Seven Summers, page 13
“Your grandparents?”
“Yeah. Did anyone help you?”
“My uncle offered when he came from Spain for the funeral, but I wasn’t ready to do it then.”
“Of course you weren’t.”
“And Michael came over a few times, but I don’t think either of us is very good at handling the other’s grief. If I got upset about something, it would set him off and vice versa. In the end, I figured it would be easier if I just cracked on by myself. He didn’t seem to mind.” I tilt my head to one side. “You said you didn’t want to go to the beach at Perranporth yesterday. That’s where you used to live, right?”
“Yep,” he replies tersely, walking over to the window and staring down at my converted studio. “I keep trying to psyche myself up.”
“Do you want someone to go with you?” I ask.
He looks over his shoulder at me. “Who?”
“Me?” I slide my back down the wall and sit on the floor, patting the space next to me in invitation.
His lips curve into a small smile and he shrugs, sitting down opposite me instead, his back resting against the bed. “I don’t know. Maybe next year.”
“You’re coming back again, then?” I ask with a grin.
“Guess so.” He smiles and stretches out his legs so they lie on either side of mine. “Do you reckon you’ll be here?” He knocks back the last of his coffee.
I let out a snort. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“Why not?”
“How can I?” I reply with a frown. “Who would look after Michael?”
“Shirley?”
“No, he needs family around. I can’t desert him.”
We fall silent.
“So what will you be doing next summer?” he asks, looking around the room.
“God knows. I can’t imagine living with Michael again. He lost it with me this morning after I walked in on him in the kitchen, doing his laundry in his underpants. I squawked and told him to put some clothes on and he shouted that it was his house and if he wanted to do his laundry in his underpants, then he bloody well would.”
Finn chuckles.
“My parents always said that he liked his independence, but he was over at our house so much that I didn’t really believe it. Now I’m grossly aware that I’m in his space, getting in his way. He’s so cross with me all the time. The sooner I can come back and live here, the better. But I don’t need all this room, and yet I couldn’t bear to sell this house. I don’t know what to do.”
Downstairs, the washing machine beeps to let me know it’s finished its cycle.
“I need to put the next load in or the sheets won’t be ready in time,” I say, getting to my feet.
Finn follows me back downstairs.
“Have you ever thought about converting this place?” he asks.
“In what way?”
“You could convert it so you only rent out the downstairs space and then you could live upstairs during the summer, only using the rest of the house when you don’t have people here.”
“But then it would only be a one-bedroom for rentals.”
“Do you really need this side-door access?” he asks as we head into the wide corridor off the laundry. “If you could fit a washing machine in the kitchen and make the kitchen door your main access to the garden and driveway, you could lose the laundry and cloakroom and turn this whole space into a kids’ room with bunk beds.”
I take a moment to look around.
“And you could convert the big main hallway with the front door into two entrance spaces, one that goes straight up the stairs to your apartment and another that works for guests. Upstairs, you could convert the big bathroom into a kitchen and turn Michael’s or your parents’ room into a living room.”
My mind is spinning at the possibilities he’s opened up.
“Did you ever think about becoming an architect?” I ask, beyond impressed.
“I never allowed myself to dream about that sort of thing,” he mutters, averting his gaze. “But you should ask Tarek.”
“Tarek?” I’m caught on the look on his face a moment ago, echoes of what Mum told me playing in my mind: His mother was a very troubled soul. I hate that he didn’t feel he could dream when he was younger. I want to wrap my arms around him, but I resist the impulse.
“He’s at university doing his Architecture Part 2, and he works part-time for a practice in Truro.”
“I forgot that he was training to be an architect,” I say. “We had a whole conversation about it at one of his and Dan’s house parties.”
The washing machine starts to beep again and Finn reaches past me to turn it off.
“Thank you,” I say, squeezing his arm and prompting him to look at me. “You’ve really given me something to think about.”
Something positive for a change.
19
It’s Saturday, one week later, and I’m at work, glad to have a distraction from the swiftly approaching anniversary of my parents’ deaths.
I’m cooking Sunday lunch tomorrow to mark the occasion and I’d hoped that the experience I’d gained might mean that Michael and I would be able to relax together and share some fond memories of Mum and Dad.
But then he went and invited Shirley, as well as Timothy, a friend he met years ago at a social club for people with special educational needs. My parents used to take him three times a week, but he hasn’t wanted to go since we lost them. He’s still in touch with a couple of his friends, though, and of them, Timothy is the closest.
Tomorrow is going to be tough no matter what, but it will be even tougher if I have to entertain people I hardly know, though I’m glad Michael is reaching out to his friends. I just want to climb into bed and spend the whole day with my head under the covers. I’ll be relieved when it’s over.
Sometimes I wonder how Michael is experiencing his grief. He cried when Mum and Dad died, and I’ve seen him cry many times since, but he seems to bounce back from bouts of sadness very quickly, so his periods of anguish seem shorter and more transient. He lives in the present, concerning himself mostly with what’s happening today or tomorrow or next week. He looks forward, not backward, and he has an enviable ability to leave the past more or less in the past.
But occasionally he’ll say something that reminds me that of course he is hurting too.
This evening, as I was leaving the cottage, he told me that he misses the Austin-Healey.
It was the classic car our parents were driving when they were killed.
His statement knocked the air out of my lungs. Even now, as I think about it, I’m fighting back tears.
“Why don’t you call it a night, love,” Chas says to me, rubbing my back. “Go on, we can manage here.”
“Thank you.” I’m blinking rapidly as I grab my bag and sling it over my shoulder.
Mixamatosis are performing their last song and the space around the stage is packed. Finn is somewhere in the middle of the crowd, watching them.
I try to swallow the lump in my throat as I push my way to the front door. I’m halfway down the steps before the despair welling up inside my chest becomes all-consuming. I want to go home, but I can’t. My home, I mean. I don’t want to return to Michael’s.
On impulse, I veer right toward the beach, the sounds of Seaglass carrying through the night air behind me. A cheer goes up as the last song comes to a raucous end, and a few moments later the stereo begins to pump out another rock song.
My phone vibrates in my bag.
“Where did you go?” Finn asks when I answer it, his voice muffled by the bass thumping around him.
“I’m at the beach,” I reply.
He ends the call and I turn around, watching with tears in my eyes as he jogs down the stairs and strides in my direction.
“It’s the anniversary of their deaths tomorrow,” I tell him in a choked voice as he reaches me, pulling me to his chest.
He cradles the back of my head with his hand and holds me close as I cry.
“I told you not to be nice to me,” I mumble against him after a while.
“Shut up,” he mutters, releasing me.
We walk in silence toward the shoreline.
“How’s Michael feeling about tomorrow?” he asks.
“It’s hard to know. He answers ‘fine’ to everything. Well, no, sometimes he’ll tell me that he’s ‘not great,’ but in the past ‘not great’ has meant that he’s in terrible pain and needs to be hospitalized for a chest infection, so that says it all, really.”
I still remember my parents relaying to me how much he’d downplayed that chest infection. It’s another warning I know I need to heed in case it happens again.
Finn takes my hand and squeezes it, giving me encouragement to go on.
“Earlier he told me that he misses Dad’s Austin-Healey.”
He glances across at me. “That’s the car they were driving?”
I nod, my face crumpling. He comes to a stop and tries to pull me into his arms again, but I wrench myself away.
“If they’d been driving their BMW, they probably would have survived.”
A stillness comes over him.
“What are you trying to say?” he asks warily.
We never spoke about it. I couldn’t bring myself to voice my suspicions out loud, but then I read the police report and did some research and my worst fears were confirmed. The guilt has intensified, poisoning me.
“They weren’t driving their BMW.” I bite back another onslaught of tears. “I was. I took us to the festival in it.”
“Please don’t tell me you blame yourself,” Finn says with horror, and then his expression transforms into shock. “Do you blame me?”
“I blame us,” I whisper. “If I hadn’t been so into you, they’d still be alive.”
He shakes his head fervently. “Fuck, Liv, no. Please don’t say that. Please don’t do that.”
“I can’t help it!” I cry.
“Fuck!” he says again, stepping away and raking his hand through his hair. He stares at the ocean with a bleak look on his face.
I should send him away to punish myself, but all I’ve done in the past two weeks is get closer to him.
I’ll pay my penance in the pain I’ll feel when he leaves.
I walk forward and slip my arms around his waist, resting my cheek against his back. He slowly places his hands over mine.
“I’m so lonely, Finn. My grief is so big and I feel so small and there’s no one to share it with.”
He hangs his head.
“Will you stay with me tonight?” I whisper against his soft T-shirt, almost too scared to ask.
“I fly back to LA on Monday,” he replies hoarsely.
“I don’t mean to . . . I just . . . I don’t want to be alone. Will you hold me? Please?”
I sense his hesitation, but I’m gratified when he nods.
* * *
Michael’s cottage is dark and quiet when we enter. I’m conscious of every beat of my heart as we creep upstairs and into my room. I gather my pajamas and head to the bathroom while Finn sits on the edge of my bed.
He’s under the covers when I return to the room, and when I pull them back and slip inside, I see that he’s stripped down to his boxer shorts. He opens up his arms and I snuggle in close, and after a while, some of my sadness seeps away.
20
I wake up on the anniversary of my parents’ deaths feeling as though I’ve drunk down grief and it’s solidified inside me like plaster, setting in a twisted, mangled form. There is nothing beautiful about it; it’s pure pain.
Finn starts awake beside me.
“Hey,” he whispers, reaching out to me.
I swallow and swallow, emotion gathering like a storm inside my chest. I need to cry, but once I start, I don’t know if I’ll be able to stop and the last thing I want to do is wake Michael.
“Get dressed,” Finn orders, climbing out of bed and reaching for his jeans. “Let’s go for a walk.”
* * *
Tears stream down my cheeks as I follow him along a narrow path banked on either side by tall, prickly brambles and feathery ferns. We round a curve in the track and up ahead is the ocean, steel gray under the lightening sky. Heading off on the left-hand fork, we walk in silence past trees so bent and broken by the wind that their insides look as though they’ve been scooped up and spat out.
I feel like one of those trees: hollow, but still living. Half-dead, half-alive.
The line between the sea and sky is almost indecipherable and it’s so still I can barely make out the swell of rolling waves far below.
But the farther we walk, the higher the sun rises above the horizon and the more vibrant the world around us becomes. The last time I was here, the dying ferns had turned the cliffs to the color of rust. Now it’s a landscape of undulating moorland carpeted with a jewel-like crust of golden gorse, amethyst heather, and emerald bracken.
When the water’s color fluctuates from aquamarine to teal and the wind picks up, Finn slows to a stop. Up ahead is a rocky outcrop, and beyond it the green cliffs roll down to an expanse of creamy-white beach.
I cast a look at Finn. He’s staring straight ahead, his jaw clenched, the wind whipping his dark hair into a frenzy.
And it hits me: this is where they found his mother’s clothes, where she took her own life, jumping from the cliff.
I’m not alone in my grief.
Is that why he’s brought me here? To share my pain?
“I promise you it will get easier, Liv.” He repeats what he told me last summer, his voice sounding low and tortured.
“How did you cope?” I ask with anguish at his pain—and mine. “You were so young.”
“I’d already lived every day in fear, wondering how she was next going to hurt herself, hurt us. In some ways it was a relief when she chose to leave.” He swallows hard and glances at me before staring at the ground. “I’ve never said that out loud to anyone.”
I loop my arm through his and press against his side.
“Have you been back here since that day?”
It’ll be nine years as of this Christmas.
He shakes his head. “I couldn’t bring myself to come up here last summer.”
“Why did you come back to Cornwall after all this time?”
“My grandparents had been begging me to for years. They’ve brought Liam and Tyler to the States twice, but they wanted me to get to know them, really get to know them, on their own turf. And I’m still not sure that I have,” he confides.
“What do you mean?”
“Liam’s all right, but Tyler . . . He’s so angry. I think he’s angry at me for leaving, as though I abandoned him too, after Mum did. But I didn’t have a choice,” he says jaggedly. “My grandparents didn’t have room for me—their place is tiny. My dad was the only one who was willing to step up and be a father.” He sighs. “I guess if my nan and granddad passed away anytime soon, Tyler and Liam would come and live with me.”
“Wouldn’t you move back here if that happened?” I ask with surprise. “If they’re still at school?”
I watch his Adam’s apple bob up and down as he swallows, and then his gaze reluctantly travels to mine.
“I couldn’t, Liv,” he says to me heavily.
“Why not?”
“It hurts, being here.”
I stare at him, my heart contracting.
His eyes are dark as he implores me to understand. “I have so many bad memories of this place. My life is in LA. My dad’s there, my older brother and sister, nephew, my friends and my band . . . I was broken when I left Cornwall, but LA is home now. I’m happy there.”
I suddenly want to cry again. I bite my lip, fighting the impulse as he unloops our arms and puts his around my waist.
“Have you sculpted anything lately?” he asks softly.
I shake my head, swallowing. “I don’t have the heart. I know it will help at some point, but I’m still too raw. I think I need to sit with the pain for a while, let it work its way out of me. Or learn how to let it become a part of me, learn to live with it.”
“Will you sculpt them, do you think?”
I hesitate before nodding. “One day.”
* * *
Later that afternoon, I’m sitting on the floor of Michael’s living room with my back against the wall, laughing at a story Amy is telling us.
Today has turned out nothing like I’d imagined it. Instead of being seated alone with Michael at a table, reminiscing about Mum and Dad and trying to hold it together, we’re surrounded by our friends.
When Rach and Amy heard that Michael had invited Shirley and Timothy for lunch, they asked if they could come too and insisted on bringing fish and chips from the shop in the village.
Finn is also here, and because there’s not enough room for everyone at the table, we’ve pushed back the sofas and are all crammed together on the floor around the coffee table, even Shirley.
“Get off!” Michael snaps, batting away Rach, who has just nicked a chip from his plate.
“Sorry, that one looked particularly crunchy,” she replies cheekily.
Michael cranes his neck to look at her plate. “I’ll take . . . that one!” he declares, picking up a fat chip.
“Oi, that was much bigger than the one I stole,” she complains.
My heart expands as I watch them. I’ve always loved the way my friends interact with Michael. They adore each other. The hugs Michael gave both Amy and Rach when they arrived were full of warmth.
“Shall I bring some more chips through from the kitchen?” Finn asks, knowing that we’re nowhere close to consuming our quota.
“No need,” Michael answers before anyone else can, stealing another chip from Rach.
