My Sister's Bones(20)

The birds wail in tandem with the howling wind. It is a cruel, brutal noise that always makes me think of the vultures that descended on the death carts in Africa during the famine of 1984, pecking scant flesh from the emaciated bodies of children. I remember lying on the living-room floor watching the scenes unfold on the TV screen while behind me Sally played with her dolls, oblivious to the hellish images that were already boring into my memory. At one point she stopped and pointed at the screen where a little boy with emaciated legs and a swollen tummy batted flies from his face. ‘Where’s his mummy?’ she asked and I told her in my matter-of-fact way that his mother was probably dead. ‘How did she die?’ Sally asked. And I told her that she had died from hunger; that the sun had dried the earth, that the rain had failed to come and the crops they needed for survival had shrivelled and died. ‘Was Mummy starving?’ she asked. ‘When baby David died? Did our crops fail?’ And I shushed her as I heard my father’s footsteps coming down the hall and switched the channel to a quiz show where a man in a shiny suit was showing a crying woman what she could have won.

The sea below me thuds and the waves hurtling in and out sound like tiny explosions. Boom, pause. Boom, pause. I find myself lulled by the noise. It makes me feel safe. Finally I tear open the envelope and flatten the lavender-coloured paper on my lap, and as I see my mother’s distinctive curled handwriting the waves fall in step with the pounding of my heart.

30th Sept., 1993

Dearest Kate,

I am writing this letter in our favourite spot: the big old green armchair where I nursed you as a baby and where you would sit as a young child to read your books. I can still see you there, like a statue, lost in your stories. It used to scare me sometimes, your silence, and I would have to call your name to check that you were still there, that you hadn’t floated off to some distant land.

Your father’s death has prompted me to get my affairs in order and write my will, but I also wanted to leave you a letter that will only be read after my death.

He is gone, Kate, and with his passing I want to ask for your forgiveness. You saw things in your young life that no child should ever see. We never spoke of what you witnessed and your silence scared me more than his fists. I worried that it had damaged you so deeply you would never recover.

But, Kate, though he was a monster there was a reason for his anger. He had lost his child, his precious David, and though we told you girls it was a tragic accident, that is not the truth. You see, it was my fault that David died and I have lived with that guilt ever since.



The words scramble as the wind blows the edges of the paper and I have to squint to read it clearly. Here it is: an ancient wound that never healed. Reasoning and pleading, guilt and sorrow, it is all here in my mother’s letter; decades of penance spelled out in petrol-blue ink.

We were at Reculver beach, as you know. You and me and David. He had seen a boat. He kept shouting it: ‘Boat, boat!’ And I saw it, a fishing boat way out across the water. I said, ‘Yes, David, pretty boat.’ But he’d forgotten about it ten minutes later. He was making a sandcastle. You pottered around my feet collecting shells. I was exhausted that day, things with your father had been difficult. The day was hot and I felt so tired I sat down in the shade by the rocks. I didn’t mean to fall asleep, I swear it, but I did, and when I woke up I couldn’t see David. I ran down the beach shouting his name over and over.



I get up, still holding the letter in my hands. The edge of the breakwater is wide and exposed and I stand for a moment looking out on to the milky surface, trying to take in what I have just read. My mother fell asleep? My sensible, over-protective mother fell asleep while in charge of two toddlers. It doesn’t make sense.

You were closer to the waves now. I ran past you as I headed for the water calling David’s name. A couple of moments later I saw him. He was floating face down in the sea. I went to run to him but my feet wouldn’t move. Everything seemed to slow down. I could hear you screaming and a man calling but still I couldn’t move.

Next thing I knew there was a fishing boat and a man waving his arms. He’d got David. He’d got him out of the water. You were in the boat too. That man had done what I had failed to do. He had brought my children to safety. But as he reached the shingle he looked at me and shook his head. When he did that my feet started to work at last and I ran to the boat but it was too late. David was dead.

It was my fault, Kate. I fell asleep when I should have been looking after my children. I was a bad mother that day and I want to say sorry for all the pain and hurt you’ve had to experience as a result of my negligence.

I will be sorry for it until the day I die.



I read the last sentence in a daze.

I fold the letter neatly and put it in my pocket. The sky is covered in a jagged cloud that filters the light of the sun on to the fishing boats, temporarily erasing the names.

I grip the blue railings and scan the mottled horizon. The shoreline has taken on a new meaning since I read the letter; what was once a place of happiness and escape is now tainted. I look up the coast towards the twin towers of Reculver, the remains of the Roman fortress jutting out from the cliffs, and shiver as I remember my mother’s insistence that, every Sunday, we visit the little strip of beach that runs below. As I grew older I assumed that my mother was using the Sunday trips as an excuse to escape my father’s moods; now I realize that they were something much more unsettling.