by Tayte, Megan
‘Huh?’
He grinned. ‘She used to throw dry cereal all over the kitchen floor – cornflakes, rice puffs, the crunchy stuff – and then stamp all over it until it was dust. When Cara and I were little and all riled up, out came the cereal packet. I stamped a lot of cereal in my time. Works for all kinds of difficult feelings, you know.’
‘Your mum sounds amazing, Luke,’ I said.
‘She was. She’d have liked you.’
‘Really? I’m not sure I’m a mother’s dream girlfriend for her son, what with all my baggage.’
It was meant to be a joke, but he didn’t smile.
‘You have to stop doing that, Scarlett,’ he said seriously. ‘Putting yourself down. I love you as you are. And the other stuff – none of it matters, as long as we’re together.’
‘So, the rows?’
‘Healthy.’
‘And the Cerulean bit of me?’
‘Nothing we can’t manage.’
‘And the family drama?’
‘We’ll get through it. And keep hoping for a quiet life one day.’
I thought about a quiet life with Luke. That was a good dream. A dream worth fighting for.
‘Love you,’ he whispered, touching his forehead to mine.
‘Love you too,’ I told him.
We stayed like that for a little while, until the fast-encroaching night whipped up a wind to make me shiver.
‘Come on,’ said Luke, slinging an arm around my shoulders. ‘Let’s get inside and work out what comes next.’
*
Two hot chocolates and a monster slab of coffee cake later and we’d reached a decision: it was time for me to go home to the cottage. I couldn’t stay at Luke’s – I needed space – and I wouldn’t hide away on the island. Plus, it seemed clear that Gabriel’s ‘see you soon’ would be followed by a visit in the not-too-distant future, and if he was going to pick a place for our meeting, it would be the cottage – familiar to us both, and isolated from people. If that’s where he was going, I wanted him to find me. Soon. I wanted it over.
There was just one thing we hadn’t agreed on: whether I would face Gabriel alone. Instinctively, I wanted to keep Luke away from the thick of the action. But he was determined to be with me, and there was just no arguing with the truth in his words:
‘You’ve done all of this without me, Scarlett. All the early stuff with Jude. The island. Newquay with Daniel and your sister. The fire. You do it alone, and then you tell me about it later, when it’s all over. I know you think you’re protecting me by keeping me separate. But you’re not – you’re shutting me out, making it harder for me to understand. Let me in. Let me be there. I’m your boyfriend; it’s only right.’
He was looking at me so earnestly and I should have been serious, I know. But a dot of cream on his nose made me smile. I reached over the kitchen table and rubbed it off.
‘Okay,’ I said.
‘Okay?’
‘Okay. Come and meet Gabriel – outcast, murderer and... father.’
The words wiped the smile off my face.
‘I’ll be there,’ said Luke. ‘You’ll be safe.’
‘I know.’
‘But you still look anxious.’
‘I don’t want to be! I want to be strong. I want him to look at me and see I’m unbreakable and unswayable and he can’t get to me.’
Luke cocked his head and looked thoughtful. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘I might just have the answer to dealing with that fear of yours.’
‘Oh yes?’
And that is how a blue-eyed boy and a green-eyed girl came to be in a dimly lit kitchen at midnight, stamping over a carpet of rapidly disintegrating honey hoops breakfast cereal to the beat of David Guetta’s ‘Titanium’.
31: I WON’T LIE TO YOU
Luke didn’t come home with me to the cottage. We made a deal: I’d call him the moment Gabriel arrived (on the new mobile phone Luke had bought me yesterday to replace my smoke-ruined one) and Luke would come straight to the cottage. Whether he was at the cafe or his house, he could be with me in no more than five minutes.
The night passed uneventfully but for a run of disturbing dreams that indicated the cereal stamping session hadn’t exorcised all of my demons. I surfaced around dawn and drifted back to sleep, but apparently a lie-in was too much to hope for this morning.
Jude was first to touch base with me, his six-thirty call pulling me from a bizarre dream in which I was a stickperson. I assured him I was fine – and alone – and no, thank you, I didn’t need him to come and be with me right now. Really. Yes, really.
Luke was next, calling so soon after Jude I wondered whether the two had been in touch. I assured him I was fine – and alone – and no, thank you, I didn’t need him to come and be with me right now. Really. Yes, really.
Next, text messages from Cara and Estelle. I sent back identical replies: I’m fine – and alone – and no, thank you, I don’t need you to come and be with me right now. Really.
I itched to turn my phone off and get some peace, but I didn’t dare – Luke would kill me. So I settled for moving away from it into the bathroom.
When I’d showered for so long that the water ran cold, I wasted another twenty minutes dithering over what to wear and then headed downstairs in my oldest, most comfortable jeans and tee. Before even clicking on the kettle, I found myself standing at the window, scanning the cottage garden. It was habit, I suppose – Jude often appeared there. Come to think of it, so had Michael when he’d visited. But the only sign of life was a lone magpie rooting about in the lawn for a worm.
One for sorrow…
Quickly, I turned away and busied myself making coffee.
Come eight o’clock, I’d worked my way through three cups of coffee, two slices of toast, a yoghurt, a banana and a box of raisins.
Come nine o’clock, I’d vacuumed the cottage from top to bottom.
Come ten o’clock, I’d found a speck of fluff on the living room carpet and vacuumed the cottage all over again.
Come eleven o’clock, I’d organised my emails, changed my desktop wallpaper three times, watched various Pitch Perfect YouTube videos, attempted the ‘Cups’ song and browsed Amazon until I was dizzy on book covers.
Come twelve o’clock, I was out of distractions. I went outside and slumped on a patio chair and stared down at the cove.
I longed to get my board and go down for a surf. I hadn’t been out in a while, what with being ill and then at Hollythwaite and the island. I’d missed it. Perhaps the water could achieve what cereal hadn’t quite.
No, I should wait here. Surely I should wait here. Get it done.
But then, he hadn’t come yet. And who knew when ‘soon’ was to Gabriel? There had been lengthy gaps between the occasions I’d seen him before now. Maybe waiting here was daft. What was it Grannie had told me the other night? ‘A watched pot never boils.’
Oh yes, and, ‘Just keep swimming.’
*
You know when you wait at a bus stop and it takes forever for your bus to come, but the moment you give up waiting and start walking off to the nearest taxi rank or subway station, the bus zooms right by you?
Come one o’clock, I was alone in the cove. The sea was empty. The beach was empty.
Come two o’clock, I was no longer alone.
Though I was a distance away when I first saw him – standing on the beach near where I’d left my towel and watching me with his hand shielding his eyes against the sun’s glare – I knew it was him. Of course it was him.
I took my time paddling back to the shore, wading out of the surf, walking up the beach towards him. His timing was perfect, I realised. It was after a surf that I felt most centred and calm. I wondered whether he knew that. I wondered whether he’d watched me before; whether he’d picked this moment, this place, to put me at ease.
I stopped a few steps in front of him and set my board down on the sand.
‘Hello, Scarlett,’ he said.
&nb
sp; Stretching up to my full height, I looked him right in the eye as I replied: ‘Hello, Gabriel.’
He didn’t flinch. Either he already knew I’d worked out who he was, or he didn’t care.
‘Can we sit and talk for a while?’
I didn’t answer, but I went over to my towel, laid out on the sand, and sat on it. He found a spot nearby, close enough that I could smell the spicy scent he wore but far enough away not to crowd me, and sat cross-legged. That bothered me. He was trying very hard to appear unthreatening.
From under the towel I retrieved the phone I’d concealed and fired off a quick text.
‘Calling for backup?’ asked Gabriel.
‘Yes,’ I said.
My phone beeped with an answering text from Luke: I left the cafe and went up to the cottage to check on you! On the cliff path now. Be with you in three.
I looked up. A distant figure on the cliff waved to me. I waved back.
‘So,’ I said, turning to Gabriel, ‘you may as well tell me right off: why are you here?’
‘To extend an invitation, Scarlett.’
That surprised me. ‘What?’
‘I want you to come and visit me. Where I live.’
‘I’m going nowhere with you!’
He sighed. ‘Yes, I rather thought you’d say that.’
I stared at him. ‘Why do you want me to?’
‘So we can get to know each other. So we can talk, at length. So I can help you understand how we come to be in the positions we are today – me, your mother, your sister, you. And so that we can work together to help your sister.’
‘Help Sienna? There’s no helping Sienna!’
‘Because of the little show she put on for you in Newquay? You know, your sister has quite a flair for the dramatic, and you and Jude were victims of that.’
‘That was no show. She killed a man! With relish! Right in front of us!’
‘Regrettable,’ said Gabriel. ‘And I certainly had words with her afterwards for the staging – not that Sienna listened, of course. She’s a very stubborn young woman. You too, I’m given to understand. You both get that from me.’
‘Or our mother,’ I said acidly. ‘After all, she left you and never looked back, didn’t she?’
A shadow passed across Gabriel’s face, and I felt a stab of sadistic pleasure that I’d caused him pain.
‘I don’t know about that, Scarlett,’ he said. ‘After all, the other night you produced a picture that suggests she has thought of me since. But certainly Elizabeth was hurt enough back then to tell me to never come near her or our daughters again. And I’ve respected her wishes for many long years.’
I checked for Luke. He was on the beach now and walking towards us.
When I turned back Gabriel was watching me soberly. In the bright sunlight, his scars were all I could see.
‘I’m happy to meet Luke,’ he said, ‘and I’m glad you have someone in your life who wants to defend you. But you know that you’re quite safe in my company, don’t you?’
‘I know no such thing. How can anyone be safe around you, given what you are?’
His eyes narrowed. ‘And what’s that, Scarlett?’
Leaning forward, I said the word with venom: ‘Murderer.’
I expected anger, or perhaps even pain. But Gabriel just nodded seriously. ‘Yes, that’s one of the many things I am.’
Luke reached us. He took one look at my face and said to Gabriel, ‘Don’t you even think about hurting her!’ Then, to me: ‘Come here. Move away from him.’
Gabriel wasn’t remotely bothered by Luke’s agitation. ‘I won’t hurt her, Luke. Either of you. Please, sit.’ He gestured to the space beside me on the towel – the space nearest to him, offering Luke the chance to put himself between us.
Luke glanced at me, and when I nodded he sat down, in the process shunting me over, further away from Gabriel. He flung one arm back and pressed it against me.
‘So,’ he said to Gabriel in a scathing tone I’d never heard before, ‘Scarlett looks traumatised already. What have I missed?’
‘Me inviting Scarlett to come visit me,’ said Gabriel. ‘A brief discussion of Sienna’s little demonstration in the alley in Newquay, which I explained had disappointed me. A recognition of the fact that I hurt Scarlett’s mother badly and have respected her wish to keep a distance until now. Oh, and acceptance of the fact that I am, as Scarlett terms it, a murderer.’
Luke gaped at Gabriel, and I couldn’t blame him. He was so cool, so matter-of-fact. So, apparently, forthright.
‘Murderer – you say it so casually, like it’s nothing at all!’
‘No, Luke, you’ve got that wrong. Taking a life isn’t casual, it’s deliberate. A serious responsibility that I don’t take lightly. But I won’t lie to you. It’s without a shred of remorse that I commit the act.’
‘He’s insane,’ said Luke, turning to me quickly. ‘We should go – right now.’
I shook my head. My eyes were locked on Gabriel’s. I knew it was dangerous to believe a word he said, and yet when he said ‘I won’t lie to you’, I believed him. I believed him completely.
‘Tell us the story,’ I said. ‘Tell us your side of what Evangeline’s told me – of how you met Mum, what happened to make you what you are, what made Mum leave.’
He stared at me, unblinking, unsmiling. Then he said, ‘I’ll tell you. But it won’t be enough. There’s much more we need to talk about. There’s much more you need to learn. Which is why you need to come to my world.’
At once Luke began arguing but Gabriel spoke over him:
‘I’ll tell you my story, Scarlett. Only don’t expect it to match Evangeline’s. She’s far less allied to the truth than I am.’
‘That’s for me to decide,’ I snapped. I wasn’t about to listen to him criticise Evangeline who, after all, had been more family to me than he ever had.
Gabriel smirked. ‘Little tiger. So like your mother.’
‘Tell me about her,’ I commanded.
And he did.
32: ELIZABETH AND GABRIEL V.2
May, 1994. In the sleepy village of Twycombe, Devon, a girl met a boy.
The girl, Elizabeth, was seventeen, the only daughter of a couple who’d lived alone on the west cliff all of her life.
The boy, Gabriel, was nineteen, a newcomer to the cove, just passing through. A Cerulean.
The two fell in love. But they had only a little time in the sweet flush of romance before their relationship was discovered.
Elizabeth’s father, Peter, was furious. He would not let his daughter, human, be with a Cerulean. He knew the consequences of that.
Evangeline and John were similarly disturbed, and they instructed Gabriel to leave the girl alone.
But the more their elders tried to pull them apart, the more Gabriel and Elizabeth held on to each other.
Until Gabriel crossed a line.
He had always been a restless Cerulean. Spirited. Wilful. Opinionated. But the tattoo on his arm read Serviam – I will serve – and he did. He was obedient.
Then, one day, he snapped. The price for obedience was too high. He could not serve. He would not serve. In a single incident, he shed his innocence. He took a life and he restored a life – he committed murder and he resurrected the dead.
When it was done, he returned to the island. He stood before Evangeline and John, dripping blood from the wounds his sins had ripped open. He was remorseless, blazing with vindication that he had done right.
He had done right. He tried to persuade Evangeline and John of that. He failed.
Gabriel was Outcast. No longer a Cerulean. He was told to leave the island, to leave Twycombe, and never come back.
He left the island. He went to Twycombe, to tell Elizabeth he was leaving. Distraught, she begged him to take her with him. She didn’t know all that he was, all that he’d done. She didn’t know how lonely a life with him would be. Gabriel knew, but he couldn’t bear to lose her. He loved her. So when he left
the cove, he took with him the innocent young girl who worshipped him blindly.
Peter and Alice were beside themselves at the disappearance of their daughter. They searched all over for her. The Ceruleans searched all over for her. But there was no trace. Gabriel made sure of that.
And then, the following year, Gabriel and Elizabeth returned to the cottage on the cliff. Elizabeth begged for forgiveness and a chance to be a family, and Peter and Alice took one look at the tiny baby girl in Gabriel’s arms and melted.
Peter arranged for the young family to live in the vicarage of St Mary’s: the perfect setting for Gabriel to work for redemption. But Gabriel did not want redemption. He’d made his choice over how to use his light the day he was Outcast, and no one would deter him. Not Peter and his reverend friend, good men whom he respected greatly. Not Elizabeth, the girl he loved who so badly needed him at her side. Not even Sienna, his baby daughter – if anything, her existence drove him to take more lives.
The path Gabriel was forging demanded more distance from his family. And lies. So many lies. Elizabeth knew that he was concealing a darkness within – it was written all over his body in the cuts he would not explain. And yet she stayed. She loved him. But one dark, wintry day, that was no longer enough.
Blood on his hands.
She caught him in the bathroom, scrubbing it off. He wasn’t bleeding. He hadn’t killed that day – he’d beaten a man. The blood wasn’t Gabriel’s, and she saw that.
Elizabeth stood before him, his baby daughter on her hip and his unborn child kicking in her womb, and she ordered him to tell her the truth.
He loved her. He couldn’t tell her. It would break her.
She began packing. He didn’t stop her. He drove her to the station. He watched her struggle onto the London train with nothing but a pram and a suitcase. He let her go.
Gabriel left Twycombe the same day. He didn’t come back, but made a new life for himself and the Ceruleans who eventually joined him and dedicated themselves to his cause.
Respecting Elizabeth’s wishes, Gabriel kept his distance. Until now.
33: THE WHO AND THE WHY
