spend it together. Maybe go somewhere on our own?’
‘You don’t want a party? You’re going to be thirty. Beatrice thought—’
‘No,’ I say sharply. ‘I definitely don’t want a party.’
‘Whatever you want. I’ll organize something special, just the two of us. My birthday treat to you. We could go to London?’
‘No, not London.’ I can’t possibly face London at the moment.
‘What about somewhere on the coast then? Lyme Regis or Weymouth?’
I agree that Lyme Regis would be nice and he assures me that he will sort it out, that he knows exactly the place, that it will be a surprise. As I hang up I’m more optimistic than I’ve been all day, and I fall asleep to the thought of spending the weekend with Ben, cuddled up in our hotel room, walks along the front, acting as a normal couple in love with nothing to worry about; no sex bans, no house rules. And best of all, no Beatrice.
It never crossed my mind that I would reach thirty and Lucy would not. But when I wake up in the room that I still think of as Jodie’s I’m painfully aware that I’m doing this without her, that regardless of my dread, August third has come around, and I’m turning thirty alone. Will it ever get any better, or am I destined to spend every birthday buckling under the weight of her absence?
Our parents always spoilt us on our birthdays, making sure to throw us a party no matter how tight things were financially. Mum, who was born in the depths of winter, continually informed us how lucky we were to celebrate our birthday in the summer, even though most years the sun was an elusive guest while overcast skies and thundery rain gatecrashed our parties. Not that this put her off. If the rain was particularly bad, she would retrieve the awning from the garage and get Dad to erect it over the patio, insisting that we sit outside to make the most of the summer irrespective of the droplets of rain that ran off the awning and down our necks. She would invite the whole estate as well as our classmates. And Lucy and I would giggle at the sheer silliness of it all, as Mum bustled around us, making sure everyone had jelly and ice cream along with waterproofs and wellies. ‘You’ll be thankful for these memories one day,’ she would happily chide us when she noticed our conspiratorial giggles, carrying out cheese-and-pineapple sticks protruding painfully from a foil-wrapped orange. But she was right. I look back on each and every one of the birthdays that we shared as children with such nostalgia, such longing, that it becomes an intense, gut-wrenching pain.
I suppose it isn’t so strange that, as the years inevitably roll on without her, I will become more absorbed in my childhood, in the past, in a time when we were happy.
The doorbell rings and I spring out of bed, wrapping my dressing gown around myself, and hurry down the stairs. But before I can get to the front door Beatrice is closing it, a huge bouquet of white lilies and roses in her arms. Lilies are my favourite flower. Roses were Lucy’s.
‘Happy birthday.’ Beatrice smiles at me. ‘These have just arrived for you.’ She hands them to me and I almost drop them, they are so heavy. I press my nose against the petals of a velvety rose. Who would have splashed out on such an opulent bouquet? ‘Come with me, I’m sure I’ve got the perfect vase in the kitchen.’ I follow as she pads off down the hallway, her pink silk dressing gown billowing out behind her.
Since returning from my parents’ house I’ve noticed that Beatrice has gone out of her way to be nice, including me in an excursion to an art gallery, which I politely declined, and a party at Niall’s house, which I readily accepted, and as the week has progressed it’s almost as it used to be between us, and I suspect Ben had a word with her after I left. Whatever he said seems to have worked. We’ve reached some kind of impasse. Neither of us have mentioned the letters, the photograph or the bracelet. And even though I toss and turn at night at the thought of those lost letters, of the eerie photo of me with no face, nervous of what might come next, I have no choice but to bide my time, for now.
Everyone is in the kitchen when we come down, and as I round the last step they all start singing Happy Birthday energetically. Ben stands at the Aga, poised over a frying pan that sizzles and crackles. After the singing he bounds over to me, wrapping his arms around me, almost crushing the flowers as he plants a big kiss on my forehead. ‘Happy birthday,’ he says. ‘Who are the flowers from?’
‘I’m not sure yet, I haven’t read the card,’ I say, slightly overwhelmed. It’s as though I’ve spent the last few weeks in the servant quarters, only now being allowed to mix with the gentry. Pam shoves a card and a bottle of expensive champagne at me, while Cass hovers by my side with a cup of tea.
‘Here, let me have those,’ says Beatrice, noticing I’ve got no spare hands with which to take the tea. She lifts the flowers from my arms and lays them on the worktop as she bends down to search in the cupboard underneath the sink for a vase.
Ben steers me to the table, tells me he’s cooking breakfast, bacon sandwiches as a special treat. His enthusiasm is so endearing that I can’t bring myself to tell him I’m not a fan of bacon. Pam and Cass take a seat opposite me while Pam chatters away about when she was thirty ‘many moons ago’, as if it isn’t obvious, by her many lines and grey parting, that it was nearly two decades ago when she was my age.
Cass shyly pushes a wrapped gift across the table. ‘It’s not much,’ she blushes. I thank her and open it, unable to hide my surprise when I see it’s a large black-and-white print. It’s of me – but it could be Lucy, or Beatrice – a close-up so that only my face and the top of my shoulders are showing in a white T-shirt. I’m deep in thought, the wind blowing some strands of hair across my cheek, the background out of focus so that I can’t tell where or when it was taken. Callum is a great photographer but this is in a different league entirely. ‘Cass, it’s amazing,’ I say, genuinely touched. The others crowd around me to see it, exclaiming at its loveliness. Suddenly my blood runs cold. There is something sickeningly familiar about this photograph – the pose, the blonde hair, the white T-shirt – and it slowly occurs to me where I’ve seen it before. The photograph is a larger version of the one I found in my bedroom, the one where my face had been scratched away, leaving a large white spooky void.
‘Can I have a copy?’ Ben grins as he returns to the Aga, spatula in hand, oblivious to my discomfort. My heart is racing, my head swims. Am I about to have a panic attack? I turn to look at Beatrice, to see how she’s reacting to all this, but she’s leaning against the worktop, a smile on her lips, the bouquet of flowers arranged beautifully in a vase behind her.
Ben serves up bacon sandwiches and as I look around the table, at Beatrice perched next to me happily recounting her and Ben’s thirtieth birthday a couple of years ago, at Cass smiling shyly at her over her coffee cup, at Pam gurning and flashing her gold tooth, it’s as if I’m in some surreal play. Did Cass leave that photograph in my bedroom? Was she acting on Beatrice’s behalf? Was it meant as a warning? A threat?
‘So,’ says Beatrice, turning to me. Her plate is empty. ‘What have you got planned for today?’
I open my mouth to say that Ben has promised to take me to Lyme Regis for the night when he interrupts me. ‘It’s a surprise, remember?’ he says. A look I can’t read passes between them and I take a bite of my bacon sandwich although it feels like cardboard in my mouth. All I can think about is that damn photograph.
‘Oh, I nearly forgot my gift,’ she says, handing me a small parcel prettily wrapped in embossed butterfly paper.
‘Oh, thanks,’ I mutter, aware that I must sound ungrateful, but I’m terrified of what I’m going to discover inside. I open it with trepidation. The box is small, navy blue, recognizable as the kind that Beatrice uses to package up her jewellery before selling it.