Secrets of the Tides (38 page)

Dora nods and they sit together in silence a while longer, until Richard speaks again.

‘You know, it’s the distance between us all now that I blame myself for most.’

Dora looks up in surprise. ‘What do you mean?’

‘You. Cassie. Perhaps I could have held things together more after we lost Alfie. I was lost in my grief, but I see now I should have tried harder, for you girls. I certainly missed all the signs with Cassie.’ He sighs and rubs the bridge of his nose. ‘Then I got caught up with Violet and the last thing I wanted to do was force my relationship with her on you girls. To be honest, I wasn’t sure how you would take it. I worried it would be yet another thing to cause upset for you both. Perhaps that was cowardly of me, but I chose to take a back seat for a while. I always hoped you might find your way back to me though . . . and to each other.’ He thinks for a moment. ‘You know, it saddens me to see you girls still so distant. Have you had any contact with Cass?’

Dora shakes her head. ‘Not really.’ How does she explain it to him? How can she tell him about the one time she tracked Cassie down? How she had stood outside a grotty north London café watching through the fogged-up windows as her sister flitted between the tables, delivering coffees and fry-ups to a crowd of hungry night-shifters; about how she had just been screwing up her courage to enter the café when she saw her sister smile at something one of the customers had said, a warm, easy smile that had stretched across her face and transformed her back to the Cassie she remembered of old. It had been the sight of her standing there amidst the tables and chairs, a steaming coffee pot in one hand, looking so at ease with the world, that had finally demolished any desire Dora had felt to confront her sister. Instead she had scuttled back to the Underground without so much as a backwards glance. It was clear Cassie didn’t need her in her life. She wasn’t the depressed, suicidal creature she’d been imagining in her dreams. For all the trauma and tragedy, it seemed as though Cassie had moved on just fine without her.

That had been the last time Dora had tried to make contact with Cassie, although her sister had reached out to her over the years. Every year on Dora’s birthday a card would arrive – a bland floral tribute simply signed ‘with love, Cassie’. There was never any message, never any kisses, until, just once, on Dora’s twenty-first, the card arrived with a mobile phone number scrawled next to Cassie’s name.

Dora had considered calling. She’d kept the card for several months, turning it over and over in her hands, wondering whether to take the plunge. But she never had. Even on those particularly lonely nights, the ones when she’d found herself home alone with nothing but a bottle of wine for company, when the nostalgia and grief had really set in, even then she’d managed to restrain herself. For she only had to recall the pain she’d felt after Cassie had run away, after she had tried to end her life, or conjure up the image of Cassie standing there in that café, her white teeth shining under the glare of the strip lights as if she didn’t have a care in the world, to remind her that there really was no point. Cassie had made her choice a long time ago and they were travelling different paths now.

Dora swallows. She knows she doesn’t have the words to tell her father how she feels about Cassie, but she is intrigued about her sister nonetheless. ‘Have you seen her recently?’ she asks.

Richard nods. ‘Violet and I saw her about six months ago. She seemed good. She’s in Oxford now . . . has landed on her feet with a job of sorts. It’s an interesting set-up.’ He pauses. ‘I know she’d like to see you . . .’ He leaves the suggestion hanging in the air, but he doesn’t push it. ‘Look, Dora,’ he continues finally, ‘I can understand your fears. I’ve spent enough of my life wishing I had protected you kids a little more, protected myself a little better. But then would I have had the happy times I enjoyed with you, and your mother . . . and now with Violet? I think you have to give of yourself. I think you have to take a few risks. What’s that saying: “A life lived in fear is a life half lived”?’

Dora nods. It makes sense in the cold light of day.

‘You know, Panda, I really don’t have the answers, but what I do know is that you can spend far too much of your life on the unimportant things: the big house, the stressful job, the perfect family and all the traditions and expectations that go along with it. But when all is said and done, that isn’t what’s important. It’s taken me a long time to learn it, but I know now that it’s the people you hold in your heart, and how you treat them, that’s what’s most important. So you hold onto Dan, and your baby. Hold on tight, and whatever you do, don’t let them go. Hold tight, my girl.’

Dora nods again. She can’t reply; his words have affected her deeply. She thinks of all the things her father has unintentionally lost from his life: his son, his wife, his home – even she and Cassie are absent to an extent. They are all gone. And yet here is her father, sitting here in his unexpected new life, learning from his mistakes, appreciating Violet and the things he holds most dear.

She reaches out for his hand and squeezes it tightly and they sit there in the lounge like that; just sitting, silently; holding on tight.

Eventually Dan returns. He holds a tray of champagne flutes before him, and is laughing at something Violet has just said. He seems oblivious to the charged emotion in the room.

‘Well, here we are, folks,’ he announces. ‘Champagne for us . . . and sparkling water for the one “with child”.’ He hands Dora her glass with a flourish.

Violet bustles in behind him with the open bottle of Champagne. ‘We must have a toast. Richard, will you do the honours?’

‘Of course.’ Richard stands and raises his glass. He clears his throat and looks across at Dora before speaking. ‘To a new life . . . and to full lives, lived without fear.’

Violet throws him a gentle smile and they all clink glasses and pretend not to notice Richard’s watering eyes as they sip at their drinks.

‘Now, there’s a lovely roast in the kitchen that needs carving,’ Violet chirrups. ‘Which of these fine alpha males is going to do the honours? Dan?’

‘It’d be my pleasure.’

‘Wonderful. Why don’t you and Dora go on ahead and I’ll just tidy up in here a bit.’

They take the hint, and as they leave the room Dora turns to see Violet fussing over her father. She is adjusting his shirt collar and murmuring something intently in his ear until a mischievous smile breaks out across her father’s face. He leans in to brush Violet’s cheek with his lips, and then, seeing Dora watching them from the doorway, gives her the slightest of winks over the top of Violet’s blond curls. Dora turns from the room, a smile upon her face.

It’s a relief when the atmosphere over lunch grows lighter and more jovial. Violet sets about her combined roles of hostess and comedienne in earnest and they have soon left behind the heavy mood from earlier. Richard cracks a stream of corny jokes over dessert and Dan has them all in stitches as he re-enacts an awkward meeting with a famous artist he has long admired. It seems none of them want to dwell on gloomier matters.

They leave just as it is getting dark outside. As they pull out of the driveway Dora turns to give a final wave. She sees her father and Violet standing outside the house. Richard has his arm slung around Violet’s shoulders as she gazes up into his eyes adoringly. Dora smiles and turns back to Dan, putting her hand over his on the gear stick. ‘You were right, you know.’

Dan nods knowingly. ‘I’m always right.’ He pauses as he indicates left. ‘But what specifically was I right about
this
time?’

‘Violet. She’s really good for Dad.’

He nods and Dora leans back into her seat and watches as a green blur of hedgerows passes outside her window.
A life half lived
. It resonates deeply. Since Alfie disappeared she knows they have all been guilty of living stilted, half-lives, in their own different ways. Her father hasn’t given her all the answers, but it has made her realise where she needs to go next.

As the hedges turn to street lamps and her eyes finally close, succumbing to the hypnotic haze of a hundred orange cats’ eyes speeding towards her out of the darkness, there is one face that continues to drift in and out of her consciousness.

Cassie.

It is time for her to see Cassie.

HELEN

Nine Years Earlier

Later, after the dust had settled, the irony would not escape Helen that her marriage had finally ended at the exact same moment the rest of the world prepared to turn the page on a shiny new chapter.

It was millennium eve. The whole country was in the final, frenzied preparations for the party of the century but as Helen woke that morning she could think of nothing more pressing than boiling the kettle for a cup of tea, throwing some muesli into a bowl and perhaps turning up the central heating a degree or two. Cassie was still an absent figure, closeted away in London, incommunicado. Dora was away for the weekend at a friend’s house. She and Richard had no plans to celebrate and she knew their evening would pass quietly with a bottle of wine and the television volume on low as they watched the loud razzle-dazzle celebrations beamed from various destinations around the globe. It was fine by her.

She padded downstairs and across the draughty hall, pulling her dressing gown around her body as she moved towards the kitchen. It was as she passed the open door to the living room that something off-kilter nudged gently at the corners of her mind. She nearly didn’t stop; but a sixth sense told her brain what her eyes had failed to process. Slowly, she retraced her steps and stood at the open doorway looking in.

Tobias’s painting of the gloomy seascape still hung in its usual place on the wall, housed within its gilt-edged frame. Everything was perfect – untouched – except for a series of violent slashes that had ripped the canvas apart and exposed the shocking whiteness of the wall behind. It looked as though someone had taken a Stanley knife and set to it with a fury.

Helen felt her legs start to give way.

She moved forwards and sat on an arm of the sofa, surveying the damage more closely. The remnants looked like some expensive installation piece. It wouldn’t have looked out of place hanging on the walls of a modern gallery. She could almost hear the critics gushing in extravagant hyperbole about its symbolism and the artist’s bold, ironic statement. Only this was no art gallery. And the only statement being made, while undeniably symbolic, was one of anger, not irony. There was only one possible explanation.

Richard knew
.

He had discovered the affair.

Helen gripped at the arm of the sofa. It had been two years since the affair ended. Two years since Alfie’s funeral when they’d lowered an empty coffin into the ground and they had said farewell to their son. She’d expected the guilt to fade with time, but she still woke every morning, unable to forgive herself for her failings as a wife and mother, unable to look at herself in the mirror with anything other than disgust and self-hatred reflected in her eyes.

She sat for a moment longer, surveying the damage to the painting, reluctant to move and unwilling to face the conflict she knew awaited her. But as she sat, and as the storm of emotion began to settle in her mind, she was surprised to find that amongst the guilt and fear lay the glimmer of something sweeter, the nub of something that she realised she could only call relief. She was about to be exposed; her sordid secrets were about to come tumbling out and once they were out there, spoken and made real, she wouldn’t have to lie or hide again. Whatever the outcome, it was time to face it, all of it, head on.

God knows she’d thought about confessing to Richard plenty of times over the last two years. The words had sat on the tip of her tongue for days after Alfie’s funeral, burning like salt in an ulcer until she had nearly screamed out in agony. But whatever her own private pain, she knew she couldn’t burden Richard with more heartache.

She had ended the affair immediately after Alfie’s disappearance, and while it might have allowed her some peace on a personal level to confess her sins to Richard, she realised it would be nothing short of barbaric to inflict yet more pain on a man already drowning in his grief. She had never been able to shake that fear since. Any time she had contemplated revealing her betrayal to her husband, she was wracked by a nagging suspicion that it would prove to be her most selfish act of all. For wouldn’t she, by easing her own conscience and seeking his forgiveness, merely be transferring the weight of her adultery onto her husband? It would be his load to bear; to digest, process and live with in whatever form he felt able. And if she were honest, she wasn’t sure he could take much more.

It was a strange, twilight time immediately after the funeral. Broken fragments of memories resurfaced. She remembered the leathery smell of the car that had driven them back to the house after the service, and the damp handkerchief she had clutched between her fingers all afternoon, that only later she had realised was embroidered with Alfred Tide’s initials, the same initials as her missing son. Back at the house Richard had slumped in a corner of the kitchen gazing out of the window at the gardens, a glass of whisky cradled in his hand. David Chamberlain, his business partner, had shuffled around and patted him awkwardly on the shoulder and repeated how sorry he was for their
loss
until Helen felt like screaming and throwing him and his wife out of the house. Bill Dryden and his wife Betty, who had both been so active in assisting the local search parties, had also returned with them. Betty made tea and laid out plates of digestives while Bill sat at the kitchen table with Cassie and Dora, the three of them reminiscing on happier times. They’d remembered the previous summer when Alfie had gone out to ‘help’ Bill dig the flower beds. Bill had the girls in giggles as they remembered Alfie putting a big, fat wriggling worm to his lips with an innocent smile. ‘Mmmm . . .’ he had said, “bagetti.’ The three of them had snickered until the realisation that Alfie would no longer be confusing worms for spaghetti had dawned on them all. Their giggles had trailed off into tearful silence, and not long after Bill and Betty had made their excuses and left.