Soul Beach

mother-daughter rom com that looks sweeter than a swimming pool full of golden syrup.
    I don’t want fantasy worlds or face-lifted actresses who look less wrinkly than their on-screen daughters. I want to get back to the Beach, to my sister and Danny, to remind myself that some things do make sense, even if Triti’s story gets weirder and weirder.
    But while I want to see my sister, she’s not exactly going out of her way to welcome me. Meggie seems to have appointed herself as my bodyguard. Whenever I log on, she’s there, even though I vary my visit times, and log on twice as often, in the hope of catching Danny just once.
    ‘This is silly, Meggie.’
    She smiles at me. ‘Every girl needs a chaperone.’
    ‘Oh, yeah, because Danny and I get so many chances to misbehave when we can’t actually even hold hands.’ I begin walking towards the rock. Our rock.
    She follows. ‘You wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for me. I feel responsible for what happens. What you do.’
    ‘Are you sure you’re not jealous?’
    She stops walking and so do I. ‘Don’t be daft.’
    ‘I’m not. When I told you about Danny and me, you looked like you were sucking a lemon. Are you sure this isn’t about the fact you don’t want me to have what you can’t?’
    She sinks down onto the sand, her face stricken, ‘Oh, Florrie, that’s an awful thing to think, I just want to protect you!’
    ‘You can’t protect me from making my own mistakes, Meggie,’ I point out gently. ‘Not unless I stay in my room for ever. And even then . . . staying in my room is how I met Danny.’
    Saying his name is like giving myself an exquisite little electric shock.
    ‘Love sucks, Florrie. It destroys you. Look at me. Would I be where I am now if I hadn’t messed around with love?’
    I step towards her. ‘Have you remembered something about that night?’
    ‘It’s not a memory, it’s . . . a feeling.’
    ‘The being buried thing.’
    She winces. ‘Yeah, but . . . the strangest thing is that as I struggle against the earth, I have this sense that whoever is doing it, is doing it because they love me. Or, at least, they think they do.’
    ‘Tim?’ I think of his rage on the phone at the weekend. Maybe all that stuff about being framed is just him trying to distract me.
    She looks away. ‘Nobody else loved me like he did.’
    I feel a hot rush of fury flood over me. ‘If that’s his way of showing he loved you, he deserves to rot in hell’
    Meggie smiles. ‘Funny. I don’t get angry any more about stuff I can’t change. But you and Danny . . . just be careful, eh? I couldn’t bear to see my little sister heartbroken.’
    ‘I . . .’ I open my mouth, ready to tell her that it’s my heart to be broken if that’s what I choose. But I don’t want to hurt her. Instead, I decide to change the subject. ‘I think I’m getting somewhere with Triti.’
    It only occurs to me as I say that, that Triti might even disappear as soon as tonight. Lewis and I now know why she died – surely that counts as a kind of resolution?
    She opens the other eye. ‘Seriously? She needs it. She’s still there,’ my sister gestures to the end of the beach. ‘Hiding from everyone. We’ve been down there once more and . . . I never knew what someone in despair looked like till now.’
    ‘Meggie, do you think she will escape? If I find out what really happened?’
    She tries to smile. ‘I really hope so, Florrie. Because if she can, then there’s hope for us all.’
    ‘Hope?’ That was what Danny said I had given him.
    Meggie looks out to sea. ‘Not that I want to go anywhere,’ she says. ‘Not now I have my little sister back.’
    I want to see Danny so badly, but how can I leave Meggie now she’s said that? I turn his name over in my mind, like a precious stone. He’s just two or three hundred steps away. Waiting.
    ‘Alice . . .’ My mother is outside my room. ‘We need to go now.’
    ‘OK, two minutes and I’ll be down.’
    ‘ Florrie? ’
    Has my sister heard my mother’s voice?
    ‘I’ve got to go, Meggie. But first . . .’ I look down the shoreline. Even if he is waiting there, I can’t risk Mum coming in. I cup my hands around my lips – letting myself imagine for a moment that they’re his lips – and then I lean right into the microphone, and call out to shore.
    ‘DANNY CROSS!’
    My voice echoes around the Beach, and it’s strange to know that only four other people can hear it: my sister, Triti, Javier .