by Ali Mercer
‘Ava? Ava, it’s time to wake up. Your coffee will go cold.’
She groaned something I couldn’t make out, turned over and put one of her pillows over her head. Well, she was obviously going to be great company that day.
I decided against drawing the curtains – no point provoking an already irritable Ava – and took one of the trays back to my bed in the gloom. The strange dream was already fading, losing its power. Just a dream. No particular reason why I should be scared by it. It hadn’t been that frightening, really. No blood, no corpses. Just that voice, and a sense of menace. And the bird, though that hadn’t been scary either. Solemn, though. As if its message was one that mattered.
But there I was with the poshest breakfast in bed ever, and a rose! I thought of the bouquet Mark had got Mum back at the beginning of the year, the way the colour of it had made everything else in our flat seem pale and drab in comparison. He certainly was introducing us to the high life. Looking at Ava now, though, I couldn’t help but wonder if she’d had a bit more of it than was good for her.
* * *
It turned out that Ava was determined to stay in bed for as long as possible, and wouldn’t be persuaded otherwise. I wasn’t surprised she had a headache: I’d seen the way she’d knocked back her wine the previous night. Just like Dad. Maybe I should have warned her not to overdo it, but I knew how much that would have annoyed her and it didn’t seem like a great idea to get her back up on what was meant to be a celebratory night.
I retreated to the bathroom and read a bit more of Wuthering Heights, but when it was getting on for nine o’clock and there was still no sign of life from Ava I decided I’d have to take action. I prodded her as gently as I could and tried to persuade her to at least have her croissant, and she said I could have it if I was so worried about it. That was when I knew she really must be feeling bad and wasn’t just making excuses because she still didn’t like Mark that much and didn’t feel like having to hang out with him all day. I wasn’t sure why she wasn’t keen on Mark – he seemed pretty much perfect to me – but there it was. It was like when you put two magnets together same pole to same pole and they try and push each other away; I couldn’t help but feel that if events had lined up differently, they’d get along just fine.
They actually reminded me of each other. They were both soft-centre people – the kind that pretend to be cool and hard when at their cores, they’re all mush. I was the opposite, and so was Mum: friendly and keen to please on the outside, invisible steel in the heart. People thought we were the easy-going ones, the weak ones, but actually, they underestimated us. Or so I liked to think.
After all, wasn’t what I had – the flashes of perception, glimpses of half-understood things that later turned out to be true – a kind of strength?
And if it wasn’t… then strength was definitely needed to cope with it.
All it took for Ava to lie in bed groaning was a bit of wine and Armagnac, and the news that Mum was getting married again and was expecting. How on earth would she cope with stuff coming in, if not from the other side, then at the very least from outside herself – little moments of knowledge from the blue?
I left Ava her croissant to have later, and put on my new swimming-costume and sundress and the new straw sun-hat I’d had to choose really quickly because Ava had spent so long trying on swimming costumes, and tucked my beach towel and other things I might need in the raffia basket Mum had bought me on the very last day before we were due to fly out here.
Then Mum came in, all keen to talk to Ava – probably wanting to make sure that she was going to be all right with her getting married and having a baby and all that. Mum tended to think that talking could sort out that kind of thing. She sent me off to go down with Mark to the beach, and I found myself alone with my future stepdad for the first time since I’d invited him into our flat, the day he’d brought round the books.
* * *
We made our way towards the hotel’s revolving doors together and out onto the sunlit road. Maybe he wasn’t a morning person; he didn’t seem particularly cheerful about having the chance to get to know me better. I supposed I was going to find out that kind of thing about him now that he was going to be a proper part of our lives, rather than a man with a fancy car who sometimes turned up to give us presents, or take us out for expensive treats.
As long as I made it perfectly clear to Dad that he’d always come first, surely it wouldn’t be so very terrible to let this other person grow fond of me… would it?
Dad was Dad, but he was on and off and you never knew when he’d be back next. Mark at least seemed reliable, and that wasn’t to be sniffed at. Going by the evidence, you had to wonder how much Dad had ever really wanted us. I let myself think this, though I knew I shouldn’t, any more than you should pick at a scab to see what’s underneath.
* * *
Even though it was still early, the beach was already crowded with bronzed sunbathers in brightly coloured swimwear and their happy, uncomplaining children. I suspected very few of them were English – or if any of them were English, they’d done a very good job of adapting. Mark and I were both paler than everybody else, but I felt I stuck out more than he did.
He had on a polo shirt and linen trousers and espadrilles and was carrying a canvas holdall with his beach stuff in it, and there was something quite Continental about him, what with the breathable fabrics and the casual air of sophistication and choosiness. There was nothing at all Continental about me, but maybe that was something to do with never having been overseas before. In fact, I’d never even left the south-east; the furthest I’d been was the beach at Brighton.
Mark managed to find a good spot, in spite of how busy it was, on a sandy incline a little way back from the sea. He took a big blue-and-white striped beach towel out of his bag and unrolled it and sat down on it, and I took my own beach towel out of my basket and did the same.
We both looked at the sea. It was glittering invitingly in the sunlight, and was bright blue all the way to the horizon. Mark said, ‘I quite fancy a dip. How about you?’
‘Me? Oh, no, I don’t think so. I’ve never swum in the sea before. It might not be safe.’
‘But you can swim, can’t you? Jenny said you could both swim.’
‘Well, yes, we can. I can swim better than Ava, actually. I’ve got more badges than her, and I did lifesaving and she didn’t bother. But I’d still rather stay here.’
‘Fair enough. You’re on holiday, you should do what you want.’
‘Are you really just going to go off and leave me here?’
‘You’ll be all right, won’t you?’
‘Well, I expect so,’ I said with a shrug.
He looked at me through slightly narrowed eyes, as if having second thoughts, then suddenly got up and approached a woman who was sunbathing at a slight distance to us, reading in the shade of a parasol stuck in the sand as her child tottered round with a bucket and spade.
He said something I couldn’t quite make out – we’d done a little bit of French at school, days of the week and so on, but nothing that really equipped you for dealing with this kind of situation. Then he gestured towards me and I distinctly heard him say fille. That was girl, and it was also daughter. Had he told this lady I was his daughter?
The lady smiled and nodded and Mark came back and sat down again.
‘She said she’ll keep an eye on you,’ he explained.
‘What did you say to her about me, exactly?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I heard you say fille. That means “daughter”, doesn’t it?’
I couldn’t decide whether I was angry or pleased about it. It was a bit of an insult to Dad, in a way. But I could see that it saved on explanations. And if Mark felt that way about us – if he was up for playing the part of being our dad – wasn’t that a good thing?
He narrowed his eyes again. I got the impression he was finding me hard-going, but trying not to show his exasperation. No w
onder he wanted a swim.
‘I said belle-fille,’ he explained.
Beautiful girl? Why on earth would he describe me like that?
‘It means “step-daughter”,’ he went on. ‘I know it’s jumping the gun a bit. But you will be, one day. Anyway, I’m going to have a quick dip, if that’s all right. I won’t be long, and I’ll be able to see you from the sea.’
‘Fine,’ I said. ‘I’m used to looking after myself, anyway.’
Oh well, Dad would probably have cleared off for a swim too, if he’d wanted.
Mark slipped off his espadrilles and I took in the sight of his bare feet with scientific interest. I wasn’t really used to seeing men’s feet. Mum’s feet were wide and pale and soft, almost child-like. Ava’s were annoyingly elegant and she was proud of them, though she wouldn’t admit it. She spent ages painting her toenails, and she was always going around in little strappy sandals, as soon as the weather warmed up enough. But bare male feet were a rarity in my life.
Mark’s were probably quite attractive, not that I had anything to compare them to. He had very high arches and very large big toes, and a sprinkling of freckles and no obvious sprouts of hair – a good thing, in my opinion.
Would Mum object to finding his toenail clippings in the bath? No – because Mark would never, ever leave them there. He’d always check, and rinse the bath as much as was necessary to remove every last trace of himself. In fact, he was probably the kind of person who would clean the bath before he used it.
Mark unbuttoned his shirt and took it off. His back was smooth and unblemished – no hair, no scars, no moles, no identifying marks. I tried to remember if I’d ever seen Dad with no top on. I didn’t think I had.
Suddenly Dad seemed a very, very long way away, which he was, as far away as someone can be. I had no idea where he was. He could have been anywhere. And you can’t get further away than that.
I tried to summon Dad up: perhaps I could get a picture of where he was, at least, or a flash of how he was feeling.
Nothing. The knowledge didn’t seem to work like that, or do anything I might actually want it to do. Sometimes I wondered what on earth was the point of it, what it was for. It certainly didn’t seem to be there to help me.
Mark stood up and unzipped his trousers and stepped out of them. He had his swimming trunks on underneath. I quickly looked away, over towards the expanse of the sea. It really wouldn’t do to stare, especially if he noticed.
Presumably, when he was married to Mum and we were all living together, he’d go round in a dressing-gown at home like we all did? It would be less awkward and strange when we were all used to each other, anyway. Wouldn’t it?
‘Back in a bit,’ he said, and went off across the sand to the sea.
Poor old Dad. He’d let Mark hit him… he’d slunk away as if he wasn’t even entitled to be there.
I watched Mark launch himself into a fast front crawl and churn his way through the water. As I looked on the waves seemed to become stronger and greyer and darker, as if a storm had blown in from somewhere, as if this wasn’t such an idyllic spot after all.
He hadn’t even reminded me to put suncream on. What kind of parent was he going to make? He certainly had a lot to learn.
I got the suncream out of my basket and dotted it on my legs and arms, then rubbed it into my skin till the white smears disappeared. It was Ava who had shown me how to do that. It smelled good; it smelled of laziness, of the kind of days when the ice-cream van comes round and you make daisy-chains and stay up late because it’s too hot to sleep.
When I looked up at the sea again, it was as blue and sparkling as a postcard or an illustration in a storybook.
I lay down on my back and rested my straw hat on my face and listened to the sound of the waves. The little kid whose mother was meant to be keeping an eye on me was chatting away to herself in French. Soothing, beachside sounds. Holiday sounds. I closed my eyes: the insides of my eyelids turned a warm orangey-brown, like the glowing embers of a fire, the way I imagined Grandma.
I couldn’t feel her now, though. Maybe I wasn’t calm enough. I didn’t feel calm at all, and that wasn’t good.
I had missed something. Something important. Something big, something to do with Mark. Something I didn’t know yet. But did Mum? Did Ava? I could feel it, but I couldn’t make out anything other than the scale and weight of it. It was a burden, a terrible pressure, and it was his – it was something he carried around everywhere, and that meant now it was ours, too.
Maybe he thought that he’d be able to escape it, or let go of it. Or at least forget it. But it didn’t seem like the kind of thing that would get better just by being left alone. It seemed like it might get bigger the more he ignored it, until it had almost completely taken him over, until there was almost nothing else.
* * *
After he’d finished swimming he came back and sat down on his towel next to me to dry off in the sun, and then Mum appeared, waving at us from a distance across the beach and picking her way round the sunbathers to get to us.
She didn’t look very happy. In fact, when she came closer, I could see that she’d been crying. I wondered what on earth Ava had said to her.
‘No Ava, then,’ Mark said as she sat down on his towel, in the space between us.
‘No. I think she’s all right, though. Or she will be.’ She drew a deep breath. ‘Ellie, there’s something we have to tell you.’
Mark said, ‘I thought you said we should all be together for this.’
Mum said, rather sharply, ‘Ava doesn’t want to be here.’
‘Shouldn’t we have discussed this?’ Mark said.
I said, ‘Discussed what?’
Mum said, ‘We have to tell her, Mark. We can’t just let it linger.’
And then she told me.
Ava wasn’t my sister after all.
Or at least, she wasn’t totally my sister. She was Mark’s daughter. And I was Sean’s.
It was a shock. Of course it was a shock. Quite apart from anything else… why hadn’t I known? What was the point of sensing things, if I didn’t get a heads-up on something as fundamental as this? And when Mark finally came on the scene… why hadn’t I realised?
But it all made sense…
It made sense in the awful, jarring way that things do when they suddenly become true, and you realise why you’ve been smelling a rat all along, and the rat was the truth and you don’t like it any better for having found it where you live.
Maybe it was just that I hadn’t wanted to know. Perhaps I had picked it up, after all. I had definitely picked up something… something that Mark carried around with him.
Guilt?
Mum was very careful to make it clear that it wasn’t Mark’s fault, that he hadn’t known, that he’d been married to someone else. But that didn’t exactly reflect very well on either of them, did it?
Maybe it was just the kind of thing that happened when you were grown up. Like car accidents, or the little purple veins that Mum had on her thighs. These were things that you wouldn’t choose to have. But sometimes, they were difficult to avoid.
After Mum had finished telling me I was quiet. I looked at the sea and the people in it and thought that maybe it didn’t matter where any of us came from, or who we were biologically related to. Which was an odd thing to think, as odd as being dropped into somebody else’s life. It made me feel artificially calm, as if I was at a distance from myself and from everybody else too.
And yet up until that moment I would have said that Mum and Ava were the most important people in the world, and that nothing could possibly matter more than family and who your family were.
Mum asked me if I had any questions. I said, ‘Does Dad know? My dad, I mean.’
‘He does,’ Mum said. ‘He always has.’
So he’d lied to me and Ava, too. But maybe he had felt he had to?
‘He thought he was lucky to have her,’ Mark said, and there was something in his voice
I didn’t like at all.
‘We should go back to the hotel,’ Mum said. ‘I don’t want to leave Ava alone for too long.’
‘She hasn’t exactly shown much sign of wanting to be with us,’ Mark said.
‘It doesn’t matter what signs she shows,’ Mum said.
I’d never heard them bicker like that before. They were beginning to sound like real parents.
I said, ‘Is there time for me to have a paddle before we go back?’
‘I thought you didn’t want to go into the sea,’ Mark objected.
‘I didn’t. But I changed my mind.’
Mum said, ‘You won’t be too long, will you?’
‘I won’t,’ I said. Suddenly I just wanted to get away from the pair of them.
‘Go on then,’ Mum said, and I got up and went down to the water’s edge.
When I turned round they were deep in conversation. Arguing? It was difficult to tell. Mum waved, though. At least she was still keeping an eye out for me. At least if I plunged into the water and started swimming towards the horizon, out of my depth, she’d probably notice.
I didn’t, though. I paddled and looked at the light bouncing off the water and listened to the swish and rush of the waves and the wet rattle of the sand, and to my surprise I was all right. I was sad, too, the way you are when something has come to an end, whether it’s because it’s time to put away the Christmas decorations or because your favourite old dress doesn’t fit you any more. I couldn’t help but see all the time Ava and I had spent together – eating meals, walking to and from school, sleeping side by side – in a different way. It made me nostalgic. As if all that time was already over.
But still, I was weirdly comforted. There was a sort of golden glow to everything, as if the brightness all around wasn’t just the sunshine of the south of France but was also a kind of light that you might be able to find anywhere if you looked for it.
