Читать книгу Always You - Erin Kaye - Страница 6

Carnlough beach, at the foot of Glencloy and just twelve miles north of Ballyfergus, was bleak on this bright but bitter February day. Carved out of the landscape by a massive ice age glacier, the glen, framed on either side by gently rising hills, swept gracefully down to meet the beach like a vast, winter-faded green velvet skirt. On its northern hem, the buildings of Carnlough village, mostly hewn from local limestone, clustered like pearls. An icy wind blew down the valley from the west, chilling the four people walking on the shingle beach.

Sarah’s nose was red with the cold and spits of cruel rain speared her left cheek like painful darts. Sarah’s sister, Becky chatted away beside her and, up ahead, Sarah’s children – eleven-year-old Molly and nine-year-old Lewis – stumbled gracelessly along the coarse sand, hindered by ill-fitting wellies. Molly, blonde-haired and grey-eyed, was very like Sarah. Lewis, with short red hair standing up in spikes and brown freckles sprinkled liberally across his face like hundreds and thousands, was the spitting image of his Dad.

Not for the first time, she wondered idly what Lewis might have looked like had she married Cahal instead of Ian. He might’ve had dark curly hair instead of red, and blue-green eyes instead of pale, almost translucent, blue ones. And then, just as quickly as the thought came to mind, she pushed it crossly away, annoyed that she had allowed Cahal to occupy her thoughts even for a second. He had done the thing he promised never to do – he had left her. She would never forgive him. In the same way her father used to dampen down the coal fire every night with a layer of slack, she buried her curiosity under a layer of determination not to think of him again.

‘So,’ Becky was saying, ‘after watching me for ages at the bar, this guy comes over and starts chatting. He was a postgrad. Nice looking. A few years younger than me I’d say, but that didn’t seem to put him off.’

A sudden gust unwound Sarah’s navy and grey cashmere scarf and whipped it in her face. She secured it round her neck again. ‘What were you wearing?’

‘Oh, my grey dress.’

Sarah knew the one – slinky jersey with a v-neck as deep as the Grand Canyon and a skirt that stopped mid-thigh. Becky liked to wear it with black fishnets and killer heels. She had even been known to wear it to work, though with flat boots, thank God, not heels.

‘Anyway,’ Becky went on, ‘we had a few drinks. Well, more than a few drinks.’

Sarah glanced at Becky, taking in the bags under her eyes and her rather carelessly applied make-up. Was that last night’s make-up with a fresh layer slapped on top?

Becky grinned and dug her hands deeper into the pockets of her padded red duvet coat, which made her look big and plump compared to Sarah. But the figure underneath the coat was more curvaceous than fat and, while she was well-upholstered, it was in all the right places. ‘And he was so hot. You should’ve seen his pecs.’ She pursed both lips together and pulled a crude, lustful face in the manner of Dawn French.

‘It wasn’t his personality you were interested in then?’ said Sarah with a raised eyebrow.

Becky chuckled. ‘Well, let’s just say the rest of him wasn’t a disappointment.’

Sarah opened her mouth, but Becky didn’t wait for her to ask the question that was on the tip of her tongue. ‘He had a flat up near the university. We went there and I drove home this morning.’

Sarah stopped dead in her tracks. ‘Becky! You said you’d stop picking up strangers in bars and sleeping with them! He could’ve been an axe murderer for all you know.’

Becky wrinkled her nose and the crystal stud in her left nostril glinted like a dewdrop. ‘He wasn’t a stranger. Well, not really. I’d seen him in the uni café a few times and we spent all evening talking. I wouldn’t have gone home with him if I didn’t think he was sound.’

Sarah tutted and shook her head. She understood Becky’s desire to rebel against their strict upbringing – hadn’t she done it herself? – but this behaviour was positively reckless. Lowering her voice, Sarah said, ‘What if he had an STD or HIV?’

‘I’m not completely stupid, Sarah. We used a condom. Condoms, I should say,’ she added, and gave Sarah a saucy smile.

‘They’re not always safe,’ said Sarah sniffily, not that she knew much about the subject. Since the divorce from Ian eight years ago, she’d not had much need for contraception. She squinted into the wind. Eight years of celibacy. What a depressing thought.

‘Have you met anyone nice lately?’ said Becky, as if she could read Sarah’s thoughts.

Sarah gave her a weary look. ‘You know I haven’t.’

‘You’re never going to meet someone if you don’t get out on the dating scene,’ said Becky gently. ‘I’ll go out with you. We’ll hit Belfast together!’

Sarah bit her lip and kicked sand with the toe of her boot. ‘I know,’ she said quietly.

‘So what’s stopping you?’

Sarah shrugged and looked ahead. Lewis, oblivious to the cold and the sharp needles of rain, twirled his navy hat in his hand, his red head exposed to the elements. ‘The kids. Work. Running the home. Lack of time.’

Becky glanced at her sharply. ‘And the real reason is?’

Sarah took a deep breath and smiled wryly. Becky would not let her away so easily. But how could she possibly explain that the love she had known with Cahal had been so perfect, so all-encompassing that she knew she would never experience the like of it again? And even if it were possible to love another man like she had once loved him, she would not take the risk. His betrayal had hurt too much. ‘I’ve been so disappointed in love. I guess I’m scared to give it another chance.’

‘Oh, Sarah,’ said Becky. ‘It makes me so sad to hear you talk like that. But you and Ian have been divorced for a long time now. You must put all that behind you.’

Sarah looked away guiltily and failed to correct Becky’s assumption about Ian. ‘I’m really happy with my life. Honestly. A man isn’t the be-all and end-all. You mustn’t worry about me.’ She linked arms with Becky and said brightly, ‘So tell me, are you seeing this guy again?’

‘I doubt it. We didn’t swap numbers or anything.’

‘Didn’t you like him?’

‘I did like him but he … well, it was just a one-night stand.’ She ducked her head. ‘I don’t expect him to appear on my doorstep bearing a dozen red roses.’

How could he, when he didn’t even know where she lived? Sarah sighed, exasperated. She slipped her arm out of Becky’s and turned her back to the wind, so that she could see her sister’s face more clearly. She chose her next words carefully. ‘You jumped into bed with him too quickly.’

Becky guffawed. ‘Oh, Sarah, that is so old-fashioned. People sleep with each other on first dates all the time.’

‘Do they?’

‘Yes and anyway, I like sex. A lot of the time, that’s all I want. I don’t want them to marry me.’

‘But you would like to be in a long-term relationship. You told me you’d like to settle down one day and have a family. And if that’s what you want, you’re going about it the wrong way.’

Becky came to a halt, turned her back to the wind and whipped a packet of cigarettes and a lighter out of her pocket. She put a cigarette in her mouth and, after several attempts at lighting it, the white tip burned like a cinder.

‘I wish you wouldn’t,’ sighed Sarah. ‘Do you want to end up like Mum?’

‘Oh, come on, give me a break.’ Her hazel eyes, the same as Mum’s, flashed under thin, arched eyebrows. ‘Mum didn’t die from smoking. A blood vessel in her brain burst. And she never smoked a cigarette in her life. You have to stop worrying so much.’

‘I can’t help it.’

‘Come here,’ said Becky and she put one arm around Sarah’s shoulders and gave her a big, rough hug. ‘Better?’ she said, holding the cigarette at arm’s length, her breath sour with the smell.

Sarah smiled, feeling for a rare moment as if the heavy mantle of responsibility that she felt towards Becky had been lifted – as if she was the little sister and not the other way round. ‘Yeah.’

They started walking again. The edges of Sarah’s coat flapped like black wings, and the feeling of lightness evaporated, as if blown away on the breeze. She took a deep breath. ‘To get back to the subject in hand, the problem with sleeping with someone on the first date is that you completely destroy any sense of mystery. Men like a bit of intrigue. If you just give it all out on the first date, you spoil the romance, or rather, the prospect of romance.’

Though she had slept with Cahal on their first date, she did not feel any sense of hypocrisy in dishing out this advice to Becky. Her relationship with Cahal had been different from the start.

‘Did you enjoy the seisiún?’

She’d returned to her friends and had not seen him come up. He leaned against the bar and crossed his ankles. Her friends all stared while she blushed and groped for words.

‘I could see it in your eyes,’ he went on, staring at her as if she were the only person in the room. ‘The way you connected with the music. The way it connected with you.’

The music had touched her. ‘I thought it was beautiful.’

‘I’m Cahal by the way.’

‘Ca-hal,’ she said, trying out the unfamiliar name. ‘Sarah. How did you learn to play like that?’

He shrugged as if his talent was nothing. ‘I’ve tickets for a Chieftains concert next week. Will you come with me?’

She did not hesitate. ‘Yes.’

‘So says Miss Celibate.’ Becky grinned to take the sting out of her comment.

‘That’s not fair. I did have a sex life once,’ said Sarah.

‘And you will do again,’ said Becky confidently.

Sarah smiled doubtfully. ‘Seriously, you should think about what I said.’ She spied Lewis’ hat on the ground, picked it up and shook the sand off it. ‘What happened with that promotion at work? Weren’t you to hear this week?’

Becky sighed. ‘I didn’t get it.’

Sarah’s heart sank. It was the third promotion Becky had been knocked back for. She worked as an admin assistant at Queen’s University Belfast, a job she’d taken straight after leaving school with three good A levels. Sarah had tried to encourage her to go to uni but Becky, under the influence of a no-good boyfriend at the time, had refused.

‘They recruited externally,’ Becky went on. ‘You know, I’m really cross about it. I wouldn’t have minded, but you should see the nerd who got the job. He can barely switch on the computer. Has to ask me every little thing.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Sarah and glanced furtively at Becky. The nose piercing was a recent one and it still looked raw and sore. ‘Did you get any feedback on why you didn’t get it?’

Becky shook her head. ‘Just vague feedback about not being right for the job. My boss said I should’ve got it, but it was up to the interview panel, not her. And I didn’t know any of them.’

They walked on, arms linked. Up ahead, Molly veered left, onto the seaweed-strewn pebbles at the top of the beach, and Lewis trailed in her wake. ‘Have you thought that how you present yourself might have something to do with not getting the job?’

Becky sighed crossly. ‘I’m an admin assistant, not a model. Surely what I do is more important than what I look like?’

‘It ought to be. But the thing is,’ said Sarah tentatively, ‘first impressions are ever so important. Everyone who knows you thinks you’re lovely but to someone meeting you for the first time, well, they might not think so.’

‘Why not?’ snapped Becky, shaking off Sarah’s arm.

‘The piercings and the tattoos and the dyed hair. They give out a message, Becky. Quite an aggressive one. Why don’t you let your hair go back to being brown? It’s the most gorgeous chestnut colour.’

Becky lifted her chin and her eyes narrowed. ‘I’m not going to change the way I look just to fit into other people’s idea of what’s acceptable. And I wish you would stop trying to change me into a clone of you. Just because you have it all – the house, the kids, the high-flying career. And the figure and looks.’

Sarah gasped in surprise. ‘How can you possibly say that? I’m a single mother struggling to run a home and hold down a full-time job. I’d hardly call that having it all.’

Becky blushed. ‘Well, you did have it all until you got divorced.’ There was an awkward pause and she sighed. ‘I just wish you would stop telling me how I should dress and what I should do.’

Sarah looked away, chastened. ‘I don’t mean to boss you around. I just want things to work out for you. In and out of work.’

Becky sighed and patted Sarah’s arm. ‘I’m okay, Sarah, really. I’m happy the way I am. You don’t have to be so protective. You’ve been mothering me ever since Mum died.’

Sarah swallowed, the mere mention of their mother bringing a lump to her throat.

The rain had stopped. A shard of sunlight broke through a chink in the pale grey, skitting cloud – and just as quickly vanished again. In the blank canvas of the sky, Sarah saw the stark grey-whiteness of the hospital ward where her mother had died.

She perched on the edge of her mother’s bed, the metal bedframe digging into her thigh. Crisp white sheets crunched between her fingers. The low hum of equipment, like a beating heart, filled her ears. The room was hot and smelt of floor polish and the fragrant sweetpeas that Dad had picked from the garden two days ago and which now sat, wilting, on the bedside table. Fear, terrible fear, ballooned in her chest.

‘Sarah.’

She leaned over her mother’s body, already still, like a corpse. She held her ear close to her mother’s lips, her heart tight and cold in her breast, and waited.

‘Take care of Becky.’ Her mother’s breath was a caress, like a summer’s breeze. ‘You’re sister and mother to her now.’

The last words her mother had said to her.

Becky’s quiet voice cracked through the memories. ‘It wasn’t right of Mum to ask you to take care of me,’ she said, harbinger of a message that Sarah stubbornly refused to own. ‘You were little more than a child yourself.’ Becky paused. ‘You must know that.’

Sarah looked away, her heart heavy with old, well-worn guilt. There was logic and truth in what Becky said. But her mother had asked. And she had promised. She’d spent the rest of her life trying to fulfil that promise. Such a contract, so solemnly made, could not be broken, despite Becky’s plausible arguments to the contrary. She blinked to clear her vision. ‘But if I don’t look out for you, who will?’

‘I’m thirty years old, Sarah,’ smiled Becky, ‘I think I can look after myself.’

Sarah returned the smile but knew in her heart that this wasn’t true. Becky was always borrowing money off her, though to be fair she did pay it back – eventually. She’d been thrown out of accommodation twice in her early twenties for not paying her rent and she was still living in a rented flat with no prospect of buying somewhere of her own.

Becky bent down, picked up a couple of glassy, grey, sharp-edged stones and stood up again, holding them in her mittened palm for Sarah to see. ‘Do you know they found evidence of Neolithic people living in this bay? They made tools from this flint. It’s over two hundred million years old.’ She turned the stone in her hand and gazed dreamily along the beach. ‘It’s amazing to think that we’re walking in the footsteps of Stone Age humans who lived over six thousand years ago. They reckon they lived in caves up there on the hill.’ She pointed at the green plateau that rose high above sea level. ‘And came down to the seashore to forage for shellfish.’

‘How do you know that?’

Becky slipped the flintstones into her pocket. ‘I quite often go to the library at lunchtime. I like the idea of learning about our ancestors by the evidence they left behind.’

‘Well,’ said Sarah, pulling the collar of her coat tighter. ‘I wouldn’t have fancied running about in nothing but animal furs, trying to kill your dinner with a bit of stone tied to the end of a stick. It must’ve been a bleak existence.’

Becky laughed. ‘A short one too, by all accounts. They rarely made it past forty.’

The age at which their mother had died. And their father, whom Sarah had believed invincible, had fallen apart.

It was shortly after the funeral. She was filling a glass with water at the kitchen sink, her swollen eyes gritty and sore from crying. Dad was in the back garden bringing in the washing, an expression of grim determination on his face. When he came to Mum’s favourite pink nightdress, he unpegged it tenderly and stood for some moments with it clutched against his breast.

Suddenly, he dropped to his knees on the damp grass, wooden pegs spilling out from the bag in his hand like kindling. Sarah rushed to the door but stalled at the sound of his sobbing, coming through the opened window. A kind of mewling, like a cat caught in a trap. It was unbearable, a private moment of grief never meant for sharing. Quickly, she turned and walked away.

Sarah’s heart pounded in her chest. It astounded her how, all these years later, she could still be so unexpectedly ambushed by moments of grief. She pushed the image resolutely out of her mind and focused on the present.

The children were absorbed by something in the seaweed which Molly was poking with a big stick. ‘Hey,’ she called out. ‘Time to go.’ She peeled back the sleeve of her coat to consult her watch and said to Becky, ‘We’d better make tracks. If we don’t hurry up we’ll be late meeting Dad and Aunt Vi for lunch.’

‘And we’ll never hear the end of it if we are,’ said Becky, rolling her eyes.

Lewis came over and held up fingers, as red and stiff as a cooked lobster. ‘My hands are cold, Mum.’

Sarah smiled indulgently. ‘No wonder, sweetheart, when you refuse to wear gloves.’ She put her arm around him and kissed his coarse hair.

‘Last one back to the car’s the loser,’ cried Becky and she set off across the shingle followed by the children.

By the time they’d all made it back to the car and driven the short distance to the Londonderry Arms Hotel in the middle of Carnlough village – where good home cooking was the order of the day and attracted clientele from the length and breadth of County Antrim – they found Aunt Vi and Dad already seated at a table by the window.

‘Thank goodness, you’re here at last,’ was the first thing Aunt Vi said from behind steel-rimmed glasses, her right hand splayed on her sternum like a starfish, her lined face full of anxiety. ‘We were getting worried.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Sarah, peeling off her scarf. ‘Lewis, don’t leave your coat lying there on the floor. Put it on the back of a chair. That’s a good boy.’

‘Come and sit by me,’ Dad said to the boy, patting the seat beside him. ‘Molly, pet, you sit on the other side.’

Sarah and Becky shed their outdoor things and filled the two remaining seats beside their aunt, who was still bristling with annoyance.

‘Sorry Aunt Vi,’ said Sarah again. ‘We didn’t mean to be late. We were on the beach. We lost track of time.’

‘That’s okay, love,’ said Dad, staring wistfully out the window, with eyes the palest shade of sky blue. ‘Your Mum used to love walking on the beach here.’

Sarah smiled at him warmly, taking in his white dentures and thinning white-grey hair. His gnarled hands lay motionless on the table – the skin across his knuckles was wrinkled and papery. An old man’s hands.

Becky said softly, ‘Yes, Dad, I remember. We used to take a run up the coast most Sundays in the summer. We’d get an ice cream and eat it over there, on the harbour wall.’ She pointed through the window to the limestone harbour constructed in the 1850s. The white stone had weathered, tinged now with a golden yellow, reminding Sarah of another childhood treat.

‘Do you remember Yellow Man?’ she said, referring to the brittle honeycomb toffee that had been one of the highlights of ‘a day up the coast’.

‘Oh, yes,’ said Becky. ‘I loved that stuff when I was little.’

Aunt Vi jumped into the brief lull in the conversation. ‘All I’m saying is that you should’ve phoned.’ She glanced at the mobile phone poised squarely on the table in front of her, like a reproach. ‘Or texted.’ Despite the fact that she cut a decidedly old-fashioned figure with her steel grey hair scraped back in a bun and a stern black roll-neck, adorned only with a simple gold locket, she was surprisingly up to speed when it came to cutting-edge technology.

Becky said, ‘Who’s for a drink?’ and caught the eye of a waiter.

Sarah lowered her voice and said patiently, ‘We were only ten minutes late, Aunt Vi.’

The children chattered excitedly to Dad and Aunt Vi said, folding her arms across her chest, ‘Ten minutes is a long time when you’re waiting for someone. Anything could’ve happened for all we knew.’

Dad looked up sharply. ‘That’s enough, now, Vi,’ he said gently.

Aunt Vi unfolded her arms and pushed up the bridge of her glasses and soon everyone was distracted by ordering drinks and food.

‘Well, Molly, you’ll be moving up to the high school after the summer,’ said Becky, when the waiter had left.

‘I hope she’s not in the same class as those nasty girls,’ said Aunt Vi under her breath. Sarah hoped so too. Lately, some girls in her class had been picking on Molly.

‘I can’t believe you’re growing up so fast,’ said Becky. ‘Next thing we know you’ll be a teenager!’

Molly sat up straighter in her chair and beamed. ‘Mum says I can cycle to school and back every day.’

‘Even in the winter?’ quizzed Aunt Vi. ‘When it’s dark?’

Sarah bit her tongue, reminding herself that Aunt Vi couldn’t help herself. She’d moved in shortly after their mother died – and with her came a new era of curfews and surveillance on a par with the secret service. Dad, stricken with depression, had pretty much let Vi take charge of the running of the house and the raising of his daughters. Sarah didn’t blame him for it – he’d done the best he could.

And, on the whole, Aunt Vi had done a good job, certainly the best she knew how, considering she’d never married or had children. There was no doubting Vi’s love for Sarah and Becky, nor her compassion – she had given up her job as matron in Coleraine hospital to help her brother raise his two motherless daughters.

‘Lots of kids cycle to the high school, Aunt Vi,’ she said cheerfully. ‘She’ll have good lights and a helmet and a fluorescent vest for when it’s dark. And she’s done her cycling proficiency.’

Molly nodded vigorously and a look of genuine fear crossed Aunt Vi’s face as she gazed upon her great-niece. Sarah felt a wave of compassion for her. ‘Honestly, Aunt Vi, we wouldn’t let her do it if we didn’t think it was safe.’

After they’d eaten, Dad gave the children two pounds each and they went off in search of Yellow Man. It wasn’t long before they came running in, clutching bags of mustard-yellow toffee that shared a close resemblance in appearance, if not in texture, to natural sponge.

‘We just saw Daddy!’ cried Lewis.

‘With Raquel,’ said Molly, breathlessly.

‘Where?’ said Sarah, glancing at the door.

‘In Daddy’s car,’ said Lewis.

‘They waved but they didn’t stop,’ added Molly.

Inside, Sarah bristled. How could Ian drive past his own children without pulling over, if only for a few moments? That would be down to Raquel, of course. She had no time for Molly and Lewis.

‘I can’t stand that woman,’ said Aunt Vi; Sarah shot her a warning look. She was no fan of Ian’s new wife either but, for the children’s sake, she tried to hide it.

Dad asked to see the hoard of Yellow Man and pinched a bit out of Molly’s bag, which resulted in lots of loud laughter and good-humoured recriminations.

‘She’s so common,’ mouthed Aunt Vi to Sarah over the noise.

Sarah leaned across the table to Aunt Vi and said quietly, ‘Like it or not, Raquel’s their stepmother now. We all have to make the best of it.’

Her aunt snorted. ‘Some stepmother. She’s never there half the time they’re at their Dad’s. Honestly, Sarah, I don’t know what Ian ever saw in that woman.’