Death Wish (The Ceruleans: Book 1) (2 page)

Tiny shells, the size of my pinkie nail.

The tinkling of chimes dancing in the breeze.

A laugh, loud and long, that says, ‘Look at me. Look at
me.’

Poppies peppered through wild grasses.

Flour dust billowing from a yellow apron.

The warm, smooth permanence of pink rocks beneath bare
feet.

Two chocolate-smeared faces peeking out from beneath a
tablecloth.

A marshmallow puff cloud below which gulls dart and dive.

Fingers intertwined with wool in a game of cat’s cradle.

The tang of lavender and seaweed on the breeze.

A grazed knee, a drop of blood meandering down, a gentle
touch, a hand pushing firmly away, a voice dismissing – ‘No, Scarlett. It’s
nothing; doesn’t even hurt.’

I woke from the dream as I always did: groggy and tired.
Blearily, I reached out for the alarm clock, but my hand met a mug, stone cold,
on the coffee table. A nap, then. I pulled myself upright, groaning with the
effort. The hands on the grandfather clock were at twelve and ten; a good three
hours had elapsed since I first sat down. Clearly, near-death experiences
weren’t conducive to wakefulness.

Wiping out wasn’t a new experience. For months now I’d been
increasingly more exhausted. Some days were better than others. Some days just
swinging a leg out of bed in the morning was an effort. I hid it well.
Concealer on the dark shadows, drops to refresh gritty, sore eyes, long blond hair
left loose to hide behind, a deliberate spring in my step when around others. I
refused to give in to the near-constant desire to slump, but pushed and pushed
until I hit the wall, when I’d no choice but to crash until some form of
balance was restored.

Waking was always disorientating, because the dreams were so
vivid that the line between fantasy and reality was foggy. For a few minutes,
usually, images remained on the periphery of my consciousness. When the dreams
began, last year, they were of that place only – that serene, beautiful
landscape where butterflies bobbed and grass tickled and the ocean was a velvet
blanket that rippled peacefully. But since April, since that blackest of days,
she
was there too – memories of the times I loved her most and the times I would
have done anything to change her.

Enough. The kitchen beckoned.

I made my way across the living room, dodging oversized
chintzy armchairs and carved wooden end tables, trailing my hand along the
polished walnut of my grandfather’s writing desk, and pushed open the
white-painted door that led into what was once my grandmother’s domain. I
fancied I could still smell the cinnamon of her baking; still hear her high
voice chastise, ‘Now Scarlett, Sienna, you wait till those flapjacks cool, you
hear me? I see you ogling them. Scoot! Out of my kitchen.’

Precious little had changed in this room – in this house, in
fact – since I was a child. And though it had been three years since Nanna’s
peaceful passing, three years one month since Grandad went to sleep and never
woke up, it felt like they were here, in the house, just a room away – like any
moment Nanna would come and press her soft, lined cheek to mine and Grandad
would stride in, shaking the morning’s paper and booming that the government had
gone to hell in a handbasket. All at once I was grateful to Mother for
preserving the house this way. I’d once thought it macabre, Miss
Haversham-like, but now I was grateful for the comforting familiarity of the
place.

I had always been happier here than in the cavernous,
echoing rooms of Hollythwaite, our family home in Hampshire. There, my parents
had slept in a separate wing to me, too far to hear when I cried out from a
nightmare. There, the dinner table was long enough that when my parents had a row
they could eat separately. There, the hallways were silent but for the squeak
of polished footwear on polished floors. But this house, this house invited
kicking off shoes and turning music up loud and eating hot buttered toast
standing up without a plate to catch the crumbs. This was home – was home for
Sienna too; I knew that’s why she had come here this year, why this was her
destination when she slipped out of her boarding school and ran away into the
night. This is where we came to find ourselves when we were lost.

My stomach gurgled, and I opened the archaic fridge and
surveyed the contents. It didn’t take long – my choices were jam on bread, or
bread on jam. The tiny garage at which I’d stopped yesterday to fuel up and get
provisions was woefully understocked. In fact, along with the toilet roll, milk
and coffee, I’d pretty much bought its entire product range. ‘Just the
essentials here, love,’ the man behind the counter had announced cheerily.
Quite why he deemed ancient-looking cans of oxtail soup essential was beyond
me.

Using Nanna’s bread knife, I carved a doorstep from the loaf
and smeared on a generous dollop of jam, picking out the biggest lumps of
strawberry, then sat at the old pine table to eat. The morning’s brush with
death swam into my mind and a hot, squirming sensation crawled in my belly.
That guy must have thought I was a right plank. He was right. Had I really
thought it would be that easy – roll up here on a Monday, then paddle out the
following morning on a surfboard and discover the truth of why she did it, just
like that?

Back at school, the plan, which I’d been formulating since
the day after I heard the news, had been simple enough:

1. Finish out the summer term, sit my final exams and get
the hell away from Millsbury Prep School for ever.

2. Go to Hollythwaite and convince Mother to let me summer
alone at my grandparents’ before university term commenced.

3. Drive the five-hour journey to Twycombe, Devon, open up
the deserted cottage and then…

Well, the next bit was admittedly more mission than plan:

4. Investigate tirelessly to discover the truth.

I’d achieved steps one to three: it was the first day of
July and I was here, in Twycombe, with the whole summer to myself stretching
ahead. But as for step four: my first attempt at getting closer to
understanding Sienna’s state of mind had flopped spectacularly.

Or had it? I thought back to those moments on the board when
death had called. Did she hear that call? Did she shiver at its seductive
allure, or did she seek it out eagerly?

‘Terrible accident’ were the words my headmistress had used
initially. But then, when I wouldn’t be placated – not by Mother’s desperate,
clinging hugs and not by Father’s evasive, simplistic explanations – new
details emerged: ‘a party; certainly drinking, quite possibly drunk’… ‘not in
her right mind’… ‘surfing alone’… ‘dark; such poor visibility, so cold’… ‘sea
was wild, stormy’… ‘went down; never came up’. Only one word was unuttered, but
it echoed through.

Suicide
.

The facts were clear: in January my older sister Sienna had
run away from her boarding school (a different one to my own; she had insisted
on that) and had installed herself in the village of Twycombe, breaking a
window to get into our grandparents’ old cottage. She used a trail of emails to
lead Father and Mother on a wild goose chase across the country, putting them
off her scent, and spent more than three months here. What she did in that time
is unclear, but from the tone of her cryptic emails to me it was evident that
she was troubled:

Blackness. It’s consuming, and I do fight it, sis, you
know I’m a fighter, but I can’t hope to win.

Such a rush! Such power! All these years of prison, now
I’m free – now I’m something.

The end is coming; no escape. But I mustn’t fear it, we
mustn’t fear it.

I wrote back of course, angry, demanding she fill the gaps.
But each day a new email would arrive with no indication that she’d even read
my last. And I rolled my eyes at it: typical melodramatic, me-me-me Sienna.

Then the emails had stopped. And an ominous feeling had
begun to gnaw away at me. And two days later I was pulled from my English class
and escorted to the head’s office, where my parents were waiting to tell me
that my sister had drowned.

Fast-forward two months and there I was, staring at her
empty chair at my grandparents’ table – always hers, because it was the
prettiest, with small pink roses hand-painted onto the wood – and trying to
fathom where to start in uncovering the truth that I refused to believe had
died with my sister. For no explanation had been good enough; no suggested
reason for her crazy, selfish, terrible act had made sense. Yes, she was wild
and destructive and had a flair for the dramatic, but she loved life,
loved
it.

We were so different, my sister and I: she the gregarious,
fearless adventurer, sauntering, stomping and sashaying through life, and I her
perfect foil, the girl on the periphery – studious, sensible, reserved. As she
dreamed of a career on a West End stage, I’d been nose-deep in books, quietly
securing a place at university. While her idea of fun had become ‘cavorting’,
as Mother put it, off-campus with an ever-expanding circle of friends, the most
interesting my social life got was a movie marathon in the school common room
where girls circulated tubs of both sweet
and
salted popcorn.

It hadn’t always been that way. As young children, with only
ten months between us in age, Sienna and I had been close. We’d had to be: when
solid, stable parental love is a thing of fairy tales, not reality, you cling
to what you can to keep afloat. So we built our own special, private world,
complete with rag dolls and skipping rhymes and midnight feasts held under the
covers that would end in us falling asleep in a tangle of limbs and biscuit
crumbs. Then, we were peas in a pod, down to matching jaunty ponytails and
corduroy pinafores. Though our colouring differed and Sienna was a touch
taller, people would sometimes mistake us for twins. They would watch us
closely, studying us, delighting in spotting similarities. I loved that. But
Sienna never did.

As we grew up, my sister became more determined to be
differentiated from me – from it all: Mother, Father, our stiff upbringing, our
strict schooling. And somehow, in retaliation, or perhaps in support, I moved
across the divide to sit as her polar opposite. It was easier to let her be the
‘big’ sister in every sense, and to creep into the background. But sometimes,
when we saw each other on a rare weekend at home, Mother would say something
cutting, or Father would say nothing at all, and I would catch Sienna’s eye and
a moment of understanding would pass between us. Then I’d know that we were
still as we’d ever been: sisters; and that meant something to us both.

I did not know why Sienna had run away. I did not know why
she’d hidden and lied and stayed in touch with me but in a veiled, confusing
way – never letting me in. I did not know why she had gone into the sea that
night. I did not know why she had sunk into the deep. But I did know this: she
had loved me. And I couldn’t come to terms with the fact that she had done this
to me, to us. As I explained to our mother, who was beside herself at the
thought of me being here now, in the place that had stolen her first-born, I
needed to find some reason in the madness.

This morning was a start, I told myself firmly. No harm
done, other than making an idiot of myself in front of some local lad I’d known
way back when. Now, I’d better pull myself together. I needed answers. I had to
find out what had kept Sienna here for months; what she had done in her time
here; who she had befriended – the background to that terrible day. As much as
my nature and current mood begged me to play the hermit, I had to get out
there. The answers weren’t within these old stone walls, but out in the village,
in the cove.

Because someone in this sleepy little community knew what
had happened the night the raging sea claimed my sister, and I was damned well
going to find them and make them tell me.

A narrow hedge-lined lane took me from the west cliff down
to the heart of the village. Even in my beloved red Mini Cooper – I preferred
to think of it as vintage rather than old – it was a tight squeeze, and I
tooted the horn at blind bends to deter any cocky four-by-four owners from
mowing me down. At the end of the lane I came to a fork – left to the nearest
city, Plymouth; right to the village of Twycombe. I swung the wheel to the
right; I’d have more choices for shopping closer to Plymouth, but the village
was the only place that held my interest.

I parked in the centre, overlooking the green square that
served as a meeting place for the elderly, a play space for the children and a
venue for all community events, from the summer fete to the December nativity.
Beyond stood the pretty nineteenth-century church of St Mary’s, with its
turreted clock tower, and a short promenade beside the beach. The main streets,
along two sides of the square, formed the hub of the community, incorporating a
post office, a cafe, a dive shop, a pub, a small grocery store, a fish and chip
shop, and a tourist shack selling all manner of beach paraphernalia, from
buckets and spades to enormous inflatable sharks. A scattering of houses grew
out from this centre up the hill behind, an eclectic hotchpotch of
architectural styles and colours, all built to make the most of the superb
ocean views.

That was it; that was Twycombe. It was a small place, mainly
inhabited by locals. There was a trickle of tourists in the summer months, but
most found the long, winding access route via narrow lanes too hair-raising and
chose the nearer Bigbury beach – bigger, sandier, with a wide car park and
public toilets. But there was one group that happily navigated through the
lanes to get here, usually first thing or in the evening: surfers. It was no
Newquay, but the natural cut of the cove created pretty decent waves here (so
I’d read online. I’d read a lot about surfing since Sienna).

I started out at the grocery shop, cruising the aisles and
picking up whatever took my fancy. After a lifetime of eating boarding school
meals and those cooked up by Marnie, the housekeeper at Hollythwaite, having
the freedom to choose was rather exhilarating. Once the basket was full to
overflowing I surveyed its contents and realised they were a jumbled mix, none
of which cohesively formed a meal – tinned custard, black grapes, chocolate
digestives, dried spaghetti, cheese slices, fizzy orange, cornflakes. I decided
I didn’t care. My summer; my way.

Groceries squeezed into the micro-boot, I headed over to the
post office to survey the ‘staff wanted’ notices. Money wasn’t an issue – I had
plenty in my account courtesy of my father, who thought love was measurable in
pounds sterling – but I wanted to make my own. Plus, working would get me out of
the house and bring me into contact with people. Labourer and bookkeeper I
rejected at once. I dithered briefly over cleaner, but then shuddered at the
thought of scrubbing toilets and moved on. Personal assistant sounded a bit
dubious. Dog walker – now that was interesting. Animals and I had always got
on; it was one of the few characteristics that Sienna and I had shared. Dog
walking sounded easy enough, plus the ad said four hours a day, which would
give me plenty of time for myself and everything I planned to do here. I
transferred the number from the ad onto my phone.

Last stop: the imaginatively named Dan’s Dive Shop. It was
packed full of all manner of diving equipment, but there was a decent section
for surfing too, and that’s where I headed. I was examining a sleek board when
the man himself appeared at my side.

‘Hello there, love. I’m Dan. What can I do for you?’

His tone was polite, but betrayed a hint of confusion – no
doubt he’d looked at this slip of a girl in her jeans and cardigan and seen no
hint of either courageous diver or gnarly surfer.

I nodded at the portly middle-aged man, eyes watering at the
neon-yellow wetsuit he was wearing. ‘How much for this one?’

On the scent of a sale, Dan cheerily related an utterly
exorbitant price. When my eyes bulged, he swiftly added, ‘It’s premium this
one, ya see. Excellent craftmanship. Cuts through the water like yer proverbial
knife through butter. Good news is, we have it in your size.’

He gestured to a board that dwarfed me. I thought of the guy
on the beach, Luke – his anger over my amateur board. The other extreme, the
very top end of surfboards, would surely be the best choice. But the size of
it! As if the sea didn’t scare me enough, I was expected to ride
this
enormous thing on it? I gritted my teeth.

‘I’ll take it,’ I said. ‘Can you deliver? My car’s a bit…’

‘No problem,’ declared Dan. ‘My man-with-van’ll drop it
round for you. Teatime, shall we say?’

‘Perfect, thanks.’

‘Address?’

I rattled it off, pretending not to notice the shocked look
on Dan’s face.

‘Right-ho. Now, if you’ll be surfing, I’m sure you’ll be
needing…’

The next five minutes passed in a blur of neoprene and
leashes and wax; sounds rather kinky, but it was actually, Dan assured me,
essential kit. To give Dan his due, he may have looked like a fluorescent
banana, but he knew his stuff when it came to effective upselling. I caved on
most items – I really had no clue what I needed for conquering the waves – but
stood firm on the ‘pimp my board’ stickers that Dan was determined to sell me.

Finally, the sales were rung up, paid for and scheduled for
delivery, and with a shake of Dan’s moist hand, I was out of there.

Pleased with my day’s work, I put the key in the car door,
ready to head home, but I found myself looking at St Mary’s church. What the
heck, I decided. It wasn’t like I had any place to be.

I crossed the green square, skirting around two elderly men
playing petanque and a sunbathing woman, and pushed open the old wooden gate
that led into the churchyard. Here, the world quietened and stilled beneath the
shady limbs of ancient oaks and beech trees. Set into the thick stone wall
above the great wooden door was a stained-glass window, and I paused to take in
the vivid colours of an angel and a baby bathed in heavenly light. Then I
walked slowly down the gravel path that led into the deserted graveyard.

As I walked, I carefully scanned each weathered gravestone.
I noticed a plot with stones all bearing the name Cavendish. The surfer
yesterday, he’d said his name was Cavendish, I thought. I walked on, and on.
The graveyard was surprisingly big for a church serving such a small community;
but then Twycombe’s history dated back hundreds of years, and many of those
lying beneath had departed this world so long ago that there was no one alive
now to remember them – to polish granite, clear away weeds, lay fresh flowers.
Stone after stone I examined, reading each epitaph sombrely, but none were the
words I was seeking.

Then, finally, I found them. They were in the far corner of
the graveyard, tucked beneath a weeping willow. I sank to my knees on the cool
grass, and breathed out deeply.

In life they had shared everything and in death they were no
different – two names on one simple grey stone, Peter and Alice Jones. I had
not come to my grandparents’ funerals, though I’d wanted to. Mother was adamant
that it was no place for a child, though I was hardly that. It hurt that I did
not get to say goodbye, for these people were home to me, the source of the
happiest memories of my childhood. They had been good to me, and it had felt
disrespectful not to say goodbye.

As final resting places go, it was perfect. Serene,
sheltered and right in the heart of Twycombe, which they’d loved. One day, when
the time came, I thought I should like to be here too. Perhaps Sienna would
have wanted that. The thought made the hole within me ache. Closing my eyes, I
leaned my head back and allowed myself a moment to let the pain surface, to let
her absence be felt. There was a moment of stillness inside, and then the dam
broke. I wondered how, after all these weeks, there could be any tears left.

A noise from behind startled me, and I tore my eyes open and
swung round. I couldn’t make out anything other than grass and gravestones. But
then, in the opposite corner, I caught a flash of movement.

I looked away and hastily mopped up tears with a sleeve. I
was embarrassed to be caught out like this, publicly venting feelings that were
private. I thought perhaps I’d wait quietly and hope the other person got the
hint and left, but then a frantic thumping sound and a high-pitched squealing
ripped through the calm. An animal; it was an animal, and it sounded
distressed.

I rose quickly and picked my way across the uneven grass.
After several paces I realised my mistake – it was an animal, but there was a
person too. Male, judging by the cropped hair and square shoulders. From this
angle, coming up behind, it was hard to judge what was going on, but then I saw
strong hands gripping grey fur and the creature thrashing and shrieking in a
way that conveyed terror, and I didn’t think, I just ran.

‘What are you doing! Stop that! Leave it alone!’

The man didn’t so much as flinch, but remained kneeling over
the creature, pinning it down – it was a rabbit, I realised as I closed the distance,
its eyes wild, its fur matted.

Just as I took the final steps, determined to stop him, the
man – no, boy, I realised; he couldn’t be much older than me – turned and
looked at me and smiled. And I pulled up to a stop so suddenly I had to reach
out and grab the nearest headstone to steady myself. That this boy had the
delicate looks of a model, that his hair was so blond it was almost white, that
his eyes were a startling smoky grey – all of this was true. But that was not
what made my breath catch in my throat and my heart rattle in my chest. His
hands, his hands that were firmly holding the rabbit to the ground – they
looked… wrong. Surreal. Like something out of the church’s stained glass.

I stared.

The boy looked at me for a beat, warmly, openly, the smile
fixed on his face. Then he returned his gaze to the rabbit and released his
grip. The rabbit quietened at once and stood hesitantly. It sniffed the ground,
then hopped away under a gap in the stone wall and out of sight.

I looked once more at the boy’s hands, and they were just
hands. In focus. Not… ethereal, as I’d thought. A trick of the mottled
afternoon light slanting through the branches of the oak above; it must have
been. Still, I stared at them, bemused.

‘… been a fox…’

He was talking to me, I realised, his voice melodic.

I started and looked up, away from his hands. Which were
definitely not glowing.

‘I said, it must have been a fox that got it. I’ve seen them
around the church. Still, it soon bounced back…’

I found my voice again; was surprised by its hardness. ‘What
were you doing?’

He thought for a moment. ‘Calming it, I suppose.’

I shook my head, confused, replaying the scene I’d stumbled
upon – this boy restraining the rabbit; the rabbit frightened and in pain. Was
he torturer or saviour?

Before I could make up my mind, the boy was on his feet and
moving sinuously towards me, hand outstretched, and from deep inside panic
swelled. I backtracked quickly. But my heel met the edge of an old horizontal
grave marker and I fell backwards. An elbow broke the impact, and a jolt of
pain shot up my arm.

The boy halted in his advance and raised his hands before
him in a gesture of surrender. ‘Hey, sorry!’

I touched my elbow and felt dampness seeping through the
fabric of my cardie: blood.

‘You okay?’ said the boy, crouching down beside me. It
struck me that this was the second time today a stranger had had cause to ask
me this.

I nodded but said nothing. I couldn’t work out whether this
boy was friend or foe.

Serious now, he leaned forward. ‘I’m very glad to meet you,’
he said, ‘… Scarlett Blake.’

Word sure spread fast about the new girl in town. ‘You know
of me?’

‘I know you,’ he replied in a low voice. He looked at me
intensely and then added, ‘You and Sienna have the same eyes. Green like the
jewels of glass that wash up on the beach.’

I drew in a sharp intake of air. He knew Sienna. Feelings
swamped me. Grief at the very sound of her name. Delight that already I had
found someone who knew her. Fear of what this boy may know.

All at once, the day was too hot, suffocating, and this boy,
this stranger, was too close. I moved to stand, but wavered as my throbbing
elbow complained at taking my weight, and before I could push it away his hand
had encased mine and was pulling me up. His touch sent shivers of warmth up my
arm. Quickly, I wrenched my hand away. Then, without another word – because I
couldn’t think of any explanation for what I was about to do – I turned and
walked away, across the graveyard, away from this boy who made me
feel
.

I did not look back.

When I reached the car, I got in shakily, leaned my head
back on the headrest and took a few breaths, then eased off my cardie to
inspect the wound on my elbow. Only when I twisted the arm, there was no pain.
And when I examined the skin over my funny bone, I found no blood, not even a
hint of damage.