The Lost Summers of Driftwood

by Vanessa McCausland

  ‘That’s not true,’ said Jez. ‘You did know her, of course you did. But people are complex. You can’t know everything about someone.’

  Phoebe turned and looked at him. Close up, the creep of time had made lines, like paper softly folded, around his eyes, but the blue-grey of his irises had not faded. ‘Small things, yes. But someone taking their own life? Someone doing things that no one but a blind old lady knew about?’

  Jez shook his head and then looked at her. ‘This isn’t just about meeting Ginny, is it? You don’t believe Karin killed herself, do you?’

  Phoebe swallowed. ‘No,’ she said with a force that she hadn’t anticipated. ‘No, I don’t. But there were things about my sister that I’m just finding out. Maybe I didn’t know her as well as I thought I did.’

  ‘You did know her, Phoebe. And if you don’t think Karin walked into that river by choice then I believe you.’

  Phoebe took Jez’s hand. ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  Jez, squeezed her shoulders and then moved towards the French doors. ‘Have you told your family any of this? What do they think?’

  She hung her head and sighed. ‘Mum and Camilla think she was depressed about not being married with kids at her age. Or lonely, or something, because she was here, where they thought was the middle of nowhere.’

  ‘But not you. You didn’t think that.’

  ‘I spoke to her every week. She was good. She was as happy as any of us. Her life wasn’t perfect—sometimes the shop stressed her if it was too quiet, but she was coping fine. She had a new idea to expand the florist business, and she had made an appointment to adopt a dog.’ Saying this out loud made Phoebe cry more. She looked at Jez but he was nodding, his eyes soft with emotion.

  ‘She didn’t have depression or anxiety. I would have noticed if she’d suddenly changed.’ It was up to me to notice. ‘But I don’t know, Camilla and Mum didn’t really question her suicide. Maybe they didn’t know her like I did.’

  * * *

  A memory returned to her, faintly, a whisper.

  ‘I want them to be sunflowers.’ Phoebe’s voice was small. The sadness, days of crying, had made her voice so small.

  ‘Darling, that would be entirely inappropriate.’ Her mother shook her head and caressed the froth of cream roses in front of them. Her mother seemed to only ever use words of affection when softening a blow.

  ‘But she loved sunflowers,’ said Phoebe, wishing she could muster more strength, more fight.

  ‘They smell terrible,’ said Camilla, scrunching up her nose. ‘So big.’

  They were on their way to the funeral home to plan Karin’s service. Her dad was getting everyone coffees and there was a florist next to the café.

  Her mother pursed her lips. ‘It’s just not suitable.’

  ‘I don’t think we could really say Karin had a favourite flower,’ said Camilla. ‘She was a florist, she appreciated all flowers. Oh, these are gorgeous.’ She picked up a bunch of poppies, their little faces manic and bright. ‘Too red though.’

  ‘Why? Karin would have wanted bright flowers. She was bright. She loved colour,’ said Phoebe.

  Her mother fixed her with a look—the look she’d learned as a child that cautioned her not to go any further. ‘You can’t put bright flowers, let alone sunflowers, on the coffin of someone who has taken their own life.’

  Phoebe had felt a rage form within her and she wanted to grab the cream roses and shred them with her fingers, throw them in her mother’s face. ‘She didn’t kill herself.’

  Her mother made a huffing sound.

  Phoebe looked to Camilla. ‘Is that what you think, too? That she really did that to herself?’

  Camilla picked up a bunch of tulips, hiding her face behind their elegant foliage. ‘It’s not us who think that, it’s the police. They said her death was not suspicious.’

  Phoebe pressed her palms into her eye sockets. ‘But this is Karin we’re talking about. Our Karin.’ Phoebe felt her dad’s presence behind her and was grateful for it. She turned to him, hoping for support. ‘Dad?’

  His eyes met hers but dropped to his feet. And then the moment was lost, and Camilla was reaching for her macchiato, saying how tired she was. They had gone to the funeral home and there had been no colourful flowers on Karin’s coffin. They had never spoken about the way Karin had died again.

  The warmth of Jez’s hand on her arm roused her from the memory.

  ‘You did know her best, Phoebe,’ he said.

  ‘I didn’t even put her favourite flowers on her coffin.’

  The sun flashed as it caught a movement in the water. ‘Sometimes I feel like if I stare into the river I’ll see her face. Sometimes I feel like she’s still there, just below the surface. Like she’s in the river now.’

  Jez opened the French doors to the sound of the breeze in the she-oaks. He faced away from her, towards the river, transfixed as it transformed into a sheet of light. ‘I couldn’t believe it when I heard. I mean, Karin and I kind of missed each other as adults but . . .’ He paused. ‘I remember once—we must only have been about thirteen—we were playing hide and seek and you had the most awesome hiding spot under the jetty, and we were all looking for you for ages. I mean, it felt like the whole day in that kid way of when days just went on and on.’

  Phoebe smiled. ‘I loved those days.’

  ‘And Cammie was the first to give up, because she was hot and tired and needed a drink.’

  ‘Typical.’

  ‘Tommy was annoyed that you’d outsmarted even him, and me and Karin were trying to figure out where the hell you were. It was getting to the point of calling the parents, but Karin was like, “No, she’s all right.” And I asked how she knew, and she said that you’d saved her life in the river, and ever since that day it was her mission to look after you. It was like a superpower—she could always feel if you were okay.’

  Phoebe felt his words smart in her chest. ‘She said that?’

  Jez pursed his lips together. ‘You know, when I heard she died, I thought back to that exact moment. She kept looking and looking when we’d all given up.’

  ‘And she was the one who found me, freezing, standing in the water up to my waist.’ Phoebe smiled even though her cheeks were wet. ‘She wasn’t even angry with me. It was so strange. I remember how sometimes she felt older than me and other times I felt older than her.’

  ‘Maybe it was because you were both looking after each other.’

  Phoebe shook her head and tried to breathe. ‘Except I couldn’t in the end, could I? Since she died I feel like I’ve been running and running because I’ve felt so guilty. Instead I looked to Camilla. She has the husband and the kids and the big happy house. She seems to have it together, you know? You have no idea how many hours I spent researching my wedding, Jez. I think that’s when Nathaniel and I grew apart—I was plotting my perfect life with him, while under the surface it was disintegrating around me and I couldn’t even tell. I don’t know when the point came that he decided he didn’t want me, that he wouldn’t do it. And I don’t remember knowing that it was him I wanted, really him. Maybe it was just the idea of him? Maybe it was just the thing you do? It was all my idea to get married. I remember the exact way his face looked when I said we should get married. It was noncommittal. But I couldn’t accept it. I tried to make him propose to me even though he didn’t want to.’

  Jez shook his head. ‘Give yourself a break, Phoebs. You were grieving. You’d lost your sister and best friend. So what? You wanted love and stability.’ He looked at her with such tenderness that she wanted to reach out and touch him. But then he turned back to the river and laughed under his breath. ‘The perfect life. What is that? It’s having two children.’

  She made a sad, clicking sound with her tongue. ‘Oh Jez, who’s to say that’s perfection?’

  ‘Asha.’

  ‘If she wants it so badly, why doesn’t she leave you?’

  His laugh was joyless. ‘It’s as though we bot
h chose the worst person to try to make babies with. She had problems initially, but then she had an operation for endometriosis that they think pretty much fixed it. But we still couldn’t conceive. Then they realised that it was me. It’s got lots of technical names but long and short of it, I can’t make her pregnant. I’ve changed my diet, exercise, taken vitamins and supplements. Everything.’

  He’d given up so much for her, it must have been like a slap in the face that she kept smoking.

  ‘We could use a donor but I don’t want to. She blames my pride. She blames me for it all. She suggested Tommy, but I know him. He won’t because of the autism risk—it’s why they won’t have another child . . . and it would all just be too weird. I wouldn’t even ask him and she hates me for that.’

  ‘It sounds like it’s been hard.’

  He shrugged and walked out onto the veranda, and Phoebe followed. The sun slanted low and warm into their eyes. She leaned her elbows on the railing.

  ‘Do you ever think back to how simple our love was?’ he asked, eyes half closed against the glare. ‘Playing each other mix tapes in my room and lying on the jetty for hours? We were so . . .’

  She thought he was going to say ‘naïve’ but instead he said ‘hopeful’.

  ‘Everything was before us and we thought we’d do it all together. It felt like everything would be lit with this . . . I don’t know how to describe it—light. If we were just together.’

  Phoebe’s heart raced and her stomach churned. She knew exactly the feeling he was talking about. The way her whole body illuminated in his presence. Every nerve cell reaching for his touch. She felt exactly the same way now standing right here. None of it had diminished, not a single bit. ‘Did we talk about living in Sydney together? I can’t remember,’ she said.

  ‘I think it was the only thing we didn’t talk about. You were going to go travelling and then come back here. I don’t think we ever really went into the details past that point. I knew you wanted to go to university and have a life in Sydney and I guess I thought I was capable of it. But when you came back from Europe you’d changed somehow. You were, I don’t know, more worldly or something. There was this distance between us that made it impossible to . . . you know what happened. I just knew I couldn’t leave here, I suppose.’

  ‘It’s funny, I always thought I abandoned you,’ she said.

  ‘No, it was me who abandoned you.’

  ‘And then your mum got sick.’

  ‘Asha came along at that time and she and Mum got on so well. I suppose part of what’s kept us together all this time is that Mum absolutely loved her. They shared that creative spirit, I think. I feel like I’d be somehow letting Mum down . . .’

  ‘I knew your mum, too. I think she’d just want you to be happy, Jez.’ Phoebe didn’t feel bad about saying it because it was the simple truth.

  He turned to her. ‘Do you think we could be happy? In that way we once were? Or was it just because we were so young and we’d had no pain yet? We hadn’t lost people . . . We hadn’t looked into someone’s eyes and seen resentment where we’d expected love. We hadn’t felt like failures.’

  She started to cry, but silently, bracing her body against the railing. She pressed her forehead against the cool wood and cried for his pain and for how hard he was trying. For the love he had for his dead mother. For Asha who just wanted to have a family with him. She cried for Tommy not having another child because of autism and she cried for herself and the deep hurt of rejection and being let down when so much was riding on being buoyed up. She cried for Karin, who she didn’t protect after all.

  When all her tears had been spent, she felt Jez’s warm hand curl around hers. His eyes were wet.

  ‘I don’t want to hurt anyone,’ she said.

  He kissed the back of her hand. ‘That’s why I love you.’

  CHAPTER 15

  The rain fell in sheets across the river and Phoebe picked over a bowl of dry cereal. It stuck to the roof of her mouth and she could barely swallow.

  Phoebe had never thought herself capable of being the other woman. It was something that women with more cleavage and less empathy did. But this was Jez. They had done nothing but hold hands as the sun slid towards the water, but a line had been crossed, she knew that. It wasn’t a physical line as much as an emotional one. Phoebe didn’t know if she believed in soulmates, but sitting there overlooking the river, she felt as though she had never been closer to someone. And she realised that maybe this was what Nathaniel had been talking about when he told her something was missing. Maybe it was simply being vulnerable to someone and feeling seen and held and safe. It was glimpsing someone’s hurts and pains and still loving what you saw. She didn’t know why she couldn’t do this with Nathaniel. She just couldn’t.

  She thought back to the beginning with Nathaniel. Had there been an opening up about their feelings? An emotional connection? No, not like she had with Jez. If she was completely honest, Nathaniel had always had a slightly distracted quality, as though there was something going on somewhere else that he was missing out on. She’d never taken it personally, but perhaps she should have. The irony was that it had initially been him who had pursued her, even though her heart hadn’t at first been in it. If only she’d listened to her own feelings—perhaps they’d been telling her that she needed something more. Their relationship had been a sphere that turned on the axis of dinner dates with friends and who would do the vacuuming on the weekend. Of course, she’d never lived with Jez and shared those practicalities, but somehow she knew the deeper thread of their communication would make things different. It was strange now to think that the more superficial relationship she’d had with Nate had been enough. It was strange how little you could know yourself and hide your own feelings.

  And Jez. He wasn’t one to hide from anything. He would never have gone looking for a bit on the side, Phoebe knew that. But unhappiness and circumstance had woven a particular kind of net, steeped in the honeyed nostalgia of their past. They had known each other in that difficult time of late childhood, so their becoming, their movement into the world, had been shared. It was as though something formative had fossilised in their brains and their bodies.

  Phoebe had wanted to still time on that veranda yesterday, his hand in hers. The first sounds of others in the house and they had parted, Jez to shower and Phoebe to help Wendy and the Texan with dinner, guilty and elated and pouring too much gin into the cocktails. She avoided eye contact with Jez for the rest of the evening but she could feel the pull of him on her body like a rope, tethering a boat to the shore just beneath the waterline.

  She got up now and put her cereal bowl in the sink. The rain thrummed louder and lashed against the windows. The river was pewter and pock-marked with it. There would be no gardening today and how could she go to Driftwood and face everyone after what had happened? She and Jez hadn’t had time to discuss the mechanics of how to inflict as little pain as possible. There was no temptation afforded by surreptitious text messages, or any kind of electronic communication, because there was none here. For that she was grateful. She was adamant that she wouldn’t allow anything to happen until Jez left Asha. But how would Jez leave Asha? And what would the shape and texture of something new look and feel like? The fallout would be huge. Surely Flick would leave with Asha, and what about Wendy and the Texan? Wendy knew Jez and Asha had problems but even if the break was clean, it wouldn’t be really. Everyone would wonder when it had begun between the two of them. And when had something begun? She remembered back to the night of the missing boat. The things Jez had said.

  She found her mobile phone abandoned on the windowsill above the kitchen sink and scrolled through the unread messages from the last time she’d been in range. She stopped at Hellie’s. It had been too long since Phoebe had texted, let alone spoken to her closest friend. She couldn’t believe she’d been here for several weeks. It had been too hard at the time to admit even to Hellie that things with Nathaniel were over. Hellie was
the one person she couldn’t hide from. Hellie knew that the decision not to get engaged wasn’t mutual. She knew how all-consumed Phoebe had been with wedding plans. Speaking to her would be like having to stare into a mirror and not look away.

  It was 10.15 am; Hellie would probably be at home for Ava’s morning nap.

  She picked up after the first ring.

  ‘Hi Hellie, it’s Phoebe.’ It was strange addressing her friend so formally. They had long ago lost the need for naming each other in greeting but she was calling from a landline.

  ‘Oh my God.’ There was relief in Hellie’s voice and it made Phoebe feel bad about not calling sooner. ‘I was just saying to Mum that I felt like putting out a missing person’s alert.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m sort of a self-imposed missing person.’

  Hellie paused. ‘Oh Phoebs, it’s so shit. It’s really over then with Nathaniel. Over, over?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘And you just wanted to escape from everything?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Isn’t it hard being at the cottage though?’

  This was what she loved about her friend, she was so intuitive. Phoebe’s voice was husky with withheld emotion. ‘Yes. But don’t feel too sorry for me. I’ve quit my job to grow vegetables.’

  ‘No. What? How? When?’ Hellie’s voice had the bright tinge of hysteria. ‘How will I survive without my freebie bottles of champagne? My plus one invites? I would have done your job.’

  ‘You’ve got a baby.’

  ‘What baby?’

  Phoebe laughed, imagining Hellie’s straight face. She had never admitted her real feelings about her job, even to Hellie. She enjoyed taking her to the parties and lavishing free wine on her. It had been enough for a while.