My Sister’s Secret

by Tracy Buchanan

  ‘No, never.’

  ‘Then why did you go quiet?’

  ‘No reason.’ She’s lying. I can always tell when she’s lying, her voice goes up an octave. ‘So if the dive’s cancelled, does that mean you’ll be coming to clean up the cottage with me?’

  I think of stepping into my parent’s cottage for the first time in twenty years. ‘I might stay here for a few days actually.’

  ‘Don’t make excuses. It might be the last chance you’ll get to see it.’

  I’ve been trying to forget the fact that I finally relented to putting the house I grew up in on the market. I haven’t stepped foot in there since my parents died. Maybe if my aunt had taken me there after, like I’d begged her to, it might have been different. But she’d insisted it would just upset me. And the more months and years that passed, the more painful the thought of going back there became.

  I look down at the necklace. Maybe it’s finally time I go.

  Chapter Two

  Willow

  Near Busby-on-Sea, UK

  August 2016

  I peer up at the large white cottage that was my childhood home until my parents died. It seems to blur into the clouds above, the green of the grass that spreads out behind it and the blue of the sea in front add the only hint of colour.

  I walk the stones I used to skip up. They’re overgrown with moss now, barely visible. And those large bay windows, I’d once sat by as I waited for Dad to return from work. But they’re so grimy now, no way anybody could see through them. The rose bushes are still here. They used to be so beautiful, Mum tending to them, dark hair wrapped up in a scarf, lip caught in her teeth. Now they’re overgrown and tangled with weeds.

  I haven’t cared for this place.

  I breathe in the sharp clear air and remember doing the same as I set off for my first day at school from this very spot, uncomfortable and rigid in my bulky new uniform. I’d stared out towards the sea and realised, even at that young age, the perimeters of my little world were widening. Then Mum had put her hand on my shoulder and squeezed it.

  ‘Come on then,’ Dad had called out as he held the door to his Range Rover open for me. ‘Time for you to break some hearts at school.’

  ‘Come on then,’ a sharp voice says right now.

  Aunt Hope is standing at the door, arms crossed, an impatient look on her face. Her grey eyes – the same colour as my mum’s – drill into mine. Her long red hair is loose around her shoulders, silver bits threaded through to the ends. I didn’t realise she’d started going grey, but then the last time I saw her was a few months ago, a brief visit to drop in her birthday card and present, an old book of poetry I’d found while visiting Scotland for a dive. She’s wearing one of her eccentric long dresses, blue-green like the sea with pearlescent gems all over.

  I lug my bag over my shoulder and walk up the mossy stepping stones towards her. She pulls some keys from her bag and places them in the door. It creaks open and I pause before entering, noticing the slate-grey floor tiles, the beginnings of a long staircase. Memories accost me: me skidding down the stairs with a screech as Dad chases me; Mum greeting me at the door after playing outside.

  I step into the house and the warmth of the memory disappears, replaced with the dust and the cold. The awful pain of my parents’ absence hits me in the chest.

  ‘Dust didn’t have a chance with the housekeeper your father hired,’ Aunt Hope says, marching down the hallway towards a small window in the middle. She yanks the yellow flowered curtains apart, dust billowing around her. The sea is unveiled in the distance, vast and blue. ‘Remember her? All ruffles and disapproving glances. What was her name?’

  ‘Linda, I think,’ I say, but I’m not really listening to her. I walk down the hallway, taking in the photos on the wall. Mum and Dad on their honeymoon, all tanned and smiling, against some pretty mountainous backdrop. Mum looking down at a newborn me in hospital, face soft with disbelief and love. Another of Dad holding a tiny me curled into his arm, a huge smile on his face. Then the three of us dressed in woolly coats, huddled up together outside this very house in the snow.

  I walk up to it, tracing my fingers around my parents’ faces, the grief bubbling inside, almost unbearable.

  ‘Were they happy here?’ I murmur to Aunt Hope. ‘They looked happy.’

  She looks into my eyes a moment. ‘I think they were, yes.’ Then she heads towards the large kitchen as I follow. The white marble floor tiles are now filthy; the pine units streaked. Aunt Hope pulls the sheet off the marble island in the middle of the kitchen, dust making us both cough.

  ‘Tea?’ she asks, pulling a travel kettle from her bag. I can’t help but smile, typical of my aunt, always needing a cup of herbal tea wherever she goes. I often wonder if that’s all she eats, too, she’s so thin.

  I try to peer out of the grimy French windows, catching a glimpse of the willow tree.

  ‘Still have lots of sugar?’ my aunt asks.

  ‘Yep.’

  She shakes her head with disapproval, heaping three spoonfuls into my tea.

  ‘You could do with some sugar yourself. You’re looking really thin,’ I say.

  She waves her hand in the air like she always does when I bring up her weight.

  ‘So,’ I say, getting the necklace out and dangling it between my fingers. ‘Recognise this?’

  She looks over her shoulder at it. ‘Nope.’

  I examine her face. I can’t tell if she’s hiding something from me. She sits down across from me and we sip our tea in silence, the necklace lying between us.

  Sometimes it’s better if we’re quiet, that way there’s no chance of an argument brewing. The argument we had before I moved out was the worst. She’d always told me the reason she didn’t have many photos of Mum from when they were young was because she’d lost them all. But on my sixteenth birthday, I’d crept up to the loft and found a photo album. Inside was a photo of Mum sitting in the sun, tanned pretty face tilted up to the camera, black hair piled on to her head with a red halter-neck top on. On the back was the year: 1974. Mum would have been thirteen. I flicked through the rest of the album, noticing blank sections that suggested photos had been removed.

  When I’d shown the album to Aunt Hope, she’d said some must have fallen out. I could tell she was lying. We argued bitterly – she was holding bits of my mother back from me and I couldn’t forgive that. In the end, I packed all my things and stormed out of the house, staying with an older girl I’d met at swimming classes. I still saw my aunt, working at her café at weekends and in evenings, and we settled into a strange relationship, half aunt and niece, half manager and employee. When I handed in my notice after getting a job as a lifeguard in Brighton, she’d wished me good luck. ‘You know where I am if you need me,’ she’d said.

  Since then it’s just been a case of popping in for birthdays and at Christmas, and the occasional phone call. I guess I’ve preferred my own company over the years. Coming back to Busby-on-Sea and seeing my aunt just brings back too many memories, not just of my parents but also those sad empty years after they passed away.

  I study her thin face over the rim of my cup, take in the lines around her pale grey eyes that seem more pronounced than last time I saw her, the pinch of her lips, the pale shade of her skin.

  She’s definitely getting older.

  After we finish our tea, she stands up. ‘Well, we can’t sit here and sip tea all day, can we? How about we tidy the place up a bit and you can have a think about what you want to do?’

  We spend the day in awkward comradeship getting cleaning supplies from the local shops and ringing around local handymen to get some broken windows sorted. By the time darkness falls, we still haven’t finished the last room: the living room, a long room divided by a pretty alcove with plaster-clad butterflies around its edges. One part of the room used to be dedicated to the TV and sofas; the other to all my toys. I remember winter nights with the fire roaring, the three of us snuggled up watching TV or playin
g games.

  It’s cold and draughty now, dust and spider webs clogging the walls. The once thick rug I used to love is dirty with dead flies and mud.

  ‘Shall we just stay here?’ Aunt Hope suggests. ‘We can work into the night, get it out of the way. There are clean sheets in storage.’

  I peer up at the ceiling. It’ll be strange staying here again, the first time since my parents died.

  ‘I presume you’ll be wanting to get away again?’ my aunt continues as she examines my face. ‘If we leave now, it might mean another whole day of clearing up.’

  I take a deep breath. ‘Alright, let’s stay.’

  Aunt Hope helps me roll the rug up and we place it in the hallway. We then scrub the dark wooden floorboards, both seeming to take comfort in the repetitive nature of the task.

  ‘Your mum loved these floorboards,’ Aunt Hope says after a while. ‘Your dad wanted to get a posh carpet but she insisted on stripping these down and restoring them.’

  ‘Yeah, she used to get annoyed when Dad pulled me along the floorboards on that rug. But then she’d join in after a while.’

  My aunt wipes a grimy hand across her forehead, leaving a dark streak behind. ‘Put this in the bin bag, won’t you?’ she says, handing me the filthy rag she’s been using. I pull the bin bag in the corner of the room towards me and go to throw the rag in. But something catches my eye, an envelope with my name on it. I pull it out. It has the cottage’s address on it, a postal stamp from a few days before.

  ‘What’s this?’ I ask.

  ‘Just some junk mail.’

  ‘But it’s addressed to me, why would I get post here?’ I say. ‘And why would you open it if it was addressed to me?’

  Aunt Hope shrugs. ‘I didn’t notice your name on it.’

  I open the bag wider, sorting through the rubbish until I come across what looks like an invitation.

  To Willow,

  You are invited to a private viewing of

  Niall Lane’s next exhibition:

  The Charity Collection, a Retrospective and

  Commemoration.

  10th August 2016

  7pm

  Brighton Museum & Art Gallery

  Beneath the text is a beautiful photograph of a tree that appears to be underwater with an etching in the bark.

  I look up at my aunt. ‘This is the same symbol that’s on the necklace. And have you seen what this photographer called his collection? What’s this all about, Aunt Hope? Is there something you’re trying to hide from me?’

  ‘Oh, you’re so dramatic, Willow. There’s nothing to hide.’

  ‘But why would you throw the invite away?’

  She shrugs. ‘It was yesterday, too late for you to go.’

  I squeeze the invitation in between my fingers in frustration. Deep breaths, Willow, deep breaths. ‘How is this photographer connected to Mum?’

  ‘He was just some kid who had a thing for her a long time ago,’ my aunt says, dismissively waving her thin hand in the air.

  ‘What do you mean a thing?’

  ‘Your mother had lots of admirers. It was nothing.’ She stands up, wiping the dust off her long skirt. ‘I’m going to put some soup on for us.’

  ‘Why can you never be straight with me, Aunt Hope? She’s my mum! It’s like you’re jealous of her memory.’

  She shoots me a cold, withering look then leaves the room. I quickly pull my phone from my pocket, Googling ‘Niall Lane’. A photographer’s website appears at the top of the results page. I click on the link and a page with dozens of photos materialises, all of submerged forests, underwater trees or ghostly tree stubs littered across vast beaches. They’re beautiful, eerie and atmospheric.

  I click on the ‘About Niall’ page. The description is brief:

  Niall Lane is a renowned underwater photographer whose photographs are exhibited around the world. His Charity Collection has won a number of industry awards.

  There’s a black and white photo of a rugged-looking man in his fifties. A memory suddenly comes to me of digging up pebbles on Busby-on-Sea’s beach around the time I lost my parents. I try to grasp at the memory before it slips away again. There’s so little I remember from my time with my parents that when a hint comes, I’m desperate to gather it in. I close my eyes, press my fingers into my temples, willing the memory to hold steady.

  There! A man. Tall, very tanned, dark hair shaved close to his head. He was dressed in a wetsuit, a camera hanging from his right hand, dark tattoos scrawled all over his arm. I remember him because he grabbed Mum’s arm while they were talking.

  It was him. Niall Lane! Many years younger but definitely him.

  I click around the site then find a map featuring all the locations where Niall Lane has taken photographs. I peer closer at the map. It’s hand-drawn, small illustrated trees marking the location of various places. Another memory stirs.

  I dart upstairs.

  ‘Where are you going?’ I hear my aunt call up after me.

  I ignore her, pulling the loft hatch down and climbing the stairs attached to it. There are only a few boxes up here. I pull the closest one over and open it. Inside are some of Mum’s counselling books – except for one book, old and musty-smelling with a green cover, a fish symbol overlaid on it: Submerged Forests by Clement Reid. I open it and there it is, the map folded in four. I pull it out and unfold it, laying it on the floor. It’s the size of an A5 piece of paper and seems quite old. I take it downstairs and show it to my aunt.

  ‘Why is there a picture of this on that photographer’s website?’

  Her brow furrows as she takes the map. ‘It was your mother’s. She wanted to visit all the submerged forests in the world. Silly notion.’

  ‘Why does Niall Lane have it on his website?’

  ‘They used to dive together. He must have taken a photograph of it.’

  ‘Mum dived?’ I ask, incredulous. ‘Why wouldn’t you tell me? It makes no sense!’

  ‘We all did. We spent our childhoods by the sea, remember.’

  ‘So this photographer and Mum used to hang out when they were kids?’

  She nods.

  ‘They must have been close,’ I say.

  ‘Back then, yes. But they were children.’

  ‘Then why did Mum have the necklace in her bag the night she died? She wasn’t a kid then.’

  My aunt hands the map back to me. ‘Why torture yourself with all these questions, Willow? The past is the past.’

  ‘It’s my past. Why are you being so elusive?’

  ‘Honestly, the way you read into things.’

  ‘And the way you hide things. Like those photos of Mum I found the day I moved out, all those blank sections.’ I scrutinise her face. ‘You’re not being honest with me.’

  ‘This isn’t an episode of EastEnders, Willow.’

  ‘Really? You’d make a good actress, the amount of times you’ve lied to me.’

  She shakes her head. ‘I can’t listen to this nonsense. I’m going to finish tidying the dining room, your soup’s in the kitchen.’

  I don’t sleep all night. I’m in my old room but it’s a ghost of what it once was, the sea-themed wallpaper faded, the cream carpet filthy. So I get up and pace the freezing house. I eventually end up in the garden. It’s very early, mist still a sheen over the grass, the air very still and quiet. There’s a sheet of grey clouds above, one indiscernible from the other. I walk the length of the garden. It seems to go on forever, a two-tier fence running around its edges to mark it from the rest of the land.

  There’s a patio area just outside the house that’s overrun with weeds now. A beautiful sundial sits at the centre of the patio and, to the side, a large gazebo with circular benches. The rest of the garden is simple, a long green lawn that’s like a meadow now, grass shin high. Around it, beneath the fence, are tangled roses. And then, right at the end, a huge willow tree that seems to have doubled in size since the last time I saw it.

  My heart clenches as I notice
the swing swaying below it. Dad made that for me. No big deal for some dads. But it was for mine. He usually got other people to do stuff like that, but he’d sanded down the wooden seat with his own hands, painted it glossy white with red stars then attached the ropes.

  I sit on the swing, feet still on ground so I don’t break it as I sway back and forth. I close my eyes, try to imagine Dad pushing me.

  Then out of the corner of my eye, I notice something in the tree’s bark. I lean closer and there it is:

  Willow and Daddy

  1996

  The year the ship sank. Sobs build up inside and I put my hand to my mouth.

  ‘Oh, Dad,’ I whisper.

  When I walk back inside, I’m surprised to see my aunt standing at the table. She’s usually an early riser but never this early. She’s looking down at the map I found, her grey eyes glassy with tears. When she notices me, she quickly folds it up.

  ‘Was Mum serious about visiting all these submerged forests?’ I ask, more gently than before.

  ‘She was just a kid,’ she says dismissively.

  ‘Was it the submerged forest off Busby’s coast that sparked her interest?’

  Aunt Hope takes a sip of her tea. ‘That wasn’t discovered until we were older.’ She peers up at me. ‘In fact, it was your parents who discovered the forest.’

  I look at her in surprise. ‘But I had no idea.’

  ‘Why does it matter?’

  ‘Everything to do with my mum and dad matters. That’s why I’m going to try to contact that photographer,’ I say, using my phone to do a web search for contact details. All I get is a generic email address.

  Aunt Hope shoots me a cynical look. ‘What good will that do?’

  ‘He’ll have memories of Mum he can share. He must’ve invited me to his exhibition for a reason. I’ll email him, see if he wants to meet.’

  I grab the map from her and unfold it again, taking in all the different locations.

  ‘And maybe I should to try to visit some of these,’ I say, feeling excitement swell inside. I realise then that the idea has been growing since the moment I saw the map. ‘It can be a homage of sorts, doing something Mum always wanted to do.’ I look up at Aunt Hope. ‘Mum would like that, right?’