2018
EDIE GREEN, THE SKY WILL offer no solution to Pythagoras. I look from the window to the blackboard. The sums are all still there, white unfathomable markings. Dust motes float in the air. I can smell wood polish and boiled cabbage. My hands are stained with black ink. I return my gaze to the window and there I am, walking with Lucy up the High Street, the sun behind us. It’s my secret, Edie. We pass the church, our satchels on our shoulders. In the churchyard they are lowering my father into the ground. Reverend Thurby says a prayer as my mother dabs at her eyes with her best handkerchief. I spit a piece of confetti into my hand then turn and run through the church gate, all the way home. There goes ghosty girl, Judy says. They found her bicycle in a field. At home my mother is in the garden with Smudge in her arms. He was in the shed. Who’d have thought? We’ve been courting, Edie, in case you hadn’t noticed. I lower my eyes and when I lift them my father is there digging up the lawn. We’ll be safe in here, Edie. They’ve saved lives, these shelters. Will you fetch me a glass of water, love? There’s a good girl. My mother stands in the kitchen, her hands on her hips. Have you ripped your dress again, Edie? Whatever will people think? I take him his glass of water, hardly spilling any, then pick up my spade, the spade I bring to the beach where I build castles and squat down by the surf looking for pink shells. Lucy stubs her cigarette out with the heel of her shoe. I get this delicious pain just thinking about him.
‘Mum, are you even listening to me?’
I stare out of the window as Daniel turns the engine off. Words, images, fragments, they drift through my mind like scattered dandelion seeds, blowing hither and thither on the breeze. They seem useless, nothing more than thistledown, pieces of a puzzle that won’t fit together. Only I know they do fit together, somehow. There are important bits, gaps I need to fill in.
We’ve pulled up outside a house with a SOLD board outside. Someone has staked it into the front lawn. ‘Where are we now?’ I ask.
Daniel ignores me. He opens the car door and gets out. Then he is round at my side, undoing my seat belt, offering me his arm.
‘I can manage,’ I say, crossly. But I take his arm anyway.
He pulls a key from his pocket and then we’re inside a familiar hallway. ‘Look, you’ll be all right, won’t you, Mum? Get yourself a cup of tea. Put some warmer clothes on. Or go for a nap. I’m sorry, I’ve got to get to work, I’m late enough as it is.’ He glances at his watch. ‘I’ll give you a call later, okay?’
‘Don’t go. Please don’t go.’
But the door is closing. I see him outside, through the coloured glass, fiddling with the lock, a blur of features, suit and tie. His footsteps on the path, crunching on the gravel. He’s right. I should put some warmer clothes on; I’m in my nightdress but I can’t think why. How embarrassing. I hope no one saw, I’d be mortified.
Once changed, I make a cup of tea in the kitchen and sit at the table. I wonder where Arthur is? I suppose he’s at work. Didn’t he just say he was going to be late? He seemed to be in a rush. I sip my tea and reach for the crossword, remembering I was stuck on something. I drum my pencil against the folded paper. Ah, yes, there it is: leporid mammal. Six down. What is a leporid mammal? I know this, I’m sure I do.
Leporid mammal.
Rabbit. Of course.
I begin to fill in my squares. It’s the last clue and I feel a sense of satisfaction at completing the crossword. R-A-B-B-I-T.
Rabbit.
Eggs and rabbits. Rabbit and eggs. Weren’t they what my mother saw?
I grip the arm of my chair; the room is swaying, objects sharpening then blurring. A cast iron rabbit with a chipped ear. Two untouched fried eggs. Blood pooling on the floor. Reg’s trembling hands, my mother’s voice: people will interpret my visions in all sorts of ways when they’re looking for answers.
It can’t be right. It can’t be true.
Feeling wildly disorientated, I take Arthur’s magnifying glass from its leather case and place it over the photograph we took from George, pressing the glass over our young, hopeful faces, lingering on Lucy. It seems like only yesterday we were there together with Miss Munby. Lucy is smiling; the collar of her blouse is neatly pressed, and she wears a thin chain around her neck, a tiny charm resting at her throat.
The chain I found at the bottom of my jewellery box, the one I’ve been wearing all along – it had slipped under the lining and I couldn’t think where it had come from. Now, I see it in the pawn shop window. A hot July day. I’m on my way to meet Lucy but I never got a chance to return the necklace to her.
I see myself, an awkward girl of fifteen with sore hands and a bloody handkerchief. There I am in a too-hot tweed skirt, resting my bicycle against the wall, entering the house by the kitchen door. And then it returns: the memory, a splintered-off part of the jumbled narrative of my life, forgotten and dusty, but also as fresh as if it happened yesterday. Lucy, lying on the kitchen floor, Reg, noticing me come in, the panic in his eyes, his insistence that we could never tell anyone, that we had to forget we were anything to do with it. What I did in order to protect my mother.
Lucy Theddle is missing, they said.
I ease myself up from my chair, my legs heavy. In the hallway, I slowly climb the stairs, standing, looking at my picture gallery, at all the photographs of my family. All the photographs of the life I’ve led, the life I never deserved to lead. I take one from the wall and throw it down the stairs onto the hallway tiles. I do the same with the next, and the next. One by one I pull the pictures down off their hooks and throw them. I enjoy the sound of the photographs bouncing down the stairs, the musical note of the smashing glass. My hallway is littered with parts of frames, broken glass and discarded pictures. Once I have a bare wall, I carefully step over the broken frames and shards of glass and go into the kitchen.
Then I begin to panic. I can’t forget. Not again. I reach for a pad of paper, the pad Josie writes my shopping lists on. I grab a pen and write in large shaky handwriting: Lucy was on the floor. She fell on the rabbit. Reg said we couldn’t tell anyone. Reg made it go away.
I look down at what I have written. I am ready to face the consequences, to sacrifice the rest of my life so that Lucy and her family can finally have their peace, the closure they deserve. I’ve got to work out a way of getting out of the house when I’m locked in; I must confess to what I’ve done. I’ll call them now. I’ll call the police and tell them what I did.
Putting the note in my pocket, I leave the kitchen and wander along the hallway. I feel ever so unsettled although I can’t think why. What was it I was about to do? I’m sure there was something. It was just there and now it’s gone. Perhaps there is an untouched cup of tea in the living room. That could be it. I’m always making cups of tea and forgetting to drink them. It wouldn’t be the first time. Then I notice someone has made a mess in the hallway. There are shards of glass on the floor. I’ll have to get the dustpan and brush.