She hates that it happened again. Hates that someone was there to see it. Hates more than she thinks she should that it was Ash, of all people, who was there with her. If it had been Darcy or Mia, she could’ve coped, but the way he looked at her out of kind, careful eyes when he said goodbye at her door … She doesn’t want to think of the impression she must’ve given.
When she can’t concentrate on the dream book she bought, she heads to the bathroom and switches the shower on as hot as it will go. She doesn’t have a bath, but she hates them anyway, hates the feeling of being submerged, surrounded by water. She steps into the shower, the water like needles, stinging her skin. She closes her eyes, breathes in the steam.
There’s the sound of screeching brakes as someone pushes her out of the way. The thud of tarmac reverberating through her knees as she hits the ground. The sound of someone’s body slamming into a windscreen, the sickening crack of a head hitting the road.
She opens her eyes, scowling at herself.
Stop it, Lissa.
No one got hurt. No one’s head hit the tarmac. It was a motorbike, not a car.
The water continues to pour around her, and although it’s draining away, she feels as if the water level is rising, can already feel the burn of her lungs, like she’s being submerged.
She’s running into the garden, desperate to get to Chloe before she drowns, not to be too late this time. Only she’s not running through the garden at all. She’s running through a city that has turned to rubble, and the screams she can hear are not her sister’s, but coming from all around, as the sound of planes above grows steadily quieter.
No.Her heart beats the warning, nausea swells as she runs. To her house – to whatshouldbe her house – where she left her sister only moments ago. She was supposed to be safe there, but now there is a small, limp hand sticking out from the rubble. It can’t be hers, itcan’tbe.
Lissa knows, though, that it is. It’s her sister’s hand, stretching for help as the street was bombed around her. The warning came too late, when Lissa was already out – and her mother isn’t home, her dad away fighting. Which leaves only her. She was left in charge and she was supposed to be there to protect her sister, but she wasn’t.
She’s scrambling over the rubble, ears ringing, people shouting. At her? She isn’t sure. She feels a rough grip on her arm, shakes it off as she bends down to reach for the hand. It’s her sister’s, she knows that, even if she can’t see the rest of her yet. She checks the pulse first.
Nothing. Not even a flicker of life.
She is sobbing as she tries to clear the rubble. She shouldn’t have left. This is all her fault, she shouldn’t have left.
The water is running cold. It’s that, she thinks, that pulls her back to reality. She is shivering as she reaches to turn the tap off. And she realises, when the water stops, that she is crying.
Is that what this is all about – Chloe? Is it a way of trying to process what happened to her, by imagining different ways she could have died? Are the flashbacks she’s seeing some weird kind of PTSD? It’s so many years after it happened, but trauma can do that to a person, can’t it? Or maybe she’s just going mad. Maybe she needs a doctor, pills of some kind.
She is exhausted when she climbs into bed, and it doesn’t take her long to fall asleep. When she does, she’s greeted by the sound of water; soft waves lapping against the shoreline. It’s oddly soothing, given that she can’t swim.
She is sitting by a loch, her feet bare, just on the edge of the glittering dark blue water. It’s as warm as it ever gets this far north, though a cool breeze whisks across her cheeks as she sketches, the movement of charcoal over paper something that never fails to calm her. Around her, heather-clad hills roll into the distance, while ancient pines guard her back.
It feels like another memory, another lifetime. Only it is somehow more blurred than the other flashbacks, like an out-of-focus photo.
She looks up at the scene she’s drawing. A man is rowing towards her.Herman, one with chestnut hair and pale green eyes. Even from here, she can see him smiling at her behind his beard. Or she can’t reallyseeit, because there is still that strange blurred quality to the dream, but she can imagine it.
It’s become her favourite thing to do, to come and sit here with him. He only came back to this part of Scotland because of his father, she knows. Because when his father returned from the Crimean War, he wasn’t the same. But she hopes he’ll stay.
He is singing out there on the lake, a beautiful, comforting sound, the Gaelic words tumbling into one another. He’s tried to convince her to come out on the water with him before, but she doesn’t know how to swim, so it doesn’t seem sensible.
She is finishing the sketch when he pulls to the shoreline, jumps out into the water and strides towards her. She tilts her head back, smiles up at him. He asked her once what she wanted from life. She wasn’t able to answer, becausewantseemed like such a foreign concept. She had things she needed to do, parents she needed to take care of, things she needed to atone for. But really, when he asked, all she wanted to say was:You. I want you.And that just didn’t seem like the type of thing it was wise to say to someone before you knew if they were staying. Before you knew if they wanted you back.
From the way he’s looking at her now, though, his face framed in sunlight, she hopes he might like her just as much as she likes him.
The shrill ring of her phone jolts her awake. She fumbles for it in the dark as it rings again, feeling disoriented, still groggy from sleep.
She doesn’t even check the screen before she answers. There’s only one person who can be calling her this time of night. ‘Mum?’
There is no answer, only the sound of sobbing.
‘Shit,’ she mutters. Then, more loudly, ‘Mum?’ Sobbing again. ‘I’m coming round, okay? Do you hear me, Mum? It’ll be all right. I’ll be there soon.’
The lights are on in her childhood home as she lets herself in, and the house is cold. She finds her mum in the living room, half passed out on the sofa, paper cut up all around her, like a weird version of the mess a child would make. There’s a near-empty bottle of gin on the coffee table, next to a glass still beaded with condensation.
‘Mum?’ Lissa speaks softly as she moves into the room with practised quiet.
Her mum half opens one eye, struggles to sit up. Then she opens her eyes more fully and looks at Lissa in a way that makes her insides twist. In a way she recognises. ‘You.’ The word drips with loathing, and even though Lissa has heard this tone before, even though she knows to expect it, that does not stop it hurting.
