The Sea Sisters: Gripping - a twist filled thriller
The Sea Sisters: Gripping - a twist filled thriller
Lucy Clarke
Two sisters, one life-changing secret . . .‘A terrific summer read’ Richard & JudyThere are some currents in the relationship between sisters that run so dark and so deep, it’s better for the people swimming on the surface never to know what’s beneath . . .Katie’s carefully structured world is shattered by the news that her headstrong younger sister, Mia, has been found dead in Bali – and the police claim it was suicide.With only the entries of Mia’s travel journal as her guide, Katie retraces the last few months of her sister’s life, and – page by page, country by country – begins to uncover the mystery surrounding her death.What she discovers changes everything. But will her search for the truth push their sisterly bond – and Katie – to breaking point?The Sea Sisters is a compelling story of the enduring connection between sisters.
The Sea Sisters
Lucy Clarke
Copyright (#ulink_0895bbf2-7998-51c9-bcf4-436f291c759a)
Harper
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This ebook first published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2013
Copyright © Lucy Clarke 2013
Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2013
Cover photograph © Bildhuset / plainpicture • Author photograph © James Bowden
Lucy Clarke asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780007481347
Ebook Edition MAY 2013 ISBN: 9780007481354
Version: 2015-06-19
Dedication (#ulink_d916872f-cdeb-579d-bb77-9fa8752f0746)
For James
Contents
Cover (#uc0d25397-8a4b-5e1d-ac5c-835a0e3f47ac)
Title Page (#u618206ec-5d6b-59ea-9189-8006c3a3ae94)
Copyright (#u3fa765f1-d6eb-50d9-bcbb-4741bd2febde)
Dedication (#u2f18bd24-8c45-5926-a5f5-c31616761c39)
1. Katie (#ube7ff2de-9cee-58e3-b4c1-cc5ccdfcbd46)
2. Mia (#u53c609d8-e072-55c0-bbb4-0a8a6d79e5d5)
3. Katie (#uf1c1f00c-67d4-5c71-b32c-eff672b08c0c)
4. Mia (#ue483c5c5-ba4b-587c-bb80-2854869d9335)
5. Katie (#uac71b982-8ec9-5b17-8908-0f418dacd696)
6. Mia (#u7889fb1b-2709-5d4e-8c44-f343078b78e4)
7. Katie (#ub754a49d-e5b4-5092-910d-79ebb8c6024f)
8. Mia (#litres_trial_promo)
9. Katie (#litres_trial_promo)
10. Mia (#litres_trial_promo)
11. Katie (#litres_trial_promo)
12. Mia (#litres_trial_promo)
13. Katie (#litres_trial_promo)
14. Mia (#litres_trial_promo)
15. Katie (#litres_trial_promo)
16. Mia (#litres_trial_promo)
17. Katie (#litres_trial_promo)
18. Mia (#litres_trial_promo)
19. Katie (#litres_trial_promo)
20. Mia (#litres_trial_promo)
21. Katie (#litres_trial_promo)
22. Mia (#litres_trial_promo)
23. Katie (#litres_trial_promo)
24. Mia (#litres_trial_promo)
25. Katie (#litres_trial_promo)
26. Mia (#litres_trial_promo)
27. Katie (#litres_trial_promo)
28. Mia (#litres_trial_promo)
29. Katie (#litres_trial_promo)
30. Mia (#litres_trial_promo)
31. Katie (#litres_trial_promo)
32. Mia (#litres_trial_promo)
33. Katie (#litres_trial_promo)
Keep Reading: A Single Breath (#litres_trial_promo)
Keep Reading: The Blue (#litres_trial_promo)
A Chat with Lucy Clarke (#litres_trial_promo)
Questions for Discussion (#litres_trial_promo)
The W6 Book Café (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
1 (#ulink_622f55f3-be4a-5307-8172-0c9099cc0a0e)
KATIE (#ulink_622f55f3-be4a-5307-8172-0c9099cc0a0e)
London, March
Katie had been dreaming of the sea. Dark, restless water and sinuous currents drained away as she pushed herself upright on the heels of her hands. Somewhere in the flat her phone was ringing. She blinked, then rubbed her eyes. The bedside clock read 2.14 a.m.
Mia, she thought immediately, stiffening. Her sister would get the time difference wrong.
She pushed back the covers and slipped out of bed, her nightdress twisted around her waist. The air was frigid and the floorboards were like ice against the soles of her feet. She shivered as she moved through the room, her fingers spread in front of her like sensors. Reaching the door, she groped for the handle. The hinges whined as she pulled it open.
The ringing grew louder as she picked her way along the darkened hall. There was something troubling about the sound in the quiet, sleep-coated hours of the night. What time would it be in Australia? Midday, perhaps?
Her stomach stirred uneasily remembering yesterday’s terrible fight. Words had been sharpened to injure and their mother’s name had been flung down the phone line like a grenade. Afterwards, Katie was so knotted with guilt that she left work an hour early, unable to concentrate. At least now they’d have a chance to talk again and she could tell Mia how sorry she was.
She was only two steps from the phone when she realized it was no longer ringing. She hovered for a moment, a hand pressed to her forehead. Had Mia rung off? Had she dreamt it?
Then the noise came again. Not the phone after all, but the insistent buzz of the flat intercom.
She sighed, knowing it would be late-night visitors for the traders who lived upstairs. She leant towards the intercom, holding a finger to the Talk button. ‘Hello?’
‘This is the police.’
She froze, sleep burning off like sea mist on a sunny day.
‘We’d like to speak to Miss Katie Greene.’
Her pulse ticked in her throat. ‘That’s me.’
‘May we come up?’
She released the front door, thinking, What? What’s happened? She switched on the light, blinking as the hall was suddenly illuminated. Looking away from the glare she saw her bare feet, toenails polished pink, and the creased trim of her silk nightdress against her pale thighs. She wanted to fetch a dressing gown, but already the heavy tread of feet sounded up the stairway.
She opened the door and two uniformed police officers stepped into her hall.
‘Miss Katie Greene?’ asked a female officer. She had greying blonde hair and high colour in her cheeks. She stood beside a male officer young enough to be her son, who kept his gaze on the ground.
‘Yes.’
‘Are you alone?’
She nodded.
‘Are you the sister of Mia Greene?’
Her hands flew to her mouth. ‘Yes…’
‘We are very sorry to tell you that the police in Bali have informed us –’
Oh God, she began to say to herself. Oh God…
‘– that Mia Greene has been found dead. She was discovered at the bottom of a cliff in Umanuk. The police believe she fell—’
‘No! NO!’ She spun away from them, bile stinging the back of her throat. This couldn’t be real. It couldn’t be.
‘Miss Greene?’
She wouldn’t turn. Her gaze found the noticeboard in the hallway where invites, a calendar, and the business card of a caterer were neatly pinned. At the top was a map of the world. The week before Mia left to go travelling, Katie had asked her to plot her route on it. Mia’s mouth had curled into a smile at that, yet she indulged Katie’s need for schedules and itineraries by marking a loose route that began on the west coast of America and took in Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Samoa, Vietnam and Cambodia – an endless summer of trailing coastlines. Katie had been tracking the route from Mia’s infrequent bursts of communication, and now the silver drawing pin was stuck in Western Australia.
Staring at the map, she knew something wasn’t right. She turned back to the police. ‘Where was she found?’
‘In Umanuk,’ the female officer repeated. ‘It’s in the southern tip of Bali.’
Bali. Bali wasn’t on Mia’s route. This was a mistake! She wanted to laugh – let the relief explode from her chest. ‘Mia isn’t in Bali. She’s in Australia!’
She caught the exchange of glances between the officers. The woman stepped forwards; she had light blue eyes and wore no make-up. ‘I’m afraid Mia’s passport was stamped in Bali four weeks ago.’ Her voice was gentle, but contained a certainty that chilled Katie. ‘Miss Greene, would you like to sit down?’
Mia couldn’t be dead. She was twenty-four. Her little sister. It was inconceivable. Her thoughts swam. She could hear the cistern downstairs humming. A television was playing somewhere. Outside, a late-night reveller was singing. Singing!
‘What about Finn?’ she asked suddenly.
‘Finn?’
‘Finn Tyler. They were travelling together.’
The female officer opened up her notebook and spent a moment glancing through it. She shook her head. ‘I’m afraid I don’t have any information about him currently. I’m sure the Balinese police will have been in contact with him though.’
‘I don’t understand any of this,’ Katie whispered. ‘Can you … I … I need to know everything. Tell me everything.’
The police officer described the exact time and location at which Mia had been found. She told her that medical assistance had arrived swiftly on the scene, but that Mia was pronounced dead on their arrival. She explained that her body was being held at the Sanglah morgue in Bali. She confirmed that there would be further investigations, but that so far the Balinese police believed it was a tragic accident.
All the while Katie stood completely still.
‘Is there someone you would like us to contact on your behalf?’
She thought instantly of their mother. She allowed herself a moment to imagine the comfort of being held in her arms, the soft cashmere of her mother’s jumper against her cheek. ‘No,’ she told the officer eventually. ‘I’d like you to leave now. Please.’
‘Of course. Someone from the Foreign Office will be in touch tomorrow with an update from the Balinese police. I’d also like to visit you again. I’ve been assigned as your Family Liaison Officer and will be here to answer any questions you have.’ The woman took a card from her pocket and placed it beside the phone.
Both officers told Katie how sorry they were, and then left.
As the door clicked shut, the strength in Katie’s legs dissipated and she sank onto the cold wooden floor. She didn’t cry. She hugged her knees to her chest to contain the trembling that had seized her. Why had Mia been in Bali? Katie didn’t know anything about the place. There was a bombing outside a nightclub some years ago, but what else? Clearly there were cliffs, but the only ones she could picture were the grass-covered cliffs of Cornwall that Mia had bounded along as a child, dark hair flying behind her.
She tried to imagine how Mia could have fallen. Was she standing on an overhang and the earth crumbled? Did a sudden gust of wind unbalance her? Was she sitting on the edge and became distracted? It seemed absurdly careless to fall from a cliff. The facts Katie had been given were so few that she couldn’t arrange them into any sort of sense. She knew she should call someone. Ed. She would speak to Ed.
It was her third attempt before she managed to dial correctly. She heard the rustle of a duvet, a mumbled, ‘Hello?’ and then silence as he listened. When he spoke again, his voice was level, telling her only, ‘I’m on my way.’
It must have taken no less than ten minutes for him to drive from his apartment in Fulham to hers in Putney, but looking back she wouldn’t remember any of that time. She was still sitting on the hallway floor, her skin like goose flesh, when the intercom buzzed. She stood groggily. The floorboards had marked the backs of her thighs with red slash-like indentations. She pressed the button to let him in.
Katie heard the thundering of his feet as he took the steps two at a time, and then Ed was at her door. She opened it and he stepped forward, folding her into his arms. ‘My darling!’ he said. ‘My poor darling!’
She pressed her face into the stiff wool of his jacket, which scratched against her cold cheek. She smelt deodorant. Had he sprayed himself with deodorant before coming over?
‘You’re freezing. We can’t stand here.’ He led her into the lounge and she perched on the edge of the cream leather sofa. It’s like sitting on vanilla ice cream, Mia had said the morning it was delivered.
Ed removed his jacket and draped it over her shoulders, rubbing her back with smooth circular strokes. Then he went into the kitchen and she heard him open the boiler cupboard and flick on the central heating, which rumbled and strained into life. There was the gush of a tap as he filled the kettle, followed by the opening and closing of drawers, cupboards and the fridge.
He returned with a cup of tea, but her hands didn’t move to take it. ‘Katie,’ he said, crouching down so they were eye level. ‘You are in shock. Try and drink a little. It will help.’
He lifted the tea to her lips and she sipped it obediently. She could taste the sweet milky flavour on her tongue and the urge to retch was immediate. She lurched past him to the bathroom with a hand clamped to her mouth. The jacket slipped from her shoulders and fell to the floor with a soft thump.
Bending over the sink, she gagged. Saliva hit the white ceramic basin.
Ed was behind her. ‘Sorry…’
Katie rinsed her hands and splashed water over her face.
‘Darling,’ he said, passing her a blue hand towel. ‘What happened?’
She buried her face in it and shook her head. He gently peeled the towel away, then unhooked her dressing gown from the back of the bathroom door and guided her arms into the soft cotton. He took her hands in his and rubbed them. ‘Talk to me.’
She repeated the details learnt from the police. Her voice sounded jagged and she imagined that if she were to glance up at the bathroom mirror, her skin would be leached of colour, her eyes glassy.
As they moved back to the lounge, Ed asked the same question to which she wanted the answer: ‘Why was your sister in Bali?’
‘I have no idea.’
‘Have you spoken to Finn?’
‘Not yet. I should call him.’
Her hands shook as she dialled Finn’s mobile. She pressed the phone to her ear and listened as it rang and rang. ‘He’s not answering.’
‘What about his family? Do you know their number?’
Katie searched in her address book and found it, the Cornish dialling code stirring a faint memory that she wasn’t ready to grasp.
Finn was the youngest of four brothers. His mother, Sue, a curt woman who was often harassed, answered, sounding half asleep. ‘Who is this?’
‘Katie Greene.’
‘Who?’
‘Katie Greene.’ She cleared her throat. ‘Mia’s sister.’
‘Mia?’ Sue repeated. Then immediately: ‘Finn?’
‘There’s been an accident—’
‘Finn—’
‘No. It’s Mia.’ Katie paused and looked at Ed. He nodded for her to go on. ‘The police have been here. They told me that Mia was in Bali … on a cliff somewhere. She fell. They’re saying she’s dead.’
‘No…’
In the background she could hear Finn’s father, a placid man in his sixties who worked for the Forestry Commission. There was a brief volley of exclamations muffled by a hand over the receiver, and then Sue returned to the line. ‘Does Finn know?’
‘I’d imagine so. But he’s not answering his mobile.’
‘He lost it a few weeks ago. Hasn’t replaced it yet. We’ve been using email. I’ve got his address if you want—’
‘Why were they in Bali?’ Katie interrupted.
‘Bali? Finn wasn’t.’
‘But that’s where they said Mia was found. Her passport was stamped—’
‘Mia went to Bali. Not Finn.’
‘What?’ Katie said, her grip tightening.
‘There was an argument. Sorry, I thought you knew.’
‘When was this?’
‘Good month ago, now. Finn spoke to Jack about it. From what I heard they had a falling-out – God knows what about – and Mia changed her ticket.’
Katie’s thoughts whirled. Mia and Finn’s friendship was unshakable. She pictured them as children, Finn with a wig of glistening seaweed draped over his head, Mia bent double with laughter. Theirs was a friendship that was so rare, so solid, that she couldn’t imagine what would be terrible enough to cause them to separate.
*
Ten days later, winter sun flooded Katie’s bedroom. She lay perfectly still, her arms at her sides, eyes shut, bracing herself against a distant threat she couldn’t quite recall. She blinked and, before she had a chance to recall why her eyelids felt stiff and salted, grief bowled into her.
Mia.
She curled into herself, tucking her knees to her chest and pressing tight fists to her mouth. She screwed her eyes shut, but disturbing images bled into her thoughts: Mia dropping silently through the air like a stone, the rush of wind lifting her dark hair away from her face, a rasped scream, the crack of her skull against granite.
She reached for Ed but her fingers met only with the empty curve of where he’d slept. She listened for him and, after a moment, was relieved to tune into the light tapping of a keyboard coming from the lounge: he would be emailing his office. She envied him that – the ability for his world to continue, when hers had stopped.
She knew she must get to the shower. It would be too easy to remain cocooned in the duvet as she had done yesterday, not rising until after lunch by which time she was drowsy and disorientated. Taking a deep breath, she forced herself from beneath the covers.
Drifting towards the bathroom, she passed Mia’s room and found herself pausing vaguely outside the door. They had bought this flat using the small inheritance they received after their mother’s death. Everyone was surprised that they were moving in together, not least Katie, who had vowed she’d never live with Mia again after their acrimonious teenage years, yet she’d worried that if Mia didn’t put her share of the inheritance into something solid, it would slip through her fingers as easily as water. Katie had been the one to organize viewings, deal with estate agents and solicitors, and run through the rain with a broken umbrella to sign the mortgage papers on time.
Wrapping her fingers lightly around the brass door handle, she turned it. A faint trace of jasmine lingered in the cold, stale air. Mia had positioned her bed beneath the tall sash window so she could wake and see sky. A sheepskin coat, which once belonged to their mother, was draped over the foot of the bed. It was an original from the Seventies with a wide, unstructured collar, and she remembered Mia wrapping herself in it all winter like a lost flower-child.
Beside the bed a pine desk was heaving with junk: an old stereo, unplugged and dusty; three cardboard boxes bulging with CDs; a pair of hiking boots with their laces missing; a mound of paperbacks, well thumbed, beside two pots of pens. The bedroom walls were bare of the photos and paintings that had adorned Mia’s previous rooms and she’d made no attempt to decorate; in fact, it was as if she had never intended the move to be permanent.
Katie was the one who’d persuaded her sister to move to London, using words like ‘opportunity’ and ‘career’, when those words had never belonged to Mia. Mia spent her days wandering the parks, or drifting in one of the rent-a-rowing-boats in Battersea Park, as if dreaming she were somewhere else. She’d had five jobs in as many months because she would suddenly decide to get out of the city to go hiking or camping, and take off, just leaving a note pushed under Katie’s door and a message on her employer’s answerphone. Katie tried searching out job opportunities using her recruitment contacts, but fixing Mia to something was like pinning a ribbon to the wind.
Noticing a pair of mud-flecked running shoes, she remembered the evening Mia announced she was going travelling. Katie had been in the kitchen preparing a risotto, slicing onions with deft, clean strokes. She tossed them into a pan as Mia wandered in, a pair of white earphones dangling over the neckline of her T-shirt, to fill her water bottle at the tap.
‘Going running?’ Katie had asked, blotting her streaming eyes with the sleeve of her cardigan.
‘Yeah.’
‘How’s the hangover?’ When she’d gone to shower before work, Katie had found Mia asleep on the bathroom floor wearing a dress of hers borrowed without asking.
‘Fine,’ she replied, keeping her back to Katie. She turned off the tap and wiped her wet hands on her T-shirt, leaving silver beads of moisture.
‘What happened to your ankle?’
Mia glanced down at the angry red cut that stretched an inch above her sock line. ‘Smashed a glass at work.’
‘Does it need a plaster? I’ve got some in my room.’
‘It’s fine.’
Katie nodded, tossing the onions with a wooden spoon, watching their sharp whiteness soften and become translucent. She turned up the heat.
Mia lingered by the sink for a moment. Eventually she said, ‘I spoke to Finn earlier.’
Katie glanced up; his name was so rarely spoken between them.
‘We’ve decided to go travelling.’
The onions started to sizzle, but Katie was no longer stirring. ‘You’re going travelling?’
‘Yeah.’
‘For how long?’
Mia shrugged. ‘A while. A year, maybe.’
‘A year!’
‘Our tickets are open.’
‘You’ve already booked?’
Mia nodded.
‘When did you decide this?’
‘Today.’
‘Today?’ Katie repeated, incredulous. ‘You haven’t thought it through!’
Mia raised an eyebrow: ‘Haven’t I?’
‘I didn’t think you had any money.’
‘I’ll manage.’
The oil began to crackle and spit. ‘And what, Finn’s just taking a sabbatical? I’m sure the radio station will be thrilled.’
‘He’s handed in his notice.’
‘But he loved that job…’
‘Is that right?’ Mia said, looking directly at her. The air in the kitchen seemed to contract.
Then Mia picked up her water bottle, pushed her earphones in, and left. The pan started to smoke so Katie snapped off the hob. She felt a hot flash of anger and took three strides across the kitchen to follow but then, as she heard the tread of Mia’s trainers along the hallway, the turning of the latch, and finally the slam of the door, Katie realized that what she felt most acutely was not anger or even hurt, it was relief. Mia was no longer her responsibility: she was Finn’s.
*
It was mid-afternoon when the phone rang. Ed glanced up from his laptop; Katie shook her head. She had refused to speak to anyone, allowing the answerphone to record friends’ messages of condolence that were punctuated with awkward apologies and strained pauses.
The machine clicked on. ‘Hello. It’s Mr Spire here from the Foreign Office in London.’
A nerve in her eyelid flickered. It was Ed who reached for the phone just before the message ended. ‘This is Katie’s fiancé.’ He looked across to her and said, ‘Yes, she’s with me now.’ He nodded at her to take the phone.
She held it at arm’s length, as if it were a gun she was being asked to put to her head. Mr Spire had called twice since Mia’s death, first to request permission for an autopsy to go ahead, and later to discuss the repatriation of Mia’s body. After a moment, Katie pressed her lips together and cleared her throat. Bringing the phone towards her mouth, she said slowly, ‘This is Katie.’
‘I hope this is a convenient time to talk?’
‘Yes, fine.’ The dry, musty warmth of the central heating caught at the back of her throat.
‘The British Consulate in Bali have been in touch. They have some further news concerning Mia’s death.’
She closed her eyes. ‘Go on.’
‘In cases such as Mia’s, a toxicology report is sometimes requested as part of the autopsy procedure. I have a copy of it in front of me, which I wanted to talk to you about.’
‘Right.’
‘The results indicate that at the time of death, Mia was intoxicated. Her blood alcohol content was 0.13, which means she may have had impaired reflexes and reaction times.’ He paused. ‘And there’s something else.’
She moved into the lounge doorway and gripped the wooden frame, anchoring herself.
‘The Balinese police have interviewed two witnesses who claim to have seen Mia on the evening of her death.’ He hesitated and she sensed he was struggling with something. ‘Katie, I’m very sorry, but in their statement, they have said that Mia jumped.’
The ground pitched, her stomach dropped away. She hinged forward from the waist. Footsteps crossed the lounge and she felt Ed’s hand on her back. She pushed him away, straightening. ‘You think she …’ Her voice was strained like elastic set to snap. ‘You think it was suicide?’
‘I am afraid that based on witness statements and the autopsy, the cause of death has been established as suicide.’
Katie reached a hand to her forehead.
‘I understand this must be incredibly hard—’
‘The witnesses, who are they?’
‘I have copies of their statements.’ She heard the creak of a chair and pictured him leaning across a wide desk to reach them. ‘Yes, here. The witnesses are a 30-year-old couple who were honeymooning in Bali. In their statement, they say that they had taken an evening walk along the lower cliff path in Umanuk and paused at a lookout point – this was close to midnight. A young woman, matching Mia’s description, ran past them looking extremely anxious. The male witness asked if she needed help and Mia is said to have responded, “No.” She then disappeared along what used to be the upper cliff path, which has apparently been disused for several years. Between five and eight minutes later, the witnesses looked up and saw Mia standing very near the cliff’s edge. The report says that they were concerned for her safety, but before they were able to act, she jumped.’
‘My God.’ Katie began to tremble.
Mr Spire waited a moment before continuing. ‘The autopsy suggested that, from the injuries sustained, it is likely that Mia went over the cliff edge facing forwards, which collaborates with the witnesses’ reports.’ He continued to expand on further details, but Katie was no longer listening. Her mind had already drifted to the cliff top.
He’s wrong, Mia, isn’t he? You didn’t jump. I won’t believe it. What I said when you called – oh, God, please don’t let what I said …
‘Katie,’ he was saying. ‘The arrangements are in place to have Mia’s body repatriated to the UK a week on Wednesday.’ He required details of the funeral parlour she had selected, and then the call ended.
She felt shooting pains behind her eyes and pressed the arched bones beneath her eyebrows with her thumb and index finger. In the flat below the baby was wailing.
Ed turned her slowly to face him.
‘They are saying it was suicide,’ she said in a small, strained voice. ‘But it wasn’t.’
He placed his hands on her shoulders. ‘You will get through this, Katie.’
But how could he know? She hadn’t told him about the terrible argument she’d had with Mia. She hadn’t told him of the hateful, shameful things she’d said. She hadn’t told him about the anger and hurt that had been festering between them for months. She hadn’t told Ed any of this because there are some currents in a relationship between sisters that are so dark and run so deep, it’s better for the people swimming on the surface never to know what’s beneath.
She turned from Ed and stole to her room where she lay on the bed with her eyes closed, trying to fix on something good between her and Mia. Her thoughts led her back to the last time she had seen her, as they hugged goodbye at the airport. She recalled the willowy feel of Mia’s body, the muscular ridges of her forearms and the press of her collarbone.
Katie would have held on for longer, treasured every detail, had she known it would be the last time she’d feel her sister in her arms.
2 (#ulink_42e49193-891f-5e81-bfd3-ec6c07141d11)
MIA (#ulink_42e49193-891f-5e81-bfd3-ec6c07141d11)
London, October Last Year
Mia felt the soft cushion of her sister’s cheek pressed against hers as they held each other. She absorbed the curve of her chest, the slightness of her shoulders, the way Katie had to stand on the balls of her feet to reach.
Mia and Katie rarely hugged. There had been a time, as children, when they were entirely uninhibited with each other’s bodies – squeezing onto the same armchair with their hips pressed tight, plaiting thin sections of each other’s hair and securing bright beads at the ends, practising flying angels on the sun-warmed sand with their fingers interlaced. She couldn’t say at what point that physical closeness was lost to her. Katie remained warmly tactile; she welcomed people with a hug or kiss, and had an inclusive way of reaching out mid-story to place her hand on someone’s arm.
The last time they had embraced like this must have been on the morning of their mother’s funeral, a year ago. Dressed in black, they had exchanged forthright words on the narrow landing of their childhood home. Eventually it was Katie who had extended her arms when, in truth, the gesture should have been Mia’s. They had clasped each other and, in whispers broken with relief, a truce was made. But not maintained.
Now, as they held one another in the check-in area at Heathrow, Mia felt a tightening in her throat and the prick of tears beginning beneath her eyelids. She stiffened and let go. She wouldn’t look at Katie as she picked up her backpack and hoisted it over her shoulders, tugging her hair free from beneath it.
‘So this is it,’ Katie said.
‘I suppose so.’
‘Got everything?’
‘Yes.’
‘Passport? Tickets? Currency?’
‘Everything.’
‘And Finn’s meeting you shortly?’
‘Yes.’ Mia had arranged it so his and Katie’s paths wouldn’t have to cross. ‘Thanks for bringing me,’ she added, touched that Katie had taken the day off work to do so. ‘You didn’t have to.’
‘I wanted to say goodbye properly.’ Katie was dressed in a well-cut grey dress beneath a light caramel jacket. She slipped her hands into the wide pockets. ‘I feel like I’ve barely seen you recently.’
Her gaze slid to the floor; she’d been finding reasons to stay away.
‘Mia,’ she said, taking a small step forward. ‘I know it’s probably seemed like I’m not happy for you – about you travelling. It’s just hard. You leaving. That’s all.’
‘I know.’
Katie reached out and took her hands. Her sister’s fingers were warm and dry from her pockets and her own felt clammy within them. ‘I’m sorry if London hasn’t been right for you. I feel like I pushed you into it.’ Katie twisted Mia’s silver thumb ring between her fingers as she said, ‘I just thought, after Mum, it would be good for us to stay together. I know you’ve been having a tough time lately – and I’m sorry if you haven’t felt like you could come to me.’
An oily slick of guilt slid down the back of Mia’s throat: How could I come to you?
She thought back to the day she’d booked this trip. She had woken on their bathroom floor, her cheek pressed into the cool, tiled floor, which smelt of bleach. Her dress – a jade one of Katie’s – had twisted around her waist and her shoes had been abandoned, one beneath the sink, the other caught on the pedal of the bin.
Katie, wrapped in a soft blue towel, had been standing in the doorway. ‘Oh, Mia…’
Mia’s head had throbbed and the sour taste of spirits furred the back of her throat. She had pushed herself upright and a bolt of pain clenched at her temples. Snapshots of her evening flashed in her mind: the low-lit red booth, the empty whisky glasses, the grungy beat of an R&B track, the musky tang of sweat in the air, another round, a cheer of male voices, a familiar face, the irrepressible desire for risk. She remembered slinging her bag over her shoulder, tipping the final whisky down her throat, and then weaving along a darkened corridor. The memory of what happened next was so fresh and laced with so much shame, that she knew she had to leave. Leave London. Leave her sister.
A passenger announcement boomed over the tannoy bringing her back to the present.
Katie said, ‘I worry about you.’
Mia withdrew her hand, pretending to adjust her backpack straps. ‘I’ll be fine.’
They both turned as a middle-aged couple hurtled past, the man muttering, ‘Christ!’ as he pushed a luggage trolley behind his wife, who was struggling to run in heels, her painted fingernails gripping a bundle of documents. The man glanced across at Katie. Even when rushing for planes, even when their wives were at their sides, men couldn’t help but look. They were drawn to her like bees to a honey pot, or like flies to shit as Mia had once said in anger. It wasn’t just Katie’s petite figure or honey-blonde hair, it was a warm confidence that breathed through her pores, saying, I know who I am.
Katie didn’t notice the admiring glance as her attention had been caught by someone else. Finn came loping towards them wearing his daily uniform of T-shirt, jeans and Converse trainers. A tattered army-green backpack hung easily off one shoulder.
Katie took a slight step backwards, aligning herself with Mia, and fed her hands deep into her pockets.
Finn’s gaze moved slowly over them both. Then the corners of his mouth turned up in an easy, wide smile. ‘The Greene sisters!’ If there was any awkwardness on his part, he didn’t show it. ‘Coming with us, Katie?’
‘I’ll be living the trip vicariously from all the emails Mia will be sending.’
Mia smiled. ‘Hint duly noted.’
An airport vehicle towing a row of luggage trolleys beeped as it rolled towards them, causing the three of them to bunch together.
‘So how are things?’ Finn asked Katie. ‘It’s been a while.’
‘Yes, it has. Everything is fine, thank you. Work’s busy. But good. And you? How are you?’
‘Feeling pretty pleased about having a year off.’
‘You both must be. It’s California first?’
‘Yes, for a few weeks of coast-side cruising, and then on to Australia.’
‘Sounds wonderful. I’m incredibly jealous.’
Is she? Mia wondered. Would she want this: wearing her life on her back and moving from place to place with no plans?
‘Right,’ Katie said, taking the car keys from her handbag. ‘I best get going.’ She glanced at Finn, her face turning serious. ‘You will look after her, won’t you?’
‘You know that’s like asking a goldfish to babysit a piranha.’
Her features softened a little. ‘Just bring her back safely.’
‘I promise.’ He leant forward and kissed her on the cheek. ‘Take care.’
She nodded quickly, pressing her lips together. ‘You’ll call?’ she said to Mia. ‘You’ve got your mobile?’
‘I’m not taking it.’ Then, seeing Katie’s expression, she added, ‘It’s too expensive abroad.’ But cost wasn’t the real reason: Mia didn’t want to be contactable.
‘I’ve got mine if you need us,’ Finn said. ‘You’ve got my number still?’
‘Yes. Yes, I think so.’
There was a brief silence between them all. Mia wondered what Katie would do with the rest of her day. Catch up with a friend over coffee? Go to the gym? Meet Ed for lunch? She realized she had no idea how her sister spent her time.
‘Can you let me know when you’ve arrived?’
‘Sure,’ Mia replied, with a shrug she hadn’t intended. She wanted to tell Katie that she loved her, or say how much she’d miss her, but somehow she couldn’t find the words. It had always been that way for her. Instead, she lifted a hand in wave, then turned and left with Finn.
*
Pressing her nose against the window, she watched London disappearing beneath the white wings of the plane. They rose through a layer of cloud and suddenly the view was swallowed. She sank back in her seat, her heart rate gradually slowing. She had left.
On her lap rested her travel journal. She’d bought it at Camden Market from a stall that sold weathervanes, maps and antique pocket watches. She’d been drawn to the sea-blue fabric that bound the cover and the thick cream pages that smelt like promises.
She opened it, clicked her pen against her collarbone, and wrote her first two lines.
People go travelling for two reasons: because they are searching for something, or because they are running from something. For me, it’s both.
She tucked the journal into the seat pocket alongside the laminated flight-safety procedures, and then closed her eyes.
*
As the plane descended over the Sierra Nevada range, Mia gazed at the clouds drifting below. They looked soft and inviting, and she imagined diving into them, being caught in their fleecy hold and floating with the air currents.
‘Not as comfy as they look,’ Finn said, as if reading her mind.
Finn Adam Tyler was her best friend and had been since they’d met aged 11 on the school bus. Four weeks ago she’d called him at work to tell him she was going travelling. She was sitting on the kitchen worktop, her heels dangling against the fridge door. When he answered, she said only, ‘I’ve got a plan.’
‘What do I need?’ he’d replied, a throwback to their teenage years when a plan, if conceived by one of them, had to be adhered to by the other.
She grinned. ‘Your passport, a resignation letter, a backpack and a typhoid jab.’
There was a pause. Then, ‘Mia, what have you done?’
‘Reserved two round-the-world tickets: America, Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Samoa, Vietnam and Cambodia. The flights leave in four weeks. You coming?’
There was silence. It had hung between them long enough for her to wonder whether her impulsiveness had been a mistake, whether he’d say of course he couldn’t just up and leave his job.
‘So this typhoid jab,’ he’d said eventually, ‘is it in the arm or the arse?’
She looked at Finn now: his knees were pushed against the seat in front, a newspaper spread on his lap. The mousey curls of the schoolboy she’d known had now been cut short and rough stubble shadowed his chin.
At the end of their row a voluptuous woman with dangling gold earrings unclipped her seat belt and stepped into the aisle. She moved towards the toilets, gripping the backs of headrests for balance. Mia turned to Finn. ‘I need to talk to you.’
‘If it’s about that last meal, I swear, I thought you wouldn’t want to be disturbed.’
She smiled. ‘It’s something important.’
Finn folded the newspaper over and gave her his full attention.
A few rows in front the faint grizzling of a toddler started up.
Mia tucked her hands beneath her thighs. ‘This may sound odd,’ she began uncertainly, ‘but after I booked our tickets, I realized that there was another place I needed to visit on this trip.’ She should have talked to Finn about it sooner, only she was afraid to voice the idea in case she set in motion something she wasn’t ready for. Sometimes she wasn’t aware that an idea was brewing until it suddenly popped into her mind and she acted upon it. ‘I’ve booked us an extra stop.’
‘What?’
‘After San Francisco, we’ve got a flight to Maui.’
‘Maui?’ He looked blank. ‘Why?’
‘It’s where Mick lives.’
She waited a beat for him to place the name. It had been a long time since he’d heard it.
‘Your dad?’
She nodded.
The grizzling child had found its stride and a captive audience; the crying grew louder and something was tossed into the aisle.
Finn was staring at her. ‘You haven’t talked about him in years. You want to see him?’
‘I think so. Yes.’
‘Has he … have you been in contact?’
She shook her head. ‘No. Neither of us.’ Mick had left when she and Katie were young children, leaving their mother to bring up her two daughters alone.
‘I don’t understand. Why now?’
It was a fair question, but one she wasn’t sure how to answer just yet. She shrugged. Ahead, she heard a taut whisper from the toddler’s parent: ‘That. Is. Enough.’
Finn ran the knuckle of his thumb under his chin, a habitual gesture when something was worrying him. ‘What does Katie think?’
‘I haven’t told her.’
She could see Finn’s surprise and sensed he wanted to say more, but Mia turned to the window, ending the conversation.
She willed her thoughts to drift away with the clouds, knowing it wasn’t the only thing she was keeping from her sister.
3 (#ulink_f66daf2f-93e4-5948-af77-30a1c2868a55)
KATIE (#ulink_f66daf2f-93e4-5948-af77-30a1c2868a55)
Cornwall/London, March
Katie sat pin straight on the church pew, her feet pressed together. Biting sea air crept through the cracks in the stained-glass windows and twisted beneath the heavy oak door. Her fingers were curled around a damp tissue, Ed’s hand resting on top. Eighteen months earlier had seen her seated in this same pew when they buried her mother, only then it had been Mia’s fingers linked through her own.
Her gaze was fixed on the coffin. Everything about it – the polished shine to the elm wood, the brass clasps keeping it sealed, the white lilies arranged on top – suddenly looked wrong. Why had she chosen to bury Mia beside their mother, when her sister had never once visited the grave? Wouldn’t cremation have been more suitable, her ashes dispersing on a breeze over a wild sea? Why don’t I know what you’d have wanted?
It would have been almost impossible to conceive that Mia was inside the coffin had Katie not decided, two days ago, that she needed to see the body. Ed had been cautious on her behalf. ‘Are you sure? We don’t know how she may look after the fall.’ That’s what people were referring to it as: the fall, as if Mia had no more than slipped in the shower, or toppled off a stool.
She wouldn’t be dissuaded. Seeing Mia’s body would be agony, but to not see it would leave her with the smallest fraction of doubt – and if she allowed that doubt to grow over time to hope, she’d be in danger of deluding herself.
When Katie had stepped behind the heavy purple drape in the funeral parlour, she could have fooled herself that Mia was merely sleeping. Her willowy figure, the sweep of dark hair, the curve of her lips, looked as they always had. Yet the proof of death lay in Mia’s skin. After months of travelling she would have been deeply tanned, but death had left behind its ghostly pallor so that her skin appeared a strange insipid shade, like milk spilt over a dark floor.
The funeral director had asked if Katie wished to choose an outfit for Mia to be buried in, but she had said no. It had seemed presumptuous to dress Mia, for whom fashion was something indefinable. She fell in love with clothes for their story, choosing a loose shift dress in a deep blue that reminded her of the sea, or picking a second-hand pair of heels because she liked to imagine the places they’d already walked.
On the night Mia died she had been wearing a pair of teal shorts. They had been arranged too high up her waist, not slung low over her hips as she would have worn them. Her feet were bare, a silver toe ring on each foot, her nails unpainted. On her top half she was wearing a cream vest over a turquoise string bikini. A delicate necklace strung with tiny white shells rested at her throat, a single pearl at its centre. She looked too casual for death.
Katie had reached out and placed her hand on Mia’s forearm. It felt cold and leaden beneath her fingertips. Slowly, she traced her fingers towards Mia’s inner elbow where thin blue veins criss-crossed, no longer carrying blood around her body. She drew her hand over the ridge of Mia’s bicep, across her shoulder and along the smooth skin at the nape of her neck. She brushed the faint scar on her temple, a silver crescent, and then her palm rested finally against Mia’s cheek. She knew the back of Mia’s skull had been cracked open on impact, but there were no other marks on her body. Katie was disappointed: she had been hoping for a clue, something the authorities had missed that would prove Mia had died for a reason more bearable than suicide.
Carefully, she untucked Mia’s vest and rearranged her shorts so they rested on her hip bones. Then she leant close to her ear. Her sister’s skin smelt unfamiliar: antiseptic and embalming lotion. She closed her eyes as she whispered, ‘I am so sorry.’
‘Katie?’ Ed was squeezing her hand, pulling her thoughts back to the funeral. ‘It’s you, now.’
He moved his hand to her elbow and helped her stand. Her legs felt light and insubstantial as she left the pew and drifted towards the lectern like a spectre. She tucked her tissue into her coat pocket and pulled from the other a square piece of card on which she’d noted a few sentences.
She glanced up. The church was full. People were standing three deep at the back. She saw old neighbours, friends of Mia’s from her schooldays, a group of Katie’s girlfriends who’d made the long journey from London. There were many people she didn’t recognize, too. A girl in a black woollen hat sobbed quietly, her shoulders shaking. Two rows back, a thin young man blew his nose into a yellow handkerchief and then tucked it beneath his order of service. She knew that the circumstances of Mia’s death would be lingering in everyone’s thoughts, but she didn’t have the answers to address their questions. How could she when she didn’t know what to believe herself?
Katie gripped the lectern, cleared her throat twice, and then began. ‘While the authorities have made a grey area of Mia’s death, her life was a rainbow of colour. As a sister, Mia was dazzling indigo, challenging me to look at the world from new perspectives and see its different shades. She was also the deep violet that drove all her actions straight from her heart, which made her passionate, spontaneous and brave. As a friend she was vibrant orange, spirited, plucky and on the lookout for adventure. As a daughter, I think our mum—’ she struggled on that last word. Closing her eyes, she focused on swallowing the rising lump of emotion.
When she opened them, she could see Ed nodding at her, encouraging her on. She took a deep breath and began the sentence again. ‘As a daughter, I think our mum would have said Mia was love red, as she filled her with happiness, warmth and laughter. She was also the sea green of the ocean, in which she spent her childhood splashing and tumbling through waves. Her laughter – infectious, giddy and frequent – was brilliant yellow, a beam of sunlight falling on whoever she laughed with. And now that Mia has gone, for me only cool, empty blue remains in the space where her rainbow once danced.’
Katie left the card on the lectern and somehow her legs carried her back to Ed’s side.
*
The coffin had been lowered into the ground and the funeral party were returning to their cars when Katie saw him.
Finn looked different from the man she’d said goodbye to at the airport. His usually fair skin was bronzed, his hair lightened by the sun to a golden brown, and he looked older, too, having lost the boyish softness in his cheeks. Finn’s family had been unable to get in contact with him until three days ago. He had boarded the first flight back to London and arrived yesterday. Flanked by two of his brothers, he glanced up and saw her. His eyes were bloodshot and the skin around his nose was red raw. He moved towards her warily.
‘Katie—’ he said, but faltered when he saw her expression.
Her voice came out as cold and flat as the sky. ‘You left her, Finn.’
He closed his eyes and swallowed. She saw that his lashes were damp. Beyond them a car door slammed and an engine started.
Katie was standing with her back to the stone archway at the rear of the church. She thrust her hands deep into her coat pockets. ‘You were supposed to be travelling together. What happened?’
The question seemed painful for him and he looked beyond her as he answered. ‘We had an argument. It should never have happened. Mia didn’t want to be in Australia—’
‘So she went to Bali,’ Katie finished. ‘Why?’
Finn’s left foot, in an unpolished black shoe, jigged up and down. She remembered the gesture; she’d once thought it was a mark of impatience but later understood it to be a sign of nervousness. ‘We’d met people who were going out there.’
‘I just don’t understand any of it.’ Katie’s hands were beginning to tremble in her pockets. She balled them into fists and lifted her chin. ‘Why was she on that cliff top?’
‘I don’t know. We didn’t speak after Australia. She emailed once—’
‘You didn’t think to tell anyone?’ Her voice was growing louder and she was aware of glances being exchanged between Finn’s brothers who were hanging back.
He turned his palms towards the heavy grey sky, helpless under the fire of her questions. ‘I thought Mia would have said—’
‘You should have stopped her!’ A sharp gust whipped Katie’s hair in front of her face. She swiped it aside.
‘She is headstrong,’ he said. ‘You know that.’
‘Was headstrong. Was. She’s dead!’ The last word was the cold truth between them and the power of it pushed Katie on, anger rising like venom in her throat. ‘You promised me you’d look after her.’
‘I know—’
‘She trusted you, Finn. I trusted you!’ She stepped forward, extended her arm and slapped him, once, hard, on the left cheek.
Above, two seagulls screamed.
No one moved. Finn, shocked, held his face. Katie felt a smarting in her fingertips. After a moment it looked as if he was going to say something, but all that came out was a sob. She had never seen him cry before and was shocked at the way his face collapsed, as if the tears dragged all of his features downwards.
She watched, motionless, until she felt the firm pressure of Ed’s hand on her shoulder. He steered her away, moving towards an area near Mia’s grave where tributes had been laid. He didn’t mention what had just happened, but simply buttoned up his dark overcoat, and then began carefully picking up the tributes. One at a time, he read each message aloud.
Katie wasn’t listening. She was still thinking of the red handprint she’d left on Finn’s cheek, as if he’d been branded. She had never hit anyone before. Ed would later tell her that Finn was grieving, too, and she should have allowed him the chance to explain – but what was there to say? Mia was dead. If she didn’t blame Finn, she was only left with herself.
‘This is unusual,’ Ed commented. He was holding a single flower; from its blood-red centre three white petals swept outwards like fans. He passed it to Katie, who lightly fingered the velvet petals. It looked like a type of orchid and she brought it close to her face to smell it. The scent conjured up another place – somewhere sweet and warm, filled with fragrance and light.
When she looked up, Ed was holding the small card that came with the flower. ‘What is it?’ she asked, noticing the change in his expression.
He said nothing, just handed the card to her.
Turning it over, she saw that the sender hadn’t included his or her name. There was only a single word on the card: Sorry.
*
After the funeral there had been drinks at the village pub, where people huddled by the fire, stamping their feet to get the blood moving again. Katie stayed for an hour at most, making sure she thanked everyone who’d journeyed a long way, before quietly slipping out.
As she and Ed crossed the car park, someone called out, ‘You’re leaving?’
They both turned. It was Jess, her best friend, a girl who used to take Katie dancing to a bump-’n’-grind club in a dingy corner of their university town, but who now had a high-flying job as the sales director of a pharmaceutical company.
‘Sorry, I know we’ve hardly talked, but … I…’
‘Katie,’ Jess said, flicking her cigarette to the ground. ‘It’s okay.’
‘Thanks for coming today. It means a lot. And thanks for your messages, too.’ Jess had called every day since Mia’s death, leaving voicemails telling Katie how loved she was and passing on news and condolences from mutual friends. ‘Sorry I haven’t been in touch. I keep meaning to ring … but, well …’ Katie stalled, not knowing how to explain. She was grateful to Jess – to all her friends – but she hadn’t felt ready to talk about Mia. Not yet.
‘You’ve lost your sister. I understand.’ Jess stepped forward and wrapped Katie in her arms. ‘No more apologies, okay? Just take your time. We’re all here for you when you’re ready.’
‘Thanks,’ she sighed, breathing in the cigarette smoke that clung to Jess’s hair.
Jess squeezed Katie’s hands and then turned to Ed, wagging her finger. ‘You make sure you look after her, you hear?’
He smiled, putting an arm around Katie’s waist. ‘I intend to.’
It was Jess who’d introduced Katie to Ed at a riverboat party on the Thames. Katie had just come out of a relationship and wasn’t interested in rejoining the dating scene so soon. Yet, Ed, with his handsome face, quick-witted banter and devastating smile, managed to persuade her otherwise. They had slipped free of the party the moment the boat moored and went on to a bar where they shared a bottle of Merlot and talked and laughed until the place closed. Eighteen months later, Ed got down on one knee to offer her a diamond ring and a lifetime together. She found herself grinning and saying yes.
It was a long drive back to London, but Katie couldn’t stay in Cornwall with the sharp sea air and the waves that whispered with memories. In the flat, she unzipped her black dress, which fell to the floor with a swoosh. She stepped from the dark puddle into a fleecy jumper and pair of jogging bottoms belonging to Mia. The hems trailed around her feet as she padded along the hall. She hesitated only a moment before entering Mia’s room.
Her sister’s backpack was propped against the bed. It had been flown back from Bali several days ago, but Katie hadn’t wanted to look through it before. Airport tags curled around its straps and strands of Indian leather were attached to each zip. There was a badge on the front of a woman in a hula skirt, and a picture of a daisy had been doodled on a side pocket in thick black marker. She unbuckled it, loosened the drawstring and reached inside.
Pushing her hand into the belly of the bag she felt her way through various items, pulling out one at a time like a game of lucky dip. She tugged free a burnt-orange beach dress that smelt of jasmine laced with the holiday tang of suncream and salt. She smoothed out the creases and then set it on the bed. Carefully, Katie removed more items: a pair of Havaiana flip-flops with worn-down soles; a travel towel stuffed into a net bag; an iPod in a clear case; two novels by authors Katie hadn’t heard of; a slim torch gritted with sand; and a man’s jumper, with thumb holes in the sleeves. Finn’s?
She continued searching until her hand met something hard. Katie had been told that Mia’s travel journal had been located by the police, who had examined it, but found nothing that could be considered as evidence.
Mia had always kept journals. Katie found it disconcerting that her sister preferred to share her feelings on paper rather than in person. As a teenager the temptation to read one had been irresistible. She had twice searched Mia’s room hoping to uncover information that only her journal would reveal but, for all Mia’s clutter and disorganization, she was fastidious about hiding them.
Carefully, Katie slid the journal free. Glimmering sea-blue fabric was stretched across the cover and it felt heavy in her hands. She traced a finger down the spine and then opened it carefully, as if Mia’s words were butterflies that might flutter free into the air.
She turned the pages slowly, admiring her sister’s elegant handwriting. In some things, Mia was lackadaisical and careless – her wallet was a brick of receipts, and her books were dog-eared with doodles filling the margins – yet the handwriting in her journal was graceful and refined. The entries were crafted around pencil sketches, handwritten notes, corners of maps and fragments of memorabilia from places she’d visited. Each page was a work of art brimming with its own tale.
‘Everything okay?’ Ed was standing in the doorway to Mia’s room.
She nodded.
He glanced at the backpack. ‘You’re going through her things?’
‘I’ve found her travel journal.’
He straightened, surprised. ‘I didn’t realize she kept one.’ He pushed his hands into his pockets. ‘Are you going to read it?’
‘I think so. Yes. There’s so much I don’t know about her trip.’ And about her, she thought. They’d barely spoken while Mia was away. She wondered when this distance had grown between them. They used to be close once, but not lately. She sighed. ‘Why did she go, Ed?’
‘Travelling?’
‘Yes. She booked the trip so suddenly. Something must have happened to make her leave.’
‘She was just impulsive. Young. Bored. That’s all.’
‘I shouldn’t have let her go.’
‘Katie,’ he said gently, ‘you’ve had a long day. Perhaps you shouldn’t be looking at her journal tonight. Wait till morning, at least. I was just about to make us a snack. Why don’t you come into the kitchen? Keep me company?’
‘Maybe in a minute.’
When the door closed, she flicked through the pages and picked an entry at random. As she began to read, her gaze jumped from phrase to phrase – ‘cinder desert’, ‘Finn and me’, ‘deep violet sky’, ‘lunar landscape’ – as if each word was too hot for her mind to settle on. She squeezed her eyes shut and then reopened them, trying to focus on a single sentence. But it was hopeless; her gaze roamed over the words, but her mind refused to digest them.
Frustrated, she flicked on. She passed an entry where a sketched bird took flight from the bottom of a page, and another where Mia’s writing spiralled around an invisible coil as if being sucked downwards. Her heartbeat quickened when she realized she was travelling towards the back of the journal, her fingertips skimming the edges of each page as they drew her to Mia’s final entry.
Reaching it, Katie paused. There would be things, she knew already, which she’d rather not learn, but like a passer-by being drawn to the sight of a crash, she was unable to look away.
Staring at the final entry she saw that just one side of the double spread was filled. The adjoining page was missing; it had been ripped out leaving behind a jagged edge near the spine of the journal. Her eyes fixed on the remaining page, which was filled with an intricate pencil drawing of the profile of a female face. Within the face a series of detailed doodles had been drawn: a roaring dark wave, a screaming mouth, falling stars, a hangman with six blank dashes, an empty phone dangling from a wire.
Katie snapped the journal shut and stood.
She shouldn’t have looked; it was too soon. Already new questions were swimming to the surface of her thoughts. What did the illustrations mean? Why had a page been torn out? What had been on it? She pushed the journal back towards the bag as if returning it to the backpack would stop the stream of doubts rushing forwards, but in her hurry the journal fell free of her hands, and as it spilt to the floor, something glided from its pages.
Bending to retrieve it she saw it was the stub of Mia’s first boarding pass: London Heathrow to San Francisco. Her fingers moved across the smooth white card as she thought about Mia arriving in San Francisco full of the anticipation of travelling. She tried picturing the places Mia visited, wondering about the people she had met, imagining what she might have experienced – but Mia’s travels were a mystery, six lost months Katie was desperate to understand. Six months that the journal held the key to.
As she held Mia’s plane ticket between her fingers, an idea began to form.
*
Katie barely slept that night as the idea shaped itself into a purpose. The next morning she rose early and strode into Putney High Street searching for a travel agency. She placed Mia’s itinerary on the desk of a woman who wore coral-pink lipstick on cracked lips. ‘I would like to book the same route.’
She could have done it online, but felt the decision was too important to be made on the click of a button. Perhaps she had anticipated hesitation from the saleswoman, as if someone would tell her this was a foolish, impulsive idea, but instead the lady had taken a sip from her steaming mug of coffee, then simply asked, ‘When would you like to go?’
Now, five days later, she sat on the wooden floorboards in her bedroom trying to pack. The contents of Mia’s backpack fanned around her feet, and her own clothes waited tentatively in half-built piles within a purple suitcase. She was usually a decisive and methodical packer, but she had no clue what to pack for this trip. In a few hours she was due to board a flight to San Francisco, exactly as Mia had done six months earlier.
Her bedroom door opened and Ed entered, carrying two mugs of tea. He passed her one and then lowered himself onto the floor beside her, his suit trousers pulling tight across his knees and revealing half an inch of skin above his socks.
She took a sip of tea. He made it exactly how she liked it: not too strong, a generous splash of milk and half a spoonful of sugar.
He eyed the piles of belongings sceptically. ‘There’s still time to change your mind. Work would have you back, you know.’
She had quit her job as a senior recruitment consultant as she’d walked back from the travel agency. After dedicating herself to the same company since graduation, she had only needed a five-minute phone call to leave. ‘I can’t go back.’ The idea of returning to the office, taking a seat at her corner desk beneath the air-conditioning vent that aggravated her eyes, and pretending that placing candidates was still important to her, seemed utterly ludicrous.
‘Why not wait a few weeks? I am almost certain I’ll be able to juggle holiday. We could go together … not everywhere, but Bali. You can see where—’
‘I need to start this from the beginning.’ Katie’s coping mechanism was structure. After her mother’s death, she had ruthlessly filled her diary with social engagements, taking command of every free hour that might otherwise have been idled away in the folds of self-pity. She attacked her job with equal vigour, working around the clock with such steely focus that, three months later, she got a promotion.
Losing Mia felt different. Work and social distractions were no match for her grief, which was thick and black. Finding Mia’s travel journal seemed like a small glimmer of light in the gloom, so she had made a decision to follow it, entry by entry, country by country, in the hope that retracing Mia’s steps would help her to understand her death. For the first time since the police arrived on her doorstep, Katie felt as if she had a sense of purpose.
‘I know we’ve talked about this,’ Ed said, ‘but I am still struggling to understand your logic.’
‘You know how difficult things were between me and Mia before she left,’ she said, setting aside her tea. ‘And I let her go … I was relieved to see her go.’
‘Mia’s death is not your fault.’
Wasn’t it? She had seen Mia was unhappy when they were living together, but she had let her loose anyway. Mia was her little sister, her responsibility. And Katie had failed her. ‘The journal is all I have left. It’s a link to six months of her life that I missed.’
‘So read it. I’ve already told you I’m happy to do it with you.’
She’d discovered Ed thumbing through the journal the morning after she’d found it, checking that there was nothing that would upset her. She knew he was being kind, but she didn’t want his protection; she wanted his support. Now she’d taken to keeping the journal with her at all times.
‘But once I’ve finished reading it,’ she explained, ‘there’ll be no more new memories of Mia. That’ll be it – she’s gone.’ She imagined flicking through the pages time and time again until the words had become dull and meaningless, like a set of old photographs that have faded with the years. But Katie knew that by reading each entry in the countries where Mia wrote them, and experiencing some of the things she had experienced, then it would feel as if she was with her – that those six months hadn’t been lost. ‘I need to do this, Ed.’
He stood and crossed her bedroom to the window and opened it. Katie caught the heavy bass booming from a car stereo below. He spread his hands on the low windowsill and, for several moments, just stared at the street below.
‘Ed?’
‘I love you,’ he began slowly, turning to face her, ‘but I believe you are making a mistake. What about everything you’re leaving behind? What about our wedding?’
They were due to get married in August. They had booked an intimate country house in Surrey, which they’d planned to take over for the weekend with their closest friends and family. Katie’s evenings had been occupied with searching for a band that would play beyond midnight, deliberating over the choice of cheesecake or profiteroles for dessert, and collecting vintage photo frames to create a display on the cake table. The excitement and anticipation that had only recently consumed her now seemed as if it had been part of a life that was no longer hers.
‘I won’t be away for long. A few months at most.’
‘I know you’re going through hell right now,’ he said, pushing aside a cream lantern to make space to sit. ‘I wish, I really wish, there was something I could do to make this easier for you. But all I can say to you, darling, is that I truly believe it will help if you can begin looking towards the future, rather than the past.’
She nodded. There was some sense in that.
He indicated the spot beside him and she moved across the room and sat. She could smell the residue of his shaving foam, mixed with the fresh tones of aftershave. He looked handsome in his suit; the slate-grey tie had been a present from Katie and she liked to imagine his hand brushing the raw silk in a meeting, his thoughts trailing from the boardroom to her.
‘This isn’t the answer,’ he said, looking at Mia’s journal which she still held. She heard the smile in his voice as he said, ‘Come on, you hate flying! You’ve never been outside of Europe. It is just not safe for you to go backpacking on your own.’ He placed his hand on her thigh, rubbing gently. ‘Let’s work through this together. Here.’
Ed always had a practical way of assessing situations; it was one of the many things she admired about him. Perhaps this was a mistake. Flying to the other side of the world and giving no indication of when she would be back was unfair on Ed, she knew that much. ‘I don’t know what the right decision is any more.’
‘Katie,’ he said quietly, ‘eventually you are going to have to let her go.’
She ran her fingers over the sea-blue cover of the journal, imagining all the times Mia had written in it. She pictured her swinging lazily in a hammock, her tanned legs stretched in front of her, a pen moving lightly over the cream leaves. The journal contained the most intimate details of Mia’s thoughts, and Katie held it in her hands.
‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘Not until I know what happened.’
Ed sighed.
She wondered whether he had already decided what had happened. In the time he’d known Mia, he had seen her at her worst – impetuous, wayward and volatile – but he didn’t know the real Mia; the one who swam like a fish in the sea, who kicked off her shoes to dance, who loved catching hailstones in her palms. ‘It wasn’t suicide,’ she said firmly.
‘Perhaps it wasn’t.’
And there it was. The ‘perhaps’.
She stood, picked up Mia’s empty backpack and began carefully replacing items she had taken from it. From her own suitcase she grabbed a pile of clothes, her washbag and her passport, and squeezed them into the backpack, then buckled it shut. She shoved her suitcase in the wardrobe, closing the door with a satisfying smack: what good was a suitcase where she was going?
Ed was on his feet. ‘You’re actually doing this?’
‘I am.’
She could see he was hurt and that he wanted to say something more. There were a thousand reasons why she shouldn’t go: she had never travelled alone before; her career would suffer; she was grieving and would do better with company. They had been through all of these reservations, Ed giving pragmatic advice, just as she would have offered someone else. Only now she felt differently. Now it wasn’t about practicalities, risk assessment or smart decision making. It was about her sister.
4 (#ulink_d6c301db-bf52-593d-b8d3-e81ab2fcb6c6)
MIA (#ulink_d6c301db-bf52-593d-b8d3-e81ab2fcb6c6)
California, October Last Year
Mia’s legs rested on the dash of the battered Chevy they’d rented. She pressed her bare toes against the windscreen and then withdrew them, watching the toe-prints of condensation slowly disappear. Beside her, Finn was drumming his thumbs against the steering wheel in time to a blues number playing on the radio.
They were driving south along the famous Highway One, leaving San Francisco in their wake. They’d spent far more time there than intended, having been captivated by the city’s offbeat charm. On their first night they took a room in a cheap motel, dumped their backpacks and went for dinner at a busy Thai restaurant that served incredible sweet chilli prawns. The owner tipped them off about a basement club a couple of blocks away and, in spite of their jet lag, they found themselves drinking and dancing until their feet throbbed. They surfaced, hours later, to find dawn breaking over the city, and stumbled across an early-morning coffee house where they bought cinnamon bagels with fresh coffee and sat on the edge of the bay watching a pale pink sun climb over Alcatraz.
Low-lying fog stalked them down the coast and clung to the sea like a damp cloak obscuring any view of the horizon. Mia wound down the window and stuck her head out, squinting towards the sky. ‘Sun’s coming out.’
‘I’ll stop at the next lay-by.’
A few miles on was a gravel viewpoint on the cliff top. Sure enough, the sun was burning through the fog to unveil a rugged, grassy coastline. Wildflower-strewn cliffs, which she imagined would be spectacular in spring, staggered down to an untamed bay frothing with white-water.
She stepped from the car barefoot, interlocked her fingers above her head and stretched, her stomach pulling taut. The air fizzed with salt and she inhaled, closing her eyes.
Finn leant against the car with his arms folded loosely over his chest. ‘Look at this place.’
‘You want to go down?’
‘Sure.’
They found a narrow footpath that wound down the impressive cliff face, cutting back and forth to steal the incline from the steepest parts. Reaching the bottom, Mia was the first to jog towards the shore and plunge her feet in the sea. ‘Hello, Pacific!’ she bellowed. Then she turned to Finn. ‘Swim?’
‘Here? It looks pretty rough.’
‘You can look after my clothes, then,’ she said, pulling off her top and wriggling free from her shorts, leaving her in mismatched underwear. Her body was lean and muscular; she thought herself too angular to be considered beautiful, although she’d grown used to the jut of her hip bones and her small breasts, and wasn’t abashed in front of Finn. They’d seen each other’s bodies hundreds of times – she knew the broadness of his shoulders, the way his belly button protruded slightly, seen the coarse hairs spread from around his nipples across his chest.
‘Good London tan,’ she said, referencing the lily-white shade of his chest as he stripped from his T-shirt.
‘Good slacker’s tan.’
She laughed, and Finn took the opportunity to race past her, splashing through the white-water and hurdling small waves before the sea finally took his legs from under him. He tumbled forwards, flattening his body and spreading his arms so he hit the water with a slap, sending silver droplets skyward.
Mia was still laughing as she waded in to join him. The cold water was like a vice at her ankles, which reached its grip to her knees and caused a shaving nick to sting. A gull cawed overhead and she glanced up, watching it glide on the breeze. The seabed dropped away suddenly and water rose over her cotton pants and towards her stomach, which she sucked in away from the sea’s bite. She took a quick breath and then dived under.
When she surfaced her dark hair was slicked to her head like oil. She kicked her legs and swam with clear, smooth strokes.
‘Don’t go too far,’ Finn called. ‘I only do Baywatch rescues on red-pants days.’
The waves rose and fell beneath her. One took her by surprise and white-water slipped over her head like a blanket. She rubbed the water from her eyes and then took off in front crawl, feeling the tightening of her muscles as they worked to propel her forward. On every second stroke she turned her head for air, and felt the weak sun brush her face.
Eventually, when her legs began to stiffen from the exertion and the cold, she slowed and swam parallel to the shore, looking at the cliffs from a new angle. It was an impressive coastline – dramatic, weather-beaten and empty. The space was intoxicating, a physical relief after London where she had felt as if she could never quite catch her breath. Away from the city, away from the memory of who she’d become, it was the first time in months that Mia felt at ease.
*
That evening, they sat on a picnic bench clutching tin mugs filled with hot chocolate. She could hear waves breaking in the distance, a soft rumble, almost like a far-off lorry passing by. She slipped a silver hip flask from her back pocket and unscrewed the cap. ‘Whisky?’
Finn pushed his mug towards her. ‘Good job on dinner.’
Having camped often in their youth, they had mastered one-pot dishes to a level of wizardry. Tonight, Mia had offered to cook, serving noodles with thick slices of salami, simmering with peas, chunks of mushroom, a few cherry tomatoes and a shake of seasoning. ‘Always tastes better outdoors,’ she said, splashing whisky into both mugs. ‘It’s been so long since we’ve camped together.’
‘London parks don’t have quite the same appeal.’
‘True.’ She smiled. ‘But – really – are you enjoying London?’ Finn had moved there after graduation, renting a flat above a butcher’s shop. It backed onto a railway line, and water shook from the kitchen tap whenever a train passed.
‘I do. I did. It was a change after Cornwall.’
‘What, Friday nights at SJ’s didn’t do it for you?’
‘No, I love leopard print and Lycra on fifty-year-olds.’ He grinned. ‘London wasn’t for you, though?’
‘I guess not.’ She had missed the sea with a deep ache and found her dreams were filled with beaches and empty horizons.
‘Is that why you wanted to go travelling?’
She stretched the sleeves of her jumper over her hands and then wrapped them round the mug to keep warm. ‘I was ready for a change.’
‘It’s been a tough year. You deserve a break.’
Do I? she thought. It had been Katie, not her, who stayed stoically at their mother’s side throughout her illness. Mia had closed her eyes to the beakers of pills, the clumps of hair in the shower tray, the new gauntness in her mother’s cheeks – because it was easier. Anything was easier than watching her strong, capable mother wilt. She felt the hard little pebble of guilt that lived in her stomach and she reached for the hip flask, putting her lips around the cool metal mouth.
Finn slung his arm around her shoulder. ‘You okay?’
She nodded.
‘Listen, Mia.’ His voice was serious and she glanced up. ‘When your mum was ill, I know we weren’t hanging out so much – but you did know I was there for you, didn’t you?’
‘Course,’ she said, embarrassed by his earnestness. They had never broached the subject of the four strained months when a wall had reared up between them, stacked with hard bricks of resentment and cemented by Mia’s silence. She wasn’t sure she was ready to now.
Sensing that, Finn pulled his arm back and said, ‘So tell me about Mick. When did you decide you wanted to see him?’
‘I found a photo of him when I was clearing out Mum’s wardrobe.’ In the picture he was standing onstage with a band in front of a banner that read black ewe. The band looked as if they’d just finished a set, their faces red and glistening with sweat. A man with long black hair that had turned damp at the temples stood in the centre, holding a guitar loosely at its neck and staring intently at the camera. Beside him, Mick looked exuberant and fresh in a fitted suit and pointed brown shoes that turned up at the toe. He had no instrument to hold like the others, so he had shot a double-handed finger-gun at the camera and cocked his head to one side with a wink. It was a gesture that Mia would never have made, far too assured for it to look natural on her, yet she liked the picture as she saw a similarity between her and her father in the strong shape of their noses and possibly the curve of their lips, too. ‘I suppose seeing the picture made me curious.’
‘You haven’t been curious before?’
‘Not really. Well, maybe a little,’ she conceded, thinking of a comment her grandmother made years ago that had always stuck with her. Mia had been in the bath, the water turning brackish from the mud caked to her knees. She wriggled and protested at having her hair washed, her grandmother eventually snapping, ‘Such an awkward, independent thing, aren’t you?’ And then adding under her breath, ‘Just like your father.’ The illicitness of that name had lingered in the steamy room for a long moment. Long enough for the comparison to settle deep into Mia’s thoughts.
Finn tilted his mug to his lips, finishing his drink. ‘How come you haven’t talked to Katie about your visiting him?’
Mia thought for a minute. ‘Sometimes when people give you their opinions, they can end up becoming your own. I didn’t want that.’
A car pulled into the campsite, the headlights briefly illuminating them before the engine was cut. A couple got out and began staking out their tent by torchlight.
The few sentences they’d just shared were the most Mia had admitted to anyone, even herself. For now, that was enough. She reached across for Finn’s mug. ‘I’ll wash up.’ Then she hopped from the picnic bench and disappeared to the water tap.
Later, after she’d cleaned her teeth, spitting the paste into a bush, she climbed into the tent with Finn. It was pitched with the shadow of a scrub-covered hillside in the background and the salty breath of the sea to the fore. They lay with their heads on a folded beach towel, poking out of the tent so they could gaze up at the stars. They’d spent countless nights sharing a tent or lying like sardines in the single beds in each other’s rooms. Their friendship was close and easy even now, a gift that Mia would always be grateful for.
‘Shooting star,’ she said, pointing.
‘Didn’t see it.’
‘It’s hard to when you have your eyes closed. You should sleep.’
They pulled their heads inside, zipped up the tent, and lay next to one another, just as they had done a thousand nights before.
*
The ground was unforgiving beneath Finn and he moved his weight onto his side, avoiding a ridge that was digging into his shoulder blade.
Mia was already asleep. He lay listening to the faint murmur of her breath and the crickets singing in the undergrowth beyond the tent. What Finn loved about camping was that life moved at a slower pace. A simple meal took longer to prepare; a bed for the night had to be erected and then dismantled; a shower and change of clothes became a luxury rather than a daily routine. He took more time to absorb the sounds, smells and rhythm of a place, and to pay attention to what he was thinking.
Mia shifted, her hand slipping from her stomach and coming to rest on his forearm. He felt the heat from her skin against his. He could have moved his arm from beneath hers, yet he remained still. Unchecked in the darkness, he found his thoughts straying to a summer’s evening when he and Mia were 16 years old.
They were at a gig watching an American punk band called Thaw, who they’d been lobbying to see for months. Mia had worn a pair of pale jeans ripped across her thighs that she’d bought from a second-hand shop called Hobos. She’d painted silver eyeliner in sharp flicks at the edges of her eyes and brushed something on her cheekbones that made them shimmer. She looked older than the bare-faced girl he’d helped to reel in a mackerel earlier in the day, and the transformation both unsettled and appealed to him.
The band met all their expectations: the arena was pulsing with energy, the mosh pit was frenetic and with each song the crowd grew wilder. Mia was effervescent, dancing wildly with her hands thrown skyward. She turned and shouted something to a burly man with a thick neck who had been standing behind them. The man cupped his hands together and, before Finn realized what was happening, he watched Mia place her foot in the sweaty palms and be tossed into the air. Her body arched backwards, her arms outstretched at her sides like open wings, and she was caught by a sea of hands, crowd surfing over the tops of people’s heads.
The black Beastie Boys T-shirt she wore – one she and Finn shared as they could only afford one between them – rode up her waist exposing her smooth, slender stomach. The lighting crew picked out this ethereal girl with her wave of dark hair and spotlighted her journey to the front. A group of men, sweating heavily and thumping their fists in the air, whistled and catcalled at her. Every inch of Finn’s body tensed at their remarks, and he imagined beating a path through the audience and shutting them up.
The crowd continued to buck and writhe, illuminated by brilliant blue and white laser lights, and he strained to keep Mia in sight. Ducking to the side of a lanky man, he was able to spot the bouncers pulling her over the safety barrier. He didn’t know how she’d find her way back to him and four more songs were belted out before he saw her.
Squeezing through an impossibly tight gap, she stood before him, her cheeks flushed, her forehead glistening with sweat.
‘Mia!’
As the band launched into their final track, the audience surged forward, pinning her against him. Instinctively, he gripped her waist fearing she could slip beneath their feet. Thrust together he felt the heat of her midriff through her damp T-shirt. Unfazed by the crowd, which roared beneath a thick haze of smoke, Mia placed her hands around Finn’s face and kissed him briefly on the lips.
The crowd heaved backwards; Mia slipped free from his hands. She turned towards the band and carried on swaying and rocking. Finn remained rooted to the spot, while a thousand other people danced on.
There are key incidents in everyone’s history – pivotal points on which the axis of life can swivel, and a seemingly innocuous action can flip the entire direction of one’s fate. For Finn, that kiss changed everything. Mia, the girl he’d always knocked around with, became an enigma to him overnight. At school the next day, every ordinary interaction – holding a test tube while Mia added magnesium ribbon, eating ham sandwiches together on the bench beneath a sycamore tree, sharing a pair of earphones on the bus ride home – became fused with his new desire. It was as if he’d stepped out of his body and into someone else’s. He was so unnerved by this shift that he bunked off the final two days of term to give himself space to think.
When school broke up for the summer, Mia cycled to his house with her tent, sleeping bag and a bottle of vodka she’d bribed Katie into buying, and told him they were going camping in the forest that backed onto the cliffs. He could think of no excuse good enough to refuse, so he grabbed his sleeping bag and followed.
That evening, an unforecast downpour drove them into the tent before dusk. They played cards and drank vodka, and Finn stole furtive glances at Mia and wondered how he’d never before noticed that her eyes were the lush green of emeralds. Once the rain stopped, they unzipped the tent onto the dark forest steeped in a rich, earthy smell. They stood in the damp heather, the hems of their jeans turning sodden, and felt drunk and exuberant. The moon that night, a perfect silver disc, looked so spectacular that for no reason at all, Finn howled like a wolf. Mia giggled and then howled, too.
In the seventy-two hours since Mia had kissed Finn, he’d thought constantly of how it would feel to kiss her back. Properly. ‘Mia,’ he said, moving in front of her unsteadily. She looked at him, still grinning. She wore no make-up, and in the moonlight her skin looked luminous. ‘God, you’re so beautiful!’ he said suddenly. Then he reached a hand to her cheek and leant forward to kiss her.
Moments before his lips reached hers, Mia pulled back.
‘Finn!’ She laughed, thumping his chest. ‘I thought you were being serious for a second! Don’t weird me out!’
Finn had bent forward, pretending to laugh too, when actually it felt as though he’d taken a punch in the gut.
He didn’t see her for three weeks after that as he joined his family on holiday in northern France. On that trip, Finn lost his virginity to a seventeen-year-old girl named Ambré, who was working as a cleaner in the park where they stayed. She wore a pink bra and no pants beneath her uniform, and invited Finn to her caravan each afternoon on her three-o’clock break. While he was genuinely thrilled by the arrangement, it gradually exposed the depth of his feelings for Mia. He not only yearned to touch or kiss her in the way he was doing with Ambré, he also missed other things, like the sound of her laughter, or the way she’d bite the tip of her thumbnail when she was concentrating, or the determination in her voice when she’d tell him, ‘I can do this.’ He missed Mia’s friendship – and wasn’t prepared to risk that again.
When he returned home, he and Mia slipped back into their old routine, the night in the forest never mentioned again. A chorus of other girls, and later women, quietened his infatuation and he was grateful that their friendship returned to its usual tune. Yet today, when Mia had stripped to her underwear at the beach, revealing her exquisite slender body, a low note of desire had been struck and had resonated in his thoughts in the hours since.
He knew the great risk of allowing that forbidden note to sound louder, so Finn carefully eased his arm from beneath her hand and, reluctantly, rolled away.
5 (#ulink_c7bd4cb1-c86f-50fe-8eae-289f5b9281ad)
KATIE (#ulink_c7bd4cb1-c86f-50fe-8eae-289f5b9281ad)
California, March
Katie pulled down the beige plastic blind of the aeroplane window, closing out the view. She didn’t need to see that they were flying above the clouds, that the ocean was thirty thousand feet below them, or that the white wings of a Boeing 747 were the only thing keeping them from spiralling down to earth.
The first time Katie flew, she had clutched the armrests so hard that her knuckles turned white. Beside her, Mia’s eyes had been wide, her pupils dilated, with what Katie had first imagined to be fear but then, as she’d watched the smile break over her face, recognized to be awe. She couldn’t understand how Mia could be so mesmerized, when her own insides churned with panic. Katie’s fear hadn’t been passed down from an anxious adult, or grown out of horror stories from friends or television: it was something that lived inside her. She was 9 years old then. Flying should have been an adventure.
After that flight, Katie had taken two further plane journeys – and with each her fear grew into something living that would begin hissing at her weeks before takeoff. She’d discovered that the only way to silence the fear was to avoid it: when there was a university ski trip, she signed up after learning they would be travelling by coach; when their mother received a small windfall and offered to take the girls away, Katie said what she’d like to do most was a cruise; when Ed talked of visiting Barcelona, she persuaded him to go to Paris via the Channel Tunnel.
Now, as she twisted the sleeve of her cardigan, turning it tightly between her fingers and then unwinding it and starting again, it wasn’t the fear of the plane’s engine failing, or the capability of the pilot, that concerned her. What made her throat tighten and her heart clamber against her chest was the boxed-in enclosure of the plane, the small seat with its fixed armrests, the two passengers – one asleep, one reading – blocking her exit to the aisle, the seat belt pinned across her lap, the eleven-hour journey that couldn’t be paused. She would be quietly trapped here, hour after hour, with nothing to distract her, so that for the first time since the news broke, she was sitting entirely still. Her mind seized the opportunity to focus on the one word she had been trying to avoid: ‘suicide’.
Suicide was something she associated with the mentally ill, or people suffering from a dreadful, incurable illness – not able-bodied, able-minded 24-year-olds halfway through a world adventure with their best friend. There was no logic to it. But it had happened. There were witness statements, an autopsy report and a police account that said it had.
She had obsessively looked up the word ‘suicide’ on the Internet and was shocked to learn that it was the tenth leading cause of death – above murder, liver disease and Parkinson’s. She had read that one million people committed suicide each year and, staggeringly, that one in seven people would seriously consider committing suicide at some point in their lives. She discovered that drugs and alcohol misuse played a role in 70 per cent of adolescent suicides.
But what the Internet, the witnesses and the Balinese police didn’t know was her sister. Mia would never have jumped. Yes, she could be unpredictable, swinging from energetic reckless highs to crushingly troubled lows, and sometimes it did seem that she felt things so deeply it was as if her heart lay too close to her skin, but she was also fiercely brave. She was a fighter – and fighters don’t jump.
Katie believed this wholeheartedly. She had to, otherwise she was left with the agonizing knowledge that her sister had chosen to leave her.
*
San Francisco International Airport seemed the size of a town. Katie lost herself in the crowd, letting them lead her up escalators, along advert-lined corridors, and down brightly lit stairways, before eventually arriving at the baggage-claim area. She picked a spot at carousel 3, standing several paces back to allow eager travellers space to reach their belongings and disappear on new journeys.
As she waited for Mia’s backpack to pass beneath the heavy plastic teeth of the carousel, she played a game with herself, trying to match pieces of luggage to their owners. The first couple were easy; she knew that the padded black ice-hockey bag belonged to the broad teenager with a lightning bolt shaved into the back of his sandy hair, and that the pair of ladybird-print cases would be passed to twin girls in identical blue coats. It was a small surprise, however, when the gentleman in a tired panama hat reached not for the tan leather suitcase she had predicted, but a sleek silver case with the sheen of a bullet. But then, neither would she have matched the smartly dressed blonde woman in charcoal ankle boots and a fitted blazer to the tattered backpack that she reached for.
Grabbing a worn strap, Katie hauled it from the carousel using both hands. She struggled to put it on, bending her arms in awkward contortions to force them through the straps, and then jumping a little to shift it into position. She felt compressed by the weight of it, and bent forward at the waist to balance out the load.
She trudged through the arrivals gate where a crowd watched eagerly for their loved ones, their eyes moving quickly beyond her to see who followed. A heavyset man in a Giants sweater ducked beneath the barrier and ran forward, throwing thick arms around the boy with the hockey stick. Katie didn’t rush to leave the airport, excited to see San Francisco, as Mia and Finn might have; instead, she joined the crowd on the other side of the arrivals barrier, set down her backpack, perched on top of it and watched.
Time ran away as Katie sat perfectly still, hands placed together in her lap. She began to understand the rhythm of arrivals, anticipating the empty space alongside the barriers between flights, which filled in correlation to the overhead screen announcing the next set of arrivals. If a flight was delayed or there had been a hold-up, then two groups of passengers could arrive at the same time, and the barrier would be pressed taut.
There were fathers collecting daughters, girlfriends being met by boyfriends, husbands waiting for wives, grandparents beaming at grandchildren – but the reunions she searched out were always those between sisters. Sometimes it was difficult to tell which women were friends and which were siblings, but more often Katie knew instinctively. It was in the casualness of how they embraced, the way their smiles were completed when they saw each other, or how a joke quickly passed from one pair of lips to a smile on the other. It was in the same angle of their noses, a gesture they both displayed, or how they walked arm in arm, as they left together.
A woman with fox-red hair spilling over the shoulders of her kaftan placed a hand to her mouth when she saw her sister. A purple silk scarf partly concealed the sister’s bald head, but the strain of illness showed in her sallow skin and gaunt cheeks. The redhead reached out and squeezed her sister’s fingers, then lightly touched her empty hairline and then, finally letting go of whatever composure she’d privately been battling to maintain, embraced her in a long clasp, sobbing over her shoulder.
If someone had watched Katie and Mia, she wondered whether they’d have guessed they were sisters. Katie’s fair features were distinct from Mia’s strikingly dark looks, but someone paying attention might have noticed that their lips shared an equal fullness, or that their eyebrows followed the exact same arch. If they had listened closely they would catch crisply articulated word endings from years of good schooling, but might have noticed that they still mispronounced the word ‘irritable’, both placing the emphasis on the second syllable, not the first.
Vivid memories of Mia flew into her thoughts, details from their childhood she hadn’t thought of in years: lying together in the sun-warmed rock pools that smelt like cooked seaweed; doing handstands in the sea with salt water filling their noses; their first bike, cherry red, which Katie would pedal while Mia perched on the white handlebars; fighting like pirates on winter-emptied beaches with seagull feathers tucked behind their ears.
Katie had loved being an older sister, wearing the role like a badge of honour. At what point, she wondered, did our closeness begin to fade? Was it triggered by our feud when Mum was dying? Or maybe it had begun long before. Perhaps it wasn’t one incident, rather a series of smaller incidents, an unravelling, like a favourite dress that over time becomes worn: first a thinning at the neckline, then a loss of shape around the waist, and finally a loose thread opens into a tear.
‘Ma’am?’ A porter in a navy uniform, with dreadlocks tucked beneath his cap, stood beside her. ‘You’ve been here since I came on shift.’
She glanced at the time displayed on the bottom of the arrivals board. Two hours had slipped away from her.
‘Somethin’ I can help you with?’
She stood suddenly, her knees stiff from holding the same position. ‘I’m fine, thank you.’
‘You hopin’ to find someone?’
She glanced to where two young women were embracing. The taller one stepped back and took the other’s hand, raising it to her lips and kissing it.
‘Yes,’ she answered. ‘My sister.’
*
Later that day she heaved the backpack onto the bed and looked around the motel room, hands on hips. The walls, glossed beige, were decorated by two framed prints of tulips, and the windows wouldn’t open so the warm fug of other people hung in the air. She noted the television remote bolted to the Formica desk, and the Bible and phone directory stacked on the bedside table. It wasn’t the sort of room that encouraged a lengthy visit, but this was where Mia had stayed, so Katie would stay here, too.
Her first impulse was to unpack, but she was a backpacker now following Mia’s route, moving on again tomorrow, and the next night, and the night after that. As a compromise she fetched out her washbag and placed it in the windowless bathroom next to the thin bar of soap provided by the motel. Exhausted from travelling, she wanted to lie down and rest, but it was only five o’clock in the evening. If she allowed herself to sleep now, she would wake in the night, battling to keep the dark memories at bay. Deciding she would get something to eat instead, she splashed cool water over her face, reapplied her mascara and changed into a fresh top. She grabbed her handbag and Mia’s journal, and left.
The receptionist gave her directions to the Thai restaurant where, according to the journal, Mia and Finn had their first meal. Katie wound her way through San Francisco’s wharf area as the sun went down, stopping only to call Ed to let him know she’d arrived safely.
Evening fog hung like smoke over the water and she pulled her jacket tight around her shoulders, wishing she’d worn another layer. In the journal, Mia had noted that San Francisco was a ‘melting pot of artists, musicians, bankers and free spirits’, and that she had loved ‘the electric pulse of the downtown’. In another time, Katie might have agreed and found herself smitten with the quirky architecture, the winding streets, and the eclectic shop fronts – but tonight she hurried on.
She arrived at the restaurant, a lively place where circular tables were packed with people talking, laughing, eating and drinking. A waiter led her towards a window seat; a group of men looked up appreciatively as she passed, conversation only resuming when she was well beyond them.
She straightened her jacket on the chair back while the waiter removed the second place setting. Jazz played through sleek speakers in the corners of ochre walls and above the music she tuned into a wash of American accents. The smell of warm spices and fragrant rice reached her and it struck Katie how hungry she was, having not managed to eat anything on the plane. She ordered a glass of dry white wine and by the time the waiter returned with it, she had chosen Penang king prawns.
Without the prop of a menu there was nothing to occupy her attention and she felt faintly conspicuous dining alone. It would be one of many small hurdles she’d need to face each and every day of this trip and suddenly the scale of the undertaking daunted her. She locked her legs at her ankles and tucked them beneath her chair, then flattened her hands on her thighs, consciously trying to relax. She congratulated herself: she had boarded a plane for the first time in years, and was now sitting alone in a restaurant, in a country she’d never visited. I’m doing just fine. Reaching for her wine, she drained half of it, then set Mia’s journal in front of her.
On the plane she’d only read the first entry, enough to learn where Mia and Finn stayed and ate. She had promised herself that she would savour each sentence, breathing life into the entries by experiencing them in the places Mia had been. Opening the journal, she felt oddly reassured by the company of Mia’s words, as if it were her sister sitting in front of her. She smiled as she read, ‘Even Finn blushed when the waiter swapped his chopsticks for a spoon. Not even a fork – a spoon!’ She pictured the remnants of Finn’s dinner spread across the starched white tablecloth, Mia laughing the infectious giggle Katie had always loved.
She thought of the times she’d heard Finn and Mia’s explosions of laughter through her bedroom wall, great whooping sounds that would go on for minutes, each of them spurring on the other. If she went next door, she might find Finn with a pair of trousers belted at his ribs taking off one of their teachers with uncanny accuracy, or see that they’d drawn handlebar moustaches and wire spectacles on each other’s faces in black felt-tip. She wished she could step into the room and laugh with them but often she found herself frozen in the doorway, her arms folded over her chest.
It wasn’t that Katie resented their friendship – she had a tight group of friends herself who she could call on in any crisis. What she did resent, and it took her some years to pin down the essence of this, was the way Mia responded to Finn. She laughed harder and more frequently in his company; they talked for hours covering all sorts of topics, when Mia was often a silent presence at home; and he had a knack of diffusing her dark moods, which Katie seemed only able to ignite.
‘Excuse me? Is this chair free?’
Startled, she glanced up from the journal. A man in a pastel-yellow polo shirt indicated the chair opposite her.
‘Yes.’ Imagining he intended to remove the chair, she was taken aback to find him lowering himself onto it, placing a tall glass of beer at her table and stretching a hand towards her. ‘Mark.’
His fingers were short and clammy. She didn’t return her name.
‘I’m here with my squash buddies,’ he said, nodding to the table of men she’d passed on her way into the restaurant. ‘But having lost, again, I couldn’t sit through the point-by-point debrief. You don’t mind me joining you, I hope?’
She did mind. Enormously. In other circumstances, Katie would have explained that she was unavailable, softening the blow with a flattering remark, and then the man could have been on his way, dignity intact. However, with the weariness of the day leaning on her shoulders, her usual social graces eluded her entirely.
‘So,’ Mark said, taking her silence as encouragement, ‘where are you from?’
She placed her left hand, engagement ring facing towards him, on the stem of her wineglass. ‘London.’
‘Big Ben. Madame Tussauds. Covent Garden.’ He laughed. ‘I visited a couple of years back. Damn cold. Pretty, though. Very pretty.’
She picked up her wine and took a drink.
The man’s gaze moved to the journal. ‘Notebook?’
‘Journal.’
‘You’re a writer?’
‘This isn’t mine.’
He angled his head to see it more clearly. She noticed his eyes were positioned unusually close together; it made him look reptilian. ‘Whose is it?’
‘My sister’s.’
‘Getting the dirt on her, are you?’ She smelt alcohol on his breath and realized from the glassy sheen in his eyes that he was drunk. She glanced around, hoping the waiter might be nearby with her dinner.
‘So tell me …’ He made a waving motion with his hand.
‘Katie.’
‘So tell me, Katie. What are you doing with your sister’s journal?’
She flinched at this stranger’s casual reference to Mia’s journal. She wanted to snap it shut and be rid of this overconfident, drunken clown. ‘It’s private.’
‘Bet that’s what she thought when she was writing it!’ He laughed, then picked up his beer and took a gulp; she could see his inner lip squashed against the rim of the glass.
‘I’m sorry. I think you should leave.’
He looked affronted as if he’d thought the conversation had been moving along successfully. ‘Seriously?’
‘Yes. Seriously.’
His knee bashed the table as he stood, causing it to rock. Katie’s wineglass teetered, but she caught it by the stem just before it fell. She wasn’t quick enough to save the beer. Golden liquid, light with bubbles, spilt over the open journal. Horrified, she grabbed her napkin and blotted it, but the beer was already seeping into the pages, turning the smooth cream sheets dark and ridged. She watched with dismay as the precise, neat writing on the page began to blur.
‘You idiot!’
Two women at the next table turned to look.
The man raised his hands in the air. ‘Easy, lady. I just came over to be nice.’ He pushed back his chair with force. ‘Guess the game’s up,’ he said maliciously, motioning to the soiled journal.
‘Fuck you.’ The swear word felt sharp and delicious on her tongue.
The man strode back to his friends, shaking his head.
She bit down on her lip, desperate to maintain control, but tears were already threatening. Clutching the damaged journal, she scooped up her handbag and coat.
By the time the waiter had set down a dinner for one, Katie was already at the door. She had left behind her home, her job, her fiancé and her friends because of a desperate need to understand what happened to Mia. But as she burst onto the pavement, damp air closing in on her like cold breath, she wondered if she had made a terrible mistake. I’m sorry, Mia. I don’t think I can do this.
6 (#ulink_e68d39d3-065b-5ce2-a9e7-b07c418c6e9b)
MIA (#ulink_e68d39d3-065b-5ce2-a9e7-b07c418c6e9b)
Maui, October Last Year
Finn laced up his hiking boots in the dark, with a foot on the wheel arch of the hire car. He’d set his alarm for 4 a.m. and driven Mia along winding roads and hairpin bends to the highest point in Maui, atop the Haleakala¯ volcano, to watch the sunrise. At an elevation of ten thousand feet it was bitterly cold, although they had been warned that by midday it would become scorching with almost no shade for hikers to rest.
‘How much water have you got?’ Mia asked, her voice still husky from her doze in the car.
‘Enough for us both.’ He zipped up his coat, locked the car, and tightened the straps of his pack.
They struck out by the light from their head torches. He led, wanting to pick out a route with firm footing. Night hiking could be dangerous as changes in the terrain were difficult to judge, but the path proved smooth and descended steadily into the crater basin. Neither of them spoke, the only sound being the loose cinder ash crunching underfoot like snow.
It was still before dawn and the air was dry and chilled; Finn’s cheeks felt as if they’d been stretched taut. He glanced back to check that Mia was close behind and the beam of his torch illuminated her face. She’d fastened her hair into a loose knot and wore a black fleece zipped to the chin. Her expression was set and determined.
‘Okay?’
‘Okay.’
They continued on as the sky bled from black to a deep violet and silhouettes of looming volcanoes and cinder cones began to emerge. Fit and strong, Mia kept a good pace; she’d once told Finn she loved hiking for the simplicity of travelling from one point to another under an open sky. Since arriving on Maui, she had spent many hours walking the beaches alone, and Finn guessed that she used the time to think about her father. They had been on the island a week, but she hadn’t visited him and Finn hadn’t asked why. Mia would go when the time was right.
Over the years he’d become good at deciphering how Mia felt from the small clues she gave him. For instance, if they were in conversation and she looked up at him from the corners of her eyes, chewing slightly on her bottom lip, it was often an indication that she wanted to talk about something important, and he’d need to slow and soften his voice to give her space to do so. He’d become attuned to such signals after thirteen years of friendship – longer than many marriages – yet the signs he couldn’t confidently translate were what she felt for him.
He stopped. ‘Let’s watch from there,’ he said, pointing to a raised area just off the trail where they could view the sunrise. The sky had lightened to a soft indigo and he removed his head torch, threw down his pack and leant against it. Mia sat beside him, drawing her knees towards her chest. She yawned and he saw the slight arch of her back.
From her pack she pulled a thin blanket borrowed from the hostel and draped it around them both. He could smell her shampoo: peach and avocado. Heat spread through his body. He swallowed, closing his eyes. It was dangerous to be feeling like this.
‘Finn,’ she said, her lips close to his ear.
‘Yes?’
‘Thank you – for coming to Maui.’
‘It would’ve been a different story if your dad lived in Kazakhstan,’ he quipped, forcing a smile.
‘I mean it.’ She was studying him closely. Too closely. ‘I really appreciate you being here.’ She leant into him, lifted her chin, and placed a kiss on his cheek.
He was 16 again and standing in the crowded concert hall, sweat trickling down his lower back, the taste of Mia’s lips fresh on his.
He saw the truth of it now as he had back then: he was in love with Mia.
In the Hawaiian language, ‘Haleakalã’meant ‘House of the Sun’. The first light broke on the horizon, sending pink slithers into the sky and painting the underbellies of clouds silver.
‘My God!’ Mia said, sitting forward.
A brilliant red sun began to appear from behind the crater, a majestic god in all its awesome glory. As it rose, light flooded the lunar landscape, turning everything a deep earthy red. Now he could make out the towering cinder cones and crater basin, which emitted an ethereal quality that he could only compare to pictures of the moon. Within minutes, the full sun bloomed from behind the volcano like a smile, and they felt the first blush of warmth on their faces.
It was an otherworldly sight; one of many incredible things they would experience together on this trip. He looked ahead to the weeks and months to come – spending hour after hour in Mia’s company – and glimpsed a type of exquisite torture unfolding. He would be able to lie beside Mia, listening to her breath slowing into sleep, but wouldn’t be able to hold her. He would eat dinner with her as the sun went down, but would never reach across to touch her hand. He would listen to all the things that busied her mind, but would not share the one thing on his.
Travelling together for months in such intimate proximity would be impossible, deceitful even. He felt he was being driven towards making a decision with only one choice: Tell her.
*
Mia kicked off her hiking boots and then peeled away the damp socks, revealing pink and swollen feet. Dust caked her shins, stopping at the exact line at which her socks had begun. She’d caught the sun on her shoulders, nose and cheekbones, and stepped gratefully into a cool shower, feeling the water slide over her skin.
They were staying in the Pineapple Hostel on Maui’s north shore. Mia liked the rainbow colours of the dorms and the vegetable patch in the garden and, on another evening, she might have taken advantage of the hammocks, or sat in the shade of a palm tree to read. Right now, however, her mind was elsewhere because on the hike she had decided that tonight she would visit Mick.
She rolled deodorant along the hollows of her armpits and then combed her wet hair into a single smooth rope that glistened like liquorice. She pulled a fresh T-shirt from her backpack and slipped it on with a pair of shorts, then grabbed her bag.
Finn was in the communal kitchen cooking pasta and chatting with a group of windsurfers who’d just arrived at the hostel.
‘Sorry to interrupt,’ she said, placing a hand lightly on his arm. ‘I’m going to see Mick.’
‘Now?’
‘Yes.’
‘Excuse me a second,’ she heard Finn say. He followed her out of the kitchen. ‘Wait, Mia. Are you sure? I could go with you.’
‘I’d like to do this on my own.’
He nodded. ‘You know where you’re going?’
‘The hostel owner said it’s a ten-minute walk.’
‘It’s getting dark.’
‘I’ll take a taxi back.’
Finn rubbed a knuckle beneath his chin. ‘Well, I hope it goes all right.’
She left at once, so she didn’t have time to change her mind. She walked through the small town of Paia, an offbeat place dotted with health-food stores, vegetarian cafés, surf shops and beachwear boutiques. Sugar-cane fields backed onto the town, lending a sweet smell to the air, and everywhere looked lush and green, as if she’d stepped outside after a burst of heavy rain.
Two young boys emerged from the neck of a footpath with wet hair and bare feet, surfboards thrust underarm. Rather than turning right into the street that would deliver her to Mick’s house, Mia found herself taking the footpath, which led her through palm and papaya trees, to a wide stretch of beach.
The air smelt fragrant, a crush of petals infused on the humid air. She slipped off her flip-flops and padded through the warm sand, which had taken on the pinkish hue of the evening sun. Her calf muscles and the backs of her thighs ached from hiking so she found a stretch of deep sand and sank down into it.
Clean sets of waves rolled in from the ocean in neat lines, like a watery army. She watched as each wave rose gracefully to a fluid peak and then broke in a powerful cacophony of spray and froth, sending white-water roaring towards the shore.
Beyond the breaking waves a lone surfer caught her attention. He paddled hard as a great mound of swell grew beneath him, and he was suddenly propelled onto it. He rose to his feet and dropped down the glassy face of the wave. He cut two smooth and fluid turns, carving white spray with a flick of the board’s tail, and then popped over the back of the wave moments before it closed out in a boom and a crush of foam. Mia realized she had been holding her breath watching him.
From her bag she took out her journal and placed it on her knees. The four lines of her father’s address were written on a scrap of paper that she’d stuck in the centre of a double page, around which she’d begun to write brief notes and questions.
Writing was Mia’s way of organizing her thoughts; when she could see words physically taking shape on a page she would then recognize threads of feelings or emotions that she’d allow to simmer, unidentified. Talking had never come as easily. She admired the way Katie would flop onto a chair, cup her hands lightly around her face, and air whatever grievance was troubling her. Regardless of the advice Mia or their mother gave, it was obvious that it was the act of talking that helped clear Katie’s mind, in the way a brisk walk on a frosty morning clears the sinuses, and she would always leave brighter for it.
Looking at the double page now, Mia noticed that two questions stood out more prominently than the other notes, and she circled them both. The first was simply: ‘Who is Mick?’
She knew the basic facts: Mick had been 28 when he met their mother, seven years her senior. They married four months later and bought a small house in North London where Katie and Mia were born. Mick worked in the music industry and set up three independent labels during his career; the first two went bust and the third he sold before retiring to Maui. Few of these facts had been elaborated on by their mother, always reluctant to talk about a man who had so little input into her daughters’ lives. When pushed, she had described him as charismatic with a shrewd head for business, but added that he was deeply selfish and never committed to the responsibilities of fatherhood.
The second question Mia had circled was more complicated. Even as a child she had sensed how different she and Katie were. Teachers praised Katie’s positive work ethic and her popularity amongst classmates, but complained about Mia’s disruptive behaviour and the lack of care applied to her studies. Katie became the benchmark against which Mia was measured, never the other way round.
The comparisons other people made, however, were nothing against those Mia and Katie drew between themselves. Mia had sometimes wondered if their differences were more pronounced since, oddly, their birthdays fell on the same day – 11 June – but with three years between them. The year Mia turned 12 and Katie 15, Mia asked to celebrate with a beach barbeque, and Katie, who was nearing the end of senior school, wanted a party. Their mother offered a solution: they would have a party at the beach.
Katie invited a dozen school friends; the boys headed straight for the water and the girls basked in the early-evening sun. Mia left to explore the next bay along with Finn, who was the only person she’d thought to invite. They spent their time digging for lugworms or chasing each other, swinging thick ropes of seaweed above their heads. They rejoined the party only when they could smell the burgers cooking, and then took their loaded plates to the rocks where they sat together eating and throwing the occasional scraps to the cocky gulls that gathered nearby.
Mia watched Katie moving seamlessly from friend to friend, checking that they had enough food, that their drinks were full and that they were enjoying themselves. She noticed how the girls brightened as soon as Katie joined them, and the boys’ gazes would linger on her. One of the party, a diminutive girl who’d earlier been caught unawares by a wave that soaked the bottoms of her jeans, sat alone, deflated after the incident, her paper plate sagging on her knees. Noticing her, Katie slipped apart from the group she was with and sat beside the girl. She touched the damp line of the girl’s jeans, and then whispered something that made her laugh hard enough to forget the cool denim at her shins. When Katie stood and reached out her hand, the girl took it and then followed Katie as they moved to rejoin the larger crowd.
Mia was impressed. At 15, when most teenagers were awkward and temperamental, Katie had an intuitive ability to put people at their ease. From her vantage point on the rocks, she saw Katie join their mother beside the barbeque as she heaped the last of the blackened sausages onto a spare plate. As they stood close, their blonde heads leaning towards one another, their gazes levelled at the sea, it suddenly struck Mia how similar her mother and sister were. It was more than their physical likeness, it was a likeness etched into their personalities. They shared a gregarious manner and a gift for understanding people, both able to read gestures and expressions in a way that was entirely alien to Mia.
The realization of their similarities unsettled Mia, but it wasn’t until years later, when her mother’s cancer was moving into its final stages, that she understood precisely why. Mia was visiting home and had swung into the drive – three hours late according to the schedule Katie had emailed her. A headache thumped at her temples and alcohol fumes emanated from her pores.
When she let herself in, Katie was coming down the stairs holding a leather weekend bag at her side. ‘Mum’s sleeping.’
‘Right.’
Katie reached the bottom step and stopped. Up close, Mia could see her eyelids were pink and swollen. ‘You’re three hours late,’ Katie said.
Mia shrugged.
‘An apology would be nice.’
‘For what?’
Katie’s eyes widened. ‘You’ve delayed me by three hours. I had plans.’
‘I’m sure your boyfriend will understand,’ Mia said with an arched eyebrow.
‘Don’t make this about us, Mia. It’s about Mum.’ Katie lowered her voice. ‘She’s dying. I don’t want you to look back and regret anything.’
‘What, like the way I regret having you as a sister?’ It was a childish, dirty remark, which Mia didn’t feel proud of.
As Katie moved past her, she said to Mia, ‘I have no idea who you are.’
In that comment she had hit upon the very thing that had always troubled Mia: if she didn’t take after her mother the way Katie did, then it could only lead Mia in one direction – Mick. And since all she knew of him was that he had abandoned his family, the second question she had circled in her journal was: ‘Who am I?’
Glancing up, she saw that the shadows of palm trees had clawed their way across the beach. She stood, dusting the sand from the backs of her thighs, knowing it was time to answer those questions.
As she moved along the beach, her gaze was caught again by the lone surfer paddling for a wave. He rode the liquid mountain as gracefully as a dancer, arching his body and turning his hips to catch the right motion. Mia watched him, rapt, and still didn’t move off as he paddled back in to shore, letting a small ridge of white-water carry him almost to the beach. Then he slipped from his board and stood, hooking it beneath his arm as he waded in.
The man, who looked to be just a few years older than her, had a closely shaven head and a dark tattoo that stretched across the underside of his forearm. He squeezed a thumb and forefinger against the corners of his eyes, flicking away the salt water and blinking. He set his board down, removed his ankle leash, and then turned back to the ocean where a final blaze of red sky fringed the horizon. He stood with his arms loosely folded over his chest, his chin raised. The posture was stoic, resolute, yet somehow contemplative, too. Mia was intrigued by the way he watched intensely as if he were in communion with the ocean.
Minutes passed and the red sky faded to a warm orange glow, and still he did not move. Mia knew she should go but, as she stepped forwards, the man turned sharply.
He looked directly at her and his expression was one of affront, as if she had intruded on a moment intended for him alone. There was no hint of his mouth softening into a smile, or his eyebrows rising in acknowledgement. Thick lashes shadowed dark eyes and the intensity of his gaze bore into her. His eyes held her fixed and she felt heat rising in her cheeks. For a moment, she thought he was about to say something but then he dipped his head and turned back to the horizon.
She moved on, leaving the beach in his watch. She followed a narrow footpath, which eventually brought her out in front of a row of beach-front properties. Sprinkler systems kept trimmed lawns fresh and green, and large cars with tinted windows were parked on tarmac driveways. Mick’s house, number 11, was two storeys with a terracotta roof, stonewashed walls and blue shutters framing the windows. Bright tropical plants grew in curved flower beds that bordered the path to the front door, and she caught the sweet smell of frangipani in the air.
She hovered awkwardly at the edge of the driveway. Her heart was beginning to pound and she shoved her hands in her pockets to stop the trembling of her fingers. For every minute she waited, her anxiety doubled. The visit wasn’t simply an exercise in curiosity; it was far more crucial to her than that. Mia had always felt like an outsider in her family, and had taken a strange comfort in the idea that somewhere in the world was her father, a man she was just like. She had come to Maui to hold up a mirror to him, wondering if she would see herself in its reflection.
She drew in a long, steady breath, and then placed one foot in front of the other. When she reached the front door she steeled herself and pressed the bell.
7 (#ulink_be1c1024-232b-56ff-9fd2-a17becd1bf96)
KATIE (#ulink_be1c1024-232b-56ff-9fd2-a17becd1bf96)
California/Maui, April
Katie glanced up at the floodlit sign for San Francisco International. A rush of passengers with luggage trolleys weaved around her, and a busy procession of taxis, minibuses and coaches ducked in and out of drop-off bays. A car horn hooted twice. Headlights were flashed. A door slammed. Then overhead, the roar of a plane taking off filled the sky.
She slipped her phone from her pocket, dialled, and walked into the airport.
Ed answered. She could hear a tap running in the background and imagined him standing in a towel, smoothing shaving foam over his face.
‘It’s me.’ She hadn’t spoken to anyone in two days and the weakness in her voice startled her. She cleared her throat. ‘I’m at the airport.’
‘Where?’
‘San Francisco.’ She hesitated. ‘I’m flying home.’
She heard him turn off the tap. ‘What’s happened? Are you okay?’
When she had set out on this journey, she knew Ed had questioned the wisdom of her decision. It was one thing for Mia to travel to far-flung corners of the world, but Katie was cut from a different cloth and he’d doubted she’d be able to cope so soon after losing her sister. ‘I can’t do this,’ she admitted.
‘Katie—’
‘I really wanted to. I can’t bear to think that …’ She broke off as tears slipped onto her cheeks.
‘It’s okay, darling.’
She swiped at the tears with the back of her hand. It wasn’t okay. She had only been in America for twelve days. Leaving England she’d felt certain that retracing Mia’s route would bring her closer to understanding what happened, yet the further she travelled, the more distance she felt from Mia. She hadn’t danced till dawn in San Francisco’s downtown, or swum in her underwear in the Pacific; she hadn’t the energy to hike into Yosemite to look down from the tops of waterfalls, or gaze up at age-old redwoods; neither did she have the courage to stay in the colourful hostels Mia and Finn had visited, or put up a tent beneath a sky of stars. She could no more travel like her sister than she could understand her.
Instead, she had found herself drifting from hotel to hotel, ordering fast food or room service to avoid eating out, and watching films long into the night simply to put off sleeping. She spent her days driving along empty coast roads, then parking up and sitting on the bonnet of the car with a rug around her shoulders, listening to foam-crested waves smashing against rock.
Memories of Mia lined Katie’s days. Some she invited in to provide comfort, as if she wouldn’t feel the cold space of Mia’s absence if she could wrap herself in enough of them. Other memories arrived unannounced, carried on the smell of the breeze, or freed by a song playing on the radio, or emanating from a stranger’s gesture.
Ed, gently and without reproach, said, ‘It was too soon.’
He was right – had been right all along.
‘Have you bought your ticket yet?’ he asked.
‘No.’
‘I want you to put yourself on the next flight home. Don’t worry about the cost. I’ll take care of it. I just want you back here, safely.’
‘Thank you.’
‘God, I’ve missed you. Why don’t I arrange to take some time off? We can lock down in my apartment for a few days. I’ll cook for you. We’ll watch old DVDs. We can go for long walks – it’s feeling more like spring now.’
‘Is it?’ she said distractedly.
‘Your friends will be pleased. Everyone’s been worrying about you. My inbox has never been so full! Once you’re home, you will start to feel better. I promise.’
Returning to England, to his apartment, to his arms, was what she needed. She should be in a place where her friends were only a Tube stop away, where she could find a supermarket without the need of a map, where she knew the cinema and gym schedules so that every free hour could be filled. This new world that she had stepped into was too big, too remote from what she knew.
‘Ring me as soon as you’ve booked. I’ll pick you up.’ He paused. ‘Katie, I can’t wait to see you.’
‘Me too,’ she said, but even as she ended the call, an uneasy disappointment settled in her chest.
She hoisted on Mia’s backpack, familiar now with the technique of throwing it over her shoulders, and found the queue for the ticket desk. It snaked around a maze of barriers and she joined behind a family whose toddler lay asleep on top of a stack of black cases on their trolley.
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Lucy Clarke
Two sisters, one life-changing secret . . .‘A terrific summer read’ Richard & JudyThere are some currents in the relationship between sisters that run so dark and so deep, it’s better for the people swimming on the surface never to know what’s beneath . . .Katie’s carefully structured world is shattered by the news that her headstrong younger sister, Mia, has been found dead in Bali – and the police claim it was suicide.With only the entries of Mia’s travel journal as her guide, Katie retraces the last few months of her sister’s life, and – page by page, country by country – begins to uncover the mystery surrounding her death.What she discovers changes everything. But will her search for the truth push their sisterly bond – and Katie – to breaking point?The Sea Sisters is a compelling story of the enduring connection between sisters.
The Sea Sisters
Lucy Clarke
Copyright (#ulink_0895bbf2-7998-51c9-bcf4-436f291c759a)
Harper
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
This ebook first published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2013
Copyright © Lucy Clarke 2013
Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2013
Cover photograph © Bildhuset / plainpicture • Author photograph © James Bowden
Lucy Clarke asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780007481347
Ebook Edition MAY 2013 ISBN: 9780007481354
Version: 2015-06-19
Dedication (#ulink_d916872f-cdeb-579d-bb77-9fa8752f0746)
For James
Contents
Cover (#uc0d25397-8a4b-5e1d-ac5c-835a0e3f47ac)
Title Page (#u618206ec-5d6b-59ea-9189-8006c3a3ae94)
Copyright (#u3fa765f1-d6eb-50d9-bcbb-4741bd2febde)
Dedication (#u2f18bd24-8c45-5926-a5f5-c31616761c39)
1. Katie (#ube7ff2de-9cee-58e3-b4c1-cc5ccdfcbd46)
2. Mia (#u53c609d8-e072-55c0-bbb4-0a8a6d79e5d5)
3. Katie (#uf1c1f00c-67d4-5c71-b32c-eff672b08c0c)
4. Mia (#ue483c5c5-ba4b-587c-bb80-2854869d9335)
5. Katie (#uac71b982-8ec9-5b17-8908-0f418dacd696)
6. Mia (#u7889fb1b-2709-5d4e-8c44-f343078b78e4)
7. Katie (#ub754a49d-e5b4-5092-910d-79ebb8c6024f)
8. Mia (#litres_trial_promo)
9. Katie (#litres_trial_promo)
10. Mia (#litres_trial_promo)
11. Katie (#litres_trial_promo)
12. Mia (#litres_trial_promo)
13. Katie (#litres_trial_promo)
14. Mia (#litres_trial_promo)
15. Katie (#litres_trial_promo)
16. Mia (#litres_trial_promo)
17. Katie (#litres_trial_promo)
18. Mia (#litres_trial_promo)
19. Katie (#litres_trial_promo)
20. Mia (#litres_trial_promo)
21. Katie (#litres_trial_promo)
22. Mia (#litres_trial_promo)
23. Katie (#litres_trial_promo)
24. Mia (#litres_trial_promo)
25. Katie (#litres_trial_promo)
26. Mia (#litres_trial_promo)
27. Katie (#litres_trial_promo)
28. Mia (#litres_trial_promo)
29. Katie (#litres_trial_promo)
30. Mia (#litres_trial_promo)
31. Katie (#litres_trial_promo)
32. Mia (#litres_trial_promo)
33. Katie (#litres_trial_promo)
Keep Reading: A Single Breath (#litres_trial_promo)
Keep Reading: The Blue (#litres_trial_promo)
A Chat with Lucy Clarke (#litres_trial_promo)
Questions for Discussion (#litres_trial_promo)
The W6 Book Café (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
1 (#ulink_622f55f3-be4a-5307-8172-0c9099cc0a0e)
KATIE (#ulink_622f55f3-be4a-5307-8172-0c9099cc0a0e)
London, March
Katie had been dreaming of the sea. Dark, restless water and sinuous currents drained away as she pushed herself upright on the heels of her hands. Somewhere in the flat her phone was ringing. She blinked, then rubbed her eyes. The bedside clock read 2.14 a.m.
Mia, she thought immediately, stiffening. Her sister would get the time difference wrong.
She pushed back the covers and slipped out of bed, her nightdress twisted around her waist. The air was frigid and the floorboards were like ice against the soles of her feet. She shivered as she moved through the room, her fingers spread in front of her like sensors. Reaching the door, she groped for the handle. The hinges whined as she pulled it open.
The ringing grew louder as she picked her way along the darkened hall. There was something troubling about the sound in the quiet, sleep-coated hours of the night. What time would it be in Australia? Midday, perhaps?
Her stomach stirred uneasily remembering yesterday’s terrible fight. Words had been sharpened to injure and their mother’s name had been flung down the phone line like a grenade. Afterwards, Katie was so knotted with guilt that she left work an hour early, unable to concentrate. At least now they’d have a chance to talk again and she could tell Mia how sorry she was.
She was only two steps from the phone when she realized it was no longer ringing. She hovered for a moment, a hand pressed to her forehead. Had Mia rung off? Had she dreamt it?
Then the noise came again. Not the phone after all, but the insistent buzz of the flat intercom.
She sighed, knowing it would be late-night visitors for the traders who lived upstairs. She leant towards the intercom, holding a finger to the Talk button. ‘Hello?’
‘This is the police.’
She froze, sleep burning off like sea mist on a sunny day.
‘We’d like to speak to Miss Katie Greene.’
Her pulse ticked in her throat. ‘That’s me.’
‘May we come up?’
She released the front door, thinking, What? What’s happened? She switched on the light, blinking as the hall was suddenly illuminated. Looking away from the glare she saw her bare feet, toenails polished pink, and the creased trim of her silk nightdress against her pale thighs. She wanted to fetch a dressing gown, but already the heavy tread of feet sounded up the stairway.
She opened the door and two uniformed police officers stepped into her hall.
‘Miss Katie Greene?’ asked a female officer. She had greying blonde hair and high colour in her cheeks. She stood beside a male officer young enough to be her son, who kept his gaze on the ground.
‘Yes.’
‘Are you alone?’
She nodded.
‘Are you the sister of Mia Greene?’
Her hands flew to her mouth. ‘Yes…’
‘We are very sorry to tell you that the police in Bali have informed us –’
Oh God, she began to say to herself. Oh God…
‘– that Mia Greene has been found dead. She was discovered at the bottom of a cliff in Umanuk. The police believe she fell—’
‘No! NO!’ She spun away from them, bile stinging the back of her throat. This couldn’t be real. It couldn’t be.
‘Miss Greene?’
She wouldn’t turn. Her gaze found the noticeboard in the hallway where invites, a calendar, and the business card of a caterer were neatly pinned. At the top was a map of the world. The week before Mia left to go travelling, Katie had asked her to plot her route on it. Mia’s mouth had curled into a smile at that, yet she indulged Katie’s need for schedules and itineraries by marking a loose route that began on the west coast of America and took in Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Samoa, Vietnam and Cambodia – an endless summer of trailing coastlines. Katie had been tracking the route from Mia’s infrequent bursts of communication, and now the silver drawing pin was stuck in Western Australia.
Staring at the map, she knew something wasn’t right. She turned back to the police. ‘Where was she found?’
‘In Umanuk,’ the female officer repeated. ‘It’s in the southern tip of Bali.’
Bali. Bali wasn’t on Mia’s route. This was a mistake! She wanted to laugh – let the relief explode from her chest. ‘Mia isn’t in Bali. She’s in Australia!’
She caught the exchange of glances between the officers. The woman stepped forwards; she had light blue eyes and wore no make-up. ‘I’m afraid Mia’s passport was stamped in Bali four weeks ago.’ Her voice was gentle, but contained a certainty that chilled Katie. ‘Miss Greene, would you like to sit down?’
Mia couldn’t be dead. She was twenty-four. Her little sister. It was inconceivable. Her thoughts swam. She could hear the cistern downstairs humming. A television was playing somewhere. Outside, a late-night reveller was singing. Singing!
‘What about Finn?’ she asked suddenly.
‘Finn?’
‘Finn Tyler. They were travelling together.’
The female officer opened up her notebook and spent a moment glancing through it. She shook her head. ‘I’m afraid I don’t have any information about him currently. I’m sure the Balinese police will have been in contact with him though.’
‘I don’t understand any of this,’ Katie whispered. ‘Can you … I … I need to know everything. Tell me everything.’
The police officer described the exact time and location at which Mia had been found. She told her that medical assistance had arrived swiftly on the scene, but that Mia was pronounced dead on their arrival. She explained that her body was being held at the Sanglah morgue in Bali. She confirmed that there would be further investigations, but that so far the Balinese police believed it was a tragic accident.
All the while Katie stood completely still.
‘Is there someone you would like us to contact on your behalf?’
She thought instantly of their mother. She allowed herself a moment to imagine the comfort of being held in her arms, the soft cashmere of her mother’s jumper against her cheek. ‘No,’ she told the officer eventually. ‘I’d like you to leave now. Please.’
‘Of course. Someone from the Foreign Office will be in touch tomorrow with an update from the Balinese police. I’d also like to visit you again. I’ve been assigned as your Family Liaison Officer and will be here to answer any questions you have.’ The woman took a card from her pocket and placed it beside the phone.
Both officers told Katie how sorry they were, and then left.
As the door clicked shut, the strength in Katie’s legs dissipated and she sank onto the cold wooden floor. She didn’t cry. She hugged her knees to her chest to contain the trembling that had seized her. Why had Mia been in Bali? Katie didn’t know anything about the place. There was a bombing outside a nightclub some years ago, but what else? Clearly there were cliffs, but the only ones she could picture were the grass-covered cliffs of Cornwall that Mia had bounded along as a child, dark hair flying behind her.
She tried to imagine how Mia could have fallen. Was she standing on an overhang and the earth crumbled? Did a sudden gust of wind unbalance her? Was she sitting on the edge and became distracted? It seemed absurdly careless to fall from a cliff. The facts Katie had been given were so few that she couldn’t arrange them into any sort of sense. She knew she should call someone. Ed. She would speak to Ed.
It was her third attempt before she managed to dial correctly. She heard the rustle of a duvet, a mumbled, ‘Hello?’ and then silence as he listened. When he spoke again, his voice was level, telling her only, ‘I’m on my way.’
It must have taken no less than ten minutes for him to drive from his apartment in Fulham to hers in Putney, but looking back she wouldn’t remember any of that time. She was still sitting on the hallway floor, her skin like goose flesh, when the intercom buzzed. She stood groggily. The floorboards had marked the backs of her thighs with red slash-like indentations. She pressed the button to let him in.
Katie heard the thundering of his feet as he took the steps two at a time, and then Ed was at her door. She opened it and he stepped forward, folding her into his arms. ‘My darling!’ he said. ‘My poor darling!’
She pressed her face into the stiff wool of his jacket, which scratched against her cold cheek. She smelt deodorant. Had he sprayed himself with deodorant before coming over?
‘You’re freezing. We can’t stand here.’ He led her into the lounge and she perched on the edge of the cream leather sofa. It’s like sitting on vanilla ice cream, Mia had said the morning it was delivered.
Ed removed his jacket and draped it over her shoulders, rubbing her back with smooth circular strokes. Then he went into the kitchen and she heard him open the boiler cupboard and flick on the central heating, which rumbled and strained into life. There was the gush of a tap as he filled the kettle, followed by the opening and closing of drawers, cupboards and the fridge.
He returned with a cup of tea, but her hands didn’t move to take it. ‘Katie,’ he said, crouching down so they were eye level. ‘You are in shock. Try and drink a little. It will help.’
He lifted the tea to her lips and she sipped it obediently. She could taste the sweet milky flavour on her tongue and the urge to retch was immediate. She lurched past him to the bathroom with a hand clamped to her mouth. The jacket slipped from her shoulders and fell to the floor with a soft thump.
Bending over the sink, she gagged. Saliva hit the white ceramic basin.
Ed was behind her. ‘Sorry…’
Katie rinsed her hands and splashed water over her face.
‘Darling,’ he said, passing her a blue hand towel. ‘What happened?’
She buried her face in it and shook her head. He gently peeled the towel away, then unhooked her dressing gown from the back of the bathroom door and guided her arms into the soft cotton. He took her hands in his and rubbed them. ‘Talk to me.’
She repeated the details learnt from the police. Her voice sounded jagged and she imagined that if she were to glance up at the bathroom mirror, her skin would be leached of colour, her eyes glassy.
As they moved back to the lounge, Ed asked the same question to which she wanted the answer: ‘Why was your sister in Bali?’
‘I have no idea.’
‘Have you spoken to Finn?’
‘Not yet. I should call him.’
Her hands shook as she dialled Finn’s mobile. She pressed the phone to her ear and listened as it rang and rang. ‘He’s not answering.’
‘What about his family? Do you know their number?’
Katie searched in her address book and found it, the Cornish dialling code stirring a faint memory that she wasn’t ready to grasp.
Finn was the youngest of four brothers. His mother, Sue, a curt woman who was often harassed, answered, sounding half asleep. ‘Who is this?’
‘Katie Greene.’
‘Who?’
‘Katie Greene.’ She cleared her throat. ‘Mia’s sister.’
‘Mia?’ Sue repeated. Then immediately: ‘Finn?’
‘There’s been an accident—’
‘Finn—’
‘No. It’s Mia.’ Katie paused and looked at Ed. He nodded for her to go on. ‘The police have been here. They told me that Mia was in Bali … on a cliff somewhere. She fell. They’re saying she’s dead.’
‘No…’
In the background she could hear Finn’s father, a placid man in his sixties who worked for the Forestry Commission. There was a brief volley of exclamations muffled by a hand over the receiver, and then Sue returned to the line. ‘Does Finn know?’
‘I’d imagine so. But he’s not answering his mobile.’
‘He lost it a few weeks ago. Hasn’t replaced it yet. We’ve been using email. I’ve got his address if you want—’
‘Why were they in Bali?’ Katie interrupted.
‘Bali? Finn wasn’t.’
‘But that’s where they said Mia was found. Her passport was stamped—’
‘Mia went to Bali. Not Finn.’
‘What?’ Katie said, her grip tightening.
‘There was an argument. Sorry, I thought you knew.’
‘When was this?’
‘Good month ago, now. Finn spoke to Jack about it. From what I heard they had a falling-out – God knows what about – and Mia changed her ticket.’
Katie’s thoughts whirled. Mia and Finn’s friendship was unshakable. She pictured them as children, Finn with a wig of glistening seaweed draped over his head, Mia bent double with laughter. Theirs was a friendship that was so rare, so solid, that she couldn’t imagine what would be terrible enough to cause them to separate.
*
Ten days later, winter sun flooded Katie’s bedroom. She lay perfectly still, her arms at her sides, eyes shut, bracing herself against a distant threat she couldn’t quite recall. She blinked and, before she had a chance to recall why her eyelids felt stiff and salted, grief bowled into her.
Mia.
She curled into herself, tucking her knees to her chest and pressing tight fists to her mouth. She screwed her eyes shut, but disturbing images bled into her thoughts: Mia dropping silently through the air like a stone, the rush of wind lifting her dark hair away from her face, a rasped scream, the crack of her skull against granite.
She reached for Ed but her fingers met only with the empty curve of where he’d slept. She listened for him and, after a moment, was relieved to tune into the light tapping of a keyboard coming from the lounge: he would be emailing his office. She envied him that – the ability for his world to continue, when hers had stopped.
She knew she must get to the shower. It would be too easy to remain cocooned in the duvet as she had done yesterday, not rising until after lunch by which time she was drowsy and disorientated. Taking a deep breath, she forced herself from beneath the covers.
Drifting towards the bathroom, she passed Mia’s room and found herself pausing vaguely outside the door. They had bought this flat using the small inheritance they received after their mother’s death. Everyone was surprised that they were moving in together, not least Katie, who had vowed she’d never live with Mia again after their acrimonious teenage years, yet she’d worried that if Mia didn’t put her share of the inheritance into something solid, it would slip through her fingers as easily as water. Katie had been the one to organize viewings, deal with estate agents and solicitors, and run through the rain with a broken umbrella to sign the mortgage papers on time.
Wrapping her fingers lightly around the brass door handle, she turned it. A faint trace of jasmine lingered in the cold, stale air. Mia had positioned her bed beneath the tall sash window so she could wake and see sky. A sheepskin coat, which once belonged to their mother, was draped over the foot of the bed. It was an original from the Seventies with a wide, unstructured collar, and she remembered Mia wrapping herself in it all winter like a lost flower-child.
Beside the bed a pine desk was heaving with junk: an old stereo, unplugged and dusty; three cardboard boxes bulging with CDs; a pair of hiking boots with their laces missing; a mound of paperbacks, well thumbed, beside two pots of pens. The bedroom walls were bare of the photos and paintings that had adorned Mia’s previous rooms and she’d made no attempt to decorate; in fact, it was as if she had never intended the move to be permanent.
Katie was the one who’d persuaded her sister to move to London, using words like ‘opportunity’ and ‘career’, when those words had never belonged to Mia. Mia spent her days wandering the parks, or drifting in one of the rent-a-rowing-boats in Battersea Park, as if dreaming she were somewhere else. She’d had five jobs in as many months because she would suddenly decide to get out of the city to go hiking or camping, and take off, just leaving a note pushed under Katie’s door and a message on her employer’s answerphone. Katie tried searching out job opportunities using her recruitment contacts, but fixing Mia to something was like pinning a ribbon to the wind.
Noticing a pair of mud-flecked running shoes, she remembered the evening Mia announced she was going travelling. Katie had been in the kitchen preparing a risotto, slicing onions with deft, clean strokes. She tossed them into a pan as Mia wandered in, a pair of white earphones dangling over the neckline of her T-shirt, to fill her water bottle at the tap.
‘Going running?’ Katie had asked, blotting her streaming eyes with the sleeve of her cardigan.
‘Yeah.’
‘How’s the hangover?’ When she’d gone to shower before work, Katie had found Mia asleep on the bathroom floor wearing a dress of hers borrowed without asking.
‘Fine,’ she replied, keeping her back to Katie. She turned off the tap and wiped her wet hands on her T-shirt, leaving silver beads of moisture.
‘What happened to your ankle?’
Mia glanced down at the angry red cut that stretched an inch above her sock line. ‘Smashed a glass at work.’
‘Does it need a plaster? I’ve got some in my room.’
‘It’s fine.’
Katie nodded, tossing the onions with a wooden spoon, watching their sharp whiteness soften and become translucent. She turned up the heat.
Mia lingered by the sink for a moment. Eventually she said, ‘I spoke to Finn earlier.’
Katie glanced up; his name was so rarely spoken between them.
‘We’ve decided to go travelling.’
The onions started to sizzle, but Katie was no longer stirring. ‘You’re going travelling?’
‘Yeah.’
‘For how long?’
Mia shrugged. ‘A while. A year, maybe.’
‘A year!’
‘Our tickets are open.’
‘You’ve already booked?’
Mia nodded.
‘When did you decide this?’
‘Today.’
‘Today?’ Katie repeated, incredulous. ‘You haven’t thought it through!’
Mia raised an eyebrow: ‘Haven’t I?’
‘I didn’t think you had any money.’
‘I’ll manage.’
The oil began to crackle and spit. ‘And what, Finn’s just taking a sabbatical? I’m sure the radio station will be thrilled.’
‘He’s handed in his notice.’
‘But he loved that job…’
‘Is that right?’ Mia said, looking directly at her. The air in the kitchen seemed to contract.
Then Mia picked up her water bottle, pushed her earphones in, and left. The pan started to smoke so Katie snapped off the hob. She felt a hot flash of anger and took three strides across the kitchen to follow but then, as she heard the tread of Mia’s trainers along the hallway, the turning of the latch, and finally the slam of the door, Katie realized that what she felt most acutely was not anger or even hurt, it was relief. Mia was no longer her responsibility: she was Finn’s.
*
It was mid-afternoon when the phone rang. Ed glanced up from his laptop; Katie shook her head. She had refused to speak to anyone, allowing the answerphone to record friends’ messages of condolence that were punctuated with awkward apologies and strained pauses.
The machine clicked on. ‘Hello. It’s Mr Spire here from the Foreign Office in London.’
A nerve in her eyelid flickered. It was Ed who reached for the phone just before the message ended. ‘This is Katie’s fiancé.’ He looked across to her and said, ‘Yes, she’s with me now.’ He nodded at her to take the phone.
She held it at arm’s length, as if it were a gun she was being asked to put to her head. Mr Spire had called twice since Mia’s death, first to request permission for an autopsy to go ahead, and later to discuss the repatriation of Mia’s body. After a moment, Katie pressed her lips together and cleared her throat. Bringing the phone towards her mouth, she said slowly, ‘This is Katie.’
‘I hope this is a convenient time to talk?’
‘Yes, fine.’ The dry, musty warmth of the central heating caught at the back of her throat.
‘The British Consulate in Bali have been in touch. They have some further news concerning Mia’s death.’
She closed her eyes. ‘Go on.’
‘In cases such as Mia’s, a toxicology report is sometimes requested as part of the autopsy procedure. I have a copy of it in front of me, which I wanted to talk to you about.’
‘Right.’
‘The results indicate that at the time of death, Mia was intoxicated. Her blood alcohol content was 0.13, which means she may have had impaired reflexes and reaction times.’ He paused. ‘And there’s something else.’
She moved into the lounge doorway and gripped the wooden frame, anchoring herself.
‘The Balinese police have interviewed two witnesses who claim to have seen Mia on the evening of her death.’ He hesitated and she sensed he was struggling with something. ‘Katie, I’m very sorry, but in their statement, they have said that Mia jumped.’
The ground pitched, her stomach dropped away. She hinged forward from the waist. Footsteps crossed the lounge and she felt Ed’s hand on her back. She pushed him away, straightening. ‘You think she …’ Her voice was strained like elastic set to snap. ‘You think it was suicide?’
‘I am afraid that based on witness statements and the autopsy, the cause of death has been established as suicide.’
Katie reached a hand to her forehead.
‘I understand this must be incredibly hard—’
‘The witnesses, who are they?’
‘I have copies of their statements.’ She heard the creak of a chair and pictured him leaning across a wide desk to reach them. ‘Yes, here. The witnesses are a 30-year-old couple who were honeymooning in Bali. In their statement, they say that they had taken an evening walk along the lower cliff path in Umanuk and paused at a lookout point – this was close to midnight. A young woman, matching Mia’s description, ran past them looking extremely anxious. The male witness asked if she needed help and Mia is said to have responded, “No.” She then disappeared along what used to be the upper cliff path, which has apparently been disused for several years. Between five and eight minutes later, the witnesses looked up and saw Mia standing very near the cliff’s edge. The report says that they were concerned for her safety, but before they were able to act, she jumped.’
‘My God.’ Katie began to tremble.
Mr Spire waited a moment before continuing. ‘The autopsy suggested that, from the injuries sustained, it is likely that Mia went over the cliff edge facing forwards, which collaborates with the witnesses’ reports.’ He continued to expand on further details, but Katie was no longer listening. Her mind had already drifted to the cliff top.
He’s wrong, Mia, isn’t he? You didn’t jump. I won’t believe it. What I said when you called – oh, God, please don’t let what I said …
‘Katie,’ he was saying. ‘The arrangements are in place to have Mia’s body repatriated to the UK a week on Wednesday.’ He required details of the funeral parlour she had selected, and then the call ended.
She felt shooting pains behind her eyes and pressed the arched bones beneath her eyebrows with her thumb and index finger. In the flat below the baby was wailing.
Ed turned her slowly to face him.
‘They are saying it was suicide,’ she said in a small, strained voice. ‘But it wasn’t.’
He placed his hands on her shoulders. ‘You will get through this, Katie.’
But how could he know? She hadn’t told him about the terrible argument she’d had with Mia. She hadn’t told him of the hateful, shameful things she’d said. She hadn’t told him about the anger and hurt that had been festering between them for months. She hadn’t told Ed any of this because there are some currents in a relationship between sisters that are so dark and run so deep, it’s better for the people swimming on the surface never to know what’s beneath.
She turned from Ed and stole to her room where she lay on the bed with her eyes closed, trying to fix on something good between her and Mia. Her thoughts led her back to the last time she had seen her, as they hugged goodbye at the airport. She recalled the willowy feel of Mia’s body, the muscular ridges of her forearms and the press of her collarbone.
Katie would have held on for longer, treasured every detail, had she known it would be the last time she’d feel her sister in her arms.
2 (#ulink_42e49193-891f-5e81-bfd3-ec6c07141d11)
MIA (#ulink_42e49193-891f-5e81-bfd3-ec6c07141d11)
London, October Last Year
Mia felt the soft cushion of her sister’s cheek pressed against hers as they held each other. She absorbed the curve of her chest, the slightness of her shoulders, the way Katie had to stand on the balls of her feet to reach.
Mia and Katie rarely hugged. There had been a time, as children, when they were entirely uninhibited with each other’s bodies – squeezing onto the same armchair with their hips pressed tight, plaiting thin sections of each other’s hair and securing bright beads at the ends, practising flying angels on the sun-warmed sand with their fingers interlaced. She couldn’t say at what point that physical closeness was lost to her. Katie remained warmly tactile; she welcomed people with a hug or kiss, and had an inclusive way of reaching out mid-story to place her hand on someone’s arm.
The last time they had embraced like this must have been on the morning of their mother’s funeral, a year ago. Dressed in black, they had exchanged forthright words on the narrow landing of their childhood home. Eventually it was Katie who had extended her arms when, in truth, the gesture should have been Mia’s. They had clasped each other and, in whispers broken with relief, a truce was made. But not maintained.
Now, as they held one another in the check-in area at Heathrow, Mia felt a tightening in her throat and the prick of tears beginning beneath her eyelids. She stiffened and let go. She wouldn’t look at Katie as she picked up her backpack and hoisted it over her shoulders, tugging her hair free from beneath it.
‘So this is it,’ Katie said.
‘I suppose so.’
‘Got everything?’
‘Yes.’
‘Passport? Tickets? Currency?’
‘Everything.’
‘And Finn’s meeting you shortly?’
‘Yes.’ Mia had arranged it so his and Katie’s paths wouldn’t have to cross. ‘Thanks for bringing me,’ she added, touched that Katie had taken the day off work to do so. ‘You didn’t have to.’
‘I wanted to say goodbye properly.’ Katie was dressed in a well-cut grey dress beneath a light caramel jacket. She slipped her hands into the wide pockets. ‘I feel like I’ve barely seen you recently.’
Her gaze slid to the floor; she’d been finding reasons to stay away.
‘Mia,’ she said, taking a small step forward. ‘I know it’s probably seemed like I’m not happy for you – about you travelling. It’s just hard. You leaving. That’s all.’
‘I know.’
Katie reached out and took her hands. Her sister’s fingers were warm and dry from her pockets and her own felt clammy within them. ‘I’m sorry if London hasn’t been right for you. I feel like I pushed you into it.’ Katie twisted Mia’s silver thumb ring between her fingers as she said, ‘I just thought, after Mum, it would be good for us to stay together. I know you’ve been having a tough time lately – and I’m sorry if you haven’t felt like you could come to me.’
An oily slick of guilt slid down the back of Mia’s throat: How could I come to you?
She thought back to the day she’d booked this trip. She had woken on their bathroom floor, her cheek pressed into the cool, tiled floor, which smelt of bleach. Her dress – a jade one of Katie’s – had twisted around her waist and her shoes had been abandoned, one beneath the sink, the other caught on the pedal of the bin.
Katie, wrapped in a soft blue towel, had been standing in the doorway. ‘Oh, Mia…’
Mia’s head had throbbed and the sour taste of spirits furred the back of her throat. She had pushed herself upright and a bolt of pain clenched at her temples. Snapshots of her evening flashed in her mind: the low-lit red booth, the empty whisky glasses, the grungy beat of an R&B track, the musky tang of sweat in the air, another round, a cheer of male voices, a familiar face, the irrepressible desire for risk. She remembered slinging her bag over her shoulder, tipping the final whisky down her throat, and then weaving along a darkened corridor. The memory of what happened next was so fresh and laced with so much shame, that she knew she had to leave. Leave London. Leave her sister.
A passenger announcement boomed over the tannoy bringing her back to the present.
Katie said, ‘I worry about you.’
Mia withdrew her hand, pretending to adjust her backpack straps. ‘I’ll be fine.’
They both turned as a middle-aged couple hurtled past, the man muttering, ‘Christ!’ as he pushed a luggage trolley behind his wife, who was struggling to run in heels, her painted fingernails gripping a bundle of documents. The man glanced across at Katie. Even when rushing for planes, even when their wives were at their sides, men couldn’t help but look. They were drawn to her like bees to a honey pot, or like flies to shit as Mia had once said in anger. It wasn’t just Katie’s petite figure or honey-blonde hair, it was a warm confidence that breathed through her pores, saying, I know who I am.
Katie didn’t notice the admiring glance as her attention had been caught by someone else. Finn came loping towards them wearing his daily uniform of T-shirt, jeans and Converse trainers. A tattered army-green backpack hung easily off one shoulder.
Katie took a slight step backwards, aligning herself with Mia, and fed her hands deep into her pockets.
Finn’s gaze moved slowly over them both. Then the corners of his mouth turned up in an easy, wide smile. ‘The Greene sisters!’ If there was any awkwardness on his part, he didn’t show it. ‘Coming with us, Katie?’
‘I’ll be living the trip vicariously from all the emails Mia will be sending.’
Mia smiled. ‘Hint duly noted.’
An airport vehicle towing a row of luggage trolleys beeped as it rolled towards them, causing the three of them to bunch together.
‘So how are things?’ Finn asked Katie. ‘It’s been a while.’
‘Yes, it has. Everything is fine, thank you. Work’s busy. But good. And you? How are you?’
‘Feeling pretty pleased about having a year off.’
‘You both must be. It’s California first?’
‘Yes, for a few weeks of coast-side cruising, and then on to Australia.’
‘Sounds wonderful. I’m incredibly jealous.’
Is she? Mia wondered. Would she want this: wearing her life on her back and moving from place to place with no plans?
‘Right,’ Katie said, taking the car keys from her handbag. ‘I best get going.’ She glanced at Finn, her face turning serious. ‘You will look after her, won’t you?’
‘You know that’s like asking a goldfish to babysit a piranha.’
Her features softened a little. ‘Just bring her back safely.’
‘I promise.’ He leant forward and kissed her on the cheek. ‘Take care.’
She nodded quickly, pressing her lips together. ‘You’ll call?’ she said to Mia. ‘You’ve got your mobile?’
‘I’m not taking it.’ Then, seeing Katie’s expression, she added, ‘It’s too expensive abroad.’ But cost wasn’t the real reason: Mia didn’t want to be contactable.
‘I’ve got mine if you need us,’ Finn said. ‘You’ve got my number still?’
‘Yes. Yes, I think so.’
There was a brief silence between them all. Mia wondered what Katie would do with the rest of her day. Catch up with a friend over coffee? Go to the gym? Meet Ed for lunch? She realized she had no idea how her sister spent her time.
‘Can you let me know when you’ve arrived?’
‘Sure,’ Mia replied, with a shrug she hadn’t intended. She wanted to tell Katie that she loved her, or say how much she’d miss her, but somehow she couldn’t find the words. It had always been that way for her. Instead, she lifted a hand in wave, then turned and left with Finn.
*
Pressing her nose against the window, she watched London disappearing beneath the white wings of the plane. They rose through a layer of cloud and suddenly the view was swallowed. She sank back in her seat, her heart rate gradually slowing. She had left.
On her lap rested her travel journal. She’d bought it at Camden Market from a stall that sold weathervanes, maps and antique pocket watches. She’d been drawn to the sea-blue fabric that bound the cover and the thick cream pages that smelt like promises.
She opened it, clicked her pen against her collarbone, and wrote her first two lines.
People go travelling for two reasons: because they are searching for something, or because they are running from something. For me, it’s both.
She tucked the journal into the seat pocket alongside the laminated flight-safety procedures, and then closed her eyes.
*
As the plane descended over the Sierra Nevada range, Mia gazed at the clouds drifting below. They looked soft and inviting, and she imagined diving into them, being caught in their fleecy hold and floating with the air currents.
‘Not as comfy as they look,’ Finn said, as if reading her mind.
Finn Adam Tyler was her best friend and had been since they’d met aged 11 on the school bus. Four weeks ago she’d called him at work to tell him she was going travelling. She was sitting on the kitchen worktop, her heels dangling against the fridge door. When he answered, she said only, ‘I’ve got a plan.’
‘What do I need?’ he’d replied, a throwback to their teenage years when a plan, if conceived by one of them, had to be adhered to by the other.
She grinned. ‘Your passport, a resignation letter, a backpack and a typhoid jab.’
There was a pause. Then, ‘Mia, what have you done?’
‘Reserved two round-the-world tickets: America, Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Samoa, Vietnam and Cambodia. The flights leave in four weeks. You coming?’
There was silence. It had hung between them long enough for her to wonder whether her impulsiveness had been a mistake, whether he’d say of course he couldn’t just up and leave his job.
‘So this typhoid jab,’ he’d said eventually, ‘is it in the arm or the arse?’
She looked at Finn now: his knees were pushed against the seat in front, a newspaper spread on his lap. The mousey curls of the schoolboy she’d known had now been cut short and rough stubble shadowed his chin.
At the end of their row a voluptuous woman with dangling gold earrings unclipped her seat belt and stepped into the aisle. She moved towards the toilets, gripping the backs of headrests for balance. Mia turned to Finn. ‘I need to talk to you.’
‘If it’s about that last meal, I swear, I thought you wouldn’t want to be disturbed.’
She smiled. ‘It’s something important.’
Finn folded the newspaper over and gave her his full attention.
A few rows in front the faint grizzling of a toddler started up.
Mia tucked her hands beneath her thighs. ‘This may sound odd,’ she began uncertainly, ‘but after I booked our tickets, I realized that there was another place I needed to visit on this trip.’ She should have talked to Finn about it sooner, only she was afraid to voice the idea in case she set in motion something she wasn’t ready for. Sometimes she wasn’t aware that an idea was brewing until it suddenly popped into her mind and she acted upon it. ‘I’ve booked us an extra stop.’
‘What?’
‘After San Francisco, we’ve got a flight to Maui.’
‘Maui?’ He looked blank. ‘Why?’
‘It’s where Mick lives.’
She waited a beat for him to place the name. It had been a long time since he’d heard it.
‘Your dad?’
She nodded.
The grizzling child had found its stride and a captive audience; the crying grew louder and something was tossed into the aisle.
Finn was staring at her. ‘You haven’t talked about him in years. You want to see him?’
‘I think so. Yes.’
‘Has he … have you been in contact?’
She shook her head. ‘No. Neither of us.’ Mick had left when she and Katie were young children, leaving their mother to bring up her two daughters alone.
‘I don’t understand. Why now?’
It was a fair question, but one she wasn’t sure how to answer just yet. She shrugged. Ahead, she heard a taut whisper from the toddler’s parent: ‘That. Is. Enough.’
Finn ran the knuckle of his thumb under his chin, a habitual gesture when something was worrying him. ‘What does Katie think?’
‘I haven’t told her.’
She could see Finn’s surprise and sensed he wanted to say more, but Mia turned to the window, ending the conversation.
She willed her thoughts to drift away with the clouds, knowing it wasn’t the only thing she was keeping from her sister.
3 (#ulink_f66daf2f-93e4-5948-af77-30a1c2868a55)
KATIE (#ulink_f66daf2f-93e4-5948-af77-30a1c2868a55)
Cornwall/London, March
Katie sat pin straight on the church pew, her feet pressed together. Biting sea air crept through the cracks in the stained-glass windows and twisted beneath the heavy oak door. Her fingers were curled around a damp tissue, Ed’s hand resting on top. Eighteen months earlier had seen her seated in this same pew when they buried her mother, only then it had been Mia’s fingers linked through her own.
Her gaze was fixed on the coffin. Everything about it – the polished shine to the elm wood, the brass clasps keeping it sealed, the white lilies arranged on top – suddenly looked wrong. Why had she chosen to bury Mia beside their mother, when her sister had never once visited the grave? Wouldn’t cremation have been more suitable, her ashes dispersing on a breeze over a wild sea? Why don’t I know what you’d have wanted?
It would have been almost impossible to conceive that Mia was inside the coffin had Katie not decided, two days ago, that she needed to see the body. Ed had been cautious on her behalf. ‘Are you sure? We don’t know how she may look after the fall.’ That’s what people were referring to it as: the fall, as if Mia had no more than slipped in the shower, or toppled off a stool.
She wouldn’t be dissuaded. Seeing Mia’s body would be agony, but to not see it would leave her with the smallest fraction of doubt – and if she allowed that doubt to grow over time to hope, she’d be in danger of deluding herself.
When Katie had stepped behind the heavy purple drape in the funeral parlour, she could have fooled herself that Mia was merely sleeping. Her willowy figure, the sweep of dark hair, the curve of her lips, looked as they always had. Yet the proof of death lay in Mia’s skin. After months of travelling she would have been deeply tanned, but death had left behind its ghostly pallor so that her skin appeared a strange insipid shade, like milk spilt over a dark floor.
The funeral director had asked if Katie wished to choose an outfit for Mia to be buried in, but she had said no. It had seemed presumptuous to dress Mia, for whom fashion was something indefinable. She fell in love with clothes for their story, choosing a loose shift dress in a deep blue that reminded her of the sea, or picking a second-hand pair of heels because she liked to imagine the places they’d already walked.
On the night Mia died she had been wearing a pair of teal shorts. They had been arranged too high up her waist, not slung low over her hips as she would have worn them. Her feet were bare, a silver toe ring on each foot, her nails unpainted. On her top half she was wearing a cream vest over a turquoise string bikini. A delicate necklace strung with tiny white shells rested at her throat, a single pearl at its centre. She looked too casual for death.
Katie had reached out and placed her hand on Mia’s forearm. It felt cold and leaden beneath her fingertips. Slowly, she traced her fingers towards Mia’s inner elbow where thin blue veins criss-crossed, no longer carrying blood around her body. She drew her hand over the ridge of Mia’s bicep, across her shoulder and along the smooth skin at the nape of her neck. She brushed the faint scar on her temple, a silver crescent, and then her palm rested finally against Mia’s cheek. She knew the back of Mia’s skull had been cracked open on impact, but there were no other marks on her body. Katie was disappointed: she had been hoping for a clue, something the authorities had missed that would prove Mia had died for a reason more bearable than suicide.
Carefully, she untucked Mia’s vest and rearranged her shorts so they rested on her hip bones. Then she leant close to her ear. Her sister’s skin smelt unfamiliar: antiseptic and embalming lotion. She closed her eyes as she whispered, ‘I am so sorry.’
‘Katie?’ Ed was squeezing her hand, pulling her thoughts back to the funeral. ‘It’s you, now.’
He moved his hand to her elbow and helped her stand. Her legs felt light and insubstantial as she left the pew and drifted towards the lectern like a spectre. She tucked her tissue into her coat pocket and pulled from the other a square piece of card on which she’d noted a few sentences.
She glanced up. The church was full. People were standing three deep at the back. She saw old neighbours, friends of Mia’s from her schooldays, a group of Katie’s girlfriends who’d made the long journey from London. There were many people she didn’t recognize, too. A girl in a black woollen hat sobbed quietly, her shoulders shaking. Two rows back, a thin young man blew his nose into a yellow handkerchief and then tucked it beneath his order of service. She knew that the circumstances of Mia’s death would be lingering in everyone’s thoughts, but she didn’t have the answers to address their questions. How could she when she didn’t know what to believe herself?
Katie gripped the lectern, cleared her throat twice, and then began. ‘While the authorities have made a grey area of Mia’s death, her life was a rainbow of colour. As a sister, Mia was dazzling indigo, challenging me to look at the world from new perspectives and see its different shades. She was also the deep violet that drove all her actions straight from her heart, which made her passionate, spontaneous and brave. As a friend she was vibrant orange, spirited, plucky and on the lookout for adventure. As a daughter, I think our mum—’ she struggled on that last word. Closing her eyes, she focused on swallowing the rising lump of emotion.
When she opened them, she could see Ed nodding at her, encouraging her on. She took a deep breath and began the sentence again. ‘As a daughter, I think our mum would have said Mia was love red, as she filled her with happiness, warmth and laughter. She was also the sea green of the ocean, in which she spent her childhood splashing and tumbling through waves. Her laughter – infectious, giddy and frequent – was brilliant yellow, a beam of sunlight falling on whoever she laughed with. And now that Mia has gone, for me only cool, empty blue remains in the space where her rainbow once danced.’
Katie left the card on the lectern and somehow her legs carried her back to Ed’s side.
*
The coffin had been lowered into the ground and the funeral party were returning to their cars when Katie saw him.
Finn looked different from the man she’d said goodbye to at the airport. His usually fair skin was bronzed, his hair lightened by the sun to a golden brown, and he looked older, too, having lost the boyish softness in his cheeks. Finn’s family had been unable to get in contact with him until three days ago. He had boarded the first flight back to London and arrived yesterday. Flanked by two of his brothers, he glanced up and saw her. His eyes were bloodshot and the skin around his nose was red raw. He moved towards her warily.
‘Katie—’ he said, but faltered when he saw her expression.
Her voice came out as cold and flat as the sky. ‘You left her, Finn.’
He closed his eyes and swallowed. She saw that his lashes were damp. Beyond them a car door slammed and an engine started.
Katie was standing with her back to the stone archway at the rear of the church. She thrust her hands deep into her coat pockets. ‘You were supposed to be travelling together. What happened?’
The question seemed painful for him and he looked beyond her as he answered. ‘We had an argument. It should never have happened. Mia didn’t want to be in Australia—’
‘So she went to Bali,’ Katie finished. ‘Why?’
Finn’s left foot, in an unpolished black shoe, jigged up and down. She remembered the gesture; she’d once thought it was a mark of impatience but later understood it to be a sign of nervousness. ‘We’d met people who were going out there.’
‘I just don’t understand any of it.’ Katie’s hands were beginning to tremble in her pockets. She balled them into fists and lifted her chin. ‘Why was she on that cliff top?’
‘I don’t know. We didn’t speak after Australia. She emailed once—’
‘You didn’t think to tell anyone?’ Her voice was growing louder and she was aware of glances being exchanged between Finn’s brothers who were hanging back.
He turned his palms towards the heavy grey sky, helpless under the fire of her questions. ‘I thought Mia would have said—’
‘You should have stopped her!’ A sharp gust whipped Katie’s hair in front of her face. She swiped it aside.
‘She is headstrong,’ he said. ‘You know that.’
‘Was headstrong. Was. She’s dead!’ The last word was the cold truth between them and the power of it pushed Katie on, anger rising like venom in her throat. ‘You promised me you’d look after her.’
‘I know—’
‘She trusted you, Finn. I trusted you!’ She stepped forward, extended her arm and slapped him, once, hard, on the left cheek.
Above, two seagulls screamed.
No one moved. Finn, shocked, held his face. Katie felt a smarting in her fingertips. After a moment it looked as if he was going to say something, but all that came out was a sob. She had never seen him cry before and was shocked at the way his face collapsed, as if the tears dragged all of his features downwards.
She watched, motionless, until she felt the firm pressure of Ed’s hand on her shoulder. He steered her away, moving towards an area near Mia’s grave where tributes had been laid. He didn’t mention what had just happened, but simply buttoned up his dark overcoat, and then began carefully picking up the tributes. One at a time, he read each message aloud.
Katie wasn’t listening. She was still thinking of the red handprint she’d left on Finn’s cheek, as if he’d been branded. She had never hit anyone before. Ed would later tell her that Finn was grieving, too, and she should have allowed him the chance to explain – but what was there to say? Mia was dead. If she didn’t blame Finn, she was only left with herself.
‘This is unusual,’ Ed commented. He was holding a single flower; from its blood-red centre three white petals swept outwards like fans. He passed it to Katie, who lightly fingered the velvet petals. It looked like a type of orchid and she brought it close to her face to smell it. The scent conjured up another place – somewhere sweet and warm, filled with fragrance and light.
When she looked up, Ed was holding the small card that came with the flower. ‘What is it?’ she asked, noticing the change in his expression.
He said nothing, just handed the card to her.
Turning it over, she saw that the sender hadn’t included his or her name. There was only a single word on the card: Sorry.
*
After the funeral there had been drinks at the village pub, where people huddled by the fire, stamping their feet to get the blood moving again. Katie stayed for an hour at most, making sure she thanked everyone who’d journeyed a long way, before quietly slipping out.
As she and Ed crossed the car park, someone called out, ‘You’re leaving?’
They both turned. It was Jess, her best friend, a girl who used to take Katie dancing to a bump-’n’-grind club in a dingy corner of their university town, but who now had a high-flying job as the sales director of a pharmaceutical company.
‘Sorry, I know we’ve hardly talked, but … I…’
‘Katie,’ Jess said, flicking her cigarette to the ground. ‘It’s okay.’
‘Thanks for coming today. It means a lot. And thanks for your messages, too.’ Jess had called every day since Mia’s death, leaving voicemails telling Katie how loved she was and passing on news and condolences from mutual friends. ‘Sorry I haven’t been in touch. I keep meaning to ring … but, well …’ Katie stalled, not knowing how to explain. She was grateful to Jess – to all her friends – but she hadn’t felt ready to talk about Mia. Not yet.
‘You’ve lost your sister. I understand.’ Jess stepped forward and wrapped Katie in her arms. ‘No more apologies, okay? Just take your time. We’re all here for you when you’re ready.’
‘Thanks,’ she sighed, breathing in the cigarette smoke that clung to Jess’s hair.
Jess squeezed Katie’s hands and then turned to Ed, wagging her finger. ‘You make sure you look after her, you hear?’
He smiled, putting an arm around Katie’s waist. ‘I intend to.’
It was Jess who’d introduced Katie to Ed at a riverboat party on the Thames. Katie had just come out of a relationship and wasn’t interested in rejoining the dating scene so soon. Yet, Ed, with his handsome face, quick-witted banter and devastating smile, managed to persuade her otherwise. They had slipped free of the party the moment the boat moored and went on to a bar where they shared a bottle of Merlot and talked and laughed until the place closed. Eighteen months later, Ed got down on one knee to offer her a diamond ring and a lifetime together. She found herself grinning and saying yes.
It was a long drive back to London, but Katie couldn’t stay in Cornwall with the sharp sea air and the waves that whispered with memories. In the flat, she unzipped her black dress, which fell to the floor with a swoosh. She stepped from the dark puddle into a fleecy jumper and pair of jogging bottoms belonging to Mia. The hems trailed around her feet as she padded along the hall. She hesitated only a moment before entering Mia’s room.
Her sister’s backpack was propped against the bed. It had been flown back from Bali several days ago, but Katie hadn’t wanted to look through it before. Airport tags curled around its straps and strands of Indian leather were attached to each zip. There was a badge on the front of a woman in a hula skirt, and a picture of a daisy had been doodled on a side pocket in thick black marker. She unbuckled it, loosened the drawstring and reached inside.
Pushing her hand into the belly of the bag she felt her way through various items, pulling out one at a time like a game of lucky dip. She tugged free a burnt-orange beach dress that smelt of jasmine laced with the holiday tang of suncream and salt. She smoothed out the creases and then set it on the bed. Carefully, Katie removed more items: a pair of Havaiana flip-flops with worn-down soles; a travel towel stuffed into a net bag; an iPod in a clear case; two novels by authors Katie hadn’t heard of; a slim torch gritted with sand; and a man’s jumper, with thumb holes in the sleeves. Finn’s?
She continued searching until her hand met something hard. Katie had been told that Mia’s travel journal had been located by the police, who had examined it, but found nothing that could be considered as evidence.
Mia had always kept journals. Katie found it disconcerting that her sister preferred to share her feelings on paper rather than in person. As a teenager the temptation to read one had been irresistible. She had twice searched Mia’s room hoping to uncover information that only her journal would reveal but, for all Mia’s clutter and disorganization, she was fastidious about hiding them.
Carefully, Katie slid the journal free. Glimmering sea-blue fabric was stretched across the cover and it felt heavy in her hands. She traced a finger down the spine and then opened it carefully, as if Mia’s words were butterflies that might flutter free into the air.
She turned the pages slowly, admiring her sister’s elegant handwriting. In some things, Mia was lackadaisical and careless – her wallet was a brick of receipts, and her books were dog-eared with doodles filling the margins – yet the handwriting in her journal was graceful and refined. The entries were crafted around pencil sketches, handwritten notes, corners of maps and fragments of memorabilia from places she’d visited. Each page was a work of art brimming with its own tale.
‘Everything okay?’ Ed was standing in the doorway to Mia’s room.
She nodded.
He glanced at the backpack. ‘You’re going through her things?’
‘I’ve found her travel journal.’
He straightened, surprised. ‘I didn’t realize she kept one.’ He pushed his hands into his pockets. ‘Are you going to read it?’
‘I think so. Yes. There’s so much I don’t know about her trip.’ And about her, she thought. They’d barely spoken while Mia was away. She wondered when this distance had grown between them. They used to be close once, but not lately. She sighed. ‘Why did she go, Ed?’
‘Travelling?’
‘Yes. She booked the trip so suddenly. Something must have happened to make her leave.’
‘She was just impulsive. Young. Bored. That’s all.’
‘I shouldn’t have let her go.’
‘Katie,’ he said gently, ‘you’ve had a long day. Perhaps you shouldn’t be looking at her journal tonight. Wait till morning, at least. I was just about to make us a snack. Why don’t you come into the kitchen? Keep me company?’
‘Maybe in a minute.’
When the door closed, she flicked through the pages and picked an entry at random. As she began to read, her gaze jumped from phrase to phrase – ‘cinder desert’, ‘Finn and me’, ‘deep violet sky’, ‘lunar landscape’ – as if each word was too hot for her mind to settle on. She squeezed her eyes shut and then reopened them, trying to focus on a single sentence. But it was hopeless; her gaze roamed over the words, but her mind refused to digest them.
Frustrated, she flicked on. She passed an entry where a sketched bird took flight from the bottom of a page, and another where Mia’s writing spiralled around an invisible coil as if being sucked downwards. Her heartbeat quickened when she realized she was travelling towards the back of the journal, her fingertips skimming the edges of each page as they drew her to Mia’s final entry.
Reaching it, Katie paused. There would be things, she knew already, which she’d rather not learn, but like a passer-by being drawn to the sight of a crash, she was unable to look away.
Staring at the final entry she saw that just one side of the double spread was filled. The adjoining page was missing; it had been ripped out leaving behind a jagged edge near the spine of the journal. Her eyes fixed on the remaining page, which was filled with an intricate pencil drawing of the profile of a female face. Within the face a series of detailed doodles had been drawn: a roaring dark wave, a screaming mouth, falling stars, a hangman with six blank dashes, an empty phone dangling from a wire.
Katie snapped the journal shut and stood.
She shouldn’t have looked; it was too soon. Already new questions were swimming to the surface of her thoughts. What did the illustrations mean? Why had a page been torn out? What had been on it? She pushed the journal back towards the bag as if returning it to the backpack would stop the stream of doubts rushing forwards, but in her hurry the journal fell free of her hands, and as it spilt to the floor, something glided from its pages.
Bending to retrieve it she saw it was the stub of Mia’s first boarding pass: London Heathrow to San Francisco. Her fingers moved across the smooth white card as she thought about Mia arriving in San Francisco full of the anticipation of travelling. She tried picturing the places Mia visited, wondering about the people she had met, imagining what she might have experienced – but Mia’s travels were a mystery, six lost months Katie was desperate to understand. Six months that the journal held the key to.
As she held Mia’s plane ticket between her fingers, an idea began to form.
*
Katie barely slept that night as the idea shaped itself into a purpose. The next morning she rose early and strode into Putney High Street searching for a travel agency. She placed Mia’s itinerary on the desk of a woman who wore coral-pink lipstick on cracked lips. ‘I would like to book the same route.’
She could have done it online, but felt the decision was too important to be made on the click of a button. Perhaps she had anticipated hesitation from the saleswoman, as if someone would tell her this was a foolish, impulsive idea, but instead the lady had taken a sip from her steaming mug of coffee, then simply asked, ‘When would you like to go?’
Now, five days later, she sat on the wooden floorboards in her bedroom trying to pack. The contents of Mia’s backpack fanned around her feet, and her own clothes waited tentatively in half-built piles within a purple suitcase. She was usually a decisive and methodical packer, but she had no clue what to pack for this trip. In a few hours she was due to board a flight to San Francisco, exactly as Mia had done six months earlier.
Her bedroom door opened and Ed entered, carrying two mugs of tea. He passed her one and then lowered himself onto the floor beside her, his suit trousers pulling tight across his knees and revealing half an inch of skin above his socks.
She took a sip of tea. He made it exactly how she liked it: not too strong, a generous splash of milk and half a spoonful of sugar.
He eyed the piles of belongings sceptically. ‘There’s still time to change your mind. Work would have you back, you know.’
She had quit her job as a senior recruitment consultant as she’d walked back from the travel agency. After dedicating herself to the same company since graduation, she had only needed a five-minute phone call to leave. ‘I can’t go back.’ The idea of returning to the office, taking a seat at her corner desk beneath the air-conditioning vent that aggravated her eyes, and pretending that placing candidates was still important to her, seemed utterly ludicrous.
‘Why not wait a few weeks? I am almost certain I’ll be able to juggle holiday. We could go together … not everywhere, but Bali. You can see where—’
‘I need to start this from the beginning.’ Katie’s coping mechanism was structure. After her mother’s death, she had ruthlessly filled her diary with social engagements, taking command of every free hour that might otherwise have been idled away in the folds of self-pity. She attacked her job with equal vigour, working around the clock with such steely focus that, three months later, she got a promotion.
Losing Mia felt different. Work and social distractions were no match for her grief, which was thick and black. Finding Mia’s travel journal seemed like a small glimmer of light in the gloom, so she had made a decision to follow it, entry by entry, country by country, in the hope that retracing Mia’s steps would help her to understand her death. For the first time since the police arrived on her doorstep, Katie felt as if she had a sense of purpose.
‘I know we’ve talked about this,’ Ed said, ‘but I am still struggling to understand your logic.’
‘You know how difficult things were between me and Mia before she left,’ she said, setting aside her tea. ‘And I let her go … I was relieved to see her go.’
‘Mia’s death is not your fault.’
Wasn’t it? She had seen Mia was unhappy when they were living together, but she had let her loose anyway. Mia was her little sister, her responsibility. And Katie had failed her. ‘The journal is all I have left. It’s a link to six months of her life that I missed.’
‘So read it. I’ve already told you I’m happy to do it with you.’
She’d discovered Ed thumbing through the journal the morning after she’d found it, checking that there was nothing that would upset her. She knew he was being kind, but she didn’t want his protection; she wanted his support. Now she’d taken to keeping the journal with her at all times.
‘But once I’ve finished reading it,’ she explained, ‘there’ll be no more new memories of Mia. That’ll be it – she’s gone.’ She imagined flicking through the pages time and time again until the words had become dull and meaningless, like a set of old photographs that have faded with the years. But Katie knew that by reading each entry in the countries where Mia wrote them, and experiencing some of the things she had experienced, then it would feel as if she was with her – that those six months hadn’t been lost. ‘I need to do this, Ed.’
He stood and crossed her bedroom to the window and opened it. Katie caught the heavy bass booming from a car stereo below. He spread his hands on the low windowsill and, for several moments, just stared at the street below.
‘Ed?’
‘I love you,’ he began slowly, turning to face her, ‘but I believe you are making a mistake. What about everything you’re leaving behind? What about our wedding?’
They were due to get married in August. They had booked an intimate country house in Surrey, which they’d planned to take over for the weekend with their closest friends and family. Katie’s evenings had been occupied with searching for a band that would play beyond midnight, deliberating over the choice of cheesecake or profiteroles for dessert, and collecting vintage photo frames to create a display on the cake table. The excitement and anticipation that had only recently consumed her now seemed as if it had been part of a life that was no longer hers.
‘I won’t be away for long. A few months at most.’
‘I know you’re going through hell right now,’ he said, pushing aside a cream lantern to make space to sit. ‘I wish, I really wish, there was something I could do to make this easier for you. But all I can say to you, darling, is that I truly believe it will help if you can begin looking towards the future, rather than the past.’
She nodded. There was some sense in that.
He indicated the spot beside him and she moved across the room and sat. She could smell the residue of his shaving foam, mixed with the fresh tones of aftershave. He looked handsome in his suit; the slate-grey tie had been a present from Katie and she liked to imagine his hand brushing the raw silk in a meeting, his thoughts trailing from the boardroom to her.
‘This isn’t the answer,’ he said, looking at Mia’s journal which she still held. She heard the smile in his voice as he said, ‘Come on, you hate flying! You’ve never been outside of Europe. It is just not safe for you to go backpacking on your own.’ He placed his hand on her thigh, rubbing gently. ‘Let’s work through this together. Here.’
Ed always had a practical way of assessing situations; it was one of the many things she admired about him. Perhaps this was a mistake. Flying to the other side of the world and giving no indication of when she would be back was unfair on Ed, she knew that much. ‘I don’t know what the right decision is any more.’
‘Katie,’ he said quietly, ‘eventually you are going to have to let her go.’
She ran her fingers over the sea-blue cover of the journal, imagining all the times Mia had written in it. She pictured her swinging lazily in a hammock, her tanned legs stretched in front of her, a pen moving lightly over the cream leaves. The journal contained the most intimate details of Mia’s thoughts, and Katie held it in her hands.
‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘Not until I know what happened.’
Ed sighed.
She wondered whether he had already decided what had happened. In the time he’d known Mia, he had seen her at her worst – impetuous, wayward and volatile – but he didn’t know the real Mia; the one who swam like a fish in the sea, who kicked off her shoes to dance, who loved catching hailstones in her palms. ‘It wasn’t suicide,’ she said firmly.
‘Perhaps it wasn’t.’
And there it was. The ‘perhaps’.
She stood, picked up Mia’s empty backpack and began carefully replacing items she had taken from it. From her own suitcase she grabbed a pile of clothes, her washbag and her passport, and squeezed them into the backpack, then buckled it shut. She shoved her suitcase in the wardrobe, closing the door with a satisfying smack: what good was a suitcase where she was going?
Ed was on his feet. ‘You’re actually doing this?’
‘I am.’
She could see he was hurt and that he wanted to say something more. There were a thousand reasons why she shouldn’t go: she had never travelled alone before; her career would suffer; she was grieving and would do better with company. They had been through all of these reservations, Ed giving pragmatic advice, just as she would have offered someone else. Only now she felt differently. Now it wasn’t about practicalities, risk assessment or smart decision making. It was about her sister.
4 (#ulink_d6c301db-bf52-593d-b8d3-e81ab2fcb6c6)
MIA (#ulink_d6c301db-bf52-593d-b8d3-e81ab2fcb6c6)
California, October Last Year
Mia’s legs rested on the dash of the battered Chevy they’d rented. She pressed her bare toes against the windscreen and then withdrew them, watching the toe-prints of condensation slowly disappear. Beside her, Finn was drumming his thumbs against the steering wheel in time to a blues number playing on the radio.
They were driving south along the famous Highway One, leaving San Francisco in their wake. They’d spent far more time there than intended, having been captivated by the city’s offbeat charm. On their first night they took a room in a cheap motel, dumped their backpacks and went for dinner at a busy Thai restaurant that served incredible sweet chilli prawns. The owner tipped them off about a basement club a couple of blocks away and, in spite of their jet lag, they found themselves drinking and dancing until their feet throbbed. They surfaced, hours later, to find dawn breaking over the city, and stumbled across an early-morning coffee house where they bought cinnamon bagels with fresh coffee and sat on the edge of the bay watching a pale pink sun climb over Alcatraz.
Low-lying fog stalked them down the coast and clung to the sea like a damp cloak obscuring any view of the horizon. Mia wound down the window and stuck her head out, squinting towards the sky. ‘Sun’s coming out.’
‘I’ll stop at the next lay-by.’
A few miles on was a gravel viewpoint on the cliff top. Sure enough, the sun was burning through the fog to unveil a rugged, grassy coastline. Wildflower-strewn cliffs, which she imagined would be spectacular in spring, staggered down to an untamed bay frothing with white-water.
She stepped from the car barefoot, interlocked her fingers above her head and stretched, her stomach pulling taut. The air fizzed with salt and she inhaled, closing her eyes.
Finn leant against the car with his arms folded loosely over his chest. ‘Look at this place.’
‘You want to go down?’
‘Sure.’
They found a narrow footpath that wound down the impressive cliff face, cutting back and forth to steal the incline from the steepest parts. Reaching the bottom, Mia was the first to jog towards the shore and plunge her feet in the sea. ‘Hello, Pacific!’ she bellowed. Then she turned to Finn. ‘Swim?’
‘Here? It looks pretty rough.’
‘You can look after my clothes, then,’ she said, pulling off her top and wriggling free from her shorts, leaving her in mismatched underwear. Her body was lean and muscular; she thought herself too angular to be considered beautiful, although she’d grown used to the jut of her hip bones and her small breasts, and wasn’t abashed in front of Finn. They’d seen each other’s bodies hundreds of times – she knew the broadness of his shoulders, the way his belly button protruded slightly, seen the coarse hairs spread from around his nipples across his chest.
‘Good London tan,’ she said, referencing the lily-white shade of his chest as he stripped from his T-shirt.
‘Good slacker’s tan.’
She laughed, and Finn took the opportunity to race past her, splashing through the white-water and hurdling small waves before the sea finally took his legs from under him. He tumbled forwards, flattening his body and spreading his arms so he hit the water with a slap, sending silver droplets skyward.
Mia was still laughing as she waded in to join him. The cold water was like a vice at her ankles, which reached its grip to her knees and caused a shaving nick to sting. A gull cawed overhead and she glanced up, watching it glide on the breeze. The seabed dropped away suddenly and water rose over her cotton pants and towards her stomach, which she sucked in away from the sea’s bite. She took a quick breath and then dived under.
When she surfaced her dark hair was slicked to her head like oil. She kicked her legs and swam with clear, smooth strokes.
‘Don’t go too far,’ Finn called. ‘I only do Baywatch rescues on red-pants days.’
The waves rose and fell beneath her. One took her by surprise and white-water slipped over her head like a blanket. She rubbed the water from her eyes and then took off in front crawl, feeling the tightening of her muscles as they worked to propel her forward. On every second stroke she turned her head for air, and felt the weak sun brush her face.
Eventually, when her legs began to stiffen from the exertion and the cold, she slowed and swam parallel to the shore, looking at the cliffs from a new angle. It was an impressive coastline – dramatic, weather-beaten and empty. The space was intoxicating, a physical relief after London where she had felt as if she could never quite catch her breath. Away from the city, away from the memory of who she’d become, it was the first time in months that Mia felt at ease.
*
That evening, they sat on a picnic bench clutching tin mugs filled with hot chocolate. She could hear waves breaking in the distance, a soft rumble, almost like a far-off lorry passing by. She slipped a silver hip flask from her back pocket and unscrewed the cap. ‘Whisky?’
Finn pushed his mug towards her. ‘Good job on dinner.’
Having camped often in their youth, they had mastered one-pot dishes to a level of wizardry. Tonight, Mia had offered to cook, serving noodles with thick slices of salami, simmering with peas, chunks of mushroom, a few cherry tomatoes and a shake of seasoning. ‘Always tastes better outdoors,’ she said, splashing whisky into both mugs. ‘It’s been so long since we’ve camped together.’
‘London parks don’t have quite the same appeal.’
‘True.’ She smiled. ‘But – really – are you enjoying London?’ Finn had moved there after graduation, renting a flat above a butcher’s shop. It backed onto a railway line, and water shook from the kitchen tap whenever a train passed.
‘I do. I did. It was a change after Cornwall.’
‘What, Friday nights at SJ’s didn’t do it for you?’
‘No, I love leopard print and Lycra on fifty-year-olds.’ He grinned. ‘London wasn’t for you, though?’
‘I guess not.’ She had missed the sea with a deep ache and found her dreams were filled with beaches and empty horizons.
‘Is that why you wanted to go travelling?’
She stretched the sleeves of her jumper over her hands and then wrapped them round the mug to keep warm. ‘I was ready for a change.’
‘It’s been a tough year. You deserve a break.’
Do I? she thought. It had been Katie, not her, who stayed stoically at their mother’s side throughout her illness. Mia had closed her eyes to the beakers of pills, the clumps of hair in the shower tray, the new gauntness in her mother’s cheeks – because it was easier. Anything was easier than watching her strong, capable mother wilt. She felt the hard little pebble of guilt that lived in her stomach and she reached for the hip flask, putting her lips around the cool metal mouth.
Finn slung his arm around her shoulder. ‘You okay?’
She nodded.
‘Listen, Mia.’ His voice was serious and she glanced up. ‘When your mum was ill, I know we weren’t hanging out so much – but you did know I was there for you, didn’t you?’
‘Course,’ she said, embarrassed by his earnestness. They had never broached the subject of the four strained months when a wall had reared up between them, stacked with hard bricks of resentment and cemented by Mia’s silence. She wasn’t sure she was ready to now.
Sensing that, Finn pulled his arm back and said, ‘So tell me about Mick. When did you decide you wanted to see him?’
‘I found a photo of him when I was clearing out Mum’s wardrobe.’ In the picture he was standing onstage with a band in front of a banner that read black ewe. The band looked as if they’d just finished a set, their faces red and glistening with sweat. A man with long black hair that had turned damp at the temples stood in the centre, holding a guitar loosely at its neck and staring intently at the camera. Beside him, Mick looked exuberant and fresh in a fitted suit and pointed brown shoes that turned up at the toe. He had no instrument to hold like the others, so he had shot a double-handed finger-gun at the camera and cocked his head to one side with a wink. It was a gesture that Mia would never have made, far too assured for it to look natural on her, yet she liked the picture as she saw a similarity between her and her father in the strong shape of their noses and possibly the curve of their lips, too. ‘I suppose seeing the picture made me curious.’
‘You haven’t been curious before?’
‘Not really. Well, maybe a little,’ she conceded, thinking of a comment her grandmother made years ago that had always stuck with her. Mia had been in the bath, the water turning brackish from the mud caked to her knees. She wriggled and protested at having her hair washed, her grandmother eventually snapping, ‘Such an awkward, independent thing, aren’t you?’ And then adding under her breath, ‘Just like your father.’ The illicitness of that name had lingered in the steamy room for a long moment. Long enough for the comparison to settle deep into Mia’s thoughts.
Finn tilted his mug to his lips, finishing his drink. ‘How come you haven’t talked to Katie about your visiting him?’
Mia thought for a minute. ‘Sometimes when people give you their opinions, they can end up becoming your own. I didn’t want that.’
A car pulled into the campsite, the headlights briefly illuminating them before the engine was cut. A couple got out and began staking out their tent by torchlight.
The few sentences they’d just shared were the most Mia had admitted to anyone, even herself. For now, that was enough. She reached across for Finn’s mug. ‘I’ll wash up.’ Then she hopped from the picnic bench and disappeared to the water tap.
Later, after she’d cleaned her teeth, spitting the paste into a bush, she climbed into the tent with Finn. It was pitched with the shadow of a scrub-covered hillside in the background and the salty breath of the sea to the fore. They lay with their heads on a folded beach towel, poking out of the tent so they could gaze up at the stars. They’d spent countless nights sharing a tent or lying like sardines in the single beds in each other’s rooms. Their friendship was close and easy even now, a gift that Mia would always be grateful for.
‘Shooting star,’ she said, pointing.
‘Didn’t see it.’
‘It’s hard to when you have your eyes closed. You should sleep.’
They pulled their heads inside, zipped up the tent, and lay next to one another, just as they had done a thousand nights before.
*
The ground was unforgiving beneath Finn and he moved his weight onto his side, avoiding a ridge that was digging into his shoulder blade.
Mia was already asleep. He lay listening to the faint murmur of her breath and the crickets singing in the undergrowth beyond the tent. What Finn loved about camping was that life moved at a slower pace. A simple meal took longer to prepare; a bed for the night had to be erected and then dismantled; a shower and change of clothes became a luxury rather than a daily routine. He took more time to absorb the sounds, smells and rhythm of a place, and to pay attention to what he was thinking.
Mia shifted, her hand slipping from her stomach and coming to rest on his forearm. He felt the heat from her skin against his. He could have moved his arm from beneath hers, yet he remained still. Unchecked in the darkness, he found his thoughts straying to a summer’s evening when he and Mia were 16 years old.
They were at a gig watching an American punk band called Thaw, who they’d been lobbying to see for months. Mia had worn a pair of pale jeans ripped across her thighs that she’d bought from a second-hand shop called Hobos. She’d painted silver eyeliner in sharp flicks at the edges of her eyes and brushed something on her cheekbones that made them shimmer. She looked older than the bare-faced girl he’d helped to reel in a mackerel earlier in the day, and the transformation both unsettled and appealed to him.
The band met all their expectations: the arena was pulsing with energy, the mosh pit was frenetic and with each song the crowd grew wilder. Mia was effervescent, dancing wildly with her hands thrown skyward. She turned and shouted something to a burly man with a thick neck who had been standing behind them. The man cupped his hands together and, before Finn realized what was happening, he watched Mia place her foot in the sweaty palms and be tossed into the air. Her body arched backwards, her arms outstretched at her sides like open wings, and she was caught by a sea of hands, crowd surfing over the tops of people’s heads.
The black Beastie Boys T-shirt she wore – one she and Finn shared as they could only afford one between them – rode up her waist exposing her smooth, slender stomach. The lighting crew picked out this ethereal girl with her wave of dark hair and spotlighted her journey to the front. A group of men, sweating heavily and thumping their fists in the air, whistled and catcalled at her. Every inch of Finn’s body tensed at their remarks, and he imagined beating a path through the audience and shutting them up.
The crowd continued to buck and writhe, illuminated by brilliant blue and white laser lights, and he strained to keep Mia in sight. Ducking to the side of a lanky man, he was able to spot the bouncers pulling her over the safety barrier. He didn’t know how she’d find her way back to him and four more songs were belted out before he saw her.
Squeezing through an impossibly tight gap, she stood before him, her cheeks flushed, her forehead glistening with sweat.
‘Mia!’
As the band launched into their final track, the audience surged forward, pinning her against him. Instinctively, he gripped her waist fearing she could slip beneath their feet. Thrust together he felt the heat of her midriff through her damp T-shirt. Unfazed by the crowd, which roared beneath a thick haze of smoke, Mia placed her hands around Finn’s face and kissed him briefly on the lips.
The crowd heaved backwards; Mia slipped free from his hands. She turned towards the band and carried on swaying and rocking. Finn remained rooted to the spot, while a thousand other people danced on.
There are key incidents in everyone’s history – pivotal points on which the axis of life can swivel, and a seemingly innocuous action can flip the entire direction of one’s fate. For Finn, that kiss changed everything. Mia, the girl he’d always knocked around with, became an enigma to him overnight. At school the next day, every ordinary interaction – holding a test tube while Mia added magnesium ribbon, eating ham sandwiches together on the bench beneath a sycamore tree, sharing a pair of earphones on the bus ride home – became fused with his new desire. It was as if he’d stepped out of his body and into someone else’s. He was so unnerved by this shift that he bunked off the final two days of term to give himself space to think.
When school broke up for the summer, Mia cycled to his house with her tent, sleeping bag and a bottle of vodka she’d bribed Katie into buying, and told him they were going camping in the forest that backed onto the cliffs. He could think of no excuse good enough to refuse, so he grabbed his sleeping bag and followed.
That evening, an unforecast downpour drove them into the tent before dusk. They played cards and drank vodka, and Finn stole furtive glances at Mia and wondered how he’d never before noticed that her eyes were the lush green of emeralds. Once the rain stopped, they unzipped the tent onto the dark forest steeped in a rich, earthy smell. They stood in the damp heather, the hems of their jeans turning sodden, and felt drunk and exuberant. The moon that night, a perfect silver disc, looked so spectacular that for no reason at all, Finn howled like a wolf. Mia giggled and then howled, too.
In the seventy-two hours since Mia had kissed Finn, he’d thought constantly of how it would feel to kiss her back. Properly. ‘Mia,’ he said, moving in front of her unsteadily. She looked at him, still grinning. She wore no make-up, and in the moonlight her skin looked luminous. ‘God, you’re so beautiful!’ he said suddenly. Then he reached a hand to her cheek and leant forward to kiss her.
Moments before his lips reached hers, Mia pulled back.
‘Finn!’ She laughed, thumping his chest. ‘I thought you were being serious for a second! Don’t weird me out!’
Finn had bent forward, pretending to laugh too, when actually it felt as though he’d taken a punch in the gut.
He didn’t see her for three weeks after that as he joined his family on holiday in northern France. On that trip, Finn lost his virginity to a seventeen-year-old girl named Ambré, who was working as a cleaner in the park where they stayed. She wore a pink bra and no pants beneath her uniform, and invited Finn to her caravan each afternoon on her three-o’clock break. While he was genuinely thrilled by the arrangement, it gradually exposed the depth of his feelings for Mia. He not only yearned to touch or kiss her in the way he was doing with Ambré, he also missed other things, like the sound of her laughter, or the way she’d bite the tip of her thumbnail when she was concentrating, or the determination in her voice when she’d tell him, ‘I can do this.’ He missed Mia’s friendship – and wasn’t prepared to risk that again.
When he returned home, he and Mia slipped back into their old routine, the night in the forest never mentioned again. A chorus of other girls, and later women, quietened his infatuation and he was grateful that their friendship returned to its usual tune. Yet today, when Mia had stripped to her underwear at the beach, revealing her exquisite slender body, a low note of desire had been struck and had resonated in his thoughts in the hours since.
He knew the great risk of allowing that forbidden note to sound louder, so Finn carefully eased his arm from beneath her hand and, reluctantly, rolled away.
5 (#ulink_c7bd4cb1-c86f-50fe-8eae-289f5b9281ad)
KATIE (#ulink_c7bd4cb1-c86f-50fe-8eae-289f5b9281ad)
California, March
Katie pulled down the beige plastic blind of the aeroplane window, closing out the view. She didn’t need to see that they were flying above the clouds, that the ocean was thirty thousand feet below them, or that the white wings of a Boeing 747 were the only thing keeping them from spiralling down to earth.
The first time Katie flew, she had clutched the armrests so hard that her knuckles turned white. Beside her, Mia’s eyes had been wide, her pupils dilated, with what Katie had first imagined to be fear but then, as she’d watched the smile break over her face, recognized to be awe. She couldn’t understand how Mia could be so mesmerized, when her own insides churned with panic. Katie’s fear hadn’t been passed down from an anxious adult, or grown out of horror stories from friends or television: it was something that lived inside her. She was 9 years old then. Flying should have been an adventure.
After that flight, Katie had taken two further plane journeys – and with each her fear grew into something living that would begin hissing at her weeks before takeoff. She’d discovered that the only way to silence the fear was to avoid it: when there was a university ski trip, she signed up after learning they would be travelling by coach; when their mother received a small windfall and offered to take the girls away, Katie said what she’d like to do most was a cruise; when Ed talked of visiting Barcelona, she persuaded him to go to Paris via the Channel Tunnel.
Now, as she twisted the sleeve of her cardigan, turning it tightly between her fingers and then unwinding it and starting again, it wasn’t the fear of the plane’s engine failing, or the capability of the pilot, that concerned her. What made her throat tighten and her heart clamber against her chest was the boxed-in enclosure of the plane, the small seat with its fixed armrests, the two passengers – one asleep, one reading – blocking her exit to the aisle, the seat belt pinned across her lap, the eleven-hour journey that couldn’t be paused. She would be quietly trapped here, hour after hour, with nothing to distract her, so that for the first time since the news broke, she was sitting entirely still. Her mind seized the opportunity to focus on the one word she had been trying to avoid: ‘suicide’.
Suicide was something she associated with the mentally ill, or people suffering from a dreadful, incurable illness – not able-bodied, able-minded 24-year-olds halfway through a world adventure with their best friend. There was no logic to it. But it had happened. There were witness statements, an autopsy report and a police account that said it had.
She had obsessively looked up the word ‘suicide’ on the Internet and was shocked to learn that it was the tenth leading cause of death – above murder, liver disease and Parkinson’s. She had read that one million people committed suicide each year and, staggeringly, that one in seven people would seriously consider committing suicide at some point in their lives. She discovered that drugs and alcohol misuse played a role in 70 per cent of adolescent suicides.
But what the Internet, the witnesses and the Balinese police didn’t know was her sister. Mia would never have jumped. Yes, she could be unpredictable, swinging from energetic reckless highs to crushingly troubled lows, and sometimes it did seem that she felt things so deeply it was as if her heart lay too close to her skin, but she was also fiercely brave. She was a fighter – and fighters don’t jump.
Katie believed this wholeheartedly. She had to, otherwise she was left with the agonizing knowledge that her sister had chosen to leave her.
*
San Francisco International Airport seemed the size of a town. Katie lost herself in the crowd, letting them lead her up escalators, along advert-lined corridors, and down brightly lit stairways, before eventually arriving at the baggage-claim area. She picked a spot at carousel 3, standing several paces back to allow eager travellers space to reach their belongings and disappear on new journeys.
As she waited for Mia’s backpack to pass beneath the heavy plastic teeth of the carousel, she played a game with herself, trying to match pieces of luggage to their owners. The first couple were easy; she knew that the padded black ice-hockey bag belonged to the broad teenager with a lightning bolt shaved into the back of his sandy hair, and that the pair of ladybird-print cases would be passed to twin girls in identical blue coats. It was a small surprise, however, when the gentleman in a tired panama hat reached not for the tan leather suitcase she had predicted, but a sleek silver case with the sheen of a bullet. But then, neither would she have matched the smartly dressed blonde woman in charcoal ankle boots and a fitted blazer to the tattered backpack that she reached for.
Grabbing a worn strap, Katie hauled it from the carousel using both hands. She struggled to put it on, bending her arms in awkward contortions to force them through the straps, and then jumping a little to shift it into position. She felt compressed by the weight of it, and bent forward at the waist to balance out the load.
She trudged through the arrivals gate where a crowd watched eagerly for their loved ones, their eyes moving quickly beyond her to see who followed. A heavyset man in a Giants sweater ducked beneath the barrier and ran forward, throwing thick arms around the boy with the hockey stick. Katie didn’t rush to leave the airport, excited to see San Francisco, as Mia and Finn might have; instead, she joined the crowd on the other side of the arrivals barrier, set down her backpack, perched on top of it and watched.
Time ran away as Katie sat perfectly still, hands placed together in her lap. She began to understand the rhythm of arrivals, anticipating the empty space alongside the barriers between flights, which filled in correlation to the overhead screen announcing the next set of arrivals. If a flight was delayed or there had been a hold-up, then two groups of passengers could arrive at the same time, and the barrier would be pressed taut.
There were fathers collecting daughters, girlfriends being met by boyfriends, husbands waiting for wives, grandparents beaming at grandchildren – but the reunions she searched out were always those between sisters. Sometimes it was difficult to tell which women were friends and which were siblings, but more often Katie knew instinctively. It was in the casualness of how they embraced, the way their smiles were completed when they saw each other, or how a joke quickly passed from one pair of lips to a smile on the other. It was in the same angle of their noses, a gesture they both displayed, or how they walked arm in arm, as they left together.
A woman with fox-red hair spilling over the shoulders of her kaftan placed a hand to her mouth when she saw her sister. A purple silk scarf partly concealed the sister’s bald head, but the strain of illness showed in her sallow skin and gaunt cheeks. The redhead reached out and squeezed her sister’s fingers, then lightly touched her empty hairline and then, finally letting go of whatever composure she’d privately been battling to maintain, embraced her in a long clasp, sobbing over her shoulder.
If someone had watched Katie and Mia, she wondered whether they’d have guessed they were sisters. Katie’s fair features were distinct from Mia’s strikingly dark looks, but someone paying attention might have noticed that their lips shared an equal fullness, or that their eyebrows followed the exact same arch. If they had listened closely they would catch crisply articulated word endings from years of good schooling, but might have noticed that they still mispronounced the word ‘irritable’, both placing the emphasis on the second syllable, not the first.
Vivid memories of Mia flew into her thoughts, details from their childhood she hadn’t thought of in years: lying together in the sun-warmed rock pools that smelt like cooked seaweed; doing handstands in the sea with salt water filling their noses; their first bike, cherry red, which Katie would pedal while Mia perched on the white handlebars; fighting like pirates on winter-emptied beaches with seagull feathers tucked behind their ears.
Katie had loved being an older sister, wearing the role like a badge of honour. At what point, she wondered, did our closeness begin to fade? Was it triggered by our feud when Mum was dying? Or maybe it had begun long before. Perhaps it wasn’t one incident, rather a series of smaller incidents, an unravelling, like a favourite dress that over time becomes worn: first a thinning at the neckline, then a loss of shape around the waist, and finally a loose thread opens into a tear.
‘Ma’am?’ A porter in a navy uniform, with dreadlocks tucked beneath his cap, stood beside her. ‘You’ve been here since I came on shift.’
She glanced at the time displayed on the bottom of the arrivals board. Two hours had slipped away from her.
‘Somethin’ I can help you with?’
She stood suddenly, her knees stiff from holding the same position. ‘I’m fine, thank you.’
‘You hopin’ to find someone?’
She glanced to where two young women were embracing. The taller one stepped back and took the other’s hand, raising it to her lips and kissing it.
‘Yes,’ she answered. ‘My sister.’
*
Later that day she heaved the backpack onto the bed and looked around the motel room, hands on hips. The walls, glossed beige, were decorated by two framed prints of tulips, and the windows wouldn’t open so the warm fug of other people hung in the air. She noted the television remote bolted to the Formica desk, and the Bible and phone directory stacked on the bedside table. It wasn’t the sort of room that encouraged a lengthy visit, but this was where Mia had stayed, so Katie would stay here, too.
Her first impulse was to unpack, but she was a backpacker now following Mia’s route, moving on again tomorrow, and the next night, and the night after that. As a compromise she fetched out her washbag and placed it in the windowless bathroom next to the thin bar of soap provided by the motel. Exhausted from travelling, she wanted to lie down and rest, but it was only five o’clock in the evening. If she allowed herself to sleep now, she would wake in the night, battling to keep the dark memories at bay. Deciding she would get something to eat instead, she splashed cool water over her face, reapplied her mascara and changed into a fresh top. She grabbed her handbag and Mia’s journal, and left.
The receptionist gave her directions to the Thai restaurant where, according to the journal, Mia and Finn had their first meal. Katie wound her way through San Francisco’s wharf area as the sun went down, stopping only to call Ed to let him know she’d arrived safely.
Evening fog hung like smoke over the water and she pulled her jacket tight around her shoulders, wishing she’d worn another layer. In the journal, Mia had noted that San Francisco was a ‘melting pot of artists, musicians, bankers and free spirits’, and that she had loved ‘the electric pulse of the downtown’. In another time, Katie might have agreed and found herself smitten with the quirky architecture, the winding streets, and the eclectic shop fronts – but tonight she hurried on.
She arrived at the restaurant, a lively place where circular tables were packed with people talking, laughing, eating and drinking. A waiter led her towards a window seat; a group of men looked up appreciatively as she passed, conversation only resuming when she was well beyond them.
She straightened her jacket on the chair back while the waiter removed the second place setting. Jazz played through sleek speakers in the corners of ochre walls and above the music she tuned into a wash of American accents. The smell of warm spices and fragrant rice reached her and it struck Katie how hungry she was, having not managed to eat anything on the plane. She ordered a glass of dry white wine and by the time the waiter returned with it, she had chosen Penang king prawns.
Without the prop of a menu there was nothing to occupy her attention and she felt faintly conspicuous dining alone. It would be one of many small hurdles she’d need to face each and every day of this trip and suddenly the scale of the undertaking daunted her. She locked her legs at her ankles and tucked them beneath her chair, then flattened her hands on her thighs, consciously trying to relax. She congratulated herself: she had boarded a plane for the first time in years, and was now sitting alone in a restaurant, in a country she’d never visited. I’m doing just fine. Reaching for her wine, she drained half of it, then set Mia’s journal in front of her.
On the plane she’d only read the first entry, enough to learn where Mia and Finn stayed and ate. She had promised herself that she would savour each sentence, breathing life into the entries by experiencing them in the places Mia had been. Opening the journal, she felt oddly reassured by the company of Mia’s words, as if it were her sister sitting in front of her. She smiled as she read, ‘Even Finn blushed when the waiter swapped his chopsticks for a spoon. Not even a fork – a spoon!’ She pictured the remnants of Finn’s dinner spread across the starched white tablecloth, Mia laughing the infectious giggle Katie had always loved.
She thought of the times she’d heard Finn and Mia’s explosions of laughter through her bedroom wall, great whooping sounds that would go on for minutes, each of them spurring on the other. If she went next door, she might find Finn with a pair of trousers belted at his ribs taking off one of their teachers with uncanny accuracy, or see that they’d drawn handlebar moustaches and wire spectacles on each other’s faces in black felt-tip. She wished she could step into the room and laugh with them but often she found herself frozen in the doorway, her arms folded over her chest.
It wasn’t that Katie resented their friendship – she had a tight group of friends herself who she could call on in any crisis. What she did resent, and it took her some years to pin down the essence of this, was the way Mia responded to Finn. She laughed harder and more frequently in his company; they talked for hours covering all sorts of topics, when Mia was often a silent presence at home; and he had a knack of diffusing her dark moods, which Katie seemed only able to ignite.
‘Excuse me? Is this chair free?’
Startled, she glanced up from the journal. A man in a pastel-yellow polo shirt indicated the chair opposite her.
‘Yes.’ Imagining he intended to remove the chair, she was taken aback to find him lowering himself onto it, placing a tall glass of beer at her table and stretching a hand towards her. ‘Mark.’
His fingers were short and clammy. She didn’t return her name.
‘I’m here with my squash buddies,’ he said, nodding to the table of men she’d passed on her way into the restaurant. ‘But having lost, again, I couldn’t sit through the point-by-point debrief. You don’t mind me joining you, I hope?’
She did mind. Enormously. In other circumstances, Katie would have explained that she was unavailable, softening the blow with a flattering remark, and then the man could have been on his way, dignity intact. However, with the weariness of the day leaning on her shoulders, her usual social graces eluded her entirely.
‘So,’ Mark said, taking her silence as encouragement, ‘where are you from?’
She placed her left hand, engagement ring facing towards him, on the stem of her wineglass. ‘London.’
‘Big Ben. Madame Tussauds. Covent Garden.’ He laughed. ‘I visited a couple of years back. Damn cold. Pretty, though. Very pretty.’
She picked up her wine and took a drink.
The man’s gaze moved to the journal. ‘Notebook?’
‘Journal.’
‘You’re a writer?’
‘This isn’t mine.’
He angled his head to see it more clearly. She noticed his eyes were positioned unusually close together; it made him look reptilian. ‘Whose is it?’
‘My sister’s.’
‘Getting the dirt on her, are you?’ She smelt alcohol on his breath and realized from the glassy sheen in his eyes that he was drunk. She glanced around, hoping the waiter might be nearby with her dinner.
‘So tell me …’ He made a waving motion with his hand.
‘Katie.’
‘So tell me, Katie. What are you doing with your sister’s journal?’
She flinched at this stranger’s casual reference to Mia’s journal. She wanted to snap it shut and be rid of this overconfident, drunken clown. ‘It’s private.’
‘Bet that’s what she thought when she was writing it!’ He laughed, then picked up his beer and took a gulp; she could see his inner lip squashed against the rim of the glass.
‘I’m sorry. I think you should leave.’
He looked affronted as if he’d thought the conversation had been moving along successfully. ‘Seriously?’
‘Yes. Seriously.’
His knee bashed the table as he stood, causing it to rock. Katie’s wineglass teetered, but she caught it by the stem just before it fell. She wasn’t quick enough to save the beer. Golden liquid, light with bubbles, spilt over the open journal. Horrified, she grabbed her napkin and blotted it, but the beer was already seeping into the pages, turning the smooth cream sheets dark and ridged. She watched with dismay as the precise, neat writing on the page began to blur.
‘You idiot!’
Two women at the next table turned to look.
The man raised his hands in the air. ‘Easy, lady. I just came over to be nice.’ He pushed back his chair with force. ‘Guess the game’s up,’ he said maliciously, motioning to the soiled journal.
‘Fuck you.’ The swear word felt sharp and delicious on her tongue.
The man strode back to his friends, shaking his head.
She bit down on her lip, desperate to maintain control, but tears were already threatening. Clutching the damaged journal, she scooped up her handbag and coat.
By the time the waiter had set down a dinner for one, Katie was already at the door. She had left behind her home, her job, her fiancé and her friends because of a desperate need to understand what happened to Mia. But as she burst onto the pavement, damp air closing in on her like cold breath, she wondered if she had made a terrible mistake. I’m sorry, Mia. I don’t think I can do this.
6 (#ulink_e68d39d3-065b-5ce2-a9e7-b07c418c6e9b)
MIA (#ulink_e68d39d3-065b-5ce2-a9e7-b07c418c6e9b)
Maui, October Last Year
Finn laced up his hiking boots in the dark, with a foot on the wheel arch of the hire car. He’d set his alarm for 4 a.m. and driven Mia along winding roads and hairpin bends to the highest point in Maui, atop the Haleakala¯ volcano, to watch the sunrise. At an elevation of ten thousand feet it was bitterly cold, although they had been warned that by midday it would become scorching with almost no shade for hikers to rest.
‘How much water have you got?’ Mia asked, her voice still husky from her doze in the car.
‘Enough for us both.’ He zipped up his coat, locked the car, and tightened the straps of his pack.
They struck out by the light from their head torches. He led, wanting to pick out a route with firm footing. Night hiking could be dangerous as changes in the terrain were difficult to judge, but the path proved smooth and descended steadily into the crater basin. Neither of them spoke, the only sound being the loose cinder ash crunching underfoot like snow.
It was still before dawn and the air was dry and chilled; Finn’s cheeks felt as if they’d been stretched taut. He glanced back to check that Mia was close behind and the beam of his torch illuminated her face. She’d fastened her hair into a loose knot and wore a black fleece zipped to the chin. Her expression was set and determined.
‘Okay?’
‘Okay.’
They continued on as the sky bled from black to a deep violet and silhouettes of looming volcanoes and cinder cones began to emerge. Fit and strong, Mia kept a good pace; she’d once told Finn she loved hiking for the simplicity of travelling from one point to another under an open sky. Since arriving on Maui, she had spent many hours walking the beaches alone, and Finn guessed that she used the time to think about her father. They had been on the island a week, but she hadn’t visited him and Finn hadn’t asked why. Mia would go when the time was right.
Over the years he’d become good at deciphering how Mia felt from the small clues she gave him. For instance, if they were in conversation and she looked up at him from the corners of her eyes, chewing slightly on her bottom lip, it was often an indication that she wanted to talk about something important, and he’d need to slow and soften his voice to give her space to do so. He’d become attuned to such signals after thirteen years of friendship – longer than many marriages – yet the signs he couldn’t confidently translate were what she felt for him.
He stopped. ‘Let’s watch from there,’ he said, pointing to a raised area just off the trail where they could view the sunrise. The sky had lightened to a soft indigo and he removed his head torch, threw down his pack and leant against it. Mia sat beside him, drawing her knees towards her chest. She yawned and he saw the slight arch of her back.
From her pack she pulled a thin blanket borrowed from the hostel and draped it around them both. He could smell her shampoo: peach and avocado. Heat spread through his body. He swallowed, closing his eyes. It was dangerous to be feeling like this.
‘Finn,’ she said, her lips close to his ear.
‘Yes?’
‘Thank you – for coming to Maui.’
‘It would’ve been a different story if your dad lived in Kazakhstan,’ he quipped, forcing a smile.
‘I mean it.’ She was studying him closely. Too closely. ‘I really appreciate you being here.’ She leant into him, lifted her chin, and placed a kiss on his cheek.
He was 16 again and standing in the crowded concert hall, sweat trickling down his lower back, the taste of Mia’s lips fresh on his.
He saw the truth of it now as he had back then: he was in love with Mia.
In the Hawaiian language, ‘Haleakalã’meant ‘House of the Sun’. The first light broke on the horizon, sending pink slithers into the sky and painting the underbellies of clouds silver.
‘My God!’ Mia said, sitting forward.
A brilliant red sun began to appear from behind the crater, a majestic god in all its awesome glory. As it rose, light flooded the lunar landscape, turning everything a deep earthy red. Now he could make out the towering cinder cones and crater basin, which emitted an ethereal quality that he could only compare to pictures of the moon. Within minutes, the full sun bloomed from behind the volcano like a smile, and they felt the first blush of warmth on their faces.
It was an otherworldly sight; one of many incredible things they would experience together on this trip. He looked ahead to the weeks and months to come – spending hour after hour in Mia’s company – and glimpsed a type of exquisite torture unfolding. He would be able to lie beside Mia, listening to her breath slowing into sleep, but wouldn’t be able to hold her. He would eat dinner with her as the sun went down, but would never reach across to touch her hand. He would listen to all the things that busied her mind, but would not share the one thing on his.
Travelling together for months in such intimate proximity would be impossible, deceitful even. He felt he was being driven towards making a decision with only one choice: Tell her.
*
Mia kicked off her hiking boots and then peeled away the damp socks, revealing pink and swollen feet. Dust caked her shins, stopping at the exact line at which her socks had begun. She’d caught the sun on her shoulders, nose and cheekbones, and stepped gratefully into a cool shower, feeling the water slide over her skin.
They were staying in the Pineapple Hostel on Maui’s north shore. Mia liked the rainbow colours of the dorms and the vegetable patch in the garden and, on another evening, she might have taken advantage of the hammocks, or sat in the shade of a palm tree to read. Right now, however, her mind was elsewhere because on the hike she had decided that tonight she would visit Mick.
She rolled deodorant along the hollows of her armpits and then combed her wet hair into a single smooth rope that glistened like liquorice. She pulled a fresh T-shirt from her backpack and slipped it on with a pair of shorts, then grabbed her bag.
Finn was in the communal kitchen cooking pasta and chatting with a group of windsurfers who’d just arrived at the hostel.
‘Sorry to interrupt,’ she said, placing a hand lightly on his arm. ‘I’m going to see Mick.’
‘Now?’
‘Yes.’
‘Excuse me a second,’ she heard Finn say. He followed her out of the kitchen. ‘Wait, Mia. Are you sure? I could go with you.’
‘I’d like to do this on my own.’
He nodded. ‘You know where you’re going?’
‘The hostel owner said it’s a ten-minute walk.’
‘It’s getting dark.’
‘I’ll take a taxi back.’
Finn rubbed a knuckle beneath his chin. ‘Well, I hope it goes all right.’
She left at once, so she didn’t have time to change her mind. She walked through the small town of Paia, an offbeat place dotted with health-food stores, vegetarian cafés, surf shops and beachwear boutiques. Sugar-cane fields backed onto the town, lending a sweet smell to the air, and everywhere looked lush and green, as if she’d stepped outside after a burst of heavy rain.
Two young boys emerged from the neck of a footpath with wet hair and bare feet, surfboards thrust underarm. Rather than turning right into the street that would deliver her to Mick’s house, Mia found herself taking the footpath, which led her through palm and papaya trees, to a wide stretch of beach.
The air smelt fragrant, a crush of petals infused on the humid air. She slipped off her flip-flops and padded through the warm sand, which had taken on the pinkish hue of the evening sun. Her calf muscles and the backs of her thighs ached from hiking so she found a stretch of deep sand and sank down into it.
Clean sets of waves rolled in from the ocean in neat lines, like a watery army. She watched as each wave rose gracefully to a fluid peak and then broke in a powerful cacophony of spray and froth, sending white-water roaring towards the shore.
Beyond the breaking waves a lone surfer caught her attention. He paddled hard as a great mound of swell grew beneath him, and he was suddenly propelled onto it. He rose to his feet and dropped down the glassy face of the wave. He cut two smooth and fluid turns, carving white spray with a flick of the board’s tail, and then popped over the back of the wave moments before it closed out in a boom and a crush of foam. Mia realized she had been holding her breath watching him.
From her bag she took out her journal and placed it on her knees. The four lines of her father’s address were written on a scrap of paper that she’d stuck in the centre of a double page, around which she’d begun to write brief notes and questions.
Writing was Mia’s way of organizing her thoughts; when she could see words physically taking shape on a page she would then recognize threads of feelings or emotions that she’d allow to simmer, unidentified. Talking had never come as easily. She admired the way Katie would flop onto a chair, cup her hands lightly around her face, and air whatever grievance was troubling her. Regardless of the advice Mia or their mother gave, it was obvious that it was the act of talking that helped clear Katie’s mind, in the way a brisk walk on a frosty morning clears the sinuses, and she would always leave brighter for it.
Looking at the double page now, Mia noticed that two questions stood out more prominently than the other notes, and she circled them both. The first was simply: ‘Who is Mick?’
She knew the basic facts: Mick had been 28 when he met their mother, seven years her senior. They married four months later and bought a small house in North London where Katie and Mia were born. Mick worked in the music industry and set up three independent labels during his career; the first two went bust and the third he sold before retiring to Maui. Few of these facts had been elaborated on by their mother, always reluctant to talk about a man who had so little input into her daughters’ lives. When pushed, she had described him as charismatic with a shrewd head for business, but added that he was deeply selfish and never committed to the responsibilities of fatherhood.
The second question Mia had circled was more complicated. Even as a child she had sensed how different she and Katie were. Teachers praised Katie’s positive work ethic and her popularity amongst classmates, but complained about Mia’s disruptive behaviour and the lack of care applied to her studies. Katie became the benchmark against which Mia was measured, never the other way round.
The comparisons other people made, however, were nothing against those Mia and Katie drew between themselves. Mia had sometimes wondered if their differences were more pronounced since, oddly, their birthdays fell on the same day – 11 June – but with three years between them. The year Mia turned 12 and Katie 15, Mia asked to celebrate with a beach barbeque, and Katie, who was nearing the end of senior school, wanted a party. Their mother offered a solution: they would have a party at the beach.
Katie invited a dozen school friends; the boys headed straight for the water and the girls basked in the early-evening sun. Mia left to explore the next bay along with Finn, who was the only person she’d thought to invite. They spent their time digging for lugworms or chasing each other, swinging thick ropes of seaweed above their heads. They rejoined the party only when they could smell the burgers cooking, and then took their loaded plates to the rocks where they sat together eating and throwing the occasional scraps to the cocky gulls that gathered nearby.
Mia watched Katie moving seamlessly from friend to friend, checking that they had enough food, that their drinks were full and that they were enjoying themselves. She noticed how the girls brightened as soon as Katie joined them, and the boys’ gazes would linger on her. One of the party, a diminutive girl who’d earlier been caught unawares by a wave that soaked the bottoms of her jeans, sat alone, deflated after the incident, her paper plate sagging on her knees. Noticing her, Katie slipped apart from the group she was with and sat beside the girl. She touched the damp line of the girl’s jeans, and then whispered something that made her laugh hard enough to forget the cool denim at her shins. When Katie stood and reached out her hand, the girl took it and then followed Katie as they moved to rejoin the larger crowd.
Mia was impressed. At 15, when most teenagers were awkward and temperamental, Katie had an intuitive ability to put people at their ease. From her vantage point on the rocks, she saw Katie join their mother beside the barbeque as she heaped the last of the blackened sausages onto a spare plate. As they stood close, their blonde heads leaning towards one another, their gazes levelled at the sea, it suddenly struck Mia how similar her mother and sister were. It was more than their physical likeness, it was a likeness etched into their personalities. They shared a gregarious manner and a gift for understanding people, both able to read gestures and expressions in a way that was entirely alien to Mia.
The realization of their similarities unsettled Mia, but it wasn’t until years later, when her mother’s cancer was moving into its final stages, that she understood precisely why. Mia was visiting home and had swung into the drive – three hours late according to the schedule Katie had emailed her. A headache thumped at her temples and alcohol fumes emanated from her pores.
When she let herself in, Katie was coming down the stairs holding a leather weekend bag at her side. ‘Mum’s sleeping.’
‘Right.’
Katie reached the bottom step and stopped. Up close, Mia could see her eyelids were pink and swollen. ‘You’re three hours late,’ Katie said.
Mia shrugged.
‘An apology would be nice.’
‘For what?’
Katie’s eyes widened. ‘You’ve delayed me by three hours. I had plans.’
‘I’m sure your boyfriend will understand,’ Mia said with an arched eyebrow.
‘Don’t make this about us, Mia. It’s about Mum.’ Katie lowered her voice. ‘She’s dying. I don’t want you to look back and regret anything.’
‘What, like the way I regret having you as a sister?’ It was a childish, dirty remark, which Mia didn’t feel proud of.
As Katie moved past her, she said to Mia, ‘I have no idea who you are.’
In that comment she had hit upon the very thing that had always troubled Mia: if she didn’t take after her mother the way Katie did, then it could only lead Mia in one direction – Mick. And since all she knew of him was that he had abandoned his family, the second question she had circled in her journal was: ‘Who am I?’
Glancing up, she saw that the shadows of palm trees had clawed their way across the beach. She stood, dusting the sand from the backs of her thighs, knowing it was time to answer those questions.
As she moved along the beach, her gaze was caught again by the lone surfer paddling for a wave. He rode the liquid mountain as gracefully as a dancer, arching his body and turning his hips to catch the right motion. Mia watched him, rapt, and still didn’t move off as he paddled back in to shore, letting a small ridge of white-water carry him almost to the beach. Then he slipped from his board and stood, hooking it beneath his arm as he waded in.
The man, who looked to be just a few years older than her, had a closely shaven head and a dark tattoo that stretched across the underside of his forearm. He squeezed a thumb and forefinger against the corners of his eyes, flicking away the salt water and blinking. He set his board down, removed his ankle leash, and then turned back to the ocean where a final blaze of red sky fringed the horizon. He stood with his arms loosely folded over his chest, his chin raised. The posture was stoic, resolute, yet somehow contemplative, too. Mia was intrigued by the way he watched intensely as if he were in communion with the ocean.
Minutes passed and the red sky faded to a warm orange glow, and still he did not move. Mia knew she should go but, as she stepped forwards, the man turned sharply.
He looked directly at her and his expression was one of affront, as if she had intruded on a moment intended for him alone. There was no hint of his mouth softening into a smile, or his eyebrows rising in acknowledgement. Thick lashes shadowed dark eyes and the intensity of his gaze bore into her. His eyes held her fixed and she felt heat rising in her cheeks. For a moment, she thought he was about to say something but then he dipped his head and turned back to the horizon.
She moved on, leaving the beach in his watch. She followed a narrow footpath, which eventually brought her out in front of a row of beach-front properties. Sprinkler systems kept trimmed lawns fresh and green, and large cars with tinted windows were parked on tarmac driveways. Mick’s house, number 11, was two storeys with a terracotta roof, stonewashed walls and blue shutters framing the windows. Bright tropical plants grew in curved flower beds that bordered the path to the front door, and she caught the sweet smell of frangipani in the air.
She hovered awkwardly at the edge of the driveway. Her heart was beginning to pound and she shoved her hands in her pockets to stop the trembling of her fingers. For every minute she waited, her anxiety doubled. The visit wasn’t simply an exercise in curiosity; it was far more crucial to her than that. Mia had always felt like an outsider in her family, and had taken a strange comfort in the idea that somewhere in the world was her father, a man she was just like. She had come to Maui to hold up a mirror to him, wondering if she would see herself in its reflection.
She drew in a long, steady breath, and then placed one foot in front of the other. When she reached the front door she steeled herself and pressed the bell.
7 (#ulink_be1c1024-232b-56ff-9fd2-a17becd1bf96)
KATIE (#ulink_be1c1024-232b-56ff-9fd2-a17becd1bf96)
California/Maui, April
Katie glanced up at the floodlit sign for San Francisco International. A rush of passengers with luggage trolleys weaved around her, and a busy procession of taxis, minibuses and coaches ducked in and out of drop-off bays. A car horn hooted twice. Headlights were flashed. A door slammed. Then overhead, the roar of a plane taking off filled the sky.
She slipped her phone from her pocket, dialled, and walked into the airport.
Ed answered. She could hear a tap running in the background and imagined him standing in a towel, smoothing shaving foam over his face.
‘It’s me.’ She hadn’t spoken to anyone in two days and the weakness in her voice startled her. She cleared her throat. ‘I’m at the airport.’
‘Where?’
‘San Francisco.’ She hesitated. ‘I’m flying home.’
She heard him turn off the tap. ‘What’s happened? Are you okay?’
When she had set out on this journey, she knew Ed had questioned the wisdom of her decision. It was one thing for Mia to travel to far-flung corners of the world, but Katie was cut from a different cloth and he’d doubted she’d be able to cope so soon after losing her sister. ‘I can’t do this,’ she admitted.
‘Katie—’
‘I really wanted to. I can’t bear to think that …’ She broke off as tears slipped onto her cheeks.
‘It’s okay, darling.’
She swiped at the tears with the back of her hand. It wasn’t okay. She had only been in America for twelve days. Leaving England she’d felt certain that retracing Mia’s route would bring her closer to understanding what happened, yet the further she travelled, the more distance she felt from Mia. She hadn’t danced till dawn in San Francisco’s downtown, or swum in her underwear in the Pacific; she hadn’t the energy to hike into Yosemite to look down from the tops of waterfalls, or gaze up at age-old redwoods; neither did she have the courage to stay in the colourful hostels Mia and Finn had visited, or put up a tent beneath a sky of stars. She could no more travel like her sister than she could understand her.
Instead, she had found herself drifting from hotel to hotel, ordering fast food or room service to avoid eating out, and watching films long into the night simply to put off sleeping. She spent her days driving along empty coast roads, then parking up and sitting on the bonnet of the car with a rug around her shoulders, listening to foam-crested waves smashing against rock.
Memories of Mia lined Katie’s days. Some she invited in to provide comfort, as if she wouldn’t feel the cold space of Mia’s absence if she could wrap herself in enough of them. Other memories arrived unannounced, carried on the smell of the breeze, or freed by a song playing on the radio, or emanating from a stranger’s gesture.
Ed, gently and without reproach, said, ‘It was too soon.’
He was right – had been right all along.
‘Have you bought your ticket yet?’ he asked.
‘No.’
‘I want you to put yourself on the next flight home. Don’t worry about the cost. I’ll take care of it. I just want you back here, safely.’
‘Thank you.’
‘God, I’ve missed you. Why don’t I arrange to take some time off? We can lock down in my apartment for a few days. I’ll cook for you. We’ll watch old DVDs. We can go for long walks – it’s feeling more like spring now.’
‘Is it?’ she said distractedly.
‘Your friends will be pleased. Everyone’s been worrying about you. My inbox has never been so full! Once you’re home, you will start to feel better. I promise.’
Returning to England, to his apartment, to his arms, was what she needed. She should be in a place where her friends were only a Tube stop away, where she could find a supermarket without the need of a map, where she knew the cinema and gym schedules so that every free hour could be filled. This new world that she had stepped into was too big, too remote from what she knew.
‘Ring me as soon as you’ve booked. I’ll pick you up.’ He paused. ‘Katie, I can’t wait to see you.’
‘Me too,’ she said, but even as she ended the call, an uneasy disappointment settled in her chest.
She hoisted on Mia’s backpack, familiar now with the technique of throwing it over her shoulders, and found the queue for the ticket desk. It snaked around a maze of barriers and she joined behind a family whose toddler lay asleep on top of a stack of black cases on their trolley.
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Lucy Clarke
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: Two sisters, one life-changing secret . . .‘A terrific summer read’ Richard & JudyThere are some currents in the relationship between sisters that run so dark and so deep, it’s better for the people swimming on the surface never to know what’s beneath . . .Katie’s carefully structured world is shattered by the news that her headstrong younger sister, Mia, has been found dead in Bali – and the police claim it was suicide.With only the entries of Mia’s travel journal as her guide, Katie retraces the last few months of her sister’s life, and – page by page, country by country – begins to uncover the mystery surrounding her death.What she discovers changes everything. But will her search for the truth push their sisterly bond – and Katie – to breaking point?The Sea Sisters is a compelling story of the enduring connection between sisters.