by Ali Harris
‘I can’t lose this baby, Bea,’ she says, staring at me with wide, fearful eyes. ‘I don’t know what I’ll do—’
‘You won’t lose the baby,’ I say firmly, my cold breath circling hers. I glance up at the stars that are just visible. ‘There is no way in this world that’s going to happen.’ I see one star twinkling brighter than the rest and I wish with everything I have that it is the one that will carry Milly’s daughter into this world safely. ‘I think she just wants to meet you a little sooner than you’d planned.’ I smile tearfully, trying to hide my fear. ‘She’s her mother’s daughter. Very decisive and totally in charge . . .’
‘Or an insufferable control freak,’ Milly says weakly. And then she closes her eyes and is taken to the ambulance.
I watch it reverse down Loni’s drive and with red lights flashing, it speeds off into the dark, dark night and only then do I begin to cry.
It feels like an entire lifetime has passed when I finally allow Loni to lead me inside.
Chapter 57
It’s 11 p.m. and Loni and I are alone. Her guests have either left or crashed out in the various guest rooms, outhouses and random caravans that are parked in the drive. I’m sitting in front of the fire with a blanket wrapped around my shoulders, not speaking, just slowly sipping the brandy she gave me. We’re still waiting to hear from Cal. I can’t stop thinking about Milly and her baby. I feel like what happened is my fault – if we hadn’t been arguing maybe she wouldn’t have gone into premature labour . . .
‘It’s not your fault,’ Loni whispers, as if reading my mind. ‘You have to stop blaming yourself for everything.’
I lean my head against Loni’s chest and stare at the flickering flames. I remember that we sat like this a lot in the year after Kieran left and I was living at home. I close my eyes, enjoying the warmth of Loni’s embrace. It feels good being here with her. Just like the old days. Back when I wanted to hide away from the world.
‘Do you think I made the wrong decision by leaving Adam?’ I ask her falteringly. I’m thinking of his note, which I still have in my pocket. I’m thinking about everything I have felt about Kieran in the past few months, and how confused I’ve been, and how completely certain I was that it was Adam I wanted when Kieran kissed me.
‘Do you want to know what I think?’ Loni says softly. ‘I think you’ve been incredibly brave in trying to face up to the things that stopped you from truly giving yourself to Adam. You have found a job you really love and the kind of independence you’ve never had before, and that can only be a good thing. I think there were lots of things you needed to confront that Adam, without realising, protected you from. I think the decision you made on your wedding day had nothing to do with you and him and everything to do with what had happened in the past. You know, darling,’ she says gently, kissing the top of my head lightly, ‘you’ve always been so quick to blame yourself. But what you don’t often realise is that there is a trail of decisions that other people have made. It was the same when Len left . . . When I told Cal he’d gone he was upset, but he accepted it was your father’s decision. But you,’ she strokes my hair, ‘you were convinced that you’d driven him away, that it was your actions that led him to leave us.’ Loni shakes her head sadly as she gazes at me. ‘You became so introverted, so full of guilt, unable to articulate your thoughts or feelings, and I had to battle to make you see that his leaving had nothing to do with you. You always focus on the final event: Len leaving, Elliot jumping off the pier, Milly’s premature labour . . .’ She lifts her hand and continues stroking my hair, until her hand comes to rest on my forehead, the warmth of it soothing the swirling current of guilt and shame I’ve spent years trying to live with. ‘I just wish you’d be kinder to yourself and realise that the universe doesn’t fracture, the stars don’t split because of one decision you make, Bea. Life goes on, just in a slightly different way.’
‘Like without Dad,’ I say quietly. I can see the path opening up in the conversation before me. This is my chance to talk to her about what I’ve been hiding from her for weeks.
I’m sick of secrets. Sick and tired. I pull out Adam’s note and show her the address on the front. Loni gazes down and I see her blue eyes darken as she stares at it. She doesn’t say anything at first. She just keeps staring, first at it, and then out the window, as if she’s looking for something. Or someone.
‘Of course,’ she murmurs.
‘Loni? Do you recognise this address?’
‘He always loved Goa,’ she says quietly. ‘It’s where we were when we conceived you. It’s where he was happiest.’
I pull out another piece of paper. This time the one Father Joe had given me. ‘This is where he went after Cley, Loni. Do you know this place too?’
Loni looks down, nods, and then looks at me, her eyes full of torment.
‘What?’ I ask desperately. ‘What is it?’
She closes her eyes and inhales deeply. I can see her hands are shaking. ‘It was a Church-run treatment centre for depression. I only know because when your father and I were travelling we lived just down the road from it on a commune in Garden Grove . . .’
The words hit me like bullets. Dad suffered from depression. Just like me. I feel at once like my world has split – and come together, the information fitting into the jigsaw puzzle of my life perfectly.
‘And you knew he’d gone there all this time?’ I say.
‘No!’ she exclaims, clutching my hands. ‘No, I had no idea. Honestly, Bea. I knew he went to stay with his friend in Cley, but then I – I never heard from him again. Bea,’ she pauses, ‘Bea, darling, I think it’s time I told you the whole truth.’
I pull away from her. ‘I thought you just did. You didn’t know he’d gone to that depression clinic. That was the truth, you said.’
She nods slowly. ‘It was, but there’s more . . .’
A silence descends, one that hangs heavy in the room like a mist over the ocean. It is stifling, sucking the air out of me. I feel like I’m walking a tightrope between the past and the future, and whichever way I fall I’m going to get hurt.
‘Tell me what happened,’ I say. ‘I need to know, Loni. Stop protecting me. I’m not a child, I’m not ill any more, just sick, sick and tired of not knowing. I can cope with the truth. I’m stronger than you think,’ I say firmly, then I soften my voice. ‘I’m your daughter, after all . . .’
She clasps my hand and stares at it. ‘I wasn’t bored in my marriage, Bea,’ she says at last. The words come out in staccato, like she has to force each one out, her breath raspy as if she’s struggling to get air. ‘I didn’t kick him out. I was devoted to Len. I loved him with every ounce of my being but I didn’t always understand him.’
Her eyes glaze over and I see she has been carried away on a wave of memories. ‘We were so happy, darling; he said I was the light of his life, the one person who made him happy. I was twenty and I loved being in love with such a kind, wise, sensitive man who believed the whole world revolved around me. I knew he’d been ill, but I thought it was all in the past. At that time in my life, I truly believed I could keep him lifted and his life filled with love and light. We travelled for a year or so around California, China, Bali, Thailand, India and when I fell pregnant with you, we came home, got married and Len began teaching again at the university. And then Cal came along too and for a few years everything was perfect. He said he felt that he’d finally found his place – and peace – in the world. But then, he became more distant. I remember being worried that he might have been having an affair but I knew he wouldn’t do that to me. He stopped communicating. He stopped working. Some days he wouldn’t get out of bed. The only thing that seemed to make him happy was gardening. He spent more and more time outside and less and less with us. I could see I was losing him to his illness again.’
She looks at me tearfully. ‘You quickly realised the only way to be with him was to be out there too. You used to work together out there for hours, side by side. I honestly
think you were the reason he stayed as long as he did.’
I stare at her in shock, my head reeling with all the new information.
‘I loved him so much, Bea, you have to understand, but I just couldn’t get through to him any more. I’d have moments when I thought I was making a breakthrough. Days when I would see my old Len again; but then he’d disappear behind another wall and I’d be left to carry on alone. And then one day he disappeared for good. Packed a bag and walked out, no warning, no note. All he left was that gardening diary for you.’
I stare at the floor.
‘But you knew he went to Cley . . .’ I say at last.
‘One of his friends from the church he went to told me. I went straight there and knocked on the door for ages, but Father Joe explained Len wouldn’t see me. He just asked me to bring a box of his stuff which I did. When I went back a week later, Len was gone. I was told he hadn’t left a forwarding address.’
‘Why didn’t you tell us before . . . why did you make out it was your decision?’
‘I wanted you to have the opportunity to have a relationship with him if he chose to return. And for him to have a second chance of being the father I always knew he could be. I loved him, Bea, so very much.’ Her voice cracks with emotion.
I stare at Loni as if I’m seeing her for the first time, not as the relentlessly happy and upbeat social and spiritual whirlwind I have always known her to be, but as an abandoned woman, who has spent years keeping everything together when her whole world had been torn apart.
‘I blamed you. I blamed you for something that wasn’t your fault,’ I manage at last.
‘I didn’t care, darling!’ Loni says, enveloping me in her arms and allowing me to bury my head in her chest. ‘I was strong enough to take it. I knew that being here, able to look after you, to love you every single day, would mean that you’d love me unconditionally even if it meant that sometimes you hated me too. But your father was the centre of your world, you adored him, and I didn’t want his leaving us to change your perception of him. He was a good man and a great dad, but he was ill. I just wish I could have helped him more . . .’
‘Like you helped me,’ I say quietly. She stares at me and takes my hand. It feels warm against mine and I close my fingers around hers as I think back to my teens and early twenties, the hours, days, months, years spent battling my own demons. The dark thoughts that came swirling in on me in the middle of the night, exaggerating every tick of the clock and cannibalising the things about myself I didn’t like, telling me I wasn’t good enough for Dad, that I wouldn’t be good enough for anyone or anything. That I was ungrateful, useless, that mine was a waste of a good life. I remember the feelings of inadequacy and misery that caused me to crash spectacularly out of my A levels and take an attempted overdose of paracetamol. Then there were the doctors trying various sleeping tablets and antidepressants to get me back on track before Loni demanded that we use a more holistic approach. She changed my diet, encouraged me to start exercising more; I began running along the coast every day with Cal, Loni never far away in her car, ready to pick us up as soon as I’d run myself to a happy place. She got me doing her garden – the one part of our home that had been neglected since Dad had left. I got my place on the Garden Design course at UEA in Norwich. I felt if not always happy, then stable, steady, calm. It was like I’d accepted my past and begun to embrace the future. It was not an exciting life but it was all I could deal with. It was enough.
And then, two years into the course, aged twenty-two, and finally feeling that I knew where I was going, I met Kieran and I fell again. And then the accident happened.
Now I ask myself, was this how Dad felt when he left us? I feel like my world is cracking once again and as I look up at Loni I suddenly realise what I must have put her through. But she didn’t give up on me. She picked up the pieces after my A levels, and after Kieran had gone, and after I left Adam. She cocooned me in the house like it was a womb, nursing me back to health – again and again.
‘I can’t imagine what you went through when Dad left. I – I just wish you’d shared it with us.’ I break down then. ‘I’m sorry Loni, I’m so sorry . . .’
‘Shhh, it’s not your fault, darling. I should have told you the truth about your father sooner. I – I wanted to make it easier for you kids . . . I thought knowing would make it worse. You were so similar to him that I wanted to give you the best chance of living your own life; I didn’t want you to think that your fate was fixed because of what your father was like. I realise now I made the wrong decision.’
I want to tell Loni how selfless she’s been, how stable and strong. That I don’t know where I’d be without her.
‘I know, Loni, I know you’ve always done what you’ve thought was right. I understand why you didn’t want to tell me the truth. He was ill and if I’d known that when I was ill it would only have made it worse. But I do want – no, I need to find him. I don’t think I’m ever going to move on in my life until I do.’
She nods. ‘I’ll help you find him, Bea – I promise.’ She grasps my face and rests her forehead against mine.
I wrap my arms around her and nestle my face into her neck, buoyed as always by her strength and support.
Chapter 58
It’s New Year’s Eve and I’m standing opposite Cromer Pier, feeling like I’m walking the line between past and present. I’ve just been to see Milly and her beautiful baby daughter in the hospital. After a week of bed rest and being kept on a drip, Milly gave birth to Holly Rose this morning at 12.01 a.m. Five weeks early and a very healthy 5lbs 2 oz, she is as beautiful and as full of spirit as her mum; the first picture Jay took of her shows the determination clenched in her fists, her screaming mouth, her soulful eyes. A new life born on the eve of a new year. It doesn’t get more hopeful than that.
Distant thunder rumbles like cannons being fired. A storm is on its way and even though everyone else appears to have sensibly stayed indoors I knew after seeing Milly and Holly I had to come here tonight. It’s the one last place from my past I have to revisit before I can move on. I haven’t seen Kieran since Christmas Day. He texted a few times and wanted to meet up but I made various excuses. I’ve spent the last week just with Loni and Cal and it’s only now that I feel ready to face up to all this. They know I’m here and they know why. No more secrets.
I look up at the pier entrance. The neon lights around the ‘Christmas Seaside Special’ sign are switched off, the twin domes of the booths that remind me a little of the old Royal Naval College frame the stretch of the pier. Tomorrow the town will be packed full of people watching fireworks light up the pier. For now there is only the sound of waves thrashing against the stilts that separate this ancient structure from the angry sea, and the rain pounding against the pavement. Just like it did that tragic night eight years ago. I’m here because I need to let go. Of it all. My guilt about Elliot’s death . . . and Kieran. It’s the right kind of day to put ghosts to rest.
I walk round the curve of the sea wall and look down at the pier. Instinctively, I glance back over my shoulder and see Kieran appearing through the mist. Somehow I knew I wouldn’t have to wait long to see him. He’s lost in thought, his head buried in his hood, eyes staring at the pavement as if searching for something, or someone. He’s not even noticed I’m here.
I step out in front of him and touch his arm. He looks up, scared, expectant, hopeful – and then I see a flash of disappointment which he tries to hide.
‘Bea, I wasn’t expecting you to be here . . .’ Kieran leans forward to kiss me.
I pull away guiltily. I don’t want to give him the wrong idea.
‘Is everything OK? I mean, I don’t know what’s happened since Christmas, but I’ve missed you.’
‘Have you?’ I ask him. ‘Have you really?’ He stares at me, hurt and confused. I look out over the sea wall; I can feel him next to me, waiting. ‘I’ve done a lot of thinking, Kieran, trying to work out what it was that drew us back togeth
er. And I realise that I’ve been in denial all these months, wanting it to be love, hoping it was love, trying to make it feel like love.’ I turn and look at him. ‘But it wasn’t love, not for me, and – and I don’t think it was for you, either.’
Kieran’s about to protest but I put my hand out to stop him. ‘Please, just hear me out. This wasn’t love, Kieran. It was guilt. Guilt and sadness and loss and longing. We were trying to cling to each other because we felt in some small way it would bring us closer to Elliot and lessen our guilt, because no matter what anyone tells us, both of us blame ourselves for his death.’
‘But I told you that night I didn’t think Elliot’s death was your fault and that’s never changed!’
‘I came between you . . .’ I say. ‘Because of me everything changed.’
He lifts my chin with his forefinger and looks deep into my eyes. ‘You don’t see it, do you? Elliot was never going to grow up or calm down and until I met you, nor was I, Bea. He jumped, Bea, he jumped. You have to stop believing that you caused Elliot’s death, and start believing that you saved my life.’ He takes my hand and as he does I feel another piece of my pain drift out to sea. ‘That’s what I realised when I left you that summer. Losing him and being with you made me see there was a future for me different to the one that had been mapped out before. I stayed away for so long because I wanted to be sure I was worthy of you, not because I blamed you.’
As I look at him the present falls away and I see him as the lost, reckless boy he was when I met him.
The sky has turned black now, the sea is like a serpent wriggling beneath us, rising up against the side of the pier. It’s as if it senses that we are old prey and this moment, so like the one eight years ago, is another chance for it to claim us as its own. Every rise and fall of the waves feels like it’s trying to curl itself around us and drag us down, swallowing us whole like it did Elliot.