Secrets in the Snow - Emma Heatherington Page 0,58

now, and so I let go and fix my hair, then stand up wondering what I can do to shift the energy around us. ‘Look, I’m sure Camille will understand if I take a bit of time out this morning. Do you fancy a walk on the beach to clear our heads and try to make sense of this all?’

He looks up at me and smiles with so much gratitude in his eyes it touches me in a way I wish it wouldn’t. The more I get to know him, the more attached I feel we are becoming, and in my heart I know that is very wrong and will only end in tears. I keep telling myself that one of these days I’ll create some distance between us to save all the pain that is inevitably coming my way when he decides to pack up and leave and go back to make amends with Rachel.

‘I’d love to walk on the beach,’ he says, standing up tall beside me, so closely I imagine I can hear his heart beat. ‘I’ll just get my coat.’

I walk barefoot along the sand, carrying my shoes. The spectacular Killahoey Strand is one of the area’s majestic Blue Flag beaches and, when I look ahead at the glorious backdrop of Muckish Mountain as it meets the sea, it doesn’t take a psychologist to know why being here always fills me with good feelings.

Aidan strolls along a few feet away from me in a routine we normally save for a Sunday morning when Ben usually leads the way and dictates the pace, yelling at us to keep up as the wind blows in his face and the sea air gives him a healthy glow, but today it’s just the two of us and it feels very different.

‘I can’t stop thinking of how close my dad and Peter once were when they were young and carefree in that little town on the far side of the country,’ he says to me when our footprints meet along the water’s edge in a natural rhythm. ‘And I can really see now why Mabel and my own grandmother preferred to remember them both from those times, rather than the bickering mess they became in their later lives. Imagine only having one sibling and to lose them after a stupid row. It just doesn’t bear thinking about.’

We walk along the golden sand on auto pilot to a sand dune where we have sat so many times in recent months, watching the waves lap along the coastline.

‘I think you only feel the loneliness of being an only child when your parents are both gone and you realize you need someone to lean on or turn to in their place,’ he tells me, pulling some grass from the sand as he speaks. ‘Not that I even remember what it feels like to have a parent to lean on. Both my mum and dad are just blurry faces in my memory now or smiling distant strangers in a photograph. It pains me to admit that, but it’s true.’

He lifts a stick from beside him and makes shapes in the sand as the waves crash in the near distance, a sound that I will never tire of.

‘Me too,’ I tell him, knowing that although our stories are so very different, they both make us feel the exact same way. ‘I always wanted a big sister or brother to replace the parents I never had in real life. Someone to guide me along the way, or to tell me off, or someone to call when I’m in need or just to vent to when I’m feeling sad or angry. Mabel filled so many gaps for me in the short time I knew her. I trusted her. I could tell her anything and she, in turn, could tell me the truth right back.’

The truth – I remember again her emphasis in her message on how important it is for us always to be true, and it almost makes my head spin at how often I’ve refused to be true, particularly in all the time I pretended to be happy when I was really stuck and trapped in a soulless and destructive marriage.

‘You know, I once overheard a conversation my grandparents had when I was a young teenager, one that I wasn’t supposed to hear,’ Aidan tells me as he looks out onto the dark blue water in the distance. ‘They were whispering one night in the kitchen,