Girl A(88)

‘She was certainly subtle,’ I said. ‘I’ll give her that.’

‘Do you know what she said,’ Bill said, ‘when I’d ask if I should contact you? When she was dying, I mean. I’d ask if you might visit, if I got in touch. And she just said, oh, no. Lex is much too clever for that.’

A dull red blush advanced to his ears, and he was no longer interested in looking at me. I tried to think of something pleasant to say, to fill the rest of the drive. I thought of him arriving home, hours late, to a plate warming in the oven. He clawed off his shirt and trousers, and calmed himself – sensibly, alone – in a quiet bedroom. That ungrateful fucking bitch. He would, I admitted, probably never think something like that.

He didn’t get out of the car to say goodbye. I clambered out and stood on the pavement, watching him through the open window. I had sweated through my shirt and suit, and I tucked my hands beneath my arms, afraid of what he might gather from the patches.

‘I appreciate your help, Bill,’ I said. ‘But I can take it from here.’

He didn’t look at me. His eyes were fixed on the dull road home.

‘Your father,’ Bill said. ‘Did you ever think about what he did to her?’

‘You know,’ I said, ‘there was always so much else to think about.’

Evie was waiting for me in the room above the pub, tiny amidst the two beds. She was pale and slouched, but still she smiled when I walked through the door.

‘Tell me. Tell me everything.’

‘How are you feeling?’

‘I’ll be fine. Come on, Lex!’

While I showered, she sat in the corner of the bathroom, the knobs of her spine against the radiator. I narrated the day from the cubicle, gesturing through the stream of water, ducking out to catch the expressions on her face. ‘You nailed it,’ she said. ‘Absolutely.’

When I spoke about Bill: ‘How the hell did Mother manage that?’

In response to the house, she was quieter. ‘I need to go back there,’ she said. ‘What did you feel?’

‘Nothing.’

She smiled. ‘That’s such a Lex answer. “Nothing”.’

‘I don’t know what else to say. It was just an ordinary house. Are you going to tell me how you’re doing, now?’

‘Not so good.’

‘Allergic to Hollowfield?’

I had been joking, but she considered it. ‘I don’t know. It started when we arrived. A kind of – fear, I suppose. Like – dread.’

‘We can leave now. Stay somewhere in Manchester, or back in London. You should see the hotel—’

‘I’m too tired, Lex. Tomorrow.’

‘First thing tomorrow.’

I bought a bottle of wine from the bar and we finished it in a chair beneath our window, waiting for the storm. The wind blew down from the moors, already damp from where it had come. Sky the colour of sand. I wrapped a blanket around Evie and set my feet on the window ledge. Down on the high street, people scurried beneath shopfronts and back to their cars. It was good to be here, inside and together, and close to the end of the day.

‘I’m worried about you,’ I said.

‘I’m just tired.’

‘You’re tiny. You need to eat.’

‘Sh. Tell me a story. Like you used to do.’

‘It was a dark and stormy night.’

She laughed. ‘A good story.’

‘A good story? OK. At the beginning of the story, there are seven brothers and sisters. Four boys; three girls.’

‘I’m not sure about this story,’ she said. She glanced at me, one eyebrow raised. ‘I feel like I know how it ends.’

‘What about if they live by the seaside? In a great wooden house over the beach.’

‘Better.’

‘Their parents work hard. Their dad runs a little IT business. Their mum’s the editor of the town paper.’

‘She survived the journalism cuts?’

‘They had an exceptional website. Her husband designed it.’

‘Touché.’

‘Sometimes the kids like each other and sometimes they don’t. They spend their whole childhood on the beach. They read a lot. They’re each good enough at something. The eldest one – he’s the cleverest—’

‘That isn’t true.’

‘—He’s the cleverest. He has ideas about how the world should be. He has all of these convictions—’

‘The girls. Tell me about them.’

‘Well, one of them’s unspeakably beautiful. She takes after her mother. She works in television. She can make anybody tell her anything. She knows what she wants, and precisely how to get it.’

‘The other two, though.’

‘Oh, they’re all over the place. One of them wants to be an artist. The other one doesn’t know what she wants to do. She might be an academic. She might be an escort. She might be a lawyer, even. There’s plenty of time for them to think about it.’

‘They can be anything they want to be.’

‘Exactly. Before they decide, they set off from the wooden house, and they travel the world. They have a bucket list from the books they’ve read. They’re away for many months – for years.’