‘What is it?’
‘I fink we’d better ask Daddy!’
(Laughter, applause.)
I stand up and turn it off. It’s a video, I realise. I bend down to the machine. I hadn’t even seen it when I’d arrived but now I do see it I realise how long it has been since I saw a VHS player. It is top-loading, and I press the eject button with the pad of my thumb. The tape rises and I pull it out. On the label in felt-tip is written ‘Marigold! Series 4-6’. It is childish, blocky writing. I put it on the table and lie on the couch, waiting for sleep. It is a long time coming.
The next morning I walk into town. I am going to meet Heidi, I have decided. That videotape in the night was enough for me to want to get out of the house and have company. I’d held it in my hands that morning, turning it over and over between my fingers. Where had it come from? One thing was certain, I was sleepwalking again. I must be. Because how else would it have got into the house?
She is waiting outside the café, her coat pulled up against the wind. She holds a flask in one hand and waves when she sees me. She is like a sprite, fizzing with energy.
‘Hi, thanks for coming,’ she says, and then kneels to nuzzle Blue, slapping him gently on the flanks. When she straightens she gives me a smile.
‘I thought we’d go to the beach. I’ve brought a flask and some croissants. The forecast said rain but not till this afternoon, so I think we’ll be all right.’ She hooks her arm in mine and I flinch at the familiarity. If she notices she doesn’t let on, keeping up a steady stream of chatter until the dunes are behind us, rising at our backs like the tundra of a vast and distant planet. On the beach the wind is strong and thick with salt, the sand treacle-coloured and shimmering.
I let Blue off the lead and we scramble up rocks studded with mussels and barnacles. Pools are cradled in hollows, and much of the moonlike surface is slick with treacherous gutweed.
‘How are you?’
‘Good,’ I reply. ‘Fine, fine. Fine.’
‘I’m hungover,’ Heidi groans. ‘White Russians and some awful cider. I feel like death. Times like this I can understand why you don’t drink. I must look like shit.’ She nods to Chy an Mor at the top of the cliff. ‘Is that your place up there?’
Shielding my eyes, I follow Heidi’s gaze and see the squat little cottage with the warped roof, long chimney like a finger raised to the sky. I’ve never seen it from this angle. It looks so remote.
‘Yes, that’s it, that’s the cottage.’
‘Is it haunted?’
I turn to her, not knowing what to say. She hands me a croissant. ‘That’s what people say. Is it true?’
‘I don’t believe in ghosts.’
‘Aw, that’s a shame. I was hoping you might have some good stories for me.’
The sand is dimpled with the scars of the retreating tide. Blue charges into the shallow river where the seaweed floats in the current like witch’s hair. He rolls his wet body in the sand and then veers off, tail high in the air.
‘What a life that dog has.’
‘Yes. And look at this. It’s lovely, isn’t it? I will never get tired of this view.’
I nod towards the surfers right out past the breakers where the mist hangs over the sea like a nimbus. ‘They’re brave.’
‘They’re nuts, more like. It must be freezing.’
‘I’d love to try it.’
‘You should ask Frankie to teach you. You could talk about wipeouts and hang ten or whatever till the cows come home.’
‘Frankie?’
‘I know, right? You look at the size of him, and you’d think he’d have no centre of gravity at all but he’s actually very agile, like a cat.’
I think of the time he caught me on the clifftop, the sure manacle of his hand about my wrist.
‘See?’ Heidi points at a dark shape in the water. ‘See him there? Sitting on his surfboard. Posing, some people would call it. Do you want some tea? I hope you like it sweet.’
I do. She pours us both cups from her flask and I cradle it, ruffling the surface with my breath.
‘You must miss your boyfriend.’
I don’t reply. Heidi reaches over and touches my cup to her own. I look at her, surprised.
‘I hear you. Fond of your own space, right? “Besser allein als in schlechter Gesellschaft”,’ Heidi says and smiles. ‘I have German grandparents. It means “Better to be alone than in bad company”.’
I feel a brief jolt of memory, sharp as jagged glass. Martha, of course. Sweet, kind, generous Martha, who had been afraid of swearing during labour. I feel a flare of loneliness then, and perform a quick mental calculation as to when the baby would be due.
‘What do you mean by “bad company”?’
She ignores me, looking out to the horizon. ‘Listen. I wanted to speak to you. I hope I have this completely wrong and that you’ll tell me to shut up and stop being so paranoid, but someone has been looking for you.’
‘Who?’
‘He wouldn’t give his name. At least not to me. He’s been in the café a few times, just asking around. At first I thought he was just interested in the area – we get a lot of that, you see – geologists, botanists, historians – so I was happy to answer his questions but after a while I just’ – she shrugs – ‘I just thought something wasn’t right.’
She points at the scar on her face, the one like a curving sideways smile. ‘Although, as you can see, I’m a pretty lousy judge of character.’
I don’t know what to say to that, so I say nothing.
‘My husband did this to me. I’d like to tell you it was the last straw, the very last, but you know what? It wasn’t. It was just one in a very long, very boring list of injuries he liked to inflict on me.’
She holds out her hand, and I can see that two of the fingers on her right are misshapen, as though from arthritis. ‘Ask me why he broke my fingers.’
‘Why did he break your fingers?’
‘The volume on the TV was too loud, and I didn’t get to the remote fast enough. That’s the punchline. Pretty funny, huh? Pretty funny.’
I don’t think it’s funny, and I tell her so. She smiles, watching the brace of the waves hurtle towards the shore.
‘It’s a chemical process, love. I found that out a while ago. The hormones which are released have an effect on the brain similar to mental illness. Did you know that?’
I tell her I did not.
‘It’s that little chemical that makes you stay with a man even when he’s breaking your fingers or cutting up your face. Just a little hormone with a lousy name, making you blind. When Tony hit me, he was relaxed, in good humour. That’s what made it so frightening. He told me the trick was to relax, to breathe through the pain.’
‘That’s awful. I’m so sorry.’
‘Well. Long time ago. But the scars are still there, you know? The person who got me out of it was Frankie’s wife. Amazing woman, she was. It was she who told me to change my name and do something crazy with my hair to draw attention away from my scar. She helped me with a place to stay and food to eat. She was incredible. You better believe I cried my eyes out when she died. I always told myself that if I ever saw a woman in the same kind of trouble as I’d been in, that I’d try to help in some way.’