On the Edge

by Jane Jesmond

  ‘Sorry, Ma. No breakfast. Stupid. It’ll pass.’

  I couldn’t think about it. Not right now.

  The hard lip of a glass knocked against my lips and teeth and I sipped. Something sweet. Too sweet but it calmed me. Ma waited. Gave me time to recover. She was always good like that. I made a great effort and got control of myself.

  ‘Maybe I should come home,’ I said. ‘For a short while.’

  ‘Everybody does in the end, you know. It’s how it should be. Remember Kelynen, Talan’s sister? She’s come back recently.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘You should go talk to her. She’s suffering. She’s lost so much. But being home will help.’

  I didn’t think that living with Talan and working for Freda was going to do much to help Kelly get over the loss of the career and passion she’d devoted years to. But, hey, I had better things to argue with Ma about. I made a last effort.

  ‘But, Ma, I’m not staying unless we do something to sort out Kit’s finances. I couldn’t take it. I couldn’t be here with Kit and Sofija falling apart. I don’t know how you can bear it.’

  ‘I keep away from them. I can’t let their negativity poison me.’

  ‘Ma!’

  She stood up and pointed her finger at me.

  ‘We have to be very careful, Jenifry, because your brother has opened Tregonna up to negative forces. Very careful.’

  ‘What! You mean when the conference centre opens? The walkers, the painters, the crystal gazers and the other visitors. Aren’t some of them your friends? Besides you often have a few paying guests.’

  ‘Not them.’ Her bracelets jingled as she dismissed them with a wave of her arms. ‘They’ll come and go. They’ll barely touch the heart of the place. She is already here. You know who I mean.’

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  But I thought I did. Not that there were many options to choose between. Apart from Ma and Rosa, the only ‘she’ at Tregonna was Sofija. My difficult to know, difficult to warm to, sister-in-law.

  Kit and Sofija’s marriage had been such a cliché. A successful business owner and his Eastern European bride. That’s what people thought. I knew they did because a few of them had been stupid enough to make snide comments in my hearing. I’d smacked them down sharply. Maybe over sharply because I’d felt a pang of concern myself when they’d stood, Sofija and Kit, holding hands and slightly stooped under the sloping roof of my kitchen. Both so tall. So well matched, in that way at least. And they’d told me they were getting married.

  And Kit overflowed with happiness. It lit up the tiny space and made me smile back at them. So I ignored my suspicions. Reminded myself that Sofija had a job, a good job. Staff nurse at Kings College Hospital. That in a few months she’d have the right to stay in the UK anyway. Besides nothing mattered so long as she kept on making Kit feel that way. It would have been nice if she’d shone with happiness too. But the more time I spent with her, the more I realised that she never showed what she was thinking.

  Ma’s eyes stared into mine. I thought of pebbles. Beach pebbles. Hard and wet. Bouncing the light off so you can’t see what colour they are. So Ma wouldn’t see through my eyes into my mind. And I stared back at her. A faint smile curled her mouth.

  I knew it was no good. She’d seen a shadow of my unease over their marriage.

  ‘So you’re not going to help, are you?’ I said.

  ‘I tried, Kit,’ I said to him as we walked down through the gardens towards the sea. We’d wrapped ourselves up in coats and hats and scarfs and gone out into the fading day to get some air. ‘But I don’t think she’ll ever agree.’

  ‘With a bit of time she will, don’t you think? I always knew she’d be dead against it at first.’

  ‘No, Kit, she won’t. Nothing’s going to make her agree. You’ll… We’ll have to find another way.’

  Kit stopped by a bed of shrubs he and Sofija had planted shortly after moving down. The winds off the sea were tough on plants and Kit touched the few leaves that still clung onto stalks and life, pockmarked with brown spots and edges seared yellow. He laid his finger on each leaf in turn as though committing it to memory while the cold forced the blood to our noses. I thrust my hands deep into the pockets of the coat I’d taken, ignoring the detritus of crumbs and old tissues left behind by previous wearers, and something metallic that felt like a nut.

  ‘What other way?’ he said.

  I had no answer.

  The early evening light made the ruddy orange stem of a dogwood gleam, but even it had suffered, with the last few inches of each stalk burnt black. Kit picked off each dead end. Then, without speaking, he broke off each twig and branch working down until nothing remained except the central spine. He tugged at it, forcing his foot into the earth for leverage but it clung to the hard ground and resisted him.

  I thought he’d given up because he turned towards me and looked as if he was about to speak but something stopped him. Maybe I didn’t control my face and my pity showed. He swung his foot back in a wide arc and bashed the dogwood with the stubby base of his boot then kicked and stamped it into the ground. Afterwards his shoulders rose and fell as each of his breaths, like empty speech bubbles, whitened the air in between us.

  I spoke first.

  ‘Never liked dogwood.’ It was the wrong thing to say, but I ploughed on. ‘We’ll think of something, Kit.’ Yes, I said that too, equally stupid as it was. And Kit’s breathing shook and tore holes in its white mist. I couldn’t bear to see him like that.

  ‘Look, I’ve rung the garage in Plymouth. They’ll buy the car off me straightaway. They might not give me eighty thousand for it but it’ll be quick. They want me to bring it in the day after tomorrow.’

  He turned away and his shoulders heaved in great spasms as though he was vomiting into the flowerbed.

  ‘Listen, Kit. I’m going to sell my flat too and I’ll give you the money. There won’t be enough for all your debts. Not after I’ve paid off the mortgage. But it should settle a lot of it. And it won’t take long. Not the way the market is at the moment. Then we’ll find a way of sorting out the rest.’

  ‘We?’ he said.

  ‘We,’ I replied and gave in to the inevitable. I couldn’t leave Cornwall yet. ‘Of course it’s we. You didn’t think I was going to leave you to deal with all this on your own, did you?’

  Sofija called to him from the back door. ‘Kit. Rosa is waiting for her bedtime story and Talan rang again.’

  He stuck his hands deep in his pockets and shivered.

  ‘Jen. Talan lent me money. Ages ago. When I thought the bank would come good and it was only a cash flow problem. I have to pay him back. Could you write him a cheque? I mean, in advance of selling the car.’

  ‘How much?’ Even I could hear the bleakness in my voice. It shrivelled Kit. ‘I mean, of course. But I don’t keep much in my current account. I’ll have to go online and transfer some.’

  ‘I’ll have to check the exact amount. It happened three or four times. But fifteen thousand should cover it.’

  ‘Fine.’

  He hesitated.

  ‘Go in,’ I said. ‘I’ll come in soon. Tell Sofija what we’ve agreed. She looks…’ But now was not the time to talk about how dreadful Sofija looked. I gave him a shove and he turned and trudged back up the path.

  Kit had borrowed fifteen thousand pounds from Talan. Borrowed it without being sure he could pay it back. Something about the casual way he’d announced it made me feel sick. The old Kit, the Kit I loved, would never have done that. I began to wonder if he’d gone forever. We’d all become our opposites. Kit, the successful entrepreneur and planner extraordinaire, now cadged money as he faced bankruptcy and failure. Sofija, the imperturbable, was thin and anguished. And Pa, the mountaineer, always after new challenges, virgin peaks, thrilling in walking where no one had before, now shepher
ded coddled businessmen up mountains in South America. I… I didn’t like to think what I’d become. Best not to. Best to shut the lid on it all and move on. Only Ma remained unchanged. A bit madder every year but the essence of her never shifted. Maybe the important thing in life was to hold onto what you were. Ma was certainly happier than the rest of us. And if her happiness was because she ignored what everybody around her wanted or needed and looked only inwards to herself… hey, that was Ma.

  I picked up some dead leaves lying in the corner of the low wall round the paved seating area. Protected from the rain by the bush overhanging the wall, they had dried and crumbled until only a lacy skeleton remained. I smoothed one over the knee of my jeans and traced the network of lines that subdivided and subdivided until they blurred into each other although I was sure, if my eyes were only sharp enough, I would find each vein had an end.

  But it was a distraction from what was going on in my head. Something that made my sight blur and my fingers tremble. And when I could no longer see or touch the leaf, I screwed it tight in my hand and let the idea become words.

  Danger? Was I in danger? I thought I was.

  I didn’t think I’d been raped. There’d have been signs. I’d have known. And anyway, why all the stuff on the lighthouse? Why bother? I wasn’t going to remember anything.

  Someone had tried to kill me.

  It was the only thing that made sense.

  The words sucked everything out of me and I was nothing but a skin bag stuffed with straw. Someone had tried to kill me.

  Every thought path I went down led to that conclusion.

  Would I have taken roofies? No. I knew what they did.

  So someone must have given them to me. Slipped them into a drink.

  On that headlong walk along the cliff path trying to escape the addictions that clawed at my feet, I’d met someone. Gone somewhere. Drunk something. And afterwards that someone had taken my unresisting body to the lighthouse and hung me over the edge, using a rope they knew would fail, with a knot in it I never would have tied. I thought of the frayed bits of the cord. Maybe they’d done that too. It would have been easy to rub a worn bit against the corner of a stone. Just to speed up the moment when it snapped.

  And who would have questioned it? Jenifry Shaw with a long history of climbing stupid things. Jenifry Shaw, dead in a climbing accident. Such a pity. So sad for her poor family.

  But who? Who the fuck would have done it? Who hated me enough to kill me?

  Twelve

  When the cold and my horror-filled thoughts got too much, I went back inside to the warmth. The chill passed but frenzied spasms of questions still stabbed through my mind.

  Who? And why? Yes, why? Why had someone tried to kill me? Someone? But who? Who hated me enough to kill me?

  Sofija and Kit were sitting at the table in the old kitchen, the only bit of Tregonna that the renovation hadn’t really touched. It had been rewired but that was all. Great gouges in the battered wallpaper traced the route of the new wiring but they’d been filled in clumsily, hastily, and never redecorated.

  Was I safe? Would they try again? Why, though? Why?

  Sofija leaped up and rushed towards me. I felt my arms twitch as though to ward her off but she didn’t notice as she flung her arms around my neck. Her shell of imperturbability had cracked wide open.

  ‘Thank you, Jen,’ she said. ‘Thank you. Kit told me what you are going to do. I thought you’d turned your back on us. I am sorry.’ She breathed out heavily. ‘And now we will celebrate. We will eat something nice and drink. And toast the end to all our problems. Yes?’

  I dragged my attention back to Sofija. All her problems? I darted a quick look at Kit over her shoulder but he wouldn’t meet my eyes. What had he told her? Clearly not the whole truth.

  ‘Do sit down. You look exhausted,’ I said.

  And she did. The wild gratitude had wrung her out and the release from stress had left her wobbly and soft. Kit pushed her chair towards her but Rosa called from upstairs. Sofija hurried out of the kitchen and Kit slipped into the back room where Pa used to hang the maps and plans for his expeditions and turned on the TV. I followed him. The TV flashed images of the sea and boats and wet people clinging to each other. Migrants washed up on some Mediterranean shore. Displaced. Un-homed. Their lives wrecked.

  ‘What did you tell Sofija?’ I asked.

  Kit muted the TV and plucked at the frayed edges of a hole in the armchair. ‘I told her wrong. In the wrong order. I told her you were selling your car and your flat to help us and she thought everything was going to be OK. You saw how she was. Ecstatic. And I just couldn’t tell her the truth after that. That we’d still be in the shit.’

  ‘Well, you’ll have to put her right.’

  ‘I will. I will. Just not tonight, please, Jen.’

  We both gazed at the silent images on the screen. Then Sofia was back with Rosa in her arms.

  ‘She heard your voice and wanted to say goodnight.’ She spoke a few sentences in Bulgarian and Rosa held out her arms to me. I gave her a kiss and told her we’d look for some swings together. She smiled and burrowed her face into Sofija’s body. Sofija’s arms tightened around her and her face crumbled into love.

  I looked away. The nakedness of it was too much. I’d got her all wrong. Poor Sofija. There must have been moments when she’d wondered if Rosa would have a roof over her head.

  After she’d taken Rosa back to bed, I joined Sofija in the kitchen. She moved between sink and stove, clearing away dishes and putting water on the boil while all the time, in the background, the radio chattered away. Nothing exciting, but just interesting enough to keep my mind occupied. To stop me thinking of everybody I knew and wondering if they’d tried to kill me.

  ‘Sorry,’ Sofija said. ‘I always have the radio on. I don’t notice it but Kit hates it.’

  ‘I don’t mind.’

  But she turned it off and came and sat at the table by me.

  ‘We always had it on as children. The BBC World Service, you know? In English. My parents wanted us to learn English and they thought it would help. My brain absorbed it over the years. Of course they taught it in school after the Zhivkov era. But when I got here, I could understand what people were saying. Most of my Bulgarian friends couldn’t.’ She reached out her hand and took mine. ‘I am so very grateful to you, Jen.’

  ‘You mean the money. I’m happy to help. Kit’s my brother and…’

  She got up and went back to the sink and looked through the window. It wasn’t a great view, the back yard: the bins, a pile of old slates in one corner all covered with slimy green from the damp.

  ‘I know you do not understand how Kit has got himself into this mess,’ she said. ‘I don’t think he understands himself. He had great plans. And Kit is good at plans and designs and creative solutions to big problems.’ She turned round to me. ‘But it is not as simple as that. You have to see them through and he isn’t good at that.’

  She watched my face as I thought how right she was and how odd it was that she should know this when I hadn’t realised it. Kit loved a problem, loved finding a solution but after that he lost interest. At work, he passed the project on to me or another rigger and we saw it through, we made the adjustments, small and big, that had to happen when real life and the unexpected collided with a plan.

  Sofija smiled suddenly. ‘Nothing fancy for supper. Just pasta. But I’ll open a bottle of wine. To celebrate.’

  She started to chop tomatoes and onions and, with the silence, questions gnawed at my mind again, and an identity parade of potential killers followed swiftly.

  ‘What happened to Pip?’ I asked, desperate to distract myself.

  ‘Pip?’

  ‘Gregory’s dog. He wasn’t there when I was at the lighthouse. Is he dead?’

  ‘We think so. He disappeared a few months ago. He was
an old, old dog. Your mother thought Pip knew he was failing and went away to die alone so Gregory wouldn’t be upset. But if that’s true it had the opposite effect. Gregory hunted for him for weeks.’

  ‘Poor Gregory.’

  ‘They said in the village Pip might have disturbed someone. He was a very barky dog.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You know. People bringing things in. What do you call it? Smuggling.’ She stopped chopping and looked at me.

  ‘You’ve been listening to too many old tales, Sofija.’

  ‘No. I read it in the paper,’ she said. ‘Yachts at Falmouth with millions of pounds of cocaine aboard and people finding packages washed up on beaches.’

  Her face was serious but I didn’t answer because ideas were sparking off in my mind like fireworks on Bonfire Night. I told myself not to jump to conclusions. But what if the would-be killer wasn’t someone I knew? Wasn’t someone who hated me? What if I’d interrupted something? Something illicit. I tried to put a brake on my thoughts but they hurtled out of my control.

  Along the cliff path from Freda’s. After Kelly had seen me. Above the cove where I’d found the body that morning. The ledge with the pulley. The perfect place for landing stuff. Like the tourist board panel said. Waves of logic carried me forward and a strange scenario unfolded in my head.

  Tired after the long drive and frayed with the strangeness of being out of rehab, wanting a hit of cocaine to break the darkness of her mood, Jen goes for a long walk along the cliff path.

  She strides past the cottages and houses on the outskirts of the village and past Kelly smoking her rollies in the garden at the back of Freda’s cottage. She doesn’t see her because she’s walking hard. Hard enough to exhaust herself. Hard enough to kick her body’s natural chemicals back into life.

  That much I knew was true. And it wouldn’t have been strange for childhood memories to have enticed me down the path to the ledge.