Chapter 57
amy
The television is blaring when I get home from my shift at Al’s Burgers.
My mother squats in her armchair less than three feet away from the screen, rubbing the palms of her hands back and forth against the worn armrests with unabashed glee.
Her insulin bottles and diabetic syringes are scattered on the side table beside her, a deliberate reproach: we can’t afford the supplies for the expensive insulin pump she used to use, so she has to rely on injections every time she eats.
Another fault for her to place at my door.
I don’t need to ask what she’s watching. It’s been playing on a continual loop on the TV above the counter at Al’s all day.
I pull my bottle of cheap whisky out of its brown paper bag and pour myself a generous measure.
And then I keep on pouring until the glass is full to the brim.
‘This is the bit I like,’ Helen says, pointing the remote at the TV and turning it up.
Ashley Lincoln’s face fills the screen. She looks like butter wouldn’t melt.
‘Everything happened so fast,’ she says. ‘Especially at the end. It’s so hard to remember—’
Her flawless brow wrinkles delicately.
‘You said Finn Gray had tried to swim out for help, but the stairwell was blocked,’ Quinn says. ‘He came back to the main cabin, and that’s when the boat started to move again.’
‘It was so terrifying,’ Ashley says. ‘Honestly, I thought I was going to die.’
‘Sadly, many of your friends did,’ Quinn says.
The girl’s eyes fill. ‘I still can’t believe it. I know for everyone else it happened more than a year ago, but to me, it was just yesterday. I can’t believe I was in a coma for so long. I missed all their funerals. I never got to say goodbye.’
You’d have to have a heart of stone not to be moved. I imagine INN viewers across the country feeling desperately sorry for this brave, beautiful girl who lost her boyfriend and so many of her classmates in such a dreadful way.
‘So, what happened after the boat finally stopped moving?’ Quinn says.
‘We were all, like, trapped near the kitchen,’ Ashley says. ‘The water was rising, and it was, like, completely dark. We shouted for help, but Ms Gray had left us.’
She pauses, allowing time for her audience to appreciate the implication: Ms Gray saved her own skin and left us all to drown.
‘Who was with you at this point, can you remember?’
‘There were, like, a dozen of us,’ Ashley says. ‘Maybe more. Bella Weiss, Cassie Polatchek, Conrad Heath, Bobbie—’
She breaks off and covers her face with her hands.
I could tell her exactly how many of my students were trapped on the other side of that porthole with her. I see their faces in my dreams every night.
Sixteen.
Sixteen children I could have saved.
‘So what did you do?’ Quinn asks.
‘We thought we were going to die,’ Ashley says again.
‘And then Conrad saw this light moving around the boat. Like, a flashlight. We thought it was someone come to rescue us, so we all started screaming and shouting, but no one came, so we sort of swam through this, like, little hallway into a corridor, but the water was still coming in there, too, like, really fast.’
The camera cuts to Quinn. She’s a striking woman, with her scars and that piratical eyepatch. Her single eye is an intense, Elizabeth Taylor violet-blue, and her jaw-length black hair dips to a dramatic widow’s peak, before falling in a thick wedge across her face.
It’s hard to read her expression, but it seems to me she’s got Ashley’s measure.
Or maybe I’m just seeing what I want to see.
‘So you were trapped?’ Quinn asks.
My mother leans forward in her armchair. ‘This is the best bit,’ she says.
‘If only I could remember,’ Ashley says. ‘It comes to me in bits and pieces, and I just don’t know if it’s real. I have this dream that I’m banging on a door and it’s locked and there’s someone on the other side, and they won’t open it; they want us all to drown, but that can’t be real, can it?’
‘Turn it off,’ I say.
‘There’s no coming back from this,’ Helen gloats. ‘She knows what you did. She’s not going to keep quiet.’
Anger bubbles up inside me. My mother is deliberately goading me, and it takes a supreme effort not to rise to it.
I lean over and yank the plug from the wall. ‘I said, turn it off.’
Helen doesn’t know what happened in those last few minutes in the Lady, what Iris and I had to do. But she’s no fool. She’s heard my screams in the middle of the night. She knows Iris and I can’t bear to be in the same room together.
My sister and I can’t even look at each other.
‘I’m going to have a shower,’ I say, refilling my glass. ‘You need to go to your room. I’m working a double shift tomorrow, and I want to get some sleep.’
‘When did you first realise I didn’t love you?’ my mother asks.
The question is so abrupt, so unexpected, it catches me off guard.
‘I think I always did,’ I say finally. ‘What I’ve never understood is why.’
‘I had to stay in this greedy, loud, vile country because of you—’
‘You could have left,’ I say. ‘Dad would’ve gone anywhere with you.’
‘But that would’ve meant leaving Colt,’ Helen says, matter-of-factly.
It’s the first time in all these years my mother has said the words out loud.
I’ve always known, of course. My earliest memory is of being strapped in the back seat of the car, watching through the window as my mother made love to a man who wasn’t my father on a picnic rug less than ten feet away.
I refuse to rise to her bait. ‘Go to bed,’ I say, turning away.
My mother and I are like two feral cats trapped in a sack. She lives with me to punish me. I let her stay, because I know I deserve it.
Mac and I might have been able to save our marriage, if not for her.
Our grief counsellor told us we needed to spend time together to heal, but how could we do that with my mother always there, embedded in our lives like a malignant tumour?
When we lost our home to the lawyers, she could have moved in with Iris and Jesse, but she wasn’t going to let me off the hook that easily.
Mac begged me to come with him when he left Vermont, but I couldn’t leave her.
Some people run away by packing their bags. Others run away by standing in the same place for too long.
‘What are you going to do about that girl?’ my mother calls.
She knows I can’t let Ashley follow through on her veiled threat. I don’t care about myself, but I can’t allow her to destroy Iris, and with her, Rose.
‘Whatever I have to,’ I say, without turning round.
It’s the one thing Helen and I will always agree on: Iris comes first.
My mother is the only person who knows what I did to force Finn’s biological father to leave town. We have no secrets, not anymore.
I emptied the brake fluid reservoir in his car with a turkey baster, just enough to give him a scare.
It wasn’t hard: no mechanical knowledge required.
If Sean hadn’t been drunk and speeding, he’d never have skidded off the road like that.
He’d have been able to stop in time. He was lucky to walk away with just cuts and bruises.
I did warn him: I’d do anything to protect my sister.
There’s a sudden rap on the front door. Moments later, the old-fashioned landline rings.
‘Don’t answer that,’ I say, returning to the sitting room.
Ashley’s interview is like chum in the water. The press will be back again in droves soon, camped out on my doorstep, hurling questions in the street.
Someone knocks on the door again, and I peer through the window.
Iris and Jesse are standing outside.
I open the door warily. I assume my sister wants to talk about Ashley’s interview, but I have no idea why her husband is here. I don’t think we’ve exchanged a single word since Finn’s funeral.
‘We need to tell you about Nicky,’ Iris says.