I SHOULD HAVE chosen you.
What does it mean? I want to bring it up, as we walk slowly along the rutted path beside the Reach, but Luc’s silence is unapproachable.
What did he mean? What happened with him and Kate?
But I can’t find a way of asking, and besides, I am afraid. Afraid of what he might ask me in return. I can’t demand the truth when I’m hiding so many lies of my own.
Instead I concentrate on wheeling Freya’s pram around puddles and trenches in the rutted path. It has rained heavily while I was in the pub, and away from the tarmac, the track is soft.
I’m painfully aware of Luc beside me, measuring his pace to mine, and at last I make a half-hearted attempt at disengaging, letting him make his own way back.
‘You don’t have to walk me the whole way, you know, if you want to cut off here, save yourself the walk …’
But he shakes his head.
‘You’ll need a hand.’
It’s only when we get to the Mill that I realise what he means.
The tide is high – higher than I’ve ever seen it. The wooden walkway is invisible – fully submerged – and beyond the tract of sluggish dark water, the black silhouette of the Mill is cut off from the shore completely. The bridge can’t be more than a few inches beneath the surface, but I can barely see where the shore ends and the water begins, let alone the dissolving shape of the dark planks in the water.
If it were just me, I might risk it, but with the pram? It’s heavy, and if one of the wheels edges off the walkway, I’m not sure I’ll be strong enough to stop the whole thing from toppling into the water.
I can feel the dismay in my face as I turn to Luc.
‘Shit, what do I do?’
He glances up at the darkened windows.
‘Looks like Kate’s out. She could have left a light on.’ His voice is bitter.
‘There was a power cut,’ I say. Luc shrugs, an inexpressibly Gallic gesture that is halfway between resignation and contempt, and I feel like I should defend Kate, but there is nothing I can say to Luc’s silent disapproval, especially when a little voice at the back of my head is whispering my own resentment. How could Kate have just gone out and left me to deal with this alone? She had no way of knowing I’d have Luc to help.
‘Take your baby,’ he says, gesturing to the pram, and I pick Freya up. She is sleeping, and when I lift her she curls with compact heaviness against my shoulder like an ammonite made flesh.
‘What are you –’
But I stop, as Luc pulls off his shoes, picks up the pram and splashes into the dark water. It closes above his ankles, halfway up his calf.
‘Luc, be careful! You don’t know –’
But he knows. He knows exactly where the bridge is. He wades unerringly across the gap, me holding my breath with every step in case he misses and stumbles off the edge into the deep water, but he doesn’t. He reaches the other side, now a narrow slip of bank barely wide enough to rest the pram on, and tries the door.
It’s unlocked, and it swings wide to show an empty blackness. Luc wheels the pram inside.
‘Kate?’ His voice echoes through the silent house. I hear a click as he tries the light switch, flicking it back and forth. Nothing happens. ‘Kate?’
He re-emerges back on the bank, shrugs, and hitching up his jeans he begins to wade empty-handed to the shore.
‘This is like one of those logic puzzles,’ I say, trying for a laugh ‘You’ve got a duck, a fox and a boat …’
He smiles, the tanned skin at the side of his eyes and mouth crinkling, and I realise with a shock how alien the expression looks on his face. How little I’ve seen him smile since I returned.
‘So how do we do this?’ he asks. ‘Do you trust me to take Freya?’
I hesitate, and the smile drops from his eyes as he sees.
‘I – I do trust you,’ I say quickly, though it’s not completely true. ‘It’s not that. But she doesn’t know you – I’m worried if she wakes up and starts trying to get free – she’s surprisingly strong when she doesn’t want to be held on to.’
‘OK,’ he says. ‘So … what do you think? I could carry you, but I’m not sure the bridge would take the weight of us both.’
I laugh properly at that.
‘I’m not letting you carry me, Luc. Bridge or no bridge.’
He shrugs.
‘I’ve done it before.’
And I realise with a flicker of shock that he’s right. I had completely forgotten, but now he says it, the picture is sharp in my mind – a sun-baked beach, high tide, my shoe got swept away. There was no way back except over the barnacled rocks, and after quarter of an hour watching me hobble on bleeding feet, Kate and Thea and Fatima wincing in sympathy, offering me shoes I wouldn’t accept and couldn’t fit into, Luc had picked me up without a word and carried me, piggyback, the rest of the way to the Tide Mill.
I remember it so well – his hands on my thighs, the muscles in his back moving against my chest, the scent of his neck – warm skin and soap.
I feel myself flush.
‘I was fifteen. I’m a bit heavier now.’
‘Take off your shoes,’ he says, and I hobble on one foot, trying to hold Freya with one hand while prising off my sandals with the other – and then, before I can protest, he’s on his knees, his fingers working the straps. I step out of one shoe, blushing scarlet now, grateful for the darkness, and let him undo the other, before he straightens.
‘Take my hand,’ he says, stepping into the water. ‘Follow me. Stay very close behind me, as close as you can.’
I take his hand with my free one, the arm that’s not holding Freya, and I step into the sea.
It’s so cold it makes me gasp, but then my bare toes feel something warm – my feet are touching his in the water.
We stand for a moment, steadying each other, and then Luc says, ‘I’m going to take a big step – you follow me. This is where the rotten board is, we have to step over it.’
I nod, remembering the gaps in the bridge, the way I edged the pram over the worst of them. But thank God Luc is here – I would not have had any idea which boards were sound and where they fell. I watch as he takes a wide stride and then imitate him, but it’s a bigger stretch for me than for him, and the boards beneath the waves are slippery. My foot slides on a piece of weed, and I feel myself start to lose balance.
I cry out, without meaning to, the sharp sound ringing across the water. But Luc has me, hard in his grip, his fingers so tight on my upper arm it hurts.
‘You’re all right,’ he’s saying urgently. ‘You’re all right.’
I’m nodding, gasping, trying not to hurt Freya as I regain my balance and try to steady my breathing. A dog in the far distance let out a volley of barks at my scream, but now it falls silent. Was it Shadow?
‘I’m sorry,’ I say shakily. ‘It’s the boards – they’re so slippy.’
‘It’s OK,’ he says, and his fingers loosen on my arm, but don’t quite let go. ‘You’re all right.’
I nod, and we edge across the last few boards, his grip on my arm firm, but no longer tight enough to hurt.
At the far side I find I’m panting, my heart thumping absurdly in my chest. Amazingly Freya is sleeping steadily.
‘Th-thank you,’ I manage, and my voice is trembling in spite of myself, in spite of the fact I’m on firm ground and safe. ‘Thank you, Luc, I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t been here.’
What would I have done? I imagine myself trying to guide the rocking pram across that slippery, treacherous bridge, the wheels sloshing in a foot of water – or sitting down in the cold drizzle to wait for Kate to return from wherever she’s gone. Resentment flares again. How could she just disappear like that without so much as a text?
‘Do you know where the candles are?’ Luc asks, and I shake my head. He clicks his tongue, but whether in disgust or disapproval or what, I can’t tell, and pushes past me into the dark cavern of the Mill. I follow him, standing uncertainly in the middle of the floor. The hem of my sundress is damp and clinging to my legs, and I know I’m probably making a muddy puddle on the floor, and I realise, too, with a sense of chagrin, that my shoes are on the other side of the bridge. Well, never mind. The tide can’t possibly get any higher, not without the Mill actually floating away. I’ll collect them tomorrow when it subsides.
I’m shivering too, the cold breeze from the open doorway chilling the wet cloth against my legs, but Luc is busy searching through cupboards, and I hear the rasp of a match, smell paraffin, and see a flare in the darkness by the sink. Luc is standing there, an oil lamp in his hand, adjusting the wick so that the flame burns bright and clear in the little chimney. When it’s steady, he slips a frosted-glass globe over it, and suddenly the flickering, uncertain light is diffused into a golden glow.
He shuts the door, and we look at each other in the lamplight. The little circle of light is somehow more intimate even than darkness, holding us close in its narrow circle, and we stand just inches apart, suddenly unsure of each other. In the softly piercing light, I can see a vein in Luc’s throat is pulsing as quickly as my own heart is beating, and a kind of shiver runs through me. He is so hard to read, so impassive – but now I know that’s just a surface, that beneath he is as shaken as me, and suddenly I can’t bear to meet his eyes any more, and I have to drop my own gaze, afraid of what he might find there.
He clears his throat, the sound unbearably loud in the quiet house, and we speak at the same time.
‘Well, I should –’
‘It’s probably –’
We stop, laugh nervously.
‘You first,’ I say.
He shakes his head.
‘No, what were you about to say?’
‘Oh – nothing. I was just …’ I nod down at Freya. ‘You know. This one. I should probably put her to bed.’
‘Where’s she sleeping?’
‘In –’ I stop, swallow. ‘In your old room.’
He looks up at that, but I’m not sure if it’s surprise, or shock, or what. It must be so strange for him – seeing Kate reallocate his childhood home, and I’m struck again by the unfairness of what happened.
‘Oh. I see.’ The light dips and wavers as if the hand holding the lamp shook a little, but it might have been a draught. ‘Well, I’ll take the lamp up for you – you can’t manage a light and a baby up those stairs.’ He nods at the rickety wooden staircase, spiralling upwards in the corner of the room. ‘If someone dropped a candle in here the whole place would be in flames in minutes.’
‘Thanks,’ I say, and he turns without another word and begins to climb, me following his retreating back, and the circle of light that is disappearing into the rafters.
At the door to his old room he stops, and I hear a sound like a caught breath, but when I draw level with him, his face is almost blank, and he is just staring at the room – at the bed that used to be his, now strewn with my clothes, and the cradle at the foot with Freya’s comforter and stuffed elephant. I feel my face burn at my part in all this – at my bags spread out across his floor, at my bottles and lotions on his old desk.
‘Luc, I’m so sorry,’ I say, suddenly desperate.
‘Sorry for what?’ he asks, his voice as impassive as his face, but I can see that vein in his throat, and he shakes his head, puts the lamp down on the bedside table and then turns without a word and disappears into the darkness.
When Freya is settled, I take up the lamp and head cautiously back down the stairs, picking my way in the pool of golden light, which throws more shadows than it dispels.
I was more than half expecting him to be gone, but when I get to the foot of the stairs, I see a shape rise from the sofa, and when I hold the lamp high, it’s him.
I put the lamp on the little table beside the sofa, and without a word, as if this is something we’ve agreed, he takes my face between his hands and kisses me, and this time I don’t say anything – I don’t protest, I don’t push him away – I only kiss him back, running my fingers up beneath his shirt, feeling the smoothness of his skin, and the ridges of bone and muscle and scar and the heat of his mouth.
Outside, on the bridge, when Luc kissed me, I felt like I was betraying Owen, even though I didn’t kiss him back, but here – here, I don’t feel any guilt at all. This time, this moment, melds seamlessly into all the days and nights and hours I spent back then longing for Luc to kiss me, to touch me – a time before I ever met Owen, before I had Freya, before the drawings and Ambrose’s overdose – before any of this.
I could marshal my resentments with Owen, ticking them off on my fingers – the false accusations, the lack of trust, and the crowning insult – that emailed list of Luc’s criminal convictions as though that of all things would be the one thing that would prevent me from fucking a man I have wanted – and yes, I’m not ashamed to admit it now – a man I have wanted since I was fifteen, and perhaps still do.
But I don’t. I don’t try to justify what I’m doing. I just let go of the present, let the current tug it from my fingers, and I let myself sink down, down into the past, like a body falling into deep water, and I feel myself drowning, the waters closing over my head as I sink, and I don’t even care.
We fall backwards onto the sofa, our limbs entangled, and I help Luc pull his T-shirt over his head. There is an urgent need in the pit of my stomach to feel his skin against mine – a need that outstrips my self-consciousness about my stretch marks and the blue-white slackness of skin that was once tanned and taut.
I know I should be trying to make myself stop, but the truth is, I feel no guilt at all. Nothing else matters, as he begins to undo my dress, one button after another.
My fingers are at Luc’s belt, when he stops suddenly and pulls away. My heart stills. My face feels stiff with shame as I sit up, ready to gather my dress around myself and begin the awkward justifications – no, you’re right, it’s fine, I don’t know what I was thinking.
It’s only when he goes to the front door and shoots the bolt, that I understand, and a kind of dizzying heat washes over me – a real-isation that this is it, that we are really going to do this.
When he turns back to me, he smiles, a smile that transforms his serious face into the fifteen-year-old I once knew, and my heart seems to rise up inside me, making it hard to breathe – but the pain – the pain that has been there since I found those drawings on the mat, since Owen’s angry accusations, since all of this began – that pain is gone.
The soft, saggy sofa sighs as Luc climbs onto it, and I lie back and he takes me in his arms, and I feel his weight against me. My lips are on his throat, feeling the tenderness of the skin between my teeth, and tasting the salt of his sweat … and then suddenly I freeze.
For there, in the shadows at the top of the staircase, something is moving. A figure in the darkness.
Luc stops, raises himself up on his arms, feeling the sudden tense stillness of my muscles.
‘Isa? Are you OK?’
I can’t speak. My eyes are fixed on the dark space at the top of the stairs. Something – someone – is up there.
Pictures flash through my head. A gutted sheep. A bloodstained note. An envelope full of drawings from the past …
Luc turns, looks over his shoulder in the direction of my gaze.
The draught of his movement makes the lamp gutter and flare, and for a moment, just the briefest of moments, the flame illuminates the face of the person standing in the darkness, silently watching.
It is Kate.
I make a sound – not a scream, but something close to it, and Kate turns and disappears into the silent upper floors.
Luc is scrabbling his T-shirt back over his head, buttoning his jeans, leaving his belt trailing in his haste. He takes the stairs two at a time, but Kate is too quick for him. She is already halfway up the second flight and I hear the attic door slam and a key turn in a lock, and then Luc hammering at the door.
‘Kate. Kate! Let me in!’
No answer.
I begin to re-button my dress with shaking fingers and then scramble to my feet.
Luc’s feet sound on the stairs, his step slow, and his face, when he comes back into the circle of lamplight, is grim.
‘Shit.’
‘She was there?’ I whisper. ‘All the time? Why didn’t she come when we called?’
‘Fuck knows.’ He puts his hands over his face, as if he can grind away the sight of Kate standing there, her face blank and still.
‘How long was she standing there?’
‘I don’t know.’
My cheeks burn.
We sit, side by side on the sofa for a long, silent time. Luc’s face is impassive. I don’t know what my expression is like, but my thoughts are a confused jumble of emotion and suspicion and despair. What was she doing up there, spying on us like that?
I remember the moment the lamp flared, and her face – like a white mask in the darkness, eyes wide, mouth compressed as though she was trying not to cry out. It was the face of a stranger. What has happened to my friend, the woman I thought I knew?
‘I should go,’ Luc says at last, but although he gets to his feet, he doesn’t move towards the door. He just stands there, looking at me, his dark brows knitted in a frown, and the shadows beneath his wide cheekbones giving his face a gaunt, haunted look.
There is a noise from upstairs, a whimper from Freya, and I stand up, irresolute, but Luc speaks before I can.
‘Don’t stay here, Isa. It’s not safe.’
‘What?’ I stop at that, not trying to hide my shock. ‘What do you mean?’
‘This place –’ He waves a hand at the Mill, taking in the water outside, the dead light sockets, the rickety stairs. ‘But not just that – I –’
He stops, scrubs his free hand into his eyes, and then takes a deep breath.
‘I don’t want to leave you alone with her.’
‘Luc, she’s your sister.’
‘She’s not my sister, and I know you think she’s your friend, but Isa, you – you can’t trust her.’
He’s lowered his voice to a whisper, even though it’s impossible that Kate should hear us – three floors up, and behind a locked door.
I shake my head, refusing to believe it. Whatever Kate has done, whatever strain she’s under right now, she is my friend. She has been my friend for almost twenty years. I won’t – can’t – listen to Luc.
‘I don’t expect you to believe me.’ He’s speaking hurriedly now. Freya’s wail from above gets louder, and I glance at the stairs, wanting to go to her, but Luc is still holding my wrist, his grip gentle but firm. ‘But just – just please be careful, and listen, like I said, I think you should leave the Mill.’
‘I’ll leave tomorrow,’ I say it with a heaviness, thinking of Owen and what’s waiting for me back in London, but Luc shakes his head.
‘Now. Tonight.’
‘Luc, I can’t. There’s no train until the morning.’
‘Then come back to my flat. Stay the night. I’ll sleep on the sofa,’ he adds hurriedly, ‘if that’s what you want. But I don’t like to think of you here, alone.’
I’m not alone, I think. I have Kate. But I know that’s not what he means.
Freya wails again, and I make up my mind.
‘I’m not leaving tonight, Luc. I’m not dragging Freya and my luggage halfway across the marsh in the middle of the night—’
‘So get a cab –’ he cuts in, but I’m still talking, ignoring his protests.
‘—I’ll leave first thing tomorrow – I’ll catch the 8 a.m. train if you’re really worried, but there is no way that I’m in danger from Kate. I’m just not. I’ve known her for seventeen years, Luc, and I can’t believe it. I trust her.’
‘I’ve known her for longer than that,’ Luc says, so quietly that I can hardly hear him beneath Freya’s choking wails. ‘And I don’t.’
Freya’s cries are too loud for me to ignore now, and I pull my wrist gently out of his grip.
‘Goodnight, Luc.’
‘Goodnight, Isa,’ he says. He watches as I retreat up the stairs with the oil lamp, leaving him in darkness. Upstairs, I pick up Freya, feeling her hot little body convulsing with angry sobs, and in the silence that follows I hear the click of the door latch, and the sound of Luc’s footsteps on gravel as he disappears into the night.