'That place has been my whole life. Everything I thought I knew about myself was constructed in those few months I spent within touching distance of the sea. Everything I am is because Alistair loved me.'
What if everything you remember was a lie? The explosive and conversation-starting book-club debut from a stunning new talent. A book for every woman that turns the idea of 'the one that got away' on its head.
THEN
It’s too hot to be outside for long. Sweat is starting to dampen my scalp, thickening in the roots of my hair and pooling in the crevices of my collar bone. My t-shirt sticks to my spine and my arms are tinged pink, an ungainly line of skin beginning to blister along the top of my thigh in the almost unseasonable blaze of sun. I curl my toes into the damp sand and feel the sharpness of a small shell against the sole of my foot.
Please, don’t let him have left without me, I think, I’ll do anything. I need him to come for me.
From my spot on the sand I can just make out the dock. Rising out of the sea is the rickety wooden platform where I disembarked months ago, seasick and tired. A small boat is tethered there, bright blue and bobbing in the slow swell of the tide. It will leave in ten minutes, and I am supposed to be on it.
When I arrived here this morning the dock was quiet. Now there is a bustle of activity, a queue of impatient tourists ready to embark. The waves edge close to my legs and dampen the ground beneath my heels. I shiver as saltwater laps the tip of my toe.
Just a few more minutes. Just a few more minutes and he’ll be here.
‘Rachel!’
Someone is waving one arm in my direction, their figure silhouetted against the brightness of the sky. I lift one hand to shield my eyes and see that it’s Helena. She’s walking quickly, half jogging, and as she collapses down next to me her chest heaves, her breath tangled up in her throat. Her hair is damp and salt crystals are beginning to form and glitter at her neck, a white and grainy sheen that edges in one long streak from her jaw down to her collar bone.
‘They came for him,’ she says, her voice ragged and airless. ‘This morning.’
I’m already shaking my head, clambering to my feet.
‘No,’ I say.
‘They didn’t find him. He’d already left. He got away.’
It takes a moment for me to find the words, for the shapes that Helena’s mouth makes to form into something resembling meaning.
‘He can’t have.’
‘I’ve been to the house. Everything’s gone.’
‘You’re lying.’
‘We knew this would happen, Rachel. We knew they’d come for him, in the end.’
I gather up my bags, staggering in my hurry to get away. She opens her mouth as if to say something before I go, one arm raised up as if to catch me, and then seems to think better of it. There’s nothing she can say to stop me now.
My things are too heavy as I tumble up the beach. My shoes catch in the sand and I bend down to tug them off. I throw them on to the ground so that I can dash to the road, away from Helena and towards him. I flag down a car, a local man who pulls up looking concerned at me, barefoot and weighed down by too many things. I splutter out an address and then hold out a wad of notes, my entire boat fare.
‘Please,’ I say. ‘I’ll pay you.’
He shakes his head, obviously misreading my distress as something more sinister. It takes me a moment to remember that it is.
‘No money,’ he says. ‘I’ll take you home.’
As his car veers up the hillside and away from the dock, I try to compose myself. I take deep, desperate breaths, sucking in air through my nose and exhaling in long hard gasps. My face is wet, and when my tears reach my lips they taste as salty as the sea. As the driver wrenches the steering wheel in a way that only someone who has grown up around these vertiginous roads can, he glances anxiously in the rear-view mirror.
‘Everything OK?’ he asks.
I nod.
‘It will be,’ I say. ‘It has to be.’
How many times have I climbed the hill to this white-painted house, spent the night, left early in the morning with my head spinning? I remember the first time, when he sent a car to pick me up and I wore the nicest dress I had with me. It was flowing and white, and I felt like a Greek goddess. But then of course, that was before. Before the whispers started to curdle the summer air like an impending rainstorm. Before police descended on the island, their uniforms oppressive and dark beneath the midday sun. Before the body washed up, broken on the beach. I heard she had been there for hours by the time they found her, her skin swollen by the sea, her face no longer recognizable.
“Around me the house remains cavernous and still, as though nobody has lived here for years. As though none of us were ever here at all.”
‘Here?’ the man says.
I nod and wipe my sodden cheeks.
‘Here.’
I abandon my bags at the roadside and rush towards the wooden door. I can already see that it is open. He would never just leave it like that. He worries endlessly about locking up the bar at night. I call out his name as I step into the cool shade of the entrance hall. At first it looks the same: the wrought-iron statue on the side table, the white rug at the bottom of the stairs. Yet his keys are missing from the bowl next to the door, his jacket no longer hanging and ready for him to throw on against the evening chill. I dash upstairs, still calling out for him.
I’m sobbing by the time I reach his bedroom: guttural, animal-like noises. The wardrobe doors are thrown open, shirts scooped off their hangers as if by someone who left in a hurry. Sheets have been torn off the bed and a fallen lamp sits in pieces on the floor as though whoever broke it didn’t have time to clean up. A door to a balcony has been left ajar and thin curtains drift lazily in the breeze, their movement absurdly calm against the chaos he has left behind.
For a moment it feels like everything should stop. The world is still spinning. The sun is still shining. But he is gone. I lie stomach-down on his bed and try to capture the smell of him. I breathe in hoping to find the remnants of his aftershave, a small part of him still left behind, but the white expanse of the mattress only smells of detergent. I wail into a discarded pillow, not worried about who will hear, my body arching into the bed. Around me the house remains cavernous and still, as though nobody has lived here for years. As though none of us were ever here at all.
NOW
The heat is unbearable.
It crawls into my lungs and knots itself in the damp folds of flesh beneath my clothes. It slickens against my skin and leaves streaks of sweat on the backs of my thighs. I waxed my legs in anticipation of this holiday, conscious of how my pale skin would look in the sunlight. Perhaps I was conscious of more than that, hoping this trip would reignite some of the heat that has been missing from my marriage. Instead, I look across at my husband and feel faintly repulsed. His underarms are damp and staining the shirt he put on especially for our last night here. He’s staring out at the sea, but I know he isn’t seeing it the way I do. To him it could be anything. Any view, anywhere. To me the swell of the tide speaks of secrets, the salty air smelling irrevocably of promise.
The sea always reminds me of that summer. How the entire world had seemed within reach back then. I remember sitting with my toes in the sand, the vastness of an ocean stretching out before me, and feeling as though the whole universe was mine to be had.
‘Shall we order more wine?’ Tom asks.
I shake my head.
‘I’m actually pretty tired. Let’s get the bill.’
He nods and beckons the waiter over. He always does what I want him to. I used to like it, years ago. It used to be a relief, after everything. Now I wish that he wouldn’t. That he would have his own thoughts and things to say. That he would tell me no. I think I am starting to be scared of what I might do if he doesn’t.
“The island has changed, but then so have I. Memory is funny like that. It weights places with a significance that slowly gathers pace over time.”
‘Ready?’ he says.
I’m too young to be feeling like this, I think, but I nod and bend down to gather my bag. There are a lot of things that never get said between us. There may as well be one more.
We trudge back to the apartment block in silence. The strip that lines the beach is quiet at this time of night. The families who fill it in the daytime have already vacated the shops selling inflatable lilos and the restaurants that stock cheap wine and child-friendly pizza menus. The pavement is scattered with the remnants of days out, leftover sandwich packets and abandoned bottles of suncream. This part of town is the domain of tourists, of cheap package holidays and sun-worshippers. The coastline that was once quiet is now bloated with hotels and neon-fronted bars, concrete structures that threaten to obscure the peaceful slope of the town into the island’s hills.
When Tom promised he’d book somewhere nice for dinner on our last evening I had hoped we’d go anywhere else. Perhaps to one of the inland restaurants that cater to the sprawling villas that cling to cliff faces and hillsides far away from the town, dimly lit and demurely designed to fade into the scenery. We’ve already spent most of the holiday metres away from here, stretched out on beach towels and stopping off to stuff ourselves with salty olives and feta on the way back to the apartment. When I realized that we were heading in this direction, my hand clutched in his and slightly clammy, I had clenched my mouth into a smile.
‘I love this place!’ I had enthused, and deposited a neat clean kiss on his cheek.
He had looked painfully pleased with himself and I found myself wishing that I hadn’t bothered wearing my favourite summer dress, its thin straps chafing against my sunburnt skin.
The island has changed, but then so have I. Memory is funny like that. It weights places with a significance that slowly gathers pace over time. As I got further away from that summer, my recollections of this place became imbued with magic. I remembered arriving here by boat, the harbour bathed in a syrupy early evening glow and my shoulders slumping beneath the weight of my backpack. I remembered the taste of the local alcohol as I danced until my bones ached and my body felt weightless. I remembered the taste of his mouth, the heat of his skin, the feeling that if I didn’t belong to him then I would die. The further away I got, the more mythical the island became in my imagination, a world where emotions were heightened until they almost hurt and every day was tinged with promise.
‘You didn’t think I’d forgotten, did you?’
I’m so caught up in remembering the past that I’ve barely noticed the present. Now that I look at my husband I can see that he’s delighted by his surprise. He peers at me eagerly, waiting for my reaction.
‘This is it, isn’t it? The bar you used to work in?’
I recognize it at once, of course. It’s still as ramshackle as it used to be, a tumble of wooden steps leading up to a squat building wrapped in a winding terrace. There’s a lithe blurriness between the outdoors and the in, tables spilling on to the deck and the sound of the sea echoing off the walls. The doorway is ringed with fairy lights now, flower garlands hung up in a feeble nod towards some unidentifiable tropical theme. It used to be grottier and busier. It used to feel bigger, as though it was the centre of gravity itself, the place the entire world orbited around.
Extracted from The Girls of Summer by Katie Bishop, out now.
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