it was the eyes that held me – vivid green, bright, almond shaped – that fixed onto mine. Compelling me to hold her gaze.
My mouth, reflected in the mirror, froze open in shock, and morphed into two thin pink closed lips.
The vision held, then blurred.
I blinked and it had gone.
The air was steaming up the mirror once more. I steadied my breath and rubbed the condensation away. My reflection stared back: pale, crumpled and very, very tired.
I was still tipsy. I had to get a grip; my imagination was running away with itself, playing tricks on me.
‘Pull yourself together,’ I instructed my reflection. ‘You just need a good night’s sleep.’ I took my own advice and pushed the fear to the very back of my mind.
Flinging on my pyjamas I shuffled out of the bathroom as quickly as my tired legs could manage, dragged my body to my fluffy bed and pulled my duvet tight around me.
It wouldn’t register consciously then, but just before I sank into oblivion, I saw a small cloud of my breath.
Despite the warmth outside, my bedroom was as cold as a crypt.
Chapter Four
When I woke I was moody and morose. Though I tried to perk myself up when I roused Alfie, I never really got rid of that shirty, melancholy the whole weekend. In fact it got worse.
I had a slight reprieve late Saturday morning (less of the melancholy, more of the shirtiness) when my sister, Lottie, and nephew, Thomas, turned up for a picnic at Leigh beach. Thomas was eight months older than Alfie and the boys got on very well together.
The sun was nearing its noon zenith when they arrived. My hangover had slowed me so I was still half dressed. Lottie made it clear that she wanted to spend no time inside. A true sun-worshipper, she insisted we packed a picnic lunch and got down to the beach as soon as possible. I tried not to sulk but my older sister’s assumed authority and unassailable competence always brought out the child in me. Lottie had always been more organized, more academic and wittier than anyone else. Leaving college with a first-class degree in English, and with an outstanding final term as an award-winning editor of the college mag, she dashed everyone’s expectations by turning her back on a promising career in journalism and established her own theatre company, which she ran for several years before a BBC head-hunter netted her. She gave up working for the BBC when she was pregnant with Thomas and now worked as a freelance consultant. In her spare time she was writing a trilogy of children’s books for a US publisher.
I examined her from beneath my mat of stringy uncombed fringe. In immaculate Capri pants and oversized black sunglasses, she resembled a sexy sixties siren.
‘Come on, Sarah. I want to get down to the beach before one. Let’s make the most of the sunshine.’ She swished her curtain of shiny black hair and winked. ‘Chop chop.’
I fingered my pyjama bottoms gingerly and told her to keep her hair on, then stomped upstairs while she made sandwiches for the four of us.
Outdoors the full impact of last night’s two (or was it three?) bottles of wine kicked in. My tongue was so absurdly dry I downed a litre bottle of water in ten minutes.
We wandered down the Broadway keeping one eye on the boys and another on the windows of the boutique shops and bursting cafés, stopping at the greengrocer’s that sold Alfie’s favourite ice creams, a soft, local recipe introduced to the area by a family of Italian ice-cream makers. We fetched the two 99’s and two colas and then went across the road into The Library Gardens.
Situated by St Clements church, off the main street, and right at the top of the hill the library gardens weren’t the geographical centre of town yet the small park felt like the heart of Leigh. A place where the different communities that existed in the town converged and relaxed: the lower gardens provided a meeting place for teenage gangs and novice smokers. The upper ground, with its compact playground area, had fostered many a friendship amongst young families. The actual gardens were the perfect place for old timers to take in the views across the estuary and down into the Old Town. There were lots of benches dotted around to do just that.
I told Lottie I could do with a rest so we took a seat between the herb garden and the red-brick walls of the Victorian rectory, now the library.
The sun was so strong now it scorched the skin on the crown of my head. The others had sun hats but I, of course, had forgotten mine so wrapped my scarf around my head.
‘You look like a bag lady,’ said Lottie. I made a face and stretched across her to adjust Alfie’s ice-cream-stained shirt.
This corner of the park had an aromatic garden for the blind. The air was thick with the citrus tang of catnip and meaty wafts of purple sage and rosemary. On other days I’d sit here with pleasure, but now the pungent earthy reek made me feel like I was roasting.
I suggested we move on so Lottie led the way through the park down into the Old Town.
It was almost high tide and the modest scrap of Leigh beach was crammed. Day-trippers and locals filled every square metre of sand with towels, blankets, buckets, spades, sandcastles, lilos and rapidly reddening flesh.
We made the decision to walk east along the towpath to the larger and less crowded beach at Chalkwell and saw off a mutiny from Thomas and Alfie with the shameless promise of more ice cream. I know you’re not meant to bribe kids but honestly, sometimes, it’s the only way. Plus Lottie was making sounds that she wanted to talk. Proper grown-up talk.
Her husband, David, had piled up some ludicrous debt and, although it was a dead cert their marriage would survive, Lottie was livid and bandying around words like ‘divorce’ and ‘separation’.
They say usually the thing that attracts you to your lover is what irritates the hell out of you in the end. I remembered how Lottie loved David’s easy generosity when she met him. Now look at the pair of them.
I’d never know if it would have gone that way with Josh for two reasons. Firstly, I’ve realized I’m not like other people so I’m not sure any of those generalizations really apply to me. Granted, physically, I look fairly human: two arms, two legs, average build, height, weight. Mousy hair, which I dye, sometimes auburn, occasionally red, currently brown. But psychologically and sociologically I really have no idea what makes other people tick. I don’t follow The X-Factor or Strictly Come Dancing. In fact, I don’t watch TV. I didn’t get excited about my son’s first tooth, first word, first wet bed or bad dream. I don’t drink modestly and I don’t wear widow’s weeds. I achieved ten GCSE’s, five ‘A’ Levels, and have a good degree in music and education yet the majority of people think I’m thick on account of my estuarine accent. My IQ plunges with each dropped consonant.
Secondly, when the number 73 lost control at Newington Green and mangled Josh and his bike into its back left wheel, it robbed me of the chance to find all that stuff out.
I was so warped with shock at the time I never really got that it was game over. I kept wanting to turn around and ask him, ‘Can you believe this is happening? I mean, can you?’
So when they told us later that he didn’t feel anything, I just stared at them with my mouth open. They wanted a reaction but I couldn’t get it going so the policeman added, ‘It would have been too quick. He wouldn’t have had time to realize what was happening. He wouldn’t have felt a thing.’
And I did this weird thing, apparently, so his mum, Margaret, said. I don’t think she’s ever forgiven me for it. I said, ‘Easy come, easy go.’
That’s when Margaret started hitting me and, by all accounts, the police had to intervene.
I don’t remember it, and I know it must have seemed heartless, but I can understand what I meant. Josh was easy: persistently mild and laid back. I have this enduring image of him, hunched over his laptop with headphones on. His straw-like gingery hair jutting out at odd angles, Paul Newman blue eyes closed, head nodding, mouth creeping into a dopey