‘Are you all right?’ Nancy asks her favourite daughter.
Lily shakes her head. ‘No, of course not. It’s just so awful. I think I’m in shock, we all must be.’
‘I meant you look pale. Are you feeling okay?’
‘I can’t find my diabetic kit, but don’t worry. Missing one shot of insulin won’t kill me.’
Lily wasn’t diagnosed as diabetic until her early twenties. She injects twice a day now and makes sure that everyone knows it. I’ve spent a lot of time with diabetics at the care home where I volunteer, and I feel for them, I really do. It isn’t an easy disease to live with at any age. But Lily doesn’t take her condition as seriously as she should, and her sweet tooth and habit of overindulgence was demonstrated again at dinner. My sister rarely worries about the things that she should.
‘Look how peaceful Trixie looks,’ Lily says, staring at her daughter. ‘I don’t know how I’m going to tell her what has happened. First Nana, then Dad . . .’
‘Maybe you don’t have to tell her? Let her sleep for now?’ Nancy suggests.
Lily nods, and I watch her quietly place a blanket over Trixie with unusual care and compassion. For a moment, I feel guilty about the bad thoughts I so often have about my sister. Maybe she is capable of loving someone more than she loves herself. Lily gently kisses her daughter on the forehead and strokes her hair, in a rare display of maternal affection.
‘What do we do with this?’ asks Conor.
He’s holding the VHS tape from the kitchen with the words WATCH ME on the front. We all stare at it and him as though he’s holding a grenade and has suggested pulling out the pin.
‘Throw it on the fire?’ suggests Lily.
‘Why would someone leave that there for us to find?’ I ask.
‘Who put it there is the question we should all be asking,’ says Conor. ‘And what if it explains what is happening here tonight?’
‘It just looks like another Darker family home movie,’ Rose replies, as Conor removes the tape from its cover. We can all see the white sticky label on the side of it. ‘SEAGLASS —— 1980’ written in Nana’s swirly handwriting. Rose takes the tape from Conor’s hands.
‘Should we watch it?’ asks my mother. The rest of us exchange glances. ‘What else are we going to do for five hours? Sitting here in silence while we wait for the tide to go out will only make the hours pass more slowly, and things surely can’t get any worse. Personally, I’d welcome any distraction to take my mind off what has happened here tonight, and it might be nice for all of us to remember happier times?’
‘What about Trixie?’ Conor asks, looking at the sleeping teenager in the corner of the room. ‘Shall I turn the volume down?’
‘Don’t worry, nothing wakes her when she’s like this. She’ll be out for the count until morning,’ Lily replies.
‘Is that normal for a teenager?’
‘It is when I’ve given her a strong sedative.’
‘You did what?’
Conor looks genuinely shocked but the rest of us barely react. All families have their own version of normal, and I confess that ours is a little different from most.
Lily shrugs. ‘I asked Nancy to crush one of her pills and put it in Trixie’s tea earlier—’
‘I used to secretly give my daughters sleeping pills all the time when they were kids,’ Nancy interrupts, as though proud of the fact.
‘And we turned out just fine!’ says Lily, with a large dose of irony. She smiles, before turning to our mother. ‘I remember catching you putting the pills inside gummy bears, so we thought it was a bedtime treat before brushing our teeth. Mine were hidden inside green bears, Rose got the red ones, Daisy’s were always gold. We never questioned it, just did as we were told. Trixie wouldn’t stop crying after finding Nana. Hopefully she’ll just sleep now until the tide goes out and we can leave. I wish I could do the same.’
Lily opens a new packet of cigarettes, her fingers shaking with impatience while she lights one. Any guilt I felt regarding my feelings about her evaporates. Nobody says anything about Lily smoking, or the fact that she drugged her own daughter to stop her from crying. We all have bad habits, some we let the world see, some we only reveal with family, and some we’re too ashamed to share with anyone except ourselves. She lights up and instantly looks calmer, appearing to breathe out her unease with a puff of smoke.
Conor shakes his head, but Lily ignores him. Rose – I think sensing that a distraction might be good for the whole family – switches on Nana’s old TV set. It slowly comes to life, displaying fuzzy grey and white pixels.