Girl A(19)

‘Thank God he’s gone,’ Ana said. ‘Sorry, Lex.’

In silence, we cleared the table. Ana had painted the plates, so that olives and cypress trees emerged as you ate. ‘Leave the glasses,’ Ana said. ‘I’ll open another bottle.’ I took a cloth from the sink and wiped the red rings from the table.

We sat outside, cross-legged and facing one another, like children about to clap hands. ‘So,’ I said. ‘Tell me about the wedding.’

It was only three months away, now. They would marry on Paios, in Greece, which had its own airport, not much more than a shack and a concrete strip. Ana had holidayed there when she was a child, and had told her father, in no uncertain terms, that this was where she would get married. She liked the little white church in the main town, high on a hilltop, which she had believed, then, to be the top of the world. At nightfall, you could see every light on the island, be it a car or a house; she would contemplate a couple driving home from dinner, midway through an argument, or a widow, in bed, reaching to turn out her bedside light.

‘Always such sad imaginings,’ she said. ‘I was such a melancholy child.’

She looked down from the sky, as if remembering that I was there. ‘Of course,’ she said, ‘I had no reason to be.’

‘I’ve booked my flights,’ I said. ‘I can’t wait.’

‘You’re still welcome to bring somebody – if you would like.’

I laughed. ‘I’ll see if anything develops. I’m running out of time.’

‘You’ll be fine, anyway. Delilah will be there.’

‘Well. That’ll be an interesting encounter.’

Even in the dark garden, I could feel the flush of Ana’s discomfort. She would have liked all of us to be there, matching in chiffon and joy, on Ethan’s side of the church. Instead, Evie and Gabriel hadn’t been invited, and Delilah and I didn’t talk. Evie and I had spent some time speculating about the guest list, and the extent of Ethan’s self-service. We concluded that her place had probably gone to an MP, or the chairperson of an international charity. ‘Somebody useful,’ she said, ‘whom you would never want to sit next to.’ She paused to shrug. ‘It’s not like we were ever close.’

‘Lex—’

Ana combed the air with her fingers, as if she might find the words there.

‘Sometimes,’ she began, ‘I just wonder—’

She stared hard at the kitchen, empty under elegant lights, at the other end of the garden. At last it was cool. The oak branches above us tipped and collided in the wind, drunker than we were. Ana set down her glass and caught the tears at the corners of her eyes. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

‘That’s OK.’

‘Ethan has been difficult. Everything must be a success. The school, the presentations, the charities. The wedding. You know – don’t you – that he sleeps badly. Right from the beginning, I would get up in the night, and see him reading, or at work. But now – I hear him, walking through the house. In the daytime, there is a barrier, when he’s like this. Between us. I can’t get behind it. I can’t understand him. As long as we’re happy, I’m happy. But he doesn’t see things in this way.’

‘Success at all costs,’ I said.

‘Yes. Quite. And behind this barrier, I worry that I don’t know him at all. Sometimes he will look at me – let’s say I ask a stupid question, or suggest that preparation for an assembly can wait until the next morning – and it’s like I’m speaking to a new person, a different person, with his face. And’ – she laughed – ‘not one that I like all too much.’

‘Does he ever talk to you,’ I said, ‘about our childhood?’

‘He’s told me some things,’ she said. ‘But not others. And, you know, I respect that. I’ve attended his presentations. I know how he’s suffered. It’s just – if there is anything that would make me understand. Whether I should try to make him talk. Any suggestions at all—’

Leave him, I thought. I could taste the words; I could hear precisely how they would sound when they left my mouth. Try to understand, I would explain, which of these two people – the person you met, and the person you perceive to be new – is my brother. I thought, too, of the aftermath: of Ethan walking into the rubble of all that he had built.

‘Wait for him,’ I said. ‘When he’s like that – I think he goes somewhere you wouldn’t want to follow. He’ll always come back to you.’

‘You think so?’

‘Of course.’

She tilted forward, onto her knees on the grass, and took my hands. ‘Thank you,’ she said. A tear dawdled on her face, but she was smiling. ‘A new sister,’ she said.

When I was old enough to understand where Ethan went each day, I would wait for him and Mother by the door, clutching a pillow in anticipation. He had been only an eight-minute walk up the road, at Jasper Street Primary School, but to me it seemed that he had traversed the world, and returned each evening triumphant and willing – if, at times, begrudgingly so – to impart all that he had learnt.

In Ethan’s third year at school, when he was seven, his teacher was Mr Greggs, who implemented Fact of the Day, Word of the Day, and News of the Day. Each pupil in the class took turns to present their three items. These were the first things that Ethan taught to me when he returned home from school, while Mother fed Delilah. The presentations, Ethan said, were of mixed quality: Michelle, for example, had informed the class that she had come second in a gymnastics competition, as if that was news. Each time it was his own turn, Ethan left for school on the balls of his feet, fizzing with excitement, and I shouted the items after him as he went. I was quite sure that he was the cleverest person in the world.