Page 72 of Beautiful Ugly
“Notours. I had a life before you, Grady.”
“Apparently you had a lifeafterme too.”
She stares at me and when I look into her blue eyes all I see is a ghost.
“There’s a lot you don’t know about me,” Abby says.
“I know that your eyes were brown yesterday and now they are blue—”
She smiles. “They were just contact lenses. I fancied a change. Something different. Something to make you question whether it was really me.”
“I don’t understand—”
“You will.” She finishes her drink and looks serious again. “But first I need to tell you a story about the Children of the Mist.”
“I’ve heard that one. Sandy told me before—”
“Before you left her in Darkside Cave hoping she would drown? None of the islanders thought you would go through with it, but they don’t know you like I do. They don’t know that your books mean more to you than anyone or anything else.”
“That’s not fair.Youmeant more to me.”
“Some of the islanders didn’t like what we were doing to you. They thought you were a nice guy—including Sandy’s mother, Morag, who I gather was slipping my old newspaper cuttings that Midge liked to collect beneath your door. I needed to show them what you were capable of in order to convince them that what we were going to do to you was fair. Everyone was on board after you left Sandy to drown.” I start to stand. “Sit down, Grady. I told you I have things I need to say.” I do as she asks because it feels as though I don’t have a choice.
“The story Sandy told you was true,” Abby begins, staring into the fire, which has begun to crackle and spit. “Nobody can remember every moment of their own history. Our overburdened minds choose which highlights to hold on to, and which files from our past to delete. But I know the story about the Children of the Mist better than anyone, because I was there that day at Darkside Cave, and what happened to those children was my fault.”
STAND DOWN
Ididn’t have an easy childhood—I told you that when we met—but I spared you some of the details. You were always so weighed down with your own unhappy past, I didn’t want to burden you with mine. When I was ten I lived on Amberly, here in this house. There is everything and nothing for a child to do growing up on a small island like this. There was one school, one teacher, and one class for thirteen children aged between five and ten, but I was happy here. My best friend on the island was Sandy’s daughter, Isla. We were the same age and we were inseparable...” I remember the picture on the wall in Midge’s kitchen, of Abby and the blond little girl blowing out candles on a birthday cake. “So when I decided to run away, Isla decided to come with me. Unfortunately she wasn’t the only one.
“There was a substitute teacher that week—a creepy old man from the mainland—because our normal teacher was ill. He always brought a flask of coffee to class in the morning and took noisy sips from the plastic cup during registration, and he shouted at anyone who dared to stare at his prosthetic hand. His idea of teaching was to wheel a trolley into the classroom with a TV andVHS player, and let children watch films all afternoon while he sat in the pub. But he didn’t go to The Stumble Inn that day.
“I was off sick and home alone the afternoon he knocked on the cottage door. I’d been taught not to open the door to strangers, but he was a teacher. A person children are taught to trust and obey. He stank of alcohol and slurred his words when he said that my mother had sent him, which I knew was a lie. He walked into this house as though he owned the place. Then he stood next to that piano, turned on the metronome, and smiled at me. I don’t want to talk about what he did, or tried to do next. I got away from him and ran out of the house with a bag containing my most prized possessions: a harmonica, a book, and a Magic 8 Ball. I ran to the church looking for help, when I didn’t find any I ran to find the man who was like a father to me, but he was busy working and told me to go away. So I ran to the school to find my best friend. Isla said I should ask my Magic 8 Ball what to do, so I asked out loud if I should run away and the ball said yes. The next problem was where. “Should I go to the Standing Stones?” I asked, and the screen on the ball saidMY REPLY IS NO. “Should I hide in Darkside Cave?” was my next question. This time the answer wasWITHOUT A DOUBT. Isla said she’d come with me but that we should keep it a secret. There is nothing more exciting than a secret when you live in a place that has none. Unfortunately the other children overheard and followed us.
“We walked out of the village, through the wildflower meadow, and along the coast road toward the bay. The path around the cliff was steep and slippery, but one by one we climbed down the giant steps until we were inside Darkside Cave. Isla handed out cookies her auntie Midge had baked—they were terrible, but we ate them anyway—but then it started to get dark. And then the seawater started rushing in. We’d all been told not to play in the cave, but we didn’t know why. None of us understood that it flooded at high tide.
“We tried to leave but we couldn’t, it was already too late. Awave of water reared up like a wild animal’s paw and snatched the child standing nearest to the entrance. The rest of the children started screaming and crying. People say you can still hear them in the Bay of Singing Sands, and I believe them. I hear those children screaming inside my head every day. I was screaming too until the seawater filled my mouth and silenced me.” She drinks the second glass of whiskey and closes her eyes.
“I remember the feeling of drowning, and letting go of my best friend’s hand.
“I remember not being able to breathe and then I only remember black.
“They all died, except for me, and it was all my fault. Soon afterward I found myself living in London, with Kitty, taken away from the only place that had ever felt like home.”
“That’s why you don’t like boats, and why you were scared of the ocean?” I ask, and she nods. “But now you’re not? Beautiful Ugly is right on the beach. Your work is literally inspired by the sea.”
“I guess when I finally faced my fears I discovered that I loved the thing that used to scare me. Fear can make something beautiful appear ugly.”
I stare at her and she stares into the fire.
“Why did you never tell me any of this?” I ask.
“It was a version of me I wanted to forget. But I want you to understand why the women on this island are the way they are, and why I owe them so much. This isn’t acult, it’s a community. Isla wrote a note for her mother, Sandy, before we ran away to Darkside Cave. That’s how they eventually found us but it was too late. The men on this island were slowly removed after the tragedy, because if the substitute teacher hadn’t done what he did, and if a woman hadn’t been so desperate to leave her husband, none of it would have happened—”
“Sorry, I don’t understand—”
“Men still rule this world and as a result the world is broken. Men still hold most positions of power, men control governments, men control the media, and it is always men who start wars. Men have tricked women into thinking they see us as equals, but real equality, for all women everywhere, still feels like little more than a pipe dream. The women on this island have had enough.”
“What does that mean?”