Girl A(23)

‘How was the meeting?’ I asked. Ethan turned to me, unperturbed.

‘Excellent,’ he said. He was wearing a polo shirt, and his hair was damp. ‘They were after a general update, before the results days. It’s impossible to predict, of course. But I’m positive.’

He served me a coffee. The whites of his eyes were sallow and cut with little red wires.

‘You must have been back late,’ I said. ‘I didn’t hear you come in.’

‘Oh, not too late. There’s sport at the school today, so I have to be on decent form. Ana and I are heading up. You’re very welcome to join us.’

‘Don’t worry. I’m going to take the train back to London. I need to think about speaking to the others, like you said.’

‘Well, we’re making eggs. Stay for that, at least.’

We ate in quiet, looking out onto the garden. When Ethan had finished, he pushed his plate away and took Ana’s hand. ‘Before I forget,’ he said, though there could have been no chance of him forgetting, ‘Ana and I discussed your proposal. About how to handle the house.’

My mouth was full. I nodded.

‘It’s a great idea,’ he said. ‘A community centre, in a town like that. No associations with us. It sounds good, Lex. Let me know what to sign.’

‘I’m sure we can donate some supplies,’ Ana said. ‘Paints, paper. Anonymously, of course.’

‘Right,’ I said. ‘OK.’ I thought for a moment of Devlin in a negotiation, and how she might display a studied softness when her adversary least expected it; it was as if she had trusted you with her most precious secret, and you couldn’t help but like her for it. ‘We could talk about some limited publicity,’ I said, ‘if you think that it might attract more funding.’

‘It’s all very exciting,’ Ana said. She clapped, stood from the table, and kissed Ethan on the head. ‘Is it summer dresses?’ she asked. ‘Or more casual?’

‘Wear a dress,’ he said, and she nodded, and ran upstairs.

I turned to Ethan.

‘What?’ he said. ‘I thought about it some more. I don’t need it. Not really. Do what makes you happy. Besides, Ana loved the idea.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Almost. There’s a condition.’

‘You’ve got to be joking, Ethan.’

‘I’ll sign off on all of this. But if we’re doing it your way, you deal with it. Demolition, funding, whatever. I don’t want to hear anything about it. I mean – look around. This is where I live now.’

I looked at the drowsy bees on the grass, and the eggy, hand-painted plates, and Horace dozing beneath the sunflowers which Ana had planted at the end of the garden. (‘There’s a local competition,’ she had explained, seriously, ‘between the old women of Summertown. But this year, I’m going to win it.’)

‘Even seeing you,’ Ethan said. ‘Sometimes it’s too much.’

There were many responses to that, but each would lose me the deal. I nodded. ‘OK,’ I said. We shook hands, as if we were children placing a sombre bet on the capital of Tanzania. The memory made me smile, and the capital wouldn’t come to me, so I asked Ethan. This, more than anything, was an offering of peace.

‘It isn’t Dar es Salaam,’ he said.

‘Well,’ I said. ‘Obviously.’

‘Dodoma,’ he said. He looked at me, triumphant and then wistful. ‘Mr Greggs and his capitals.’

‘I remember them.’

‘Not Dodoma, though.’

‘No. Not Dodoma.’

‘Do you know,’ Ethan said, ‘I was giving a presentation last year, at a conference for headteachers. It’s a big event. Headteachers from around the world. And at the end of my speech, when the applause started and I could actually relax, I looked up, and I was sure that I saw him in the crowd – Mr Greggs. He was near the back, but he was clapping, and I thought that I caught his eye. I tried to find him afterwards, at the drinks reception, but it was busy, and it was the last night of the thing, and I never did.

‘Anyway. I decided that I would look him up. I requested the list of attendees from the conference, and he wasn’t on that. I searched for headmasters across the country, thinking that the list might have missed him off, somehow. He didn’t come up there, either. So then I search more widely. And it transpires that he couldn’t have been at the conference, because he died. Five years earlier. He was still a teacher then, in some comprehensive in Manchester – dead in service.’

I thought of Ethan leaving for school on the days of his presentations, brimming with knowledge. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

‘Well, what is it to me? But he was a good teacher.’

We could hear Ana on the stairs. The two of us stood, together, and watched her come through the kitchen. She was wearing a yellow dress, and when she walked into the sunshine she opened her arms, as if she would embrace us when she arrived. ‘The strange thing is,’ Ethan said, just before she reached us, ‘each time that I speak, I think of him. I still like to think of him in the crowd.’





3


Delilah (Girl B)


DETECTIVE SUPERINTENDENT GREG JAMESON at sixty-five: fat and retired, like a show dog gone to ruin. Each morning his wife, Alice, makes the tea, butters the toast, props him up with the newspaper and an old hospital tray she took from work. ‘To make up for the long, long nights,’ she says. It is ten o’clock, and the bedroom curtains flutter in mid-morning sunlight, and in these moments, the night shifts are long forgotten.