Authors: Lucie Whitehouse
‘The other night,’ he said. ‘I shouldn’t have done that. I’m sorry.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said, keeping my eyes trained on the ground. ‘There had been drink taken, as they say. These things happen – chalk it up as a mistake.’
‘No. It wasn’t a mistake. But I couldn’t . . . I’ve always been faithful.’
‘You don’t need to say any more.’ I glanced at him and saw his grim expression. ‘It’s forgotten.’
‘I do – I did need to say it. I needed you to understand.’ There was frustration in his voice, barely masked, and he kicked up an arc of sand, the clumps of it large enough to be audible as they fell back on to the beach. ‘I’ve spent the last week feeling terrible – guilty and just . . . I don’t know.’ He took something from his pocket and held it out to me. ‘Anyway, I found this for you,’ he said. ‘Not today – in the week.’
It was badly damaged and darkened from the rock in which it had been hidden for millennia but it was still recognisably a tooth like the one which Matt had found, about two inches long, its point broken. I turned it over in my hand, not sure what to say. ‘I can’t guarantee it’s from the same dinosaur, I’m afraid,’ he said.
I smiled, though my throat was suddenly tight. ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘Don’t you want to keep it, though?’
He shook his head. ‘It’s for you.’
We were quiet again on the way back. The quiet was different, however, as if something had been settled. I fought a bitter disappointment and made myself acknowledge that there had been part of me that had still hoped, even this afternoon, that there might somehow – miraculously – be a chance. Alice. For a second time I found myself hating her with a force of which I was immediately ashamed.
It had been past four already when Pete had knocked on the door and by the time we climbed the uneven steps back to the car park above the beach, the light was fading quickly, casting the fields on the far side of the road into a penumbrous gloom. The land rolled away, ancient and imbued with that strange quality I’d felt here before, the timelessness which I’d rarely felt anywhere else. Today, I found it comforting.
Endure
, I imagined it whispering to me;
endure
. Next to me, Pete was solid in the near-dark. I couldn’t look at him directly but I was aware of his hand on the gear-stick, the tightening of his grip on the wheel as he slowed to take the car into the steep corner. The engine was the only sound as we went through the lanes, and the hedgerows passed us in a black blur.
My hand, the one Pete couldn’t see, was in my jacket pocket, clenched into a tight fist around the fossil. It was an old habit; as a child, I had often found something small to hold on to and would shove my hand into my pocket or under my pillow at night and grip as though whatever it was – a pebble, a conker, a piece of our Meccano set – had talismanic powers and could keep me safe, ward off the bad.
Chapter Twenty-nine
I watched the mist coming, rising up from the sea, thickening second by second, leaving no room for oxygen in the air it moved through. It would suffocate me, I knew. The first tendrils of it were on my face already, touching me like little fingers, damp and cold. I tried to step back but my feet were too heavy – I couldn’t lift them.
Now I was surrounded, the white wall behind me as well as in front, shifting all the time but impenetrable, unbreathable. How long would I last on the air I had? Through the fog there came a light, a single beam which raked from right to left then was extinguished, and then came again. And a bell, low and mournful, tolling somewhere below me on the water. Invisible.
Suddenly she was there, only a few feet away. I saw her dress first, black silk moving like running water, billowing as if the wind was stronger where she was standing. Next I saw her hair, blown sideways like pale flame, longer than I remembered, its ends like flickering tongues.
I blinked and suddenly she was closer, close enough to touch me. The skin of her arms was so pale, deathly pale, and translucent; I could see the bones in the hands she stretched towards me. I didn’t want to look at her face, I was desperate not to see it, but she was too close now, I couldn’t help it: her face, her lovely face, tracked with tears and scored by the two terrible empty circles that were her sockets.
I woke with my heart pounding, the last image still burning in front of me. I turned on the bedside light and waited for my pulse to slow, hearing my own breathing in the quietness of the house.
It was the fourth night in a row. The first time had been Sunday, the day after we’d been walking at Brook, but then it had only been confusing, a couple of the images – the floating material of her dress, her long hair – superimposed on another dream which I couldn’t remember at all. I hadn’t known then what I was seeing but, day by day, the scene had revealed itself. I was back on the cliff edge on Tennyson Down, the rocks at the bottom waiting to receive my broken body and Alice’s voice calling me –
Kate, Kate
– her hands reaching out to me, begging me to come to her, follow her over. And every day, she was closer and closer and I woke up just a fraction of a second before she touched me.
At the café I found myself watching the street more closely. Even over lunch, when there were usually now several bowls of soup to ladle out and ferry from the kitchen, and several rounds of Welsh rarebit to make, I would look up every time anyone walked past the window. I told myself it was because of Tom. On both Monday and Tuesday he’d passed the window in the afternoon, school uniform bastardised with trainers and a hooded sweatshirt, a leather sports bag – huge but empty-looking – slung over his shoulder. The first time, the window table had been occupied but yesterday there had only been a pair of old ladies taking their time over a teacake towards the back, and the front door was propped open for fresh air. I’d been standing by the counter and tensed, ready to spring out if he tried to come in, but he’d walked past without even looking.
When the women had gone and the café was empty, I got my phone out of my bag under the counter and called Helen at the office. It only rang twice before it was answered but the voice that came on the line was Esther’s.
‘Kate – hi! How’s the Island? I was thinking last night that we should call you about the flat; if you’re definitely coming back at the end of next month, we should start looking for somewhere else, right?’
‘Actually,’ I said, ‘I’ve decided not to come back.’
‘Seriously?’ I heard the shock in her voice; she was still at the age, I thought, where moving out of London was like taking retirement.
‘Yes. I’m sure it’ll be fine, though, if you want to take the lease over officially. I’ll give you a ring about that in a couple of days, if that’s all right, when I’ve spoken to the landlord. Is Helen about?’
‘I’ll try her line for you.’ She disappeared and there was a painful twenty seconds’ worth of musak. ‘Kate?’ she said, taking me off hold. ‘She’s just answered another call; can I get her to ring you back?’
I left my phone by the till but reached into my bag again anyway and undid the zip pocket. I found the dinosaur tooth and held it in my hand for a few seconds. Then, feeling foolish, I zipped it back up and went into the kitchen to put the dishwasher on.
There was a single bark from deep inside the house as I rang the doorbell. A few seconds passed and then the coloured glass of the fanlight came alive and there were soft footsteps.
‘Kate – what a lovely surprise.’ Chris’s face lit up. ‘Come in.’
‘Hello, Ted.’ I went down on my haunches and let him mug me, his soft head burrowing into my armpit then coming up to lick my neck and the side of my face. His tail was going nineteen to the dozen, its motion moving the whole of his body.
‘Come through. Ted, leave Kate alone for a minute, let the poor girl get her breath back.’ We went through to the kitchen, today lit only by lamps dotted here and there: one on the counter, another on the small wicker table by the sofa and a standard lamp in the conservatory area moved closer to the long table on which there was a chessboard with smart wooden pieces, a game in progress.
‘Have you got the car?’ he asked. ‘I’m having a gin and tonic. Can I offer you a weak one?’
I sat on the same stool as the night of the disastrous supper. Today the papers had free rein; the top of the counter was a thatch of newsprint. ‘You’ve beaten me on the crossword,’ I said.
‘Have I? I’ve been stuck on the last couple since lunchtime – can’t get ’em for the life of me.’ He dropped a couple of ice cubes into a glass.
He brought my drink over and came to sit on the opposite stool. I asked him about the books at Bonchurch and when he thought
Sirene
would be ready to go back in the water. Ted sat with his head heavy on my knee, occasionally giving a sigh suggesting the weight of the world was on his shoulders. I stroked his ears, letting the silky fur slip between my fingers, remembering how I’d watched Pete do the same.
‘I don’t like speaking ill of the dead,’ Chris said suddenly. ‘But I thought she was a selfish woman – Alice.’
I looked at him, forgetting Ted in my surprise.
‘I’m not saying she wasn’t charming – she could be, very. And she was good-looking, obviously, and always very stylish.’ He rustled beneath the newspapers and slid a ten-pack of Marlboro Lights across to me. ‘I never got the impression, though, that much of their relationship was about him. A lot of the time, life with her seemed to be about appeasement, as far as I could tell – trying to keep her happy.’
I thought suddenly of the photograph I’d seen in the magazine months ago, the way it had seemed to belong to a different set from those of the rest of the party, with Alice dressed so fashionably. I remembered the way Pete had been looking at her, attentive, while she looked away, and felt a stab of pain for him, mixed with a streak of unreasonable jealousy.
‘Depression can seem like that, can’t it?’ I said. ‘Selfish?’
‘I daresay.’ He lit my cigarette and then his own. ‘I don’t think she liked living here. I always had the sense that she was straining to be somewhere else.’
‘But I thought she grew up on the Island?’
‘Well, she came here as a teenager, when her father retired – lovely man. But I have to say I was surprised when they got married. Not from Peter’s side – it was clear how he felt – but from hers. She wasn’t a natural Islander, I didn’t think; I worried that she would get frustrated here. Peter’s business is in Cowes – did he tell you? He needs the water for research, trials. And his workforce is very specialised. So he couldn’t move. Otherwise I think he would have done, if it would have made her happy.’
‘I met her.’
‘Did you?’ His eyebrows went up.
‘A couple of days before she . . . went. She was on the common, looking at the water. We talked about boats – she said sailing was what kept her sane here.’
He blew out quickly through his nose. ‘That’s what I mean. Didn’t she have everything in the world to be grateful for?’ He tapped his ash and looked at me. ‘It’s him I feel sorry for. And you.’
‘Me?’
He smiled, seeing my expression. ‘Call me cynical but I suspect an ulterior motive for this visit.’
I felt my face reddening and looked down. Realising he had my attention, Ted bumped his chin on my knee and I started stroking again. There was a single thump of tail against the tiles.
‘Look,’ said Chris. ‘He’s going to be here in a few minutes – at half past. We’re in the middle of a game.’ He tilted his head at the board set up on the table. ‘We play quite often. But you’re welcome to stay.’
‘No,’ I said, a little too quickly. ‘I won’t interrupt. I just came to say hello.’
He nodded. ‘Finish your drink, though – no need to dash off.’
I gulped down the rest of it, trying to appear relaxed. The cooker’s digital clock read 20.27. I stood up but there was another minute of petting Ted to do before I was allowed to move. We were in the hall, Chris handing me my jacket from the coatstand, when there were tyres on the gravel. Shit.
The automatic light was already on as I went outside: Pete was crossing the drive towards the door. We both stopped, eight or ten feet apart. ‘Hello,’ he said. I had a moment’s impression of him before I looked away: long legs in jeans, his navy jumper, a couple of days’ worth of stubble darkening his cheeks.
I glanced behind me but Chris hadn’t come out. I looked back at Pete. The brightness of the light made him hyper-real. He was watching me and I had a sudden flashback to my kitchen, the sensation in my stomach as he’d moved towards me. ‘I’m just going,’ I said. I held up my car keys as if they were proof.
He looked at them, then back at me. ‘Will I see you . . .?’
‘Around? Probably – maybe. I’d better go – leave you to the chess.’
He frowned, lines deepening between his eyebrows.
I got into the car and reversed out, the gravel protesting under the back wheels. At the roundabout by the war memorial at the bottom of the lane, I put the handbrake on and took out my own cigarettes, glad for once that the roads were so quiet and no one came up behind to force me to move off before I could light one. I was filled with a profound sense of loss.