Читать книгу The Lost Sister - Laura Elliot - Страница 8

She will ring her sisters this morning. Now, right now, while the day is still under her control. Right now, Cathy repeats to herself, before Hannah arrives for work. Right now before her son starts demanding, ‘Have you done it yet…why not…why not?’

Once yesterday, and twice the day before, she tried to ring but lost her nerve, hung up before the line connected. Today she will tap out the digits, the correct prefix, wait for the ringtone. But what then? Should she make small talk, apologise, accuse, beg, rant or sob? Should she opt for nonchalance? Whoa there, Rebecca. How’s it going, Julie? How do you do, Lauren? Remember me? It’s Cathy, your long-lost sister calling from New Zealand…yes…I know it’s over fifteen years since we spoke but time passes…and you know how it is…what can I say…?

Half-formed sentences and muddled apologies run through her mind as she walks across the lawn towards the grapefruit trees. The grapefruit is ripe and falls easily into her hands. When the basket is full, she lingers for a moment by the shore. She loves this time of morning. The pause between stillness and motion. The mist has cleared and the rising sun is pinned bright as a brooch against the throat of the mountain.

In Ireland, the dark evenings have settled. Leaves are bronze and falling. Children in masks are knocking on doors and dogs are howling.

She remembers the dog, Nero. A squiggle in a sack before Rebecca rescued him from the sludge of a low-tide estuary. When the bangers exploded, Nero heard them seconds before everyone else. A low growling in his throat, followed by a crescendo of petrified barking. Rebecca was the only one who could calm him. Halloween killed him in the end–heart failure–and Rebecca brushed his dead black coat until it gleamed and it was time to bury him at the bottom of the garden. A year later roses were growing there, bold and defiant as a bloodstain. These stingray memories, the sudden darting pain, they undo her.

She shakes herself loose from the past and returns to the kitchen, takes bread from the oven and places the loaves on a wire tray. The smell wafts through the open window, a more potent summons to eat than bells or alarm clocks. No sign of movement from the chalets so far. In the distance she hears the roar of a motorbike. Hannah emerges from a screen of trees and veers around the bend in the avenue, body and bike moulded. She enters the kitchen and shakes her black hair loose from the helmet, sheds her leathers.

On the buffet counter in the restaurant, Cathy arranges serving dishes of muesli, apples, prunes and apricots, nuts, seeds and the fruit, freshly picked. She lays a selection of cheeses on a blue-rimmed platter, stacks yoghurts in triangles, fills jugs with fruit juice and milk, sinks them in a crunch of ice, checks the buffet as keenly as an artist preparing to exhibit: a tweak here, a tweak there. The kitchen is loud with the clang of pots, the clunk of crockery, and Hannah singing one of her Maori songs that makes Cathy feel like swaying as she prepares the terrace for those who wish to eat outside.

‘Have you phoned them yet?’ Conor joins her on the terrace. His question is petulant, more like an accusation than an enquiry. He knows the answer. With breakfast preparations underway, his mother has a ready-made excuse.

‘Later,’ Cathy says. ‘The guests will be coming in for breakfast soon. I’ll do it afterwards.’

‘Not yet, they won’t.’ He opens parasols, arranges chairs around the tables. ‘You still have time.’

‘No—’

‘Yes. Do it now. Stop making excuses. You promised last night—’

‘I know what I promised…and I will.’

‘But if you leave it until later they’ll be asleep. What’s the sense in making promises if you’ve no intention of keeping them?’

She is familiar with his lip, the bee-sting pout already in position, the yearning curiosity in his eyes. He follows her to her office, yapping at her heels. She will phone her sisters and he will rake the leaves from the glow-worm trail, a job he has avoided doing for the past two weeks. He is dressed for the task, jeans and boots, a frayed sleeveless T-shirt printed with the face of an obscure rap singer he once admired.

‘Think about it,’ he says before she enters her office. ‘You’ve got the best end of the deal. I’ve only procrastinated for a fortnight. You’ve been doing it for over fifteen years.’ He likes to remind her of the time lapse, twist the guilt screw a little tighter. He looks back once, as if to challenge her indecisiveness, then disappears into the forest.

From the window, Cathy watches the first guest emerge from the Kea chalet and head towards the swimming pool. Two women walk across the lawn and sit on the bench that encircles the rata tree. Her hand trembles as she lifts the phone. Rebecca first. Grasp the bull by the horns, the nettle by its sting, the rose by its thorn. Her breath quickens as she dials her sister’s number. There should be crackles and clicks, hums, clangs and crossed wires, so many crossed wires, but the connection is instant, a clear double ring answered almost immediately.

‘Lambert Animal Sanctuary.’

‘Rebecca…’

The pause that follows is as startling as a missed heartbeat and, in that instant of recognition, Rebecca discovers that there is nothing, no barriers or soft landings, nothing to prevent the years rushing in and submerging her.

‘Rebecca…can you hear me?’

She struggles to answer but her mouth is dry and her heart, racing with relief that the long wait is over, but also with an inexplicable panic, tightens like a fist in her chest. She is filled also with an overwhelming need to weep, but tears will come later when she is alone and able to release this torrent of emotion. For now, she must remain in control. If she frightens Cathy away, there will be no explanations, no apologies, no opportunity for her sister to defend the indefensible.

‘Please say something, Rebecca. You’ve no idea how many times I dialled your number but I always lost my courage at the last moment and…oh God! I don’t know what to say…’ Cathy has acquired a slight New Zealand accent, the vowels compressed, the words precise but pleasant to the ear. She speaks too fast, spilling out excuses and apologies, as if she believes the torrent of words will prevent Rebecca hanging up on her.

‘You’re not the only one who’s stuck for words, Cathy. I can’t believe you finally decided to contact us.’

‘I’ve wanted to…so often.’ Cathy hesitates again then rushes on. ‘But, as time went on, it became harder and harder. Try and understand—’

‘Understand what? Why you never picked up the phone? Wrote a letter? Paid us a visit?’

‘I did keep in touch—’

‘Fifteen years! All the time waiting to hear from you. How could you disappear like that? Nothing except postcards…Christmas cards that never included your address. How can you possibly call that keeping in touch? One of us could have died and you’d never have known.’

‘Mel kept me informed about everything.’

‘You kept in touch with Melanie Barnes but not your own sisters?’

‘She was my only support at the time…the only person who understood.’

‘Understood what, Cathy?’

‘Understood why I had to leave. But I don’t want to talk about it over the phone.’

‘How else do you expect us to communicate?’

‘In person, Becks.’

‘Becks? You stopped using that name a long time ago.’

‘I remember. I remember everything—’

‘You said, in person. Does that mean you’re coming home?’

‘No. Not now, but, hopefully, in the future. I’m getting married in January.’

‘Congratulations. I wish you every happiness.’

‘Thank you.’

They could be strangers, Rebecca thinks. Word-perfect and skilled in the art of polite conversation. She forces herself to concentrate on what Cathy is saying. Havenswalk, she says, is a relaxation centre where people come from all over New Zealand, and even beyond, to be pampered and massaged. She runs it with a business partner, a woman called Alma.

‘It’s a wonderful place,’ Cathy enthuses. ‘And the grounds are beautiful. I’m going to be married there, on the lawn beside the lake. I want my sisters with me, Rebecca. I want us to use the occasion for a reunion and I’m hoping—’

Unable to endure Cathy’s enthusiasm, which keeps sliding through her repentant tone, Rebecca’s composure finally snaps.

‘I thought the prodigal sister was supposed to come home to eat the fatted calf, not the other way round.’

‘It doesn’t matter where we eat the fatted calf as long as we can be together again,’ Cathy retorts.

The wind, gusting through the rain, rattles the stable doors and starts a horse whinnying. Others, hearing, take up the call until it throbs like a wound inside Rebecca’s head. Throughout the day she had hoped for rain and it has been lashing against the sanctuary walls for over an hour. With such a deluge coming down, no more horses will be forced to jump the bonfires tonight.

A button on the control panel signals an emergency call.

‘Cathy, someone is trying to get through. It’s one of our busiest nights. Hold the line a moment.’

Without waiting for her sister to reply, she clicks into the incoming call. Every year Halloween brings them out of the woodwork, the crazies and the cruel, and the sanctuary crew are working round the clock to rescue injured animals. A stray pony has been spotted on wasteland near Naas, burns on its belly, a torn ear, one eye completely closed. The caller–she sounds young, probably a teenager whose night has turned sour–begins to cry. Rebecca asks for details of the location and radios her emergency team with the information. The shock of Cathy’s call is beginning to subside, yet it seems unreal, this mature voice with its taut inflections ringing out of the blue.

‘Rebecca…?’

Cathy’s hesitancy snaps her back to the present. ‘I’m listening. You want me to go to your wedding.’

‘I’m hoping you will. We need closure, Rebecca.’

‘And how do you suggest we achieve closure?’ Rebecca clicks her fingers, an audible snap carried across continents. ‘Draw a line through the past and pretend it never happened?’

‘We can’t wipe out the past but we can make peace with it.’

‘You really believe it’s that easy?’

‘Of course I don’t think it’s easy. But we have to begin somewhere. It’s taken me a long time to reach this point. How could I look for forgiveness from anyone else until I had the courage to absolve myself?’

‘Is that what you want from me, Cathy? Absolution?’ She imagines Cathy squirming away from her questions, as she did so often in the past, settling her face into a hard white mask of defiance.

‘Not absolution, Rebecca. I want you to come to Havenswalk to meet my son.’

Can silence echo, Rebecca wonders. Can it crash so heavily that all she hears is the echo…son…son…son…reverberating?

‘Your son?’

‘Yes. His name is Conor.’

‘Conor?’

‘Conor Lambert.’

‘What age is he?’

Cathy hesitates, the briefest of pauses, but long enough for Rebecca to know the answer. ‘He’ll be fifteen in December.’

‘Fifteen?’ Why on earth does she keep repeating her sister’s words?

‘You lied to us!’

‘At the time I believed…it seemed better that way. You wouldn’t worry so much—’

‘Worry? What do you know about our worries…our fears?’ Memories of their last encounter press like a claustrophobic band against Rebecca’s forehead. She winces and tightens her grip on the receiver. ‘Why did you never mention him in your cards?’

‘Would you have wanted to know?’

‘He’s my nephew, Cathy. Of course I would have wanted to know of his existence. You deliberately deceived us.’

‘I was so confused—’

‘Your son?’ Rebecca harshly interrupts her. ‘Who does he look like?’

‘His personality reminds me of Julie.’ Cathy swallows, an audible gulp, as if her throat has contracted with nerves, then forces a laugh. ‘A bit wild, like all lads his age, and into his music in a big way. He wants to be a vet when he’s older so you’re there too, Rebecca. I guess he resembles all of you in little ways. Most of all, Conor is uniquely himself. He’s anxious to meet his aunts. Please come and visit us. I’ll put you up in the chalets so it’ll only cost you the plane fare.’

‘No…I can’t. It’s nothing to do with the cost. It’s just…did you really expect it to be that easy?’

‘I didn’t expect anything. I just hoped—’

‘I’m sorry…sorry…it’s too soon. I’m not able to handle this at the moment. I’m sure the others…Do you have Julie’s number? Lauren’s in Spain; I can give you her mobile.’

‘I have their numbers. I wanted to speak to you first. Oh, Becks—’

Headlights beam through the darkness: the sanctuary crew, arriving with the latest victims of the night’s excesses.

‘I have to go, Cathy. Yes, give me your number. I’ll ring…of course I’ll ring. Goodbye…goodbye.’

Rebecca hurries to help Lulu May, the sanctuary manager, to calm an injured horse whose hoofs flail dangerously when they lead him down the ramp. Her life has moved on a long way from bobbing apples and dipping for pennies.

The sanctuary is quiet when she finishes her shift; the new arrivals sedated and out of pain. Leaves squelch under her feet as she walks across the field towards her cottage. The dank earth releases the smell of the dying year. She is facing into a grey Irish winter but spring is underway in New Zealand. A time of renewal, Cathy said. A time for closure.

She opens her cottage door. Her legs are leaden, her eyes gritty from tiredness. She switches on her computer. Amazing to think the information she needed about her youngest sister’s whereabouts had been only a finger-tap away. All that was missing was the key word–Havenswalk.

Havenswalk does indeed look like a walk in heaven. A cluster of wooden Alpine-style chalets encircle a central two-storey building where guests gather to eat, meditate and practise yoga. Outside, they soak in hot tubs under star-lit skies, relax under umbrellas, loll by a swimming pool that appears to have been hollowed from a rock. Accompanied by the haunting strains of panpipes, Havenswalk promises Serenity, Tranquillity, Spiritual Harmony, Empowerment, Healing Energy, Emotional Balance.

Cathy’s photograph smiles from the Home Page. Her eyes are bluer than Rebecca remembers, as blue as a painted icon. No longer wasted behind thick black eyeliner but staring outwards in an open, welcoming gaze. Her crimped Kate Bush hair has been tamed and replaced by a sleek black plait. From Goth to guru in little more than fifteen years. How has such a transformation occurred?

Teabag slithers from underneath an armchair and rubs against her ankles, demanding attention. Rebecca lifts the cat, cradles him against her neck. She stands by the window and watches the sun lift above the fields. Time is a thief, she thinks, gilding sorrow, stealing the intensity of loss and allowing people to move on with their lives. But all it takes is a trigger: a song, a smell, a juggernaut flashing past–or a forgotten voice echoing from another time–and memory becomes a flailing thing, capable of shattering rock.

The rain has ceased. Only tears remain on the sodden branches, glistening like pearls in the milky morning light.