The afternoon light struck the trees, flung shadows down. Tilly walked silently next to Raff. The ground was hot and dusty; wind-roused leaves scampered over it like little animals. Ada’s brown arms swung and her singing drifted back towards them as she skipped ahead. She was eager to tell their mother that the fox wasn’t dead after all. She loved to be the one to tell, even if it was a lie. Ada’s problems seemed so enviably simple. Tilly couldn’t remember life ever feeling like that, solvable, answerable, reasonable. But it must have been. She must have been as happy and lucky as Ada was. Maybe Ada would change too when she got older. Maybe that’s what getting older was—realising the unwieldy immensity of your own interior. Then trying to make your inside match your outside, which was like trying to make a hand-drawn sewing pattern match up even though the inside seams are too large. She was always running fast over the mistakes, stuffing her big feelings in like toys in a Christmas stocking that no one ever opened. It made her feel untrue—her inner self was far away from the person who was representing her out there.
The moment Ada was out of sight, Tilly missed her. Because Ada had made it easier: Ada made it three. Whatever was between her and Raff was diffused by Ada and also inconspicuously allowed. The air bristled with bird sounds and a sense of portent. She and Raff were alone, but the distance between them was stretched thin.
‘Well, I’ll be glad to get out of this town one day,’ Tilly said. She hadn’t prepared herself to say that at all, to create an impression of someone with direction, a false impression. Yet it didn’t feel like a lie, it felt like a reach for the self she wanted to be, the self that had tottered forward, without even a push.
‘Yeah? Where will you go?’
‘Ice skating first of all. At St Moritz.’
He frowned.
‘I thought you meant you wanted to live somewhere else?’
‘Yes, I do. Ireland.’
‘Why Ireland?’
‘Because of their voices…’
‘You’re funny.’
‘Well, I try to be very normal.’
‘It wouldn’t suit you.’
‘I could pull it off—you’d be surprised. I have very good manners for one thing.’
She thought if she could put her hands on his face she would hold it as if it was the most precious thing she had ever held. He picked up a stone and turned it over in his hand.
‘Do you sing?’ he said.
‘Only to myself.’
‘I do my best singing to myself.’
Why had he asked that? Did it count for him? Was he checking off requirements? Could he only love a girl who could sing? And what if he asked her to sing and she really couldn’t after all and he would think she had told a fib just to impress him when she had just meant she sang in the way everyone sang, not in the way that real singers sing, the ones with lovely voices. Should she tell him right now, to clear it up so he wouldn’t be disappointed should she ever have to sing in front of him? Probably he could sing well, because he played the trumpet. That other girl probably sang, the one with the Shirley Temple hair. She looked like she was a singer. She was even sort of golden like a canary. She probably purred too. She’d have a sultry voice, and growl Nina Simone love songs with her flaxen curls and high heels. She probably had experience too. She wouldn’t be frightened of sex and all the other stuff that came before it. She was like a movie star, with her inviting smile directed straight at him.
Raff was rubbing at his forehead, as if it hurt. ‘I got this song stuck in my head. It’s terrible. Because of the fox.’
‘What song?’
He began to hum…She knew the song.
‘“Fox on the Run”,’ she told him straightaway. He was nodding and singing in a laughing way. She had got it right. There they were walking down the street past the house that overflowed with children and goats and odd bits of furniture, past Beryl Minister’s house with the lawn always closely shaved and past Doug’s copse of thin elms all swept clean because of fire risk, and beneath the flat, blue sky and glinting tin rooves and past everything that was always there. But now that the world had shifted into a bright unfamiliar perfection, it all seemed different: bolder, bluer, clearer, even astounding. Tilly chimed in on the chorus. And everything conspired to belong to it; the neighbours’ houses, the hot grey road, the heat and birds and air, she and him, their dance of voices, the brilliant dust. It was only when the song ended that she realised that nothing had really changed except that her own bedraggled soul now sauntered like a dandy past the shabby familiarity of her street.
Home, when they arrived, clamped its old ways over it all. They paused at the door. She thought it was all over, but he kissed her—he grinned for a second and then just pulled her towards him and kissed her on the mouth. It lasted long enough that she knew it was a real kiss and she had time to blink and blink again, glimpsing his jaw, his ear and his neck. He looked at her in a tender way and then stuck his hands in his pockets. She stepped back to see his whole face and to see if she could tell what he felt, but he was already saying something, quietly and with a frown.
‘You know I’m moving to Melbourne next week?’
‘No.’ She deflated instantly.
‘It’s a shame in a way, but I planned it ages ago.’
‘Are you saying that was a goodbye kiss?’
He laughed.
‘Maybe.’
‘Maybe I’ll move to Melbourne too. Once I get my results.’
‘Maybe you will. Look me up if you do.’
‘What will you do there?’
‘I don’t know. Explore. Play music.’
She gave up then. She thought she might just sit down on the step and wrap her arms around her knees and feel sad. She stayed silent. He must have sensed it.
‘You can visit. I’ve got a room with my cousin. You and Ben are pretty different,’ he said as he turned to go.
‘He’s much more handsome,’ she said.
He no doubt meant that Ben was more fun than she was, but the difference between her and Ben came out of his maleness, which made him special to Martha and to the world. None of it was true though, she could be just as sporting as Ben. She could also explore.
He leaned towards her, but he didn’t take her hand again. He smiled. Did he mean to kiss her again? Once was enough. It was alarming. She turned quickly to go inside. She didn’t know how she felt. But here was her chance. Everything felt as if it depended on it. As if it was a test, as if Raff Cavallo’s unconsidered kiss had left him weightlessly but landed within her with all the bundled-up gravity of an imminent explosion. And now he was leaving.