mouth. I sit the plate on my knee and look at it. It’s one of Paul’s mother’s plates, willow pattern, exquisite blue and white. The eggs are sunshine yellow from our own chickens that peck around in the run Paul made for them at the bottom of the garden. The toast is granary. It looks perfect but I don’t want to eat it. Instead, I toy with rearranging it so that the eggs sit neatly on the toast and the sprig of parsley is dead centre. (Parsley? I didn’t know we had any. I have no idea where he found it.)
The room is so quiet I can hear the ticking of my own watch. I turn my fork around in my hand. He’s waiting for me to start. ‘Tuck in,’ I tell him.
‘Not until you do.’ He lifts the fork to my mouth. I keep it shut. ‘I can do aeroplanes,’ he says.
I take a breath. ‘I think I’ll manage.’ I close my eyes and open my mouth. I want to spit it out but I don’t. I chew it. Slowly. It tastes good. He’s grated cheese through it. He feeds me some more. ‘I think I’d like to be your baby in a high chair,’ I tell him.
‘You need that much looking after? Then I’m your man.’
When I’ve finished my eggs, he hands me his plate and pats his flat stomach. ‘My mum’s taking every opportunity to stuff me full. You’d be doing me a favour.’
This time I feed myself. I finish his eggs, stop short at licking the plate. Then I lean back and puff out my cheeks. ‘That was good. I never knew how hungry I was.’
He touches my arms, runs his hands the length of them and clasps my hands again. ‘Okay, Grace, here’s the deal,’ he says. ‘You’re going to let go of Rose and start remembering stuff. You’re going to remember that we’re friends and that you can draw and paint. Do you promise?’
‘Yes.’
‘I can’t hear you.’
‘Yes,’ I say, a bit louder.
I look at him. He holds a hand up to his ear.
‘Yes, yes, yes.’ My insides are smiling. ‘I promise.’
We talk and we talk, about everything and nothing: what it’s like being parents, whether he still listens to the radio in the dark, whether I still have to draw everything I see. He leaves around midnight. He holds me on the step and we hug then he turns me around and pushes me indoors. ‘Meet you down on the harbour wall tomorrow?’
I nod.
‘Two o’clock? Bring the girls. It’s time I met them. I’m practically their uncle.’
I watch him walk to the end of the street and then I come inside. My heart is floating behind my ribcage and my face is sore from so much smiling. Euan is the closest I’ve ever had to a brother. When we were growing up he was my constant companion. Sure, sometimes we fought, but mostly we had fun sharing our childhoods. And still, even now, he makes me feel good about myself, reminds me that I am the person I want to be. And as the only other person who knows about Rose, he is a counterpoint to my own fear. Having him back in the village will be a gift. All my Christmases and birthdays rolled into one.
I rise early in the morning, shower, wash my hair and dry it into something that resembles a shape. I find a top that highlights the green of my eyes. I layer it over a white long-sleeve T-shirt and a pair of casual trousers with deep pockets halfway down the leg. I rummage through my make-up tray and find eye shadow, an almost dried-up mascara and a lipstick. I empty the dishwasher, write hairdresser appointment on the whiteboard in the kitchen and lay out a bowl and a spoon on the table. I pour some muesli from the container and cover it with milk. I lift my spoon and hesitate, close my eyes, take a deep breath. I eat slowly and carefully, as if to make noise and draw attention to myself will trigger an alarm. I finish a whole bowl and want to cry with relief. Instead I stand in front of the mirror and smile at myself, refamiliarise myself with my face. I’m still too thin, too tired-looking, but behind that there is a light in my eyes that I haven’t seen in a while. If I had to give it a name I would call it hope.
When my family arrives back home I’m drawing – simple, charcoal sketches of the girls, partly from memory, partly from the photographs that line the wall in Paul’s study.
Paul comes into the kitchen alone; the girls have fallen asleep in the car, and I hold the drawings up for him to see. ‘What do you think?’
‘I love them.’ He examines each one, lifts them up to the light, angling them in his hand. ‘Can I keep them?’ He looks at me. ‘I’d like to have them framed.’
I lean again
st the top of his arm and smile. ‘They’re not good enough for that, Paul.’
‘I beg to differ. And what’s more I can tell the girls apart.’ He points to each of the drawings and picks out one child from the other.
‘That’s right. Their posture isn’t the same.’ I think about it. ‘Ella just has a different attitude.’
He hugs me suddenly and speaks into my hair. ‘I’ve been so afraid that we might have lost you,’ he says, his voice thick with emotion.
I pull up my head so that I can look into his eyes. ‘Paul, I know I haven’t been the best wife and mother lately.’ He goes to answer me and I put my hand over his mouth. ‘No, really, I know I haven’t. But I think I can change. I’m sure I can.’
He starts to kiss me and I lean into him, relax my body against his, breathe in his familiarity and close my eyes to everything except the feeling that I am loved and wanted much more than I know.
After a few moments he moves away and I try to draw him back to me. He looks beyond me to the front door and when I listen too, I hear cries from outside. ‘Daddy, Daddy now!’ Hand in hand we walk outside and find the girls struggling to free themselves from their car seats.
‘You woke up!’ Paul lifts Ella out and they rub noses. I go around the other side and undo the buckle on Daisy’s seat. She slides into my arms and settles her cheek against mine.
Just before two o’clock I load them into the buggy. They’re old enough to walk but still Ella insists on having her own place to sit. They’re wearing tights and skirts, wellington boots and home-knitted cardigans and hats in a Fair Isle pattern: greens, pinks and cream for Ella, blues, reds and cream for Daisy. My mum is never happier than when she’s knitting and the girls have more woollens than even Scottish weather can do justice to.
I give them each a bag of breadcrumbs for the gulls and we head off along the path to the harbour. The road is cobbled and the girls giggle and squeal as they’re bounced up and down over the stones. It’s a beautiful day. The sea is calm, its surface like polished glass broken by gulls as they dive into the water for fish.
When I reach the beginning of the harbour wall, I stop. I don’t really expect him to be here. I wonder whether I’ve imagined the whole of the previous evening; a kind of intense wish-fulfilment brought on by an empty stomach and a lack of sleep. I hold up my hand to shield my eyes and look along the curve of the wall. My eyes focus and within seconds I spot him. He’s standing about fifty yards away talking to a group of fishermen who are mending their nets in a patch of sunshine. He glances up and sees me, climbs up on to the wall and jogs towards me, one leg perilously close to the outside edge. When he reaches me, he looks like he’s going to topple over backwards and I scream, grab hold of his trouser leg.
‘Chicken.’ He grins at me and jumps off the wall down beside us. The girls are regarding him with cool, serious eyes.
‘Man being silly,’ Ella says, pointing at him.
‘Out of the mouths of babes.’ I am smiling so much that my face is in danger of splitting in two. We rest our backs against the wall and he starts up a conversation with the girls. It goes like this:
‘I’m Euan and you must be?’ He waits, his eyebrows raised quizzically.
Neither of them deigns to answer him.
‘This is Daisy.’ I gesture in her direction. ‘And this is Ella.’
‘And I thought I was seeing double.’
They don’t speak.
I whisper next to his ear, ‘They hear that one a lot.’
‘Is this for the gulls?’ He reaches for Ella’s bag of bread and she pulls it tight into her stomach. He turns my way with a help-me-out face.
I giggle and shake my head.
He stretches back, looks up and around the sky then leans forward again. ‘I know!’ He rubs his hands together. ‘Who wants an ice cream?’
‘Me!’ they both cry out at once and start waving their arms and banging the backs of their boots against the wheels.
‘Shouldn’t we feed the seagulls first?’ he asks them.
‘No,’ Ella shouts, fingers working at the straps around her shoulders and waist. ‘They’re not hungry.’
‘She takes after her mother,’ I say, bending to help her and then Daisy. ‘No patience.’
They both run off along the path to di Rollo’s, their boots splashing through the briny water that has leaked from the boxes of fish being loaded on to a lorry. Euan lifts my arm and puts it through his and pushes the buggy with the other hand. We get to the shop as Ella is pointing to the largest cone.
‘It will be melted before you can eat it,’ Gianluca is telling her. ‘And look who is here!’ He comes around the counter and shakes hands with Euan. ‘You back for a visit?’
‘Coming back here to live,’ Euan tells him. ‘Can’t get a decent ice cream in London.’ He looks down at Ella and Daisy. ‘So what will it be, girls?’
Ella holds on to his jeans and jumps up and down. ‘Chocolate chip, chocolate chip!’
He glances over at me and winks. ‘Why am I not surprised?’
Gianluca loads two scoops of ice cream on to a cone and passes it to Euan who hands it down to Ella. She looks at it with a kind of startled awe then starts to suck the top of it, slurping it into her mouth with satisfied smacks of her lips.
‘Daisy?’
Daisy is standing to the side watching. She goes to speak but no sound comes out. She looks at me uncertainly. Euan lifts her up and she leans on the glass and frowns down into the trays then, overwhelmed, turns back to me again.
‘You usually have mint,’ I remind her. ‘Like Daddy.’
She nods and Euan puts her down. She runs to stand beside me, wraps her arms around my legs and pushes her thumb into her mouth.
‘Are you sure they’re identical?’ Euan asks me, pulling money from his pocket.
I shrug. ‘I don’t get it either. They’re so different.’ I rest my hand on the top of Daisy’s hat. ‘Always have been.’
‘Daisy is the shy one,’ Gianluca says, leaning across the stainless-steel counter to give Daisy her cone. ‘And there is nothing wrong with that, huh, bambina?’
She smiles at him, and settles back in the buggy to enjoy the ice cream.
I put napkins around both their necks while Euan holds my cone and then we say goodbye and go back out into the sunshine. We walk over to the fishermen and sit down, like they are, on upturned boxes, Ella squeezing between Euan and me. Seagulls wheel and caw above our heads then land on the pavement beside us where they squabble over an abandoned ham sandwich.
‘Making a right racket, they are,’ Callum says. He frees his net of tangled seaweed and tosses the weed over his shoulder. ‘What do you reckon to that noise, Daisy?’
Daisy likes Callum and by way of an answer, she hands me her cone and places her hands over her ears. He laughs at her, leans forward to tickle her knees and she wriggles out of the buggy and tries to lift up an empty lobster net and bring it close to the others.
‘Business good?’ Euan asks him.
‘Can’t complain.’ He threads the needle through the netting, weaving a criss-cross pattern through the tears. ‘As many lobsters and crabs as we can catch, we can sell. For all those fancy restaurants down your way.’
‘Not my way any more,’ Euan tells him. ‘I’m coming back here to stay.’
‘Well, good on you, pal. Come to his senses at last, eh, Grace?’ He looks over at me. ‘What do you think to that? Euan’s coming back where he belongs, north of the border.’
‘I think it’s great.’ It’s an understatement so huge that I start to tremble with a kind of bottled-up hysteria, like a fizzy drink that’s been shaken and is about to pop. I stand up and help Daisy carry the lobster net. When I look back, Euan is smiling.
10
I follow Euan out of the convent. He is fuming. His hands and legs shake as he climbs into the car. Neither of us speaks until he overtakes a lorry too close to a bend and I ask him to slow down. He says nothing, just pu
lls into a lay-by. Clouds gather on the horizon ahead of us, the wind blowing them inward and then outward as if they are breathing.
‘Look, this isn’t your battle.’ I rub his left hand through mine. ‘I don’t want to drag you down with me. Maybe you should cut me loose.’
He gives a short laugh. ‘How would I go about doing that? You’re more a part of me than my own sisters. You’re in here.’ He taps the side of his head. ‘Letting go of you isn’t an option. I think we have to outmanoeuvre her.’
‘How?’
‘Say we were with each other on the night Rose died. Brazen it out. She doesn’t have any proof. Who’s going to believe her? Look at her history – mental illness, drugs, prison. That makes her about as far away from a reliable witness as you can get.’
‘But if we say we were with each other then that will be lying. Isn’t that perjury?’
‘It won’t go to court, Grace.’
‘But still.’ I think about it. I’m not sure I could pull it off. In spite of the way I’ve lived for the last twenty-four years, lying does not come easily to me. The fact is, I was never properly questioned about Rose’s death. It was presumed that her death was an accident, unseen, unheard. I have never had to defend my position and I am absolutely sure I couldn’t stand in front of Paul and fake innocence.
‘I can’t believe she has become this person,’ I say. ‘There’s nothing of the girl left.’
‘She was always like that. Just not with you. Now you’re seeing her other side. I’m going to have a cigarette.’ He opens his door. ‘You want one?’
‘No.’ I’ve had my mobile phone on silent and when I check it there is a missed call from Paul. I can’t speak to him – not yet. I text him instead: I’ll be home later. Dinner in oven.
I sit back and chew on my nails, frustrated and dismayed with the turn of events at the convent. Nothing either of us said made any difference. In fact, it seemed like the opposite. The more she saw I wanted her not to tell Paul, the more determined she became to do it.
Outside the heavens open and Euan comes back into the car. We both stare through the windscreen. Water pours down from a heavy sky, flattening grass and making quick puddles in the hollows. Half a dozen sheep, necks tucked in, bodies up close, cling stoically to the hillside, their hooves sliding on the rocky slope.