Girl A(80)

‘There was a limited choice. Anyway – the sunshine breaks tomorrow.’

‘Well, that sucks.’

The driver behind us leaned on his horn.

‘Can’t he see,’ Evie said, ‘that we’re busy discussing the weather?’ She waved an apology and bundled her rucksack into the boot. The car behind us honked again. ‘Jesus,’ I said. Evie landed in the seat beside me, just as the driver shouted something from his window.

‘Dick,’ Evie said, and we pulled away.

‘Next stop Hollowfield?’ I asked, and she groaned.

‘You know, we could go anywhere from here. We could be in Hong Kong, or Paris, or California—’

‘All of our old atlas targets.’

‘I don’t know if I’d trust it,’ she said. ‘It was so old.’ She spoke about the book like a mutual friend, one whom we missed. ‘I’m pretty sure we intended to visit both parts of Germany.’

‘Have you been?’ I asked.

‘West or East?’

This was Evie’s approach to questions: she dodged around them, as she had danced between the cars in the traffic. Her life in Europe was uneventful, she said, but she maintained a casual mystery about her days. Her friends had first names and no backgrounds; she called from the city or from the apartment or from the beach; she had boyfriends and girlfriends, but never anything serious. Whenever I asked her about returning to England, she became quiet. ‘I’ve spent my whole life,’ she said, ‘travelling away from our room. I can’t stop now.’

Thinking of the house, she flinched. It was one of the reasons that I had resisted her arrival. Hollowfield still held its scrawny grip on her, tighter than it had on the rest of us. Sometimes she called in the middle of the night, late into the New York evening, and narrated a night terror. They always started at the front door of 11 Moor Woods Road, but inside there would be some strange landscape of Father’s design: the family in crucifixion, or a biblical plain, with plagues on the horizon.

But in the daylight she was quick and freckled and light on her feet, and with one of her arms around my neck, and her smile radiating from the passenger side, I felt that our time in Hollowfield would be tolerable, at least. We would meet with Bill and representatives from the local council, and we would present our proposal to obtain funding for the community centre.

‘Will there be a cheque?’ Evie asked. ‘One of the huge ones?’

‘If I wanted a photo opportunity, I would have brought Ethan.’

‘I’m not interested in the photo,’ Evie said. ‘I just want to know how it works. Do they take it to the bank?’

‘Why don’t you do less talking and more directing?’

Evie laughed and turned on the radio. ‘We’ll lose it in the hills,’ she said, ‘so we might as well enjoy it now.’

‘Turn it up, then.’

We arrived in Hollowfield just after seven. There was a moment in the journey – I couldn’t identify the exact point – when I began to recognize the landscape. The bends of the road were familiar, and I knew the number of miles to each of the next towns, promised on square blue signs. Already some of the moorland was purple with heather, spreading on the land like a new bruise. Daylight lasted longer here than in London, but the darkness would be dense and difficult for driving, and we were short of time. The moon was on the windshield, fingernail thin. We descended into the valley.

Hollowfield idled in the last stale summer light. The sun sunken behind the moors. The grass in the gardens and churchyard had receded, exposing graves like old teeth. A blank-faced girl rode a horse towards Moor Woods Road, pinching its dumpy belly between her legs. I turned onto the high street. It was difficult to distinguish between what had changed and what I had forgotten. The bookshop was still there, flanked by a bookie’s and a charity shop. The Lifehouse had last been a Chinese restaurant; it was boarded up, and for sale again. There were still a few shrivelled menus taped to the inside of the window.

Evie and I had booked into a twin room at the pub on the corner. I parked beside a tip, in the shadow of the building, and we looked at one another. A waitress sat on a bottle crate, smiling at her phone. My fingers left dark prints on the wheel. Evie took my hand.

Inside, locals guarded the bar. This had been one of Father’s recruitment grounds, and I glanced at their faces, looking for members of our congregation. The floors were coated in a tongue-pink carpet, and there were photographs of old demolitions on the wall. The pub, perhaps, or Hollowfield in its early days. All of their occupants humourless and male. The landlady, laden with jewellery and holding her own glass, looked at me strangely when I mentioned our reservation. We were foreigners in this land, as we had been many years before. She led us to our room in silence, letting each door slam behind us on the way up.

‘Well,’ I said, when we were alone, ‘she was friendly.’

‘Come on, Lexy. She was fine.’ Evie nudged me in the ribs. ‘You,’ she said, ‘with your fancy hotels and your New York expectations. I want to hear all about it, by the way. New York.’

‘Let me take a shower. I’ll tell you over dinner.’

Like lovers, we talked as we undressed and dressed again. There was nothing of my body that she didn’t know. Our room had two single beds, one against each wall, and without speaking we pushed them together.