Secrets of the Tides (30 page)

The horror had been never-ending. She still got chills thinking about the desperate hours she had spent pounding up and down the beach with her mother. Back and forth, back and forth they went until Cassie had thought the clank and crash of the pebbles under their feet would drive her crazy. She remembered, with guilt, that she had actually been relieved when the police had suggested gently that they return home. But the hardest moments were still to come; like when their mother rounded on her and Dora in the kitchen. Cassie had never seen her so angry. It was terrifying. She’d tried to speak up. She’d wanted to say something then. It was obvious Helen lay the most blame on Dora for leaving the Crag, for meeting up with Steven, but Helen had held up her hand and the words Cassie had wanted to speak, to defend her sister, stuck in her throat and she’d swallowed them back with a burning shame.

Richard had arrived home an hour later. Cassie heard the wheels of his car crunch on the gravel, his quick footsteps and then the slam of the front door behind him. She’d rubbed her red, puffy eyes and left her bedroom.

As she’d descended the staircase she’d seen her parents in an embrace in the hallway. Her mother had her back to her but she could see Richard’s face. He was pale and anxious and his face lay half hidden in the shadow cast by the lampshade hanging in the hall. He held Helen to him with one arm, and stroked her hair with the other while she sobbed and clung to him tightly. He was talking to her in low murmurs, the exact same way she’d seen a horse whisperer speak to a wild foal in a documentary she had watched. Yet he must have heard her footsteps because he looked up as she approached and as their eyes locked Cassie remembered pausing, suddenly unsure whether to join them. For a moment it was as if they were all suspended in time; Cassie frozen on the stairs, one foot just hanging in mid-air and Richard looking up at her, his hand pale against Helen’s brown hair while he just stared and stared. She couldn’t read his expression. It was as if he wasn’t really seeing her at all and she was afraid, but then, suddenly, the moment was gone. With a nod of his head, he beckoned her to them and she flew down the stairs, Richard opening his arms and the three of them clinging to each other, crying and hugging.

She remembered they stood there like that for a long time, holding on for dear life, each of them lost in their own world of pain.

It was as if they were drowning.

Drowning slowly in the tight embrace.

She was wide awake now. She knew it wouldn’t matter if she reached across now or in an hour or so to turn her bedside lamp off; she wouldn’t sleep again that night. It was all upon her at once, raw and unbearable. Twelve months on and it still felt as fresh as it had that first night. She glanced across at her bedside table. The alarm clock showed 03:14 a.m. There were still hours of darkness to get through. She pulled her duvet up to her chin and closed her eyes but it was no use.

Sam had phoned around the same time the police had packed up and cleared out. Cassie’s heart had sunk as Richard handed her the phone. She’d known it was too much to hope she might just disappear with her parents and never be heard from again, but she’d clung to the thought anyway. She didn’t want to talk to her. It was best they just stuck to their story and tried to forget all about it. She took the phone from her father and turned her back on him.

‘Hello?’

‘It’s me. It’s Sam.’

‘Hi.’

‘Are you OK?’

Cassie didn’t know what to say so she stayed quiet.

‘Is there any news?’

‘No.’

It was Sam’s turn to remain silent and there was nothing but the distant hum of the telephone exchange and the quietness of the two girls breathing for a moment.

‘Have the police talked to you again?’

Cassie looked around for her father. He was gazing out the window, washing up mugs in the sink and looked to be a million miles away. She cleared her throat, ‘They took statements from all of us . . . but they don’t think they’ll find anything now. They think he was swept off the rocks.’ Her voice was barely a whisper. She could hardly say the words.

Sam made a funny strangled sound. ‘God, Cassie, it’s so awful. I can’t bear it.’

‘You don’t have to, do you? He wasn’t your brother.’ As the words left her lips Cassie registered it was the first time she had used the past tense to describe Alfie. She felt sick with the realisation.

‘I know, I mean . . .’ Sam struggled to find the words. ‘I’m sorry. It’s just so awful. I’m so, so sorry. I don’t know what to say.’ She paused again. ‘Cassie, do you think you should have told the police about—’

Cassie didn’t want to hear any more. ‘I have to go now. Someone needs the phone. Thanks for calling.’

‘Wait, Cassie, don’t go—’

But Cassie had hung up before Sam could say another word.

‘Who was that?’ her father asked, his face still turned to the window.

‘Oh, just a friend from school – they wanted to say sorry about Alfie.’

Richard gave a nod. ‘Good of them.’

‘I guess.’ She left the room before he could ask anything else.

Cassie had waited and waited for the sledgehammer of blame to come crashing at her door. She knew it was only a matter of time, and as the house emptied of well-meaning strangers and police officials, there was nowhere left to hide. She braced herself for her parents’ questions and recriminations. It would be nothing that she hadn’t already blamed herself for a million times already, but she knew it would be worse coming from them. To look into her parents’ eyes and admit
yes, it was all my fault
would be more than she thought she could take. But it was what she deserved and it would be a relief in the long run, she decided. She spent hours in her bedroom, braced for the knock at the door.

But it never came.

Instead, the fights began.

They started over the funeral.

Richard wanted one. Helen did not.

‘There’s no body,’ Helen had said as she stacked the dishwasher in the kitchen one morning, carelessly crashing plates and cutlery into random spaces. She spoke in the flat monotone her voice had taken on ever since the police had left. ‘Why would we have a funeral if we don’t have a body? That inquest was a joke, nothing but pure conjecture and speculation. I don’t know how you sat through it like you did.’

Cassie froze. She was in the laundry folding clothes and didn’t want to draw attention to herself.

‘Because it was the right thing to do,’ Richard replied, ‘just as a funeral is now the right thing to do. We need to say goodbye.’

‘I will say goodbye,’ Helen said, ‘when I see his body.’

‘Darling, you know that might never happen. The police explained this to us. All their evidence points towards his drowning.’ Richard was trying to be patient but an edge had entered his voice. It was clearly a wearing conversation for them both. ‘Look, will you just stop that for a moment? This is important. The dishes can wait.’

There was a crash as bowls hit the kitchen counter. ‘I just don’t understand why you are so keen to move on, Richard. I would have thought that you, of all people, would want to get
all
the answers. You’re usually such a stickler for the details.’ Cassie heard the fury in her mother’s voice. ‘Shouldn’t we try to find out what really happened to our son before we just give up hope and move on with our lives?’ Helen paused. ‘You know, I wish I could forget him sometimes. I’d like to blank this whole nightmare out too. But it’s just too soon for me.’

‘I haven’t forgotten him!’ Richard blasted. ‘How could you even suggest such a hateful thing?’ He was quiet for a moment. Cassie had to strain to catch his next words. ‘I am consumed by Alfie. I am living this nightmare each and every day, just like you, since he disappeared. I ask myself every moment of every day what I could have done . . . if I might have done things differently . . . how I might have protected him, been a better father to him . . .’ His voice wavered. ‘How I could have saved him.’

‘And you think I don’t?’ Helen had cried out, her voice suddenly hysterical with pain and rage.

‘I don’t know, Helen. Do you? I still don’t really understand where you were that day or why the kids took him to the beach. We had rules – strict rules about that. Alfie was not to go there without one of us.’

‘Oh, get off your bloody high horse, Richard. The
kids
, as you call them, aren’t
kids
any more. They’re teenagers . . . almost adults. I had to go onto campus. What was I supposed to do, take Alfie with me?’

Richard ignored the question. ‘Dora told me you asked them to look after Alfie. She said you gave them permission to go to the beach. She said you gave her the money for the ice creams.’

There was a pause. When Helen next spoke her voice was low and cold. ‘Richard, have you been talking to Dora about this behind my back? Are you blaming me for what happened that day? Are you saying this is my fault?’

He didn’t respond, instead choosing to change tack. ‘I’d just like to know what was so important at the university that it couldn’t wait until term started.’

‘For God’s sake, Richard, you’ve got a nerve. Have I ever asked you what’s so important that you have to spend days up in London, working all hours?’

‘That’s different.’

‘Is it? Why?’

‘Because I wasn’t supposed to be looking after the kids during the school holidays,’ Richard blasted back at her.

Helen started to say something but Richard shouted over the top of her. ‘If you’d told me you had work commitments maybe I could have shifted things around at the office. I could have worked from home that day. But you never mentioned that you had to be on campus. So how could I have known?’

‘It was a last minute arrangement,’ Helen screamed. ‘The Dean needed us to come in and discuss timetables and—’ She stopped herself suddenly. ‘Seriously, Richard, what are we achieving here? Do you really want me to justify myself? Are you honestly looking for someone to blame? What about the girls? What about Cassie, spending the day doing God knows what with her new friends? Or Dora, playing on the beach, frolicking around with boys up in the car park when she should have been with Alfie?’

Cassie held her breath.

‘Don’t be ridiculous, Helen. Dora isn’t to blame for this.’ Richard’s voice quietened again. Cassie couldn’t hear what he said next. She put her ear right up to the door but it was no use. It was Helen’s voice she heard next.

‘Please, please just stop,’ she sobbed. ‘None of this is helping. None of this is going to bring Alfie back.’

‘I know,’ Richard replied coldly. ‘And that’s exactly why I think we should hold the funeral.’

And round they went, a merry-go-round of grief and anger, insults and tears.

Cassie tiptoed out of the laundry room, her clothes bundled under her arm. She didn’t want to hear any more.

In the end Richard had got his way. The funeral had been held a few weeks later on a cold autumnal afternoon. Cassie dressed carefully in an old black skirt and dark polo neck and escorted her sobbing sister to the front of the chapel. The church was packed; its pews were full of familiar faces. She saw Sam standing at the back of the church with her parents as she walked by. For a split second their eyes locked. Sam seemed to be gazing at her urgently, as if she had something she wanted to say, but Cassie couldn’t bring herself to stop and speak to her so she just gave her a little nod and continued to the front of the church, trying to ignore the sensation of the girl’s eyes boring into the back of her neck for the rest of the service.

She remembered mouthing along silently to the hymns, and the sickening, dentist-drill feeling in the pit of her stomach. Someone, she didn’t know who, had thought to put some of Alfie’s favourite toys up near the coffin. It was heartbreaking to see his favourite little wooden trains lined up at the front, and his blue and yellow tricycle, a stark reminder of all the frenzied trips he had taken around the house on it, scuffing the skirting boards and driving Helen to distraction with the noise. Never again would she see that anarchic grin as he skidded around the house. Never again would she discover him in her bedroom, guilt written all over his face with his hands caked in make-up and loops of her necklaces draped around his little body. Never again would he joyfully catch snowflakes on his tongue and declare them ‘yummy’, or pester her relentlessly to play spaceships and dinosaurs, or to read him his favourite stories. Never again would he lean his little head against her leg and ask her where the moon had gone in the morning.

She remembered her father standing up at the lectern and with shaking hands and trembling voice, talking about his ‘beautiful boy’ until his voice faltered and the pastor stepped in to pat him awkwardly on the shoulder and offer a comforting word. She remembered her mother’s hysterical sobs as the heartbreakingly tiny coffin, holding nothing but air, was lifted from its stand at the front of the church and carried out into the grey afternoon light. And she remembered standing outside in the graveyard, holding herself so completely still, her lips so tightly shut, her body so rigid with tension, terrified that if she were to let go for just a moment, even for just a second, she might open her mouth and scream at the very top of her lungs: ‘It’s all my fault! I killed him.’

After the funeral, when it had finally sunk in that Alfie wasn’t coming home, the four of them had found themselves faced with the sorry task of picking up their lives. It struck Cassie now, looking back, that this had actually been the hardest time of all. No matter how painful and turbulent those first few days immediately after his disappearance had been, there had been something about the knife-edge anxiety and tension that had kept them all going; a strange adrenalin born out of the extreme situation that gave them the strength to dress each morning, head downstairs, and face the brutal days head on. But after the funeral, ‘normal’ life came knocking.

They reacted to it in different ways.

Her father disappeared, retreating to his darkened bedroom to lie amongst the shadows with his face turned to the wall. When he eventually stirred he was like a shadow himself – ghostly pale, creeping around the house with all evidence of his easy smile and jolly disposition gone.