The Family

I would always associate the police with bad news.

With endless, endless questions.

Sometimes it all blended into a swirling, solid mass. The past. The present. Impossible to separate.

The fear has never really left me. Recurrently concealing itself in the layer between skin and flesh, waiting patiently for another trigger. The chance to attack.

I can’t remember.

And sometimes, consciously, I couldn’t remember. The lie became my truth. The pressure in my head insufferable.

Then, shadowed by night, the bony fingers of the past would drag me back and I would kick and scream before I’d wake. Duvet crumpled on the floor. Pyjamas drenched in sweat. And alone.

Always alone.

The scar on my forehead throbbed a reminder of my helplessness.

Thoughts of the letter filled my mind once more as I drove towards work.

What was I going to do?

Chapter Two (#ulink_283b35d9-69c5-58b3-9295-750214435378)

LAURA

The realisation that I was unlocking the door for one of the last times stung like disinfectant being poured onto an open wound.

I drank it all in. The light bouncing off the windows as the day gathered strength. The breeze kissing the ‘Laura’s Flowers’ sign as it creaked its delight. The way the key moulded into my fingers as though it should always be mine. Soon, it would be someone else’s key. Someone else’s dream.

The door was streaked with dried egg yolk. I told myself it must be from the trick-or-treaters that had roamed the streets the previous night cloaked in black; plastic fangs protruding from bloodstained lips. I really should stop reading too much into things.

But my edginess stayed with me, despite the comforting floral smell that wrapped around me like a hug as I stepped inside.

I couldn’t believe it was over.

When I’d opened the shop ten years before I had thought I’d eventually pass the business down to Tilly, or even to my niece Rhianon, who spent as much time at our house as Tilly did at hers. They loved gardening, kneeling side by side, fingernails caked with mud, trowels in hands, digging over the small flower bed that was theirs in the corner of our garden. Nurturing dandelions and buttercups because they were sunshine-yellow bright; pulling anemones and asters which hadn’t yet flowered; flashing me gappy smiles as I handed out cherry ice pops. As they transitioned into teenagers, their corner of the garden grew tangled and wild, their interest in flowers lost. For the first time I was grateful they weren’t wanting to step into my shoes and walk the endlessly worrisome path of the sole trader; declining business and too many bills.

Crouching, I scooped a clutch of brown envelopes from the doormat and saw ‘Final Demand’ stamped in red. I dropped them all onto the once-polished counter that was now coated with a thin film of dust. Over the past six weeks I’d been home more than I’d been at the shop; I wanted to be there for Tilly, of course. But it was difficult to know how to be around her when she said she needed space. I’d wandered around the house like a ghost. Touching Gavan’s possessions as I’d once have touched his face, wondering who I was if I was no longer someone’s wife. I had long since ceased to be anyone’s daughter.

I’d had a sick feeling in my stomach for weeks, akin to thrashing around in a boat on a violent sea, but as I stepped inside the shop it was fleetingly as if I’d found the stillness that comes once a storm has passed. The shop gave me space to let my tears flow, unfiltered and raw, without worrying about being strong for Tilly.

Here I could feel.

As I did every morning I checked the diary, though I already knew it was empty. The pain behind my forehead pulsed harder. It wasn’t only the fact that I’d been closed more than open recently that had affected business. Ten months ago the scandal had hit and the local papers printed their carefully worded vitriol with their ‘allegeds’ and their ‘possiblys’ bringing my family to its knees. It was printed that although Gavan was Welsh, my mother was English; as though that made a difference. Insinuating I didn’t belong in Portgellech, the once-bustling fishing town where nowadays fishermen are as scarce a sight as the red kites that once soared across the grey and barren coastline. The community tightened ranks, some even referred to me as ‘the English girl’ despite me living there all my life. They chose to get their flowers from Tesco, the BP garage, anywhere – it seemed – but from me.

But that wasn’t quite fair. Scrape away the thick layer of self-pity I wore like a second skin and my rational self acknowledged that I couldn’t compete with the prices of supermarkets or the convenience and speed of online delivery services. Perhaps it was inevitable that it would all fall apart sometime, the whole business with Gavan just sped things up. Still, I was probably overthinking it all again. It was a notoriously quiet time of year. Wedding season was over and there was always a lull until December.

But I won’t be here then.

I rummaged through drawers stuffed with ribbon and polka dot cellophane in search of some tablets to ease my headache. Then the bell tinged as the front door opened. I glanced up. My fleeting optimism dissipated when I saw it wasn’t a paying customer, but Saffron for the third time that week.

‘I’m so sorry.’ I popped two paracetamols out of their foil cocoon. ‘I haven’t sold many.’ In truth I hadn’t sold any of the Oak Leaf Farm organic veg bags Saffron had been bringing me in to trial – offering me 20 per cent of all sales – but out of guilt I’d again bought two myself. The drawer in my fridge was stacked with limp carrots and browning parsnips.

‘That’s okay. I guess a florist isn’t the first port of call when you want to buy food.’ Briefly the corners of her mouth curved into a tense smile.

‘It’s not the first port of call when you want to buy flowers nowadays.’ I grimaced as I swallowed the tablets down dry.

‘We’ll be okay as long as Amazon doesn’t start selling bouquets.’

‘They already sell flowers.’

‘Then you’re buggered.’ Her hair, a mass of tight black spirals, sprang as her head shook with a laughter that sounded hollow. She looked as tired as I felt and I knew that despite her jokes she was as worried as I was. It was so tough being a small business owner.

‘There’s no hope for the independent retailer is there? Not when customers want everything to be available twenty-four seven,’ I said.

‘You mean it isn’t?’ She titled her chin and shielded her eyes, searching for something in the sky. ‘Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s a delivery drone.’

I didn’t laugh.

‘Thanks for the tip you gave me last week, Laura.’ She plucked a white rose from the bucket next to the counter and inhaled. ‘That new coffee shop around the corner placed a regular order for potatoes. I do love a jacket spud.’ She patted her impossibly flat stomach. Give her another ten years and the carbs would settle around her middle, the way they had on mine when I hit thirty.

Saffron chattered on and I tried to maintain my end of the conversation. Normal. I could do normal. But my mind kept returning to the letter. Adrenaline ebbed and flowed. Saffron’s sentences fragmented. The words drifted out of my reach.

‘Laura?’ The way she said my name made me realise she’d asked a question I hadn’t answered. Her voice sounded so very far away. I tried to focus but she had taken on an odd tinge. Even then, I put my disorientation down to stress. To grief. It wasn’t until a sweet, sickly smell tickled my nostrils that it crossed my mind it was happening again, but it was impossible to think that it could, it had been so long. But I knew I was right when I was hit by a spinning sensation. Arms and legs flailing. I wasn’t aware at what stage I fell to the floor, plummeting into blackness, I only found out later that I had. Time became irrelevant. It could have been seconds, minutes, hours later before I became conscious of a distant voice. An odd rasping roared into my ears – my own panicked breath. An angel – a blur of brilliant white light. I thought I was dying.

I thought I was dying again.

But as my hazy vision focused I saw it was Saffron in her white jeans and jumper. Her concerned face loomed towards mine.

‘Are you okay?’ Her hand was on my shoulder.

I tried to speak but my mouth was full of coppery blood where I’d bitten my tongue.

‘I’m calling an ambulance.’ The panic in her voice somehow calmed me.

‘No.’ I sat up. ‘Please don’t.’ Gingerly, I pressed the back of my head where I’d hit it on the floor. I knew from experience that later I’d be sore and covered in bruises, but at the time embarrassment was my overriding emotion as I struggled to my feet. ‘It’s a seizure. I’ve had them before.’ But not for years, since before my parents disowned me. It was like after they’d thrown me out, my body had fallen into a reverse shock almost – instead of breaking further apart, it had fallen back together. Perhaps Gavan had been the cause of my seizures returning. He had been the cause of so many things. I was thinking of the letter again and it all became too much. I began to cry.

‘I’m so sorry.’ She looked stricken. ‘That looked awful. I didn’t know whether to call 999 first or try to help you. It all happened so quickly.’

Although I was fuggy and disorientated and it felt like I’d been out for hours, in reality it had likely lasted less than a minute.

‘How are you feeling?’ she asked doubtfully, still gripping her phone.

Sick. Exhausted. Afraid.

‘Fine.’ I said, the bitter taste of the lie and blood on my tongue.

‘You don’t look it. Are you sure you don’t need checking over?’