Free The Sea Change by Joanna Rossiter

talk and talk, stringing
together whole generations, like lines of laundry. Endless lists of who married whom and
who had which children. As soon as Nana began one of her stories, Mum’s face would
brighten, like a child’s. It didn’t matter how many times she had heard it,
she’d hang on every detail as if it were new. But life for Mum stopped at Imber;
she didn’t listen to me like she did to Nana. She wasn’t bothered about whom
I would marry or what children I’d have. My stories – the ones from school or the
park – would be greeted with a diluted smile, so weak it might almost have been a frown.
The children she might have had in Imber – warless, naïve and grown from home – are what
matter to her. They would have been as rooted and constant as trees: working the land,
reading the weather, borrowing books from that grand old house and belonging to a man
she really loved. A place she really loved.
    Had I never known you, such selflessness
would have left me aghast
. Whatever my dad meant by his letter to her, he was
foolish to think my mother selfless. If the war hadn’t destroyed Imber, it would
have crumbled under her love, so tight was her grip on it. And while she set about
trying to preserve its memory, she lost sight of me – I, who was already adrift.
    Ravindra sits bolt upright and shouts
something – one word, over and over, flinching round to look over his shoulder. The roof
groans under the shift in his weight. He’s out of breath, sweating.
    ‘It’s okay,’ I say.
‘It’s over.’
    He looks at me, the tension in his face
softening into sadness, as if he has suddenly remembered where we are. Then he lies down
again on his stomach, his hands flat on the roof, wanting to be as close as possible to
his home.
    Most people think of a place when they think
of home. But I think of the word – strewn all over the kitchen on cutesy littleknick-knacks. They sit on the fridge, hang on door handles and drape
themselves over the window, spelling themselves out in sickly shades of pink. The first
and only time Mum met James, I told him to buy her one as a joke. She made such a show
of loving it, putting it in pride of place in the window above the sink, fearing all the
while that he’d take me away to places she’d never been.
    My step-dad tore one down once – a small
cushion on a string with ‘Home is where the heart is’ embroidered on it. He
threw it onto the floor beneath the sink where it bounced harmlessly on the lino and
cosied up to his feet. He thought I hadn’t seen him do it.
    James was always too kind about my mother.
He felt sorry for her, I suppose. Before we left for Istanbul, he drew up an itinerary
for her, with the dates on which we were expecting to arrive in each town. Istanbul in
early April, Tabriz two weeks later, Tehran the next day, Lahore at the beginning of
May, Delhi in June, then again in August. I was furious with him when I found out.
    ‘It’s nothing, Alice. I
can’t see how it will do any harm.’
    ‘I don’t want her to know where
I am.’
    ‘It’s not as if she’s
going to follow you out to Iran.’ He laughed.
    ‘I know. But it’ll nag me – the
fact she knows where I’m going and where I’ve been.’
    ‘It’s just for her peace of
mind. You’re her only daughter.’
    ‘Yeah,’ I scoffed. ‘And
don’t I know it.’
    I wish I could sleep like Ravindra. But
there’s so much sun and nothing solid to hide behind. It makes you crave darkness,
dampness, a basement room with a floor and walls. I close my eyes and imagine our patch
of the ocean evaporating, drop by drop, so that we are lowered into a vault of glassy
columns and laid to rest on the seabed. The roof softens into a mattress and James is
next to me. We’re back to back, as we always are, curled away from each other like
an
x
in algebra. Sleep comes just as the seacaves in on us. I
fumble around frantically for him, knowing that, if we’d broken a habit, if
we’d slept nose to