The Sea Sisters (20 page)

As he paddled, she recalled how his body had been raised above hers last night, his fists pressed into the white sheet of her bed, the veins in his forearms standing proud. She had turned her head and licked the delicate skin at his inner elbow. At her touch his arms had bent and he lowered himself onto her, covering every inch of her body with his.

A shadow fell over her and she looked up to see Jez staring at her with one eyebrow raised quizzically. ‘All right?’

She flushed a deep crimson as if her thoughts had been transparent.

He lowered himself onto the rock she sat on, positioning himself a couple of inches behind her. She felt it put her at a disadvantage somehow, having to turn more fully to face him.

Jez’s skin was weather-beaten; grooves deeper than his years cut into his forehead, and there were sun lesions on his nose. He was wirier than Noah, but they were a similar height. Since the evening she’d met Jez, they’d only passed one another a couple of times in the hostel; she’d smile but would feel relieved when he didn’t stop. She found something disconcerting in the way his gaze followed her, as if he was always watching.

‘Santa bring you everything you wanted?’ he said.

‘He doesn’t know my address. How about you?’

‘What I want doesn’t come gift wrapped.’ He pulled a pack of tobacco from his pocket and began to roll a cigarette. There was dirt beneath his nails and his knuckles were flecked with pink scars. ‘Where are you headin’ next?’

‘New Zealand. In a fortnight. Have you been?’ Mia asked.

‘I’m as well travelled as a paper aeroplane. Noah’s the jet-setter.’ He lit his roll-up and the sweet smoke drifted towards her.

For a minute, maybe two, neither of them said anything more and they both watched the surf. Noah took off on a wave that reared well over head high, cutting back and forth in a whoosh of spray.

‘Pretty incredible, eh?’

‘Yes, he is,’ she said, keeping her eyes on the water. ‘Does he ever compete?’

Jez stared at her. ‘He was on the pro tour for five years, paid to surf the best breaks in the world.’

‘He never said…’

‘There’s a lot he never says.’

‘So he was sponsored?’

‘Yeah. Had a sweet little thing going with Quiksilver. Until he quit the tour.’

‘Why?’

‘You’d have to ask Noah that.’

She glanced at him sideways, unsure what he meant. Noah had told her that he and Jez surfed a lot together as boys, spending every second they weren’t in school chasing waves. ‘You weren’t interested in doing it professionally?’

He laughed, smoke bubbling from his mouth. ‘Let’s just say the opportunity never came my way.’

‘It must be good taking time out now to travel together.’

‘It’s good having no commitments. We can move on whenever we want. That’s what Noah’s always loved,’ he said, looking directly at her. ‘No ties.’

He let those words hang in the air, and then he stood. ‘See you, Mia.’ He dropped the butt of the roll-up in a gap between the rocks. A thin drift of smoke wafted after him.

Christmas on the beach hadn’t been all she’d imagined and she felt a surge of loneliness wash over her. She closed her eyes and wondered what Katie would be doing now. Was she sharing Christmas lunch with Ed’s family while carols played discreetly in the background? Or were they still having drinks, Katie holding a flute of champagne, her engagement ring sparkling in the light of a chandelier? She would have bought a new outfit for the occasion and Mia imagined her hair swept back, a delicate silver chain at her throat. Then, Mia pictured Ed, his hand on Katie’s, and she felt her skin grow cool. Could she really let her sister marry him?

From her bag she took out her journal and set it on her knees. She turned to a fresh page and began to write, the pen moving hesitantly at first, then gaining momentum, words filling the page like liquid flowing into a cup. The truth spilt out of her, raw and ugly, as she confided in the journal what she had been too weak to say to Katie: ‘
You can’t marry a man who’s cheated on you. Not when it was with your sister.
’

K
atie held the torn pages of the journal between trembling fingers. When she finished reading, she looked up.

Ed had anchored himself to the cherry-wood dressing table, spreading his palms flat against its polished surface. His head hung down and in the mirror above him she could see the patch at his crown where his hair was beginning to thin. He was conscious of it and used his fingers to ruffle the spot each morning when he woke, a gesture that Katie had found endearing, pleased by the vulnerable chink in his armour of confidence.

‘You slept with my sister?’

Ed turned. His face had paled and his lips looked dark in contrast. ‘I am so sorry.’ He ran a hand across his jaw. ‘It was a huge mistake.’

‘How was it?’ She was a poker player with nothing left to lose.

‘What? I …’ he floundered.

In six torn pages, Mia’s entry had excavated a buried piece of Ed’s history, one that threw into question all Katie had thought she knew. She had read that in a bar in Camden, her fiancé and her sister had had sex in a blackened corridor, knocking a painting off the wall that had cracked, sending a shard of glass splintering into Mia’s ankle.

‘It was a mistake. And you must understand that we were both terribly drunk.’

‘You didn’t tell me.’

‘No,’ he replied. ‘I didn’t. I regretted what happened so vehemently that I never told anyone. I didn’t want to hurt you, Katie.’

‘Yet you turned up at the bar where my sister worked, bought her drink after drink, and then had sex with her in a corridor.’

‘What you read,’ Ed said, ‘is her version.’

‘Then I’d better hear yours.’ She folded her arms to hide the trembling in her hands.

He took a deep breath. ‘Do you remember on Freddie’s birthday I told you I was meeting the boys straight from work? We started drinking on the Embankment and then ended up – God knows how – in a cellar bar in Camden. I had no idea it was where Mia worked; she had so many jobs I could never keep up.’ He waved his fingers through the air in his gesture for Mia: flighty, restless. ‘I only noticed her because she was wearing a dress of yours. I quite literally did a double take.’

She was careful not to let her face fall into an expression that she wasn’t ready to give away. She continued listening, saying nothing.

‘When Mia finished her shift, I invited her to have a drink with us. It must sound ludicrous now, but I specifically recall thinking,
Katie will be pleased when I tell her
. I knew it bothered you that we hadn’t hit it off.’

He was right. Ed and Mia were from different worlds and she’d felt as though her arms could never quite stretch wide enough to reach them both. Whenever Ed talked about business, Mia would catch Katie’s eye and begin an elaborate mime of nodding off, her head jerking her awake often enough to smile encouragingly at Ed. He’d caught her mid-performance once, and said, ‘Shall I make my conversation more inclusive next time by talking about barmaiding and student debt?’ Mia had flicked him the finger and sauntered out.

Ed continued. ‘By the time she joined us, the boys and I were steaming. She was determined to catch up and Freddie, as you can imagine, was encouraging her. We all drank far too much. When the bar closed, I offered to put Mia in a cab because I knew how much it worried you when she insisted on walking everywhere. I can’t say with much clarity what happened after that, but before we reached the cab we somehow ended up …’ He cleared his throat. ‘It was ridiculous, utterly without forethought or conviction. And I am deeply ashamed of myself.’

At a business seminar, Katie had once learnt about the power of the pause. She let silence fall around Ed’s explanation and watched as he shifted, uncrossing his legs, straightening, and then shoving both hands in his pockets.

‘It’s interesting,’ she began, ‘because Mia’s journal entry was a little different. In your hurry to tear it out, I imagine you didn’t have a chance to read it all, so I’ll refresh you with a few details.’

Colour rose on Ed’s neck and spread up into his lower cheeks.

‘She noted that you were flirtatious from the moment she joined you, and insisted on buying her drink after drink. When you left to put her in a taxi,’ she flicked through the loose pages to find the extract she was looking for, ‘Mia wrote,
Ed put his hand on my lower back and whispered, “You look so sexy in that dress. But what I want to know is: What are you wearing beneath it?” I shrugged and said, “Take a look.” So he did.’

She stopped reading and looked at Ed. He had clasped both hands behind his neck so his elbows angled into the room.

‘I have to say, that is a really wonderful image for me. Such a keepsake.’

‘What matters are the facts: I betrayed your trust. Being drunk is no excuse. It happened and I am going to do everything in my power to make this right.’

She looked down at her hands, which still held the limp, torn pages. She could feel her poker face beginning to slip. He was her fiancé. She loved him. He was all she had left now that Mia and her mother were gone. Tears slid down her cheeks.

‘Darling,’ Ed said, moving towards her. ‘Please, don’t cry.’

Out in the corridor she could hear footsteps and the roll of a suitcase on wheels, then a key turning in a lock: she wished she were that guest, slipping into a different room, a different life.

He sat beside her, his weight lowering her fractionally on the bed so her body tilted towards him. He was careful not to touch her, but in a low voice, said, ‘I love you more than anything. We’ve had so many wonderful times together, and I am not prepared to throw away our future over one dreadful mistake. My whole family adores you. If I screw this up I am fairly certain they will disown me. You know how much I love you – I’ve flown across the world to be with you – so I am asking you, Katie, to forgive me.’

Tears ran down her cheeks. Could she forgive him? It was such a lot to ask of anyone. He was right to say that they’d shared many wonderful times, but a relationship wasn’t a score chart of good experiences versus bad. It was about trust and honesty. But perhaps it was also about forgiveness and understanding.

‘I’ll get you some tissues,’ Ed said.

Watching him move into the en suite, she was jolted by an image of Mia lying on the black-and-white-tiled floor of their bathroom in London, like an unseated pawn on a chess board. She had been wearing a jade dress – Katie’s dress – that was twisted at her waist. When Mia had lifted her head and seen Katie standing in the doorway, she’d looked away, unable to meet her eye. That had been the night.

Ed returned with a box of tissues. ‘The night you slept with Mia,’ she said, her voice deadly calm, ‘she passed out on our bathroom floor. I found her the next morning.’

Ed didn’t move.

‘How drunk must she have been?’

‘We were both drunk.’

She glanced out of the window. She didn’t marvel at the view of the lake bathed in the late-afternoon sun or the pristine vineyards stretching beyond; she was remembering something else from that day. Katie had been making risotto in the kitchen when Mia had come in wearing her jogging gear. She remembered asking how Mia’s head was and whether she needed a plaster for the cut on her ankle. That’s when Mia had announced she was going travelling.

She turned back to Ed. ‘After screwing you, Mia booked a round-the-world ticket to get the fuck away!’

He didn’t baulk at her language; perhaps he’d grown used to this new Katie, the one who flicked from tears to anger as quick as a switch.

‘When I found out she was going travelling, I came round to see you.’ She’d left a pan of burnt onions cooling on the side and the smell had lingered in the flat for days. ‘I was upset that she was leaving me, and do you remember what you said? “A change of scenery will be good for her.” I thought you were being understanding – but the truth was, you were pleased she was going.’

‘Katie—’

She had found her stride and wouldn’t be deterred. ‘If it hadn’t been for you,’ she said, her voice growing louder, ‘she’d have never left like that. I knew there must be a reason. I even tried talking to you about it after her funeral, but you told me Mia was just
impulsive, young, bored
.’ Her anger burnt in her throat and made her jaw tight. ‘If you hadn’t screwed her, she’d never have gone travelling. Never have ended up in Bali. Never have been on that cliff top. It was your fault, Ed. Yours!’

‘Come on! I didn’t make her have sex with me. Just like I didn’t make her go travelling, and I didn’t make her throw herself from a cliff.’

Her eyes widened. ‘What did you say?’

‘I said what the police, coroner and witnesses all believe. That’s good enough for me.’

‘I’m her sister! What about what
I
believe? I knew her better than anyone!’

‘You didn’t even know she was in Bali.’

The remark smacked her like a punch.

‘Christ, don’t you see how unhealthy this obsession of yours has become? You’ve run off to the other side of the world, clinging to that journal like it’s some kind of lifeline. Mia is dead. She committed suicide. I am genuinely sorry about that, I really am, but you need to accept the facts.’