The Cliff House

‘White Musk.’

‘Sorry?’

Had I said that aloud? ‘Your perfume,’ I said quickly. ‘It’s White Musk.’

‘You’re quite unusual, aren’t you? Not that it’s a bad thing. I like unusual.’ She blew upwards over her forehead. ‘Christ, it’s hot.’ She took hold of her top and flapped it.

We were silent. She didn’t seem to mind but it made me itch. When the awkwardness became unbearable I turned my head to look out over the sea. The wind had painted dashes of white across its surface and a small boat sat out near the horizon. So far away. Little more than a dot. I thought of the day my dad died. How quickly the squall had rolled in, turning sunshine and blue skies to driving rain and treacherous waves within moments. A crack of thunder echoed in my ears as I recalled snatching hopelessly at his legs to stop him leaving the safety of our house.

‘My name’s Edie, by the way.’

She waited expectantly but when I didn’t reply I saw her expression fade to boredom.

For God’s sake speak.

‘I like it.’

‘What?’

‘Your name. I like it.’

She stared at me for a moment then burst into laughter which sounded like sleigh bells. She tipped her head back. Exposed her throat. Pale and delicate. It struck me how vulnerable that part of her was and I hurriedly banished the thought of my hands encircling it and squeezing until her white skin bruised.

I thought she might let me in on the joke but she didn’t. ‘My mother chose it,’ she said. ‘It’s short for Edith. Piaf. Eleanor thinks it’s glamorous. Anything – and everything – à la France est très glamoureux, cherie according to Maman.’

The accent she used on some of her words reminded me of my French teacher, Madame Thomas, who came from Widemouth Bay but turned puce with rage if we failed to pronounce her surname ‘Toh-maah’. Thinking of ridiculous Madame Toh-maah made me braver and I ventured a smile in return.

‘And yours?’ Edie Davenport lifted her bottle and studied the Coke inside as she tipped it from side to side like a pendulum.

I hesitated. Should I make something up? Re-christen myself something très glamoureux? Esmerelda perhaps? Or maybe Ruby or Anastasia?

‘God,’ she said, rolling her eyes. ‘It’s not a difficult question. Someone tells you their name then asks you yours and you reply. Didn’t your mother teach you any manners between cleaning jobs?’

Edie brushed something, a fly perhaps, off one of her knees. I noticed how smooth and free of blemishes her legs were. Hairless with skin as white as a china doll except for the soles of her feet which were soft and pink like the inside of a kitten’s ear. I thought of my own legs covered ankle to thigh in fine hairs bleached by the sun, the skin peppered with scratches from brambles and mysterious bruises, my feet hardened and cracked and my toenails uneven and in need of a trim.

Edie cleared her throat and raised her eyebrows as she sipped her drink. Her eyes were bolted on to me.

Speak.

‘Tamsyn.’

‘Tamsyn.’ She rolled my name around her tongue like the Coke she swilled in the bottle. ‘Yes. It’s the perfect name for a thief.’

My stomach pitched. ‘No! I’m not a thief! I was here to find—’

‘Yes, yes.’ Edie gave a dismissive flick of her hand. ‘The cleaner’s scarf. You said.’

‘I should go.’ My voice trembled and when I lowered my eyes, I saw the tremble mirrored in my quivering hem.

‘You can’t. I’ve already taken the lid off the Coke.’ Edie gestured at the second bottle on the table. ‘You’re being rude again.’

‘Rude?’

‘Yes. Rude. I invited you to sit down with me and you haven’t. That’s rude.’

So I sat quickly because the last thing I wanted to be was rude. She flashed me a half-smile and tipped the Coca-Cola to her lips. I’d have given anything to have a fraction of her confidence and swagger, to have what she had, her father’s casual indifference, her mother’s grace and sophistication.

Even though the silence bore down on us like ten tonnes of lead, Edie didn’t seem to care one bit. But I did. I was desperate to speak but it was as if my lips were sewn together with fishing twine which looped through my skin. I imagined wrenching my mouth open so I could say something, the stitches ripping my lips to blood and tatters.

I ran my finger down the length of the bottle, traced the ridges, the gathered condensation wetting my skin.

‘Try it.’

I raised the bottle and sipped. Bubbles exploded on my tongue and the cloying sweetness made me smile involuntarily.

She shifted in her chair and tucked her legs beneath her body. ‘Have you swum here before?’

‘No.’ My dishonesty flared hot beneath my skin. I thought of my father and I in the pool. His arms wrapped around me. His eyelashes laced with droplets of water like tiny pearls. ‘I didn’t know they had a daughter,’ I said, wanting to steer away from the subject of my trespassing. Talking about Edie was safer. I just had to keep her talking about anything other than me.

She seemed amused by this. ‘Do you know much about them then?’

I shook my head. Another lie. I knew lots. I knew what newspaper he read, what clothes they wore, the position he sat in when he wrote at his typewriter. I knew she turned her sun lounger to follow the arc of the sun and when, every now and then, a sparrowhawk cried out he’d look up and search the sky for it. I knew they let food go to waste. That vegetables were left to blacken in the fridge beside sour milk, and that abandoned bread grew mould in the shiny steel bread bin. I knew they left their bed unmade when they left for London and I knew where they kept the sheets my mother would change for them. I knew what books were piled up on his bedside table and what her night cream smelt like and how soft her silk dressing gown felt against my cheek.

Edie lifted the Coke bottle and drained the last inch. ‘To be honest, I wouldn’t expect anyone to know they have a daughter. They’re barely aware of it themselves. They keep me in a boarding school so they don’t have to think about it.’

‘A boarding school?’

Edie nodded.

I had visions of great Gothic buildings and Malory Towers, hockey sticks and midnight feasts and huge panelled dining rooms where hundreds of these girls, identikit clones, gathered to sip soup from round silver spoons.

‘That must be amazing.’

‘It’s the pits. I loathe it. Every single girl there is a bitch and the teachers are idiots. Literally everybody there hates me and I hate them.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘The head says I’m trouble. Rude and difficult. But,’ and here she paused and leant forward, ‘what the flying fuck does she fucking know about anything anyway?’

I couldn’t help but smile, and as I did the tension I’d been feeling since we first laid eyes on each other finally started to fade.

Then she needled her eyes at me and pointed. ‘You don’t hate me, do you?’

‘No!’ I said quickly. ‘Not at all.’

She sat back. ‘Anyway,’ she said. ‘It’s probably a good thing the ’rents keep me in a boarding school. If they didn’t I’d be tempted to murder them. Maybe not him but definitely her.’

She smiled at me and I smiled back and as I did invisible strands of friendship began to stretch out between us.

‘Where do you go to school?’

‘The local comp. It’s a dump.’

‘I’d give anything to go to a comprehensive. Boarding school is so lame. Being at a comprehensive is cool, isn’t it? I bet you don’t even have to work. Our teachers are obsessed with results and the girls spend most of their time bingeing and chucking up. You’re actually really lucky.’

I thought about my school – teachers drowned out by constant chatting, blocked toilets with permanent Out of Order signs on them, the stench of the canteen – and shrugged.

‘Anyway, I’m imprisoned here for the holidays which is beyond dull. Are you in Cornwall for the summer too?’

I wondered where she thought I might be going. France, maybe? On one of those exchanges where you swap families? Or New York or Tokyo or India? I didn’t answer immediately, allowing myself to enjoy a few precious seconds where as far as Edie Davenport was concerned I was someone who could have a life beyond St Just.

When the pause grew uncomfortable I nodded. ‘Yes, I’m here the whole time.’

‘And presumably you have no friends?’

Her assumption took the wind out of me. I opened my mouth to protest but then decided not to. She was, after all, correct.

‘Good,’ she said emphatically. ‘Then you and I will hang out. We’ll be holiday friends. It’ll be fun.’

Holiday friends? The thought made my skin tingle.

‘I mean, Jesus,’ she said. ‘The thought of being stuck in this place with nobody to talk to for six weeks is unbearable.’

I looked up at the house and wondered if there was anywhere on this planet I’d prefer to be stuck.

Edie gave an impatient sigh. ‘Well then?’ Her question was laced with irritation. It dawned on me she might be reading my silence as lack of enthusiasm so I nodded quickly.

From nowhere a gust of wind blew. Dust and bits of last year’s leaves were lifted off the terrace in a flurry. Eleanor Davenport’s scarf again caught my eye as it was scooped up and tumbled through the air. The wind dropped as suddenly as it had picked up and the scarf fell. It floated downwards to settle on the surface of the pool. The material darkened as it sucked in the water and sank slowly until it hung suspended as if trapped in aspic.

As I stared at the scarf, the stillness was torn in two by a screech. The noise was instantly recognisable. I jumped and grabbed the table instinctively, catching the edge of one of the bottles with my hand. It fell and Coke spilled through the fretwork and collected on the paving slabs below the table.

‘Oh, I’m… sorry…’ I reached for the bottle and quickly righted it whilst casting my eyes about in search of the raven, which I knew was lurking somewhere close.

My skin prickled. I scoured the lawn, the trees, the railings, but there was no sign.

‘I have to go.’

‘Are you all right?’

‘Yes. My grandad. I need to get back to see him. He isn’t well.’ I glanced up and scanned the sky and the roof of the house. I let out a breath. There it was. The raven. Perched on the guttering of the roof. Black feathers buffeted by the wind coming off the sea. It screeched again and the sound cut through me like a shard of glass.

I had a vivid flash of the raven on the path. The one Dad and I had seen that day as we hurried home beneath a darkening sky, the first drops of rain spattering our faces.

My lungs tightened.

It’s just a bird.

I could feel the heat of its eyes on me. Polished black marbles. Charcoal beak shining.

‘Will you tell your parents about me?’ I said as I stood.

She didn’t answer immediately.

‘Please don’t.’

‘I said I wouldn’t,’ she said a little crossly. ‘So I won’t.’ Then she gave me a teasing smile. ‘Not today anyway.’

CHAPTER FIVE

Edie

July 1986

Edie reached out of her window and struck a red-tipped match against the wall. The head burst into flame with a sputter and she held it to the end of her cigarette, the tobacco crackling as it caught. She inhaled then hung her hand out of the window to allow the smoke to curl upwards into the sky rather than into her room. Not that she cared if her parents smelt it. What were they going to do? Send her back to London? Hardly a punishment.

She could still see Tamsyn on the cliffs in the distance. She leant against the window frame as she smoked, her eyes fixed on the girl’s retreating figure, knotted red hair trailing behind her like a knight’s pennant.

The blazing sun had disappeared behind light grey clouds and it had started to rain. The relief from the heat was welcome. The rain wasn’t normal rain but that particular drizzly nothingness Edie only ever saw in Cornwall. More mist than rain. Cornwall had its own weather system as far as she could tell. There was nothing predictable about it at all. She watched the fine spots of water marking the cigarette, tiny dots turning its whiteness a translucent grey, the same grey, in fact, as Tamsyn’s childish cotton bra.

Edie had never met anybody that innocent before. That sheltered. It was so striking she wondered if perhaps it was put on. A well-rehearsed act designed to elicit sympathy and ward off punishment for breaking into houses. Clever if it was. Unnecessary though. Edie didn’t give a shit about her being in the house. When she’d heard noises downstairs her first thought was she was going to be kidnapped by someone who’d then send her father a ransom note made from newspaper cuttings demanding thousands of pounds, so it was quite a relief to discover a girl her own age as terrified as a rabbit in a snare. Plus she’d literally been about to kill herself with boredom and Tamsyn was a perfect distraction.

When Tamsyn finally disappeared out of view, Edie took a last drag then roughly stubbed her cigarette out on the wall below the window, which stained the paintwork with another charcoal smudge and sent out a shower of tiny sparks. She flicked it and it skimmed through the air and landed on the terrace below. She watched the cigarette end smoulder until it burnt out, a thin trail of smoke wending its way upwards and dissolving to nothing. She lifted her head and looked out over the sea. A handful of boats dotted the blue, and the horizon lay in the distance with exciting lands beyond, each of them offering a different adventure, like chocolates in a box.

She closed the window and shut out the sounds of the waves and gulls, then cast her eyes around the bedroom with disdain. Stuck here for the whole damn summer. Jesus. It was no better than a prison cell. Nothing more than essential furniture – a bed, a wardrobe, a bedside table – and grim cream and grey striped curtains at the window. There were no pictures. No plants in pots. The only thing of mild interest were the four white walls, which changed shade as the sun moved through the day. Edie thought of Tamsyn in the house, her wild hair and regional accent contaminating the designer emptiness which Edie’s parents believed to be the height of sophistication. Minimalism they called it – all the rage in New York, darling – which as far as Edie could tell meant echoing rooms with too much white and expensive pieces of statement furniture chosen to be coveted not used. But in this room, her room, the minimalism wasn’t a design feature. This was just a room that didn’t matter.

Edie lay back on the bed. She’d had a dismal end of term. Everything had spiralled from bad to worse and now she’d had enough of every single person she knew. If life were a poker game, she’d swap her whole hand of cards. Her father barely knew she existed. Her mother was forever gummed up with pills – pills to wake up, pills to calm down, pills for energy, pills for sleep – all liberally washed down with whatever booze was closest to hand. Edie had been in Cornwall for four days and was already climbing the walls. Most of her time was spent daydreaming about escape. Shoving a few things into a bag and leaving in the dead of night, walking down the moonlit lane to the main road and hitching a lift to anywhere. But of course she wouldn’t do it. Everybody knew girls like her who hitchhiked alone got raped or strangled.

Maybe Tamsyn would be enough to get her through the summer. She was certainly interesting. Unusual. Different to the people Edie usually met. She was the daughter of a cleaner for starters. The people Edie knew were all the offspring of doctors or barristers or duller-than-dull bores who ran boring companies doing boring things with numbers. Her own father was something of an anomaly, a well-known restaurant critic turned New York Times bestseller. Whilst her mother was a tragic cliché. A failed model turned socialite wife with a penchant for getting off her face. Between them they didn’t have one friend who was a cleaner or a shopkeeper or anything remotely normal. They’d sealed themselves in a bubble and floated about in a manufactured world of braying voices, nauseating opinions, and a universal lack of morals. It made Edie’s stomach heave. Having no friends was better than having fake ones.

She reached for her Walkman and slipped the headphones on. Yes. Hanging out with Tamsyn, the trespassing daughter of a cleaner, with unkempt red hair and a look of adoration, would hopefully make the purgatory more bearable.

At the very least it would seriously piss Eleanor off.

CHAPTER SIX

Present Day

‘Are you still scared of ravens?’

My hands instinctively ball tightly. Where did that question come from?

I check my rear-view mirror, indicate, turn the wheel. The back seat of the car is piled up with shopping bags. She sits in the passenger seat. Her hands rest on her lap, motionless, ankles crossed, skirt risen above her knees. Her legs are blemish-free; nothing, not even a freckle marks them. It’s as if she’s been airbrushed.

We skirt Hayle. Drive past the mudflats revealed by the tide. Sea birds pick over the exposed silt in search of razor clams and worms and the remains of dead fish.

‘I remember how you were back then. Terrified, weren’t you?’

I don’t answer. I can’t. The familiar dread gathers in my stomach like a sponge soaking up tar. I glance at her. She’s staring at me, eyes fixed, challenging me. She won’t let this go. She’ll push and push. I have no choice but to answer.

‘Yes,’ I say.

‘Because of the one you saw the day he died?’

I don’t reply.

‘Tell me.’

‘You know.’

‘Tell me again.’ Her voice has dropped to a low angry rumble and my stomach tightens.

‘It was on the path,’ I whisper. Tears prick the backs of my eyes. I don’t want to think about it. ‘Black all over. Calm. It had eyes like tiny lacquered marbles. The sky was getting darker and darker, pressing down on us. In its beak…’ My voice is choked by a knot of emotion. ‘Long thin strands. Like spaghetti. I grabbed his hand. “It’s just a raven,” he said. Granfer says ravens make bad things happen, I whispered. He saw one at the mine once and the next day the tunnel collapsed and two men were crushed.’

I see my father’s face then. He’s laughing at me. Telling me not to believe such superstitious nonsense. I try hard to recall the sound of his laughter but it’s elusive. If only I’d known it would be the last time I’d hear that noise I’d have listened harder, sucked the sound of it right into myself, etched it on to my brain forever.

‘Don’t be daft, Tam, he said. Granfer’s an old fool. Ravens are just birds. Species genus Corvus. He’s trying to scare you. Too much of the Hitchcock in that one. Don’t you worry.’

‘But you were right to worry.’

‘Yes.’

We round the bend and I slow to a halt to let a farmer cross with his cows. Their underbellies swing as they walk, hip bones pushing against black-and-white hides, tails chasing away the flies. The farmer raises his hand in thanks. Then he does a double take. Stares. Brow furrowed in vague – or perhaps judgemental – recognition.

I put the car into gear and drive onwards. The farmer lifts the iron gate into place, stick resting against the dry-stone wall, his fleeting interest in me gone.

‘What was in the raven’s beak?’

I recall how I pressed myself tight into my father, wary eyes bolted on to the bird, my body flooding with building horror.

‘A chick,’ I say softly. My hands grip the steering wheel. Knuckles white. ‘The entrails of a dead chick.’

Flashes of that small pink body batter me. Flecked with newly emerging feathers. Sodden and bloodied. Its stomach ripped open. Entrails, tiny and thin, spewing from the ragged hole. Its baby head twisted unnaturally, spindly legs broken, wings spread-eagled. One eye bulging beneath a translucent membrane. The other pecked out.

‘A kittiwake. A day or two old, Dad said.’

Then without warning the raven had taken flight. Startled me so I squeezed my father tighter. The bird beat the air with powerful wings, dark feathers outstretched, body rising like a phoenix into the bruising sky.

I take a breath and shift my weight as I change gear. I glance out of the window to my right. The sea is silver today. Touched white in places where the wind annoys it. Foreboding wraps around me like a cloak. I pull in to a lay-by. A caravan passes, its driver red-faced, stressed as he negotiates the narrow Cornish lanes and unforgiving locals who speed around corners primed and ready to shake their fists at the tourists.

‘You saw a raven the day I left, didn’t you?’

I look across at her. She is staring straight ahead. My breathing grows tight as if my lungs are silting up. A gull cries and the shadow of a cloud passes over us.

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I saw a raven that day too.’

CHAPTER SEVEN

Tamsyn

July 1986

I knocked on Granfer’s door as I pushed it open and walked in. My whole body was buzzing from my morning. The raven on the roof was forgotten, blanked out so I was free to relish every moment I’d spent at the house.

‘Hi,’ I said. ‘I made you a sandwich.’

Granfer hadn’t moved and was still sitting in the worn leather chair he’d had forever. I never understood how he could spend so long staring at the same muddle of jigsaw pieces. It would have driven me mad. But Granfer could sit at the table for hours on end, happy in his own world, poring over the spread of shapes on the table Mum got for him a few years earlier. She’d found the table in the Salvation Army shop in Penzance and brought it back on the bus as proud as could be. It looked like junk to me, with its sun-bleached flimsy laminate top and legs riddled with woodworm, and sure enough, as she set it down in the kitchen, she’d beamed and announced it only cost a pound.

It took her three evenings, a yard of green felt from the haberdashers in Hayle, and a staple gun she borrowed from school to transform it into what she grandly called a card table, perfect, she’d said with a wide smile, for holding a jigsaw.

It wasn’t perfect, but Granfer loved it. Told her it reminded him of one they’d had when Robbie was small, which they’d use for games of Gin Rummy and Snap.

Granfer’s attention switched from the jigsaw to me as I neared him. I put the sandwich on the table, and kissed him on his hair, which was thick and white with a yellow tinge and in need of a wash.

‘Fish paste on white sliced.’

‘Lovely,’ he said. ‘I was feeling a… bit peckish.’

‘How’s it going?’ I gestured at the puzzle.

‘Got the corners... and that far... edge. But… blimey… it’s a bugger.’

‘I’ll give you a hand.’

I sat on the small stool beside him and leant over the table, resting my chin on one hand to stare at the pieces. His breathing was loud in my ears. Each inhalation a fight to draw air into his lungs which had been ruined by dust from the mines. I tuned out his painful rasping by reliving my encounter with Edie Davenport. I savoured every detail, from the warmth of the paving stones beneath my feet, to the look of admiration she gave my dress, to each delicious elongated vowel which dripped from her lips. It was all so unreal, too unreal perhaps. If it wasn’t for the syrupy taste of Coca-Cola lingering in my mouth, I’d worry the whole episode was a figment of my imagination.