CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

1997

They trip along the line of the grass- and daisy-filled canal, the sun dipping ahead of them, pushing its light through the leaves above. Night is far from fallen but there is a low moon in the sky, hanging there as a warning that soon it will be dark.

They hold hands, teetering on tiptoes, swinging on their own weight away from each other. Their feet trace the narrow meander of the canal, one after the other, one after the other. It is quiet now. Leaves brush against each other in furtive whispers. There is the occasional rattle and high-pitched call of a starling, but otherwise the air is soft and kind, and the girls say nothing as they walk along hand in hand.

They reach the part of the path where the willow tree weeps over their fence, then they stop and turn like ballerinas on a child’s wind-up jewellery box until they are facing the gate at the bottom of their garden and they know it is time to go inside.

Once inside the parameters of the fence, it is as if the magic has gone. The spell washes clean off their clothes as they cross over the boundary from the wild, untended land outside and step onto the neat, trimmed grass of the postage-stamp-sized lawn that their father mows religiously every Sunday. The calm on their faces fades as they push the gate open, falls from them like dress-up clothes, and they run across the garden like two happy playful girls, over to where their mother waits.

The gate swings behind them, slamming back against the fence in the breeze. Beyond it lies the canal, all-knowing and all-seeing, silent guardian of the secrets slithering on their bellies along its length.

As the sun sets and the windows pop with light in the house where the girls eat their tea and watch television, night eventually comes, lush and perfumed, the gate still banging in the breeze.