Page 65 of Someone in the Water
And as you mentioned that you’ve read my blog, you will know that I have an intimate understanding of blame. I lost my husband when Isobel was young, and there are two people responsible for his fatal car crash. I am ashamed to say that I am one of them. I will carry that guilt forever, and I only hope the person I share culpability with feels an equally heavy burden. But that is an episode I won’t let myself dwell on for long.
Thank you again for getting in touch, and I hope you have an enjoyable summer. Please stay safe. Corsica has its own unique dangers.
Nicole
Lola leans back in the chair.Corsica has its own unique dangers.Of course Nicole would say that – her daughter died in the island’s waters – but it still makes Lola shiver. Because her own mum could have written those words.
She looks back at the email. It’s horrible that Nicole has blamed her mum all this time, just as Frankie has blamed herself. But Nicole will have been fed the official police line, so doesn’t know to be suspicious of anyone else. Lola wonders how Nicole would react if she confided in her. Explained her suspicions about there being someone else in the water, an actual killer. Would Nicole be glad to have a real villain to remove Izzy’s portion of blame? Or would dismantling her theory that Izzy had some control over her destiny shatter Nicole’s search for peace?
Lola opens Nicole’s website and clicks on her image. Nicole and her mum have more than a fear of Corsica in common. Grief and guilt threaded together like rope, always threatening to hang them. And both of them with the shadow of another person looming in the background. Lola wonders who Nicole is referring to when she talks about sharing the blame for her husband’s death. Then she leans forward and hits the reply button. She’s had enough of secrets. Nicole deserves to know everything.
As she hits ‘send’ on her email, the door opens, and she instinctively shuts down the website.
‘Hey, Lola. My mother said you were in here.’ Patrick closes the door behind him – an act that causes a weird clenching in Lola’s belly – and perches on the desk. ‘Have you got what you need?’
‘What? Oh sorry, yes,’ she says, still flustered by Nicole’s email and now Patrick’s proximity. ‘My travel documents should arrive today.’ Lola is pleased to see a hint of disappointment wash across Patrick’s face. ‘But they last six weeks,’ she hears herself follow up with. She watches Patrick’s eyes light up and pushes away an image of her mum’s pleading face.
‘It’s my day off today,’ he says. ‘I wondered if you wanted to go for a picnic?’
‘You and me?’ Lola asks, her heart suddenly thinking it’s got a one-hundred-metre race to win.
‘We can ask your mum to come too if you’d like?’
‘No, God no. You and me, that would be great.’ She catches his eye, then looks away, hiding the grin that’s spreading across her face. At least she knows that Patrick isn’t dangerous.
‘I’ll take you to my favourite secret beach.’
‘Secret?’ Lola’s excitement wanes slightly. She’s grown to hate that word lately.
But Patrick nods, oblivious. ‘Not a tourist in sight. Probably not another person. You’ll love it, I promise.’ He smiles again, then twists off the table and opens the door, his palm leaning on the handle. ‘I’ll get some picnic stuff from the kitchen. It’s ten thirty now, so shall I meet you out front at eleven?’
‘Sounds good. Do we walk there?’
‘Oh, it’s too remote for that.’ He laughs. ‘Twenty minutes in the car, then a half-hour hike around the headland. Does that sound okay?’
Lola looks at Patrick’s hopeful face. He may be eight years older than her, but he looks like a little boy now. She feels her shoulders relax. ‘It sounds perfect,’ she says.
Lola
29th July
Lola feels a line of sweat drip down the centre of her back. It’s approaching midday and the sun is bearing down on them. But she doesn’t care about the heat. She is with Patrick in a beautiful, secluded part of Corsica with the whole afternoon stretching out ahead of them.
‘What’s that over there?’ She points at a crumbling stone structure, one and a half walls with holes for windows and a doorway.
‘One of Porto Vecchio’s many ruins,’ Patrick says, smiling. ‘If I had to sum up Corsican history in one word, it would be invasion. Everyone has wanted this little island – the Greeks, the Romans, the Genoese, the French; even Mussolini tried his luck. I don’t know whether Corsicans are brave or stupid, but they fought them every time. Some are still fighting for independence from the French. They’ve never won, but that doesn’t stop them trying.’
‘I guess that’s impressive?’ Lola says. After parking the car on a dusty side road, they walked through some woodland, and onto a steep path that took them above the treeline. They’re now on a flat stretch of grassland with boulders ahead of them and distant views of the sea below.
‘It made them tough, for sure. Although some might say too tough.’
‘What do you mean?’
He blinks, smiles. ‘You know what a vendetta is, right?’
Lola nods. ‘When someone hates another person and wants payback for whatever they’ve done to them.’
‘Officially, it’s a blood feud. You do something bad to my kin, and I’ll kill someone in yours.’
