Her presence brought me back from the brink. I pulled away from Mike and wiped my eyes. My beautiful daughter, my beautiful, frightened, brave, living daughter.
‘Why are you crying?’ she whispered.
I wanted to tell her, but I wanted to protect her too. For years I haven’t spoken about Letty in front of her. For years, not knowing how much she remembered, I’ve tried to shield her from the memory of that awful night, the night on which, because of what I did, our lives imploded.
‘Hannah—’ I reached out to touch her, and my voice stopped in my throat.
Mike’s voice cut across the room, quiet and firm: ‘Letty,’ he said gently. ‘We’re talking about Letty, Hannah.’ And as she stepped forward to take his outstretched fingers, my heart broke, overwhelmed not by the pain, or the memory of my poor lost daughter, but by the presence of so much love. Then, my hand pressed to my mouth, I had to run from the room.
Twenty
Hannah
My mother didn’t talk for almost two weeks after we came here. She just lay in her bed, like someone dead. Then for ages she drifted around, there but not quite there, as if she was a hole in a room. Aunt Kathleen looked after me, feeding me up, getting me to explain a bit about what had happened, holding me when I couldn’t stop crying. When she decided I shouldn’t be on my own, she got Lara round, and helped us bake cakes together, as if we were cooking up a friendship. As if she was trying to find me a substitute for Letty. And when I asked her what was going on with my mum, why she wouldn’t come down and be with me, Auntie K just said: ‘You and your mum have suffered something unimaginable, Hannah, and she’s not coping with it quite as well as you are. We have to give her a bit of time.’
So she gave her some time, and a bit more, and then I think she decided she’d had enough. ‘Your mum and I are going to have a little chat,’ she told me. ‘You and Lara stay here with Yoshi and mind the dog.’ I don’t know what was said, but they went out on Auntie K’s boat, and when they got back Mum looked less shadowy than she had done. She climbed out on to Whale Jetty, walked down to me and held me. I felt like it was the first time she’d actually seen me for ages. ‘I’m really sorry, Mum,’ I said, as the tears started. I could feel her bones through her shirt.
Her voice didn’t sound the same. ‘Nothing to be sorry for, lovey. You did everything right. It was me who got it all wrong.’
But I knew that if Letty and I hadn’t had that argument in front of Steven . . . if Letty hadn’t said that thing about not wanting to go on holiday . . . Suddenly I missed Letty so badly. I couldn’t believe she wasn’t alive any more. ‘I want her to be here,’ I cried.
I felt a big sob catch in Mum’s chest. She squeezed me tight. ‘Me too, lovey,’ she said softly. ‘Me too.’
Mum had told me not to say anything. She had stood there in her room and said it was very important. But I’d been so excited at the thought of me, Mum and Letty going somewhere, the thought that we might have whole weeks of giggling and doing the things Granny Villiers didn’t like. ‘I didn’t mean to tell her,’ I whispered. Then my mother took my shoulders, and her eyes, when they met mine, were bright, bright blue, like the sky, her eyelashes all pointy, like stars, from her tears. ‘Your sister’s death was not your fault, okay?’ Her voice was fierce, almost like she was telling me off. But her eyes were kind. ‘Not one iota of this was your fault, Hannah. Not one. And now you need to forget that any of it ever happened.’
A couple of weeks later, on a Monday evening, after I’d had my tea, we had a service for Letty. Out at sea. Just me, Mum, Aunt Kathleen and Milly. We went out on Ishmael to what Aunt Kathleen said was the prettiest spot in the whole of Australia, and while the dolphins bobbed around and the sun shone red and a few clouds drifted high in the sky Aunt Kathleen gave thanks for the life of Letty and said that even though we were on the other side of the world it was perfectly obvious to her where Letty’s spirit was. I kept hoping a dolphin would swim up beside us, maybe poke its head up, as if it were a sign, but although I stared for ages, they didn’t come any closer.
When we unpacked the second holdall, Mum found Letty’s crystal dolphins. She must have packed them really carefully, because not even their little fins were broken. She held one in her hand for a long, long time. Then she took a big breath and handed it to me. ‘You look after these,’ she said. ‘Keep them . . . keep them safe.’
That was one of the last times we ever spoke about Letty.
And now it’s just me, remembering things. Some things, like when me and Letty used to make camps in our bedroom, or when we used to run around in the garden and squirt the hose at each other, I try to keep in my head because I get worried that she’s fading away and soon I won’t remember her. I have two photographs of her in my drawer and if I didn’t look at them every night I wouldn’t remember how her face was, how her missing tooth looked when she smiled, the way she stroked her nose with her finger when she sucked her thumb, how she used to feel when she slept with me. And there are some things I’d like to forget. Like that night when Mum took me and Letty in her arms as soon as Granny Villiers had left and told us things were going to change. I think about the way I had found her packing our bags, and that I’d felt relieved that she’d even remembered my old flannel dog, Spike, which I couldn’t sleep without, and that she had told me we mustn’t say anything to Daddy or Granny because we were going to give them a surprise. And even though she thought I wasn’t looking I saw when she hid the bags in the spare room. I remember the purply bruises I saw on her arms, a bit like the one I had when Steven was cross with me for getting felt-tip on the kitchen table and pulled me so hard off my stool that it hurt.
And I remember feeling so excited – a bit like I did before Christmas – that I had to say something to Letty, even though I told her it was a very important secret.
And then I remember we watched a video – Pinocchio – even though it wasn’t a weekend, and that when Steven came home he smelt of drink but she had poured him a big glass of wine anyway and stood there smiling at him until he said she looked like an idiot. When she served up the supper, I could see her looking at him out of the corner of her eye as if she was waiting for something.
And then Letty and I had a stupid fight about crayons, because we both wanted the same green, which was much better than the browny-green, which never came out right on the paper, and I won because I was bigger and Letty started to cry and said she didn’t want to go away, and Steven said, ‘Go where?’ And he looked at Mum and they stared at each other for a few seconds. Then he pushed past her and went upstairs, and I heard him pulling out all the drawers. When he came back his face was so angry that I hid under the table, and pulled Letty with me. I heard him shouting, ‘Where are the passports?’ and his voice had gone all slurry and I shut my eyes really tight and while they were shut there was lots of banging and Mum fell on the floor and hit her head and his hands reached under the table and I heard him pick up Letty, who was screaming and screaming, and he said she’d be going anywhere over his dead body, and his voice sounded like he was under water or something. I tried to grab Letty’s hand but he pushed me really hard and he had her under his arm, like she was a sack of potatoes or something, and she was screaming and screaming. And then, as Mum woke up, I heard the sound of his car going down the drive, all the gravel spraying up, and Mum started crying, ‘Oh, my God, oh, my God,’ and she didn’t even notice that her face was bleeding and I held on to her because I was scared of where he’d taken Letty.