Chapter 40
Sabrina had no idea why the man who looked like a scarecrow should have been the one to blast down the wall in her head behind
which so much was hidden. He had been a terrible key, because she knew now that Eddie and Rina had not been her parents but
her uncle and aunt, and she’d lost them both years earlier than she’d thought. She hadn’t seen them grow old together, enjoying
a long and happy life: Those memories had all been false, manufactured by a brain that had seized an opportunity to hold on
to them for longer. Their dear, beloved lives had been cut tragically short when she was just a little girl, and the place
where they died was somehow linked to a scarecrow in a field. But they had brought her to Shoresend with them once and that’s
why this place was so special, synonymous with happiness for her, and that’s why she had come here again in need of solace.
When she drove to Shoresend, it had taken hours, so she hadn’t come from the immediate vicinity.
She could remember throwing her car keys on the grass toward someone because she had no choice but to do so.
He looked like the scarecrow man at the bus stop—maybe that’s why he had sprung the lock—but they couldn’t be the same person because the man at the bus stop had helped her, sat with her until the ambulance came apparently.
She knew that her mind had a habit of attaching nasty things to scarecrows; they’d become a symbol of darkness for her since that terrible crash which had changed the course of her life.
She knew she was a business analyst, without any question. And she was definitely called Sabrina Anderson because that name
fit her like a tailormade jacket. She’d been called after her auntie Rina; she was in no doubt of those few facts about herself.
But there were still great gaping potholes surrounding the few solid chunks of certainties. There was no violent, unhinged
fiend that she needed to hide from; God knows where her mind had conjured up that thought from. But then, imaginations often
warped and caricatured for their own reasons. She could see the actual man she lived with, but only as a vague outline, and
he wasn’t someone to fear. Why wasn’t he clearer, though, and why did she not have any feeling that she missed him? There
was something about a wedding that was pertinent. She thought she might have been a bridesmaid, but surely that was unlikely
at her age.
“I know all this and I’m no further forward,” she said to Teddy and Marielle. Her eyes were shiny from tears; they spilled
over and down her cheeks, a flow that refused to stop.
“I really think you need to rest, darling,” said Marielle.
“What aren’t you telling us?” asked Teddy gently, sensing there was something.
There was, and she didn’t want to say because it would make it real. It would dissolve her one solid treasure in an acid of
reality. The truth had already taken her parents away from her, and it hadn’t finished with her at that, because she remembered
now being in the hospital holding her newborn daughter in her arms, knowing that every minute brought her closer to having
to let her go.
“My daughter isn’t working her way around Australia,” said Sabrina. “She was stillborn many years ago.”
Teddy’s arms closed around her and his mother’s around them both. There was nothing to say for the moment that their embrace
couldn’t say better.
Sabrina went to bed soon after. She said she was tired, but it was a lie.
She just couldn’t hold up any longer, not even in front of these dear, kind people.
She needed to be alone. She wished she had never met the scarecrow man.
She had prayed for the truth, she had thought she was ready for it, but he had brought it to her and she wasn’t.
She had lost memories she’d never even had.
There had been no decades of picnics and barbecues in Ed and Rina’s cottage garden, nor happy family Christmases that she’d hoped the truth would wash ashore for her.
Instead it had smashed into her skull like a tidal wave and dragged every sweet illusion far out to sea.
And Linnet, whom her well-meaning brain had decided to ripen into a vibrant young woman and send to Australia to have adventures and fun, was merely a colorful, beautiful fantasy.
All Sabrina had left of her now was that tiny baby with a perfect face and dark hair, whose eyes would never open, whose mouth would never form the word Mama , never stretch into her first smile.
She had never fully excised the grief; she had never gotten over the loss. And now she had lost her all over again and it
was every bit as painful as the first time. Sabrina pushed her head into her pillow and cried silently and hard until sleep
eventually took pity on her and pulled her into a deep, dreamless oblivion.
The next morning, Sabrina was awakened by a quiet tapping on her bedroom door. Then it slowly opened and Marielle appeared,
holding a mug.
“You’ve slept for over sixteen hours,” she said gently.
Sabrina threw back the covers and stood up so quickly that she staggered backward. “I’m so late,” she said, attempting to
stand again.
“I hope you don’t mean that as late for work,” said Marielle sternly.
“There’s no way you’re even stepping outside today.
You’re to rest and that’s final.” She put the mug down on the bedside table.
“And you’re to drink this. And when you have, will you come through and I’ll make you some breakfast? ”
Sabrina felt slightly out of it, hungover without the headache; the coffee helped to right her. Her throat was dry from the
long sleep. She put on her waffle dressing gown because she had no energy to think about what else to wear. Someone, Marielle
she presumed, had emptied the bin liner and hung her clean clothes back up.
Crying had helped. She would cry again, she knew this, but what she had let go of the previous day had been sitting inside
her for years, keeping the wounds open. She had hung on to it as if the pain was the only way to feel her loved ones close,
and if she cried, if she emptied her soul of grief, they would sail away from her on her own tears. They were still there
with her, though, part of her; while she held them in her heart, they would always be with her.
She knocked on Marielle’s door, knowing she must look a proper sight, and when Marielle opened up and invited her in, she
nearly died of embarrassment. The sitting room was full of the women who had ousted her so rudely the previous day.
“Please come and sit down. No one cares what you look like,” said Marielle, catching her arm before she retreated. She knew
how her friends had treated Sabrina. She knew they’d done it from a place of kindness to her, but still it hadn’t been right.
She wasn’t as angry at them as she was at Cilla, though, because she was the one who had caused all this. She didn’t want
to think of what might have happened if they hadn’t found Sabrina at the hospital, even though her mind kept wanting to take
her down that road.
Sabrina sat crunched up, defensive, her arms wrapped round herself.
Sylvie spoke first. Sabrina remembered her from the fish-and-chip restaurant, but she hadn’t been in the posse yesterday.
“I can’t begin to tell you how sorry we are, Sabrina. In our defense we were protecting one of our own, but we got it very wrong.”
“It’s fine,” said Sabrina. “Really. I understand.”
“It’s absolutely not fine,” said Diana vehemently. “I was especially vile to you. I was so angry at you, and I’m now ten times
angrier at myself. We handled it all wrong. We can’t make up for it, but we thought you might like some flowers and chocolates—they’re
lovely, those, made by a French woman in town.” She pointed to the table where there was a large wrapped bunch of mixed blooms
and a rectangular gold carton sitting beside a very large square white box.
Bev spoke next. “We’ve always said flowers are sweeter when women give them to each other. Men too often buy them because
they’ve been caught with their trousers down. Again.” She sounded as if she spoke from experience and Sabrina smiled, just
a little, but it was enough to break the ice.
“We are all really sorry,” said Jackie. “I can’t tell you how much.”
“Can I get anyone a top-up?” asked Marielle.
“If it hadn’t been so early, I’d have suggested gin,” said Sylvie, cradling her mug.
Bev twisted her head to look at the clock on the wall. “Can’t we nudge the hands forward?”
“You’re honored, you know,” said Sylvie to Sabrina. “Being allowed into the inner sanctum with the Mad Cows. Cilla’s been
trying to get in for years.”
“Well, she’s never getting in now,” said Jackie. “I hope you’re not going to let her get away with it, Marielle. It needs
calling out. I mean, who does that? I can’t get my head around it.”
“We have cake as well,” said Diana. “We didn’t know what you’d like, so we brought coffee and walnut, chocolate, and Victoria
sponge. Cake of apology tastes especially good.”
“They all sound lovely,” said Sabrina. “Thank you.”
“As Cher said, if only we could turn back time,” added Sylvie, “but we can’t, and a Mad Cows collective and very genuine sorry from the bottom of our hearts is the best we can offer you.”
“Can you forgive us?” asked Jackie.
“Of course,” said Sabrina, and she felt the air in the room almost sigh with relief at her answer.
Then she broke bread, or rather cake, with the Mad Cows, and for that morning, at least, all was well with the world.
At work, Flick was quiet at best, morose at worst. She wouldn’t cheer up.
“Go and see her,” said Teddy, during their break.
“I daren’t.” Flick coughed a rasp out of her throat.
“Can I make you feel better?” said Teddy. “If you hadn’t said anything, then this lie might never have been found out, so
you did Sabrina the biggest favor, though it might not seem like it.”
Flick let that sink in. “Do you think?”
“I know.”
“Uncle Teddy, I can’t believe my own mother could be so flipping evil.”
“I think evil is pushing it a bit, Flick,” even though he thought evil might be precisely the right word but didn’t want Flick’s relationship with her mother damaged any more than it was. This
was a big blow to an already fractured connection.
“I thought some really horrible things about Sabrina. I hated her, and I was that far from telling her what I felt about her.
I never would have been able to take back the words,” said Flick, pressing her fingertips into the corners of her eyes to
stop any tears in their tracks.
“But you didn’t,” said Teddy.
“I really like her,” said Flick, her voice now taken over by sobs. “I think that’s why I was so mad. She proper listened to me; she didn’t just humor me. I loved talking to her and hearing about what she’d do with this place.”
Teddy reached over for a paper serviette and handed it to his young cousin before she dissolved herself in salt water.
“Go and see her,” he insisted.
Sabrina hadn’t left Teddy’s mind since they brought her home yesterday. He had replayed holding her so many times that had
it been an old cassette tape, it would have snapped hours ago. She’d been in his world for only a few weeks, but he couldn’t
remember how they’d coped without her in the restaurant, and he couldn’t put his finger on what she brought with her that
changed the atmosphere. It was as if, when she was in here, someone had tweaked up the brightness levels. And he felt that
effect inside himself too. She wasn’t like the usual sort of women he went for who wrote all over his life with a shouty pen;
she was a gentle murmur, not recognized until it stopped and then was missed in its absence. And he couldn’t work out why
her partner wasn’t moving every rock and stone to find her, because that’s exactly what he would have done—and he wouldn’t
have stopped until he had.
Marielle was just washing up the cake plates when Flick arrived at her door.
“Can I see Sabrina? I won’t keep her long, Auntie Marielle.” She’d been crying, that was clear.
“Go on through, love,” said Marielle, taking herself off downstairs so they could speak alone.
“Hello, Flick,” Sabrina said and smiled. She was sitting in the armchair in her waffle dressing gown. She looked pale but
drained of more than color. And I’ve done that to her, was all she could think.
Her practiced, measured apology disintegrated in her mouth.
Flick lowered her head, ashamed to look at her.
When she felt Sabrina’s arms come around her, she pushed her face into the woman’s neck and let herself be comforted.
“I’m so sorry,” said Flick over and over.
“Darling, it’s not your fault; it really isn’t.”
“Don’t be nice to me; it’s making me feel worse.” Flick sobbed.
“You have nothing to feel bad about, Flick.”
Sabrina had prayed to God to bring it on, to give her the truth, answers, shine light on all the mysteries, and now he had;
boy, had he.
“Come and sit down.” Sabrina pulled her onto the sofa and snapped a clutch of tissues out of the box on the coffee table for
Flick.
“I’ve missed talking to you,” said Flick eventually. “I really love our chats. I’ve been so upset. Please say you’re coming
back to work.”
Flick was holding her hands. She was disgusted that it had been her mother who started all this. She’d almost smashed up a
precious friendship by believing her, because despite the age difference, Flick really felt that Sabrina was her friend. “Please
don’t leave because of this.”
“I think it’s time that I find out where I belong,” said Sabrina. There might be some less-than-ideal things to deal with,
but there could be nothing worse than what she’d already found behind the wall in her head.
“Do that and then come back,” said Flick. “You belong with us.”
Sabrina stroked her hair. She did belong here, with these people. But she belonged somewhere else as well, and she couldn’t
just pretend she didn’t. It would all be so much simpler if she had dropped out of a spaceship and her present place in the
world was the only option she had.