“Yes. you could.” Martha’s words tumbled out. “You always encouraged Mum to stand up to him, but you didn’t do it. You ran away.”
Zelda tried to get out of her chair but couldn’t make it. “Now, just wait a minute, young lady—”
“How did Lilian know?” Martha demanded.
“She saw and heard everything, though I expect your parents tried to cover it up. They probably told her that I was drunk or said things to be spiteful.”
“But, still.” Martha stumbled. She felt her back press against the window. She gripped the sill with her fingertips. “Everyone knew. Except me.”
“I made a huge mistake. No matter what happened between us all, he loved you. Thomas was your father.”
Martha hung her head. She took her time to speak. “Did you know that I met someone?” she asked quietly. “His name was Joe.”
Zelda nodded. “Betty mentioned him. She got in touch, now and again. She gave me small updates.”
“Behind Dad’s back?”
“It was an agreement we had. I promised to stay away, not rock the boat by coming back. And she let me know that you and Lilian were okay.”
Martha shook her head. “But Joe and I were going to have a future together. I gave it up to look after Mum and Dad. If I’d known my entire family was keeping a secret from me, things could have been so different.”
“You stayed with them, because you’re a caring person. You made that decision.”
“I might have made an alternative one.”
“Or, you might have made the same one...”
Martha let out a sob. She knew her nana was right. Even if she had known about Thomas, she would have stayed, to look after her mother. She’d have felt it was her duty. “Where did you go to, when you disappeared?” she asked desperately.
“I told you. I went to Finland with Gina.”
“You’re together, aren’t you? You always have been?”
Zelda gave a tight smile. “Yes...for the longest time.”
“I thought she was your carer.”
“I never told you that.”
Martha looked around her blindly, at this empty house full of family memories that she no longer recognized.
Her nana, who’d she’d built up in her head to be some kind of fairy godmother, was just a normal, old woman. Who had lied.
And she’d never even known her real dad.
She had never felt more sapped of energy. “How did my copy of Blue Skies and Stormy Seas even end up with Owen?” she asked, her body sagging.
Zelda swallowed. “It was just an error. Gina was clearing out some books. She put it in a box by mistake with some others, to give away.”
Martha forced a laugh. “So, you didn’t even try to contact me? We found each other again, because of a mistake?”
“It was only when I got back to England that I found out Thomas and Betty had died. I expected Betty still to be here. She wasn’t old. I was terribly ill for months, after my tumor...”
Martha felt her head was about to burst. The room suddenly felt like a cage. The feelings she experienced with the reading group in the library surged over her again. Her brain pulsed and she couldn’t see clearly. Her vision flooded with red.
I’ve got to get away from all this.
When her eyes settled on her coat, she snatched it back up, off the table.
“Where are you going?” Zelda asked.
“Away from you. You were my best friend and I trusted you.”
“You can’t go. Gina will be here in a few minutes.”
“I don’t care about bloody Gina. You’re a liar, Nana. For all these years...”
“No. I just didn’t tell you the truth.”
“It’s the bloody same thing,” Martha yelled.
She marched toward the front door and flung it open. A gust of wind lifted her stripy hair and, pulling her coat around her, she began to run.
33
Boat
Not sure where she was fleeing to, or concerned that she’d left Zelda on her own, Martha automatically followed her morning route.
Her feet pounded along the street and down the slope to the beach. She headed past the mermaid statue, not able to bear looking at Daniel’s name.
Her father’s name.
She pelted across the sand towards the teardrop-shaped cave, where she and Joe enjoyed laughter and picnics. When she reached it, her breath came out in billows and her chest hurt. She slowed down to stare into the cavernous dark space. A tear ran down her cheek and she let it fall from her chin, onto her coat. The cave felt still and eerie, not the happy place where she and Zelda shared stories, or where Betty held Lilian’s hand. She pictured a dragon lurking at the back, in the shadows.
Her head throbbed and she couldn’t process her thoughts. When she heard someone shouting on the beach, she darted inside the cave, where everything grew instantly quieter. The walls provided a barrier to the sound of the ocean and the wind whistling around outside. A strand of seaweed flew past the cave entrance and a piece of driftwood tumbled, making markings on the sand like a sidewinder.
Staring around helplessly, Martha remembered back to the scorching hot day that she, Zelda, Betty and Lilian had escaped Thomas’s attention for a short while.
“You lied to me, Zelda,” she shouted, and her words echoed around the cave and back at her. She felt a hollowness inside like nothing she’d felt before, as if her innards had been scooped out. Her skin felt raw and paper-thin. “Everyone lied to me,” she cried.
As a child, she’d always felt there was something wrong in the family. She’d sensed the thing in the air so thick it felt like glue, but that she couldn’t see or fathom out. She hadn’t understood the coolness in Thomas’s eyes when he looked at her, or the tension between him and Betty, and with her nana. Or why he seemed to love Lilian more than her. But now she could.
Yet her dad had been happy to let her care for him, and to give up her own chance of getting married and having children. And Betty had watched it happen, too, and had even begged Martha to stay, in a moment of desperation. Thomas had banished Zelda, and the Storm family knew and accepted it.
Why did no one put up a fight?
She wondered how Lilian felt, knowing that Martha was looking after a man who wasn’t her real father. Her sister had constructed her own family with Paul, Rose and Will, and not said a word.
But the worst betrayal, for Martha, came from Zelda.
She might have been declared dead by Thomas, but she left Sandshift knowing that Betty was indebted to her controlling husband. Her nana deserted the Storm family and left its secrets behind her.
Martha shivered. She wrapped her arms across her body and stood shaking on the sand.
A red setter dog ran past the entrance of the cave and paused to stare at her. “Billy,” a voice shouted and Martha quickly stepped backwards, toward the rear of the cave. She stayed there, looking up at the long black slit in the rocks. She imagined a flash of turquoise as Zelda’s skirt disappeared through it, and her hand playfully grabbing the air.
“Billy.” The voice came again, closer now, and the dog wandered farther into the cave. It sniffed at the seaweed that lined part of the floor like a carpet. The dog owner’s red anorak came into view.
Not wanting to be seen, Martha raised her foot and climbed the rocks leading up to the slit. They were slippery and wet to her touch. Even though she hadn’t done this for over thirty years, her feet knew what to do and where to go.
“There you are, Billy. Good dog.”
Martha slipped through the gap and into the hollow on the other side.
There was no underground lagoon here today, just a small pool of water. Martha listened out and heard the person and the dog moving away. She sank to the floor, not caring that the sand was wet. She cradled her head in her hands and tried to block out the thoughts that made her temples ache, about who was to blame for all this mess, hurt and confusion. Was it Zelda’s fault for leaving? Or her father for declaring her dead to the family? Was it her mother for being weak-willed? Or even Lilian for not sharing with Martha that she knew something?
Perhaps it’s ultimately my own fault, for not being brave enough to follow Joe, Martha thought. I could have had a different life.