‘Susanna…’ Addie had always been softer than she was; Susanna could tell she was going to be lenient despite the circumstances.
‘You’re right,’ said Gayle. ‘It isn’t your job.’
Addie was looking at her the way she had as a kid, as if she was torn between two opposing sides and didn’t know which one to take. Susanna had seen it enough times when she returned to the island to spend time with her sister, the way her sister had pretended to have zero interest in the Sweet Life Café when Susanna could tell she’d settled into a different life without her there.
Susanna felt her chest tighten. She couldn’t be here. ‘I’ve got to get out of this house.’ She didn’t even look at either of them. She heard Addie say,let her go,and she left her suitcase behind in the middle of the kitchen doorway.
She took off. She left the cottage, turned right, followed Bay Street all the way along until she came to the footpath she knew so well, even after all this time, even in the dark. She’d never not felt safe here. Guided by the light of the moon she paced all the way along, the route familiar, the views the same. She sat at a bench, the same bench she’d sat at so many times when she felt troubled. The view took her gaze out across the water, sideways to the silhouettes of rooftops, upwards towards the stars.
She needed Alex. No matter what was going on between them she really wanted to talk to him, grasp at some semblance of normality.
Her hand shook as she pulled her phone from her coat pocket.
‘Susanna?’ He sounded groggy when he answered.
‘Were you asleep?’
‘Yeah, it’s been a long day.’
‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have called. I’ll call back tomorrow.’
She heard rustling as if he was shifting back the bed sheets. ‘I’m awake. I’ll go downstairs and get myself a glass of water.’
She waited until the sound on the other end of the line calmed. ‘I miss you.’ The words sounded desperate even to her ears.
‘Miss you too.’
Was he saying it because he meant it or because he thought he should?
Oh, she was questioning everything. How she wished they were back to the way they’d once been, when she hadn’t questioned their relationship at all.
She heard a tap go on for a few seconds, water splashing into a glass, followed by a few glugs as he drank. ‘How are things there? Did you let yourselves into the house without having the police descend on you?’
This was better, better than her launching into asking what was going on with him. This big news would be a distraction. ‘You’re not going to believe this…’
It felt so good to talk to him. While he’d been distant and secretive lately, now he indulged in conversation in a way he hadn’t done for a while. It felt intimate, she felt their close connection even from so far away.
‘Of all the things you could’ve told me tonight,’ he said, ‘that definitely wasn’t one of them. What the hell?’
‘Yeah, add in a decent expletive and that was pretty much my reaction.’
They talked until Alex yawned yet again and she let him go back to bed. Alex never went before eleven; it was another thing about his behaviour that was off lately, and she hated that it made her so unsettled.
The wind picked up a little as she began to make her way back towards Evergreen Close.
As she approached the cottage, she wondered what Gayle and Addie had found to talk about. Addie had always got on better with Gayle than she had, it was one of the things that had tilted Susanna’s world. They’d promised each other in the still of the night so many times when they first came to the island that they would stay together, that they would return to the mainland and the world that was theirs.
They’d lost their mum and their dad and neither of them ever wanted to lose each other.
10
ADDIE
After Susanna had stormed out of the cottage, Addie had got up and left the front door on the latch. She’d then texted her sister to let her know she could come back in that way. Funny – she’d been away for twenty years and some things were still second nature to her. She knew to turn the door knob and secure it, she knew the cold tap in the utility room ran colder than the one in the kitchen, she knew there was a dip in the bathroom floor upstairs near the sink, and that the windows on this side of the house always rattled in a storm.
Addie hadn’t known what to say to Gayle, who had apologised repeatedly when it was just the two of them, so she’d taken herself off as well and gone for a walk up to Bay Street. She knew Susanna would’ve gone towards the track – she’d done that a lot when she was meeting Mateo because it was another way of getting down to the marina – and she wanted to give Susanna a bit of space to think because that was what she needed herself.
Addie had reached the Sweet Life Café and stood opposite it for a while, fifty metres or so from the entrance door, not too close, and just stared. And then, ten minutes ago, she’d come back to the house to find Gayle sitting in the same place in the kitchen. Gayle had made her a cup of camomile tea and they’d sat there in silence, waiting for Susanna.
