44

Flora

‘Call yourself a bloody four-wheel drive!’ Flora accelerates hard. Mud spatters across the windscreen, and the SUV pitches out of the furrow and rocks across the open field, like an overladen cattle truck. In the far west, red pools on the horizon.

‘Out that gate.’ Jonah points from the passenger seat, a stinky black Lab in his lap. ‘And … left,’ he adds, with exactly the sort of male measured urgency that makes Flora panic and take the corner far too sharply.

‘Wacky Races,’ Angie mutters from the back, squished between Charlie and Kat.

Flora mutters, ‘No one asked you to come,’ loud enough to be heard.

Incongruous in her leopard-print fake fur and silver boots, their father pinioned to her arm, Angie had flagged down Flora in the lane. Kat gabbled an explanation of sorts out of the car window. Angie insisted they get in: ‘All hands to the pump!’ But Flora caught Daddy’s expression when the Heaps’ cottage was mentioned, the way the colour drained from his cheeks. Since then, he’s barely said a word, staring out of the window, his glasses misting, and tapping a fingernail anxiously against one tooth. If she had less to worry about right now, she’d worry about him.

And Jonah? Flora keeps shooting him pointed glances, wanting him to know she’s got him in her sights. While he may appear earthy and sincere, she knows men are adept at hiding their ugly sides. When she met Scott, he was so softly spoken she couldn’t even imagine him raising his voice. Also, Jonah fits the description of the lurker too closely for her liking. What if it’s a trap?

‘Pull up,’ says Jonah, softly but brusquely, a few minutes later.

The start of a track – narrower than the SUV – the Heaps’ weeny cottage at the end of it. Unlit windows. A sunken roof snowed white, straight out of one of her Scandi noirs. Hard to believe Lauren had stepped inside such a bleak place, and on her own, a couple of days ago – as Jonah insists, says he saw her there – and didn’t mention it. But then Lauren never said anything about her letters to Gemma either. She has a whole secret life going on, surreptitiously moving inside her. Writing notes to dead people. Chatting to them too: her sister’s phone calls, overheard through the bedroom wall, have taken on a sinister tint.

Flora throws open the vehicle door and stumbles towards the cottage, shouting Raff’s name. Kat scissors straight past her, Jonah too.

A few seconds later, Lauren and Raff appear out of its front door, blinking into the grainy dusk light like hostages. Flora sucks in cold air, pure joy. Lauren, who is carrying Raff on her hip, places him on the ground, and he runs up the track towards her, arms outstretched.

‘You!’ Overwhelmed by an avalanche of love and relief, she sweeps him up, kisses his cheeks all over. He smells gloriously, blissfully of Raff. ‘Let me have a look at you. Are you all right? Hurt?’ She inspects him for damage. Finding none, she marvels that Raff, who loathes the cold and wet, is not a sobbing mess. ‘Mummy loves you so much,’ she says, picking him up, wanting never to let go again.

A tearful, exhausted smile. ‘Big as the world.’

Flora’s heart explodes. She clocks Lauren, still hovering uncertainly by the cottage door. The nose of a parked small white car. Then, rushing down the track, not one black dog but two. Leaping and circling around each other, a mirror image. She can’t make sense of them. She can’t make sense of anything.

‘We went on a big adventure, Mummy.’ Raff presses his cold face against her neck, as if trying to nuzzle under her skin. ‘Ice balls fell out of the sky. A dog came. We met the BFG.’

‘Oh, Raff.’ This is the sort of place that would stoke any kid’s imagination. Not in a good way. ‘I swear I’ll turn grey overnight,’ she says, as her father and Angie catch up, Dad ruffling Raff’s hair.

‘Finches don’t go grey until well into their fifties, my darling Flo. Raff’s okay. It’s okay.’ Charlie circles an arm around her. It feels solid, safe, exactly as a dad’s arm should. Angie edges forward a little, as if she wants to join in too. ‘By tomorrow it’ll be another family anecdote with which to horrify your husband,’ Charlie adds, his gaze softening, fixing at a point over her shoulder. Flora turns to see a tiny dark figure, walking towards them in a snow-globe whirl.

‘I’m so sorry, Flora,’ Lauren says, approaching, looking devastated.

Flora’s stomach starts to cramp. Charlie removes his arm from her shoulders and takes Lauren’s hands, mottled and purplish, and rubs them. His little Lauren, Dixie’s precious child. And even now, in this hurricane of giant feelings, Flora feels a diminishing spike of childish envy. ‘Why didn’t you call?’ she asks tightly.

‘We’ve been worried sick, Lauren,’ Angie says.

‘I tried to call. But I couldn’t. Look, can I explain back at Rock Point?’ Lauren nods down at Raff. Her trembling undermines Flora’s anxious anger. ‘But I kept him safe, I really did.’ Her voice breaks. ‘I honestly can’t tell you how sorry I am, Flora.’

Before Flora can swallow the lump in her throat and say anything, Kat is shouting, ‘Dad!’ They turn to see Kat frantically beckoning Dad inside the cottage, then darting back in.

Her father doesn’t move.

‘Babe?’ Angie rubs his arm. ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’

Flora follows his sightline; a flash of scarlet in the cottage doorway, as if someone else has just moved out of view. Jonah perhaps, who is yet to emerge from the building. Without a word, her father starts a solemn march over the thin crust of snow, his head bowed. Like he knows what’s waiting for him.

‘Stay with Aunty, Raff.’ Flora hands her little boy to a stunned Lauren, a gift of trust. ‘The car isn’t locked. Emergency Twix in the glove compartment. Blankets in the boot. Angie, it’s warmer in there. You go too.’ She needs to see this place for herself.

Walking towards the cottage apprehensively, Flora spots ivy growing up the inside of the windows. It makes her feel peculiar, slightly queasy. The scar-like crack on the wall too. Behind every house refit – all that consumption, the desire for the shiny and new – there is a primal aversion to this. Decay. Rot. The brutality of it. Plaster and stone: skin and bone. Dust to dust. We are all a breezeblock or a brick from mud and worms.

Stepping inside, Flora gasps, struggles to process what she’s seeing. A woman in a smart red coat. Grey-blonde hair. Groomed. Late fifties. She’s holding hands with a man half her age: huge, grizzled, looks like a squatter, with the angry gaze of a cornered bull. Her father, standing opposite, next to a sober-faced Kat and Jonah, is slack-mouthed, staring at this woman. Like a bomb has gone off in his brain.

‘Flora, this is Viv. Viv Heap,’ says Jonah, shifting uncomfortably.

Viv. Flora cannot risk looking at Kat. There’s nowhere left to hide. In this cottage, the past gapes open. It feels like they’ve both been plucked out of 1999 and reassembled in some sort of domestic dystopia.

‘And this is Pete,’ Jonah perseveres, with gentle formality. ‘Viv’s son.’

Flora doesn’t recognize Pete. She barely knew him. But Viv is still very much Viv, Granny’s cleaner, Gemma’s mum, an older, stouter version, dignified but weathered, fine grooves of grief etched around her eyes and mouth.

The hush is unbearable. ‘I’m Flora,’ she blurts, nervously filling it.

‘Yes, wow. So grown-up,’ says Viv, with hard-to-stomach warmth. She doesn’t need to say, ‘Unlike Gemma, who never grew up.’ It hangs in the swampy air.

‘So, you knew Pete was here, Jonah?’ Kat asks, pulling her coat tight. ‘How?’

Jonah shoots Pete a sidelong look. ‘We bumped into one another earlier, out walking the dogs. Got chatting, you know. Pete was heading up to the moor to check in on this cottage, as he likes to do. He was … a bit agitated about you all being back.’ Jonah clears his throat, as if this might be a huge understatement. ‘When Kat said Lauren was missing, I just thought … well, I thought it might not be ideal if they bumped into each other, that’s all.’ He shifts on his feet awkwardly. ‘And I gave Viv a call.’

At this Pete bows his head, like a little boy who’s been caught red-handed doing something he shouldn’t, his mother called in.

‘I’m not sure I understand,’ says Flora, trying to collect herself.

‘Flora, it seems Pete gave Lauren a bit of a fright,’ Viv answers, with one of those steely but soft voices, a natural authority, like a popular no-nonsense teacher. ‘But we’ve talked it out. Cleared up the misunderstanding.’

‘What sort of fright?’ Flora asks uneasily, concerned about what Raff might have witnessed.

Silence draws around them, no one daring to speak. Viv and her father seem to be locked in wordless conversation.

‘Pete surprised Lauren in this cottage, where she and Raff were sheltering from the hail,’ says Jonah, carefully.

‘I bet you followed them, didn’t you?’ Kat says fiercely to Pete, who stares guiltily at the floor.

‘Excuse me, Pete didn’t hurt anyone.’ Viv dares Kat to take another swipe at her boy. ‘He wouldn’t hurt anyone, Kat.’

Flora stares from Kat to Pete, shocked, bewildered. A thought is trying to take shape. But it keeps bumping into Viv and Pete’s existence, living proof of that summer, everything she and Kat thought they’d left behind, neatly tucked away in another millennium. Viv here. In a red coat.

‘Viv’s right,’ says Jonah.

Flora frowns at Jonah. Not unlike Pete, is he? Dark coats. Hoods. Six-footers. With black dogs. From a distance, on a cliff top, say, or outside in a storm. Yes, easily confused. Close up, the similarities end, one radiating a rugged wholesomeness, the other damage.

‘I was at school with Pete,’ Jonah adds.

‘People change,’ says Kat, sharply, and Flora thinks, She’s not changed that much, after all. Kat’s still the person you want on your side.

‘And life can be hard. He’s all right, Kat. He’s the same Pete,’ Jonah continues steadily. ‘I moved back to Cornwall last year and we were reintroduced by the dogs, weren’t we, Pete? Our dogs are littermates, you see. Sisters. Bred by a lady up the road.’

Kat shakes her head disparagingly. But Flora’s glad to have the matching dogs explained at least. Her father still looks dumbfounded by it all, though, and is staring at Viv.

‘It was an unforgivable way to go about things and Pete’s sorry.’ Viv is clearly the sort of mother who’ll always stand by her son, however difficult or wayward. Flora can’t help but respect this: she’d do the same. ‘Aren’t you, Pete?’ Viv prompts.

‘I am sorry,’ Pete says, although the apology seems to be directed at his mother rather than them.

‘Gemma wouldn’t have wanted any of this, Pete,’ Viv says firmly.

Gemma: the name shatters the foetid icy air, its aftershock travelling over their faces. Her father covers his mouth with his hand, his composure almost collapsing.

‘The notes were Pete’s work, Flora.’ Kat is the first to recover.

Dear God.

‘I just wanted you all to leave, go away, clear off back to London,’ Pete says sulkily.

‘You tell the police that.’ Kat sticks her hands into her pockets. ‘And why you wouldn’t let Lauren leave this cottage. She must have been completely terrified.’

Pete grimaces. ‘I didn’t mean … I know how it looks.’

As what Lauren must have gone through sinks in, she adjusts in Flora’s mind. Her brave little sister.

‘Look, it’s your call, Mr Finch, Kat, Flora, but can I just say Pete’s had a very tough time,’ Jonah says quietly. ‘He’s recently lost his job. Divorced. And it’s been difficult for Pete, seeing you all back at Rock Point after twenty years. Stirred up a lot of feeling. He could do with being cut a bit of slack, just saying.’

‘There’ll be no more notes, we can promise you that,’ Viv assures, cutting off Jonah with a tone of finality. She adjusts her fluffy grey scarf, tucking it neatly around the lapels of her coat. ‘Lauren says she’s happy to leave it.’

‘I agree with Lauren. We won’t be taking it any further,’ Charlie says, finding his voice. ‘No more bullshit, okay, Pete? Or you’ll be in those Truro police cells before you know it.’

‘No more,’ agrees Pete, relief draining over his face. And Viv’s.

Charlie raises his hand in a goodbye gesture. Flora slips her arm inside Kat’s – it’s all too much, she needs that arm – and they follow their father out of the cottage. Already the flouring of snow is melting: their footprints will soon vanish, any trace they’ve been here. But the cottage will leave a more indelible mark.

When they’re a few steps down the track, Viv calls, ‘Charlie?’

Their father turns, slowly, like an old man. He’s aged ten years in ten minutes.

‘Thank you for going easy on him.’ Viv stands in the cottage’s doorway, her arms crossed against the cold, the wind blowing her hair off her face. ‘I know you lost someone that day too, Charlie.’