Escaping Life (6 page)

After too much
fish and with sticky fingers, they took a slow walk back up the hill to the
cottage.  They sat outside in the late summer sun, the orange glow softening the
view around them, their shirt buttons and tight city clothing loosened as they
settled into the slower pace of life.  The walls of the cottage came alive at this
time of day, bathed in the sweet colour of Merlin oranges, dimpled with
imperfections as it shone in through the distorted glass.  After a few glasses
of wine and the comfort of familiar company, Elizabeth couldn’t help but want
to discuss the arrival of the mysterious letter. 

"Something
weird happened this week," said Elizabeth, encouraged in confidence by the
alcohol that made her eyes feel somehow like they moved asynchronously to her
head.  Graham immediately knew to what strange occurrence she was referring.

"Sure you
want to talk about this, now?"  He stepped in quickly, half question, half
request.  He was worried about this subject; he thought they had forgotten it
for the weekend.  That had been his intention.

"What?"
 Helen was already intrigued, and she leaned in closely to hear the tale, fascinated
by the strange and quaint goings on of village life.  Elizabeth couldn’t quite
focus on her.  She looked like she had three eyes.  "What happened?" 

As she told the
story of the mysterious letter appearing suddenly before her almost a week ago,
she had lost any of the nervousness that she had felt before when she wanted to
raise the subject with Graham or her father.  David and Helen sat there for a
moment, contemplating the cards as Elizabeth laid them out on the table.  David
was the first to speak.  He looked firmly at Graham.

"You're
kidding, right?" David didn't know if he should be taking this seriously. 
He turned to Elizabeth, smiling a little, like he was about to reveal a
secret.  "You don't believe it’s really from your sister, do you?"  As
he went through all of the reasons of implausibility, he explained how so many
people knew about what had happened.  With all the cynicism that can only be
built up after a lifetime of city experiences, he proposed a concept that
Elizabeth herself had tried so hard not to imagine could be true.

“Don’t you
think there could be somebody out there who just wants to mess with you?”   He
had told her rather insensitively that after the funerals, many people he knew
in the city had been talking about the deaths, as if she was now something of
an unwilling celebrity.  

“Everybody
knows about it Lizzy,” he continued.  She hated how he called her Lizzy.  All
of their friends were older than she was, and she found it patronising.  She
never said anything.  “You might not want to be, but you’re kind of famous.”

“David!” Helen
interrupted, embarrassed at her husband’s crass and insensitive take on the
situation.

“What?” he pleaded
with his wife, the same outstretched openness that he had greeted Elizabeth
with earlier on that day.  “Lizzy look, I love you.  I do.  But I won’t dress
it up like he will,” he said pointing at Graham.  “Don’t tell me you believe
this, Graham?”  He looked to Graham, trying to find sense in a conversation
that he felt was in urgent need of a hefty dose of it. 

“Elizabeth has
a point, David,” he offered reluctantly, but with enough certainty to support
his wife.  David sat back in his chair, his head outstretched behind him in
exasperated acceptance of where his best friend’s point was going.  “We never
buried Rebecca.”  David had been the lawyer who handled the insurance case.  He
had worked for hours, building a case to fight for the life insurance.  He knew
every detail of the crash.  He never asked for a penny.

“Lizzy, I know
you would love to believe she’s still out there, but I don’t see any way she
could have survived that crash.”  He paused, unsure if he should share his
final thought.  He sat forward in his chair, placing his wine down firmly on
the table.  He said, in the softest words yet, “there was nothing left of that
car.”

Elizabeth lay
in bed that night, listening to the usually gentle crash of the waves against
the shore, a little louder this evening, still delivering debris from the earlier
storm.  She couldn’t sleep.  Her head was full of thoughts of Rebecca, but
these thoughts were not good thoughts.  Not the easy memories of past
Christmases and birthdays and of Sunday mornings out in the stream.  Not of
quiet nights, long past the time they should have been asleep when they would
sit up talking, their room gently lit by nightlights, underneath the bed sheets
when Rebecca would tell her stories of her own life, far more exciting and
dangerous than that of her four year old self.  Tonight she was consumed by
thoughts of her driving the old Ford Fiesta, not well maintained or at all sturdy. 
She thought about the rain that had fallen in the hours before the crash which,
out in the country it seemed, had been heavy.  She thought of the road, winding
and dark, the barriers broken and flimsy from a previous accident where the car
had only just managed to stay on the road.  She thought of police tape and
orange patrol jackets.  She thought of the car, visible as the blue lights
flashed all around her and so burnt out that nothing remained.  There were no
tyre marks on the road.  Rebecca hadn’t tried to stop.

“Can’t sleep?” 
She hadn’t even realised that Graham too was still awake.  She turned her head
to face him, her body following so that she could get closer, no matter how
sticky the heat of the night air was.  There was no breeze.

“No.  I just
keep thinking about what David said.  He knew the case so well.”  He nodded in
agreement.  David had brought a sense of rationality to the table that had been
absent, kept out by their own emotions.  “She never tried to stop, did she?” 
It was barely a question.  David had argued the case solidly, and won.  The
insurance agency had paid out the money.  He was a damn good lawyer and he
built a good case, and he had made it seem possible that it was just an
accident; that she had never intended to kill herself.

“Maybe we have
to accept that she just couldn’t cope with your mum’s death,” he said, as
Elizabeth nodded in agreement, “and the way she died.”

They both knew
what he meant.  When her mother had been found lying on the kitchen floor, her
body limp, her neck bruised and eyes red and swollen from the grip of her
murderer, it was obvious that she had been strangled.  It was Rebecca who had
found her body.  She had sat there for hours in that same room, watching her
mother’s lifeless body until the neighbours had called by, coincidentally
opening the back door automatically as they always did, the sight before them
turning their stomachs over like a rollercoaster.  Rebecca had barely spoken
for three days afterwards, shutting herself in her home, and opening the door only
for Elizabeth.  On the fourth it had rained heavily, and as Elizabeth listened
as Graham told her to get dressed - that there had been an accident, she already
knew that somehow it would be Rebecca and that she would never see her again.

“I have to
accept she killed herself,” Elizabeth said quietly.  “She didn’t want to be
here anymore.”  As she pulled her body into Graham’s arms, she closed her eyes
to sleep.  She pushed herself to box up the thoughts of her sister, even the
good ones. 
I’ll think of you again.  Don’t worry,
she said to herself as
she reassured herself more than the ghost of her sister. 
But not tonight. 
She
closed her eyes tighter, willing sleep to take over.  She would wake up
tomorrow and eat breakfast outside with her friends.  She would walk by the
water’s edge and just enjoy the beauty, rather than wonder if Rebecca was still
out there somewhere.  She would enjoy the tranquillity that they had built
through hard work in Haven, and not let the events of the past creep in.  She
hoped that David and Helen would stay tomorrow.  She would cook dinner, and
they would eat together outside if the weather held out.  Their guests would
squeeze out the last moments of their getaway weekend, and their sobering
presence would be the glue of normality. 

“Goodnight
Rebecca
,”
she whispered as her prayer for a peaceful sleep was answered,
shuttering out the disturbance of the passing week and ushering in the peace of
the dark night sky.

Waking, she was
surprised to hear the sound of the children out playing so early.  There would
be no high tide yet; the water would still be sleeping far out to sea.  The
sand would still be soft, and children who ran out too far had often been heard
screaming as their feet got stuck, sucked in by the soft pliable sand, yet never
really in any great danger.

She must have
slept later than normal, it was perfectly light outside.  The night had
certainly passed by, as she turned to glance at her old twin bell alarm clock
that for the past twenty years had been ringing to wake her from sleep, never
once running down and failing her. 

“Graham!” she
shrieked, “it’s nine thirty!”  She couldn’t believe it.  She had missed her
quiet morning time alone out in the garden.  The paper would already be out on
the front steps
,
too big for the letterbox on a Sunday
.

“So?” he
mumbled, face still muzzled by her feather pillows. 

“I never sleep
until nine thirty!”  She swung her feet round, standing to peer out of the
window.  She couldn’t see down to the bay from here, but she could see that the
crowds had already started to gather in the village.  Mrs. Lyons had already
opened her ice cream shop, and there were plenty of cars lining the village car
park.  Elizabeth arched her neck to get a better view, and she noticed Mr.
Lyons directing a steady stream of inbound traffic, desperately trying to fit
another car in.  They would be spilling out soon, bothering the locals and
spoiling the view from the road.  Grabbing her robe, she headed downstairs in
search of coffee.  Passing her little window, the tide had indeed already crept
back up onto the beach, assuming its position for the next few hours.  Her head
was sore this morning, and it throbbed with each step she took. 
How much
wine did I drink last night?
She passed the front door, determined not to
be caught by the thoughts of the newspaper lying outside waiting for an
audience.  She walked straight through and into the kitchen, opened up the French
doors and the smell of the sea air breezed past her. 
That won’t clear my
head this morning.
  As she brewed the pot of fresh coffee, she knew that she
was the only one awake.  David and Helen were still sleeping deeply upstairs,
enjoying their weekend of holiday.  She had heard them still talking as she
went to bed last night.  She couldn’t hear what they were saying, but she
imagined that it was about their crazy young friend who still, after four years,
couldn’t accept that her sister had killed herself.  ‘
What a shame’,
she
thought of them saying, ‘w
hat a cruel joke somebody is playing’.

She cleared up
the glasses and bottles from the night before, when it had still seemed such a
good idea to open the fourth bottle of wine, when their full stomachs had
betrayed them, making them believe they hadn’t been too badly affected by the
intoxicating nectar already.  She dropped four large spoonfuls of coffee into
the filter, and hit the ‘on’ button.  The smell of the rich powder was already
making her feel better.  She warmed some milk in a small pan, and threw the
rest of the ingredients into the food mixer.
  It’ll be nice to have muffins
this morning,
she thought.  Today was going to be a good day. 

She had decided
last night that she would occupy herself today; get back to her normal self. 
She really wanted David and Helen to stay and spend the day with them.  They
could even travel back to the city tomorrow morning if they wanted to, it
wouldn’t be that difficult.  Graham makes the same trip every day, and every
trick she had in her book of
how-to-make-people-feel-wanted-and-make-them-stay-longer, she was sure going to
bring out.  She quickly kneaded the dough, regularly sipping on her coffee as
she did so, and sending flour spilling onto her robe and resting on her
cheeks.  She cut out the muffins and threw them in the oven.  She set the table
outside with coffee mugs, juice, pretty white and blue striped plates with
elegant silver cutlery, that in their city apartment would have looked as if
they had borrowed it from a parent, but here fitted the setting perfectly.  The
muffins were ready and she could hear the first rumblings from upstairs, the
early morning groans of heavy heads and sleepy eyes.  She brushed the flour
from her face, fixed her hair a little bit and waited for the first of the
guests to arrive.

It had been
remarkably easy to convince David and Helen to stay another night.  Graham had thought
it a great idea, and rapidly got behind his wife’s plan.  They planned their
day out:  beach-combing followed by a mid afternoon barbeque on the soft
sands.  They would light a small fire using the driftwood, surrounded by the
rocks on the beach.  In fact, after watching one of the endless ‘Survival’
programmes that Graham was currently obsessed with and after roping in Charles
Stewart, a few months previously they had managed to dig a small hole and create
an underground oven, baking fresh fillets of Cod like the cavemen who had walked
the land thousands of years before.  If Charles had some fish for sale today,
they would do the same.