Forget Me Not (The Ceruleans: Book 2) Page 8

  I left them arguing and slipped out to the downstairs toilet to change. I got a start when I saw my reflection in the mirror – red lips, rouged cheeks, hair up, so much skin on display. I stripped off and splashed water on my face again and again until the makeup was gone, before covering up in my usual clothes – dull and dreary after Cara’s finery, but infinitely more comfortable. Then I gave the pale, tired-looking girl in the mirror the talking-to she deserved:

  ‘That was close. Too close. You might’ve lost it up that ladder. Can’t let them see you’re ill. Pull it together, girl.’

  There was a light knock on the door. ‘Scarlett? You okay?’

  ‘Fine,’ I called, collecting up Cara’s clothes.

  ‘Who are you talking to?’

  ‘Myself.’

  ‘First sign of madness that.’

  ‘I know.’

  I swung open the door. Luke was leaning on the doorframe.

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘You look beautiful.’

  ‘Now? I just washed off all the makeup. ’

  He leaned down and nuzzled my neck and murmured in my ear. ‘Now.’ Then he stood up and smiled down at me. ‘Don’t get me wrong, you in those’ – he pointed to the underwear in my arms – ‘smokin’ hot. But I prefer you like this, looking like you.’

  I lifted to tippy-toes and planted a kiss on his lips. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  I was finding it hard not to stare at the silver scar across his nose and imagine a shard of glass imbedded there. Abruptly, I pulled him to me and squeezed him hard.

  ‘Hey,’ he said when I released him, ‘what was that for?’

  ‘Just because.’

  Because you’re here, with me, and not lying in the earth next to your parents.

  He ran a hand down my arm, sending tingles through me. Then his hand stilled. He bent down and pushed up the t-shirt sleeve over my left bicep and scrutinised the skin. Then he switched and checked the other arm.

  Uh-oh.

  ‘Scarlett – your arm. I don’t understand. Where’s the huge scab? From the brick that fell?’

  I stepped back and stared up at him.

  ‘Scarlett?’

  ‘Mother!’ I announced. ‘She sent me some sample she had of a miracle scar-diminishing cream. Brand new. Not even on the market yet.’ I looked at my arm, where the wound should have been. ‘Not bad, eh? The manufacturers will make a mint out of it.’

  He stared at me, and I had the uneasy feeling, as I often did with him, that he could see right through me. But then his eyes lit up.

  ‘Could you get more?’ he said. ‘For Cara – her legs?’

  Oh man. I’d dug a hole for myself now.

  I thought furiously.

  Of course I’d considered healing Cara. I’d thought of it every single time I’d seen her since I’d discovered I had the light – every time she staggered, every time she winced in pain, every time she smoothed down a long skirt chosen specifically to hide the scars.

  It wasn’t the cost to myself that held me back. For there would be a cost, of course. Jude had said I’d nearly died healing Luke, and Sienna had been explicit in her diary: ‘use the light, die sooner’. All I wanted was every minute I could have on this earth, but I would give up precious time for Cara, to give her the life she deserved.

  Nor was it what Sienna described in her diary as ‘instinct’. Jude may believe that he wasn’t meant to heal Cara, but a devotion to Serviam wouldn’t hold me back.

  No, it was the exposure that was a problem. Pretty hard to heal someone of painful, disabled, scarred legs without her noticing, and what logical explanation could explain it away…

  Mother’s mysterious miracle cream! I’d inadvertently found a solution.

  I beamed at Luke. ‘Yes! I’ll get more cream! I’ll get more cream sent today!’

  He whooped and swept me up and I laughed as he spun us around.

  Chester came running, and Cara followed as fast as she could manage in his wake, turning into the hallway just in time to see Chester take Luke and me down with an exuberant, slobbery flying hug.

  ‘What is it? What did I miss?’ she demanded of the pile of limbs and fur and barks and squeals on the hallway floor.

  ‘Hope, Cara,’ said Luke, hauling a wriggling Chester off me. ‘But you won’t be missing it any longer.’

  17: LOST AND FOUND

  The other world is still a mystery. How many of these Ceruleans are there? Were they all regular people once, like me and Scarlett, who Became? Do they all live in Cerulea? Is it a massive place, then, with a government and everything?

  I was going to ask Jude, but then I thought: all these days I’ve been asking questions, and do the answers even matter? They don’t change anything, and I can learn all this stuff afterwards.

  The headaches are worse, and I hit the deck again yesterday, in the bathroom this time. I’m holding out for Scarlett, but I don’t know that I can last long enough. Her birthday, August thirty-first, is such a long way away.

  ~

  Daniel came to the cottage. Not alone. He brought Gabriel with him.

  They wanted to talk about Scarlett.

  ~

  I lost myself. Jude found me. He talked me into getting away from the cove for a couple of nights. The time away is a blur. At some point the tears dried up. At some point I stopped shaking. But we didn’t talk – I couldn’t talk to him. We walked a lot, along the coast. We watched the sunset. I wanted to cry again, but I didn’t.

  ~

  I misplaced some of the afternoon. It was lunchtime and then, blink, the sun was touching the tip of the plum tree in the garden.

  ~

  My head hurts.

  I miss my sister.

  ~

  I saw Grandad in the garden. He was hoeing the vegetable patch. He smiled at me, and beckoned.

  ~

  Went to St Mary’s today. Haven’t been there since I was a kid.

  I sat in the pew, and I prayed. I don’t know why – it seemed the thing to do. I prayed for Scarlett, mainly.

  The rev came out and sat beside me. He was kind. I talked to him. About death. About God.

  It helped, a little.

  18: SUNSET

  I had never intended to set foot again in St Mary’s church. I didn’t belong there. The simple, unquestioning faith I’d had as a child had long since given way to a quiet emptiness. I had stopped believing in the stories of the Bible. I had stopped believing in Jesus. I had stopped believing in the deity I’d been brought up to worship. In a house of God, I was an intruder.

  Why, then, when I should have been home packing my bag for the Newquay trip in the morning, was I pushing open the thick wooden door of the church and stepping into the cool, silent entranceway?

  Because following my reading this morning, only one page remained unread in my sister’s diary. Just a turn of a page to lay the last of the truth bare. And then – then I would have to face Jude.

  ‘You can’t keep running from me, Scarlett. You and I, we have a future ahead.’

  The fear was a rip current, propelling me into darkness, drowning me. I’d learned the hard way that the only way out of a rip is an abrupt change in direction. The church had long since ceased having meaning in my life, but there, perhaps, I may find the very dimmest of lights to follow.

  Reverend Helmsley was at the altar, paging through a large and very old Bible.

  ‘Scarlett!’ he called warmly as I walked up the aisle. ‘How lovely to see you.’ He closed the book and stepped down to meet me. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Fine,’ I said automatically.

  ‘Good! And how is your arm after that dreadful accident in the churchyard?’ He looked at my arm, as if he could see right through the wool to the skin beneath.

  Pulling my cardigan tightly around me, I said, ‘Much better, thank you.’

  ‘All better. Good!’ He beamed. ‘So,
what can I do for you this fine day?’

  I stood awkwardly, trying to find the words. Above the altar, on a sculpted crucifix, Jesus watched. His expression was tortured and his eyes – judgmental, I was sure.

  ‘Would you like to sit down, dear?’ the reverend offered kindly.

  I nodded, and he gestured to the front pew. I sat in the middle, and he settled himself down beside me – close enough to pat my hand, but at a sufficient distance that I didn’t feel crowded.

  ‘What is it you’d like to talk about, Scarlett?’

  ‘I don’t know what to say. I don’t know why I’m here. I read… I have a diary, my sister’s. She wrote that she came here and talked to you.’

  ‘Yes, she did.’

  ‘May I ask… what did you talk about?’

  The church fell silent, long enough for me to count five of Reverend Helmsley’s deep, rhythmic breaths. Then he said, ‘Your sister had many questions, difficult ones, about the existence of God, and the afterlife, and the angels.’

  ‘And what did you tell her?’

  ‘I told her what I believe: that heaven and earth are governed by a divine being of love that employs many instruments to guide and protect us.’

  ‘Instruments?’

  ‘Of heaven and earth, and all that falls in between.’

  I stared at him and his watery brown eyes met my gaze. I saw no hint of agenda in them, just compassion.

  ‘Would you like to talk about those things with me, Scarlett?’

  ‘No!’

  He was a kind man who doubtlessly knew the Bible inside and out. But what did he know, truly, of life and death? There was only one person who could give me answers, and I would see him soon enough.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘that sounded rude. But… no.’

  He smiled. ‘Not rude, Scarlett, but honest. Thank you for being honest. I wonder, do you feel able to share with me why you have come here today? Not for answers, clearly, but for something. What do you need?’

  I thought about it. ‘Courage, I suppose.’

  ‘To do battle?’

  ‘No. I’ve been fighting. Every day.’

  ‘Ah. Then perhaps it’s time to do the opposite.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Surrender.’

  ‘Give up?’

  ‘No. Accept what you cannot change.’

  ‘That’s… hard.’

  ‘It is. Especially when it comes to death.’

  I flinched at the word.

  ‘That is what we are talking about, isn’t it, dear?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Sienna’s death.

  My death.

  ‘I wonder…’ The reverend drifted off, staring at some point in space or time that was far beyond me. ‘Yes,’ he said, coming back to the moment. ‘I would like to share with you, if I may, my first encounter with death. It’s not an easy story to tell, and it’s not an easy story to hear, but I think, I hope, it will help.’

  His whole demeanour was so grave – I didn’t want to hear a story that made him that way. Not at all. But I’d come here for help, and he was offering it. I nodded.

  ‘It was many years ago,’ he said, ‘when I was only just ordained. The woman was not herself, not at all. These days I suppose the hospital may have picked up on her illness. But they didn’t then. Nor did they notice her leave the ward on which she’d been staying.

  ‘It was late at night, and I was locking up the church to go home when I noticed her. They could never work out how she got from the hospital to the cove in a dressing gown, but she did, and because the gown was white it stood out in the darkness. I saw her on the cliff, standing at the edge of the path.’

  He paused to clear his throat, and I asked, ‘Which cliff?’

  ‘The west cliff.’ He left the remainder of the sentence hanging heavily in the air: near your grandparents’ cottage.

  ‘I ran,’ he said. ‘And I got there just before... She was so unwell. God bless her, I don’t think she wanted to do it, but she could find no other way to escape the demons inside her. There was no time. I reached for her. Her hands touched mine, so briefly. And then she let go. She just… fell.’

  I squeezed my eyes shut, to block out the terrible scene that was in my mind, but it didn’t work. I saw the woman fall, as I so nearly had. I saw her fall, and no one save her.

  ‘Scarlett,’ said the reverend gently. ‘That isn’t all of the story.’

  I opened my eyes, and even the dim light in the church was dazzling.

  ‘That poor woman,’ he continued. ‘Postpartum psychosis; they said that was what drove her to it.’

  ‘Postpartum? You mean she –’

  ‘– was a mother, Scarlett, yes. A very new mother. She’d taken her baby from the hospital. She intended to take him with her. But in that final moment, she put that tiny child in my hands. Though life was too painful for her to bear any longer, she had enough faith left to believe it could be better for her son. She entrusted him to me. She gave him life. And then she gave up her own life.’

  I shuddered, and a tear that had been teetering at the rim spilled over and trickled down my cheek. The reverend produced a packet of tissues from his pocket and offered me one before continuing.

  ‘I cried too, Scarlett. Many times. I was so glad that he lived, that boy, but so utterly devastated that his mother had died. It took me time to make peace with what happened that night. To accept the woman’s death, and my futility in the face of it. Like you, I thought it was courage I was lacking. It wasn’t, though. Tell me, are you familiar with Reinhold Niebuhr’s prayer?’

  I shook my head.

  He stood up, his knees creaking with the effort. ‘Come and see,’ he said.

  The reverend led the way up the aisle to the back of the church, and stopped by a cork noticeboard by the door on which were pinned various posters and notices. At the bottom several prayer cards had been slid between the frame and the board. He pointed to one, and I read silently:

  O God, give us the serenity to accept what cannot be changed,

  The courage to change what can be changed,

  And the wisdom to know the one from the other.

  ‘Serenity,’ said Reverend Helmsley. ‘I think that’s what you really came here in search of, Scarlett. Courage won’t serve you now – you can’t change what you wish you could change. But with serenity, you can reach acceptance. And that’s the foundation for moving forward.’

  ‘But how do I find it, this serenity?’

  He smiled. ‘You don’t, Scarlett. It’s a gift from above. All you need do is ask for it.’

  *

  I sat in the garden that evening. For a long time I remained motionless, curled up in the patio chair and staring out into the cove. The lowering sun was concealed beneath thick, oppressive clouds, the sea was murky and restless and the breeze was on the brink of wind. It was not a prayer, my stillness; it was not a plea to a god I was still not convinced existed. But it was my attempt to open myself to serenity.

  Finally, when the light of the day had leaked away and I was numb, whether from cold or calm I didn’t care, I picked up my sister’s diary and I turned to the last page.

  ~

  I always thought the question was, ‘What do you live for?’ I was wrong. This is what really matters: ‘What would you die for?’

  ~

  Gabriel swears he won’t send Daniel for Scarlett. He’ll have me, and that will be enough.

  Scarlett will be safe. With Jude. He’s good. He’ll be good for her. She’ll be happy in his world.

  ~

  Not long now.

  Daniel gave me this old poem, ‘Invictus’. I don’t understand most of it, but I like how it ends:

  I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.

  ~

  Daniel will take me tonight – in the water. They say drowning is the most peaceful way to go. You just surrender.

  I never did manage to write to Scarlett. I don’t know h
ow to say goodbye.

  I will leave her this. And the rock that Jude gave me. Because the blue of it makes me think of that field of flowers behind the house where we played as children, when it was just me and her against the world. When she was my everything.

  The End.

  19: SACRIFICE

  I don’t know how long I sat there before I called Jude. It seemed barely a moment elapsed between my closing the diary and him appearing at my side. But once he was there, standing over me, and I looked up at him, I could hardly see him because the light was wrong: it was so dark.

  ‘Scarlett?’ He crouched down on the grass at my feet. ‘What is – hey, you’re freezing!’ He shrugged off his zippie and wrapped it around me. It was soft and smelt like wood smoke.

  ‘Thank you,’ I whispered through lips I couldn’t feel.

  ‘How long have you been out here?’

  ‘A while.’

  ‘Let’s get you inside.’

  He coaxed me to my feet.

  ‘Wait.’

  He stilled, but he didn’t drop his hands from my shoulders.

  ‘I finished the diary, Jude. I read it all. To The End.’

  In the dark, his eyes were fathomless, but I knew what was in them: regret.

  ‘I’m sorry, Scarlett.’

  ‘For what? You saved Luke. You saved me. You tried to save Sienna.’

  ‘But I failed.’

  His voice, so wretched, broke down the last barrier inside me. I stepped forward and put my arms around him. For a moment he stood rigid, and then I felt his hands press against my back. There we stood, two strangers holding on to each other in the darkness, and when the heavens opened, they cast down raindrops onto faces that were already wet.

  *

  We sat at the kitchen table. The brightness of the ceiling lights and the warmth from the Aga and the aroma of our coffees were reassuring for their familiarity and normality – the perfect setting to ground the conversation we were having.

  ‘What I don’t understand is why she went with Daniel,’ I said, stirring sugar into my drink. ‘Why not you?’

  Jude, grim faced and cupping his mug with both hands, said simply, ‘Daniel is very convincing.’