Anna caught sight of her reflection in the mirror above the mantelpiece and attempted to tidy the frizzy mess the sea air had made of her usually sleek shoulder-length brown hair. The one and only downside of living in Brighton, she thought.
She heard the thud of Alfie’s steps on the main staircase and his excited squeals as he ran. He and Jon must be just a floor or so away now. She couldn’t wait for them to arrive.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket. She took it out and checked the screen: Mum.
‘Hi, Mum,’ she said.
‘Hello, love.’
‘You’ll never guess where I am,’ Anna said, unable to keep the excitement from her voice. ‘I’m at our new flat.’
At that moment, Jon and Alfie burst in through the front door, wide smiles on both their faces – the family resemblance was unmissable. Alfie dashed from room to room, exploring excitedly, his dad following close behind. Anna walked back into the hallway and smiled to greet them.
‘You know I mentioned the damp?’ she said, talking into the phone and putting her head around the bathroom door. ‘It looks like they’ve sorted it out. It’s much better than when we came for the viewing. I can’t see any of the black stuff anyway – you know, the bad mould.’
‘That’s good,’ her mother Jan said, sounding distracted. ‘Listen, Anna. I’ve been trying to get hold of your sister.’
‘Imogen?’ Anna said. ‘Why? What’s up? Is she OK?’
Jon must have heard the concern in her voice, as he looked back at her, his worried expression mirroring her own.
‘She’s fine,’ Jan said. ‘Or at least I think she is, she’s impossible to get hold of.’ Anna could hear that her voice was strained.
‘Then what is it?’
‘I’m afraid we’ve just had some terrible news. It’s about your Granny Vivien.’
The ‘fasten seatbelts’ sign pinged, and Imogen undid the clunky metal clasp that held her to the aeroplane seat. She sat back, reclined the chair and looked out of the narrow window at the puffy white clouds that filled the sky over Bangkok: below them a layer of thick smog hung over the city. In just a few air-conditioned minutes they’d be moving out of Thai airspace and even further away from the island.
It had been thirty-six hours and a long boat and bus ride since Imogen had spoken to her sister Anna. She had hardly slept since then, save a few minutes with her head resting against a rattling bus window, her iPod drowning out the sounds of chickens in the aisles.
Imogen recalled her elder sister’s familiar face over the shaky Skype connection in the internet café on the island’s main street. ‘It’s Grandma Vivien,’ she’d said, her brown eyes and thick brown hair pixellating as she moved. ‘Imo, she’s gone.’ The words still swam in Imogen’s head, unreal.
Knowing the details of her grandmother’s death didn’t help – a heart attack, existing health issues she’d kept hidden
and only spoken to the doctor about. It still didn’t make sense. Grandma Vivien wasn’t supposed to die, or at least not yet. As soon as she’d finished talking to Anna, Imogen booked her flight home.
The stewardess approached with the bar trolley, and Imogen stopped her.
‘Could I have a vodka tonic, please?’
She thought about what she was going back to. Home – to England, in March. But a different kind of home, without her grandma, one of the people she cared about most. She hadn’t even had a chance to say goodbye.
‘Actually,’ she said to the stewardess, ‘can you make that a double?’
Imogen took the drink and sipped at it. Slowly, the alcohol lulled her into something approaching sleep. She lost focus on the movie she was watching, and her eyelids drooped shut.
In her dream they were in her grandmother’s back garden, she and Anna playing on the swing-ball set with Vivien keeping score, the sisters battling to hit the ball the hardest. Vivien stood cheering on the sidelines, next to a table laden with home-made lemonade and flapjacks, in a full-skirted flowery dress, a straw hat and those elegant high-heeled sandals she used to wear. As if she was awaiting a call that would sweep her away to a more glamorous party. Sparkling blue eyes, lined with liquid eyeliner. She had always looked, to Imogen, like a 1940s film star.
When Imogen awoke with a start, she could still smell
her grandmother’s distinctive scent – almond and honey from the bath oil she used, then a layer beneath that, homier – the trace scents of cooking that clung to her clothes.
Imogen switched off the screen, and tried to focus on the magazine she’d picked up at the airport. But the images of red-carpet dresses blended into one.
She wanted something, anything, to block out the hurt of knowing her grandmother was gone. On the island the news had seemed like a strange dream, but now, on the way home to England, it was becoming painfully real. The last thing she wanted to do was cry here on the plane, in front of everyone, yet the tears felt dangerously close to the surface. To distract herself, she shut her eyes and cast her mind back to the night she’d left the island.
‘You’ll come back, won’t you?’ Luca had said, bringing her towards him in the dark water. Bright fire-fly-like scatterings of phosphorescence glittered in the sea around them, and Luca’s face, with tanned skin, dark, wet hair and stubbled jaw, was partially lit by moonlight. They’d spent the evening in Komodo, a beach bar with live music, and then, after Imogen had explained that she’d have to leave, they’d separated off from their group, and she’d come down to the beach with Luca, just the two of them.
‘Of course I’ll be back,’ Imogen said, laughing and kissing him again. This was a necessary trip, not a holiday. Thailand was her home now, and she was only halfway through compiling the underwater photographs for her project. Plus – palm trees swaying, days on the beach and nights with Luca, versus
drizzly days and fish fingers in Britain? There was no contest.
‘Promise me,’ Luca said, a wry smile on his lips. ‘You’ll be one of those girls, won’t you? Who gets an offer she can’t refuse when she’s back home, leaves a beach bum like me over here alone, pining and broken-hearted. I’ve seen it before. I just hope I’m not dumb enough to fall for it myself … ’ He looked at her, a shyness and uncertainty in his eyes that was unfamiliar.
‘Oh, you’ve got nothing to worry about,’ Imogen said. ‘It’s only a fortnight. I need to be there for the funeral and to spend some time with Dad and my family. Then I’ll be straight back on the plane to Bangkok. Wild horses couldn’t keep me away.’ She leaned towards him and into a salty kiss.
‘Take this,’ Luca said, as he pulled away from her. He took off the shark’s-tooth necklace he wore around his neck. ‘Put it on,’ he said, sweeping her wavy, shoulder-length hair to one side and slipping the leather thong over her head. ‘Then bring it back to me.’
Imogen smiled. Her hand went to the smooth pendant. ‘You’ve got a deal.’
She touched the leather band around her neck now, and thought of Luca. Missed the feeling of his warm skin against hers. Two weeks apart seemed like an eternity.
It would be good to see Anna again, and her parents – well, her dad at least – but still, the thought of going home made Imogen’s heart sink. The last time she’d been there, she’d
just graduated from Bournemouth with a photography degree. After sending out eighty job applications, she’d failed to get a single interview, and at twenty-two, living at home with her parents, with her mum constantly checking up on her progress, she’d realised she needed to get away.
After two months, she’d got a bar job, and put away a little each month, dreaming of a way to get out of Lewes and away from her mum’s demands and questions. When she and her friend Lucy had saved enough money for a flight to Asia, they were out of there – and while Lucy had returned six months ago, Imogen hadn’t looked back. She had quickly made friends on the island, including Santiana, a Colombian girl as passionate about diving as she was.
Asia felt a world away from where she was heading back to, the small town of Lewes where she’d grown up.
‘Chicken or pasta?’ the stewardess asked gruffly, rifling through her metal trolley.
Imogen thought of the fragrant Thai green curry and rice she’d eaten just before she left the island. The delicious coconut lassi she’d sipped at a roadside stall while the bus refuelled.
She lowered her tray table. ‘Pasta, please,’ she said, and took the foil tray.
Imogen opened her rucksack in the spare room of her parents’ house, and a little sand fell out onto the hand-made quilt. She brushed it off, then felt a tug at her heart as her hands touched the lovingly created squares. She looked up and her
eyes met her sister’s. Anna broke the melancholy silence. ‘There are reminders everywhere you look, aren’t there?’
‘It still doesn’t feel real,’ Imogen said. ‘To think that when we go to Brighton she won’t be there. The ice cream shop, without her … ’
Anna passed Imogen a mug of tea from the oak side table, and put a hand on her arm, sympathetically. Her own eyes were puffy and red, and the tip of her nose pink from blowing it.
‘I feel awful. A whole year I haven’t seen her, Anna.’
Outside seagulls cawed, the unmissable reminder that they were back near the south coast in Lewes, in their parents’ two-storey eighteenth-century cottage.
‘Don’t beat yourself up about it,’ Anna said. ‘She loved your phone calls and the postcards – it brightened her days hearing what you were up to out there.’
Imogen fought the lump rising in her throat.
‘You must be exhausted,’ Anna said.
‘It was a long journey, but my mind’s sort of buzzy,’ Imogen replied, taking a comforting sip of the hot drink. ‘How did Granny seem, the last time you saw her?’
Anna perched on the edge of the bed and placed a cushion on her lap. ‘I was round at her house just over a week ago,’ she said. ‘And she seemed fine, good even. She didn’t want to go out to lunch, said she’d rather stay in, but that didn’t seem too unusual. I should have sensed, though, that something was up.’
‘She always seemed so young,’ Imogen said. ‘You know,
compared to other people’s grandmas. I was sure we’d have a few more years with her.’
‘Me too,’ Anna said. ‘It doesn’t seem fair. Dad’s crushed, as you’d expect.’
‘Poor Dad,’ Imogen said, biting her lip. They’d hugged hello downstairs, and while they’d barely spoken, she’d seen the grief etched into his face.
‘The cremation’s on Thursday, Mum told you that, right?’
Imogen nodded. ‘Yes. You’ll lend me something to wear, won’t you?’ she said. ‘I haven’t been to one before but I’m guessing the clothes I’ve got in my rucksack aren’t going to be right.’
‘Of course,’ Anna said, smiling warmly and getting to her feet. ‘Listen, Mum said dinner would be ready in about twenty minutes. Jump in the shower and we’ll see you down there.’
‘Sure,’ Imogen said, taking a neatly folded towel from the end of her bed. The room, once her teenage bedroom, felt alien to her. Now it was like a well-kept B&B, her music posters replaced with framed flower prints.
‘It’s nice to have you back,’ Anna said, giving her sister a gentle hug. ‘I wish you were here for other reasons, but in any case, it’s lovely to see you.’
‘You too,’ Imogen said, appreciating the familiar warmth of her sister’s arms.
Imogen showered, wrapped her hair in a towel, and threw on the first clean clothes she could find. Downstairs, through the kitchen doorway, she could see Anna chatting and preparing
dinner alongside their mum. She walked past quietly and went through into the dining room.
It looked exactly as Imogen remembered it – with photos on the mantelpiece and fresh flowers on the table. This room was the smart dining area, the one usually reserved for when guests were over.
Her dad, Tom, was sitting in a chair at the table, his head in his hands. His hands – large and strong. They’d held Imogen and Anna as children, lifted the girls up onto swings, onto his broad shoulders. Now her father looked fragile, as if the slightest breeze would break him. Imogen approached him and put a hand on his arm.
‘You OK, Dad?’ she asked, softly.
‘Oh yes, sweetheart,’ he said, weakly. ‘And you –’ his pale blue eyes implored her to take over the talking – ‘you enjoying your travels still?’
‘Yes,’ Imogen said. ‘It’s beautiful out there.’
‘I remember how it was,’ her dad said, slowly. But the usual gusto with which he told the stories of his hippy days was missing from his voice. ‘In the sixties, with nothing but my motorbike and the wind in my hair … of course that was when I still had some. Travelling through Vietnam and Laos. It was all different in those days … ’
His words tailed away and his gaze dropped to the white tablecloth.
‘Dad,’ Imogen said gently. ‘It’s OK to be upset, you know. We all are.’
‘The thing is,’ he said, without looking up, ‘you know it’s
coming. One day. Of course you do – and with Dad, somehow it wasn’t such a shock, he’d had more than his fair share of health problems. But I didn’t think it would happen so soon with Mum. It’s awful.’
It pained Imogen to hear the hurt in her father’s voice. Any other day, he’d be cracking open a bottle of wine and enthusiastically telling her and Anna about the latest sculpture he’d made out in his garden studio. But today, he was ashen-faced, a ghostly version of himself.
‘She was an amazing woman,’ Imogen said, squeezing her dad’s arm. ‘We’re all going to miss her.’
‘It’s the little things I’ll miss,’ Tom said. ‘Even the same things that once drove me mad about her. The way she’d call me up when we were having dinner, excited about something that had happened in her drama serial.’
‘Or the way she’d filter out all of the purple Quality Streets at Christmas and pretend there never were any?’ Imogen said.
‘That’s right,’ Tom laughed. ‘And then of course, she’d always bring someone along on Christmas Day, wouldn’t she? Some waif or stray we’d never met, but who’d had nowhere to go.’
‘Without fail,’ Imogen said. ‘Poor Mum never knew how many people she’d be buying the turkey for.’
‘It was her way,’ Tom said. ‘Even when Dad was around. But he didn’t mind, they’d grown so used to one another, and he always said he’d never have set up the shop with her if they hadn’t enjoyed being around people.’