Escaping Life Read online

  There were always days of excitement between the two sisters in the run up to a birthday; they knew that they would make it on to the Announcements page. There was excitement about which photograph would have been selected. When had they looked their best? When had there been a special effort with their hair? When had they been allowed to wear their best dresses? Once it had ended up being a school picture for Rebecca, and there was huge disappointment at the Sunday morning table. She had cried that year, asking her mother if at no other time in the year had she been pretty enough in a photograph for the newspaper? There was no going back on the notification, but the following Sunday, when there was another announcement with another picture Rebecca had been so pleased that she had bothered to make the fuss. It had read, “Dearest Becca, we love you so much. You are pretty every day. Your loving Mummy, Daddy, and little sister Betty xx”. That night, the sisters made a pact that every year they would pray together before their birthdays for a school photograph to be used, so that they could cause a fuss and secure themselves a second announcement the following week. Their prayers were never answered.

  Elizabeth missed this time. She missed them both. Reading the local paper in this way, albeit minus the jam sandwiches and plastic table cloth, was always the closest she felt to her mother and sister. She felt much closer to them sat in her garden with the newspaper than if she visited their gravestones. She read through the birthdays and anniversaries. As it turned out, the old couple from only the next road, who had been daily visitors to their building site whilst rebuilding the cottage to assess the progress, were celebrating their forty-fifth wedding anniversary that week.

  “Well done you two!” Elizabeth said out loud, as she took another sip of her tea. She looked at the weddings, still attracted to the glamorous white dresses, which were much smaller and sleeker than those she remembered as a child. She was so certain, at five years old, that when she married James, the boy who always rode his bike through the stream on the hot Sunday mornings, that she would have the biggest whitest, laciest dress she could find. It hadn’t taken long to become bored with the idea of marrying James and when she married Graham her dress was a far cry from her childhood aspirations.

  As she glanced down at the list of announcements, trailing her already inky finger across the names and boxes, she almost missed it, not bothering to read the name of the sender. As her brain continued to process the information, she realised she had seen something in those words, her subconscious dragging her eyes backwards as if on springs. It was something that she least expected to see again. She read it three times before she really understood what she had seen. She couldn’t believe the words so honestly written in front of her.

  Betty, I never stopped missing you. I’m so sorry that I had to go away. I know in your heart you will believe this is me, and I know you will read it. It’s time to learn the truth. Your big sister, Becca x

  As she mouthed the words over and over they scratched at her throat as if decorated by thorns. Her stomach whirled and somersaulted as if she were travelling over the highest point of a Ferris wheel. “Betty, I never stopped missing you”, she read over and over to herself. “Your big sister, Becca”. For the last four years she had begged for another conversation with the sister. She had prayed to a God that she didn’t believe in anymore to bring her back so that she could be with her again. He never answered her prayers, just like he hadn’t when she was a child, and so instead she had moved her life and her husband to this cottage, and she had found her sister again in the beauty of her garden, the sound of the ocean, and the tattered pages of the local weekly newspaper. But what she had found in this new place was not her sister. Instead it was a place where the good memories could live openly, with the more recent bad ones pushed aside. Now, here before her, were actual words, as if Becca was stood in front of her and speaking. But her sister couldn’t speak to her. She couldn’t write letters. She couldn’t contact her in any way. She had already been dead for four years.

  She sat for a while. She could no longer hear the waves lapping against the small boats tethered to the harbour wall, or the seagulls as they fought over their stolen fish. Her thoughts were simple, yet frantic. The words before her looked as if they came from the hand of her sister. Even the nicknames were the same. Nobody else ever called her Betty. But there was just no way…… was there? Grabbing the paper, she headed through her kitchen and back into the hallway, and taking the stairs two steps at a time, arrived at the bedroom where Graham was still sound asleep and unaware of the ghostly intrusion.

  “Graham, wake up,” she said shaking him. She sat down on the bed next to him, rolling him back forcefully by the hips towards her. His face twisted under the glare of the sunlight, his eyes slowly adjusting to the light streaming in through the open window. Elizabeth was trying to look calm. She knew she was failing.

  “What is it?” he asked, realising immediately that this was not the usual Sunday morning wake-up call. There was no mug of tea freshly placed at his bedside. No calm smile and early morning kisses, the familiar kind that are undeterred by the smell of stale breath from the passing night. “What’s wrong? You look like you’ve seen a ghost!”

  Elizabeth placed the paper neatly before him. She knew that it would sound crazy to say she had received a letter from Rebecca. Better just to show him, she thought. She spread out the pages, pressing them into the soft down of the quilt. She pretended to search for the notice, as if she didn’t already know exactly where it was she was looking.

  “Here, look.” She tapped the paper frantically with her ink-stained fingers, as Graham sat himself upright in bed, the duvet falling away revealing his naked chest. Any other morning Elizabeth would have reached over, pushed him back onto the sheets and kissed him, his tight chest and sun kissed skin too much of a temptation to ignore. Today, she had other things on her mind. Graham reached for his glasses on the bedside table and after securing them in place and rubbing his gritty half asleep eyes, he sat upright and picked up the paper.

  “Betty, I never stopped missing you. I’m so sorry that I had to go away.” He looked up at his wife, who was nodding in agreement at the strange letter before them. “I know in your heart you will believe this is me, and I know you will read it. It’s time to learn the truth. Your big sister.” Taking a big breath in, he bought himself some time, unsure of how to respond.

  “You missed the name, Graham. Becca. It says Becca.”

  “I know. I know.” He paused. “This is today’s paper?” He rummaged for the front cover, snatching at hope as he looked for the date.

  “Graham, of course it’s today’s paper.” She wasn’t irritated by him. She knew he wasn’t stupid, but rather like her, was completely bereft of answers.

  “Listen, baby,” he said as he tried to stifle a yawn. “There is no way that this can be from your sister, or even intended for you.” In her mind she knew that that was the most reasonable answer. But she couldn’t accept it so easily. Biting her top lip, she pushed on.

  “Learn the truth? What does that mean?” It was the most cryptic message, as much in its wording as the possible identity of the sender. He could see her initial eagerness for answers was giving way slightly: giving way to a look of hopeless hope, impossible dreams and the kind of sadness that he hadn’t seen on her face for such a long time. He didn’t say anything at first. Instead he put the paper down and stretched himself back onto his pillows, one hand on his neck, and one hand running through his floppy hazelnut bed hair.

  She tried to wait for his silence to pass but her impatience was no longer able to withstand it. “It sounds like her,” Elizabeth said. She was almost embarrassed to say it out loud as she looked down at the bed, aware of how crazy her last statement sounded.

  “Elizabeth, it can’t be. It’s a horrible coincidence.” He reached forward, and she felt the heat from his body against her own skin. “It can’t be from Becca. She’s gone.” As he reached out his hand, his large and supportive palm ca
ressed her cheek. She nestled her face into it. He took off his glasses and placed them back down on the bedside table as he guided her down next to him. She shuffled herself into his embrace, and he held her in his arms, their faces touching, his stubble scratching familiarly at her face. It always left a red rash, but she didn’t care. She felt so cared for in his arms, and knew in her heart that he had to be right. The dead cannot speak. She thought of the day when he had told her that there had been an accident. She thought of the visit she had made to the scene of the crash, and how the images of the burning car had stayed with her for so long. It had happened only four days after her mother had died. Another funeral. Another gravestone. More intricately stone carved letters the only reminder of a life lived, and ended too soon. She had stood at the black memorial on the ground, the heavy solid plaque compressing the earth around it. As she stroked its surface, her last connection to Becca, she wondered how she could find a way to move on with half of her family gone. This was just a black stone. Empty words carved by an unknown face who never knew her. There was nothing here is this cold wet earth and solidity of the stone lump that reminded her of Rebecca. She vowed never to go there again, but to find a different place to feel her. She found it on the beach. She found it in the sky. She found it in a broken-down house so different to her previous life. She found it in the sounds that filled her garden as she planted berry bushes, the fruit of which she would eat on a Sunday. She found it in her own life much more so than ever she would have in an empty black plaque. She couldn’t mourn Becca there. It was just a stone. They hadn’t even buried her body.

  Three

  It proved to be a difficult week for Elizabeth. Lying there that Sunday morning in Graham’s arms, she had told herself to forget the notice from the paper. You sound like a crazy woman, she told herself, when she dared venture again that the message really could be from her sister. She needed another focus. She decided that she should work, so she sat at her computer, yet didn’t type anything. She spoke to friends on the telephone back in the city, but when Graham asked her how they were she realised that she couldn’t recall what they’d said. She thought perhaps something practical would help take her mind off the lonely hours whilst Graham was at work and so set about making bread and cupcakes, yet none of them seemed to taste any good. She spent the first two days of the week stuck in her house, trying but failing to get the notice out of her mind. She didn’t know why she didn’t want to go out; she didn’t know if she felt safer at home, suddenly uncertain of the world around her, or if she wanted to be here, just in case. Just in case somebody knocked the door; just in case somebody knocked the door and said they had found her sister. Just in case somebody knocked the door and Rebecca was standing there peering in through the little panes of distorted glass, the kind that make faces look like bubbles. She wouldn’t know who it was at first, but she would open the door, peel back the layers of distortion and the ageing of the last four years to reveal her sister standing there with open arms, begging for forgiveness for her absence. You still sound like a crazy woman, she told herself again.

  By the time Wednesday arrived, as she stood in the bathroom looking at her face, she realised that she hadn’t slept much in the last two nights, her normally pale ‘translucent glow with just a tint of summer sunshine’ replaced by the grey sallow skin of an insomniac. Her eyes looked heavy and laden, her soft blonde hair dishevelled from lack of care. “You need to go out,” she told the stranger in the mirror. “You need to do something. You are going to drive yourself mad.” Stood in the shower, the water ran over her slim athletic body like a gentle waterfall over smooth water eroded rocks. It was hot again today. These last two weeks had been the hottest on record for Haven in the last fifty years.

  The fisherman had taken advantage of the still waters of the early morning, the early fog seemingly a continuum with the still surface of the ocean. They had caught more fish than usual, and the seagulls had been driven into a feeding frenzy when the boats returned with their catches. Charles Stewart, who owns the local fish restaurant, which surely has the best views of the bay, had been fully booked every day with the travelling masses coming from the nearest towns on last minute holiday days to enjoy the sunshine and fresh food, and to lament the benefits of clean air. The beach had been filled with the sound of playing children, the gentle lull of the rolling tide replaced by the patter of small feet crashing in and out of the water. An assortment of ice cream flavours carried on the warm breeze. She dressed in a pair of casual shorts and a loose t-shirt, grabbed a pair of sandals from the chest in the hallway, and pulled the door of her cottage shut. Elizabeth pulled her hair back into a tight pony tail, tiny wisps of hair hanging in her eyes as it escaped her grip.

  Out in the village she realised that she could put the thoughts of the notice in the paper behind her. I should have done what he said. I should have gone out yesterday, she mused to herself. She felt better to breathe the oxygen-rich air, salty from the sun baked surface of the water. She sat on the harbour wall, with an ice cream from the local tea shop. The same strawberry flavour to which she had been lured as it had crept in through her bathroom window. Mrs. Lyons really could make good ice cream, but it was so full of cream it melted almost instantly. Damn it, she thought as it dripped down her arm, simultaneously realising that she had forgotten to wish her a happy anniversary. That was one thing about a small place like Haven and the announcements page. You knew the important events in the other villagers’ lives. It was village etiquette to make sure that you mentioned them. “Make sure you read the papers. Get to know people. They appreciate it,” the artist had said to her as she browsed around her gallery during the first week of moving here. She was a young woman, maybe a little bit older than Elizabeth. Apart from the daily progress visit from Mr. and Mrs. Lyons, during the refurbishment of the cottage, she was the first person she had spoken to in the village. She had been grateful for the advice of how to fit into such a small place. Nancy had become a good friend in the three years that had passed since. She could see the small artist’s shop across the other side of the harbour, doors wide open with a steady stream of visitors. She too would be benefitting from the heat wave and influx of human traffic.

  “Hey!” she called, waving her hand across the shop floor and bustling bodies. Elizabeth edged her way through, sideways, like one of the crabs from the beach that children were trying to catch on small lines, crouched down and peering over the harbour wall equipped with their little plastic collection buckets. Nancy hadn’t noticed her in the crowd at first, too preoccupied with an inquisitive tourist who wanted to learn more about the artist before he bought the painting. It was a small painting, a watercolour of the harbour. It was bright; a happy scene. If you hung it on your wall it would brighten even the stormiest of days, when the boats rocked and the waves crashed against the pavements. That is what Nancy painted; little tokens of summer happiness, a memory and reminder that as the seasons change you will see the same bright days again.

  As she reached the back of the shop, Nancy had convinced the tourist of her merits, and he had left, smiling to himself at the watercolour in his bag that he would hang in his hallway. He would recount the tale of the seaside artist who had moved to the small tourist fishing village ten years before to pursue her dream to any guest that would pass it by. Nancy nodded to her friend, signalling her to go straight upstairs. As Elizabeth walked up the tight steep staircase that ran up through the centre of the building like a great artery connecting the chambers of the house, she glanced as she always did at the multitude of paintings on the walls. So different to my home, she thought every time she was here. There was no light in the stairway, at least not until you were near to the top. The lounge was on the first floor, the ground floor being completely taken up by gallery and studio. Her gallery and studio were one and the same, two small cottage rooms knocked into one held up by big pillars, ideal for hanging the smaller artworks. The upstairs lounge was smaller, but with large open doors
and a balcony with views across the bay that soaked up the sunlight from early morning until early evening. Although Elizabeth loved her garden, here on this balcony, you were not just an admirer of the view - you were the view. You were part of that perfect picture postcard. Here, nothing could hurt you.

  Almost thirty minutes had passed before Nancy came up the stairs. For the first time in two days Elizabeth was so relaxed, mesmerised by the motion of the waves, the rhythmical back and forth of the water’s edge that she had barely noticed her arrive.