by Julie Corbin
Backward and forward through my life until finally I land where I need to. I reach for the memory, grasp it and make the connection. My eyes snap open. I look at the bracelet on my lap. I hold it up in front of me. My heart hammers a hectic rhythm then seems to stop altogether. The bracelet – I know where I’ve seen it before.
April 1987
Paul and I honeymoon on the New England coast. We base ourselves in Cape Cod where the weather is kind to us. It’s every day the same: sunshine and soft breezes. Perfect. We stroll along the wide sandy beaches, cycle up country paths and visit the numerous lighthouses that stand guard over the coastal waters. On the first night we discover a beach restaurant that immediately becomes our favourite. New England clambake: cod, scallops, lobster and all types of clams covered in seaweed and steam-baked in charcoal pits then served with red bliss potatoes wrapped in wet cheesecloth.
We talk and we laugh and every morning and evening we make love. At first I’m shy, afraid to let go to the rising tension inside me and I automatically squash it back down again but soon I learn to let go and my body wakes up to his. I can’t help but touch him, everywhere, all the time. We are seldom parted. He goes into the post office and I mind the bikes. Within minutes I am aching for him. When he comes out I grab him, hold him in a kiss until the ache is rubbed away. I want our honeymoon to last for ever. I want to trap the moments in aspic and jump in alongside them so that I can relive the sense of completeness where all desires are met and past mistakes wiped clean.
We both love living in Boston. We have a home in the suburbs where the garden stretches into an orchard. Paul studies with Professor Butterworth at the State University and we are welcomed into a circle of friends, some of them Europeans like us. Within the year I have a place at art college and start to live out my dream of becoming an artist.
We’ve been married for four years when we start trying for a baby. Making love is tender, significant, each ejaculation, each long swim: this could be it, this could be our baby, the melding of us both into a completely new and wonderful human being. First month, nothing, second month, I’m two weeks late. Then I wake up and immediately throw up. I ring one of the other wives and she comes with me to the gynaecologist. I’m pregnant: happily, deliriously, unbelievably pregnant.
When I tell Paul he falls to his knees and hugs me, strokes my belly and I giggle. He is a model expectant father. Those first three months, I vomit both morning and evening. He brings me dry biscuits and weak tea in bed. He does all the shopping and cooking; he comes with me for the first scan.
‘Well, well, well!’ the doctor says, grinning at us both.
We wait, our smiles frozen, not sure how wide we should make them.
‘There’s one heartbeat and then there’s another! Two for one. How clever are you?’
‘Twins?’ We both look at each other and then laugh, incredulous. It is a shock, a happy readjustment.
I love being pregnant. I feel like I’m incubating a miracle, two miracles, in fact. I spend hours visualising my babies, what they will look like, their smiles and gurgles, the sound of their breathing. And when they start to move inside me it feels like the flutter of butterfly wings and then, as the months pass, their movements become stronger, proper kicks, hiccups that make my growing stomach shake.
The babies are born, time passes and Daisy becomes as summery as butter with cheeks as round as red apples. And she is content. She’s in no hurry to grow up. She watches Ella and learns from her mistakes. It isn’t Daisy who bashes her head on the side of the coffee table or breaks her wrist swinging from the elderberry tree.
Ella is a cat. She seeks attention on her terms, wants to be mistress of her own fate. She reaches all the milestones first. She smiles first, crawls and walks first. Her first word is dada; her second is dog.
‘I think we should have six children,’ I tell Paul. ‘And live in the country. On a farm with chickens and goats and—’
He’s just come home from work and he kisses me quiet. ‘Well! There’s the thing, Grace. It’s time for me to apply for a professorship. And guess what?’
‘What?’ I help him out of his jacket and hang it over the back of the chair.
‘There’s a post coming up in St Andrews of all places.’ He takes my hand. ‘Wouldn’t you like to go back home?’
I don’t answer. I don’t know what to say. I had given up on the idea of ever living in Scotland again. I no longer see it as my home.
‘Your mum and dad would be able to help with the twins,’ he continues. ‘And my parents. Skye isn’t so far from the village. Great for holidays, fishing, hill walking. It’s an ideal upbringing for children.’
I see the sense in it. But going back? I’m not so sure. We’ve made a life for ourselves in New England. I’m a different person here.
‘So what do you think?’
He is excited. He holds both my hands and waits, smiling. I want to please him. After all he has given to me, I want to give him something back. ‘If it’s the job you want then we should go for it,’ I say.
He twirls me round and then we collapse on the sofa and start to make plans. While Paul’s at work, I pack. I’m sorting through some boxes when I find it. It’s a close-up photo of Paul and his first wife Marcia. They were married in the registry office in Edinburgh. It’s summer and she’s wearing a short-sleeved dress. They are both grinning, holding their hands in front of them, showing off their wedding rings. Around Marcia’s wrist is a silver charm bracelet. I can clearly see two of the charms: a Viking boat and a gondola. When Paul comes home from work I ask him about it.
‘The Viking boat was to remind her of her gran who lived on the Shetlands.’ He points to the gondola. ‘We went to Venice in the spring before we got married,’ he tells me. ‘I bought that charm for her at one of the markets in the square. Had to haggle a bit on the price.’
‘It’s a beautiful bracelet.’ I run my finger along the image of the silver chain. ‘What happened to it?’
‘I’m not sure,’ he says. ‘When Marcia died I gave it to Rose. She took it everywhere with her but the catch was loose. She had it with her at Guide camp.’ He shrugs. ‘She must have lost it somewhere there. I went back several times to look for it but I never found it.’
16
‘What’s going on?’ Ella is standing at the bottom of the ladder staring up at me. ‘The hall is full of junk.’
It’s the next morning and I’ve already turned out the understairs cupboard and now I’m climbing into the attic. ‘I’m looking for something.’
‘If you’re trying to compete with Monica, I’d give up now. We’ve got ten times as much junk as her.’
‘Do you want to help me?’
She makes a face and goes into her bedroom. Within seconds the thump of music starts. I continue up the ladder until I’m in the roof space. I hook a light over one of the crossbeams and survey the scene. We have more boxes of books and paraphernalia than I would have thought possible. Almost every inch of space is taken up with a box or bin bag of stuff. I wish I had developed a system for cataloguing it all but it was one of those rainy day jobs that I never got around to. I need to find the photograph of Paul and Marcia’s wedding and if it means turning the whole house upside down then that’s what I’ll do. I have to make sure that my memory isn’t making links that don’t exist. And if it is the same bracelet, then how did Monica get it? And why has she kept it all these years?
I start working through the bags and boxes, trying not to be distracted by everything else I come across, but when I find the photograph taken during my ultrasound scan, Ella and Daisy, their bodies coiled around each other, head to toe, wrapped up in each other’s rhythm, I stop and sit for a moment. Sometimes I play that game: if you had to describe yourself in one word what would it be? Nine times out of ten the answer would be mother. I am more a mother than anything else and my love for them remains as solid and true as the day when I first saw the scan and heard the two baby heartbeats. By th
e time they were born, at thirty-six weeks and five days, I was already smitten beyond anything I could ever have imagined.
And I remember another time. Five months pregnant, waking up in the middle of the night to discover Paul’s side of the bed empty, finding him in the living room, fast asleep in his chair, this photograph in his hands. We parent the same children, live in the same house, make love, have fun, and plan for our future. Why wasn’t that enough for me?
I put the scan photo away again and get back to it. Wind is whistling through the roof space from west to east and the light swings backward and forward, illuminating first one corner and then the other, stuff that is no longer relevant to our lives but somehow we’re unable to throw it away.
I tread carefully over the sheets of hardboard that act as a temporary floor, bending my head under the rafters to bypass cardboard boxes of Paul’s old toys, soldiers and Airfix models. There’s a plastic bin bag of old clothes. I look through it and see my waitress uniform, think back to Donnie’s Bites, serving Paul his dinner, making up my mind to love and care for him.
The final cluster of boxes I come across look like they could well have been there for some time. Since we moved back to Scotland? Possibly, judging by the amount of dust and cobwebs that lie over the top. As soon as I open the first one, I have the feeling that I’ve struck lucky. It’s all the photographs that Paul took before I met him. I scan through the ones on top then decide to look through them downstairs away from the draught.
Ella has just come out of her bedroom and jumps as I drop the box of photos close to her feet. She looks into it, her nose wrinkling at the cobwebs and dust. ‘You’re just so random,’ she says.
I pick up the box and go downstairs.
She follows me. ‘Where’s Dad, anyway?’
‘Fishing with Grandad. They told you already.’
‘I’m not putting all that stuff back under the stairs.’ She points a plum-coloured fingernail in the direction of the emptied-out cupboard. The hallway is now almost impassable: tennis rackets, raincoats, old shoes, a broken fax machine, a dozen boxes full of the twins’ old school books and jotters and that’s not even the half of it.
‘I’m not expecting you to,’ I tell her.
I climb over everything, feel a long thin something-or-other bend and then snap under my foot, keep walking and sit down on the couch. I turn out the box on the floor and take my time looking at each photo until at last I come to it. It’s a professional one, about six inches long and four inches wide. Paul and Marcia grinning in front of the registry office. I position the bracelet on the table next to the photo and examine them carefully. Both are silver, both chains have a distinctive herringbone weave and the two visible charms on Marcia’s wrist are the Viking boat and the gondola, side by side, just as they are on the real bracelet.
It’s what I expect but still I find it hard to believe and it sets up questions that, for the moment, have no answers. How did Monica get the bracelet? Why didn’t she hand it to the police? Why has she never in all these years given it back to Paul? When I went back to the tent after the argument, Monica was still up. What if Rose went to bed after I pushed her? I may even have unconsciously registered that all the girls were there. She may have got up later, just like Euan has always said.
Could it be that I wasn’t the last person to see Rose alive?
The doorbell rings and Ella answers it. ‘I have to warn you,’ I hear her say. ‘She’s in a strange mood today.’
The living room door opens. It’s Euan. I slip the bracelet into the back pocket of my jeans. He looks around at the mess. ‘What’s going on?’
‘Just tidying.’
‘Tidying?’ He closes the door behind him. ‘Looks like a tornado’s passed through.’
‘I wanted to sort out some photos and . . .’ I give him a breezy smile. ‘No time like the present.’
He’s staring at me. He looks tired. I want to touch him.
‘Are you okay?’ he says.
‘Yeah.’ I shrug, aim for nonchalance.
‘What are you hiding?’
‘What do you mean?’
He points to my hands. I still have them behind my back. I bring them forward and show him they’re empty. He looks around at the closed door then leads me into the alcove of the room so that we won’t immediately be seen if one of the girls walks in. ‘Has Paul been in touch?’
‘No. I’ve left messages but he hasn’t answered them.’
He puts his hands in his pockets and blows out a breath.
‘At least he’s out of Orla’s reach,’ I say, trying to see the upside. ‘But I’m not sure what he’ll do when he does come back home; maybe he’ll come to see you.’
I expect him to look worried but he doesn’t. He gives me a half-smile, resigned, sympathetic. ‘It was bound to come out sooner or later.’
‘Are you going to tell Monica?’
He rubs the back of his hand over my cheek. ‘One thing at a time. Are you still okay about the alibi?’
‘Yes.’ I can’t pretend that I haven’t had some second thoughts. What if Euan hurts Orla? What if I have to lie in court? Under oath? What then? But bottom line: Orla has to be stopped and Euan and I have known each other since before either of us had language. Our selves are imprinted on the other. We are close enough to have absorbed each other’s moods and morals. I trust him completely.
‘I’ll text you.’
‘Euan.’ I pause. The bracelet is burning a hole in my back pocket. ‘Has Monica ever said anything about Rose’s death?’
‘Why would she?’ He’s whispering. We both are.
‘It’s nothing really.’ I shake my head. ‘Just a thought.’
He puts his right hand on my neck, under my ear, starts to massage it with his fingers. ‘Tell me.’
‘Well . . .’ I’m afraid that if I say it out loud it will sound like nothing – scraps of information that I’ve pieced together to form a shape that is more imagination than truth. ‘I’m not telling you this to make trouble, but Monica was out of bed that night too. I saw her when I was going back to my tent.’
‘So?’
‘When Orla turned up at the girls’ party last week, Monica saw me arguing with her and was pretty freaked out about it. And then when I met Monica on the beach the other day she was—’
‘Grace.’ He takes hold of my shoulders. ‘This is a bad situation and I can see why you’re clutching at straws.’
‘I’m not.’
‘Have you eaten anything recently?’
‘Well, no, but—’
‘This has got nothing to do with Monica and everything to do with us.’ He shakes me gently. ‘You have to stick to the point. Leave Monica out of it. I mean it. No one will ever find out what really happened to Rose. It’s a dead-end.’ He leads me through to the kitchen. ‘You should eat something and then you should rest.’ He takes cheese and ham, butter and pickle from the fridge, slices some bread then puts his arms around me and makes the sandwich with me standing in between.
I shut my eyes and lean into his neck. I could show him the bracelet but I don’t want him to come up with a rational explan ation. I want to hang on to what I know: Monica had a bracelet that belonged to Rose. She has been on the edge of her nerves since Orla came back to the village. It does add up to something. I can feel it in my bones.
Euan hands me a bulging sandwich and I offer him half back. He shakes his head. ‘I’m meeting Callum in the Anchor for a pub lunch.’
‘That’s nice.’ I take a bite.
‘He’s thinking of buying the disused fish store down at the harbour. It could be developed into apartments. He wants me to go halfers.’
‘Right.’
‘Grace?’
‘What?’
‘Monica had nothing to do with Rose’s death.’
I take another bite and keep chewing, look down at my feet.
‘Why don’t you come along to the pub?’
‘My stomach will be full
in a minute.’
‘You can just have an orange juice. Keep a couple of old men company.’
‘No, you’re right.’ I smile, pour a glass of water and take a drink. ‘I need to have a lie down.’ I drink the water and hold the glass into my stomach.
Euan is pacing, thoughtful. Then he comes to stand in front of me. ‘You’re going to break it, squeezing so hard like that.’ He takes the glass from my hand and puts his mouth close to my ear. ‘Just remember who’s the enemy here.’ His teeth tug my earlobe. ‘I’ll text you late afternoon.’
I follow him into the hallway and watch from the window. When his car turns the corner, I start up my own car and drive off in the other direction. I should be able to have it out with Monica before Euan gets back from the pub. I am driving towards their house and am almost there when, just for a second, my resolve wavers. I slow the car right down to a stop. Perhaps I shouldn’t do it. Perhaps I’ve dug around enough. Rose is dead. Twenty-four years dead. Do the details really matter?
Yes. To me the details are everything. They are the foundation on which I have built my life. Maybe the bracelet means nothing, maybe Monica will have a reasonable explanation for how she came to have it but I’m not missing the chance to find out. Angeline said that the past doesn’t matter but it’s the past that I’m wrestling with and this might be a chance to make sense of it. I won’t let this moment pass. Not even for Euan.