I looked at the floor. Her reaction when she’d seen me today, while I was holding an axe, now made sense. But she hadn’t fled or fucked off instantly; she’d tried to be polite and I had been a tosser. Standard.
“Why didn’t she come to see Marcy before she died?” I didn’t get that. It wasn’t because I was a jerk, although to be fucking honest, I was. I didn’t always get people. My brain wasn’t wired that way. And I didn’t get why she hadn’t been home to see the old lady who clearly adored her.
“You’d need to ask her family. I don’t like to say.” Gerry looked me directly in the eye, making me focus on him. Not gossiping for once.
Making me goddamn uncomfortable.
“Hang on.” Tim knocked back most of his pint. “He doesn’t know Anya. You know Marcy was upset that Anya didn’t come home…”
“She never complained.” Marcy didn’t say a word about Anya not coming home. They spoke on the phone, and she mentioned their conversations about the books they’d discussed, or the audio books that Marcy listened to when she could no longer read. “I think she’d have liked to have seen Anya but she never said so.” I shrugged, unsure about hearing any more.
Tim’s expression altered. His eyes were darker. “Anya was advised not to come back. She saw someone to help her after it all happened, and they thought that having to deal with more grief would send her under.”
I shrugged and stood up. “Not really my business. I’ll stay out of her way. She clearly has a lot to deal with.”
The lines on Tim’s head deepened. “Look, son, you live here. We’re a small island. You get to know people’s business and rather you hear all about it from Wendy-in-the-shop or old Bill, you’re better off hearing half a true tale from us. She’s a good girl is An. It’ll be good for her to have people her own age around the island apart from her sister.”
If it had been two years ago, I would’ve suspected I was being set up. But the man that I was didn’t inhabit this body any more. I walked away, feeling my back stiffen having been sitting too long, chopping wood – too much wood – had taken its toll on me. My physio had warned me, but as usual I didn’t listen. “I’ll see you tomorrow. And don’t worry, I won’t give Anya a hard time. It’s not for me to judge.”
I heard their silence as I left, the light from the sun now shrouded by the early evening. It looked like a sea fret was on its way in, the clouds holding a promise. I couldn’t read the weather yet; I hadn’t lived here long enough, but there was something different in the air tonight.
The beach was empty except for a few teenagers who had escaped away from the holiday home parks to gather on the sands where their parents couldn’t see them. They were the kids whose exams had already finished and had nothing to do apart from holiday on the island and wait for the new term to start. Weeks of nothing would be panned out in front of them, no cares or fears. Just summer and an endless blue sea.
I yanked off my trainers and dug my feet into the damp sand, the tide on its way out. Being here was all the therapy I needed at the moment. After the crash, they’d advised seeing someone to talk through what had happened. Going along with it was easy; feeling it was not. I knew what words to say, what they wanted to hear, but when I continually refused to get into a car, or a van, or even on a bus, they’d started to give up, saying I wasn’t ready and you couldn’t force it.
The sea was different. Being on a boat every morning when the world was still silent eased the rawness I still embraced.
Loss.
I got loss. It was what I painted every day when I headed back to the half ruined house I’d bought for a steal, with its huge barn where I could sleep and apply colour to canvas, capturing the people and places of the island.
Cold water gripped my feet, the hem of my jeans getting soaked. A dog ran past, spraying droplets, a too-big stick in its mouth. Kids laughed and a fire crackled.
I bent down and picked up a shell, perfect and unchipped. Underneath it was smooth and damp, recently gifted by the sea. Collecting shells was something young children did and not grown men, but I didn’t give a shit about what people thought I should do. This shell would form part of a painting, mixed media, somewhere else I could lose myself.
As I stood up I saw a female figure, up to her knees in the sea. Long hair was being tossed by the growing breeze, the last rays of light casting her as a dark silhouette. I pulled out my phone and took a photo, the hairs on the back of my neck standing to attention as my mind saw the colours and textures on the canvas, heavy acrylic paint pooling ochres and old golds, rusts and bronzes.
And her.
Her light pouring through the shadow.
I took a second photo, and a third, hoping to fuck the light was good enough now to make the picture permanent.
Then she turned, aware of my eyes watching her and she froze, paralysed.
I saw her then. Her face recognisable even in the dimming light, even though I’d only seen her once before.
Anya.
The teenagers’ laughter morphed into the sounds of the sea, the late cries of the gulls echoing up to the skies and beyond. It was all background noise. She took up every wavelength I was tuned into.
Her lips parted, as if she was about to speak. I waited, wondering what she needed to say, to ask. To yell or curse or scream.
She said nothing. Instead the waves splashed as she turned and walked away, towards the steps that led from the beach to the top of the cliff where the guesthouse was, now bright white against a darkening sky.
I watched her go, the waves hitting my legs, soaking the denim. My eyes didn’t leave her until she’d climbed the steps, disappearing like she was never really there.
* * *
