The Storm

by Amanda Jennings

  ‘Jealous?’ He erupts with laughter, dabbing imaginary tears of mirth and shaking his head as if I’ve told the funniest joke in the world. ‘Your word against mine? The word of a housewife with depression who can’t get a job or manage a bank account? And that of a pathetic drifter? You think they’ll believe the two of you over me? A respected lawyer and upstanding member of the community?’

  Each word stings. I have to dig deep. I think of Alex and the way he stands up to this man and how proud it makes me. When I speak, I do so slowly, pausing between words to steady my nerves.

  ‘But not upstanding enough to go to the police and report a crime.’

  The sentence is no more than a whisper, but I see him double-take, a flicker of surprise skims his face.

  It emboldens me.

  ‘You watched Cam put a body in his boat and head out to sea with a dingy tied to that boat. You waited until he returned. Empty-handed. No body. No dingy. You witnessed him dispose of a body, but never breathed a word. You let a village believe a man had drowned at sea. You withheld evidence.’ Adrenalin pumps through my veins like a drug. ‘A lawyer withholding evidence that might lead to a conviction for murder? What would this do to your reputation?’ Hatred fills me like an inflating balloon. ‘You know something?’ My words drive into him. ‘If it wasn’t for you, following me around, refusing to leave me alone, none of it would have happened. If you’d just stayed away then Cam and I could have had a chance at being happy. I could have married someone who truly loves me.’ I laugh bitterly. ‘Jesus. Imagine that?’

  He stands, open-mouthed, as if I’ve slapped him.

  ‘I’ve loved you from the first moment I saw you,’ he says, brow furrowed with incredulity. ‘You consumed me.’ I struggle to keep looking at him under the burning heat of his stare. ‘I saved you, Hannah. I got you away from that man. I didn’t contact the police for you. He was no good for you. A murderer? Is that the type of man who’d make you happy?’ He pauses for a moment or two to study me, searching my face for some sort of reaction. ‘I gave you a second chance, a beautiful home and family. I gave you all of this,’ he says, as he gestures around him with a dramatic sweep. Then he takes my hand in his. His thumb strokes mine. ‘Tell me, who stood by you, Hannah? Him or me?’ He raises his hand to my face and trails the backs of his fingers down my cheeks. ‘You’re misremembering it all. Things happened differently. When I found you, you were barely functioning. You were a shadow of the girl I knew. And when he abandoned you, I was there for you. If he loved you even half as much as I do, he’d never have left you. He’d have fought for you. Like I did. If it were me back then? I never would have run away from you. I’d have taken you with me. Left in the night. I’d have moved heaven and earth to not be separated from you. And I did. You asked me to let him go free. It went against everything I knew was right and I did it only for you. And what did he do? This man you think would have made you happy?’

  Nathan is speaking softly now, his demeanour gentle and unthreatening. His words are muddling me, as if he’s taking a jar of my memories and shaking it until it’s silty and unclear.

  ‘He abandoned you, Hannah. I watched him walk away from you. He didn’t even look back.’

  An image of Cam leaving blindsides me and I’m catapulted back to that afternoon.

  My voice telling him to go. Telling him I never wanted to see him again. Him pleading with me. Trying to hold on to me. Both hands against his chest. Pushing. Powered by anger at the staggering injustice of it.

  It’s over, Cam. I don’t love you. Just go.

  And that was it. He turned his back on me and didn’t look back.

  My mind wrestles with everything Nathan said. Is he right? Am I so swept up with the fantasy of Cam that I’m not remembering things correctly? Why didn’t Cam fight for me? For us? If he truly loved me, how could he walk away?

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Hannah

  The body was never recovered. The days and hours which followed his disappearance were hellish. What felt like the whole of Newlyn assembled at the church the following Sunday to pray for his safe return, yet not one member of that congregation believed he was alive. You could see it in the way they carried themselves, broken by sadness, resigned to the loss and trying to process the tragedy. The church buckled beneath the weight of shared grief, the town mourning one of its own, brother, friend, pupil, son, a young man with his whole life ahead of him, exhausted, emotionally traumatised, so drunk he wasn’t thinking straight, took a boat out at night in rough seas, and never returned.

  I had to lean on my father to keep myself steady during the service. I couldn’t look at any of them. Couldn’t look at Cam. Whispers swept the church and the bakery, the pub and the post office, street corners, playgrounds, the dock, and the fish market. Children throughout Newlyn and Penzance, Long Rock, as far as Hayle and beyond, were warned – yet again – to respect the sea. Don’t be foolish. Don’t take risks. Never take the sea for granted, never take your boat out when you’ve been drinking.

  Foolish boy.

  Even he, the whispers said, who knew the sea like the back of his hand, who’d grown up with it, who earned his livelihood from it and faced its power every day. Even he made mistakes.

  His upended dingy was found stranded on rocks below Penlee Caravan Park, not far from Mousehole.

  The current was strong that night, the whispers said. We won’t find him. Not now. He’ll be halfway to America.

  I stumbled through those days in a stupor. The lies started immediately. First I lied to my parents. I told them he was a dear friend of mine, we were close, and his loss hit me hard so I needed time to get over it. I went up to my bedroom, closed the door, pulled the curtains shut, and climbed beneath the covers. Every part of me ached as if I’d been beaten with steel bars. My head throbbed so violently the light stung my eyes.

  Cam visited. Once. He sat on the chair in my room holding the mug of tea my mother made him. We didn’t talk. Instead we sat in silence and stared at nothing, our tentacles of guilt wriggling outwards, knotting together, snarling up the space between us.

  On the fourth day, in the morning, after my fifth sleepless night, Nathan came. I could hear his voice at the front door. My mother telling him I was too sick for visitors. But he insisted. He told her he wouldn’t be long. She appeared at my door.

  ‘It’s Nathan Cardew to see you, melder. I told him to come back another time, but he’s hard to argue with.’

  I can’t recall my reply, what I said, if, indeed, I said anything. Moments later he walked into my room. Shut the door. Sat on the end of my bed and calmly told me what he’d seen. He appeared victorious in some way, elated, as if he’d won a sports match he was expecting to lose. He seemed to relish telling me in intricate detail about the body of a man in Cameron Stewart’s boat. How he’d seen Cam untie a dingy then drag it out of the harbour on a rope. How he’d waited and seen him return some time later with no dingy and no body. He peppered the story with dramatic pauses and snide comments on Cam’s violent character. He told me how at first he wasn’t sure what he’d seen, but the next morning, when he heard a man had drowned at sea the night before, well, he said, it was easy to put two and two together. All the while he spoke he held my hand. I couldn’t see straight as spores of panic multiplied like bacteria and spread throughout me.

  ‘Did you know about it? Did you know it was him?’

  I didn’t answer.

  ‘I see. Well, that explains why you look so pale and drawn. You know I have to go to the police, don’t you?’

  I shook my head. Tears scorched my cheeks. ‘Please don’t.’ He made a regretful face. ‘It’s out of my hands.’

  Cam couldn’t go to prison. Not for this. If he went to prison there would be no justice in the world. I had to protect him. It was the only thing that mattered.

  I squeezed Nathan’s hand.

  ‘Don’t go to the police.’

  ‘I have to. I love you, and I don’t wan
t to upset you, but can’t you see? I have no choice.’

  I lifted his hand to my face, rested my cheek against it.

  ‘If you love me,’ I whispered, ‘you won’t tell the police.’

  He didn’t answer immediately. His eyes clouded a little as he stroked my cheek. His fingers played with my hair. He stared at me with such intensity it scared me.

  ‘Do you love me, Hannah?’

  I held back my tears. I had no idea what to say, but I knew if I said no, if I told the truth, that Cam would be arrested. My head began to fuzz up. Nathan became indistinct as my vision blurred.

  ‘Because if you really loved me, you’d be with me, not him…’

  And there it was, hidden in that hanging sentence, Nathan’s deal. Cam’s freedom. In exchange for mine.

  ‘I do love you.’

  His face broke into a childlike smile. ‘Oh, Hannah, you have no idea how happy hearing that makes me. You must tell him. You’ve been wrong to let him think you’re in love with him and not me. Do you understand? Don’t be scared of him. I’ll protect you. You must tell him now. He needs to know you don’t love him and he needs to know you want to be with me. You have to send him away.’ He lifted my hand to his lips and kissed it. ‘He needs to leave. If I see him here again I’ll go to the police. Do you understand, Hannah? Cameron Stewart has to leave Cornwall and must never come back.’

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Hannah

  ‘I can’t drive you this morning.’ Nathan opens his wallet and leafs through his money. He selects a five-pound note and holds it out towards me. ‘You’ll have to catch the bus.’

  This doesn’t surprise me. He often offers to drive me places – my mother, the shops, the vet, school – but more often than not, something else gets in the way. When I’m in a less generous mood, I can’t help but wonder if it’s yet another example of him wielding his control. I could drive you, but I choose not to, and there’s nothing you can do about it. This morning, though, I’d hoped he might show a little more compassion given how poorly my mother is.

  I’m well practised, however, and force a smile. ‘Alex was hoping to come with me. Are you able to give me money for his fare as well?’

  Nathan closes his wallet and slips it back into his pocket. ‘He can use the money in his tin, can’t he? After all, that’s what it’s for, no? A little independence?’

  The deliberate way he closed his wallet means his mind is made up but, like the masochist I must be, I press on nonetheless. ‘That money is gone. You know that. Please, Nathan. He’d like to visit his grandmother in hospital.’

  Nathan beams with grotesque smugness. ‘He shouldn’t have spent all his money bringing Cameron Stewart back to Cornwall then, should he?’ It’s clear he’s been waiting patiently for the perfect opportunity to use this well-rehearsed line. It wouldn’t surprise me if he planned it before he’d even said yes to driving us to Treliske.

  Alex is disappointed he can’t come with me. I don’t tell him Nathan wouldn’t give me the bus fare. Instead, I tell him Mum’s not up to lots of visitors.

  ‘We don’t want to tire her. She needs her strength. She’s still asleep, anyway, so won’t know if you’re there, but I promise we’ll go again in a few days.’

  ‘Will you tell her I love her?’

  ‘Of course.’

  When Alex was younger, I’d take him to visit the bakery and Mum and Dad would rush out from behind the counter and shower him with kisses. My dad would drop a Chelsea bun into a paper bag and wink as he passed it to his beaming grandson. Alex and I would then walk over the bridge to the shingle beach at Wherrytown where he’d proceed to lick every tiny bit of the icing off. When the icing was gone I’d tear pieces off the bun and pass them to him so he could feed the seagulls. He loved it when one was clever enough to catch it midair and would clap madly. On occasion, I’ve tried to work out what my life might have been like if I hadn’t had Alex, but just the thought is unbearable. There were times, like when he and I were feeding those gulls, together, content, his laughter ringing in the air I was breathing, when my marriage made complete sense. Alex and I were safe, with a roof over our heads and food in our stomachs; the difficult stuff seemed a small price to pay. The insubstantial bunch of flowers rests on my lap as the bus makes its way towards Truro. I asked Nathan for some money for a bouquet. He told me to cut some from the garden, which was fine because that was always my plan. The flower money would have been a welcome addition to my secret stash which is almost empty after buying some new hand cream for Mum. I picked a few roses and some greenery and added some blowsy cow parsley from the verge by the bus stop. Mum loves cut flowers. I hate them. They remind me of the memorial service, of watching Mum carrying the bunch she’d brought to the church, tears coursing her cheeks as God, Jesus, and Mary stared down at me, fingers pointing, anger burning.

  ‘All right, melder?’ my dad had whispered as he rubbed my knee. ‘You’re pale as death.’

  I’d nodded, clenched my fists, caught sight of Cam a few pews in front, sobbing uncontrollably.

  ‘I need some air.’ Excusing myself I squeezed past the mourners in our row, hurried out with my head low, and only just made it to the yew bushes in the corner of the churchyard before I threw up.

  The bus wends its way through the country lanes on the way into Truro. I’m glad Nathan wouldn’t drive me and I’m glad Alex isn’t with me. It’s more restful alone. I lean my head against the window and stare at the hedgerows and houses and shops which run alongside the A30. Nathan drains me. The way he twists everything and the mental gymnastics I have to perform in order to keep my head straight is exhausting. It doesn’t matter how strong I feel when we begin a conversation, by the end I’m left shattered. I heard a woman talking on the radio a while ago. I was cleaning the fridge so it must have been a Monday. The programme was on Radio 4 and she was talking about a book she’d written. It was called Power Gamers. The presenter described it as an unflinching and often painful account of a toxic marriage. The author might as well have been talking about my life not hers. The behaviours, the control, the humiliation she encountered on a daily basis, the way her ex-husband eroded her dignity and self-worth, and, of course, the financial control which kept her captive. The woman’s sickly sweet voice began to eat into me. It was shame, she said, which kept her from reaching out for the help she needed. She finally found the strength to leave when he smashed her in the face with an iron because of a crease in his shirt. I turned the radio off at that point and focused on cleaning the fridge, tears stinging my cheeks, the self-hatred almost too much to bear.

  As I creep through the privacy curtain, the first thing I notice about my mother is how still she is. The rough, greying sheets cover her to her chest. Her arms, made from pipe cleaners and tissue paper, rest alongside her body. She is feather-light, as if all that remains of her is a delicate casing which might dissolve in the slightest breeze.

  ‘Dama, it’s me. It’s Hannah.’ There’s no vase, so I lay the flowers on the table beside her.

  When I take hold of her hand, her eyelids flicker as if a breeze brushed over them.

  I fill the air with words and pretend she’s talking back, which makes it easier. We discuss the bakery and how we used to take mischievous pleasure in watching unsuspecting tourists walk out of the shop and lose pasties to thieving seagulls. We talk about how we used to swim in the Jubilee Pool and how fancy the recent refurbishments are. I remind her of the play we saw at The Minack where the wind was so strong we couldn’t hear a word, and we ate crab sandwiches made with Dad’s best bread, and Cadbury’s Fruit and Nut, and how cold we’d got, our faces spritzed with mizzle, huddling together with a blanket laid across our knees, as the group of hardy actors tried admirably to bring A Midsummer Night’s Dream to life.

  I’m not sure how long it is before the doctor appears. Long enough for my back to stiffen. The doctor is young and tired and pretty, puffy dark circles beneath her eyes, freckles speckling her nose
and cheeks, her auburn hair tied up in a scruffy bun.

  ‘Your mother is out of the woods for now, but I’m afraid the independence she had before the stroke will be compromised. She’ll need a period of rehabilitation and some physio. We can’t determine how much of her movement will return at this stage. She’ll also need input from a speech therapist, and, of course, increased help with feeding, bathing, and dressing.’ She smiles over at Mum then back at me. ‘She’s tough though. You’ve got some good genes there.’

  I manage a smile.

  The doctor consults her notes, flicking the pages over her clipboard. ‘I see she’s currently at Heamoor Residential.’

  ‘Yes,’ I say quietly, thinking of her room, its window on to the courtyard, the little storm bird which had kept her company, now in my kitchen.

  ‘She’ll need somewhere with round-the-clock care. Have you looked at any places?’

  I shake my head.

  ‘We can give you details of a few, but it’s worth ringing around. Perhaps get recommendations from friends and family. There are a few funded by the council, but most are privately run. The quality can vary. Best to visit a selection and make your decision based on what feels right. She’ll be here for at least a week so there’s a bit of time.’

  My stomach churns as I watch the doctor running through her checks, listening to Mum’s heart, taking her blood pressure, consulting charts, monitoring the drip, writing notes. There’s no way Nathan will pay more for her care. I know how astronomical the private places can be.

  ‘What happens,’ I ask, ‘if people can’t afford this type of care for their parents?’

  Her face softens with sympathy. ‘It’s hard, isn’t it? I suppose most opt to have loved ones at home if they have the space. Getting a carer in to share the burden with a son or daughter is probably the most cost-effective way to ensure a decent standard of care. It depends what the patient needs, of course. And if there’s enough space and if the relative has a job or other commitments. But for those who can make it work it seems to be a good option.’