Page 37 of The Women at Ocean's End

‘I…’ Dotty felt as if she was frozen to the spot.

‘Can he?’

‘I don’t know. It’s…’ Dotty’s mind raced in a thousand different directions. They would go to prison. They would be carted off and locked up and that would be the end of the pair of them. That was if they were lucky – could they be hanged for killing him? Dotty shivered; how long had they been standing here?

‘We have to do something,’ Constance said then.

‘What? What are we going to do? Tell someone that I’ve just murdered my own father?’

‘You didn’t murder him, Dotty.’

‘I wanted him to die and I was the one who… who… who…’ She started to shake, the reality of what had happened actually beginning to hit her now, making her tremble, visions of what would become of her raced through her brain.They hang murderers, don’t they?Or they’d send her to prison for life – she couldn’t go to prison, she just couldn’t.

‘Come on, we’ll tell them it was an accident, he slipped and fell.’

‘But he didn’t slip though, did he? And what if he tells them we tried to… You don’t know him, Constance, you don’t know what he’s really like.’

‘What do you want to do, so?’ Constance looked at her. They hadn’t time to waste and, suddenly, it was impossible to think clearly.

‘Constance?’ Mrs Macken’s call wafted into the evening air from the garden next door. ‘Constance, come in now, it’s getting too chilly. Where are you, Constance?’

‘That’s it,’ Constance said, closing her eyes tight, perhaps willing herself to have some sort of divine inspiration. ‘Okay, we’ll tell my mother, she’ll know what to do for the best.’

‘What do you mean, what to do for the best?’

‘You know, the best thing to do so we don’t get into too much trouble.’

‘We can’t tell her everything, she’d never believe us, not about the…’ Dotty looked away and, of course, they both knew she was right, who’d believe that her dad would want to… ‘Oh, Constance, I’d die if anyone knew what he…’ Dotty started to cry again.

‘It’s okay, I know what to do,’ Constance said. ‘Wait here a minute.’

She snuck along the hedging, leaving Dotty in Mr Morrison’s back garden staring at the well. In no time, she was back carrying the small bag Norman Wren carried his sandwiches in each day, his cigarette case and his wallet. She dropped the items down the well. Then they pulled the cover over the top, as much as they could together. He was already dead, Dotty was sure of it.

‘We never, ever say a word about this to anyone, no matter what happens; we didn’t see a thing today, yes?’

‘Not a word, not ever.’ Dotty took Constance’s hand and the pact was made. Maybe not sealed in blood, but it was made in the most compelling spirit of all – fear.

24

Constance

It was the same every year on the second Saturday in May. Constance woke with a start from a nightmare that was as real now, some fifty years after it had spun out into reality. There was the sound of water: not gentle, rippling waves hitting the shore at your feet, this water was hungry, gnashing, pounding against the side of a small red fishing boat. There were screams, but they came later, with panicked shouting and a sense that the only thing worse would come when there was no sound at all.

It was a beautiful day. Sun shining, high in a clear blue sky, the vista in the distance shimmering with the promise of heat that would not dissipate until fireflies lit up the shrinking night. Constance imagined Oisin, walking barefoot along the pier, the concrete warm beneath his feet, maybe sandy residues sticking against his toes. She had made him tomato and corned beef sandwiches, with bottles of diluted lemon and barley water, filled the night before and stored in the cool box of the fridge so they would melt slowly, last longer too.

From the moment Constance had taken him to Pin Hill Island, he had been in love with the sea. She had fallen in love with him at university, both training to be teachers, their lives stretching out before them, or so they thought. Funny, but when not one but two jobs came up on the island, she thought it was a sign they belonged here, together. Her future panning out so perfectly, she couldn’t have asked for anything more.

How were they to know?

That terrible morning, along the pier, all the big trawlers had set out to sea before the dawn had cracked open in the sky across the mainland. There was nothing to sway Oisin from that trip, not so much as a whisper of a breeze, even the shipping forecast had predicted nothing more than mild swells some two hundred miles out to sea.

Constance had long ago made peace of sorts with the fact that she’d never have the answer to exactly what had happened that day. For the most part, she just ached for Oisin. These days, as her own life was drawing slowly to a close, there was something like comfort in the thought that perhaps he would be waiting for her.

It was this thought, dug up after the rigmarole of clenched muscles, unspoken cries and tears staining her cheeks while she slept, that made life bearable once more.

The second Saturday in May. The same dream every year, only, with each year, she knew as sure as grass was green that she was drawing nearer to being reunited with him once more.

This year, somehow, the heaviness that usually weighed her down did not feel so oppressive. She knew why that was. Despite the fact that Dotty had died, there was life back in Ocean’s End again. Having Heather and Ros here, of course it didn’t dispel what happened all those years ago – she wouldn’t want that, she wouldn’t want Oisin wiped out completely – but somehow the sadness this year was diluted.

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