One Year Later

by Sanjida Kay

  Luca is with Carlo in the kitchen. Just as the pictures showed, it runs the length of one side of the house and opens up into a sitting room; colourful rugs are spread over the sofas, and the side tables look as if they’ve just been bolted together from newly planed wood. It’s clean and everything feels new; but it’s rustic and basic, from the uneven raw floorboards to the plastic Mira shower fittings. Which is good: they can’t afford luxury, and Amy doesn’t think she could deal with it – it would feel wrong. Luca and Carlo are talking rapidly in Italian. Luca would tower over the shorter, stockier teenager, if he didn’t slouch. He turns to her.

  ‘Carlo has explain me how everything works in the house. I tell to you later.’

  ‘Thanks, Luca,’ she says.

  Carlo says, ‘Ansonaco. Made by mia famiglia Donati.’ He presents her with a bottle of white wine, holding it in both of his hands as if it’s precious.

  ‘How kind of you,’ she says, taking it from him. The wine is cool in her hands and she slides it into the empty fridge.

  He grins at her, his teeth white in his tanned face. Amy finds she’s smiling back, as if her body is going through the motions of being somebody who is happy to be on holiday, delighted to have been given a bottle of wine.

  ‘What a beautiful house,’ she says, to cover her fading smile, as her mind catches up and she remembers how pointless it all is.

  He nods and says something to Luca, then turns back to her. ‘You tell to me if you need anything. Goodbye.’ He shakes her hand.

  As he’s leaving, Amy notices that he looks around, maybe to check everything is as it should be, although there’s something about his gaze that seems almost proprietorial. He steps out of the kitchen into the darkened archway, just as her stepdaughter and her sister emerge from the other side and stroll past him in their bikinis. Carlo pauses momentarily and gives them a quick salute, but she notices how his eyes skim their bodies.

  ‘Anyone want to come for a quick run down to the beach?’ says Joe, bouncing in, pushing his sunglasses back on his head.

  Luca glances at her.

  ‘You’re on holiday, Luca.’

  He smiles. ‘I am happy to help.’

  ‘Thanks. It’ll be nice to have a break now and again,’ she says, ‘but please, feel free to go to the beach if you want to.’

  He nods at Joe.

  ‘I take my trainers.’

  ‘Okay, see you out the front in five,’ says Joe, and she catches sight of him a moment later, doing windmill stretches and jumping jacks in the driveway. She marvels at how quickly men can get ready, although it’s a lot easier for them: no sports bra; not having to make sure they’re suitably covered up and not exposing too many dimples or bulges; no decisions about whose turn it is to look after the kids or cook dinner; no discussions about how long you’re allowed to be away for.

  She and Matt unpack and sort out the children, slathering them in suncream and wrestling them into swimsuits and rash vests, though neither of them seems that keen on going in the pool. Lotte is anxious about Pearl, Ruby-May’s doll, which she’s brought with her. Amy puts Pearl on one of the sun-loungers and Lotte becomes a little less fretful.

  ‘Pearl hasn’t got a swimming costume,’ she says.

  Amy fills a jug of water and chops up the watermelon she bought before they caught the ferry. When she carries everything back out to the pool, Matt is setting up the sun parasols. Someone has put Lotte’s bikini bottoms on Pearl, hooking the pant legs over the doll’s shoulders to keep them on. Chloe and Bethany are stretched out on the sun-loungers, and she’s struck by how similar they look. They’re both tall and lean, although Chloe still has the skinniness of a teenager and Bethany is solid, with more muscle definition. They have long, straight dark hair, brown eyes and pale-gold skin. Chloe’s mother, Sara, is half-Chinese, and you can see a hint of her ethnicity in the set of Chloe’s eyes, but if you only glanced at the two of them, you’d think they were sisters.

  She’s jealous. There’s no way anyone would mistake Chloe for her sister: she looks old enough to be the girl’s mother; her own skin is so white there’s a bluish sheen to her limbs. When she was a child she had blonde hair, but it darkened as she grew older and she used to dye it back to the original colour. It’s now in a hacked-off bob, with four inches of roots showing and a yellow dip-dye effect at the straggly ends. Her high cheekbones and pointed chin gave her a pixie look when she was younger, but now they only heighten the gauntness of her features.

  ‘Have you got the Wi-Fi code? I meant to ask that kid for it.’

  Amy wants to tell Bethany to chill out. ‘How’s the new job going? What days does your programme go out?’

  ‘It’s a daily show,’ Bethany says, giving her an icy glare. She should know this already.

  ‘It must have been hard to take the time off?’

  ‘That would the understatement of the century.’

  Amy bites her tongue. If Bethany did lose her job on The Show to Tiffany, she’s bound to be feeling insecure. On the other hand, Amy no longer thinks a career is important. She can barely summon up the enthusiasm for her own job, and she’s sure her boss only keeps her on because he’s too much of a wimp to sack a mother who’s lost her child, when the charity she works for specializes in helping dying children to receive hospice care.

  ‘Carlo gave the Wi-Fi code to someone. I need it too,’ says Chloe, seizing her iPad.

  ‘I’ll get it for you, love,’ Amy says.

  Luca had pinned it up on the noticeboard, but she remains in the kitchen for a moment, gathering herself. Her family is grouped around the pool: Bethany, Matt, Chloe, Theo and Lotte; even though Nick hasn’t arrived yet, she knows he’ll be here soon. It makes her twin loss much more acute – the absence of her dad and her youngest daughter. And although part of her hates him, she misses him, and the children miss their grandfather. She doesn’t know how to talk about him to them, and she can’t bring herself to discuss her dad with Matt; she can tell her husband’s barely managing to suppress his rage.

  She wipes her eyes. Right! Time to act like we’re on holiday. She sets her mouth in a rictus of a smile and goes back outside.

  ONE YEAR AGO, SOMERSET

  6

  NICK

  I still have nightmares about it. In my dream I’m running as hard as I can, but the driveway to our house grows steeper and steeper, and I’m not getting any nearer to the garden, where I know, even without seeing them, that the paramedics are crouching in the grass, laying a tiny body onto a stretcher. She was wearing a white dress with sequins that caught the sunlight; for a moment I thought she was moving. I expected her to sit up, push the sheet off her face and shout, Boo! But it was only the rocking of the stretcher as the ambulance crew lifted it, which gave the illusion she was still alive. They stood for a moment, their heads bowed, as if we had fast-forwarded to the funeral already.

  I’m not sure what prompted Bethany to search the pond, because she’d already seen that the gate was still locked. She told me she’d looked everywhere else, but as she was heading towards the house to phone Amy on the landline, she decided to double-check. She climbed over the fence and that’s when she saw her. Ruby-May was floating face-down in the water. One of her shoes was missing.

  Bethany thinks Ruby-May got tangled in the water weed, and that was what held her below the surface. She tried to resuscitate our niece, but she knew it was too late. I think of her sometimes – my sister is strong and muscular, from all those press-ups she does every day – I think of those toned arms pressing down on that small chest. She kept trying. I know she’d never have given up if there had been even the slimmest chance.

  In the post-mortem they said Bethany had broken one of Ruby-May’s ribs.

  I imagine strands of weed wrapped around Ruby-May’s pudgy little wrists, and how she would smell of the water lilies that had rotted at the bottom of the pond. She must have spotted a newt swimming near the bottom, or wanted to pick some of those purple flowers tha
t grow in the marshy bits round the edge.

  No one knows how Ruby-May got into the area around the pond. The gate and the fence, though low enough not to obstruct our mother’s precious view, are too high for her to have climbed over. Dad claims he has no memory of being asked to look after Ruby-May that afternoon. He’d drunk the best part of a bottle of red, Bethany said. It wasn’t just that, though. She says he’d been growing increasingly forgetful, but no one had thought to investigate those memory lapses, or even raise them with him.

  So it wasn’t his fault. It’s hard to remember that though, especially as he refuses – is still refusing – to accept responsibility. I do understand, I really do, why Amy can’t bring herself to speak to him; and she’s barely managing to talk to Bethany, since she was the one who asked Dad to look after Ruby-May. But Dad needs help. We need to help him. Or something in all of us will remain broken.

  The verdict was accidental death.

  10 AUGUST, ITALY

  7

  AMY

  ‘Where are you taking us?’ Matt says. He doesn’t like being in the passenger seat.

  ‘I told you, it’s a surprise,’ Bethany says. She flashes them a grin over her shoulder, her teeth glinting in the semi-darkness. Amy remembers when Bee had them whitened two years ago and only drank almond milk and ate bananas for two days while the bleach set. She feels her stomach lurch. The road is narrow and twisty, and she wishes her sister would focus on driving.

  The people-carrier veers round a hairpin bend, the cliff dropping away to their left.

  ‘Steady,’ Matt says, his jaw clenched.

  ‘Relax – I have to drive behemoths for work. This contraption is a tiddler.’

  The car, loaded with the three children, Matt, Amy and Bethany, is struggling with the steepness of the hill, the engine over-revving.

  ‘Here we go.’ She slams the car down a dirt track that opens into a gravel car park and grinds to a halt.

  ‘Where the hell are we?’

  Bee jumps out and releases the kids and Amy from the back.

  ‘This way, my darlinks,’ she says in a faux Russian accent, sweeping her arm wide. Lotte giggles and rubs her eyes. Bethany’s louder than normal, and Amy suddenly remembers how her sister would turn everything into a performance when she was a child; she was the only one who was aware that the bolder and brighter Bee was, the more nervous her sister was feeling. She wonders why she’s anxious. They crunch over the car park after her. Bethany is wearing iridescent snakeskin-patterned sandals and a white tunic; she flickers moth-like through the dusk. Lights, set low to the ground, illuminate a path that winds through a hedge. Lotte curls her hand into Amy’s. The air is soft and warm and smells of rosemary and geraniums as they brush past the foliage. It’s a world away from their grey, early-morning start.

  ‘Ta-da!’ Bethany wheels round, grinning with triumph.

  They’re standing on a terrace that runs along the top of the cliff. Next to them is an old, white farmhouse; the front has been turned into a cube of glass that blazes with light. Fairy lights have been strung across the glass balustrade and intertwined through palms in large pots, and all the tables are bathed in a warm glow from candles that gust in the warm breeze.

  ‘Our table, I believe,’ Bee says, striding over to the biggest, which has a reservation sign on it, with ‘Flowers’ written in chalk and a hand-drawn daisy; there’s a bottle of wine already in an ice bucket.

  They walk to the edge of the terrace and look down. The view is stunning. Below them, the sea whispers against the sand, leaving trails of foam. As far as they can see, there is only sea and sky, a rich indigo and dark plum, bleeding towards a horizon of tangerine and hot pink where the sun is setting.

  ‘Wow!’ says Theo.

  ‘Is that Grosseto?’ Matt nods towards the distant shoreline, sparkling with lights from the nearest town. It seems a million miles away and makes Amy feel small, as she realizes how remote the island is. The first star is shining.

  ‘My treat,’ Bethany says as she pours them a glass of chilled rosé.

  ‘What’s this in honour of?’ asks Matt. He’s sounding less grumpy now; she can tell he’s impressed by the restaurant, and the children are happily tearing into home-made garlic bread, the waiters fussing round them, chucking them under the chin and bringing them extra lemonade. He hadn’t wanted them to go out on their first night; the children are tired and it’s been a long day. Bethany had breezily brushed away their concerns.

  ‘I asked Luca and Joe to stay at the villa – thought this should be family only,’ she says now, her voice scratchy. ‘We haven’t seen much of each other over the last few months – I’ve been wrapped up in work, transferring to Bristol and the new job, blah, blah, blah.’ She takes a breath and a slug of wine.

  Amy finds herself mirroring her sister, the wine loosening her muscles. She spears an olive and the taste seems to explode in her mouth: grass-green oil, thyme and salty lemon. The food tastes so much better here. She thinks of the bland supermarket tomatoes they get back home, as she takes slices of burrata layered with glossy green basil leaves.

  ‘I wanted to say thank you for inviting me…’ Bethany pauses again as the children shriek when they see the size of their pizza, the crusts floury, oozing with molten mozzarella. A waiter slides a plate of grilled fish in front of them, charred bulbs of garlic bursting in the juices; another of baby courgettes, their yellow flowers twisted into floral parcels stuffed with goat’s cheese; flame-roasted red peppers, and tomatoes still on the vine, their skins bubbling and crisped. Amy’s stomach rumbles.

  ‘We couldn’t not invite you,’ she says, stretching out her hand and clasping her sister’s.

  Bee shakes her head. ‘I know how awful this last year has been for you. And you must both have hated me for asking Dad to look after Ruby-May. You probably still do.’ She looks down at her white plate. ‘There isn’t a day I don’t regret—’ She presses her napkin against her eyes and turns to Amy, grasping her hand in both of hers. ‘I can’t lose you, Ames. I’ve missed you.’

  Amy opens her arms and Bethany almost falls into them. Her sister hugs her so tightly she feels her bones creak.

  ‘I’m sorry. I can never make it up to you. And I miss her. I miss Ruby-May.’ Bethany’s tears are hot and slide down Amy’s neck. She can’t remember the last time she saw her sister cry. She was always the strong one.

  Matt gets to his feet and puts an arm round Bethany, pats her on the back. She can see the effort it takes, but he manages finally, gruffly, to say, ‘Not your fault.’

  Bethany pulls away from them, smiling, her eyes wet and glittering, and gives the children and Chloe a hug and a kiss too, before she sits back down. Lotte and Theo are absorbed in their pizza and are arguing about what they’re going to watch on the iPad when they get back to the villa, but Chloe is watching the three of them, nervously twisting her napkin, as if she wishes she was somewhere else. Teenagers, Amy thinks. Can’t bear any emotion on display. Or does Chloe simply wish she was at home with her real mother?

  ‘I’m famished,’ Bee says, sliding a piece of fish onto her plate and raising a glass to toast Matt and Amy. She sniffs, then winks at Chloe and taps her glass against her step-niece’s lemonade bottle.

  ‘Yeah,’ says Matt, stealing a piece of pizza from Lotte and leaning back in his chair, ‘I could just about manage to live here. A nice little villa on the coast.’

  Amy takes another sip of her wine, a perfect bone-dry rosé with a hint of strawberries, and smiles at her sister, who raises her eyebrows at her and grins indulgently at Matt. The air smells of ozone and oleander blossom, and it’s as if something missing has clicked back into place and she remembers how the two of them used to be when they were children – roaming through the Somerset countryside whilst their mother was painting, practically inseparable from one another.

  It’s going to be okay.

  11 AUGUST, ITALY

  8

  AMY

  ‘Whe
n’s Uncle Nick coming?’ Lotte asks for the fifth time.

  ‘He’s ten minutes closer than he was ten minutes ago,’ says Matt.

  ‘What? That doesn’t make any sense,’ Theo says.

  Amy checks the clock in the kitchen. It’s early evening. Nick really should be here any minute, she thinks, but doesn’t say it out loud, in case his taxi is late and the children badger them even more. She lays the table. There’s fresh bread from Carlo’s family’s farm – Chloe went to buy it from them this morning. She’s put pizza on trays ready to go in the oven (surely they’ve got to be better than shop-bought ones from home?) and has made a salad out of tomatoes, basil, mozzarella and olive oil. She’s laid out butter, extra Parmesan, already grated, a plate of cheese and prosciutto, a jug with sliced lemon and cold water. It’s not what she’d call cooking, but it makes her feel slightly calmer: she’s managed to put together a meal without walking out or throwing it in the bin halfway through. It’s progress of sorts. She pops the cork on a bottle of Prosecco and pours herself a glass.

  ‘Would you like one?’ she asks, as Bethany drifts in from the pool.

  ‘I can’t believe you’ve started without me!’

  Amy hasn’t even taken a sip of her own drink, but she sets her glass down and picks up a champagne flute for her sister. In spite of last night, she’s still nervous around Bethany; she’s afraid she’ll remember what happened and will lash out at Bee when her guard is down. But then Bee chinks her glass against hers, making a high-pitched ting, and she realizes her sister wasn’t being serious.