‘Everybody leaves in the end.’
My mother said these words to me twice.
The first time was soon after my father killed himself. That day will haunt me for the rest of my life. The air in my bedroom rang with the echo of the gunshot. Kerensa started screaming. Glass-shattering shrieks which tore up the house. I ran out on to the landing and took the stairs two at a time, heart hammering.
She was in the doorway of his study.
‘What is it?’ I said, my voice breathless with adrenalin.
She turned, her face white, eyes wide. When she saw me she thrust open her arms as if tied to a crucifix, blocking my view. I craned my neck, ducked and dived, to try and see past her, desperate to know what she was trying to hide.
‘No!’ Her sharp cry was strangled by tears. ‘No, Nate. No! Go back to your room. Do you hear me? Now!’
‘But I want to see—’
She was sobbing. Begging me not to look. Then Mother appeared, looming over both of us. She pushed Kerensa to one side and I saw him lying there, crumpled on the floor, a gaping bloody hole where the right side of his face should have been. That’s quite a sight for a child to see and the image etched into my mind hasn’t dulled one fraction over time.
Kerensa grabbed me and pressed my face into her chest. Her arms wrapped around me and held me to her. I struggled and pulled against her but she held on, whispering words I couldn’t hear into my hair.
‘Upstairs both of you.’ Our mother’s voice was cast iron. ‘Now!’
We ran, Kerensa pulling me after her, our feet hammering the stairs, across the landing, into her room. She pulled the door shut and we sat on her bed, holding each other, neither of us speaking for what felt like years.
Everything else is snatched memories. The police arriving. The ambulance. The sounds of people in the house. Mother’s shrill voice barking orders at people. We knelt up on the bed. Looked out of the window and down at the people moving about in semi-darkness. There was a stretcher. On it was a huge black bag. There was no sign of my mother and I remember wondering if I’d still get to open my birthday presents. She appeared around midnight. Her silhouette filled the doorway. ‘Go to sleep,’ she said, her voice dry and flat. ‘Everybody leaves in the end.’
A few nights later, I can’t remember how many, Kerensa crept into my room. She lifted my bedcovers and climbed in beside me. She was crying. She hadn’t stopped. The day after my birthday, I found her sitting under the apple tree, sobbing so hard her body shook like she was having a fit. I worried she might actually cry herself to death. She was a sensitive soul. Gentle and pure.
‘Aren’t you sad?’ she asked through her shuddering sobs.
‘Of course,’ I said, then pinched myself hard until tears came. ‘See?’
But rather than sad I felt angry, angry he didn’t care enough about us to stay alive, and angry he was so weak. In the hours which followed his death I grew to despise him.
‘Coward,’ my mother had said, her voice edged with hatred and disrespect. ‘A weak-willed coward.’
Even at thirteen, I knew there was no glory in weakness and cowardice. The only things he left behind, other than his mutilated body and a ruined rug, was a hidden stash of empty bottles and a debt which threatened to bankrupt us. What kind of a husband and father would do that?
I lay in bed with Kerensa, my manufactured tears long dried up, and stared at her beautiful, devastated face in the blue-white moonlight which spilled in through the window.
‘Nate,’ she whispered, when her sobbing finally stopped.
‘Yes?’
‘I want you to promise me you’ll be different to them. Promise me you’ll be happy. You need to find love. You have to be happy. Do you understand?’
I’m not sure I did. Not then. Not aged thirteen.
‘Whatever you do, make sure you find love, and when you do – are you listening? – when you do find it, do everything you can to hold on to it. We aren’t going to be like them. Do you hear me? We are going to find love and we’re going to hold on to it. We’re going to be happy.’
‘But how will I know?’
‘Know what?’
‘When I find love?’
She thought for a moment or two. ‘You’ll know because it will hit you. Maybe out of the blue. That’s what they say, don’t they? They say, when you know, you just know.’
‘Who says it?’
‘The people who know about love.’ Then her hands squeezed mine. ‘Promise me you’ll find love and, when you do, you’ll never, ever, let it go. Promise me.’
I nodded.
‘Say it.’
‘I promise you.’
She smiled, but it was fleeting. ‘Nate?’
‘Yes?’
She hesitated. ‘I have to go away for a while.’
‘What?’ Horror hit me full on. ‘No! No. You can’t—’
She put her fingers against my lips. ‘I have to. Mother and I are fighting all the time. I hate her. I hate it here. I can’t get the image of him out of my head. I need to get away.’
‘But what about me?’
Her face twitched, as if some sort of pain had grabbed her, and she was quiet for a few moments. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said finally. ‘It won’t be forever. I’ll be back, I promise.’
I idolised my sister. She was a mother and father wrapped up in one person. It was Kerensa who read to me when I was small, who kissed me goodnight, who made me laugh behind Mother’s back and rolled her eyes when our father came back so drunk he couldn’t walk. It was Kernesa who snuck into my room when the shouting and screaming got too loud and covered my ears with her hands. She was the only joy I knew and when she died all the lights went out.
You asked me, Hannah, why I didn’t tell you I knew Alex wasn’t mine. I thought your question was strange. Because if you knew me at all you’d know. My family was destroyed by scandal. It was destroyed by a weak man, a coward, who allowed his family name to be dragged through the dirt. I vowed at thirteen I’d be nothing like him. The Cardew name would never again be associated with scandal and immorality. How would it look if word got out that I wasn’t Alex’s father? That I was the type of man who’d take on a philandering wife? That I was a man unable to father my own children? Most men wouldn’t have forgiven their wives for what you did, for the lies and the deception. But I’m not most men. You brought a cuckoo into the nest. I could have thrown you both out. But I didn’t. And now, looking back, knowing what I know about Alex’s father, I understand you so much more. I know what it’s like to be damaged and how the darkest things can erode us from within.
I still love you, Hannah.
When you left, I remember thinking how sad you looked. How full of regret. You moved heavily, laboriously, not with the energy of somebody doing something they want to do. I watched you heave your two suitcases to the front door and tried not to picture the empty cupboards upstairs, your creams gone from the bathroom, my dressing gown hanging alone on the hook on our door.
‘Where will you go?’
You didn’t answer me. Perhaps you didn’t trust yourself to speak. Perhaps you knew if you did your resolve would falter.
‘With him?’
A flicker of doubt crossed your face. You shook your head. Told me, again, there was nothing between you and Cameron Stewart. But I saw the lie in your eyes. He’d got to you, wheedled his way inside your head, poisoned you against me. Blood pumped faster around my veins. Were you really going through with it? The pain I felt when you opened the door was intense.
‘Don’t leave me.’ Desperation strangled my voice.
For a moment I thought you might stop, turn back, kiss me, and tell me how sorry you were.
But you didn’t.
‘Goodbye, Nathan.’
The door closed and I was left alone with nothing but my mother’s voice ringing around the bricks and flagstones like a tolling bell.
Everybody leaves in the end.
The second time she said those words was when I found her sitting in my father’s study with a photograph of my sister in a silver frame on the desk in front of her. She turned and looked at me. No tears. Mouth set with what appeared to be hatred.
‘Your sister is dead.’ Her clipped words like slivers of ice.
‘I don’t understand.’
‘What’s to understand? I told you, didn’t I? Everybody leaves in the end.’
And now, here I am, parked in the car park overlooking the beach. You are sitting on the wall, your hair taken by the wind, and you are smiling. I recall the first time I saw you through the bakery window. Your skin clear and fresh, your eyes bright with an innocent joy, reminding me, in that split second, of my sister.
Kerensa was right.
When you know, you just know.
You laugh and I can hear the noise in my head. Then you catch sight of something and wave. And that’s when I see him walking across the shingle towards you. Alex runs to him. You smile and when he sits beside you it’s all I can do to stop myself screaming. His face is smug and triumphant. He thinks he’s won. But he hasn’t.
I won’t give up, Hannah. I’ll bide my time and I’ll get you back.
It’s not the end. Not yet.
I’ll get you back if it’s the last thing I do.