Chapter 9
SUSANNA
Susanna slumped down at the table next to Addie.
In situations like this, when it was clear that someone was playing games, she usually walked away, refusing to be a part of it.
Like the time a group of girls she hung around with at school decided to invite everyone to a house party but not her.
She could tell by the way they were looking at her in the classroom that they wanted her to beg, to find out why she wasn’t invited, but she’d packed up her books and left them to it.
She’d got an invite in the end, but she hadn’t gone.
She didn’t need the drama. And she definitely didn’t need drama now.
She wanted to walk away, out of this cottage and back to her life, but this was such a shock it kept her right where she was.
At least she hadn’t lost the ability to demand answers. ‘Are you going to explain?’ She looked her aunt right in the eye but her voice almost wavered as she said, ‘You’re supposed to be dead and you’re not.’
‘I’ll leave you to it, Gayle,’ said the neighbour, who had put down the broom she was holding, which was presumably intended to be her weapon. Clearly the neighbours knew their aunt was alive. Were she and Addie the only ones who didn’t?
Gayle sat at the table in a long, bright floral nightdress with an equally vivid pink dressing gown wrapped around her shoulders. She hadn’t always worn bright colours but now the wording on the funeral invite made more sense. She must have changed over the years. They all had.
When the back door clicked shut Gayle settled her elbows on the tabletop, her fingers steepled in front of her.
Susanna remembered her doing that exact thing when they lived here.
She’d do it when she had bills to pay, when Susanna had stayed out late and not told her where she was going, coming back only when she was ready.
Susanna had always been waiting for Gayle to explode, yell at her, except she never really did.
‘I made a mistake,’ said Gayle into the eerie silence that had fallen over the kitchen on Evergreen Close.
‘How can you accidentally plan your own funeral?’ Even to Susanna’s own ears her tone felt mild, when all she should be feeling was rage. She shivered. It was chilly in here without the sunshine that usually streamed through the windows.
‘It was supposed to be a living funeral. I—’
‘What on earth is a living funeral?’ Susanna wanted the facts and fast.
‘It’s a celebration of life… but obviously nobody has died.’
‘Glad we’ve cleared that up,’ Susanna snapped.
‘I didn’t mean it to happen.’
‘Really.’ It wasn’t a question; the remark dripped with sarcasm.
She looked at Addie who was so in shock that she wasn’t talking.
Susanna looked at their aunt, the person who had tricked them into coming back to the island.
She was the same Gayle, except now her hair was more white than grey, and the sun had left deep creases in her face and brown spots on her forearms. Gayle still sounded the same as she had done the last time they spoke, decades ago, with the same caution in her voice, mixed with regret and wariness that Susanna remembered from when they’d first come here as young girls.
‘I used online guides to work out what to write,’ Gayle went on, as if an explanation would ever make this any better.
‘My concentration span these days isn’t the best. I was toying with what to call the gathering.
I could’ve called it a celebration of life, or a pre-death party or a pre-funeral.
I’d decided on “living funeral” but I’m afraid I lost focus and ended up forgetting to add in the word “living” entirely.
I didn’t do a check before I folded the invites and popped them into the envelopes.
’ She looked at the girls very briefly over the top of her fingertips before she tore her gaze away.
Addie finally found her voice. ‘Why not just have a party rather than anything to do with a funeral?’
‘It’s not my birthday for ages. I don’t have anything else to celebrate coming up.’
‘Then you should’ve made something up.’ Susanna’s voice rose like her fury.
‘We can’t be the only ones who got invites,’ Addie chipped in.
‘Well, no, there were plenty of other guests.’
‘Your neighbour?’ At the puzzled look on Gayle’s face, Addie added, ‘The woman from before. She obviously didn’t think you were dead.’
Susanna sat straighter in her chair. ‘Hang on, when did you realise you’d made the mistake?’
Aunt Gayle looked deflated. ‘Soon after the invites went out in the mail, I had a knock on the door from Nancy… You remember Nancy?’ Her brief uplift of demeanour sank again when she realised neither of her nieces were going to embrace a bit of nostalgia.
‘We’d only seen one another a few hours before she got home and found the invite.
She came over to see what was going on.’
Susanna crossed her arms in front of her chest. ‘And what did you do next?’
‘I had to call around and spread the word.’ Her composure faded when she realised what she’d admitted.
Addie took her by surprise when she shouted, ‘So basically, you told everyone apart from us!’
Susanna stood up. ‘This is so wrong. Come on, Addie. We’re leaving.’
‘No, please…’ Gayle stood up too, hands firmly on the table, but when she wobbled she sat straight back down.
As the girls retrieved their suitcases from the side of the room she begged, ‘Please don’t go, not now you’re finally here.
I know I should’ve told you. But tell me this…
’ Her voice followed them to the door as Susanna tried to wrangle her suitcase between the chairs and head out the front, which was closer to the kitchen than the rear door.
‘Tell you what?’ Addie asked.
Susanna kept her back to them both; she didn’t want Gayle to see her weak, to see that her eyes had filled with tears, from the shock, the audacity, the cruelty of the situation.
Aunt Gayle’s voice shook as she said, ‘Tell me, would either of you have bothered to come for a party?’
Susanna turned round. ‘Probably not.’ Her words delivered a sting she hoped Gayle felt as keenly as the one delivered to them as the only people not to know the truth, the same cruel sting Susanna had felt when she realised Gayle had told Mateo to end things with her.
Gayle’s eyes implored Addie to give a different answer to her sister. But Addie didn’t say a word. She slumped down at the table again while Susanna stayed where she was in the doorway.
‘You girls left and never came back,’ said Gayle. ‘There are things I need to put right before it’s my time to go, whether that’s soon or not for a number of years.’
‘Are you sick?’ Addie immediately asked.
Susanna harrumphed. ‘That’s it. You’re not well and you want us here to look after you.’
Gayle shook her head. ‘That’s not it at all.
I’m getting old, nothing surprising there.
When I realised my mistake I thought I would test the waters, see whether either of you came.
I thought you might if it was for a funeral, if only to clear out your father’s things.
’ She managed a small smile. ‘And you came together. You’ve no idea how happy that makes me. ’
‘Don’t you dare say that!’ Susanna roared. ‘It’s not our job to make you happy!’
‘Susanna…’ Addie had always been softer than she was; Susanna could tell she was going to be lenient despite the circumstances.
‘You’re right,’ said Gayle. ‘It isn’t your job.’
Addie was looking at her the way she had as a kid, as if she was torn between two opposing sides and didn’t know which one to take.
Susanna had seen it enough times when she returned to the island to spend time with her sister, the way her sister had pretended to have zero interest in the Sweet Life Café when Susanna could tell she’d settled into a different life without her there.
Susanna felt her chest tighten. She couldn’t be here. ‘I’ve got to get out of this house.’ She didn’t even look at either of them. She heard Addie say, let her go, and she left her suitcase behind in the middle of the kitchen doorway.
She took off. She left the cottage, turned right, followed Bay Street all the way along until she came to the footpath she knew so well, even after all this time, even in the dark.
She’d never not felt safe here. Guided by the light of the moon she paced all the way along, the route familiar, the views the same.
She sat at a bench, the same bench she’d sat at so many times when she felt troubled.
The view took her gaze out across the water, sideways to the silhouettes of rooftops, upwards towards the stars.
She needed Alex. No matter what was going on between them she really wanted to talk to him, grasp at some semblance of normality.
Her hand shook as she pulled her phone from her coat pocket.
‘Susanna?’ He sounded groggy when he answered.
‘Were you asleep?’
‘Yeah, it’s been a long day.’
‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have called. I’ll call back tomorrow.’
She heard rustling as if he was shifting back the bed sheets. ‘I’m awake. I’ll go downstairs and get myself a glass of water.’
She waited until the sound on the other end of the line calmed. ‘I miss you.’ The words sounded desperate even to her ears.
‘Miss you too.’
Was he saying it because he meant it or because he thought he should?
Oh, she was questioning everything. How she wished they were back to the way they’d once been, when she hadn’t questioned their relationship at all.
She heard a tap go on for a few seconds, water splashing into a glass, followed by a few glugs as he drank. ‘How are things there? Did you let yourselves into the house without having the police descend on you?’
This was better, better than her launching into asking what was going on with him. This big news would be a distraction. ‘You’re not going to believe this…’
It felt so good to talk to him. While he’d been distant and secretive lately, now he indulged in conversation in a way he hadn’t done for a while. It felt intimate, she felt their close connection even from so far away.
‘Of all the things you could’ve told me tonight,’ he said, ‘that definitely wasn’t one of them. What the hell?’
‘Yeah, add in a decent expletive and that was pretty much my reaction.’
They talked until Alex yawned yet again and she let him go back to bed. Alex never went before eleven; it was another thing about his behaviour that was off lately, and she hated that it made her so unsettled.
The wind picked up a little as she began to make her way back towards Evergreen Close.
As she approached the cottage, she wondered what Gayle and Addie had found to talk about.
Addie had always got on better with Gayle than she had, it was one of the things that had tilted Susanna’s world.
They’d promised each other in the still of the night so many times when they first came to the island that they would stay together, that they would return to the mainland and the world that was theirs.
They’d lost their mum and their dad and neither of them ever wanted to lose each other.