Harriet Evans - Love Always

I run my tongue around my teeth; my mouth tastes stale, bitter. ‘Sorry to make you come looking for me,’ I say. ‘I was just – thinking.’

Octavia is watching me, her arms crossed. ‘What have you got there?’ she asks, and she nudges my hand with Cecily’s diary in it.

‘Nothing,’ I say, immediately realising that’s a stupid thing to say.

‘Come on, what is it?’ she persists. Octavia is a burly, serious girl. I don’t like the way she’s looking at the diary.

‘Natasha? You’re there!’ I hear someone cal ing. I turn. Mum is running down the path, her hair and her scarf flying behind her. The wind is blowing against her, it is strong now. She reaches us, panting. ‘We’re going, Natasha,’ she says. ‘I’ve been looking for you everywhere—’

‘Just a minute.’ Octavia steps in front of us. ‘I want you to answer something, Miranda.’ She points at my mother. ‘I want to know what you were talking about, during your speech.’

‘Octavia – sshh,’ says Louisa. ‘Please, don’t make a scene.’

‘You were getting at something, I know you were,’ Octavia says.

‘I said your mother was the backbone of our family. And it’s true.’

Octavia crosses her arms. ‘What a load of bul shit. I mean the other stuff you said. The insinuations about Franty, making out she was guilty of things—’

‘I’m afraid you’re wrong about that, Octavia,’ my mother says lightly.

‘I know al about you –’ Octavia says. ‘About the way you were carrying on that summer.’

‘ Octavia! ’ Louisa says angrily. ‘Stop it!’

Mum holds up a hand. ‘No. Let her go on. I want to hear it. What do you mean?’

‘You know what I mean.’ Octavia squares up to her, her mannish figure tal er than Mum’s. ‘You. Throwing yourself at my father, and my uncle!

Your vile brother, perving over my mother. The two of you, bul ying poor Cecily to death, just because she wouldn’t go along with you—’

‘Hey! Octavia!’ I say, finding my voice. ‘You don’t know anything! Shut the hel up!’

‘No!’ Her eyes are popping out of her head. ‘You stupid girl,’ Mum says, baring her teeth. A strong gust blows her hair round her head, like a banshee. She looks terrifying. ‘Where do you get off, accusing me? You know nothing, darling. You don’t know the fucking half of it, you have no—’

And then Octavia reaches forward and whips the diary out from under my arm, with a movement so sharp and quick it’s gone before I can stop her.

‘ Continuing the Diary of Cecily Kapoor ,’ she reads. She looks up, smiling, as though she’s won something.

Louisa’s mouth drops open. ‘No –’ she says, scanning the red cover. ‘That’s her handwriting, that’s Cecily’s—’ She stares at her cousin.

‘Miranda – is that her diary?’

‘It is,’ Mum says. ‘How—’ Louisa’s eyes are wide. ‘From that summer?’

‘Yes,’ Mum says. She gently puts her hand on Octavia’s wrist and strokes it, as though she’s a cat, and Octavia’s fingers slowly open. Mum takes the diary out. She looks at it, then at her cousin. ‘Yes, I’ve read it. It’s pretty interesting.’

‘I bet it is,’ Octavia says. ‘No wonder you haven’t told anyone about it, al these years.’

‘We only found it after Granny died,’ I point out. ‘OK?’

‘What’s in it?’

‘Yes,’ Louisa says, shaking her head. But she looks terrified. And then she looks at my mother and steps back. ‘You know – I don’t think I want to know. I just want to remember her as she was.’

‘Louisa, tel me something,’ Mum asks. ‘What do you remember about that summer? Before she died, I mean.’

‘Wel —’ Louisa looks wary. ‘Why?’

‘It’s Cecily’s diary, not yours, or mine. She was writing what she wanted to write about. We were there too, weren’t we? What do you remember?’

‘Oh . . .’ Louisa screws up her face. ‘I remember . . . “Please Please Me”.’ They smile at each other. ‘And my new shorts, Mummy said they were indecent, but I loved them. And the awful springs on Jeremy’s car. I remember . . . oh gosh, how hot it was. Mary making lavender ice-cream the day we arrived, it was absolutely delicious. Archie . . .’ She blushes. ‘Archie being a Peeping Tom. For years afterwards I’d try to avoid him. I always forget that’s why, it got mixed up with everything else, didn’t it? Oh, I remember Frank and Guy arriving, and how wonderful it was . . . at first.

It al changed, after that. I don’t know why.’

‘Everything did get mixed up,’ Mum says. She hugs the diary close. ‘I remember my new clothes, and my feet looking brown in the pumps I’d bought, and I remember how much I hated it at home, how I wished I could leave. I’d lie awake at night with Cecily snoring away and work out how I’d do it. Go somewhere where I wasn’t the stupid one, the slow one, the lazy one. Be the pretty one, the fun one, the exciting one.’

‘But you were,’ Louisa says in amazement. ‘We thought you were absolutely it. We were so boring, Jeremy and I, compared to you three. You’d met everyone, seen everything, your parents let you do what you wanted . . .’

‘Funny, isn’t it?’ Mum isn’t smiling though. The wind buffets us, stinging my cheeks. I am transfixed. ‘That’s not how I remember it. At al . Look, it’s al in the past now,’ she says. ‘It’s gone. It’s like the diary. It’s her version, not mine, not yours.’ She clutches the diary close, drumming her fingers against it.

I hadn’t thought of it like that. How if I were to read Mum’s diary of the summer, or Archie’s, or even Granny’s, it might be different. I guess I’l never know the rest. They were al there that summer, they know what it was like, but even then there’s stil a lot they’l never real y understand.

‘I stil think about her, I can stil picture her so clearly,’ Louisa says. ‘Don’t you?’

‘Every day,’ Mum tel s her. She looks so old, suddenly. Tears swim in her eyes. Whether it’s the wind or not, I don’t know. ‘She was lovely, wasn’t she?’

They give each other a smal , half-smile, as the wind buffets us. ‘She was,’ says Louisa. ‘It’s not fair.’

‘It’s not,’ Mum says. ‘But like I say, it’s in the past now.’

I find myself nodding. She’s right. ‘Wel , I disagree. I think we should read it too,’ Octavia says.

‘Why?’ I ask her. ‘Because we deserve the truth. Al our lives, Mum’s the one who’s done everything for your mother and father. She’s got nothing for it, she’s never been thanked or rewarded—’

‘What, you want money?’ I ask. ‘Is that what this is about?’

‘Octavia! Natasha!’ Louisa hisses. ‘No, of course not.’

‘I’m just saying, I’ve grown up with it. I’ve sat there and watched Mum cleaning up, cooking, spending al summer here, her looking after you –’

she points at me – ‘because you –’ she points at Mum – ‘can’t be bothered to come and see your parents. And no one ever says why, do they?’

Octavia laughs. ‘They never say why we can’t rock the boat. We just al pretend it’s al OK.’

I’ve had enough. ‘Octavia, you don’t know what the hel you’re talking about,’ I say. ‘You’ve got it al wrong! Mum’s not the one who—’

And then something strange happens. The diary is in Mum’s hand, and it suddenly flies out, eddying away on a huge, arching gust of wind, out over the beach, dropping abruptly like a rock into the sea. Louisa cries out, and Octavia scrambles for the steps, but my mother, with an iron grasp, stops her.

‘No. Octavia, don’t. It’s too dangerous.’