by Karen Clarke
‘Shall I get you some ibuprofen?’
Banishing Emma’s voice, I shook my head. ‘I’ll be fine,’ I said, adding more gently, ‘I’m definitely going to start a new painting today.’
‘Why not leave it until after we’ve been away?’ I turned to see him standing right behind me. ‘You could take some photos while we’re there,’ he said, stroking his thumb down the side of my face. ‘Get some fresh inspiration.’
‘I need to do something, Vic.’ I twisted away. ‘It’s the only way I can switch my brain off.’
He held up his hands and stepped back. ‘I’ll be outside if you need me.’
I noticed he’d changed into a pair of jeans and the checked shirt he wore for gardening. ‘There can’t be much more to do out there,’ I said, injecting lightness into my tone.
‘Not according to Pam.’ His face flickered with a smile. ‘She’s keeping an eye on me over the hedge.’
Upstairs, I went into my painting room and sat on the wooden stool in front of my easel, going over and over my conversation with Katya, looking for clues, trying to decide on the best course of action.
On impulse, I texted Rosa.
Any news on what we talked about? There couldn’t be or she’d have called, but maybe she needed prompting.
I jumped when my phone rang straight away and I recognised Jamie’s number.
‘What was that message about?’
My heart stalled. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I didn’t know you’d exchanged numbers with Rosa.’
My mind scrambled. ‘Why do you have her phone?’
‘She left it in the van when I dropped her at the station this morning.’
A vision of her boarding a train popped up, then I realised he meant the police station. ‘I only noticed when your text came through.’
‘Should you be reading her messages?’
‘Probably not,’ he admitted. ‘When I saw your name on the screen, I couldn’t look away.’
A chill swept through me. ‘Isn’t her phone locked?’
‘We know each other’s passwords,’ he said. ‘We don’t have secrets.’ The words At least, I thought we didn’t crackled between us, unspoken. I wondered whether he’d seen the photo of the footprint from my studio, but didn’t like to ask.
‘It’s … about the robbery next door to Mum and Dad,’ I said, remembering the break-in and stolen lawnmower. ‘I was worried whoever it was might get into my studio.’ A nerve twitched under my eye.
‘Scared your paintings might get stolen?’
For once, I was glad to hear him mocking me. ‘I know they’re not priceless works of art, but I am quite fond of them.’
‘Why keep them there, then?’
Good question. ‘I won’t be for much longer,’ I said. There was no point mentioning the exhibition. He wouldn’t be interested. I was surprised he was even speaking to me, after our recent exchanges. ‘Not busy today?’
‘Stop changing the subject.’
‘I was hoping Rosa had looked into it, that’s all.’
‘I’m sure she’ll be in touch when she has.’ There was a note in his voice that I couldn’t decipher.
‘Please talk to me, Jamie.’
‘I’m talking, aren’t I?’
‘Talk properly, I mean.’
‘I’m not one of your patients, Beth.’
My patience snapped. ‘You know what, Jamie? You need to get over yourself. And stop checking your girlfriend’s phone. Some things should be kept private.’
A stunned silence met my outburst. ‘You won’t tell her, will you?’ He sounded tense.
‘I thought you didn’t have secrets.’
He gave a hollow laugh. ‘Yeah, well, I’ve never actually put it to the test until now.’ There was a second’s pause. ‘And whatever you think, I don’t have any deep, dark secrets I’m keeping from you.’
I closed my eyes, weariness falling through me. ‘I’ve got to go.’
‘Me too.’ He hated me having the upper hand; had to have the last word. Too tired to take issue with his childish rejoinder, I let him cut the call and aimed a frustrated kick at my bag on the floor. It toppled and a book slid out; the one Katya had given me. I checked the time. Half an hour until I had to pick Hayley up. I glanced out of the window and saw Vic leaning on a spade. He’d begun digging a border by the fence, no doubt egged on by Pam who was hanging out washing and saying something to him over her shoulder.
Slightly soothed by the sight, I picked up the book. Maybe I would find some inspiration inside. I’d never gone this long without painting something. Usually, faced with a canvas, I only needed to start – a brush of colour, a shape, even a single line and an image would start to flow. Maybe being told to make the most of your final birthday would be a motivator for someone else – an opportunity to squeeze in as much as possible and live every day as though it was the last. I’d never subscribed to that. I would prefer to live each day as though I had plenty more.
Tightness gripped my chest and my vision blurred.
Determined not to give in to a wave of panic, I opened the book, fixing my eyes on the first seascape I came to; a striking image in oils of blurry waves and a stormy sky. The artist had used unusual shades, deep and dark with flashes of white, to create a sense of movement and atmosphere.
Not bothering to put a shirt over my clothes, I put the book down and opened my box of paints. I picked out a tube of raw umber and squeezed a worm of colour onto my palette, then added some ochre. Selecting a brush from my jar at random, I swirled it through the paints but the shade still wasn’t quite right.
Putting my brush down, I returned to the book, but it had fallen open on a different page. There was a slip of paper tucked inside, acting as a bookmark. As I took in the image, my heart picked up pace. It was a painting called ‘Gathering Storm’ and the artist, Doris Bridges, had perfectly captured the absinthe-green of waves whipped up by the wind, the gunmetal sky and an arc of foamy spray. I immediately felt the icy grip of water, tasted salt in my mouth as it dragged me under, flooding my nostrils. Hardly breathing, I let my gaze fall to the paragraph underneath and felt a beat of shock. Two words had been crudely highlighted in pink. Perran Cove.
I could barely process what I was seeing, or what it meant. Katya must have done this, but how did she know? I’d never mentioned Cornwall to her, or the place where I’d nearly drowned. Had she been digging into my past? Or, had she asked Marianne, the only person at Fernley House who knew what happened there? But Marianne wouldn’t reveal a confidence, and definitely not to a client, however persistent. It would have raised a massive red flag.
Katya often asked personal questions, most of which I deflected. Maybe she’d hoped I would open up and talk to her; was hurt that I hadn’t and this was her way of telling me she knew about Perran Cove and the man who drowned.
I leapt with fright when my phone pinged. I slammed the book shut and shoved it on the shelf with a pile of others. Half-dreading looking at my phone, I was relieved to see Emma’s name, but my stomach dropped when I read her message.
Have you talked to Vic yet?
Blunt and to the point. She clearly wasn’t about to let this go.
My fingers dithered over the screen. I could call her; tell her the woman she’d seen him with was no one important, and tell her about the art book, the highlighted text, the painting of Perran Cove. But would she turn it around and say that Vic was responsible? I hadn’t shown him the book. I’d left it in my bag. In truth, I’d pushed it to the back of my mind and forgotten about it. I sensed movement, a presence behind me.
‘What are you supposed to talk to me about?’
I screamed and dropped my phone. ‘Jesus, Vic!’ I spun round, heart pounding with fright. ‘You scared me.’
He pulled back, hands up. ‘I thought you’d heard me come upstairs.’
‘You read the message?’
‘I just glanced over your shoulder,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t try
ing to be sneaky.’
‘I didn’t mean that. It was about the woman Emma told me she’d seen you with …’
‘It’s OK. I shouldn’t have looked,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry.’ He looked unusually dishevelled, a smear of dirt on his forehead, a tuft of hair sticking up at the front. ‘I came to say it’s almost time to pick Hayley up.’
My insides were a mass of nerves. ‘Vic, I actually don’t think we should go away.’
His face emptied out. ‘Why?’
‘Emma’s worried it might affect me badly.’ I made myself meet his eyes. ‘What if she’s right?’
‘What do you think?’
Relieved he hadn’t immediately tried to discredit Emma, I shrugged. ‘I honestly don’t know anymore.’
‘Fine.’ He wiped his face with the back of his hand. The room was stuffy and his skin had a sheen of perspiration. ‘I’ll ring up and cancel,’ he said mildly. ‘The last thing you need is more pressure. After what’s been happening, returning to Perran Cove is the last thing you need.’
Now he’d shown he was willing to call off our trip – that he understood – I felt a perverse need to face the challenge after all; to go back to the place where my life had diverged, the place where it all began. Maybe there, I’d find some answers.
As Vic retreated to the landing, I made my mind up. ‘Vic, wait.’
He turned, a quizzical frown on his face. ‘What is it?’
‘Don’t cancel,’ I said. ‘We’re going.’
Chapter 20
‘Have fun and look after your mum,’ Vic said to Hayley, parking outside the leisure centre the following morning.
‘Mummy looks after me, silly!’ She rolled her eyes, looking a lot like my mum. ‘Can I get out now?’
‘Just a minute, you.’ I grabbed my bag from the footwell, returning Vic’s smile.
He was clearly relieved I seemed more relaxed, after struggling to get through dinner the night before. I’d gone to bed early with a persistent headache in the end, only to lie awake fretting for half the night.
‘Sure you don’t want me to come in?’ he said, wiggling his eyebrows. ‘I’ve got my swimming gear in the boot.’
‘You have?’
‘I sometimes use the pool near the hospital.’
‘Oh, that’s right.’ I spotted Marianne’s ancient Volvo, back from the garage, parked a few rows away. ‘We’ll be fine,’ I said. ‘Weren’t you going to the gym?’
‘I might just go to the café and read the papers,’ he said, glancing through the windscreen. The sky was ultramarine blue, the sun already hot. ‘I don’t fancy the treadmill this morning.’
I leaned over and kissed him. ‘We’ll be ready in a couple of hours.’
‘Come on, Mummy.’ Hayley had unclipped her seatbelt and was drumming her heels. ‘You’re always so slow.’
‘And you are very impatient, young lady.’
Marianne was waiting for us by the pool area with her granddaughter, Charlotte, a cherubic five-year-old with rosy cheeks and blonde ringlets.
‘OK?’ she said, touching my arm once Vic had headed up to the café on the second floor. ‘You look pale.’
‘You’d think I’d be used to this by now,’ I murmured, while the girls compared swimming bags. The humid, chlorinated air seemed to clog my lungs, making it harder to breathe. ‘It never gets any easier.’
‘Shall we try the outdoor pool?’
Feeling the bite of failure, I shook my head. ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Not today.’ The outdoor pool was too deep, too busy. I couldn’t risk it.
Marianne smiled her understanding. ‘Another time.’
‘Can we do paddles in the baby pool first?’ Hayley asked.
‘Of course,’ I said, as I always did. Hayley knew that ‘Mummy only goes in the baby pool’ because Matt and I had presented it as a fact as soon as she was old enough to understand. I knew one day she’d ask why but, for now, she accepted it. ‘I’ll be watching,’ I said, tapping my nose.
‘I’m going to swim all the way up and down,’ she announced, face bright with excitement, and I marvelled, not for the first time, that while my daughter truly loved being in the water, I’d happily never set foot near a swimming pool again. At first, just the feel of a swimming costume, cold and tight against my skin, would tip me back to that day at Perran Cove. I’d got around it by wearing a two-piece, not caring that it showcased my pregnancy stretch marks or cellulite on my thighs – things I’d worried about revealing to Vic, who’d kissed every inch of me and told me I was beautiful.
In the changing cubicle, I fought back a feeling of claustrophobia and focused on stripping to my bikini, and helping Hayley undress.
Next door, Marianne was chatting to Charlotte and the sound soothed my nerves a little, quietening the questions roiling in my head. The last thing I wanted was Hayley picking up that anything was wrong, but she was happily oblivious as we emerged, her hair tucked into her Disney swimming cap. Apart from protecting her hair, it helped me keep her in sight, and to Marianne’s delight, Charlotte had insisted on wearing an identical cap.
Marianne kept casting me looks of concern as we herded the girls to the pool. Glancing up, I saw Vic in the café above the viewing gallery, a mug and paper in front of him. He smiled and blew a kiss, and I banished the thought that he was probably wishing he was somewhere else. He loved me, and loved being with me. He’d been willing to cancel our trip to Perran Cove to prove it.
A movement caught my eye. Pam had arrived to join Vic, canary-like in a yellow sundress that showed off her suntanned arms. I watched him greet her, unable from a distance to read the tone of his smile. She often came to watch before she did her shopping – had even asked to come in the water once, which Hayley had loved. Mum had been with us that time and was a bit affronted by Pam’s presence.
‘Hasn’t she got a family of her own to hang out with?’
‘Actually, no,’ I’d said. ‘And Hayley likes her.’
Chastened, Mum had been extra nice to Pam, but it struck me now that she hadn’t had much to say to her at my party the other night. I wondered whether Mum was jealous.
I returned Pam’s cheery wave, then watched the girls high-step into the water holding hands, shrieking and giggling. My body fizzed with tension. I wouldn’t relax until we were in the car, on our way home.
Understanding that it wasn’t the best time to make conversation, Marianne shrugged off her enormous towel and placed it with a couple of smaller ones on the bench, next to mine and Hayley’s. Her body was soft and white, the straps of her navy swimsuit cutting into the plump folds of her flesh, but she moved unselfconsciously after the girls.
‘You coming?’ She threw me a smile over her shoulder. I took my cue, wading after them, trying to pretend I was walking through a grassy meadow, not heading towards a deeper body of water.
I’d coped when Hayley was a toddler, able to splash with her in the shallows, and had trusted Matt with her in the bigger pool, even if I couldn’t watch when he ducked her underwater. It was harder now she wanted to throw herself around, doing handstands and having breath-holding competitions, and she and Charlotte loved dunking each other. I was hyperaware of other children, watchful of her being pulled under or knocked into, but the odd time it happened, she’d been unfazed.
‘Remember, you’re projecting your own fears,’ Matt had said in the past, hair plastered to his head, eyes pink-rimmed with chlorine. ‘Hayley isn’t frightened of the water – she’s a good little swimmer.’
It was true, but that didn’t stop my heart rate rising if she slipped out of sight for a second, though I did my best to hide my panic.
The pool was already getting busier, filling up with Saturday dads, toddlers with parents, teenagers, and plenty more headed up the steps to the outdoor pool.
I stared for a moment at the slice of sky visible through the open double doors, wishing I was outside, breathing fresh air. Preferably in the garden at home, painting, while Vic tended to the
borders and Hayley played with Baxter on the lawn.
Tearing my eyes away, I glanced down at my feet, distorted by the clear water. My toenails were a vivid shade of fuchsia. I’d painted them the day before my birthday, which felt like a decade ago.
Hayley. With a jolt of adrenaline, I looked up, expecting to see her sturdy body next to Charlotte’s, their feet kicking up the water, splashing each other, but there was someone else in front of me: a woman in a lurid green bathing suit, bending low, holding the chubby hands of a toddler stomping his feet, gurgling up at her with a look of wonder.
I shoved past, water splashing up my calves, nearly falling over two little girls on their tummies, wearing goggles that gave them an alien-like appearance, pushing a rubber duck between them.
‘Hayley!’ My voice was lost in the clamour of shouts, squeals and splashes that echoed around me. ‘Marianne!’ Where was she? I spun around, trying to catch a glimpse, in time to see a teenager slip on the tiles as he ran towards the main pool. He fell in sideways, creating a wave-like effect that sent his friends thrashing to the sides. Seconds later, his head bobbed up, face split with laughter.
Where was Hayley? I seemed to be rotating on the spot, eyes zooming in on people who weren’t her. I looked frantically up at the café, but Vic was talking to Pam, not looking at the pool at all.
I made a whimpering sound as I scoured the area again for any sign of Marianne, moving closer to the gulley that joined the two pools. I pushed out a breath and pressed my lips into a smile for the mum with the toddler, who was giving me strange looks. As long as Marianne was with Hayley, she’d be fine, I told myself over and over. They went into the adjoining pool every week, at which point I got out and sat on the side to watch, pretending to enjoy myself.
I couldn’t get out now. Not until I knew where they were.
As my eyes raked the water, I thought I saw a flash of pink, then a small arm shoot above the surface. Hayley? I flicked a glance at the lifeguard in his distinctive red and yellow top. He seemed to be keeping a lookout, but it was busy. He could easily miss someone in difficulty.
