They both look at Conor, who is busy checking that the windows are locked. ‘Is that what you think too?’ Lily asks him.
‘We searched the whole house when we were looking for Trixie. If Nancy had wanted to be found, we would have found her. I agree with Rose.’
Lily pulls an ugly face. ‘I guess some things never change.’
I understand why the others suspect Nancy, but they’re wrong.
The fourth time I died, I was here at Seaglass. It was spring 1984, and Nancy and I were sitting on her favourite bench in the garden, pressing flowers. It was something she liked to do. But not when they were perfect and pretty, only when they were dead. Ideas are sewn in our heads, just like seeds. Some are scattered and soon forgotten, others take root and grow to become something much bigger than they were in the beginning. Sometimes we make notes in the margins of our minds, thoughts and ideas that are just for us alone to read and ponder over. Thoughts and ideas we do not share. I’ve never forgotten what my mother said that day.
‘We only really acknowledge the beauty and brilliance of someone or something when they die,’ she said, holding her pruning shears and deadheading some roses.
Snip.
She handed me a ball of dark crimson petals before moving onto some white lilies. ‘I’ve always found that strange, the way people don’t appreciate what they have until it is gone.’
Snip. Snip.
Then she bent down and cut a few dead daisies from the lawn. Seconds later, it was as though they were never there.
Snip. Snip. Snip.
The silver heart-shaped locket my father had given her one Christmas dangled from her neck. She’d worn it every day since, and I imagined pretty pictures of my sisters inside. My mother used to hold it between her thumb and her index finger when she was thinking. I wondered if she thought of them when she did.
I don’t remember why we were together at Seaglass without my sisters. Normally Nancy dropped me off alone when they were at school and she needed to disappear. She had joined an amateur dramatics group in London, and spent an increasing amount of time getting out of parental duties and getting into character for performances at the town hall. The local newspaper once described her as ‘a hard act to follow’。 They did not mean it kindly. Nancy said we weren’t allowed to see her in a show until she was cast in a lead role, which meant we never saw her on stage.
I know Nana liked having the adult company when my mother came to stay at Seaglass. The two women had more in common than either of them realized or cared to admit. Acting and writing are surprisingly similar, and the wish to walk in someone else’s shoes – which is what actors and writers do – is a very human desire. But if they forget to take those shoes off, or forget who they really are, it can be a dangerous obsession.
Sometimes London was a little too loud for Nancy. Whenever she was having one of what she called her ‘blue days’ she needed to hibernate. Those days frequently coincided with her not getting a part she had auditioned for, or finding grey hairs, or not liking how she looked in a photo. But there were often times when I couldn’t tell what triggered my mother’s melancholy. When she was low, she preferred silence and solitude to hustle and bustle, and Seaglass became a place of sanctuary. Nancy would disappear into a world of her own when we were by the sea. When the tide rolled in, surrounding Seaglass with salty waves, it felt like a moat, separating her from the rest of mankind and the people who had hurt her. Because someone hurt my mother; it’s the only explanation I can think of for why she was the way she was.
We dried and pressed the dead flowers between the pages of her Observer’s Book of Wild Flowers that afternoon, drinking home-made lemonade and enjoying the sunshine, and for a little while I think we were almost happy. But it didn’t last.
‘Are all the flowers in Nana’s garden wild?’ I asked.
‘All living things are wild,’ Nancy answered.
‘Even children?’
‘Especially children.’
As she closed the book on the flattened daisies – the least interesting or beautiful of the flowers she picked – I felt as though she’d like to flatten me between the pages of a book too. It’s hard to explain, but it was the first time I truly understood that my mother didn’t really love me. The sea sounded louder, and I remember feeling filled with sorrow, as though the lonely thoughts inside my young head might drown me. I was nothing but a disappointment. A broken promise. She blamed herself for my broken heart, and when she looked at me, all she saw was guilt. In that moment, I understood that my mother loved my sisters, and she loved that garden, but her love for me was not evergreen, or even perennial; it would not grow back. Sad memories hide inside us all like ghosts.