The Key to Anchor Lake ✓

47 : Blaire

B L A I R E

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There is no map, no blueprint to show me how I'm supposed to approach Elizabeth about being on the podcast. We're no longer tiptoeing around each other, and I want to keep it that way: we're still learning about each other, and I don't want to lose all of our progress by asking the wrong question.

So I didn't mention anything yesterday when I got home from Sukie's. Instead, to distract myself, I offered to cook. It would be an understatement to say that I'm not much of a chef, when my reigning accomplishment is unburnt toast, and maybe buttery pasta topped with cheese.

Last night I searched online for a recipe that matched the ingredients in the cupboard, and I think my first ever attempt at a Bolognese could have gone an awful lot worse. I mean, we both finished our plates and Elizabeth even had seconds, and neither of us was up all night with food poisoning, so I'd class that as a success.

I wake up with the question weighing on my shoulders, sitting heavy at the forefront of my mind as we eat breakfast together. It waits there as Elizabeth asks me about my plans for the week – these days it involves a lot more of Sukie and a bit less of the book that brought us together – and I shrug it off when she asks me what's on my mind.

Hey, Elizabeth, fancy addressing your life full of sorrow and that book you wish you hadn't written, for our entertainment?

Yeah, I don't think that would go down well.

So when she goes upstairs to continue her landscape, I lie across a sofa in the sitting room with my book, and I look up at Mum's ashes. She's become a fixture on the mantelpiece; it'd look empty there without her. But I know she can't stay there.

Mum hated sitting still. She hated staying in the same place; she'd be devastated to be here. Not moving. Stuck in a dark room in a dark house. She spent her life in the pool; she was never happier than when she was in the water, gliding like that was where she belonged. Where she belongs.

I can't read now. I can't lie here and lose myself in this romance now that the thought has latched onto me like a leech, when I am propelled to drop the book and get to my feet and take the urn in both hands. I carry it up to the attic, and when Elizabeth doesn't immediately hear me behind her, I watch her paint for a moment. Watch her when she doesn't know she's being watched.

Every single stroke of the brush is made with care. She considers every move she makes, taking pains to mix the perfect shade of grey to blend the crowds with the sky; she mixes pinpricks of green and brown until she has the ideal forest shade for the choppy water and the trees that line the lake.

It's a couple of minutes before she catches sight of me out of the corner of her eye, and she jumps a mile, smearing paint on her apron when she throws a hand to her chest.

"Blaire! I didn't hear you come up." Her eyes drop to Mum. "Are you okay?"

I hold up the urn. "Can we go to the lake?"

"You want to go to the lake?"

"I want to scatter Mum's ashes. She'd want to be in the water."

"Oh." She lays her paintbrush down and dries her hand on a tea towel streaked with a hundred colours. "Of course, darling. If that's what you want."

"It is. It's what she'd want too." It's so clear to me now. Of course that's what I have to do. "I know Anchor Lake hasn't been her home for a long time, but I think it's the only place that ever really was her home. And now it's mine, too."