The Lost Sister

by Tracy Buchanan

  ‘Thanks for looking after them,’ she says to him now with a smile.

  ‘Always a pleasure.’

  She occasionally took the dogs into the practice with her, but it was hard keeping three large dogs entertained in such a small space. David looked after them most days, bringing them over to see her during her breaks.

  She leans down and pats Bronte on the head. She gives a soft thump of her feathery white tail then puts her little chin back on her paws. She was another rescue dog, brought in to the practice two years ago, an ex-breeding dog dumped by a local puppy farm after getting an infection. David had taken an instant liking to her after his last cocker spaniel had passed away, so he’d ended up adopting her.

  ‘Right, let’s get you all back,’ Becky says, patting her thigh and heading towards the fence that divides their gardens.

  ‘Not staying for a cuppa?’ David calls out to her.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ she calls back. ‘I’m so exhausted, I think I might go to bed straight after dinner.’

  He laughs. ‘You work too hard.’

  Becky steps over the fence, the dogs leaping over with her, and lets herself into her cottage. All three dogs dart to the back of the house as soon as they get in, standing by their bowls and looking up at her with impatient eyes, ready for their dinner.

  ‘Okay, okay, give me a minute!’ Becky calls out.

  She chucks her keys onto the stairs and walks down the small hallway and into the kitchen, which is surprisingly large considering the size of the rest of the cottage, and has enough room for a decent-sized pine table in the middle.

  Becky feeds the dogs then sets about making her own dinner, a quick stir fry. Once she’s finished cooking, she plates up and heads out onto the patio to sit down with her dinner and a book – another romance. David has gone in now. Becky leans back in her chair and blinks up at the sun. She loves this time of day; warm enough to sit outside, cool enough that she doesn’t have to worry about it burning her pale skin. A bird soars above, heading east … maybe towards Kent, where she once lived.

  The phone rings, puncturing her thoughts. She sighs. Why does this always happen when she’s settling down to eat? She places her plate on a table as she stands up, then walks inside quickly to grab the phone.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Becky?’

  The voice is weak, barely audible. It’s a voice she hasn’t heard in many years and yet she knows it in an instant. It’s seared into her heart.

  ‘Mum?’

  Chapter Four

  Selma

  Kent, UK

  19 July 1991

  ‘Mummy?’

  I nibbled on my pen while looking out towards the sea, playing over what had happened the evening before again. I’d dreamt about the man all night, hot feverish dreams, as I’m sure half the town had too.

  ‘Mummy!’

  I looked at Becky. ‘Sorry, darling, I was a million miles away.’

  ‘Did the man really walk on water, like everyone was saying?’

  ‘Of course he didn’t!’ Mike exclaimed over his shoulder from the kitchen. ‘It’s just bored people imagining things.’

  I smiled to myself, snapping my notepad shut. ‘Yes, Daddy’s right of course, very bored people making stuff up.’

  Becky looked disappointed. ‘Still hungry, Daddy,’ she chirped, pushing her half-eaten cereal to the side.

  ‘You’ve hardly eaten your cereal,’ I said.

  Becky shrugged. ‘Don’t like it.’

  ‘You can have some strawberries then,’ Mike said.

  Becky frowned, crossing her arms. ‘No, I want chocolate.’

  I leaned in close to her ear. ‘Maybe when Daddy goes,’ I whispered.

  Mike shot me a disapproving glance. ‘Fruit or nothing,’ he said, grabbing his car keys. He gave Becky a kiss on the head then waved at me before letting himself out. There was once a time when he’d kiss me before leaving for work. Not now though. Should that have made me feel sad? Well I didn’t. I felt nothing.

  When I was sure he was gone, I went to the cupboard and got some chocolate-flavoured cereal out, winking at a giggling Becky. ‘You have to be quick though, we have to leave for school soon.’

  Five minutes later, we walked to Becky’s school. It was a breezy day, still warm though, the skies blue, the sun bright, the sea glimmering in the distance. People were either walking to work or coming back from dropping kids off, dressed in shorts and T-shirts, sandals and flip-flops.

  The school lay at the bottom of a hill, five minutes’ walk from our new-build house. As I passed the newsagent, I noticed the headline: UK’s Economy at Historic Low. I peered towards where Mike worked with Greg at a large financial advice firm in town. There had been rumours of redundancies the year before but nothing had come of it. What if Mike was made redundant now? Would I have to go back to working full-time again?

  The thought sent a dart of fear through me.

  Better if they made me redundant from my senior copywriter job. It wasn’t like I was pulling in much on my three-day salary anyway.

  I put my sunglasses on, pulling up the straps of my silky red vest top to cover my bra straps, my black skirt skimming the back of my knees. Everyone else around me was wearing pastel colours, but I liked to be bold: blood reds and stark blacks, azure blues and emerald greens. I had earrings to match, necklaces sometimes too.

  As I approached the small primary school, which was housed in a Victorian building, I noticed some of the parents already crowded around the gates nattering. I hated the whole school-gate drama, especially recently with all the talk of recession. Most mornings, I made up excuses to leave: lunch in London with my editor; a book signing in Canterbury; some media interview or another. I liked to make it vague, so they couldn’t check whether I was telling the truth or not. Sometimes, if I was having a bad writing day or had received yet another royalty statement with minus signs on it from my agent, I’d hang around, basking in the inevitable glory of being the only published novelist in town. I suppose sometimes I needed the questions that at other times irritated me, the stories of success I weaved wiping away the disappointment.

  ‘There she is!’ a woman declared, a slim brunette called Haley. She was one of the few mums I could tolerate, plus she worked in the town library which was always a good thing as she let me take out more books then the standard eight. ‘You saw it from a front row seat, didn’t you?’ she asked me when I got to the group.

  ‘Saw what?’ I asked. I knew perfectly well what she meant, of course. But I enjoyed this, the tease.

  ‘The man who saved that boy last night,’ one of the other mums said, a timid woman called Donna. She was wearing an oversized beige blouse and black leggings. Her shoulders were slightly slumped and she had her arms wrapped around her midriff.

  ‘Oh, that,’ I said with a bored sigh. I almost resented other people having seen it all happen. If only I’d been alone on that beach with Monica and her son so I could add embellishments to the story: a mouth-to-mouth resuscitation after, maybe?

  ‘I hear he’s a homeless man,’ one of the other mothers drawled. It was Cynthia, or Gym Bunny as I referred to her. She had her blonde hair up in a high ponytail, her hip bones jutting out from the top of her Lycra leggings.

  ‘He didn’t look very homeless to me,’ Haley said with a raised eyebrow. ‘You have to admit it was rather exciting?’

  ‘I suppose so. For this town, anyway,’ I said as I gave Becky a kiss on the head, aware of everyone’s eyes on me. As Becky ran off towards one of her little friends, I paused a moment, looking towards the sea, adding another bored sigh for effect. Then I turned back to the group of mums, shrugging. ‘He’s just a man who helped a kid. I think people are getting a bit carried away.’

  A couple of the mums gave each other a look. But Donna looked out to the water, a wistful expression on her face as her short dark bob lifted in the breeze. She always seemed so overwhelmed by the other mums, which was surprising considering she was
a midwife. Or maybe she was just used to hysterical women and had learnt to be calm and stoic in the face of dramatics.

  There were times when she really should have said something though, like when Cynthia gave her some free passes to the gym to ‘knock off those extra pounds’. Donna had just stood there in shock, eyes filling with tears. I had to do something so I’d linked my arm through Donna’s and arched an eyebrow. ‘Gym? With these?’ I’d said, pointing to both our ample chests. ‘Absolutely not! Can’t risk ruining our best assets.’ Cynthia, as flat-chested as her own son, just looked at me dumbfounded, Donna sneaking me a quick and grateful smile.

  ‘Anyway, must get back,’ I said now, peering at my watch. ‘My book won’t write itself.’

  ‘How’s it going?’ Donna asked softly.

  ‘Good,’ I said, smiling at her. ‘Should be finished soon.’

  ‘And the cake preparations for next Saturday?’ Haley asked. ‘I hope it’s still okay to do one?’

  Oh bugger.

  I tried to keep the smile on my face. I’d completely forgot I’d volunteered to bake a cake for Haley’s son’s birthday party. It had happened after Cynthia made a throwaway comment about me ‘not being the domestic type’, no doubt revenge for the gym pass slight the week before.

  ‘You’d be surprised,’ I’d retorted.

  ‘Really?’ Cynthia had asked, eyebrow arched.

  ‘Yes, really.’ I’d turned my best icy glare to Cynthia then. ‘I’m a dab hand at baking actually.’

  ‘You are?’ Haley had said. ‘We were going to find someone to make Beau’s cake but if you can, wonderful! I’d pay you of course.’

  ‘No need to pay,’ I’d replied, waving my hand about as I watched Cynthia’s expression out of the corner of my eye. ‘It’s no problem at all.’

  ‘Can you do it in the shape of a monkey?’ Haley had then asked. ‘It’s just that Beau’s obsessed with them after our latest trip to the zoo.’

  I’d nodded, trying to hide my horror. Sure, I’d made the odd chocolate cake or two. It hadn’t given Mike and Becky food poisoning so that was a bonus. But that was the extent of my baking skills.

  I smiled at Haley now. ‘All sorted, darling. See you all next week!’ Then I walked up the hill towards my house, muttering ‘Bloody monkey cake’ under my breath.

  Before I opened my front door, I paused. I really couldn’t bear the thought of returning to the house to write. I’d had to drag the words out lately. I tried to tell myself it was the house. But the fact is, I used to be able to write anywhere: on the bus in the dreary rain, sitting in a doctor’s waiting room, even in my car when I was stuck in standstill traffic once. No, there was more to it than that. The past couple of years, a numbness had descended. Stopped me from wanting to be touched and touch. Stopped me from wanting to write.

  Maybe I’d grown weary. It was all so far from the dreams I’d had of writing from the hotel above the cliffs all those years ago, a glass of gin by my side as Mike took up some exciting watersport. Instead, the only house we could afford when we finally decided to move from London when I was pregnant nine years ago was a good fifteen-minute walk from the sea. It wasn’t much to look at either, a plain brown new-build house sitting across from a petrol station. The only bonus was it looked out to fields at the back. I’d set up an office in the spare room at the back in the hope I’d write from there, looking out over those fields, a tiny glimpse of sea in the distance.

  But as soon as Becky was born, my days had mostly been filled with baby sensory classes and weigh-ins, toddler tantrums and coffees in overfilled cafés. It was only when Becky went to school I was able to really focus on writing. But then the days went so damn fast before it was time to pick Becky up again at three. If I could only get that second book published, I could give up the job and write full-time instead of just two days a week.

  That was the dream, wasn’t it? It had always been the dream, from the moment I used to sneak glances of the novels my mother would bring back from her countless trips to local charity shops, their battered spines smelling of earth and dust. Authors became my rock stars and I’d escape into their words for hours, a place to pretend I was something other than the little girl nobody noticed.

  While studying English at university, I’d been determined to come away with a novel ready to send to editors. Of course, I didn’t know then how unrealistic that was. But I was so idealistic then, so full of romantic notions, attaching myself to fellow dreamers. Before I met Mike, I’d dated a beautiful Polish man with graceful hands and the softest of lips. He’d write poetry on my naked curves, inspiring me to spill words out into a notepad he’d bought me. But even then, each time I started something, I just couldn’t finish it.

  When I graduated, I fell into various copywriting jobs to pay the rent on the tiny flat I rented with Mike in Battersea, writing in the evenings. Then one gloomy October day, feigning an illness to stay at home, I found myself writing pages and pages of a novel that seemed to have come out of nowhere about a woman who runs a small hotel in the woods with her mother. Unable to deal with the loss when her mother passes away, she tells guests she’s just resting after an illness. Sounds depressing, doesn’t it? But there was a love story thrown in. Lady Chatterley’s Lover meets Hotel du Lac was how my agent described it.

  A year later, it was ready to submit. It had countless rejections and I nearly lost hope, but then a small publishing house took it on. I’d been so proud, I’d even called my mother to tell her, despite the fact that we rarely saw each other apart from a brief, awkward visit to her little flat in Margate over the Christmas period each year.

  ‘I’ll be able to find it in WHSmith, will I?’ my mother had asked me. I’d imagined her sitting on her battered sofa with a glass of wine in her hand, her dark dyed hair in rollers.

  ‘Yes,’ I’d replied, knowing it was a lie – my editor had told me only a few independent bookshops were taking it. But I wanted so much for my mother to be proud. Needed so much.

  A week after it was published, she’d treated me to a rare phone call. I thought it was to congratulate me on the launch of my debut. But instead, it was to berate me for ‘embarrassing’ her in front of her friends who thought she’d lied about her ‘author daughter’ seeing as they couldn’t find her books in WHSmith.

  ‘You’re just one of those crappy authors, aren’t you?’ my mother had said. ‘The ones whose books you find in the bargain bucket.’

  I had slammed the phone down, resolving never to take a call from her again. That was two years ago. Two long years with only a few thousand words written of my next novel, despite having two days a week dedicated to it.

  Why wouldn’t the words come?

  I looked up at my house, then at the petrol station across from it. It had to be the house. It was just so uninspiring! I impulsively turned back and headed towards the beach.

  The tide was low, the sea hazy in the distance, seaweed and shells clogging the wet morning sand as people walked out of the café nearby with takeaway teas in polystyrene cups. It wasn’t a built-up beach – even now it isn’t – just a plain and simple sandy cove, no trendy eateries or boutique shops. Its natural beauties were enough to draw people in, the chalk stacks adorning most of the postcards in town. The bay beyond the chalk stacks with its five caves wasn’t as much of a draw then; people were put off by the stories of tourists being caught out there during high tide.

  I walked onto the sand that morning, taking my gold sandals off and strolling along the edge of the seaweeded area, picking up shells for Becky. I liked to do that sometimes when my mind was blocked or sad memories crowded. Breathe in the salty air, feel the sand beneath my toes and the smooth curve of shells in my palms.

  After a while, I spotted a washed-up starfish, orange with black dots, its legs tangled and broken. I crouched down, staring at it, tears irrationally pricking at my eyelashes.

  What the hell was wrong with me?

  The wind picked strands of my dark hair up,
the sound of laughter carried along with it. I stood and looked over towards the bay of caves. It was usually quiet at this time of the morning, with children at school, but there was a group of teenagers crowding around the entrance to the larger cave at the end of the bay. Four of them were girls, long hair trailing down their backs, the waistbands of their school skirts rolled up. I remembered doing the same at the struggling comprehensive I went to in Margate all those years ago. The two boys with them looked bored, their shirts hanging out, hair spiky. But the girls were enraptured as they peered into the cave at something that was out of my eye line.

  I took another step forward until the focus of their attention came into view.

  It was the man who’d rescued the boy the evening before.

  He was sitting on a white chalk rock just inside the entrance to the cave, painting something on the cliff wall in swirling blue. His hair was up in a bun this time, exposing his long, tanned neck, the golden stubble on his cheeks. As he painted, his lean muscles flexed, the morning sun picking up the contours of his shapely arms and bare back.

  ‘That’s so cool,’ I heard one of the girls say in a hushed voice.

  ‘Totally,’ another agreed.

  ‘We should go now,’ one of the boys said, looking at his watch. ‘Mrs Botley will go mental if we’re late.’

  The blonde girl looked at the boy. ‘You go,’ she said, sinking to the sand and crossing her long legs beneath her. ‘I’m staying.’

  ‘Me too,’ one of her friends said, joining her.

  The boys rolled their eyes at each other. ‘Not our issue if you get a rollocking,’ one of them said before the rest of the group walked off.

  I watched the two girls for a while, looking at the way they observed the man. There was clear attraction in their eyes, a calm attentiveness too.

  I quickly got my notepad out, writing what I saw.

  He moved his arm gracefully, slowly, like how he’d appeared to walk on water the night before. The girls watched in rapture, as though they were seeing something for the first time. Beyond them, the sea—