Chapter 17

17

October 31, 1:45 a.m.

less than five hours until low tide

I was never allowed to go to school once my hidden heart problem was exposed, and life was never allowed to return to normal. For any of us. My parents divorced less than a year later. Some marriages are held hostage by memories of happier times; others are imprisoned by the idea that parenthood can only be performed well in pairs. A dying child seemed to set my parents free from each other. My two older sisters were sent to boarding school; I was more than enough for my mother to look after, and they were too much. A groundless guilt consumed her, and she wrapped the rest of my childhood in cotton wool, which in turn led to me wrapping myself inside books. Hundreds of them. Reading was one of the few things I was still allowed to do.

Books saved me, and I ran away inside the stories I read as a child. They were the only place where I could run, and swim, and dance without fear of falling and not being able to get back up. Books were full of friends and adventures, whereas my real childhood was cold, and dark, and horribly lonely. I’ve never spoken honestly about it with anybody. Until now. And the only place that felt like home when I was a child was Seaglass. I think that’s why the idea of never coming back here hurts too much. Nana’s little library was my Disneyland, and the books inside it were the paper-shaped rides that let me live while everyone else was waiting for me to die.

Sometimes people get impatient when they have to wait too long for something.

“I’ve always felt terrible about what happened that day on the beach, and all the other days when I wasn’t as kind as I could have been,” says Lily, back in the present, where she can no longer bully me the way she used to. She doesn’t look me in the eye when she says it. I don’t think she can, and I don’t really believe that Lily is sorry at all.

Her words do nothing to blunt my anger; instead they sharpen it into a more dangerous shape, one that will leave a mark. But I bite my tongue, as always, keen to keep the peace. My sisters won’t talk to me because of what happened with Conor a few years ago. It seems so unfair, given all the things they did when I was a child. But saying how I really feel about it all now isn’t going to help fix what got broken then, and there are bigger things to worry about.

Why would someone want us to watch that home movie?

I look at my sisters tonight and see us all exactly the same way we were then. They might be taller, older, have a few more wrinkles, but we are all just children masquerading as the adults we thought we should become. My personality is very similar now to what it was when I was a child. I’m still shy, and quiet, and happiest at home. Rose and Lily haven’t changed very much either; none of us have, not really. There are pockets of sadness in all of our lives, and mine are deep. The diagnosis of my broken heart felt like a death sentence, and five is awfully young to find out that you won’t live forever.

They say that your life flashes before your eyes when you die, so you should make it a life worth watching. But as someone who has died several times, I don’t think that is true. For me, every time my heart stopped beating, it felt like a delayed train journey through the cruelest moments of my life. The memories didn’t flash; they were slow and painful. It was like traveling through time and space to somewhere dark and cold, to relive my worst mistakes in Technicolor misery. Sometimes I could still hear people around me when my heart stopped. I swear I heard doctors or nurses saying that I was dead on more than one occasion. My parents didn’t believe me back then, but neurologists have since confirmed that the human brain is still active for a period of time after death, and I promise you that it is true. Dead people can hear you, so be careful what you say. I hope it wasn’t too awful for Nana. Or my dad. I hope neither of them heard something they shouldn’t have.

We take death almost as for granted as life. We think we know what to expect because we’ve read a chapter of a book or watched a scene in a film. We no longer seem capable of separating fiction from facts. There is so much that we don’t know we don’t know. It scares me. When you’ve died as often as I have, it’s hard not to become a little preoccupied with it all, and seeing other people take their good health for granted makes me so angry. None of them understand what it’s like for me. How could they? I’m grateful to still be here, but death has been part of my life for so long, I worry about it all of the time. Our future is just our past in the making.

“I don’t get it,” says Conor. “Who left this tape on the kitchen table with the words WATCH ME stuck to the front? It must have been one of us, so who was it?”

Nobody answers him.

Lily lights another cigarette before tossing the match and a log on the fire, which crackles, and spits, and choreographs a hundred eerie shadows to dance across the room. Then she takes a long drag before slowly blowing smoke from her pink lips.

“Do you ever think about anyone except yourself?” Rose says, staring at her.

“What does that mean?” Lily asks, sitting up and staring back.

“Rose,” says Nancy, trying to prevent storm damage when the rest of us can see that the roof has already blown right off. The home movie has brought back some unhappy memories for everyone. Maybe that’s why someone thought we should watch it. When Lily loses her temper, she’s the only one who can find it again, but it’s unlike Rose to lose control of her emotions.

“Honestly, you are the most selfish and spoiled person I’ve ever had the misfortune to know. I’d actually forgotten how cruel you used to be to Daisy when we were kids. The poem in the kitchen and everything Dad said about you last night is true,” Rose continues, while we all wait for Lily to react. I fully expect her next words to be soaked in sarcasm, her preferred form of self-defense. I confess I do enjoy it more than I should when my older sisters squabble. It always felt like them against me when we were younger, and them against each other is much more fun. All families have their own private routines and secret language, and all families know how to hurt one another.

“I don’t care what Dad thought about me, and I don’t care what you think either. Why don’t you get a life and stop judging mine,” Lily says.

“I’d gladly not watch the car crash that is your life any longer, it’s embarrassing. Maybe with Nana and Dad gone, we don’t need to keep playing happy families. Perhaps we can all just go our own separate ways for good when the tide goes out?”

“Rose, you don’t mean that,” says Nancy.

“Don’t I?” As soon as she sees the look on our mother’s face, my eldest sister softens again, retreating inside the version of herself she thinks we all want her to be. “I’m … sorry. I already had a terrible day before I got here and, like everyone else, I just can’t believe what has happened. Or that Nana and Dad are gone.”

Rose’s unexpected Jekyll and Hyde routine catches us all off guard. When I try to translate the look on her face, I think it is fear. Rose is terrified, and maybe she is right to be. Maybe finally, and for the first time, my family does know what it is like to be me, to live with the constant fear that today might be their last. I see the same fear on the faces of the residents at the care home where I volunteer because they know their time is almost up. I do my best to comfort them, listen to their regrets and ease their anxiety, but they know it’s inevitable. Life kills us all in the end. I stare at my family as we sit in yet another awkward silence, wondering how it came to this. In contrast, the storm outside continues to make itself heard, the sound of rain constantly tapping on the windows like a thousand tiny fingernails.

“Why was yesterday a bad day?” Conor asks Rose, sounding genuinely interested.

She makes eye contact with him very briefly, then stares into the distance as though reliving another memory she would rather forget.

“I got a call from the RSPCA yesterday afternoon. I had to stop off at a disused barn on the way here, and there were six ponies locked inside. They hadn’t had food or water for days.”

Even Lily looks moved. “That’s so sad. What did you do? Will they get rehomed?”

“I shot every one of them. Between the eyes.” Rose looks up, but nobody says anything. I look around the room and see that everyone is as shocked as I feel. “I had to,” she says. “It was too late to save them, there was nothing I could do. They were in agony. I had to do something to end their pain, but I didn’t have enough anesthetic to inject them all. My gun was the only option. It was awful. I can still hear them. Did you know that horses cry when they are scared? Like children.” Her hands tremble a little and she balls them into fists. “I wish I could have shot those responsible instead. Sometimes I loathe people, I really do. I don’t understand how human beings are capable of such horrific things, or why they inflict so much pain on others.”

The silence seems to swallow us all this time.

“I didn’t even know you had a gun,” says Lily.

Rose sighs. “It’s just a small handgun. A lot of vets have guns and are licensed to use them. It’s normally locked in the safe at the practice.”

Nancy frowns. “But if you did … that on the way here, does that mean there is a loaded gun in the house? With real bullets?”

“Don’t worry. I hid it somewhere safe when I arrived.”

The silence resumes, and I study my eldest sister for a while. I know that her vet practice is having a little money trouble, but I also know she has always been too proud to ask for any financial help from anyone, unlike Lily. Rose would have really benefitted from Nana’s money had she been left any, and would have put it to good use. I notice how she keeps checking her watch, and wonder whether she is just counting down the hours before we can leave. Just over four now, I think. Rose looks so sad. She has always found human company unsatisfying. She says she finds it exhausting to listen to the manufactured feelings of people too stupid to know when their thoughts are not their own. I wonder what her thoughts are now as she checks her watch again, for the second time in less than a minute. I’m not the only one studying Rose, and it’s as though the weight of our stares is too heavy for her to bear.

“Why are you all looking at me like that?” she asks.

“I think, given everything that has happened tonight, we all might feel a bit anxious about there being a gun in the house,” says Nancy.

“Fine. My gun didn’t kill anyone, but if it will make everyone feel better, I’ll go and check that it’s still safe where I left it,” Rose says, standing to leave the room.

Vets are more likely to commit suicide than almost any other profession. That statistic used to make me worry about my eldest sister—vets work long hours, often alone—and when I think of all the horrific things she has seen, it scares me. Rose knows how to end lives as well as save them; sadly, it’s part of her job.

“I might see if I can get a signal on my phone upstairs … maybe it will work up there,” says Conor.

“It won’t,” says Lily. “I don’t feel quite right. I’m going to my room to try to find my diabetic kit.”

Nancy nods. “I can feel one of my migraines coming. I’m going to get a glass of water and some pills from the kitchen,” she says, heading for the door like the rest of them. My mother thinks there is a pill for any and all situations.

“Well, I might just get a bit of air,” I say, not wanting to be left behind. I think we’re all feeling a little claustrophobic trapped in this house together, but also all scared of being alone. I stand in the hallway and can hear different corners of the house creaking with quiet activity. The noise does nothing to calm my nerves. I have always preferred the sound of silence.

I notice that the front door is slightly ajar and step out onto the porch, but there is nobody there. The roar of the sea and the melody of the wind chimes remind me how isolated we are out here, cut off from the mainland for several hours every day. And night. When you’ve spent as much time alone as I have, it can be hard to be around people for too long. Even family. Especially one like ours.

I was the last to leave the room, but think I’m the first to return to the lounge a short while later, and I spot something unfamiliar on the coffee table. The rest of the family come back before I can take a closer look. Conor is the last to return, but he’s the first to see what I saw, and from the tone of his voice, it’s as though he’s accusing me of putting it there.

“What’s that on the table?” he asks.

“It’s the tape we just watched,” Lily replies.

“I don’t think it is,” I say, taking a step back.

“No. It isn’t,” Rose confirms.

We’re all looking at the tape now. It wasn’t there before, and the Scrabble letters stuck to the case of this home movie spell a different message:

HEAR ME.

“What the hell?” says Conor. “Who did this?” He looks around the room at each of us.

“You’re the one who noticed it, maybe it was you,” says Lily.

Rose picks it up carefully. “The last tape said WATCH ME. This one says HEAR ME. This is super messed up. Who would do this, and why?”

We are all staring at one another, silent accusations exchanged in the form of wary glances.

“We should watch it,” I say, and then everyone starts arguing about the pros and cons of doing so.

“Enough!” Nancy says, and the rest of us are quiet. “No more games. Nana and your dad are dead. There’s nobody else here at Seaglass and I don’t believe in ghosts. Who left that tape on the table?”

Nobody answers.

“Maybe the only way to find out is to watch it,” Rose says, and when nobody argues, she slides the video out of its case and into the machine, then presses play.