by Lucy Clarke
The sight of the red ember glowing in the dusk makes me yearn for a cigarette, too. I haven’t smoked properly in years – not since I fell pregnant with Jacob. Occasionally I share the odd cigarette with Isla, pressing it to my lips like a delicious secret. If Nick’s with us, he’ll make a show of protesting, but in truth, I think he likes the nod to our youth. That’s one of the special things about old friends – you never quite let go of the memory of who you used to be.
What was I like at Jacob’s age? It’s so easy to forget who I was at seventeen as the years keep stacking, one on top of the other; the girl who wore silver platforms and drew flicks of liquid eyeliner at the edges of her eyes getting compressed beneath the weight of the past. I know that at Jacob’s age I wasn’t close to my mother, that’s for certain. It was Isla who I spent every free moment with.
A memory swims back to me … an evening when we were seventeen and cycled into town with fake IDs stuffed into our handbags. We’d fluttered our way into a club and danced for hours in a bar built into a disused church. Discs span. Our bodies curved to a beat that thundered from two speakers, our dresses stuck to the small of our backs.
Isla had slipped her hand into the tiny single pocket on the front of her dress, then uncurled her fingers in front of me, eyes glinting. I peered at her palm, then looked up at her smiling.
We put gold tablets on the end of our tongues and swallowed.
The rhythm sped up. My pulse flickered in my throat.
A boy danced with his knee through mine – and I tipped back my head and laughed. Isla jumped into the air with the music, long hair catching in a flash of light. A strobe played over us, distilling our movements into a hundred frames.
Later, much later, we tumbled out on to the street, hearts thumping, minds buzzing. We squeezed through the doorway of a kebab shop together, watching meat spin in a blizzard of overhead lights. We ate on the pavement, glittering heels kicked off, grease and mayonnaise dampening our lips. We stuffed wrappers in a bin and walked with our arms linked, hips knocking, to where our bikes were chained together.
Heels were thrown in baskets and we carved through the night on our bikes, the wind behind us, tanned legs pedalling fast circles. I raced to the top of a hill, standing up on the pedals, feeling my dress billowing around the tops of my thighs. At the brow, breathing hard, Isla and I were shoulder to shoulder.
I turned.
She looked at me. Grinned.
Before us the dark road unfurled. We leant forward, gave a dozen hard pedals, and then the momentum caught us. We felt the pull of the wheels as they began to roll. We went hurtling down, wind whipping our hair back from our faces. No bike lights, no helmets, bare skin inches away from the rough scrape of tarmac. Isla lay across the handlebars, legs outstretched behind her, screaming a single high note. I kicked out my legs so they sailed like wings away from the pedals.
The stars rained down as we glided.
Together we felt free. Invincible. Brave.
I was young once, I want to tell Jacob. I haven’t always been this person you see now.
I love you. I’m sorry. It was the wrong decision. Those are some of the other things I need to say.
Forgive me.
‘No Jacob yet?’ Nick asks the moment he walks in.
I shake my head.
Nick moves towards me and I know he’ll press a quick kiss on my cheek. I can’t remember when we stopped kissing each other on the mouth – but I realize that I miss it. As he bends towards me, I turn my face into him so his kiss lands on my lips. We bump chins, like uncertain teenagers, and Nick raises his eyebrows slightly.
I catch the smell of his fading aftershave, and a hint of air freshener from his car. He is forty-three in autumn and I think he looks good on it; he still has a thick head of lightbrown hair, and the lines on his face trace a pattern of smiles rather than frowns. He goes to the fridge and pulls out a beer, then sinks down on to the sofa.
I pour another glass of wine for myself, but remain standing. ‘How did the pitch go?’ I ask, although all I really want to talk about is Jacob.
‘Okay. I think. God, I don’t know. It’s so hard to say. We were there all day. But they’re seeing three more agencies. It’ll come down to figures in the end, I suppose.’
‘Three more?’ Nick had thought it was just his agency, and a London firm.
He shrugs, surprisingly relaxed about it. Since he heard about the pitch, he’s been working flat out. He’s grinding his teeth again in his sleep. I haven’t mentioned it; I know he sees it as a weakness – a sign that he can’t handle the stress.
‘When will you hear?’
‘Friday.’
I take another sip of wine, then direct the conversation to Jacob. ‘I’m surprised there’s still been no word from our boy.’
‘What did Luke say?’
‘Just that Jacob was at the party until about eleven, and then he and Caz walked along the beach – had an argument, I’m gauging – and then she left him and went to her hut alone.’ I tell Nick about the remarks I overheard at Luke’s hut about Caz’s drinking.
‘Sounds like the two of them had a bust-up. He was happy enough earlier on in the day, wasn’t he?’
I hesitate, thinking of our argument.
Nick knows me too well. ‘Did the two of you have a fight?’
‘It was ridiculous, really. Something and nothing.’
‘What started it this time?’
I make a show of trying to remember what we argued about, although I know exactly how it began. I remember the way Jacob turned to face me, the accusation in his eyes as Isla’s name came hissing out of my mouth. But I don’t tell Nick that. I say, ‘I asked Jacob whether he had enjoyed the barbecue – I was fishing for a thank you, I suppose. But he missed the hint entirely, just got out his phone and ignored me. I don’t mind doing all the work – I really don’t – but I’d just like him to notice sometimes. I nagged him about not being glued to the screen all day. He flared up. I fired back. That was it. I should have left it – it was his birthday.’
‘Doesn’t give him the right to be rude to you.’
I shrug lightly.
‘And then what, he left?’
‘Stormed out.’
Nick’s brows draw together, annoyed. He doesn’t ask a lot from Jacob – but good manners are high on his list.
‘I’m worried,’ I tell Nick, truthfully. ‘It’s been almost twenty-four hours since we’ve seen him. We don’t even know where he stayed last night. He wasn’t with Luke, or Caz, so where was he?’
‘He could’ve crashed in another friend’s hut – or even slept on the beach. It’s warm enough.’
‘Yes, but surely he’d have come back today? And he’s not answering his phone – it keeps on telling me that I can’t be connected.’
‘He’s switched it off, then.’
Why? Why would Jacob keep his phone switched off all day? Even if he was angry enough to not want to speak to me, surely he wouldn’t want to be cut off from everyone else? He could have just ignored my calls – but left his phone on.
Nick asks, ‘Do you think it’s serious between him and Caz?’
‘I think Jacob is serious. He’s in love with her, I can see it. He’s just been so … changeable. One moment he’s on top of the world – practically skipping around the hut. He was even singing yesterday morning. Jacob. Singing.’ I shake my head. ‘Then the next minute, he’s a moody bugger. Probably because they’ve had a fight or he’s seen her talking to another boy.’
‘And you don’t think she feels the same?’
I sigh. ‘To be honest, I’ve no idea. She just seems more … together than he does.’
‘So maybe they had a fight, like you suggested, and he’s just taking some time to cool down. Let’s give him another hour or two. You know what us Symonds men are like: when we get upset we like to just disappear, take ourselves off into the woods. Maybe this is Jacob’s way of letting off steam. He’s dealing with a
lot of emotions, right now. He’s in love. His first love. That’s life-changing.’
Before Nick realizes what he’s said, the words are out there.
Colour spreads across his cheeks. He meets my gaze and I can see the apology in the widening of his pupils.
I wasn’t Nick’s first love.
Isla was.
6. ISLA
Nick was mine before he was Sarah’s. It’s one of those oddly uncomfortable, yet incontrovertible pieces of history that Sarah, Nick and I pretend to ignore. We flit around the subject, never quite brushing the edges of it, like moths scared of getting too close to a flame.
I met Nick the summer I bought my beach hut. His parents, David and Stella, owned the newly built hut next door, which had modern windows and a brand-new cooker that was fancier than the one in my mother’s old bungalow. They talked to me mostly of their three sons. Two were doctors, both on secondment in America, and their youngest son, Nick, was completing an MA in Business Studies – and was due to return to the sandbank for summer.
I was expecting someone pale-skinned and bookish from a spring spent studying, but when Nick arrived, he was tanned and athletic-looking. I liked his easy manner, and the smile that lit up his whole face when he shook my hand for the first time.
We were friends for two days – lovers by the third.
Summer 1998
‘Sherbet lemon yellow,’ I said to Nick as I balanced on the stepladder, dipping the paintbrush into the tin, the sun-warmed rungs of the ladder hard against my bare feet.
Nick, a glue-gun in hand, glanced up.
‘That’s how my mum would’ve described this colour. She painted my bedroom door in the same shade.’ I worked the brush across the hut in smooth strokes. I liked the steady rhythm of painting, the soothing repetition, the heat on my back.
‘You had a yellow bedroom door?’
‘All our doors were different colours. Mum’s room was new-leaf green,’ I said, thinking of the smear of my child-sized fingerprints from where I’d pushed the door open before the paint had dried. ‘The bathroom door was iceberg blue, and the kitchen was plum-pie purple. The estate agent who valued the bungalow said, “You might want to think about more neutral tones before putting it on the market.”’
Nick laughed. I could see he was going to ask something further about my mother, but I pointed to the radio and said, ‘Oh, I love this song! Turn it up.’
Sometimes I liked to talk to Nick about her, but more often than not I kept her for myself. It felt like an impossible task to try and pin her into words. He wouldn’t have been able to picture the violet flecks of her irises, or the way she sometimes slipped a pencil through the loose twisted knot of her hair. He didn’t know that when she played the flute, her eyes fluttered closed and her head would dance with the notes. He would struggle to understand that, in our house, we didn’t have a dining table – we brought mugs of tea and biscuits into bed in the mornings; we took jam sandwiches in our pockets when we were walking; we’d make thick soups over a fire in the garden. He wouldn’t know that sometimes my mother disappeared inside herself for long periods of time, and I would bring her food and books, and she’d run her fingers through my hair and call me, ‘My darling, Isla-la.’ She was a mother of colour and inconsistencies – and I wasn’t ready to share her.
In Nick’s family there were older brothers, a host of cousins, and two sets of grandparents; there were family meals and trophies on shelves; there was laughter and ribbing and family jokes. I loved being a part of it. His father treated me as though I was an exotic, intriguing patient he was still trying to diagnose. His mother looked at me through the corners of her eyes and spoke carefully. ‘She adores you,’ Nick would assure me with his easy smile, believing it. ‘How couldn’t she?’
I looked across at Nick, his top lip beaded with sweat as he concentrated on filling the cracks in the wood. I loved the confidence he had in the world – and his place in it. He belonged in a way I never would. If my mother had met him, she’d have held his face in her hands and said, ‘Well, aren’t you something special?’
He glanced up. ‘What?’
I smiled. ‘I wish Mum could have met you.’
He moved towards the stepladder where I still balanced, placing his lips against my bare ankle.
That evening, Sarah arrived at the hut with a sleeping bag stuffed underarm. ‘Can I stay?’
‘Course.’ I pushed myself up from Nick’s lap and crossed the hut, wrapping my arms around her. ‘Maggie’s birthday, isn’t it?’
She nodded. Maggie was her older sister, who was killed in a road accident the year before I met Sarah.
I took Sarah’s hand and pulled her across the deck, into the hut. ‘Watch the paint. It’s wet.’
‘Sherbet lemon yellow,’ she said with a smile. ‘I love it.’
Nick gave Sarah a warm hug, then told us he was going to The Rope and Anchor on the quay. I loved him in that moment for his tact, his sense of knowing when Sarah and I needed to be alone.
That night the air was warm and windless, and we built a fire near the shoreline and sat around it drinking cheap French beers and smoking.
As I shuffled closer to the flames, holding my palms up to the heat, Sarah said, ‘I threw the ball.’
There was no introduction, no explanation. In the darkness I couldn’t see her expression, but I knew exactly what she was talking about. Maggie was chasing after a ball when she was hit by the car that killed her. Sarah had told me before how she remembered Maggie lying on the roadside, an arm behind her back, her school skirt twisted around her waist. ‘Her knickers were on show – pink cotton ones with a mouse on the front that were too babyish for her. I thought, How embarrassing! Everyone can see your knickers! Honestly, that was my very first thought.’
Sarah poked at the fire with a stick, sending orange sparks crackling into the night. ‘I threw it,’ she said again. ‘It was this bouncing ball, as big as my fist, and when it bounced, silver glitter swirled like falling snow. I loved it – it was my favourite thing.’ She shook her head lightly. ‘I didn’t even mean to throw it. I was just holding it one moment … and the next I must have let it go without thinking. The ball started bouncing away from me, glittering in the sunlight. Maggie chased after it for me. She didn’t trip, didn’t stumble. She literally stepped right off the pavement without looking, her hand reaching out for my ball. I saw the car coming. It was bright red with a flat shiny bonnet and those pop-up lights. Do you remember? Some of the older sports cars had them. They were so square and sharp. I screamed at her to look out, but …’
I laced my fingers through Sarah’s, squeezing tight.
‘I threw the ball,’ she whispered, leaning against my shoulder. Her hair smelt of wood-smoke and dewberry shampoo. ‘I wish more than anything I hadn’t. She’d be twenty-one today.’
‘It wasn’t your fault,’ I whispered back. ‘It was an accident.’
A trail of tears glistened on Sarah’s cheeks. ‘You know what my mum said on the morning of the funeral? We were sitting at the kitchen table waiting for the hearse, listening to my father pacing on the landing above. He must have paused outside my sister’s room as we both heard the creak of the door handle being turned, then a gulp as if a sob was being swallowed. Mum pressed the heels of her hands into her eye sockets. She shook her head, hands twisting into her face. I could smell her lipstick, and the heat of tea on her breath as she said, “You should never, ever, throw a ball near a road! Remember that, Sarah! Remember!” She couldn’t even look at me.’
That night, as on many others, Sarah and I fell asleep on the beach, the stars watching over us. We crawled into my hut at dawn, dewy and shivering, and fell asleep on the sofa bed, a pile of blankets pulled over us.
Nick found us the next morning, curled together like a clasped shell around our secret pearls of grief.
Seven months later, I found myself at Heathrow Airport. I was standing at the departures gate, with Sarah facing me, arms fold
ed. ‘You know Nick’s heartbroken?’
I tipped my head back, closed my eyes. ‘Don’t.’ I felt the weight of my backpack on my shoulders and against my pelvis. It was comforting, like a solid hug. I liked knowing that, for the next year, everything I needed was right here on my back.
‘He would’ve gone with you.’
I straightened. ‘I couldn’t let him give up his job. He loves it.’ He’d just started working as a marketing executive for a large agency that was young and forward-thinking and worked with some great clients. Nick practically bounced out of bed in the mornings, excited to get to the office.
‘It wasn’t only that, was it?’ Sarah said, her gaze still pinned on me.
‘I need to do this alone.’ I reached out and took her fingers in mine. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said softly, understanding that Sarah was hurt that I was leaving her, too. It was difficult to explain why I had to go on my own. For the last few months, the idea of travelling had become intoxicating. Every time I pictured it, there was no one else in the frame. It was me I saw riding a bus, my head leant against the sun-warmed window. It was me who would be getting lost in the dusty heat of a city. It was me who would be swimming in a lagoon on my own.
I needed time for myself. If Nick came with me, he’d keep me safe, plan routes, book accommodation, look after me – when I didn’t want any of that. I wanted to put myself in the hands of the universe and see what happened.
‘I’ll wait for you,’ he’d told me last night as I’d locked up the beach hut.
‘You mustn’t. Please,’ I’d begged him, burying my face in his neck.
When we’d stepped apart, he’d placed a final kiss on my forehead, almost reverently. He’d cleared his throat and told me, ‘Even though we’re not together now, Isla, if you have any problems – anything at all – you call me, okay? Whatever it is, wherever you are, whatever time of day or night – please don’t be too proud to call. If you need anything, I’m here. Okay?’
I’d felt tears prick at the base of my eyelids. I’d wrapped my arms around him one last time and wondered why the hell I was letting him go.
