But you still have a daughter down there, Esme. She’s fourteen. Sheneedsyou. You’re the only thing she has left.
There was a scoff. Was there definitely a scoff, or is that just something Lissa’s brain has imagined, filling in the gaps?She’s got you, hasn’t she? Isn’t that why you’re around all the time? To check up on me? To check I’m doing a good job – that I don’t lose another daughter?
Mia turned the TV up louder, but not loud enough.
He blames me.Her mother’s voice wasn’t a shout any more, but still it carried in their too-small house.
What?
David. He blames me for what happened.
Her uncle’s voice was gentler now.Esme …
But it’s not my fault. It’s not my fault, you hear me? I wasn’t the one who was supposed to be watching her.
Downstairs, Lissa closed her eyes. She’d heard this before, many times.
Mia put an arm around her, saying nothing as Lissa buried her face in her cousin’s neck, pretending she was in a reality where her sister had not died.
But she had. She’d drowned because Lissa, who’d been left in charge, had gone inside, just to get lunch, while Chloe had been playing by the pond. Only she’d got distracted, talking to one of her friends on the phone, and hadn’t gone back out to the garden until she realised that everything had gone quiet.
She never saw her sister climbing over the fence, put up to stop them getting to the pond, but it was concluded – by the police, and social services – that that was what had happened. That Chloe had thrown her toy, and without an adult to ask for help had been determined to get it back by herself.
Lissa screamed when she saw her sister’s body there, face-down in the water. She ran to her. But it was too late –shewas too late.
It doesn’t take a lot of water for someone to drown. She heard them tell her mum that. Her mum, who stood in the garden staring at her lifeless daughter until the paramedics arrived. Lissa can still remember the stiff way she held herself as they fixed an oxygen mask to Chloe’s little face, her mouth tinged with blue, skin far too pale.
Her mum went in the ambulance with Chloe, while her dad followed in the car with Lissa. She remembers his white knuckles on the steering wheel. How he shouted at her to get out of the car the moment they arrived at the hospital, how he didn’t wait for her to undo her seat belt before he was running.
She has only ever imagined what her mum went through on that journey. How she must have sat there holding Chloe’s hand, telling herself the doctors would bring her back. How the sirens must have sounded too loud, how the journey time must have seemed endless.
It was pointless, anyway, to go to the hospital. Chloe was dead by the time the paramedics arrived. She’d been drowning while Lissa had been upstairs, giggling over something stupid, unable to hear.
‘How’s your father, Lissa?’ Her mum’s voice brings her back to the kitchen, where Mia is unloading groceries onto the counter.
‘He’s good,’ Lissa says. Her mum asks about him less than he does about her – a demonstration, perhaps, that today is a good day.
‘And your …’ Her mum breaks off, clearing her throat. ‘Elsie?’ Still unable to say the wordsister, fourteen years on from Elsie’s birth. ‘How is she?’
‘She’s good too, I think.’ Uncomfortable guilt squirms in Lissa’s stomach as she switches the oven on. She should know how Elsie is. She wonders if she got that trip into Bath she’d wanted last time they all met.
Mia claps her hands. ‘Right. Let’s get this show on the road, shall we?’
‘Yes, good idea,’ Lissa says. The quicker they cook, the quicker they can eat, the quicker they can leave. ‘I’ll peel the potatoes.’
‘I’ll help,’ her mum says.
‘Oh. Okay. I mean, great! Do you have two peelers?’
‘I could make the cauliflower cheese. Are we having cauliflower cheese?’
‘Ah …’ Lissa looks at Mia.
‘I bought broccoli?’ Mia holds up the vegetable in question.
There’s a hesitation, then Esme nods. ‘Broccoli cheese. That will work, won’t it?’
‘Don’t see why not,’ Lissa says. She will not be the one to ruin the good mood her mum is in.
