The mildly cleaner carpets and shinier wood make a difference, but I’m not satisfied. Burrowing below the sink, I pounce on the meagre cleaning supplies and begin on the kitchen. The kitchen floor disappears as I fling out the contents of each cupboard, crawling into the corners to scrub every inch clean. The hot water supply gives out, so I boil and reboil the kettle. Within minutes the windows fog up. I open them wide to let out the steam. Marianne joins me on the floor, watching what I do and copying my movements. We work side by side, avoiding speech for fear of waking the rage that lingers between us. When the kitchen is scrubbed I move onto the bathroom.
By lunchtime we’ve run out of cloths, cleaners and food, so I take a begrudging forty-minute break and we march into town on a supply run. On the way back I glance into a shop window and see a vacuum cleaner the size of a Dalek that promises deep shampooing action and untold suction power. Dragging it up the hill and then up the stairs nearly kills us, but we manage it somehow. As we stand sweating and panting in the hallway, I catch Marianne’s eye for a second and give her a tiny smile. The rage shrinks a little.
The afternoon’s work is calmer, more companionable. While Marianne fills a bucket and sponges the skirting boards, I mix white vinegar and water and wipe the mirrors, the windows and the picture frames. The smell is sharp and sour and comforting. I strip and remake the beds, then reverently set to work with the Dalek, beginning with the loops of dust on the curtains. Next, I fill its detergent compartment and begin again on the carpets, entranced and disgusted by the filth of the water I pour away down the sink. Finally I mop the kitchen floor for the third time that day, shut the Dalek away in the pantry and send Marianne to phone Daniel so I can make dinner. My muscles ache and my hands are dry and sore from their day-long soaking in water and chemicals. When Marianne returns, we sit in exhausted silence at the shining mahogany table, newly scented with lemon, and eat sausages with baked beans and jacket potatoes.
It’s not until the dishes are scrubbed clean, the stove-top re-purified, the dining table purged of non-existent crumbs and the windows flung wide to let out the chemical scents of our day’s work that I finally allow myself to stop. While Marianne gets ready for bed I sit at Lily’s desk, in theory making a list of estate agents, but in fact staring out at the garden and the ocean beyond. Seven hours of ferocious effort have had a startling impact on Lily’s house. It now looks loved rather than neglected, like a home rather than a shrine.
I’ve lent Marianne my dongle so she can get onto YouTube. The flickering colours of her tablet reflect off her face. Lily has a television, but Marianne has never been very interested. Her generation could well witness the slow disappearance of the box in the corner of the room. Maybe by the time I’m old, I’ll reminisce fondly about the days when everyone sat around in couch-potato silence and stared with their mouths open at the same programme.
Lily and I rarely watched TV either. However, she sometimes took me to the moth-eaten cinema at the end of an old-fashioned shopping arcade, where the seats were worn red velvet and the floor had that ancient stickiness that’s almost seductive. Often she would fall asleep, her head propped up by the sinewy slenderness of her hand and forearm, her rings gleaming in the light of the screen. I can remember all the films she took me to. Mary Poppins, Bedknobs and Broomsticks, The Slipper and the Rose. A double bill of Star Wars movies. They didn’t always make sense to me because there were no subtitles, but I loved going anyway, for the darkness during daytime, the faded luxury of our surroundings.
Feeling my gaze on her, Marianne stirs a little and rearranges a cushion. From a distance, our silence probably looks companionable. It would take someone who knows us very well indeed to spot that Marianne and I are both on edge, waiting for something to happen to resolve this morning’s disagreement. What sort of punishment is appropriate for what she did?
“Marianne.” She’s instantly alert, putting her tablet away without being asked.
“Yes?”
“Nothing. Never mind. Forget it.”
She defied years of careful instruction, went alone into the house of a threatening near-stranger and accepted a drink. Or, she saw an old man, weeping for his lost love, and went to comfort him.
Yet another version: she spoke to someone who I’ve decided is my enemy.
A final possibility: she was kind to a man who hurt me, by telling me I betrayed and neglected Lily. I’ve only made him my enemy because, in spite of everything I know, in spite of what she did, I’m afraid he was right. I don’t like this version.
“What did you talk about?” I ask, to distract myself. Marianne looks at me blankly. “This morning, I mean. With… him.”
“He said Lily and I have the same eyebrows,” says Marianne. “Is that true?”
“Yes,” I say in surprise, because he’s right. The fleeting resemblance that’s haunted me for years can be traced to that soft triangular shape, faintly reminiscent of an owl, perfectly replicated from Lily. James Moon has effortlessly solved a question I should have answered the day she was born. Another reason to be annoyed with him. “Were you talking about Lily, then?”
“Yes. He said—” Marianne hesitates. “He says he remembers you when you were little. But you never saw him because his wife was still alive so he and Lily weren’t friends then. He just remembers you playing in the garden sometimes.”
This startles me. I had assumed a zero overlap between his time and mine. I don’t know if I like the idea or not.
“It was interesting,” Marianne says, slow and tentative. “I like hearing about you when you were little. And about Lily. She sounds nice. I wish—”
She stops abruptly. Puts her hand up to her mouth to nibble at her nails, drops her hand again. Goes to pick at a scab on her arm. Stops herself. Watches my face for clues.
She did no harm and came to no harm. I did a lot of things in the time I spent here, things that would have got me grounded for weeks if my parents found out. Except that they never did, and now, what I mainly remember is the unthinking bliss of freedom. She did no harm and came to no harm. I can picture Lily as clearly as if she’s standing in front of me, as if my frenetic cleaning has woken her ghost. Sometimes the best thing is not to say anything.
“I need to text your dad,” I say.
Hey, lovely husband. Got a joke for you. How many estate agents does it take to change a light bulb?
Am I allowed to google it?
No you’re not. Do you give up?
All right, I give up. How many estate agents does it take to change a light bulb?
Ask for seven, but be prepared to go down to six for the right person.
That’s TERRIBLE
Just like my day.
You found some good ones then?
I did not. There are no good ones. We’re only having one house our whole lives. Just so you know. I don’t ever want to have to talk to another estate agent.
Technically I haven’t talked to any today either, but I’ve looked in Lily’s Yellow Pages and made a list, so surely that counts. Daniel won’t want to hear that I’ve spent the day cleaning. I would have had to clean before inviting anyone in to value the place. I’ve only done the tasks slightly out of order. I’m not used to lying to Daniel; normally we’re far too entwined in each other’s lives for me to get away with it. I can’t decide if I like the feeling.
So what have you been doing?
Nothing special really. Worked on the new stuff. Got bored. Went shopping. Missed you.
I remember my dream about the woman in the red dress. I hope the guitar really is only borrowed. Maybe he’s lying to me too.
So how’s our Marianne?
Actually, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about. This morning she
“No,” Lily says reproachfully. “Don’t do that, Jen.”
went into someone else’s house without telling me where she was going and
“No, Jen. He doesn’t need to know. Be kind.”
Marianne is watchi
ng me, waiting for the sentence to be passed, the blow to fall.
I hold my thumb over the delete button.
You can ask her yourself if you like, she’s got her phone superglued to her hand like always
I called her earlier. She says she’s fine and she’s not bored and there’s nothing much happening and she’s trying to help you as much as she can but you won’t let her do a lot.
That sounds like Marianne all right
And she said the guy who gave you the death certificate at the hospital yesterday was quite good looking. You didn’t tell me that :)
I flinch guiltily. Thank God he’s not here to see me blush.
Well, the guy who gave me the death certificate was about twelve. Also, he was the guy who was giving me the death certificate.
So he wasn’t good-looking?
No he wasn’t. Okay? Marianne might have thought so but there’s no point listening to her, she likes those terrible boys off YouTube
I just worry. You’re beautiful and amazing and I love you so much. I wish you’d let me come with you so I could look after you. Keep the vultures away
Daniel please, it’s fine, he was no one, he was totally professional. And anyway, I’m only interested in you, okay? Only you. You know that.
I miss you :(
I know, I miss you too
Right, got to go. Talk to you later, okay xxxxx
xxxxxxx
“Are you all right, Mum?” Marianne is still watching me.
“Of course I am. Why?”
“You look stressed.”
“It’s nothing.”
“Are you and Dad arguing?”
“I said it’s nothing. Now let’s have a talk about this morning, shall we?”
In spite of herself, she flinches. Then she takes a deep breath, squares her shoulders, lays her hands in her lap and waits, meek and accepting, for Madame Guillotine.
“I’m still not impressed about you going into Mr Moon’s house by yourself,” I begin.
“I know I shouldn’t have done it, I know it was really stupid and you can’t trust me now and—”
“Shush. Now here’s what we’re going to do. I don’t like him, but you’re allowed to like different people to me. So if you don’t want to talk to him, you don’t have to. But if you do want to, you can.”
Marianne looks at me as if I’ve grown a second head.
“Really?”
“I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t.”
“And you’re not mad with me any more?”
“No,” I say, not realising until my hands shape the words that this is the truth.
“But, did Dad say that was all right?”
I can’t think of anything to say to this, so I look at her and hope she’ll move on.
“So you don’t mind if I visit him? Just while you’re busy? And I’ll always check with you first so you know where I am?”
Why does it mean so much to her to visit a grumpy old man who she didn’t even know existed three days ago? Or is she simply relieved our cold war’s at an end? The heat of her bath radiates off her skin as I stroke the damp tangle of her hair. “You need to brush this or it’ll be one huge knot tomorrow. Do you want me to do it?”
“Aren’t you busy?” She looks at me, then smiles. “Oh… Do you want to do it?”
“Yes.”
Marianne fetches a brush, then sits at my feet. I smooth out the long thick spirally curls, marvelling at the way they hold their shape even under the weight of the water dragging them down. No matter what you do to Marianne’s hair, it will always be the way it wants to be. As the tangles grow smoother, she relaxes into the brush’s caress, leaning damply against my knees. Marianne’s normally shy of strangers, having to be coaxed and bullied into the simplest social exchanges – buying something at a shop, asking for a book at the library. How odd that James Moon, of all people, has put her at her ease.
He was possibly the last person on this earth to love Lily. And this afternoon I shouted at him for giving Marianne a glass of lemonade and showing her a photograph of her great-grandmother. Letting him see my daughter if she wants to is the very least I can do. Perhaps I should do more, but the bare minimum is all I feel like doing. After all, I am in mourning too.
Chapter Six – Lily
I sit at the table and stare down at the food on my plate. The lamb is tender and melting, the potatoes crisp and golden with soft fluffy insides. I can’t eat a bite. I’m ten years old and it’s one of the rare occasions when Lily is cross with me.
It was entirely my own fault; I can see that now. “I’m going rock-pooling,” I told Lily as I raced past her with my bucket, and when Lily looked up from her little pile of shells and sea glass and shook her head and replied, “No, Jen, not now, the tide’s coming in,” I cunningly pretended not to see.
I was going to find a snakelocks anemone. We’ve been studying the ancient Greek myths and I wanted Lily to photograph one for me, so I could show off my knowledge back at school. In my head, this devotion to my studies outweighed the risk to my safety. I imagined myself a heroine, bravely risking her personal safety in the quest for knowledge, applauded by all who knew me. (Although obviously, I told myself as I hopped over a little gully that was filling with seawater by the minute, I wasn’t actually in any danger. I’d known these pools and this particular stretch of ocean all my life. Getting cut off by the tide was for tourists and idiots. Since I was neither, it was clearly going to be fine. Clearly.)
The reality of my expedition (ignominiously snatched up by a stern-faced stranger, half carried back across the rapidly vanishing rocks, wedged beneath an arm like a hoop of iron, the fascinated stares of his children, Lily’s face white and frantic) is something that I will not quickly forget, however much I want to.
Lily isn’t eating with me. She said something about not being very hungry yet, and is sitting at her desk in the window. She must be wondering how to tell my parents. I’ve already been told off in front of the entire beach by Lily, the man she sent to retrieve me and a passing mother with two very small children, who had nothing to do with it but felt compelled to join in anyway; but my parents will be the worst, because they have power. What will they say? Perhaps they’ll say I can’t come here again. Have I ruined every summer, and not just this one? I slip down from my chair.
For as long as I’ve been alive, Lily and I have hoarded up treasures from the beach: one basket for her gleanings, one for mine. Now, her collection of shells and sea glass lies scattered across a square of linen. From a length of soft grey string, held up to the light for a critical inspection, a half of mussel shell hangs resplendent like a droplet of amethyst, the centrepiece of a long necklace of sea jewels.
“What’s that? It’s beautiful.” My hand reaches for it before I can stop myself. I want to wear it round my neck, or perhaps in my hair. I want to crown myself the daughter of the ocean.
“It’s nothing.” Lily tries to force a smile, but her eyes are still sad and troubled. “Have you finished eating, my darling? Let’s find you some pudding.”
“But it’s so beautiful. Who’s it for? Will you wear it to church?” In spite of herself, Lily laughs. “Then what’s it for? Is it for the house? You could hang it over your mirror.”
“It’s nothing,” Lily repeats, and starts to fold the necklace away.
“Is it because you’re still mad with me? Is that why you’re not telling me?” Lily stops and looks at me uncertainly. “I’m sorry. Please don’t be cross any more.” Lily is still looking at me, not speaking, simply watching my face as if she’s waiting to see something, or perhaps as if she’s testing me. I stare back at her, not sure what’s going on here or what kind of contest we’re having, but determined not to lose.
“I’m not angry,” Lily says at last. “I was never angry. I was frightened.” She unfolds the linen again and lifts up the necklace. “This is for the sea. It’s a gift. To make up for stealing you back.”
I stare at her.
“I saw you going over the rocks,” she says, and I try not to see the remembered terror in her eyes because it makes me ashamed. “I started to go after you but you were so quick, and by the time I got onto the rocks you were already so far away. I could see I wouldn’t be fast enough. I thought… I thought… the sea is so greedy, Jen. I could see it wanted you. I didn’t know what to do, you wouldn’t look round and I didn’t know how to tell you that you were in danger. If that man hadn’t come along—”
I picture the hungry waves creeping closer, long arms of water reaching to drag me under. For the first time, I begin to understand. My feet feel heavy and my head very light.
“Jen. Jen. Look at me.” Lily touches my arm to make sure I’m listening. “Jen, it’s all right. Don’t be frightened. He did come along. It’s all right. You’re safe. You’re safe. I promise.”
Like all children, I’ve stoically endured a lifetime of tellings-off from the adults around me. I’ve always assumed the lectures and the forced apologies and the time alone in rooms are simply revenge inflicted on me for requiring attention after breaking the rules – rules that seem so pointless and arbitrary that I long ago lost sight of the idea that they have any purpose. This is the first time I’ve understood how dangerous the world is. This is the first time I’ve understood that I am vulnerable.
“It’s all right,” Lily repeats. “You’re safe. Do you understand me? You’re safe. It was a close call, but you did no harm and came to no harm.”
“But—” the question is shaming, but I have to ask it. “But, are you going to tell Mum and Dad?”
“Why would I? You’re safe. Nothing else matters.”
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