‘It’s OK.’ Pepper touched her mother’s arm. ‘We can wait.’
‘Do you mind if I sit here for a while?’ asked her mother, her gaze fixed on the water.
‘Sure.’ Samuel had begun to move away, and Pepper went to follow, to give her mother some space, then she hesitated.
‘Mum?’
Her mother opened her eyes a fraction wider.
‘I’ll be just over here, if you need me.’
She had been saying the same phrase ever since she was a teenager but wondered now how sincere she had been. For years, Pepper had prodded at her mum’s grief, looking for chinks into which she might slide a little comfort, but the less success she had, the more it became an exercise in simply going through the motions. Today, however, the words sounded different, and Pepper did not have to search long to work out the reason why.
It was because for the first time ever, she finally felt able to help.
Chapter 48
Pepper could still remember the first mosaic she had ever made.
Her mother had collected her from school, her bright red coat straining over the swell of her baby sister Bethan, and taken her down to the beach.
‘Pick up as many pretty shells and pebbles as you can find,’ she had told Pepper, pushing a little bucket into her hands. ‘Mummy will wait here for you.’
Pepper had done as instructed, picking her way along the shoreline where the stones were their shiniest. Every few paces, she had turned, looking back over her shoulder to make sure her mother was still there, that she could still make out the scarlet blur of her in the distance.
When her bucket was full, they had taken it home where her mother had washed all the pieces, laying them out on a tea towel to dry while she mixed up a bowl of plaster. This she spread inside the cardboard lid of a shoebox – ‘right to the edges, see?’ – explaining to Pepper how she could create a picture from half-burying all her treasures in its grainy surface. Seeing her picture come to life had felt magical, and it was a sensation she had carried with her always – that feeling of rightness, and of coming alive. It had ignited the artist in her, and that flame had not gone out. Not even in the darkest of times.
It had always been her light.
‘This is it, Mum. This is what I wanted to show you.’
Trinity stared up at the small building in front of them, taking in the oval stained-glass windows, ornate crosses and miniature turrets.
‘It looks like a church,’ she said, and Pepper smiled.
‘It is. Well, it’s a chapel – the Little Chapel, to be exact.’
Her mother still looked mystified.
‘I have never heard of it,’ she said.
‘Neither had I, until I started looking up Guernsey earlier this week,’ she confessed. ‘But isn’t it amazing?’
‘It’s certainly . . .’ Samuel paused, raising a hand to shield his eyes from the sun. ‘Something.’
‘The whole thing is decorated in shells, glass, pebbles and broken china,’ Pepper told them, unable to keep the excitement from her voice. ‘It’s essentially a giant mosaic.’
As they moved forwards to take a closer look, Pepper realised that it wasn’t simply the chapel that had been adorned with broken fragments, but the walls, archways and steps around it, too. She was aware of the familiar tickle of inspiration as she took in all the colours, shapes and patterns, a new delight revealing itself with every step she took. There were diamond-shaped panels of white and green, stars of yellow shards and crowns of amber, sapphire and terracotta. There were daisies and willow trees, roses and birds, geometric patterns and painted faces split in two. It was chaos, but there was harmony, just as Pepper had known there would be.
‘What do you think?’ she asked Samuel, as the two of them emerged from the far exit of the chapel and made their way back around to admire it from the front.
‘I think it looks like a place that elves would live in,’ he replied. ‘But I like it.’
‘Park Güell in Barcelona is a lot like this,’ Pepper told him. ‘But on a much larger scale.’
Her mother had been examining the little grotto-cum-garden to the left of the chapel, but now she joined them, a real smile on her face for the first time that day. The walk had clearly done her some good. The hangover she’d had when Pepper knocked for her that morning seemed to have gone, and her quiet poise was well on the way to returning.
‘You know,’ Pepper said. ‘I have always loved mosaics, because I saw them as a sort of jigsaw puzzle – only one where I got to decide what picture to make. Putting everything back together, as I saw it, made me happy. I wanted things to be as perfect as possible – and anything I found lacking, I simply tossed away.’
Samuel was smiling at her as well now, the sun behind him making the tips of his ears glow.
‘But all that time, and actually until very recently, I was missing the whole point,’ she went on. ‘It wasn’t until Josephine said something to me a few weeks ago that I realised I’d been looking at things all wrong.’
‘What do you mean?’ her mother asked, tucking her hair behind her ears as a light breeze scurried past them.
‘Well, what do you see when you look at this chapel?’ Pepper asked.
Trinity shook her head in confusion.
‘Go on,’ Pepper urged. ‘Just look at it right now and tell me what you see.’
‘I see lots of colours,’ she said. ‘And patterns.’
‘And?’ encouraged Pepper. ‘Do you like it?’
‘Yes. I mean, it’s certainly very striking – very beautiful.’
Samuel coughed. ‘It’s a masterpiece if you ask me – must have taken ages.’
Pepper laughingly agreed.
‘What do you think makes it so beautiful, Mum?’ Pepper pressed, watching her closely.
‘All the pieces,’ she said. ‘All the broken pieces.’
‘Yes!’ Pepper exclaimed. ‘When we look at this chapel, or at any mosaic we ever see, we look at the pieces, not at the cracks around them.’
‘I would argue that we do,’ Samuel put in. ‘I guess, we just don’t see them – we don’t take them in.’
‘Exactly!’ Pepper took a few steps forwards and placed her hand on the chapel wall.
‘The thing is,’ she said, her eyes now solely on her mother, ‘I think you and I have been guilty of looking at the wrong thing for years.’
Her mother frowned, still not quite understanding.
‘The cracks,’ Pepper went on, tracing a finger along one as she spoke. ‘We have focused so intently on the fault lines of our lives that we forgot to appreciate all the beauty – the good things we still had left after Bethan died.’
‘I couldn’t see any of them,’ her mum said then, her voice choked with pain. ‘Everything was tarnished by what happened, by the accident.’
Pepper froze. It was the first time she had ever heard her mother refer to it as such.
‘First Bethan died, then your father left. I had you, but it felt as if I didn’t. I was so scared of the pain that I pushed you as far away from me as I could. I was scared to even love you – my own daughter.’