The Key to Anchor Lake ✓

49 : Blaire

B L A I R E

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The moment news got out that Elizabeth had agreed to be interviewed, Olga, Cat, and Niko turned up at Sukie's house. It may have been my fault, when I posted a message in the group chat – never before in my life have I been part of a group chat – letting them know what was going on.

Olga must have run over based on her red face and inability to catch her breath, her wild curls scraped into an explosive cloud of a ponytail. Cat and Niko showed up a few minutes later, and the four of us talked to Sara while the interview went on upstairs.

Almost an hour passed before Sukie and Elizabeth came down, both sporting red eyes, and no matter how hard Olga worked to persuade her, she wouldn't let us listen to the episode straight away. She wanted to polish it up, to make sure it's perfect, the best way that she could say goodbye to The Anchor Lakey.

It feels like the end of an era and I haven't dedicated nearly as much time to it as she has; I haven't stayed up late recording and editing over a hundred episodes, and yet the thought that it's over makes me cry. It's only been a part of my life for as long as I've lived in Anchor Lake, such a small proportion of the weeks I've been alive, but it's been a huge part.

On the drive home, I don't want to poke and prod Elizabeth when that's probably what Sukie's been doing for the last hour, but I can only avoid the elephant in the room for so long. Neither of us speak in the car, but the moment we're in the house, heading straight for the kettle, I have to ask.

"How did it go?"

"It was ... good," Elizabeth says. "Sukie's a good host."

"She's amazing."

She gives me a soft, knowing smile. "She did ask me something I didn't know, actually."

"About your own book?"

"Mmm." She takes her time making two coffees. "She pointed out that all these things I wrote about, they all happened every twenty-five years."

"Oh, yeah." I frown. "Wait, you didn't know that?"

"I never realised it. Like I said to Sukie, my focus was only ever on the people. I was exploring my family tree. I never noticed the years."

"Oh. Wow. Yeah, that was their main theory. I know Jacob for one still believes it."

"Jacob?"

"The bastard Hill child," I say, borrowing her own words. It makes her smile. "They've spent a lot of time theorising what was going to happen this year in Anchor Lake. I think it was Niko, or maybe Oliver, who decided we're due another plague."

Elizabeth pulls a face. "It does no good to dwell on such things. Whether there's a curse or not, does it change how we should live our lives?"

"Well, maybe more carefully," I say.

She shakes her head at me as she hands me a coffee. "The things that have happened to our ancestors are not things we can predict. When Norma and Michael Key went to the cemetery to mourn Henry, do you think they could have had any idea that a landslide would kill them?"

"No, of course not."

"And what about everyone out on the street celebrating Beltane? They couldn't have known that a train would derail and crash into the high street. And those miners – they went to work every day, knowing it was dangerous. They couldn't have known when disaster would strike and their mine would collapse."

"I guess not." I breathe in the intoxicating scent of coffee, too hot to take a sip. "What're you saying, exactly?"

Elizabeth sighs as she sits beside me, rather than opposite, and she puts a comforting arm around my shoulders. "I'm saying that we can't know what's going to happen. Whether we're cursed or not, what can we do to change that? If our history shows us anything, it's that death is inescapable."