B L A I R E
•
I haven't seen Elizabeth for two days, not since our fight. My fight, really. She was calm and rational and I was the blubbering, yelling mess. I know she's home, though, because I can hear her every now and then – I hear the creak of the floorboards upstairs, or I hear her in the attic; sometimes I hear the radio floating down. We're existing in the same space, and yet somehow our schedules have no crossover.
I'm not sure if that's pure coincidence, or if she's making sure not to be around when I come down to eat. Maybe she vanishes when she hears me come out of my bedroom; perhaps she slips out of the back door and waits until I've dragged myself back up the stairs, so our paths never have to cross.
There's a chance I pushed it too far.
I feel bad. I didn't want to push her away – I wanted the exact opposite. I wanted to pull her closer, to find out how to get to know this woman, and I managed to shove her so far when I broke down at her that she has gone into hiding.
It fits with what Sukie said about her – a quiet recluse. Here I am, turning that lifestyle on its head and then yelling at her for not knowing how to deal with me when I don't know how to deal with her.
I also don't know what to think after the episode of The Anchor Lakey that I listened to this morning. After a couple of normal ones, Sukie and Oli bouncing off each other with jokes and theories and occasional in-jokes that I didn't understand, the twenty-fifth was completely different. Sukie, alone, sounding tired and sad and questioning everything. It made my soul ache, hearing her despair, and the ending made my heart race.
Jane, I think. That's all she said, and then the episode ended, and I can't stop thinking about it long enough to even start a new one. After a dreary day of lounging about the house yesterday, it's time to get out again. It's Wednesday afternoon now, approximately fifty-one hours since she walked away from me and I rage-cycled into Anchor Lake, and I'm back on the bike.
Wednesday means Olga's working at The Greenhouse, and after I spent all of this morning debating about whether or not to go, here I am, pedalling down this treacherous road. I don't know what to do about Elizabeth, but I do know what to do for Mum – I can buy her peonies and freesias to brighten up her current resting place, and maybe a bit of colour and a pretty smell will go some way towards thawing the ice between my aunt and me.
If Elizabeth hasn't forgot about me, of course. I wouldn't even be that surprised if that was the case.
Olga spots me before I open the door, and she grabs it for me with a smile. "Hi, Blaire! I was wondering if I might see you today."
"Hi, Olga," I say, already glad I decided to come out. Her face is almost as bright as the explosive bunches of flowers dotted around the shop, tin buckets with chalkboard squares advertising poppies and roses and lilies. It smells incredible in here, like walking into the botanical gardens of paradise.
"Peonies and freesias was it, that you wanted?" she asks, neatening up a bucket full of pretty sprigs of greenery.
"You remembered?"
She taps the side of her head and says, "When it comes to flowers, I never forget. How do you want them? One bunch of each? A mixed bunch? Anything else, or just those two flowers?"
"God, so many options," I say with half a laugh, trying to imagine what Mum would have liked. Colour. Plenty of colour. Something loud. "Um, two bunches, please. Could you feature peonies in one, and freesias in the other? But with other colours and flowers too, so it's kind of ... busy and bright?"
"Absolutely. A small bunch is nine pounds, medium is fifteen, and large is twenty." She shows me three sample bouquets with fake flowers; the small is too small, and the large is probably too big to manage home on the bike.
"Both medium, please," I say, and as she starts to pick and choose, humming away, I check my back account to double check that I have thirty pounds to spare. Just about.
There's plenty more in my savings, but Mum always taught me not to be frivolous. She was always a saver, even though we travelled so much, and now I guess I'll benefit from that. According to her will, she wanted almost everything to go to me, once I'm twenty-one. It's a daunting thought, having money and no direction, and I hope that by the time my twenty-first swings around, in fifteen months, I'll have a better clue of what I want my life to look like.
I've zoned out. Olga's looking at me expectantly.
"Sorry, what?"
"How's this looking?" she asks, showing me a bunch in progress. "Do you want any more of anything? Any less?"
A few round, fluffy peonies are enhanced by a border of leafy greens and bursts of every colour that all somehow complement each other perfectly.
"I love it. That's perfect," I murmur, envisaging the mantelpiece. It's not much, I know, and they won't last, but it feels like the right thing to do, for now.
"So, managed to listen to any more of the podcast since Monday?" Olga asks as she puts a few finishing flourishes on the peony bunch and starts on the freesias.
"Yes. Actually, I have a question for you," I say, spine straightening as I remember that strange, sleepy episode. "I listened to episode twenty-five last night, and—"
"Ah," Olga says with a laugh. "The famous twenty-fifth episode."
"Oh?"
"Oli was upset all week that she recorded without him and that it was the one time she figured out something new."
"That's what I wanted to ask about," I say, watching the way Olga handles the flowers with such care, each stem as precious as a newborn. "Who's Jane?"
Olga presses her lips together, carefully trimming leaves off the long stem of a flower I don't know. "We don't know."
"Still? Really?"
"Mmhmm. We had a mini breakthrough when Cat realised that it didn't actually say Jane, but the letters J, A, N, and E, with full stops between them. Like they stand for something else. But we didn't get any further."
"Where was it again?"
"Right on the front page, the one that looks blank."
I hate that I still haven't seen this damn book, but at least I'll know where to look when I do. "So, where the dedications usually are?"
"Yup." She plucks a few sprigs of lavender out of one of the buckets, water dripping off the ends to the floor.
"Maybe it was someone's initials? Or some kind of code? An acronym?"
"That's what we figured, but Sukie spent months trying to find some kind of code that made sense, and there's just no way of knowing if any of them were right." She laughs and adds, "Oli decided it was a warning from Mary to us, about herself: Just A Nasty Exhibitionist. Or, what was the other one ... oh! Joking – Another Nefarious Experiment, I think it was. He made up so many things it could be code for."
"And no luck on the initials front?" I ask. I realise I'm leaning towards her, my body twitching with the excitement of a possible clue, even if it's one that the others have been mulling over for two years.
"Nope. Nothing that made sense, anyway. Plenty of people in the book and the town with each individual initial, but we couldn't make it work. I think, eventually, Sukie decided we were wasting our time." She adds something pretty and white and delicate to the bouquet and shows it to me. "How's this?"
"Perfect. Thank you, Olga," I say, and not just for the flowers. There's a tickle of a thrill inside me, something to sink my teeth into. I have nothing but time, here – nothing to do except figure out what J.A.N.E. means.
*
The library still doesn't have the book, so I cycle home to out the flowers in water, hoping Elizabeth has a couple of vases. My mind's so busy churning over the latest discovery that I don't think as I let myself into the house, flowers dripping into my bag, and I jump out of my skin when I see Elizabeth standing in the kitchen.
"Jesus!" I whisper to myself, halfway to a heart attack. I have a choice to make. I can ignore her and go to the sitting room, or make the first move.
It's hard, but I make the first move.
"Hi," I say, letting my bag drop to the kitchen table. Elizabeth's covered in paint again, splotches of orange and red and green and brown, like she's painting a harvest scene. I wonder what she is painting.
"Hello, Blaire." She's sitting, a newspaper in front of her open to the puzzle page; she's halfway through the codeword.
"I'm sorry, Elizabeth," I blurt out. "I'm sorry for yelling at you, and for calling you a stone-hearted bitch."
"I think it was a stone-cold heartless bitch, actually," she says. I can't tell if there's half a smile hiding somewhere. I doubt it.
"I'm sorry. I was upset."
"I've been called worse," she says. It seems like she's going to leave it there, until she puts down the pen and folds over the paper so the puzzle page doesn't tempt her. "Would you like a coffee?"
I'm not sure we're done with this conversation yet, but I would like a drink and at least she's talking to me. This is a step in the right direction. "Yes, please."
While she's at the kettle, I look around the kitchen with its low ceiling and wooden beams, and I think of how everything creaks, and I remember what Sukie said in one of her earlier podcasts. Everyone who has been in this town since 1994 has some connection to the tragedies. What's Elizabeth's?
"How long have you lived here?" I ask when her back is turned.
"Nineteen years," she says. "I bought this house in 2000, once I'd ascertained that Y2K hadn't brought the world to its knees."
I deflate. Not the answer I was looking for. And I'm not sure now's the right time to start getting personal with her, though who knows when she'll be happy to talk to me again.
She puts a coffee in front of me and cradles her own as she sits opposite, and neither of us speaks for a moment. I'm searching for the right words, the right questions, when she takes the floor.
"I'm sorry for being cold with you, Blaire." Her hands clasp tighter around her mug. "I know it's a poor excuse, but I have been alone for so long that this is hard for me; I don't know how to have company. I'm sorry that I've upset you. I don't want to upset you."
"I thought you hated me," I say. The words come out meek and meagre, and they make Elizabeth's face fall.
"You're my niece, Blaire. Why would I hate you?" There's genuine hurt in her eyes, and it's nice to know that she's probably being honest.
"Because I've come into your life with pretty much no warning and messed up your routine, and yelled at you and called you a bitch for not talking to me more."
"I can handle being called a bitch," she says. It's strange to hear that from my aunt, who must be in her sixties. I don't even know her age, don't even know if she was Mum's big sister or if it was the other way around.
"Still. I'm sorry."
"Me too."
"Did you hate Mum?" I ask. I might as well, while I've got her here and she's talking and neither of us are yelling.
"Of course not." She frowns at me. "Why would you think I hate either of you?"
There are a few reasons I can think of, but I just shrug. Elizabeth shakes her head.
"I loved your mother, Blaire. You won't know what it's like because you don't have siblings, but I idolised Anna. I looked up to her for years. I never hated her; nothing that happened between us had anything to do with hate. At least, not on my part. That, I can say for certain."
I don't get it. I want to scream that out loud, to throw a tantrum like a toddler and wail that I don't understand, but before I can vocalise just how baffled I am, Elizabeth stands up.
"I need to head back upstairs," she says. "I'm glad you're okay, Blaire." As she leaves, she nods at my bag. "Make sure to put your flowers in water."
She doesn't seem to miss a trick, and yet I feel like I'm missing everything.
I need to make a list of all my questions, everything that doesn't make sense. I need to get her to sit down and talk with me until the list is done and everything has been answered, and maybe then the air will finally be clear between us. I'm sick of the fog hanging around my aunt, like I'm not seeing the full picture.
But first, I need to find a couple of vases and give these flowers to Mum.
*