Last Seen: A gripping psychological thriller, full of secrets and twists. Lucy Clarke

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       6. ISLA

       Nick was mine before he was Sarah’s. It’s one of those oddly uncomfortable, yet incontrovertible pieces of history that Sarah, Nick and I pretend to ignore. We flit around the subject, never quite brushing the edges of it, like moths scared of getting too close to a flame.

       I met Nick the summer I bought my beach hut. His parents, David and Stella, owned the newly built hut next door, which had modern windows and a brand-new cooker that was fancier than the one in my mother’s old bungalow. They talked to me mostly of their three sons. Two were doctors, both on secondment in America, and their youngest son, Nick, was completing an MA in Business Studies – and was due to return to the sandbank for summer.

       I was expecting someone pale-skinned and bookish from a spring spent studying, but when Nick arrived, he was tanned and athletic-looking. I liked his easy manner, and the smile that lit up his whole face when he shook my hand for the first time.

       We were friends for two days – lovers by the third.

       Summer 1998

      ‘Sherbet lemon yellow,’ I said to Nick as I balanced on the stepladder, dipping the paintbrush into the tin, the sun-warmed rungs of the ladder hard against my bare feet.

      Nick, a glue-gun in hand, glanced up.

      ‘That’s how my mum would’ve described this colour. She painted my bedroom door in the same shade.’ I worked the brush across the hut in smooth strokes. I liked the steady rhythm of painting, the soothing repetition, the heat on my back.

      ‘You had a yellow bedroom door?’

      ‘All our doors were different colours. Mum’s room was new-leaf green,’ I said, thinking of the smear of my child-sized fingerprints from where I’d pushed the door open before the paint had dried. ‘The bathroom door was iceberg blue, and the kitchen was plum-pie purple. The estate agent who valued the bungalow said, “You might want to think about more neutral tones before putting it on the market.”’

      Nick laughed. I could see he was going to ask something further about my mother, but I pointed to the radio and said, ‘Oh, I love this song! Turn it up.’

      Sometimes I liked to talk to Nick about her, but more often than not I kept her for myself. It felt like an impossible task to try and pin her into words. He wouldn’t have been able to picture the violet flecks of her irises, or the way she sometimes slipped a pencil through the loose twisted knot of her hair. He didn’t know that when she played the flute, her eyes fluttered closed and her head would dance with the notes. He would struggle to understand that, in our house, we didn’t have a dining table – we brought mugs of tea and biscuits into bed in the mornings; we took jam sandwiches in our pockets when we were walking; we’d make thick soups over a fire in the garden. He wouldn’t know that sometimes my mother disappeared inside herself for long periods of time, and I would bring her food and books, and she’d run her fingers through my hair and call me, ‘My darling, Isla-la.’ She was a mother of colour and inconsistencies – and I wasn’t ready to share her.

      In Nick’s family there were older brothers, a host of cousins, and two sets of grandparents; there were family meals and trophies on shelves; there was laughter and ribbing and family jokes. I loved being a part of it. His father treated me as though I was an exotic, intriguing patient he was still trying to diagnose. His mother looked at me through the corners of her eyes and spoke carefully. ‘She adores you,’ Nick would assure me with his easy smile, believing it. ‘How couldn’t she?’

      I looked across at Nick, his top lip beaded with sweat as he concentrated on filling the cracks in the wood. I loved the confidence he had in the world – and his place in it. СКАЧАТЬ