The Lighthouse Witches(10)

III

“Done,” Ethan says, washing his hands in the sink.

“You moved them? Both bags?”

He nods. “Put them in number ten’s bin. It was half-empty.”

“And you swept up the shells?”

“Yep.”

She’s relieved. Today, of all days, she wants to feel free of Lòn Haven.

They travel to the hospital in Luna’s car. Technically, they both own the car, and the flat is mortgaged in joint names, but Luna has both for now. A permanent separation isn’t yet on the cards.

“Mum says hi,” Ethan says after a long silence. “She’s wondering if you’d like her to knit blue baby blankets or gender neutral.”

“I don’t mind,” she says. “Gray? Or maybe she’d rather wait until . . .”

She falls silent, thinking of the last time Ethan’s mother started knitting for their baby. They’d got all the way to fourteen weeks with that one, had proudly told everyone they knew right after the twelve-week scan revealed a squirming, kicking fetus, apparently as healthy as could be. The night before the miscarriage she’d been sitting in Alison’s house, where Ethan is living just now, admiring the blanket she’d begun knitting.

“It’s going to be fine,” Ethan says now, resting his hand on top of hers. She pulls it away. He sighs and slides his hands between his knees.

“I found a flat a few streets away from ours,” he says, looking out the window. “I was thinking it might be smart to grab it before someone else does.”

It takes her a moment to work out that he’s asking if they’re to continue to live separately.

“It’s up to you,” she says, stung. “It was your decision to move out in the first place.”

“We’re going over this again, are we?”

The sign for the hospital appears at the side of the road, and she indicates to turn. “I said I wasn’t ready to marry you, Ethan. I didn’t say I wanted us to split up.”

She parks, and he fixes his dark, sad eyes on her. They have had this conversation so many times, over and over, never resolving it.

“I need you to be honest with me,” he says in a measured voice. She senses that he’s prepared a speech. She’s still attracted to him, still in love with him. He has honest eyes, beautifully straight teeth, thick black dreads to his shoulders, a smooth, radio-presenter voice. He was born and raised in Coventry, but his heritage is Trinidadian. He is striking to look at: six foot four, square-jawed, muscular as a gladiator. She used to feel short and unattractive beside him, barely scraping five foot four, boring brown bob, nothing at all striking about her looks, but he’s always acted as though he’s the luckiest man alive to be with her. When she has her period he buys her ice cream and rubs her feet, and after each miscarriage he cried without embarrassment. Marriage is important to Ethan, especially since they’ve been trying for a baby.

“Look,” he says, and she notices that he’s nervous. Is he seeing someone else? The thought of it pierces her.

But he’s talking, and she has zoned out, mentally sifting through possibilities. Jenn from the Pilates club has always been flirty with him, even in front of Luna. She knows that Uche from the flat across the road is always a little more friendly when Luna’s not around. Or maybe it’s his ex Maeve, who still comments on his Facebook posts.

“I don’t care about the piece of paper, either,” he says. “But I want to know what’s changed your mind. I mean, if you don’t want to marry me after six years together, when we’re finally having a baby, do you really want to be with me?” His voice catches, and he looks down. “For the record, I don’t want us to split up, either. I just wanted to give you space.”

So, he isn’t seeing someone. Relief washes across her like a warm bath. What was it he asked? Oh yes; does she want to be with him. Yes, she thinks. I really do. But the stubborn resistance to marriage is still there, and she doesn’t know why. Marriage was always in the cards. They said it would happen when they had enough money, when they could get time off work, when the time was right. And now it’s the perfect time to get married.

But when Ethan got down on one knee on New Year’s Eve, when she knew marriage was finally feasible, something inside her bolted.

And she said no.


IV

The sonographer shows them their baby boy on the screen, the occasional ribbon of blue or red showing where he’s drinking amniotic fluid or sucking his thumb. Luna has seen him on this screen so many times now—the single benefit of being high risk—but today she’s especially relieved to see that he is wriggling around like an eel. The appearance of the shells had made her fear that something might be wrong, that they were an omen, somehow, of their baby’s imminent departure.

“Is everything OK?” she asks the sonographer when she seems to be frowning at something.

There’s a fraught silence. She and Ethan share a terrified look. This is it, she thinks, and she feels her heart plummet.

“Ah, there we go,” the sonographer says. “The screen had frozen. Baby’s absolutely fine.”

She breathes out with relief and laughs. Ethan takes her hand and she squeezes it tight.

Later, as they’re waiting in the reception area for her pregnancy notes to be returned, she picks up her phone and scrolls quickly to her Facebook pages, “Have you seen Clover Stay?” and “Help Find Sapphire Stay!” Clover’s page features a handful of photographs and a home video of Clover doing handstands in a field. She’s wearing a cotton dress over jeans. Her brown wavy hair is teased by the wind and she talks to the camera, which is held by their mother. “Is it on?” she asks several times. A voice off-camera—Liv—says, “Yeah.” Luna must have watched the clip a thousand times over and yet the sound of her mother’s voice still feels like a horse kick. On camera, Clover raises both arms in the air, lifts her right knee, and lowers her hands to the grass, swinging her legs high above her until she is perfectly straight. Then she counts quickly to one hundred, wobbling as she holds her balance. She finishes with a flourish, walking two steps forward on her hands and throwing her legs over her head into a crab’s bend. Then she leaps up and runs toward the camera with a laugh, her whole face filling the frame.