A Sister’s Gift (46 page)

My Japanese friend shifts his body round so he’s facing me. ‘Does that mean you’re a free woman now, Scarlett?’

I manage a laugh, looking pointedly down at my swollen belly. Hardly free. ‘You offering to take me out on a date?’

Emoto smiles disarmingly. Bloody hell. He’s actually shy, not aloof as I’ve always thought. Why did I never see that before?

‘You’ll be getting on a plane to Tokyo after London,’ I remind him, ‘and I’ll be entering a contract into slave labour for the next three months…’

‘Barry set up that temporary au pair’s job at his brother-in-law’s hotel for you then?’

I nod unenthusiastically.

‘Why don’t you just go home, Scarlett?’ he says feelingly.

I turn my head as the loud hiss of the coach signals that, at last, we are on our way out of Manaus.

‘I can’t go home,’ I tell him thickly. ‘I wish I could, but I can’t.’

I can feel him looking at me curiously for a few moments, his eyes darting over my face till eventually he lowers his gaze.

‘Perhaps for the best, eh? If you’re still here then some other environmental group are bound to pick you up. Would have been better if you could have stayed on with Eve maybe but with the way things were…’

‘Yeah,’ I offer up a wan smile. ‘I wasn’t exactly flavour of the month by the end, was I?’

‘It did get a bit…cramped,’ he admits. That’s one way of putting it. ‘Hardly surprising,’ he runs on, ‘five of us cooped up in a two-bed flat while we were trying to regroup and figure out our next move.’

‘Yeah. I thought Barry’s offer was the better one, which is why I’m on this coach with you now. And I’m glad, you know, Emoto. This is the first time we’ve been properly able to get to know each other, isn’t it?’

‘I’m glad, too,’ he says. ‘And once you get the award, you just wait, they’ll be queuing in the aisles to offer you another job…’

Ah yes. The award.

The two-year-old in front is staring at us again. He’s just
thrown his dummy at Emoto’s head and Emoto grins, bending to retrieve it for him.

‘You’re going to make someone a fantastic daddy one of these days,’ I say before I can stop myself. ‘And you’re going to get the Klausmann,’ I add to cover up the confusion the last statement has thrown us both into. ‘I won’t be submitting any seed samples so that means I’ll be no longer eligible. Don’t try and dissuade me either. I’ve had the last three weeks to think long and hard about this.’

It wasn’t just the thought of Duncan, waiting in the wings to expose me as a wrongdoer, that swung it in the end. It was discovering that Emoto really was the one who deserved it. It was never
my
thesis that impressed them all so much. It was my mother’s. Her work did do some good in the end, though. It brought me to this place. It gave me this opportunity. I won’t use it to steal away Emoto’s big chance now.

Emoto pushes his short dark hair up into spikes on his head and rests his trainers up on the seat in front of him. The toddler lets off a high-pitched scream and he promptly removes them, grinning guiltily.

‘You don’t have to do this, Scarlett.’

‘I do, though, Emoto.’

‘Come on! You don’t want to spend the rest of your life pulling hair out of plug-holes and straightening people’s beds, do you…?’

‘Not the rest of my life, you wally. Just till I’ve got myself sorted, that’s all.’

‘And have you figured out yet how you’re going to do that?’ He arches his brows and looks pointedly towards my belly.

‘Yes,’ I tell him assuredly. ‘I’ve got it all planned out. How I’m going to manage…things and stuff.’

He snorts, because he knows me better than that. I lean my head back against the seat now, feeling my lids starting to droop. If only I could let my sister know how very sorry I am for all
the pain I caused her. What wouldn’t I do, what wouldn’t I give, to take it all back? But she wouldn’t want to know. She wouldn’t believe me, anyway.

And who can blame her?

‘So, the Italy move is going ahead?’ Bea’s face falls, a picture of disappointment. ‘So soon? What about the cottage?
Please
don’t tell me the developers bought it?’ Our neighbour is looking very alarmed.

‘Now we wouldn’t do that to you, would we, Beatrice?’ Rich grabs a couple of glasses of champagne from a passing waiter’s tray for us ladies. Nobody can say the Bridge Wardens don’t know how to put on a party.

‘It’s going to the National Trust. They’re mooting plans for opening up the garden and serving cream teas and such to the coachloads that come to see the castle.’

‘And you two are
definitely
headed out to Italy?’

The bubbles in my champagne glass rise and pop like new ideas, so many new possibilities coming to the surface.

‘Hard though it is to believe, I’m really looking forward to it, Bea,’ I nod. ‘There’s nothing keeping us here any more – even Ruff has passed away. I have to…dream a new dream, I guess.’

‘Smile!’ The photographer from the
Kent Messenger
demands. We’re all gathered outside the little entrance area at Number Five the Esplanade, all the Bridge Wardens and the mayor and various local dignitaries – and then Bea and me and Rich squeezed in at the edge. It’s a relief when a few minutes later the photographer calls for a thinning out of the crowd and some of us troop inside.

‘All’s well that ends well.’ Ben Spenlow’s glass chinks amicably against mine. ‘Bridge never did fall down, eh? You were convinced that’s what was going to happen, weren’t you?’

I don’t answer him, just smile into my drink. Maybe I should never have told him I used to dream about that happening, a long time ago before I blocked it all out. I used to dream about a deep brown river, much wider and faster than our one, hurtling past an old wooden bridge, straining and pulling at it till eventually the weight of water collapsed it all. And I’d go down with it, every time.

‘This looks jolly good too, don’t you think?’ Beatrice intervenes. I stop. There, just inside Number Five, in the coolness of the spacious hallway, they’ve put up the new Rochester Bridge picture.

‘It looks
different
somehow…’ I stare at it for a good few minutes, trying to fathom out what’s changed. I’ve already seen it with the frame on. Could it really just be the setting?

‘You were never really taken with it, were you?’ Bea’s at my elbow. ‘I think it’s marvellous, myself.’

‘Actually, I think I see it all in a different light now, Bea.’

‘It’s a masterful amalgamation of the old and the new, don’t you see? The tragic past fades into soft and nostalgic tones behind us, the future veers up sharply, almost
dangerously
, in front of us…’

Does the past always fade into nostalgic tones behind us? Only if we can let it, perhaps.

‘I don’t know why I couldn’t see it before. It’s a really arresting picture. Stunning, even. I can see it now. Maybe it’s because I’m not frightened of the water any more?’

Bea looks at me, suddenly interested. ‘You
did
it?’

‘I’ve started classes at the local pool. I managed a whole width yesterday. Before you know it I’ll be doing lengths just like everyone else…’

‘Bravo!’ Bea suddenly goes quiet as a new thought crosses her
mind, I can almost see it. ‘Is it true you’ve had no news at all from Scarlett?’

‘None.’ I shake my head thoughtfully. ‘But if she ever does get in touch, I have forgiven her, Bea.’

‘For everything?’ A look of relief crosses Beatrice Highland’s face. I’m not even going to dwell on how much of
everything
she might know.

‘I’ve had to,’ I shrug. ‘I realised I couldn’t…I couldn’t spend the rest of my life carrying that much weight of resentment around with me.’ I turn away from her and close my eyes for a moment. Behind my closed lids, I relive the sheer and utter bliss I felt the first time I spread out my arms in the water, pushed my legs backwards off the pool bottom and just
swam
.

And didn’t sink. The sense of freedom I felt was indescribable. Bea gives me a small, self-conscious hug.

‘I am so very glad, my dear.’ She’s silent for a bit. She knows that even though there are so many things turning round in my life right now, there’s still one thing I have no control over.

‘Shall we go up? There are canapés upstairs, very good ones, you’ll miss those when you leave here, I promise you…’

She’s right. The hallway is getting very crowded, and as we start making our way up the stairs I let myself acknowledge all the things I am preparing to leave behind.

I am going to miss my beautiful Florence Cottage with its glorious Olde Worlde garden. I am going to miss the view from my kitchen of the river through all its seasons: from the soft and lazy rolling water of high summer to the headstrong hurtling of waves swollen by the winter months. I am going to miss the way the soft light shines through these stained-glass windows here at the bend of the stairwell in the Bridge Warden’s chambers.

But life is always full of so many possibilities, isn’t it?

I
have
started dreaming again, just like Mr Huang promised me I would, little snapshots and cameos of things, that’s all: like walking down a long narrow shaded street, tall buildings rising
to either side of me, or another time, climbing up a grassy slope somewhere, where it’s hot and the breeze is blowing my hair back. Somewhere that’s not here. Italy maybe? I smile at Rich, who’s been hijacked by a redhead with a martini and a notepad. He’s always there in my dreams with me, so I don’t need to worry that
she
will get him. Someone else is there with us too. I’ve not got to look at him properly yet, but I think it is someone little. Someone lovely. Who knows?

‘I shall enjoy the Mediterranean cuisine though, and you’ll have to come out and spend part of next summer with us…’I turn to her as we reach the table groaning with canapés at the top. ‘Wow. Such a crowd…’ I mutter as we go and stand by the windows overlooking the Esplanade. ‘All here for the bridge re-opening?’

‘Medway council has put on a celebratory free concert in the castle gardens.’ Ben has joined us, his plate piled high with goodies. ‘They’ve got a fair on – all the usual attractions. Another red balloon stand.’ He raises his eyebrows at me. ‘I keep seeing them go up. D’you remember the autumn when they let them all fly off together? I’ve never seen anything quite like it. You wished for the bridge to be fixed, didn’t you?’ He smiles one of his rare smiles at me. ‘Well, you got your wish.’

I didn’t wish for that, though.

I turn away from the table, watching the crowds all congregating towards the castle grounds now. Lots of families with young kids. Lots of babies in their prams.

‘I’ve been wishing for pretty much the same thing all my life,’ I mutter under my breath.

So many people…I look out over the multitude of bobbing heads and then I realise after a while that I’m not the only one doing the scrutinising. There’s a young couple with a pram just opposite standing by the stone railings looking up at me. Who are they? I peer a little closer. And why are they both looking at me so intently?

Maybe they aren’t looking at
me?
I glance behind me. Nobody else is standing by the window. Maybe it’s just the party scene which the couple are fascinated by? But it isn’t. When I look again, the young man has crossed the road and now he’s standing right beneath my window. He’s pulled his hood off so I can get a better look at his face and now I see, my heart thudding in my mouth, that I
do
know who he is.

The shock of recognition goes through me like so many volts of electricity. But for the fact that his face returned to me so clearly in the pool a few weeks back, I’d never have known him. It’s that boy Aaron. Except he isn’t a boy any more, he’s a man and with a young child of his own by the looks of it.

I feel my fists clench, leaning against the wide stone window frames. It’s
him
. It was him in the archway that night by the Cathedral. It was him that frozen day when I met Rich up on Jackson’s field and I had to stop myself from running away from the park. I’ve been running away from him for such a long time now, haven’t I, and here he is, with a child of his own – has he come to gloat?

I want to look away but I can’t because he’s mouthing something up at me. I can’t quite make out what it is. Oh, he’ll be like Duncan, after Scarlett no doubt – they always are! You’ve got a child of your own now, I think furiously. Now you’ll know what it feels like to feel vulnerable because that’s what love does to you…

I screw up my face, turning away, but now the bugger has thrown a small pebble up to the window to catch my attention again. Does he know what these windows cost?

‘What do you want?’ I sign at him. ‘Go away!’

‘I’m sorry,’ he mouths back.

‘What do you want?’

‘I…AM…SORRY!’ he mouths again.

He’s
sorry?

He turns and waits for the traffic to clear before he can cross
safely back over to his family again. When he gets to the pram I see him bend over, tuck in the little one gently. I lean so far forward then that my head is resting against the glass pane, my fingers smudging on the edges of the glass. He’s sorry. That’s what he wanted to tell me. I’ve been avoiding him all this time and that’s all he ever wanted to say? I feel a bubble of laughter rising up in my stomach.

‘Oooh, look, they’re off again!’ Everyone is crowding round the window suddenly, to see the flight of the released red balloons as they soar up and quickly spread like a splodge of red paint against the canvas of the early summer sky.

‘Did you make a wish?’ Richard is suddenly beside me, his breath warm in my ear. He knows I always do.

‘Not this time,’ I turn towards him, leaning in close to his chest. ‘Maybe for the first time I can see that I’ve already got everything I need.’

‘Hey, Scarlett.’ I wake up as a dark-eyed Emoto is patting my wrist gently. The coach has stopped. We’ve arrived at Caracas International.

‘This is where we say goodbye, I think.’

But I don’t want to say goodbye to him, though. We’ve got to know each other better over the last few days and weeks than we did in the entire year before it. Emoto is far more like me than I could have imagined. He’s totally into the rainforest and travelling, he loves conjuring tricks and he has a truly wicked sense of humour…