Ten-year-old Saffy was throwing a stick for Nala, laughing as the dog splashed through the waves, ears flying, to retrieve it. Saffy had on blue wellies and a yellow jacket, her red hair tied back in a braid. I remember this vividly, the image burned into my mind ever since that day. When I’d turned away from her, frustrated and run-down, I’d had no idea it would be the last time I saw her. When Dad finished his call, he looked down to see Nala sitting beside him, one of Saffy’s boots in her mouth, Saffy nowhere to be seen.
‘Ça va?’
My eyes open at the sound of her voice from behind me, her warm hand on my arm. I turn to Fleur and smile. ‘Ça va.’ She squeezes my arm, her eyes focused on the water beneath us. ‘Thank you for coming. You didn’t have to.’
She shakes her head, still staring out to sea. ‘Of course I did.’ As if it is that simple. But it is, for her at least. There is no greyness for Fleur, no hesitation. She knows what to do and she does it. A busy day is merely a checklist for her, as easy as breathing, and for the past few years she has been my steadying hand, the rock to which I have chained myself, my life raft in the middle of the ocean.
I kiss her cheek, breathing in her strawberry scent, and we watch, hand in hand, as the city comes into view. Plymouth, where we will disembark and get into the hire car, driving across the Tamar and into Cornwall, where my father lies dead.
‘Will your maman come?’ Fleur asks, brushing her damp hair back from her forehead. ‘I would like to meet her.’
I shake my head. She hasn’t set foot in Cornwall in almost twenty years. She has always blamed my father for Saffy’s disappearance, him and his mistress, now wife, and the children she bore while he was still married to my mother. Felix and Tobias, the brothers I wouldn’t recognise if I walked past them on the street. When it all became too painful for her, Mum moved us back to Scotland, where we lived with my grandparents in their house just outside Edinburgh. I went to school nearby, and watched my mum sink further and further into depression as the years went by without so much as a sighting of Saffy. My sister, who had disappeared into thin air, haunted that house. I saw her in my mother’s eyes whenever she looked at me, and I knew she saw Saffy in me too. We were so alike, with long red curls and skin as pale as milk, and I soon realised that I would never be enough, that my mum would always be looking beyond me, searching for her lost daughter.
I studied English Literature at university, escaping that house and the ghost of my sister to live in a poky flat with four other girls, a flat that was always full of noise and laughter. I welcomed it, after the years of silence with my mother and grandparents, the grief pressing in on us from every angle. I basked in it, those three years of chaos, full of parties and drinking and drama. There were arguments, one which resulted in one of the girls moving out halfway through the year, and the house was always a mess, the sink full of dirty dishes, discarded shoes lying in the hallway, coats thrown over the banister. But I loved it. I loved those girls, with their loudness and untidiness, and the way they would drop everything at the last minute to spend the day at the beach or hit the shops to spend their student loan. They were chaotic, and they were exactly what I needed.
I first visited France on a trip with the university. We spent two days in Paris, soaking up the culture, eating croissants and drinking coffee in the bright sun. Paris was even busier than Edinburgh, the bustle and the noise drawing me in like a moth to a flame. After graduation, I found a job that paid just enough and took my one suitcase on the Eurostar, moving into a shared apartment in the middle of the city. The two French women I lived with refused to speak English, but the Belgian woman, Eline, was kinder. She helped me with my pronunciation, laughing when I made mistakes, her eyes crinkling in the corners. I quickly realised I was in love with her, my sexuality suddenly becoming crystal clear, and I felt free to explore it. We split our time between our two rooms, and the French women slowly warmed to me. Paris was beautiful and wild, and I was finally discovering who I was, beyond the sister of a missing girl.
Eline went back to Belgium after a couple of years and we drifted apart, she marrying and having three children who she now posts about frequently on Instagram. I stayed in France, taking jobs at various magazines and newspapers, never staying long in one place. Until I met Fleur four years ago, and we moved into our small house in Brittany, where we keep chickens and grow our own vegetables. We work for the same online media company, the second bedroom turned into an office with two desks and bookshelves crammed with books, and we spend our weekends doing beach cleans or travelling to protests. We were in Paris last week, joining the gilets jaunes as they protested against the government’s tax reforms and general inequality among the working class. I look at her now, remembering the photo I took that day, Fleur’s lips parted in a battle cry, one arm raised as she marched towards the police barrier. She looked like a warrior princess, a force of energy that burned bright enough to blind.
Usually, Fleur is steady and pragmatic, almost immune to emotional outbursts. She analyses every situation, always making plans and sticking to them. She gets up at the same time every day – seven on a weekday, nine on weekends and bank holidays – and she eats the same wholegrain toast with Nutella and sliced banana every morning except Sunday. She washes her hair twice a week, cleans the bathroom on a Saturday, and never has chipped nail polish. But she is anything but predictable. Outside of her routine, she is spontaneous, waking me with a cup of coffee and whisking me out of the house for a hike through Monts d’Arrée or a swim with the dolphins at Port-Mer. We walk to the bakery at the end of the road and pick up fresh bread and croissants for Sunday breakfast, and she surprises me with fresh wild flowers picked from the field beyond our back garden, placing them in an old milk bottle on the kitchen table. She makes her own soaps, wrapping them in brown paper and giving them as gifts on Christmas, forever striving to do better by the environment, to care for the planet. She is inspiring and full of life, and I have never been so intoxicated.
I watch her wrestle with her long dark hair as the wind drives the ferry on towards the port, and I wonder how she will cope with seeing this other side of me, the side I have learned to control, to bury beneath the me I have been creating since I left England. I wonder if she will still look at me the same way when she learns my secrets.
3
The Daughter-in-Law
I turn the letter over in my hands, the afternoon sun glinting off the shimmering sea before me. It is beautiful here, with stunning views of an endless ocean. But it is not enough to distract me now. I recognise the writing on the envelope, the small, block capitals I could never forget. He has found me.
Lexi Hearn
Asquith & Son
Perranporth
Cornwall
I haven’t been Lexi Hearn for almost eight years now, shedding my name like an old skin and becoming Lexi Forrest. But my past isn’t so easy to shake off, and I can feel it coming for me, like a wave rising up, casting a long shadow over the sand.
‘Mummy!’ I whirl around at the sound of my son’s voice, and smile as he runs towards me, his arms outstretched. Felix comes up behind him, one hand shading his eyes from the low winter sun as I pick Leo up and bury my face into his hair. The letter is shoved into my back pocket, a corner digging in through my thin trousers as I smile at my fiancé.