Secrets in the Shadows

And then it was morning. Louisa had dressed quickly and stepped out of her bedroom, expecting her father’s bedroom door to be firmly shut as it always was early in the morning. But the door was flung wide open, and she heard the clattering of pots and jars coming from the kitchen. Louisa followed the sticky smell of flour and eggs until she was standing in the doorway of the large, upturned kitchen, watching her father whip a grey mixture in a bowl. He looked up, and his face fell in despair.

‘Louisa,’ he said. ‘This was meant to be a surprise. Nobody was meant to see me … ’

Louisa had thought how odd it was to see a man holding a spoon. She pictured her father getting out of bed early to make her goodness knows what kind of birthday cake on Nancy’s day off. And then she thought of the 9.47 train, and how she would not be getting on it.

That, Louisa recalled now in the bloody air of the butchers, was the day she had decided that Blackpool could wait.

Until now.

‘So your father didn’t mind you coming along with us, Louisa?’ Hatty’s mother, Mrs Kennedy, asked the following Monday as their train began to amble along the tracks.

‘No. He doesn’t really notice whether I’m there or not, these days. So he didn’t mind,’ Louisa murmured, noticing as she spoke that Mrs Kennedy’s face was a shade darker than her neck.

‘Ah, Doctor Ash is a busy man. I am sure he does notice you, even if it doesn’t feel as though he does,’ Mrs Kennedy offered, misunderstanding.

She must have known my father some time ago, Louisa thought, when he was busy and important. Time seemed to have washed away his importance like a tide. Each day, Louisa would sit with him and talk to him about his life, his house, their happy times together. As dusk fell, he would be shining with the knowledge of his life, but with the morning sun his face and mind would be blank again.

‘Yes,’ Louisa sighed, not wanting to explain. ‘Maybe you’re right.’

‘So!’ Hatty said rather more loudly than she needed to, eyes wide. ‘Let’s get into the holiday spirit! What do you want to do when we arrive? There’s the beach, and it’s a gorgeous day so we could sunbathe. Or we could go dancing in the Tower, or we could go to the Pleasure Beach, although we’re probably best waiting until tomorrow for that so we have a full day there, or we could … ’

Hatty’s voice drifted away as Louisa stared out of the train windows into the fields beyond. Had she done the right thing coming on this holiday? Perhaps she should try to get a train back somehow, and explain to the Kennedys the truth about why she had come and why she definitely shouldn’t have.

‘Louisa? What do you think? I don’t feel exposed in it, so I don’t see a problem. Sally Smith has a bikini, and she’s fatter than me. If she can wear one, then I certainly can.’

Louisa nodded. ‘Hatty,’ she began, ‘I think that I’ve perhaps made a bit of a mistake. I don’t … ’ Her words stopped abruptly as she thought of what she was speeding away from. She looked at Hatty, who sat waiting patiently for the rest of Louisa’s words. ‘I don’t remember packing my sunglasses,’ she finished, embarrassed by the sad little ending to her sentence.

‘Well, that’s not a problem. I’ve packed three pairs,’ said Hatty.

When the girls were finally settled on the swarming sands, Louisa lay back. She draped her arm lazily over her eyes, having yet to receive an offer of sunglasses from a rather bikini-preoccupied Hatty. Eventually, the sun managed to glare through the crook of Louisa’s arm, and she sat up. Hatty was splashing about in the sea with some boys who were staying at the hotel next door, her headscarf tied carefully over her rollers and her new bikini showing off her lean legs and flat stomach. Louisa glanced down at her own stomach, and pulled it in, suddenly self-conscious, then looked away again, not wanting to dwell on her old-fashioned bathing costume.

I can’t believe I’m here, she thought, as she drank in the sights of the beach and the promenade. The last time she had smelled salt and skin and sun had been so long ago. Those smells had belonged to her old life, and had been replaced by the meaty, heavier smells of soup and wood fires and her father’s cologne, and later, his sweet medicines.

Smelling her old life reminded Louisa that it hadn’t left her. She had left it. Hadn’t she? After her failed plans to return to Blackpool three years ago, the idea that her mother might be dead lay untouched in a shaded corner of Louisa’s mind. The thought was sharp and Louisa never took it out to inspect, for fear of the pain of handling it. Her father never mentioned her anymore; he never mentioned anything. But now, here, with the thought of what was about to happen to her father trapped in her mind too, Louisa’s mother seemed to float out, freed with the evocative sights and sounds of the sea.

Louisa scoured the beach for anybody who might look like her mother would now. But after a few minutes of gazing into the crowds, of seeing horribly stiff hairstyles and velvet lapels and wide smiles and sultry frowns, Louisa covered her eyes with her sand-dotted palms. It was too much. Her mother wasn’t here. She wasn’t anywhere. All because Louisa had been too late to save her.

‘Lou! Lou!’ Hatty shouted, her dampened scent of hairspray preceding her grip on Louisa’s arm. ‘What’s the matter with you?’

Louisa allowed her hands to be peeled from her face. ‘Nothing. Nothing’s the matter.’

‘Then why on earth are you sitting there like that? Join in the fun for heaven’s sake! I didn’t bring you on holiday to mope. Now,’ Hatty continued, her tone changing promptly and effortlessly, ‘what do you want from the van over there? There’s tea, or ice cream, or oysters, but my friend Anita came to Blackpool last summer and got some oysters and she had the most terrible stomach problems for months after. She puts it all down to those oysters, you know, and she said that she bought them from a little blue van. So with that van being blue, I think we’ll give the oysters a miss. What do you think?’

Louisa looked over at the blue van, a snake of people queuing right into its mouth. ‘Ice cream,’ she said, trying to cram as much joy into those two words as she possibly could. She winced as she heard her voice: too high-pitched, too false. But Hatty didn’t seem to care. She gave a firm, single nod, and stood up.

‘You know,’ she said, as she brushed flecks of sand from her golden thighs, ‘I think we should find ourselves some men tonight.’

‘Yes,’ Louisa agreed, her merry tone much improved second time around, ‘I think you’re right.’

Later, when Hatty had carefully backcombed her hair and applied plenty of eyeliner on herself and Louisa, they followed Mr and Mrs Kennedy down to the hotel bar. The Fortuna was a very grand hotel, Louisa thought as she descended the rather regal staircase. She wished she had on a long, sweeping dress rather than her short blue dress, a dress that she could swoosh along the red carpet.

‘Mother,’ Hatty was grumbling as they reached the bar, ‘I don’t see the harm in just one drink. After all, we’re eighteen on our next birthdays.’ She turned and rolled her eyes at Louisa.

Mrs Kennedy fiddled about with the clasp on her cream leather handbag. ‘Okay, darling.’

Hatty squeezed Louisa’s arm excitedly. ‘Knew she wouldn’t put up a fight,’ she hissed in Louisa’s ear.

And so, one drink turned into two drinks. Two drinks gave Hatty the courage to ask her parents if she and Louisa could leave the hotel bar and go to Yates’s, and gave Mr and Mrs Kennedy the courage to say yes.

Louisa and Hatty stumbled along the promenade, the summer wind fresh on their faces. Louisa licked her lips and tasted salt, sand and loss.

Yates’s was just as Louisa had imagined it would be when she had stared up at it as a little girl. It was smoky, hazy and hot. Hatty bought them a glass of wine each, but the woman behind the bar misheard the order for two glasses of white wine and slopped two glasses of deep purple wine down in front of them. It tasted of wood and winter, not summers on the beach, and it burned Louisa’s throat as she swallowed. But after their first glass, they found they had a taste for it. So when a tall, rather hairy man wandered over to them and offered to buy them a drink, they asked for more of the same. Louisa stared at the man as he queued at the bar, waiting to be served. His shirt was unbuttoned at the top and his chest looked almost as though it wanted to leap out of his clothes. Hair sprouted from his chest, his neck, his face and his head. Later, when he stroked Louisa’s cheek and smiled at her, she noticed that he had hair on his fingers too.

‘What’s your name?’ Louisa asked the man, over the hum of voices and laughter and music.

‘Nicky. Yours?’

Hatty cleared her throat and leaned forward, stubbing out her cigarette. ‘Never mind that. I think we’d better be getting back.’

‘I don’t want to get back,’ Louisa frowned. ‘What is there to get back for?’ She liked how philosophical this sounded, and laughed. Nicky smiled appreciatively.

‘My parents. They’ll kill me if we’re much later.’

Louisa groaned as Hatty stood up.

‘Tell you what,’ Nicky said in Louisa’s ear, his yeasty scent floating around her as he spoke, ‘I’ll meet you under Central Pier in a bit.’

It was this thought that kept Louisa going as she stood up and the room lurched towards her, as Hatty dragged her back to the hotel, as there was a knock at the door of their shared room.

‘Yes?’ Hatty asked as she opened the door, her eyes wide at the unexpected drama of somebody visiting them in their hotel room. Louisa couldn’t see past the door, but knew exactly what news was going to come from behind it.

‘Yes, yes, she’s in here,’ Hatty said. ‘Hold on. It’s the manager. He’s asking for you,’ she said to Louisa, frowning in confusion.

Louisa clambered over the bed to receive the news that she was waiting for, the words that she knew would be spoken at this precise time, whether she was at home or in Blackpool, or drunk or sober.

‘Miss Ash? I’m afraid to say that I have some rather bad news for you. It’s your father,’ said the manager. ‘We’ve had a telephone call from your maid. I’m very sorry to tell you that he’s passed away.’

Louisa said very little and focused on not vomiting on Hatty’s unmade bed, on the jumble of clothes and bikinis and make-up. She thanked the manager, and then swung the door of Room 35 shut abruptly. The click as it closed seemed to mark the change in direction of Louisa’s life.

‘My father is dead,’ she said simply. ‘I’m going for a walk.’

Hatty wailed. ‘Oh Louisa! I’m so sorry!’ She fumbled in her bag for the room key. ‘I must come with you. Or do you want me to wake up my parents?’

‘No. Please. Just let me walk,’ Louisa said, and left the room.

At first, Nicky was more gentle than Louisa had expected him to be. He stroked her cheek again, and then he kissed her forehead. Louisa thought how strange this was, and remembered her mother kissing her forehead before bedtime. Nicky kissed her cheek next, and his fingers moved to her thigh. The sand beneath them was cool and uncomfortable: it seemed less welcoming than it had done during the day. She wondered what she should do with her hands, so decided to run them through Nicky’s hair, like she had seen in the film at the cinema last year. Nicky didn’t seem to like this. He swatted her hand away as though he was angry. Then he began tugging at her dress and all of a sudden Louisa remembered her father and wanted to cry. She pushed against Nicky with all her weight, but he just grunted and forced her back into the sand. The grains prickled into her like glass.

‘My father’s just died!’ Louisa shouted after a minute of grunting and pushing. ‘Please get off me! I feel sick, and I—’