The Sea Sisters (10 page)

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.

The queue shuffled forwards and Katie moved with them. When it paused, she unzipped the side pocket of the backpack and pulled Mia’s journal free. She trailed a finger over its scuffed corners and down the bent and worn spine. The cream leaves had thickened and browned from the spilt beer and she thumbed through the wrinkled pages.

Finding the journal had been a gift so precious that Katie had wanted to treasure every word of it. She had been reading an entry a day, but now that she was leaving Mia’s path there was no reason not to read on. She turned to the page she’d left off at – Mia and Finn driving through the furnace of Death Valley – and began to read.

She learnt about the man-made beauty of the Hoover Dam and a little roadside stall that sold the best beef tacos Mia had ever tried. She read that Mia and Finn shared a warm beer as they watched a turkey vulture circle above the Grand Canyon. She discovered that they’d hiked in Joshua Tree National Park, scaling huge red boulders to secure the best views.

Mia, you seemed so happy: what changed? You were experiencing all these incredible things with Finn, yet ended up in Bali alone. Why
were you on that cliff top in the dead of night? Were you thinking about what I’d said? Did you do it, Mia? Did you jump? God, Mia, what happened to you?

Her gaze burnt into the journal as she snapped through page after page. It was like cracking open Mia’s chest, pulling back the bones and flesh, and looking straight into her heart. Everything Mia had felt or experienced was laid bare. Katie ignored the weight of the backpack pressing down on her shoulders and rushed through sentence after sentence, swallowing entries whole in her impatience to understand. Then she came across a name in the journal so astonishing that she placed a hand to her mouth to contain her gasp.

Mick.

Mia wrote that she planned to visit their father, who neither of them had seen in more than twenty years. Mick’s name was weighted so heavily with disappointment for their mother that Mia and Katie had never felt any desire to contact him. Until now. She flicked on, hoping Mia’s idea of visiting had been concocted on a whim.

But more details followed. Mia had stuck a scrap of lined paper in the centre of a double page with what must be his address written on it. Surrounding it was a splattering of words, facts, musings. She noticed that two questions had been circled in black pen: ‘
Who is Mick?
’ and ‘
Who am I?
’ The questions pricked at her thoughts and a memory burst into her mind.

Two months before Mia went travelling, she’d woken Katie at three in the morning. ‘Lost my keys,’ she had slurred, a finger to her lips. Kohl eyeliner was smudged beneath her eyes and a pair of scuffed heels dangled from her hand.

‘Oh, Mia,’ Katie sighed, helping her through the doorway. ‘Why do you do this to yourself?’

‘Because,’ she answered, staggering past her and into their lounge, ‘I am a fuck-up.’

Katie had left her for a moment and gone into the kitchen. She gripped the cool edges of the sink and closed her eyes. Several times a week she would find evidence of similar nights out – the front door slamming at an ungodly hour, her medicine box raided and the headache tablets missing, the aftermath of late-night snacks littering the kitchen worktop. The drinking and the dark moods that followed were a reaction to losing their mother, so Katie never mentioned her disrupted sleep or the mess she cleared up in the mornings.

As the older sister, making sacrifices for Mia came naturally to her. When Mia was 6 and refused to speak in the school nativity play, it was Katie who’d gone onstage, holding her sister’s clammy hand and saying the words for her. When Mia, at 17, thought she might be pregnant, it was Katie who’d raced back from university and missed her summer ball. When Mia spent her student loan on a trip to Mexico and couldn’t cover her rent, it was Katie who’d lent her the money – never minding that she was short herself. It was as if their personalities were balanced on a seesaw: Mia had claimed the wild, high ride and Katie was left on the ground. She loved her sister fiercely, but lately she’d found herself resenting her, too.

Music suddenly blasted from the lounge and Katie thought immediately of their neighbours below, a serious couple with a baby.

‘Mia—’ she began, marching into the room – and then stopped.

Mia was dancing in the space between the sofa and coffee table, her hair swaying down her back. She closed her eyes as she swirled to the music; it was a soul track from one of their mother’s old albums. Mia’s fingers stroked the air as if feeling her way through a stream of notes. She spun round, the skirt of her dress filling with air. When she opened her eyes and saw Katie, she grinned and extended her hand.

For a moment, Katie glimpsed the eight-year-old Mia, mud streaked and soaked, dancing in their garden in a summer downpour. Katie found herself being pulled forwards, drawn into the music, drawn into her sister. Her shoulders began to loosen and her hips swung beneath the silken touch of her nightdress. She smiled as Mia took her other hand, spinning her beneath a raised arm.

They made each other laugh with silly moves and outrageous gestures. Mia jumped onto the sofa using it as a podium, her bare feet sinking into the leather cushions, her fingertips stretched towards the ceiling. Katie remembered a sequence from a childhood dance routine they’d learnt in front of her bedroom mirror and executed it now with such serious precision that she could have been ten years old again. They collapsed on the sofa, laughing. Mia wrapped her arms around Katie who accepted the gesture for what it was – a rare burst of affection made accessible by alcohol.

When the track ended, the room sank back into silence. They stayed in each other’s arms, their hearts thumping from the exertion. In the darkness, Mia said, ‘You remind me so much of Mum.’

‘Do I?’ Katie said softly, cautious of chasing away the intimacy that had fallen on them like a beam of sunshine.

‘You two could have been sisters.’

A long silence stretched between them, and was broken by a question pitched by Mia. ‘Do you ever wonder why Mick left us?’

Surprised, Katie sat up. ‘He left because he was selfish.’

‘Maybe there’s more to it than that.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘He was flawed.’ Through the window, the flashing blue lights from a police car passed. ‘Why are we even talking about him? He never cared about anyone but himself.’

‘How do we know?’

‘He abandoned us. That’s how.’ Katie stood.

Mia tucked her feet to her side and Katie saw that her soles were filthy.

‘Have a glass of water before you sleep.’

As she left the room, she heard Mia say, ‘What if I’m like him?’

Katie paused, not sure if she’d heard right. When Mia didn’t speak again, she continued to bed.

At the time, she had dismissed the remark as a drunken rambling, rather than considering that Mia could have been voicing a real fear. Now, eager to find out where Mia’s journal entry about Mick led, she flipped overleaf.

Stuck on an otherwise clean page was the stub of a boarding card from a flight to Maui. Mia and Finn had gone there the day after the entry was written.

‘How may I help you?’ A woman with a buttercup-yellow scarf knotted over her blouse smiled at Katie from behind the ticket desk. Katie had reached the front of the queue.

‘I’d like to book a flight, please.’

‘Certainly. And where will you be flying to?’

Glancing down at the journal, she wondered if Mia’s decision to see Mick was somehow tied to what happened in Bali. If she flew home now, she would have no choice but to accept the authorities’ account of Mia’s death. She’d never know the truth.

She closed the journal carefully. ‘I’d like a ticket to Maui.’

*

It was dawn when Katie stepped from the plane into the sweet, humid air of Maui. Tour operators draped leis of fresh hibiscus flowers around their guests’ necks, and Katie slipped quietly through the perfumed crowd and into a taxi.

She rolled down the window and felt the warmth in the air loosening the tension in her neck and shoulders. She was dropped off at the Pineapple Hostel on the north shore of the island. The owner, who wore three silver rings in his bottom lip, told her, ‘Dorm 4 is empty. Go along the hall, up the stairs and it’s on your right. The bathroom is opposite. Enjoy.
Mahalo
.’

Katie thanked him and followed the brightly painted corridor. She passed cheaply framed photos of towering waves ridden by windsurfers, and beneath each the location was printed in white letters:
maui
. She thought how surreal it was to be here, knowing almost nothing about the island, when a different decision just hours ago would have seen her alighting back into freezing temperatures in London.

It was her first experience at a hostel and she was relieved to find the dorm clean and airy. There were four bunk beds with bright green sheets and yellow pillows, and she set her backpack against the nearest one, claiming the bottom from habit.

When Katie was 9, Mia 6, they had asked for canary-yellow bunk beds for Christmas. They didn’t need to share a room – there were two other empty ones in the house – but Katie liked the idea of having someone nearby as she fell asleep, and Mia liked having something wooden in her room she could climb. There was no argument as to who slept where: Katie wanted the bottom bunk so she could tuck a sheet into the corners of the mattress above, making it drape down like the canopy in a princess’s room, and Mia was delighted by the top so she could pretend she was on the highest deck of a ship. She stuck stars on the ceiling for the sky and dragged in the blue bath mat, which became the sea. She’d call Katie up, who was less confident negotiating the flimsy wooden ladder, and they’d sit with their legs crossed, describing the things they saw in the water.

Now, Katie took her mobile from the backpack and switched it on. It beeped immediately, with three new messages from Ed. She sat on the edge of the bunk bed, her neck craned forward, and called him.

‘Katie! Where are you? I’ve been worried about you.’

‘My flight left almost immediately. There wasn’t time—’

‘You’re at Heathrow? Already?’

‘No. Listen, Ed,’ she said, placing a hand to her forehead. ‘I had chance to think. I’ve decided to carry on with the trip.’

‘Where are you?’

‘Maui.’

‘Maui! What the hell is going on?’

‘It felt wrong giving up.’

‘You can’t just fly off to God knows where without telling anyone! It’s not safe. You’re acting like Mia.’

She knew the comparison was meant to chastise her, but privately she felt pleased by it. She pulled off her ankle boots and socks with one hand, and placed her bare feet on the wooden floor of the dorm. It felt wonderfully cool.

‘We should be making these kinds of decisions together,’ he continued. ‘You need to talk to me.’

‘I’m sorry. You’re right. I hate being apart, I really do. It’s just I’ve realized exactly how much I need to do this.’

‘A few hours ago you called to say you’re coming home. And now you’re in Maui and it’s all back on. I’m honestly not sure if you’re in the right state of mind to be doing this.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘The Katie I know is decisive and level-headed.’

‘Yes, she is. But she’s also just lost her sister and deserves a little leeway.’

‘I’m not arguing with you, Katie.’

‘So show me that you support me.’

‘I support everything you do. I’m just finding it difficult to believe that travelling alone is the best thing for you right now. I’m worried you’re chasing ghosts.’

‘And I’m worried,’ she said levelly, ‘that if I come home now, I will have let Mia down.’

There was a strained silence. She turned her engagement ring with her fingers, the diamond glittering in the light.