Page 24 of The Sirens

23

LUCY

SATURDAY, 16 FEbrUARY 2019

Something cold makes its way over Lucy’s toes, lapping at her ankles, her calves. It burns; she shivers. At first the world is just a haze of blue. Then she hears the roar and hiss of the waves. Gasping, she jerks upright, pulling her feet from the water’s touch.

She is on the beach, sitting right at the lacy edge of the sea. Next to her, her backpack is soaked. The sun is high in the sky, its heat pressing down on her. It’s 11 a.m.; the tide has come in. How long has she been sitting here? Her breathing grows panicked, shallow, as she scrabbles for details.

But then she remembers.

Everything she believed about her life is a lie.

She gets slowly to her feet, brushing the sand from her legs, grimacing at the sting of tiny grains on her skin. Skin that is already burning and tightening from the water’s poison kiss.

She had come straight from Melody’s. She’d practically run, as if somehow the sea had called to her, exerting its own magnetic pull. She remembers sitting down on the soft sand, the water still metres away. She’d watched the minute movements of a crab, the click of its pincers. And she’d cried, her thoughts wheeling in all different directions, like the flock of gulls cawing in the distance.

She’d closed her eyes, grinding the heels of her hands into her eye sockets, as if to rub away the memory of the newspaper article, that face.

Her mother’s face.

Then the darkness had washed over her, sucking her back in time. She remembers the burning blue dome of sky, the citrus burst of orange. The insistent gnaw of fear.

Her phone buzzes in the pocket of her shorts. No, not her phone – Jess’s phone.

Oh God.

Jess.

Jess is Baby Hope.

She knows, doesn’t she? She must have known for years. That’s why she’s here, in Comber Bay.

Jess’s phone is still ringing. It’s Max.

A gust of wind hurls sand into Lucy’s eyes. She blinks. Her mouth is dry, claggy. She doesn’t know what to say to him. How can he help her, this stranger?

But he’s Jess’s friend. Someone she cares for. Someone who might know the truth, who might know where Jess is. She answers.

‘Jess? God, it’s been so long – are you OK? I’ve only just seen—’

‘Sorry, Max?’ Lucy takes a breath. ‘It’s actually Lucy here, Jess’s’ – her mouth struggles to form the word – ‘sister?’ ‘Oh. Right. Hi, Lucy – are you with Jess now?’

‘That’s why I tried to call, actually,’ she says. ‘I – um – I came down to see Jess a few days ago but she isn’t here. Her car’s here, and her phone – obviously – but her neighbour said she was going away for a while. I was hoping she might be with you. Or that you might know where she is?’

‘No,’ Max says, drawing out the word slowly. ‘No, she’s not, and I don’t. We actually haven’t spoken for a while. I assumed she was ringing about – ah …’

‘About what?’

‘Listen, it doesn’t matter. I’m sure she’s fine. Trust Jess to leave her phone behind.’ He attempts a laugh, but it sounds brittle. ‘But when she gets home, would you tell her to give me a call? That I’d really love to speak to her?’

‘OK,’ Lucy says, her lips cold and numb. ‘But are you sure you don’t—’

‘I’m sorry, Lucy,’ Max cuts her off. ‘But I really have to go. I’m sure Jess is fine. Bye, now.’

He hangs up before she can say anything more. She grips Jess’s phone tight in her hand, resisting the urge to hurl it away. There was something that Max wasn’t telling her. She could hear it in his voice.

Anguish thrums in her veins. All of her senses are raw, as if her skin has been filed away.

Her mother isn’t Maggie Martin, but Judith Wilson. Her father isn’t Michael Martin, but Robert Wilson. The man who found Baby Hope at Devil’s Lookout and offered her to his wife, as if she was some treasure he’d dredged up; a pearl or an abalone shell.

And Jess is Baby Hope.

Which means Jess is not her sister.

All these years, her family has been nothing more than a story. A collage of half-truths and lies.

Fragments from the podcast swirl through her mind, the scrutiny the couple – her parents – faced in the wake of the adoption, the bitter tabloid rumours.

Mrs Wilson might have given birth to the child and then, suffering from post-partum depression, left it in the cave before confessing her actions to her husband. In this version of events, Mr Wilson was not a hero but an accomplice who had sought to cover up his wife’s crime by staging the dramatic rescue from Devil’s Lookout.

She can’t bear to even countenance the possibility of that being true. But then – it’s the only version of events where she and Jess are sisters.

The waves froth and roil, reflecting the maelstrom of her thoughts.

But Jess is her sister: Lucy feels it in every cell. It’s not just the physical resemblance – their shared skin condition, or the matching whelks of their ears, bestowed by their father.

It’s the dreams, their shared world, the link between them that defies rational explanation. Jess has left her very fingerprints inside Lucy’s brain.

How can they not belong to each other?