Rift
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Su ce, très chère, adieu. Voilà trop causer,
Les temps que l'on perde à lire une missive
N'aura jamais valu la peine qu'on l'écrive
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(Lief Vollebeck – You Couldn't Lie To Me in Paris)
1
The day she came home Emily went down to the lake to look at the stillness of its unbroken surface. Still stooped under the weight of her rucksack, she hadn't even been back to the house yet, she inhaled long and deeply the rich smell of the wet earth. The wood rustled quietly; the breeze was light and unobtrusive, not even skimming the water, and Emily wondered how long it had been since she had been anywhere so quiet.
She tried to work out if the strange shudder of tears she felt developing were because she was sad to be home, or maybe just because she was relieved that she could still find loneliness down at the edge of the water.
Her feet scuffled into the damp soil, carving out shallow burrows the way she had done when she was a child, trying desperately to root herself into the ground like a tree so she could always live beside the water and never have to go home. Her battered canvas shoes had been through worse, quite accustomed the dirt that came creeping through the tears in the fabric where it was peeling away from the sole.
Above, in the white impassive sky, a bird of prey shrieked and circled, and the sound seemed to roll through the trees like an avalanche. Then there was silence again, and stillness, rushing into the void the bird call had left until it was almost more still than before, and Emily felt like she had to hold her breath to keep from disturbing it.
She looked from left to right, knowing exactly what she'd see in each direction. The whole time she'd been away she'd been drinking in nothing but the newness of places, not really seeing them, not really knowing them like this. She wondered if she'd found a place like this whether she would've stayed. Here it felt like home, after all this time. Maybe that was the difference. It still felt like home the same way it did when she would take a blanket down into the shelter of the trees and sit there for hours, watching darkness bloating the sky until it felt heavy, hanging there above her, so she'd lie back and stare up, squashing stars between her fingers and pretending she could extinguish them like candles.
And then Emily jolted, alerted by the sudden noises of something getting close. She listened carefully to the growing sounds of uninhibited rustling and stomping, followed by swearing, hissed through clenched teeth in angry whispers.
Emily smiled to herself before turning from the water to see her sister groping through the shrubs and low-lying brambles, her heels slipping and skidding beneath her in the mud. 'Fucking ... Em ... Jesus,' Katie said, finally steadying herself by flattening a palm against the trunk of an ash tree.
'Hi,' Emily said, her fingers twitching slightly as they gripped the strap of her rucksack.
'You were meant to call when you landed,' Katie told her, waggling the phone she was gripping in her white-knuckled fist, the Hello Kitty charm dangling loosely from the case clacking gently against the plastic.
'Battery's dead,' Emily told her. She watched as Katie's gaze flicked along the length of her body, lingering on the torn, sagging knees of her faded jeans and the chewed laces of the hoody tied around her waist.
Her survey finished, Katie looked back at Emily's face. 'Well, Dad's freaking out ... so,' she absently fingered a newly acquired ladder in her tights before sniffing and standing up straight again, 'you coming?'
Emily hesitated, though it was only for a moment, and was thankful that Katie had already turned back around and begun to move away so she didn't see. She quickly caught up to Katie, her footwear and clothing far more suitable than her sister's for moving quickly over the terrain of slippery mud and tangling brambles that just made feeble grazing noises against her fraying jeans.
Katie fiddled with the screen of her phone as they walked. 'Hi,' she said importantly, pressing the phone against her face, 'yeah she's here.'
Emily heard the Scouse drawl on the other end of the line, buzzing like an insect in Katie's hand.
'I don't know, must've been delayed or something,' Katie lied.
More buzzing.
'She's fine. No ... Dad ... for god's sake ...' She sighed heavily, 'alright, I'll check.' She stopped walking and grabbed Emily's arm roughly, spinning her round halfway and back again, looking her up and down, 'no, no tattoos.'
Emily rolled her eyes.
'Yeah, see you later,' Katie said, ending the call.
Emily scowled at her.
'What?' Katie asked as they started walking again. 'You're lucky he didn't ask for a full piercing inventory as well,' she told her.
Emily sighed, resisting the urge to lift her fingers to the new studs in the shell of her left ear.
'So how was ...' Katie paused; Emily glanced sideways to see her frowning in concentration, 'China?' she guessed.
Emily smiled gently. 'It was fine ... when I was there three months ago,' she added.
'Right,' Katie said, her tone switching to defensive, 'well I don't know how I was expected to have a clue about where you were ... you only called, like, twice a year. I didn't even get your Christmas postcard until halfway through May.'
Emily felt the silence during which she could've apologised swell around them, until it was broken by the snapping of a twig beneath her foot.
'So what's going on here?' Emily asked. 'What've I missed?' She always hated that expression, hated the ambiguity of it. You she thought, you're what I've missed.
Katie shrugged one shoulder moodily. 'You know, nothing ever happens here,' she said, trying not to smile when Emily nudged her gently with her shoulder and said 'Ah now go on,' in an attempt at an Irish accent.
'Oh, I don't know,' Katie's cheeks dimpled slightly as she concentrated. 'They've built a new Greggs opposite petrol station near us. James goes there every morning before school; he's getting a little Buddha belly. Dad keeps threatening to get him a personal trainer. Effy had a job there for a while when it opened but she shagged the store manager who was going out with one of the other girls who worked there and she went completely schizo at Effy in front of a load of customers and they both got fired. So Cook went mental at the store manager and threatened to kick the shit out of him and got a bunch of weeks added onto his community service.' Then she sighed as if she almost couldn't be bothered to say the next bit. 'Naomi's back as well.'
The sentence came out all as one word, like she hoped if she said it quick enough Emily wouldn't really notice it, like the shutter closing over a camera lens.
Emily nodded passively. Katie's words felt like they echoed inside her, or maybe they were echoing in the trees. It felt peaceful. And distant. 'I thought she moved to London,' was all she said, sensing Katie observing her cautiously.
'Yeah, well she's back like a ... an STD or something,' Katie snickered at her own comparison. 'She's, like, the herpes of Bristol.'
'What does that make me then?' Emily asked.
Katie rolled her eyes. 'Don't be stupid, Em. Everyone'll be pleased to see you,' she told her. 'Plus you've been gone for ages ... Naomi only lasted, like, six months.'
They hiked back up the track that led to the road. It was constricted and dirty, and the road when they reached it was almost as narrow. They tucked into the verge as a car sped noisily past, flicking grit from its tyres. Katie tsked as her heels sunk once again into the saturated earth of the grassy bank. 'I would've picked you up from the airport you know,' she snapped, signing a 'wanker' gesture after the retreating the car.
'You didn't have to come down to the lake,' Emily retaliated.
'Yeah well,' Katie huffed, 'had to make sure you'd actually come home, didn't I?'
They stepped back out into the road.
...
The house felt bigger than she remembered. Darker and emptier, shadowy in the corners. Katie kicked off her mud-caked shoes and marched off towards the kitchen, only to reappear a few seconds later and say 'for fuck's sake, will you take that hideous bag off,' as Emily just stood there.
Emily let the enormous bag slide laboriously from her shoulders and thud to the floor. She shivered as the cool air of the house brushed against the sweat on her back.
'Where is everyone?' she asked.
'Mum's at work, James is at school,' Katie listed, 'and Dad's in the gym.'
Emily nodded, looking down and pushing her rucksack to the side with her foot.
Katie stood with her hands on her hips, watching Emily's every move with an unsettling intensity.
Emily frowned. 'What?' she demanded.
'Nothing,' Katie replied immediately.
Emily relaxed her frown slightly. 'OK ... well ...'
She was cut off by Katie's body springing towards her, arms wrapping tightly around her shoulders and squeezing hard. She froze momentarily, stunned, before moving her own arms to circle Katie's waist. She closed her eyes and squeezed back, feeling Katie's gentle breath against her shoulder.
They stood like that for almost a minute. Katie dropped her arms first, and Emily opened her eyes and took a step back. She smiled shyly, tucking her hair behind her ear, and Katie smiled back, her eyes soft and deep brown.
'I think you've put on weight Em,' Katie said, before turning and walking back towards the kitchen. Emily stared after her, self-consciously skimming her hands down over her hips. She shook her head in quiet amusement before forcing herself to move and heave her fatigued body up the stairs to her room.
She pushed open the door to her's and Katie's room. The space seemed subdued, drained of energy. Emily's side, with her tiny single bed pushed up against the wall, seemed almost blank. The fresh sheets were a neutral beige colour, a white towel and flannel folded neatly upon the pillow. Faint, rectilinear patches on the paint of the wall beside the bed were all that was left of the photographs and posters that used to adorn it.
Emily sat down heavily on the bed. It smelt of fabric softener. She felt her heart lurch slightly as she saw the handful of postcards she'd sent over the past two years blu-tacked up to the wall on Katie's side.
She stood up again, walking across the room and picking one of her postcards from the wall. It detached with a soft sticking sound. She remembered the card, remembered selecting it from the rotating display outside a tourist shop on the Khao San road, the heat sticking her vest to her back and her sunglasses slipping down her face in the grease of sweat and sunscreen that coated her face.
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Hey K,
Just got to Bangkok. It's big and dirty. We're here for a couple of weeks then we're heading out to Phuket. It's the rainy season in Thailand right now – almost as wet as Bristol!
Love and miss you
E
PS. Tell Dad it's pronounced 'Foo-ket' yeah?
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She cringed inwardly at herself. She'd spent all of two minutes scrawling out the message, using Isabel's back as a writing surface, hunching her over, a bottle of Singha clamped under her arm. She ran a hand through her hair – it felt flat and greasy and her body felt tender from travelling. She left the postcard on the dresser; it didn't deserve to be on the wall.
She walked over to the window and looked out into the street below, the same street that she'd woken up to for eighteen years. She fingered the net curtain beyond the rolled-up blackout blind and thought about the sun setting over the sea in Koh Samui, Isabel sat on the bed behind her rolling cigarettes, the sea an endless blaze of iridescent orange that she never wanted to cross.