26

Flora

Sneaky. But the right thing to do given the circumstances. For Flora’s own peace of mind, she must debunk Angie’s awful – but not entirely dismissible – insinuation that Lauren is the author of the terrorizing notes. That she’s been mentally destabilized by returning to Rock Point, this chaotic rummaging through the gubbins of their childhood Daddy has instigated, and Flora is trying to neutralize by working out some sort of bagsy-ing system. Since no one else has bothered.

Most likely, Lauren’s writing letters to a secret lover. Yes, that’ll be it. Someone unsuitable. Married. After all, she heard Lauren chatting on the phone in her bedroom again. Flora can’t help but feel miffed Lauren’s not sharing such juicy intimacies. Although she’d never dare peel back her own bedsheets – different when you’re married – the point of a singleton’s escapades is the hilarity and discussion over a glass of wine afterwards. Epic sex, bad sex, the men who never text, or text too often: all could be vicariously enjoyed by a married sister.

On the other hand, if the two notes are Lauren’s work – and good people can do bad things, she knows this at first hand – at least it means there’s no vengeful local, readying to burst into Rock Point at any moment, like Jack Nicholson in The Shining.

Checking the landing’s clear, Flora cracks ajar Lauren’s bedroom door, enough to get a view of the desk in the corner. No letter pad now. No pen. It occurs to her that Lauren, sensing suspicion, has covered her tracks.

‘Are you looking for me?’

Flora prepares her smile then turns. ‘Yes! I am, Lauren,’ she fibs. ‘It’s Kat. I mean she’s fine, don’t worry. She went for a coast path run and it seems she ran too far …’ A small stab of Schadenfreude. ‘Anyway, she’s sensibly taken refuge in a pub. I’m off to pick her up in a minute. Would you come with? I’m a bit of a nervous driver in the pitch dark.’

Lauren looks heartbreakingly pleased to be asked. ‘Of course.’

Flora’s phone beeps. ‘Ah, another Kat text. Hold on.’ She frowns, surprised. ‘She wants us to bring the scarf that’s stuffed under her pillow.’

Raff stubbornly refuses to budge so Flora leaves him watching Toy Story with her father, to whom she gives an inventory of strict instructions: no sugar, no fingers near the parrot’s cage, front door locked, and Raff in sight at all times. She waves to them from the drive, struck by how idyllic Rock Point’s interior looks framed in a window, the gold firelight, the little boy, and his granddad. Then, in stark contrast, she walks anxiously around her car, crunching on the gravel, using her phone’s torch cautiously to check the tyres. ‘Good to go.’

The SUV smells of Flora’s normal life, luxury leather and Diptyque Baies car diffuser, both artificial and cloying here. She reverses, grateful it’s Lauren not Scott sitting beside her – ‘Reversing isn’t your strong point, Flora. Let me drive’ – but still imagining her foot slipping, hitting the accelerator, hurtling into the Atlantic. To her surprise, she manages it smoothly despite the sudden heavy downpour the wipers can’t clear fast enough.

Driving along the lane, rain streaming across the windscreen, Ed Sheeran blasting – ‘Don’t judge me, Lauren’ – Flora’s hit by an unexpected high, a whoosh of dopamine, as if the relief of Raff’s safe return has only just registered. Also, satisfyingly, Kat has asked for her help – she does need Flora after all – and they’re off to rescue her. This is what their Rock Point reunion should be about. Sisters. Weather. Bonding outward-bound-like experiences, with a pub at the end of it. Finally, a fizz of light.

The pub’s metal sign flaps in the wind. Inside, it’s cosy and crowded, with low, woodwormy beams, a whiff of wet dog and spilled ale. The customers look like weather-beaten locals – not a Canada Goose jacket in sight. Heads turn as they weave towards a slump of muddy Lycra in the corner. ‘Met your match?’ Flora doesn’t enjoy seeing her sister like this. It disturbs the natural order of things.

‘Never. I got beaten by the dusk, that’s all.’ But she looks drained, slightly haunted, as if she’s confronted more than the darkness out there.

‘Your scarf, Kat.’ Lauren hands over the disintegrating, sordid-looking thing that Flora can’t imagine Kat owning, let alone sleeping with under her pillow.

Kat presses it against her cheek, and closes her eyes for a second or two, just like Raff does when he loses then finds his beloved doll.

‘Are you hurt?’ Lauren kneels beside her, exhibiting the sweet bedside manner that must make her a hit at the hospice.

‘Only if a blister counts.’ But Kat looks away. And, more extraordinarily, there are bulbs of tears in her eyes.

In her adult life Flora has never seen Kat cry. She didn’t cry at Granny’s funeral last year, or at Dixie’s in the autumn, not even when Lauren stood up and gave that speech – ‘I hope you’re swimming now, Mum, in the warm tropical oceans you loved, sunlit, weightless, free of pain’ – and everyone else was in pieces. Yet here Kat is, broken by a run, a grubby scarf pressed to her cheek. And this brings with it the possibility that Flora imagines her sisters to be one thing when actually they’re quite another; that perhaps she’s not who she is perceived to be either, the entire Finch family one big case of mistaken identity. Or, worse, a performance.

‘Here.’ Lauren shucks off her puffer jacket and tucks it over Kat’s knees. ‘Your lips are blue. Show me your fingers.’ After rubbing Kat’s hands in hers, Lauren places them carefully under the coat, as if she were a toddler in a pram. ‘You need calories. What can we get you?’

‘I’d murder a Coke. Full fat. A packet of pork scratchings.’

‘Pork scratchings?’ says Flora, doubtfully, checking she heard it right.

‘Yes, and crisps,’ says Kat, improbably. As they turn to the bar, Kat adds, ‘Don’t drink, Flo. Not with these roads.’

Flora’s cheeks heat: she’d been about to order a glass of white. She can’t see the point of being in a country pub without a drink in her hand.

But, astonishingly, a lime soda doesn’t ruin the evening. Sitting around the small wobbly table, eating pork scratchings – delicious, who knew? – they don’t talk about the notes or Dad or Angie. Lauren doesn’t ask difficult questions about the eclipse summer. Kat doesn’t even check her phone, despite its continual flashing and buzzing.

And as they relax, old anecdotes resurface. Stories they’d forgotten still tie them together in knots of cringing laughter. Dad’s cameos outside their school gates, roaring up in his embarrassing sports car, the other parents staring, agog. The time Kat’s new headmistress invited Dad to give an ‘inspirational talk’: ‘Bunk off whenever you can is my advice. I was taught absolutely nothing of any value until I went to art school.’ How he’d taken Scott to one side at Flora’s wedding and, prodding his chest with one finger, smiling like a Mafia boss, said, ‘Treat my daughter like a goddess or I’ll fry your bollocks for breakfast, okay?’ (Flora had secretly loved that.) The year one of Dad’s girlfriends – they think her name was Jemima, but it could have been Jane, or Jessie; he had a run of girlfriends with names starting with J – set up a chocolate fountain in his kitchen as a treat for them and it splattered all over a Damien Hirst spot picture; the silence afterwards, as they all waited for Dad to explode, and he’d waspishly said it was an improvement. His impractical, un-parent-like two-bedroom Soho flat. Friends would ring the intercom at four in the morning. Its spare bedroom was the size of a broom cupboard; staying over as girls, they’d share it with a man-sized metal sculpture that looked like a dementor from Harry Potter. Flora revels in their rare togetherness, the Finch part of her life that has always made her feel so different from her other half-siblings, who came from a different marriage, a different world. And she feels their sisterhood again, something of what was lost, found.

Then Scott texts: Why aren’t you replying to my messages? Where r u? I want to say goodnight to Raff. Flora’s warm feeling vanishes. She dares not tell Scott she’s in the pub. Nor can she risk him talking to her father, who will assume he knows about Raff wandering out to the cliff and mention it. ‘I’d better get back,’ she says abruptly, reaching for her coat. Lauren and Kat glance up, surprised, then they too stand, pulling back, remembering their differences again.

Turning onto the unlit lane, it feels like they’re leaving the sisters they could become sitting at the pub table. And Flora wants to say this but doesn’t know how, certainly not without digging up the reasons they drifted apart in the first place, which reach all the way back to the unmentionable. And possibly beyond that to their mothers, she realizes, the seeds of resentment and jealousy hers planted, with her muttered asides and a certain pained look that’d pass across her face if Dixie’s name was mentioned. But that’s the problem with digging: there’s always another layer and the soil is colder, rockier, and harder to work the deeper you go. And you can never be sure exactly what you might find.

The rainy night slides against the car, wet as a fish. A vehicle pulls out from the pub car park after they do, and she’s glad of its company on the empty roads. Turning on the radio, Flora starts when the unmistakable riff of Bowie’s ‘Changes’ blasts out of the SUV’s formidable speakers. In a fluster, she stabs at the settings with a finger, trying to switch to something less loaded, and making a point of saying it’s the radio so they don’t think she’s played it on purpose.

‘Leave it, Flora,’ says Kat, huddled under Lauren’s coat in the passenger seat. ‘It’s just a song.’

They all know it’s not, and Kat stating the contrary only proves this. But Flora tries to behave like it’s no biggie too, tapping her fingers against the wheel as Bowie’s vocals – and those studio sittings – travel up her spinal cord. Checking her rear-view mirror, she’s relieved to see Lauren hasn’t stuck her fingers into her ears and, when the chorus swells, actually mouths the words. Made of stronger stuff, clearly.

Flora tries to block out the song by concentrating on the narrow road, the high rocky banks at either side. In the mirror, that same car from the pub, not as far back as she’d like, given the conditions. She’s not sure if it’s the car or the song but she takes a left turn far too hard.

‘Easy,’ Kat mutters.

‘Sorry.’ The car behind makes the same turn. Why is it coming up so fast? It’s a twisty lane, too narrow to pass a car coming in the opposite direction, let alone overtake. Tailgating now. Dazzling fog lights. ‘Shit,’ she says, in a low voice. ‘We’ve got some sort of stunt rider up our backside.’

The car flashes its lights.

‘Maybe they’re trying to signal there’s something wrong with our car?’ Flora’s stomach is starting to cramp. She flicks off the music. ‘I’d better pull over.’

‘Don’t. Don’t stop,’ says Lauren, with unexpected authority, from the seat behind.

‘Hold your ground.’ Kat reaches for the handle strap.

‘Oh. Right. Yes.’ Realizing what her sisters are thinking, Flora pictures a screwdriver stabbing at Angie’s tyres. Their SUV slamming into the bank, then over the cliff, flipping as it falls. Raff left without a mother. Her palms, sweating, slide slightly on the steering wheel.

‘Idiot.’ Kat twists around, trying to see the driver. ‘Probably pissed.’

‘Who is it?’ Flora asks, her voice wavering.

‘I can’t see …’

‘Oh, my God. Are they trying to knock us into the ditch?’ Flora slams the horn with the heel of her hand. ‘Back off!’ There’s a growl, and the car closes the distance between them, its headlights two blinding suns.