Since leaving him I’ve found myself doing all kinds of other things I wouldn’t normally do. Coming here, for a start. I didn’t even think twice about the drive – all those hours on the M4 with Dani in the back, the rain sheeting down when we got to the West Country, the tangle of lanes and bad signposts at the end.
But we made it. And Dani was so good. It was almost as if she knew how badly I needed her to be calm and patient. It was like having a mini adult with me, who had decided to be kind and supportive and help me to follow through on what I’d started. It was not at all like having a real adult with me – at least, not if that adult had been my husband.
If Jon had been with me – under other circumstances, at a more ordinary time – he’d have been impatient with my driving, and I would have had to turn a blind eye to his.
But Dani said, Don’t worry, Mummy, when I took yet another wrong turn, when it was long after dark and she should have been bathed and in bed. We’ll get there.
And then we did, and I drew up outside the dark little cottage and the key was under the pot of lavender in the front garden, just as I’d been told it would be. When I went in and flicked the switch the lights came on and I saw the cottage for what it was: a small, plain, sparsely furnished lifesaver. A place where Dani and I could live simply from day to day, lying low, eating and sleeping and making trips to the beach. A chance for me to rest and recover, and regain my strength to face what would come next.
We slept well in our unfamiliar beds – we were too worn out by the long drive for either of us to have trouble sleeping – and this morning we walked down the lane to the corner shop to buy eggs and tea and juice and milk for breakfast. I’d come away in such a rush, I’d only packed enough snacks to see us through the journey.
I’d forgotten to pack sunhats, too. Luckily they had a rack of them in the shop. I chose a straw Stetson, and Dani picked out a bright yellow cloth hat.
‘There’ll be no losing you in that,’ I said to her, though the truth is there’s no losing Dani anywhere; her bright red curls make her stand out in any crowd.
They sold stationery next to the till. I picked up a packet of felt tips and some paper for Dani to draw on. Then, on impulse, I added a couple of ballpoint pens and a pad of lined A4 paper, with a spiral-bound spine so it opened up like a book.
I said to the lady behind the till, ‘You’re quiet this morning.’
‘Oh, it comes and goes,’ she said, ringing up my purchases. She had a Scottish accent. I suppose Cornwall is full of people who have come from somewhere else, drawn by the warmer weather and the sea and the desire to get away.
‘We’re at Curlew Cottage, at the top of the lane,’ I told her. ‘Are you Mandy?’
‘Yes, that’s me, the one who put the key out for you last night. It was an impulse thing, then, you coming here? They said it was a last-minute booking.’
‘Yes, it was. Thanks for your help.’
Did I look like a runaway? She looked us over and took in my rings, the solitaire diamond and the gold band, which I’ve carried on wearing because in spite of everything, I’m a long way from being ready to give them up. Her own wedding ring was stuck on her chubby finger as if it hadn’t come off for years.
It was obvious she wanted to ask more, but she restrained herself and just said, ‘Well, looks like you’ve got good weather. Might as well make the most of it.’
‘We will,’ I said.
Dani wanted us to wear our hats straight away, so Mandy snipped the tags out for us and we walked back up the lane to the cottage with them on. It felt almost as if we were on holiday. Or it might have done if I knew where home is going to be when we leave.
And now here I am, sitting at the garden table in the sunshine with one of my new pens in my hand and the A4 notebook open in front of me, and Dani next to me, drawing.
I thought I could make to-do lists, map out my next move. I could note down what I want, figure out all the problems I’ll have to solve to get there.
But instead the pen and paper just make me want to write… write for its own sake, to make a record, though I have no idea who for. Like sticking a flag in the ground to say I was here.
If only I could swim back through time to the beginning, when nothing had gone wrong, when none of the mistakes had been made. But there is no going back. There is only the present, and my whole future rests on what I choose to do next. Dani’s, too. Because Dani is my future. But she is also his, and that’s what makes it so hard to know what to do for the best. It’s not just about feelings – betrayal and love and guilt. It’s about blood and earth, the ties that bind us to people and places we only think we can leave behind.
Everything that happens here seems important and unreal at the same time, weighted with possible consequences even if it’s nothing out of the ordinary in itself. Like a dream that seems to be trying to tell you something, maybe even to warn you, but you have no way of knowing what it means.
I have a decision to make, and I am putting it off. I don’t want to face it. Not yet.
In the meantime, I have to protect Dani. She needs to know that none of this is her fault.
And most of all, I have to make sure she never finds out what he has done.
Ten years later
On the morning of my fourteenth birthday Aunt Carrie looked knackered, which was nothing new. Birthdays weren’t all that easy for me either, but I figured the best way to deal with it was not to think about it too much, whereas Aunt Carrie was the brooding sort. She thought about all of it a lot – much more than was good for her – and it kept her awake at night. You only had to look at her face to know: pale, beaky, with deep little lines round the mouth and eyes and the expression of someone who suffered from a near-permanent headache.
Still, at least she’d remembered. There was a card and a parcel waiting for me on the dining-room table when I came down for breakfast. I assumed Dad had forgotten – not for the first time.
‘Happy birthday,’ Aunt Carrie said, and carried on eating her toast.
‘Yeah, well, it’s not really that different to any other day, is it? I mean, I’ve still got school and stuff.’
Aunt Carrie looked wounded. I ignored her and put down my bowl of cornflakes and set about opening my present. I already knew she hadn’t got me any of the things I wanted. OK, maybe a PlayStation was a big ask, but a phone that wasn’t two years old would have done nicely, or the new Sims game. But no, it was obvious from the shape of the package that she’d got me books, something called I Capture the Castle with a girl in a drippy white dress holding some flowers on the cover, and Rebecca, which had spooky-looking writing and an old house.
‘I hope you’ll enjoy them,’ Aunt Carrie said. She was always on at me to read.
‘Yeah, I’m sure I will.’
I pretended to take in the blurbs on the back, then put the books down. I knew I’d probably never get round to tackling them. There were quite a few books about the place, but the only ones I ever looked at were the romantic ones Aunt Carrie kept in her bedroom, which I sometimes peeked at for a laugh when she was out. None of the men I’d ever met were at all like the heroes Aunt Carrie liked, putting themselves in harm’s way to save helpless girls, or turning from mean to soppy because of a single kiss.
I knew it made her sad that I preferred playing on the computer to reading. But then, lots of things made Aunt Carrie sad. I didn’t hug her or anything – we didn’t go in for a whole lot of that. In fact, we spent most of our time together in the house as physically far apart as possible, whether we were watching telly or eating or doing weekend chores. I wasn’t mad keen on having my personal space invaded – not by anybody, including Aunt Carrie. It didn’t help that my hair was so curly, which meant people often wanted to touch it, but I’d developed a pretty good glare that meant they usually got the message and backed off fast.
‘I’ve put some money in your savings account,’ she said. She was always on at me to save, too.
‘Thanks.’
I opened my birthday card. It had a picture of an elegant, long-haired lady lying in a hammock, writing in a notebook. If that was her idea of who I was going to turn into when I grew up, I figured she had another think coming.
‘Thanks,’ I said again, and set about eating my cornflakes. Aunt Carrie didn’t say anything, just nodded and tightened her lips. She carried on sitting there at the round dining table, looking out through the French windows that she was always so careful to lock in case of burglars, staring at the birds splashing and playing in the birdbath.
Poor old Aunt Carrie. You had to feel sorry for her, in a way – or at least I might have done if I hadn’t found her so annoying. She never could have expected to find herself lumbered with bringing up her little sister’s kid more or less single-handed. But as it turned out, she was stuck with a cuckoo in the nest – a curly-haired, freckly, stroppy cuckoo, who had refused ballet lessons and wasn’t always polite to grown-ups and got into trouble at school. And didn’t read. Worse still, the nest was empty apart from us. I was a cuckoo without any siblings, and she was a mama bird without a partner. It was a recipe for resentment on both sides.
I had a pretty shrewd idea what was on her mind, and I had at least as much right as her to sit round feeling sad about it. But actually, I just wanted to get away from her. So I finished as fast as I could and said, ‘Right-o, I’d better get going.’
She didn’t actually answer, but let out a gurgling kind of noise that probably meant she was crying, or trying not to. I decided the best thing was to ignore her and went to wash up my bowl. There were times when chores were actually quite useful.
If there was anything I’d learned in my fourteen years on the planet, that was it – to keep my feelings to myself and out of sight, like the dirty laundry we put in a wicker basket with a lid, and that Aunt Carrie sorted through and turned into neatly folded and ironed things that she reproached me for not putting away properly.
The other thing that was helpful was to discourage anybody and everybody from asking questions. People who knew a little bit about me were sometimes curious. They wanted to know what was it like having a dead mum, did I remember her, did I look like her, did I remind my dad of her and was that why he didn’t want to see me very much and so on and so forth. They wanted to know how sorry they ought to feel for me.
But my answer – the only one I was prepared to give them – was that they shouldn’t feel sorry for me at all. I didn’t want hugs and pats and sympathy, and if anybody tried all that with me, I was more likely to want to punch them on the nose than anything else. And that went for Aunt Carrie, too.
I wasn’t in the greatest of moods when I rocked up at school, and the day didn’t improve.
Nobody really knew it was my birthday, so there wasn’t a lot of fuss. I should have been relieved, but I just found myself getting more and more fed up. By the time I got to French, which was the first lesson after lunch, people were pretty much avoiding me. They didn’t know me that well, but on the whole, they knew me well enough to keep their distance when I got angry.
French was boring at the best of times, but was almost unbearable on a warm afternoon. Mr Matthews, our teacher, seemed to feel the same way. He set us some work to do and got on with his marking, and his head bowed so low over his desk at the front that once or twice I thought he’d actually managed to doze off.
The task he’d set us was to write a paragraph describing our families. We were allowed to make stuff up for this kind of task: it didn’t have to be strictly accurate. Maybe Mr Matthews appreciated that some of us didn’t go on holiday or do anything much at the weekend or feel like describing where we lived. Or maybe he felt that if there was any chance of being entertained by our efforts, he should take it.
But I didn’t feel much like being entertaining. Instead I decided to write something that might wake Mr Matthews up.
J’habite avec ma tante. Mon père habite dans le meme ville. Je le vois quelquefois.
I live with my aunt. My dad lives in the same town. I see him sometimes.
J’ai une photo de ma mère dans ma salle de chambre. Elle etait très belle. Je suis dans le photo aussi. J’avais quatre ans. Aujourd’hui j’ai quatorze ans. Mon père a oublié mon anniversaire.
On ne parle pas de ma mère.
I have a photo of my mum in my bedroom. She was very pretty. I’m in the photo too. I was four. Today I’m fourteen. My dad forgot my birthday.
We don’t talk about my mum.
There! Hopefully that would give Mr Matthews something to pay attention to. I’d pressed so hard as I was writing that I’d poked little holes in the paper. I had no idea if the French was right or wrong, and I didn’t care.
The next lesson was science. I sat next to Josie Pye, who was skinny and little and always got picked on. She was there before me – she was that kind of kid, always on time, always trying her hardest, never realising that didn’t really get you anywhere. As I settled down next to her and got my pencil case out of my bag she muttered something I didn’t hear, then slid a card in a bright pink envelope across the desk.
She’d gone bright red. I said, ‘Is that for me?’
‘Yeah. It is your birthday, right? Happy birthday.’
There was a packet of sweets stuck to the envelope. I took them off and tore it open. Inside was a card with a Cocker Spaniel on the front. The dog had big dopey love-me eyes, a bit like Josie – the kind of look that brings out either the soft side in people or the nasty side, depending.
‘Sorry it’s a bit cheesy,’ Josie said. ‘It was either that or one with teddy bears and flowers on it.’
‘It was nice of you. Thanks. I like dogs, but my aunt won’t let me have one,’ I said.
Gemma Case, who was sitting in front of us and who was one of the people who especially liked to make Josie’s life a misery, turned round and stared at us. I glared at Gemma and she turned away.
Mr Hodge, the science teacher, started droning on about what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object. I opened the sweets Josie had given me and offered Josie one.
She hesitated – she wasn’t one for breaking rules and eating sweets in class was one of many things we weren’t supposed to do. But she took one, and I took one too and pocketed the rest. We sat there discreetly sucking our sweets and the teacher didn’t notice, and I thought that perhaps school wasn’t quite so bad after all.
When I got home there was another, much bigger surprise waiting for me.
I spotted it as soon as I came out of the alleyway that led from the bridge over the stream to our road. It was leaning against the front of the house with a big pink totally over-the-top bow tied round the crossbar and a helmet dangling from the handlebars by its straps.
It was a bike. A beautiful gleaming silver bike. I knew at once who’d left it there. There was only one person in the world who would get me something like that and then not stick around to see my reaction to it.
He’d at least taken the precaution of locking it – though knowing Dad, he would have been confident of his ability to get it back if anybody had nicked it. He seemed to have pretty good connections with Kettlebridge’s small semi-criminal underworld. Once, when Aunt Carrie’s elderly neighbour had her new terracotta window-boxes nicked, Dad had intervened and the stolen goods had been returned within twenty-four hours, left on the neighbour’s lawn with an extra potted geranium by way of apology. Aunt Carrie hadn’t even seemed to find this particularly remarkable. ‘Your dad has his ways,’ was all she had said.
The bike had a substantial D-lock securing the front wheel to the frame. No sign of any key. I imagined Dad standing here, snapping the lock into place, stepping back to admire his handiwork and imagine my reaction, then driving off. Or maybe he’d asked someone else to leave it here. That was the thing with Dad – I never knew. He was a mystery.
Anyway, I’d have to get hold of the key to the D-lock or I wouldn’t be going anywhere. Maybe he’d left it with Aunt Carrie at her office in the town centre, to dole out after a short lecture about road safety when she got back from work.
I unlocked the front door to find a big white envelope on the doormat. My name was written on the front in Dad’s spiky, almost illegible handwriting: Dani. I tore it open and a key fell out. I scooped it up and held it. Freedom! Freedom, direct from him to me.
The card said HAPPY BIRTHDAY on the front, with balloons. It took me a while to decipher what he’d written inside.
Bob from the bike shop reckons this’ll be the right size for you. Take it to him to check and he’ll make sure it’s OK. Ride safely, and don’t go anywhere you’re not supposed to.
He’d signed it, Dad x. The kiss looked both hesitant and deliberate, like something he’d thought about.
I dumped my schoolbag and went back out. Everything fit: the key in the lock, the helmet on my head. I tore off the pink ribbon and left it lying there. It looked like the aftermath of a party. But as far as I was concerned the party was only just beginning. I straddled the bike and found – not to my surprise – that it was exactly the right size for me. That was the power of Dad; people tried to do things right for him, to please him. Apart from me. I didn’t see why I should, and anyway, what could be worse than to make an effort and still be mostly ignored?
But I owed him a big thank you for this. Still, I couldn’t quite bring myself to feel grateful. Couldn’t he at least have put the card through the door this morning?
I took off down the road. It had been a while since I’d ridden a bike – I’d outgrown my old one a couple of years before – and I’d forgotten what it felt like, the sense of speed, the lightness of it. Of not being in contact with the earth. Like swimming if water was air. Or flying.
Maybe he really did love me, after all.
But in that case, why did he make it so hard for me to love him back?
It all started with a broken rule. I’m not one for blindly following orders, but I will say this. If you ever decide to do the one thing you’ve been explicitly instructed never to do, you should be prepared for consequences.
Once I had my bike, I wanted to make the most of it. As far as I was concerned Dad had given me the keys to my freedom – the chance to get away from home, Aunt Carrie, Kettlebridge, anyone I knew and all the old familiar roads. Aunt Carrie didn’t see it like that, though, predictably, and it wasn’t long after my birthday that she decided to lay down the law.
She tackled me after dinner, which was the usual time for her to give me a talking-to about anything that was bothering her – I spent most of the rest of my time in my bedroom, and she knew I hated her coming in when I was up there. She was washing up and I was drying, and I could tell that something was wrong. She looked hot and flustered, more so than she should have been, given that the heat had gone out of the day. Then, all of a sudden, she came out with it.
‘I hope you’re being careful when you go out on your bike.’
Was she about to try and put some kind of limit on how far out of Kettlebridge I was allowed to go? ‘Sure I am. I always wear my helmet. You don’t have to worry. The bike shop checked everything, so it’s as it should be. And I promise you I’ll always make sure I’m back in time for dinner.’ I had a sudden burst of inspiration: ‘It’s good exercise, isn’t it? Better than sitting home playing on the computer.’
Aunt Carrie looked up towards the ceiling, frowning slightly as if checking for cobwebs. I held my breath. Then she fixed her gaze on me. Aunt Carrie had green eyes; Mum’s had been brown, like mine. In the photo of Mum that I had on my bedroom windowsill Mum’s eyes looked warm and loving. They were the eyes of someone you wouldn’t mind hugging you. Aunt Carrie looked like someone who probably wouldn’t want to hug you even if you let them.
‘This is all very well right now, but when the nights start drawing in I want you back before dark.’
‘Sure.’
Well, that was no big deal. Autumn was ages away, anyway.
‘There is one other thing. I know your father would say this as well.’
How bad could it be?
‘No swimming.’
I stared at her.
‘No river swimming, I mean,’ she said. ‘You can go to the pool anytime you want.’ She looked as stern as if we were talking about drugs, or thieving, or sex, or the kinds of things that mothers of teenagers were supposed to worry about. But she wasn’t my mother. And she was talking about something it had literally never even occurred to me to try.
‘OK, fine, but why are you making such a big deal about this all of a sudden?’
She put her hands back into the washing-up bowl. ‘Because it’s dangerous. River water is dirty water. You get a mouthful of that, heaven only knows what kind of shape you’ll be in.’
‘I’m not planning on swallowing any river water, Aunt Carrie.’
She gave me the disdainful look that meant I was being facetious when she was trying to talk about something important. ‘Kids are always getting into trouble in open water. You get a heatwave, like now, they suddenly think it would be a great idea to cool off wherever they like, and next thing you know they’re getting tangled up in the reeds and not making it back up to the surface. There’s a reason why we have swimming pools, you know. Besides, you shouldn’t swim anywhere unsupervised.’
I could feel my face beginning to crack into a grin the way it always did when she was stern with me. I couldn’t help it. Being told off by anybody made me want to laugh. It was a reflex reaction that inevitably made people even more annoyed with me than they already were.
‘But I don’t even like swimming.’
Swimming lessons at school had not been much fun – too cold, too much hanging around. The only redeeming thing had been that I could actually swim, so was spared the humiliation of being in the bottom group.
My dad had taught me, back when I was little. It was one of my earliest memories, maybe the earliest of all – being suspended in blue water, very deep, and him just a few inches away, within reaching distance, having let me go. What I remembered was the feeling of panic – of my body moving almost involuntarily, like someone scrabbling at a cliff edge before falling – and then realising that I wasn’t going to sink. That the blue water was holding me up. Dad was still there, just a few inches away, and what he had wanted me to learn was that I didn’t need him.
I knew now that the water hadn’t even been that deep. That had been at the leisure centre in Barrowton, a few miles south of Kettlebridge, and he’d taken me there because at the time Kettlebridge didn’t have an indoor pool of its own. Looking back, I was impressed that he’d bothered. I’d already been living with Aunt Carrie then. He hadn’t been around for all that much of my childhood, but at least he’d taught me something.
‘I just want you to promise me that you won’t do it,’ Aunt Carrie said. ‘How would I explain it to your dad if anything happened to you?’
‘He probably wouldn’t care.’
‘Don’t be such a brat. Do I need to ask him to talk to you about this?’
I looked away, shrugged. Suddenly I felt like crying. All this fuss over something I didn’t even want to do and had no intention of doing.
‘OK,’ I said. ‘I promise I won’t swim in the river.’
‘Good girl,’ Aunt Carrie said approvingly. ‘As long as we’ve got that clear.’
I made my escape to my bedroom as soon as I’d dried the last dish. Back to the world of my computer game, where all the families and their lives and their houses were under my control, and there was nobody at all who could tell me what to do. At least Aunt Carrie had given up on attempting to ration my screen time; I think it actually suited her to have me quietly occupied, so she could have the telly and the living room to herself.
If it hadn’t been so hot, I might have found it easier to keep my promise. But as it was…
One day, after school, I found a spot that was a little like a beach: a small sandy patch by the edge of the Thames in a village called Little Tipthorpe, a few miles downstream from Kettlebridge. The river was wide and slow there, and the bank sloped gently down to meet it. There were some people swimming a little way downstream. I stayed at a safe distance and watched them, bobbing around in the water and laughing, and I remembered what Aunt Carrie had said about dirty water and people getting tangled up in the reeds, and tried to tell myself that they were making a stupid mistake.
The water wasn’t that tempting, after all. It wasn’t as if it was blue and sparkling. It was the colour of diluted mud. It was just that the day was so sweltering, and the breeze coming off the river offered a little of the same kind of relief that you might get from being by the sea.
The next afternoon was even hotter, and when I got to the same spot by the river I had it to myself. I sat on the sandy bank and took off my socks and shoes and edged forward so I could dip my toes in the water. That couldn’t do any harm, surely.
Cold! But it was good. Such a relief!
I put both feet in. I could still see them through the water: perhaps it wasn’t quite so dirty after all. I . . .
We hope you are enjoying the book so far. To continue reading...
Copyright © 2024 All Rights Reserved
Please log in to recommend or discuss...
