‘It’s not a Labrador,’ I said. ‘Or a Dalmatian. I can tell you all the things it’s not. I just can’t decide exactly what it is. Perhaps we could do that and just see what’s left?’
‘It’s a Border collie, Florence. Do you think you can remember that?’
‘I think so,’ I said. ‘You know, the only problem with dying in your sleep is that you die alone.’
‘You’re never alone, Florence,’ she said. ‘Just because you can’t see someone, doesn’t mean they’re not there with you.’
I looked at her, but Elsie’s gaze rested on the sea.
‘Milk, no sugar.’ Jack handed me a cardboard cup. It had a little corrugated waistband and a lid.
‘Put your hands around it, keep yourself warm.’ Jack sat at the end of the bench. This seat wasn’t dedicated to anyone. I checked before we chose it. Perhaps they made sure there were spares, in case they thought of someone who needed remembering right at the last moment.
I wrapped my fingers around the cardboard. ‘It’s strange Mrs Honeyman didn’t say anything. About someone turning up with her husband’s name.’
‘Mrs Honeyman slept through most things,’ Jack said. ‘And when she wasn’t sleeping, she was in a little world of her own.’
Elsie said, ‘Best place to be, if you ask me,’ and sniffed away the cold air.
‘And I don’t suppose she’d think anything of it.’ Jack swallowed a mouthful of tea. ‘Someone turns up with a name your husband used occasionally. A husband who disappeared sixty years ago. In a different place and a different time.’
‘Who looked nothing like him,’ I said.
The woman and her dog were far in the distance now. Little specks of people, like biscuit crumbs near the pier. I thought I could still spot her, but I might have been wrong.
Jack rested his tea on the arm of the seat. ‘What are you thinking about, Florence?’
‘Do you think,’ I said, ‘we could go for a walk on the beach?’
Sand is surprisingly difficult to walk on. You wouldn’t think so, would you? From a distance, it looks like it would be a piece of cake, but once you’re there, your legs become heavy and tired so much more quickly and it doesn’t take many minutes before each step feels like an enormous achievement.
Jack didn’t last very long before he found a rock to lean on.
‘I think I’ll stay here for a bit.’ He waved his stick about. ‘You carry on, if you want to.’
I was a little ahead of Elsie. I made slow, deliberate footprints, and every few minutes, I looked behind me and checked on them, and made sure she was still following.
‘Whatever are you doing?’ she shouted, but the sea stole her words again and carried them away. As I walked, I watched the waves. The tide had changed and it pulled at the beach, as if the water was trying to persuade the sand to go along with something. Each time a little closer, a little more successful. It must be an instinct that makes us always stare at the ocean. Perhaps because we realise how important it is, and so we need to keep an eye on it to make sure it hasn’t left.
I stopped to look at my footprints again, and Elsie caught up.
‘Aren’t you tired?’ she said, but I said, no, no, I’m fine. I want to keep walking, I told her. To make more footprints.
She asked why, but I carried on further up the beach, and she shouted, ‘Why do you keep marching off, Flo? What’s got into you?’
If we’d stopped to think when we were younger, that one day we would be back here, stooped and grey, if we’d given a moment to think how we would struggle against the wind to stay upright, and how our feet would feel afraid and uncertain; perhaps, then, we would have taken a little more time over things. We would have enjoyed the soft, easy days of childhood a little more. Arms and legs full of confidence and energy. Minds free from hesitation. Perhaps we would have danced through our youth a little more slowly.
It was cold on the sand, much more so than on the cliff-top, and I fastened the top button of my coat. Elsie saw me do it. ‘It’s freezing, Florence,’ she called out. ‘We need to go back.’
‘You should have worn your scarf,’ I shouted back. ‘The one Gwen knitted for you. The red one.’
I slowed down.
I could feel a memory making a path from the back of my mind, trying to find its way. I wasn’t even sure what it was at first, but I knew it was important. It was like waking in the morning knowing a terrible thing happened the day before, but at first, you can’t quite reach the thought and work out what it is. I knew it would only be a moment before it arrived. Before everything was changed.
When it did, I realised I had stopped walking and I was staring at the sand. I turned to look at Elsie; we were both still. Just the breeze, catching the edge of a coat, a strand of hair.
She moved towards me.
I said nothing. I pushed my hands into my pockets and looked for clues on her face, because when the memory appeared, it brought all the others along with it.
‘It was you,’ I said.
She didn’t reply.
‘It was you,’ I said again. ‘You were in the car with Ronnie that night. The red. The red that Mabel saw. It was your scarf.’
‘Yes, it was my scarf,’ she said.
The air was cruel and salted. It made my eyes and my lips smart. It buried itself into my skin, and filled my mouth with the taste of nothing else.
‘Why didn’t you admit it? Why didn’t you say anything?’
‘We said everything we had to say back then. We talked about nothing else for days.’
‘Did we? I don’t remember. I don’t remember any of this.’
‘You’ve just forgotten, Florence, that’s all.’
‘Remind me, then. Help me to remember, like you always do.’
She hesitated and her face searched for an explanation.
‘My mother,’ she said eventually. ‘Ronnie threatened to report her. Don’t you remember?’
I shook my head.
‘He said he’d shop her to the authorities if anyone went to the police. Get her sent to an asylum if we ever whispered a word about how Beryl died. We decided, the two of us,’ she said. ‘No one could help Beryl any more, so we protected my mother instead. She wouldn’t have lasted a minute locked away. It would have ended her.’
I looked at her across the sand, trying to find the words I needed. ‘He wouldn’t have been able to do that. How could Ronnie have got your mother committed?’
‘Florence, everyone knew she’d lost her mind. Everyone. But people turned a blind eye. If Ronnie reported her for the assault, and made it official, they would have had to do something. The people at the hospital were suspicious enough already with the injuries he had.’
‘But you let him get away with it,’ I said. ‘He should have been punished.’
‘Our word against his, you mean? You know what kind of places asylums were then. Filled with stink and misery. It was the right decision. It kept her with us, it kept her safe.’
‘How could you watch your own sister killed and keep quiet about it? How could you?’
‘I couldn’t lose them both,’ she shouted. ‘If I’d opened my mouth, I would have sacrificed my mother as well.’
We stood in silence, and the wind disappeared across the water, leaving us in a pocket of quiet.
‘I need you to find a forgiveness,’ she said. ‘And when you do, I need you to hold on to it, no matter what happens.’
‘I can’t remember any of this. Why do I always need you to remind me who I was?’
She started to answer, but the words disappeared back into her throat. Instead, she said, ‘What do you remember?’
‘I remember being at the dance,’ I said. ‘I remember the music, but we stopped listening to it.’
‘Why? Why did we stop?’
I tried to find my way back. ‘Because we were watching Beryl and Ronnie. They were arguing in the car park, and we were trying to listen through the glass.’
‘And?’
‘She stormed off. Beryl. Didn’t she? Off into the night.’
She nodded.
I turned to Elsie. ‘And I decided to go after her.’
‘I tried to stop you. I said it wasn’t your place to go.’
‘We were in the cloakroom. You said I’d freeze to death out there, but I wrapped myself up and I told you I’d be fine.’