The Colour of Mermaids

by Catherine Curzon

  Lyndsey had suggested they meet up for a walk, and Eva had been so concerned about her friend that she had agreed. She couldn’t bear to think what nightmares from the past had been stirred in Lyndsey, but fresh air and sunshine might distract them for a while at least.

  “I can’t imagine what she went through as a child,” Eva confided. “And it’s all swirling about inside again, poor girl.”

  “Lyndsey’s mum.” Daniel frowned. “Is she like Lyndsey? What I mean is, she’s so emotional and I just wondered, if her mum’s the same, could that make it worse? I suppose she’s got Miles though, and he’s anything but emotional.”

  Eva snorted with laughter. “Are you saying my ex is a bit boring, Daniel? Well…let’s say he’s a very steady sort of bloke, and that if anyone can keep Lyndsey rooted, it’s him.”

  “When I was inside, I met all sorts of people. You can imagine.” And she could, but she didn’t want to. “I’ve only met him once, so tell me if I’m wrong, I feel like there’s nothing there. He’s walking around, he’s talking and breathing, but…he gives me the strangest feeling.”

  “He can be very charming, or he used to be, at least.” Eva shrugged. “But he changed. And that was that. You’re right about Lynds’ mum, though. I think dotty might be the polite way to describe her! Dotes on Lynds like she’s still a little girl, but I suppose you can see why, after what happened in their family.”

  “Maybe my time at HM’s pleasure made me cynical, but do you wonder if there’s even the slightest possibility—” He glanced at her then said, “Forget it, let’s try and have a good day.”

  The car park was almost empty when they arrived, except for a rather bored man in an ice cream van reading a newspaper.

  “I’m glad it’s not too busy. I came for a walk out here once and nearly got knocked out by a stunt kite.” Eva grinned at Daniel as she tried to tidy her hair. “The joys of living by the sea…”

  But Daniel’s attention was elsewhere as he climbed from the car and looked out over the horizon. The land seemed to fall away into emptiness, as though the world itself ended at the cliff edge, where nothing waited other than a sheer drop down to the sea below.

  Oh.

  Eva tucked her hair behind her ears but the breeze caught it and blew it loose. The long strands whipped against her face as she reached for Daniel’s hand. “Darling, if you’d rather not…we can go back home again if you prefer. I’ll send Lynds a text. I’ll say I didn’t feel up to it after all.”

  “It’s going to make life by the sea tricky if I can’t look at a cliff.” He kissed her cheek, but she heard trepidation in his voice. “Kick coke, walk on a cliff, fall in love. A successful year!”

  Eva laughed. She screwed up her eyes against the sun and peered along the path. There, on the headland, were three figures silhouetted against the bright, sparkling sea. “That’s them, I think. Shall we?”

  “Let’s go.” He nodded. “Meet the parent!”

  Eva waved as they made their way over the tufty grass that clung to the sparse soil and chalky earth. The figures returned her greeting. Miles was clad in another of his striped shirts, a jumper knotted carefully around his shoulders. Lyndsey’s mother was wearing a cerise-pink skirt suit with a flouncy blouse that billowed in the wind, and her shoulder-length grey hair blew about her face. Her entire outfit looked crumpled, as if she had slept in it—which was, Eva had learnt over the years, par for the course. She looked even more crumpled stood next to Lyndsey in another of her immaculate ensembles.

  “Afternoon!” Eva greeted.

  “Hello!” Lyndsey seemed so much happier today. Her cheeks were flushed, her hair perfectly groomed and her smile in place. Her mother didn’t look quite so delighted, Eva noticed. She seemed to have aged decades in the few months since their last meeting. “Mum, this is Daniel. I’ve told you all about him, haven’t I?”

  “Yes.” Mrs Davis kept her hands in her pockets and bestowed only a curt nod. “The artist, aren’t you?”

  “That’s what I tell everybody.” Daniel smiled and took off his sunglasses. “Pleased to meet you. Good to see you again, Miles, Lyndsey.”

  Once again, Miles stared at Daniel as if he had just heard a loud and surprising bang. Did it really startle him so much that Eva should have found a new partner?

  “And you, too.” Miles extended his hand to Daniel. “Glorious day, perfect for blowing out the old cobwebs!”

  The men shook hands and Lyndsey, standing dangerously close to the cliff edge, snapped a photo of them with her phone.

  “For posterity.” She smiled. “Two friends beside the sea.”

  Her heart hammering, Eva looped her arm through Lyndsey’s, bringing her away from the edge. “Right, then…off we go.”

  They strolled along the cliff path, but the farther they went, the more the atmosphere thickened. Perhaps Mrs Davis found the presence of the art world’s celebrity enigma a little troubling, because she kept glancing back at where he and Miles walked in awkward silence, and it seemed as though only Lyndsey had anything to say, chatting merrily about this and that but never, ever mentioning Rupert.

  Lyndsey was clearly aware of it too, and her efforts to draw her mother and boyfriend into the conversation grew more clipped until Eva had a feeling that trouble might be on its way. She heard the slight huff in her friend’s voice, saw the tightness in her jaw and the flash of childish annoyance in her eyes when she asked, “Miles, shall we share our news?”

  Miles glanced at Mrs Davis before nodding to Lyndsey. “Yes, I think we should.”

  Mrs Davis stopped and slipped off one dust-covered court shoe to rub her toes. “Never mind me,” she muttered.

  “News?” Eva did her best to sound upbeat. “Oh, go on, spill!”

  “What happened yesterday has shown us that life can be horribly short.” Lyndsey reached out and seized her boyfriend’s hand. “We can’t get along without each other and we wouldn’t want to. Miles and I are engaged!”

  Eva clapped her hands together. “That’s so lovely! Oh, congratulations, you make such a lovely—”

  Mrs Davis interrupted with a huff. “I don’t want to hear about it. Lyndsey, you’ve knocked me badly!”

  “Don’t you dare.”

  Lyndsey sounded utterly furious, but even she was silenced when Daniel addressed Mrs Davis and said, “I knew you were familiar from somewhere.”

  His voice dropped to a menacing whisper and he asked Miles, “What the fuck’s going on?”

  Defiant, Miles raised his chin and stared at Daniel. “Lyndsey and I are getting married. There’s no need for bad language, even from an enfant terrible like you.”

  “Miles!” Mrs Davis snapped. “That’s enough!”

  Eva moved too slowly to catch Daniel’s hand. He seized Miles’ chin in a violent grip and stared at him, his black eyes blazing with an emotion that she couldn’t quite read. Then he whispered, “Ollie?”

  The wind blew with more fury along the clifftop, rattling the salt-stiffened grass.

  ‘Ollie?’

  “What?” Eva’s stomach lurched. This wasn’t right. Miles was Miles, he wasn’t Oliver Shaw, he wasn’t the boy whose lies had condemned Lee Carswell. “Daniel, come away… Let’s go back to the car. Let’s go home.”

  “You put me away! You killed your sister and you put me away for it!” Daniel shouted, his words searing with fury, and still Miles stood there, silent and unmoving as Daniel yelled. “We were mates! How the hell do you push your own sister off a fucking cliff and—”

  “He didn’t.” Lyndsey held out her hand to her mother. “Did he, Mum?”

  “You’ll hold your tongue if you’ve got any sense, my girl.” Mrs Davis’ hands were still in her pockets, bunched now into fists. “But you haven’t. All I did for you, and you plan to seal your existence in an act of abomination with him.”

  Miles broke away from Daniel’s stare and glared at Mrs Davis. “Shut up, you mad old witch! We love each other!”

  �
�Why can’t you be normal?” Lyndsey thundered at her mother. “Why do you have to talk like there’s something wrong with you? All you did for me? All I did for you!”

  “Normal?” Mrs Davis’ deep laugh shook her body as if the very ground she stood on was about to crack apart. “Says the girl who wants to marry her own brother!”

  “Shut up!” Miles swung his fist in rage and frustration. “Shut up, you mad bitch! And as for you, Mr Artist, I don’t know what the fuck you’re on about. I never pushed anyone off a cliff! Why? Did you?”

  Eva couldn’t move. The wind blew with more violence by the second, whistling and shrieking around them. Images came to her. Emily Shaw in her school photograph, Lee Carswell’s mugshot.

  But she had never seen Oliver Shaw.

  Until now.

  In fact, as his fist connected with Daniel’s jaw and sent him sprawling across the grass, she saw him all too clearly. Oliver and Emily had been here all along, the abused girl living her life with the crazy lady who had once lived in the big house, the woman Daniel had knocked badly with his loutish mischief. The woman who had masterminded all of this.

  Because surely a child couldn’t—

  Suddenly Lyndsey’s words made all too much sense, her calls for Rupert to be punished beyond anything the law could do, to be gnawed away from within over the years. Was that what they had done to the father who’d abused her? Spirited away his victim and left him to live out the years not knowing what had become of her? Punished not by the police, but by the torment that she had been taken from him by the actions of a boy who had been innocent all along.

  Lee Carswell hadn’t been locked away for a crime he didn’t commit.

  He had been locked away for a crime that never even happened.

  “Get up, Lee!” Miles taunted. “Didn’t you learn to fight in Borstal? You fucking idiot scum, come on then!”

  “Ollie, don’t act the fool,” Lyndsey told him, cringing as though he’d told an off-colour joke. As Daniel pushed himself onto his hands and knees and spat out a thick wad of blood, Lyndsey’s hand lashed out like a whipcrack and caught Eva’s wrist, pulling her close. In her other fist she held a small, bright-bladed penknife, which she pressed against Eva’s throat. “I was so scared when Ru went for you. Miles gave me this just in case. I think this counts as just in case, don’t you?”

  “Lyndsey!” Eva could barely speak, scared that her slightest movement could bring the blade into her skin. “No. Emily, that’s who you are, isn’t it?”

  “Emily’s dead,” Lyndsey told her with that same bright humour in her voice. “She died the first time her daddy climbed into her bed and told her, This is our secret. Well, Miles and me had an even bigger secret, didn’t we? All these years, the biggest secret of all and the best mum a girl could want.”

  Daniel stumbled to his feet, his gaze still fixed on Mrs Davis. Then he asked, “So this was your idea? You took her and ran and the whole world thought—”

  “Of course it wasn’t her idea, does she look like she’s capable of coming up with an idea like that?” Lyndsey laughed. “I was eight years old, but thanks to daddy, I was a very grown-up girl. It was my idea, Lee. I wrote it all down in my jotter and showed it to Ollie and one day, when Mum—Mrs Davis to you—was all upset and crying about the little girl she had lost, we showed the jotter to her too.”

  She pressed the blade closer to Eva’s skin, the edge just biting into her flesh. “That crazy woman in the big house who you and your little friends used to torment was grieving for her own child, Lee. She’d had a baby and she lost it, and you were smashing her windows and writing dirty words on her wall, and is it any wonder that she hated you? You were a nasty, horrid little chav and, in all honesty, I think we did you a favour.”

  “He was a child,” Eva murmured. “The world did him wrong. Just as it did you!”

  “No one wept for little Lee Carswell.” Mrs Davis’ tone was cold and detached. “But little Emily Shaw, what a beautiful child! Hair like wisps of gold, and I loved her, properly, as a mother should. Not that pathetic bitch who did nothing in the face of that unnatural monster she’d married, no. I gave you a home. And how do you repay me? You’re twisted, Emily, you always were!”

  “I’m twisted?” She scoffed. “It was Ollie who caved Rupert’s skull in, not me! I only said someone should teach him a lesson, Mum!”

  Miles puffed his chest out with pride, then grabbed Daniel by the front of his shirt. “Hear that, do you? I killed a man for the woman I love. And you? What did you do? Shouted and carried on a bit, a fucking yob just like you always were!”

  Daniel was silent, staring into Miles’ eyes. Then he spoke, the anger in his voice still there, though Eva could sense the effort he was making to keep it in check.

  “Let Eva go, Lyndsey. She’s your best friend.” He looked straight through Miles, as though he wasn’t even there. “She’s never done anything but be kind to you.”

  “You don’t understand, Lee.” Lyndsey smiled. “I love Eva, really, she’s a sister to me, but when she picked you, that was sort of it. You’re still a horrid little council house rat and I think she could do so”—she jabbed the blade again—“much”—another jab—“better.”

  Still held by Miles, his rugby player physique never more bulky than it seemed now, Daniel seized the moment that Lyndsey had given him and slammed his fist hard into Miles’ belly. He crumpled and Daniel turned, clearly intent on reaching Lyndsey and Eva.

  “Stop it!” Eva cried. “Lyndsey, please.”

  “You always were a tart, Eva!” Miles spat through heaving breaths. “Going with him? With a Borstal brat?”

  Miles lunged for Daniel’s legs, toppling him over. The two men grappled with each other, heading for the edge of the cliff. Eva couldn’t move, could only scream, and Lyndsey hadn’t let her go.

  Mrs Davis did nothing but stare at them all with empty eyes.

  “What’s going on?” a voice asked and there, innocuous amid all this violence and truth, was a party of three middle-aged women clad in sensible hiking boots and Gore-tex. In their hands they held walking poles and on their heads, despite the warmth, were woolly hats. They were prepared for anything, it seemed, but not this. “Is that— Call the police, she’s holding a knife!”

  But Lyndsey wasn’t looking at the women, nor was she really looking at Eva anymore, and as Daniel and Miles tumbled towards the edge of the cliff she let out a howl of panic because she saw, as clearly as Eva did, that their momentum would carry them over.

  The man she loved and his paintings and the warmth of his embrace and the passion in his every kiss and— Eva was about to lose him.

  And there was nothing she could do.

  Miles grunted like a beast, and did he really not see it? Could he not see the edge of the cliff?

  At the last, their limbs somehow came undone and she saw Daniel’s arms flailing even as his momentum took him sliding down the crumbling bank. One caught onto the jagged face of the rocks, the other locking around Miles’ wrist. She heard earth fall, rocks scatter and Miles, his arm still held by Daniel, disappeared over the edge. With a cry of pained exertion Daniel forced his heels into the ground and was caught there like Prometheus on the rock, his back pressed flat to the steep incline, one arm wrapped for dear life around a sharp outcrop, the other hand keeping Miles from his death.

  Alone he would have been safe, but with the weight of the other man dragging at him, it was only a matter of time before both fell. Certainly before the emergency services the hikers were summoning would arrive.

  A thin wail rose from Miles, the cry of a terrified child. The cry of Oliver Shaw as he condemned his friend to prison. And now the cry of a man who was about to die.

  “You’re coming too!” Miles’ shout echoed against the cliff face, as if his voice was far away. “You’ll die with me, Carswell!”

  Eva slowly closed her hand over Lyndsey’s wrist and with a quick movement pulled her arm away. Her head pulsed with bloo
d at the sight of the drop that fell hundreds of feet below, of the chasm of air noisy with the crashing waves and the shriek of gulls.

  Helpless, unable to go any nearer to the cliff edge, she held out her hand, but it was too far for Daniel to reach. “Daniel, don’t go…don’t!”

  And she already knew that he wouldn’t let go of Miles because he wasn’t the sort of man who could do that. He wasn’t the sort of man who would let anybody fall.

  Lyndsey screamed her brother’s name as she dashed towards the edge, scattering a loose fall of rocks as she went. Yet she wasn’t intent on violence now, but on saving the man she loved from the fate that the world thought had befallen her. Her momentum carried her over the coarse grass and stone, the soles of her ballet flats scraping for purchase that they couldn’t find. It was like watching someone trying to keep their balance on a carpet of marbles and, in a shower of tumbling rocks, Lyndsey Davis—Emily Shaw—plummeted down onto the merciless rocks below.

  Even the waves fell silent for the space of a heartbeat. Then a dreadful sob came from Miles as he cried out, “Emily!” He sobbed again, the most desolate wail of sorrow Eva had ever heard. “I can’t live without her…let me go with her, Lee! For God’s sake, man! Let me go!”

  “We were mates back then, whatever you did,” Daniel gasped, his knuckles white against the rock. “I’m not letting you fall.”

  “Then you’ll die with us too!” Miles yelled. “Do you want that?”

  Eva crawled towards the edge. She couldn’t get close enough to reach, but she could see Miles dangling below, his lips drawn back and his teeth bared as he bit Daniel’s hand. The bite tore a cry of pain from Daniel’s lips but still he held on, even as blood began to seep from between Miles’ teeth. A hand closed over Eva’s shoulder and she turned to see the face of a police officer, whose eyes were wide at the sight he was witnessing.

  And when Eva looked back she could see her lover’s fingers slipping from the rock, smearing blood from the sheer effort it was taking to hang on. Perhaps it was the sense of that hand on her shoulder that did it, perhaps just sheer desperation, but she lunged forward, straining every muscle to catch Daniel’s fingers in the second that he let go of the outcrop. Another hand joined hers and someone, somewhere, caught her by the ankles just in time to stop them all following Miles as he fell, his body thudding onto the rocks at Lyndsey’s side.