The Sea Sisters (29 page)

‘You both had a lot of fun.’

‘Yes,’ he agreed.

‘What did you do after Mia left for Bali?’

‘I missed my flight to New Zealand, so I stayed in Aus. I hired a car and headed for the east coast.’

‘Long drive.’

‘Yes,’ Finn said, thinking of the hot, dusty stretches of road, and the cool nights sleeping on the back seat of his car. ‘I never made it.’

‘Where were you,’ she said seriously, ‘when you found out about Mia?’

‘At a gas station. It was in the middle of nowhere. They had an old computer hooked up to the Internet, so I logged on to check my mail. There were seven messages from my brother telling me to call home urgently. I lost my mobile a few weeks before, so no one had been able to get in touch with me. I paid the till girl $20 to let me use the office phone.’ He remembered that she wouldn’t allow him behind the desk, so he’d made the call leaning over the kiosk, a rack of mints pressing into his hip bone.

‘My dad answered. I knew something had happened as he wouldn’t speak to me, kept telling me to hold on while he found Mum. She was in the bloody bath. Took ages for her to get to the phone. I was sweating by the time she came on the line. She just said it outright: “Mia Greene has died. They found her body at the bottom of a cliff in Bali thirteen days ago.” She had been dead for thirteen days and I didn’t know,’ he said, shaking his head.

‘Afterwards, I hung up, got back in my car and drove off. I don’t know what I was thinking. In fact, I wasn’t thinking, it was like my mind went totally blank. Maybe the logic was that if I drove far enough away from that phone, then it wouldn’t have happened.’

‘Oh, Finn.’

He glanced out to sea where a speedboat raced across the water, the hull bouncing off the waves. ‘I pulled in later at a beach and just sat on the shore watching the waves break until it was dark.’ He’d cried and raged, and punched a tree so hard he dislocated a knuckle. ‘Then I drove straight through the night to reach Adelaide Airport and took the first flight out of Australia.’

‘Oh, Finn,’ she said again.

‘Anyway, that’s enough of the happy talk for one afternoon,’ he said, stopping and turning to face the sea. ‘Eighteen hours on a plane – I’m ready for a salt water bath.’ He pulled off his T-shirt and tightened the cord on his board shorts. Then he ran into the clear water, wondering if every ocean would always remind him of Mia.

*

Katie watched him dive under the water. He surfaced, shaking his head, sending silver droplets flying through the air. Then he flipped onto his back and floated beneath the cloudless blue sky.

Finn is here. He is really here.

The sea glittered and the breeze seemed to skate off its surface, sliding over her skin. Two young girls with their hair in braids padded through the shallows, snorkel masks swinging from their hands. She smiled, thinking of Mia. Then she removed her sandals and stepped forward, sinking her bare feet into the wet sand at the edge of the sea. She concentrated on the feeling of salt water shifting beneath her toes, and then she took another step and let the sea spill around her ankles. It was warm and clear, inviting, not the cold sea of Cornwall.

She gathered the bottom of her dress with a hand and took another few steps until water reached her knees. She glanced up, checking Finn was still near. He waved and she managed to lift her hand and wave too.

He had asked her once, ‘Why don’t you swim in the sea?’ They had been sharing a bath in his flat in North London, and the water had turned tepid, foam bubbles melting into a milky scum. She was leaning against his chest, her knees poking through the surface like two white hills, as she said, ‘I almost drowned at Porthcray when I was 14. The tide turned while I was swimming.’ She had run her fingers over the metal bath handle, wiping off flecks of water as she added, ‘I’ll never trust it again.’

He had leant forward and kissed her damp shoulder. It was the only response she’d needed.

Strange that she’d never told Ed about her fear of the sea, she thought now as she waded back out of the shallows, only Finn. She sat on the shore, pleased by the swirls of salt that dried on her shins. She turned her face to the sun and closed her eyes, feeling the tension in her neck loosening.

A few minutes later, Finn sank down beside her. The sun illuminated his face and she saw flecks of green in his irises. ‘Finn,’ she said slowly, sitting forward. ‘Why are you really here?’

He picked up a stone and turned it through his fingers as he said, ‘It’s been hard back in Cornwall. I’ve felt sort of … dislocated from everything. It was like I needed to be in Bali, to be there, where it happened, for it to seem real.’

She nodded. ‘I felt the same.’

‘Did you?’

‘When the police told me, it was so surreal. I don’t think I really believed it. Seeing her body helped, though. I needed to be certain.’

‘That must’ve been hard.’

She nodded.

‘When you rang a couple of weeks ago and said you were out here, I realized how much I needed to come to Bali too. What you’re doing – this trip, going to the places Mia did – that makes total sense to me.’

‘Does it? Sometimes I’m not sure it even makes sense to me.’

‘You’re searching for answers. I get that.’

‘Am I? Or am I just running away?’ She looked down at her hands.

‘Katie?’

‘Maybe this trip was never about Mia. Maybe I just used it as an excuse to escape my own life.’ She thought of Ed, of her job, of her flat. She missed none of it. What did that say about the life she’d left behind?

‘It’s okay to be here for yourself too. It doesn’t always have to be about Mia.’

For some time they sat on the shoreline listening to waves lapping against the sand. She could feel the skin on her chest prickling pink in the heat. ‘I think I should find some shade,’ she said eventually.

She gathered her sandals and as they started to walk, Finn said, ‘So you went to Maui?’

‘Yes. I visited Mick.’

He waited for her to continue, perhaps unsure how much Mia had committed to her journal.

‘I know about Harley,’ she said.

‘Were you shocked?’

Katie nodded. ‘I wish Mia had told me herself.’

‘She wanted to.’

‘But instead she told you.’ She glanced away, surprised by the speed with which old jealousies could surface. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean that. I’m grateful that you were there for her.’

A cloud passed over his face, something she couldn’t understand. But just as quickly as it arrived, it vanished. ‘I think Mia didn’t tell you about Harley because she was afraid that being half-sisters would change things between you.’

‘Maybe it would have. It was awful finding out. It felt … I don’t know … as if it diluted us.’

Finn smiled. ‘That’s exactly what Mia said.’

‘Is it?’ Katie smiled too. ‘But I don’t feel like that any more.
Half
– it’s just a word, isn’t it? We still grew up together, shared our childhood. Having different fathers makes no difference to me. We’re sisters.’

‘Exactly.’

‘Sometimes it feels like I know more about Mia from her journal than from her. It’s driving me mad that it’s gone. I’ve had it in my hands this whole time but didn’t read it all. I just keep thinking, what if she’d written something that would’ve explained things?’

‘The police here must have examined it closely.’

‘I’ve been told they would have. And I flicked through the last pages myself as soon as I found it.’

‘And there was no note … no clue as to what happened?’

Katie shook her head.

‘What do the police say about the backpack? Is there any chance it’ll turn up?’

‘They said if there’s no news after a week it’s unlikely they’ll recover it.’

‘How long has it been?’

‘Almost two.’

He nodded. ‘Have you thought about visiting the British Consulate out here?’

‘It’s an idea. Aside from the backpack, I want to know where Mia died. I know it was the Umanuk cliffs, but I’d like to know where, exactly.’

‘Why don’t I arrange for us to visit?’

‘Thank you, Finn.’

He found her hand and squeezed it between his.

The spark was immediate. Her stomach fell away and her cheeks flushed red and hot. She withdrew her hand, surprised that even in the bottomless depths of grief, the heart could still want. She marvelled at the feeling, as if she’d just glimpsed the first green shoot of spring rising from the frozen ground.

T
he wind whipped Mia’s hair across her face and pinned Noah’s T-shirt flat to his chest. They stood on the shoreline, bare legs smarting from flung sand, watching the ocean writhe beneath the brewing storm.

When Noah spoke he had to raise his voice above the wind. ‘Rain’s coming.’

She glanced towards the sky. A flotilla of dark clouds, swollen with rain, were bowling in from the east. She guessed they had three or four minutes until the clouds reached them.

A wind shadow quivered across the surface of the sea, like the twitching scales of a fish. Noah took her hand in his and she felt grains of sand pressed between their fingers. ‘Here’s a big set,’ he said, dark eyes shining.

Great mounds of swell the size of buses were building at sea. ‘Could they be surfed?’

His gaze swept across the water as if he were mapping out a route. ‘It’s possible, but you’d be paddling into wind and the waves are breaking over reef. Tomorrow the wind will drop off, but the swell should stick. It’ll be perfect.’

He’d been watching the forecast all week, checking the maps as the low pressure travelled in from the Indian Ocean, following a course from Antarctica. She’d been surprised by the technicality of forecasting, listening as Noah talked knowledgeably about weather systems, swell periods and local effects.

The lead wave of the set reared from the sea. It sucked up the water in its path, exposing the reef, jagged and brittle like the bones of a body from which the flesh has been sucked clean. The wave broke with a thunderous boom that reverberated in her chest. Water splintered across the serrated reef.

‘My God!’ Mia said, gripping his fingers. ‘The power in that wave…’

‘It’s humbling.’

She nodded, amazed.

‘You must get some big Atlantic storms rolling into Cornwall?’

‘We do. When we were kids, our mum would drive us to the quay and we’d eat fish and chips in the car, watching the waves smash against the sea wall.’ As soon as they’d finished, she and Katie would bundle up the greasy papers and race to the bin with the wind at their backs. They’d linger for a while, edging close enough to the sea wall to feel the briny vapour kissing their faces. When they climbed back in the car, their hair matted and tangled with salt, it always smelt of chip fat and vinegar, and their mother would be singing along to the radio. ‘I miss it.’

Noah turned. ‘Cornwall?’

‘Cornwall. The storms. My mum. My sister. All of it.’ She fingered the shells on her necklace. ‘We grew up on the beach. It was our backyard. And now Katie’s in London and I’m here.’ She sighed. ‘Katie avoids spending time on the coast. I know it sounds stupid, but I think of it as our place. Our link.’

‘What changed?’

Mia thought for a moment. ‘She’s afraid.’ She remembered that day at Porthcray when the current turned the water dark and rough. She could almost feel the hard surface of the windsurfing board pressing into her hips as she’d spread herself across it, digging her arms into the sea. She shook her head, freeing the memory. ‘You and Jez are lucky – you both surf together still. It must be nice to share that.’

‘Maybe.’

She caught the change in his expression. ‘Did Jez find it hard when you started surfing professionally?’

He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. We didn’t talk about it.’

‘But when you went home, you must have sensed whether or not he was happy for you.’

‘I never went home.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I came out to Bali for a year. After that I travelled for a while, then joined the tour.’

‘You never went back?’

He shook his head.

‘You saw your family though?’

‘I’d meet my brothers whenever I was in Australia.’

‘And your parents?’

A gust of wind blasted across the beach and they turned as the palm fronds clattered behind them. When they faced the ocean again, Noah was silent.

She squeezed his fingers between hers. ‘What about your parents?’

‘Let’s just enjoy the waves.’

They watched wordlessly as the waves continued to thunder in and sand blew across the beach in sheets.

‘How about you stay over with me tonight?’ she said later, trying to regain some of their lost intimacy.

He shifted. ‘I sleep better alone.’

‘Who said anything about sleeping?’

He didn’t respond and kept his eyes levelled at the water.

‘You
are
pleased I came to Bali?’

He released her fingers to wipe salt from his brow. ‘I thought we were watching the storm coming in.’

‘Not in silence. Sometimes I feel like …’ How did she begin to explain the cool stack of pebbles building in her stomach each time he pushed her away? ‘Like you’re not letting me in. Like you’re not always
there
.’