Escaping Life (4 page)

“Oh God, what’s
happened?  Tell Aunty Nancy.”  She waited, eager to hear the turmoil brewing. 
If anyone would understand, it would be Nancy.  Nancy wasn’t one of those
people who took life to be so black and white.  Nancy didn’t try to box things
up immediately into fact or fiction, wrong or right.  She knew, as with her
paintings, that there were shades of grey, subtleties that needed extra
consideration and thought.  Nancy understood that even in the picturesque harbour
scenes that she had been selling in abundance this last stifling week, that
there were dark sombre colours mixed in with the good.  “
That’s what life
is,”
she had explained to Elizabeth on that first day browsing around the
gallery.

It was the
simplest of statements, but one that Elizabeth took to heart, immediately
realising that she may have found another being who could understand her. 
Nancy hadn’t known Elizabeth before.  She hadn’t been there when they buried
her mother or when they stood around the black and heavy stone and pretended to
have a funeral for Rebecca.  Sure, she knew that they were both dead, but she
didn’t know any of the details.  They were details that at the time were so
painful she couldn’t share them, so had covered up the truth with simple lies. 
Her lies were the ribbons and bows on the gift of death that had been delivered
painfully to her door.  As time passed, there had been no need to change the
story.  Yet now, to talk about the notice in the newspaper, the published
letter that somewhere in her heart, as much as she tried to push it deep into
storage, she couldn’t help but believe to be from her dead sister, she needed
to clear away the mistruths.  She had to reveal to Nancy the events from the
past.  She had to somehow unfold the facts that had been assimilated into more
digestible pieces back into their original form.  As she told the story, firstly,
of her mother’s death and then of the burnt-out car, she could feel her own
discomfort, but no matter how hard she looked, she found none on Nancy’s face
before her.  She spelt it all out.  She didn’t leave out the details.  Now was
not the time for a cover story.  Nancy sat and listened; her response was
simple.

“So, your
sister didn’t die.”

As she walked
back through the streets of Haven, Elizabeth couldn’t shake off Nancy’s final
words.  ‘
So, your sister didn’t die’. 
She passed the ice cream stand,
now closed as the sun passed over the cliffs and into the next village where it
would bring folk out into the gardens to enjoy the evening sun.  The words
rolled over and over in her head.  She tried to focus on the few people still on
the beach, probably those who were only staying for the day and so would light
a fire to make the most
of
it.  They
would throw on their jumpers and grill sausages to eat hot off the stick.  They
would wrap themselves up in blankets, and the mothers would worry about the
children still paddling in the ocean once it had got dark, but not seriously
enough to call them back.  These were the days that a family remembered after
the summer had passed, once the days became short and the winter announced its
arrival.  These were the days that would get stored up, forming memories ready
to be brought out on a cold and gloomier day.  These were the memories that
they would take with them to bolster them through the longer nights.  Elizabeth
and Nancy had sat and talked for hours before she had left, but it was still
her first response that she kept returning to.  ‘
So, your sister didn’t die’.
  
She repeated it over and over in her head as she had with the words from
the newspaper two days before.  Nancy didn’t look for a coincidence like Graham
had.  She looked clearly at the facts, and with the open-mindedness that made
her not only a great confidant but also a friend.  Maybe Rebecca wasn’t dead.

As she
approached the gate, she could see Graham’s BMW parked around the corner of the
house. 
He must be home early tonight
, she thought, as she closed the
latch of the white picket fence behind her.  Passing the rows of ornate trumpet
shaped purple flowers of the Hebe bushes that she had planted in rows along the
pathway, her wild thoughts of the sister still living somewhere waiting to be
found had managed somehow to become rather frivolous.  Her musings and her
discussion with Nancy had, by the time she reached her own sensible home,
managed to seem childish somehow.  Silly even.  She was certain if she told
Graham about it, that he would roll his eyes and wonder what had happened to
his sensible wife.  It wasn’t that Graham was unsupportive, and he had indeed
loved Rebecca and would rejoice at her return.  He had cried more at her
funeral than Elizabeth had.  He had become her brother in the time that they
had spent together.  But that’s also exactly why he would think it ludicrous to
continue to entertain these ideas; they were dangerous to him.  Hurtful.  He
had watched as they had interred the empty box, with its shiny brass plate
bearing the name ‘Rebecca Jackson’.  He had supported his wife for a year as
they tried to rebuild their lives in the city with two huge gaping holes, until
eventually it became impossible and they had found a new life and a new peace
in the countryside.  To entertain the thought that his wife’s dead sister was
communicating from the grave, or somehow worse still, had been missing for the
last four years, was tantamount to undoing everything they had rebuilt.  All of
the work they had done would be gone, and behind it nothing but a trail of dust.

He smiled at
her as she walked in.  He was laying the table for dinner.  He had placed a
single carnation in a vase on the table, cut carefully from the garden so not
to disturb the plant too much.  His smile was one of those open warm smiles,
starting from the eyes, spreading down his cheeks and ending somewhere she had
never yet found the words to describe.  She had met Graham one afternoon whilst
running out for a coffee, in search of ten minutes away from her claustrophobic
office cubicle.  She was twenty-two, newly graduated, and the last thing on her
mind was a man.  Sure, the occasional man was fine, but not the kind that stuck
around for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  She wasn’t looking for anything other
than her own path in life.  She had landed the job of her dreams, a junior web
designer for a huge company.  The money was OK, but the prospects were great. 
So when the tall man behind her, dressed smartly in his perfectly fitted blue
suit with a white and blue striped shirt, the open neck the only casual thing
about him, had stood behind her in the queue she couldn’t help but feel his
presence.  She had spotted him as soon as he had walked in through the door. 
Most of the cafe had.  He knew it too, but yet held himself in a way that
didn’t look overtly arrogant, like most of the other guys in here.  Yes, he was
gorgeous, but he had a kind face, intelligent looking behind his dark rimmed
glasses.  Not just another hot guy in a suit.  She became acutely aware of her
breathing as he joined the queue behind her.  She suddenly wondered if her hair
looked good.  She asked herself if she had remembered to apply lip gloss before
she came out of the office.  She looked down at her jeans and converse
trainers, laces tucked in like a teenager. 
Damn dress down Friday, s
he
had cursed to herself.

“Hi, what can I
get you?” the barista had asked her.

“A large
macchiato please,” she replied, trying not to eye up the cakes directly beneath
her.  Before the barista could confirm what she was having in the repetitive
parrot fashion that was always adopted, even though she ordered the same thing
every day, the tower of a man behind her was adding in his own order.

“Add on to that
a double espresso and two slices of the chocolate cake that she was drooling
at,” as he motioned his thumb towards Elizabeth stood next to him, slightly
speechless, and certainly embarrassed.  “I’ll be paying for these.”  She waited
for a moment, uncertain if she should be annoyed at his presumptuousness, or go
with her instinct and just be glad that this guy, this gorgeous guy, wanted to
buy her a coffee.

“Thanks,” she
giggled, having quickly made her mind up that going with this unfolding
situation could only be for the best.  He had the friendliest face.  She
couldn’t be angry at him.  Especially as it seemed that after his self-assured
start, he actually looked slightly nervous once he could no longer hide behind
the element of surprise.  They looked at each other for a moment, before he
reached for his wallet to pay.

“I’m only
hoping that you are going to agree to eat your cake on that table over there
with me.  Otherwise, I’m going to look a bit foolish, and be forced to take
mine with me.”  He was right.  If she chose to say ‘thanks very much’ and carry
on with her coffee and cake on her own, everybody who had noticed the events at
the counter and who were currently watching them would certainly find it amusing
that the smart looking man in the suit had been rebuffed by the sloppy trainer-wearing
girl.  OK, she still looked gorgeous, but this man looked like he didn’t hear the
word ‘no’ all that often. 

“OK, but only
so you don’t look stupid!”  That was the first time she had seen that smile. 
As she agreed to sit with him, his face opened up.  His face was illuminated,
and it was the kind of warmth that draws you in.  They sat together for over an
hour that day, both returning late to work.  As she sat back down at her desk, his
phone number already entered into her phone and on her hand, she vowed to leave
it at least two days before she called him. 
Don’t want to look too keen,
she
thought.  She needn’t have worried; within the next half an hour he had already
called her to say that he had booked a table that night for dinner.  She called
Rebecca to first cancel their cinema date, and to tell her all about Graham, or
‘Hot guy in a suit’ as he became know
n
for the first couple of months.  He was older than her, by about ten years.  He
was confident and strong, and little did she know at the time how valuable
those qualities would be in the future.  Looking at him now, laying plates on
the table, she loved him more than ever before.

“You’re home
early?” she said, smiling as she kissed him on the lips.

“Little bit.  I
cooked.  Stopped off at Stewart’s and picked up some fish and baked it with
some lemons.”  He opened out his hands, raising his eye brows as if looking for
approval.

“That sounds
good.  Shall I put myself on salad duty?”  He looked as if to consider her
question for a moment, before motioning to the table.

“Nope.  Sit
there,” he pointed to the chair, “and drink that.”  He had already poured her a
glass of Pinot Grigio.  It was her favourite.  “Tell me about your day.”  He
listened as she recounted her activities:  the ice cream, the lunch, the way
that the harbour had been so full of tourists.  She wondered again if she
should tell him what Nancy had said.  She didn’t want to sound crazy, but
equally she didn’t want to keep her thoughts from him.  After all, there was a
reason that Nancy had made sense to her earlier on in the day; it hadn’t
sounded so crazy then.  She could accept that there was a lot to explain, but
perhaps with a little imagination she could find the answers.  After all, it
was a message in her local paper.  How many sisters with the names ‘Betty’ and ‘Becca’
must there be?  She broached it slowly.

“I told Nancy
about the ….. letter.”  She wanted to stop calling it an ‘announcement’.  It
was more personal than that.

“What letter?” 
He paused a little.  “From the newspaper?  I thought you’d forgotten about
that.” 
Forgotten
?  How could she have forgotten?  It was all she had
thought about since.

“I can’t forget
it.  OK, I can’t explain it yet, but I can’t just forget it either.  It can’t
be a coincidence.  How can it be?”  He placed his knife and fork down,
interlocking his fingers in front of him, his chin resting on them in
contemplation.  He breathed in, choosing his words carefully.

“OK, let’s say
it’s from Becca.  Tell me why she would leave a note for you in a paper? 
Especially here.  How would she even know where we live?”  It was a fair
argument, but not one that she hadn’t considered.

“She knew that
I would read it.  We always read the announcements together.  It was our thing,
with Mum.”  He nodded in agreement as she continued to put the case forward. 
He was a sharp lawyer, and she had learnt to argue well.  “She could have been
watching us ..... following us.”  Aware that the last comment sounded
implausible, she tried to immediately qualify the statement.  “I mean like,
from afar.  She just knew where we were.”

“But yet never
knocked the door. 
Your
door. 
You. 
She never knocked Betty’s
door.”  He rubbed at his forehead with his hands, exasperated at his lack of
answers, and his own uncertainty.

“I’m not saying
I have the answers.”  She knew she had made a good point.  She knew that she
had him on side.  “But don’t tell me that you don’t think there is even the
slightest, tiniest, chance that it could be from her.  No matter how small.” 
He knew she was on the verge of tears, her bottom lip trembling as if it alone
was shivering.  Her dead sister had, for Elizabeth, been resurrected, killed
off and reborn all in the space of three days.   He knew the concept of
ignoring this, letting it all slip by on the passing tide was not an option,
even if he wanted it to be.  He remembered how she had stood at the funeral,
cold and stoic.  She hadn’t cried.  Her father had cried, and Graham had held
him up, wiping away his own tears to do so.  He looked out of the window to see
the large grey clouds creeping in across Haven bay, silently at first until steady
hollow rumbles could be heard.  The first prattle of raindrops on the warm
glass, slow at first as the whispery clouds on the outskirts of the storm front
settled above them. He thought back to that day, as he looked behind him to his
wife, stood at the black gravestone long after the others had left.  She didn’t
speak much on the day of the funeral; she kept quiet, her face unwavering.  It
was as if she was somewhere else.  Now, after reading that letter on the Sunday
morning as it so innocently filtered into their lives, he couldn’t tell her
that there was no chance that it was Rebecca.  He had thought it himself, as he
had read the words.  As the roar of thunder got louder, the early gentle rumble
shifted as the sky was ripped open by the crash of the storm arriving directly
overhead, with large raindrops battering their French doors, waking him from
thought.  He jumped up, grabbing the door handles and pulling them closed as he
tried to keep his body dry.  He could see the families on the beach as their fires
gave out the final curls of smoke, rising as the rain began to fall and they
ran for the shelter of their cars, their day cut short by the unexpected but
predictable summer storm.  As he turned back to Elizabeth he remembered her
final words before they left Rebecca’s gravestone for the last time, her vow
never to return:  she said through gritted teeth, and the same tears welling in
her eyes as he saw before him tonight: