The Lighthouse Witches(6)

I stared at her. “How much?”

“Twenty quid.”

Twenty quid could buy a week’s worth of groceries for the four of us. She held out her hand, expectant.

“No thanks,” I said. “I’ll go to a library.”

“Maybe you should think before you judge everyone to be a Nazi, Liv.”

The “Liv” stung, just as she’d intended. “Maybe I should.”

At that, she tucked her book under her armpit and got up sharply to leave, knocking her tea across the table and all over the mural.

“Saffy!” I yelled. “Look what you’ve done!” I lunged forward to snatch the mural away, but the tea had covered the page. All I could do was hold it up, allowing the tea to slide off so that it wouldn’t soak through.

“It’s just a fucking piece of paper!” she shouted.

“Just a piece of paper?” I said, desperately flapping the sheet to get the liquid off. “This is the only copy of the mural I’ve got!”

“Well, just ask for another one,” she said, hurling her cup into the sink with a clatter. “Last I checked, a piece of paper was pretty easy to come by. Or are we really that poor?”

I reeled at her comment, at how unapologetic she was. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

“I think you should ask yourself the same question,” she said, turning and squaring up to me. She was already four inches taller than me. “Dragging all of us in the middle of the night to the back of beyond. You think that’s good parenting?”

I knew what was buried inside that horrible question, the torrent of accusations folded within it. “Maybe it isn’t good parenting,” I said, trying not to show how much her words stung. “But when you have kids, you can show us all how much of a better mother you are than me . . .”

Her eyes narrowed. “You’ve certainly kept the bar low.”

Before I knew what I was doing I lifted a hand and slapped her hard across the face, a loud crack ringing through the air. She clasped a hand to her cheek, staring at me with wild horror.

“I’m sorry,” I said, reeling from what I’d done. “Saffy. I’m so, so sorry.”

Her face crumpled, her eyes filling with tears and a sob escaping her mouth. For a moment the perfected mask of teenage haughtiness fell, and her hurt was laid nakedly before me—just for a second, she was my little girl again, reeling from the fact that I had struck her. That I had crossed a line I had promised never, ever to cross.

I reached for her arm, but she pulled away from me, her hand still clutching her face.

I turned and ran into the kitchen, searching the tiny icebox of the fridge for ice. Nothing. I grabbed a rag and held it under the cold tap, then returned to the living room.

But Saffy had gone.

The front door gaped open like a wound.





SAPPHIRE, 1998



I

Sapphire stumbles blindly across the road away from the Longing.

It’s early, the sky like polished silver, the ocean sinewy and muscular, crackling as it reaches the stones at the edge of the causeway. She turns, out of breath from anger and wading, and looks back at the bothy. What a shithole. No KFC or McDonald’s on the whole bloody island. And the lighthouse—she’s always loved the idea of lighthouses, the romance of a building designed to throw light out across the ocean to keep ships safe and draw them home. But this one is creepy. It’s tall and white with big sections of flaked paint, and the windows are smashed. It doesn’t even work as a lighthouse. It’s just a big phallic eyesore.

The cool salty air has taken the sting away from where her mum slapped her. She narrows her eyes and watches the bothy, wishing she could set it alight with her mind. What kind of mother hits their kid like that? And after dragging them all up here, too, to the arse-end of nowhere, right in the middle of Saffy’s exams. Saffy loves her school back in York. She loves her friends and her boyfriend, Jack, who she’s been seeing for six months.

She hates her mum. She wishes she would just die and let Saffy be adopted by someone normal. Maybe her biological dad will come back and he’ll have a nice wife and some other kids and Saffy will have an actual normal life. Not one that involves living on boats and sometimes even in tents, and now a bothy on an island. A life with boundaries and bedtimes and clothes that don’t come from charity shops.

Lately, she’s been thinking about her stepdad, Sean. How much she misses him. Things were normal when he was alive, and they were happy. Even her mum was different. She wasn’t as thin as she is now, but more importantly she was kind of calm. Now she has this weird, nervous energy. Skittish as a river bird. And dazed, as if she’s half asleep or permanently daydreaming. Sean was the one who made everything wonderful. He was like sunshine, bringing out the colors in everyone he met.

When Liv had told her that Sean had been injured in a car accident, Saffy had asked, “Is he going to die?” because this was her worst fear. And when Liv said yes, it was likely that he would, Saffy had promised herself that she would be there when he did. It was what she’d held on to, the promise that she’d hold his hand, that the last thing he’d see was her there with him. She couldn’t change the fact that he wasn’t her real dad, but she could be there for him when he died.

But Liv insisted that Saffy go home with her uncle Liam, and nothing Saffy said or did persuaded her otherwise. Saffy wailed and pleaded, but still Liam took her firmly by the hand and drove her home. Not even an hour had passed before the phone rang with the news that Sean had passed.