B L A I R E
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The moment I heard Sukie's voice, I was captivated by her broad Yorkshire accent, and I'm not sure I've breathed properly for the last thirty minutes. When the first episode of the podcast comes to an end, I realise my fingertips are a blotchy mess of red and white from digging into the notches in the scratched tabletop, and there's a dull ache in my lungs like I've been using them all wrong.
I want to know more. I have to know more. My thumb hovers over the link to the second episode, until I realise I've been gone for more than an hour and while I'm not sure how much Elizabeth cares about me, I don't want to worry her.
The eerie piano intro lingers at the back of my mind, my fingers itching to play the piece I used to know without the need for sheet music. It's been a long time since I touched the keys, though, and I'm sure any talent I once had has rusted with age and disuse. And I know that the moment I play that piece again, it will make me weep. It was one of Mum's favourites. She loved Einaudi.
I rip out my earphones and loop them around my hand before stuffing them deep into my bag along with my phone, which I flick back onto airplane mode, and I hitch both straps of my bag over my hunched shoulders as I march outside. Regina isn't hanging around the desk, thankfully, so there's no awkward conversation to be made, no awkward smile to past on my face as I leave with my hood up to face the smattering of spitty rain.
The whole way back to Elizabeth's house, I turn Sukie's words over and over in my mind, trying some out loud to test her accent on myself. I try to remember the timeline, but the middle blurs into obscurity and all I can pick out is the witch hunt of 1619, and the last fifty years. I hear the pain in Sukie's voice when she talked about the brother she never knew, and it makes me think of my father.
I don't know how I'm supposed to feel about him. Is there a rulebook about how to grieve for people you don't remember, in what regard to hold them in your memory? I have no recollection of my father. I was a toddler when he died. When he took me to his parents' farm for a few days while Mum was touring for Just Keep Swimming, and he wrote a note that Mum mentioned in the past but never repeated without sobbing, and he pulled the trigger of his father's hunting rifle.
Pushing the blurry image of him out of my mind – I can't even conjure up his face, a face that I have only seen in photographs from at least seventeen years ago – I try to focus on the pumping of my feet on the pedals, but it doesn't take long for my thoughts to be invaded by Sukie's questions, the hunger in her voice.
I screech to a halt when I realise, damn it, I should have checked for the book in the library. But I'm a third of the way back to the house, and the bike seat is beyond uncomfortable, and I'm already tired and sweaty. And if I don't go back now, it's a reason to get up in the morning.
A week ago, I knew nothing about this town. A few days ago, I had never been here. And now, after thirty minutes of listening to a girl with an entrancing voice, a girl whose words had me teetering on the edge of the stiff library seat, I'm engrossed in four hundred years of history. Never in my life have I cared about history, but I feel a pull towards it now.
There's an itching deep inside my bones, something that tells me I have to do this. Whatever this is. It's been nearly three years since Sukie and Oliver recorded the episode I just listened to – they'll be a year older than me now, by my maths. They could have left home; they could be anywhere in the world. They could have figured out who Mary S Nesbitt is. We're nearly four months into 2019; they could have lived through another tragedy already.
I certainly know I have.
My back and my legs ache by the time I reach the house and almost lose my balance dismounting the bike to stow it away in the shed. My bag's heavy on my back, two pints of milk weighing me down. My heart's heavy in my chest, my head heavy on my neck.
Gravity seems to hit me harder the closer I get to the front door, my bones stooping and cracking. I don't want to go inside. I don't want to see Elizabeth. The thought of seeing her face makes me want to cry, and I know the only way to get over that is to spend time with her, but it hurts so much. I don't know where to tread. I don't know who she is.
I don't have a key, but I only realise that after I've already tried the handle and it's unlocked, the door opening into the dim hallway. The house is cool and dark, but I can hear the tapping of a foot so I follow the noise, and I find myself in a room I haven't seen yet. A surprisingly cosy sitting room, with a couple of deep, throw-covered sofas and a wide hearth, and Elizabeth,
She's on one of the sofas, sinking into the cushions, with a book in her hands and a half-drunk coffee on the side table. When she hears me, she closes the book without marking her page and slips it into her bag, and she crosses her legs as she looks up at me.
"You were a while," she says. "Do you feel better?"
Do I feel better? Do I feel better? Two weeks since my mother died and she thinks she can send me to buy bread and I'll feel better? Acid rage claws its way up my throat but I swallow it down, rendered mute by the surge of anger that knocks me back, and I just nod.
"Did you find the shop?"
I let the bag drop from one shoulder to take out the overpriced bread and the organic milk and the tea; I hold them out to her and she just tips her head at the wall behind her.
"That can go in the kitchen." Her eyes drop to the tea. One is jasmine, the other Masala Chai.
"I didn't know what tea you wanted," I say before she can tell me that she wanted PG Tips.
"It doesn't matter." She shrugs. Maybe she's being nice. But it makes me mad. I don't want passive. I want her to want to talk to me; I want her to tell me about herself; I don't want stilted conversation about fucking tea. I want her to tell me why she and my mother stopped talking and I don't want to have to ask, and irrational ire floods me as I storm to the kitchen.
Cupboards bang as I find somewhere to put the bread and tea and I shove the milk in the fridge, and there's this vibrating in my limbs like I need to hit something or scream or cry but I don't know how. It knocks me back against the fridge, one hand clasped over my eyes as I suck in a ragged breath and try to shake off my frustration.
A minute passes. I've snatched the reins on my pulse when Elizabeth comes into the kitchen, and my nails instantly dig into my palms.
"Good timing," she says, opening the cupboard where she stores more mugs than one person needs. "It's about to storm."
I guess we've already reached the stage where all we can talk about is the weather. Maybe I'll never have the guts to ask about Mum, and she'll never feel the need to tell me, and we'll spend the next year tiptoeing around each other and never talking about what's on our minds.
Right now, there's so much on my mind that it's impossible to pick out a single strand, and delving into the mess of questions I have is a fruitless task that only leaves me angry and drained and distraught.
"Tea?" Elizabeth holds up a mug. I shake my head. She flicks on the kettle and opens the box of Masala Chai I just bought, dropping one of the richly-scented bags into a bone china cup. I watch the process, the way she pours in hot water and squeezes the bag between the cup and the back of her spoon, how she adds a splash of milk.
Only once she's done, and she's taken a seat at the kitchen table, do I realise I want a coffee. And I need food. I haven't eaten since yesterday and I don't even remember what I had or when I had it, and now my stomach growls with the low warning rumble of a guard dog.
As I'm reaching for the bread, my hand stops in mid-air. I glance at Elizabeth, and she seems to feel my eyes on me because she looks up, fixing that blue stare on me.
"Can I have toast?" I ask.
"You don't have to ask, Blaire," she says. "You live here too, now." There's a pause, and a hitch in her breath, before she says, "Treat this like your home. It is your home." Her hands fall to her mug, curling around the fading pattern on the delicate china. "This is what your mother wanted."
My hands go clammy at the mention. I almost drop the pot of instant coffee. "Why?"
Her head sways from side to side in a slow and sombre shake. "I don't know, Blaire. I don't know."
"If you two didn't talk for twenty years, why would she want me to come here? Why would she suddenly want us to meet?"
"I don't know," Elizabeth says again. She sounds resigned. She doesn't look at me. I recognise the ache in her voice and I drop my guard, just a fraction. "It was always the two of you, wasn't it?"
I nod. I want to elaborate, to tell her that Mum was my best friend, that we did everything together, that she was my parent and teacher and friend and confidante and travel buddy. She was all of those people rolled into one, and now she's gone and every role is unfulfilled in my life.
"Maybe she was scared," Elizabeth murmurs.
"Of what?"
"Leaving you alone." Her eyes briefly meet mine and flicker away. "Maybe, after everything, she'd rather give in and send you to me than to make you fend for yourself. She'd rather us know each other than you be alone."
I pour boiling water into a sturdy mug with shaking hands, and I manage to drop two pieces of bread into the toaster. The lever stays down on my third attempt.
"Why leave it until now? Why leave it to chance? Why not just tell me that I have a secret aunt?"
Elizabeth sighs and sips her tea. I catch a waft of cinnamon and soft spice. "She probably thought you'd never have to know. I doubt she thought she would die so young." Her voice is a crack above a whisper. Outside, a burst of rain lashes the window and almost drowns her words, and my chest squeezes so tightly that there's a moment I'm convinced this is a heart attack. But the pressure eases when thunder rolls overhead and Elizabeth glances at the ceiling.
"I told you there'd be a storm."
Whatever storm rages outside can't possibly contend with the one in my head. The sky is briefly illuminated by a crack of lightning and I'm whipped back to the podcast, to the timeline, to the bolt of lightning that killed six children in 1794. And then I'm plunged into darkness.
"Power cut," Elizabeth says to herself. It's so dark outside, storm clouds laced together to block out the sun, that I can barely see her when she stands as my eyes adjust to the lack of light. "The box is under the stairs."
I turn on the spot to watch as she slips past me into the hall and doesn't even use a torch to illuminate the box on the wall. With the flick of a switch, the electricity comes whirring back to life, but the moment she has sat down, it dies again with a second gust of ferocious wind that blows the torrential rain against the panes.
A quiet harrumph escapes her lips. "Do you mind the dark?"
I shake my head, then realise she probably can't see. "No. I don't."
"Okay. It might be a while."
"Okay."
My toast isn't done. But I don't really care. There's the faintest hint of crispness to the bread. I add a thin layer of butter once I fumble for the fridge handle and I find a knife in the cutlery drawer, all while Elizabeth watches and waits for me to figure it out. Good thing she doesn't have kids, if this is how she would've taught them: just watch and see what happens.
"I'm going to my room," I say.
"Okay."
My pile of blankets is calling me, and in the midst of a thunderstorm, there's nothing better to do than to hide away from the world beneath my duvet with a coffee to keep me warm, and the next episode of Sukie's podcast.
I glance at my phone. No WiFi, but I have data, and nearly sixty percent battery. The knot in my chest loosens as I ascend the stairs and shut myself away in my bedroom, with its thin windows and its uneven floor, and a haze of, I don't know, okayness, rolls over me as I wrap myself in a blanket and climb under the duvet and load up episode two of The Anchor Lakey.
This is what I need. A distraction. Something to focus on. This is exactly what I need.
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