Thrown (9 page)

I don’t want to be without them. Everything I do in my life will always feel a little duller because they won’t be here to see it, to talk to me, to advise me or to laugh with me. I already feel numb inside most of the time and I’m the one who is still alive and should be experiencing life to the full. I feel like my soul is already dead and buried. The only time I feel anything is when I cut myself and I know that isn’t how it’s supposed to be and I have to stop doing it, I know that but it’s so hard to give up the only thing that allows you to feel alive if only for a moment. Please help me stop. Please help me be normal.

*

By the time I get back to Promise House, Mr Tibbles is in the kitchen waiting to be fed but Dell is still asleep. She still has ten minutes before her alarm sounds.

Mr Tibbles winds himself around my legs as I get a can of cat food and open it. He meows as if he’s telling me to hurry. I get it into his dish and he wolfs it down as soon as I put the dish on the floor. I give him a scratch behind his ears and set about making breakfast for Dell and me.

She finally makes an appearance as I’m getting everything out of the grill and frying pans.

‘Something smells amazing,’ she says.

‘It’s a special breakfast for a special person.’

‘Oh boy, don’t start going all soppy on my now. We have a couple of hours yet.’

‘I know. It’s just that I’m going to miss you like hell.’

‘Me too. But at least we have Skype and Hangouts. It’ll be just like I’m here in the room with you. And you have to keep me updated on the Stoker situation.’

‘There is no Stoker situation.’

She picks up a piece of toast and takes a bite. ‘I saw the way he looked at you after you guys came back from Penzance. Believe me, there’s a Stoker situation.’

I shake my head. ‘Nope. Haven’t heard from him in a while now.’

She sits down at the table while I dish up the food. The kitchen is full of the smell of sausages and bacon and it smells somehow comforting.

After today, I will be having oatmeal for breakfast before going to work in the shop alone and then returning to a TV dinner.

Mr Tibbles looks up at me with his green eyes and lets out a pitiful cry that is supposed to make me feel sorry for him and give him some real meat. It works and I put a sausage on his dish. He takes a bite and shakes his head because it’s too hot. Undeterred, he grabs the sausage and takes it out through the cat flap.

‘I’ve been thinking about why Stoker hasn’t contacted you yet.’

‘OK, let’s hear this great theory.’

‘Not so much theory as deduction.’

‘Give it to me.’

‘He’s waiting until I leave. He knows I’m only here for a week and he doesn’t want to get in the way. So he’s keeping his distance. After today, he’ll be in touch.’

‘If you say so.’ I take our plates to the table and we start on the cooked breakfast.

‘I do say so. Aww, that’s really nice of him to resist his urges until I leave.’

‘Urges?’

‘Urges. Do we need to have ‘the talk’? Hmm?’

‘There’s nothing like that going to happen. You know my experience with boys and how it all goes horribly wrong.’

‘That’s just because you didn’t meet the right one yet. He could be the one.’

‘Wow, you have a real talent at exaggerating reality.’

‘I have a talent at seeing what is right in front of my eyes, something you should try sometime.’

‘You’re crazy, Dell.’

‘I’m not crazy. Everyone else is crazy and I’m the only sane person in the world.’

’So what do you want to do this morning?’

“We’re not opening the bookshop?’

‘No, I want to spend the time with you.’

‘Cool. Let’s bum around and watch TV.’

I smile.

‘What you smiling at?’

‘You’re not the only one who can predict things.’

‘Hey, predicting that I would want to stay indoors and watch TV

hardly makes you the Amazing Kreskin.’

‘I know but it’s nice to know that some things never change.’

‘And what are you going to do this afternoon when I’m on my way to the airport? You could open the store then to keep yourself busy.’

‘Nah, I’m probably going to watch old movies and eat ice cream.’

‘Ice cream. I approve. But tomorrow when you open the book store, make sure you look your best. Wear something nice and not just this black shit you wear all the time.’

’That’s rich coming from you.’

‘Take my advice. You want to look good for him, don’t you?’

‘Who?’ I ask innocently, knowing who she means and hoping deep down that she’s right. Dell is good at reading people. She’d make a hell of a poker player if she could be bothered to learn the game.

‘Him. The one. He’s going to make his move tomorrow. Be prepared.’

‘Do not start calling him ‘the one’.’

‘I’ll call him whatever I damn well please, Missy. Anyway, who was I referring to?’

‘Stoker.’

‘Aha, so you admit Stoker is the one!’

We both break down into fits of giggles and all the time I’m aware of the clock ticking toward the eleventh hour when my best friend in the whole world will be gone.

*

The time passes way too fast. It isn’t fair. We stand in the hallway by the front door, her suitcase packed in the typical Dell way of just throwing all her clothes inside and forcing the case shut. The taxi will be here any moment and then she’ll be on her way home. According to the way things are now,
my
home is Promise House. It doesn’t feel like home but neither does Boston anymore. I don’t feel like I have a home anywhere at all.

‘Safe journey, Dell.’

‘That’s the fifth time you’ve said that. I’ll be fine. I’ll text you when I get to the airport and when I land on the other side.’

‘OK.’ I try to hold back the threatening tears by swallowing hard.

‘Hey, we’ll get online tomorrow and have a good chat.’ She has tears welling in her own eyes.

‘I don’t want you to go, Dell.’

She puts her arms around me and we hug. She starts to cry. ‘I’m going to miss you,’ she whispers.

‘Me too.’ I let the tears come and we stand there crying together until the taxi sounds its horn on the driveway.

‘My ride is here,’ she says, dabbing at her eyes with a Kleenex.

‘Yeah. Make sure you text me.’

‘I will.’ She opens the door and goes out to the cab. The driver puts her case in the trunk and she gets into the back of the car, waving at me through the window as the taxi pulls away from the house and turns onto the main road. I stand at the open front door after she’s gone and cry some more. I can’t believe she’s gone. A few hours ago we were having breakfast and laughing and now she isn’t here anymore and the house is quiet. She won’t be here for breakfast tomorrow. Or the next day. Or the day after that.

I return to the silent house and close the door.

I’m not going out today.

I feel too sad and tired.

I go into the living room and curl up on the sofa. When I was a little girl I used to lie here and watch the flames crackle and spark in the big stone fireplace. We had a fire in there last night while we sat watching TV and drinking soda and talking about nothing in particular.

Now the fire is dead and the fireplace is just a black square.

I close my eyes and let the tears roll hotly over my face.

My only friend.

Gone.

PART TWO

SECRETS

CHAPTER SEVEN

Dawn

Amy

I get out of bed the next morning to find Mr Tibbles in the kitchen waiting for his breakfast. The kitchen clock tells me it’s only six o clock but I can’t go back to sleep because I feel too restless. I already know that today is going to be a bad day and last night, the only thing that prevented me from using the razors in my nightstand was that I was just too tired. I fell asleep on the sofa after Dell left then wearily climbed the stairs a few hours later and collapsed on the bed. Now I’m paying for all that sleep with a restlessness that makes me feel like it’s mid-morning, not six a.m.

It isn’t even light out yet. There’s a slight gray tinge to the sky but the sun isn’t up. So why am I? I need to sort out my sleep patterns or I’ll end up napping in the bookshop when I should be working.

I turn from the kitchen window and feed the cat then stand there for a moment listening to the silence of Promise House. It’s way too early to open the shop but I need to get out from inside these four walls for a while. Maybe a walk along the cliffs will clear out the cobwebs in my head. It looks like a nice day out there. If I leave now, I can catch the sunrise.

Before I leave, I apply a little makeup and brush my hair, remembering my chance encounter with Stoker at the cemetery. I’ll come back and change before I go into town so my blue jeans and short-sleeved blue sweater will be fine for the walk. The sleeves of the sweater are short but not too short; they come down to my elbows. I never have my upper arms exposed. Never. If I ever want the world to see how ugly I am inside, I just need to go out with bare arms. The scars tell the whole story.

I leave by the back door and the salty sea breeze feels good on my face. The tide is out and the stretch of sand beneath the cliffs is exposed and I consider taking a walk along the beach but I don’t know anything about sea tides and if the waves come in while I’m down there and I can’t find a way back up the cliffs, I’ll be stuck. So I stick to the cliff tops and walk aimlessly along, waiting for the sun. The little dirt path I’m following has been created over the years by thousands of pairs of walking boots and is at least fifteen feet away from the edge of the cliffs and my mind runs over the possibility of Aunt B falling accidentally. I can’t imagine it could happen that way. She knew the path and she walked it every night. No way could she fall over the edge. Even if she stumbled on a rock or something and fell towards the edge there’s no way she would reach it; she’d just land on the grass.

The more I think about it, there’s only one explanation. Aunt Beth jumped.

I walk carefully to the edge and look down. It’s a long way. Further along the beach there’s a man walking a dog, throwing a stick for it into the sea. The dog goes splashing in and grabs the stick and return to his owner shaking himself dry.

The stretch of sand ends where the rocky cliff juts out into the sea and there’s another person down there, sitting by the rocks in front of what looks like a painter’s easel. The tide must be out for a while if he has time to paint the landscape. I step back from the edge and continue along looking for one of the paths that wind down the cliff face to the beach.

Maybe I can take a look at the painting and chat with the artist. I’ve heard that artists come to Cornwall for the quality of the light and that light is about to begin for the day as the sun comes up.

I find a trail that leads down to the beach and I take it, clambering over rocks and making sure I’m safe before taking each step down. It’s steep but as long as I go slow I can make it. The climb back up is going to be a nightmare though. Maybe I’ll be able to find an easier way back.

I let out a sigh of relief when I reach the beach and I trek over the sand toward the rocks where the painter is set up. He looks up and sees me and waves me over and I can’t believe my eyes. It’s Stoker. Dean Stoker the mechanic sitting on a beach at dawn painting the landscape. I walk a little faster, which is hard in the sand, and by the time I get to him, I’m exhausted.

He’s sitting on a little fold-up stool and he has a small wooden easel onto which he’s attached a watercolor pad. There’s a palette of watercolor paints clipped onto the easel and an assortment of brushes sitting in a tray. A jar of water sits in the sand by Stoker’s boots. He isn’t his usual greasy self this morning; he’s wearing a dark blue long-sleeved t-shirt with a rock band’s logo across the chest and blue jeans with a black belt and black boots. He looks good. Really good.

‘Hey, I didn’t expect you to be up so early,’ he says.

‘I could say the same thing about you.’

‘If you’re going to paint a seascape at dawn, you need to be here at dawn. Take a seat. The sand’s comfy.’

I sit on the sand and run my fingers through the tiny grains, making nonsense patterns.

‘I didn’t know you were a painter.’

‘You didn’t ask.’

‘Stoker, don’t be ridiculous. Why would I ask that?’

‘You didn’t ask because all you saw was the dirty mechanic in his overalls. And you thought that was who I am. All I am.’

I shrug. He isn’t wrong on that score. I
did
think that but only because that was the one and only side of him that I saw.

‘Have you been painting long?’

‘Since I was a kid. Painting and drawing. It lets me escape the world for a little while and concentrate on something that isn’t depressing.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Oh, you know…just life.’

I think about the graves of his mother and brother in the Sea Road Cemetery and nod. ‘Yeah.’

He grab a brush and dips it into the water then the blue paint and he lays down a wash on the paper to represent the sky. ‘So why are
you
up so early?’

‘I couldn’t sleep. Dell went home yesterday and I sorta fell asleep all afternoon and all night so I’m up bright and early today.’

‘Well it’s nice to see you.’ He puts down a gray shape on the paper where the cliffs are.

‘What are you painting?’

‘You see that cliff there? The way it curves out into the sea? And just beyond it you can see a rock formation in the water. I want to capture that.’

I look around at the rocks above us and ask a question I hardly dare ask but which is burning inside me. ’Stoker, it it around here that…Aunt B…fell?’

He pauses and takes his brush from the paper. ‘Yes. Just a little way back toward Promise House.’

Oh my God. So I actually walked past the spot Aunt B was standing when she fell. I look along the line of sand that runs beneath the cliffs.

‘So…it’s this beach…’

‘Where they found her? Yeah, it is. A little further up that way. Some people put wreaths there but the tide took them.’