Page 34 of Secrets of Starshine
“Indeed they did! So, that’s obviously not you either…which leaves us with the only other option.”
She stares at me over the top of her glasses, and her wrinkled face breaks out into a huge smile.
“I recognise you now, darling. You were cute as a button – hair down to your waist, lovely big smile…in fact you haven’t changed a bit really!”
“Wow! You remember me…that’s astonishing really…”
I pause, check Ed’s trim to make sure it’s even, and brush strays from his shoulders. I ask him if he wants to see it, and he tells me no, thank you, he only did it to shut Vi up. He gets up as quickly as he can, and strikes a pose in front of Viola.
“Very smart, dear,” she announces. “Maybe I’ll put up with you for a little while longer, after all. Ed, would we have the photos from that year? The business ones, not the personal ones?”
He ponders this, and nods.
“I’m sure we do. I’ll try and root some out. That was the year that we got Butch, wasn’t it? Butch was our poodle – tiny little girl, scared of her own shadow. Called her Butch to try and boost her self-esteem!”
“You loved Butch, Cally, now I come to think of it,” Viola continues. She is gazing past me, as though watching a scene unfold that the rest of us can’t see. “I think she distracted you from everything else that was going on.”
I am still reeling at the whole idea of new photos, and wondering if my dad’s signature is on one of those booking forms that Viola has on her lap – a tiny, tangible scrap of him left for me to touch.
Perhaps it is because of this that it takes me a while to register what she has just said. Distract me? From what? And what was “going on”?
Ed disappears into another room, presumably to go through their equally well-ordered photo albums, and I take a seat on the beige velvet sofa next to Connie.
“I don’t really remember Butch, I’m afraid,” I say quietly. “And do you mind me asking what I needed distracting from?”
Viola removes her glasses, lets them dangle against her chest on their chain, and stares at me intently.
“I don’t want to talk out of turn,” she says, sounding concerned. “And it’s probably just me getting mixed up and mis-remembering…”
Having listened to this whole conversation, I’m guessing that mis-remembering this time in her life is not something that Viola does often.
“No, please,” I reply. “You’re not talking out of turn. What was going on?”
She grimaces, and finally answers: “Your parents, dear. They were…well, they weren’t getting on. We see it all, you know, people who run businesses like ours. All walks of life, all kinds of families…and yours was very unhappy. They were forever arguing, bickering. They didn’t seem able to stand to be in the same room as each other, truth be told.
“We felt so sorry for you – you were such a delight, this pretty little poppet stuck in the middle of it all…you used to go off and play with Butch when things got too bad. They got so wound up in their arguments they seemed to forget you existed, and you’d slink off and do something else instead – we all kept an eye on you, just in case. Didn’t want you wandering off to the beach on your own or anything. Do you really not remember any of this yourself? The fights?”
I shake my head sadly, completely out of my comfort zone. I wrack my brains, try and dredge up the hazy memories – but they are as elusive as ever. I remember my dad. I remember the snowmen. I remember being…happy.
That doesn’t tally up at all with what Viola is describing, and I feel oddly deflated. Like someone has sucked all the air out of me and left me floppy. I came all this way to find Starshine Cove because it was one of my few pleasant memories of my dad, of my family – is it possible that I made it all up? Is it possible that the reason it’s all so hazy isn’t just because of time, or my dad’s death, but because I never wanted to remember parts of it at all?
I know the human mind is a complicated beast, but I just don’t know how I could get it so badly wrong. How my version of events could be so different to Viola’s.
I feel Connie’s hand creep into mine, and hear her asking if I’m okay. I nod, and fake a smile, but I am feeling a sense of dread as Ed walks back into the room, triumphantly holding an album aloft. It looks exactly like the one I found at home when I was going through my mum’s things, and when I open it, I see identical cellophane. It even makes the same crinkling noise as I run my fingertips across it.
“That’s the album for the year you were here,” he tells me, “so you might find some relevant ones nearer the end. Back then we used to take photos of all our guests and the cottages as a nice little keepsake. Quite a lot of them contacted us afterwards, asked for copies.”
I nod, and thank him, and look at the album with a reluctance that feeds into my fingers, making them slow and heavy as I turn the pages. I take way too long looking at photos of strangers – of children who will be adults now, of grandparents who might not be around any more, of people I have never known and never will, enjoying a holiday decades ago.
It is odd, this glimpse into their lives – playing games on the green, posing outside the cottages, eating breakfast at patio sets in their front gardens. Everyone is frozen in time with their smiles and eighties clothes and haircuts. One woman is clinging to her early-era Lady Di style; another has a huge perm that makes her look like the lead singer in a rock band.
I see the seasons change, and the clothes along with them – the pedal-pushers and flouncy summer skirts giving way to jeans and chinos in autumn, then hefty coats and sweaters as the weather turned. Boots replace sandals, and little people are swathed in scarves.
Eventually, I reach shots of a couple with a handsome black Lab who seems to be smiling for the camera. Wilbur, I presume. After that comes a group shot of a family with two young boys, one of them sticking his tongue out. The mum looks tired but happy. In another picture, the dad is heading a football on the green. I wonder idly if this is before or after the standard lamp got smashed, knowing that I don’t really care – I am just putting off the inevitable.
This morning, if someone had told me I’d be holding an album that might contain photos of me with my dad, I’d have been thrilled. But after my conversation with Viola, I am not so sure. I am worried that old vision of familial comfort, something I have held on to for so long, is about to be destroyed. I lean into the album, allowing my hair to swoop around my face as a privacy curtain.
I turn the page, and he is there. My dad. Tall, unruly dark hair, exactly as I remember him – except that he isn’t smiling, the way I always imagine him to be. He is standing outside the cottage, next to me, one hand on my shoulder. I am grinning in my bobble hat, but he looks sad – drained. My mum is on the other side of us, but at a distance, a few steps away, as though she doesn’t want to get too close. Almost like she is in the process of sneaking away.
