by Sanjida Kay
‘Cheers!’ Bethany says and squeezes Amy’s shoulder, smiling at her. ‘Thank God I’m on holiday and can have a glass or two of wine without Joe ticking me off. By the way, he won’t eat that. Sorry, should have warned you.’
‘I won’t eat what?’ asks Joe.
He’s entered the kitchen almost soundlessly. He’s wearing flipflops, shorts and a vest and already has a warm glow from the sun on his shoulders and cheekbones. Amy hasn’t got the energy for this conversation. She’s been worrying about money. They haven’t got enough to pay for the holiday, even sharing the cost of the house and the food and the hire car, but Matt had agreed to it because, well, what else could he do? Anywhere in the UK would have been as expensive and would have reminded them too much of Somerset. Not to commemorate the day in some way would also have been unthinkable. And if they’d gone on as they were, then Nick’s right: it’s quite likely they’d never have spoken to one another again.
She’s not really listening as Joe, who’s spotted the pizza, is telling her how he doesn’t eat refined carbs, when they hear the crunch of tyres in the gravel.
The children scream and run to the front door, shouting, ‘Uncle Nick! Uncle Nick!’
‘How many Toblerones do you think he’ll have bought them in Duty Free?’ says Bethany, as she strolls after the children.
Theo and Lotte fight over who gets to open the door. Theo lets Lotte win, and the children tumble out. Amy takes a long draught of her drink and bangs on the kitchen window. Chloe, who’s been lying on a sun-lounger by the pool, takes off her headphones.
‘Is Nick here?’
Amy nods, and Chloe follows her outside. She shields her eyes from the sun’s blaze as she steps into the heat. The sea and the sky have melded into one hazy blue line; a solitary cloud hangs in the sky. The driver is already popping the boot of the dusty car, as Nick shoulders his satchel and holds out his arms. His T-shirt is rumpled and sweat-stained and he looks awkward and embarrassed. She’s not sure why, although maybe it’s because he’s hot, tired and late again. Nick crushes the children together in a giant hug and lifts Lotte over his head. She screams and kicks her legs.
He puts her down and says, ‘Surprise!’
Her father steps out of the car.
Amy reels back as if she’s been physically punched in the chest. Nick tries to walk towards her, but the children cling to him. She puts her hand out and grips Matt’s arm. He’s damp with sweat and her fingers slide down his tensed muscles. She doesn’t know whether she’s holding onto her husband for support or she’s holding him back, the way you might restrain a dog that’s pulling at the leash. The throb of the cicadas is an angry buzz in her ears. She’s dimly aware of Luca and Joe hovering behind them. They are all still, for what feels like a long moment.
‘Jesus, Nick,’ says Bethany and folds her arms across her chest.
The driver heaves her dad’s case out and looks puzzled. He shrugs, as if he always knew Brits were odd, standing around instead of embracing. He closes the car doors and reverses at speed back down the track until he has enough room to turn, stones spitting from the wheels.
‘What the hell—’ Matt starts, but the children suddenly realize who it is.
They interrupt, both yelling, ‘Granddad!’, and fling themselves at him. He hugs them awkwardly and rubs their hair. Nick pulls a bumper pack of Skittles out of his bag and rattles it.
‘I could do with a cold beer,’ he says, patting his father on the shoulders.
‘It’s wonderful,’ her dad says, taking in the olive groves, the sweep of the sea, the curve of the cliff edge below them. ‘Thank you for inviting me.’
Matt grinds his teeth together. ‘You have a bl… a nerve, bringing him here.’
‘What’s a nerve?’ asks Lotte.
‘Let’s get Dad out of the heat,’ Nick says.
The children pull their grandfather into the holiday house, talking excitedly. Once they’re inside, Lotte snatches the Skittles from Theo and rips the bag open. The plastic tears and hundreds of coloured sweets cascade across the floor.
‘Lotte!’
‘Oops-a-daisy,’ Amy’s dad says and ineffectually tries to pick up a few of them, wincing as he bends his knees.
‘He’s not staying.’ Skittles skitter beneath Matt’s flip-flops and he almost slips.
Amy feels as if she can’t breathe. She holds onto the table to stop herself from folding in two. Bethany pours them both Prosecco and takes a long drink. She regards her father coldly.
‘Dad, why are you here?’
He looks perplexed. ‘I thought we were all gathered together for Ruby-May’s anniversary.’
‘That’s why we’re here,’ Bethany says. ‘I asked why you are here.’
Amy, in spite of how she feels about her father, winces. His face sags, as he realizes. He turns to Nick. ‘I thought you said I was invited?’
Nick looks at the toes of his Converse.
Her father braces himself against the back of a chair and pulls himself straighter. ‘I wanted to see you. I’ve missed you. My children. My grandchildren. I love you. And I would like to be here, with you all, for Ruby-May’s anniversary.’
Amy can’t bear the sound of her daughter’s name on her father’s lips. She sees Chloe, almost hiding behind Bethany, biting her nails as she looks from her grandfather to Amy and Matt.
‘You need to leave right now,’ Matt says.
‘He’s only just got here,’ Theo says. ‘Where are you going to sleep, Granddad?’
Luca gets out a brush and pan and starts sweeping up the Skittles, and Lotte and Theo chase the coloured balls round the floor on their hands and knees, scooping handfuls into their mouths.
‘Okay, that is enough,’ Luca tells them, and tips the sweets into the bin. ‘David can have my room. I will share the apartment with Joe.’
‘No, you won’t,’ Amy says, finally managing to speak. ‘Dad, I don’t know what you were thinking, coming here. You’re not welcome. You ought to have known that. I’d like you to leave. Nick should never have invited you.’
‘Amy, my darling—’ her father says.
‘Don’t call me that!’
‘Hey, kids, want to go and kick a ball about?’ Joe asks.
He ushers the children outside.
‘Chloe, why don’t you go with them?’ Amy says.
Chloe makes a face at being lumped in with the children, but she looks relieved. She slouches out, conspicuously pulling her headphones back over her ears. Luca slides a tray of pizza into the oven for Lotte and Theo and follows them, shutting the door quietly behind him.
‘What were you thinking, Nick?’ Amy rounds on her little brother.
He opens his mouth to speak, but her father says, ‘Why can I not celebrate my granddaughter’s anniversary with my family?’
‘Do I have to spell it out?’ Matt says, through gritted teeth. ‘It’s your fucking fault she’s dead!’
There’s a moment of silence and they can hear the children shouting with delight. Joe yells, ‘Goal!’
‘No one asked me to look after her. If I’d known…’ There’s a tremor in his voice and his eyes are damp.
‘I asked you! I asked you to! And you still won’t accept responsibility, after all this time,’ Bethany says. She puts an arm round Amy’s shoulder and pulls her sister in tightly against her.
‘Look, it wasn’t his fault,’ Nick says. ‘It was an accident! He can’t remember—’
‘He was drunk! While he was meant to be looking after our daughter,’ shouts Matt.
Her dad holds his hands up and says with quiet dignity, ‘If that’s how you feel, I’ll go.’
Luca reappears. They wait for him to slide the pizza onto a chopping board and head back outside, before speaking.
Nick says, ‘You can’t turn him away! There isn’t another flight to Bristol today.’
‘I don’t care,’ Matt says.
‘Dad, if you simply accepted that you were drunk and your m
ind is no longer what it was, and you apologized—’
Their father shakes his head. ‘I am sorry. Of course I am sorry. But, Bethany, I have no recollection of you asking me to look after Ruby-May that afternoon.’
‘Christ! See what I mean?’ Bethany looks at Amy. ‘Your call. I’ll drive him to the ferry myself, if you want him to leave.’
She can’t do it. They’re on a remote island off the coast of a larger island, miles from mainland Italy. She can’t turn her seventy-twoyear-old father out into the heat, this far from home. Nick’s right, there won’t be another ferry, or another flight. It would be cruel.
‘There’s pizza,’ she says, and Matt glares at her.
Nick swiftly slides the trays into the oven, as if she might change her mind, and gets two beers out of the fridge. He hands one to Matt, who hesitates fractionally and then takes it. Bethany, rather pointedly, pours their father a glass of water. As Amy sits down, she sees Luca quietly heading up the stairs and hears the creak of his footsteps on the old floorboards. A few minutes later he reappears with his duffel bag slung over his shoulder and walks past the pool to Joe’s apartment. How can she make Dad leave now? She thinks of what the children will do if she sends him home in the morning. They haven’t been able to understand why they couldn’t see their granddad for the past year, and she hasn’t been able to explain. She looks down at her empty white plate.
There is no going back. Her father is here to stay.
9
AMY
‘I couldn’t do it,’ Amy says again.
She’s sitting on the edge of the bed, sliding her rings off and rubbing cream from a tube of Body Shop hemp hand-protector into the dry skin of her knuckles. The smell reminds her of the linseed oil in her mother’s studio.
Matt is lying on the bed, reading a magazine about fishing. It’s a new hobby. He used to coach five-a-side football, and she can’t square the image she has of her husband – a man who spent his weekends running up and down the side of a pitch, shouting until he was hoarse – with the person he’s become: a man whose Sundays are silent and solitary, communing with non-existent fish. It’s still early and they can hear faint voices carried up from the beach on the wind, a reminder that other people are enjoying themselves, that other people have not yet been sapped of the will to live. It’s not that long since they’ve got the children into bed, Pearl tucked next to Lotte. Her father has gone to his room. Nick, Bethany, Chloe, Joe and Luca are watching a movie on TV downstairs. A ripple of gunshots reverberates through the floorboards.
Matt sighs and rests the magazine on his thighs, removes his glasses. His earlier anger has slipped into something harder, sadder. ‘I don’t want him here, Amy. You shouldn’t have let him stay.’
‘You still don’t think he has dementia?’
Matt looks towards the window but he’s not really focusing on what’s outside. The window is small and faces the pool, and they haven’t closed the curtains yet. There’s the sound of a muffled scream, followed by a splash. Amy looks out. Chloe has jumped in and there’s a dark shape on the far side of the pool. She can’t see who it is. The film must have finished or else Chloe has grown bored. Amy wants to tell Matt to make the girl go to bed, but he acts as if he hasn’t noticed.
‘David’s always been arrogant and selfish,’ Matt says finally. ‘He never thought about you when you were children, and I haven’t noticed a change. As far as I can see, he’s still as sharp as a pin. He was reading some tome after dinner – a trawl through British politics from Thatcher to Brexit.’
His voice is pinched, final. Matt replaces his glasses and picks up the magazine again. There’s a picture of an enormous trout on the front cover, bursting from murky depths, its mouth agape, gasping for air, the shadow of a man in the background.
Is something really wrong with her father? Bethany had taken him for a private check-up after the accident. Her sister said he showed early signs of dementia – and who knows, he could have got worse over the past few months.
But if Matt’s right, and there’s nothing really wrong with her dad, then that is much, much worse. Because it means that it was her father’s fault their youngest daughter died, through sheer negligence, drunkenness and self-centredness, and not because he’s in the grip of a disease that is rotting his brain, neurone by neurone.
She stands at the foot of the bed and notices the weary sag in her husband’s shoulders, the smattering of hairs on his chest that have turned white, and the effort he’s making to contain his anger.
Where will it stop? If Matt won’t forgive her father, then he won’t forgive Bethany for asking their dad to look after Ruby-May; he won’t forgive Nick for not being there; he won’t forgive her. He won’t ever forgive any of them. They were all responsible.
Below her, Chloe is floating on her back in the water. Her hair is fanned out, straight as seaweed, and her white bikini glows in the moonlight.
‘You should tell Chloe to go to bed,’ she says.
‘Don’t take it out on my daughter!’
A muscle at his jaw twitches and he snaps the magazine back to the page he was reading.
There are so many stars in the sky: seventy thousand million million million; by their faint light, she thinks she can still see the dark shape in the shadows by the edge of the pool, watching her stepdaughter. Bethany? Or is it Joe?
10
AMY
She’s sleeping in the bowels of a boat. Her bunk bed is rocking slightly. She gets up and the ground tilts beneath her feet. She’s filled with a dreadful certainty that something is wrong. She climbs the narrow stairs up to the deck, holding tightly to the rail. It’s a clear night. There’s a smudged half-moon that’s broken into fragments on the sharp-edged black waves. She looks around, but she’s alone. The wind sings through the slack sails and the wooden hull creaks. They’re drifting slowly: the sails are at half-mast and there’s no wind. She turns towards to the tiller and sees there’s no one at the helm of the ship. Nobody is steering. She chokes back a sob and makes for the ship’s wheel, when she hears a splash and a gasp. She can’t tell where it’s coming from.
She looks over one side and then hears a desperate, ‘Mummy!’
She runs to the other side, shouting, ‘Coming, sweetheart, I’m coming!’
Ruby-May is in the sea, choking and sinking, splashing at the surface with the flat of her hands, sobbing and swallowing water. She’s wearing a white dress and it billows around her in the black water, twisting about her feet. She’s panicking.
‘I’m coming!’
She can’t see a life-ring. In desperation she climbs over the rail, ready to jump in. Ruby-May sinks below the surface and Amy screams.
She wakes, drenched in sweat and rigid with terror. Next to her, Matt mutters and turns away. Her heart is pounding so hard it hurts. There’s a moment, while the adrenaline is coursing through her, when she still feels as if she’s there, the salt spray on her lips, the cold breath of the sea on her skin, her daughter drowning. As her pulse slows, it seeps into her like some awful poison – the knowledge that Ruby-May is dead. She wraps her arms around herself. It’s as if some essential part of her has been hacked off: a hand, a foot, her leg; and, like a phantom limb, she still feels the pain, although there is nothing left except the bleeding stump.
She takes a breath, preparing to get up and make herself a cup of tea, when she realizes that there is someone else in the room. She holds herself still and stares hard, as if through sheer willpower she’ll be able to make out who it is. I must be imagining it. It’s probably nothing – a towel hanging over the back of the door, one of the children sleep-talking, the old barn shifting as the timbers contract, now it’s grown chillier. I’m disoriented by the nightmare. She moves to the edge of the bed, her toes touching the rough mat.
A floorboard creaks, just a few feet away from her. Whoever it is, they’re right there. She can hear them breathing.
‘Theo?’ She doesn’t think it’s her son. Th
ey’re much bigger. A man.
‘Amy, darling.’
The tension leaves her in a rush and she stands abruptly, seizes a shawl and wraps it round herself.
‘Dad? What are you doing here?’
Matt sighs and mumbles something, and then sits bolt upright.
‘What the fuck?’
She takes her father’s elbow and tries to steer him out of the room.
‘What’s he doing here?’
Matt snaps on the bedside light and she blinks. Her father’s hair is uncombed and he looks grizzled; there are watery pouches beneath his eyes.
‘There was someone in my room,’ he says. ‘I woke up – I’d forgotten to write in my journal – and I realized there was someone there.’
‘Who the hell would be in your room?’
‘He was standing at the bottom of my bed, watching me. I waited and then he left. I heard him walk down the stairs.’
‘You must be imagining it, David. How do you even know it was a man? It was probably one of the kids looking for the bathroom,’ Matt says.
‘It was definitely a man. We should see if the children are okay,’ her father says.
She feels her heart clench. Could there really be someone be in the house? Matt shoulders his way past her dad, pulling on his T-shirt. A moment later he returns.
‘They’re fine. I’ll check on Chloe.’
‘Shall we have a look in your bedroom?’
‘I told you – he left. He went downstairs,’ her dad says. He insists on going first, though, and she follows him along the landing.
‘What’s going on?’ asks Nick, opening the door of his room and running his hand through his hair, making it stand on end.
‘Dad thinks there was someone in his room.’
Nick frowns and pushes their father’s bedroom door open. ‘It’s empty.’ He even flings open the wardrobe for good measure. ‘Must have been a nightmare.’
Matt reappears, with Bethany behind him.
