She pushed and shook and cowered in silence and then heard Laurie’s faraway voice say, ‘Now scream.’
Her daughter’s voice reoriented her. The ocean plate swung to become horizontal. Her stomach lagged behind, coffee swilling in its emptiness.
Now scream.
Nina opened her mouth, wondering if she would do it. The air was thick with salt and the wind spiked directly into her throat and her lungs.
The ocean sighed its disappointment.
‘I don’t want to scream,’ she said.
‘Everybody needs to let rip sometimes. You’re on your own now.’
Nina hesitated. ‘What did you say?’
‘Pretend I’m not here. It’s only you and the big wide sea. Scream and let it all out, Mum.’
Nina opened her mouth wide again, but then gagged. Abruptly, hot tears stung her eyes. She stared out at the void and thought of the note from Rob she had discovered on the kitchen table upon returning from work: I’m sorry, but I’ve gone for good. She thought of her frantic looting of the house while Laurie was staying at a friend’s house overnight: Rob’s passport gone, and maybe a few items of clothing and a couple of books, but pretty much everything else left behind. Her careful repositioning of every disturbed item the next morning in preparation for Laurie’s return. Her glassy denials to her daughter, and at work, and to her friends, that anything was wrong.
If she could only channel it all. A single scream. It would solve nothing, but it might establish an outlet. A statement of intent that she was ready to start afresh.
No sound came from her mouth. She grabbed her knees and rocked, bumping her shoulders on the hard cave walls.
Minutes passed without any sound other than the waves, a hum made somehow threatening in its journey into the cubbyhole, a roar in all but volume. She rubbed her forearm across her face, more and more rapidly as if she might prevent the tears with heat.
She struggled forwards and made a crouched one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn in the opening of the little cave. After she had made her way along the outcrop and onto the relative safety of the boulder platform, she found that she couldn’t meet her daughter’s eye.
CHAPTER THREE
Nina frowned when she saw the boy. He stood at the crest of the hill as they trudged along the worn track at the cliff edge. With the sun behind him he looked like a Giacometti statue, the light turning his limbs into barely-there spindles.
He was watching them, like the girl on the road last night. Nina felt a surge of coldness and glanced instinctively at the sea to her left and far below, as if the water level might suddenly have risen and begun to creep along her skin from the feet up.
She shielded her eyes and looked again at the crest of the hill, but the boy was already gone.
Laurie hadn’t noticed, staring at her feet as she walked ahead of Nina. Her fluid movements as she navigated the rocks and clumps of grass revealed her nascent maturity. The malleable, formative years of Laurie’s childhood were over. Somehow Nina had missed them.
She forced herself to look at her surroundings instead.
Hope Island was beautiful. No aspect of the environment was motionless; even the cliffside rocks were alive with shifting shadows. Herring gulls wheeled in the sky, graceful stringless kites whipping in the irregular gusts. The wind from inland pointed the meadow grass towards the water, green waves hurrying to meet blue. The ocean embraced the island, insulating it from the real, hostile world.
This was a place in which she, too, ought to feel safe. It would allow her to reach out to her daughter in a manner made impossible by their respective lives at home.
She took a deep breath and relished the clear, cold air in her lungs.
There was no sense in waiting.
‘There’s something I need to talk to you about,’ she called out.
Laurie stopped and turned. Her eyes shone glassily. People had always commented that they were Rob’s eyes, not Nina’s.
Once again, Laurie interrupted her. ‘What’s your problem with Gran?’
Nina blinked. ‘What? I don’t—’
‘She’s only trying to make you feel welcome.’
Nina shook her head, in order to clear it rather than as a refutation. ‘I don’t have any problem with Tammy. And Abram’s a sweetheart.’
‘You don’t even want to be here.’
They stopped walking. Nina reached for Laurie’s hands, but they slipped away.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I know I’ve been on edge. I’ll calm down. It’s work.’
‘It’s always work, Mum. What’s the point of a holiday – I mean sabbatical – if you’re still at work, really, in your head?’
Nina had no idea how to demonstrate her innocence. In truth, work had only been on her mind in fits and starts. Tammy and Abram’s house had no Wi-Fi; she had spied a desktop computer on the upstairs landing, but stifled the impulse to ask to use it. Before they had entered the woodland, she had finally found a patch of 3G reception, but after a couple of forced refreshes her inbox had insisted that it had Updated just now, with not even a spam email to show for it. Anyway, she had left minutely detailed instructions about ongoing projects and everyday routines for her team and Hannah, the acting producer, at the North West Tonight studio. They’d be fine without her.
‘It takes a lot out of me, that’s all,’ Nina said. ‘Don’t be cross about it.’
‘I’m not cross.’
‘No. Okay.’
This must be about the primal scream. Nina had been given a chance to participate in Laurie’s private ceremony, and had turned her down.
‘Today is today,’ Nina said. ‘I’m grateful to be here with you. And I know it’s strange that I’ve never visited Hope Island before, and that I really don’t know your grandparents all that well. I know it’s weird and I suppose I don’t really have any good answer for why. But I’m here now, and I’m happy about it.’ She smiled to prove it.
‘You’re lying,’ Laurie said.
Nina shivered even though the breeze had died down. ‘What do you mean?’
Laurie watched her, breathing deeply. Her concentration and intensity were unlike a child’s. ‘I can’t be doing with lies, Mum.’
This was the time for the truth.
But suddenly Laurie was shouting at her. ‘You’re not happy to be here! I don’t understand what you’re doing here!’ All her earlier poise had disappeared and her eyes glittered silver. ‘You want to ditch me and go travelling – well, fine, do that, then. It would be better if you didn’t pretend. You’re just bringing everyone down, don’t you see that?’
Laurie’s face tilted up towards the sky and its skidding clouds. Nina wondered whether she might scream again. But then Laurie scraped her blond hair behind her ears and gazed at Nina. That round, open face. Nina experienced twin impulses, both equally alien and wrong: firstly, to embrace Laurie and prevent anybody else from influencing her; secondly, to shove her and watch her plummet into the ocean.
Nina wondered what Laurie’s equivalent impulses might be.
Even though Nina hadn’t moved an inch, Laurie whispered, ‘Don’t come near me.’
Nina held up both hands in surrender.