My mother knocks on the door a little after eight, sets a steaming cup of tea on my bedside table alongside the picture of me with Andrew and Joshua.
‘We should be looking to leave at about nine,’ she says. I sit up, push the sheets away from me. The air is cool but comfortable. ‘Anything you want for breakfast?’
‘Just some toast,’ I say as I reach for my tea.
I tie my hair into a pigtail and slip on a pair of jeans, pulling a light cardigan over the top. I stare in the mirror at the scar across my head. All that’s visible is an inch-long scar that extends from underneath my hairline. The rest of it is covered by new growth, and can only be seen if you part my hair in the right place.
After breakfast, we climb into the car. I sit in the front seat next to my mother. In the boot is one small suitcase, the last of my possessions to be taken from my old room here. I look up at the house, almost unable to believe that I won’t be coming back.
‘It’ll be strange once you’ve gone,’ I hear my mother say, her voice quiet, apologetic.
‘I know,’ I say as I reach over and touch her hand. ‘But you’ll get used to it.’
She laughs a little, but there’s no humour in it. ‘I’m not so sure about that. It’s a big house to be in on your own.’ She sighs heavily. ‘Maybe I should sell it.’
‘Where would you go?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. Maybe Brighton,’ she says, a small smile hovering on her lips. ‘A nice little house near the sea.’ I can appreciate that kind of dream. ‘I could move closer to you.’
I smile. ‘I would like that.’
I chose to come back here after that night in the woods. The doctors wouldn’t let me return to my house alone. Andrew wasn’t anywhere near ready to leave rehab or be responsible for me, and I had nowhere else. But I refused to return to the place where my father was living. So my mother told him to leave.
‘Are we all set?’ she asks as she starts the engine. ‘Ready to go?’ I look back at the house one last time, the winter sun bright in the windows. There is a light, almost transparent mist floating above the lawn. ‘Ready if you are,’ I say.
I still struggle to believe that my father was helping Guy resurrect the brief relationship we’d shared, that he lied about my husband and the death of my child. He’s been back to the house just once since I returned here, in order to collect some things. He lingered in his study until he caught me briefly in the hall. He wanted to apologise, he said, for everything he’d done. He told me he couldn’t bring himself to verbalise the lies one by one. But I think even now he is most upset by the fact that he got it wrong, that he trusted Guy when he told him he had nothing to do with the accident. That he believed Guy loved me and wanted us to create a life together.
My father had known about the two of us for weeks before the accident; he admitted that he had seen us together. He thought Guy was my second chance. I suppose we both got it wrong, misjudged the person Guy really was. Still, my father’s meaningless apology and feigned remorse failed to move me. He still calls the house sometimes, talks to my mother on the phone. But we are finished. I want nothing more to do with him, and I think my mother feels the same. I’ve heard her late at night talking on the phone with Peter. Once I even heard her laughing. I tell myself to keep believing that she too can move forward after this.
At the hospital, Dr Gleeson asks me a whole list of questions before he tells me I am doing just fine. After that, we drive along the coast road, the same journey we took on the day I was first discharged. But that is where the similarity with that journey ends. Now I see everything through different eyes. Back then I thought there was no hope of remembering who I was. Who I am. But now I know that hope resides in the darkest of places. You just have to be prepared to search in the shadows, because alongside them you will always find the light.
My mother stops the car in the lay-by outside the entrance to the Palace Pier, just as we agreed. The lights are bright and glaring, the hum of the music audible over the song of the rolling waves. She pulls on the handbrake, turns to face me.
‘Don’t forget this,’ she says, handing me a rolled-up towel. The gulls call out overhead, circling in excitement in the weak sunlight. I listen to the distant sounds coming from the amusement arcade halfway along the pier. ‘I’ll take your bag and drop it off like you asked me to, and then I’ll call in at Ben’s mother’s house, tell them you’ll be over later.’
‘Thanks. They need us to keep helping them.’
‘Of course.’ After I returned home I found the reason Ben had been in my room. We were never a couple, nothing more than friend besides that one time when we nearly kissed. We had both been so embarrassed by it after the event.
He had left a note under my pillow, explaining the things I couldn’t remember about our relationship. It turns out he is the sole carer for his mother, who is suffering with Alzheimer’s. I had been spending time with her whenever I could because I remain one of the few people she could remember. When I read that it made me feel as if I had roots in an older version of my life; even though I couldn’t remember myself, somebody who had forgotten nearly all other people, including her son, still knew the person I used to be. He was desperate for me to start seeing her again.
‘And I’ll put your house key back through the letter box,’ Mum says.
‘No,’ I tell her as I step from the car to the sound of breaking waves, the push of the wind strong against my skin. ‘Hang onto it. You never know when I might need a spare.’
For a moment she looks as if she might cry, that briefest moment of trust stirring something unexpected in her. ‘Chloe, please tell him again how sorry I am. For everything I was a part of.’ And then she drives away, and I wonder when I’m going to see her again.
Sunshine comes and goes as fluffy grey clouds pass above me. I follow the steps down until I reach the beach, where I see Andrew waiting next to the kiosk selling fish and chips in cones. He is exactly where he said he would be. I look at my watch. I am early.
For a moment I just stand there, staring. His cheeks are pink from the wind, his lips chapped from the cold. It’s Andrew who speaks first. ‘Are you sure you want to do this today?’
‘Dr Gleeson gave me the all-clear.’ I look around the beach. There are only a few people here, braving the elements, sipping on drinks in the nearby café. It’s a beautiful day, though, the sky bright. Eight weeks have passed since that night when I learnt the truth, and since then, I have grown stronger. I need this moment for myself. ‘And he did say that I am supposed to get back to normal life.’
We walk together in silence towards the water, the pebbles shifting and crunching under our feet. Today we have the whole stretch to ourselves. I hand Andrew the towel and pull my jumper over my head, exposing the plain black swimsuit underneath. I slip my feet from my trainers and step out of my trousers. I shiver as my bare feet touch the soft curves of the pebbles underfoot.
‘Joshua would have loved this,’ I tell him, and Andrew simply nods his head. This is our place, I think, the place we came to as a family. I reach down, arrange some of the stones into a little pile. ‘So I know where to swim back to.’ Then I notice a small dead flower that has been washed up on the beach. I pick it up and place it by the rock pile. It feels like he’s here with me. Will it ever hurt less than this?
Andrew steps forwards, kisses me on the cheek. ‘I’ll be waiting for you when you get back.’
I walk down to the water’s edge, let the cold bite my ankles. I gaze out to sea, take a step forward and the water swirls up around my knees. A few steps more and it’s up to my thighs. I stop, turn back. Andrew is still there, sitting on the beach, his cold hands tucked inside his armpits. He motions for me to get going. Whatever happens between us, I know things will be all right. I will make sure of that now.
Because I knew what had happened on the night of the accident even before Guy attacked me in the clearing where Joshua died. It came back to me while I was sitting in the bus shelter, looking out to sea after leaving the meeting with Damien Treadstone. It was the sight of the hotel behind me that did it, the place where the Roberta awards were held. The couple walking arm in arm. I suddenly remembered leading Guy away, luring him under the pier. What a thrill he was that night. And it all flooded back then: the park, the abduction, the accident. The affair. The fact that he had killed my son. And in that moment I wanted to hurt him so much, make him pay for what he had done. What he was doing.
When I picked up that knife in the kitchen, I wanted to kill him. But just the sight of him and I lost my nerve. Those few moments made me realise I couldn’t use a weapon anyway, otherwise his death wouldn’t look like self-defence. But I felt sure that if I could get him to the site of the accident, I could find a way to hurt him. I considered trying to crash the car as we drove through the city, even taking hold of the wheel. But I wasn’t prepared to die for him. It was a risk that nearly backfired when he got the upper hand, overpowered me. But I got there in the end, drove that rock straight at him. He got what he deserved.
The police completed their investigation, but nobody questioned our version of events. He fell in the fight, banged his head when I pushed him away. I might have hit him once, but it was all just a blur. I’m sorry, I can’t remember. But they didn’t question it when I told them how Guy forced me into the car, threatened to kill me, especially once they saw the bruises he left on my skin in the struggle. They assumed he had decided to hurt me because I’d told him the police were involved and that we knew where the second car had been stolen from. They figured he was trying to cover up his mistakes, which I suppose wasn’t all that far from the truth anyway.
Even though he’s dead, there are still times I think I see him, following me, watching me. Just like he used to do while we were together, spying on me while I was down at the beach with Joshua. What a dangerous game I played. Even now, as I look up to the pier, the water chilling against my waist, I think for a second that I can see him there, hanging over the rails, watching me as I wade further and further from shore. But then I blink and he is gone. Will the memory of him trail me like a shadow for the rest of my life? Remind me of how much I used to want him? Need him? Hate him? Maybe. I just don’t know.
I look back once more at Andrew. I picture Joshua at his side, imagine him sitting on the beach alongside his father. If only I could go back, undo the things I’ve done. But I can’t. The past is lost. You can never get it back. Now it’s about the future, finding a new life. A new me, a mother again. I turn, look towards the horizon. And as I close my eyes and take a deep breath, I let myself slip silently beneath the waves.