Skein Island

by Aliya Whiteley

  But mothers don’t leave, do they? Not even after death. Not the good ones.

  ‘I wish you were able to talk about this,’ says Rebecca. ‘Because—Because I really need to talk about it too. Hamish tries to understand but he’s…’

  ‘A man,’ I finish for her, and I know she hates it, the thought of this unbridgeable divide between man and woman that Vanessa has placed in our heads. But she doesn’t contradict me.

  ‘Since it happened he seems dead set on protecting me. Perhaps it was the thought of losing me. Everything we do now, every time I attempt to get up, he’s there, wanting to be my crutch.’

  ‘That’s pretty normal, surely?’

  ‘Of course,’ she says. ‘But before, if he was having protective impulses, we could talk about it. He’d be happy to admit it, to see that it was irrational. Now we can’t even have a conversation. Whenever I raise it he doesn’t listen. It’s like I’m of the utmost importance in his life, and at the same time, totally irrelevant.’

  Rebecca has a way with words. I recognise this feeling, this marginalisation. I feel it every time David looks at me.

  It would be so good to tell Rebecca my thoughts and fears about this. But I know what she wants is to cast me back into the role of patient so that she can make herself feel better. So instead I say, ‘The preliminary reports on the house show the foundations were weakened by a natural spring that runs under the island.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Vanessa was tapping it. In the basement. Diverting the flow of the water and collecting it. Barrels of it. Don’t you remember the piping? It wound around Moira.’

  ‘The statue,’ Rebecca corrects me. ‘I don’t remember that. What for?’

  ‘I don’t know yet.’

  ‘A natural spring,’ she muses. ‘One pound fifty for a small bottle of Malvern water nowadays. She was sitting on top of a gold mine and died because of it. An expensive way to go.’

  Vanessa filled those barrels for a reason. I wonder to whom she sold them, and what purpose they serve. It’s been intimated to me that I will soon become a very rich woman. Is it all left over from Amelia’s enormous fortune? Or had Vanessa found another way to add to the island’s wealth? Financial records – those not destroyed in the collapse – will eventually come to me, and then I will get some answers.

  ‘So what did you see?’ I find myself asking Rebecca, before I can stop myself. This is the conversation I didn’t want to have. ‘What did you see, down there? If you didn’t see the piping, or the barrels, and you didn’t see Moira?’

  ‘I knew it,’ she says. ‘You still believe it. That parlour trick Vanessa pulled.’

  ‘Forget what I believe. What do you believe?’

  ‘Your mother had real problems. I’d maybe characterise it as Stockholm Syndrome. She met a rich, brilliant, troubled woman who had lived through wars, seen terrible things, and that woman bound your mother to her, with lies. With stories. Then she died, and left your mother alone, and she wanted you back. To continue those stories. Keep them alive. So she set that whole thing up to manipulate you. She wanted you to stay there, on that island, with her. If you’re not careful, she’ll get her way. You’ll end up back there forever. Maybe not physically, but mentally.’

  ‘She never asked me to stay.’

  ‘She was getting to it!’

  ‘It took her seventeen years to get that far.’

  ‘People spend their whole lives preparing for certain moments, Marianne.’ Rebecca scratches her knee just above the cast. ‘Only those moments count, for them. The stuff that happens every day, that’s just marking time until the big scene. The reveal. We all live that way sometimes. Working towards a wedding day, the birth of a child. We imagine it, and prepare for it, even if we’re not engaged or pregnant. Perhaps it’s a female thing. We just don’t live in the present, do we?’

  I think perhaps she’s right. But if Moira was an illusion, clever trickery with lights and effects, then what was my mother hoping to make me think?

  ‘I never should have gone to that stupid island,’ says Rebecca. ‘I knew it wasn’t going to teach me anything useful about myself. All I’ve learned is a phobia of damp basements.’

  ‘Here’s hoping that’s a life lesson that stands you in good stead.’

  ‘Marianne, I come from Yorkshire. All the basements are damp. I can’t even make it down the stairs to grab a bottle of red wine from my cellar. Now that’s an issue.’

  I can’t help it. I laugh. She laughs too, the guilty sound of survival, and we don’t stop until David and Hamish come into the conservatory and stand beside us in a flanking manoeuvre.

  ‘We really should get on the road,’ says Hamish. He’s aged less well than Rebecca, a wiry, pale white-blond with a slight physique and very blue eyes. Beside him Rebecca looks more vital. ‘It’s a long drive back.’

  ‘Yes,’ she says, meekly.

  ‘I suppose we should as well,’ I say, and David nods. How handsome he is in his dark suit. How glad I am that he’s beside me, so that I don’t have to face these conversations alone.

  Hamish says, ‘Great to chat with you,’ to David, and David replies, ‘You’ve got my email?’

  ‘Yes.’ Hamish pats his breast pocket, where I assume he keeps his phone. ‘I’ll be in touch.’

  ‘We should all say goodbye to Kay’s mother,’ says David. ‘She’s done a wonderful job here. Maybe we should check if she needs a hand tidying up.’ We all agree, and David turns to look for the poor mother, the right words no doubt already forming on his lips, taking the sting out of the situation for us all.

  * * *

  David and I travel home in silence. It’s not a strained silence. It’s comfortable, companionable. We are so pleased to have weathered these two funerals, and we are looking forward to recommencing our old life.

  He’s driving. With the radio on soft jazz and the night already upon us, I remember the trip to the police station. That night feels so very long ago.

  As we get closer to our junction on the M4, David takes one hand from the steering wheel and clicks off the radio.

  ‘How are you?’ he asks.

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘Good. I’m glad.’

  I think we can do this. I can go back to work in the library. They’ve rearranged the shift patterns so that nobody is ever left alone to lock up. I can work there, and look forward to a takeaway on a Friday night, and maybe I can give David children because there’s no doubt that he’ll make a wonderful father. We can be content, our family, in the knowledge that we’ve had our adventure and no more shocks await us.

  ‘What was Kay like?’ he says. ‘If you don’t mind me asking.’

  ‘She didn’t want to live for other people. She was taller than me, and she walked really quickly. She wasn’t keen on Italian food.’ It’s an odd list, and it includes everything I know about her. Suddenly I feel the movement of time, a jolt, like riding a galloping horse towards a fence, far in the distance, and realising that the jump is coming, coming, is so very nearly upon me.

  We are home. David reverse-parks the car and then we get out, to a darkened house warmed through by the silent, pumping radiators. The neighbours have their Christmas decorations up, multicoloured lights strung around the small, bare cherry tree they keep in the middle of their front lawn. Already we have moved on. My mind turns to presents, and food, and the beginning of a new year. I want to get something special for David. I can’t think of anything that would do. Clothes, music, films: all too mundane. If he were a woman and I were a man, I’d buy him a ring. An eternity ring, worth a month’s wages at least, to seal the deal.

  I follow him into the living room and watch him draw the curtains. Then he sits on the sofa and I sit next to him, side by side, our coats and shoes still on. He pulls me into his lap, and I kick off my shoes and relax into him. We are wrapped together in our womb of a house, and the certainty hits me that this is not the beginning of our happily
ever after. We will have to grow up soon, up and apart, and face the truth about the divergent paths of our lives. I have things I have to do, mysteries that still need to be solved. I push that unwelcome revelation away and sigh into his neck.

  ‘While you were away I met someone who said she knew you,’ he says. ‘She’s a Community Support Officer.’

  ‘How did you meet her?’

  ‘Outside the library.’

  ‘What were you…?’ I didn’t finish the question. I’m certain I’d rather not hear the things he’s trying to tell me.

  ‘He started all of this, you know that, don’t you?’ says David. ‘He would have—’

  The words spring out of me. ‘Raped me. Burned me. Hurt me. Used me. Killed me. Fucked me. Cut me.’

  ‘Stop.’

  ‘I’m here with you. I’m fine. You need to let it go,’ I tell him.

  ‘Sam – the woman I met – she was desperate to catch this man, to stop him from hurting others. And you can come out of an attack, an earthquake, a meeting with the mother who abandoned you, her death, and you think you can simply let it all go?’

  ‘Not me,’ I tell him. ‘I can’t let it go. You can.’

  He is quiet for a moment. Then he says, ‘I think I need you to accept that when things happen to you, they happen to me too. Maybe not in exactly the same way, but they do happen to me too.’

  ‘Yes. All right. I can see that.’ I move from his lap to the other side of the sofa. ‘So tell me. Tell me what you went through.’

  ‘It’s not a competition, Marianne.’

  ‘Then why do I feel like I’ve got a rival? This woman – Sam – who wants to be a heroine. Do you prefer that? What is she trying to prove?’

  David crosses his legs. ‘I’m not interested in what she’s trying to prove.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s true.’

  My body has become used to the heat of the house; I’m no longer warm. I take the throw from the back of the sofa and wrap it around my legs.

  ‘I think you need help,’ says David. He leans over and puts a hand on my thigh. ‘To talk this out with someone. Not just the library thing, but the thing with your mother as well. And I need the same, maybe. There’s too much to take on. So much has happened, so fast. There’s so much you’re not telling me.’

  ‘Can’t we just not talk about it? I think if we just…’ I make a smooth line with the flat of my hand, like a journey on calm seas.

  ‘Do you think that’ll work forever?’

  ‘It’ll work tonight. Tomorrow night. Maybe all the way to Christmas. That’s what I want. A happy Christmas. Can we have that? Please?’

  ‘And then?’ David takes his hand away and stands up. ‘Will you be ready to deal with it after that? If we do this entirely on your terms, because it seems that’s how everything has to be?’

  His words, and the pain behind them, hurt me deeply. He’s right, then – we are interlinked. We have grown together, and any time those strands get pulled there is a twinge, a soreness, to the movement. ‘I’m selfish. Yes, I know it, and I’m so sorry. I can’t blame you for anything that happened while I was away, and I won’t. I won’t, as long as I don’t have to talk about it. Don’t tell me any more about your friend, or how you met her. All that matters right now is that you came for me. Everything else can wait. Because we love each other, it can wait. Right?’

  He nods, and says, ‘Cuppa?’

  ‘Lovely.’

  Normality is restored so easily. He wanders off to the kitchen, shedding his coat, and our love is a given once more.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Time passed for David in a slow haze. The bubble of life with Marianne protected him from the worst – and best – of his emotions. They both returned to work. She resumed library duties and he went back and forth to his office with no real understanding of what he was doing. He couldn’t remember the conversations he had there, or the daily commutes in the car. It seemed beyond trivial to him. If he had gone on making no effort and taking no interest at work, he was certain he would have lost his job, but in the final few days before Christmas it seemed that nobody was concentrating on such things.

  Even The Cornerhouse was decked out with tinsel and paper chains, and a row of orange fairy lights ran along the optics, giving out a glow that could almost be described as welcoming. Although an effort had been made with the decoration, the place was deserted. The usual crowd of old men was missing, and a weary silence hung over the rough tables and chairs. The pull of the cubes had left David completely. He wondered if the other men felt the same.

  David was about to leave when he heard a cough, and realised Arnie was still there, in his usual seat at the back by the fireplace. At the next table along was Geoff, the perennial loser at the cubes, still wearing his striped tie and nursing his pint with a bruised expression. David’s eyes caught a movement behind the bar, and Mags came forward, and leaned against the pumps with a raise of her eyebrows. She wore a black blouse, her hair loose, her breasts hanging low. She looked older and smaller without her usual audience.

  David felt her watching him as he crossed the room to Arnie, tapping the envelope he held against his leg. He stopped in front of the table, not knowing how to begin.

  ‘What now?’ said Arnie, as if picking up a conversation from minutes earlier.

  ‘Marianne asked me to give you this.’ David held out the envelope. Arnie reached over without enthusiasm and took it, breaking the seal, sliding the Christmas card into view. It was the expensive type, stiff cream paper, with a picture of a holly leaf embossed with green and silver glitter, golden calligraphic greetings of the season surrounding it.

  ‘Nice,’ Arnie said. He didn’t read the message inside. ‘She’s still not keen on seeing me, then?’

  ‘She explained it,’ said David.

  ‘Yeah, it was a lovely telephone conversation. To be fair, I think she covered everything. Not a word was wasted. A talent she got from her mother.’ He put the card down next to the dregs of his pint of beer. Mags came over with two full pints, and said, ‘Pay me later,’ before stomping away with the old glass in hand.

  What had Marianne said to her father? The night after her mother’s funeral she had taken the phone upstairs and locked herself in the bathroom with it. From downstairs, all he heard was the soft rumbling of her serious tone of voice. No shouting, no shrillness. Had she told Arnie that she couldn’t ever forgive him for his refusal to come to the funeral? Or was it the secrets he had kept from her that had led to this break from him? Did she tell him she never wanted to see him again? But no, David was certain that Marianne would never say anything so permanent. Right now, they were living their life here in Wootton Bassett as if it were only a temporary arrangement. Besides, the giving of a Christmas card suggested nothing so extreme.

  After Christmas, that was when she wanted to talk about facing the past and constructing a future. Until then they were all just treading water. The metaphor made him think of Inger. David wondered where she was now. He hoped, for her sake, she wasn’t alone. She was the kind of person who needed someone to be strong for.

  ‘You been down the gym?’ said Arnie.

  David shook his head.

  ‘I hear you pulled them out of an earthquake.’

  ‘A house collapsed.’

  Arnie nodded, as if such things happened every day in his experience. ‘I’m not such a bad person, you know. I would have done the same thing. I would have pulled Marianne out of an earthquake. And Vanessa, too. Even Vanessa. So a house fell on her.’ He took a sip of his new beer. ‘Like the Wicked Witch of the Wotsit. Did her toes curl under? I’m just joking. It’s dead here tonight.’

  ‘No cubes?’ said David. He kept his voice as casual as he could.

  ‘Given up doing that,’ said Arnie, glumly. ‘Haven’t we?’

  Mags called, ‘No more cubes, you bloody lot,’ from her usual place behind the bar. ‘Bloody men.’

  Geoff stood up, and wobbled over
to their table. He sat and scraped his chair right up to David, so close that David could smell the mustiness and old, dried sweat of his clothes.

  ‘What are we gonna do?’ he said. ‘Hm? What? She’s taken the cubes down. They’re not on the shelf any more.’

  ‘They stopped production,’ called Mags. ‘No more barrels. No more cubes. Not anywhere. Besides, you lot don’t need it any more. Busy making your own plans, aren’t you?’ She muttered something, then picked up a tea towel and ran it up and down the bar, forlornly, like the proud owner of a failing vintage car.

  ‘And no more favours for poor old Mags,’ said Arnie. ‘We all knew she was rigging it, a bit of sleight of hand to get her favours. She had us all cleaning her windows, getting her shopping, anything she wanted, just so she’d let us win every once in a while and have a taste of the stuff.’

  ‘But now you don’t want the stuff.’

  Geoff shrugged. ‘It doesn’t seem so important any more. We don’t need to pretend, do we? We just… are.’

  It was a difficult thing to take on board. The cubes had been bigger than The Cornerhouse, than Mags or Arnie or the old men who had based their lives around it. David thought of the pub in Allcombe, on the quay, with the fisherman sitting so still, and the cubes on the mantelpiece, the only decoration not covered in dust. How many pubs had played the game of the cubes?

  ‘What do we do?’ said Geoff. ‘I’ve been waiting for you to come back. I knew you’d know what to do.’

  ‘So why did Marianne run away, then?’ said Arnie.

  ‘I don’t know,’ David said.

  ‘It wasn’t because of that attack? It was in the paper about it. Some bloke’s been hanging around the library.’

  ‘When was it in the paper?’

  ‘Four or five days ago. Mags, have you still got it? I read it and thought – I wonder if that’s Marianne. But I’m always putting two and two together and making fifty-eight. Mags, the Gazette, it was, have you got it?’