I had to get through a full week of bed rest before I was able to leave the house to visit Milly. Her bedsit was in a soulless development ten miles inland. Like so many people in St Ives, she’d been driven away by the rising house prices, unable to afford anything close to the sea on her nurse’s salary.
The first four times I rang the bell Milly ignored me. Between rings, I phoned her mobile and left a series of voicemails.
‘I know you’re in there.’
‘I’m not going away, Milly.’
‘I need the loo and if I have an accident on your street it will be your fault.’
‘I’m calling your mother if you don’t let me in now.’
It was the last one that did it. There was a hiss as she buzzed me in, but I was too slow and I missed my chance and had to press the bell again.
By the time I’d climbed both flights of stairs, dragging myself up by the handrail and huffing and puffing, pausing every few seconds to catch my breath, Milly was standing on the landing, one hand on a hip. ‘Tell me you haven’t gone into labour. Because you’re breathing as if you have.’
‘I’m twenty-nine weeks – I breathe like this all the time these days.’
She wrinkled her nose in disgust. ‘You’re on your own?’ She narrowed her eyes as if expecting to see Zac pop out from behind me.
‘I made a steak sandwich for Zac’s lunch and surprised him with it at work before I came here. He’s definitely at the hospital.’
‘Cunning.’
‘Yes. That Girlfriend of the Year award is sure to be mine. He was deeply touched, given the fact that I’ve barely spoken to him lately, but way too busy to stop and eat it.’
‘Did you get lots of attention from all the nurses?’ She looked as if she wanted to smile as she pictured this, but wouldn’t let herself.
‘They were lovely, and happy for me, and probably extremely relieved that I’m no longer working there and messing things up. Scarlett made me sit down and put my feet up and she fed me chocolates – can I come in, Milly? I need a glass of water. I’ve been on bed rest the last week and this is my first day out.’
She appeared to think about it, then she turned her back on me and walked through her door, leaving it open so I could follow her in.
The floor was protected by a plaster-powdered and paint-spattered tarpaulin. There was a ramshackle collection of tables and carts of different shapes and sizes, covered in works in progress and tools of varying degrees of sharpness. Beneath the tables were tubes of acrylic, jars of brushes, buckets of sand, tubs of glue, and plastic boxes overflowing with fluffy pom-poms and wires. A blob of grey clay on a pottery wheel matched the smear on Milly’s cheek.
The one comfortable piece of furniture was a single bed. It was covered in a bright patchwork quilt that I’d made for Milly on her sixteenth birthday. Along the side of the bed that was pushed against the wall she’d arranged cushions to form a kind of makeshift sofa. The cushions were taken from her childhood room.
‘Can I sit down?’
‘I thought you needed to pee.’
‘I lied so you’d let me in.’
She shot me a glare and flipped her hand towards the bed, presenting it. At the foot was a three-tiered trolley with a hot plate and kettle on top, and a hodgepodge assortment of mismatched crockery and cutlery and tea bags and biscuits on the shelves below – the entirety of her kitchen. She disappeared into what I guessed was the bathroom before she returned with a glass of water and put it in my hand.
She crossed her arms. ‘What?’
‘I haven’t said anything.’
‘I know it’s a dump. I want a proper artist’s studio but this is what I can afford.’
‘I think it’s wonderful. I think you’re wonderful.’
‘Don’t patronise me, Holly.’
‘I’m not. You know I never would. This is me, Milly. I wish you’d let me come before.’
‘It’s not as if Lord Voldemort would have let you out of the dungeon.’
‘Probably true.’
One of the tables was covered in her finished work. Tiny humanoid creatures with strange bulges and psychedelic protrusions were dribbled with neon violet. There was a primitively beautiful model of entwined lovers, hewn from a block of black stone. I put the glass on the floor by the bed and started to heave myself up to look more closely. Milly extended an arm to pull me, and I took it.
Interspersed with her sculptures were numerous abandoned mugs of weak black tea, most of them half-finished. She carried them away so my view of her creations was unimpeded.
‘When do you do all this?’
‘Nights. Weekends. Whenever I can between shifts.’
I pointed to a sculpture whose head was topped with the greased lavender tail she’d cut from a My Little Pony and tied with a pink ribbon. It had a cotton ball she’d dyed fuchsia for a bottom. The shoulders and chest were absurdly large compared to the rest. ‘Gaston?’
‘Glad to know that much is clear.’
It had been stabbed in the stomach with a miniature dart, which was surrounded by a red target to highlight the bullseye. ‘Is it a voodoo doll?’
‘I hate his fucking guts. I hope he dies. And that it’s painful.’
‘Me too.’
‘Even more than I used to. And his fucking ugly new girlfriend too.’
‘Me too.’
‘I don’t want a penis near me ever again,’ she said.
‘Me too.’ I touched a tiny vase, so perfect in scale it would hold only a pinch of the most delicate wild flowers. It was in waves of grey and blue, shades of the sea, sandy and rough outside and smooth inside. ‘I prefer your non-Gaston period.’
It was her turn to say, ‘Me too.’ She waved at the vase. ‘Would you like it?’
‘I love it so much. But I can’t take it. You can sell it – you need the money.’
‘There’s something – I have something – you must promise not to refuse it,’ she said. ‘I think – I can’t help but feel – I want you to have a small piece of me, something portable. A talisman, to protect you.’
I swallowed hard. She knew. Even without my saying a word she knew I would soon be gone. I was exactly one week away from vanishing. She was crying, and trying harder to cover it up than I was not to notice. I’d never told her about the contents of the bag in the garage, but it would only confirm what she already knew in her bones about Zac.
I tried to speak lightly. ‘Talisman, Milly? Are you catching your mum’s superstition?’
‘Maybe I am.’ She reached into the pocket of her dusty cardigan and pulled out a stone.
I blinked, and saw the stone as it was twenty years ago when I found it in the tide pools Milly and I had been exploring.
Then, it was shark-grey and prehistoric as a dinosaur, with a collection of small pits, the tiniest as if pricked by a pin, the largest as if by a pen’s nib. It was flat and smooth on the bottom, so it sat like a perfect paperweight, though several chalky scratches ran across it. The top was rounded gently. I pressed it against Milly’s palm and curved her fingers around it. ‘Paint this,’ I’d said.
She repeated my own gesture of all those years ago, putting the stone against my palm, curving my own fingers around it. ‘You remember it,’ she said. ‘I can see that you do.’
She’d enamelled it in a shimmering paint the colour of lapis lazuli. The flaws no longer showed. In her delicate strokes, as exact as the tiny brush of a portrait artist who specialises in miniatures, was a mother holding her baby. Their skin was bare, and seemed lit from within. The mother’s hair was a coating of amber, like mine, and matched her child’s.
‘Keep it with you,’ Milly said.
I kissed the stone. ‘Have you forgiven me for last week?’
‘Having a baby emergency is just about acceptable as an excuse. But sending my mother …’
I gulped. She retrieved the water and I drank the rest.
‘I might forgive you someday,’ she said.
‘At least I have something to aim for.’ I rested my head on her shoulder.
‘I’m sorry I didn’t answer your calls,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t talk to anyone. I’d been crying and crying. People caring made it worse. I hate how pathetic I’ve been about that total prick. I should have picked up when I saw it was you.’
‘That’s okay. I know you. I know that’s how you work.’
She stroked my hair. ‘Baby girl is okay?’
I nodded. My eyes filled with tears. ‘I saw the midwife yesterday. I’d read that my bump measurement should match the number of weeks, so I had a bit of a freak-out that the number was 27.5 centimetres and not 29.’
‘There must be a range of error.’
I nod. ‘She said give or take a couple of centimetres either side was fine.’
‘You see? You’re in range, then. Plus you’re slight to begin with. Are you resting enough?’
‘All the time. I’m going straight to bed when I get home.’
‘Good. Is Lord Voldemort behaving?’
I told her the truth. ‘No. He isn’t.’
‘What can I do?’
‘You can move into my house. It’s empty and it’s going to stay empty. You can live there and look after it for me and save up for your studio by not having to pay for this place. You can eradicate everything brown.’
‘May she rest in peace, but everything your grandmother chose was a different shade of shit.’
‘True.’ I hated lying to Milly about my grandmother’s death, but I still didn’t confess the truth. ‘So treat the walls as your canvas.’
‘I’m not a charity case, Holly.’
‘No. You’re my sister. You’re the only one I’ll ever have.’ I pressed an envelope into Milly’s hand. The papers inside were prepared by one of Maxine’s people, another of Maxine’s many proofs that doing this calmly and methodically, that taking enough time to set everything up before fleeing, was the right course of action. ‘This makes the arrangement legal. In case I’m not here. Any eventualities – it’s all you need.’
She put the envelope down without opening it. She was wrapping the tiny vase in bubble wrap. ‘Only if you take this too,’ she said. So I did.