new feathers pushing through a haze of down, jostle and screech a safe distance away. You watch them for a few moments then return to the terrace.
To her and to him.
To the white-walled house.
‘I spy with my little eye something beginning with P,’ you say under your breath.
The man lifts his drink and sips. The woman runs her hand through her honey-blonde hair.
Perfection.
‘I spy perfection.’
Present Day
I lean against the worktop and watch her. Her hands rest lightly on the table. She stares at me, unmoving, impassive. If I didn’t know her so well it would be unnerving.
There’s a chill in the air and I rub my arms to warm myself. It’s good to see her looking so beautiful, her hair shining, skin flawless and eyes bright. Neither of us speak. The silence isn’t uncomfortable but I know it won’t last. There’s a reason she’s here.
There always is.
I am unable to hold my tongue any longer. ‘Say it then.’
She raises an eyebrow, amused at the sharpness of my tone. ‘I was thinking back.’ Her voice never fails to take me by surprise, soft and melodic, close to singing.
‘To that summer?’
‘Yes.’ Her face is like a millpond, her expression placid and calm. This is misleading, of course. Beneath the veneer lies a tangle of questions and emotions. ‘But my memories are hazy, like half-remembered dreams.’
I turn away from her. Look out of the window. A crack runs diagonally across the glass. Dusty cobwebs are collected in the corners. The paintwork on the frame is peeling and patches of rot caress the edge of the pane. I long to open it. There’s a thick smell of mildew in the kitchen and it’s catching the back of my throat, but I’m not certain fresh air would be enough to get rid of it, so I leave it closed.
Outside the sky is the colour of a ripened bruise. It hangs low and heavy, threatening thunder. Raindrops spatter the window, run downwards in random paths, merging and barrelling as they grow heavier. I close my eyes and hear the distant echo of Edie’s laugh. Remembering her brings with it the smell of seaweed drying in the farthest reach of a spring tide, the tang of salt carried on a summer breeze, the feel of the sun-warmed terrace beneath my feet. My own memories are crystal clear. Each one as crisp and complete as if it happened just hours before.
We met, Edie and I, on the first day of the summer holidays in 1986. Until that moment I didn’t know her name or what she looked like. I didn’t even know she existed.
But I knew the place she lived.
I knew The Cliff House.
Tamsyn
July 1986
I sprang out of bed as soon as I woke. It was the first day of the holidays and I couldn’t wait to escape.
The house was still. It hung with a silence as thick as pea soup. Mum was at work. My brother was in his bedroom. Door closed. I didn’t need to go in to know he was still asleep. Sleeping was pretty much all he’d done since the tin mine shut down. Granfer was also in his room. Although it wasn’t really his room. It was Mum and Dad’s, but Mum had moved to a fold-up bed in the sitting room when Granfer came to live with us. She wanted him to be comfortable, what with the state of his lungs, she said. I remember when the man from the tip came to pick up the double bed. Jago had dragged it on to the street and the three of us watched as the man and his friend hefted it onto the back of a truck in exchange for a six-pack of beer. Though Mum didn’t say, I could tell by her face she was sad to see it go, but, as she said, Granfer needed the space and a chair was more use to him than a bed for two.
His door was open a crack and there he was, in his chair, leaning forward to study the mess of jigsaw pieces scattered on the small table in front of him. I watched him for a minute or two, ready to smile if he noticed me, but he didn’t move a muscle, just stared down at the table.
I turned and walked over to the airing cupboard on the landing. Mum used it to keep her stuff in. She’d put the spare sheets and towels in a cardboard box in the corner of Granfer’s room, then removed the shelves and put up a hanging rail which she made from a length of pine doweling she picked up from the hardware shop in Penzance. She had to cut it to size with our rusted hacksaw and I remember thinking how well she’d done it despite her not being Dad.
I opened the cupboard door and stared at the clothes inside with her shoes lined up below them in happy pairs. There was a variety of boxes with belts and earrings and her winter hat and scarf on a high shelf above. I ran my finger along clothes on their hangers, enjoying the feel of the different fabrics as I looked for something pretty. Something suitable.
My eyes settled on her rainbow dress and I smiled.
‘Perfect.’
A shiver of excitement ran through my body as I took the dress into the bathroom and closed the door behind me. I let my dressing gown fall to the floor and slipped on the dress, smoothing it over my hips and waist, the crepe fabric rough against my skin. Mum kept her make-up in a flowery wash-bag on a wire vegetable rack below the basin along with her shower cap, a soap-on-a-rope we’d never used, and a pot of Oil of Ulay which Jago and I gave her for her last birthday. Inside the wash-bag was a pressed powder she’d had forever, a drying mascara and her lipstick. I took out the lipstick and removed the lid, then turned the base to reveal the scarlet innards. Lifting it to my nose I breathed in. The smell conjured memories of when I was younger, my parents dressed up to go out, perhaps – if it was a special occasion – to the Italian restaurant in Porthleven they loved so much. I pictured her turning a circle for him. Saw him smile, eyes alight, as he leant in to kiss her cheek. It was painful remembering how it was back then. Back then when our house felt like a home.
Home.
Just a memory. Vague and fading. I stared at myself in the mirror above the basin and searched for the ten-year-old girl who’d lived in that happy place. But she was long gone. I drew in a deep breath and touched the tip of my finger to the blood-coloured lipstick, dabbing first its waxy surface and then my lips to add a blush of colour. I dropped the lipstick back into the wash-bag and zipped it up. Then, looking down, I swung left and right to make the rainbow dress swish, imagining my father watching on and smiling.
I went downstairs and glanced into the sitting room as I passed. Her bed was stored neatly behind the settee. The folded duvet and pillow lay on top of it, struck through by a line of sunlight from a gap between the curtains. As I walked into the kitchen I saw two mugs on the table, one with a smudge of lipstick on it, the other without. A sudden sweep of anger washed over me and I snatched them up and marched them to the sink where I turned the tap on, squirted washing-up liquid into the mugs, and reached for the scouring pad. I attacked the one without the red smear the hardest. How had he squirmed his way into the kitchen? I scrubbed, wanting all trace of him gone, then dried the mugs and returned them to the cupboard before squeezing bleach on the table and meticulously cleaning every inch of it, rubbing all the way into the corners and along the edges.
The kitchen hung with the pungent tang of bleach and my mind returned to thoughts of getting out. I stood on tiptoes and reached for the battered biscuit tin on top of the fridge. Inside was a collection of odds and sods, as Mum called them: safety pins, pencil stubs, an assortment of rusted screws and nails, and a variety of keys. Excitement wriggled along my arm and down to the pit of my stomach as I pulled out the key with the green fob. I slipped it into the pocket of the rainbow dress, replaced the tin, then grabbed my bag from the