Girl A(99)

We ate on, to the chimes of metal on china.

‘There’s one thing,’ Dad said, ‘and I have to say it—’

He set his hands on the table, palms up, as if he was about to begin grace. I took one hand, and Mum took the other.

‘This wedding,’ he said. ‘We’re worried, Lex.’

A petition, then. I let go of his hand, and kept eating.

‘Seeing them isn’t good for you,’ Mum said. ‘Isn’t that what Dr K says? We just – we want you to get back to New York. Back to work – safe and happy. You don’t owe Ethan anything.’

‘It’s a family wedding. A holiday.’

Mum looked to Dad, and Dad looked to me.

‘What did Dr K say?’ he asked.

The old trust between them, forged in hospital corridors and windowless rooms.

‘She isn’t concerned,’ I said.

‘In that case—’

My parents looked at empty plates, like they were still waiting for a serving of reassurance.

‘If you have to know,’ I said, ‘I have a date.’

Olivia and I flew out in the middle of the week, and early. At the airport we moved listlessly from WHSmith to Boots, bug-eyed and bored, looking at things which we would never buy. We tried on sunglasses, none of which concealed how old I looked at this time in the morning.

‘Champagne?’

‘Sure.’

There was one of those obnoxious white bars, dumped in the centre of the departure lounge. A few long-dead lobsters languished on ice.

‘Did you see that JP’s baby was born?’ I asked.

There had been a picture of JP online, with a white bundle in his arms. Mother and baby were doing well. They had called the child Atticus, and even alone, I had rolled my eyes.

‘That’s nice,’ Olivia said. ‘I suppose.’

‘I hope that it’s a difficult baby,’ I said. ‘Nothing wrong with him, obviously. Just difficult.’

‘Furious,’ Olivia said.

‘Fucking incandescent, to be honest,’ I said, and she snorted into her champagne flute, and reached for my hand.

Olivia had instructed me to start spending more money, so I hired the single convertible from the island airport. It was just like I had expected as a child, with one button to roll back the rooftop. As soon as she saw it, Olivia started laughing, and she laughed all along the road, gripping her sunglasses and handbag and hair.

Pebbled steps led to the pink villa, with its veranda and shutters, and geckoes flashing up the walls. The hill of the island hovered in the distance. The garden was shaded by a fat fig tree, and tapered into a scrub of wildflowers and pine trees; below that was a cove, and the ocean. We left our suitcases on the veranda and scrambled down to the beach, neither of us ready to speak; the quiet was so absolute that you imagined somebody must be listening. A makeshift jetty bobbed in the tide, the wood of it slick and splintered, and in the shade of the cove there was a rudimentary rowing boat, upturned and missing its oars. There was something improbable about the mundane items in isolation, as if they must be magical, or cursed.

Olivia sat down on the pebbles and pulled off her shoes and socks, and then her jeans. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘It’s too good to wait.’

We staggered to the sea, hand in hand, and into the shallows. Feet alabaster beneath the water. Shoals of translucent fish swarmed between us, neat as starlings.

That first night, in a strange bed with the wrong kind of pillows, I received an email from Bill. They’ll fund it, the email said.

I lay there for a few long minutes, reading the message again. The happy thumping of my heart was too loud for the bedroom. Olivia was already asleep, and I couldn’t speak to anybody else I’d have liked to tell. I padded down to the kitchen, poured a glass of wine, and took it out to the veranda. The night was warm and silvered, and I raised my glass, to no one in particular.

Soon, there would be a curtain of scaffolding around 11 Moor Woods Road, and behind it, the house would change.

The rooms are full of people, bearing power tools and flasks. They drain the floors and the garden. They shift the upstairs weight from the old walls and knock them through. They joke about the contents of the garden, but only in the daylight. Christopher visits, wearing cashmere and high vis. Nobody wants the site waste, even for scrap. They plaster in the New Year, then leave the house to dry. They fit windows, lights, sockets, switches. They hang the doors and furnish the rooms. Last of all, they decorate. In the library, a local artist paints a girl and a boy, hand in hand, life-size. They are running, in motion, about to slip from the wall. The boy is seven or eight, and the girl is already a teenager. They are older than they have ever been, and they share a knowing smile.

We lived for three days in extended celebration. Slow and planless, and often drunk. I ran in the morning, when the light was still cool and new. We swam before lunch. Olivia crawled far out, beyond the cove and into the open water, until her body was indistinguishable from the sea and the sunlight. I stopped when the water line cut my throat and hovered there, inelegant, listening to my breath and the lap of the tide. I surveyed the beach and the rocks above it. The whole island dotted with secret coves and olive groves. You could believe the myths, when you were here. You could believe anything. I waded back to the shore and across the pebbles, trailing saltwater.