Chapter Twenty-Three
Lissa wakes as Ash pulls the car onto a gravel driveway, and surreptitiously tries to wipe the drool off the corner of her mouth.
She blinks, feeling disoriented as she glances around.
Ahead of them is a grey stone cottage that looks to her like it’s standing right on top of a cliff.
Close enough to make her wonder if it will still be here in a few years’ time, or if it will fall, piece by piece, into the ocean below, as waves and wind and salt eat away at it. The definition of living on the edge.
Beyond the cottage she can see the ocean, stretching out to the horizon over the grey and green cliff, a beautiful turquoise blue under the clear sky and shining sun. In the distance, a few white boats bob on the waves, a picture-perfect image of the Cornish coastline.
She glances at Ash as he switches off the engine – and with it, the air conditioning. ‘Sorry I fell asleep.’
One corner of his mouth lifts in a smile. ‘No problem. You’re cute when you sleep.’ His gaze slides to her, a teasing light in his eye. ‘Even when you drool.’
She laughs. So much for surreptitious. They get out of the car, the hot air immediately clinging to her skin.
A heat wave, according to the radio – one that they are either encouraged to make the most of or hide inside from, depending on who you ask.
She can feel sweat start to prick the backs of her thighs as she lifts her small suitcase out of the car.
She ties her hair into a bun, sees Ash watching her as her vest top lifts, showing the barest hint of her stomach above her shorts.
Her skin prickles in awareness, even as he moves away.
She went for casual for the drive down, trying not to look – or dress – like she’d spent actual hours agonising over her wardrobe.
Agonising over the whole bloody trip, in reality, wondering whether to make some excuse and bail.
They haven’t even slept together. What the fuck does she thinks she’s playing at, coming on a weekend away?
It was Darcy, via voice note, who convinced her to stick with the plan.
You’ve been friend-dating for like six months.
I don’t think it’s that inappropriate to go away together.
I went to Berlin on a long weekend with someone I met in a club once.
Admittedly he turned out to be completely obsessed with his cousin, but don’t let that put you off.
She follows Ash into the cottage. There is a definite sense of isolation here. Ash found the place, but she looked it up before they left – the nearest town is over forty minutes away, hence her insistence that they stop for supplies en route.
The interior is gorgeous. Abandoning her suitcase by the front door, Lissa immediately heads left, into a kitchen with grey slate flooring and beautiful teal cupboards.
A coffee machine stands on one of the wooden counters, and a full fruit basket sits centre on the kitchen table, next to brochures for activities in the area.
Ash opens one of the cupboards, somehow finding glasses on the first attempt. He fills one with water, offers it to her. Because she can’t think of what else to do, she takes it.
‘Thanks,’ she says, taking a sip while he gets himself one too. ‘This place is amazing.’
He nods in agreement, moving to the window, which looks out over a small garden fenced by an old stone wall. ‘It really is.’
There is quiet between them, Lissa leaning against the counter, Ash with his back to her, facing the window.
You can hear the waves even through the closed window, but apart from that, it feels so still.
She is very aware, in all this quiet, that it is just the two of them.
That they have come away for the weekend with no discussion over what it means.
She knows, from her Google search, that there are two bedrooms. She doesn’t think he’d hold her to any kind of expectation, but what is he thinking? What is he hoping for?
He turns from the window, looks at her. And she feels it between them – the unsteadiness in the air.
‘We should go for a walk,’ she blurts out. Her voice is too loud, and she sees him attempt to control a smile. Is that a knowing glint in his eye? Of course it bloody is.
‘Sure,’ he says easily. ‘Let’s do that.’
They find a path that takes them over the cliffs and along the coastline.
She can see a way down to the sandy beach below, but right now, they opt for walking rather than sunbathing, and although it’s hot, it feels easier to be moving.
Easier not to wonder what will happen later, at the cottage, or what it means that he asked her to come away with him. What it means that she said yes.
‘You know, I think I’ve been to Cornwall once before,’ she says musingly as her legs loosen, stretching to cover more ground and fall into step with his long stride.
He crooks an eyebrow at her. ‘You think?’
‘I must’ve only been about eight or something, so I can’t be totally sure it was Cornwall.
But I remember sitting in the car for what felt like a lifetime, playing all the car games with my mum.
’ It makes her smile a little to think of it.
She can remember her mum’s face as she turned to smile at her in the back seat, rounder, younger and happier than it is now.
She remembers, too, sitting with a bucket and spade, collecting shells and presenting them to her dad. Remembers watching her mum splashing in the waves in her swimming costume, holding a toddler in a blue hat.
‘Chloe was there,’ she murmurs. ‘She was at the beach with us.’ And Chloe hadn’t inherited Lissa’s fear of water, because Lissa can hear her giggling as their mum took her a little deeper, holding her so she could dip her toes in the ocean.
‘Do you remember much about her?’ Ash asks, and though she’s looking out at the ocean, not at him, she can feel his eyes tracing her face, like he’s checking she’s okay to talk about it.
‘I remember bits,’ she says. ‘But it’s like, I don’t know …
’ She bites her lip. ‘This might sound awful,’ she begins slowly.
But she can tell him, she thinks. She can tell him, even though she never talks about it with anyone else.
‘It’s like she doesn’t feel like a real person, in my mind.
She exists as my little sister, but only as I knew her then.
I was twelve and she was six, and when she died we all just …
stopped talking about her.’ She swallows.
‘They never wanted to say her name. My parents. Or when my mum did, it was when she was … struggling. It was never about Chloe, but rather the loss of her. So it feels like I never really knew her. Like I didn’t appreciate her for her.
‘I do remember some stuff, though,’ she goes on quickly, feeling the need to justify.
‘I remember she was learning the recorder at school. I remember that she was terrible at it.’ She laughs a little at that, and Ash smiles, his features softening.
‘I remember her being in the nativity play. I was so annoyed that I got dragged along to watch, but she played a shepherd and she was so cute. She used to force me to play Barbies with her when I was trying to convince myself I was way too old for that. She used to let me paint her nails, to practise. She had the best smile.’
She can feel tears pricking the back of her eyes, but she smiles.
It’s nice, she realises, to talk about Chloe.
To remember that she existed, despite the tragic fleetingness of her life, that she was loved.
To have proof of that in her memories, even buried as they are.
She’ll have to tell Elsie, she thinks. Share bits of the sister she lost with the sister she still has.
‘What about you?’ she asks. ‘Do you remember your mum? Or, I mean, of course you do.’ He was sixteen when she died, so he had nearly as long with her as he’s now had without. ‘I just mean …’
He takes her hand, squeezes. Then links his fingers with hers as they walk.
‘I know what you mean. And I get what you said about not thinking of Chloe as a person, too. I was older when Mum died, sure, but I feel like I’d only just started to think of her as someone with her own thoughts and feelings, rather than simply my mother.
I wish I’d had the chance to get to know her in her own right.
She was great, though. Very strict on no shoes in the house.
’ Lissa laughs. ‘But great. She cooked the best lasagne, but for some reason burnt chips literally every time she put them in the oven. She made herself go to the gym most days, but claimed it was only so she could drink as much red wine as she wanted. She always had time to talk, no matter what she was doing, and I didn’t always make the most of that. ’
‘You were a teenager,’ she says. ‘Talking to parents isn’t exactly par for the course.’
‘Yeah. I wonder, though, if I’d taken the time …’ He trails off as they start heading down to a lower part of the cliff. ‘And I also can’t help wondering …’
Again he doesn’t finish, but she can guess. ‘Your dad?’
He looks at her, offers her a reflection of that slightly sad smile she knows she was wearing moments ago. ‘Yeah. I wonder if he might not have got so bad if she’d still been around.’
She can’t think of what to say to that, because there is no way of knowing, is there?
He comes to a stop, then lets go of her hand and heads towards the edge, peering over it.
She goes with him, but a little cautiously.
It’s not like she’s particularly scared of heights, but it doesn’t exactly seem sensible for someone who can’t swim to be right on the brink of a cliff.
She wonders why there aren’t barriers to stop people getting too close.
They’ve wound their way down the path, so that they’re now only twenty metres or so up, waves crashing white against rock either side of them. The ocean is a glistening blue, and if Lissa didn’t know how dangerous it could be, she’d say it looked almost inviting.
‘You know,’ Ash says contemplatively, ‘I’m pretty sure this is a spot I read about when I looked the place up. You can jump from here.’
Lissa laughs, sure it’s a joke, but he grins at her, completely misreading her response. Grins at her in a way that for a moment makes her heart stutter with something that can only be fear.
He kicks off his shoes. He’s kidding. He’s got to be kidding. His eyes are alight as he looks down at the water. ‘You only live once, right?’
And he jumps. He actually fucking dives off the cliff edge and into the sea below.
Lissa doesn’t even scream. Because already she is running, adrenaline flooding her system in a way that makes her feel sick. She looks frantically one way, then the other, searching for a path down to the beach.
Shit. Shit! What if he gets knocked unconscious? What if he needs help? She can’t swim. What the fuck is she supposed to do? She fumbles for her phone as she sees a narrow overgrown path and sprints for it. She stumbles, skidding down a few feet.
Her vision is blurring. She can feel the water as if it’s pouring into her own lungs.
Not again, not again, not again.
She reaches the shoreline to see him surfacing. He whoops, as if it’s a fucking game. There are rocks ten metres or so either side of him. He could have hit his head. He could have died.
She’s breathing heavily, her hands literally shaking, while he strikes out in a front crawl towards her. He’s still wearing his clothes. He didn’t even bother to take the time to think of what might have happened.
He stands up, shaking his head like a dog. She is still trembling. But it’s not from fear any more.
Hot anger surges through her, so forceful it’s almost painful. She can feel her heartbeat pounding, urging her to do something. To smash something. Her muscles quiver as he grins at her. Then that grin falters, at whatever he sees in her expression.
‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing?’ She doesn’t shout. She’s beyond that. Instead the words are tight, lethal. She doesn’t think she’s ever heard herself speak like this before.
‘I—’
But there is no justification he can give, so she holds her hand up. ‘If you ever do something like that again, Ash, I swear to God, I’m done with whatever the fuck this is.’
He moves a little closer to her, now only ankle-deep in the waves, his shorts sopping wet. She hopes it fucking hurts, walking on the pebbles barefoot.
‘It was safe, Liss,’ he says. His voice is soothing – it’s almost like he thinks she’s overreacting. Like he thinks it’s totally acceptable to quite literally jump off a fucking cliff.
‘You can’t possibly know that.’ She plants her legs wide, to stop her doing something stupid. What, she’s not quite sure. ‘And you might not put any value on your life, but I do.’
He moves closer to her, but she backs away. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset—’
‘Upset?’ She lets out a hysterical laugh. ‘I’m not upset. I am livid.’ And it feels good to feel this anger. To direct it outward. Because, she realises, she is so fucking angry. Angry at him, angry at herself. Angry at Chloe for climbing over the fence, for going into the pond that day.
Her breath is hot between her teeth, her skin crawling, adrenaline surging again. She turns, needing to work off the excess energy. He reaches for her hand, and she snatches it away. She can hear the crunch of pebbles beneath her trainers.
‘Lissa …’ His voice is placating.
‘Don’t,’ she snaps. She turns back to see him watching her. His skin is glistening, his eyes the colour of the ocean behind him.
She is still so angry. Still has all this energy, with nowhere to direct it. So she does the only thing she can think of. She strides towards him, fists her hands into the front of his T-shirt. And kisses him.