Page 42 of The Sirens

41

LUCY

SUNDAY, 17 FEbrUARY 2019

Lucy sits on Jess’s sofa, the diary resting next to her. Dora Maar flits from underneath the coffee table to the kitchen, a growl emitting from deep in her chest.

Her mouth tastes stale, metallic.

She looks at the ultrasound in her hand, at the ghostly capture of her own newly forming limbs. At her sister’s name.

Images of her childhood flash before her eyes, like the jumping reel of a film. Her mother holding her hand on the first day of school, her father teaching her to drive, singing loudly along to the radio. Smiling shyly before her school formal, her parents on either side.

All of it a lie.

She thinks of Jess. The longing she’d felt for her as a little girl, as if some part of her had always known.

She finally understands the dark shapes that shifted beneath the surface of her childhood. Who had first uttered the word sister ? Who decided that this was what Lucy would be? Had it been Jess? Had she wanted to give her up?

She thinks of Jess’s distance, the way she kept herself apart from Lucy. She thinks of her childhood gift of a snakeskin, kept for all these years, now glittering in Jess’s painting; her masterpiece. She thinks of the passcode on Jess’s phone.

20 09 99

How had it felt for Jess, to key those numbers into her phone countless times a day? The date she gave birth to the child she surrendered? The rush of pain she feels is as much for Jess as it is for herself.

She does not let herself think about the man who might be her father, about the ring that shimmers on the coffee table. At least, she will not think of him in those terms.

She slots the facts into place, cold and hard, as if she is loading bullets into a gun.

Jess had an affair with Cameron Hennessey. Cameron Hennessey has been charged with assault.

Cameron Hennessey’s car was found nearby. His ring was on the staircase leading to the sea.

Cameron and Jess are missing.

They must be together. Is she sheltering him, protecting him? Or has Hennessey been keeping her prisoner? Lucy thinks of the staircase where she found the ring. Where could they have been going? Had they taken a boat somewhere?

She tries to visualise the cliff face as she’s seen it from the opposite end of the bay. There is no dock or jetty, no place for a boat to moor.

And then she remembers: Devil’s Lookout. The dark maw in the sandstone.

The cave.

She scours the kitchen for a weapon, pulling a serrated knife from the knife block. Only then does she realise: another of the knives is missing.

* * *

Outside, the sky is thick with clouds, heavy and purple as fruit. There is a sensation as if her body, or perhaps the whole world, is preparing to burst.

She shivers as she stands at the precipice of the staircase. Either side of her, the tussocks of grass flutter in the wind, and the music of the windchimes grows frenzied, almost violent.

Her heart drums with fear as she looks down, at the dizzying fall to the sea. The white waves tongue the rocks, the tide rising and rising. She has to go now – if she waits, then the swell will be too high. She needs to get to Jess as quickly as she can.

Lucy takes a breath, touches the flat shape of the knife in her pocket.

She begins her descent.