by Tayte, Megan
‘I don’t know, Scarlett. You’re clearly worried.’
‘But I don’t know why. Especially here. With you. On a date. In Spain!’
He smiled a little, but then asked seriously, ‘Where’s your mum now?’
‘Hollythwaite. She mentioned on the phone last night that she had a meeting with a supplier this afternoon.’
‘Then you should go there.’
‘What – now?’
‘Yes now. You’ll feel better if you see her.’
‘But our date –’
‘Is over. You’re tired, Scarlett. You know this place is our last stop for the day. And you know we have to go back. We can’t hide in Spain forever.’ He leaned in and kissed my forehead. ‘Go on,’ he urged. ‘Have a coffee with your mum.’
‘I can’t just turn up there,’ I protested. ‘Pop in – without a car – with no reason for the visit. Sit and drink coffee with her and skirt around a million topics of conversation I’m desperate to raise but can’t.’
‘You can,’ he said. ‘If you want to.’
I eyed him thoughtfully. ‘Why are you nudging me to go? I thought you, of all people, would apply cool logic and tell me I’m a worrywart.’
‘Usually, I suppose, I would.’
‘So why not now?’
‘Because it’s your mum, Scarlett.’
He didn’t have to say any more; I knew exactly what he meant. He wouldn’t spell it out like Cara had, but their loss had taught him how precious mothers are.
‘It doesn’t hurt to check in on her,’ he said. ‘See how she is. If she’s acting strange, upset, like he’s been in touch, then you can start talking. You never know – maybe you won’t need to skirt around the truth. Maybe, finally, you can have an honest conversation.’
I hadn’t thought of that; I’d been too caught up in wanting to protect my mother from the pain of her past. But that was a knee-jerk reaction. Did she actually need my protection? She’d come a long way this past year. She wasn’t fragile like she’d once been. And if the root of her depression had been Gabe all along, the truth could obliterate the shadows once and for all. If she knew, finally, what Gabe was – and what Sienna was – and what I was...
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I’ll go.’
Luke leaned across the table and kissed me sweetly, gently, and I knew he meant this to be the last kiss of our date. Only it wasn’t the kiss I’d remember. We’d had that kiss an hour ago in front of Miró’s ‘The Morning Star’, when England lay forgotten, hundreds of miles away.
‘Right,’ said Luke, all business now, ‘you’ll have to come back for me, or drop me off somewhere.’
‘I’m not doing that.’
‘You can’t just leave me on some Spanish hill, Scarlett!’
‘No, I mean I want you to come with me. If… if you don’t mind.’
The look in his eyes said it all – I’d let him in, of my own accord; I was asking him to be there for me.
‘Come on,’ he said, holding out his hand. ‘Let’s find a quiet spot.’
38: MUSE
I brought us to the lane leading to Hollythwaite. I wasn’t sure that it would be deserted, but I was pretty sure we wouldn’t be spotted arriving where the hedgerow butted against a broad oak tree. Judging by the lack of shocked gasps following our arrival, I was right.
‘I will never get used to that,’ said Luke, extracting himself from the grabbing branches of a bush. ‘One minute a Spanish art museum rooftop, the next an English country lane. It’s really, really bizarre.’ He saw my expression and added: ‘And brilliant. I can’t wait for our next date. New York?’
‘Never been,’ I said, ‘so I can’t Travel there. How about Paris?’
His eyes lit up at the thought, and as we walked along the lane he began planning the date, from where we’d go to what we’d eat (Luke was very passionate on the subject of French gastronomy). I was just putting my foot down on eating snails when we reached the short drive leading to Hollythwaite’s gates.
‘But how do you know they’re gross unless you try them?’ Luke protested as I keyed in the entry code on the security post.
Beep. Access denied. Mum must have changed the code.
‘Because they’re slimy slugs with shells,’ I told him as I hit the intercom buzzer.
‘But you have to at least try new things. Maybe escargot will be the best food you’ve ever tasted.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Nothing can beat that Spanish peach.’
He smiled and ducked his head to kiss me. I broke away.
‘No one’s answering. She must be out. But...’ I frowned.
‘What is it?’
‘I felt someone here. As we approached.’
‘Felt someone? I don’t understand.’
‘It’s hard to explain. People – people who aren’t Ceruleans, I mean – they pull at me. In a crowded place, it’s overwhelming. In a quiet place, it’s easier to feel the pull of individual people.’
Luke stared at me. ‘You feel like that all the time? Constantly pulled at? I make you feel that way?’
‘I’ve got used to it,’ I said. ‘It’s okay.’ I focused on pressing the buzzer again. ‘I was sure I felt someone...’
Luke walked up to the gates and peered through, then beckoned me over. When I reached him he said, ‘Listen.’
Straining my ears, I made out music. It sounded like Muse.
‘She is home,’ said Luke. ‘Maybe the intercom’s broken at her end. Try phoning her.’
Two unanswered calls later I gave up. I stood on the drive, staring through the gates at the lodge just metres away.
‘I don’t feel anyone,’ I said.
‘Maybe she’s up at the house,’ Luke suggested. ‘If she’s meeting a supplier, wouldn’t she do it there? Come on.’ He held out his hand. ‘Get us in and we’ll walk up and meet her.’
Without stopping to think, I took his hand, visualised our destination and took us there. Staggering, I ricocheted off something hard and Luke caught me.
‘Hey,’ he said, ‘easy.’ He leaned me against the something hard – an enormous Buddha statue – peered at me and frowned. ‘You’ve overdone it,’ he said. ‘All the people today, all the Travelling. You’re dead on your feet. We have to go. To the cottage. You need to rest. Scarlett... Scarlett. Are you listening to me?’
I wasn’t. I was looking past him, across my mother’s deserted Zen garden, to the lodge.
‘The back door,’ I said. ‘It’s open.’
Luke turned to look, but I was already up and walking across the lawn. He caught up with me as I passed a picnic rug on which lay a folded-up newspaper and a sunhat.
‘Mum?’ I called over the music as I approached the door. ‘It’s Scarlett.’
I stepped into the kitchen. Stopped. On the table was half a fruit cake, two crumb-littered plates and two tall glasses. One of the glasses was on its side and cranberry juice was dripping onto the floor.
Luke nudged past me. ‘Well, she’s certainly about,’ he said. He turned off the CD player on the windowsill. The lodge fell silent.
‘This is wrong,’ I said, staring at the puddle on the floor tiles. ‘Something’s wrong.’
Luke grabbed a roll of paper towels and began blotting up the mess. ‘She probably just ducked out to get something,’ he said.
I walked past him, to the hallway. Empty. The living room. Empty. The yoga studio. Empty. The stairs creaked beneath my tread – and Luke’s. All the doors upstairs were closed. I eased open the bathroom door. Empty. I checked the guest room. Empty.
I tried the door to my mother’s bedroom. It was locked.
‘Perhaps she’s taking a nap,’ said Luke.
I pounded on the door, hard, and yelled, ‘Mum! Mum!’
Silence.
‘You did say she used to take sleeping pills.’
‘Not any more.’
Luke rattled the doorknob. ‘Elizabeth?... She’s not here.’ He turned around. ‘Scarlett, you’re as wh
ite as a ghost! Come on now, take us home. To the cottage.’
He held out his hand, but I was backing away, out of his reach. And quickly, ignoring the concern in his eyes, I closed my own and pictured a patchwork quilt spread neatly on a double bed.
I felt the air shift.
I opened my eyes.
I discovered why it was I’d known my mother wasn’t nearby and yet I’d been unable to leave.
A terrible, guttural cry shattered the silence as I fell to my knees beside my mother, here after all, here in her little blue room before her wall of memories, here, right here beneath my grasping hands.
But gone.
39: NON SERVIAM
If it weren’t for Luke, I may never have moved again. I may have sat there for a lifetime, my mother’s head in my lap, and died a little more with every breath I took that she did not take.
But when he heard my cry and I didn’t reply to his shouts, he broke down the door to my mother’s room.
‘Oh God,’ he said as he took in the scene, and then he threw himself onto his knees beside us and bowed his head over my mum and he was still… still… still.
‘She’s alive!’ he said, erupting back up again. ‘Scarlett, she’s alive. But barely. You have to do something.’
He pulled my mother off my lap and laid her on the floor. Her head left a dark stain on my jeans.
‘She’s dead,’ I said.
‘No. There’s a pulse. It’s barely there, but I felt it. You have to heal her – now!’ When I didn’t move, he pushed my hands onto my mother’s chest. ‘Hurry! Scarlett, heal her. Or she’ll die, and you can’t bring her back.’
His words pierced the fog. He was wrong. She was already dead. And I could bring her back.
I could bring her back.
I closed my eyes tight, shutting out the sight of my mother’s limp body and the blood in her hair and the blood on the floor and the blood on my jeans, and I focused on my hands on her chest. The might of the heavens was in those hands, and I would channel that now.
Ignoring the certain knowledge that I could do nothing here, was meant to do nothing here, I willed my mother to live – to heal – to come back to me.
Dimly, I heard Luke gasp. Even with my eyes shut the light was dazzling.
But blocked. A wall. There was a wall. The light could not flow into her; it was flooding out into the room.
I pushed against the wall. It was impenetrable.
I pushed against the wall. It was immovable.
The light faded and I collapsed back. Opening my eyes, I saw my mother lying just as I’d found her: dead.
Quickly, Luke leaned me against the bed and scrabbled in his back pocket and pulled out his phone, talking all the while: ‘Too much for you, too much. I’ll get help. I’ll get Jude.’
Not Jude. He couldn’t break down that wall.
‘Gabe,’ I said. ‘Get Gabriel.’
He’d brought her back before. ‘I put my hands on her and I drowned her in my light,’ he’d said, ‘and when I hit a brick wall I basted through it. And then she was breathing: she was alive.’
‘Stay here,’ said Luke. ‘I need your phone – your bag, in the kitchen. Gabe’s number... Just wait here.’
He scrambled to the door and ran.
I wouldn’t wait – my mother, my mother. I would blast through that wall, like Gabe had. I would be like him.
I slid across the floor to Mum. Smoothed hair from her face. My hands were sticky with her blood. I pressed them to her chest. Brilliant blue light lit my mother’s bedroom, dazzling, divine – and mine to command.
‘Non Serviam,’ I intoned. ‘I. Will. Not. Serve.’
Pain slashing across my back.
White-hot light.
An eternity of fire.
Heaven and hell in battle.
Break down the wall.
Break down the wall.
Someone shouting my name.
Hands on me, yanking at me.
Darkness.
*
The wall was gone. So was the light. I thought: I’ve done it! I’ve saved her! But then I opened my eyes to find my mother hadn’t moved but I had: I was under the window, on Luke’s lap, and standing over me were two panting, wild-eyed figures: Gabe and Sienna.
I lurched forwards but Luke tightened his arms around me and Gabe pressed restraining hands to my shoulders and I was trapped.
‘What are you doing?!’ I yelled. ‘Let me go – let me help her!’
Sienna slumped onto the bed and buried her head in her hands.
‘Help Mum, Sienna! Please – you know you can!’
‘She can’t,’ said Gabriel. ‘She can’t, and you can’t, and I can’t.’
‘But you bring people back. You do that. Bring her back! Bring her back!’
‘Listen, Scarlett,’ Luke pleaded. ‘You have to listen to him.’
I struggled against his arms around me, but they were like a straightjacket.
‘Please!’ I begged. ‘Please! She’s my mother!’
And then I was sobbing, and Luke was rocking me, and Gabe was no longer holding me back but holding me, and my sister was there, her arms around me, and my arms were around her, and I didn’t know where one person ended and another began in the terrible well of grief that had sprung up in this little bedroom.
Finally, Gabe stood up and said in a tone rough enough to snap me from my tears, ‘You nearly killed yourself, Scarlett, trying to heal Elizabeth. Do you understand that? You went too far and nearly gave up all your light. If Luke hadn’t called me – if we hadn’t pulled you off her –’
‘So you stopped me healing her? You saved me over her?’ I glared up at him. ‘So what if it would have killed me to save her? That’s my choice to make, not yours.’
‘Stop it!’ Luke let go of me and crawled around to face me. I was shocked by the state of him – he’d been crying, he’d been crying a lot, and he still was a little now. ‘Scarlett, please,’ he said. ‘Please. I know you’re hurting, but listen to him.’
‘We had to pull you away,’ said Gabe. ‘If you’d died, Scarlett, if you’d given all of yourself – it would have made no difference. She can’t be healed. I’m sorry. You tried. I tried. Sienna tried. We can’t heal Elizabeth.’
He looked across the room. Sienna had gone over to the memory wall and she was sitting now as I had earlier, with my mother’s head on her lap.
My mother.
I stood up – and fell into Luke. He caught me and sat me on the bed and held me there.
‘Scarlett,’ he said, ‘we have to look after you.’
‘Not me, her. Her.’ I looked past him, to Gabe. ‘You saved her before. You brought her back before. You can do it now.’
‘It’s not always possible to heal. Surely Jude told you that.’
‘I don’t care what he told me! You break all the rules – break this one!’
‘I would if I could. But I’m not God, Scarlett. I’m not all-powerful. None of us are. There’s nothing we can do but wait and pray.’
‘Pray for what?’
‘For her to wake up.’
‘Look at her! She’s not going to wake up! She’s... she’s...’ I stared at her body. I couldn’t say the word.
Suddenly, Luke was in front of me, blocking my view. ‘Scarlett,’ he said urgently, ‘she’s unconscious. You know that, right? I told you, remember – she has a pulse. She’s breathing. She’s not dead.’
‘What?’
‘She’s alive,’ he said emphatically. ‘You hold on to that, okay? Your mother’s alive. There’s still hope.’
This time, when I scrambled to get across the room, he helped me. I fell to my knees beside Sienna and fixed my eyes on my mother’s chest. Watched it rise and fall, rise and fall.
She was alive. We couldn’t heal her, but she was alive. I couldn’t take it in. I couldn’t think past all the wailing – what was that wailing?
‘Sienna – as agreed,’ said Gabe suddenly.
Sienna was gentle as she laid Mum on the floor but there was nothing gentle in the way she reached over and grabbed my arm.
I tried to shake her off. ‘What are you doing? Get off me!’
‘Luke,’ said Sienna, ‘take my hand.’
He did, so that the three of us were interlocked over my mother, and I realised too late what was about to happen.
‘No!’ I struggled wildly. ‘I won’t leave her!’
But with my sister gripping my arm brutally hard, I had no choice. The last thing I heard was my father’s promise – ‘I’ll stay with her’ – shouted over the deafening din of the sirens.
40: LOOMING
I was in a bedroom. I was on a bed. Not my bedroom, not my bed. My sister’s. The only room in Hollythwaite my mother hadn’t transformed. No time for nostalgia; I closed my eyes and –
‘No! You can’t go back!’
I couldn’t focus with Luke shaking me.
‘Look at me, Scarlett. Stay with me.’
His voice was cracking. I opened my eyes and saw his – red-rimmed and frantic.
‘Listen to me,’ he said, gripping my shoulders hard. ‘You have to stay here, out of the way. So the paramedics can help your mum. So we can help you.’
‘I can’t leave her alone.’
‘She’s not alone – Gabriel will stay with her.’
‘I can’t trust him!’
‘Then trust me, Scarlett. I’m telling you, Gabriel will keep your mother safe. And right now, I need to make you safe. Do you understand?’
I didn’t understand, I didn’t understand anything, but it was Luke and I trusted him. I nodded and he sagged with relief.
‘Good,’ he said. ‘Now sit still and take deep breaths. I’m going to check your back. Okay?’
Without waiting for an answer he crawled around me on the bed and began tugging at my top. I scanned the room for my sister; she was kneeling on the window seat, wrestling with the latch.
Behind me, Luke said, ‘I don’t want to hurt you, Scarlett, but your t-shirt’s stuck... the blood...’
‘I don’t care,’ I told him. ‘Yank it off.’
