Autumn Dreams at Mermaids Point, page 2
Typing…
Go back and see if the door is open. Those old cottages have a latch that works from the outside.
Of course, Sylvia would know that. She seemed to know everything about everything in the Point.
As though sensing Nerissa’s hesitancy, Sylvia sent a follow-up message.
Just try the door, Ner, we can’t leave her on her own if she’s upset.
Against her better judgement, Nerissa retraced her steps.
The front window was now closed, the curtains still drawn tightly. ‘This is a big mistake,’ she muttered under her breath as she reached for the old-fashioned metal latch and pressed her thumb to it. When it clunked down, Nerissa took a deep breath and forced herself to nudge open the door. ‘Linda? I’m so sorry to intrude,’ she said as she stepped onto the stone flags of the hallway floor and edged the door closed behind her. ‘I just want to make sure you’re okay and then I promise I’ll go away and leave you in peace.’
Stepping into the darkened interior of the front room, Nerissa’s gaze flickered over the array of dirty cups and plates on the table, past the small pile of crumpled tissues on the sofa cushion and met Linda’s reddened eyes. Her mousy hair hung limp around her face, and the thickness of the seam on the sleeve of the cardigan she was huddled into suggested she had pulled it on inside out. Moving cautiously the way one might around a skittish animal, Nerissa made her way to the nearby armchair and sat down. With the window closed, the heat was stifling, but Linda didn’t appear to notice. Reaching out, Nerissa pressed the mute button on the remote control, cutting off a canned laughter track. Tension settled as thick and unpleasant as the air.
‘Is there anything I can get for you?’ Nerissa asked, hoping a neutral question might help her ease her way into the conversation.
‘I told you to go away.’ Linda punctuated the words with a noisy blow of her nose into a sodden-looking tissue.
Nerissa leaned forward and nudged the Kleenex box on the table nearer to Linda. ‘I thought you might have learned from the way Sylvia and the rest of the family invaded your home that us Morgans aren’t very good at minding our own business.’
When Linda’s husband, Nigel, had died unexpectedly six weeks previously, their son Jake had gone home for the first time in ten years to deal with the fallout. Unwilling to let him handle things on his own, the Morgan clan, minus Nerissa, had descended, uninvited, to help him manage the arrangements, and to try and get Linda back on her feet a bit. It had seemed like she was making progress, and they’d all hoped a stay in the Point might give Linda a bit of breathing space and a chance to make some decisions about her future, without being surrounded by constant reminders of what she’d lost. From the state of both Linda and the little cottage, those hopes were misplaced.
‘True.’ Linda gave just the glimmer of what might have been a smile, and Nerissa felt her shoulders relax.
‘If you really want me to go away, I will,’ Nerissa promised. ‘But at least let me get you a cup of tea or a cold drink first.’
Silence stretched long enough for the knot of tension in Nerissa’s shoulders to return and she was about to get up when Linda sighed and said, ‘There’s some sparkling water in the fridge.’
Nerissa took her time fetching them both a drink, giving Linda a minute or two to collect herself. Once she’d set the glasses on the coffee table, Nerissa circled the sofa and tugged open the curtains a couple of inches to let in a little bit of light and propped the upper window back open. By the time she retook her seat, Linda’s face was dry and she was holding the cool glass against one cheek. After a sip of her own water to wet her lips, Nerissa took a breath and hoped she could find the right words.
‘Grief is a funny thing, and it doesn’t come with any rules.’ When Linda remained silent, she stumbled on. ‘I… I lost someone very special to me. It was a long time ago now, but some days are harder than others. It would’ve been his birthday today.’
‘I’m sorry for your loss.’
When Nerissa glanced across, it was to find Linda’s attention was fixed on her, rather than her glass. ‘Thank you. Like I said, it was a long time ago. I just wanted you to know that I understand some of what you’re going through.’
‘Do you?’ Linda’s laugh was harsh and bitter. ‘I don’t expect you do at all.’
Startled, Nerissa took another sip of her water to cover her shock at the ugliness in Linda’s tone. ‘Well, of course, everyone’s experience is different. Gareth and I had barely a year together, not a lifetime shared like you and Nigel.’
‘And you loved him.’
Oof. Those four words and the untold story they hid all but stole the breath from Nerissa’s lungs. Wishing like hell she’d ignored Sylvia’s urgings and carried on her way to the café, Nerissa braced herself for another peek beneath the lid of the Pandora’s box she’d inadvertently opened. ‘From the little bits Laurie has told me, I understand Nigel could be difficult.’
‘Difficult?’ Linda laughed that bitter laugh again. ‘Bloody impossible, more like.’ Her head turned sharply away as though she hadn’t meant to uncork the bottle of repressed feelings and didn’t know how to stopper it again before she said any more.
Nerissa didn’t blame her. She wasn’t at all sure she was the right person for Linda to be talking to about this, but then again, who was? Poor Jake had enough on his plate coming to terms with his own grief – not that he’d shown a flicker of emotion. Well, maybe things were different when he and Laurie were alone, but when he was around the rest of the family, it was as if he’d shrugged it off and was determined to focus only on the future. Nerissa didn’t blame him for that either, perhaps if she’d done a bit more of that she wouldn’t be suspended as she was in a life half-lived. Her hand hovered at the base of her throat, drawn once more to the engagement ring she hadn’t worn long enough to develop a tan line on her finger. No, she couldn’t do anything to help Jake, but Linda was a different matter. ‘Tell me.’
Linda’s shoulders slumped, her body curling in upon itself. ‘He was so charming when we met. I was sixteen and it was the first time I’d been allowed to go to the Apple Blossom fair without my parents. I went with a little gang of pals from school. Nigel and his friends were a bit older and they pushed in the queue with us just as we got to the dodgems. Somehow they split us up and I ended up riding in the car with him.’ She raised her glass and gulped at her water like a survivor crawling out of the desert, not stopping until its contents were drained. ‘God forgive me for saying so, but sitting down in that bloody bumper car was the worst mistake of my life.’
‘Given everything that’s happened, I don’t think anyone would blame you for feeling that way.’ In the darkest, quietest moments of the past twenty years Nerissa had wished Gareth had never shown up on her doorstep.
Linda’s next words were barely above a whisper. ‘But then I wouldn’t have Jake, and what kind of woman, what kind of mother wishes away a life that gave them a child?’
‘Regretting your life with Nigel and wishing Jake away aren’t the same thing,’ Nerissa responded in a fierce voice, furious with the dead stranger who’d tied Linda up in so many Gordian knots.
‘He’d have been better off without us,’ Linda muttered.
Reaching across the narrow coffee table, Nerissa grabbed Linda’s limp hand and gave it a hard shake. ‘Look at me.’ It took a few moments, but when their eyes finally met, Nerissa tightened her grip. ‘I’m not here to absolve you of guilt for past actions, that’s something for you and Jake to sort out between yourselves, but you’re free now to make your own decisions about how you move into the future.’
‘But that’s the whole problem. I don’t know how to make those kinds of decisions.’ Linda placed her empty glass on the table, then covered her face in her hands. ‘Nigel did everything, and I went along with it.’ Her hands fell limply to her lap. ‘I knew I’d made a terrible mistake within the first six months of our marriage, but when I spoke to my parents, they told me I’d made my bed and I had to lie in it. I don’t think they really understood how difficult it was, or maybe I didn’t explain it well enough…’ She glanced across at Nerissa. ‘We weren’t the sort of family that really talked about those sorts of things.’
Nerissa’s heart ached for the woman. Nerissa had grown up in a boisterous, loving family, and though she was a bit more introverted than her older brother, she’d always had someone to talk to, someone who would listen. Yes, she’d been told a harsh truth a time or two by their mother, but she’d never been brushed off in the way it sounded like Linda had been. She wondered what her mum would’ve made of Linda’s situation and a wave of longing struck her. Merrow Morgan had passed away three years ago – long enough to adjust to her not being around, but it was another hole in her life that felt too big.
Focus. Giving herself a little mental shake, Nerissa rose from the armchair and rounded the coffee table to take a seat on the sofa beside Linda, taking her unresisting hand once more. ‘I don’t want you to feel under pressure to talk if you’re not comfortable with it.’
Linda returned her touch with the tiniest of squeezes. ‘You are kind. It’s just another thing I don’t know how to do. I feel… useless. A waste of space. I shouldn’t have come here, I’m a millstone around Jake’s neck.’
‘I’m sure he doesn’t feel that way,’ Nerissa said, not being entirely truthful, but Linda’s confidence didn’t seem like it would take another blow. ‘But I understand you not wanting to feel like a burden to him. Why don’t you let me help you – I know Sylvia would say the same if she were here. You’re not on your own, Linda. We’d like to be your friends, if that’s something you’d like too.’
Linda swallowed so hard, Nerissa could see the bob in her throat. ‘I don’t know how to be a friend. Not any more. Nigel never wanted me to spend time with anyone other than him, even when he was at work.’
‘Oh, fuck Nigel!’
The two of them shared an equally shocked look before they both burst out laughing.
‘I’m sorry,’ Nerissa gasped around her giggles. ‘I shouldn’t have said that.’
Linda raised her free hand to wipe the tears from the corners of her eyes. ‘Yes, you should, and I should have too – a long time ago.’ Tilting her head back, she opened her mouth and yelled, ‘Fuck you, Nigel Smith!’
Nerissa couldn’t stop another snort of laughter escaping. ‘Bravo!’
With a long sigh, Linda closed her eyes and her hand tightened around Nerissa’s palm. Nerissa pressed back, giving what strength and support she could and the time to process what must be a tumult of emotions.
When Linda finally spoke, her words broke Nerissa’s heart. ‘I don’t know who I am.’
‘You’re free now, Linda. Free to be whoever you want to be.’
As she watched the other woman wipe away the last of her tears, Nerissa decided she needed to listen to her own advice. For too long she’d allowed the past to shackle her, allowed others to mould and shape her life, instead of taking control. And she knew exactly where to start. She’d let Doc dither and delay over making a decision about his retirement for too long. As his live-in housekeeper-cum-receptionist, whatever decision he made would have a profound effect on the next chapter in her own life. The prospect of being both jobless and homeless at the age of forty-three was frankly terrifying, which was why she’d let things drift. It felt hypocritical to sit here urging Linda to seize control of her destiny and not do the same.
Her fingers rose to toy with the ring on her necklace. Change was coming for both of them, whether they liked it or not.
3
‘Max? Em? Sorry I’m late guys.’ Tom Nelson tossed his keys onto the side table in the hall as he kicked the front door shut behind him with his heel. Silence greeted him, which wasn’t unexpected these days.
Tugging at his tie, Tom carried his medical bag into his study, tucked it into the bottom drawer of his filing cabinet and spun the combination lock. Not that he didn’t trust the kids – they knew his study was strictly off limits, but he’d been doing it since Emily had first started crawling. A memory of her as a chubby infant, all smiles and rolls of baby-powder scented sweetness sprung to mind, bringing a rare grin to his face which was quickly wiped away by the continued silence to his greeting.
He closed the door of his study, pausing to toe off his shoes in the hallway before padding towards the kitchen. ‘Max? Em? Where are you?’ he called again.
‘In here.’ The response when it came was in a much deeper voice than he’d expected. What was his brother doing here?
Perplexed, Tom entered the room to find Alex stirring a bubbling pot on the stove top. Max sat at the battered pine kitchen table, his head bent over something. Bracing himself for another one-sided conversation about his twelve-year-old son’s obsession with his phone, Tom was pleasantly surprised to realise Max was focused on his maths book.
‘Hey, bud, where’s your sister?’ Tom bent over to press a kiss to the top of Max’s tousled blond hair. It was several weeks past needing a cut and Tom added it to his mental to-do list.
‘Upstairs.’
The single word response was followed by a long silence and Tom wondered if the two of them had been fighting. They got along great for the most part, but perhaps today was one of those rare occasions when they’d butted heads. He tried a different tack. ‘How was school?’
‘Okay.’
Normally, the question would prompt a flood of information, terrible jokes Max had heard from one of his friends, an insistence Tom watch whatever the latest hilarious video was trending on TikTok, but not tonight.
Tom rested a gentle hand on Max’s shoulder. ‘Only okay?’
Keeping his eyes fixed on his book, Max bobbed his head up and down.
Glancing over his shoulder at Alex, Tom raised his brows.
His brother shook his head and mouthed ‘later’, then banged the spoon he’d been using on the rim of the pot of what smelled like chilli and replaced the lid. ‘Another half an hour, I reckon.’
‘Sounds good,’ Tom replied, tamping down his growing sense of unease. It wasn’t completely unheard of for his brother to drop by unannounced, but he was more likely to be found messing around on the PlayStation with Max rather than doing something useful. Alex’s idea of domestication had always left a lot to be desired, even when he and Jo had still been together. After the explosive destruction of his marriage eighteen months back, Alex had survived the first year of being single by writing and anonymously publishing an excoriating account of his wife’s betrayal, which became a runaway bestseller. The stress of keeping his identity quiet, as well as pressure from his publisher to produce a follow-up book, had turned Alex into a takeaway-eating slob.
An image of the last time he’d been to Alex’s flat came to mind and Tom dismissed it with a quick shudder as he looked his younger brother over. Though he still sported the terrible post-breakup beard he’d been cultivating, his clothes were clean and smart. A far cry from the sweatpants and stained T-shirts that had become his recent outfit of choice. Something was most definitely up.
Giving Max’s shoulder a quick squeeze, Tom released it and crossed over towards the pastel blue Smeg fridge. How he’d ever let Anna talk him into the ridiculous-looking thing, and all the other matching small appliances…
Shaking his head to chase away the thought before it could take root, he tugged open the door and reached for a couple of bottles of Heineken from the top shelf. ‘Beer?’ He offered one to his brother.
‘Cheers.’ Alex took the bottle and retreated back to his spot beside the oven.
‘Want a drink, Max?’
Max finally looked up, a hint of his usual cheeky smile lighting up his face. ‘Can I have a beer?’
‘Nice try.’ Tom twisted the cap off a carton of apple juice and poured some into a glass. He set the drink down in front of Max, then pointed to his textbook. ‘Why don’t you take that upstairs and finish off, and we’ll give you a shout when dinner’s ready?’
Max folded the book closed, gathered his stuff under one arm, and stood. His expression a serious mask once more, he cast a quick glance towards his uncle. ‘It wasn’t my fault.’
‘It’ll be all right, Maxy,’ Alex said, sending another warning glance towards Tom, who shut his mouth against his better judgement. ‘Take your drink now.’
When Max looked his way, Tom forced an encouraging smile. ‘Let Em know dinner will be ready in about half an hour.’
With a little nod, Max traipsed from the kitchen. Tom gave him a count of five seconds before he shoved the kitchen door closed behind him and rounded on his brother.
‘What the bloody hell is going on?’
Alex took a sip from his beer like he had all the time in the world. ‘The school called me.’ He took another sip. ‘At about half one.’
Half-one? Tom checked his watch. ‘That was five hours ago.’
‘Yup.’
Grinding his teeth, Tom tried again. ‘Why did they call you?’
Alex set his beer down, then folded his arms across his chest. ‘I don’t know, Tom, why did they call me? Is it perhaps – now stay with me here – because you didn’t answer your phone?’
‘I didn’t get any messages.’ Tom reached into his pocket, letting out a soft curse when he pulled out his work phone. He’d put his personal phone in his medical bag before starting surgery and forgotten all about it.
He yanked open the kitchen door and ran towards his study.
‘Come on, come on,’ he muttered when he messed up the combination on his cabinet lock the first time.
By the time he’d got the drawer open and his phone out of his bag, Alex had followed him into the study and closed the door behind him.
Tom showed the display full of missed call notifications and urgent texts to call the school to his brother. ‘I didn’t hear it.’ With a sick feeling in his stomach, he checked the button on the side of the handset. ‘Shit. I’d put it into silent mode.’
