‘It hasn’t changed!’ I say, knowing I sound foolish. Kate shrugs, and begins to unbuckle Freya from her pram.
‘It has a bit. I had to replace the fridge.’ She nods at one in the corner, which looks if anything older and more disreputable than its predecessor. ‘And I had to sell a lot of Dad’s best paintings of course. I filled the gaps with mine, but they’re not the same. I had to sell some of my favourites – the plover’s skeleton, and the one of the greyhound on the sands … but the rest, I couldn’t bear to let these go.’
She looks over the top of Freya’s head at the pictures that remain, and her gaze caresses each one.
I take Freya from her arms, and bounce her over my shoulder, not saying what I am thinking, which is that the place feels like a museum, like those rooms in the houses of famous men, frozen at the moment they left it. Marcel Proust’s bedroom, faithfully reconstructed in the Musée Carnavalet. Kipling’s study preserved in aspic at Bateman’s.
Only here there are no ropes to hold the viewer back, only Kate, living on, in this memorial to her father.
To hide my thoughts I walk to the window, patting Freya’s warm, firm back, more to soothe myself than her, and I stare out over the Reach. The tide is low, but the wooden jetty overlooking the bay is only a few feet above the lapping waves, and I turn back to Kate, surprised.
‘Has the jetty sunk?’
‘Not just the jetty,’ Kate says ruefully. ‘That’s the problem. The whole place is sinking. I had a surveyor come and look at it, he said there’s no proper foundations, and that if I were applying for a mortgage today I’d never get one.’
‘But – wait, hang on, what do you mean? Sinking? Can’t you repin it? – underpin, that’s what I mean. Can’t you do that?’
‘Not really. The problem is it’s just sand underneath us. There’s nothing for the underpinning to rest on. You could postpone the inevitable, but eventually it’s just going to wash away.’
‘Isn’t that dangerous?’
‘Not really. I mean, yes, it’s causing some movement in the upper storeys, which is making the floor a bit uneven, but it’s not going to disappear tonight if that’s what you’re worried about. It’s more stuff like the electrics.’
‘What?’ I stare at the light switch on the wall, as if expecting sparks to start flying at any moment. Kate laughs.
‘Don’t worry, I had a massive fuck-off circuit-breaker installed when things started getting dicey. If anything starts to fizz it just trips. But it does mean that the lights have a tendency to go off at high tide.’
‘This place can’t possibly be insured.’
‘Insured?’ She looks at me like I’ve said something quaint and eccentric. ‘What the hell would I do with insurance?’
I shake my head, wondering.
‘What are you doing here? Kate, this is mad. You can’t live like this.’
‘Isa,’ she says patiently, ‘I can’t leave. How could I? It’s completely unsaleable.’
‘So don’t sell it – walk away. Give the keys to the bank. Declare yourself bankrupt if that’s what it takes.’
‘I can’t leave,’ she says stubbornly, and goes across to the stove to turn the handle on the gas bottle and light the little burner. The kettle on top starts to hiss quietly as she gets out two mugs, and a battered canister of tea. ‘You know why.’
And I can’t answer that because I do. I know exactly why. And it’s the very reason I’ve come back here myself.
‘Kate,’ I say, feeling my insides tighten queasily. ‘Kate – that message …’
‘Not now,’ she says. Her back is towards me, and I can’t see her face. ‘I’m sorry, Isa, I just – it wouldn’t be fair. We need to wait, until the others are here.’
‘OK,’ I say quietly. But suddenly, I’m not. Not really.
FATIMA IS THE next to arrive.
It is almost dusk; a warm sluggish breeze filters through the open windows as I turn the pages of a novel, trying to distract myself from my imaginings. Part of me wants to shake Kate, force the truth out of her. But another part of me – and it’s equally big – is afraid to face what’s coming.
For the moment, this moment, everything is peaceful, me with my book, Freya snoozing in her buggy, Kate at the stove, salt-savoury smells rising up from the frying pan balanced on top of the burner. There’s a part of me that wants to hold on to that for as long as possible. Perhaps, if we don’t talk about it, we can pretend that this is just what I told Owen – old friends meeting up.
There is a hiss from the pan, making me jump, and at the same time Shadow gives a staccato series of barks. Turning my head, I hear the sound of tyres turning off the main road onto the track that leads down by the Reach.
I get up from my window seat and open the door to the landward side of the Mill, and there, lights streaming out across the marsh, is a big black 4x4 bumping down the track, music blaring, sending marsh birds flapping and wheeling in alarm. It gets closer, and closer, and then comes to a halt with a crunch of stones and a creak of the handbrake. The engine turns off, and the silence abruptly returns.
‘Fatima?’ I call, and the driver’s door opens, and then I am running across the jetty to meet her. On the shore, she throws her arms around me in a hug so hard I almost forget to breathe.
‘Isa!’ Her bright eyes are as black as a robin’s. ‘How long has it been?’
‘I can’t remember!’ I kiss her cheek, half hidden with a silky head-scarf, and cool from the car’s air conditioning, and then pull back to look at her properly. ‘I think it was after you had Nadia, I came round to see you so that must be … blimey, six years?’
She nods, and puts her hands up to the pins that hold the head-scarf in place, and for a moment I’m expecting her to take it off, assuming it’s an Audrey Hepburn-type thing. But she doesn’t, she only pins it more securely, and suddenly I realise. It’s not just a scarf – it’s a hijab. This is new. New since I last saw her new, not just new since school.
Fatima sees me looking, joining up the dots, and she smiles as she pushes the last pin back into place.
‘I know, bit of a change, right? I was thinking about it for ages, and then when Sam was born, I don’t know. It just felt right.’
‘Is it – did Ali –’ I start, and then instantly want to kick myself when Fatima gives me the side-eye.
‘Isa, honey, when have you ever known me to listen to a bloke when it wasn’t something I wanted to do myself?’ Then she sighs. I think it’s a sigh at me, although perhaps it’s about all the times she’s been asked this question. ‘I don’t know,’ she says. ‘Maybe having the kids made me reassess stuff. Or maybe it’s something I’ve been working my way back to all my life. I don’t know. All I know is I’m happier now than I ever was.’
‘Well, I’m …’ I pause, trying to work out how I feel. I am looking at her high-buttoned top, and the sleekly folded scarf, and I can’t help remembering her beautiful hair, the way it fell like a river over her shoulders, draping her bikini top until it looked like she was swathed in nothing else. Lady Godiva, Ambrose had called her once, though I didn’t understand the reference until later. And now … now it’s gone. Hidden. But I understand why she might want to leave that part of her past behind. ‘I’m impressed, I guess. And Ali? Is he – I mean, does he do the whole nine yards too? Ramadan and stuff?’
‘Yup. I guess it’s something we’ve kind of come to together.’
‘Your parents must be pleased.’
‘I don’t know. It’s a bit hard to tell – I mean, yeah.’ She shoulders her bag and we start to walk across the jetty, picking our way carefully in the last shafts of sunset. ‘I think they are; although Mum was always very clear that she was OK with me not wearing a scarf, I think she’s secretly quite chuffed I’ve come round. Ali’s parents … funnily enough, not so much. His mother is hilarious, she’s always like but, Fatima, people don’t like hijabis in this country, you’ll hurt your chances at work, the other mothers at school will think you’re a radical. I’ve tried to tell her my surgery is pathetically grateful to get a female GP who can speak Urdu and is prepared to work full-time, and that half of the kids’ friends are from Muslim homes anyway, but she just doesn’t believe it.’