‘I’ll make coffee,’ says Rebecca.
I get up and find cups. At the back of one of the cupboards is an old board game with a ripped lid. I bring it down and put it in the centre of the table, along with milk and sugar.
‘Game of Life!’ says Kay. She opens the box and takes out the board, then examines the pieces. ‘There aren’t many pegs left but I reckon we could play a game. It’s better than listening to me all night, right?’ She rolls her eyes, and starts setting out the little plastic cars. ‘So what made you apply, then? For the island?’ She doesn’t aim the question at anyone in particular; Rebecca is busy spooning coffee into a filter jug, so I reply.
‘I didn’t.’
‘Let me guess – your husband did it for you so he could have a week alone with his mates and his widescreen telly.’
‘No, nothing like that. I received the offer of a place without applying. My mother came here years ago. I think maybe it’s to do with that.’
Kay nods. ‘Did you ask her? Maybe she applied for you. To follow in her footsteps?’
‘No, I…’ I swallow, hating the nervous feeling in my throat. ‘I haven’t seen her since she came here, actually, seventeen years ago.’
‘She disappeared while she was here?’ Rebecca says, bringing the filter jug to the table, along with a packet of digestives.
‘No. No, she’s in Bedfordshire now.’ The ridiculousness of it makes them both laugh. Hearing that sound, I feel comfortable for the first time since that man walked into the library. Time makes the worst things laughable, I suppose. ‘She sends cards every now and again and the postmark says Bedfordshire, but she’s never given me an address, so I always assumed she didn’t want to meet up. She just didn’t want to be with my father any more. Or me, I suppose. Something here – something she realised – persuaded her to leave us.’
‘So what are you doing here?’ says Rebecca. She presses down the plunger on the jug, taking her time, leaning into it. ‘Shouldn’t you be in Bedfordshire somewhere, asking her why? Or do you want to be persuaded to leave everyone behind too?’
‘I want to know why I received a letter inviting me here,’ I say. ‘I’ve got no interest in my mother.’ It sounds ridiculously untrue. ‘The letter was signed by Lady Amelia Worthington.’
‘Who?’ says Kay.
Rebecca rolls her eyes. ‘The founder of the island. The dead founder of this island.’
‘That’s quite a trick.’ Kay takes the green plastic car between her thumb and forefinger and speeds it around the board. ‘So how are you going to get your answers? Hunt around in between swimming and yoga? Check the graveyard for signs of recent disturbance?’
‘Strikes me as an administrative error,’ says Rebecca, pouring the coffee. ‘And there is no graveyard here.’
The conversation is running away. I say, ‘While I’m here I thought I’d try to find out a little bit about my mother as well. I thought maybe I was invited because she did something interesting when she was here, or wrote a great declaration, or… I don’t know. If I could get her declaration, maybe that would tell me something.’
‘They don’t do that.’ Kay puts the car back down on the start square, and fits a blue peg behind the wheel.
‘I know, but I thought—’
‘Good luck with thinking. It never works for me.’ She spins the wheel in the centre of the board; it stops, abruptly, on number three. ‘Right. We’re off.’
I wake up.
The enormity of what I’ve done is upon me, pressing on my chest. I can’t remember why I left him; all I can feel is the certainty of guilt. I have become my mother. We have finally been united in the act of desertion.
I should have explained it to him. I should have said, I need to understand why I received this letter. I can’t understand why I didn’t. There is no light. The sea is audible, a murmuring voice outside the windows. I picture myself, how I must look from the sky: a tiny, smothered mass, surrounded by the blue, awaiting my answers, travelling towards a goal that David can’t appreciate.
On our fifth date, I told him what it was to be abandoned. We went to a restaurant, like a couple from a romantic noveclass="underline" an arranged meeting, reservation made, then the slow walk home afterwards, holding hands, a kiss. Containing the relationship within those strictures gave me the much-needed illusion of control. David wore a suit, a tie, aftershave; I found his desire to impress me with his appearance charming and also a little funny. So I responded in kind by wearing a dress to dinner, a different one every time. I liked the idea that with each dress he was getting a different woman. That evening, I had been in a low-cut wraparound dress, offering him more than I had dared to before. But instead of taking it as an invitation to flirt, it had brought out a serious side in him. He asked questions about my life, my past, all the things I hate to talk about.
David likes to search for the bottom of things. What do you really feel? he asked me, that night. How very seriously he took my replies, over lamb shanks and strawberry mousse cake, sitting in a deserted bistro on the Swindon road where the waiter strutted by the table, attempting to rise to the occasion.
‘What happened on the day she left?’ he asked, after three glasses of red wine, just before the arrival of coffee with a burnt aftertaste. I felt so romantic, in a literary sense, with the candlelight between us and Norah Jones on the CD player.
I told him it hadn’t been an unusual day. My father had been working as a gardener back then; well, doing any job, really. So I had let myself in after school with my own key.
‘How old were you?’
Sixteen. And he had shaken his head at that.
I confided in him, rewarded his desire to know me. I had talked about always feeling that my mother had wanted to leave, to get away from Arnie, with his drinking. Sixteen would seem to be the age when a girl can start to fend for herself; perhaps that was how my mother saw it.
‘But sixteen is… at sixteen you’re a baby,’ David had said. ‘You were just a baby.’
I remember reaching across the table and touching his arm. He had said something important, and I had begun to understand, at that moment, that my books were not enough.
Standing at my front door, after the walk home, I asked him to come in, wanting him, and he had said no. A week passed. By the time he phoned I had changed my mind again, decided that I didn’t want him, attack being the best form of defence. I would not have returned the message he left on the answer phone if it had not begun with the words, I’ve gone and fallen in love with you.
I didn’t believe him, of course. Nobody could fall in love after five dates.
And now I understand, as I lie here in the dark, why I hadn’t told him in person where I was going. He has always been the better talker. He would have persuaded me out of it in less than a minute, maybe told me it was my mother I was looking for, and we would be in Bedfordshire right now, searching places together.
I find I’m crying, noisily, competing with the sea, keeping it company.
‘Can I get you anything?’ says Rebecca, from my left.
I hear the squeak of bedsprings, and then a new weight settles on one side of the bed, next to my knees.
‘Do you want to talk about it?’ whispers Rebecca. ‘Bad dreams? To do with home?’
‘I should have told him,’ I manage to say.