Secrets of the Tides (11 page)

‘You know something, Mum,’ she says as she moves towards the doorway, ‘I had almost convinced myself that I was wrong; that I had imagined it all these years. I told myself that deep down you really
did
still love me but that you just couldn’t show it any more, not after what happened.’ She lets out a bitter laugh. ‘I felt sorry for you. I figured you were . . . too . . . too damaged to show me how you feel. But I see now I was wrong.’ She shakes her head and gives a bitter little laugh. ‘God, was I wrong. The truth is that now that I carry the blame for what happened on
that one
day we can never go back. You’ll never forgive me, will you? Years later and you can still barely bring yourself to look at me.’

The room falls silent and finally, Helen’s head turns to meet Dora’s. Even from her distance she can see the flecks of golden-amber glinting in the depths of her mother’s green eyes.

‘I . . . I . . . I want . . . I’m trying . . .’ Helen stammers and then falls silent. She gives a defeated shrug of her shoulders and turns back to the garden once more.

‘ “
I
. . .
I
” what? What is it, Mum? What can’t you say to me? Why are you still punishing me like this? What is wrong with you? Why can’t you talk to me?’ She is at the door. She waits, tearful and wild-eyed, hoping that her mother will tell her she is wrong, that she will stand and pull her into her arms and murmur comforting words in her ear; but her mother’s shoulders remain twisted away from her and her gaze resolutely fixed on the swaying trees outside.

Dora stares a moment longer as another wave of anger floods through her body, then she turns and stalks out of the room. It takes all of her self-control not to slam the door on her way out.

CASSIE

Fourteen Years Earlier

It was bad news. Cassie knew it the moment Dora sprinted into her bedroom, tripping in her baggy pink pyjamas and bursting with her first burning question of the morning.

‘What’s a happy accident, Cassie?’ She threw herself shivering onto the end of the bed and shoved her feet under the duvet.

‘Where did you hear that?’ Cassie asked, pulled from a warm haze of sleep by Dora’s words and the shock of ice-cube toes against her skin.

‘Mum. On the phone last night to Violet,’ Dora explained. ‘Most accidents end in tears, right? That’s what Dad always says, anyway.’

‘Yeah,’ Cassie agreed. Grazed knees, broken limbs, smashed crockery, and crashed cars – she couldn’t think of one accident that didn’t end in upset. Nothing good, as far as she could tell, ever came of an accident.

‘Maybe we’re getting a puppy?’ Dora suggested hopefully.

‘Mmm . . .’ murmured Cassie doubtfully from beneath the covers. It was never going to happen.

‘Do you think the boiler will freeze up again at school and we’ll all be sent home?’

‘I don’t know, Dora,’ Cassie sighed wearily. ‘Why don’t you go and bother Dad with your questions. It’s too early.’

Dora stomped off with a little sniff, leaving Cassie to settle beneath her still-warm duvet; just enough time to try to block out the cloud of ugly thoughts suddenly filling her mind. No, nothing good ever came from an accident.

Richard and Helen sat the girls down that morning and told them the news.

‘A baby?’ Dora exclaimed.

‘That’s right,’ said Richard proudly.

Cassie and Dora looked at one another.

‘Is this the happy accident?’ Dora asked, turning back to their mother.

Helen burst out laughing. ‘Have you been eavesdropping on my phone calls?’

‘No . . . Well, maybe,’ Dora blushed.

‘Yes, I suppose it is,’ Helen agreed with a smile. ‘We weren’t planning on having any more children. It’s a bolt from the blue. But it turns out we’re rather pleased about it.’ Helen reached over and squeezed Richard’s hand. ‘We hope you will be too.’

‘Couldn’t you have used contraception?’ Cassie asked bluntly.

Richard coughed.

‘What’s contraception?’ Dora asked.

‘Well,’ said Helen patiently, ‘contraception is something two adults use when they make love, but don’t want to have a baby.’

‘It’s what Sharon Tate in Year Ten should have used,’ added Cassie knowingly to Dora.

‘Yes, well, like your mother says, sex and contraception are for adults. Adults who love each other,’ Richard stressed. ‘And you’re right, Cassie, we could have used contraception,’ he agreed, trying to cover his embarrassment. ‘But now that your mother is pregnant, we think it’s wonderful. So . . .’ he paused, expectation heavy in his voice, ‘what do
you
both think?’

‘I think it’s wonderful too,’ said Dora with a happy sigh. ‘A baby sister.’

‘Or a brother,’ Richard reminded.

‘It’ll be a sister,’ said Dora definitively.

There was silence. Cassie felt the weight of her parents’ expectation pressing down on her.

‘Well, Cassie, what do you think? Are you pleased?’

‘Yeah,’ Cassie said finally. ‘It’s great.’

There was a rush of air as Richard exhaled loudly. ‘We knew you’d be pleased. Didn’t I tell you, Helen? I
said
the girls would be pleased. A baby!’ He smiled broadly at them all. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll have you girls making up bottles and changing dirty nappies before you know it.’

‘Ewwww . . . dirty nappies, no thank you!’ Dora giggled.

‘A baby,’ Richard said again, shaking his head in wonder. ‘Who’d have thought this old house would see another Tide arrive into the world? Mum and Dad would have been so pleased.’

There was something about the softness in her father’s face that Cassie couldn’t bear to see. She turned away, focusing her gaze on the scene outside the kitchen window. The ground was covered in frost and above it hung a thin strip of pale sky. Higher up a blanket of dark cumulus lay heavily upon the air, as though trying to press it into the frosted earth below, suffocating it slowly. Suddenly, she longed to escape. Never mind the cold, she wanted to launch into the void outside and run and run until her lungs were bursting and her legs collapsed. Then she would lie on the ground, let the frost from the grass soak into her clothes, crawl over her skin and wrap her in a cloak of ice.

‘Earth to Cassie!’ Richard was waving his hands in front of her face, trying to get her attention. ‘Goodness, you were away with the fairies then! Did you hear me? I asked if you wanted another cup of tea?’

Cassie shook her head and turned back to the window. She couldn’t even bring herself to smile. A baby; it was not good news.

Pregnancy transformed Helen. Over the coming months she seemed to swell and ripen, like the giant peach in Dora’s favourite children’s story. She had never been one for housekeeping, but she suddenly took to washing, cleaning and, most unfortunately, cooking with a newly found zeal, until Richard gently suggested she might want to conserve some of her energy for the baby’s arrival; but the truth was none of them could stomach another of her elaborate and inedible family meals.

Her sister basked in Helen’s glow, flitting moth-like around her mother with irrepressible excitement. Helen had told them that the baby could already hear their voices and Dora chattered away to the bump about anything and everything, but Cassie felt self-conscious the one time she had tried and couldn’t think of anything to say, so she left it to Dora to babble idiotically at their mother’s belly.

Their father too, could barely contain his excitement. He bounded round the house each weekend, preparing for the arrival. There was a new nursery to paint and an old crib to sand and varnish. He built wooden shelves which he stocked with new books and toys, and attacked his projects with vigour, as if by hurling himself into them he could somehow encourage the baby to arrive more quickly.

It didn’t help that as Helen blossomed and grew, Cassie’s own body was undergoing a strange and uncomfortable transformation. Overnight, it seemed, hair had begun to sprout in awkward places. Her skin broke out in greasy red pimples and she got hot and sweaty at difficult times, particularly whenever Miss Mackintosh, the prettiest teacher at school, addressed her in class. And worst of all, breasts had started to grow where once had only been flat, pink nipples. She studied and poked at them in the bedroom mirror, half annoyed, half fascinated. She wasn’t sure she liked the new additions and felt self-conscious in her too-tight school blouses. Secretly she hoped that Helen might notice and suggest a shopping trip, like the other girls in her class; a mother–daughter rite of passage, it seemed: a new bra, a milkshake, and even her ears pierced if she were really lucky, like Tamara Hopkins. But Helen was preoccupied with her own life, and the new one growing inside her. As the days passed and Cassie’s growth spurt went unnoticed, she grew increasingly annoyed, until eventually she raided Helen’s purse, pocketed a twenty pound note and took herself off to the department store in Bridport.

All she wanted was a bra. How hard could it be? She drifted round the ground floor on her own for a while, trying to summon the courage to grab something from the bewildering array of lingerie on display. There were little lacy numbers, sporty T-shirt bras, pretty ones covered in flowers and bows, and giant hammock-like contraptions terrifying in their complex construction. Finally, a kindly grey-haired assistant with gold-rimmed spectacles perched high on her nose took pity on her. ‘Can I help you there, love?’ She smiled down at her.

Cassie would have run, but she really didn’t want to return home without a bra; it was getting impossible at school. Her shirt was virtually see-through and she’d seen some of the boys staring.

‘I need a bra, please,’ she finally muttered.

‘Well, you’re in the right place. Let’s get you into a changing room, shall we? I’ll measure you up and then you can try on some different styles. We’ll have you fixed up in no time, all right?’

Cassie nodded and followed the lady into the changing rooms. The assistant pulled out a tape measure and continued with her small talk as she took Cassie’s measurements. ‘You on your own today, love?’

‘Yes.’

‘First bra, is it?’

‘Yes.’

‘I remember when I got my first bra. My mum and I went to a funny little shop in Exeter. Terribly uncomfortable it was. Not like these things nowadays. So soft and stretchy. It’s the Lycra. It’s revolutionised life for us women. Whoever invented Lycra should be given a bloomin’ medal, if you ask me. Your mum off buying groceries, is she? Left you to get on with it alone, like a big girl?’

‘My mum’s dead.’ Cassie wasn’t sure why she said it, but the words were out of her mouth before she could stop them.

‘Oh!’ The woman’s hands froze and the tape measure unfurled into a long tangled heap on the floor. ‘Oh my gosh. I am sorry. There’s me prattling on. Oh you poor dear.’ There was an embarrassed silence. ‘Well, don’t you worry, my love. We’ll get you fixed up and comfy as we can in no time. You’re in expert hands here. Never met a pair of breasts I couldn’t fit.’

Cassie gave the lady a weak smile and was mortified to see the assistant had tears in her eyes. She didn’t really know why she’d lied, but it was out there now and she couldn’t take it back.

The woman made a big fuss of her. She measured her and then brought four bras back into the cubicle. She had Cassie try them all on and sent her on her way just twenty minutes later in her first virgin-white 32A-cup; a simple cotton number with a tiny purple bow in the centre. ‘She’d be very proud of you, she would,’ the lady told her on her way out of the shop.

Cassie looked at her in confusion.

‘Your mum, my love, she’d be so proud, you all grown-up . . . a proper woman!’ and she’d winked down at Cassie and made her blush with shame.

Cassie thought about it on the way home. The shop assistant was wrong. Her mother wasn’t proud of her. She hadn’t even noticed Cassie was growing into a woman. Her mum may as well be dead, for all the attention she gave her these days. Cassie sat simmering quietly as she rode the bus home on her own, cursing her mother, her unborn sibling and the new bra straps digging uncomfortably into her shoulders.

She was still angry at the world that evening, and the sight of Dora seated at the kitchen table, her head bent intently over the misshapen blanket she was learning to knit for the baby was too much. She straddled the chair next to Dora and waited for her sister to look up obligingly from the tangle of yellow wool in her lap.

‘You do realise,’ she said, ‘that things are going to be very different when this baby arrives, don’t you, Dora?’

Dora looked startled. She had been mid-count, her tongue still caught between her lips in concentration. ‘Dropped one! What was that, Cassie?’

‘I said things are going to be different when the baby arrives.’

‘Different how?’

‘Babies need a lot of attention and Mum and Dad . . . they’ll be tired and distracted.’

Dora nodded. ‘Uh-huh.’

Cassie continued. ‘It will be their favourite, you know, the
baby
of the family. It will get the most attention. You won’t be the youngest any more, Dora. You and I, we can’t compete with that, can we?’

Dora thought for a moment. ‘I didn’t think it was a competition. Surely Mum and Dad will just love us all the same? Anyway, they seem happy again, don’t they? I like it.’ Dora lifted the needles to regard her progress and Cassie noted several large holes in the long and strangely triangular-shaped fabric. The blanket was going to be a disaster but Dora just gave it a tug here and there and returned to clicking her needles together in a slow and steady rhythm.