The Lost Sister

I smiled at Haley now. ‘All sorted, darling. See you all next week!’ Then I walked up the hill towards my house, muttering ‘Bloody monkey cake’ under my breath.

Before I opened my front door, I paused. I really couldn’t bear the thought of returning to the house to write. I’d had to drag the words out lately. I tried to tell myself it was the house. But the fact is, I used to be able to write anywhere: on the bus in the dreary rain, sitting in a doctor’s waiting room, even in my car when I was stuck in standstill traffic once. No, there was more to it than that. The past couple of years, a numbness had descended. Stopped me from wanting to be touched and touch. Stopped me from wanting to write.

Maybe I’d grown weary. It was all so far from the dreams I’d had of writing from the hotel above the cliffs all those years ago, a glass of gin by my side as Mike took up some exciting watersport. Instead, the only house we could afford when we finally decided to move from London when I was pregnant nine years ago was a good fifteen-minute walk from the sea. It wasn’t much to look at either, a plain brown new-build house sitting across from a petrol station. The only bonus was it looked out to fields at the back. I’d set up an office in the spare room at the back in the hope I’d write from there, looking out over those fields, a tiny glimpse of sea in the distance.

But as soon as Becky was born, my days had mostly been filled with baby sensory classes and weigh-ins, toddler tantrums and coffees in overfilled cafés. It was only when Becky went to school I was able to really focus on writing. But then the days went so damn fast before it was time to pick Becky up again at three. If I could only get that second book published, I could give up the job and write full-time instead of just two days a week.

That was the dream, wasn’t it? It had always been the dream, from the moment I used to sneak glances of the novels my mother would bring back from her countless trips to local charity shops, their battered spines smelling of earth and dust. Authors became my rock stars and I’d escape into their words for hours, a place to pretend I was something other than the little girl nobody noticed.

While studying English at university, I’d been determined to come away with a novel ready to send to editors. Of course, I didn’t know then how unrealistic that was. But I was so idealistic then, so full of romantic notions, attaching myself to fellow dreamers. Before I met Mike, I’d dated a beautiful Polish man with graceful hands and the softest of lips. He’d write poetry on my naked curves, inspiring me to spill words out into a notepad he’d bought me. But even then, each time I started something, I just couldn’t finish it.

When I graduated, I fell into various copywriting jobs to pay the rent on the tiny flat I rented with Mike in Battersea, writing in the evenings. Then one gloomy October day, feigning an illness to stay at home, I found myself writing pages and pages of a novel that seemed to have come out of nowhere about a woman who runs a small hotel in the woods with her mother. Unable to deal with the loss when her mother passes away, she tells guests she’s just resting after an illness. Sounds depressing, doesn’t it? But there was a love story thrown in. Lady Chatterley’s Lover meets Hotel du Lac was how my agent described it.

A year later, it was ready to submit. It had countless rejections and I nearly lost hope, but then a small publishing house took it on. I’d been so proud, I’d even called my mother to tell her, despite the fact that we rarely saw each other apart from a brief, awkward visit to her little flat in Margate over the Christmas period each year.

‘I’ll be able to find it in WHSmith, will I?’ my mother had asked me. I’d imagined her sitting on her battered sofa with a glass of wine in her hand, her dark dyed hair in rollers.

‘Yes,’ I’d replied, knowing it was a lie – my editor had told me only a few independent bookshops were taking it. But I wanted so much for my mother to be proud. Needed so much.

A week after it was published, she’d treated me to a rare phone call. I thought it was to congratulate me on the launch of my debut. But instead, it was to berate me for ‘embarrassing’ her in front of her friends who thought she’d lied about her ‘author daughter’ seeing as they couldn’t find her books in WHSmith.

‘You’re just one of those crappy authors, aren’t you?’ my mother had said. ‘The ones whose books you find in the bargain bucket.’

I had slammed the phone down, resolving never to take a call from her again. That was two years ago. Two long years with only a few thousand words written of my next novel, despite having two days a week dedicated to it.

Why wouldn’t the words come?

I looked up at my house, then at the petrol station across from it. It had to be the house. It was just so uninspiring! I impulsively turned back and headed towards the beach.

The tide was low, the sea hazy in the distance, seaweed and shells clogging the wet morning sand as people walked out of the café nearby with takeaway teas in polystyrene cups. It wasn’t a built-up beach – even now it isn’t – just a plain and simple sandy cove, no trendy eateries or boutique shops. Its natural beauties were enough to draw people in, the chalk stacks adorning most of the postcards in town. The bay beyond the chalk stacks with its five caves wasn’t as much of a draw then; people were put off by the stories of tourists being caught out there during high tide.

I walked onto the sand that morning, taking my gold sandals off and strolling along the edge of the seaweeded area, picking up shells for Becky. I liked to do that sometimes when my mind was blocked or sad memories crowded. Breathe in the salty air, feel the sand beneath my toes and the smooth curve of shells in my palms.

After a while, I spotted a washed-up starfish, orange with black dots, its legs tangled and broken. I crouched down, staring at it, tears irrationally pricking at my eyelashes.

What the hell was wrong with me?

The wind picked strands of my dark hair up, the sound of laughter carried along with it. I stood and looked over towards the bay of caves. It was usually quiet at this time of the morning, with children at school, but there was a group of teenagers crowding around the entrance to the larger cave at the end of the bay. Four of them were girls, long hair trailing down their backs, the waistbands of their school skirts rolled up. I remembered doing the same at the struggling comprehensive I went to in Margate all those years ago. The two boys with them looked bored, their shirts hanging out, hair spiky. But the girls were enraptured as they peered into the cave at something that was out of my eye line.

I took another step forward until the focus of their attention came into view.

It was the man who’d rescued the boy the evening before.

He was sitting on a white chalk rock just inside the entrance to the cave, painting something on the cliff wall in swirling blue. His hair was up in a bun this time, exposing his long, tanned neck, the golden stubble on his cheeks. As he painted, his lean muscles flexed, the morning sun picking up the contours of his shapely arms and bare back.

‘That’s so cool,’ I heard one of the girls say in a hushed voice.

‘Totally,’ another agreed.

‘We should go now,’ one of the boys said, looking at his watch. ‘Mrs Botley will go mental if we’re late.’

The blonde girl looked at the boy. ‘You go,’ she said, sinking to the sand and crossing her long legs beneath her. ‘I’m staying.’

‘Me too,’ one of her friends said, joining her.

The boys rolled their eyes at each other. ‘Not our issue if you get a rollocking,’ one of them said before the rest of the group walked off.

I watched the two girls for a while, looking at the way they observed the man. There was clear attraction in their eyes, a calm attentiveness too.

I quickly got my notepad out, writing what I saw.

He moved his arm gracefully, slowly, like how he’d appeared to walk on water the night before. The girls watched in rapture, as though they were seeing something for the first time. Beyond them, the sea—

‘The next bestselling novel?’ a voice asked from behind me.

I snapped my notepad shut and looked up to see Greg smiling down at me.

‘Maybe.’

A quick look at my cleavage, quelle surprise, then back up to my face. ‘We’ll have to keep an eye on him,’ he said, jutting his chin towards the man painting in the cave.

I raised an eyebrow. ‘And why might that be?’

‘Hanging around with teenagers. Looks like we have a resident paedophile on our hands.’

I rolled my eyes. ‘Honestly, Greg, talk about jumping to conclusions.’

‘Really? So you’d let Becky near him? He’s clearly slept in that cave overnight,’ he added, pointing to a sleeping bag I hadn’t noticed before, lying at the side of the cave.

‘Just because he’s sleeping in a cave, that doesn’t make him a paedophile. There are a lot of people out of jobs thanks to this recession. Haven’t you been reading the papers?’ I walked past Greg and headed to the wooden path. I really wasn’t in the mood for him, especially after he interrupted my rare moment of inspiration.

‘Mind if I join you?’ Greg asked as he fell into step beside me.

I couldn’t help but sigh. ‘Aren’t you working today?’

‘Day off. Told Julie I’m getting nappies.’

‘And you’re not?’

‘Not now,’ he said, pushing his Ray-Bans onto the top of his head and smiling at me. ‘Needed to get out. All she talks about is babies, babies, babies.’

‘She has just had one.’ I peered at him sideways. ‘As have you.’

‘Yeah but it’s different for men.’

‘How?’

‘You know,’ he said, openly staring at my breasts.

‘No, I don’t actually.’ I stopped, crossing my arms. ‘How is it different?’

He gave me a sly grin. ‘You going to make me say it?’

Here it comes …

‘Fine,’ he said with an exaggerated sigh. ‘Breasts. Babies need breasts and we can’t provide that, can we?’

‘Ah, breasts,’ I said. ‘Breasts, breasts, breasts, that’s all men talk about.’

‘Can you blame us?’ he asked playfully.

‘Yes, yes I can. They are mounds of flesh, their primary function being to feed babies.’

He laughed. ‘This is why I like you, fire in your belly. What do you say to a cheeky vino at the café?’

‘At this time of the morning?’

‘Why not?’ He grabbed my shoulders in excitement. ‘Seize the day! Let’s do something crazy! I know you’re like me, Selma, I can tell.’

I felt an overwhelming desire to slap him. But instead I pulled away from him, making my face cold. ‘I’m nothing like you. And if you think drinking wine at nine in the morning is seizing the day, then you really need to get a life.’

His face dropped, his dark eyes flashing with anger. ‘Clearly I was wrong about you. I thought you were the adventurous type.’

‘I have a call with a producer who’s interested in turning my book into a film,’ I lied. ‘I think that’s a tad more adventurous than sharing a bottle of wine with a married man, don’t you?’ Then I stalked off.

That run-in with Greg hung over my head like a dark cloud all weekend, making me tetchy with Mike and Becky. I’d like to say it was because I felt bad for his wife, but mainly it was because he’d stopped me from writing. I hadn’t felt so inspired in ages and now that sudden fizz was gone again. It wasn’t much better when I walked into the office on Monday morning to get on with my copywriting day job. I only had to endure the place three days a week: Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays. But it was still painful.

I walked to my desk, feeling more of a black cloud than usual hovering over my head, my lack of word count still playing on my mind. Something needed to change and quick, otherwise I’d be back to working five days a week, even if Mike wasn’t made redundant. It had been hard enough convincing him I needed to go down to three days a week so I could write another novel. The problem was, I wasn’t writing it! How could I when I was forced to have all the creativity drained out of me three days a week by this soul-destroying job?

I ignored the voice inside that told me past soul-destroying jobs hadn’t stopped me from writing. The same voice that told me there had to be another reason.

I peered at my notepad in my bag, a sense of resolve filling me. I was going to write this novel. I had to.

‘Selma!’

I looked up to see Monica waving at me from across the room, people gathered around her desk. ‘Selma was there,’ Monica explained to the colleagues gathered around her. ‘She saw everything. Come over and tell them!’

I didn’t say anything, just put my bag on my desk and switched my computer on.

‘Selma!’ Monica called out again.

I battled with the desire to continue ignoring her, but then I remembered the look on Monica’s face as she saw her son in the ocean, that awful fear.

I sighed, making myself smile. ‘Nathan okay, is he?’ I called over.

‘Fine. Shaken up but fine!’ Monica called back. ‘Come tell everyone what happened.’

‘I’m sure you have given a better account than I could.’ I sat at my desk, noticing my colleague Matthew smirking at me from over our divider. I smiled back at him. He was the only person in the place I could tolerate. On my first day six years ago, he’d handed me some headphones. ‘You’ll need these, trust me,’ he’d said wryly.

‘Best day of her life, her son nearly drowning,’ Matthew said now in a quiet voice.

My smile deepened. ‘Naughty boy,’ I whispered back.

We both went quiet when our boss, Daphne, approached. ‘Good weekend, Selma?’ she asked.

‘Lovely, thanks,’ I replied. ‘Apart from the barbeque catching fire,’ I added.

Daphne put her hand to her mouth. ‘Oh no!’

It was a lie, of course. Anything to ease the pain of the predictable Monday morning ‘How was your weekend?’ ritual.

‘I heard your book’s being made into a film,’ Daphne said. ‘I hope we’re not going to lose you to the glitz and glam of Hollywood.’

I felt my face flush. How quickly rumours spread in this town. A mere mention to Greg and now everyone knew.

‘Oh, it was just a call,’ I replied. ‘Might come to nothing.’

‘It’s exciting either way! Better get back to work, no film deal for me to pay the mortgage. Chat later!’

I narrowed my eyes at her. Was that a dig? My boss was the queen of passive aggressiveness.

As Daphne walked off, Monica strolled over.

‘Oh God, she’s coming over,’ Matthew said, quickly putting his headphones back on.

‘Did you hear the man who saved Nathan is living in one of the caves?’ Monica asked, sitting on my desk, which was something I detested people doing.

‘I heard something about it,’ I replied as I yanked some proofs of an advert I’d written from under her bum.

‘I left a bottle of wine outside to thank him with a note,’ Monica said excitedly. ‘He wasn’t there though, so I hope nobody nicks it. There were a couple of strange characters in there. I think they’d spent the night.’

I frowned. ‘How do you know that?’

‘I saw sleeping bags. One of the girls was still in her nightie.’

‘Girls?’ Matthew asked with a raised eyebrow.

Monica turned to him, nodding. ‘She looked young, maybe sixteen, seventeen.’

‘I bet he’s having fun,’ Matthew drawled.

Was it was one of the schoolgirls from the other day?

‘There was even a little table with tea and stuff on it,’ Monica added. ‘A few floor cushions as well. It looked rather comfy.’

‘You thinking of moving in, Monica?’ Matthew asked her.

‘Oh gosh, no!’ she said, raising her voice and getting flustered.

Daphne peered over at the sound of Monica’s raised voice.

‘Better go!’ Monica said, waving at them both and walking off as she frowned at Daphne.

‘She wants that guy’s babies,’ Matthew said.

‘Probably. He’s every frustrated housewife’s dream.’

‘So you like him too?’

I threw a pen at Matthew. ‘You know I’m not like the rest of them.’

‘Never, Selma, never,’ he said, winking at me before looking back at his computer.

As I tried to write copy for a leaflet for a local gym, I found my mind drifting off towards that cave. Tea. Cushions. Teenage girls in nighties. How strange.

How wonderful.

I peered around me to check nobody was looking then discreetly pulled out my notepad and started writing, suddenly inspired again.

He smelt of tea leaves, of the forest and the snow. The girl watched him, finger flicking to her flimsy white nightie, breath heavy …

I crossed through the line in frustration. Too Mills & Boon.

‘Right everyone, time for our weekly team meeting!’ Daphne said, clapping her hands.

I squeezed my pen in frustration. Why did this have to happen just as I was all fired up to write? I watched everyone trudge into the stuffy meeting room, ready to waste an hour discussing milk being stolen from the fridge, reduced budgets due to the recession and early booking for the Christmas party. I thought of all the other meetings I’d been in, nodding my head at something someone had said while screaming inside, drawing doodles of desperate eyes and gaping mouths around the edges of the paper as I pretended to take notes.

How much longer could I endure it?

I thought of the man painting at the cave. The freedom of it. The creativity.

I shoved my notepad in my bag then slung it over my shoulder, striding over to Daphne.

‘Everything okay?’ she asked me.

‘No actually. The school called shortly after I got to the office. Becky’s ill.’

Daphne faked sympathy. ‘Poor thing.’ But I could see she was thinking of the deadline that day.

‘I’m afraid I have to go,’ I continued. ‘Mike’s out of town.’

‘You’ll miss the meeting. We’re discussing the Christmas do this year.’

‘I know, such a shame,’ I replied with an exaggerated sigh as I backed away. Then I hurried out, breathing in the fresh air as it hit me. I truly felt as though I’d been suffocating in there. But now I felt free, even if it was just for one illicit day.

What should I do?

I looked towards the sea. What else?

When I approached the cave there were more people milling outside. A young man was strumming a guitar, with a girl dancing in circles to the music. They weren’t just teenagers either. There was a tall black man who looked to be in his early forties, and a woman in her fifties too.

Monica had been right. People were living there with the man. Maybe they were homeless, with no choice but to live in the cave after losing their jobs. Or was there more to it than that?

I moved into the shadows of the chalk stacks and pulled a cigarette out from my bag, lighting it and drawing in the intoxicating smoke before blowing it out. I always kept a packet handy. Officially, I gave up just before I got pregnant. But every now and again, I felt the need.

‘They won’t kill you, you know,’ a voice said from behind me.

I turned to see a teenage girl with long, white-blonde hair watching me, a smile on her pretty face. It was one of the schoolgirls from the other day.

‘Do you mean they will kill me?’ I asked.

The girl shook her head. She had bare feet and I could see her nipples through her white summer dress. ‘Contrary to what people say, the cigarette won’t kill you. The disease will have been there for a while.’

My eyes alighted on the girl’s nipples then I looked away, towards the cave. ‘Thanks for that little fact.’

‘You’re the writer, aren’t you?’

I looked back at her in surprise. ‘How do you know?’

‘Idris knows everything.’

‘Idris?’

‘Yes, Idris,’ the girl said, a lazy smile on her face as she nodded over towards him as he painted on the cave walls. ‘He told us you’re a writer.’

I felt my heart hammer like a thunderclap. ‘He told you?’

‘He says it’s important that people like us – creatives – stick together.’

‘Is it now?’ I tapped some ash into a nook in the cliff, trying to appear casual. ‘So how does Idris know I’m a writer then?’

‘It’s like I said, he knows everything.’

I raised an eyebrow. ‘And I suppose you’re going to tell me he walks on water too.’

‘Of course not. But there are more interesting things than walking on water.’ The girl smiled a dreamy smile as she twirled her hair around her fingers. Was she stoned? ‘I write poetry,’ she said, ‘Idris let me write a line on the cave. I live there now. My friend came too but I think she’ll go home tonight, she doesn’t like the fact there’s no shower.’

‘Can’t blame her.’ I looked the girl up and down. She was small-boned. Tiny. Face of a child. But something told me she wasn’t as young as she looked. ‘How old are you?’

‘Seventeen.’ She bit her lip, still smiling. ‘My dad’s gone ballistic.’

‘I bet he has.’

‘Mum’s living with us in the cave now though, and my little brother too. Can I have some?’ the girl asked, gesturing towards my cigarette.

I took a final drag then handed it over to the girl. ‘Finish it. How old’s your brother?’

‘Eight.’

The same age as Becky.

The girl leaned against the rock right next to me, her arm brushing against mine. She put her bare foot up behind her and took a drag.

‘Maybe I’d like to write a novel one day,’ the girl said. ‘Idris told me I need to grow first, mature.’

‘Plenty of people publish novels at your age. Mary Shelley came up with the idea for Frankenstein when she was eighteen.’

The girl rolled her eyes. ‘He meant spiritually, not literally. People are so obsessed with age, with numbers full stop. If people stopped fixating on numbers and statistics, the world would be a better place. I mean, take this recession. All this obsessing with money and numbers, and we’re back to square one. All we need to do is to get into the current.’

‘The current? You mean like the sea?’

The girl smiled mysteriously and shook her head. ‘Nope.’

‘What do you mean then?’

‘You’ll need to come to the cave to find out. Idris explains it best.’

I suddenly felt an irrational anger at the girl, at her dreamy expression, her big nipples and free-living. ‘Might be worth you formulating some of your own thoughts before believing every word of some stranger,’ I snapped.

The girl frowned.

I looked at my wrist for the time. ‘The numbers on my watch are telling me I should go. But enjoy the ciggie!’

I went to walk away but the girl ran after me and grabbed my elbow. ‘Why do you have to go? Come visit the cave! It’s a haven for writers. Maybe you’ll end up living there like me?’

‘Let me think,’ I said, pretending to ponder things. ‘I have a mortgage to pay, a child to support. Plus my husband might have a heart attack at the prospect of no second income.’

The girl let my wrist go, looking at me with sympathy. ‘All numbers. Don’t you see? That sentence you just uttered is all numbers. What if you just left it behind, came to the cave with me right now?’ She put her hand out to me again. ‘Come.’

I hesitated; something inside me was tempted. Then I took in the girl’s stained dress, the dark circles under her eyes. ‘No thanks. The numbers beckon.’

A few minutes later, I was back at the office. It was time I stopped dreaming and faced reality. I was thirty-eight, for God’s sake, not eighteen. I couldn’t just bunk off work.

‘Did you forget something?’ Daphne asked as I walked into the meeting room.

‘Mike turned up in the end so I could come back.’

‘Wonderful!’ My boss turned back to the rest of the room. ‘So, about the milk that was stolen …’

The rest of the week was miserable; the weather was moody and the atmosphere in the house reflected it. Mike was having a tough time in his job, working long hours to prove his worth in the face of more redundancies. He was clearly growing more and more resentful of the fact I worked part-time. I usually let his irritation wash over me, but that week was different. Maybe it was the cave and the encounter with that silly girl … and the fact I wasn’t writing much. Maybe the girl was right. Maybe that cave was a haven for writers and all I needed was a few hours there?