By the time I had worked out a plan and a date for its execution, I was so nervous that I was surprised they couldn't see it. I hadn't been able to eat properly for weeks. The knot in my stomach made me clumsy, the endless reworking of plans in my head made me forgetful so they both tutted about my general uselessness and warned Hannah that if she didn't buck her ideas up she'd end up like me. If the girls knew something was up, they didn't show it. Thankfully, children tend to live in the moment. I watched their games, their private conversations, the absent way they ate their fish-fingers, and imagined them in Australia, running down Whale Jetty. Then I offered silent prayers to God that He would grant them that freedom. I wanted them to be free, strong, independent, happy. I wanted that for myself - but by then I had hardly any idea who I actually was.
'Your daughter needs a haircut,' he said, that morning. 'We're having a family photograph taken for my council election leaflet on Saturday. Please try to make sure that you and she are half-way presentable. Make sure your blue dress is clean.' He kissed my cheek - a cold, formal peck, for his mother's benefit, I guessed. As much as she disliked me, she would have disliked his affair even more.
'Will you be back for supper?' I said, trying to keep my voice light and unconcerned.
He looked irritated to be asked. 'I've got a meeting tonight,' he said, 'but I'll be home before Mother goes out.'
I barely remember that day now, except that it rained heavily, and that the girls, stuck indoors, squabbled. It was the school holidays and having Hannah at home all the time had irritated my mother-in-law so much that she'd got one of her 'headaches'. She warned me that if I couldn't keep the noise down I'd have Steven to answer to. I remember smiling my apology and hoping the headache heralded a tumour.
I must have checked the passports every half-hour. They and the tickets were safe in the lining of my coat. While that woman slept, I packed two holdalls with the bare essentials so that a cursory glance in the children's drawers would not suggest we had gone. At one point Hannah came up to ask what I was doing - when she opened the bedroom door my heart beat so fast I thought it would bounce clean out of my chest. I placed my finger to my lips, trying to keep my face free of anxiety, and told her to go downstairs, that I had a surprise planned, but it would only work if she kept it a secret.
'Are we going on holiday?' she said, and I fought the urge to clap my hand over her mouth.
'Something like that. A little adventure,' I whispered. 'Go downstairs now, Hannah, and don't say anything to Letty. It's very important.'
She opened her mouth to speak, but I almost shoved her out of the door. 'Go on now, Hannah. We mustn't wake Granny Villiers or Daddy will be cross.' It was a cheap shot, but I was desperate.
Hannah didn't need telling twice: she left my room and, as silently as I could, I put the bags under the bed in the spare room.
He was late that evening, as I'd suspected he would be. Thursday evening was his night for seeing 'her', I had guessed, and my mother-in-law grew increasingly agitated after he missed the time he had agreed to come home.
'He's going to make me late for bridge,' she said bad-temperedly, for the eighteenth time, staring out at the wet driveway. I said nothing. I had long learnt that that was the safest way.
Then, miraculously, she stood up. 'I can't wait any longer,' she said. 'Tell Steven I had to go. And make sure that casserole doesn't burn. You've got it on too high a heat.'
I think the casserole reassured her: in some perverse way she reasoned that I wasn't likely to go anywhere if food was cooking.
'Have a nice time,' I said, keeping my features as bland as possible. She looked at me a little sharply, so I busied myself with plates, as if I was laying the table.
'Don't forget there's bread to warm in the oven,' she said. And then, with a swish of her coat, she was gone. I stood in the kitchen with the girls chatting at my feet about some game they were playing and freedom was so close it tasted metallic in my mouth.
As her car left the drive, I ran upstairs and grabbed the pills from their hiding-place in the wardrobe. I came down, and while the girls watched a video, I broke several capsules into a glass, then added some wine, stirred and tasted it. The drug was undetectable. I poured some more, then broke in four more capsules, just to be sure. I tasted it again - with luck, if I made the casserole spicy enough, he would taste nothing. It was almost half past seven.
He would eat, fall into a deep sleep, and I would have several hours before she came home. Several hours in which to get to nearby Heathrow in his car. To board a plane. Her Thursday sessions could go on as late as eleven thirty or even midnight. With luck, by the time she got home, he would still be asleep and we might already be in the air. It was a good plan. A near-perfect plan.
I started as I heard Steven's car pull up in the drive, and tried to quell the butterflies in my stomach. I had never before prayed for him to come home sooner rather than later. The smile I had on my face as his key turned in the lock was as close to genuine as I had worn in years.
'Elizabeth,' he said--
Mike was holding my hands. 'It's all right,' he said, his eyes kind. 'It's all right.'
My breath was coming in deep jags, tears streaming down my face. 'I can't--' I shook my head at him. 'I can't--' My chest was so tight I could barely breathe. I gulped air, and my lungs inflated with a painful gasp.
I felt his arms surround me. 'You don't have to say anything,' he murmured, into my ear. 'You don't have to tell me anything.'
'Letty - I--'
He held me then. He held me without saying anything and let me fall apart. And he never moved. He just sat, his face pressed to mine so tightly that his skin must have absorbed my tears. His arms stayed locked round me. Tight enough to comfort. Loose enough to reassure me of my freedom.
'Mum?'
Hannah stood in the doorway, still in her nightdress. She looked from me to Mike and back again. Her hair was still matted from sleep.
Her presence brought me back from the brink. I pulled away from Mike and wiped my eyes. My beautiful daughter, my beautiful, frightened, brave, living daughter.
'Why are you crying?' she whispered.
I wanted to tell her, but I wanted to protect her too. For years I haven't spoken about Letty in front of her. For years, not knowing how much she remembered, I've tried to shield her from the memory of that awful night, the night on which, because of what I did, our lives imploded.
'Hannah--' I reached out to touch her, and my voice stopped in my throat.
Mike's voice cut across the room, quiet and firm: 'Letty,' he said gently. 'We're talking about Letty, Hannah.' And as she stepped forward to take his outstretched fingers, my heart broke, overwhelmed not by the pain, or the memory of my poor lost daughter, but by the presence of so much love. Then, my hand pressed to my mouth, I had to run from the room.
Twenty
Hannah
My mother didn't talk for almost two weeks after we came here. She just lay in her bed, like someone dead. Then for ages she drifted around, there but not quite there, as if she was a hole in a room. Aunt Kathleen looked after me, feeding me up, getting me to explain a bit about what had happened, holding me when I couldn't stop crying. When she decided I shouldn't be on my own, she got Lara round, and helped us bake cakes together, as if we were cooking up a friendship. As if she was trying to find me a substitute for Letty. And when I asked her what was going on with my mum, why she wouldn't come down and be with me, Auntie K just said: 'You and your mum have suffered something unimaginable, Hannah, and she's not coping with it quite as well as you are. We have to give her a bit of time.'
So she gave her some time, and a bit more, and then I think she decided she'd had enough. 'Your mum and I are going to have a little chat,' she told me. 'You and Lara stay here with Yoshi and mind the dog.' I don't know what was said, but they went out on Auntie K's boat, and when they got back Mum looked less shadowy than she had done. She climbed out on to Whale Jetty, walked down to me an
d held me. I felt like it was the first time she'd actually seen me for ages. 'I'm really sorry, Mum,' I said, as the tears started. I could feel her bones through her shirt.
Her voice didn't sound the same. 'Nothing to be sorry for, lovey. You did everything right. It was me who got it all wrong.'
But I knew that if Letty and I hadn't had that argument in front of Steven . . . if Letty hadn't said that thing about not wanting to go on holiday . . . Suddenly I missed Letty so badly. I couldn't believe she wasn't alive any more. 'I want her to be here,' I cried.
I felt a big sob catch in Mum's chest. She squeezed me tight. 'Me too, lovey,' she said softly. 'Me too.'
Mum had told me not to say anything. She had stood there in her room and said it was very important. But I'd been so excited at the thought of me, Mum and Letty going somewhere, the thought that we might have whole weeks of giggling and doing the things Granny Villiers didn't like. 'I didn't mean to tell her,' I whispered. Then my mother took my shoulders, and her eyes, when they met mine, were bright, bright blue, like the sky, her eyelashes all pointy, like stars, from her tears. 'Your sister's death was not your fault, okay?' Her voice was fierce, almost like she was telling me off. But her eyes were kind. 'Not one iota of this was your fault, Hannah. Not one. And now you need to forget that any of it ever happened.'
A couple of weeks later, on a Monday evening, after I'd had my tea, we had a service for Letty. Out at sea. Just me, Mum, Aunt Kathleen and Milly. We went out on Ishmael to what Aunt Kathleen said was the prettiest spot in the whole of Australia, and while the dolphins bobbed around and the sun shone red and a few clouds drifted high in the sky Aunt Kathleen gave thanks for the life of Letty and said that even though we were on the other side of the world it was perfectly obvious to her where Letty's spirit was. I kept hoping a dolphin would swim up beside us, maybe poke its head up, as if it were a sign, but although I stared for ages, they didn't come any closer.
When we unpacked the second holdall, Mum found Letty's crystal dolphins. She must have packed them really carefully, because not even their little fins were broken. She held one in her hand for a long, long time. Then she took a big breath and handed it to me. 'You look after these,' she said. 'Keep them . . . keep them safe.'
That was one of the last times we ever spoke about Letty.
And now it's just me, remembering things. Some things, like when me and Letty used to make camps in our bedroom, or when we used to run around in the garden and squirt the hose at each other, I try to keep in my head because I get worried that she's fading away and soon I won't remember her. I have two photographs of her in my drawer and if I didn't look at them every night I wouldn't remember how her face was, how her missing tooth looked when she smiled, the way she stroked her nose with her finger when she sucked her thumb, how she used to feel when she slept with me. And there are some things I'd like to forget. Like that night when Mum took me and Letty in her arms as soon as Granny Villiers had left and told us things were going to change. I think about the way I had found her packing our bags, and that I'd felt relieved that she'd even remembered my old flannel dog, Spike, which I couldn't sleep without, and that she had told me we mustn't say anything to Daddy or Granny because we were going to give them a surprise. And even though she thought I wasn't looking I saw when she hid the bags in the spare room. I remember the purply bruises I saw on her arms, a bit like the one I had when Steven was cross with me for getting felt-tip on the kitchen table and pulled me so hard off my stool that it hurt.
And I remember feeling so excited - a bit like I did before Christmas - that I had to say something to Letty, even though I told her it was a very important secret.
And then I remember we watched a video - Pinocchio - even though it wasn't a weekend, and that when Steven came home he smelt of drink but she had poured him a big glass of wine anyway and stood there smiling at him until he said she looked like an idiot. When she served up the supper, I could see her looking at him out of the corner of her eye as if she was waiting for something.
And then Letty and I had a stupid fight about crayons, because we both wanted the same green, which was much better than the browny-green, which never came out right on the paper, and I won because I was bigger and Letty started to cry and said she didn't want to go away, and Steven said, 'Go where?' And he looked at Mum and they stared at each other for a few seconds. Then he pushed past her and went upstairs, and I heard him pulling out all the drawers. When he came back his face was so angry that I hid under the table, and pulled Letty with me. I heard him shouting, 'Where are the passports?' and his voice had gone all slurry and I shut my eyes really tight and while they were shut there was lots of banging and Mum fell on the floor and hit her head and his hands reached under the table and I heard him pick up Letty, who was screaming and screaming, and he said she'd be going anywhere over his dead body, and his voice sounded like he was under water or something. I tried to grab Letty's hand but he pushed me really hard and he had her under his arm, like she was a sack of potatoes or something, and she was screaming and screaming. And then, as Mum woke up, I heard the sound of his car going down the drive, all the gravel spraying up, and Mum started crying, 'Oh, my God, oh, my God,' and she didn't even notice that her face was bleeding and I held on to her because I was scared of where he'd taken Letty.
I don't know how long we sat there.
I remember asking Mum where Letty was and she held me close to her and said, 'They'll be back soon,' but I wasn't sure if she believed it. I was afraid because I guessed that when Steven came back he was going to be really angry.
I think it was a few hours later that the phone rang. Mum was sitting, shaking, on the floor, and her head still had blood on it and I picked up the phone and it was Granny Villiers and her voice sounded strange. And she said, 'Put your mother on, please,' like I was a stranger. And then she started shouting at Mum because I could hear her voice down the phone and Mum went all grey and moaned and I held on to her legs to try to stop them shaking. And she kept saying, 'What have I done? What have I done?' That was the longest night I remember. When it started to get light, I remember Mum waking me up. I'd fallen asleep on the floor and I was cold and stiff. She said, in a weird voice, that we had to go now. I said, 'What about Letty?' and she said there had been an accident, that Steven had had a car crash and Letty was dead in the hospital, and it was all her fault, and her teeth chattered like she was swimming in a pool with the water too cold. I can't remember much after that - just being in a taxi, and then an aeroplane, and when I cried and said I didn't want to go, Mum said it was the only way she could protect me. I remember crying every time my mum went to the loo because I was frightened she would disappear, too, and I'd be left by myself. And then I remember Aunt Kathleen standing at the airport barrier and hugging me like she knew me, and telling me that everything was going to be all right, even though everything definitely wasn't. And all the time I wanted to say to Mum, 'But how can we leave Letty?' What if she wasn't dead, and was in the hospital waiting for us? And even if she was dead we should have brought her with us, not left her all those miles away so that we couldn't put flowers on her grave and let her know we still loved her. But I didn't say anything. Because for a long, long time, my mum couldn't say anything at all.
This was what I told Mike, on the morning I caught him holding Mum's hands in his bedroom. This was what I told him, after she'd gone, even though I've never been able to tell that story to anyone, not even Auntie K, not with everything in it. But I told him, because I got the feeling that somehow things had changed, and that Mum would think it was okay if Mike knew.
I have never seen a man cry before.
Twenty-one
Mike
As the rest of Silver Bay slept late the following day, and the waters stilled under a clear blue sky, several miles away, in a gently humming room at the Port Summer Hospital, Nino Gaines woke up.
Kathleen had been sitting at the end of his bed, leaning heavily on the arm of a blue pa
dded chair. She had gone straight there from tucking everyone in, explaining afterwards that she had wanted to tell her oldest friend a little of what had happened that momentous night. As dawn broke, exhaustion caught up with her and she had dozed for a while, then sat reading the previous day's newspaper, occasionally aloud when she found something that might interest him. In this case, it was a report about a man they both knew who had set up a restaurant. 'Be a bloody disaster,' he croaked. So weary was she from the fright of Hannah's disappearance and the horror of the ghost nets that Kathleen Whittier Mostyn read on another two sentences before she realised what she'd heard.
He was frail, and a little disorientated, but underneath the white hospital gown and the myriad tubes and wires he was indubitably Nino Gaines, and for that, it seemed, the whole Silver Bay community was grateful. The doctors gave him a raft of examinations, most of which he complained were a 'bloody waste of time', did brain scans and cardiograms, consulted their textbooks and finally pronounced him surprisingly well for a man of his age who had been unconscious for so many days. He was allowed to sit up, lost a few of the tubes that had punctured his arms, and the trickle of visitors swiftly turned into a torrent. Kathleen was allowed to sit at the end of his bed throughout, a privilege usually accorded only to a wife, as long as she didn't raise his blood pressure.
'Been raising my bloody blood pressure for more than fifty years,' he told the nurses, in front of her. 'Fat lot of good it's done me.' And Kathleen beamed. She had not stopped beaming since.
A lucky few know their purpose in life from an early age. They recognise in themselves a vocation, whether it be religion, art, storytelling or the spearing of sacred cows. I finally learnt my purpose in life on a clear dawn at the start of an Australian spring, when an eleven-year-old girl took my hand and trusted me with a secret. From that moment, I understood that every bit of my energy would be given to her protection and that of her mother.