Secrets of the Tides (44 page)

‘Of course I’m bloody pleased. I’m going to be an auntie.’ Cassie is grinning from ear to ear, but as she looks again at her sister her smile fades. ‘Are
you
pleased? I guess that’s the more important question here.’

‘Yeah, I think so. I mean, I’m coming round to the idea. Dan’s over the moon about it but I’ve realised over the last few weeks that I’m absolutely terrified. It’s Alfie, you see. I feel paralysed. Stuck. How can I celebrate a new life when I’m still mourning Alfie’s? And how can I even consider motherhood when I failed my baby brother so catastrophically? What kind of mother will I really be, Cassie? Can you tell me that?’ Dora takes a deep breath before continuing. ‘Motherhood terrifies me.’ She swallows. ‘I have dreams, Cassie; horrible dreams where I lose things, important things. What if I make the same mistakes again? Everything is so fragile, so easily broken. I don’t think I can hurt again the way I did when we lost Alfie that summer. It would tear me apart. I’m not strong enough. Do you understand?’ Her words spill out into the air, tripping over each other.

‘You’ve got to get over this guilt-trip you’re on, Dora. It’s all wrong.
You
are so wrong.’

‘How can you say that when you just implied that it was
your
guilt about Alfie that was the very thing that tipped
you
over the edge and made you want to end your life?’

Cassie flinches. ‘That’s different.’

‘I don’t see how. Why is it different?’

There is a pause before she answers. ‘Because I had something
real
to feel guilty about . . . something you don’t know.’

The sun is shining down on Dora, making her squint, but even with the glare in her eyes she can see the flicker of something terrible pass across her sister’s face, and as she sees it, Cassie’s words slowly permeate Dora’s consciousness. They lodge in her brain where they rattle and hum with noisy, irritating insistence. She lets them jangle there a while, contrasting wildly with the stillness of the garden around them.
Something real. Something you don’t know
.

‘Come on,’ says Cassie suddenly. ‘Let’s head down to the lake. It’s gorgeous down there at this time of day. Besides,’ she adds, ‘you’re going a bit pink.’

Cassie is up on her feet and heading towards the low wooden doorway before Dora can protest. She has no option but to follow.

They make their way out of the high-walled garden and turn away from the grand house, past a collapsing pergola and a yew tree so old its heavy boughs seem to graze the ground it stands upon, before arriving out onto the overgrown lawn. Cassie is walking fast, her back rigid and her shoulders taut as she leads the way, always a step or two ahead of Dora. As Dora follows her through the long grass her heels sink awkwardly into the boggy ground and she struggles to keep up.

In a flash she is back at Clifftops; she is the annoying little sister chasing after Cassie, desperate to follow her big sister on whatever exotic adventure she is on. She can almost hear the splash of puddles and the flap of her ungainly wellies as she makes her way down across the lawn. She’s a grown woman, and yet the way she feels, she could be no more than nine or ten again. She would be annoyed if it wasn’t so ridiculous. She decides to slow down and take the garden at her own pace, she doesn’t have to play this game, but by the time she reaches the edge of the lake, Cassie has disappeared from view completely. Dora stands squinting in the sunshine, looking left and right for a sign of her sister.

Finally she sees her, a dark silhouette against the edge of the lake. Cassie seems to bend and gather something from the shallows of the water. Dora makes her way carefully towards her and just as she reaches her side, Cassie leans back and flicks a pebble out across the still surface of the lake, both of them watching as it skips-skips-skips and then sinks below the shimmering surface.

‘You always were good at that,’ says Dora.

An electric-blue dragonfly skims along the water’s edge. Dora can see water boatmen skating across the surface of the shallows, and midges dancing over the reeds like dust. Far on the other side of the lake a swan drifts languidly past a rotting boathouse, dipping its head gracefully to fish for food.

‘It’s really beautiful here.’

‘Yes, isn’t it.’ Cassie doesn’t seem to want to say any more. She just stands there at the water’s edge, shifting her weight from one foot to the other; if Dora didn’t know better, she’d think she was nervous.

Finally, Cassie breaks the silence. ‘Come on, let’s sit under the weeping willow. It’ll be shady under there.’

She leads the way along the bank to the drooping old tree, parting its luxuriant yellow-green fronds and beckoning her into the cool of its interior. Once the trailing boughs have closed ranks behind them, it is as if they have entered an intimate, shadowy room. The tree’s vertical leaves shimmer secretively in the breeze, reminding Dora of summer rain. She slips off her heels and sits for a moment, gazing up at the branches overhead; it is beautiful, a little like being inside a waterfall.

‘Dora, there’s something I have to tell you. Something I’ve never told anyone before.’ Cassie takes another deep breath before continuing to speak. ‘You know, I was so angry that morning. So incredibly angry. I can still feel the fury that raged through me when you came upstairs and told me that Mum was leaving us for the day and that you and I had to take Alfie to the beach.’

Dora swallows, but daren’t speak; she doesn’t want to interrupt her sister now that she is finally talking.

‘You see, Sam and I had hatched a plan. It was our last day together. We were going to go to the Crag and hang out, just the two of us. We were . . . we were kind of
into
each other. I fancied her rotten.’ She looks up at Dora meaningfully. ‘We wanted to be alone. Looking after Alfie with you was the last thing I’d planned on that day.’

Dora’s eyes widen in the eerie green light of the tree. ‘You’re gay?’

Cassie shrugs. ‘Yeah.’

Dora nods slowly as a series of small cogs fall into place.
I wasn’t who they thought I was . . . Felix and me? No chance!
’

‘Do you have a girlfriend?’ Dora is curious.

Cassie blushes slightly, a rosy glow flooding her cheeks. ‘There is someone. It’s early days . . . but she’s nice . . . really nice. We’re taking it slow.’

Dora smiles. She realises she’s pleased for Cassie.

‘Anyway, my current love life aside, that’s why I was so sulky that morning,’ Cassie continues. ‘You know, Mum dumping Alfie on us and running off to “work” for the day, which of course was nothing but a blatant lie.’

‘A lie?’ Dora’s head snaps up. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Are you kidding me?’ Cassie looks at Dora in amazement. ‘You mean you still don’t know?’

Dora shakes her head. ‘Know what?’

‘About the affair?’

Dora looks at Cassie with confusion. ‘What affair?’

‘Mum’s affair with Tobias Grey? You know,’ she continues, seeing Dora’s puzzled look, ‘the artist. He’s the one that painted that ugly picture Mum hung over the mantelpiece at Clifftops. Remember?’

Dora’s brain whirs and dredges up a forgotten image of a fierce, brooding seascape painted in oils. She shakes her head. ‘Mum had an affair with an artist? Are you sure?’

‘Yeah, I heard it from the horse’s mouth. He phoned the house once . . . a long time ago. He thought he was speaking to her. I didn’t know who
he
was for a long time, but eventually things fell into place. I pretended I knew more than I did and in the end Dad spilled the beans. It turns out she had been with Tobias on the day Alfie disappeared. I think that’s why Dad eventually left her.’

‘My God!’ Dora is shocked. It is too much to take in. Her mother had been with another man on the very day Alfie disappeared. She’d been having an
affair
. She thinks back to her encounter with Helen a few weeks ago, to her mother’s brittle demeanour. She remembers Alfie’s bedroom, like a time capsule, perfectly untouched with everything exactly as it had been the day he had gone missing and a glimmer of understanding suddenly registers. She’s always thought her mother kept the room unaltered in order to punish her, to remind Dora of her own failings that day. But now she sees it in a new light. Helen is punishing
herself
every day. Just by staying in Dorset, by living at Clifftops and surrounding herself with memories of Alfie, she is suffering. She has created her own private prison for her failings as a mother. She must have looked wildly for others to blame because the pain of knowing that she had been with Tobias when Alfie had gone missing would be almost too much to bear. Dora shakes her head in disbelief. All this time. Her mind is whirling with the startling revelation when Cassie speaks again.

‘But you see, in the end, Dora, it really doesn’t matter where Mum was that day.’ Cassie’s voice cracks and Dora looks up in surprise. ‘It was me.
I
killed him.’

The words are barely a whisper but they slice cleanly through the jumble of Dora’s thoughts and seem to suck the air right out of her lungs. She is shocked to see tears welling in Cassie’s eyes. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘That day at the Crag, you don’t know what
really
happened. None of you do.’

Dora suddenly wonders if Cassie is OK. She’s seemed so normal, but maybe it is a charade after all.

‘What are you talking about, Cass? I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying. You’re scaring me.’

Cassie hangs her head, suddenly unable to meet her eye. ‘After you left the Crag that first time, when you went to buy ice creams, Alfie, he . . . he came over to us. He was bored, you see. He wanted us to play with him.’

‘Hang on. You mean he
was
with you and Sam in the cave?’ Dora frowns, confused.

Cassie gives a small nod. ‘He kept going on and on about collecting sticks and looking for crabs. He wanted us to collect sticks with him. I don’t really know why.’

Dora remembers the pile of driftwood they had been building. Alfie
had
been in the cave with Cassie. It didn’t make sense. Why had she lied about it?

‘He kept going on and on at us,’ Cassie says with a sad little smile. ‘You know what he got like, really whiney and cross. He was angry that Sam and I wouldn’t play with him. He stood there banging his stick against the cave wall and stamping his little feet, over and over. Bang, bang, bang. Over and over. It echoed horribly. The noise was horrible.’

Dora can see her brother in her mind’s eye, his little fists clenched and his red galoshes pounding up and down on the gritty cave floor.

‘Sam and I were really stoned; we just wanted to lie on the sand and be together. I was desperate . . . Sam was going home the next day. When you left the cave I knew it was our last chance. But then Alfie kept whining and banging, whining and banging. On and on. He was driving me mad.’

Dora can just imagine it: little Alfie stamping and complaining and Cassie desperate, her temper on a knife-edge, ready to explode.

‘I tried to be patient. I told him to go and find more crabs at the other end of the cave but he said that was boring. So I told him to find somewhere to hide. To count to a hundred, and then we would come and find him.’

‘He just wanted to play with someone,’ says Dora sadly.

‘Well, Alfie said he couldn’t count to a hundred yet. He said hide and seek was boring. And that’s when I really lost my temper. I told him if it was so boring in the cave, why didn’t he leave. We hadn’t asked him to come with us.’

Dora looks at her sister with disbelief.

‘I told him . . . I told him to leave us alone. I told him to go and find you, wherever you were. I told him to go for a walk, to look for shells. He kept on whining and whining.
No. No. No
. On and on. Banging his stick, over and over. And so that’s when I said it.’

‘Said what?’ Dora’s heart thuds loudly in her chest.

Cassie puts her hand to her mouth, as if unable to continue, but then speaks the final words in a rush. ‘I told him if he was so bored in the cave maybe he should go for a swim.’

Dora swallows. ‘But you knew—’

‘Yes. I knew he couldn’t swim. He told me, too. He said, “Cassie, I can’t swim. I’m too little.” And do you know what I said back?’

Dora is frozen. She doesn’t think she wants to hear the rest, but she doesn’t want Cassie to stop either.

‘I said, “But Alfie, you’re a superhero. You can do anything, right? Of course you can swim.” ’ Cassie is staring into the distance as a single tear rolls down her cheek.

Dora sits in stunned silence for a moment. She can’t believe what she is hearing. All this time, all these years, Cassie has never breathed a word of this to anyone.

‘I know it was cruel. I know it was a sick, twisted thing to say and I still don’t really know why I said it. All I do know is that he just shrugged his little shoulders, turned his back on us, and began to clamber up and out of the Crag. And do you want to know how I felt as I watched him go?’

Dora doesn’t move. She isn’t sure she can take any more.

‘I felt relief. Pure, sweet relief that he was finally going and that Sam and I would be alone, at last.’

Dora swallows back the bitter taste in her mouth.

‘We . . . Dora, I’m not proud of this . . . we . . . well, you know. And then you came back with your friend. It seemed like only moments earlier that Alfie had left the Crag, but instantly I knew something was wrong. I knew what I had done. When you asked where he was, I just blurted out that I hadn’t seen him, that I thought he had gone with you.’ She shakes her head. ‘I still don’t know why I did that. The cave was so quiet . . . eerily so . . . I had this horrible image in my head of him. I saw him tottering out across the rocky outcrop, all the while blissfully unaware of the changing tides and the splash and spray of the waves as they dumped onto the promontory. I could see him standing on the edge, peering over into the waves as they splashed up over the tops of his little boots. I knew then . . . I just knew.’

‘You knew he might have left the cave . . . gone to the rock pools?’

Cassie nods. She isn’t meeting her eyes. ‘I never meant to hurt him. I never meant to hurt Alfie.’