Tracy Buchanan - The Lost Sister

Maybe I’d grown weary. It was all so far from the dreams I’d had of writing from the hotel above the cliffs all those years ago, a glass of gin by my side as Mike took up some exciting watersport. Instead, the only house we could afford when we finally decided to move from London when I was pregnant nine years ago was a good fifteen-minute walk from the sea. It wasn’t much to look at either, a plain brown new-build house sitting across from a petrol station. The only bonus was it looked out to fields at the back. I’d set up an office in the spare room at the back in the hope I’d write from there, looking out over those fields, a tiny glimpse of sea in the distance.

But as soon as Becky was born, my days had mostly been filled with baby sensory classes and weigh-ins, toddler tantrums and coffees in overfilled cafés. It was only when Becky went to school I was able to really focus on writing. But then the days went so damn fast before it was time to pick Becky up again at three. If I could only get that second book published, I could give up the job and write full-time instead of just two days a week.

That was the dream, wasn’t it? It had always been the dream, from the moment I used to sneak glances of the novels my mother would bring back from her countless trips to local charity shops, their battered spines smelling of earth and dust. Authors became my rock stars and I’d escape into their words for hours, a place to pretend I was something other than the little girl nobody noticed.

While studying English at university, I’d been determined to come away with a novel ready to send to editors. Of course, I didn’t know then how unrealistic that was. But I was so idealistic then, so full of romantic notions, attaching myself to fellow dreamers. Before I met Mike, I’d dated a beautiful Polish man with graceful hands and the softest of lips. He’d write poetry on my naked curves, inspiring me to spill words out into a notepad he’d bought me. But even then, each time I started something, I just couldn’t finish it.

When I graduated, I fell into various copywriting jobs to pay the rent on the tiny flat I rented with Mike in Battersea, writing in the evenings. Then one gloomy October day, feigning an illness to stay at home, I found myself writing pages and pages of a novel that seemed to have come out of nowhere about a woman who runs a small hotel in the woods with her mother. Unable to deal with the loss when her mother passes away, she tells guests she’s just resting after an illness. Sounds depressing, doesn’t it? But there was a love story thrown in. Lady Chatterley’s Lover meets Hotel du Lac was how my agent described it.

A year later, it was ready to submit. It had countless rejections and I nearly lost hope, but then a small publishing house took it on. I’d been so proud, I’d even called my mother to tell her, despite the fact that we rarely saw each other apart from a brief, awkward visit to her little flat in Margate over the Christmas period each year.

‘I’ll be able to find it in WHSmith, will I?’ my mother had asked me. I’d imagined her sitting on her battered sofa with a glass of wine in her hand, her dark dyed hair in rollers.

‘Yes,’ I’d replied, knowing it was a lie – my editor had told me only a few independent bookshops were taking it. But I wanted so much for my mother to be proud. Needed so much.

A week after it was published, she’d treated me to a rare phone call. I thought it was to congratulate me on the launch of my debut. But instead, it was to berate me for ‘embarrassing’ her in front of her friends who thought she’d lied about her ‘author daughter’ seeing as they couldn’t find her books in WHSmith.

‘You’re just one of those crappy authors, aren’t you?’ my mother had said. ‘The ones whose books you find in the bargain bucket.’

I had slammed the phone down, resolving never to take a call from her again. That was two years ago. Two long years with only a few thousand words written of my next novel, despite having two days a week dedicated to it.

Why wouldn’t the words come?

I looked up at my house, then at the petrol station across from it. It had to be the house. It was just so uninspiring! I impulsively turned back and headed towards the beach.

The tide was low, the sea hazy in the distance, seaweed and shells clogging the wet morning sand as people walked out of the café nearby with takeaway teas in polystyrene cups. It wasn’t a built-up beach – even now it isn’t – just a plain and simple sandy cove, no trendy eateries or boutique shops. Its natural beauties were enough to draw people in, the chalk stacks adorning most of the postcards in town. The bay beyond the chalk stacks with its five caves wasn’t as much of a draw then; people were put off by the stories of tourists being caught out there during high tide.

I walked onto the sand that morning, taking my gold sandals off and strolling along the edge of the seaweeded area, picking up shells for Becky. I liked to do that sometimes when my mind was blocked or sad memories crowded. Breathe in the salty air, feel the sand beneath my toes and the smooth curve of shells in my palms.

After a while, I spotted a washed-up starfish, orange with black dots, its legs tangled and broken. I crouched down, staring at it, tears irrationally pricking at my eyelashes.

What the hell was wrong with me?

The wind picked strands of my dark hair up, the sound of laughter carried along with it. I stood and looked over towards the bay of caves. It was usually quiet at this time of the morning, with children at school, but there was a group of teenagers crowding around the entrance to the larger cave at the end of the bay. Four of them were girls, long hair trailing down their backs, the waistbands of their school skirts rolled up. I remembered doing the same at the struggling comprehensive I went to in Margate all those years ago. The two boys with them looked bored, their shirts hanging out, hair spiky. But the girls were enraptured as they peered into the cave at something that was out of my eye line.

I took another step forward until the focus of their attention came into view.

It was the man who’d rescued the boy the evening before.

He was sitting on a white chalk rock just inside the entrance to the cave, painting something on the cliff wall in swirling blue. His hair was up in a bun this time, exposing his long, tanned neck, the golden stubble on his cheeks. As he painted, his lean muscles flexed, the morning sun picking up the contours of his shapely arms and bare back.

‘That’s so cool,’ I heard one of the girls say in a hushed voice.

‘Totally,’ another agreed.

‘We should go now,’ one of the boys said, looking at his watch. ‘Mrs Botley will go mental if we’re late.’

The blonde girl looked at the boy. ‘You go,’ she said, sinking to the sand and crossing her long legs beneath her. ‘I’m staying.’

‘Me too,’ one of her friends said, joining her.

The boys rolled their eyes at each other. ‘Not our issue if you get a rollocking,’ one of them said before the rest of the group walked off.

I watched the two girls for a while, looking at the way they observed the man. There was clear attraction in their eyes, a calm attentiveness too.

I quickly got my notepad out, writing what I saw.

He moved his arm gracefully, slowly, like how he’d appeared to walk on water the night before. The girls watched in rapture, as though they were seeing something for the first time. Beyond them, the sea—

‘The next bestselling novel?’ a voice asked from behind me.

I snapped my notepad shut and looked up to see Greg smiling down at me.

‘Maybe.’

A quick look at my cleavage, quelle surprise , then back up to my face. ‘We’ll have to keep an eye on him,’ he said, jutting his chin towards the man painting in the cave.