When we come to the first pagoda he stands back to let me go first. Rain slides down my face, falling from the end of my nose, trickling into my mouth. I hesitate and he gestures impatiently with his hand. Mesh doors hang open on broken hinges. I move, stumbling over the high doorstep to get into the building. There’s a narrow corridor and I wait while he unlocks a door, pushes me ahead of him into a big room.

  ‘Look what I dragged out of the sea,’ he says as he comes in behind me, closing the door.

  I blink in the gloom, shivering. A bundle of rags in the corner stirs and out of the lumpy shapes, a creature sits up slowly. It makes a strange noise–half-cry, half-sob–and holds out its arms towards me. ‘Faith,’ I hear it croak. ‘Faith. Is that you?’

  I feel as though I’m in a dream. But the child walking across the pagoda is real. She crouches before me, staring with round eyes, and I can see that she’s drenched, hair and clothes water-darkened and dripping. She is shivering. I reach out with trembling fingers to touch her face. Her skin is cold. ‘What are you doing here?’ I can hardly speak.

  She throws herself into my arms, the damp, dense weight of her nearly knocking me backwards. I’m buried in her neck, my lips on her salty skin. She smells of the sea, and under that, she smells of home. She pulls back to look at me. ‘Eva.’ She fingers my hair, pats my cheek. ‘I knew you’d be here. I knew.’

  I glance over at Billy. He’s leaning against the wall staring at us and I can’t see his face, can’t guess what he’s thinking.

  ‘It’s my sister,’ I tell him. ‘This is my sister.’

  ‘He rescued me,’ Faith says, her voice a low buzz against my ear. ‘I fell in.’

  ‘My God.’ I clasp her to me; the wings of her shoulder blades push through her school blazer. ‘She can’t swim.’ Icy strands of her hair get into my mouth. I rub along the bony ridge of her spine to try and warm her.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ I look at him over her shoulder, trying to see his expression.

  He shrugs. ‘I’ll get the Primus going. Get something to eat.’

  ‘You don’t understand,’ I say, ‘they’ll be looking for her.’

  Faith is silent, hugging me tightly, her cheek pressed against my chest. ‘You’re thin,’ she says. I move my hands across her head, stroking her tangled hair. Her body convulses in shudders, her teeth chattering behind blue lips, and I think it must be shock, or even hypothermia.

  ‘Give me your blanket,’ I tell him, ‘she’s so cold.’

  After a moment, Billy stoops and gathers up his coat, comes over and squats by us. He drapes it around her, staring at Faith’s white face. ‘You came for her? Your sister.’

  Faith nods.

  ‘You knew she wasn’t dead?’ He touches Faith. ‘You can see things, can’t you?’

  She shrinks away from him. I wrap his coat around her, the familiar musty stink of wool. ‘But what are you going to do?’ I look at Billy. ‘Someone will have reported her missing by now. The police might have been called. The coastguard. There’ll be a search.’

  He’s moved further away, standing at the other side of the pagoda. But he seems to be in a daze, mesmerised by Faith. Through spasms of shivering, she’s begun to hum, her voice vibrating against my ribs. It’s one of her old songs. Her comfort music. I murmur, ‘It’s all right, Shrimp. It’s going to be OK.’ I get up slowly, leaving her on the floor so that I can get closer to Billy.

  She keeps humming, and I remember fairy lights flickering on green leaves. Lemon cake and foxtrots around vegetable beds. Jack and Granny holding each other close.

  ‘Billy…’ I need him to understand, shake him out of his dream. ‘Somebody will come…’

  He holds up a hand to silence me. ‘I wasn’t a coward, Eva.’ He’s alert again, and he takes hold of my arm, tugging me closer, staring into my face urgently. ‘When they wanted to send me back after I killed her, after the trial, I would have been a target for the IRA. But that wasn’t the reason I deserted. It wasn’t about me being afraid.’ He’s squeezing me so tightly that it hurts. ‘I couldn’t let them use me again. You see that don’t you?’ His eyes are wide. I see myself caught inside his pupils, tadpole-like, staring back. ‘Tell me you understand.’

  I nod. He releases my arm, his shoulders slumping. ‘You should go.’ He tilts his head towards Faith. ‘Take her. Go to the shore. They’ll see you.’

  ‘Come with us,’ I say. ‘You can get help. You can sort it out.’

  He shakes his head. Faith has shuffled around the edge of the pit, his coat trailing behind her. She slips her hand into mine. Pulls at me. ‘Eva. I don’t like it here.’

  Billy looks at me. ‘Go.’

  ‘No.’ I bite my lip. ‘Please. Come with us. You can’t keep running.’

  ‘It isn’t finished yet,’ he says, ‘not for me.’ He leans close. ‘It’s all right, Eva. I heard her.’ He smiles. ‘She came back. I was filled with her voice–more than a voice. It was like sunlight, water, something that gets into every corner. And I know what to do. She told me.’

  When Faith and I step outside the rain has turned to a misty drizzle. There is the crash of waves, the shift of wind across pebbles. Terns cry overhead. It feels strange to be leaving him. As Faith and I walk along the concrete road hand in hand, I hear feet crunching through shingle, and my heart skips a beat. But he’s not coming after us; he’s walking in the other direction towards the opposite shore, to the open ocean. He trudges up the incline towards the gorse bushes, head down. He doesn’t look back. ‘Where is he going?’ Faith asks me.

  ‘To the sea,’ I tell her.

  ‘Oh, of course.’ She turns to stare at him.

  ‘Faith,’ I squeeze her hand, look at her closely, ‘we won’t tell them about him. Not at first, anyway.’

  I don’t look over my shoulder at the square concrete block with the concrete pillars and strangely shaped roof. The image of it is imprinted on my mind. I won’t be able to forget the smell: rust and earth and damp, the stink of the pit and its hollow loneliness. My drawings will stay there, shaping our story for anyone that wants to see. The last one an angel with spreading wings. At the shore, I shade my eyes, looking through the drizzle towards the cloudy mainland.

  PART TWO

  FOUND

  49

  When Clara opens the front door she finds her eldest daughter before her, wrapped in an old coat, her arm around her sister, smiling her wide, gap-toothed smile. The one that Clara gazes at in photographs, recalls in dreams, thinking she’ll never see again. Eva coughs, straggly hair falling across her face, and Clara grasps the wood of the frame, knuckles whitening, as if trying to hold on to the fact itself. Her lost child is alive.

  ‘Eva?’ Her voice trembles.

  Max appears from the hall. He makes one sound, the noise crushed in his chest, and Eva straightens, trying to smile at him, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. To Clara, it seems that the air sings, webbing them together, pulling light around their family as they stand in the doorway, half in and half out of the house, staring at each other. A part of her brain tells her that she will remember this moment for ever, and the moment itself seems to slow and crystallise. It has stopped raining and the world is full of green scents and soft mist. Water glitters on leaves and grass, and inside the tangles in Eva’s hair.

  Faith clutches her sister’s hand and grins with excitement. Clara is vaguely aware of Ted standing on the garden path. But all her attention is on her girls, pulling every detail into her hungry gaze. She and Max step forward at the same time, blundering against each other in the narrow doorway, elbows and shoulders colliding as they gather both their daughters between them. There are no words, just strangled sounds of surprise and relief escaping from throats. Clara rubs her mouth against the textures of her children, hugging them close, wanting to pack them inside her ribs, absorb them through her skin. Faith pushing up under her shoulder, Eva’s cheek pressed next to her own, slick with tears.

  Seeing Mum and Dad again, the pain on their faces, how can I be angry? I can’t reach back beyond the time on the island to find my old self, my old reactions to their lie. I don’t want to. Everything is different now. I missed them, longed for them every moment I’d been away. Mum is crying. We all are, laughing and crying, and we’re hugging each other on the doorstep. I’m held inside a tangle of limbs and skin and kisses. Their smells and shapes are familiar and strange, less and more than I’d remembered. They look tired, Dad paler, more stooped than before, and Mum thinner, tanned and untidy. They keep hugging me close and then holding me at arm’s length, fingers gripping my arms, staring at me as if I’m a precious, exotic bird that will fly away if they let go.

  Inside the house, I can’t take it all in. We go into the sitting room, which somehow seems smaller. Colours are overwhelming, vivid, insisting. Silver is going crazy, leaping at me, his eyes bright, tail beating in a frenzy of love. His claws scratch my legs. Then Faith is leading him away and I can hear his muffled barking from the kitchen. Mum drapes me in a blanket, wraps it tightly, and I smell the clean blue of our washing detergent. All around me, forgotten scents are making my nose itch. I’m inhaling coffee, carpet, perfume, dog. Dad fetches a bottle of brandy from the cabinet, sloshes it into glasses. I smell that too, rich and sharp at the back of my throat.

  Ted has come in, and he’s sitting in an armchair, holding up a hand to take a glass from Dad. He’s talking, sipping his drink. ‘A man from one of the moorings… young girl alone and heading towards the sea… red canoe.’ Ted scratches his knee with blunt fingers. ‘Checked the dinghy park…’ He winks at Faith. ‘I’d glimpsed young trouble here in the rain earlier this morning playing truant…’

  I’m trying to listen. The sounds are too loud. It’s been a long time since I heard voices. Billy and I were silent a lot. He talked quietly. My world has been watery, wind-blown, wide. These words clatter inside my head.

  ‘So I headed straight to the island. Had a hunch I’d find her,’ he looks at me, ‘but I hadn’t expected the two of them. They’d been standing hand in hand, just as if they’d been waiting for me.’

  I sit on the arm of the sofa. My legs too weak to hold me. Both Mum and Dad are asking me questions and I try to answer. My teeth won’t stop chattering even though I don’t feel cold. ‘A man,’ I manage. ‘He found me. Saved my life and then he wouldn’t let me go.’ I can’t breathe. The air is suffocating. I pull the blanket away from my neck. ‘He kept me in the pagoda…’ Billy. My throat closes. A sob escapes, hard, fierce. More are swelling through me. And then Mum is holding me and crying too and telling me that I don’t have to do this now. ‘Later,’ she’s saying, ‘take all the time you need. Hush.’

  ‘I’m going to phone the police.’ Dad’s face hardens ; his mouth dips and wavers. ‘They need to get over there.’

  ‘Shall I run you a bath, darling?’ Mum asks, patting my arm.

  I nod. ‘I’d like to see my room.’

  ‘We kept it exactly as you left it.’ Mum hugs me again, wincing. ‘You’re so thin,’ she whispers. ‘Are you hungry? What would you like?’

  I am tired, drained. It feels odd, walking back into my old life. Objects are the same but I’m different, and so they are too. I need to be alone. I can hear Mum calling out to Faith, telling her to give me a moment. The door shuts behind me. I lean against it, looking around. The mirror on my dressing table shines, the glass flickering with reflections of the room. I hold my breath as I come closer and the frame fills: a human swimming towards me.

  Above the pots of make-up, nail varnishes and jewellery, a wild girl looks back. A face full of bones, the cut of angles, skin stretched tight. Her eyes huge inside dark hollows. A filthy, matted tangle of hair flops across the girl’s face, reaching down her back in twisted curls and dreadlocks. I blink and lean closer until my breath mists the reflection. I feel the cold of the glass touch my lips, sit back and put my hands to my face, running my fingers over the living warmth of nose and cheeks. It is my face, my eyes looking out of the mirror with the feral glitter of an animal’s. I see Billy there. His features hover above my own, the lines and planes of his face touching mine like an echo.

  50

  I had to stay in hospital. They said I’d had pneumonia and was suffering from malnutrition. They stuck a drip in my arm. The hospital ward was loud with the clatter of voices. Sounds from the outside pressed at the windows: traffic, horns and sirens. Even at night there was an underlying hum, the machinery of the place ticking over: generators and engines. It hurt my ears. The sheets were clean. Their crisp edges felt raw against my newly scrubbed skin.

  Reporters wanted to speak to me, but Dad wouldn’t let them. The police came. I answered their questions about Billy. I thought that it would be better if they found him. Maybe they would help him; he could stop running. Everyone asked me if he’d hurt me: the police, the doctors, Dad. They had a particular look on their faces when they asked me. I shook my head. At night, as I listened to the nurses padding efficiently across the floor and their whispered exchanges, I wondered where Billy was and how long it would be before they caught up with him.

  There was a manhunt the day I was found, locals joining the police in looking for Billy. Dad went too. I begged him not to. His mouth tightened. ‘He needs to be found, Eva. What he’s done is unforgiveable.’ Dad’s voice broke as he crushed me to him, the boom and swell of his heart hard against my ribs. ‘I need to do this.’ He looked at me, his eyes bright. ‘I’ll be back soon.’

  Dad returned hours later, muddy, tired and dispirited. The hunt had been fruitless.

  Today Mum and Dad are bringing me home from hospital, and it feels like one of the dreams I had on the island. As we walk up the garden path, I stare at the house. There’s a glint of autumn sun on the windows. Nothing has changed: still the worn, pale texture of the brick and the twist of wisteria that grows over the front door, everything exactly as I’d imagined for all those months. Silver is barking. As soon as we open the door he throws himself at me, dinosaur paws on my chest, almost knocking me over. His mouth opens in a smile, his amber eyes looking into mine.

  ‘Well,’ Mum laughs. ‘That’s it. I’ll be second best now that you’re back.’

  The house, which all my life has seemed cold and full of drafts, encloses me in safe, thick, windproof walls. It still amazes me that I turn a tap and there is fresh water to drink, hot water to wash in. My back aches from the softness of mattresses. I’ve been told to introduce different foods into my diet gradually because everything is too rich for my stomach. I am bewildered by the choices that are suddenly available to me, the demands they make. Sometimes I begin to panic and I have to close my eyes and imagine that I’m back on the island. I breathe deeply, remembering the sounds of the sea, wind on shingle, wings unfolding.

  My bedroom is different from how I’d remembered: smaller, scruffier. More childish. I touch things, trailing my fingers across the crystal desert rose, trying on armfuls of bangles, fingering the clothes in my drawers. They don’t seem to belong to me anymore. I hug my old teddy, standing at the window to look across the garden and the marshes towards the sea. The island is a dark mass, between sky and horizon. One day, probably when I’m very old or dead, the island will disappear. The pagoda will be swallowed by water, starfish clinging to the rusting pipes, shoals of fish flitting through the interior, fins brushing my cave-drawings, wearing away the story of Billy and me.

  Faith knocks at the door. She comes in slowly, looking up under her pale hair, suddenly shy. I pat the bed and we sit cross-legged on the cover, grinning at each other. ‘I can’t believe you’re really here,’ she says.

  ‘Well, get used to it,’ I tell her. ‘I’m not going anywhere again. Not for a long time.’

  ‘Eva.’ She stretches out a hand to touch me, her fingers a whisper against my skin. I bite my lip, thinking how odd, we share not a drop of blood. But we’ve grown up together, inhabit the same memories, love the same parents, and we love each other. It has to be enough. She is my sister. I’m sure they haven’t told her about me. She would have said something. Faith can’t hide things from me. I wonder if I should tell her. But I can’t face it. Not yet. I reach out and give her a hug. ‘You were very brave you know, coming to find me.’ I press my mouth against the ticklish strands of her hair. ‘I’ll never forget it.’

  ‘What about Marco?’ She pulls back, looking at me earnestly. ‘I’ve got his address.’

  ‘Have you?’ I’m surprised by the sound of his name. By Faith remembering him. I shake my head. ‘It’s over, Faith. I don’t want to talk about it.’

  She looks disappointed. ‘But why is it over? He came to the river. He loves you.’

  ‘Really? Well,’ I force a smile, ‘I’m not the same person. Just leave it, Faith. All right?’

  ‘He’ll know though,’ she mutters. ‘It’s in the papers. So he’ll know that you didn’t drown. He’ll know you’re home.’

  I push her off the bed, just like I would have done before. She sprawls on the floor, mouth open. And then she grins up at me.

  ‘You need to take an interest in your own life.’ I raise my eyebrows. ‘What have you been doing with yourself all these months? Learnt any new waltzes or Charlestons?’

  ‘Granny and Jack aren’t here to teach me.’ She scrunches her nose. ‘Idiot.’

  We’re playing a game now, finding a shared way of being, remembering the rhythms of it. This is how we are together. It’s like a dance.

  ‘Ever heard of a thing called classes?’ I put my hands on my hips. ‘Ask Mum to enrol you in some. You’re good, Faith. You have talent.’

  Of course I do think about Marco. Faith is probably right. He’ll read about me in the papers, or he’ll hear it from someone else. There is a part of me that expects him to contact me.