Escaping Life (2 page)

She opened up
the back doors, and placed a tray of tea on the small wrought iron table.  She
would sit here silently with her morning drink, the only sound the distant mumble
of fisherman fighting away the seagulls, and the gentle roar of breaking
waves.  This was where she waited until she heard the thud of the Sunday
morning newspaper as it dropped onto the doormat.  She could have read the news
easily on-line, watched the television, or turned on the radio.  But it wasn’t
the same.  She liked the feel of the newspaper in front of her:  the rustle of crisp
paper as she turned and folded the pages, slowly becoming less uniform as she
devoured them with the print on her fingers and the smell of the ink lifting
under the heat of the early morning sun.  The breeze rose up and off the ocean
beneath them and gently skirted the cliffs and it waved at her robe, which
dropped open exposing her pale legs.  It was cool enough to make her skin
pimple, and she thought of Graham, still upstairs bundled into the quilt that
was too thick for the time of year, and how he missed the best part of the
day.  Part of her was glad though, she liked that she had it all to herself.

She heard the noise
of her front gate, followed by the thud of the newspaper as it landed on the doormat,
and she made her way along the smoothly sanded floorboards, covered only with a
locally woven rug.  Almost everything was white or wooden, and she loved the
sense of space it gave the small cottage, especially when the light of the
summer made everything just a little bit crisper.  It was a blank canvas for
nature to paint its myriad coloured sunsets and sunrises onto the bare walls.  She
had even left the walls bare of paintings and photographs.  It was so unlike
the place in the city that she had left behind.  The sharp dark edges and shiny
surfaces of the old apartment were a contrast to the rugged finish of bare wood
and natural textures.  It was exactly what she needed.  Grabbing the newspapers
from the mat, she picked up her glasses from the hallway table and made her way
back out into the garden.  She could hear Graham snoring upstairs, the gentle
groan of deep sleep.  She had at least another hour to enjoy her peace.  She
closed the French doors behind her, poured herself another cup of tea and sat
in the company of the view and the news before her. 

She had her
routine.  The first step was to read loosely through the national paper.  She
would glance at the headlines of political unrest and celebrity scandal and
wonder how far removed it seemed from her quiet life by the beach.  Her life as
a web designer working for a huge company had been busy and full of stress. 
Opening her own freelance business and working from home after they moved here was
going well, and the hustle of her old city life, and all that went with it that
she now read about in the paper, seemed like another world at times.  She still
heard about it from Graham, who travelled in every day, but she didn’t need to
live it anymore.  She would pause on any story that interested her, but
generally she quickly moved on.  Her real interest was to get to the local
paper.  She didn’t move quickly through these stories.  She wanted to know what
was happening at the church fete; she wanted to know how much had been
collected in the latest charity auction; she wanted to know what the local
groups had organised for the children’s summer activities, and who would be
running them.  The local news made her feel like she was home.  It made her
feel like she had as a child. 

As a child she
would wake up early on a Sunday morning.  Her sister, Rebecca, would still be
sleeping in the next room, but would soon get up once Elizabeth was awake and
tugging at her sheets.  In the winters, which always seemed longer then, they
would put on their wellington boots and wrap up warm as they had been shown,
with their blue duffle coats with big cream buttons.  They would wrap their scarves
tightly around their necks and put on their mittens, which still dangled from
their sleeves on elastic.  Rebecca always complained that the other kids at
school didn’t have their mittens hanging out of their sleeves like puppy’s ears
anymore.  It made her feel childish.  She had cut the elastic once, but when
she got home without one of her mittens her father’s chiding made sure she
never cut the elastic again.  In the summer, they would grab their sundresses
and sandals, dressing quickly as if it were an Olympic sport and charge out
into the nearby fields, down to the stream where probably there were already a
couple of local kids playing.  There were four years between Elizabeth and
Rebecca, but it didn’t matter.  They grew up never having to look for friends
to play with.  They always had each other. 

“
They had to be home for
midday”
,
their mother would say as she called after them as they burst out through the kitchen
door with their golden blonde hair trailing behind them like string from a
party popper.  Once, Rebecca, who was always the time keeper had forgotten to
put her watch on and they were late.  They spent the subsequent month of
Sundays on curfew, only allowed to watch from the window as summer dwindled by
without them.  Elizabeth had been so mad with Rebecca that she stopped talking
to her for the first week, until she realised it was even worse being in their
house without her big sister to play with.

As she browsed
through the pages, the newspaper was abundant with local stories:  images of
prize vegetables from the flower show; a car accident that had resulted in the loss
of a garden fence; the ongoing scandal of the local politician who had been a
member of more than one political party.  Then, after turning past twenty
pages, she reached her aim.  The Announcements.  There was nothing more that she
liked doing on a Sunday morning than to read through the announcements of
weddings, engagements, anniversaries, even the deaths.  There was nothing more
that transported her back to a time when she sat, sweaty from the heat,
surrounded by the bustle of her mother in the kitchen as she made them jam
sandwiches whilst her sister would read aloud the story of the day before
Elizabeth had learned to do so.  There would be a large plate of white bread
and strawberry jam sandwiches, sometimes cut with pastry shapes into little
people or animals.  They would eat without plates over the white and red
checked plastic table cloth, so that even though they were indoors it somehow
felt like a picnic.  In the summer there would be a plate of fresh berries from
the garden, the only day of the week when picking of the garden fruit was
allowed.  “
We have to let the fruits grow each week.  We can’t be greedy
every day”,
their mother would say when they craved the succulent juicy
treats on a weekday.  Then their mother would spread out the paper on the
table, turning straight to the Announcements page.  They listened to all of the
announcements as their mother read them out.  “
Scott-Walker”,
she would
begin:  “
Peter and Sue Scott are delighted to announce the forthcoming
marriage of their beloved son”
.  She would read out the weddings, which was
always Elizabeth’s favourite, with the pictures of the white dresses, soon smudged
with jam fingerprints as she would thumb at the images, dreaming one day of her
own wedding.  “
Be careful sticky fingers”,
her mother would berate, as
she pretended to bat away her enthusiastic little hands, both of them knowing
there was no real danger in her reprimand.

There were
always days of excitement between the two sisters in the run up to a birthday;
they knew that they would make it on to the Announcements page.  There was
excitement about which photograph would have been selected.  When had they
looked their best?  When had there been a special effort with their hair?  When
had they been allowed to wear their best dresses?  Once it had ended up being a
school picture for Rebecca, and there was huge disappointment at the Sunday
morning table.  She had cried that year, asking her mother if at no other time
in the year had she been pretty enough in a photograph for the newspaper? 
There was no going back on the notification, but the following Sunday, when
there was another announcement with another picture Rebecca had been so pleased
that she had bothered to make the fuss.  It had read, “
Dearest Becca, we
love you so much.  You are pretty every day.  Your loving Mummy, Daddy, and
little sister Betty xx”. 
That night, the sisters made a pact that every
year they would pray together before their birthdays for a school photograph to
be used, so that they could cause a fuss and secure themselves a second announcement
the following week.  Their prayers were never answered. 

Elizabeth
missed this time.  She missed them both.  Reading the local paper in this way,
albeit minus the jam sandwiches and plastic table cloth, was always the closest
she felt to her mother and sister.  She felt much closer to them sat in her
garden with the newspaper than if she visited their gravestones.
 
She
read through the birthdays and anniversaries.  As it turned out, the old couple
from only the next road, who had been daily visitors to their building site
whilst rebuilding the cottage to assess the progress, were celebrating their
forty-fifth wedding anniversary that week.

“Well done you
two!” Elizabeth said out loud, as she took another sip of her tea.  She looked
at the weddings, still attracted to the glamorous white dresses, which were
much smaller and sleeker than those she remembered as a child.  She was so
certain, at five years old, that when she married James, the boy who always
rode his bike through the stream on the hot Sunday mornings, that she would
have the biggest whitest, laciest dress she could find.  It hadn’t taken long
to become bored with the idea of marrying James and when she married Graham her
dress was a far cry from her childhood aspirations.

As she glanced
down at the list of announcements, trailing her already inky finger across the
names and boxes, she almost missed it, not bothering to read the name of the
sender.  As her brain continued to process the information, she realised she
had seen something in those words, her subconscious dragging her eyes backwards
as if on springs.  It was something that she least expected to see again.  She
read it three times before she really understood what she had seen.  She
couldn’t believe the words so honestly written in front of her.

Betty, I
never stopped missing you.  I’m so sorry that I had to go away.  I know in your
heart you will believe this is me, and I know you will read it.  It’s time to
learn the truth.  Your big sister, Becca  x

As she mouthed
the words over and over they scratched at her throat as if decorated by thorns. 
Her stomach whirled and somersaulted as if she were travelling over the highest
point of a Ferris wheel.  “
Betty, I never stopped missing you”,
she read
over and over to herself.  “
Your big sister, Becca”.  
 For the last four
years she had begged for another conversation with the sister.  She had prayed
to a God that she didn’t believe in anymore to bring her back so that she could
be with her again.  He never answered her prayers, just like he hadn’t when she
was a child, and so instead she had moved her life and her husband to this
cottage, and she had found her sister again in the beauty of her garden, the
sound of the ocean, and the tattered pages of the local weekly newspaper.  But
what she had found in this new place was not her sister.  Instead it was a
place where the good memories could live openly, with the more recent bad ones
pushed aside.  Now, here before her, were actual words, as if Becca was stood
in front of her and speaking.  But her sister couldn’t speak to her.  She
couldn’t write letters.  She couldn’t contact her in any way.  She had already been
dead for four years.

She sat for a
while.  She could no longer hear the waves lapping against the small boats
tethered to the harbour wall, or the seagulls as they fought over their stolen
fish.  Her thoughts were simple, yet frantic.  The words before her looked as
if they came from the hand of her sister.  Even the nicknames were the same.  Nobody
else ever called her Betty. 
But there was just no way…… was there
? 
Grabbing the paper, she headed through her kitchen and back into the hallway,
and taking the stairs two steps at a time, arrived at the bedroom where Graham
was still sound asleep and unaware of the ghostly intrusion.

“Graham, wake
up,” she said shaking him.  She sat down on the bed next to him, rolling him
back forcefully by the hips towards her.  His face twisted under the glare of
the sunlight, his eyes slowly adjusting to the light streaming in through the open
window.  Elizabeth was trying to look calm.  She knew she was failing.

“What is it?”
he asked, realising immediately that this was not the usual Sunday morning
wake-up call.  There was no mug of tea freshly placed at his bedside.  No calm
smile and early morning kisses, the familiar kind that are undeterred by the
smell of stale breath from the passing night.  “What’s wrong?  You look like
you’ve seen a ghost!”

Elizabeth
placed the paper neatly before him.  She knew that it would sound crazy to say
she had received a letter from Rebecca. 
Better just to show him
, she
thought.  She spread out the pages, pressing them into the soft down of the
quilt.  She pretended to search for the notice, as if she didn’t already know
exactly where it was she was looking.

“Here, look.” 
She tapped the paper frantically with her ink-stained fingers, as Graham sat
himself upright in bed, the duvet falling away revealing his naked chest.  Any
other morning Elizabeth would have reached over, pushed him back onto the
sheets and kissed him, his tight chest and sun kissed skin too much of a
temptation to ignore.  Today, she had other things on her mind.  Graham reached
for his glasses on the bedside table and after securing them in place and
rubbing his gritty half asleep eyes, he sat upright and picked up the paper.