The Last Night Read online

  The sea was out, low tide, the seaweed exposed in a line along the shore, boats tilted into the mud of the harbour. She wrapped her coat around herself, moving past the Pavilion, the café and pub, grateful to recognize the same landmarks, feeling that these places could become familiar to her.

  She hadn’t been paying a great deal of attention as she wound her way past the shops and harbour, but she stopped short when she recognized him from the boat that day. He was walking as if on a tightrope along the sea wall, arms wide, grin enormous, winking at her as she passed. She wanted to keep a straight face, perhaps even look affronted, but found herself returning the smile. He stopped, twisted on one foot, took his flat cap off with a flourish and bowed.

  She turned away, smiling stupidly behind her hand, knowing she shouldn’t encourage him. What would her sister think? After being in the village for two seconds. It was this thought that made her more brusque with him than she might have been. She felt her face move into a frown, eyes narrowed. Then all that was forgotten as he jumped down from the wall, landing on two feet in front of her.

  ‘You’re that girl.’

  She didn’t know what to say, felt a jolt as words tumbled from her mouth. ‘I am.’

  He nodded, an easy smile erupting on his face. ‘I’m Richard.’ He held out a hand, large, palm up.

  She paused for a moment. His hand stayed there, unwavering, and she found herself taking it, hers lost in it as they shook.

  ‘Good. Now that I’ve introduced myself, I can ask you out.’

  His confidence made her bristle. ‘No, I don’t think…’

  ‘I saw you, in the harbour, it’s fate, something in the stars…’ He held his arms out wide and she rolled her eyes at him.

  ‘That’s not fate. That’s shop opening hours.’

  His forehead wrinkled and his mouth fell. ‘That’s what you think. But I say it’s fate. Where have you come from?’

  ‘Bristol,’ she said grudgingly.

  He whistled out loud. ‘Very fancy.’

  ‘Hardly.’ She laughed, not able to remain serious with him for long.

  ‘Well it’s fancier than here. Here there’s fish and not a lot else,’ he said, indicating the village behind them with a jerk of his head. ‘Why did you leave?’ he asked, tipping his chin to the left.

  ‘I…’ She thought then of her mum, a stab of pain as she remembered the sepia face in the bed, the unseeing eyes. She blinked once, quick to return to the tanned face of the boy. ‘I’m sorry.’ She bit her lip.

  ‘No…’ He held up a hand in apology. ‘I can be so nosy, ignore me, it was rude.’ His voice sped up, tripping over itself. ‘I just ramble on, I know I do, the lads on the boat just tell me to pipe down. I’m a dreadful rambler, Dad tells me that he can’t get a word in edgeways at home.’

  ‘I thought ramblers were more about walking?’

  ‘Are they?’ he said. ‘Oh I’m not a rambler then.’ He trailed off, looking anywhere but at her face. She realized he was embarrassed. It made her feel better, taller, as if maybe he didn’t have all the answers.

  ‘Do you work on the boats?’ she asked, shielding her eyes to look out at the of sea beyond, the fishing boats tied up at every angle in the harbour.

  ‘I’m a fisherman,’ he said, nodding.

  ‘I’d love to be out on the sea. I’ve only ever looked at it.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘Well I’ve never had the chance.’

  ‘No, I mean, why do you want to be out on it?’

  Abigail felt her own words speed up as she pictured herself at the helm of a ship, imagined herself bouncing over waves, water flying up around her. ‘To be out and free and heading to who knows where. It’s exciting.’

  ‘Well you do know most days. But you’re not wrong.’

  ‘Have you always been a fisherman?’

  He nodded. ‘There are days I dread it.’ He stopped then, abruptly, looking guiltily over his shoulder up the valley. ‘My dad would hate to hear me say that.’

  ‘Why do you dread it?’

  ‘There’s just so much…’ He paused to think of the word and then shrugged. ‘Water.’

  ‘But that’s what I think is so marvellous,’ Abigail said, surprising herself with the passion in her voice. She pictured an endless stretch of ocean, the waves rolling past, the miles of nothingness.

  ‘You’re right. I’m whining. I just get sick of being soaked, I suppose.’

  ‘You’re allowed to whine. I don’t have a clue what I’m talking about, I’d probably topple overboard or get seasick in the first hour.’

  He laughed. ‘My friend Bill has to drink ginger tea from a flask that his mum makes him, to stop him, you know…’

  Abigail felt her nose wrinkle. ‘How horrid. Poor Bill.’

  ‘Pity us when he forgets the flask.’

  ‘Oh,’ Abigail squeaked, half at the image, half because she could see her sister’s hat in the distance. ‘My sister’s coming.’

  He turned in the direction of her finger. ‘I’ve seen her before,’ he mused.

  Abigail tried to suppress the spark of jealousy as it flared. Of course he would notice her. She found herself folding her arms to her chest.

  Richard turned back to her, his green eyes focused once more on her face. ‘Well I’ll leave you in peace.’

  She felt her shoulders lower, relieved she wouldn’t have to make the introductions, glad when he tipped his hat and turned away. ‘Was a pleasure to meet you… Harbour Girl.’

  Her sister was nearing. Abigail could feel her palms getting slippery as she turned, not wanting her sister to see her, wanting to get back to the house and wait there.

  ‘It’s Abigail,’ she said, biting her lip again.

  ‘Abigail.’

  It was strange hearing her name spoken aloud by this stranger. Her insides seemed to flip and squirm. Her face twitched into a half-smile.

  She giggled quietly to herself as he walked away whistling a tune she hadn’t heard before. She thought it was beautiful.

  IRINA

  As she lay in her bed the next morning, the mood seemed to cling to her, a dread that was hard to shake. It made her pull the covers up to her chin and lie there staring at the ceiling, the swirls of plaster, the dove-grey shade. Glancing at the time, which seemed to be shifting forward rapidly, she swung her legs from the bed and started to get ready, the feeling stubbornly remaining on her skin in the shower as the water ran down her body and into the drain. She scrubbed then in fast small circles, determinedly, until her skin was pink, the memories were scoured away, and she had reclaimed her body.

  Stamping down the stairs, louder than normal, she burst into the workshop, ready to take on the day. The bureau was standing there and she breathed in through her nose slowly and deliberately, feeling her lungs expand, her shoulders lift, and then out again, quickly, in a puff of relief.

  She forced herself to work on it all morning: removing the bottle-green leather writing surface that curled at the edges. One of the pigeonhole drawers was jammed shut, she tried to prise it open gently with the edge of her knife but it wouldn’t budge. She would return to it when she had finished the rest.

  She emailed the client, curious to know more about the piece, asking him how long he had owned it, where it had come from. Within seconds an email pinged back and Irina opened it immediately without taking in the subject heading. The email announced that he was out of the country, leaving no alternative email or number. Irina had only ever communicated with him by email and now, with no other way of contacting him, her shoulders sank at the realization that she wouldn’t get any answers. Worse perhaps was the slow acknowledgement that the bureau would be staying a while.

  That thought seemed to trigger a reaction. Grabbing her coat, she called to Patricia in
the shop. ‘Just leaving for a bit, do you need anything?’

  Patricia’s head appeared through the beaded curtain a few seconds later, her body still in the shop. ‘Nothing for me,’ she said, craning her neck to the side. ‘All OK?’

  Irina didn’t usually go out in the day like this; she could see the question in Patricia’s face, the frown lines creasing her make-up. ‘Yes, all OK,’ she replied in a rush.

  She walked down the alleyway quickly, no specific destination in mind but keen to get out into the day. As she brushed past brambles curving into the path, something caught on her coat, making her stop and untangle herself; she pictured the wide road at the other end, eager to look up into the open and see the sky. She emerged onto the street where a narrow pavement dropped sharply down the hill and she turned to walk along it. There was a field beyond that and she stepped over the turnstile, dropping into a patch of dried mud on the other side.

  It was getting warmer now and her coat was almost too much. She shook it off and threw it over one arm, revelling in the spring sunshine. The meadow was a patchwork of wild gorse and tiny flowers, the hedges tumbled over each other, barely restrained around the border. She imagined the butterflies and bees of the summer months dipping in and out of it all. Very few families came here, it was an uneven patch of beauty, no place for ball games or cricket, so they preferred to make the drive down the A285 to the beach at West Wittering on sunny days.

  There was a spot at the top of an incline where you could stand and look out over the South Downs, the view a brilliant mishmash of fields and trees in every shade, the colours overlapping each other one after the other all the way to the South Downs themselves and then the sky above it all, the clouds creating shadows that moved across the landscape, grey patches that only highlighted the yellows, ochres, browns and greens of the scene beneath them.

  She walked up there through the long grass, feeling a welcome burn in her thighs as she climbed higher, needing to steady herself on occasion as the ground tricked her. Then it opened out before her and she felt, for the first time that day, free of things, reminded that she was a small speck in a much bigger place, the workshop, the bureau, even the memories that crept up on her at any given moment, such tiny considerations really in the scheme of things.

  Today the sun was unashamedly bright but the wind could still nip at her up there, playing with strands of loose hair. She wondered for a second what she might look like then to others, a heroine in a novel perhaps, atop a hill staring at the horizon, then their surprise as she turned to them, the right side of her face livid in this light and their expressions changing, her image dissolved in that moment, shifting to something else. She chastised herself for thinking in this way and turned back to take in the village, the houses and shops in their higgledy-piggledy lines, behind them the walls of Petworth House hemming them in. It was a few moments before she heard her mobile ringing.

  ‘Irina?’ Patricia sounded so brusque on the phone. ‘We might have to ring a plumber, there’s been a leak, although I’m not absolutely sure where it’s from. Don’t panic, dear, none of the furniture is damaged, it’s in the workshop. I’ll wait for you to get back.’

  Irina rolled her eyes at the news. The pipes in the house were ancient. She’d had a nasty cold spell the year before when the boiler had packed in and the pipes had frozen, cracking when they melted and flooding her kitchen, right through the ceiling into the workshop. The plumber had assured her he’d fixed it, but you never knew with old houses. She started walking immediately, the wind gently nudging her in the back, steering her to the shop.

  Patricia was with a customer, packaging up three or four figurines from one of the displays, china birds in an assortment of sizes. She grimaced as Irina passed her, which only made Irina worry more. How bad was the damage, she wondered as she pushed aside the beaded curtain. Automatically her eyes flew to the ceiling and ran along the moulding, checking for damp patches. Certainly the room smelt different, a scent she couldn’t place. She pictured seaweed and lavender. She stopped examining the ceiling; nothing there appeared to be wrong, there was perhaps a small dark patch in one corner but it had been there for as long as Irina had had the workshop. She kept meaning to paint over it.

  Her eyes scanned the floor, where she could just make out the edge of a puddle beyond the workbench. She moved across, over shavings that needed sweeping up, to peer down at it. There was a lot of water, pooled in a mass about three feet wide and three feet across in the middle of the stone floor. It hadn’t fallen on any of the tops or furniture, so they’d been lucky; it had reached one of the legs of the bureau but had gone no further. Irina looked above it, her forehead bunched up in a question. Nothing. Perhaps the water had come from the floor, seeped up between the stone cracks from somewhere? She went to fetch the mop, turning towards the cupboard in the corner.

  They were in front of her then. She wondered how she’d missed them. Her skin prickled, an uneasiness shivering across her body. Her mouth felt dry as she examined them. Two fading watery footprints, their outlines barely there, on the floor next to the puddle. They were small and narrow. Irina stared at them for a long while, rooted to the workshop floor. Perhaps Patricia had stepped into the puddle? Yet it seemed they were prints from bare feet. Perhaps it was a coincidence, like when a cloud looks like a skeleton or there’s a face in the toast. Irina wanted to laugh into the empty space, throw off the feeling, stop her heart from speeding up and get her brain thinking logically again.

  She edged round them, not looking anymore at where they were, opened the door to the cupboard, chastised herself for jumping as the mop handle fell out. Lowering her hand from her chest, she did laugh then, a quick release of noise in the silence.

  The beads moved aside. ‘Are you alright?’

  Irina spun round, holding the mop in both hands.

  Patricia had moved into the room and was standing next to the worktop. ‘Did you find the leak? Bit odd,’ she said, eyes roving across the ceiling.

  ‘Hmm, a mystery,’ Irina said, relieved at having company for a moment, the mood already lighter. She slapped the mop down in the water, circling it and squeezing it out into the bucket.

  ‘Well, a relief, I suppose, that nothing was damaged,’ said Patricia, moving back towards the curtain, taking one last look at Irina.

  Irina glanced up from her mopping, a pause, and then she nodded.

  ‘Yes, a relief.’

  She put her head back down and continued to wipe the floor. She didn’t say anything about the footprints. They had gone completely now anyway.

  ABIGAIL

  She wasn’t used to sitting around all day. Her sister held coffee mornings in the drawing room and the ladies in the village would pick their way up to the house and sit primly on a semi-circle of chairs in assorted sizes, some lost to the bear hug of an armchair, looking tiny among the cushions, some straining on the edge of a flimsy wooden straight-backed chair, perching their saucer on one hand as they lifted the tea cup to their mouth.

  The women had welcomed Abigail to that first meeting. She had sat trying not to slurp her tea, joining in the moans about the continued rationing of tea – ‘Absurd!’ – and commenting on articles about the young queen’s ‘lovely skin’. She smoothed her skirt down as her sister moved elegantly across the room, remarking on one woman’s ring, another’s hat, ensuring all the guests were included somehow. Abigail cocked her head to one side, watching her. Her sister, born to be a hostess.

  The talk of the day was an accident at the bottom of Countisbury Hill, a busload of people, the brakes failing and the small stone wall that continually had to be rebuilt.

  ‘Happens once a month. We live just down Tors Road and we hear the bangs.’

  ‘How dreadful,’ Abigail said, shivering at the thought of a runaway vehicle, imagining the winter months, surely no one able to get in or out of the village. The thou
ght made her itch at her palms and neck.

  The woman raised a finely plucked eyebrow and shifted in her chair, a wall of lilac jacket blocking further conversation.

  ‘Connie tells us you’ve lived in Bristol,’ called a woman across the room, her cheeks stained an unnatural pink.

  ‘I did.’ Abigail smiled, nibbling on her Huntley and Palmers biscuit, wondering why the question made her eyes sting.

  ‘Do you play whist?’ the woman asked, eyes bright.

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ admitted Abigail, wondering whether she should get up and help serve things. She felt frozen on the sofa.

  ‘Our mother never played,’ Connie said.

  Abigail looked at her sharply. Her hand gripped her saucer a little too tightly and she placed it slowly on the side table. ‘She was very busy,’ she said, wondering why she was jumping in.

  The woman seemed to shift in her seat, turned her attention elsewhere. Had Abigail offended her somehow? Was she suggesting the woman wasn’t busy if she had time for cards? The eternal run of questions was exhausting and she smoothed her skirt again, hoping the carriage clock might suddenly speed up.

  She escaped into the corridor, resting her back against the door for a second, glad to be free of the babble and polite clinking of tea cups on saucers, the slow stir, the talk behind gloved hands. She felt a lurch then for the quiet solitude of their home in Bristol, her mum’s gentle snores, head lolled to the side, the distant sounds of the street beyond, the quiet turning of the page of her book, walks with Mary along the Downs. She wasn’t used to this clucking and fussing, and that her sister seemed so at ease in there made her feel lonelier than ever.

  She shook herself, feeling foolish for being such a misery, determined to return to the room and ensure she was pulling her weight, make her sister proud. She didn’t want to be a drain on her, a dull weight Connie had to heave around the village. She was so lost in her thoughts, she hadn’t heard the door opening. The first thing that alerted her was the sharp breeze that swept around her ankles, the sudden noise of seagulls and sea, and then the silence again, a shadow behind the inner door.