by Alex Morgan
“Anyway, I didn’t come to talk about Sanders or the note, and I’m not here to criticise the decisions you made or the way you’ve brought him up. That’s none of my business.”
Carole frowned. “What is it then? Why are you here?”
“You really don’t know? I thought that’s why you left Nora and Terry’s.”
“What are you on about? I had a migraine.”
“I know, but after I remembered everything, I thought it was an excuse. You were staring and scowling at me. I assumed you knew who I was.”
Carole stared at her. “An excuse for what? What do you mean I knew who you were? I wasn’t scowling at anybody; my head was sore. I didn’t know you from Adam. Sanders didn’t tell me he was friends with you until after he ran away.”
“You honestly don’t remember me? You don’t remember us playing together?” Paula asked urgently. She leant forward, the table top sticky against the bare skin of her forearms. “The summer I came here when we were little. Minnie, you must remember.”
Carole sat back in her seat. “No one’s called me Minnie for yonks.” She searched Paula’s face. “We were friends? I played with loads of visitors when I was a lassie.”
“It was 1992. I was on holiday with my mum and dad. You had a red and green kite that we used to fly on the dunes …”
“You were the big girl I built amazing sandcastles with?” Carole interrupted. She was smiling now, revealing a slight chip in one of her bottom teeth. “Your dad helped us. We covered them in shells and seaweed, and made moats with water and driftwood drawbridges, and we flew my kite and went for rides on the donkeys.” She considered for a moment. “Didn’t you have a brother that was somewhere else?”
Paula nodded.
“That was you? That’s weird.”
“I know. Pete, my brother, was camping with a friend in France.” She paused to give the words time to marshal themselves. “He died recently.”
Carole’s smile froze. She took Paula’s hand. Her touch was warm. “I’m so sorry. How …”
“He had an accident on his bike,” Paula said quietly.
“That’s terrible.” Carole looked thoughtful for a moment then stood up. “I think I’ve got a picture.”
Paula surveyed the kitchen as she listened to the other woman moving about upstairs. A hand-made card was taped to the fridge below Brad Pitt. Sanders had written HApPY BIRTHDAY MuM around the
edges, each of the widely spread letters in a different colour of felt pen. In the centre was a drawing of a woman carrying several shopping bags. She appeared to be tapping one foot impatiently. A speech bubble coming out of her mouth said, Your eatin me out of house an home!!! There were more of his drawings and paintings stuck on the wall above the table. A surprisingly sophisticated landscape with a steam train seemed quite recent, but the rest looked as if they had been there for years. There were crudely painted houses on yellowing paper with curling edges, splodgy cats and dogs, and an enormous lilac elephant wearing red high-heeled sandals.
Carole returned with a dusty shoebox. Pushing aside the papers and other junk on the table, she tipped it up. A lifetime of faded memories spilled onto the unwiped surface: photos, newspaper clippings, greetings cards. Picking up a handful of pictures, she began sorting through them. She held out a glossy close-up of herself looking no older than Sanders. Her eyes were red and swollen and she was clutching a tiny wrinkled baby swathed in a pale green blanket. Sanders’ eyes were tightly shut. “That’s the day after he was born.”
She offered Paula another. “First day at school.” Sanders was grinning, hands on hips, as he showed off his oversized blazer and voluminous shorts. A Mutant Ninja Turtle rucksack was propped against one stick-thin leg.
Tears welled under Paula’s eyelids. “He looks so small and vulnerable,” she said, wiping them away with the back of her hand.
Carole continued to rummage. “There!” She held up a square print that had been torn in half and taped back together. “That’s you and me, isn’t it?”
Two girls, one several centimetres taller than the other, stood beaming beside a sprawling complex of sandcastles. They were both clutching plastic spades. Paula was wearing the flowerpot dress. The kite lay on the sand by Carole’s bare feet and behind them, in the distance, a group of donkeys waited patiently for riders.
Paula took the photograph from Carole and studied it. It was her dreams, her past made concrete. Hard evidence that she hadn’t imagined it all. She had actually been here. The memories that had been surfacing were based on something real.
“I can hardly believe it,” she managed. “There we are.” She placed the picture on the table in front of her but didn’t take her eyes off it.
“There we are,” Carole confirmed.
“I’ve been having dreams. There’s a little girl – the dress, the kite are just the same. I thought she was me, but it was actually you.”
“You’ve been dreaming about me?”
“Over and over, and I’ve finally worked out what it means. In the last dreams, you had a black eye.”
“A black eye?” Carole turned her gaze back to the neglected garden as she thought about this. Suddenly, her hand flew up to her face. “Oh, my goodness, I remember.”
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.” Paula reached out and briefly touched her hand. “I let you down badly and I wanted to apologise.”
“Oh, my goodness.” Carole repeated. She turned to Paula. “My mum was so angry.”
“She was having a relationship with Bill Thompson, the donkey man, wasn’t she?” Paula said quickly. “She wanted you to call him Uncle Bill, but you wouldn’t. You told me you hated him. Then the day before we were leaving, you asked if you could come home with me. You said you could be my sister, but I said no, I already had a brother. You cried. You cried so much.” She leant over the table and clasped Carole’s small hands in her own. “You were trying to tell me something, weren’t you? About Bill. That he was hurting you. That’s why I dreamt about you with the black eye. You needed help and you came to me because I was the big girl, but I didn’t understand. Minnie, I’m so, so sorry. I let you down. I left you there with him. It’s no wonder you started taking drugs. It’s all my fault because I didn’t help you.”
Carole stared at her. “No,” she said eventually. “No, that’s not what happened.” She pulled her hands out of Paula’s grasp. “That’s not what happened at all. I … You … You’re the girl who caused all the trouble.”
“What? What on earth do you mean?”
She ran a finger down the join on the photograph. “That’s why it’s torn in half – Mum ripped it up. I saved the bits, taped them back together and hid it where she wouldn’t find it. I always kept it, in spite of what happened, because you were my friend. You were my friend.”
Paula felt as if she was going to be sick. “Carole, please tell me what you’re talking about.”
“One day when we were playing …” She paused to light another cigarette. “I cannae believe how clearly this is coming back. We were digging a hole. We were up to our knees, really digging, sand going everywhere. You said we had to hurry, that you were really cross with your brother for going away without you. We were going to dig all the way to France and you were going to climb down and find him – and you were going to drag him back. That’s exactly what you said: drag him back.”
“I said that?”
“You did, and the black eye was nothing to do with Bill Thompson. I didn’t much like him, but he never hurt me. I think he dumped Mum not long after, went off and got a job on the rigs or something.”
Paula’s tongue felt dry and thick. She swallowed some of the disgusting coffee to moisten it. “Are you sure? You could be suppressing the memory.”
“Certain. I know who gave me that black eye – it was you!” She leant across the table. “You did it just before you left. I asked to come home with you – you’re right about that. I reminded you what you’d said about be
ing angry with your brother. I said if I was your sister, I’d never go away and leave you. I kept begging you to let me be your sister. You got really cross. You said you were a twin and you didn’t need a stupid sister. That’s when you punched me. You sent me flying and I hit my head on a stone. I was knocked unconscious and there was blood all over the place. You were wearing that dress.” Carole tapped the photo with a bitten fingernail. “It was the last thing I saw before I blacked out. They took me to Westwick in an ambulance. Mum was raging. She wanted to call the police but Bill said it wasnae worth the bother. They kept me in overnight and did loads of tests. At first I wouldn’t say anything to anyone, just sat there staring about. Then when I started talking again I kept asking, ‘Have I missed him? Did he give my presents to someone else because I was bad?’ When Mum asked what I was on about, I said Santa. I thought it was Christmas time and I’d missed him because of being in hospital. She says it was weeks before everything came back to me. She was beside herself – convinced I’d got brain damage. She wouldnae let me out the house on my own the rest of the summer.”
“No! That can’t be right. That’s awful.” Paula’s head was pounding. She rested it in her hands, fingers icy against the heat of her forehead. “You must have misremembered.”
The kitchen door opened. Paula glanced up. Sanders and the bad-tempered woman from the Co-op came in.
“Look, Nan, Paula’s here,” he said to the woman. He turned to Paula. “Have you come for lunch? This is my nan, but you can call her Agnes.”
“What are you doing here?” Agnes demanded.
“Mum!” Carole said. “Don’t be so unfriendly.”
“You dinnae ken who she is. I knew when Sanders told me about her before the gala. Never forget a name, me.” Agnes pointed a red-nailed finger at Paula. “You’re the hooligan that assaulted my girl. She’s no’ been right in the head since. I thought I told you to stay away.”
“What do you mean ‘no’ right in the head’?” Carole snapped. “There’s nothing wrong with my head.”
“Y’ken exactly what I mean. Y’d never o’ taken all they drugs if it wasnae for her scramblin’ yer brains.”
“That’s complete, crap, Mum. The drugs were nothing to do with Paula. I took them because I was a stupid wee girl, God help me.”
“Y’were never the same after she attacked you.”
“Mum, shut up.” Carole turned to Paula. “Ignore her, she’s talking out of her arse.”
“You wrote the note?” Paula whispered incredulously to Agnes.
“She thought it was Bill Thompson that hit me,” Carole said.
“I thought that’s why you were annoyed when Sanders said he’d met him at the farm,” Paula put in.
Agnes snorted. “Billy Thompson wouldnae hurt a fly. I was annoyed because the bastard went and dumped me when he got a sniff of a job offshore. As for the note …”
“What note?” Sanders asked. “What’s everyone so cross about? Shall I make a pot o’ tea?”
“Wheesht you, we don’t need tea,” Agnes snapped. She turned her attention back to Paula. “I certainly did write it. You’re a hooligan. You ruined my girl’s life, and I dinnae want you near any o’ my family.”
“Don’t be so daft, Mum,” Carole said. “It was nothing – a falling out between two kids more than twenty years ago. No more than that. She came to make up.”
“What’s twenty years ago?” Sanders interjected.
Paula opened her mouth and closed it again without saying anything.
“Not now, Sands,” Carole said. She looked at her mother. “If I don’t bear a grudge, why should you?”
“That’s as mibby,” Agnes said, “but no one hurts my family and gets away wi’ it. You needed six stitches. They shaved half the hair off the back o’ your head and you cried for two days.”
“What are you all talking about?” Sanders demanded.
“Go upstairs,” Agnes said. “This is nothing to do wi’ you.”
Carole caught hold of his arm. “Stay where you are. It’s a fuss about nothing.”
Paula got to her feet. “I’m the one who should go,” she said. “I really am sorry, Carole. I don’t know how I could have got it so wrong.”
Feelings
Paula took up her usual position on the steps leading down to the beach. The tide was out and a group of children played cricket on the wet sand. An unsteady toddler clung to his mother’s hand as they made their way to the water’s edge. He stamped his bare feet up and down in the shallow foam and waved his free arm gleefully. The young woman bent down and, taking hold of his plump torso, swung him round on a level with her face. She kissed his pink cheeks and she set him back down on the sand. When he held up his arms to be lifted again, she knelt and, giggling, hugged him to her.
Paula reached into the pocket of her shorts and fished out her phone. She dialled her parents’ number.
Her mum answered on the third ring. She sounded slightly brighter than in their previous conversations. “Paula? It’s good to hear your voice. I’m so sorry we didn’t get to talk on your birthday. How are you? Mrs McIntyre said you were doing much better.”
Paula ignored the fact that her parents had been talking to her landlady behind her back. “I’m fine, Mum. How are you and Dad?”
“Your birthday – yours and Pete’s,” her mum corrected herself, “was difficult, but we got through it and we’re still here, taking it one day at a time, as they say.”
“I know, me too. I wanted to ask you something. The summer we came here, do you remember a little girl I played with?”
She thought for a second. “Of course, a tiny thing. She was called something like Millie. A very sweet girl.”
“It was Minnie.” Paula took a deep breath. “Do you remember what happened?”
“What happened?” her mum asked carefully.
“Just before we left to come home, did I do something?”
“Well …” Her mum hesitated. “It wasn’t really anything. You didn’t mean any harm, but you were quite a bit bigger than her … As I say, it really wasn’t anything.”
“It’s okay, Mum, you don’t need to protect me. I know what it was. I gave her a black eye and knocked her out. She needed stitches after she fell and hit her head. I just wanted to know how you remembered it.”
Paula could hear her mum breathing. Eventually she said, “You did hit her, but you didn’t intend to hurt her. It was completely out of character. She said something about Pete and you lashed out – a childish reflex.”
Paula’s throat constricted. “I told her I was angry with him for going to France, and she said she would be my sister and take his place.” Her voice was little more than a whisper. “She kept saying it and in the end I punched her. I could have done her serious harm.”
“But you didn’t mean it,” her mum interjected quickly.
“But I started it. I said I didn’t want to be a twin anymore.”
“You were nine years old and you loved your brother. No one ever doubted how much you loved him. It’s just one of those things children say.” Her mum sounded close to tears. “You must believe me, Paula, you are not responsible for what happened to Pete.”
Paula slumped over until her elbows rested on her knees. She propped her head up on one hand, exhausted to her very bones. “I’ve been having dreams,” she said slowly, “about the summer we spent here. There’s a little girl on the beach. At first, I thought she was me. Then I remembered about Minnie. I knew I’d let her down, but when I tried to work out how, I got it completely wrong. I made up this elaborate fantasy about her being abused by her mum’s boyfriend. But I was the one who’d hit her. Mum, I feel like such an idiot.”
“You’re not an idiot, darling. Sometimes it’s much easier to misremember than to face the truth. With what you’ve been going through, it’s no wonder a memory like that surfaced, but you’ve got to stop giving yourself such a hard time.”
Paula made a small sobbing sound. A tear
dripped onto the bare skin of her knee.
“Listen to me,” her mum said gently. “Pete’s death was nothing to do with you.”
“But if I’d been with him.”
“You weren’t. Pete was an adult, responsible for his own actions. Your dad and I might as well say what if we’d not moved to Scotland when you were little. You wouldn’t have started school there and been put in the same class. If we’d stayed in England, you’d have started before Pete and been in separate years. Maybe your relationship would have developed differently. Maybe you wouldn’t have wanted to be twins and to ride together. You wouldn’t have been going in for that race and he wouldn’t have been out training the night before, and so on, and so on. It’s a ridiculous line of thinking. You can see that, can’t you?”
“I know, but I can’t help wondering if somehow, maybe what he did was deliberate.”
“Deliberate?” There was shock in her mum’s voice.
“I think Pete was gay and couldn’t come to terms with it. That he thought if he came out, if I knew … oh, I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m trying to say.”
“Darling, Pete may or may not have been gay – your dad and I have wondered about it – but your brother did not deliberately put himself in the path of that car. He wasn’t depressed, he wasn’t even unhappy. He loved his life, his cycling, his job and, above all, he loved you. You have nothing whatsoever to feel guilty about.”
Paula closed her eyes. On the cine screen of her imagination, she was nine years old again, barefoot and dressed in the blue and white flowerpot dress. She and Pete were sprinting side-by-side down the sand. She was carrying a red plastic bucket and he had a bamboo handled shrimp net. They waded out until they were knee deep in the icy white foam. Laughing, Pete pulled her round and they ran together through the shallows towards the paddling pool by the harbour. If only he’d been in Craskferry with her that summer, instead of in France. But if he had been there, she wouldn’t have made friends with Minnie, wouldn’t have had the dreams that drew her back, and if she hadn’t come back, she would never have met Andy or Sanders. Her life would have turned out entirely differently.