‘Yes, okay, thanks.’
‘Back to the pool. It’ll be a quiet week for me.’
I nod. ‘Hopefully no suicide bids, then.’
Inger shrugs, as if it is impossible to tell when somebody might decide to throw themselves into the deep end.
Outside, on the short walk back to the bungalow, I picture that basement filled with declarations. What do those stories mean? Do they have to mean anything? And yet I can feel the pervasive magic of wanting to put down my own words, separating my life into before and after, altering my ideas about the person I want to be.
Am I turning into my mother?
Or maybe that process has already begun, in the library, in the face of that unknown man. Or earlier still, when my mother left. Yes, people are changed forever when the people they love decide to leave.
‘I think she makes the only choice she can. I mean, she has to avenge him, right? Sometimes we live on instinct and no matter how much we know it’s not a good idea, we can’t listen to anything but our hearts.’ The slim woman in jeans and a cream cable-knit jumper touches the space between her breasts with both hands, and I sit back as the other women in the circle nod. It is the kind of statement that divides people into two categories: those who believe in the all-embracing power of love, and those who think that the first group are a bunch of self-indulgent idiots. I desperately don’t want anyone else to work out that I think I once belonged to the first group. Now I’m not so sure.
Rebecca, sitting on my right, nudges me, then says in her loud voice, ‘I think you always have a choice.’
‘Yes,’ says Inger, from across the circle. She is wearing a black dress, which surprises me. It’s a sheath, the kind of glamorous garment that belongs to a formal event, not on this island. Still, there can’t be many opportunities to dress up. ‘I think it’s fine to want revenge. It’s fine to act on it. But you have to know you’ll pay the price for it. Be aware of what it means, yes, and think it through.’
‘And that makes it okay?’ says Rebecca.
‘No, but it makes it methodical,’ I say. I like Inger’s practical solemnity. Sitting a few rows behind her in the screening room, I found myself watching the back of Inger’s head more often than Jodie Foster’s deliberations. There had been, in the way she leaned forward during the emotional moments of the film, a feeling of intense concentration emanating from her. I don’t think I’ve ever managed to concentrate on something in that way. Right now, only half of me is in this group. The other half is wondering how Kay is doing on her mission to find a way into the basement of the white house without being detected.
The meeting peters out into general chatting about lives back home, and I am silent once more as Rebecca categorises everyone’s experiences and attempts to make sense of them. She really can’t help herself. Later, we stand side by side at the sinks in the toilets, and she at least has the grace to look embarrassed.
‘Do you know what?’ She washes her hands, using the pink soap from the dispenser. ‘Other people’s problems are much easier to deal with. But I do wonder if my way is the right way. Who’s to say facing up to it and moving on has to work? Why couldn’t we all just pretend the worst things never happened and refuse to confront them?’
I’m pretty certain by now that Rebecca isn’t a person I would get along with under usual circumstances. ‘When you told that woman with the abusive husband—’
‘Sophie.’
‘When you told Sophie she could leave, you think you could have said something different?’
Reflected in the mirrors are shiny taps, the clean sheets of the walls, and Rebecca’s grim smile as she says, ‘Do you think Sophie will ever leave him? I wonder if it matters what I say to her. Or if he’ll beg, and promise to go to counselling, and next thing you know she’ll be in the casualty department with bruises the shape of his fingers around her neck. Again.’
‘You don’t know that,’ I tell her. I have to believe in the possibility of change, it seems. ‘You never know. This island has a strange effect on people.’
‘Like your mother? You think she hadn’t already decided to leave before she came here?’
‘I don’t know.’ I rip a handful of dark blue paper towels from the dispenser, and hand some to Rebecca.
‘Was your father abusive?’ she asks me.
‘He was a normal dad. Until she didn’t come back. And then he ignored me, that’s all.’ I think of piggybacks, of ice creams, of hands keeping me afloat in the swimming pool, locked under my tummy while I kick, and suddenly I feel ashamed of ever forgetting that side, instead of seeing only the shadow of him, lurking in The Cornerhouse. I throw the paper towels in the bin. ‘Come on. Kay should be waiting for us.’
‘Listen, I’m not sure that this thing with Kay is such a good idea.’
‘Let’s just see what she’s found out,’ I say. ‘Maybe there’s nothing.’ But it doesn’t feel that way. There is excitement buzzing through me. Something is about to happen.
Standing outside the cinema, under the light from the old-fashioned streetlight placed at a crossroads in the gravel path, Kay hops from one foot to the other in her big, black boots as we walk over to her. ‘That took ages!’ she says. ‘Did you dissect it scene by scene?’
I hear a cough behind me; Inger is approaching in her sheath dress, coatless, with a large bunch of keys in one hand. ‘Thanks for coming along,’ she says.
‘I enjoyed it.’
‘Me too. The pool’s open from ten tomorrow, if you want a swim.’
I watch her go, sure-footed, swinging the keys. She doesn’t seem to feel the cold at all.
Rebecca leans over and whispers close to my ear, very loudly, ‘I think she suspects something.’
Kay rolls her eyes. ‘Is this whole thing not melodramatic enough for you, then, Rebecca?’
‘I just think it isn’t a good idea to start doing things that are morally wrong because you happen to both think that the ends justify the means. What happens when you get caught?’
‘So we’re definitely going to get caught, are we?’
‘Yes, actually. Because that’s what happens to criminals.’
‘Like the Nazis, you mean? Like Klaus Barbie, living out his life in South America, soaking up the sunshine?’
Rebecca flicks back her hair and turns up the collar on her coat. ‘There is no point trying to have a rational discussion if you’re going to bring up Nazi Germany. That’s totally uncalled for. As a comparison. And didn’t he get caught eventually?’
‘Listen,’ I say, before it can get any worse, ‘I don’t want to upset anyone. I’m not going to torture people or run away to Bolivia. I just want to see one declaration. Just one. I won’t look at anyone else’s, I promise, Rebecca. And besides, it’s probably locked up too tight for me to even get near.’
‘Heh,’ says Kay. ‘That’s what you think. Come on. I’ve had a quick look round the grounds of the white house, and I think I’ve found a way in. Maybe we’ll even uncover the mummy of Amelia Worthington, still signing acceptance letters, with a fountain pen in her bandaged hand.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. I’m not doing anything of the sort. And I’d appreciate it if you don’t talk about it around me, either.’ Rebecca sticks her hands into her pockets. ‘I’m going back to the bungalow now. I think you should come back and play a board game and forget all about this, Marianne. There are other ways to find your answers. You don’t have to become your mother to understand her, I promise you.’
It is so polished, such a slick thing to say, that it is impossible to take it seriously. I tell her, carefully, ‘We’ll be back really soon, okay? We’re just going to take a look. That’s all.’