Written in the Stars (36 page)

She looks at me tearfully. ‘You quickly realised the only way to be with him was to be out there too. You used to work together out there for hours, side by side. I honestly think you were the reason he stayed as long as he did.’

I stare at her in shock, my head reeling with all the new information.

‘I loved him so much, Bea, you have to understand, but I just couldn’t get through to him any more. I’d have moments when I thought I was making a breakthrough. Days when I would see my old Len again; but then he’d disappear behind another wall and I’d be left to carry on alone. And then one day he disappeared for good. Packed a bag and walked out, no warning, no note. All he left was that gardening diary for you.’

I stare at the floor.

‘But you knew he went to Cley . . .’ I say at last.

‘One of his friends from the church he went to told me. I went straight there and knocked on the door for ages, but Father Joe explained Len wouldn’t see me. He just asked me to bring a box of his stuff which I did. When I went back a week later, Len was gone. I was told he hadn’t left a forwarding address.’

‘Why didn’t you tell us before . . . why did you make out it was your decision?’

‘I wanted you to have the opportunity to have a relationship with him if he chose to return. And for him to have a second chance of being the father I always knew he could be. I loved him, Bea, so very much.’ Her voice cracks with emotion.

I stare at Loni as if I’m seeing her for the first time, not as the relentlessly happy and upbeat social and spiritual whirlwind I have always known her to be, but as an abandoned woman, who has spent years keeping everything together when her whole world had been torn apart.

‘I blamed you. I blamed you for something that wasn’t your fault,’ I manage at last.

‘I didn’t care, darling!’ Loni says, enveloping me in her arms and allowing me to bury my head in her chest. ‘I was strong enough to take it. I knew that being here, able to look after you, to love you every single day, would mean that you’d love me unconditionally even if it meant that sometimes you hated me too. But your father was the centre of your world, you adored him, and I didn’t want his leaving us to change your perception of him. He was a good man and a great dad, but he was ill. I just wish I could have helped him more . . .’

‘Like you helped me,’ I say quietly. She stares at me and takes my hand. It feels warm against mine and I close my fingers around hers as I think back to my teens and early twenties, the hours, days, months, years spent battling my own demons. The dark thoughts that came swirling in on me in the middle of the night, exaggerating every tick of the clock and cannibalising the things about myself I didn’t like, telling me I wasn’t good enough for Dad, that I wouldn’t be good enough for anyone or anything. That I was ungrateful, useless, that mine was a waste of a good life. I remember the feelings of inadequacy and misery that caused me to crash spectacularly out of my A levels and take an attempted overdose of paracetamol. Then there were the doctors trying various sleeping tablets and antidepressants to get me back on track before Loni demanded that we use a more holistic approach. She changed my diet, encouraged me to start exercising more; I began running along the coast every day with Cal, Loni never far away in her car, ready to pick us up as soon as I’d run myself to a happy place. She got me doing her garden – the one part of our home that had been neglected since Dad had left. I got my place on the Garden Design course at UEA in Norwich. I felt if not always happy, then stable, steady, calm. It was like I’d accepted my past and begun to embrace the future. It was not an exciting life but it was all I could deal with. It was enough.

And then, two years into the course, aged twenty-two, and finally feeling that I knew where I was going, I met Kieran and I fell again. And then the accident happened.

Now I ask myself, was this how Dad felt when he left us? I feel like my world is cracking once again and as I look up at Loni I suddenly realise what I must have put her through. But she didn’t give up on me. She picked up the pieces after my A levels, and after Kieran had gone, and after I left Adam. She cocooned me in the house like it was a womb, nursing me back to health – again and again.

‘I can’t imagine what you went through when Dad left. I – I just wish you’d shared it with us.’ I break down then. ‘I’m sorry Loni, I’m so sorry . . .’

‘Shhh, it’s not your fault, darling. I should have told you the truth about your father sooner. I – I wanted to make it easier for you kids . . . I thought knowing would make it worse. You were so similar to him that I wanted to give you the best chance of living your own life; I didn’t want you to think that your fate was fixed because of what your father was like. I realise now I made the wrong decision.’

I want to tell Loni how selfless she’s been, how stable and strong. That I don’t know where I’d be without her.

‘I know, Loni, I know you’ve always done what you’ve thought was right. I understand why you didn’t want to tell me the truth. He was ill and if I’d known that when I was ill it would only have made it worse. But I do want – no, I
need
to find him. I don’t think I’m ever going to move on in my life until I do.’

She nods. ‘I’ll help you find him, Bea – I promise.’ She grasps my face and rests her forehead against mine.

I wrap my arms around her and nestle my face into her neck, buoyed as always by her strength and support.

Chapter 58

It’s New Year’s Eve and I’m standing opposite Cromer Pier, feeling like I’m walking the line between past and present. I’ve just been to see Milly and her beautiful baby daughter in the hospital. After a week of bed rest and being kept on a drip, Milly gave birth to Holly Rose this morning at 12.01 a.m. Five weeks early and a very healthy 5lbs 2 oz, she is as beautiful and as full of spirit as her mum; the first picture Jay took of her shows the determination clenched in her fists, her screaming mouth, her soulful eyes. A new life born on the eve of a new year. It doesn’t get more hopeful than that.

Distant thunder rumbles like cannons being fired. A storm is on its way and even though everyone else appears to have sensibly stayed indoors I knew after seeing Milly and Holly I had to come here tonight. It’s the one last place from my past I have to revisit before I can move on. I haven’t seen Kieran since Christmas Day. He texted a few times and wanted to meet up but I made various excuses. I’ve spent the last week just with Loni and Cal and it’s only now that I feel ready to face up to all this. They know I’m here and they know why. No more secrets.

I look up at the pier entrance. The neon lights around the ‘Christmas Seaside Special’ sign are switched off, the twin domes of the booths that remind me a little of the old Royal Naval College frame the stretch of the pier. Tomorrow the town will be packed full of people watching fireworks light up the pier. For now there is only the sound of waves thrashing against the stilts that separate this ancient structure from the angry sea, and the rain pounding against the pavement. Just like it did that tragic night eight years ago. I’m here because I need to let go. Of it all. My guilt about Elliot’s death . . . and Kieran. It’s the right kind of day to put ghosts to rest.

I walk round the curve of the sea wall and look down at the pier. Instinctively, I glance back over my shoulder and see Kieran appearing through the mist. Somehow I knew I wouldn’t have to wait long to see him. He’s lost in thought, his head buried in his hood, eyes staring at the pavement as if searching for something, or someone. He’s not even noticed I’m here.

I step out in front of him and touch his arm. He looks up, scared, expectant, hopeful – and then I see a flash of disappointment which he tries to hide.

‘Bea, I wasn’t expecting you to be here . . .’ Kieran leans forward to kiss me.

I pull away guiltily. I don’t want to give him the wrong idea.

‘Is everything OK? I mean, I don’t know what’s happened since Christmas, but I’ve missed you.’

‘Have you?’ I ask him. ‘Have you really?’ He stares at me, hurt and confused. I look out over the sea wall; I can feel him next to me, waiting. ‘I’ve done a lot of thinking, Kieran, trying to work out what it was that drew us back together. And I realise that I’ve been in denial all these months, wanting it to be love, hoping it was love, trying to make it feel like love.’ I turn and look at him. ‘But it wasn’t love, not for me, and – and I don’t think it was for you, either.’

Kieran’s about to protest but I put my hand out to stop him. ‘Please, just hear me out. This wasn’t love, Kieran. It was guilt. Guilt and sadness and loss and longing. We were trying to cling to each other because we felt in some small way it would bring us closer to Elliot and lessen our guilt, because no matter what anyone tells us, both of us blame ourselves for his death.’

‘But I told you that night I didn’t think Elliot’s death was your fault and that’s never changed!’

‘I came between you . . .’ I say. ‘Because of me
everything
changed.’

He lifts my chin with his forefinger and looks deep into my eyes. ‘You don’t see it, do you? Elliot was never going to grow up or calm down and until I met you, nor was I, Bea. He jumped, Bea,
he jumped
. You have to stop believing that you caused Elliot’s death, and start believing that you saved
my life
.’ He takes my hand and as he does I feel another piece of my pain drift out to sea. ‘That’s what
I
realised when I left you that summer. Losing him and being with you made me see there was a future for me different to the one that had been mapped out before. I stayed away for so long because I wanted to be sure I was worthy of you, not because I blamed you.’

As I look at him the present falls away and I see him as the lost, reckless boy he was when I met him.

The sky has turned black now, the sea is like a serpent wriggling beneath us, rising up against the side of the pier. It’s as if it senses that we are old prey and this moment, so like the one eight years ago, is another chance for it to claim us as its own. Every rise and fall of the waves feels like it’s trying to curl itself around us and drag us down, swallowing us whole like it did Elliot.

I should be scared of being out here in this storm but I’m strangely calm. It seems right for us to be here now. Like this was all predestined. This meeting, this moment, this weather so like it was that night. In a strange, sick kind of way, it is perfect.

Kieran stares out to sea and when he speaks his voice is loud above the wind and rain. ‘I convinced myself I was doing something big and brave and important when I joined the Navy. Something that would make me feel close to my brother. But the truth is that I’ve never stopped drifting. The only place I have ever felt anchored is with you . . .’ He steps towards me, his eyes glistening brightly. ‘I
am
in love with you, Bea. I always have been.’

‘Kieran—’ I begin, but he pulls me to him.

‘Come on, Bea, let’s do what the universe has been telling us all this time and be together!’

A flash lights up his eyes and I turn and see lightning slice the sky down to the sea as if it’s splitting the world in two. Immediately afterwards another forked streak of lightning shoots out, like a serpent’s tongue.

‘No, Kieran,’ I say softly, putting my hand against his chest as the mists clear and the world becomes one again. Kieran tilts his head back and stares up at the stars and then down at the sea that claimed his brother.

‘We were kids then,’ I tell him. ‘Stupid kids who experienced something wonderful and then something terrible together. It isn’t me you miss, Kieran. It’s not me you’ve come back for. I think you know that . . .’

‘I miss him so much, you know, Bea,’ he says quietly. ‘Every single day. It feels like a piece of me is missing and no matter what I do or where I go, I can’t find him. I thought if you and I were together, at least it would make what happened that night make sense. It was all such a waste.’

I put my arm around him and squeeze him tight as I rest my head against his shoulder.

‘I just want to turn back time, Bea. Relive that moment. Press rewind and do everything differently, you know? Make different decisions.’

And I do know. A calm has settled over the sea and over us. Neither of us will ever get over Elliot’s death. We will always blame ourselves, but being together again would only make it worse. I kiss him on his cheek. We both know this is goodbye.

‘Will you be all right?’ I ask, stepping back from him.

‘I’m just going to stay here a little while longer,’ he says. His voice is soft, distant, like he is already a long, long way away. Part of me wonders if he has ever really been here. In body, maybe, but not in spirit. That was lost the night he lost his twin.

It is his brother he’s wanted to be with all these years, not me.

And it’s Adam I want to be with now.

It has always been Adam.

January

Dear Bea

A new year is upon us. Despite the bare branches of the trees, the spikes of spring shoots shimmer in the frosty sunlight bringing promise of new life. Holly bushes are heavy with ice-covered berries, glazed like frosted sweets, swathes of early snowdrops carpet the earth, nodding their white, honey-scented heads like brides at the altar. Maybe this isn’ t enough to coax you from the warm comfort of your home but that’s OK. Just as we use this time to reflect on the past year and make resolutions for the one to come, we should reflect upon our garden. We might want to make big changes, like reshaping beds and borders or removing dominant, long-standing features. After all, sometimes a reshuffle is long overdue . . .

If you decide to make these changes, you may find it hard to see clearly through the wintry mists as they descend upon you. There have been times when I have felt that everything is so dark my life will always be devoid of colour. It is tempting to hibernate, to hide away from the world until you can see the promise of sunshine again. But if you brave the bad weather and you feel like the relentlessly inhospitable wind is pushing you to the edge, trust that there will always be something or someone there to soften your fall.