At Home With The Templetons (41 page)

Reluctantly, wanting to keep her distance, Gracie had sat back a little. Before long, though, she’d found herself smiling as story after story spilled from him. Calamity-filled trips on decrepit public transport. Nights spent sleeping on beaches, being woken by urinating dogs. Surfing lessons in Mexico, where two weeks later he’d ended up running the classes.

‘You can’t surf, can you?’ Eleanor asked. ‘You can barely swim.’ ‘Neither could the students. That’s why we got on so well.’ As Eleanor laughed, a jealous feeling flashed through Gracie. Her mother had been so low lately, after more fights with Henry over outstanding bills via their lawyers. Gracie knew she hadn’t been any fun to have around either. Yet here was Spencer, waltzing in, throwing his charm around, clearly telling lie after lie, not only managing to make their mother smile again, but to laugh - laugh so much in fact she was actually crying.

‘It’s as well I don’t know half of what you get up to, Spencer,’ Eleanor said, wiping the tears from her eyes. ‘I’d never sleep at night.’

‘I actually decided it was time you knew exactly what I got up to while I was away,’ he grinned. ‘So I’ve brought back documentary proof.’

He rummaged in the battered backpack on the floor beside him, finally taking out a large envelope which he passed to his mother. As Gracie saw her mother’s eyes grow wide as she read whatever was inside it, she couldn’t resist going across too. It was a newspaper article, with a large headline: SHARK BOY! Underneath was a photo of Spencer grinning into the camera, giving a thumbs up and holding up his shirt to show a large white bandage on the left side of his chest. A large, dead shark lay on the sand beside him. It was a short article.

Lucky to be alive: Pictured on Saturday, Spencer Templeton, 19, originally from the UK, beside the shark that nearly took his life. ‘If I’d known it was as big as this, I’d have swum twice as fast,’ the lucky youngster said. Templeton, in the middle of a backpacking trip through the region, was attacked by the shark on Thursday while surfing with friends. He says he still doesn’t know how he managed to fight the shark off, attributing it to a combination of ‘blind fear and adrenaline - and a strong desire not to end up as shark food’. ‘It’s fake, isn’t it?’ Gracie said. ‘One of those dummy newspapers.’

Spencer lifted his shirt. There was a long scar down the left side of his chest.

‘Spencer!’ Eleanor gasped. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘One mercy mission in a lifetime is enough, don’t you think?’ ‘What on earth happened?’

He shrugged. ‘Just as it said in the paper. I was surfing with some mates and my board suddenly tilted up. I thought it was one of them messing around, then it happened again. Next thing

I knew I felt this God-almighty pain in my chest and I don’t know what happened next, whether it was instinct or blind fear, but I used the board and pushed it away and then it came at me again. I pushed again, and then a wave took me, just swept me up and away from it. I landed on the beach, blood everywhere, people screaming, me screaming. Everyone saw it happen.’

Eleanor’s hand was at her mouth. ‘You swam away from a shark?’

He nodded proudly.

‘You’re like a cat with nine lives, Spencer,’ Gracie said. ‘Cheers, Gracie.’ He laughed then. Sniggered, she’d thought afterwards. Like a schoolboy in a comic. ‘Except it’s not true, of course.’

‘The photo’s a fake?’ Eleanor asked.

‘Oh, no, that’s real. And there was a shark. It’s the story that’s made up. It was a local English-language .paper. No one reads it but a few tourists. They needed a story to go with the pic, so my mate and I hatched it up between us.’

‘But what about your scar?’ Gracie asked.

A grin. ‘Dad’s number-one rule. Base a lie on the truth. I’d ripped my chest open a couple of days before when I was trying to surf. Some bastard ship-owner had thrown a box out. I fell off my board onto it, bled like mad. It looked like a shark bite, it bled like a shark bite, so the next day when someone caught an actual shark …’ He shrugged. ‘The paper took loads of photos of people beside the shark. How was I to know they’d use mine?’

‘Let me see the scar again, Spencer,’ Eleanor said, worried now. She frowned as he lifted his shirt. ‘I want you to go and see the doctor here, in case it’s infected.’

‘Too late for that. It’s long-healed,’ he said, kissing his mother. ‘Eleanor, stop worrying that pretty little head of yours. I’m fine. It’s the poor shark you should feel sorry for.’

Later, Gracie was in the kitchen washing up when he came in, whistling.

‘So, what have you been up to here, Gracie, while I’ve

been channelling Jules Verne or whoever it is that did battles with scary creatures of the deep?’

‘Scary creatures? Boxes, you mean?’ ‘It could have been a shark.’

‘It wasn’t a shark.’ ‘It might have been.’ ‘It wasn’t, Spencer. It wasn’t a shark.’

‘Jesus, Gracie, calm down. What’s your problem?’

You, Spencer, she thought. You’re my problem. ‘Nothing,’ she said aloud. Then she changed her mind. She turned, crossed her arms, leaned against the sink, trying to choose her words carefully. ‘Do you know what annoys me the most?’

‘About me?’ He grinned. ‘I can’t possibly imagine but I really can’t wait to hear.’

‘Everything is so easy for you, isn’t it? Nothing bad ever happens to you. You never worry about anything. You lose your job - too bad, Hope bails you out again - off you go travelling, doing what you like, conning people ‘

‘Conning who?’

‘That newspaper, for starters.’

‘It was a crappy tourist rag, Gracie, for God’s sake. Chill out, would you?’

‘Like you? Like you do constantly? One day, Spencer, you’ll have to face up to real life. Stop living life as if it is one big joke, as if everyone and everything is here just for your amusement, while the rest of us try our best, try to get over things, get work …’ She was starting to cry. Damn it. She was starting to cry.

He didn’t go across to her. He stayed where he was, his arms crossed now too. ‘This is about Italy still, isn’t it? Not about me.’ He sighed. ‘Gracie, you have to move on. It was an accident, a lapse of judgement on your part. You got distracted ‘

‘By you pulling my plait, Spencer. By you! Don’t you feel any guilt at all?’

‘Look, I’m as sorry about Tom as you are. But it could have been worse.’

‘Worse? How could it have been worse than it was?’ Spencer shrugged. ‘Tom could have died, I guess. Or you could have lost your licence.’

Her tears disappeared. Anger returned. ‘Tom nearly did die, Spencer. And who cares about my stupid licence?’

‘So what’s the problem?’

It was all she could do not to scream at her brother, shout at him, throw something at him, make him admit he was as much to blame as she was. Only the thought of upsetting her mother in the next room stopped her. She kept her voice calm with great difficulty. ‘Everything is the problem, Spencer. Have you blocked it all out? Don’t you ever even think about Tom?’

‘See what I mean? That’s what this is all about, isn’t it? You and Tom. It’s nothing to do with me.’

‘Tom can’t walk any more, Spencer. Because of what we did to him, you and me, both of us. Don’t you feel even the slightest bit guilty about it? Feel any responsibility at all?’

He shifted position then, the first sign of awkwardness she’d seen from him. ‘Of course I wish it hadn’t happened. And I feel sorry for Tom, sure. But it was an accident, Gracie. Accidents happen. Don’t turn your guilt on to me, just because Tom and Nina wanted nothing to do with you, with any of us, after it happened.’

In the train seat now, Gracie realised her breathing had quickened again, her fists were clenched, at the memory alone. Six years after that conversation, eight years after the accident itself, and it was as if she’d made no progress at all. Spencer had completely moved on, living in Ireland with his latest girlfriend, running his own business - under completely false pretences but so far he’d got away with that too, hadn’t he? Her two sisters had made something of their lives as well. Charlotte was a high-flying businesswoman in Chicago. Audrey was not only deliriously happy in New Zealand with Greg, but even had a successful performing career these days. Gracie was the only one who hadn’t found her way.

She’d tried, again and again. She’d done everything she could think of in the years since the accident to make up for it in some kind of karmic way. She’d volunteered for charities. Applied for jobs that meant something to people, that weren’t only about earning money. It didn’t seem to matter. The jobs didn’t last. Her fault each time. She didn’t seem to have a proper attention span any more. The longest she’d stayed in any of them was six months. If it hadn’t been for her waitressing skills, she’d have been in serious trouble financially. She tried going back to study - not university, at a local college - but dropped out after the first semester. She tried travelling again, with two classmates from college. She spent the whole time wishing she was with Tom, wishing she was somewhere else, and she knew the two girls wished she was as well.

She’d tried dating again, hoping that might help. The first man had been a waiter in the restaurant she worked in. He’d been very keen, inviting her out time and again until she’d said yes. They’d gone to see films together, bands, comedy, and at first she’d thought that perhaps it might work between them. Until she realised two things in the same night, six weeks after they started seeing each other: he never asked her any questions and she hated the way it felt when he kissed her. Six months later, she tried again with a different man, a fellow volunteer at a community festival she was working on. That lasted two months, progressing from casual dating to being lovers, until the night he accused her of being constantly distracted, even when they were in bed together. ‘There’s someone else, isn’t there?’ he’d said. He was right.

Tom. She now knew with certainty it had been something special with him. Regardless of their age, regardless of the length of their relationship. Would it have been different if they’d been together longer, if imperfection and impatience had crept in? If she had unhappy memories to dwell on? If he hadn’t stayed frozen in her mind, in her heart? If she knew something, anything, about the man he had become?

She still missed him, every single day. She missed him so much it hurt, long after any pain from the accident had gone, long after she’d given up hope that the postman would bring a letter, even a postcard, from him. She knew he

blamed her for what had happened. Nina blamed her. They had every right. It was her fault. Nothing could change that. Nothing could ever get it completely out of her mind. No music, no magazine, no view from a train window. She lived with it always.

It was after six by the time she got back to the small flat she rented on the top floor of a terrace house in Kensal Green. She didn’t make herself dinner, change out of her interview clothes or ring her mother to let her know how she’d got on. She needed to do something else first. She’d made a decision on the train. If she couldn’t get rid of her memories, she

could get rid of other physical reminders.

She went to her wardrobe and reached up to the highest shelf. The box was nestled behind her winter jumpers. She lifted it down, opened the lid and moved aside the bundle of theatre tickets, newspaper clippings and postcards from her father that had served as a kind of weight on it for years, keeping it pushed down and out of sight. It was still in its envelope with the Australian stamp and Melbourne Mail Centre postmark.

She didn’t need to read it one last time. She knew every curve of Nina’s handwriting, every word of those two stark sentences off by heart. She took the letter out of the envelope and crumpled it into a ball. Placing it on a saucer on her windowsill, she struck a match and held it against the paper, watching the flame slowly lick across the letter, blazing for a second before turning to ash. Then she opened her window wide and watched the wind take the fragments and blow them out across the garden. Her only other reminder of him was in her bag. The antique whistle. She traced the lettering again now. For Gracie with love from Tom. She always carried it with her. In the days after the accident, back in London, she’d even slept with it clutched in her hand. It had gone from being a good luck charm to a talisman to something more. She’d held it as she made her way to the first day of every new job, called on it for luck every time she sent off an application, held it in her hand whenever the sadness threatened to overwhelm her again. She’d needed it as recently as that morning, before her interview.

It hadn’t brought her luck today, though, had it? Perhaps that was the sign she’d been waiting for. The proof it wasn’t good for her to have kept it for this long. But what could she do with it? Put it into one of the bins outside on the street? If she did, this time tomorrow it would be collected, gone from her life. She held it in one hand, then the other, tracing the engraving one last time.

She couldn’t do it. It was all she had. She put it back in her bag, pushing it right down to the bottom, out of sight.

Sligo, Ireland

Spencer, wake up.’ ‘I am awake.’ ‘Wake up, get dressed and get in the van, I mean. You’re late.’ ‘I’m not late. I’m hungover and I need more sleep.’

‘Spencer, come on. Donal just rang. He hasn’t got the key, the morning class is there and that guy from the newspaper is due in half an hour.’

‘Tell Donal the key’s on the key ring. You talk to the newspaper guy. You’re much nicer than I am.’

‘He doesn’t want to talk to me. He wants to talk to you. Came on, Shark Boy. It took weeks to set this up. Don’t blow it on me now.’

Spencer sat up, pushed his curls off his face and stretched noisily. The white scar on the left side of his chest stood out against his brown skin. He patted the bed beside him, leering in cartoon fashion at the pretty, darkhaired woman glaring at him. ‘Come back here first, my little Ciara. I’m awake. I’m in bed. We may as well make use of it.’

Ciara threw the pillow at him. ‘Spencer, get up and get ready. I’m leaving in ten minutes. You come with me or you can walk.’