Girl A(31)

‘We have the same hair,’ I said.

‘Yes, but a different face, and different eyes, and different arms and legs.’

When we were children, I considered Delilah to be foolish. Her school reports were damning: ‘Delilah needs to apply herself,’ the teacher would write, or ‘Delilah doesn’t have a great deal of natural ability in this subject, and will need to work harder.’ I had heard two of the teachers talking about her one lunchtime: ‘She’s certainly no Ethan,’ said one, and the other nodded: ‘And no Alexandra, either.’ When Delilah was assigned homework, she rested her head on her arms and reached across the table to Father. ‘I don’t understand,’ she said, ‘why I can’t just have one of your stories instead.’ Now, I think of the careful attentiveness on Delilah’s face when Father was talking, and her adoration of Mother as a child, long before The Parade began, and I wonder if Delilah was, in fact, cleverer than me and Ethan – if Delilah was the cleverest of us all.

For some time, I complained about sleeping in the same room as Evie. I was disgruntled with Delilah, and disappointed that I would no longer have the opportunity to talk to Ethan last thing at night, which – ever since he had imparted his knowledge of the Wild West – was when we discussed our days at school. The baby room was crowded with Father’s old projects: a computer slumped on the bedside table, exposing shiny guts; wires coiled beneath the cot. But Evie was a stern, quiet baby, and I began to like her. As Mother had said, she looked just like me. It was easy to allocate a baby’s affiliations, and I badly needed somebody on my team.

Instead of talking to Ethan about my day, I whispered across the room to her. In one of Father’s boxes, I found a torch; when the teacher allowed us to take books home from school, I waited for the house to settle into the night, then began to read aloud. ‘She can’t even understand you,’ Delilah said. I ignored her. The reading wasn’t just for Evie; it was also for me. Sometimes, if I caught her when she was whimpering and lifted her from the cot – just before she really started to cry – I found that I could console her myself. And I was usually the first to reach her; increasingly, Mother and Father were occupied with other things.

Some time between Sunday and Monday, my phone began to ring. When I woke like this, disorientated, from a dead sleep, I thought for a moment that I was in Moor Woods Road. Many years ago, Dr K had formulated a three-point plan to address these awakenings: stretch up to the ceiling; wait for the room to come into view; remember each detail of the day before, as specifically as you can. Soho cast an electric orange glow through the curtains, and the bath and the desk solidified from the darkness. Yesterday’s dress lay on top of my shoes on the floor, as though their occupant had vanished. I thought of Olivia in the taxi, waving her scarf from the window as it went, so when I answered the phone, I was smiling. Just gone four. I waited for the caller to speak.

‘Lex. It’s been a very long time.’

‘Delilah,’ I said. Of course.

‘I’m in London,’ she said. ‘I can come to see you. Where are you staying?’

‘Romilly Street,’ I said. ‘It’s the Romilly Townhouse. When do you want to meet?’

‘I don’t have very long. I’ll be there in an hour. Maybe less.’

‘What?’

‘To see you. I’m coming to see you.’

‘It’s the middle of the night.’

‘I’ll see you soon.’

I tried to turn on a gentle light, but hit the overhead switch by mistake. Kicked off the bedcovers and lay in a stupor on the mattress. Cursed Delilah; hotel lighting; the novice percussion band rehearsing in my skull; the whisky society; the tilt of the earth; London in the heat; the distance from the bed to the shower. Under the cool, clean water, I made myself vomit, and rested my forehead against the tiles. Delilah.

When I had stopped shaking, I opened the window and sat down at the desk, and wrote a brief, broad letter of consent in respect of the house on Moor Woods Road and the accompanying cash, allowing for the establishment of the community centre as Evie and I imagined it. I left the execution block empty. I didn’t even know what Delilah’s name was, now. The first grains of daylight scattered across the room. I ordered coffees from reception and drank them both. She would make me wait.

She arrived two hours after she phoned. She called again to check my room number, and a moment later her footsteps stopped outside my door. She waited a few seconds before she knocked, and I stood on the other side of the wood, thinking of her in the empty corridor, assembling her face.

Father kept the Bible on his bedside table, and whenever he couldn’t divine an evening story, he asked one of us to fetch it. As with the tales of our parents’ lives, we fought to hear our favourite book. I liked the Book of Jonah because of the whale. Ethan liked the Book of Samuel but hated the Book of Kings; it featured his namesake, but only to clarify that Solomon was much, much wiser. Delilah was happy to listen to whatever Father selected, which was usually something didactic. It was, I thought, her way of concealing that she couldn’t remember which book was which.

On Sundays, we dressed in what I thought of as our uncomfortable clothes – high white collars and nipping waistlines – and walked through the town in Father’s wake. We passed other, older churches, with congregations filing steadily inside – there, close to the centre, was the austere stone church at which we had been christened – and arrived at a square, beige box of a building, just before the industrial site. There was a white canopy above the door, where somebody had hand-painted: Welcome.