Secrets of the Tides (13 page)

‘So it doesn’t hurt?’

‘No, you don’t feel anything when you’re dead. Everything just stops.’

Dora remembered she’d felt a little better. She’d watched as Cassie had leaned over and removed the twists of toilet paper from between her toes, before testing her nails with a finger. Seemingly satisfied she’d turned to Dora. ‘I’m bored, are you coming?’

‘Where?’

‘Outside. I can’t stand all these old people everywhere. It’s so depressing.’

Dora hadn’t needed to be asked twice. She’d followed her sister down the stairs, grabbed their winter coats and shoes, and run out into the back garden. They’d tripped across the lawn and down to the stream below the orchard, silently watching as their poohsticks slipped away towards the ocean.

Dora winces at the sudden onslaught of memories and although the sun still holds a glimmer of warmth, she shivers and wraps her arms tightly around her body. Was that when it had all begun to unravel – for it had only been a matter of weeks before the family had left London and moved down to Clifftops – was that when things had started to come undone? Like a tiny hole in a tightly woven cloth, was it the move to Dorset that had tugged loose the first thread and begun to unravel the fabric of their family?

Dora looks down again at her grandparents’ graves. She is unable to offer flowers but there is something she can do. She kneels on the ground and begins to clear the weeds that have sprung up around their headstones, ignoring the damp earth seeping through the knees of her jeans. As she works, her ear tunes in to the ebb and flow of the waves washing against the cliffs below. The sound is strangely soothing, like the rise and fall of her breathing – in and out, forwards and backwards, the perpetual motion of the waves is ceaseless in its rhythm.

She works until she has pulled every weed from the mounds of earth covering her grandparents’ coffins, then stands and looks out towards the horizon. The sun is paling in the sky, sinking slowly towards the earth. Dora knows she must return to the house. It is too late to drive back to London now. She’ll have to stay the night.

She picks herself up, still unable to even glance at the newer, cleaner headstone standing next to her grandparents’, and turning her back on the church she makes her way through the gate and out towards the muddy path that will take her home.

HELEN

Eleven Years Earlier

It was the usual morning of chaos. No matter that it was the last day of term, there they were, racing around the house like lunatics, trying to get out the door on time. Helen felt like pulling her hair out.

‘Have you seen my trainers, Mum?’

‘By the front door, where you left them, Dora.’ She turned and threw milk and cereal bowls onto the table. ‘Alfie, get down! You’ll fall and hurt yourself.’ Alfie grinned at her from his precarious position hanging over the back of one of the kitchen chairs. ‘Alfie, I mean it. Get down now.’

Slowly he clambered down.

‘Where’s Cassie?’

Dora shrugged. ‘Still in bed.’

Helen let out a groan. ‘That girl!’ She raced out of the kitchen and stood at the bottom of the stairs. ‘Cassie! Get down here now. You’re going to be late for school.’

Richard appeared at the top of the stairs, struggling with a tie. His hair was still wet from the shower and his face bore a livid shaving rash, an angry red against his pale skin. ‘Morning, love.’

‘Will you tell Cassie to get herself down here, now. She’s going to miss the bus again.’

Richard turned and huffed back up the stairs.

Honestly, thought Helen, sometimes it was like having four kids to look after. She headed back to the kitchen.

‘I can’t find them, Mum, they’re not there.’

‘What’s not there, Dora?’

‘My trainers.’

‘Well maybe if you put them away each night, like I asked you to, we wouldn’t have to go through this every morning. Have you thought of that?’

Dora rolled her eyes and stomped off in the direction of the conservatory.

Helen hurried into the kitchen, turning her attention back to breakfast. ‘Did you tell her?’ she asked as Richard reappeared. She danced around him, simultaneously removing toast from the toaster and filling glasses with orange juice.

‘I told her.’

‘Is she coming down?’

‘She was still in bed when I went in, but she got the message.’ Richard sat himself at the kitchen table and reached across for a slice of toast. ‘Did you buy more marmalade?’

‘You know I’ve been flat out this week. Just when would I have had time to get to the shops?’ She sounded more defensive than she’d intended, but Richard, thankfully, didn’t rise to the bait.

‘Would you like
me
to stop at the supermarket on my way home from work?’ he asked carefully.

‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘Thanks,’ she added after another moment.

Richard shrugged. ‘You know,’ he continued, spreading butter across the slice of wholemeal in front of him, ‘if Cass went to bed at a sensible time we wouldn’t have this problem every morning.’

Helen sighed. She’d tried, but Cassie was going through yet another phase. No one, it seemed, could tell their daughter what to do. ‘Did you find them?’ she asked, glancing up as Dora entered the room, grateful to change the subject.

‘Yes.’

‘Where were they?’

‘In Alfie’s toy box. He must have put them in there.’

Richard smiled indulgently. ‘Funny boy. Hello, Panda, did you sleep well?’

‘Yes thanks.’

Helen couldn’t miss the meaningful glance Richard threw her way. He was always drawing comparisons between the two girls, but it wasn’t fair. They were so different. Chalk and cheese. Dora was just like her father in temperament, solid and dependable. Cassie was more spirited. It was a good thing.

‘Talking of Alfie,’ said Helen, ‘where is he?’

All three of them went still, listening for traces of a little boy making mischief. It was ominously quiet.

‘Great,’ sighed Helen. ‘I’ll go.’

She found him, moments later, on the sofa in the den. He was perched in front of the television set, still in his dinosaur pyjamas, his straw hair even more electric than usual. Piled beside him was a mountain of corn flakes. The empty packet lay on the floor and Helen could just see the rim of a bowl poking out from beneath the landslide. ‘Did you help yourself to breakfast, Alfie?’ she asked, surveying the wreckage.

He nodded and reached a chubby hand into the pile for a flake, angling it into his mouth, his gaze never leaving the cartoon on the screen.

‘Were you hungry?’

He nodded again. ‘Alfie spill it.’ He looked up at her then with his cornflower-blue eyes. ‘Sorry, Mummy.’

Any frustration she felt about the mess instantly faded. ‘That’s OK. Just ask me next time, or one of your sisters. We will help you.’

‘I can do it myself,’ he asserted, ever the independent, shovelling more dry cereal into his mouth.

‘All right, Alfie, but we don’t just help ourselves, OK?’

‘Why?’

‘Because if we all helped ourselves to the food in the cupboards we’d run out very quickly.’

He looked up at her with interest. ‘Why?’

‘Because Mummy only goes shopping once a week.’

‘Why?’

‘Because Mummy is very busy, working and looking after all of you.’

‘Why?’

‘Because that’s what mums do.’

‘Why?’

Helen sighed. It seemed he had entered
that
phase. She opted for the fail-safe conversation closer. ‘Just because.’

It seemed to work. He turned back to the television, silenced for a moment, until he twisted back to her with a smile. ‘Mummy’s nice.’

She grinned back at him idiotically, his words swelling her heart.

Eventually, after several more attempts to prise Cassie from her room, a battle with the dishwasher, a curt goodbye to her husband and a fight with Alfie about a plastic dinosaur he refused to leave behind, Helen bundled the girls down the driveway, fastened Alfie into his child seat and then leapt into the car. It was going to be one of those days.

She got as far as the end of the lane when a tractor came into view. ‘God damn it!’ she cursed, thumping the steering wheel with frustration. She was going to be late for work, again.

‘Damit, damit, damit,’ Alfie babbled at her from the back.

She looked at his chubby little face in the rear-view mirror with a guilty start. Richard was always warning her about minding her language in front of the kids, but she always forgot.

‘Rabbit, rabbit, rabbit, Alfie. That’s what Mummy said,’ she tried cheerfully.

‘God damit!’ Alfie giggled back at her. He was nearly three and no fool.

Helen sighed. No doubt that would be another black mark against her. She was already in Mrs Kendall’s bad books at Alfie’s nursery. She had been taken aside just yesterday and told with stern disapproval that she really did need to collect her son
on time
each evening. They wouldn’t mind if it had just been the once, but unfortunately it was becoming something of a habit. Still, she consoled herself, just one more day and then she and Alfie and the girls would all be home for the summer holidays. No more late nights sitting up preparing lectures for uninterested, yawning students; no more mad dashes across the Dorset countryside; no more guilt as she realised yet again that she would be late to collect Alfie; at least, not for the next six weeks anyway.

Guilt: it was an emotion she felt consumed by these days. Helen loved her job but it was proving harder and harder to juggle all the pieces of her life, and she felt constantly as though she were falling short in every single area. Wife, mother, employee – she tried hard to make it all work; to fit the pieces together like a complicated jigsaw puzzle, but she felt that as soon as she got one piece slotted into place, the table was jostled and another piece came springing free. She had complained to Richard about it at the weekend but he had only infuriated her by gently suggesting that if she couldn’t cope perhaps she should consider giving up her job at the university. It wasn’t as if they really needed her wages, he’d reminded her, and it might be nice for her to spend a little more time around the house. He’d helpfully pointed out the moth-eaten curtains in the drawing room that needed replacing, and the thick layer of dust caking the library bookshelves.

‘What?’ he’d asked, confused at the fury spreading across her face. ‘Why are you looking at me like
that
? I’m only trying to help . . . I know you enjoy your job, but we shouldn’t let the house just fall down around our ears. You don’t have to put yourself under this pressure, not for us. Why not relax a bit, enjoy the peace and quiet here, instead of haring off to Exeter day after day?’

She had nearly thrown the saucepan she’d been holding at his head. Did he really think she would give up her job to stay at home and dust bookshelves? Did he really know her so little? She had no intention of giving up her job, not now. It was one of the few things that gave her a thrill. It was one of the few times that she actually felt like herself again, and not just a frumpy housewife or exhausted mother.

Helen followed the tractor round yet another hairpin bend and was about to release another string of profanities unsuitable for the tender, young ears in the back seat of the car when the vehicle finally pulled up onto the grass verge, allowing her past. The road was pleasingly clear in front and just twenty minutes later she was running back across the nursery car park to her car. Thankfully she’d managed to avoid grumpy Mrs Kendall, plonking Alfie into the arms of a pretty young minder she didn’t know the name of, and waving cheerfully to him as she said goodbye. ‘Have fun, little man, see you this afternoon.’ Alfie’s bottom lip had wobbled slightly but the young woman holding him had artfully distracted him with a big red train that lay at their feet.

She still hated leaving him, but she couldn’t deny she’d grown to love the sensation that descended upon her just minutes later as she clambered back into her car, turned up the radio and put her foot down on the accelerator. She knew what it was she felt: sheer, unadulterated freedom. Was it normal to long for these solitary moments so much, she wondered? Or did that make her a bad mother? A bad wife? Well, she thought with a sad smile, pulling onto the dual carriageway and putting her foot to the floor, she already knew she was a bad wife, and she didn’t need Richard to remind her of it, as he did so frequently these days. Last night’s row had been no exception. She couldn’t even remember how it had started now. But it had been awful. She could still hear Richard’s bitter words echoing in her ears.

‘Do we really have to live in this perpetual chaos?’ he’d asked, hurling the remains of his uneaten dinner into the bin. ‘I can’t bear it. I’m not asking much, am I?’

‘No, of course
you’re
not asking much!’ she’d spat back. ‘And Cassie’s not asking much! And Dora’s not asking much! And Alfie’s not asking much. None of you
think
you’re asking for much; but add it all up and you’ll soon see that I’m being torn in four different directions. I don’t have time for
me
any more. I can’t even remember who
I
am.’