You Let Me In

by Lucy Clarke

  I flick on the light, too agitated to sleep. From my bedside drawer, I pull out my copy of Wild Fear, and turn to the front.

  I read the dedication.

  For my mother.

  I run a fingertip beneath those words.

  Your mum would’ve been so proud, a reader once said at a book signing.

  They were wrong.

  *

  Wind funnels along the side of the house as I step from the back door into the morning’s cold bite. Beneath bare soles, the paving stones are ice. Tightening the cord of my dressing gown, I feel the glossy kiss of my swimsuit beneath.

  At the end of the pathway, private steps carve into the rock face, which I share with Frank and Enid’s property. I concentrate on each footstep, avoiding the puddles of seawater pooling in grooves, the rock edges furred with seaweed.

  Last night I only managed to snatch an hour or two’s sleep. It felt like there was an axle out of alignment in my mind, causing my thoughts to over-steer, almost imperceptibly, in one direction so that, no matter how far I travelled, eventually they’d turn a circle and I’d arrive exactly where I started.

  Out here though, buffeted by the blast and sting of salt air, my head begins to clear. Reaching the beach, the sand is compact, cold against my feet. Whitecaps rise and crumble beneath blustering clouds.

  ‘You’re mad,’ Fiona always tells me whenever she hears I’ve been in for a winter swim. ‘No one knows you’re out there. You don’t even wear a wetsuit. What if something happened?’

  ‘It won’t,’ I reply, confident in my ability to judge conditions, to know my own limits. I’ve always loved to swim, but there is something intoxicating about swimming in the depths of winter. When I moved here, I made a bargain with myself that I’d get in the water once a week – all year round.

  As children, we used to holiday in Cornwall, renting a caravan set back from the beach. I remember a particularly cold April, books and blankets scattered across the caravan, and a sense of restlessness at having spent too long indoors. I’d looked up from my page to watch a group of elderly people in swimsuits gathered at the water’s edge. There was no squealing, no tiptoeing, no fuss. They simply walked into the sea and swam.

  ‘That’s what dementia does to you,’ Fiona had declared, clambering onto the sofa beside me to watch.

  ‘They’re brave,’ I countered, chin resting on forearms.

  ‘They’re like, a hundred. They’ll get pneumonia.’

  Our mother, who’d been writing in the gold-edged notebook we’d bought her for Christmas, glanced up.

  ‘Cold water boosts our white blood cells because our bodies are forced to react to the changing conditions. It’s good for you.’ She’d always had a knack for casting a relevant, articulate fact into almost any stream of conversation.

  Fiona turned to me, eyes glinting. ‘I dare you to join them.’

  Four years older than me, her approval was hard to gain. I thought about the sharpness of the cold, the feel of the icy waves lifting and dropping me, the way my skin would pucker with goose bumps. I placed a bookmark into the spine of my novel.

  ‘Sure.’

  I lasted a minute and a half, the cold squeezing the air from my lungs, but Fiona had clapped and cheered from the shoreline and I felt like a hero. Afterwards our mother warmed a pan of hot chocolate and I sat cross-legged in front of the electric fire watching the wiggling red lines of heat, the mug cupped in my hands, a surge of endorphins pumping in my body.

  Now at the shoreline, I step from my dressing gown, the cold nicking my skin. I set the gown on the damp sand, then snap a picture of it, typing a quick post:

  My drug of choice for getting the brain cells firing. #wildswim

  Then the phone is away, and it is just me and the sea.

  The trick, I’ve learned, is not to rush. To set a pace that doesn’t falter. I walk purposefully to the shore and straight into the sea. I don’t focus on the cold gripping my ankles: I concentrate on my breathing, keeping it level as the water climbs to my waist.

  I push off, kicking away from shore. The bitter sea wraps around me, stealing every thought in my head. It is all I can do to remember to breathe.

  I’m careful to remain near shore, not wanting to chance my luck against the stronger currents that pull and suck towards the horizon. I can taste the salt on my lips, feel the pleasing sting of it against my skin.

  I look back towards my house. I realise that I’ve left the light on in the writing room and I can see straight inside, the empty desk eyeing me.

  It looks, just for a moment, as if someone passes behind it.

  I tread water, blinking saltwater from my eyes, looking again. It is a trick of the light, of course. A strange reflection, because now the shadow has gone.

  *

  The first time I saw the cliff-top house was with Flynn. We had come to Cornwall to be introduced to a ten-day-old Drake. Fiona seemed shell-shocked that this tiny pink creature with tightly curled fists and a fierce cry was hers. She moved around the house in a daze, a muslin flung over her shoulder, patches of her shirt stiff with leaked milk.

  ‘Take him,’ Fiona had begged, when I passed the nursery one evening and found her jigging him wearily.

  Pressing him to my chest, I slowly circled my palm over the curve of his tiny back. I began to sing in a low, half-whispered voice, words that unravelled from some distant song that our mother had taught us. The rhythm seemed to soothe him, and I placed my lips against the soft down of his head and breathed in. Longing bloomed like blood rising to the surface of my skin.

  When I turned, I saw Fiona still standing in the doorway of the nursery, watching. Her eyes shone with tears that didn’t fall.

  ‘I can’t even stop him crying.’

  ‘You’re doing brilliantly – but you’re exhausted. Get some sleep. I’ll wake you when he’s hungry.’

  Fiona didn’t seem to hear. Her gaze was on the empty cot.

  ‘There are so many things I want to ask Mum. She did it on her own. The two of us.’ She shook her head. ‘Dad left when you were six weeks old. How the hell did she manage with two kids and no family nearby to help? I can’t even imagine. She was a hero, but I didn’t … I didn’t tell her how incredible she was … it’s only now …’ She pulled back her lips, as if baring her teeth. ‘I just, I miss her so much.’

  ‘I know you do,’ I whispered.

  It was no surprise that the cruelness of our mother’s absence revisited us again with the birth of Drake, in the way that life and death circle each other. She would have loved rocking Drake to sleep in her arms, examining those tiny pink toes, carefully dressing and undressing him, bathing him, washing the blankets he used, the Babygros he soiled, the muslins he posseted on. She would have made meals, stocked freezers, emptied bins, folded washing. She would have praised Bill’s easy competency at changing nappies, or with manning the sterilizing station. She would have looked at Fiona and known that sleep deprivation was sinking her, that the baby blues were in danger of growing into something more serious.

  She would have done all those things because she was a mother herself, and she knew.

  I tried to fill that role as best I could, but each time I held Drake, my own longing sharpened. Flynn, sensing I needed a break, removed the pile of clean vests and white hats and delicate cardigans I’d been folding, took my fingers in his and told me, ‘Let’s walk.’

  We weaved down a footpath in the direction of the coast, eventually coming to a steep path of switchbacks leading to a small bay hugged by cliffs.

  I had a vague memory of visiting this beach years before. I could recall the red tassels of a picnic blanket, my mother sitting with a hand shading the sun from her eyes, marvelling at something. I could picture the black rocks that lay exposed and dripping at low tide.

  As we walked, Flynn said, ‘It will happen for us.’

  I’d slipped my hand into the back pocket of his jeans, leaning into him. ‘It’s been over a year.’

/>   ‘Maybe it’s time to see a doctor.’

  I felt myself stiffen, retract. But I needed answers, too.

  When we reached the far end of the bay, we looked up, noticing the squat fisherman’s cottage set on the cliff top. ‘What a view.’

  ‘It has a For Sale sign,’ he said, pointing to the red board at its shoulder.

  The owner was home – a retired nurse who didn’t mind this young couple knocking on her door – and she invited us to look around. The cottage was hopelessly run-down, the roof sagging, the wallpaper curling at the edges, yet there was magic there.

  ‘Imagine living here,’ Flynn had said when we were alone, turning me to face the view, wrapping his arms around my waist, chin resting on my shoulder. ‘We could do it, couldn’t we?’

  The money from my advance had just landed in our account, and Flynn had some savings from a family inheritance.

  ‘Yes, I think we could. But Cornwall? What about your job?’

  ‘I can be a tree surgeon anywhere,’ he’d said. ‘I think this is where you want to be, isn’t it? Near your sister, near Drake.’

  I thought of Fiona cradling her new son; I thought of our mother’s dream to own a house overlooking the sea; I thought of the chances of stumbling across this cottage, finding the owner home. It seemed serendipitous.

  ‘Yes,’ I’d said to Flynn. ‘It is.’

  Twelve weeks later, we had the keys. We moved in, sleeping on a mattress on the floor while we made plans. A lick of paint. A wood burning stove. New curtains. Fresh carpet. It was everything we’d need.

  Now, as I swim looking up at the towering house on the cliff top, I wonder if we’d stuck to the plan – if the idea of the house hadn’t overtaken me – whether our marriage would have had a better chance of surviving.

  Here I am alone, with a house I can no longer afford, and a career that feels like it, too, is teetering on a cliff edge.

  My feet look bloodless and pale against the dark rock as I climb the cliff steps, shivering beneath my dressing gown. My hair hangs wetly at my neck and I am already anticipating the warmth of the shower.

  As I follow the narrow path alongside the house, a plastic bag wheels past on the breeze, brushing my bare ankle. I grab for it, but a gust lifts it out of reach, parachuting the bag beyond me. Hurrying after it, I come to the end of the path and halt.

  The driveway is scattered with litter. Used kitchen roll, empty tins, plastic containers, and cereal boxes are strewn across the gravel. Sheets of newspaper dance in the gusts, several more pinned against the fence line. A crumpled page from a notebook rolls past me. At the edge of the driveway, the recycling bin lies on its side, lid open. Although the wind is blowing, I know it isn’t nearly strong enough to upturn a bin.

  I hurry across the drive, gravel cutting into my feet, and with some effort, I manage to right the bin. I re-knot the belt of my dressing gown, then begin gathering the litter. My wet hair whips around my face, leaving trails of fresh salt.

  As I push my hair back from my face, I have the growing sensation that I’m not alone.

  Across the lane, I spot Mark standing in the doorway of his parents’ house, a cigarette held between his fingers.

  ‘Foxes,’ he calls.

  He stubs the cigarette against the wall, then turns and disappears inside the house.

  I stand there, open-mouthed. Did that just happen? Had he – a grown man – upturned my bins?

  I half-laugh, staggered. Is this a reaction to the house build – a retaliation for compromising the view from their family home? I think of the awful visit six months after we’d bought the house, as I unrolled the architect’s drawings across Frank and Enid’s kitchen table.

  ‘You said renovate, not rebuild!’ Frank exploded, colour bursting into his cheeks.

  When I’d worried about the neighbours’ reaction, friends reassured me that No one owns a view! Any other buyer would do the same! Although they were right, it didn’t lessen the guilty heat that crept up my neck.

  Enid had moved towards the kitchen window, heavy-knuckled hands worrying the edge of her cardigan. She looked out towards the sea as if her time with the view was waning. If there’d been a moment when I was close to reconsidering, that had been it.

  I finish collecting the litter, then drag the bin back into position at the end of the driveway. If I were Fiona, I’d go over and demand an apology from Mark, but I don’t have the energy for a confrontation.

  My novel, I think. That’s what I need to focus on.

  Setting myself at my desk with a steaming coffee and salt-damp hair, I am ready. I open the drawer to grab a pencil – but can’t find one. I pull the drawer right out, trailing my hand through the mess of pens, Sharpie markers, Post-it notes, and glue sticks. There is a hole puncher, a calculator, a pot of drawing pins, a lighter for my oil burner – but no bloody pencils.

  It’s a stupid detail, but it bothers me: I always have spares.

  I tramp downstairs and locate a pencil from the depths of my handbag. I’m tetchy by the time I return to my writing room. I open the window, settle myself for a second time. I keep a well-thumbed dictionary on my desk and I watch as its cover lifts in the breeze, pages fanning.

  Something doesn’t feel quite right. I try not to indulge the feeling – I don’t want to become one of those writers who demand a certain ambience to create – but I can’t shake the thought that something is off-balance.

  Then I realise what it is. The dictionary. It is usually secured by a paperweight – a beautiful glass globe that my mother bought on a hiking holiday in Malta three years before her death.

  ‘It looks like it’s caught the sea inside,’ she’d told me, a wistful look in her eyes. I always keep the paperweight on top of the dictionary – but oddly, it is now positioned beside it.

  I pick up the paperweight, turning it through my fingers, feeling its solidity and coolness against my palms. Daylight catches in the silver flecks, making it shimmer like the surface of the sea. As I rotate it, my skin catches on something jagged.

  Lifting the globe towards my face, I see the crack – a chip no greater than the length of a fingernail.

  I can’t remember damaging it.

  There is something unsettling at the back of my mind, a sense of discord. I pace for a moment, trying to work it loose.

  Then I seize on it: the jagged shard of glass that punctured my foot. It’d looked like a tiny, lethal icicle. The same colour as this.

  I hurry from the writing room, descending the stairs, fingers gripping the paperweight. Pushing open my bedroom door, I go straight to the wastepaper basket at the foot of my mirror. Digging through it, I pull out a parcel of tissue.

  Opening it carefully, I remove the dagger of glass I’d found embedded in the carpet.

  I press the missing fragment against the paperweight.

  Like a key slipped into a lock, it is the exact fit.

  Previously

  When staying in someone else’s house, one would have to be incurious not to wonder about the owner. There are clues everywhere – the photos carefully selected for display on the walls, the clothes hanging in the floor-to-ceiling wardrobes, the stock of medicines in the bathroom cabinet, the box file filled with documents in the bureau, the post that arrives with the handwritten address.

  I can take my time, enjoy these small discoveries because, for now, your house is mine.

  I drift from the kitchen to the lounge, admiring the sense of continuity and flow between rooms. Everything is marvellously tasteful: the low-backed cream sofa, framed by two upholstered tub armchairs, each carefully angled to face the water. The neutral tones and uncluttered lines naturally focus the gaze towards the sea. Even on a dull day, such as this, there is a mesmerising quality to the water. In warmer weather, I imagine sliding back the bifold doors, removing a wall of the room so that it feels as if the house and water are just a breath apart.

  It’s a truly beautiful home. I’m sure some people would be quick to add, �
�Well, yes, easy if you’ve got the money.’

  I disagree. This takes vision.

  I could never have created this.

  My gaze is drawn to a slight groove in the seat of your sofa, the lightest depression in the fabric. This is where you sit. My eye travels to the adjacent coffee table, where there is a scuff mark close to the edge where you must put your feet up.

  I lower myself into the spot that is familiar to you. I find my hand sliding down the side of the sofa. It’s the forgotten corners in a home that are often the most revealing. I feel the rough grate of sand or crumbs beneath my nails. My fingers meet something firm and narrow, and I withdraw a pencil. The end of it is splintered, the lead protruding further than the wooden housing. It appears as if the pencil has been snapped in two.

  An accident?

  Pushing myself to my feet, I turn. Behind the sofa is a library wall. Carefully selected pieces of pottery punctuate the rows of books with the grace of well-placed commas. I stand for a moment admiring your literary choices, many of them classics: Hemingway, Shakespeare, Brontë and Austen. A little predictable, but nice all the same.

  I step closer, running my finger along the worn spines of the fiction shelf, passing psychological thrillers, romance novels, literary novels – but no, I still do not see it. I keep looking until I’m sure.

  There is only one notable absence on these shelves: your book.

  5

  Elle

  I drop the final piece of naan into my mouth, then gather the takeaway dishes, following Fiona through to her kitchen.

  ‘Avert your eyes,’ Fiona instructs, glancing at the sink, which is piled with washing up. ‘One of those weeks.’

  ‘I’ll do them. It’ll take me a minute.’

  ‘You will not.’ She blocks the sink. ‘You can pour us more wine.’

  My sister’s relentless bossiness has a nostalgic flavour. I’m used to my actions being channelled, as if I’m something fluid, destined to flow around Fiona.

  ‘I’ve been meaning to ask,’ I say, watching her rinse the plastic takeaway dishes, then jam them into the recycling bin, punching down a cereal box to make room. ‘You know when you cleaned after the Airbnb, did you happen to go into my writing room?’