The Sea Sisters: Gripping - a twist filled thriller

Katie had loved being an older sister, wearing the role like a badge of honour. At what point, she wondered, did our closeness begin to fade? Was it triggered by our feud when Mum was dying? Or maybe it had begun long before. Perhaps it wasn’t one incident, rather a series of smaller incidents, an unravelling, like a favourite dress that over time becomes worn: first a thinning at the neckline, then a loss of shape around the waist, and finally a loose thread opens into a tear.

‘Ma’am?’ A porter in a navy uniform, with dreadlocks tucked beneath his cap, stood beside her. ‘You’ve been here since I came on shift.’

She glanced at the time displayed on the bottom of the arrivals board. Two hours had slipped away from her.

‘Somethin’ I can help you with?’

She stood suddenly, her knees stiff from holding the same position. ‘I’m fine, thank you.’

‘You hopin’ to find someone?’

She glanced to where two young women were embracing. The taller one stepped back and took the other’s hand, raising it to her lips and kissing it.

‘Yes,’ she answered. ‘My sister.’

*

Later that day she heaved the backpack onto the bed and looked around the motel room, hands on hips. The walls, glossed beige, were decorated by two framed prints of tulips, and the windows wouldn’t open so the warm fug of other people hung in the air. She noted the television remote bolted to the Formica desk, and the Bible and phone directory stacked on the bedside table. It wasn’t the sort of room that encouraged a lengthy visit, but this was where Mia had stayed, so Katie would stay here, too.

Her first impulse was to unpack, but she was a backpacker now following Mia’s route, moving on again tomorrow, and the next night, and the night after that. As a compromise she fetched out her washbag and placed it in the windowless bathroom next to the thin bar of soap provided by the motel. Exhausted from travelling, she wanted to lie down and rest, but it was only five o’clock in the evening. If she allowed herself to sleep now, she would wake in the night, battling to keep the dark memories at bay. Deciding she would get something to eat instead, she splashed cool water over her face, reapplied her mascara and changed into a fresh top. She grabbed her handbag and Mia’s journal, and left.

The receptionist gave her directions to the Thai restaurant where, according to the journal, Mia and Finn had their first meal. Katie wound her way through San Francisco’s wharf area as the sun went down, stopping only to call Ed to let him know she’d arrived safely.

Evening fog hung like smoke over the water and she pulled her jacket tight around her shoulders, wishing she’d worn another layer. In the journal, Mia had noted that San Francisco was a ‘melting pot of artists, musicians, bankers and free spirits’, and that she had loved ‘the electric pulse of the downtown’. In another time, Katie might have agreed and found herself smitten with the quirky architecture, the winding streets, and the eclectic shop fronts – but tonight she hurried on.

She arrived at the restaurant, a lively place where circular tables were packed with people talking, laughing, eating and drinking. A waiter led her towards a window seat; a group of men looked up appreciatively as she passed, conversation only resuming when she was well beyond them.

She straightened her jacket on the chair back while the waiter removed the second place setting. Jazz played through sleek speakers in the corners of ochre walls and above the music she tuned into a wash of American accents. The smell of warm spices and fragrant rice reached her and it struck Katie how hungry she was, having not managed to eat anything on the plane. She ordered a glass of dry white wine and by the time the waiter returned with it, she had chosen Penang king prawns.

Without the prop of a menu there was nothing to occupy her attention and she felt faintly conspicuous dining alone. It would be one of many small hurdles she’d need to face each and every day of this trip and suddenly the scale of the undertaking daunted her. She locked her legs at her ankles and tucked them beneath her chair, then flattened her hands on her thighs, consciously trying to relax. She congratulated herself: she had boarded a plane for the first time in years, and was now sitting alone in a restaurant, in a country she’d never visited. I’m doing just fine. Reaching for her wine, she drained half of it, then set Mia’s journal in front of her.

On the plane she’d only read the first entry, enough to learn where Mia and Finn stayed and ate. She had promised herself that she would savour each sentence, breathing life into the entries by experiencing them in the places Mia had been. Opening the journal, she felt oddly reassured by the company of Mia’s words, as if it were her sister sitting in front of her. She smiled as she read, ‘Even Finn blushed when the waiter swapped his chopsticks for a spoon. Not even a fork – a spoon!’ She pictured the remnants of Finn’s dinner spread across the starched white tablecloth, Mia laughing the infectious giggle Katie had always loved.

She thought of the times she’d heard Finn and Mia’s explosions of laughter through her bedroom wall, great whooping sounds that would go on for minutes, each of them spurring on the other. If she went next door, she might find Finn with a pair of trousers belted at his ribs taking off one of their teachers with uncanny accuracy, or see that they’d drawn handlebar moustaches and wire spectacles on each other’s faces in black felt-tip. She wished she could step into the room and laugh with them but often she found herself frozen in the doorway, her arms folded over her chest.

It wasn’t that Katie resented their friendship – she had a tight group of friends herself who she could call on in any crisis. What she did resent, and it took her some years to pin down the essence of this, was the way Mia responded to Finn. She laughed harder and more frequently in his company; they talked for hours covering all sorts of topics, when Mia was often a silent presence at home; and he had a knack of diffusing her dark moods, which Katie seemed only able to ignite.

‘Excuse me? Is this chair free?’

Startled, she glanced up from the journal. A man in a pastel-yellow polo shirt indicated the chair opposite her.

‘Yes.’ Imagining he intended to remove the chair, she was taken aback to find him lowering himself onto it, placing a tall glass of beer at her table and stretching a hand towards her. ‘Mark.’

His fingers were short and clammy. She didn’t return her name.

‘I’m here with my squash buddies,’ he said, nodding to the table of men she’d passed on her way into the restaurant. ‘But having lost, again, I couldn’t sit through the point-by-point debrief. You don’t mind me joining you, I hope?’

She did mind. Enormously. In other circumstances, Katie would have explained that she was unavailable, softening the blow with a flattering remark, and then the man could have been on his way, dignity intact. However, with the weariness of the day leaning on her shoulders, her usual social graces eluded her entirely.

‘So,’ Mark said, taking her silence as encouragement, ‘where are you from?’

She placed her left hand, engagement ring facing towards him, on the stem of her wineglass. ‘London.’

‘Big Ben. Madame Tussauds. Covent Garden.’ He laughed. ‘I visited a couple of years back. Damn cold. Pretty, though. Very pretty.’

She picked up her wine and took a drink.

The man’s gaze moved to the journal. ‘Notebook?’

‘Journal.’

‘You’re a writer?’

‘This isn’t mine.’

He angled his head to see it more clearly. She noticed his eyes were positioned unusually close together; it made him look reptilian. ‘Whose is it?’

‘My sister’s.’

‘Getting the dirt on her, are you?’ She smelt alcohol on his breath and realized from the glassy sheen in his eyes that he was drunk. She glanced around, hoping the waiter might be nearby with her dinner.

‘So tell me …’ He made a waving motion with his hand.

‘Katie.’

‘So tell me, Katie. What are you doing with your sister’s journal?’

She flinched at this stranger’s casual reference to Mia’s journal. She wanted to snap it shut and be rid of this overconfident, drunken clown. ‘It’s private.’

‘Bet that’s what she thought when she was writing it!’ He laughed, then picked up his beer and took a gulp; she could see his inner lip squashed against the rim of the glass.

‘I’m sorry. I think you should leave.’

He looked affronted as if he’d thought the conversation had been moving along successfully. ‘Seriously?’

‘Yes. Seriously.’

His knee bashed the table as he stood, causing it to rock. Katie’s wineglass teetered, but she caught it by the stem just before it fell. She wasn’t quick enough to save the beer. Golden liquid, light with bubbles, spilt over the open journal. Horrified, she grabbed her napkin and blotted it, but the beer was already seeping into the pages, turning the smooth cream sheets dark and ridged. She watched with dismay as the precise, neat writing on the page began to blur.

‘You idiot!’

Two women at the next table turned to look.

The man raised his hands in the air. ‘Easy, lady. I just came over to be nice.’ He pushed back his chair with force. ‘Guess the game’s up,’ he said maliciously, motioning to the soiled journal.

‘Fuck you.’ The swear word felt sharp and delicious on her tongue.

The man strode back to his friends, shaking his head.

She bit down on her lip, desperate to maintain control, but tears were already threatening. Clutching the damaged journal, she scooped up her handbag and coat.

By the time the waiter had set down a dinner for one, Katie was already at the door. She had left behind her home, her job, her fiancé and her friends because of a desperate need to understand what happened to Mia. But as she burst onto the pavement, damp air closing in on her like cold breath, she wondered if she had made a terrible mistake. I’m sorry, Mia. I don’t think I can do this.

6

MIA

Maui, October Last Year

Finn laced up his hiking boots in the dark, with a foot on the wheel arch of the hire car. He’d set his alarm for 4 a.m. and driven Mia along winding roads and hairpin bends to the highest point in Maui, atop the Haleakala¯ volcano, to watch the sunrise. At an elevation of ten thousand feet it was bitterly cold, although they had been warned that by midday it would become scorching with almost no shade for hikers to rest.

‘How much water have you got?’ Mia asked, her voice still husky from her doze in the car.

‘Enough for us both.’ He zipped up his coat, locked the car, and tightened the straps of his pack.

They struck out by the light from their head torches. He led, wanting to pick out a route with firm footing. Night hiking could be dangerous as changes in the terrain were difficult to judge, but the path proved smooth and descended steadily into the crater basin. Neither of them spoke, the only sound being the loose cinder ash crunching underfoot like snow.

It was still before dawn and the air was dry and chilled; Finn’s cheeks felt as if they’d been stretched taut. He glanced back to check that Mia was close behind and the beam of his torch illuminated her face. She’d fastened her hair into a loose knot and wore a black fleece zipped to the chin. Her expression was set and determined.

‘Okay?’

‘Okay.’

They continued on as the sky bled from black to a deep violet and silhouettes of looming volcanoes and cinder cones began to emerge. Fit and strong, Mia kept a good pace; she’d once told Finn she loved hiking for the simplicity of travelling from one point to another under an open sky. Since arriving on Maui, she had spent many hours walking the beaches alone, and Finn guessed that she used the time to think about her father. They had been on the island a week, but she hadn’t visited him and Finn hadn’t asked why. Mia would go when the time was right.

Over the years he’d become good at deciphering how Mia felt from the small clues she gave him. For instance, if they were in conversation and she looked up at him from the corners of her eyes, chewing slightly on her bottom lip, it was often an indication that she wanted to talk about something important, and he’d need to slow and soften his voice to give her space to do so. He’d become attuned to such signals after thirteen years of friendship – longer than many marriages – yet the signs he couldn’t confidently translate were what she felt for him.

He stopped. ‘Let’s watch from there,’ he said, pointing to a raised area just off the trail where they could view the sunrise. The sky had lightened to a soft indigo and he removed his head torch, threw down his pack and leant against it. Mia sat beside him, drawing her knees towards her chest. She yawned and he saw the slight arch of her back.

From her pack she pulled a thin blanket borrowed from the hostel and draped it around them both. He could smell her shampoo: peach and avocado. Heat spread through his body. He swallowed, closing his eyes. It was dangerous to be feeling like this.

‘Finn,’ she said, her lips close to his ear.

‘Yes?’

‘Thank you – for coming to Maui.’

‘It would’ve been a different story if your dad lived in Kazakhstan,’ he quipped, forcing a smile.

‘I mean it.’ She was studying him closely. Too closely. ‘I really appreciate you being here.’ She leant into him, lifted her chin, and placed a kiss on his cheek.

He was 16 again and standing in the crowded concert hall, sweat trickling down his lower back, the taste of Mia’s lips fresh on his.

He saw the truth of it now as he had back then: he was in love with Mia.

In the Hawaiian language, ‘Haleakalã’ meant ‘House of the Sun’. The first light broke on the horizon, sending pink slithers into the sky and painting the underbellies of clouds silver.

‘My God!’ Mia said, sitting forward.

A brilliant red sun began to appear from behind the crater, a majestic god in all its awesome glory. As it rose, light flooded the lunar landscape, turning everything a deep earthy red. Now he could make out the towering cinder cones and crater basin, which emitted an ethereal quality that he could only compare to pictures of the moon. Within minutes, the full sun bloomed from behind the volcano like a smile, and they felt the first blush of warmth on their faces.

It was an otherworldly sight; one of many incredible things they would experience together on this trip. He looked ahead to the weeks and months to come – spending hour after hour in Mia’s company – and glimpsed a type of exquisite torture unfolding. He would be able to lie beside Mia, listening to her breath slowing into sleep, but wouldn’t be able to hold her. He would eat dinner with her as the sun went down, but would never reach across to touch her hand. He would listen to all the things that busied her mind, but would not share the one thing on his.

Travelling together for months in such intimate proximity would be impossible, deceitful even. He felt he was being driven towards making a decision with only one choice: Tell her.

*

Mia kicked off her hiking boots and then peeled away the damp socks, revealing pink and swollen feet. Dust caked her shins, stopping at the exact line at which her socks had begun. She’d caught the sun on her shoulders, nose and cheekbones, and stepped gratefully into a cool shower, feeling the water slide over her skin.

They were staying in the Pineapple Hostel on Maui’s north shore. Mia liked the rainbow colours of the dorms and the vegetable patch in the garden and, on another evening, she might have taken advantage of the hammocks, or sat in the shade of a palm tree to read. Right now, however, her mind was elsewhere because on the hike she had decided that tonight she would visit Mick.

She rolled deodorant along the hollows of her armpits and then combed her wet hair into a single smooth rope that glistened like liquorice. She pulled a fresh T-shirt from her backpack and slipped it on with a pair of shorts, then grabbed her bag.

Finn was in the communal kitchen cooking pasta and chatting with a group of windsurfers who’d just arrived at the hostel.

‘Sorry to interrupt,’ she said, placing a hand lightly on his arm. ‘I’m going to see Mick.’

‘Now?’

‘Yes.’

‘Excuse me a second,’ she heard Finn say. He followed her out of the kitchen. ‘Wait, Mia. Are you sure? I could go with you.’

‘I’d like to do this on my own.’

He nodded. ‘You know where you’re going?’

‘The hostel owner said it’s a ten-minute walk.’

‘It’s getting dark.’

‘I’ll take a taxi back.’

Finn rubbed a knuckle beneath his chin. ‘Well, I hope it goes all right.’

She left at once, so she didn’t have time to change her mind. She walked through the small town of Paia, an offbeat place dotted with health-food stores, vegetarian cafés, surf shops and beachwear boutiques. Sugar-cane fields backed onto the town, lending a sweet smell to the air, and everywhere looked lush and green, as if she’d stepped outside after a burst of heavy rain.

Two young boys emerged from the neck of a footpath with wet hair and bare feet, surfboards thrust underarm. Rather than turning right into the street that would deliver her to Mick’s house, Mia found herself taking the footpath, which led her through palm and papaya trees, to a wide stretch of beach.

The air smelt fragrant, a crush of petals infused on the humid air. She slipped off her flip-flops and padded through the warm sand, which had taken on the pinkish hue of the evening sun. Her calf muscles and the backs of her thighs ached from hiking so she found a stretch of deep sand and sank down into it.

Clean sets of waves rolled in from the ocean in neat lines, like a watery army. She watched as each wave rose gracefully to a fluid peak and then broke in a powerful cacophony of spray and froth, sending white-water roaring towards the shore.

Beyond the breaking waves a lone surfer caught her attention. He paddled hard as a great mound of swell grew beneath him, and he was suddenly propelled onto it. He rose to his feet and dropped down the glassy face of the wave. He cut two smooth and fluid turns, carving white spray with a flick of the board’s tail, and then popped over the back of the wave moments before it closed out in a boom and a crush of foam. Mia realized she had been holding her breath watching him.

From her bag she took out her journal and placed it on her knees. The four lines of her father’s address were written on a scrap of paper that she’d stuck in the centre of a double page, around which she’d begun to write brief notes and questions.

Writing was Mia’s way of organizing her thoughts; when she could see words physically taking shape on a page she would then recognize threads of feelings or emotions that she’d allow to simmer, unidentified. Talking had never come as easily. She admired the way Katie would flop onto a chair, cup her hands lightly around her face, and air whatever grievance was troubling her. Regardless of the advice Mia or their mother gave, it was obvious that it was the act of talking that helped clear Katie’s mind, in the way a brisk walk on a frosty morning clears the sinuses, and she would always leave brighter for it.

Looking at the double page now, Mia noticed that two questions stood out more prominently than the other notes, and she circled them both. The first was simply: ‘Who is Mick?’

She knew the basic facts: Mick had been 28 when he met their mother, seven years her senior. They married four months later and bought a small house in North London where Katie and Mia were born. Mick worked in the music industry and set up three independent labels during his career; the first two went bust and the third he sold before retiring to Maui. Few of these facts had been elaborated on by their mother, always reluctant to talk about a man who had so little input into her daughters’ lives. When pushed, she had described him as charismatic with a shrewd head for business, but added that he was deeply selfish and never committed to the responsibilities of fatherhood.

The second question Mia had circled was more complicated. Even as a child she had sensed how different she and Katie were. Teachers praised Katie’s positive work ethic and her popularity amongst classmates, but complained about Mia’s disruptive behaviour and the lack of care applied to her studies. Katie became the benchmark against which Mia was measured, never the other way round.

The comparisons other people made, however, were nothing against those Mia and Katie drew between themselves. Mia had sometimes wondered if their differences were more pronounced since, oddly, their birthdays fell on the same day – 11 June – but with three years between them. The year Mia turned 12 and Katie 15, Mia asked to celebrate with a beach barbeque, and Katie, who was nearing the end of senior school, wanted a party. Their mother offered a solution: they would have a party at the beach.

Katie invited a dozen school friends; the boys headed straight for the water and the girls basked in the early-evening sun. Mia left to explore the next bay along with Finn, who was the only person she’d thought to invite. They spent their time digging for lugworms or chasing each other, swinging thick ropes of seaweed above their heads. They rejoined the party only when they could smell the burgers cooking, and then took their loaded plates to the rocks where they sat together eating and throwing the occasional scraps to the cocky gulls that gathered nearby.

Mia watched Katie moving seamlessly from friend to friend, checking that they had enough food, that their drinks were full and that they were enjoying themselves. She noticed how the girls brightened as soon as Katie joined them, and the boys’ gazes would linger on her. One of the party, a diminutive girl who’d earlier been caught unawares by a wave that soaked the bottoms of her jeans, sat alone, deflated after the incident, her paper plate sagging on her knees. Noticing her, Katie slipped apart from the group she was with and sat beside the girl. She touched the damp line of the girl’s jeans, and then whispered something that made her laugh hard enough to forget the cool denim at her shins. When Katie stood and reached out her hand, the girl took it and then followed Katie as they moved to rejoin the larger crowd.

Mia was impressed. At 15, when most teenagers were awkward and temperamental, Katie had an intuitive ability to put people at their ease. From her vantage point on the rocks, she saw Katie join their mother beside the barbeque as she heaped the last of the blackened sausages onto a spare plate. As they stood close, their blonde heads leaning towards one another, their gazes levelled at the sea, it suddenly struck Mia how similar her mother and sister were. It was more than their physical likeness, it was a likeness etched into their personalities. They shared a gregarious manner and a gift for understanding people, both able to read gestures and expressions in a way that was entirely alien to Mia.

The realization of their similarities unsettled Mia, but it wasn’t until years later, when her mother’s cancer was moving into its final stages, that she understood precisely why. Mia was visiting home and had swung into the drive – three hours late according to the schedule Katie had emailed her. A headache thumped at her temples and alcohol fumes emanated from her pores.