HE’LL COME BACK.
But I didn’t say any of that either so maybe we were all thinking it in our heads and none of us could say it out loud. In case He did. Come Back I mean.
So after breakfast I pulled Cat behind the Berlin Wall and I put my hand over her mouth and I whispered in her ear ‘IT HAS TO BE TONIGHT’!!
Because It Does. No matter what she says. No matter how scared we are. It’s THE PLAN. It’s what we agreed.
I’m behind the curtain in the pantry, struggling to breathe through El’s clammy hand and the dusty dark. The ghosts whisper and thump around us. It has to be tonight.
No, I think. NO.
Yes, says El. I feel her smile under my fingers as if we’ve swapped places – I’ve become her and she’s become me. And when I let her go and pull back the curtain, every wall in the hallway and kitchen is painted ugly wet crimson. I hear an owl hoot: high and long. I hear boots, I hear RUN! I hear rings. The noise is deafening. The wooden board shudders, every one of its bells shaking left and right, star-shaped pendulums flashing in the gloom, the dark. I see the moon.
Wake up! El screams in my voice. Our voice. Wake the fuck up.
*
I fall off the stool onto the pantry floor. My arms and legs feel too heavy. My stomach is empty, queasy. My head aches, aches, aches. Is this what grief feels like? Or guilt? Is this what it feels like when half of you is gone? When half of you is dead?
I pick up my phone, press reply. The screen stays blurry no matter how many times I blink.
Answer me. Meet me. Explain. Or leave me the fuck alone.
Ross is standing by the kitchen window, looking out at a back garden distorted by rain. It pounds against the roof and the flue cap, the guttering. He turns around when he hears me. Last night, I insisted that we both sleep alone, and spent the entirety of it longing for his breath on my neck and his arm across my belly and his legs tangled between mine. Today, I can’t even look at him.
‘The tea’s stewed,’ he says, picking up the pot. It shakes in his hands, enough that the lid starts to rattle. ‘I’ll make some more.’
I take it from him. ‘It’s okay.’ I fill a mug and sit down. Take too large a swallow. Don’t slitter, Catriona.
‘Cat.’ Ross sits down next to me. His fingers are warm against mine. I try to tell myself their touch doesn’t help, doesn’t straightaway soothe a hollow place deep inside my chest. ‘Please don’t shut me out.’
I take back my hands, press them between my knees instead. ‘I need to see her.’
Ross almost recoils. ‘What? Why? The DNA—’
‘You’re the one who said she wasn’t suicidal,’ I say. Because just about the only thing still holding me together is that stubborn and enduring I’d know. That I would have felt the moment she died, the moment she drowned, the moment she left. That those hopeless, helpless, horrifying seizures of yesterday were only shock, only shame.
‘Maybe she didn’t mean to do it.’ He takes hold of my hands again, pulls them in hard against his breastbone. I can feel the too-fast thud-thud of his heart. ‘Maybe it was an accident. Maybe she just wanted me to notice she was in pain.’ His eyes are wet with unshed tears. And when I take back my hands again, he stands up, turns away from me.
I look down at the two tiles in front of the Kitchener. That cracked line of grout stained dark. My smile feels tight, like my lips might split and bleed. ‘Years ago, I read about this tribe. It was in one of Grandpa’s encyclopaedias. And it … it was one of those lucky tribes that had managed to avoid the rest of us for centuries. In South America somewhere, I don’t know.’
‘Cat—’
‘If a member of this tribe did something wrong, got caught doing something wrong, or even just thought they’d done something – anything, you know, from telling a lie to committing a murder – this tribe, this entire tribe, would take them into the centre of their village, and they would form this circle around them, so tight they couldn’t escape, couldn’t hide. And then they would tell that person everything that was good about them. Every good thing they’d ever done. Every good thing they’d ever been. Over and over. And they wouldn’t stop. Not until that person heard them. Believed them.’
My voice breaks. My eyes burn with tears I refuse to cry. My hands twitch to hold his. My body aches to lie down. To feel his hard, warm, sure weight against me, inside me. And all of me wants to look in a mirror and see only El. To stand on a freezing cold beach and say this is where I’ll stay. To never allow her to let go of my hand. No matter how much it hurts. No matter how many times she pushes me away.
CHAPTER 20
Marie stands on the doorstep inside a swathe of bright morning light. She’s holding a huge bunch of calla lilies, and tears are running down her cheeks.
‘Je suis désolée. C’est affreux. Je suis tellement désolée.’
I take the flowers – their antiseptic smell waters my eyes and stings my nose. ‘Thank you, Marie.’
She takes out a beautifully embroidered handkerchief and dabs at her skin. ‘I knew … I knew she had to be … mais …’
‘Sorry – I’d invite you in, but I’m just about to go out.’
She blinks at my denim jacket. Today, I can’t even look at the grey cashmere coat hanging on the stand behind me.
‘Is
