‘I’m sorry to inform you that your parents have been involved in a car crash,’ the police officer says. There’s momentary pause, an audible blink and then: ‘They’re both dead.’
He is holding his hat in front of him as if using it as a shield. There’s been no messing around. First he confirmed that I am, indeed, Megan Smart – and then, bam!, dead parents.
There’s another pause in which I find myself staring at his shoes. They’ve been shined to the point that they’re almost mirrors. The white of the hallway lights are reflecting back at me like stars in the night sky.
He shuffles and glances to his colleague during the silence, then turns back to me. I’m avoiding his stare, worried that my eyes might betray me. It’s awkward – but then I doubt death knocks are ever fun and games.
‘Oh,’ I say.
‘They were both in your father’s car,’ he adds. ‘Our colleagues are investigating the cause of the crash. We don’t know any more at this time.’
Another silence.
‘Has someone told Chloe?’ I ask.
‘Officers are with your sister now.’
‘Right.’
I take a small step backwards into my flat, one hand on the front door, as the other officer – a woman – moves forward. She puts a hand on my shoulder but quickly removes it when I wince away.
‘We can wait with you if you want?’ she says. She has a slight Scouse accent. No doubt she drew the short straw in having to come out and make this type of visit.
‘It’s fine,’ I say. ‘I’m going to call Chloe.’
‘We can arrange to get you down to London if that’s—’
‘No!’ I answer too quickly and the air sizzles. Like the moment after a glass is dropped and everyone turns to see who smashed it. Both officers step backwards from the doorframe and I finally look up to their faces. Match their stares.
I’ve screwed up because instinct is hard to fake. I should be breaking down, throwing my hands into the air. I should have questions. The who, what, where, why and how. That’s what normal people would ask.
I’m trying to think of a question that sounds right but all I can manage is a weak, ‘Are you sure it’s them?’
‘We’re sure,’ the man replies.
‘Oh,’ I say. ‘I guess that’s that, then.’
I have barely opened the front door when Chloe dashes past me. She heads across the kitchen and down the hallway, pushing doors open on either side as she goes.
‘Bagsy the big bedroom,’ she calls, poking her head into each room before ducking out and trying the next.
The front door doesn’t seem to fit in the frame: probably the years of rain and heat causing it to swell and shrink over and over. It sticks as I try to close it, leaving me to shoulder and boot it into place as it squeaks in annoyance. There’s nothing like a quick bit of violence after five hours in a car. Three hours on the motorway was bad enough, but the subsequent two hours on twisty-turny country roads would bring out the worst in anyone. Gandhi might have banged on about peace and forgiveness – but he never had to drive from London to Cornwall in a battered VW.
‘I don’t think there is a big bedroom,’ I call after my sister.
Chloe is already at the back of the cottage, almost hidden in the murk of the hall, pointing to an open door. ‘Shotgun this room.’
‘Fine.’
She disappears inside and there’s a thump as her bag hits the ground. She’ll be unpacking already. Everything in its place and all that. In some ways – this one in particular – she’s unquestionably our mother’s daughter.
I dump my own backpack on the crusty welcome mat and head towards the fridge. Chloe was six, possibly just seven, when she was last in the family cottage. I was ten and, a decade on, it was literally half a lifetime ago for me. I do remember this cottage, this kitchen. I see it in flashes, like scenes from a forgotten television show I’ve not watched in years. One that wasn’t very good and that I’d rather forget.
There’s a thick wooden dining table in the corner, the type of thing that’s so big people remove window frames to get it inside. It ain’t IKEA, that’s for sure. There’s a coating of dust on its surface, but this is the sort of furniture that could survive ice ages and meteor strikes. Long after the human race has gone and the mosquitoes have taken over, this hunk of varnished wood will still be here.
I was sitting at that table when Mother told me I couldn’t have a cheese sandwich because I was already pudgy enough.
Chloe drifts back into the kitchen, her phone aloft. ‘No reception,’ she says.
‘Try upstairs.’
She moves back towards the hall before stopping and turning, half a grin on her face. ‘You almost had me then.’
As well as the organisational skills and desire for things to be in their rightful place, Chloe also got Mother’s looks. Naturally blonde, with those big round eyes. There was a time when I called her ‘the Aryan child’. Never to her face, obviously. That was a different me. I was meaner then. Sometimes I miss that girl who spoke first and thought second.
Chloe edges into the kitchen again, straining across the sink and reaching her phone towards the window.
‘Nothing,’ she says, turning in a circle. ‘Not even a single bar.’
‘Try the WiFi.’
She taps the screen once and then looks up. ‘Be nice to me.’
I grin. ‘We’ll figure it out. There’s probably a phone mast on a hill somewhere. There’ll be Internet in the village. We’ll live.’
It’s sacrilege but Chloe lets it go. She runs a hand along the draining board, taking a layer of dust into her palm. ‘When was the last time anyone was here?’
‘I think Mum was down a bit before Christmas. I don’t know.’
‘She could’ve sorted out the WiFi. It’s like… I dunno, Victorian times.’
‘I don’t think there’s ever been a phone line.’
I look around blankly, as if expecting to see the type of ancient technology that involved a phone connected to the wall with a cable. All that’s there is a musty layer of dust on everything.
It’s only when I find myself searching through the drawers for a duster or a tea towel that I realise how mumsy I’m becoming. Chloe’s watching, saying nothing and I wonder if she’s thinking it as well. I’m twenty going on fifty sometimes. Ancient.
‘Why’s it so hot?’ Chloe asks.
‘There’s no air-con or central heating. I bet it’s freezing in winter and boiling in summer.’
She huffs in annoyance. ‘I’m going to unpack.’
Chloe hangs around for a second, probably subconsciously waiting for permission. It’s taken us both time to realise we don’t need to wait for our parents’ approval any longer. I don’t say anything, so she disappears off to the back room and I give up on finding a cloth. Half the drawers are stuck closed and it’s not like the dust is going anywhere. I take a tiny amount of pleasure from knowing that, if Mother were here, she’d be on the brink of a panic attack at all the cleaning that needs doing. A decade ago, she’d have done it herself. In recent years, she’d have been clicking her fingers and calling for Gabriela. The memory is so clear, so close, that I can even hear the intonation in her voice. ‘Gabby,’ she’d call, ‘Gabriela. Will you look at this?’
I sometimes wonder what might have happened if poor Gabriela had simply looked at the mess and left it there. When it came to our Polish help, Mother had somehow turned cleaning a single five-bedroom house into a fifty-hour-a-week job. No working time directive on our road. That didn’t stop my parents from voting to ‘send them all back’, of course. Mother actually said that to me when she asked how I’d voted.
Cookbooks sit in a row on the counter, spines faded by the sun. All the celebrity chefs have their names on show and I wonder whose benefit these books are for. Even in the old days, I don’t remember either of my parents cooking. It was sort yourself out, or find somewhere that delivers. Mother didn’t eat, so why should any of the rest of us have to bother with such a pesky thing?
This is where I’m unquestionably my mother’s daughter.
I run my fingers along the spines, sending a clump of dust onto the floor. It’ll be good to toss the lot into a skip one day soon. Leave a nice trample mark on Jamie Oliver’s face. That’s what I think of your Italian Kitchen, mate.
The living room is a similar story to the kitchen. It’s a smaller room, perhaps more of a study. It’s dusty and the air is clogged and thick. There are bookcases filled with hardback crime and romance novels, yet I doubt either of my parents ever read a fiction book. A cricket bat is resting inexplicably in the corner. Neither of them much cared for playing or watching sport, so who knows where it came from. The rocking chair stirs another memory. I think I sat in here, reading quietly. Children should neither be seen nor heard and all that. I set the chair bobbing back and forth, sending a flurry of dust to the floor. There’s nothing else in here that feels familiar.
The second study is cosier than the first: all throws and cushions. Like a bomb went off in the home section of John Lewis. The soft furnishings are more likely to be from Harrods, of course, or imported from who knows where. Somewhere expensive. The rest of the house might have once been like a show home but this room is all Mother. There’s even a soothing purple lightbulb. I bet there’s a CD of whale music somewhere nearby.
I have no recollection of this part of the cottage. I remember the thick kitchen table, the cheese sandwich denial… and that’s about it. I had wondered if being here might jog some memories – but there’s nothing there to be jogged. My ten-year-old brain was obviously concerned with other things.
It doesn’t surprise me that the food memory has stuck. I sometimes wonder if absorbing so many random facts about food – if not the food itself – has pushed everything else away. Like, there’s only room for so much knowledge in a person’s head at any given time. That cheese sandwich would’ve been 500 calories minimum. Forty per cent fat, twenty per cent carbs. If we had an Internet connection, I’d Google it to make sure.
I’m busy thinking of melting Cheddar with speckled dots of grated onion when a gentle series of clunks echo through the house. I emerge into the hall at the same time as Chloe.
‘Was that you?’ I ask.
‘I think someone’s at the door.’
She nods behind me, towards the kitchen, and I realise that she’s right. The silhouette of someone’s head is distorted by the rippled glass in the front door. Mother’s voice is at the back of my mind again.
Gabby, there’s someone at the door. Gabriela...?
I have to push my foot into the frame and pull to make the front door open. It scrapes and grinds, then flies open, almost making me topple backwards. Not quite the elegance and poise those private school fees paid for.
Daylight beams into the sullen kitchen and the woman on the other side jumps back a little. She squeaks like a trodden-on puppy.
‘Oh,’ she says. ‘I, um…’
She’s wearing the type of oversized sunglasses that scream an airy lack of interest in anything other than herself, yet she removes them to examine first me and then Chloe. Her eyes narrow, which is quite the miracle given the smoothness of her forehead. I hadn’t realised Botox was available this far out in the sticks.
‘Is it really you?’ she asks.
‘Well, I’m me, so…’
Her face stretches tighter, momentarily confused, straining against the facelift. Six months old, I reckon. There’s the merest hint of a scar skimming her hairline. It’s only showing because of her tan: a narrow cream line against the browned skin. She’s in a smart skirt suit. There was a time when I would have known the brand simply by looking. Either way, it’s expensive – and completely out of place, considering this cottage is surrounded by forest.
‘Megan?’ she says, before turning to my sister. ‘And is that little Chloe…?’
She’d raise an eyebrow if she could.
‘Do we know you?’ I ask.
The woman turns back to me and stretches out her hand. Her fingers are long and slender, her nails baby pink. ‘Alison,’ she says, as if this should mean something. ‘Alison Wood.’
We shake hands, if it can be called that. Her grip is so limp that’s more an incidental brushing of palms.
‘I was friends with your parents,’ she adds. ‘We’ve known each other for years. We did a charity gala thing and Anne was on the Burning Boat committee a while back. That was—’
‘She was on the what committee?’
Alison blinks, not used to being interrupted. There’s a flicker of annoyance that is gone so quickly that I half-wonder if it was there at all. I learned at school that people who come from money aren’t accustomed to being spoken over. They talk, you listen.
Alison bats a dismissive hand. ‘You poor things. What happened to your parents is such a tragedy. They were so young, so kind, so talented. And to be taken by a car crash…’
She tails off, but neither Chloe nor I add anything. What is there to say?
‘Did you get my card?’ she adds.
I glance at Chloe, who is leaning on the doorframe, arms hugged across her front. She’s nowhere near over what happened yet. It’s been a long three months for her; a blink for me.
‘We got a lot of cards,’ I reply. ‘We didn’t know most of our parents’ friends. That’s what happens when you’re hidden away at boarding school.’
Chloe tenses but Alison seems not to notice the bitterness in my tone. I don’t think she was listening.
‘I remember you both as little girls,’ she replies airily. Her eyes become glassy as she glances upwards. She bats her hand in front of her face, warding off invisible tears. ‘I suppose the last time I saw you was the summer that everything happened…’
Alison tails off, takes a breath and then continues: ‘It was so brave of your parents to come back and check in with the place every few months. It must have brought back such terrible memories. I’ve been keeping half an eye on the cottage ever since I heard what happened to them. That’s why I noticed your car.’ She turns to look at my scuffed Volkswagen. When I turned eighteen, Mother offered to buy me a ‘proper car’, but I wanted to pay for something with my own money. I was craving disapproval at the time.
Alison has paused, waiting for me to fill in some details. I know that expectant, docile look. I used to wear it myself. When I was at school, there was a time when I used to feed on gossip. A succubus for controversy and titillation. Takes one to know one. It was an age thing with me: I grew out of it.
‘Are you staying for long?’ she asks eventually, when she realises I am not going to say anything further.’
‘We’re not sure,’ I reply.
‘I suppose you have things to sort out. You must have had it so hard. I can’t begin to understand.’ She licks her lips and takes a small step backwards. She glances between us, but I can’t read her this time. She seems confused more than anything.
‘We’re here for a break,’ Chloe says. It’s the first words she’s spoken since the knock on the door. ‘We figured we’d get away from London for a while.’
Alison takes us both in, nodding along. ‘That sounds nice. Does this mean you’ll be staying around? They say it’s going to be a hot summer.’
I jump in before Chloe can reply: ‘We’re gonna wing it. See how things go.’
Alison winces momentarily at my filthy slang.
‘Well… If you need some help, or want to ask about the area – anything like that – we’re right by the “Welcome to Whitecliff” sign.’
She points towards the main road. There’s only one route to the village. We must have passed her house when we drove in.
‘It’s called The Gables,’ she adds. ‘On the right as you enter. You can’t miss it.’
‘I think I saw it on the way in,’ Chloe replies.
Alison smiles in reply – or as much as she can. Her lips twitch upwards. ‘There’s a buzzer on the gatepost,’ she says. ‘Come by any time. My husband’s called Dan. Either of us will be happy to help if you need something.’
She takes another step away, crunching awkwardly across the gravel and onto a crumbling set of paving slabs that serve as a pathway.
‘Your husband’s name is Dan?’
Alison stops and stares back at me. ‘Right…’
‘I think I do remember you,’ I say. ‘Didn’t you have a son? My age?’
It’s more of a dream than a memory. The vaguest inkling that I once played on the beach with a boy named Somebody Wood. My father was chatting to his father, who was called Dan. I don’t remember Alison at all.
‘Eli?’ I ask. ‘Something like that. Edward…? Evan…? Something with an “E”?’
It takes her a few seconds, but Alison slowly starts to nod. ‘Cambridge,’ she says breezily. ‘He stays there during the summers. Loves the place.’ She doesn’t confirm his name.
We all pause for a moment more, no one quite sure what to say.
Alison finishes with, ‘Well, you know where we are…’ and then turns, heading back along the track towards the road.
When she’s out of sight, I wrestle the front door back into place and then turn to see Chloe with her hands on her hips.
‘That was rude,’ she says.
‘Me?’
‘She was only trying to help.’
I want to tell Chloe that she’s young, that she’s naïve. That women like Alison Wood don’t only help. There’s always something else going on, even if it’s just gathering gossip for the rest of the village’s Official Nosy Bastard Society.
‘We’re fine on our own,’ I reply.
‘I never said we’re not – but she was only making sure we’re good. She was friends with Mum.’
I start to reply but then stop myself. It’s not worth arguing. Mother and Father mean something different to Chloe than they do to me.
Chloe makes a move towards her room, then turns back. ‘How long do you think we’ll be here?’
We had to visit the cottage at some point – or at least one of us did. Inheriting an estate is ludicrously complicated. This place is equally ours now, even if Chloe’s share is being held until she’s eighteen.
That’s not why we’re here, though.
‘I should have told you earlier,’ I say. ‘I thought it’d be better if I waited until we were here.’
I cross to my bag and struggle with the spaghetti tangle of ties and zips before removing the postcard.
‘This arrived on the day of the funeral,’ I say, passing it across.
Chloe stares at the front, which is a photo of a steep cliff towering over a beach. ‘Whitecliff’ is printed in the corner. I’ve spent hours looking at the picture, wondering what it means.
She flips it over and glances at the back. There’s not a lot to see. On the right, our London address is written in green capital letters. It’s addressed to me. On the left, in the space for the message, is a single letter.
Z.
Chloe turns the card around, checking she hasn’t missed anything, then she holds it up for me to see.
‘Z? What does that mean?’
‘I’m not sure.’
There’s a moment where Chloe’s body tenses and I think she might screw up the card. In the three months since I received it, I’ve thought about doing precisely that several times.
‘Zac…?’ Chloe speaks with wide-eyed disbelief. I can’t remember the last time we talked about our brother. About what happened to him.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Why didn’t you say something before?’
I look away, not quite able to tell her the truth: that I wanted this to be my secret. That there’s a part of me that’s enjoyed having something for me and only me.
‘There wasn’t a right moment,’ I reply. ‘What with the funeral and everything. You were upset and…’ I tail off, hoping she’ll let it go.
Chloe’s eyes narrow slightly and, for a moment, I think she might push me harder. I could have told her at several points between the funeral and now but I hadn’t wanted to. Once I’d opted not to tell her first time around, it would have been difficult to explain why I’d continued to keep it a secret. At least now we’re here, I’ve got a reason to tell her. I can pin it on being back in the cottage after so long.
She nods slightly and I know my sister well enough to see I’m off the hook. If things were reversed, I wouldn’t have let it go so easily.
‘You can’t think it’s from him…?’ she says, before adding quickly: ‘It must be a coincidence? A mistake?’
I take the card back, smoothing the front and returning it to the safety of my bag. Mine.
‘I honestly don’t know.’
Chloe’s gentle hums drift through the cottage like the dawn song of a pain-in-the-arse bird. There was a big bedroom, after all: the one our parents shared when they stayed here. I don’t remember the room itself, which makes me wonder if I was ever allowed in. Probably not. Our parents enjoyed their secrets.
Chloe is busy unpacking, cheerful about being here. It’s somewhere different, a break from the endless video conferences with solicitors and the lengthy list of things to do. Her exams were barely a month ago. Her school offered to let her defer them for a year, but she took them anyway. She’s on holiday now and I don’t blame her for being cheerful, for wanting to forget everything that’s happened. She’s happy to be here – and, I hope, happy to be with me.
We’ve been at different private boarding schools for most of our lives and not just because of the age gap. We would have had a year or two overlap at the same school, but Mother sent Chloe somewhere different, saying I would be a bad influence. Because of this, we haven’t spent a lot of time together. We’ve only seen each other for part of each summer and at various family occasions. We’ve kept in touch with WhatsApp messages. Emails, in the old days. It’s not the same as living together, though. Sometimes I forget how little we know each other. Especially because, at times, it’s like she’s a younger me. Nicer, of course. Kinder.
She’s already brushed off the postcard from ‘Z’, figuring it was a mistake. I’d have never done that, even at sixteen going on seventeen.
I listen to her humming and singing, which is an accompaniment to the opening and closing of drawers and wardrobes. My bag rests untouched against the too-soft bed in my room.
It’s not long before I feel like the walls are closing in. I stare at the spiral swirls of mould in the corners where the walls meet the ceiling. It’s so humid in here that it feels like I’m breathing in bubbles.
I call for Chloe and meet her in the hallway. She’s taken off her trainers and is walking around in bare feet.
‘Let’s go out,’ I say.
‘I’m still unpacking.’
‘You can do that any time. The sun’s out – let’s explore.’
Chloe bobs from one foot to the other, wavering. She’d clearly rather stay here but says, ‘One minute,’ anyway and disappears back into her room. A moment later and she’s ready, wearing sandals, shorts and a strappy top.
It takes me a minute or so to fight the front door and lock up. There’s a patch of crumbling paving slabs and then a gravelly track that leads from our cottage to the main road. A separate darkened trail disappears into the woods. We opt for the route to the road but it’s still dim and moody under the shadow of the swaying trees. The temperature is a degree or two lower outside the cottage – and it’s another couple of degrees cooler again in the shade.
After a minute or so, we reach the road. Glancing back, I realise that there’s no way Alison Wood could have seen my car unless she came down the track. And the track only leads to the cottage, so I wonder what she was doing. Perhaps it is as simple as that she was ‘keeping half an eye’ on the cottage, as she said. Suspicion comes easily.
We walk along the edge of the road for a short while and then the trees open up, unveiling the wonder of what’s below. The cottage is at the top of a hill – the type of brutal, unrelenting steep road that Britain does so well. Switchbacks are for softies.
The blue of the ocean stretches far into the distance below, only ending when it reaches the sapphire sky. The cliffs from the postcard are off to the right: craggy walls of rock topped with grass and trees that tower over a smooth stretch of beach. Dark dots of ant-like people are scattered across the sand, baking in the afternoon heat.
Then there’s Whitecliff itself.
From the top of the hill, it’s a sprinkling of roofs atop cosy cottages and weathered houses. As we head down, the blend of cobbled and tarmacked streets becomes more apparent. Half a dozen boats are docked at a jetty on the edge of the village, close to a pub. There are photocopied black and white posters advertising an upcoming festival, plus some others about water safety. The streets aren’t exactly heaving with people, but the village feels lived in. There are flower baskets hanging beside various front doors, a sign pointing the way to the beach and telegraph poles with cables looping down to the buildings.
It’s a far cry from the people and noise of the cities I’m used to – but undoubtedly a step up from the isolation of the cottage.
Chloe stops to check the menu on the side of the pub and I stand with her, staring out towards the boats. There’s a topless, tanned man hunched over the front of a vessel marked ‘Chandler Fishing’. He’s mid-twenties or so. Sweat is pouring along his arms and back, dripping on the wooden dock at his feet. He’s big, with only a bristle of dark hair across his head. There’s far more on his back, upper arms and, well… everywhere.
Almost as if he can sense me, he stops, turning and wiping his brow with one hand as he clutches a spanner in the other. He squints, trying to figure out who I am. . .
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