Esme's Gift

Chapter 2-2

After a brief quarrel over which of them should stay to look after Esme and Aaron, the sisters concluded that the two of them could look after each other and prepared to depart. While Mavis struggled at the door with her umbrella, Penelope buttoned up her smart black overcoat and shot Esme a sympathetic smile.

Esme didn’t smile back. Her hand was in her pocket, clutching the letter addressed to the new Mrs Silver.

‘You should be glad my sister puts up with you,’ Mavis grumbled at Esme. She gave up on her own umbrella and seized one of Aaron’s from the coatrack.

‘I don’t “put up with her”, Mavis,’ Penelope insisted. ‘I’m really very fond of her.’

Penelope’s voice was so sickly sweet, Esme wondered how her gleaming teeth weren’t full of cavities.

‘Yeah, right,’ Esme said before she could stop herself. ‘You’ve never liked me, have you, Penelope?’

Penelope, who had just opened the front door, turned back round to face Esme. She started to speak in her own defence, but Esme cut her off.

‘What about my father? Do you really love him? Or is this just a marriage of convenience … for you?’

Mavis gasped.

‘His parents want him back. Back in the village, back in the family business—and they’re prepared to pay for it, I suspect.’ Esme’s eyes narrowed. ‘Am I on the right track?’

‘How dare you!’ hissed Mavis.

Penelope, however, stayed silent. Her grey eyes lifted, then flickered to the floor. Too late. In that brief moment, Esme had seen the truth laid bare.

‘I’ve found you out, haven’t I?’ said Esme. ‘Mavis, your sister has you fooled. She has everyone fooled except me.’

She glanced at Mavis and saw something flit across her face too.

Fear.

In that moment, Esme felt more desperate than ever for her father, who had lost his heart to Penelope, and for Mavis, too, who was entirely under Penelope’s sway.

‘Once you’ve got what you want, are you going to leave my father, too?’ Esme goaded Penelope. ‘Move on to bigger prey?’

Penelope drew close and whispered in her ear. Her perfume assailed Esme’s nostrils like a dark miasma, expelled from a rotting flower.

‘Just remember that from now on, no one will believe a word you say.’

Esme took hold of Penelope’s wrist. ‘If you hurt my father …’

Penelope shook Esme’s hand away. As she retreated toward her sister on the porch, her eyes turned wide and innocent, like those of a doe.

‘I love your father very, very much. Anyone can see that—anyone who’s in their right mind, that is. Let’s go, Mavis.’

As soon as Penelope’s back was turned, Reuben sprang forward and dug a claw into her leg. Penelope shrieked, almost tripping down the front steps. Like a bloodhound protecting its master, Mavis lunged at the cat—but Reuben had already scrambled back inside, seeking refuge behind Esme’s legs.

Esme slammed the door shut, then slid down onto the floor, shocked that she had managed to crack Penelope’s cool façade.

That brief but damning flicker of avarice in Penelope’s eyes … Esme had seen that grasping look before. It was the same expression Dr Nathan Mare had worn when he had gazed upon the fabled Pearl of Esperance.

Mare was the reason Ariane had disappeared, the reason she was trapped in a trance right now. Esme, along with everyone else, had been totally fooled by his reassuring manner, his kind smile, his honeyed tones—right up until she’d witnessed that involuntary glimmer of greed on his face.

When Esme was certain the two sisters were far away, she left the house for the back garden, full of paper daisies and flannel flowers limp from the rain. Behind the blue-domed lighthouse, the ocean cut away beyond the cliffs, streaming off to the other islands of the archipelago. The storm-laden clouds were gone, leaving only ragged tatters behind.

Torn inside, Esme gazed at the lavender bushes her mother had planted long ago.

How futile it had been to try to convince her father of the existence of another world. All she had done was force him to delve into a past he had remarried to forget, reopened wounds that had finally started to heal. It was like pieces of gravel were lodged in her throat, rubbing painfully against each other.

Then she noticed movement out of the corner of her eye.

One of the birds perched on the lighthouse’s dome was lifting off: a white sea eagle speckled with grey. This was the bird to which Esme’s letter had referred, the bird that had hung around the lighthouse all her life. Her mother had always been fond of it; it had even featured in some of her paintings. In Esperance, Esme had discovered that the uncannily intelligent eagle was no ordinary creature. It was a messenger bird from Aeolia.

It spread its wings wide and circled over Esme before soaring off to the open ocean. It was as if the bird was beckoning for her to follow.

Spurred into action, Esme headed back inside.

As much as it hurt to leave her father so soon, it would be unwise—dangerous, even—to dally here any longer. Penelope would be back tomorrow to take her to see Doctor Wright, and there was a good chance he might recommend an extended stay in the Garson Sanatorium. If she ended up there, in a locked ward, she might never have the chance to return to Aeolia.

Aeolia—where her mother needed her more than ever.

After pouring every last bottle of whiskey down the sink, she emptied the contents of her satchel into another bag and took it with her to the lighthouse—the only place she knew she could leave a message to her father without Penelope or Mavis finding it first.

She climbed the spiral stairs with a heavy heart. On the dust-covered desk on the lighthouse’s top level, she searched for a pen and some paper, and began to write.

Dear Dad,

I’m sorry I had to leave so soon. I’ve gone back to Esperance, to look after Mum. She’s bed-bound, and I don’t know how much longer she’ll last. She needs me by her side.

She needs you, too.

Please, please, look in the bag in the cupboard behind this desk. It’s easy to tell that Mum painted the illustrations in that book—you know her style better than anyone. Look at the photographs on the roll of film—some are of her, some are of me in Esperance, some are of us together. And if you hold the shell in there to your ear long enough, you might just hear a siren’s song.

I’m going to write to you every week while I’m away. The letters will be delivered by the sea eagle with speckled wings, the one Mum used to paint. If you want to write back, give your letter to that bird and say it’s for me. And if you want to come to Aeolia yourself, the way there is through one of the rock pools on Spindrift Island—the teardrop-shaped pool that great-grandma Lucinda used to love so much. Dive to the bottom, touch the shell hidden amongst the reeds, and you’ll be on your way.

Esme wasn’t sure whether she should add the next part, but ultimately, she thought it would be better for her father to know everything, no matter how much it might hurt him.

There’s something else inside the bag. An envelope, addressed to Penelope, full of bank statements. I opened it by accident (really). Your parents are paying Penelope a lot of money—they have been for a while—and I can’t help but think it’s connected to getting you back to the village. I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions, but I’m worried for you. Moving out should be up to you—not anyone else.

Your loving (and perfectly sane) daughter,

Esme

PS: Ease off the whiskey … and please look out for Mavis.

By the time Esme returned to the cottage, the only noises in the house were Aaron’s snores, Reuben’s purring, and the whispers of waves far below. The sea’s ceaseless refrain slipped in under doors and through crevices, reminding the cottage’s inhabitants of their duty to keep the lighthouse beacon burning, to warn ships of the treachery of Splinter Bay.

The sea had nothing to say about treachery of a different kind.

Just before dawn, Esme kissed her sleeping father goodbye.

‘I love you,’ she whispered, her heart breaking.

Then she slipped a note into his pocket. Don’t forget to check the lighthouse one last time before you leave.

As she turned away from the sofa, Reuben yowled at her feet.

‘I can’t take you with me,’ she said sadly, lifting him up and snuggling him in her arms. ‘I want to, but I can’t. You hate getting wet. If I tried to take you through the portal, you’d scratch me to ribbons. Plus, someone needs to be here to look after Dad.’

She let him down onto the sofa and hurried out of the room.

The sun crested the horizon as Esme made her way to the harbour. She spent the next few hours in the churchyard by her mother’s cenotaph, sheltered from the scattered rain by the leaves of an ancient oak.

When the ferry was due to depart, Esme raced down to the jetty.

‘Off again?’ the ferrymaster asked her.

Esme was thankful that he didn’t recognise her as the girl who had vanished from Picton several weeks ago. To him, she was just the girl he had picked up yesterday from Spindrift. She nodded, keeping part of her face hidden under her hood.

‘You must like it over there,’ he said. ‘Funny time of year to be going to Spindrift, though. Fish won’t be biting for weeks.’

‘I don’t go there for the fishing,’ said Esme. ‘My family has a holiday cottage there.’

He smiled and clipped her a ticket. ‘If I were you, I wouldn’t stop there. You’re young. Go see the world while you can.’

Several hours later, when the vicar of Picton Church took a stroll through the grounds, he stopped and stared, dumbfounded, at the damage some ill-bred vandal had inflicted upon one of the cenotaphs under the oak tree.

The date of Ariane Silver’s death had been scratched out, and the last line on the tablet no longer read ‘Lost at Sea’.

It simply read: ‘at Sea’.