CHAPTER 22 #2
‘I suppose so. Can’t say I’ve ever been a fan.’
‘It’s definitely got busier since I was last here.’ Sofia’s mouth twisted into a disapproving expression.
‘They’re always getting lost, knocking on my door all hours of the day.’
‘Don’t they know these cliffs are dangerous?’ Sofia watched as the seemingly oblivious groups posed, one leg in the air, pretending to fall.
‘There are signs everywhere. I’m not sure what else you’re supposed to do.’ Pat paused. ‘Henry was discovered on this beach at eight a.m. After the high tide.’
‘He was pushed from here?’ asked Sofia.
‘Sometime after five the previous evening, we think.’
They walked down the steps to the sea. Their progress was hampered by the amount of traffic to and from the beach. There were a few people in the water, one serious lady swimmer in a full-length wetsuit and rubber cap ploughing up and down the shoreline attached to a large red float.
‘That doesn’t look much fun,’ said Sofia as she hopped from one leg to the other on the pebbles, wrapped in a towel, putting on her swimming costume.
‘Just so long as she’s enjoying herself,’ said Pat, striding into the sea. ‘Come on!’
They stayed in for precisely fifteen minutes, one minute for every degree Celsius, laughing and joking and bouncing around in the waves, treading water, watching the tourists take their snaps.
Pat tried to remember the last time they’d swum together.
Maybe eight years ago? Perhaps longer. They emerged pink with cold and giggling with exhaustion, and flopped down on the beach, rubbing themselves with towels: shins, shoulders, back of the head.
Sofia lay back on the pebbles and stared up at the sky.
‘Mum?’ she said, sitting up suddenly. ‘If all these tourists are here all the time, taking photos of Birling Gap, surely someone will have taken a picture of Henry?’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Pat, rubbing her face with her towel.
‘Well, you know, accidentally snapped him, like in the background. He’ll be there in their selfies or landscape photos. If you think someone pushed him, they may well be in the shot too.’
‘Do you think?’ Pat slowly put down the towel.
‘Well, it’s worth a look. If you type Birling Gap or Seven Sisters into Instagram, all the photographs tagged with that will come up, and you can see if he was there on the day he died.’
‘Really?’
‘Let’s give it a go.’
Back at the house, Sofia set up Pat’s laptop to trawl through the hundreds of photographs that responded to the search tag.
Sofia offered to do the scrolling, as Pat kept getting distracted by the images people were posting.
Ice creams, dancing, cartwheels, walking through clouds; it was some sort of special effect, apparently.
Pat was old enough to remember when being invited over to see someone’s holiday snaps was the punchline to a joke, the ultimate social endurance test. There was even a time you had to sit through grainy home cine films, nodding politely.
Now people queued up willingly to scroll through strangers’ sunsets and breakfasts.
But she understood it really. It wasn’t about the photos; it was about being seen how you wanted to be seen.
About curating a version of yourself that felt shinier, more coherent.
A life with edges tidied and light carefully filtered.
While Sofia kept working her way through endless images, Pat chopped cucumbers and avocados for the chicken salad she was making for supper.
‘It’s certainly popular,’ said Sofia as she scrolled. ‘What was he wearing?’
‘A suit, a smart suit, Armani, like what you’d wear to go to dinner.’
‘Black? Blue? Striped?’
‘Black. White shirt.’
‘Like this?’
Pat stopped chopping and bent down to look at the screen, squinting slightly, her knife still in her hand. ‘What’s that?’
‘A sleeve and a shoulder in the background of this photo. Dark hair?’
‘You’re amazing,’ said Pat, slowly sitting down, heart thumping. ‘It certainly looks like him. The light is greyish, it’s turning, so it could be around five p.m.?’
‘Yes, it could be, but a glimpse of someone’s shoulder doesn’t prove much.’
‘It proves that he wasn’t sitting on the edge waiting to jump. It has him standing, moving, walking around. Not sitting round-shouldered, hunched to the world, contemplating his own death. Is anyone else there?’
‘In this photo? Not that I can see. But I can tell you the exact location, if I click through here. It’s near the car park. See?’
Pat peered at the map that was now on her screen. ‘That’s just above where his body was found.’
‘I’ll keep digging.’
Pat chopped and laid the table while Sofia carried on scrolling and back-referencing all the images she could find. But when they sat down to supper, it was still just the sleeve and the shoulder. Proof of life sometime during the late-afternoon light of 21 April.
Pat sighed. ‘Well, thank you, darling, for all your help.’ She poured herself a glass of red wine from the open bottle on the table. ‘Would you like a glass?’
‘Maybe later,’ replied Sofia.
‘So what else have you been up to?’ asked Pat.
‘I could show you if you want?’ suggested Sofia, turning the computer around.
‘Sure, that would be great,’ said Pat, hoping her tone sounded upbeat. ‘I’d like to see what you’re doing.’
‘You don’t have to.’
‘No, no, I’d love to.’
‘Only if you’re sure?’
‘Sofia, I would like to see your work.’ Pat took a swig of wine. ‘Is that affirmative enough?’
Sofia tapped into her account. Sofe, 28-year-old wife to the wonder that is Adam, homey hosting, London lifestyle and food.
All organic and guilt-free! Pat didn’t say anything.
Sofia had done some updating since she’d last looked.
There were now more than seven hundred thousand people following the account.
‘So, it’s about recipes and having fun and going about my business in London,’ explained Sofia.
‘It’s not my everyday, obviously, but that’s how I sell it, so I’ll do like “Trad Tuesday”, where I’ll show all the stuff I do during the day.
But I usually spend quite a lot of time setting all these things up.
’ She clicked on a recent video at the top of her profile.
‘Hi!’ said the social-media-perfect version of her.
‘My name is Sofe and I’ve been very happily married to my gorgeous hubby Adam for the last four years.
We love our home in Battersea, it’s our safe place.
I’m a stay-at-home wife and influencer. I absolutely love to cook, especially for Adam, who works so hard. ’
Pat sat at her kitchen table watching her daughter explain her life to her hundreds of thousands of followers, going through recipes and her handy hints to uplift and elevate seemingly dull domestic chores, such as putting lavender in the laundry and spritzing pillows with a little scent for a good night’s sleep.
She made a bath oil with fresh rosemary, preserved some lemons, made wild garlic pesto with activated pine nuts and went flower shopping at Columbia Road market on a Pashley bicycle complete with wicker basket.
She played another reel where she learnt how to embroider stars into the holes in a cashmere jumper and tried her hand at knitting a pair of bed socks, which proved to be much harder than it looked.
She churned butter, made cheese, and batch-cooked some salmon dish for the freezer.
There was a kombucha and sauerkraut session, and lots of pickling.
By the third or fourth clip, Pat was bowled over by the amount of hard work involved in the filming, the editing, the music and the endless ideas to keep her audience entertained.
‘Sofia,’ she said, ‘I can’t believe how hard you work at this. It’s incredible.’ She was quite pleased with herself for swallowing back the words ‘Not quite my bag, but …’
‘Thanks, Mum.’ Her daughter smiled brightly.
‘Seriously. I don’t how you manage to do it all. Cheers, darling.’ Pat smiled, leaping out of her chair and heading towards the cupboard. ‘Let me get you a drink.’
‘Mum.’
‘What?’ She turned around.
‘I’m pregnant.’
‘Oh my goodness!’ She beamed from the other side of the kitchen. ‘That is good news … It’s great news!’
‘You think?’
‘Oh.’ Pat was a little stunned. ‘It normally is.’
‘Is it, though?’ Sofia bit her lip. ‘Given the track record of this family.’
Pat sat slowly down in her seat. ‘Really? Is it that bad?’
‘Come on, Mum! I mean, no one could have fucked up quite as much as you.’
‘Oh.’ That hit Pat hard, straight in the solar plexus. She had to remember to breathe. It was a stark contrast to the camera-ready Sofia she had just watched on Instagram.
‘I’m not really sure I want this baby,’ Sofia mumbled out of the side of her mouth.
‘Oh,’ Pat said again. As a statement, it didn’t come tougher than that.
‘It seems unfair on the poor little thing. Another basket case waiting to happen. I really don’t want to do a bad job.’ It seemed to Pat that what Sofia actually wanted to say was ‘as bad a job as you did’. ‘The idea of history repeating itself, it’s too much,’ she concluded.
Pat sat there for a second. Don’t react, reflect, she told herself. She knew that. ‘Well,’ she replied in as measured a way as possible, ‘you don’t have to make the same mistakes I did.’ She smiled. ‘Although I did try.’
‘Did you? Did you really? Well that’s even more worrying!
’ Sofia laughed. ‘You tried your best and you still fucked it up! And here I was thinking you were just phoning it in, from your work, or the divorce, or night school or your PhD or your dissertation or your clients, all the other things you did except be at home and be a parent.’
‘I was absent, I’m sorry. I was always at work, and then I was training.’
‘And selfish.’
‘Oh? Probably. And selfish.’
‘And self-absorbed.’
‘Isn’t that the same thing?’
‘I’m just making my point!’
‘OK, I was all of those things. But just because I was doesn’t mean you need to be.’
‘But I’ve learnt from the master, haven’t I? What if my childcare abilities are inherited? What if I do the same as you, give it all up for my career?’
‘The whole point is that we can change. Human beings are intelligent, we can learn from our mistakes. I recommend a brilliant book by a colleague of mine, The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read (and Your Children Will Be Glad That You Did). It’s great, I wish I had read it before I had you.
I wish I’d been a therapist back then, and then I would’ve known that I should have been more present for you.
I think I was assuming you would be a child for ever and there would be another time I could see a nativity play, or pick you up from school.
I’m sorry, darling. You will get it right for your kid.
I’ve got a copy of that book somewhere. Read it before you decide anything.
It will show you how not to repeat the mistakes Granny made with me and I made with you.
The pattern of seeing your child as a chore to delegate rather than a person to relate to.
I know I did that, and I’m sorry. I did fuck up and I wish I could do it again. ’
‘OK,’ Sofia replied flatly.
‘You are aware of what you needed and didn’t get; I was not aware of what I needed as a child and didn’t get. That will make all the difference.’
‘Oh Mum,’ said Sofia, and she went up to Pat and they hugged.
When they separated, they looked at each other’s red eyes, smiled and hugged again, then Pat said, ‘Does Adam know?’
‘Not yet.’
‘He’ll be over the moon when you tell him. I’m over the moon!’ She leant over and kissed her daughter on the forehead. ‘I am so, so happy for you! I really am. You’ll be fine. You’ll be a natural.’
‘Will I? Why?’
‘Because you’re not me. You’re different.’ She smiled. ‘You are better.’