‘I wasn’t skinny-dipping, was I?’ I asked, trying to joke my way out of what was fast becoming a really uncomfortable conversation.
‘No. But it looked like you could easily have ended up naked.’
My thoughts were spinning, trying to imagine how anot-guiltyLexi would react to those words. She’d be interested, of course she would be.
I poured the eggs into the pan and then turned my attention back to my sister, who was watching me from her seat at the kitchen table.
‘Go on then. Spill the beans. Tell me what I was doing in this dream of yours.’
‘You were kissing Sam.’
The fork slipped from my hand and clattered noisily on to the quarry-tiled floor. I was glad I had to bend down to retrieve it and wipe up the messy eggy trail it had left. It meant that by the time I finally straightened up, my face was wiped clean of panic. But my hands still felt shaky as I returned my attention to our scrambled-egg breakfast.
‘Yes,’ continued Amelia, her brows furrowing as though she could still see the scene replaying in her head. ‘The two of you were getting really hot and heavy on the beach, and I was rapping on the window, trying to let you know that I was right there and that I could see what you were doing, but you couldn’t hear me.’
I felt sick. Had Amelia seen us? Had she woken, confused and disorientated from her high-dosage sleeping pills, and wandered over to the window? Or was this just a horrible – and very accurate – coincidence? I’d checked in on her as soon as I got back inside, after leaving Nick to walk back to his car, which he’d parked further down the lane. Amelia had been in the exact same position as when I’d left, facing away from the door. Which meant I hadn’t seen her face. I couldn’t swear she’d been asleep. What if she’d been lying there, her cheeks wet with tears after witnessing the ultimate betrayal by two people she loved?
‘Dreams don’t mean anything,’ I said decisively as I slid the eggs from the pan on to waiting slices of toast. ‘And given the number of drugs they’ve got you on, one of me making out on the beach is actually fairly mild.’
Amelia took the plate from me and gave a small shrug. ‘I guess so. But it felt incredibly vivid.’
I’d been intending to message Nick when Amelia went upstairs to shower and dress, but I set my phone aside and busied myself instead with tidying up the kitchen. My guilt-driven cleaning frenzy spilled out into the hallway, where it came to an abrupt stop. The shoes I’d grabbed to wear on the beach the night before were still there on the mat. They were Amelia’s and the soles were caked with clumps of damp sand. Had she seen them on her way into the kitchen, I worried? With a furtive glance at the staircase, I eased open the front door and vigorously wiped the shoes clean with my hands.I’m not cut out for a life of subterfuge or deceit,I realised, as I scrubbed my hands beneath the kitchen tap under water so hot it was practically scalding. If I was serious about continuing this thing with Nick, I was going to have to be a hell of a lot more careful going forward.
*
The days that followed had a curious quality – like the ones between Christmas and New Year, when you really don’t know what day of the week it is anymore. I’d turned on my out-of-office, having agreed I’d be taking a few days’ vacation time. But that felt like entirely the wrong name for it. Vacations are a time when you kick back and relax. And I wasn’t able to do that, for a great many reasons. With each passing day, it became clear that the story we’d concocted about Sam and the silent retreat was perilously close to its use-by date.
A lot of watching went on in those early days. Amelia watched the windows whenever a shadow fell across them. She watched the post when it fell on to the mat, searching for an envelope with familiar handwriting. And she watched the beach and the incoming waves, like the wife of a sailor who’d been widowed by the sea.
I did my fair share of watching too. I watched Amelia with an obsession that sat just this side of unhealthy. I counted her breaths when she wasn’t looking and was transfixed by the readings on the home blood pressure monitor that I’d presented her with.
‘Worst gift ever,’ she’d declared with unusual pithiness as she fastened the cuff around her slender upper arm. ‘And I don’t remember the hospital saying I needed to do this every day.’
She was right; they hadn’t, but seeing her readings sit comfortably within the normal range took the edge off my anxiety. Given my general stress levels, my own results were probably far higher than hers anyway.
Mum was part of the watch patrol too, although her attention was divided equally between her daughters. ‘Are you sure you wouldn’t like me to stay here for a week or so?’ she asked, not for the first time, as I walked her to the door one afternoon. ‘It’s a lot to take on, looking after Amelia on your own.’
‘I’m right here,’ Amelia sang out from the lounge.
‘If it’s a matter of space, I’m sure I could always stay at Tom’s,’ Mum continued.
‘Ah…nowwe’re getting to it,’ Amelia called.
I smiled at that and stepped closer to give Mum a reassuring squeeze. ‘Honestly, Mum, it’s all fine. Let me take up the slack for these first couple of weeks. There’ll be time enough for you to take over when I’ve gone back home.’
‘I can still hear you both, you know. And for the hundredth time, I don’t need looking after.’
Mum and I exchanged a meaningful glance. Whatever she might think, Amelia still needed our assistance – even though she’d never admit it.
The hospital had recommended ‘gentle exercise’, so we’d been taking short walks along the beach twice a day. But it worried me how quickly and frequently Amelia needed to stop and rest. As much as I liked the feel of her arm linked through mine, I’d have liked it a whole lot more if it had been there for companionship rather than support.
The final type of watching that went on was much less worrisome, and involved a great many hours spent curled up on the settee bingeing through films we’d missed. We quickly worked our way through the good ones and were now dipping into the kind that would definitely be categorised as B list.
It was late afternoon, and we were halfway through a romcom that was so cheesy it should have been served with crackers. The dialogue was poor and the plot implausible, and yet Amelia and I were still somehow sticking with it.
‘Do you know what this movie needs?’ Amelia said.
‘A decent scriptwriter?’ I guessed.
