Back at the house, I do what I always do when I get to Evie’s, sort of check out each room for new things. I read the postcards that are propped along the mantelpiece in the sitting room. Evie and Gramps don’t mind. It’s like I’m catching up on what I’ve missed. Sometimes I think I’ve got two lives: the ordinary one, back home, and my one here, on the island. We’ve been coming here almost every summer since Evie and Gramps bought the house, seven years ago. That’s half my life. I even have my own room.
The photographs are here just the same, of course, lined up along the bookcase: me, as a baby, at five and seven, eleven and thirteen, and the same for Joe, and one of Gramps in his funny white bee-keeper’s suit, and lots of Dad, and the wedding one I love, because of the loving, happy way Dad’s looking at Mum, and because I know their secret: that even though Mum looks slim and beautiful in her cream silk dress, baby Joe is there already, growing inside Mum, already five months big.
Now all the photos of Joe will stop. He’ll be here, at sixteen, for ever, and never any older, while I’ll go on growing up, and before long I’ll be older and bigger than Joe and not his little sister any more . . .
I pick up the very last one of Joe. We didn’t know that, of course, when Gramps took it. Joe’s holding up three mackerel he’s just caught, grinning into the camera. Behind him the sky is a brilliant blue.
‘Tea?’ Evie calls from the kitchen.
‘Coming.’
The tractor rumbles up the lane from the farm. I hear the thump of my bag being dumped at the gate. Evie calls out, ‘Thanks, Matt!’
Through the window I glimpse Matt’s sun-bleached hair, the back of his blue T-shirt. The tractor chugs off again.
‘Better phone home to say you’re safe,’ Evie says.
I nod. I don’t want to talk to Mum right now. Don’t really want to think about her, or Dad, or anything I’ve left behind back there, but Evie starts asking questions while we’re drinking tea and waiting for Gramps to turn up. He’s gone to fetch in the crab pots.
‘It’s good they let you come,’ Evie says. ‘That’s progress, isn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
‘How’s your mum doing, now?’
‘Same. She still can’t work. But she’s got the move and the house to sort out, so she’s busy enough.’
‘And Dad?’
‘Still working all the time. He says he has to, because Mum’s not earning anything. They argue about it.’
Evie’s face closes up. I wish I hadn’t said anything. I don’t usually. Not even to Miranda. No one knows about all the arguments. Or the silences. The silences are the worst. I imagine too much. I’m scared it’s all falling apart – them, our family . . .
Evie pulls herself together. ‘Well, it’s been such a tough year for you all. I’m so glad you’re here, Freya. You’re very pale. You look like you could do with a holiday.’ She’s got tears in her eyes.
I look away.
‘We’ll do our best. I know it’s not much fun with just Gramps and me. But there are lots of kids at the campsite for you to play with; Sally says they’re fully booked all August. Loads of families.’ She smiles at me. ‘Unless of course you’re too grown-up to play this year, Freya May?’
‘I wouldn’t play anywhere else,’ I say. ‘But here, it’s different. Everything is.’
‘Well!’ Evie says. ‘Thank heavens for that, at least. But it won’t be easy, Freya. Everything will remind you of last year . . . bring it all back. You need to be prepared for that, yes?’
Of course I know that. But right now I can’t speak, my throat too tight, choked with tears.
I want to tell Evie how much I love being in this house with her and Gramps, even though they’re old and don’t have a computer or anything much. Or perhaps because it’s like that. Life is simple and easy. Used to be, anyway. But I don’t tell her.
I lug my bag upstairs, trying to keep my mind off that boy – Matt – because it seems sort of disloyal, to be thinking about anyone but Joe. Silly, really. And it doesn’t stop me, in any case. Matt’s got fair hair like Huw, but he’s younger, I guess. Eighteen, rather than twenty. I wonder what he knows about me, and Joe, and last summer. Is it all round the campsite? It was in all the newspapers at the time, of course. Accident. Inquest. Verdict. Sally might have told him.
Through the little bedroom window under the eaves I can see straight across fields to the sea, right out to the Bird islands, Annot and Kila, and the jagged shapes of the Western Rocks. Don’t think about that now. I take a deep breath. I sit on the bed, run my fingers over the faded pink bedspread, the tiny neat stitches of the patchwork. When I was little, Evie used to tell me stories about the different scraps of material: bits of her mother’s dresses, a patch of curtain.
The sky is beginning to clear.
I leave my bag untouched, go back down to the kitchen.
‘I’m going out,’ I tell Evie.
She nods. ‘Look out for Gramps, then.’
The wind’s blowing hard. I twist my hair into a rope and tuck it inside my collar. I’m going to do what Joe and I always do together, when we first arrive: walk right round the island. It’s not far; only takes about an hour. I start by going through the cow field to the cliff, where there are huge rocks you can climb up.
Wherever you are, you can hear the sea, like a rhythm, a pattern of sound in your skull. Over time, it becomes so familiar you hardly notice it, but when you first arrive it hits you all over again. Today, because of the storm, the sea’s still churned up, thundering and sucking and swooshing on to the rocks. The wind carries sea-spray – spindrift – which coats my hair and clothes in a fine mist. The sea has a voice. Today it’s angry and wild. I love it. The wind whips my hair out from my collar as I begin to climb higher. It lashes thin wet strands across my face and makes it sting. It’s like it’s waking me up.
From the top, I can see almost the entire island, east to west. I stretch out my arms wide and lean into the wind. I gulp the sweet cold air, great lungfuls of it. I yell out, and the wind snatches my voice. The roar of the waves drowns it.
A thin streak of sunshine gleams on the sea over at Periglis. Gramps might be back with the crab pots by now. I climb down from my boulder perch and start making my way along the foreshore, skirting the bottom of the farm and the lower fringes of the campsite, towards Periglis beach.
Voices.
Someone laughs.
Two people are sitting close together on the stone field boundary at the shore edge. One’s a girl I don’t recognise, with golden, wind-swept hair, in a big turquoise jumper and baggy orange trousers, bare feet. Looking at her intently, laughing, is the fair-haired boy from the boat. Matt.
My heart sinks. They’ve seen me. I’m not ready for this.
‘Hello there!’ The girl grins.
‘Got your bag OK?’ Matt asks.
I nod. Can’t speak. My face is burning. I hurry on past, slipping on the wet seaweed and rocks. I know they’re watching me. Wondering why I’m so rude. Or shy, or stupid. But when I glance back, I see they’re holding hands, looking at each other. They’ve forgotten all about me already.
There’s no sign of Gramps at the beach, but the rowing boat is stowed safely at the edge of the old lifeboat slipway. I try not to see the space where the dinghy used to be. Instead of going on round the island, I cut back to the lane. I can do the rest another time. The lane takes me past the empty house attached to the old lighthouse. The gate’s hanging off its hinges, and one of the windows upstairs is broken. Nettles grow waist-high in the big front garden.
Something looks different. There’s a notice pinned to a post in the garden: For Sale.
I’m dragging my feet.
Remembering.
Last summer.