by Sanjida Kay
She’s not wearing a cardigan and it’s chilly at this height. She comes back inside, runs her finger along the books on the shelves, their cracked spines hard to read in the dull light: books on politics, on art, on photography; screenplays and Star Wars, comics and comedies; all the lives that have lived here, and the shallow indentation they have left, spelled out in other people’s words.
Nick, damp with rain, walks in. The first thing he says is, ‘Did you know Joe is gay?’
He looks terrible. His hair is on end and he hasn’t shaved. He’s pale beneath his light Italian tan.
‘Why did you ask me to come here?’ she says, crossing her arms, the anger she feels towards him returning in a rush.
Nick says, ‘Bethany is lying to us. She was attacked. I know it!’
‘This has to stop. You can’t go round accusing people of hurting Bethany. You have to accept what the police said.’
‘I found her bottle of Prosecco on the beach – the one she took from the house – and it was almost full. She wasn’t drunk. She didn’t fall.’
‘Listen to me, Nick. I spoke to Bethany this morning, after you called me. Even she says you’re being creepy and obsessive. She says she was drunk. That Prosecco, they sell it all over the island. She could have bought another bottle. The one you found on the beach was probably her second. She went to the terrace bar up on the hill every day; she must have got it there. Please, stop going on about it. The police are right: she tripped and hit her head. And it might not be ideal, but she’s using the experience – or a version of it – to relaunch her career. Booking online holidays, the dangers for women on their own in a foreign country, that kind of thing. We need to support her. Let her start over. And you need to deal with the real issue.’
‘Which is?’ Nick runs his hand through his hair, wipes the rain from his forehead. He’s frowning and he reminds her of what he was like when he was six years old.
‘Your grief. You need to find a way to deal with your grief.’ She blows her nose, wipes her eyes. ‘I have to go. Bethany says she doesn’t want to speak to you. I only came because she phoned me. Told me to get you off her back.’
‘It’s convenient for you, isn’t it?’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘That everyone thinks Bee was drunk. But somebody pushed her. She knows who attacked her. And for some reason she’s not telling anyone who did it. Why do you think that is, Amy?’
‘Nick! You’re losing it. I’d suggest therapy, if I didn’t think it was a waste of time.’
‘She wouldn’t tell the police if she loved the person who pushed her. If she could understand why that person wanted to attack her.’
‘Are you saying…? Oh my God, you are. You’re suggesting I tried to kill my own sister.’
‘No, no! I’m just… trying to think it through.’
‘Get a grip. And don’t call me until you’ve sorted yourself out.’
She lets herself out of the flat, dashing away tears of outrage and hurt as she hurries down the corkscrew staircase, past abandoned piles of mail in the hall and out into the rain-soaked street. She pauses for a moment, looking down towards the river, and automatically puts out a hand to stop her smallest daughter from stepping off the kerb, before she remembers.
37
NICK
After Amy walked out, I lie on the sofa and watch Bethany in old episodes of The Show, scrutinizing her face for a sign of the abuse she was dealing with, trying to read the lies in her eyes. The sitting room grows bright with light: the sky is washed like a watercolour after today’s deluge. I shiver; my clothes are still damp from being caught in the shower on the way to my flat. Something sharp sticks into my butt. I try and sit up, but it digs in further. I slide onto the floor, put my hand in the back pocket of my jeans. I pull out two small, misshapen objects. One is the piece of plastic I found on the beach where Bethany was attacked, the other is the tooth someone had placed on my windowsill in the Italian holiday house.
I sit for a moment, weighing them in my palm, like Anubis. Definitely heavier than a feather. Somebody is going straight to hell. I hang my head between my knees, hoping to quell the nausea. I could leave it alone. After all, no one believes me. Even Bethany is telling me to drop it.
What would Maddison say I should do? I shake my talismans together, like dice, and put them back in my pocket. I force myself to get up, and I make a strong black coffee. In the cupboard there’s an old bottle of apple brandy that Tony, one of Dad’s neighbours, brewed. I wonder how long it’s been here, in this flat. I wonder if Dad drank it on his own or with… I take a slug and feel the sharp sweetness sing through my veins, and then the caffeine jolts my heart.
I realize, as I take another sip, that when Ruby-May died, something in me died too. I lost the man who’d held that baby in his arms and thought he knew what life was all about; I lost the man I could have been. I drink more brandy and it tastes like something rotten, from the bottom of the orchard in our garden.
Ruby-May is running through the thick grass, long blonde hair catching in the hands of the apple trees; she’s laughing. She startles a magpie; it arrows into the sky, the sun shines through its outstretched wings. Ruby-May holds out a bunch of tiny purple flowers in her small fist. Her fingers smell of spearmint. She opens her mouth and green water pours out; skeins of pond weed are tangled in her baby teeth.
It’s now or never, I tell myself. I pour the rest of that rancid brandy down the sink.
I sit on the low wall in front of Bethany’s apartment block, looking out over the river. I stare through the masts and rigging of the SS Great Britain; on the tip of the hill behind the ship is Cabot Tower, dedicated to the man who sailed across the ocean and ‘discovered’ America. To the left is Goldney Hall, where I imagine my father was once wined and dined when the university held grand dinners for the Ambassador of China and other notabilities. I wonder whom he wined and dined in my flat. His flat. I can even see the roof and the ledge where I used to sit with Maddison. Is Bethany right? Am I blaming my sister because I’m unable to forgive her and I feel sorry for Dad? I hold the black pawn in my palm, roll it between my finger and thumb, feel its grooves and its smooth, spherical head.
I call Amy. I expect it to go straight to voicemail.
‘Nick! I told you, don’t call me again.’
‘Sorry. I’m sorry. You’re right. I’m being insane.’
She gives a juddering sigh, as if she’s on the verge of tears.
I press on. ‘I don’t expect you to forgive me right now. Just one thing. I need Luca’s mobile number. I’ve got his copy of The Divine Comedy.’
‘Really? That’s what you’re obsessing about now? Okay, I’ve changed my mind: get some help. Jungian, Freudian, on the NHS, private, bespoke – whatever. You need some serious therapy.’
‘I want to know whether to post it to him or not.’
‘Nick! Are you even listening? I’m sure it can wait. There’s not much point; it’ll cost more than it would to buy a new copy. Besides, he’ll be back to see his tutor soon.’
‘Yeah, well. I’d like to keep in touch with him.’
She makes a clicking sound with her tongue. She thinks I’m a complete fool and that I have more important things to worry about. Anything to get rid of me, though.
‘Don’t call me again until you’re over this,’ she says and hangs up.
Amy, though, no matter what she says, is reliable. A moment later she texts me Luca’s contact details.
I dial the number, but there’s no response. I’m about to give up, when on the ninth ring he answers. I stumble over my words.
‘Luca. It’s Nick. Nick Flowers.’
I haven’t thought this through. What am I going to say? How do I persuade him to talk to me?
‘Nick. What can I do for you?’
He’s cold, businesslike, but then what the hell did I expect?
‘I know. I know what you did to Bethany.’
‘I have no
idea what you say.’ He speaks without a moment’s hesitation.
Too quick.
‘I haven’t told anyone yet.’
‘Why are you calling, Nick?’ he says again.
‘How did you know it was Bethany? Something happened on holiday to make you change your mind. You believed it was Dad’s fault, just like everyone else, but then you saw something. You were going to tell me! What did you see?’
There’s silence, and I wonder if he’s put the phone down. I expect him to hang up on me in disgust, just as my sister did. I get up and walk right to the edge of the river, line my toes up with the end of the harbour wall. I look down into the brackish water; weed gently undulates in the current, writhing as if it’s alive.
He’s breathing more heavily now.
‘It was the pills,’ Luca says eventually.
‘What pills?’
‘Temazepam. She was taking the sleeping pills. I saw them in her room – and she give them to your father because he is awake in the night. Do you remember?’
‘Vaguely. She offered some to me. But what—’
‘On the day that it happen, I work in your mother’s old room. I stood up to take the stretch and I look out the window. I see your father asleep in the sunshine. And then I see your sister. She has the blue pill and she give it to him with a glass of water. He swallow it. A little later she come back with a bottle of red wine and she put it next to him. He is still sleeping. She pour wine into a glass and then she do a strange thing. Two strange things. She throw half the wine from the bottle away – she pour it in the flowers! Then she take a little syringe – you know, the purple one that you have with the medicine for children? She suck some of the wine from the glass into this little device and she put a drop on his shirt. She put a drop on his tongue. I say to myself, “This is strange”, but I don’t think of it again, after what happen to Ruby-May.
‘And then we are on the holiday and it happen again. The night before Ruby-May’s anniversary, I see her give him the blue pill and a glass of water. And he does not drink, even to take a sip of the champagne with Ruby-May’s cake. He tell to me he is on medicine for his heart and he cannot have alcohol. And I think about this all the day, and then I say to myself: if a man cannot drink, but he has a taste for the wine and he is given some, even a little, little drop, that taste will come back, so fierce. When he wake up, he will find the wine and he cannot help himself: he will drink it all.
‘Then I know. How could your father tell Bethany he would look to Ruby-May, when he is asleep? Why does he not remember the red wine? Because he did not choose to drink it.’
My God! Bethany was looking after Ruby-May. And then she drugged our father after Ruby-May died, to make sure he wouldn’t remember. He would literally have had no memory of that afternoon. And to complete her lie, she got him drunk and then she pretended to take him for a memory test.
I look down at an artificial marsh, floating just below me; a coot steps through the rushes and I can smell the sweet, sharp scent of spearmint.
‘Lasciate ogni speranza o voi che entrate.’
‘What?’
‘Is something we say in this region of Italy,’ he says. ‘I don’t know what to do with this knowledge. I think, I will ask to Bethany. Give her the chance to tell the truth. I follow her to the beach, I try and talk to her. But she laugh at me. She laugh at me and we are talking about the death of a child – a child I loved more than I love myself! So I shake her. I only want her to say that it is her fault, that she is sorry.’
The coot leaves the haven of the marsh, and launches itself into the open water, breaking the scum of oil that marbles the surface. I can’t see any chicks. Maybe they’ve grown up and left already.
‘But she fall, she hit her head. I do not mean to hurt her. I am afraid she die. I panic, I leave her there. Then I hate myself, so I go early to the police station to say them what happen. But I hear one of the officers, Agente Martelli, he pick up his free coffee in a bar and he say they find an English woman on the beach. So I know she is alive and I think, if she tell someone, then it all come out: what I do to her, but also what she do to Ruby-May.’
I feel myself swaying. I take a step back from the water’s edge.
‘So I go home to my family and I wait. I cancel my flight to Bristol. I tell my tutor I never come back. I do nothing. I sit here and I wait for you or for the police. No one. Bethany say nothing. And now you, Nick. You know the whole truth. It is up to you what you do with this knowledge.’
A couple of swans glide past. The current is choppy in the middle of the river, changeable. They struggle against it and then give up, beating their wings, harder and harder, until they laboriously free themselves from the water and fly downstream. I’d forgotten how noisy swans in flight can be.
‘Goodbye, Nick,’ Luca says, and the line goes dead.
I turn round and look up at Bethany’s flat. She’s standing in the window, watching me. I can barely see her face, she’s haloed by the brilliance of the studio lights. I slide my phone into my pocket and I wait for my sister.
She walks across the cobbles towards me. The bruise and the scar are livid, where the make-up artist has let them shine through her foundation. She moves carefully, as if she is trying not to jar anything. We stand there for a moment, facing each other. Although the sun is warm on my back, there’s a chill wind rising from the water and I shiver. I wonder if it’ll rain again. It rains practically every day in Bristol. And I realize that I knew – I knew all along it was Bethany. The sadness is almost unbearable. My own sister.
‘Luca,’ I say.
‘How did you know?’
I hold out my hand. The piece of plastic I found on the beach lies on my palm. It’s a tiny black pawn from a travelling chess set.
‘I found it on the beach next to a rock covered in your blood. I didn’t realize what it was at first, and then I thought it was a coincidence. But it’s not, is it?’
She squeezes her eyes shut and winces. I wonder if there is a blood clot, swelling inside her brain, pressing against her skull. How long she has to live. If she’s about to die.
‘Luca wanted you to admit it. Apologize. He went a little far – he’s not naturally a violent man, is he? He didn’t mean it to go so badly wrong. But when you cracked your skull open… well, he didn’t think anyone would find out it was him, once you were dead. And then you came round and he was in the clear! He hadn’t committed murder, and he thought the attack would be blamed on a random drunk, or your own inebriation, because there’s no way you’d tell anyone it was him. If you did, you’d have to say why a mild, gentle student, a man studying to be a child psychologist no less, would want to kill you. It was a relief, really, when Matt told the police you were probably drunk – so you confirmed it. They dropped the case. Problem solved.’
‘I loved her. I loved her! Don’t you understand?’ Bethany says.
‘I do,’ I say. ‘Just not enough.’
She takes a deep, jagged breath. ‘If I’d told Amy, it would have destroyed my relationship with her. How could she ever have spoken to me again, if she’d known it was my fault? I’d never have seen Lotte and Theo or Chloe. You and Dad. Think of our family, Nick, of what this will do to them.’
‘You have to tell her,’ I say. ‘You can’t let Dad carry the blame for this.’
‘Why not?’ she says, standing up straighter, folding her arms. The breeze blows her dark hair back from her face. ‘He ruined our lives. His drinking. His adultery. His absence. Why shouldn’t he? I think of Ruby-May every day. Every fucking day. There’s nothing that I wouldn’t give to bring her back. But she’s gone. She’s dead, and we can’t ever change that. We have to think of the future, of each other, of our family.’
‘But what you did to him – giving him a sleeping pill, putting the wine out for him, pretending you’d taken him to a Memory Clinic – that was…’ I struggle to think of the right word. In the end I simply say, ‘Wrong.’
�
�Do you want to know why? The real reason I did that?’
I swallow. Do I? No, I don’t want to hear whatever bullshit excuse Bethany is going to come up with.
But Bethany has never cared what I think. She tells me. She tells me the real reason why she hates our father enough to do what she did to him. When she’s finished, she’s crying so hard tears drip from her chin. If I were the kind of man who was in touch with his feelings, I’d be fucking sobbing too.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘That’s awful.’ That sounds trite. I try again. ‘I don’t know how you lived with it, all these years.’ Nope. No better. I take a breath. This is going to sound callous and I really don’t mean to. I lean towards her, but this time I refrain from gripping her shoulders. ‘It doesn’t change anything. You need to tell Amy – your sister – what really happened. Two days. You’ve got the rest of today and until tomorrow night to tell Amy.’
Bethany’s sadness shifts gear, switches to anger. ‘Or what?’ she says, coming closer. She’s almost the same height as me. My sister stands in a beam of sunlight, her tawny eyes illuminated, pupils shrunk to pin pricks. ‘Are you threatening me? You won’t tell her. It would be the end of our family, and you know it. You haven’t got the balls.’
I can’t stay here. I might let her push me into something I’ll regret.
Or else I’ll kill her.
I leave my sister standing by the river, and I walk as fast as I can away from the water.
