Page 3 of Someone in the Water
I pull my phone out of my pocket and stare at my home screen. Lola is smiling broadly, tendrils of dark, wet hair framing her face, a medal around her neck, and a proud expression on her face. The photo was taken last summer. Lola had just won a local windsurfing competition and was feeling justifiably pleased with herself.
It’s not surprising that Lola is a natural on the water. The beach has been a big part of her childhood, just like it was for me, and my mother before that. Mum turned sixty-three last year and she still takes a windsurf board out when there’s a stable cross-shore wind. And except for two years when I was too scared to go near the sea, I’ve been a lifelong fan too. Mum has made sure that windsurfing is Lola’s first passion, but she’s also a talented sailor, swimmer and water-skier.
I run a finger over the cool glass, then swipe upwards to bring it to life. I click into WhatsApp and finds Lola’s name. When she left yesterday evening to stay at Tamsyn’s ahead of their early morning trip to the airport, I hugged her tightly, but then whispered in her ear that it might be better if she phoned her Grams rather than me if she needed anything while she was away. And I can still see her expression now, as she drew away from me, the mix of sadness and resignation on her face.
My eyes fill with tears at the memory. It feels like such an impossible choice. I hate the thought of Lola seeing me at my lowest – sleep-deprived, grief-stricken, talking about murderous mythical legends as though they’re real. But I know that in protecting myself, I’m rejecting her. Year after year. What kind of mother does that?
Lola is two thousand miles away in Cyprus. There’s no chance of me physically hurting her like I almost did when she was three. And Lola hardly ever calls me anymore – it’s always messages or voice notes. If I stick to typing rather than talking, surely I won’t lose my sanity so deeply that I actually write any of the crazy nonsense that I’ve allowed to slip out of my mouth in the past?
My hand hovers over the chat function, my mind frozen with indecision. But then I push my hair away from my face, drop my thumbs onto the screen, and type.
Hey, hope you had a good flight.
Just to say, what I said about contacting Grams, ignore it
I’d love for you to keep in touch with me.
And I can’t wait to hear all your holiday gossip
Love you, Mum xx
Frankie
25th July
I tip my head to one side and assess the canvas. I don’t often paint landscapes, but the view from this place is so stunning that it has inspired me to give it a go. I don’t think my new watercolour will win any awards, but I’m grateful for how it has distracted me this afternoon, and I like the sense of tranquillity that the painting radiates. Especially when I know it’s the calm before the storm.
My stomach growls, and I remember that I haven’t eaten since breakfast. I take a pasta ready meal out of the fridge and put it in the microwave. As I wait for it to heat up, I start making the familiar deals with myself.
If I don’t force sleep, the nightmares won’t come.
If I accept the insomnia, my body will find a way to rest when it needs.
If I give my imagination an outlet by painting the mazzeri, I won’t start to believe they’re real.
The microwave pings. I slide the pasta onto a plate and take it outside. The sun is setting, wispy clouds lit up orange against the darkening blue sky. I sink into the soft bucket chair and watch dusk float towards night as I chew. By the time I’ve finished my meal, the sun has disappeared over the horizon, so I take my plate back inside and open up Spotify on my laptop.
Five minutes later, I’m back behind my easel with a fresh canvas resting on its ledge. Music spills out of the portable speaker. I always listen to the same playlist when I hide away from the world every summer. Coldplay’s ‘Clocks’. Black Eyed Peas’ ‘Where Is the Love?’ Kelis’ ‘Milkshake’. Hits that take me back twenty-one years, like an act of self-harm.
I haven’t heard from Lola since I sent her that message, but I can’t let myself worry about that. She’ll be in a bar by now, I imagine, or maybe a nightclub, drinking and dancing with Tamsyn, Martha, and Ruby. Four girls enjoying their post-college summer holiday without a care in the world. Just as I thought it would be for me that same summer.
I turn up the volume and focus on the white square in front of me.
And I paint. Scenes that I have grown to hate, but that seem to live inside me. Corsican mountains at night, cedar and fir trees glowing in the moonlight. Spiky white asphodels – known by the locals in Corsica as flowers of the dead. Red deer hiding in the shadows, golden eagles roosting on rocky ledges with watchful eyes. And men with hoods, their faces obscured, prowling through the undergrowth with weapons.
The mazzeri dream hunters.
I would never let my students paint onto canvas without a sketch to follow, but this is more about survival than art. Exposure therapy maybe. The mazzeri story is a mythical legend distinct to Corsica, the island where my dad was born, and where I spent that terrible summer, and for centuries it was considered as real as Catholicism by the locals. Of course it’s not real – all myths are just stories – but that doesn’t make the dreams any less scary. As I have discovered for myself. Especially when … but no, I won’t go there tonight.
At around 3 a.m., my eyelids start to grow heavy, but instinctively I know it’s too early to lie down. That if I try to sleep, my brain will fill up with a toxic merging of real memories and crazy fantasies. I need to finish the painting first and be so tired that I can barely stand. At that point, if I help things along with a sleeping pill, I’ll black out rather than sleep, and the nightmares should stay away.
Two hours later, with dawn rising, the picture is finished. I stand back to study it. Art was my favourite subject at school, and I was good at it, but it wasn’t a passion, not when I had the beach as my playground. But that changed during my first stay in hospital in London. Art therapy was offered every other day, and after my first session, I found myself waiting impatiently for the next time I could pick up a paintbrush. When I was discharged, Mum encouraged me to keep going with it, so I signed up for lessons at Putney Art School. It wasn’t meant to lead to a career, but my teacher, Becky, said I had great potential. And that stuck with me.
I couldn’t become an art teacher the conventional way because I didn’t have a university degree, but I got a job as a part-time art assistant in a private school in Bournemouth when Lola was two and slowly worked my way up. I started a full-time position at Lymington college three years later, and now it seems my decade and a half of experience counts for more than a piece of paper, because I teach art to both sixth-form students and adults on evening courses.
With the sun sneaking over the horizon, I finally turn away from the easel and walk inside. I’ve been standing up for nearly nine hours and my legs are exhausted, so I grab my laptop from the table and lower into the small, plump sofa.
When I first started painting these pictures, I would throw the canvases away at the end of my stay. But they’re expensive and it always felt like such a waste, so after a few years, I set up a small online business, and called it Imitating Art. I got a business email address and bank account, and only put my initials on the paintings, so they couldn’t be linked to me. Then I signed up with Artfinder and Etsy. Gradually the sales crept up, and by 2016 I was even making a small profit.
