Page 2 of Someone in the Water

Frankie

I pull at the zip. Grumble out a swear word when the slider doesn’t budge, the teeth of the zipper straining but refusing to meet.

But it’s not my holdall’s fault that it won’t close.

It’s me, overfilling it, too worried about overlooking something that I’ll need while I’m away.

I sigh, remove one of my jumpers – it’s July after all, I don’t need five – and finally the bag zips shut.

My phone buzzes in the back pocket of my shorts. I feel a jolt of panic as I pull it out, but it’s only my mum. ‘Hey, Mum.’

‘Hi, love. How’s the packing going?’

‘Yeah, fine.’ I eye the jumper, wonder whether I should lay it between the bag’s handles, just in case. ‘I’m leaving soon though. Nothing to hang around here for.’

‘So Lola got off okay then?’

This is why I’ve got nothing to stay for, but it’s also the reason I panicked when my phone rang. Imagining my daughter in trouble, even though she’s currently about thirty thousand feet in the air, somewhere over France probably. With her phone on airplane mode.

‘Yeah, I checked online, and the plane left about half an hour ago. Ayia Napa is two hours ahead, so it’ll be four o’clock in the afternoon by the time they land.’

‘Just in time for a fun night out then.’

‘Yeah, I’m not sure I need reminding of that.’

Mum chuckles. ‘They’re good girls. They’ll be fine. And you can’t hold on to them forever, however much you want to. I still remember dropping you at the airport when you were eighteen, how nervous I felt, and you were going away for months, not weeks. And without any besties to watch your back.’

‘And look how that turned out.’

The words spill out before I can stop them, and I have to blink to keep the tears away.

Twenty-one years on, and I’m still a mess.

Although that’s not fair. Yes, for the first two years after that terrible summer, I wasn’t sure I’d find a way to survive.

But gradually things improved. And now it’s only at this time of year, the two anniversaries, when those memories threaten to smother me again.

‘Lola is going on holiday with her friends,’ Mum says softly. ‘They will have a fantastic time, and then come home in one piece. I promise.’

‘Yeah, you’re right. Thanks, Mum.’ I try to take deep breaths, but quietly, so that Mum doesn’t pick up on my anxiety – she’s had more than enough of that to deal with over the years.

‘And you’ll keep an eye on your phone, just in case Lola can’t get hold of me?

’ I continue. I can’t trust my behaviour at this time of year, which is why I go away by myself, to somewhere remote, so that no one I love is exposed to it.

We’ve been following this routine for fourteen years now, so both Lola and Mum are used to it.

But Lola has never been out of the country during this period before.

I hate to think that she might need me, and I won’t be there for her.

But I know there’s no better stand-in than my mum.

‘Of course. I’m used to being here for her at this time of year, aren’t I? And I guess this will be my last rodeo as her responsible adult with her eighteenth birthday only days away,’ she adds, her voice turning wistful.

I ride the crashing wave of guilt that is so familiar now. All those childhood birthdays I’ve not been here for. And now it’s too late to ever make amends. ‘I owe you a lot,’ I say quietly.

‘She’s my granddaughter. You’re my daughter. I do it because I love you both; you don’t owe me anything.’

When I found out I was pregnant with Lola, I thought it was a sign.

After two years of nightmares, delusions, and insomnia – peppered with drinking binges and topped off with a four-week stay on a psychiatric ward – I felt I’d been given a second chance at life.

I’d only hooked up with Lola’s father that once – a free-spirited traveller from New Zealand’s South Island on a global journey of discovery (his words) – and I had no plans to ask him to stick around to help.

But a baby. An amazing, innocent new life.

I stopped the booze, the pills, the partying with people I barely knew.

I moved out of London and back to my childhood home in Southbourne on the south coast, took up yoga, and rediscovered my love of the sea.

And I slept. Blissful eight-hour periods when my brain stayed quiet.

But then the sonographer at my twenty-week scan told me that Lola’s due date was 31st July. It was a cruel joke by some higher power I don’t believe in, but it still sent me spiralling.

I told myself over and over that it was just a coincidence, that there was no way my baby’s upcoming birth could possibly be connected to what happened in a different country three years earlier.

But as the date got closer, and I got bigger, my hormones raged, and the nightmares returned with a vengeance.

And with them their trusted companion, insomnia.

My beautiful, thoughtful Lola held on for one extra day – her birthday is the 1st of August – and at the time I hoped that would be enough. But it wasn’t. And three years later, on Lola’s third birthday, I was reminded just how tight a vice those memories held me in.

‘And anyway,’ Mum continues, ‘I’m sure Lola won’t need either of us.

I’ve transferred three hundred pounds into her Revolut account as an early birthday present, so hopefully there’ll be a gushing message of gratitude, but otherwise I doubt we’ll hear from her.

She won’t be short of money, and those girls are all smart cookies. ’

I try to soak up Mum’s reasoning. Because she’s right.

Lola is with her three best friends, girls who have been in and out of each other’s houses and lives since primary school.

They’ll look out for each other. And she deserves to have a holiday after working so hard at her A levels, much harder than I did – although in my defence, I had only buried my dad two months before my exams started.

‘What would I do without you?’ I whisper.

‘The feeling is mutual, my love. So you go away, do whatever you need, safe in the knowledge that Lola will be having the best time ever without you, and I’ll have my phone by my side the whole time.’

I catch my reflection in my bedroom mirror and notice that I’m smiling.

Which is as it should be. Lola has had to spend her birthday with my mum since she turned four, never quite understanding why I wasn’t there to celebrate with them.

This is the first time we’re going to be apart on her terms. ‘Thanks, Mum. You know, I really think you’d make more money as a therapist.’

‘And I think I’d be the one needing therapy if anyone dragged me away from my workshop,’ she counters, making my smile widen even more.

We say our goodbyes and I lug my holdall down the stairs. It’s ten forty-five. I have access to the rental cottage in the New Forest from eleven o’clock this morning.

And maybe the sooner this purgatory starts, the quicker it will be over.