Page 8 of The Sirens

7

LUCY

WEDNESDAY, 13 FEbrUARY 2019

Lucy is woken by the screech of a cockatoo outside.

It’s only just dawn – her phone says 6 a.m. There’s something liminal about the pale light and the eerie call of the sea through the window, a sense of being outside time. Perhaps that’s why the dream seems closer, a room she’s only just stepped out of.

Each time, she remembers more and more, as if that other world is lapping at her heels.

Darkness, pressing against her nose and mouth. Women’s voices crying and praying. The feeling of another hand in hers, so powerful that now her body aches with the lack.

Mo dheirfiúr.

My sister.

For a moment, the dream is more solid, more real, than the bed with its lumpy pillows, the watery sunlight arcing across the duvet. The only link is the sound of the sea: the rhythmic roar and suck seems to have followed her.

She must have fallen asleep moments after lying down. With a chill, she realises that she’s done nothing to protect herself – she hasn’t wedged a chair under the bedroom door handle; in fact she’s pretty sure she left the front door unlocked, worried that Jess would be unable to get inside without her keys. So she can’t even be sure that she hasn’t been sleepwalking.

Raising herself onto an elbow, she calls out tentatively in case Jess has come back in the night. But there’s no answer: only the wooden house creaking around her.

Perhaps Jess had found Lucy in her bed and, not wanting to wake her, had gone to sleep on the sofa? The idea of her older sister just downstairs, of no longer being alone, is so comforting that she can’t bear to break the spell of it.

But she’s thirsty and needs the bathroom; she has to get

up.

Tentatively, Lucy swings her legs off the bed, flinching at the cold touch of the floorboards. In the early-morning light, she sees tracings of sand on the rich wood; notices a dark bloom of damp on the ceiling. It’s as if the house longs to be reclaimed by the sea.

In the cramped bathroom she inspects her reflection, suddenly nervous at the prospect of seeing her sister. The sight makes her grimace: her eyes are ringed with shadows and her forehead gleams with an oily sheen.

The old longing – to fill the sink with water and splash it over her face – returns.

The aquagenic urticaria was diagnosed when she was still a baby; she can’t remember a time when water wasn’t a threat. Over the years she has reached a kind of acceptance, aided by strict routines and rituals. She keeps her hair short, she uses wet wipes instead of showering – though even that small amount of moisture can trigger an attack. She does not think of how it might feel to swim.

But sometimes, the question she tries so hard to suppress bubbles to the surface. When she sees her mother wash her hands at the kitchen sink; when she sees her father delight in the rare gift of rain.

Why me and not them?

She is about to leave the bathroom when she hears the thud of the front door closing. Jess . She’s back.

Relief pounds through Lucy’s body, followed by nerves. She runs a hand over the bristles on her scalp, wishing she was cleaner, that she’d changed into fresh clothes. But it doesn’t matter. They’re sisters, after all.

My sister.

Heart lifting, she opens the bathroom door.

‘Jess? It’s me – Lucy. I tried to call—’

There’s no answer, but the creaking stops, as if Jess has paused.

Lucy pads down the stairs, rehearsing what she’ll say. How she’ll unknot everything that’s happened, everything that’s driven her here, now.

Really, it boils down to two simple sentences.

I need you.

Help me.

But once downstairs, she gasps in shock.

There’s a woman standing in the kitchen. But it isn’t Jess.