I perch on the desk. ‘Look I know you’re going to tell me to stop—’
‘No, actually, there’s something I wanted to ask you,’ he says, cutting me off. ‘I mean, I didn’t want to mention it, but seeing you back here and all, I’ve just… well… been wondering…’ He shifts on his feet, seeming oddly nervous.
‘What is it?’ I cross my arms.
‘I found something…’ He looks away, hesitating. ‘I didn’t tell anyone about it at the time. I was too… squeamish.’
‘Squeamish?’ Instantly, I send my emotions into lockdown mode. I can’t afford to feel right now. Can’t afford to wonder how I’ll cope if the one person who has been a rock to me for so long – the one person who most certainly was not involved in any of it – might have secrets too. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘It was a couple of weeks before she died,’ Bill says. ‘I was throwing something away in the bathroom bin, and I found… it.’ He looks out of the window, like the view of grey sky is particularly fascinating. ‘A pregnancy kit,’ he says.
‘What?’ I hiss. I grip the edge of the desk.
‘Was it yours?’ He grimaces. ‘Or… hers?’
Pieces of the puzzle that I didn’t even know were missing slam into place. Ginny breaking up with James, then a few months later declaring her undying love for him. Ginny, bowing out of the audition, ripping up the ticket I bought for her. Throwing away all our hopes and dreams just like that. Ginny who went to the party that night and… died. Ginny who was… Oh God.
I feel like I might be sick. I’ve had it with this whole thing and everyone involved. ‘It wasn’t mine,’ I say, my voice sharp. ‘And you should have told me about it. Everyone should have told the truth. Don’t you think the police might have been interested to know if she was pregnant? That it might have had an impact on her mental state?’
‘I didn’t think about that,’ Bill says. ‘I didn’t tell anyone because it was too embarrassing. And besides, I really did think it was yours. I mean, you and Byron—’
‘You could have asked…’ But even as I say the words, I realise I’m being unfair. Bill was a teenage boy with two loopy sisters that surely he couldn’t even begin to comprehend.
‘I wasn’t even sure what it was,’ Bill defends his corner. ‘I mean, I had an idea. I was pretty sure it was something that Mum wouldn’t be happy to find. So I threw it in the bin out back.’
‘And you’re sure it was positive?’
‘There was a pink cross. I remember that. When Fiona showed me her pink cross a few years later, I knew I’d seen it before.’
I put my hands over my eyes. ‘This is all just so… awful.’
Before Bill can respond, there’s a commotion out in the hallway. Gripping the wall to steady myself, I follow him out of the room. Emily is there, along with Fiona, who raises a questioning eyebrow when she sees us. Emily has the record player in her arms, the chord trailing along behind her. Fiona is carrying one of the heavy boxes of records.
‘Here, let me take that,’ Bill says. He gives me a quick glance and I can see how relieved he is to be done with our conversation.
‘Sure, be my guest.’ She hands him the box.
‘I’ll take that.’ I point to the box of journals.
Emily gives me a black look, but I ignore her.
‘I’ve got a headache from all that dust,’ I say. I pick up the box and take it to my room, set it down just inside the door and give it a hard shove with my foot over to Ginny’s side. Then I pick up the harp and put it outside the door.
‘Can you take this away too?’ I say. ‘Please.’
‘Sure,’ Bill says, looking worried.
‘I hope you feel better, Skye,’ Fiona says.
‘Thanks,’ I say, pulling the door shut. ‘Me too.’
I don’t tell her that I couldn’t possibly feel worse.
I lie on my bed staring at a pinhole in the wall, trying to make sense of this unbearable new dimension to the tragedy. Ginny broke up with James because we were leaving and she wanted to make a clean break. Then she discovered she was pregnant. She bought a coach ticket to Glasgow – but it wasn’t because she was going there with James.
Maybe she’d decided to have an abortion: somewhere anonymous, where it wouldn’t get back to Mum through the grapevine. I don’t know for sure, but it does make sense. Then, at the last minute, she had second thoughts. She decided to keep the baby, tell James, get back together. But James rejected her. She was upset, everything seemed hopeless. Did she make a snap decision to end the pain once and for all?
Again I don’t know, but what I really don’t understand is why she didn’t confide in me? I loved her, I would have helped her. If she wanted an abortion, I would have stood by her – and made sure that James paid for a coach ticket for both of us.
Or, she could have had the baby. Mum disapproves of abortion, and I’m sure she would happily have raised it. I would have made sure that James damn well paid child support.
It would have been an awkward and upsetting time, but we would have got through it. We were a family. It was only Ginny’s action that destroyed that.
I hear a car outside. And voices. Mum: home from her WI do. My suspicions loom like sinister shadows. Did Mum know?
I think of her antipathy for James, the farm park, and Katie. Then there was the conversation I overheard between her and Lorna: ‘I never told her.’ It could have been about any of the secrets she was keeping – the stroke, the made-up story, her suspicions of suicide – anything. But could it have been about my sister being pregnant?
The more I think about it, the more certain I am that Mum must have known. It explains why she was so worried the night of the party. Begging me to collect Ginny and bring her home. Wanting me to protect not only my sister but also her unborn child—
I sit up and get to my feet. I don’t want to stay in this room a moment longer. Nor do I want to go down and brave the family. The idea of sitting downstairs, interacting with Bill, and Mum – two people that I’d thought were just as perplexed as I was about what happened all those years ago – seems impossible. They too were keeping secrets… they too were lying all this time.
I glance over at the box with Ginny’s journals. In truth, I don’t want to change my view of my sister. I don’t want to taint the good memories or think of her as scared and depressed, her heart broken by a boy who wouldn’t stick by her. A girl who might decide that her life was hopeless and not worth living. I don’t want to know the truth.
But it’s too late now.
I kneel down and take out the books one by one. I flip through the pages, trying to dull the pain of seeing her loopy, rambling handwriting. The first page of each journal has a month and year written, along with: ‘Property of Virginia Turner – Keep Out!!!’
For the most part, I did keep out. Ginny read me snippets from time to time, but I never tried to read her journals or steal them. Why would I? I knew everything about her. I didn’t need to know her secrets because she didn’t keep any from me.
I toss a few of the journals into an old rucksack. They only seem to go up until the time she was eighteen, so there must be at least one that’s missing. I take the rucksack downstairs. I’m not going to read them here.
Mum’s in the kitchen with Fiona, and the others don’t seem to be around. Both of them look surprised to see me. Fiona offers me a cup of tea.
‘No, thanks,’ I say. I don’t look at Mum or try and make small talk. All the secrets… all the years… ‘I’m going out,’ I say. ‘I won’t be back for supper.’
31
The light is fading as I reach the village. I pass the coach stop, and it seems like years instead of days since I arrived, worried about coming home and seeing Mum, but hoping for the best. It also seems a lot longer than mere hours ago when I drove back from the lighthouse feeling better for having gone out there. Now, all I can feel is an icy chill inside of me.
I drive through the village and pull into the car park of
the little stone church, nestled in a copse of trees. It’s eerily quiet as I get out of the car, taking the rucksack with me, and go around the back to the graveyard. An elderly woman is standing before one of the graves near the church, her head bowed. I turn up the first aisle and walk to the far end, where there’s a gnarled oak tree, and the graves of my family.
I’ve been here many times after the Sunday service we used to attend as kids. Before going on to tea and biscuits in the church hall, we’d come here and say hello to Grandma and Granddad Stewart – Mum’s parents – who died when we were little, and Grandpa Turner, whom Dad said we had to forgive for being half English and giving us our surname. Our great grandma Millie fell in love with a man from the wrong side of the border, but they’d met while serving in Passchendaele, so her indiscretion could be overlooked. Next to Grandpa Turner is his wife, Mary-Annie. She was a champion open water swimmer, and it was a shock when she died, when I was about twelve.
Dad’s grave is just past his parents’. It’s marked with a shiny granite headstone with a cherub playing a harp. It was the closest to a musical theme that we could find in the standard repertoire of headstones. Dad’s funeral was one of Ginny’s greatest performances. She sang ‘Green Grow the Rashes O’ while I strummed along on the guitar. Her voice had never sounded so pure, so bell-like, especially when it began to break with emotion. I can still see her standing just beyond the tree, tall and slender, her long hair straight down her back. In her black dress with lace sleeves she looked like a dark angel, otherworldly and untouchable. At one with death and yet immune from it. Her voice was one that was destined to live on for years, touching the hearts of millions. Ginny was her family’s darling and soon she would be the world’s darling. It had seemed inevitable.
Now, her headstone is next to Dad’s. Black granite with blue metallic sparkles, luminous like her eyes. But Ginny isn’t there. She chose her own grave. A grave of wind and rock and crashing waves. A grave for her and… her child.
Tears sting my eyes, but I didn’t come here to be sad. I sit down on one of the Stewart graves and take out one of Ginny’s diaries. I open it to a page at random.
Grandma finished her Brussels sprouts and then she let out a huge fart. I looked at Mum. She was staring down at her plate and then she started choking. I looked at Skye like ‘should we help her?’ Then Mum snorts – seriously – and she’s laughing. Grannie lets another one go… I swear, I laughed myself sick…
There’s much more of the same. Some parts are funny, some are mundane descriptions of her day-to-day life. I enjoy reliving some of Ginny’s good memories, especially of family Christmases. For the most part, they mirror my own. Laughter, jokes, music, food. So much to live for.
But towards the end of that journal, there are a few references that give me pause:
S is like five minutes older than me. But she acts like I’m a silly, stupid little girl. It’s driving me crazy.
Or one from the beginning of the next, when we were both seventeen.
She didn’t know I saw her. He totally had his hand up her shirt and his tongue down her throat. She didn’t see me. But he did. And the look he gave me… I hate her.
I stare at the words on the page, feeling hurt and a little betrayed. OK, so I probably was a bit smug when I was with Byron. But surely that’s understandable given how most people fussed over Ginny, not me. I skip on to the entry when she first started going out with James:
It’s finally my turn to get what she has. J’s so nice, and he makes me laugh. I feel like a princess. If I were staying here, I could do worse. And better…
So James didn’t exactly sweep her off her feet. That doesn’t surprise me. I am surprised by the thinly veiled references to her being jealous of me.
I read one of the last entries in the diary from that year. She goes on and on about being Queen of the Fleet, the dresses, and the ‘maidens’ in her court. But towards the end, another line snags my eyes:
S thinks that she knows everything about me. She thinks we want the same things, and that she’s got it all figured out. So I just play along. There’s only one thing that she has that I want.
What did I have that she wanted?
There’s only one thing I can think of. One thing we didn’t share.
One person.
32
It’s dark when I stuff the journals back into the rucksack and leave the graveyard. I feel more alone than I ever have in my life, even the moment when I found out Ginny was dead. At that time I was in denial – my sister, it seems, was not only a talented singer, but a very good actress. But I can’t deny her own words. She resented me. She was jealous of me and Byron. Could that really be true?
I drive back to the centre of the village and park the car. I’m chilled from sitting outside, but I have to try and speak to Lachlan. If anyone was lurking about in the shadows: if anyone saw ‘what really happened’ – not just that night, but in the months leading up to it – then surely it would be him.
I walk down to the harbour. The boats are bobbing up and down, the streetlamps casting jagged golden shapes on the water. The door to the Fisherman’s Arms is open, a yellow parallelogram of light spilling onto the dark paving outside. I can hear music: traditional fiddle and flute music. For a second, my pulse quickens. Live music? No – after a few seconds I recognise a track from a CD. When I first arrived, I didn’t think I’d ever want to join in another session. Now, though, the uncomplicated joy of making music, laughing, catching up with old friends and making new ones seems like a dream I could relish. If I were staying here long term, then maybe I’d start one. One where everyone felt welcome, especially young people who were just starting out. But I won’t be staying. Not after what I’ve discovered.
The pub seems more Christmassy than last time. The tree Byron bought has been put up next to the fireplace and trimmed with red baubles and white lights. I’m not sure what it means: did his son Kyle not come after all? He’d told me that he’d be taking some time off from the pub to spend with him. I’d been hoping that I wouldn’t have to see him tonight.
The tables in the pub are about half full, with some people eating and others just drinking. Then, there’s a loud cheer from upstairs where, according to a banner above the door to the toilets, a pool tournament is going on.
I make my way over to the bar looking for Lachlan on the stools but instead I see that he’s behind the bar serving drinks.
‘Hi, Skye.’ Lachlan looks up from the pint he’s pulling. ‘You well?’ He puts the pint on the counter in front of an old man on one of the stools, and checks his watch. ‘If you’re here for the tournament, then you’re too late. The women have just finished.’
‘I’m not here for that,’ I say. ‘I was hoping to have a word with you.’
‘OK…’ He eyes me warily.
‘It won’t take long.’
‘Why don’t you go upstairs and watch the tourney? I’ll join you in a few minutes.’
‘Watch?’
Lachlan gives me an appraising glance. ‘Well, if you fancy playing the men, I could have a word with Richie.’
‘I’ll think about it,’ I say. One of the things that Lachlan was better than ‘almost’ at was pool. He and me both.
‘Fine. I won’t be a minute. You want a drink?’
‘Just a ginger ale, please.’
He makes the drink and I take it with me upstairs to the pool room. I’m surprised to see that the two old pool tables and racks of warped cues are gone. In the centre of the room is a genuine, fourteen-foot long snooker table.
‘Do you like it? It’s my pride and joy?’
I turn, startled. Byron has come up behind me carrying a keg of beer. I notice another bar along the back wall that wasn’t there before. Seeing him brings back the anger I felt the other day when I discovered that he orchestrated the lie about my sister’s death. But what else did he lie about?
‘Um yeah,’ I say. ‘Nice.’
‘I thought it was
time for an upgrade,’ he says.
‘Did you?’ I say, my voice laced with sarcasm. Someone calls him over to the bar.
‘I’ll catch up with you later?’ he says. ‘You OK for a drink?’
‘Yes. I’m fine.’ As he walks to the bar, I roll back the years to our then-relationship. The rational part of me says that I’m making something out of nothing. So what if my sister wrote in her journals that she was jealous? That doesn’t mean anything happened between them. I can’t recall Byron ever treating Ginny as anything other than my younger sibling, usually rolling his eyes at some of her antics. He was a grounded person and so was I. We were good together. And Ginny? She was happy with James. Until she broke up with him…
I’m not sure of anything any more.
There are a few women sitting around the tables drinking beer and about twenty men. Some people I recognise, others not. I spot Byron chatting to a bald man with a dark tattoo down his neck – Danny Morrison, one of Byron’s tougher mates from back in the day. He breaks off and points at me. The man nods. Maybe I’m just being paranoid, but I sense an undercurrent of hostility. In the old days, I used to be part of this crowd, but now I feel like a stranger, an outsider. Being here is definitely a bad idea.
As I’m standing there, Lachlan comes up the stairs. I’m about to tell him that I don’t want to play in the tournament, but before I can do so, he calls out to a fat, balding man who’s holding a clipboard and asks if I can sign up. The fat man, Richie, eyes me, tits first, then face. ‘It’s men only,’ he says.
‘Come on, Richie,’ Lachlan says. ‘It’ll be nicer seeing her arse around the table than yours.’
Everyone is looking now. I can’t back down, and now that I’m being challenged, I want to prove myself. I channel the performer in me, the cute little country and western singer who’s in her element on stage in denim hot pants and sequin halter tops, boots and a Stetson. I take a cue from the rack. There are some balls scattered on the table, a few reds, and all the colours. I drop down and aim for a red near the cushion. It rattles the jaw of the pocket, and there’s a collective holding of breath as it drops. I pot the black ball and straighten up.
My Mother's Silence (ARC) Page 19
