Girl A(83)

Delilah ate well that night and the next. Over her plate she watched me, fork sliding between her lips. A smile small enough to get away with. At night, she was free to wander between the rooms, and she opened our bedroom door in the late evening. Light exposed the sullied mattress, and Evie curled away from it, closer to my chest. Delilah remained at the threshold, back-lit, so that I couldn’t see the expression on her face.

‘What?’ I said.

She stood there for a minute, then two.

‘Delilah?’

‘Goodnight, Lex,’ she said, and left us together in the darkness.

Always back to the bedroom. Father had procured a bed for Evie, but there were many nights when she slipped from the bindings and picked her way across the Territory. The slight compression of the mattress, ghost-light. I was usually awake, to welcome her into my arms, but sometimes she arrived when I was asleep, and our bodies collided happily in the night.

Other evenings, Evie and I ventured into the Territory and established a world there. Ithaca, maybe. The interior of a Mustang, heading for California. I found it easy to suspend the events of the day and slip into my self-appointed role. But as the months passed, Evie was more weary, and less convincing. She didn’t want to play Penelope; couldn’t she be Eurydice, where you got to stay in bed? She couldn’t hold a plate at shoulder-height, and would let it fall into her lap; you could never do that with a steering wheel. I tried to compensate. My performances became more maniacal. There was some embarrassment to that, I thought, being five years older. All the same, I knew that we couldn’t stay in the room. Not every night. There had to be some world apart from it.

Bill waited for me outside the council office. He had a supermarket bag looped around one wrist, and half of a sandwich in his hand. Everything about him was soft: his stomach and his eyes, and the place where his face met his neck. He was smiling, as if he was thinking about something special and specific.

‘Hello,’ I said, and he blinked.

‘Alexandra. I didn’t recognize you.’

‘It’s good to see you,’ I said, and meant it.

He held out a hand, and I shook it.

‘I know that you don’t have to be here,’ I said. ‘I appreciate it.’

‘You don’t want to face those cronies on your own.’

‘I think that I could handle them.’

‘Oh, I think that you could handle anyone.’

The truth was that Bill had done it all. He had recommended a probate lawyer to review the documents signed by my siblings. He had appointed a surveyor, and read their report. He had investigated the council’s budget and assessed its current offerings. He had lunched with the councillors themselves, who were old fashioned, sure, but easily charmed. He had procured our Friday-morning appointment, when everybody – he was sure of it – would be in a good mood.

‘Are you ready?’ Bill asked.

‘I’ve got notes. And the plans.’

The plans were my only contribution. Christopher worked as an architect at a great glass studio in North London, and had agreed to spend an afternoon in Hollowfield, composing a first set of drawings at a discounted rate.

‘Could I make a weekend of it?’ he asked, when he was booking a train.

‘I wouldn’t.’

He had hand-delivered a neat wooden tube to the Romilly. When he passed it over, his hands were quivering. He crossed to the window and waited there, watching the street below, while I unravelled the paper across the duvet. There were layers of it, so that the community centre appeared at first from the outside, encased in metal and wood. Beneath that, the external walls were removed and the interior exposed. Figures walked between the rooms and met at tables, in corridors, at the kitchen sink. On the last sheet, the building was a shell, to reveal the garden behind it. I traced the fine pencil lines with a finger, trying to consolidate this with the house I remembered. Even the form of it was incompatible with Moor Woods Road, where each sheet of paper had been dog-eared, and drawn on before.

‘There’s something uniquely embarrassing,’ Christopher said, ‘about creating something for a friend—’

‘It’s perfect,’ I said, and started to laugh. ‘Is it expensive?’

‘Well. It could be—’

Inside the office, the receptionist stirred, like somebody waking up.

‘They’re waiting for you,’ she said.

Together, we took the drab corridor. There seemed to be a grandeur to these buildings in London, cared for quietly through the nights, but here there were vacant bulbs and piles of tatty flyers. Events long passed, and poorly attended. The carpet was matted with dirt and gum, and curling away from the walls, as if it had decided that the time had come to leave.

The councillors received us in their chamber, which was just a small, hot room, with heavy curtains and a table too big for its inhabitants. I had prepared myself to recognize them – to be recognized – but they were all old and unfamiliar. I thought of Devlin, always the first into the meeting room, her hand outstretched, her mouth on the brink of a smile. Devlin would devour them whole.

‘This is Alexandra,’ Bill said.

‘Hello,’ I said, and shook five hands. There were a dozen spare chairs at the table, but I stayed standing. Let them see me, I thought. Give them a tale to tell at tonight’s dinner table. Let them look.