‘The kindergarten classroom is now a massive kitchen, Mum,’ Claire said, trying to keep things light. She was talking for talking’s sake. ‘And the old book corner is now the utility room.’ She offered around the sandwiches she’d hastily packed up. ‘Please, do eat them up before they…’ But she trailed off, motionless, with the foil-wrapped package held out at arm’s length and her mouth slightly open. She stared down to the shore. Nick had taken off his T-shirt and dropped it at the water’s edge. He was diving in and out of the waves, not looking much different to how he did that day aged eighteen. Claire felt the hairs on her arm stand up, despite the heat.
This is now, this is now, she said over and over in her head as she felt herself being swept back in time. She gazed along the beach, almost expecting to see Lenni walking off to get ice cream, swallowing down the lump in her throat.
‘Well, I’m going for a paddle,’ Greta said.
‘Good idea,’ Patrick said, kicking off his shoes and rolling up his trousers. ‘I’ll come too.’ Greta stood up the way pregnant women do – her belly leading, legs wide apart and her hand leaving the chair at the last moment. She ambled down to the shore with Shona and Patrick.
‘To be honest, Jase, I’m finding this all a bit hard,’ Claire said, when they were out of earshot. ‘And I don’t just mean the tension between you and Dad.’ She paused, running her fingers through the sand. She was determined not to cry. ‘You, Nick and Maggie were in the sea when Lenni…’
‘I know,’ Jason said, patting her arm. ‘Though I wasn’t actually in the sea.’
‘But you were swimming when Lenni went off, I swear.’ She’d gone through the scene a thousand times in her mind since. Had it got distorted over the years? Had she turned it into something it wasn’t? She remembered the white foamy waves breaking high from the previous day’s storm, carrying the excited friends to shore on body boards, their skin grazing on the sand as they were dumped in the shallows. She’d given Lenni some money, then gone into the sea herself. Claire had told all this to the police. She remembered blushing feverishly when she mentioned that she and Nick were swimming together, skin brushing, lips finally meeting in their one and only kiss.
‘I’m certain you were in the sea.’ But what if she was wrong and it had messed up the entire investigation?
Jason was shaking his head. ‘No, I’d gone for a walk when I should have been there to stop her going off alone.’
‘So you’d have stopped her?’ While she knew he was trying to lessen her guilt, it felt a lot like blame.
Jason thought a moment, staring up at the sky and squinting. ‘No,’ he said honestly. ‘I felt ridiculously sorry for her most of the time. She was like a butterfly trapped in a jar. I’d have given her the money and sent her off to the shop too.’
‘Mum and Dad thought they were doing the right thing, you know. By protecting her so much.’
‘I know,’ he replied. ‘She never seemed quite capable of watching out for herself whereas we always did.’
Jason had a point. As Lenni was growing up, her naivety and gullibility bloomed with her. From talking to strangers, openly telling them her name and where she lived, to handing over her possessions at school when the bullies demanded, Lenni had little concept of mistrust. Once, she’d even run out of the playground, chasing a sick rabbit across the fields wanting to help it. She was gone for hours. Her nature was both beautiful and agonising to watch and, on reflection, Claire and Jason completely understood their parents’ hypervigilance.
They sat in silence, chewing it over, watching as Greta, Shona and Patrick walked slowly up and down a short section of beach through the breakers. They’d caught up with Maggie, Angus and Jenny, who were coming back with coffees from the kiosk. Nick was still tirelessly bodysurfing, waiting patiently for the perfect wave – or trying to prove something, Claire wondered. She felt sad Callum hadn’t wanted to join them.
‘Rain didn’t come home last night,’ she told Jason. ‘And Maggie didn’t seem that bothered.’
‘Really?’ Jason suddenly sat up, brushing sand from his hair.
‘Marcus was reluctant to say much. He did tell me that she went a bit weird in a club they went to and she took off on her own. She had their taxi money.’
‘Claire…’ Jason reluctantly took the sandwich she was offering. ‘There’s something I should—’
‘Thankfully, Marcus had enough money in his account to get some cash from the machine, otherwise the boys would have been stranded.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘Sorry, what were you going to say?’ She bit into a smoked salmon sandwich.
‘Nothing,’ Jason said, fingering the bread. ‘It can wait.’ Probably forever, he decided.
‘What I don’t get is that Maggie didn’t seem very concerned about Rain. She sauntered in this morning looking like a dog’s dinner, as glum as anything and refusing to say where she’d been all night.’
‘OK…’ Jason said, cursing his voice for wavering. ‘Maybe she was fast asleep on the living room floor at your place. You know, literally just slept wherever she’d fallen. Downstairs.’
‘Maybe,’ Claire said, waving at Amy who was sitting over with the teenagers.
Jason stuffed the rest of the sandwich into his mouth.
‘Anything could have happened to her. She went out wearing virtually nothing.’
‘Clubs stay open until all hours. She probably met a lad or two, ended up having breakfast in a greasy spoon with them. It’s different these days.’ Jason’s mouth was full and dry. He could hardly speak.
Claire wished everyone would stop saying that. She didn’t think it was different at all. She stood up. ‘I’m going to join Greta. Coming?’ She hoped it would get him walking with Patrick.
‘I’ll sit this one out, sis,’ he said, lying back down on the rug.
* * *
Claire walked off, keeping Nick in her line of sight as she went. She thought he looked exhausted, though he continued ploughing back out through the waves on the body board, paddling hard against the current so that every strap of muscle stood proud on his back and shoulders. Halfway down to the tideline, Claire stopped. She felt dizzy and dug her toes into the cool wet sand. Something sharp caught against her foot – a razor clam – and she pulled back her wind-whipped hair, staring down the long crescent of beach. The memories swept through her… the coin, fat and full of the promise of an ice cream in the palm of Lenni’s hand, her saggy-bottomed swimsuit under her denim shorts, the water quickly seeping through… the creeping tide drenching their stuff as Lenni was about to set off…
Nick had been in the water, that day. She knew that. Though she recalled he’d gone off somewhere shortly after Lenni went for her ice cream, perhaps embarrassed by their kiss. She couldn’t be sure. She was certain Jason had been in the water too. But in her mind’s eye, she couldn’t picture him there at all now. It was as if all the memories had been dislodged by the reunion, stirred up in a freak tide of doubt. Over the years they’d loosened, become malleable, as if taking on the shape of whatever she was told.
She shook her head, not knowing what to believe, and cupped her hands around her mouth. ‘Wait for me!’ she called out, but her words blew back against the wind.
Chapter Thirty-One
Sometime Long Ago
The ceiling, once a measure of my growth, bears down on me daily. I feel like Alice – all gangly-legged and too big for the room. I’m told I won’t get much taller, that I’m stunted, like a plant with no light. I stare into the grimy mirror – I’m a wiry, pale creature with a big, bobbing head sprouting thin, ratty hair. I’m nothing like the lovely actresses in the movies I watch. A girl I don’t recognise stares back at me, as if one of us is waiting for the other to pounce. I know one of us has given up. Her mouth is blistered and sore and her eyes hang heavy with loneliness. At night, she dreams of what lies beyond the door, but her plans to find out are always dissolved by morning.
Anyway, she tells herself, those pretty actresses always end up dead. Outside is no place for someone like her.
I turn around and around very slowly, looking, checking I’m alone. Sometimes people come, just stand there and watch me. If I stare back, if I blink and rub my eyes, they’re gone. But today it’s just me and the same four walls. I’m told to be happy, to be grateful. You’re alive, aren’t you?