Girl A(17)

‘What are you doing here?’

‘It’s a side project. I’m testing some new lighting. Join me, if you’d like.’

He beckoned. Mother was still shaking. She didn’t move, and Father laughed.

‘Don’t be frightened.’

‘I’m not frightened. How do I get up?’

‘Back by the entrance. Let me light the way.’

He disappeared, and bright light flooded the aisle. Relief rushed through her: foolish, to be afraid of the dark. She ascended the staircase as quickly as she could, hampered by her dress and holding onto the walls, navigating wires and banners and stacks of chairs. At the top, she looked for him, suspicious that it had been a prank, and that he would have hidden. Instead, he stood with his back to her, waiting.

‘It sounds like you’re having quite the evening,’ he said. He held a fuse box in his hands. There were crevices of muscle along his forearms, and bright deltas of veins. The new, strange country of him.

‘Yes. I shouldn’t have agreed to it. I have this friend – an old friend, I suppose. It was her idea.’

He didn’t yet deign to look at her.

‘Where is she now?’

‘With some guy, I think.’

‘She doesn’t sound like such a good friend.’

‘I suppose not.’

He conjured a spotlight, which travelled down along the balcony, and rested on her face.

‘Your hair,’ he said. ‘All of the lights land in it.’

(All of the lights land in it: an excellent line. While I try to deny it, there were times – when I was younger – when this would have impressed me, too.)

‘Is this how you usually spend your Saturday nights?’ Mother asked.

‘No. Sometimes. I like the technology, you see. And I like to help out.’

Mother leaned against the railing alongside him. She let her hair fall against his arm.

‘I’ve never had company before,’ Father said, and smiled. ‘This makes things much more interesting.’

‘I’m not that interesting at all,’ Mother said. ‘I mean, I’m pretty boring. Actually.’

‘I don’t believe you. What’s the best thing that’s ever happened to you?’

‘What?’

‘Tell me the best thing that’s ever happened to you. Nobody’s boring when they tell you the best thing that’s ever happened. Go.’

Mother thought of her princess dress, and the faces of the villagers watching the Harvest Festival. In her mind, they multiplied, so that she led the parade through a crowd of hundreds – thousands – of well-wishers. ‘Fine,’ she said. She knew exactly how she would tell it.

‘See,’ Father said, at the end. ‘That wasn’t boring. But it wasn’t the best thing that ever happened to you, either.’

‘It wasn’t?’

‘Of course not,’ Father said. He concentrated on the fuse box, passing it from one great palm to the other. He was smiling, close to laughter. ‘That’s tonight.’

‘This is a boring story,’ Ethan said, whenever it was told. ‘I don’t know why you like it.’

‘Do you think it ever happened?’ Evie asked me, when she heard it for the first time. ‘Or did they just meet at a Sunday service?’ I was surprised by her cynicism, then surprised that I had never questioned the story myself. The fact was, I wanted it to be true. It cast my parents in a dark, glittering light: the lovers poised on their balcony at the very beginning of the tale. This was the version of them that I liked the best.

Ethan had his own plans for the house on Moor Woods Road. He kept them to himself through dinner on Friday night, and during Ana’s artistic tour of Oxford on Saturday morning, but by lunchtime his opportunities were running out. Ana had made a Greek salad and found a garden umbrella, and we ate outside, talking about Ethan’s work. ‘Would you like to go for a walk after lunch?’ he asked me, pointedly. I imagined him striding into the staffroom at Wesley to propose the same thing to a colleague, and how the connotations of that suggestion would linger when they had gone: a walk with Mr Gracie.

‘Sure,’ I said.

We walked out to University Parks, past the cricket pitches and the flower beds, and found a shaded path to the Cherwell. The open grass was a dull, desert yellow, but underneath the trees and by the river, it was still green. The sunshine snatched a little of Ethan’s dignity. His skin was a shade thinner than white, and his more caustic lines – on the forehead, and between the eyes – no longer retreated when he smiled, but stayed, poised, on his face.

‘Your hair’s even darker,’ Ethan said. ‘I don’t know why you do that.’

‘Don’t you?’ I said. ‘Really?’

‘You look better blonde.’

I knew Ethan well enough to appreciate that this was a battle cry: a few notches out of the enemy’s wall before he launched the main offensive.

‘I have no desire to see Mother in the mirror,’ I said. ‘Besides, it’s not in my direct financial interests.’

‘Unlike mine, you mean?’

‘It can’t hurt,’ I said, ‘with lectures about your personal trauma.’

‘Overcoming personal trauma. And I’m not trying to judge you, Lex, I’m really not, but you should come along. The feedback’s been unbelievable. Everybody gets something out of it, I promise you. I’m in New York in the autumn. It could really help you out.’