‘I love wrapping presents. I don’t get much chance to, so I took my time. Not to mention it’s the first present I’ve given you in a few years.’ She smiles.
‘Is that what you were doing yesterday? Shopping for this?’ She nods and I lean over and rub her knee. ‘Thank you.’
‘You haven’t seen it yet. You might hate it.’
‘I won’t.’ I slide my fingers under the tape and ease the paper open.
Inside is a framed print. A mermaid. I recognise her; it’s a print taken from a painting by one of the Pre-Raphaelites, though I can’t recall which one. She sits amid the rocks on a pebbly beach, her tail wrapped around her, her milky body rising seamlessly from the silvery grey of her scales. The sea behind her is a deep blue and dark-grey cliffs rise vertically in the background. Her hair is long and brown and while she combs it she reflects on something distant, oblivious to those outside her world who spy on her.
‘It’s only a print. I found it in the shop at the Tate. I know how much you love that mermaid story you read her.’
‘I love it. Thank you. I’m lost for words.’
She smiles, clearly pleased. ‘It’s from Mum as well.’
‘Thank you,’ I say and reach over to take hold of Alice’s hand.
As I do something happens.
‘Dawn,’ I whisper, hardly able to get my voice out. ‘She squeezed my hand.’
‘My God,’ Dawn says, under her breath. ‘Look at her eyes.’
Alice’s eyes are focused. The pupils have widened and there is a slight movement, a slight flicking back and forth.
‘Mum?’ Dawn moves quickly to Alice’s side and rubs her hand. ‘Mum? It’s Morveren’s birthday. She’s twenty-eight. And she’s here. Look Mum, she’s here. She came back to us.’
And then our mother turns her head and looks at me.
Dawn draws in a sharp breath.
I drop to my knees and pull her hand into my chest.
Dawn bursts into tears, a mix of laughing and crying.
‘It’s Morveren,’ I say and her hand squeezes mine for a second time.
Dawn and I don’t leave her alone that day. We sit and talk to her, my misdeed of the day before a forgotten memory. When it gets to six o’clock, Dawn leaves us to make her supper, and I sit and carry on chatting to her, not wanting to stop for even a moment for fear of her returning to whatever dark recess of her mind has held her captive. I tell her about the hostel, my room, Fi’s purple hair and how she looked after me when I hit my head. I tell her about Phil’s coffee and the cat that lives in the flat but never ventures past the kitchen door. I don’t tell her about the night I spent with Greg because even thinking about it makes me feel uncomfortable now.
We might be imagining it, but as we spend time with her, colour seems to bleed into our mother’s face. Her hand clutches the side of her chair. It’s like she’s filling up with life again. By the time we put her to bed, the reality of what’s happening is sinking in. We sit on the edge of her bed. She doesn’t look at us, she looks at the ceiling, yet she is changed, she is with us.
In the kitchen, I pick up the cat and kiss her soft fur.
‘They said she might just get better,’ says Dawn. ‘That without treatment, without them taking her away, they couldn’t guarantee it, but that it might happen. I’m not sure they believed it though.’
‘Who’s they?’
‘The doctors.’ Her voice is veined with bitter sadness. ‘They tried to take her away from me, you know. Put her in some filthy hospital. They said I should get on with my life.’ She shakes her head. ‘Stupid idiots. She was my life and they couldn’t see it. I had to look after her. What type of person would I have been if I’d abandoned her? She’d have lost us both. I couldn’t do that to her. I couldn’t.’
‘You could have stayed at school, I suppose, if she’d gone to a hospital. That’s probably what they meant.’
‘As if they care about school for the likes of me?’ she snorts. ‘Stuck-up arseholes. No, it wasn’t school they were talking about.’ She stops there, but I can see she has more to tell me and her face tightens with the strain of holding back whatever it is.
‘You can tell me.’
She pauses, her mouth opens for a fraction of a minute, but then she shakes her head. ‘Anyway, school doesn’t matter, not in the real world. This is the real world, Morveren. The real world where my mother was sick and I was her carer, and without me there was nothing for her. Looking after her was the most important thing. The only thing.’
‘Our mother,’ I say, stroking the cat.
Dawn turns away from me.
‘I remembered something today.’
She glances back at me.
‘The Campbells drove me out of France in a car. They hid me under a blanket in the footwell. That’s how they got me out.’
FORTY-SIX
‘Do you remember anything else?’
Dawn and I have mugs of coffee and are sitting at the kitchen table.
‘I don’t know. Maybe. A car driving along the wet road jogged me. Maybe other things will dislodge other memories.’ I pause. ‘Is there anything you can remember from the day I went missing? Maybe that will help.’
Dawn’s body visibly tenses.
‘I hate thinking about it.’
‘So you do remember?’
She doesn’t answer me.
‘You don’t want to think about it because you think it’s your fault?’
No reply.
‘You were seven, right?’
Dawn nods.
‘It wasn’t your fault.’
Still she doesn’t speak.
‘Please tell me what you remember, Dawn.’
Dawn sighs. ‘I can’t remember much. There are so many holes.’
‘It doesn’t matter. Anything.’
She breathes in, looks at her hands, then picks at a flake of skin at the edge of the weeping sore. ‘From what I can remember, it all started the day we were supposed to be going on holiday. The car was packed up and you and I were ready to go, and then they started shouting.’ She looks at me for a moment and adds, ‘They were always bloody shouting. But this time Mum was saying that she was wrong about the holiday. That it wouldn’t help and that she wanted a divorce instead. She said he was a bad father and we’d be better off without him. There was a boy at school with divorced parents and he was always crying, so I got upset and was begging to go on the holiday. Anyway, she looks at me and says, Fine, we’ll go on the holiday but it’s make or break. I didn’t know what that meant, but I remember being excited again. We hadn’t been on holiday before and I’d told everyone at school. They’d call me a liar if we didn’t go.’
Dawn takes another breath and closes her eyes for a minute.
‘I remember all this as if it was yesterday,’ she says softly. ‘It’s odd because I can’t remember anything that happened after we came back from France, but all this? Like crystal. We drove to the ferry place. It took ages and they were pretty much screaming the whole time. I put my hands over your ears for a bit so you couldn’t hear it. We got on the boat and Dad went to the bar, and we did colouring. I got cross because you just scribbled over the pages and wouldn’t keep between the lines. I even remember what we had, chips and sausage, but it was cold and there was this sticky stuff on the sausage I didn’t like. Then I don’t remember much until the campsite. We were staying in a caravan. It was dirty and smelt bad and there was a patch of black mould on the ceiling, and Mum said Dad was bloody useless for booking something so awful and then she sat in the corner in a mood, rolling her thumbs around each other for hours and hours. She wouldn’t play with me or read any stories and you were crying a lot, which got on my nerves.’ She looks at me earnestly. ‘Only because I was a child and probably tired and annoyed with everyone being cross.’
‘I know.’
She nods, then sighs. ‘So we’re in this caravan and suddenly he starts yelling again. Going on about how we’re supposed to be o
n holiday and that we should be having fun. Every time he said fun he gave this awful grin and waved his arms around like a madman. He gets some clothes out of the case and chucks them at Mum and says, We’re going out. And she says no, but he doesn’t listen, shouts louder, says they’re going to have a good time if it’s the last thing they do. And then she said, It’s over and … he hit her.’
Dawn winces at the memory. I think of that man, Mark Tremayne, sitting in his filth with the pigeons, and feel sick.
‘There was blood on her face from a cut in her hair. It scared me so much. I screamed and then he starts walking towards me, pointing his finger and saying he wished I’d never been born.’
Dawn’s eyes shine with a film of tears and for a moment she’s quiet.
‘Mum steps between us and holds me behind her legs and then he tells her that the three of us ruined his life, that the four of us were going to go out and have some goddamned fun.’
Dawn gives a bitter, incredulous snort.
‘Can you believe he said that? Those two things in one sentence? And then he pushes Mum to one side. Grabs me around my neck and pushes me against the wall of the caravan. I can still feel his hand on my neck.’
And then I am there. He’s holding my sister’s neck. My mother is sobbing. She claws desperately at him. She wants him to let Dawn go. I am cowering on the seat beside the table. The fabric is rough against my cheek and smells of damp towels. I tuck myself into the corner as far as I can go, burying my face into my teddy. He smells nice. He’s scared of Dad, too. Scared of how his eyes have gone big and staring with red veins popping in the whites of his eye. And he doesn’t like how he’s hurting my sister. How he’s really hurting her.
‘…and then he just sort of drops me. He was shaking. And Mum was crying, but quieter. She grabbed me and, as she did, he turned and went into the toilet and shut the door.’
Her voice cracks with emotion and I reach over and rub her shoulder.
‘And then Mum grabs you by the hand and drags you over to me and kneels down and whispers that I have to get out of the caravan. She says we have to hide underneath it and wait for her. She said she would get us when he had calmed down and then she’d put us to bed. She was speaking quickly and I nodded. Then we heard the flush of the toilet, and she said, Quick, under the caravan, then she pushed me out of the door even though we were crying. Then she closed the door and said, And don’t let go of your sister’s hand, Dawn.’
I watch her face contort in pain as she battles her guilt.
I reach for her hand and hold it. I can smell the alcohol that hangs in the mouldy caravan. I remember my mother bending down, her hand on my arm as she tucks the hair behind my ear and tells me to go with my sister. She tells me she loves me. There’s blood on her face.
‘We wriggled under the caravan. I told you it was a game. That we were going to pretend we were playing hide and seek. You just kept on calling for Mum and trying to get out from under the caravan. I tried to sing to you, even told you a story, but you kept on crying.’ Tears begin to course her cheeks now. ‘I wanted Mum so badly. And I knew—’ She has to stop for crying, then the words that follow are punctuated with sobs and snatched breaths. ‘I knew I … shouldn’t let … go … but I couldn’t hold on … I couldn’t stop you … and … and you pulled out of my grasp and even though I called and I called, you never … You never came back. I let you go.’
She shakes her head and fresh tears tumble down her face.
And then I know that this is the dream I’ve had before. I am running. My heart thumps in my ears. My breath comes in short, painful gasps. It is dark. And cold. The trees reach out to grab at me as if they are alive. There are roots in the ground that are covered with leaves and I keep tripping over. My feet are so sore. Every step hurts. One foot more than the other and when I look down at my feet I see I have lost a slipper. Dad will be cross.
‘I didn’t go and look for you,’ Dawn says quietly. ‘I stayed beneath the caravan because I was scared. I was scared of the dark and scared of him so I just stayed where I was.’
‘It wasn’t your fault,’ I say. ‘It wasn’t. You were just a child.’
Dawn’s whole body shudders with sobs
‘It was their responsibility to look after us.’ I kiss the top of her head. ‘Dawn. Look at me.’
She lifts her head slowly, her body still shivering, and looks at me.
‘It wasn’t your fault.’ I say, holding her face between both my hands. ‘It wasn’t.’
‘He told the … police…’ she says, grasping at each word. ‘That it was my fault. I heard him … he said … I was supposed to be … with you … they stared at me, nodded when he said it. Wrote it down in their … in their stupid … notebooks.’
I wrap my arms around her and stroke her back. ‘It’s OK,’ I whisper. ‘It’s going to be OK now.’
FORTY-SEVEN
That night I am plagued by an unrelenting insomnia that pokes and prods me like a bored child. I can’t stop thinking about my father, the man responsible for half my genes, the man sitting in that cavernous, putrid house with his stinking clothes and his rotten heart.
And when at last I sleep, I find myself with Tori. She looks unwell. Her skin is tinged yellow and there are dark circles around her eyes. She is painfully thin and wears a faded dressing gown that once was lilac. We are swimming in the sea. Underwater. Deep down dark, near the ocean floor. She holds my hand as we glide through the icy cold. I wave my free arm through the water, enjoying the way it slips between my fingers. I smile at her and she smiles back weakly, as if every ounce of energy is taken up with that one gesture. The water is deep green and there are no fish, just grey hunks of rock and seaweed that reaches way above my head, swishing to and fro in the current. I look back at Tori, her golden hair is fanned out like a magnificent, golden peacock’s tail. I pull on her arm to get her attention but she doesn’t respond.
‘Tori?’
She laughs and a train of bubbles spews from her nose and mouth and wiggle their way to the surface of the sea, miles and miles above us.
‘I’m not called Tori, silly.’
‘Yes, you are!’
‘I’m not. I let you call me it, but it’s not my name.’
‘What is your name then?’
She laughs again. ‘You know.’
‘I’ve forgotten,’ I say. ‘Tell me once more.’
She shakes her head and disappears behind an explosion of giggling bubbles. ‘Silly, silly, you,’ she sings.
Then she lifts a single finger to her lips and hushes me. I am about to ask her why I need to be quiet, but I feel something touch my ankle. I look down to see a single frond of black seaweed curling around my leg like melted bitumen. Around and around it creeps, growing thicker and blacker as it goes. Another crawling frond grabs my arm. Then another my other leg. I am being cocooned, a helpless fly in a sea-spider’s web.
I reach for the little girl, but she has gone. She is swimming away in the distance, too far to hear my call. The seaweed begins to inch up my neck, into my ears and eyes. When I scream, a frond crawls into my mouth and thrusts its way down my throat. I gag. It’s impossible to breathe, but as I begin to lose consciousness, I feel a hand on mine. She has come back for me.
With one tug she breaks me free of the murderous weed and pulls me to safety through the velvety water.
‘Thank you,’ I say to her.
But she doesn’t reply.
FORTY-EIGHT
When I see the wheelchair my heart sinks. I’m not sure if it would cope with a walk to the end of the street let alone a walk on the cliffs, which is where I was going to suggest we go. The frame is speckled with angry sores of rust, the grey plastic seat is torn in places, with worn yellowed foam peeking out, and there’s a worrisome clicking from one of the wheels as Dawn pulls it out of the ramshackle shed in the front yard.
‘It’s fine,’ she says, obviously noticing my doubt. ‘We’ve not used it for years, but it�
�s perfectly fine.’
‘Maybe a touch of oil? The wheel looks a little stiff,’ I suggest.
‘We’re not going far.’
Dawn leaves the chair outside and squeezes past me, disappearing into the flat towards the kitchen. I pull the wheelchair into the house and wheel it backwards into Alice’s room.
‘Guess what? I managed to get us a day release pass,’ I say, as I give Alice’s shoulder a quick rub.
An hour later, the taxi drops us outside the church in Zennor. The driver sits in his seat, picking at his teeth, watching us in his rear-view mirror as we manoeuvre Alice out of the car and into her chair with the sun beating down on us like we’re ants beneath a magnifying glass. Dawn is silent. She’s in a bad mood. She thinks all of this is ‘more trouble than it’s worth’.
When at last Alice is out of the car and in her chair, I leave Dawn to fuss with an unnecessary blanket on her lap, and pay the driver.
I untuck my vest top and flap it to dry the sweat that runs in rivulets down my front and back. ‘She’ll bake under that,’ I say.
‘Why are we here?’ she says, eyeing the church warily.
‘You told me she liked it.’ I start to push Alice towards the church. I tilt her backwards and rest the front wheels on the first stone step.
‘I thought you wanted to go for a walk.’
‘I do,’ I say, panting with the effort of getting the back wheels up and pushing the chair forward over the uneven cobbles.
‘Walking in the church?’
I heave the chair up the next step; it might as well have been an articulated lorry. ‘We’re…’ I pause and lean my weight on the back of the chair to balance it. ‘Can you give me a hand?’
Dawn grabs the handles of the chair from me and eases Alice carefully back down the step I’d negotiated with great effort, then swings it around and expertly pulls her up the steps backwards. ‘I just don’t see why we have to go into the church.’
In Her Wake Page 23