Linda Kavanagh

CHAPTER 1 of Never Say Goodbye

I feel sick with fear when the school bell rings at the end of the
day. Why am I the one this is happening to? It’s been going on
for ages now, and I don’t know how much more I can take.

“Oh my God – how could I not have known?”
Claire Ross bit her lip so hard that it bled, but she was
oblivious to everything but the words she was reading. She’d just
discovered her late sister’s diary, and its revelations left her
reeling. Suddenly, everything she’d believed about Zoe had been
overturned in an instant.

As she began turning the pages, her eyes filled with tears. So
Zoe’s death hadn’t been an accident. Her thirteen-year-old sister
hadn’t been snatched from the beach by a freak wave, as had
been claimed at the time, because the proof was here, in Zoe’s
own handwriting.

Claire felt all the pain of loss well up inside her again. How
could all this have happened to her sister without her knowing
about it? Had their mother been aware of what was going on?
And what about the school? Surely someone had been aware of
the situation? Oh my God, Claire thought, it’s like walking into
a nightmare. Now I really know why Zoe died. And the world as
I’ve known it has just been turned on its head.

As Claire read through the entries, anger rose in her throat and
formed a lump that almost threatened to choke her. A month
after her sister had written the final entry in her diary, her body
had been found floating out at sea. Memories of that day came
flooding back into Claire’s mind. On that day she had, in effect,
lost her mother too. Although her mother’s drinking had been
bad before her sister’s death, the aftermath had been even more
horrendous. From the day Zoe died, her mother was rarely sober
again, and Claire had suddenly been thrown into a bewildering
and frightening world of loss.

As a small child, alone and terrified, she’d crawled into Zoe’s
bed that first night without her sister, hoping to find comfort
from contact with Zoe’s possessions. She’d put on Zoe’s pyjamas
and pressed them tightly to her body, as though they might
somehow connect her to her beloved sister again.

As the weeks went by and before social services waded in, her
mother had consumed even greater amounts of whiskey to dull her
own pain, and Claire watched broken-hearted as her mother
retreated from her, sinking deeper into her own world of
despondency and despair. Despite their shared sorrow, they hadn’t
been able to comfort each other, and Claire longed to scream at her
mother: You had two daughters – one of them is still living – why
can’t you find some joy in me?Why do you miss the dead one more
than you love the one who’s alive?

Claire had been nine when her older sister died. Now, at
thirty-eight, there hadn’t been a day that passed when she hadn’t
thought of her sister.

Claire wiped her eyes. Was it only an hour ago she’d stepped
into the gloomy interior of her mother’s house? It felt like a
century. Having recently inherited the house on her mother’s
death, she’d reluctantly made the journey back to the seaside
village of Trentham-on-Sea where she’d grown up.

Opening the blinds, she’d glanced around the dusty, stuffy
drawing room, feeling a pang of guilt that this house was now
hers. It was years since she’d had any kind of relationship with
her mother, but now that she was gone Claire felt her loss acutely.
All those lost opportunities to say the things that mattered.

As she wandered around, picking up and touching things as
she went, Claire had been filled with sadness and regret. Perhaps
she should have made more of an effort to understand and
support her mother. On the other hand, it had been difficult, if
not impossible, to deal with a belligerent drunk who hadn’t been
sober in years.

Claire surveyed the old cooker, fridge and pantry with
distaste. Nothing had changed since she’d left all those years ago.
In fact, nothing had changed since her father left, a lifetime
earlier. Her mother had made no attempt to modernise or replace
anything. The same old pots filled the cupboards, and the ironing
board wore the same piece of scorched gingham material that she
remembered from her childhood.

Claire shuddered. They’d all have to go. In fact, the entire
house would have to go. After today, she’d no intention of ever
setting foot in it again. She intended getting a local estate agent
to put it on the market immediately. Then, when the house was
sold, she’d set a date to marry David. For the first time since
she’d arrived, a fleeting smile crossed Claire’s face. Her fiancé
was the best thing that ever happened to her, and she knew that
Zoe, wherever she was, would be happy for her.

Claire had then made her way into the room that housed the
old-fashioned roll-top desk that had originally belonged to her
father. It seemed like aeons since he’d been part of the family, and
Claire wondered where he was now. He was probably dead
himself. His departure had been the turning point in all their
lives. Before that, their mother had been a happy woman. But
after he left, she began drinking heavily, and her two daughters’
young lives had been turned upside down. Not only had they to
deal with the grief of losing their beloved father, they’d also had
to contend with a mother who was becoming increasingly out of
control. If he hadn’t deserted them all, their mother wouldn’t
have started drinking, and maybe poor Zoe wouldn’t have died.

Opening the roll-top desk, Claire gazed inside. There were
bundles of bills accompanied by matching receipts, carefully
rolled-up pieces of string, and out-of-date coupons cut from
newspapers. Claire was suddenly overwhelmed with grief as she
surveyed the trivia that represented her mother’s life. In truth, the
poor woman hadn’t had much of a life. With the benefit of
hindsight, Claire was seeing her mother as someone who once
had hopes and dreams of her own.

The first two drawers were empty, but in the third drawer
Claire discovered a pile of ancient newspapers, their pages
yellowed and fragile. Gingerly opening the first of them, Claire
found herself staring at the local newspaper’s account of her
sister’s drowning. She shuddered. It was ghoulish of her mother
to keep such mementoes, but as she smoothed out the papers’
tattered edges, Claire realised these newspaper accounts had
represented her mother’s last link with her eldest daughter.

The first account detailed the discovery of the missing child’s
body. Claire remembered the hushed tones of Doctor Barker and
the local policeman as they arrived at the cottage to give her
mother the devastating news. Then, as nine-year-old Claire was
taken away by a kindly neighbour, she heard her mother’s
screams and sobs behind the closed drawing-room door.

Another newspaper, dated a few days later, detailed Zoe’s
funeral, displaying a photograph of all the pupils from The
Gables School for Girls lining the route from the church to the
graveyard.

Claire’s lip trembled. What hypocrites they’d all been! Once
their moment in the limelight was over, they’d left Claire and her
mother to their lonely and tragic existence, without a helping
hand from that day onwards.

As the light began to fade, Claire had abandoned the
newspapers and wandered into Zoe’s bedroom. Everything was
exactly as it had been the fateful evening she’d left, never to
return. Idly, she touched Zoe’s duvet, as though it could act as a
conduit that would somehow link her to her sister.

Blinking back a tear, she wondered how different her life
might have been if Zoe had lived. With each other to lean on,
they’d have struggled through, and eventually they might even
have got their mother the help she needed. But it had been too
great a task for one little girl to tackle, and now, many years later,
Claire was left among the tragic remnants of three women’s lives.

Claire lifted her sister’s hairbrush and held it to her face. As
she felt her sister’s hairs against her skin, she remembered the
times they’d sat together on Zoe’s bed, whispering and laughing,
making plans for the future – a future Zoe had cruelly been
denied.

Looking around the room, Claire decided she’d just take a
single memento of Zoe with her. She dismissed the bedclothes,
the books and the hairbrush – she’d look for something more in
keeping with the Zoe she’d known. Her sister had enjoyed art at
school – if she could find one of Zoe’s paintings, she could frame
it and hang on her apartment wall. Then Zoe would always be
with her.

Getting down on her knees, Claire looked inside Zoe’s bedside
locker, but it yielded nothing of interest. Bitterly disappointed,
she leaned on it to steady herself as she got up. But it toppled
over, and Claire ended up on the floor beside it.

Swearing, she hauled herself up onto the bed, angry and
determined to leave the house as soon as possible. If ever she
needed proof that this house was cursed, she’d confirmed it now!

As she reached out to put the locker back in its upright
position, Claire noticed a book attached to the back, held in
place with sticky tape. She tingled with excitement as she peeled
it away from the locker. It was a diary, the kind companies gave
away free to customers, and it advertised a well-known breakfast
cereal on the front. Claire now remembered Zoe being thrilled
when a local shop-owner, Mr Leonard, gave it to her. She hadn’t
even waited until January to begin writing in it – she’d filled the
entire frontispiece and title page with her writings!

As she opened the diary and began reading Zoe’s childish
writing, Claire expected to discover details about Zoe’s homework
assignments, her favourite film stars and her dreams for the
future. Instead, she found something very different and shocking.
And as she read, a swell of anger rose up inside her, threatening
to overwhelm her with its ferocity. Oh, Zoe, she whispered as the
tears ran freely down her face, I’ll avenge you, no matter what. I
swear I’ll make them pay for what they did to you.