The Sea Sisters (35 page)

Katie thought of the dark truth she’d so coolly released, and the sound of Mia’s breath catching in her throat as it hit her.

‘I could not bear to read that it was my words that led her to the edge of that cliff.’

M
ia slotted her credit card into the payphone and punched in Katie’s number. She waited. Hard bass beats from a nightclub pumped down the street, drumming inside her chest. Opposite, a street light flickered, sending strobes of orange light across the kerb where a scrawny dog nosed an empty food carton.

‘Katie Greene speaking.’ Her work voice was crisp and professional.

‘It’s me.’

‘Mia?’

‘Yes.’

There was a pause. ‘I’m at work.’

‘Can you talk? Just for five minutes?’

She sighed. ‘Wait a moment.’

Mia heard Katie telling a colleague that she’d be back shortly; then there was the sharp click of heels across a hard floor, the sucking sound as a door was pushed open and then the rush of London traffic speeding across the phone waves.

‘It’s freezing outside,’ Katie said. ‘I can’t be long.’

Mia couldn’t imagine the flat cold of a winter’s day in London, when here it was night and the air was still so warm her cotton vest clung to her skin. ‘How are you?’ she asked banally, unsure how to begin.

‘Fine.’

‘Sorry I haven’t called in a while.’

‘It’s been three months,’ Katie said.

‘Has it?’ Mia wrapped the phone cord around her wrist, twisting it tightly until she felt the blood flow to her fingers restricted. She couldn’t think of what she wanted to say. ‘How’s work?’

‘Fine.’

‘And Ed?’

‘You didn’t ring to ask about Ed. Or work. What do you want, Mia?’

Mia pulled the phone cord taut and felt the cool prick of pins and needles in her fingertips. She didn’t want to ask Katie for money – she’d rather hear her chat about her life in London or reminisce together about some small detail of their childhood – but there was no one else who could help. She needed her passport back so she could get out of Bali. It was over with Noah. Her friendship with Finn, ruined. There was only Katie … she needed Katie to do this for her. ‘I need to borrow some money. About a thousand pounds. It’d be a loan.’

‘Is this a joke?’

‘I’d pay you back within a few weeks, once I’ve got work.’

There was a long, weighted pause. Up ahead, a group of young men in rugby shirts stumbled from the nightclub, cheering and jumping onto one another’s backs. They were drunk, jubilant. Mia suddenly longed to be surrounded by a group of friends, feeling the warm caress of alcohol flooding through her body.

‘Do you know how many engagement cards Ed and I were sent?’

The non sequitur threw Mia and she hesitated.

‘Thirty-seven. The flat was filled with them. I had to prop some on top of the fridge as the windowsills were filled. My workmates took me out for dinner to celebrate. Ed’s sister came from Weybridge with flowers and a bottle of champagne.’ There was a pause. ‘But you …
you
,’ she repeated, a quiet fury contained in the word, ‘couldn’t even bring yourself to say congratulations.’

‘Katie—’

‘You haven’t been in touch for three months. I thought my
sister
would be the person I shared all this with. I wanted to ask your opinion on wedding dresses and venues and a hundred other details. But you never called – not even to find out if we’d set a date. And now you ring me,
at work
, to ask for money. What do you think I should say?’

Mia’s wrist ached. She released the phone cord and the skin beneath was yellowy white. She flexed her fingers slowly, feeling a creaking pain as the blood began to circulate. ‘I don’t know.’

‘You’re travelling. You’re having fun. Meeting new people. I understand that – but honestly, how hard can it be to make time to pick up a phone? You didn’t even call on Mum’s birthday. It was three weeks ago. She’d have been 54.’

The numbers on the dial seemed to swim in her vision. How could she have forgotten that? February 14th. Valentine’s Day. The postman always said their mother was the most popular woman on his round. The date hadn’t registered with Mia this year. Recently, time seemed to have been weaving circles around her and she’d lost track of days and weeks.

‘Have you nothing to say?’

Mia could feel perspiration sliding down the backs of her knees. She wanted to explain that she thought about their mother every day; that birthdays had never meant anything to her. She could feel the words rising up and blocking in her throat, like bubbles surging against the lid of a bottle.

‘Jesus, Mia, don’t you care?’

‘Yes, I care!’ she cried, slamming her hand on the phone console. ‘Just because I forgot her fucking birthday, it doesn’t mean I don’t care!’

‘And what about me?’

‘What?’

‘It’s not just about honouring Mum’s birthday – it should be about
us
, being there for each other.’

‘I am.’

Katie’s voice was quiet. ‘You left.’

‘I needed to get away.’

‘From what?’

From you!
she wanted to scream.
Because I fucked your fiancé out of spite and I couldn’t look at you, knowing it!

‘What’s pathetic is that I wished you’d asked me to go travelling. Did you know that? I actually wanted to come with you.’

‘That’s crap. You’d never have quit your job. Or got on a plane.’

‘I would have, Mia. If you’d asked me. But you didn’t.’

‘Don’t try and push guilt on me.’

‘Push guilt on you?’

She could hear Katie’s footsteps and the receding sounds of traffic. She imagined her sister walking onto a side street and moving past a row of tall Georgian houses, their front doors black and glossy.

‘I’m the one who protects you,’ Katie was saying. ‘That’s what I do. I was handed the role of older sister: sensible, protective, reliable. You were handed younger sister: wild, independent, selfish.’

‘That’s bullshit.’

‘Is it? Who took care of everything after Mum died? I organized the funeral, sold Mum’s house, found us a flat, tried helping you find work.’

‘You weren’t protecting me,’ Mia said, anger burning in her throat. ‘You were controlling me, shrinking down my life so it could fit into a neat little package beside yours.’

‘Is that what you think?’

‘I don’t see how snatching my best friend was
protecting
me,’ she said, and then the words were out there, like a firework launched into the sky. ‘Why him? Out of all the men you could pick from, why Finn?’

She heard Katie’s footsteps stop. Mia held her breath, waiting for the explosion.

But there were no bright lights or loud bangs. Just three words delivered as quietly as smoke: ‘I loved him.’

Love?
Mia’s head spun. She reached out a hand and held onto the phone console. Her palms were damp. ‘No.’

‘I never planned to fall in love with him, but I did. I really loved him.’

Mia bit down on the inside of her cheek, pressing her teeth hard into the soft flesh. The metallic taste of blood filled her mouth.

‘It was excruciating because I saw what losing Finn did to you,’ Katie continued. ‘You were a shadow. I hardly recognized you. And then, Christ, Mum got ill. It was terrible for all of us, but I think it was particularly hard on you. And you wouldn’t let Finn or me support you. I hated seeing you hurting like that. I felt like there was no choice: I had to let him go. I did it for you, Mia, because I was trying to protect you.’ Katie paused. ‘And I had to protect you from Mum’s death, too.’

‘What are you talking about?’ Even as Mia said the words, a cool feeling crept over her skin.

‘That morning – when she was dying – I left four messages asking you to come to the house to say goodbye.’

‘I lost my—’

‘Mobile. Yes, you said. Come on, Mia. We’re beyond this.’

Mia’s ear was burning where the phone pressed against it. She wanted to rip it away, snap the cord with her hands and fling it into the street.

‘You weren’t at the house with me because you couldn’t cope with Mum dying. I understood that, but I kept calling because I didn’t want you to regret not saying goodbye.’

Mia had been walking at Porthcray all morning, her mobile wailing in the pocket of her fleece. A week of southwesterlies had washed in mounds of seaweed that lay rotting on the shoreline, making the air taste sulphuric. She picked her way over them, listening to each of Katie’s messages and knowing that 3 miles away in her family home her mother was dying. Her mother who’d told Mia that her eyes were like polished emeralds, who had treasured a story Mia had written about a snow leopard when she was 6, who’d assured Mia she didn’t mind what she did with her life as long as she was happy. She couldn’t die.

Further up the beach, Mia had picked up a smooth white stone the size of a mussel shell and told herself that if she skimmed it six times, then she’d go to her mother. She pulled back her arm and flicked her wrist; the stone bounced across the water like a jumping fish, sharp and bright, six times. She’d turned and begun to walk back to her car, but halfway there she’d stopped, her legs refusing to take another step. Instead, she found herself bending to the ground, gathering the next pebble. She bargained with herself that it must skim seven times to be sure. Then eight … then nine …

Finally, when the phone rang again, it was Katie leaving a message in a broken voice to say their mother was dead.

Mia had launched her mobile into the sea. It skimmed once and sank.

Now, Katie said, ‘When you finally arrived, I poured us gin and tonics. Do you remember? We sat at the kitchen table. You asked me how it was at the end. I told you that it was peaceful. I told you that I’d sat on the edge of Mum’s bed, holding her hand, and she’d just slipped away, like she was sleeping.’ Katie cleared her throat, fighting back tears. ‘But I think you know that’s not the truth.’

Everything began to recede: the noise of the nearby club, the heat in the air, the feel of the phone pressed against her cheekbone. All she focused on was Katie’s voice.

‘Mum’s death was not peaceful. The morphine dose wasn’t strong enough. She was in so much pain at the end that she bit through her bottom lip. She was terrified, pleading, begging whatever God she thought was up there, not to let her die. And do you know what she kept saying, over and over?’

Please
, Mia thought.
Don’t do this.

‘I’d been at her bedside for weeks and the last thing she said to me was, “Where is Mia?”’

The receiver slipped through her fingers, clattered against the metal base of the phone box, and was left dangling from a dark wire.

*

Mia flicked the light on in her room. The window had been left wide open and the thin curtain billowed in the breeze. She hugged her arms against her middle. Her throat was choked with tears and she closed her eyes. On the backs of her eyelids Finn’s email waited.
‘If you’re not careful, Mia, you could end up alone, wondering what happened to everyone in your life. Just like your father.’

She wanted to reach through the sky, grab Harley by the throat and ask,
‘Was this how you felt?’

Swiping away her tears, she moved to her backpack and searched roughly for her journal. Pulling it free, she opened it and slipped from the front a photo of her and Katie. They were riding a seahorse merry-go-round on the pier, their hands linked. She stared at the picture, remembering that day vividly when life tasted sweet and easy.

Without hesitating she tore Katie from it.

Then she placed the journal on the desk and sat down in front of it. Her hands were trembling. She flattened out an empty double-page and began to write, ink flowing across the paper like a dark river.

T
ogether they read the remaining pages of the journal. Katie asked this of Finn – she could not face it alone. They sat on the edge of the hotel bed, an inch between their bodies, the white soles of her feet resting on the polished wooden floor, their heads angled towards the journal.