by Jane Jesmond
She clamped her mouth shut as though she’d revealed more than she meant to. We looked round the cottage’s back garden. If you could call it a garden. Grass and rocks and a few plants, but all low. Nothing high could withstand the wind from the sea.
‘I met Talan this morning,’ I said to break the quiet. ‘He looked good. I never saw him as a policeman, though.’
‘What did you see him as then, Jen?’ There was an edge to her voice that I remembered of old. A bite to her words. ‘What did you think he was going to do when you upped sticks and left without so much as a backward glance? You’re good at that, aren’t you? Leading people on and then disappearing.’
‘Hey, Kelly. Look who’s talking? I don’t remember you hanging around much. Coming back in the holidays. Spending quality time with Talan.’
‘I am now,’ she said and laughed. A mocking laugh that jarred. ‘Back and spending quality time with my brother. Who’d have thought it? Me and Talan. Chalk and cheese.’ She laughed again and stretched her arms out and touched me on the shoulders in a kind of stylised embrace. I thought she looked wrung out, thin and somehow empty. She’d lost muscle, like I had – and for the same reasons, I supposed. No exercise. No point trying to keep muscle tone when you know you can’t do the only thing you want it for. I guessed her injury might be a permanent thing.
I also guessed she didn’t want to talk about it. I could understand that. Talking about it doesn’t always help. No matter what all the therapists and counsellors say. Sometimes you have to grit your teeth, put your head down and battle on because nothing but time is going to get you over the next ridge. I thought Kelly was doing the best she could and I forgave the acid in her voice.
‘And what about you, Jen?’ she asked. ‘Have you come back to spend quality time with your brother?’
‘I suppose you could say that. Not for long, though. I got here yesterday and…’ I decided not to say that I couldn’t wait to leave.
‘Yeah, I know. Freda and I saw you last night.’
My body jerked. I couldn’t stop it. I grabbed the top of the stone wall. Kelly was staring at me with eyes narrowed.
‘Last night?’
‘Yeah. I saw Talan at lunch today. He told me about the lighthouse and seeing you there. He thought it might be you who broke in. You and some friends, maybe. Told me you’d sworn you had nothing to do with it. That you never left The Seagull last night. So I didn’t let on I’d seen you yesterday evening, on the cliff path. Why should I care if you wanted a bit of fun in this arse end of a place? Not my idea of a good time, though: breaking into a lighthouse. But hey, whatever floats your boat. You were always a bit strange like that.’ She paused and shot me a quick look. ‘Do you still do that urban thing? What did you call it? Urban something. Urban exploring?’
‘Urbex? Place hacking?’ I said. A little bug crawled out of the wall and onto my finger. I shook it off. ‘No.’
‘Oh.’ She raised her eyebrows like she wasn’t sure she believed me. It killed me that no one ever believed I’d stopped.
‘Was I, like… OK? Last night when you saw me?’ I asked.
Kelly fixed me with another of her blank looks, then her eyes focussed into hard points and a smile curled her lips.
‘You’re kidding me. You’re absolutely kidding me. You’d taken some shit.’
‘What makes you think that?’
‘You slay me, Jen. You come home and the first thing you do is get high and break into the lighthouse. Only you. Only you could do that. I salute you. I thought you were your mother, you know. I’ve seen her a few times, dancing along the headlands at dusk.’
‘Dancing?’
‘Yeah.’ She went over to her washing and smacked the heavy sheets as though forcing the water out of them.
‘I was dancing?’
‘No. You were head-down and going fast. As though the devil was on your heels. But a storm was coming. I thought it was your mother rushing home.’
‘Maybe it was.’
She shook her head and her hair whipped round in tight circles. I wondered if its strange bruise-like colour was because she’d tried to remove the black dye. ‘It was you, Jen,’ she said. ‘Your mother’s hair is longer and she doesn’t wear jeans. If I’d known you were here I’d have recognised you straightaway…’
I made a swift decision. I wasn’t going to get any further without telling Kelly part of the truth.
‘I guess it was me. But the thing is, I don’t remember a lot of it. You know how it messes with your head sometimes.’ And I was sure Kelly did know. I’d mixed with a big crowd in London. Lots of different groups of people. Friends from work. Friends who went to the same pubs and clubs. Friends from home who’d moved to London like Kelly: Josie, who worked at reception at Skyhooks; Seb the journalist; and Pete, who’d surprised us all by becoming a surgeon at Kings. Plus all my different groups of climbing friends: the purists, the urban explorers, the parkour nutters who run over roofs and jump between buildings. And these groups weren’t entirely separate. Imagine a huge and complex Venn diagram with multiple overlaps. Surprising overlaps. Many of my work friends did some sort of climbing as well. And Kit sometimes employed a couple of friends from home. Kelly belonged to the friends from Cornwall group but often mixed with my climbing friends, too, because some of them went to the same gym as her dancing friends. The circles were fluid.
When I started partying after Grid’s accident, I couldn’t bear to spend much time with people who knew us well. So I drifted towards friends on the outer edges of these circles. The ones who took stuff. And, as if they saw where I was going, they passed me on to their friends and, before I knew it, my friend centre had shifted a little. I discovered surprising overlaps, even then. Most of my madder climbing friends smoked and some of them dabbled in other drugs. On second thoughts, maybe that isn’t too surprising. So I came across them from time to time. And Kelly. I was sure Kelly had been around. I’d seen her occasionally, strangely expressionless in the blur of laughing faces.
‘It really messed with my head,’ I said again. She smiled a long, slow smile and nodded. ‘So I can’t remember a lot of it,’ I continued.
‘Well, you were fine when we saw you.’ She stubbed the dark brown remnant of her cigarette against the wall.
‘And I didn’t stop?’
‘You didn’t see us. I was smoking outside the back door and Freda was standing inside wittering at me.’
‘What time was it?’
She stared back at the cottage and its low back door, trying, I thought, to fit me into her timeline.
‘Just after six, I guess. I do nights. I’m only here this afternoon because Freda’s neighbour is away. She normally gives her lunch. But I started at six yesterday. One of the family pops in when I’m due to arrive.’ She paused. ‘To check up on me, I think, although they always say they’ve come to see Freda. Still, I generally go outside when they arrive. Have a ciggie and hang the washing out or bring it in. There’s always washing because dear old Freda won’t wear her incontinence pads and she doesn’t always wake up in time, does she? It’s a fucking nightmare trying to keep up with the washing.’
She reached in her pocket and pulled out a tin of tobacco and papers and a few already-rolled cigarettes and offered me one. I shook my head. One of the few vices I’d managed to avoid. Kelly lit hers, turning away from the wind. I wondered what else I could ask her. I’d arrived at the hotel at around four-thirty. She’d seen me walking towards the lighthouse at around six. It all fitted in.
‘So I didn’t stop? I didn’t talk to you?’
‘No.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘Jesus, Jen. Do you think I’d forget? I haven’t seen you for months. I’d remember if we stopped for a chat yesterday. It would be the highlight of my bloody day. Chatting to someone with half a brain.’ She sighed and blew a cloud of smoke in
front of her, spat and fished another piece of tobacco from her mouth. ‘So you don’t remember if the body was there last night?’
I stared at her. ‘Surely it came in on the morning tide?’ Thoughts hammered in my head. Beating faster and faster. I looked out to sea so Kelly wouldn’t see the panic I was feeling. Someone had been with me last night. I knew that. Had they fallen? The washed-up body… What did it mean?
The sound of a door slamming broke the silence. Kelly jerked her head around. ‘Shit,’ she muttered.
Freda had a walking frame but it didn’t slow her down. She lurched towards us at speed. I caught Kelly’s arm and tugged gently.
‘So there’s nothing else you can tell me? Nothing else you remember?’
She pulled her arm away and shook her head as Freda joined us.
‘Jenifry Hammett,’ she said. ‘Kelynen told me you were home. You get more like your mother everyday.’
I could have replied that my surname was Shaw but there was no point. She wedged her walker against the wall and settled her weight onto it. I knew I’d be stuck here for a while unless I was prepared to be very rude. And I wasn’t. Poor old Freda was delighted to see me.
‘How is your mother, Jenifry?’
‘Fine.’
‘She must be pleased to have Kit home?’
I nodded.
‘Nice for her to have her granddaughter as well. What’s her name? Isolde, isn’t it?’
‘Rosa. Isolde is her second name.’
‘Nothing like children in the house to keep you young.’
I suspected that Ma didn’t see it like that. Freda wittered on about all the people in the village with grandchildren while Kelly squeezed the excess water from the base of the sheets. Her face was expressionless as though she’d long given up trying to show an interest.
‘Shouldn’t you be bringing the sheets in, Kelynen dear?’ Freda asked.
‘Hardly worth it. They’re wet through still. No one hung them out this morning.’
‘Oh,’ Freda’s flow of words faltered. ‘Was I supposed to do that?’
‘No, no. It was… Never mind Freda, it doesn’t matter.’
Kelly took a last drag from her cig and ground it into a stone to join the other dark brown remnants.
‘I’m cold now, Kelynen. I want to go back in.’
‘Go on, then. I’ll be in in a tick.’
‘We should bring the washing in.’ She turned to me. ‘Goodbye, er…’
‘Jen,’ I said.
‘Oh yes, Jen.’
‘Morwenna’s daughter,’ I said. ‘Kit’s sister.’
‘Yes, I know. Tell her… What did I want to tell Morwenna, Kelynen?’
‘I don’t know, Freda.’
‘What were we talking about? Do you remember?’
I shook my head.
‘What’s for dinner, Kelynen?’
‘You’ve had your… Never mind. We’ll have fish, shall we? A nice piece of fish. You go on in and I’ll serve it up. Go on. And then it’ll be time for a rest. You must be tired out after everything you’ve done today.’
‘Oh yes dear. I’m very tired. But I sleep well when Kelynen’s here, don’t I? Like a baby?’
‘Yes, Freda, you do. Just like a baby.’
Freda started her stagger back to the cottage, the walker clattering on the path and dislodging wedges of moss. We both watched her.
‘Is she always like this?’
‘Most of the time. One minute, she’s right on the ball and the next she’s somewhere in the past. I think she sort of knows but she doesn’t think it matters. She doesn’t care if you’re Jen or if you’re your mother. Anyway, I prefer it when she’s in the past. She rambles on for hours and I just have to nod from time to time. Sometimes I listen to music while she’s rabbiting on. She can’t tell. I’ll have to go in. She’ll start trying to cook or something.’ She sighed and her finger picked at a bit of loose skin on her lip.
Freda turned and called as she reached the cottage. ‘Kelynen,’ she said. ‘There’s someone at the door. I forgot to say. Someone’s knocking.’
Nine
Sofija was at the door of Freda’s cottage. She looked at me over Kelly’s shoulder, the skin over the planes of her face pulled flat by her tightly plaited hair. She tried to smile.
Rosa stood by her, her arms around her mother’s leg as she peered up at us. The breath caught in my throat. She had grown. Of course she had. It was months since I’d seen her. But the change was bigger than that. The last vestiges of babyhood had left her and she’d become a little girl.
I dropped down to Rosa’s height, calling her name with my arms stretched out but she didn’t move.
‘Rosa, it’s your Aunty Jen,’ Sofija said. ‘Remember? Aunty Jen. She took you to the park. With the ducks? And the swings? You remember playing on the swings. Going higher and higher? Say hello to her.’
She tried to prise Rosa’s hands off her legs.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said. ‘Give her time.’
‘She’s forgotten you. Seven months is a long time for a three-year-old.’
She bent and whispered something in Rosa’s ear but Rosa shook her head and clung tighter to Sofija’s leg. I’d been away too long. I should never have stayed away. I smiled at Sofija and Rosa and gave the little girl a wave. She released her grip on Sofija’s knee enough to give me a wave back and I felt my eyes prickle. But I was pleased. I hoped she’d remembered the swings and screaming ‘more’ as she sailed higher and higher into the sky. And I was pleased because these were real feelings. Not the rush of coke-induced chemicals. No. Real feelings. Blurry and confused, running into each other like the colours on a child’s over-wet painting.
‘We won’t come in, Kelynen,’ Sofija said. ‘I’m here to pick Jen up. Kit called me. He’s up where the path meets the road.’
Where I’d met Nick last night, I thought. Of course, it was much easier to take the body that way.
We walked in silence to the Land Rover and I waited while Sofija strapped Rosa into her seat.
‘Is this all right?’ she asked in the end. ‘Kit said things were OK now. Between you?’
‘Yes.’
‘He shouldn’t have said what he did, but it’s not you. It’s everything. Give us a chance and he’ll explain.’
She gave me a worried look over her shoulder as she clipped the belts of Rosa’s seat into place and I wondered if she had made Kit write to me for help. I had never known if being married and having a child had changed Kit or if it was Sofija herself. She seemed reserved but I often had the feeling she called the shots in her own quiet way.
Kit was waiting by the side of the road, not far from the big rock that I’d feared might be a bear on Friday night. Last night. Was it only last night? Less than twenty-four hours ago. He scrambled into the back next to Rosa and blew on his hands.
‘Put the heating up, Sofi, will you. I got a bit wet helping them.’
‘Have they gone?’ I asked.
‘Yes.’
‘What did they say?’
‘Not much.’ He jerked his head towards Rosa. ‘Not much that I can repeat.’
‘Did they say how long it had been in the water?’ I had to know.
‘Two, maybe three weeks.’
Relief surged through my veins. ‘Sure?’ I asked.
‘You saw the state of it, Jen. Besides, they had a doctor with them. To certify, you know. They have to, even if they’re sure. She said two or three weeks. Any longer and, er, things start to fall off.’
Sofija pulled a face but I felt better. It was a coincidence. That was all. I knew someone else had been with me last night. On the viewing platform of the lighthouse with me. Someone who’d tied the knot in the cord because I would never have done it. But the body was a coincidence and nothing to do wi
th me. Suddenly I felt very tired and hungry.
‘So where to now?’ Sofija said. ‘I need to get Rosa home for her tea.’
‘Why can’t we go back to Tregonna and talk?’ I asked.
‘Ma’s there.’
‘Is she the problem, Kit? Is it Ma?
Silence.
‘What’s going on, Kit? Why did you want me to come down?’ I asked and waited.
He looked at the back of my seat as though he might find the words there.
‘Where have you been, Jen?’ he said in the end. ‘I know you’re mad at me but… it’s been a terrible few months.’
I thought of the calls from him I hadn’t answered. The texts he’d sent I hadn’t read. The birthday card from Rosa with the scarf that I never acknowledged. Guilt opened a hole in my stomach.
If I was honest though, the estrangement had started long, long before our fight. We’d started to drift when Kit married Sofija and Rosa had arrived. He’d stopped climbing shortly after. It was only natural, I’d told myself, when increasingly work was the only place I saw him on his own. I loved work anyway. I loved Skyhooks. Working with Kit on building it up to become the UK’s go-to rigging company had been like returning to the days when we ran wild together at Tregonna, Kit with a new idea every day and me following in his wake. Our bread and butter work was rigging for events but we also worked on films. Coming up with ways to manage stunts safely or to get cameramen into difficult places: hanging from the undersides of bridges or slung between two buildings and, once, following climbers up the rock faces at the Kalymnos Festival in Greece. So when Kit had announced, out of the blue, that he’d had an offer for the company and he wanted to accept it, I’d been shocked. I tried to change his mind but I couldn’t explain what Skyhooks meant to me. How it had been my escape from the misery and dreariness of Tregonna and Cornwall. He said he was bored. That he wanted a challenge. That the buyers wanted one of us to stay on anyway and he’d prefer it was me. So nothing would change except I’d have a lot of money.
He was wrong on every count – except the money, I guess. Skyhooks without Kit was a drag. The new owners quickly imposed stricter Health and Safety protocols and operating procedures. Even Grid, normally the most easy-going of people, had started to mutter about them.