Ghostbird Read online

  ‘Isadora Blodeuwedd,’ she said when the registrar asked for the baby’s name.

  His mouth twitched.

  Violet wanted to slap him. ‘Is there a problem? Do you want me to spell it?’

  ‘That won’t be necessary,’ he said. ‘I’m Welsh.’

  ‘I meant, Isadora. My baby is called Isadora.’

  She handed Teilo the birth certificate as if it were an exhibit.

  A tremor ran through him. She saw it, tying knots in his heart, making him more unkind than he was.

  Violet’s mother went over the sea and far away. Violet had a fear of water. Teilo would mock her: Teilo and his flower-faced child clutching his hand, walking her to the lake, teaching her to love it in the same way he did. And then he would be gone again. Violet wandered the woods, sometimes taking the baby with her, at others leaving her with Lili, who loved her from the beginning.

  Eyeing the sky, Violet held her breath. The bus rumbled into view. She paid her fare and settled into a seat at the back, away from the chatter and prying.

  As the bus pulled away a tall man came out of the village shop and Violet started. No way. It can’t be. Oh please, don’t let it be true.

  He strode off in the opposite direction and as the bus passed the church, a magpie flew down from one of the yew trees.

  One for sorrow…

  The ghost tries to cry and discovers she no longer can.

  She is in a space in which she alone exists; separate from light and shade and love.

  Why don’t you see me?

  Her sister sleeps so deeply the ghost can’t rouse her. Not even when she sits on the sill for so long she almost falls asleep herself.

  She hides from the birds, from their habits and their fearless curiosity. She hears voices and sees shadows, watches the moon rise and stars burning holes in the sky.

  She doesn’t know who she is…

  Fourteen

  ‘Let’s have a look at those scratches.’

  Lili was more concerned with the dark circles still painted under Cadi’s eyes.

  ‘Don’t fuss, Lili. I’m fine.’

  ‘You look worn out.

  Cadi shrugged. ‘I’m not; I’m sleeping like a log.’

  ‘Have it your own way.’

  Not all deep sleep is good sleep. ‘Come on, you can help me with the dishes.

  ‘Do you think, if I turned up with a dog, she’d be okay?’

  Lili spluttered. ‘Now there’s a plan.’

  ‘You ought to have seen it, Lili: the dog in the churchyard. It was so sweet.’ Cadi dried a plate and placed it on the table. ‘Children are supposed to have pets. They teach us to be responsible.’

  ‘Nice try.’

  ‘Jack Russells must be dead easy to train. When that guy whistled, she ran straight to him. Well, once I stopped stroking her.’

  ‘Who was he?’

  ‘You’re as bad as Mam. I told her – he wasn’t a weirdo.’

  ‘How do you know? What does a weirdo look like?’

  Cadi made a face, her mouth twisted, her tongue hanging out.

  ‘Ach y fi, Cadi, that’s horrible. Don’t.’ Lili laughed and carried on washing the dishes.

  ‘Anyway,’ Cadi said. ‘What is it with you two and blokes in cowboy boots?’

  Lili stopped, holding onto a plate as if it were glued to her fingers.

  ‘What?’ Cadi asked.

  Soapsuds dripped down Lili’s arm. ‘It’s nothing. I knew someone once and he wore cowboy boots, that’s all.’

  ‘Lili, loads of people wear cowboy boots.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Was he your boyfriend?’

  ‘Who?’

  Cadi rolled her eyes. ‘The man in the churchyard? Keep up.’

  Lili pulled a face. ‘Not likely. And anyway, I’d rather have a girl, I keep telling everyone.’

  ‘Are you sure you’re a lesbian?’

  Lili’s laugh was almost a snort.

  ‘Don’t laugh.’ Cadi picked up a pile of dry plates. ‘Life’s difficult enough at school without you being a witch and gay.’ She put the plates in the cupboard and muttered, ‘If you really are a witch.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  Lili emptied the washing-up bowl. ‘You’ll cope.’

  ‘Mind you, matey wasn’t up to much. Maybe you are better off with girls.’

  ‘I’ll bear your wise words in mind. Now then, do you fancy a walk?’

  ‘Can we go swimming?’

  ‘You could put a coat and a hat on an idea like that and take it for a hike up a hill.’

  ‘Don’t be mean, Lili.’

  ‘Mean? After everything your mother said?’

  ‘It’s so hot. She won’t be back for ages; she’s on a late shift so she won’t even know.’

  ‘Cariad bach, don’t be disrespectful, your mother has a name. In any case, she could probably hear us walking to the lake from the top of Cader Idris with a bag over her head and earplugs in.’

  ‘I guess.’

  Lili regarded Cadi with a wry smile. Violet’s accusations still rankled.

  ‘Come on, a walk will do us both good. We’ll go fishing. If you mention swimming, mind, I’m bringing you straight back.’

  The air smelled of sun and grass, birds sang territory songs and around the lake, small breezes sighed through the trees. Lili sat with her back against the Sleeping Stone. Cadi picked daisies, fashioning them into a chain.

  ‘Listen,’ Lili said.

  Cadi said she couldn’t hear anything and Lili grinned and made a tutting sound.

  They’d been lazing about for nearly an hour, watching the water boatmen skittering on the surface of the lake, eating apples and collecting minnows in a jam-jar. Defying Violet occasionally took precedence over prudence. After the upheaval of the past day or two, Lili was prepared to risk her sister-in-law’s anger for the pleasure of Cadi’s delight.

  She watched from the corner of her eye. Whatever had frightened Cadi so much, she seemed perfectly at ease now.

  Lili’s thoughts slid sideways. If Owen Penry was back, she would deal with him the way she dealt with anyone who threatened her family. For now she may as well relax. She concentrated on the swans drifting through the reeds under the far bank.

  ‘Can I swim, Lili?’ Cadi said. ‘Pretty please? The water looks lush and I’m really hot. Oh, go on. It will feel nice on my face.’ Already she was scooping her T-shirt over her head revealing her swimsuit. She picked up the daisy chain and placed it in Lili’s hair. ‘You look like a princess.’

  Lili watched the sun glancing off Cadi’s skin and for a moment, in spite of the scratches on her face, the child’s beauty mesmerised her.

  ‘Go on then.’ Before she had time to retract, Cadi was out of her skirt, a streak of turquoise running into the lake. She splashed through the shallows, shrieked once and plunged into the water.

  How dare Violet deprive her daughter of this simple pleasure?

  How can she not? This thought fell against her unkind one, chastising her and reminding her she was actively undermining Violet.

  She watched Cadi curving through the water like a fish, the way Teilo used to, so like him, Lili swallowed to keep a tear at bay.

  Cadi Hopkins, toddling down the garden toward her mother and her aunt, seated under the cherry tree sharing a jug of lemonade.

  Trailing her teddy bear, Cadi smiles her father’s smile.

  ‘I have to go,’ Violet says, scrambling to her feet.

  Cadi says: ‘Can I stay with you, Lili?’

  ‘Of course, you can, my lovely, of course you can.’

  Lili always avoided judging others. People have the right to their grief but spending so much time around Cadi, with a head full of Violet’s secrets was beginning to test her patience.

  I have only myself to blame. It didn’t make keeping Violet’s confidences any easier.

  From nowhere she heard a different shriek – an alarmed bird, the sound
of it alien. All at once Lili needed to be gone. She called to Cadi, urging her to swim back. When Cadi ignored her, Lili flung off her frock and ran into the water, diving beneath the surface.

  The water was always colder than anyone expected. She surfaced and swam out to where Cadi floated on her back, as serene as the drifting water lilies.

  ‘We have to go, Cadi, it’s getting late,’ Lili said, treading water and gasping for breath.

  They swam back together, cutting through the water like otters. On the shore, Cadi caught up the discarded daisy chain, holding it out to her aunt. Lili shook her head and squeezed water out of her hair. She felt a shiver go through her and it had nothing to do with the chilly water.

  Oblivious to Lili’s change of mood, Cadi slid the minnows out of the jar and watched as they darted away to freedom.

  There was silence then, except for the lapping water and the echoing cry of a bird.

  Fifteen

  They planned to be back before Violet arrived home from work.

  Time had run away with itself leaving Cadi and Lili damp and caught red-handed. They found Violet sitting at Lili’s kitchen table, icy with fury.

  ‘Go home, Cadi, I need to talk to Lili.’

  Although she knew better than to argue, Cadi risked a small defence. ‘It’s my fault, Mam, honestly, I nagged her.’

  Violet pulled her blue cardigan round her body like a security blanket.

  Cadi said, ‘Please, you two, don’t fight okay? It’s only a swim.’

  ‘Which bit of “go away” didn’t you hear, Cadi? For god’s sake just bloody well do as you’re told for once.’

  Cadi flinched. Some words feel like blows, and leave bruises.

  As the door slammed, Lili winced.

  Violet inhaled. She fingered the small scar on the outside edge of her right hand and watched as Lili wrapped her hair in a towel. Violet wanted things to stay the same and for nobody to rock the boat.

  And here was Lili, who had defied her and taken her daughter to the lake.

  Lili’s head tilted to one side, in the same way Teilo’s used to. Violet’s rage coiled, and she intended to be heard. ‘How could you, Lili? I thought I could trust you.’

  ‘You’ve always been able to trust me.’

  ‘To do what, exactly?’

  ‘Keep your wretched secrets for a start.’ Lili let the towel drop and began twining her hair into a loose knot. ‘Okay, Violet, spit it out. Let’s be done with it, because this time I’m telling you, I’ve had enough.’

  ‘So make it go away.’ Violet tapped a finger hard on her cigarette, knocking the ash into one of Lili’s geraniums. ‘You’re the bloody witch. Make it go away, why don’t you? And while you’re at it, try listening to me. Next time you go to that damn lake, you leave my daughter behind.’

  ‘That’s a promise you can’t make me keep, Violet. Not anymore. Cadi’s fourteen, she isn’t a child. She loves the lake and it’s not a bad place.’

  ‘It’s a bad place, where a bad thing happened.’ Violet shuddered. ‘If you want to keep going there, you’re sick in the head.’

  ‘It’s not the place. You can’t blame a bloody pond. Anyway, this isn’t about the lake, it’s about what Cadi needs.’

  Violet didn’t believe a word of this. ‘You don’t get it, do you? It’s not about Cadi; it’s about my life, Lili. No way am I going to allow you to bring any more disasters down on me.’

  The room was beginning to smell foul. Lili found a saucer and shoved it under Violet’s cigarette.

  ‘We can’t make the future any more than we can unmake the past,’ she said. ‘What’s done isn’t Cadi’s fault. You’re laying all your pain on her, and she knows it.’ Lili jabbed her hair with a hairpin. ‘You can’t change reality or escape your own fate.’

  ‘You think all this chaos comes down to fate?’ Violet’s eyes widened, a sneer caught in the corner of her mouth. ‘You do, don’t you? You think it’s some of your stupid karma.’

  ‘I don’t know what I think.’

  ‘That makes a change.’

  ‘I mean, I’m not sure if fate’s preordained or random.’

  Across the village, the clock struck the hour: seven long notes carrying on the soft summer evening. In the quiet, Violet’s laugh sounded harsh.

  ‘If my parents hadn’t disappeared, you mean?’ She blew smoke across the table. ‘If my father hadn’t been a cowardly bastard then my selfish mother wouldn’t have become bitter and twisted? She wouldn’t have resented me and abandoned me for a better offer? And if I hadn’t gone to that party to piss her off, I wouldn’t have met your precious, pathetic brother?’

  Violet spat the last few words as if they were a curse. Her lips tightened and she shook her head.

  ‘Sometimes, Lili, I can’t believe how much of an idiot you are. My life’s been an accident alright. A bloody train wreck, nothing more cosmic than that.’ By now, Violet’s arms were folded so tightly across her body she might squeeze her own breath from her lungs. ‘It doesn’t get much simpler, so why don’t you take your mumbo-jumbo and your platitudes and your interference, and mind your own damn business?’

  Violet hadn’t spoken that many words in one go to Lili in years. Before Lili could answer, she went on. ‘He left me with nothing. He ripped my life apart, betrayed me and abandoned me just like my parents did, the way everyone has.’

  ‘He left you with Cadi!’ Lili could barely contain herself.

  Violet’s already pale face whitened a shade more.

  ‘What happened was appalling, Violet,’ Lili went on. ‘It’s shocking to lose a child and god knows the pain it must still cause you. And to lose Teilo so soon after was a double tragedy. But hell, at least you’ve got Cadi.’ She was shaking. ‘That’s the real truth, isn’t it? He left you with Cadi, and you can’t forgive either of them. Carrying your grief around like a bag of rocks as if you’re the only one who lost them.’

  Violet’s eyes glittered, although not with tears. ‘You always were a cruel bitch, Lilwen Hopkins.’

  Lili said no, she wasn’t cruel, cruel people were deliberate in their brutality. All that concerned her was Cadi’s wellbeing.

  ‘Rubbish. All you care about is yourself. She’s my daughter. The subject is no longer open for discussion. If his memory’s dead to me, then it will be dead to Cadi too. I hate him. He was a coward. And that’s the truth, all the truth Cadi needs to know.’

  ‘Ah, the truth,’ Lili said in a voice so sharp it didn’t even sound like hers. ‘And what about Owen? Where does he fit into this truthful scenario you’ve concocted?’

  Violet made a mewling sound, and clapped her hand to her mouth. ‘He isn’t part of it, he can’t be.’

  ‘But he was. And if Cadi did see him and he’s back, you can’t pretend he wasn’t.’ Lili shook her head. ‘The truth Cadi knows is a lie, Violet. A big fat lie she called it, and she’s right.’ Lili ran her hand over her damp hair. ‘People are rarely better off believing lies and the more you lie, the less you remember the truth.’

  Violet had had enough truth to last a lifetime. There was no more truth she wanted or needed to know. It made her heart hurt and her head spin.

  She said she would be the judge of what Cadi needed. She was Cadi’s mother and it wasn’t any of Lili’s business. ‘How many times do I have to tell you?’ Violet’s thumb worried the scar, as if she might rub away the skin. ‘You do not take her to the lake again.’ Her eyes sought Lili’s. ‘Not to the lake, not to the graves, not anywhere without my permission. I don’t care what you say, I forbid it. And never ever mention that man’s name to me again. Do you hear me? I forbid it.’

  ‘I hear you,’ Lili said, refusing Violet’s gaze. ‘Is that it?’

  ‘You don’t see me though, do you, Lili? Add that to your list of precious truths.’ Violet felt her heart trembling under her ribs. ‘Nobody sees me.’

  Sixteen

  Hurt and stunned, Violet’s words ringing in her ears, the thought of going h
ome gave Cadi goosebumps.

  At the same time, she didn’t want to think about what might be happening in the kitchen. Yes, you do.

  She crept up Lili’s stairs, round the half-landing to a cushioned window-seat wide enough to hold a child. Nowadays, in order to fit, Cadi sat sideways, her long legs bent and her arms around her knees.

  A small casement window overlooked the garden. The opening pane was clear, the fixed one held a stained-glass picture. Slivers of lilac glass described a sky where a blue crescent moon hung above an owl on a tree branch. On sunny days, filtered light tumbled across the ruby carpet. If Cadi looked for long enough without blinking, the lead blurred. The picture appeared to disintegrate, and through the glass, the real trees, the sky and the distant hills glowed in a kaleidoscope of luminous colour.

  Lili had told her how Iolo found the window at an auction, how there hadn’t been a suitable window in the big cottage, so it ended up in hers.

  Cadi leaned against the solid wall and closed her eyes.

  Cadi Hopkins could hear the stars coming out. She heard the moon as it rose. Curled up on the window seat with the casement window on its latch, the voices of her mother and her aunt drifted up like dandelion clocks.

  The truth she knows is a lie… He was a coward…

  With no clear idea what they meant, hearing the word ‘coward’ applied to her father shocked Cadi. And what about Owen? Where did he fit? Tired of blank spaces, of images of her father and her sister out of reach, Cadi held her breath and listened.

  ‘You can’t forbid me any more than you can forbid Cadi.’ Lili was running out of patience. ‘She’s always gone to the lake and you’ve known for ages. Come on, Violet, it’s almost in our back garden. Whatever you say, she’ll still go.’

  ‘Not if I have anything to do with it, she won’t.’

  By now, Violet was on her third cigarette. The stink was making Lili feel sick. ‘Violet, do you have to smoke so much?’

  Violet drew smoke into her lungs.

  Lili pushed open the window, as far as it would go. ‘Cadi’s a bright girl. How long do you think you can keep this up?’