Tracy Buchanan - My Sister’s Secret

‘Have you thought about going private?’ Lana asked. ‘Setting up your own practice?’

‘I’d love that. But I don’t have any capital.’

‘Dan can give you money,’ Lana declared, clapping her hands. ‘I can decorate your office!’

Dan laughed. ‘Darling, you’re getting a bit ahead of yourself.’

‘Why couldn’t you?’ Lana asked. ‘It would help Charity out.’

Charity laughed nervously. Lana didn’t seem to have any kind of filter. ‘I’m sure Dan has better things to do with his money.’

‘Like buy my wife antiques in Paris,’ Dan said with a raised eyebrow. He turned to Niall. ‘What about you, Niall?’

‘I’m not into antiques,’ Niall said with a smile. ‘Don’t have a wife either.’

Dan laughed.

Niall leant back, his long legs stretching out in front of him. Charity glanced at his thighs, remembering how she had found it hard to hide her feelings from her sisters as she watched him strip his wetsuit off to reveal his muscular thighs the day after their first kiss.

‘I’m an underwater photographer,’ he said. ‘Mainly advertising jobs.’

Charity looked at him, surprised. Sure, he used to lug around an old camera, but she didn’t realise that was what he’d ended up doing.

‘Wonderful. How did you get into that?’ Lana asked.

‘Happened by accident really,’ Niall replied. ‘An old school friend ended up working for an advertising agency, knew I was a photographer and that I could dive, asked me to do a last-minute job a couple of years ago. More assignments came in.’

‘Is that why you’re back in Busby-on-Sea, an assignment?’ Dan asked.

‘No. I’ve been trying to find a submerged forest that’s supposed to be here actually.’ His eyes caught Charity’s briefly then flickered away.

Charity went very still. Faith’s underwater forest?

‘Why would a forest be submerged?’ Lana asked.

‘They were once land forests,’ Niall explained. ‘But due to lots of different reasons – dams bursting, floods – they get submerged by water. They’re all over the world, in oceans and lakes, even rivers. Some are quite beautiful to look at.’

‘So, like a woodland Atlantis?’ Lana asked. Charity thought back to the first time Faith had told her and Hope about them. She’d asked the same thing.

‘Exactly like that,’ Niall said. She wondered if he was thinking of Faith too. She wished he’d change the subject, this was becoming too painful.

‘What makes you think a submerged forest lies off the coast here?’ Dan asked Niall.

‘A fisherman got lost at sea once and thought he saw it,’ Niall explained. ‘Became a bit of a local legend.’

Dan went quiet, a thoughtful look on his face. ‘I think that fisherman may have been right about that forest, you know. I have a viewing glass on my boat and I saw something very interesting during a trip the other day.’

‘Really?’ Charity and Niall asked at the same time.

‘Really.’ Dan rang a bell by his side – an actual bell! – and an older woman with dark hair walked in. ‘Those photos you had developed for me the other day, Clara, can you bring them down?’

When Clara reappeared with a bunch of photos. Dan handed one to Charity and her eyes widened. In the top right corner of one was a shadowy outline of what looked like branches.

‘Where exactly did you see this?’ she asked Dan.

‘Across from the lighthouse. The co-ordinates are in the top right corner, see?’

She looked at Niall, unable to contain her excitement despite how painful the memories were. It was just where he’d suspected. He smiled at her and Charity’s stomach contracted. He rarely smiled but when it happened, it set the room on fire, the lines around his mouth deepening, his blue eyes sparkling. It suddenly felt like something was blossoming inside Charity again; something she’d stifled for so long. Had she ever stopped loving him?

She thought of Faith. If she hadn’t started loving him maybe her sister would be there now?

‘Can I have the co-ordinates?’ she asked Dan.

‘I can do one better,’ Dan said. ‘How about we go out on my boat tomorrow. You can both dive off it, see if you can find the forest for yourself?’

Charity looked at Niall. How could she possibly spend the day with him? It was out of the question. ‘I’m afraid I’ll be working at the café.’

‘The weekend then?’ Dan asked.

She shook her head. ‘Sorry.’

Niall sighed, looking down at his plate.

The door opened and Clara walked in again with a large gold tray. At first, Charity thought it was a tray of seashells of all different shapes and sizes but, as Clara drew closer, she noticed eight plump oysters in their shells were lying on a bed of seashells, a dollop of what looked like black beads on each one.

Niall’s eyes lifted to meet hers. She knew he too was thinking about their first date.

Dan lifted one of the oysters into the air and looked at Charity then Niall. ‘To real-life heroes and damsels in distress.’ Then he tipped his head back and let the oyster slither into his mouth, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. When Charity ate hers, it tasted just as the oysters had that moonlit night with Niall: of the sea, salty and earthy, the subtle taste of the caviar now making it even more delicious.

‘So how did you first meet?’ Lana asked Charity and Niall.

Charity looked down into her drink. She didn’t want to talk about the past.

‘On the beach,’ Niall said. ‘We were just kids.’

Lana leant her chin on her hands and smiled dreamily. ‘Oh, how romantic, meeting on a windswept beach!’

‘Don’t get ahead of yourself,’ Dan said, laughing.

‘No. I have a nose for these things,’ Lana said, tapping the side of her nose. ‘You can sense the chemistry oozing off these two. I’m right, aren’t I?’

Charity squirmed in her seat while Niall’s neck flushed red.

‘I am right!’ Lana said.

Dan put his hand on Lana’s. ‘Darling, I don’t think—’

‘So you’re not together now,’ Lana said, tapping her lower lip with her finger as she narrowed her eyes at them. ‘Why did you break up?’

Charity peered at the door. She should have left.

Niall opened his mouth to say something but Lana put her hand up. ‘No, wait, let me guess. You cheated on Charity!’

‘Lana, that’s enough,’ Dan said sharply.

‘No, wait,’ Lana said, looking between Charity and Niall. ‘ She cheated on you.’

‘It wasn’t like that,’ Niall said quietly.

Charity felt tears sting her eyes. She took a quick sip of wine and looked away. Her last meeting with Niall had been so abrupt, a few moments on a windswept dark beach the week after Faith died, the terrible incident throbbing between them. It had been horrific enough to be told by her parents the day after she’d learnt of her sister’s death that she’d been knocked down in a hit and run. But then to discover Niall’s car was seen screeching away from the scene of her death. It was unbearable.

Hope had been livid. ‘You must never see him again,’ she’d hissed at Charity.

‘It was an accident,’ Charity had said, so confused, still in shock and trying to process the news herself.

‘He killed our sister.’

Charity hadn’t said anything. What could she say? She knew she must talk to Niall. But she hadn’t seen him since Faith had died and he wasn’t in their usual spot that night either. Each night, she waited for him, until a few nights later when she saw him waiting in the moonlight, head down, shoulders hunched.

That’s when he’d told her they couldn’t see each other again; that she had to get on with her life. She’d been devastated. People might think him a murderer but she knew he wasn’t. He was as grief-stricken as she was. He’d loved Faith too, spent many summers with her.