Dora nods and Cassie sighs deeply again, seemingly resolved. “So I guess it’s time we talked about it all, all of the secrets that have brought us to where we both sit today, if that’s what you want?”
Dora doesn’t say anything. She holds her breath, fearful that if she speaks, Cassie will change her mind and the spell of intimate confession she appears to have cast over her sister will be broken. Cassie, however, doesn’t waver. She continues in a slow and steady monologue.
“That day…” Cassie pauses. A shadow passes over her face. “That day, when Alfie went missing, well, you know how it changed things for us all, forever. I was pretty messed up after he died. We all were, in our own ways, but I really struggled. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep. I just knew Mum and Dad thought it was my fault. I knew they blamed me.”
“For Alfie?” Dora is shocked. Did Cassie blame herself as well?
“Why wouldn’t they? After all, how could Alfie just disappear on a crowded beach when I was supposed to be looking after him?”
“We were both responsible that day, Cassie. If you are to blame, then I am too.” Dora feels sick; this is exactly what she has been afraid of, but Cassie is shaking her head vigorously.
“No, Dora, you’re wrong. Trust me, it wasn’t your fault. Not at all. If there was one innocent in our family that summer it was you. You…and Alfie, of course. Poor Alfie.”
“Yes,” Dora sighs, “poor Alfie.”
“You know they never said anything,” Cassie continues after a pause, “but I could tell what Mum and Dad were thinking. At least, I thought I could. They’d fall silent whenever I walked into a room, or avert their gaze from me. I could have sworn Dad would leave the room when I entered. And it all just reinforced what I already knew: It was my fault!” Cassie scrapes at the earth with the toe of her shoe. “I just couldn’t take it. I was desperate to escape but there was nowhere for me to go. I had school and A-levels coming up. Mum and Dad had such expectations…they seemed to know better than I did who I was supposed to be and what I was supposed to be doing. I was so confused. I didn’t have a clue what I wanted. So I just tried to lose myself where I could, you know, parties, sex, drink, and drugs. I think I was just trying to feel something, you know, anything but all that awful teenage confusion and the overwhelming grief about Alfie.” Cassie rubs at a dirty mark on her jeans.
Dora swallows and wonders if she’s brave enough to ask. “Is that why…is that why you cut yourself?”
Cassie turns her wrists outward so they can both see the thin, silver scars crisscrossing like cobwebs all the way up her tanned arms. Dora winces at the sight of them but Cassie just shrugs.
“It was another way of taking control, I suppose.”
Dora nods.
“You know, when I got my A-level results I felt nothing but a deep, sweeping depression. It was all there, laid out for me, the exact future Mum and Dad had planned for me. But they didn’t have a clue. They didn’t know how far from the exalted prodigal daughter I really was. I wasn’t who they thought I was. I felt suffocated…I had to run…I had to get away from you all. I couldn’t face letting you all down again. That’s why I went to London. That’s why I tried to kill myself.”
Dora thinks she knows the rest but Cassie continues.
“I was hysterical when I woke up in hospital and realized I was still alive. I couldn’t bear the thought of returning to Clifftops and even though Dad tried his best to persuade me I was adamant. I couldn’t face any of you. In the end I found a job working as a waitress for a while, in some grotty café. It was pretty shitty. The pay was awful and the customers were pigs…but then I met Felix. We got friendly and he invited me here, to his family house. I suppose the rest, as they say, is history. I’ve been healing ever since, slowly coming to terms with the past—and the grief and the guilt I felt about Alfie.”
“That sounds familiar. I know a thing or two about guilt.”
“I’ve told you, Dora,” Cassie says firmly, “you’ve got nothing to feel guilty about. Nothing.”
“You say that. Dan says it. Dad says it. But it still doesn’t help. I was there with you on the beach that day. It was as much my fault as it was yours. If Mum or Dad thought, even for just one wild second, that you could have been held in some way responsible, then I should shoulder some of that blame. It doesn’t make sense otherwise.”
“Trust me, Dora, it’s different.”
“But why? Why is it different? I’m only eighteen months younger than you. It’s not that big a gap. Do those few extra months in age that you have over me make you somehow more responsible for Alfie’s safety that day?” Dora shakes her head. “I don’t think so.”
Cassie eyes her sister carefully. “This is why you’re here, isn’t it? You still haven’t let him go, have you?”
Dora shakes her head again. “No. I guess not.” She’d always imagined her sister to be the unstable one and yet here Cassie is, seemingly at peace with the world while Dora struggles to move forward with her own life, paralyzed by dreams and panic attacks.
“So is that why you’re here, Dora? After all this time, it’s not just a social visit. You’re looking for something. Am I right?”
Dora nods. “Yes. Yes I am.”
“Well, come on then, out with it. I’ve told you a bit of my story. Isn’t it time you told me yours?”
There is no point holding back anymore, she decides. “I’m pregnant.”
“My God!” Cassie turns to Dora with an amazed smile. “That’s wonderful news. Why didn’t you say something earlier, you dork!” She leans across and puts a warm hand on Dora’s arm. “Here I am prattling on about myself and all the while you’re sitting there politely listening while you actually have something important to tell me! Congratulations. Wow, my baby sister is going to be a mum!”
Dora looks up at her sister hopefully. Her reaction isn’t what she’s expected, not after her parents’ more muted responses. “You’re pleased?” she asks.
“Of course I’m bloody pleased. I’m going to be an auntie.” Cassie is grinning from ear to ear, but as she looks again at her sister her smile fades. “Are you pleased? I guess that’s the more important question here.”
“Yeah, I think so. I mean, I’m coming round to the idea. Dan’s over the moon about it but I’ve realized over the last few weeks that I’m absolutely terrified. It’s Alfie, you see. I feel paralyzed. How can I celebrate a new life when I’m still mourning Alfie’s? And how can I even consider motherhood when I failed my baby brother so catastrophically?” Dora takes a deep breath before continuing. “Motherhood terrifies me. I have dreams, horrible dreams where I lose things, important things. What if I make the same mistakes again? Everything is so fragile, so easily broken. I don’t think I can hurt again the way I did when we lost Alfie that summer. It would tear me apart. I’m not strong enough. Do you understand?” Her words spill out into the air, tripping over each other.
“You’ve got to get over this guilt trip you’re on. It’s all wrong. You are so wrong.”
“How can you say that when you just implied that it was your guilt about Alfie that was the very thing that tipped you over the edge and made you want to end your life?”
Cassie flinches. “That’s different.”
“I don’t see how. Why is it different?”
There is a pause before she answers. “Because I had something real to feel guilty about…something you don’t know.”
The sun is shining directly onto Dora, making her squint, but even with the glare in her eyes she can see the flicker of something terrible pass across her sister’s face, and as she sees it, Cassie’s words slowly permeate Dora’s consciousness. They lodge in her brain where they rattle and hum with noisy, irritating insistence. She lets them jangle there awhile, contrasting wildly with the stillness of the garden around them. Something real. Something you don’t know.
“Come on,” says Cassie suddenly. “Let’s head down to the lake. It’s gorgeous down there a
t this time of day. Besides,” she adds, “you’re getting a bit pink.”
Cassie is up on her feet and heading toward the low wooden doorway before Dora can protest. She has no option but to follow.
They make their way out of the high-walled garden and turn away from the grand house, past a collapsing pergola and a yew tree so old its heavy boughs seem to graze the ground it stands upon, before arriving out onto the overgrown lawn. Cassie is walking fast, her back rigid and her shoulders taut as she leads the way, always a step or two ahead of Dora. As Dora follows her through the long grass her heels sink awkwardly into the boggy ground and she struggles to keep up.
In a flash she is back at Clifftops; she is the annoying little sister chasing after Cassie, desperate to follow her big sister on whatever exotic adventure she is on. She can almost hear the splash of puddles and the flap of her ungainly Wellies as she makes her way down across the lawn. She’s a grown woman, and yet the way she feels, she could be no more than nine or ten again. She would be annoyed if it wasn’t so ridiculous. She decides to slow down and take the garden at her own pace—she doesn’t have to play this game—but by the time she reaches the edge of the lake, Cassie has disappeared from view completely. Dora stands squinting in the sunshine, looking left and right for a sign of her sister.
Finally she sees her, a dark silhouette against the edge of the water. Cassie seems to bend and gather something from the shallows of the water. Dora makes her way carefully toward her and just as she reaches her side, Cassie leans back and skims a pebble out across the still surface of the lake, both of them watching as it skips-skips-skips and then sinks below the shimmering surface.
“You always were good at that,” says Dora.
An electric-blue dragonfly skims along the water’s edge. Dora can see water boatmen skating across the surface of the shallows, and midges dancing over the reeds like dust. Far on the other side of the lake a swan drifts languidly past a rotting boathouse, dipping its head gracefully to fish for food.
“It’s really beautiful here.”
“Yes, isn’t it.” Cassie doesn’t seem to want to say any more. She just stands there at the water’s edge, shifting her weight from one foot to the other.
Finally, Cassie breaks the silence. “Come on, let’s sit under the weeping willow. It’ll be shady under there.”
She leads the way along the bank to the drooping old tree, parting its luxuriant yellow-green fronds and beckoning her into the cool of its interior. Once the trailing boughs have closed ranks behind them, it is as if they have entered an intimate, shadowy room. The tree’s vertical leaves shimmer secretively in the breeze, and Dora slips off her heels and sits for a moment, gazing up at the branches overhead.
“Dora, there’s something I have to tell you. Something I’ve never told anyone before.” Cassie takes another deep breath before continuing to speak. “You know, I was so angry that morning. So incredibly angry. I can still feel the fury that raged through me when you came upstairs and told me that Mum was leaving us for the day and that you and I had to take Alfie to the beach.”
Dora swallows, but doesn’t dare speak.
“You see, Sam and I had hatched a plan. It was our last day together. We were going to go to the Crag and hang out, just the two of us. We were…we were kind of into each other. I fancied her rotten.” She looks up at Dora meaningfully. “We wanted to be alone. Looking after Alfie with you was the last thing I’d planned on that day.”
Dora’s eyes widen in the eerie green light of the tree. “You’re gay?”
Cassie shrugs. “Yeah.”
Dora nods slowly as a series of small cogs fall into place. I wasn’t who they thought I was…Felix and me? No chance!
“Do you have a girlfriend?” Dora is curious.
Cassie blushes slightly, a rosy glow flooding her cheeks. “There is someone. It’s early days…but she’s nice…really nice. We’re taking it slow.”
Dora smiles. She realizes she’s pleased for Cassie.
“Anyway, my current love life aside, that’s why I was so sulky that morning,” Cassie continues, “you know, Mum dumping Alfie on us and running off to ‘work’ for the day, which of course was nothing but a blantant lie.”
“A lie?” Dora’s head snaps up. “What do you mean?”
“Are you kidding me?” Cassie looks at Dora in amazement. “You mean you still don’t know?”
Dora shakes her head. “Know what?”
“About the affair?”
Dora looks at Cassie with confusion. “What affair?”
“Mum’s affair with Tobias Grey? You know,” she continues, seeing Dora’s puzzled look, “the artist. He’s the one that painted that ugly picture Mum hung over the mantelpiece at Clifftops. Remember?”
Dora’s brain whirs and dredges up a forgotten image of a fierce, brooding seascape painted in oils. She shakes her head. “Mum had an affair with an artist? Are you sure?”
“Yeah, I heard it from the horse’s mouth. He phoned the house once…a long time ago. He thought he was speaking to her. I didn’t know who he was for a long time, but eventually things fell into place. I pretended I knew more than I did and in the end Dad spilled the beans. It turns out she had been with him on the day Alfie disappeared. I think that’s why he eventually left her.”
“My God!” Dora is shocked. It is too much to take in. Her mother had been with Tobias Grey on the very day Alfie disappeared. She’d been having an affair. She thinks back to her encounter with Helen a few weeks ago, to her mother’s brittle demeanor. She remembers Alfie’s bedroom, like a time capsule, perfectly untouched with everything exactly as it had been the day he had gone missing and a glimmer of understanding suddenly registers. She’s always thought her mother kept the room just so to punish her, to remind Dora of her own failings that day. But now she sees it in a new light. Helen is punishing herself every day, by staying in Dorset, by living at Clifftops and surrounding herself with memories of Alfie. She has created her own private prison for her failings as a mother. She must have looked wildly for others to blame because the pain of knowing that she had been with Tobias when Alfie had gone missing would be almost too much to bear. Dora shakes her head in disbelief. All this time. Her mind is whirling with the startling revelation when Cassie speaks again.
“But you see, in the end, it really doesn’t matter where Mum was that day.” Cassie’s voice cracks and Dora looks up in surprise. “It was me. I killed him.”
The words are barely a whisper but they slice cleanly through the jumble of Dora’s thoughts and seem to suck the air right out of her lungs. She is shocked to see tears welling in Cassie’s blue eyes. “What are you talking about?”
“That day at the Crag, you don’t know what really happened. None of you do.”
Dora suddenly wonders if Cassie is okay. She’s seemed so normal, but maybe it is a charade after all.
“What are you talking about, Cass? You’re scaring me.”
Cassie hangs her head, suddenly unable to meet her eye. “After you left the Crag that first time, when you went to buy ice cream, Alfie, he…he came over to us. He was bored, you see. He wanted us to play with him.”
“Hang on. You mean he was with you and Sam in the cave?” Dora frowns, confused.
Cassie gives a small nod. “He kept going on and on about collecting sticks and looking for crabs. He wanted us to collect sticks with him. I don’t really know why.”
Dora remembers the pile of driftwood they had been building. Alfie had been in the cave with Cassie. It didn’t make sense. Why had she lied about it?
“He kept going on and on at us,” Cassie says with a sad little smile. “You know what he would get like, really whiny and cross. He was angry that Sam and I wouldn’t play with him. He stood there banging his stick against the cave wall and stamping his little feet, over and over. Bang, bang, bang. Over and over. It echoed horribly. The noise was horrible.”
Dora can see her brother in her mind’s eye, his little f
ists clenched and his red galoshes pounding up and down on the gritty cave floor.
“Sam and I were really stoned; we just wanted to lie on the sand and be together. I was desperate…Sam was going home the next day. When you left the cave I knew it was our last chance. But then Alfie kept whining and banging, whining and banging. On and on. He was driving me mad.”
Dora can just imagine it: little Alfie stamping and complaining and Cassie on a knife-edge, ready to explode.
“I tried to be patient. I told him to go and find more crabs at the other end of the cave but he said that was boring. So I told him to find somewhere to hide. To count to a hundred, and then we would come and find him.”
“He just wanted to play with someone,” says Dora sadly.
“Well, Alfie said he couldn’t count to a hundred yet. He said hide-and-seek was boring. And that’s when I really lost my temper. I told him if it was so boring in the cave, why didn’t he leave. We hadn’t asked him to come with us.”
Dora looks at her sister with disbelief.
“I told him…I told him to leave us alone. I told him to go and find you, wherever you were. I told him to go for a walk, to look for shells. He kept on whining and whining. No. No. No. On and on. Banging his stick, over and over. And so that’s when I said it.”
“Said what?” Dora’s heart thuds loudly in her chest.
Cassie puts her hand to her mouth, as if unable to continue, but then speaks the final words in a rush. “I told him if he was so bored in the cave maybe he should go for a swim.”
Dora swallows. “But—”
“Yes. I knew he couldn’t swim. He told me, too. He said, Cassie, I can’t swim. I’m too little. And do you know what I said back?”
Dora is frozen. She doesn’t think she wants to hear the rest, but she doesn’t want Cassie to stop either.
The House of Tides Page 33
