HAUNTINGS: Bringing the Beach Home

By Lynsey May

The first time I let Eva go to the beach alone I stood at the window, then the door, for the entire hour she was gone. I’d sent her with her pink watch carefully tucked into the buttoned top pocket of her denim shirt. We confirmed the position the hands would be in when it was time for her to return. She wouldn’t talk to strangers, she knew to dip no more than her toes, and yet I couldn’t settle.

She was barely two minutes late. I smiled widely and wiped the sweat from my palms.

‘Did you have fun?’

She nodded. I was pleased and uncomfortable, also. Now she’d proved she could entertain herself at the beach, I’d let her go again and again. And I did, guilty and grateful for the solitude. Over the next few days, she followed instructions perfectly and came back at the appointed hours for her slick of suncream and handful of carrot sticks.

I was working my way through the boxes we’d packed together, trying to decide what I’d relinquish to John, now that he’d abandoned our new life together for one of his own. It was a relief to have the place to myself as I pulled apart our memories but the relief at hearing the sandy thud of Eva’s small, Velcro sandals being hit against the doorframe was greater.

On Thursday, I sliced vegetables for a lasagne. My soft-hearted daughter had violently taken against meat a few years ago.  Even Quorn was a stretch for her, we had to spell out the words on the box until she was convinced it really was made out of fungus or whatever the hell it actually is. I snuck mouthfuls of chorizo or pate whenever I had the chance.

Dinner was in the oven and I was wiping at the counter when I noticed the heaviness of the salt in the air. The windows were open and the sun high. I pictured banks of seaweed, drying on the sand and wondered if Eva would enjoy popping and crunching the pods with her soft heels. I would go down to the water with her again soon. Not that afternoon though, nor the next, because I was busy claiming our home. It was a flat that felt like a house. Built into a steep hill, we had two floors and our own front door – you could almost forget about the families that lived below us. John said he wanted Eva to grow up by the sea. I agreed, imagining us playing together in the sand. Maybe, when we’d signed the deed, he’d already known he wouldn’t be joining us.

There were several piles in the living room. One, I intended to pack up in the van John would send for it. Another would go to a charity shop in one of the bigger towns nearby. The last held the things that he’d requested but that I would keep. This was the smallest but also the most shameful of the piles.

I was deliberating over a book when I heard small feet pattering above me and a strange, shuffling noise. I shouted up and she replied. The words were indistinct, her tone un-panicked. I ran my finger over the soft ruffles of the paperback. It still had a faint tang of smoke, left over from John’s younger years. I heard Eva retrace her steps and the delayed whack of sandals against wood.

She came to me and I didn’t tell her off for the sand she’d have tracked into the house. I kissed the hot parting of her hair and gave her a packet of raisins. How she absorbed sunlight, my dark, darling child. She took her snack and pattered back out the door without glancing at the possessions littering the floor before me.

That night, she didn’t want a story. I blinked, agreed and shut her door behind me quickly. Downstairs, I read a few pages of John’s old paperback and barely took in a word. I was remembering where it’d once sat with several others, on his mantelpiece for visitors like me to admire.

The more time I spent trying to excise John, the harder I found it to imagine opening the front door and following Eva to the beach. I ordered our shopping from the big supermarket two towns over and sat by the hearth in the evening, although it was too warm still to think of lighting a fire.

John called and left a message, wondering how I was getting on and whether I’d be sending the things soon and if I’d thought about when he might get to see our daughter again. I drank a glass of wine that night. The kind of glass that never quite empties, because the bottle is sitting on the floor beside it. John had to be good about the time I was taking because he was in the wrong, leaving us the way he had. Leaving us just when we were on our way to reinvent ourselves at the seaside. But no matter how bad his behaviour, it wouldn’t buy me infinite patience. His insistences would soon become firmer.

The piles were not the real problem. There was something much more precious at stake than a bunch of tat. What I couldn’t do was work out what was best for Eva and whether it was fair to keep a cheater in her life. Another cheater.

I took another mouthful and went to tuck her in although I knew I shouldn’t. She’d been sleeping more lightly recently and though I’d learned already where all of the creaking boards lay, I wasn’t convinced I could avoid them with the cheap red thinning my blood.

The warm sugar smell of her breath was drowned by something darker, deeper. I peeked into the yellow bucket sitting on her desk, braced for the chitter of small, shelled legs I’d grown used to coming home with her and John when they’d been exploring. It was empty.

I left her sleeping, resolving to clean the next day, and retreated to my chair. I was late to bed and woke with a headache. Eva hurried her cornflakes and, noticing her squint out the window, I asked if she’d made many friends.

‘They’re all weird here.’

‘To them, you’re a little different too, but you’ll get used to each other. You’ll acclimatise. We both will.’

She shrugged her tiny shoulder, had a last spoonful of smooshy cornflakes and left. I riffled through John’s things, thinking about asking Eva if she wanted to bake biscuits with me after lunch. There were no eggs in the fridge and, feeling parched despite several glasses of water, I decided to forget baking and take a bath instead. There was sand on the bottom of the tub and it rasped against by back like a big cat’s tongue. My head lolled against the edge and I created my own waves in the still water. Twunk went Eva’s sandals. I reached up to grip the side of the tub, my hand steaming against the porcelain.

‘Everything alright?’ As always, my clothes were laid out on the floor in order, I could be dressed in under a minute.

‘Yeah,’ she said. I could hear her sweaty feet stick-peeling to the floorboards as she passed. She was still in her room when I finally heaved myself from the cooling water. I was drying myself when her door snicked again. She was waiting for me in the hall.

‘You didn’t have fun at the beach?’ She shrugged. ‘Shall we have some lunch then?’

We sat among the boxes and Eva peeled open her peanut butter sandwich and frowned at what she saw.

‘Not to madam’s satisfaction?’

‘Can we have ham tomorrow?’

‘Ham? Real ham?’ To my surprise she nodded. ‘The kind that comes from a pig?’ This nod was shorter and sharper. ‘If you’re sure.’

Ten minutes later, she was back out with a smear of Factor 40 on her nose but I’d barely picked up the first photo album when I heard her open the front door again. I climbed the stairs in time to see her emerging from her room, closing the door firmly behind her.

‘Forget something?’ I asked and she nodded and sidled past me, her hands empty.

When bedtime approached, she asked me if I would read her a story on the sofa. Comfortable in my seat by the fireplace, I let her snuggle in beside me. It was the same the next night. And the next.

I’d bought a case of wine, there was no point placing an order at the supermarket unless it was a big one, and I drank and stared into the place a fire would later burn. I woke parched, despite the glasses of water I took to bed with me, and although hours were lost, it felt as though I was barely sleeping. I often stirred in the night to feel Eva’s arms round my neck and the smell of fish in her hair.

‘Bathtime for you tomorrow, missy.’ I whispered through my salt-stung lips.

Over the next few days I noticed her pottering back and forth constantly, always running home not long after she left. I hoped she wasn’t being teased, down at the water’s edge, then worried she might be checking up on me. I would go with her. Tomorrow, the day after. We’d paddle together. We’d build a village and smash it. I’d clear the floor and clean the flat and start getting out of the house.

The summer holidays scuttled onwards and I should’ve been making the most of every moment but my head ached and when she left for the beach, I waved and said nothing. Eva was in a contrary mood and I didn’t blame her. Still, it was infuriating to watch the way she picked at her food. The ham ended up in the bin. So did the chicken breast and meatballs she’d insisted she wanted. Even the turkey dinosaurs were consigned to the black pit.

‘That’s it,’ I said. ‘We’re back to meat-free tomorrow.’

Her eyes glossed and in another second or two I would’ve reached out and hugged her but the phone rang and my hand reflexively reached for it instead. It was John. His voice was a cold wave against my belly and he wondered how I was doing and whether I remembered that the van would be coming the next day. He didn’t have to cancel and rebook it again, did he? I’d had such a lot of time.

‘It’s not one person job really, though, is it?’

‘I thought you’d prefer it that way. When can I see Eva? I miss her.’

‘We’re not ready.’

I held in me the opportunity to cast him off or keep him tied to us. Eva held it. I could take the gamble, let them swab her cheek and do the same to him and rank their slugs, snails, puppy dog’s tails and love of crustaceans side by side to see how they measured up. That several-month-long slip up I’d almost forgotten about might be the answer to this riddle. We might never have to see him again, if I was willing to reveal something of myself.

She was back in her room by the time I hung up the phone and it was almost bedtime. An urge to break the rules surged and I decided we’d go for a paddle and see if the chip shop had ice cream to sell us. I stood and plucked the empty wine bottle from the table. The bin lid was already on its descent when the incongruity registered. The turkey dinosaurs weren’t there. I lifted the lid again. Gone. All that remained was a scattering of breadcrumbs over the rubbish.

I climbed the stairs to Eva’s room with my fingers clenching remorsefully. I remembered a day from my own childhood, when I was left at the table with a plate of stew until the fat congealed and the gravy grew a thick skin.

I pushed her door fiercely, ignoring the rules I’d set about knocking, with an apology rising in my throat. She was crouched on the floor by her bed, the turkey dinosaurs in her hand. Leaning out from under the overhang of her pink duvet was a creature half as big as my daughter, with bone-white cheeks and needle sharp teeth. Its scales shimmered in the evening sun and the spine of fine bones rose when it saw me. I screamed and Eva fell backwards so that she sat firmly on the floor. Her expression was petulant but the gesture one of pure relief.

I reached out and pulled her to me, away from the monster under her bed. The duvet blew up on the current of air and I saw the fragments of crab shells and a smear of the rich tomato sauce from yesterday’s meatballs. The creature glared.

I’d glimpsed something cold blooded and hollow boned, now I saw arms and soft hair like the smoothest of sea ferns and I smelled the stink of the ocean. I felt the wrap of dreams and terrors and was glad that sometimes this mixture of skin and scale spent the night with me, that it curled itself round my neck and not Eva’s. I was shaking. The creature’s thin teeth grew more prominent. It looked as though it was grinning.

‘She’s lost, ‘ Eva said.

I dragged my gaze from the creature to my daughter, my baby girl who’d grown old enough to lie.

‘If she’s lost, she needs to go home.’ The thing was listening hard, tail twitching and sharp fingers scratching the floorboards. ‘Shall we take her? Can we do that Eva, can we take her home safe?’

My daughter stared at me so intently I blushed, every doubt and glass of wine and untruth burning on my cheeks.

‘It’s good of you to look after her,’ I said. ‘But she should be with her family, shouldn’t she? With her mummy?’

The silence that followed was dark and fathomless. Then, like a shaft of sun penetrating the ocean depths, Eva nodded and stood.

The creature quivered and I, horror prickling my stomach, looked for something to put it in. My daughter grabbed the bucket John bought her and I shook my head, tipping the soft toys out of a red crate without taking my eyes from the boney bundle. Eva dropped her bucket and spade, scooped the creature up with both hands and plonked it in the crate. It twitched and curled against the plastic.

‘Your mummy misses you,’ she placated. I said nothing.

Eva carried the crate in a hug and I rested my hand on her back as we walked carefully down the stairs and into the warm evening sun. Resilient, duplicitous and kind hearted as only a child can be, this girl was all mine. There was no need to lie.

—

Lynsey May lives, writes and loves in Edinburgh. She received a Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award in 2013, a Robert Louis Stevenson Fellowship in 2015 and a spot as Cove Park’s Emerging Scottish Writer in 2016. Her short fiction has been published in various journals and anthologies, including The Stinging Fly, Gutter and New Writing Scotland.