The Last Pier Read Online Free Page A

was back once more. A prodigal daughter returning to an empty home, with a suitcase full of smart clothes. With ringless fingers and a divorce certificate. Thin and officially middle-aged. At long last! The letter she had received years ago was in the suitcase, too. The handwriting was still readable, the content still unbelievable. The letter said that her father, Selwyn Maudsley, had passed away and that Cecily Maudsley, next of kin, was being notified. It expressed deep sympathy and some regret. After she had read it Cecily calmly put the letter back in its envelope. Her father had joined all the other late people in the world.
    Standing in the room in the soft twilight, she felt the house had developed a sly, stubborn air. So many people had stored secrets in it over the years – letters, journals, farm accounts, locks of hair, shreds of silk, sentimental rubbish of all sorts – that she felt certain some further revelations from that terrible day could leap out at her. Anything was possible.
    A clock ticked.
    She opened a window, let out a bee and saw the myrtle bush, grown from the cutting of some distant Maudsley bridal bouquet, still flourishing.
    In the dining room a photograph hung damply over the mantelpiece like a holy picture in a disused chapel. She felt handcuffed to her childhood. So without turning on the electricity, she went upstairs hoping to unravel the golden questions that needed answering. The banister was wet. She could smell the dampness everywhere. It seemed to rise and follow her like an army of skeletons.
    And because the moonlight flooded the house she failed to notice the silent figure moving with the wind across the road in full view of the window.
    Upstairs her sister’s bed lay phosphorescent in the stillness. The room itself was heavy with sleep; a place kept just so, for a dead child who was never coming back. It was tidily made up, forever. Rose’s dresses, boxed up in the wardrobe, beautifully darned. Her name on a piece of paper pinned to one of them. The pin was rusty, the pierced paper discoloured. A loving hand had written the date on it.
     
    Someone, somewhere in the centre of the town let off a firework, followed by another. One big bang followed by two others. One bright fountain of sherbet-coloured flowers followed by another rain of light. While all over Suffolk August funfairs were in full swing. The war had been dead for twenty-three years. Rose some time longer.
     
    A week after Rose’s funeral Joe went off to fight for England and a band played loudly in Cecily’s head as he gave her a hug. Happy and Glorious, played the band.
    ‘It’s not your fault,’ Joe said.
    His words were light. As if he didn’t want to acknowledge the weight they carried. Cecily looked at him. She badly wanted to ask him where Franca was but his eyes were so sad that she didn’t dare. There was as yet no protective membrane stretched across her emotions, which Joe might, had he looked closely, seen. But that day Joe was in a hurry to catch his train and, giving his youngest sister a last hug, headed for the town of Bly instead. The band in Cecily’s head carried on playing as she watched him go. It would still be playing long after she stopped crying.
    ‘So you cry when your brother leaves but not when your sister dies,’ someone, she couldn’t remember who it was, said.
    Cecily’s mother had looked up angrily.
    ‘There’s no rule,’ Agnes said sharply, ‘to say when you should and shouldn’t cry. Leave her alone!’
    No one answered back. Cecily went up to her bedroom. She wanted her roommate back out of the ground but all she gotwas herself staring at herself in the mirror. White face, black hair. The same Cecily, nothing changed. She vomited. Then she picked up the silver-backed hairbrush and flung it at her reflection. This was the girl who had killed her sister Rose. Not Cecily. The mirror cracked from side to side. A trickle of blood coursed down Cecily’s leg. The curse