Cassie gave the lady a weak smile and was mortified to see the assistant had tears in her eyes. She didn’t really know why she’d lied, but it was out there now and she couldn’t take it back.
The woman made a big fuss of her. She measured her and then brought four bras back into the cubicle. She had Cassie try them all on and sent her on her way just twenty minutes later in her first virgin-white 32A-cup; a simple cotton number with a tiny purple bow in the centre. ‘She’d be very proud of you, she would,’ the lady told her on her way out of the shop.
Cassie looked at her in confusion.
‘Your mum, my love, she’d be so proud, you all grown-up . . . a proper woman!’ and she’d winked down at Cassie and made her blush with shame.
Cassie thought about it on the way home. The shop assistant was wrong. Her mother wasn’t proud of her. She hadn’t even noticed Cassie was growing into a woman. Her mum may as well be dead, for all the attention she gave her these days. Cassie sat simmering quietly as she rode the bus home on her own, cursing her mother, her unborn sibling and the new bra straps digging uncomfortably into her shoulders.
She was still angry at the world that evening, and the sight of Dora seated at the kitchen table, her head bent intently over the misshapen blanket she was learning to knit for the baby was too much. She straddled the chair next to Dora and waited for her sister to look up obligingly from the tangle of yellow wool in her lap.
‘You do realise,’ she said, ‘that things are going to be very different when this baby arrives, don’t you, Dora?’
Dora looked startled. She had been mid-count, her tongue still caught between her lips in concentration. ‘Dropped one! What was that, Cassie?’
‘I said things are going to be different when the baby arrives.’
‘Different how?’
‘Babies need a lot of attention and Mum and Dad . . . they’ll be tired and distracted.’
Dora nodded. ‘Uh-huh.’
Cassie continued. ‘It will be their favourite, you know, the baby of the family. It will get the most attention. You won’t be the youngest any more, Dora. You and I, we can’t compete with that, can we?’
Dora thought for a moment. ‘I didn’t think it was a competition. Surely Mum and Dad will just love us all the same? Anyway, they seem happy again, don’t they? I like it.’ Dora lifted the needles to regard her progress and Cassie noted several large holes in the long and strangely triangular-shaped fabric. The blanket was going to be a disaster but Dora just gave it a tug here and there and returned to clicking her needles together in a slow and steady rhythm.
Cassie shook her head. ‘Oh, Dora, you’re so naive. Believe that if you want, if it makes you feel better, but deep down you know I’m right. Everything’s about to change.’ She just couldn’t stop herself. She felt a hot spite raging within and she needed to release it, to share it. ‘So you’d better brace yourself. It’s you and me now, Dora,’ she continued. ‘It’s you and me against the world. You know that, right?’
Dora seemed to consider her sister’s words for a moment, before she nodded. ‘I s’pose so.’
Cassie was chastened slightly by the sight of Dora’s glum face, but she tried again in a softer voice. ‘We’ve got to stick together, haven’t we? It’s what sisters do.’
Dora nodded again, but it seemed she didn’t want to continue the conversation. She dropped her head and continued with her slow and steady knit-one-purl-one rhythm until Cassie got bored and retreated from the room.
A few nights later, Cassie woke from sleep to a hot, damp feeling between her legs. She flicked on her bedside lamp and looked down to see a bloody stain blossoming on the pale cotton of her nightie. She sighed.
Her period: it had finally started.
They’d talked about it in PSE lessons at school, Mrs Nelson battling on regardless, ignoring the girls’ sniggers and embarrassed jokes, explaining to them that it would be worth keeping a small supply of towels or tampons handy for such a momentous occasion: ‘their initiation into womanhood’, she had called it. Since that class Cassie had been meaning to broach the issue with her mother but she had never found the right moment. She regretted it now.
Cassie hauled herself out of bed and padded silently down the landing to the bathroom. As she reached the doorway she heard a strange, strangled cry. She’d investigate just as soon as she’d sorted herself out.
First she pulled the nightdress over her head and washed herself with a damp flannel. In the bathroom cabinet she found an old packet of sanitary towels belonging to her mother. They looked enormous, far bigger than the ones the teacher had shown them in class. She pulled off the strip from the back of the pad and settled the giant wedge into an old pair of knickers from the airing cupboard. It felt stiff and fat between her legs, not at all comfortable. Still, it would do for now. Grabbing a pair of flannel pyjamas, Cassie pulled them on hurriedly and then set about furiously scrubbing the livid red stain from her nightdress. Out damn spot! She was suddenly reminded of the line from Macbeth. The mark had transformed from livid red to a tea-brown tinge, but it was still there. She stuffed the nightie, sodden and crumpled, to the back of the airing cupboard before switching off the light and heading back into the hallway.
It was still dark, but a sliver of light escaped from underneath her parent’s bedroom door. Again, a cat-like wail broke the eerie silence. Cassie walked towards the door, uncertain if she really wanted to go any further, but unable to turn back. As she got closer, she noticed the door was slightly ajar. The mewling grew louder, and then stopped. She heard her parents talking in soft, low voices. She paused at the entrance to the room, took a breath, and then gently pushed the door open. Her eyes widened as she saw the scene before her.
Helen and Richard sat together on the bed, propped up on pillows. The sheets and duvet lay in a tangled heap at the bottom of the bed. Her father looked dishevelled, as though he hadn’t yet been to sleep, his arm slung protectively around Helen’s shoulders as they both gazed in rapture at a small bundle nestled in her arms. Another piercing cry broke the quiet and Helen shifted the bundle of blankets in her arms and unbuttoned the front of her nightdress with her free hand. Then a small, pink head appeared and seemed to settle peacefully at Helen’s breast. ‘He’s hungry,’ she heard her mother say.
Cassie bristled with discomfort. She felt as though she were intruding on a private moment, something sacred that she wasn’t a part of. She started to back out of the room, willing her presence to go unnoticed but something had given her away because suddenly Richard’s head swung up.
‘Cassie!’ he exclaimed, startled to see her standing at their bedroom door. ‘Come in. Come and meet your brother.’
Cassie padded reluctantly across the carpet, leaning in to peer politely at the swaddled infant. He was pink and puffy with bow lips and eyes scrunched shut. His face looked swollen and his nose squashed, as if he’d gone ten rounds in a boxing ring. She could see a fretwork of blue veins pumping blood under his papery skin, and a smattering of blond down on the top of his head, the exact same colour as her father’s. The baby was oblivious to anything but the breast he was latched to and Cassie was suddenly reminded of the newborn Labrador puppies they had gone to see in Farmer Plummer’s barn last summer, disappointingly slimy and translucent, wriggling blindly at their mother’s swollen teats.
‘What do you think?’ Richard asked. ‘Isn’t he adorable?’
‘Mmm . . .’ Cassie agreed. ‘I thought you were going to have him at the hospital?’ she addressed Helen, accusingly.
‘Well, that was the plan, but it seems this little guy had other ideas. You should have seen your father, Cass, all in a tizzy, until the midwife at the end of the phone took him in hand and explained what he had to do. It was just as well because this baby was in a hurry.’
‘To be honest I didn’t really do that much. Your mother and brother did all the hard work.’
There was a loud creak of the door and they all looked up.
‘Come and meet your new baby brother,’ Richard urged, beckoning Dora into the family circle.
‘He’s here? Already? Why didn’t anyone wake me?’
‘Come on, poppet, come and meet him,’ Richard urged.
She didn’t need any further encouragement. Dora launched herself at the double bed, landing on the mattress with a thud.
‘Careful!’ warned Helen, clutching the bundle protectively to her chest.
Cassie saw Dora bite her lip and glance across at her. Cassie rewarded her sister with a knowing look, one that said: see, I told you so.
Dora’s cheeks flared red and she dropped her gaze hurriedly, before sidling apologetically up to her father’s side of the bed. ‘Sorry.’
‘It’s OK, Panda,’ Richard soothed, putting an arm around her. ‘Just go gently. He’s only tiny.’
Dora nodded and poked at the baby in Helen’s arms. ‘What’s he called?’
Cassie and Dora shared another quick look. First Cassandra. Then Pandora. They were both keen to know what trials from Greek mythology Helen would inflict on this new Tide child.
‘He’s Alfred, isn’t he, Richard?’
Richard looked up at Helen with a start. ‘I thought you had your heart set on Hector?’
‘No.’ Helen shook her head. ‘Look at him. He’s an Alfred if ever I saw one.’
‘Alfie!’ exclaimed Dora. ‘Like Granddad?’
‘Yes,’ smiled Richard, his voice thick with emotion. ‘Like Granddad.’
‘Baby Alfie,’ repeated Dora with satisfaction. ‘It suits him.’
‘Yes,’ said Helen. ‘Yes it does.’
Just then little Alfie gurgled and gave a small cry.
‘He’s so cute,’ Dora exclaimed. ‘Look at his tiny fingernails.’
As Helen, Richard and Dora all cooed over baby Alfie’s ten perfect fingers and ten perfect toes, Cassie retreated quietly from the cosy family scene, slipping away unnoticed from the room. No, nothing good ever came from an accident; she could feel it deep in her bones.
DORA
Present Day
Dora runs down the oak-panelled hallway and bursts through the front door into the blinding afternoon sunshine. She doesn’t know where she is going; all she knows is that she has to escape the house and, somehow, banish the image replaying over and over in her mind of her mother’s face – tight and pale – turning away from her and the news of her pregnancy. At that moment Dora can’t stand to be under the same roof as Helen.
She’s oblivious to her surroundings as she half runs, half walks down through the garden and across the fruit orchard before joining up with the muddy walking track heading out towards the cliffs. The ground is boggy after weeks of spring rain and she concentrates on jumping the puddles littered along the way. Her impractical ballet flats squelch and splash as she goes and cold water is already seeping around her feet, edging up the hems of her jeans, but she doesn’t care. She marches on, head down, stewing on the events that have just unfolded in the conservatory.
Helen’s reaction has shocked Dora to the core. It was never going to be an easy conversation, but Dora realises now that she had, at least, dared to hope for a little more from her mother – an expression of joy or support, perhaps, amidst the obvious grief and distress. Instead it feels as though Helen has pulled yet another shutter down between them. There is an insurmountable divide that they just cannot seem to bridge.
What has happened to the mother she remembers from her childhood? The one who would gather her into her bed at night and hold her close as a midnight thunderstorm raged outside? Or cover her with pink calamine lotion when she itched with chicken pox? The woman who sewed name tags into her school uniform, packed her lunches, tucked her in at night, bathed her grazed knees, kissed her feverish brow and wiped away her tears? The mother she remembers from childhood seems wholly unrelated to the ice-cold woman sitting up at Clifftops. It makes Dora want to cry out with frustration and pain.
She reaches the trail’s end; the hawthorn hedgerows on either side peter out and Dora finds herself standing on the cliffs overlooking Lyme Bay. She has, she realises, unconsciously returned to the well-trodden walking tracks of her childhood. To the left lies the beach. To the right stands an old weather-beaten church. Directly ahead lies the placid, shimmering sea. She watches the sunlight dance across its surface, a sheet of silver rippling in the breeze. Slowly her heart begins to calm in her ribcage. Fine gauze cloud is building high up in the sky but it is still warm and Dora knows it will be light out for a few more hours yet. In for a penny in for a pound, she thinks, and with a grim smile, she turns right and heads for the church.
It is exactly as she remembers it, a humble, whitewashed building with arched stained-glass windows and a roughly hewn wooden cross hanging over the doorway. It is surrounded by a crumbling stone wall, and dotted all around are the markers of a hundred or more graves, the headstones seeming to push up through the ground like the wild spring flowers dancing on the breeze. Dora hesitates for just a moment before entering through the wooden gate.
For a minute or two she wanders among the graves, trailing her hands across the warm stone, reading the names and the dates of the deceased. Some of the graves are overgrown, their headstones nothing more than ruins, the words once so carefully engraved onto the stone now weathered and worn until illegible; but others are well maintained, with carefully placed bunches of flowers indicating the human grief and loss that still lives on. Many are sailors, she realises, souls lost over the years to the raging sea. As Dora slowly makes her way towards her grandparents’ resting place, she wishes she had thought to bring flowers.
She stands in almost the same spot as she had fifteen years ago, when she had watched Alfred and Daphne’s wooden coffins being lowered into the earth. The memory of that day is strangely hazy, but standing there, she is reminded of the feeling of her father’s cold hand clutching at her own mittened one. His grip had been bone-crushing, like that of a drowning man. Afterwards they had all returned to Clifftops and Dora had sat shivering on the front doorstep watching a steady stream of creaking, elderly people arrive from the village. Her cheeks were soon bruised from their sympathetic pinches and the fridge fit to bursting with the casseroles and cakes they’d brought with them. After a while she’d realised Cassie had the right idea. She’d left the serious business of adult grief behind, and wandered upstairs to find her sister.
‘Cassie?’ She’d rattled the door handle to her sister’s room.
‘What?’ had come the muffled reply.
‘Can I come in?’
She’d heard a sigh, followed by the sound of chair legs scraping across the floor. When Dora had tried the handle again the door had flown open. Cassie was resettling herself on the bed, a bottle of nail varnish in her hand.
‘What are you doing?’
‘What does it look like?’
Dora knew it was best not to say anything. When Cassie got into one of her strops it didn’t take much to tip the balance; sometimes even the most innocuous of comments could see her ejected from the inner sanctum of her sister’s room. So she’d sat quietly, watching from a careful distance as Cassie artfully applied a thick layer of black nail varnish to each of her toenails. Their mum was going to go spare.
‘Cass?’ she’d tried, eventually.
‘Uh-huh?’ She didn’t bother to look up.
‘What do you think it feels like when you’re dead?’
Cassie turned to regard Dora with her cool blue-eyed gaze, her hand paused halfway between the bottle and her toes. She seemed to consider the question for a moment. ‘I think dead probably feels OK. You know, peaceful . . . calm . . .’ She paused. ‘Like when you’re in a warm bath, just floating, floating and you’ve got nothing in your head.’
‘So it doesn’t hurt?’
‘No, you don’t feel anything when you’re dead. Everything just stops.’
Dora remembered she’d felt a little better. She’d watched as Cassie had leaned over and removed the twists of toilet paper from between her toes, before testing her nails with a finger. Seemingly satisfied she’d turned to Dora. ‘I’m bored, are you coming?’
‘Where?’
‘Outside. I can’t stand all these old people everywhere. It’s so depressing.’
Dora hadn’t needed to be asked twice. She’d followed her sister down the stairs, grabbed their winter coats and shoes, and run out into the back garden. They’d tripped across the lawn and down to the stream below the orchard, silently watching as their poohsticks slipped away towards the ocean.
Dora winces at the sudden onslaught of memories and although the sun still holds a glimmer of warmth, she shivers and wraps her arms tightly around her body. Was that when it had all begun to unravel – for it had only been a matter of weeks before the family had left London and moved down to Clifftops – was that when things had started to come undone? Like a tiny hole in a tightly woven cloth, was it the move to Dorset that had tugged loose the first thread and begun to unravel the fabric of their family?
Dora looks down again at her grandparents’ graves. She is unable to offer flowers but there is something she can do. She kneels on the ground and begins to clear the weeds that have sprung up around their headstones, ignoring the damp earth seeping through the knees of her jeans. As she works, her ear tunes in to the ebb and flow of the waves washing against the cliffs below. The sound is strangely soothing, like the rise and fall of her breathing – in and out, forwards and backwards, the perpetual motion of the waves is ceaseless in its rhythm.
She works until she has pulled every weed from the mounds of earth covering her grandparents’ coffins, then stands and looks out towards the horizon. The sun is paling in the sky, sinking slowly towards the earth. Dora knows she must return to the house. It is too late to drive back to London now. She’ll have to stay the night.
Secrets of the Tides Page 9
