44

‘S’mai, Dad,’ said Bradwen.

Rhys Jones put the dog down without answering the greeting. ‘Stay,’ he said. His galoshes were on the doorstep, facing away from the house; he could step right into them. He did, keeping his balance with one hand on the jamb. The dog looked up at him, panting excitedly. Without so much as looking at Bradwen, he walked down the crushed-slate path to his car, which was parked next to the house with the bumper almost touching the old pigsty. He opened the car door. ‘Sam,’ he called. The dog – which had tried to peer round the corner, nervous, with his head at an angle – flew out of the house and leapt into the car without a moment’s hesitation; it was obviously something he’d done many times before.

She had come out too by now, in her socks. A kind of triangle resulted: Rhys Jones at the car, Bradwen next to the future rose bed and her at the door. It wasn’t really cold any more; the last flakes of snow were dripping from the rose leaves.

‘So those socks are for you?’ the sheep farmer said. It wasn’t really a question. He’d already gone round the car and opened the door on the driver’s side.

‘Socks?’ the boy asked.

She looked from the boy to the man and back again. If Bradwen is a gymnast, she thought, Rhys Jones is a judoka who gave it up twenty years ago and let himself go to seed. She sucked on her cigarette, very hard, and blew out the smoke, which was thick in the damp air. Rhys Jones climbed in and started the car. Sam sat next to him, alert and staring straight ahead, his tongue lolling out of his mouth. A sheepdog. Happy. Next to his real master, the alpha male. Suddenly she understood why the dog had sat with her so often, why he had so willingly abandoned his post in front of the bathroom door that very first day: she was on the same level as the boy. The black car – it was a pickup – backed up, disappearing from her field of vision. She saw the shelf under the mirror before her, the first box of tablets. Just as her own body had seemed to emerge from the water with a slight lag earlier, everything outside seemed to be a quarter of a second out of sync too. She wanted to take another tablet now to keep it that way.

Shirley, the doctor, the baker and his wife, Rhys Jones and Bradwen. The boy was very naked now, without a dog, behind the pots with scrawny, dripping rose bushes, the straps of a small rucksack across his chest. ‘Come here,’ she said, when the car was out of earshot. If she didn’t call him, he would probably just stay there. She tossed the cigarette away and grabbed the boy. The rucksack was in the way; she wormed her hands in under it and hugged him to her chest. He smelt unbelievably good. She let her hands slide down and pulled his lower body up against hers.

‘Socks?’ he asked again, warm breath on her throat. He had wrapped his arms lightly around her.

‘That man doesn’t know what he’s talking about,’ she said. She saw the oak lying there like a fallen candelabra with uneven arms. If the tree’s left to lie there like that, it will end up turning into a second moss bridge. The smell of fresh bread overwhelmed the smell of the boy.