Chapter Five
Around her, the world is dark and cold. Water pushes in on her, her eyes sting as she tries to open them.
Her arms and legs are frantic, trying to propel her to the surface, only she’s not sure she knows which way that is any more.
Her lungs are threatening to explode as she fights that desperate urge to breathe.
This is it. She can’t think as panic overwhelms her, even as she hears someone just out of reach, calling her name.
She wakes before the sun does, blinking into a new kind of darkness.
Cold sweat dampens her back and her breath comes in short, sharp busts, like she really has just wrenched herself out of a lake.
She waits until her breathing settles, until her heart stops beating so loudly against her chest. All this time, since Chloe died, and she still can’t shake the nightmares, can’t stop herself imagining what her sister went through.
She takes a deep, shuddering breath, does her best to push the nightmare to the corner of her mind, where it belongs. Then she throws off her duvet and resigns herself to another early-morning start.
*
Lissa tries to ignore the headache that is currently pressing in on her temples as she walks from Frome station towards her dad’s house.
It’s a headache born of lack of sleep and staring at her laptop all day while she worked from home, but is made worse, no doubt, by the low-level anxiety she feels whenever she heads out this way.
She dodged the last couple of dinner invitations from her dad and stepmum, but was fast running out of excuses when this one rolled around.
She thought of inventing a new hobby, but then having to learn all about said new hobby felt like more effort than just saying yes to dinner.
Even though she’s pretty sure her dad only invites her round because of some kind of residual familial obligation.
She squares her shoulders as she reaches his house – a beautiful period cottage just outside the town centre.
It’s the one he moved to fourteen years ago, just before Elsie, her half-sister, was born.
The evening light is drawing in now, casting the nearby fields in an orangey glow, and in the distance she can hear the sound of farm animals.
It’s like something out of a bloody fairy tale.
She knocks on the door – an ornate iron knocker.
It’s Nicole, her stepmum, who answers. She beams at Lissa and moves in to air-kiss both her cheeks, then gestures her inside.
She’s dressed in a chic blouse and slacks, barefoot with toenails painted a bright red.
Her long brunette hair is plaited down her back and her deep brown eyes are framed with eyeliner.
She is in stark opposition to Lissa’s mum, whose grey hair often doesn’t look brushed, and whose make-up bag consists of a bareMinerals foundation, one peach lipstick and a tube of mascara from the Middle Ages.
‘Come in, come in!’ Nicole says – redundantly, given that she is already shutting the door behind her. Lissa can smell her stepmum’s perfume as well as the scented candles she always has burning around the place. ‘Do you mind?’ Nicole asks, pointing to Lissa’s boots.
‘Oh. Sure.’ She bends down to unzip them.
‘It’s just we’ve had the carpets redone.’
‘Oh, lovely,’ Lissa says as she straightens. ‘Well they look great.’ In fact they look exactly the same as before, from what she can tell – the same slightly impractical cream colour.
Nicole smiles. ‘Thank you. I got a discount through one of the suppliers I work with, and I just thought it’d be a shame to miss the opportunity.’
‘Absolutely,’ Lissa says, nodding as Nicole ushers her through to the kitchen.
Nicole is an interior designer, and you can tell.
Another contrast with Lissa’s own childhood home – here, everything manages to hold the aesthetic of a period property while still adding a touch of the modern.
It’s full of life, with just the right amount of clutter on the shelves, yet not bogged down by the weight of the past. The kitchen was upgraded a few years ago, and is now complete with underfloor heating beneath the large slate tiles, and a breakfast bar where you can sit and chat to whoever is cooking.
‘There she is!’ Her dad’s voice is booming – and just a touch too enthusiastic – as he turns to greet her in the kitchen.
Although she supposes that’s better than a touch too unenthusiastic.
He moves towards her, abandoning whatever he was stirring at the counter.
He looks for a second like he might hug her, but ends up patting her slightly awkwardly on the arm instead.
‘We’re making steak with a peppercorn sauce and a few salads – is that okay?’ Nicole asks, giving Lissa’s dad an easy squeeze on the forearm as she brushes past him.
‘Sounds great,’ Lissa says. She decides not to point out the risks of eating too much red meat.
‘Train okay?’ her dad asks, rocking back on his heels.
‘Yep. All good. I brought some wine.’ She holds up the bottle of rosé to demonstrate.
‘Oh that’s so kind of you.’ Nicole takes the offered bottle. ‘I’ve already got some white chilling in the fridge, so we’ll have a glass of that to start, shall we?’
Thank God for that – maybe wine will help with the small talk.
Lissa sits on one of the high stools at the breakfast bar as her dad gets down the glasses and sets them on the counter for Nicole to pour.
His hair is the same salt-and-pepper grey as the last time she saw him, with a few days of stubble growth in the place of the beard he once had – and which Nicole made him shave off before their wedding.
She remembers that – he’d not told her he was doing it, and when she’d seen him before the ceremony it had been like seeing an entirely different person.
In hindsight, maybe it wasn’t only the lack of beard making him seem different.
She’d been a teenager – it was only a year after he’d left her and her mum, and barely two since Chloe had died.
The wedding had been awful. Lissa had been put on a table with her dad’s side of the family, who he barely spoke to, let alone her.
She’d been allowed to bring a friend and she’d brought Mia, though that had been awkward because she was a cousin on her mum’s side.
Mia had snuck them both champagne, which they’d pretended to enjoy, and after watching the first dance, Lissa had hidden in the loo to cry.
It hadn’t seemed real until then. And she knew he wouldn’t change his mind now he was married. He wouldn’t come back.
‘Here you go, love,’ her dad says, handing her a glass of wine.
‘Thanks.’ She takes a grateful gulp. It has that smooth, light taste she’s come to associate with expensive wines she can’t afford. She glances around the kitchen, through the big French doors that lead to the huge garden. ‘Where’s Elsie?’
‘Up in her room,’ Nicole says, getting out a chopping board. ‘You know what teenagers are like.’
‘Can I do anything to help?’
‘Oh no.’ She waves a hand in Lissa’s direction. ‘You just relax, it won’t take long.’
She’d rather have been set to work – at least when chopping food you can pretend to be busy.
Now she has to think of something to bloody say.
She taps her fingernails on her wine glass.
‘So, Dad. How’s the life of a copywriter treating you?
’ He was a teacher when she was growing up, teaching history at one of Bath’s best secondary schools.
But after Chloe died, he quit. She often thinks it’s because he couldn’t face seeing all those young faces and knowing Chloe would never be one of them.
It’s how she felt when she saw the younger years of her sister’s primary school filtering through the gates, or caught sight of one of Chloe’s friends years later.
Her mum, on the other hand, still works as a nurse, though admittedly on reduced hours.
In her darkest moments, Lissa can’t help wondering if she does it as punishment to herself – to save other people’s children, when she couldn’t save her own.
‘Oh, you know,’ says her dad, picking up his glass. ‘Much the same as always. Lots of coffee, a bit of staring at a blank screen, a lot of checking for typos. But soon enough it will all be done by AI, won’t it? Might as well enjoy it while I can.’
‘That’s the spirit,’ Lissa says.
‘What about you? Still in the same job? Marketing, right?’
‘Mm-hmm. Not much new to report there.’ There’s quiet for a beat as he nods along to that.
She hates this. When she was growing up, they had such an easy relationship.
She used to lean against his office door while he was marking papers, chatting to him, enjoying the peace he brought to the house in contrast to her mum’s mood swings, even then.
She can remember the smell of that room – like old books, but in a nice way, not a musty way.
The smell lingered for a few years after he left but has now faded completely.
She remembers one time hovering outside his office, her hand poised to knock, wanting to tell him that her mum is upstairs, crying again.
She can see her own shadow against the door as she wonders whether to ask him what he thinks about the idea of her leaving Paris.
And above all, whether he’ll even be behind the door, or if he’ll be out with another woman.
Only, no. She doesn’t remember that. Her dad’s office door was never closed when he lived at home with them.
She’s never wanted to talk to him about leaving, and although there was probably a crossover between her mum and Nicole, he didn’t make a habit of staying out late with random women. So where the hell did that come from?
Paris. Paris again.
‘And your mum?’ her dad asks, forcing Lissa’s attention back into the room. She swears Nicole stills, the knife she’s using to cut cucumber hovering over the wooden chopping board. ‘How is Esme?’