Three

“Our last GCSE!” Amy leans her bicycle against her neat, narrow hip, shades her eyes against the afternoon sun. “I can’t believe it. Do you realise we’ve worked years for this moment?”

“Never worked so hard in my life!” Ruth runs a hand through her dark untidy curls. She props her bike against the gutter. “It feels weird and wonderful! Ice creams to celebrate? My treat.”

Amy grins. “The largest chocolate ice cream in the world and sod the calories.”

“With a figure like yours, who needs to count?” Ruth vanishes inside the newsagent’s. The violin she’s propped in her bike basket makes the bike topple over. Amy laughs. It’s typical of Ruth that even her bike has a life of its own.

She looks along the quiet village street, the familiar shops, the people – she recognises most of them – going about their business. Nothing ever changes here. Everything’s neat and tidy, in its proper place. Just the way I like it.

She checks the coiled bun of hair at the nape of her neck. Smooth and correct. Then her bike basket. All those biology books can go back on the shelf above her desk, along with her immaculate files.

Tonight she’ll cook a special supper for Dad: one of her chicken casseroles, with a summer pudding to follow. She has all the ingredients in her sparkling kitchen. She plans their meals every Saturday and shops at the Liphook supermarket with Dad in the afternoon.

This evening, they’ll eat in the dining room, candles shining on the mahogany table, their serviettes in lovely silver rings. They’ll walk Tyler on the Common, talk about her work for the next few months.

It’s six years since Mum died. It feels longer: as if she and Dad have always lived alone together, happiest in each other’s company, though delighted when Julian’s home. And when Aunt Charlotte comes to stay: at Christmas and Easter, and often at weekends. Just to keep in touch, look after Amy. Make sure that Dad’s OK.

Amy, almost sixteen now, is going to be a doctor. Julian’s reading History of Art at Cambridge. He’s always turned up his nose at medicine. “I’m much too squeamish,” he’d say, shuddering at the thought of “all those bodies . . . You can be the worthy one, sis! Give me a painting any day. Bodies in paintings don’t cough and bleed!”

But Amy’s longing to follow in Dad’s footsteps. And one day, if she decides to be a GP, maybe she’ll join his practice. He’ll hand over his files. “Remember Mrs Meadows? Her son has a strange new virus . . .” Oh, yes. Her inheritance. That’s what Dad’s life has been about. Caring for the village folk until it’s her turn to take over . . .

Ruth emerges from the newsagent’s holding two huge ice creams. She hands the chocolate one to Amy, buries her face in a livid pink concoction.

Amy laughs. “You’ve got strawberry bits all over your nose.”

“So? Part of the fun.” Ruth picks up her bike with her free hand and glances at Amy. “Coming to the club in Guildford tonight? Me and Eddie are going. Pete said he’d be there.”

Amy savours the coolness of the ice. “Pete who?”

“Oh, come on, Amy! Pete Franklin. You met him on Saturday, lives in Haslemere. Says he fancies you.”

Amy blushes, furious with herself. “Sorry. I’m cooking for Dad.”

“You can do that any night.”

“No, I can’t.” Amy bites off a neat piece of cone. “He’s usually on call. Said he’d take a night off, to celebrate the last of my exams. I’m defrosting the chicken.”

Ruth swallows a dollop of ice cream. “Do you know what, Amy Grant? You’re becoming more than a little dull!”

“Too bad!”

“It is too bad . . . Me and Eddie have been together for ages. You’ve never even had a boyfriend.”

“What’s the rush?” Amy says vaguely.

Ruth turns away to chat to one of her neighbours. Amy is about to join in when something catches her eye.

Somebody familiar – very familiar – has come out of the Indian restaurant at the end of the street.

Dad.

But he’s not alone.

A tall woman with smooth dark hair cut into a short bob has come out with him. She’s wearing a cream-coloured suit with a long jacket and a knee-length skirt. She’s tying a scarf round her neck, talking to Dad. More than talking – they’re laughing, standing close together, he’s looking into her eyes.

They turn and start to cross the road. Dad flings an arm in front of her, pulls her back from an oncoming Land Rover. It looks as if they’re going to the surgery . . .

“Amy?”

“What?”

“You haven’t listened to a word. What are you staring at?”

“Nothing.”

“Come on, tell me.”

Amy swallows the last of her cone. It tastes bitter. She glances at Ruth. “I thought I saw my dad with someone.”

“Who?”

“A woman. I’ve never seen her before. They came out of the Manzil, walked off down the road arm in arm.”

“What’s so extraordinary about that?”

Amy says quietly, “Dad didn’t tell me he was taking anyone to lunch.”

Ruth stares at her. “For goodness’sake, Amy. Does he have to tell you everything?”

“No, he doesn’t have to . . . He just does.”

“That’s daft.” Ruth takes another swipe at her unruly hair. “He’s got a life of his own, hasn’t he? Maybe she’s one of his patients.”

“She didn’t look ill. I didn’t recognise her. I’m sure she’s not from round here.”

Ruth pushes her bike into the road and straddles it. “There’s only one way to find out. You’ll have to ask him at that supper of yours tonight.”

Amy stirs the rich casserole, sniffing at the pungent, honest tang of garlic which cuts like a knife through the steamy air.

“That smells wonderful!” Dad puts his head round the door. “Can I help?”

“It’s all done.” Amy reaches to kiss his cheek. It feels rough with a day’s growth of beard. “Good day?”

“Very good.” Dad smiles. His dark eyes beneath their heavy brows look brighter than usual. “Twenty out of ten.”

A pang of alarm shoots through Amy’s heart. “I had a good day too.”

“Of course!” Dad spins round from the sink. “How was biology?”

“I could answer all the questions standing on my head.”

“Great!” Dad hugs her. “I’m sure you’ve done brilliantly. Here, let me take the casserole.”

Amy carries a bowl of new potatoes and green beans into the dining room. The scent of the roses she’d arranged on the table is drowned by the aroma of chicken.

“So,” she says carefully when they’ve eaten. Her heart thumps uncomfortably. She forces herself to ask. “Did you find time for lunch today?”

“That was delicious, Amy. You’re an excellent cook.” Dad looks at the flowers. “We need to plant more roses. Keep replenishing Mum’s rose garden. Maybe we could drive to the garden centre, check their new stock.”

“I’d like that.” Amy stands up. She stacks the summer-pudding plates. Her legs feel surprisingly weak. She says flatly, trying to seem nonchalant, aware she’s doggedly repeating the question, making it into a statement, “So you didn’t have lunch.”

Dad folds his serviette, pushes it through the ring. He does not look up. “Guess I had a sandwich at my desk.”

“He lied.”

Amy sits in the hall talking to Ruth on the phone. Dad had vanished in the car on an errand and taken Tyler with him.

“An out-and-out lie. A sandwich at his desk. Why would he say that?”

“He must’ve had a reason.”

“Yeah. He doesn’t want me to know what he’s doing any more.”

“Nonsense. P’raps it’s a question of patient confidentiality.”

“Don’t give me that! Not in the Manzil at lunchtime!”

“Maybe that lunch is a weekly date. We’re not usually in the village so early in the afternoon. It was only because we’d taken the last exam and we had the rest of the day off. Maybe he and this woman have been to that restaurant lots of times, but you’ve just never seen them.”

“So if she’s a friend, why hasn’t he told me about her?”

“Either she is someone special and he doesn’t want you to know about her, or she’s so unimportant he’s forgotten.”

Amy says slowly, “I think she’s special. He said he’d had a wonderful day.”

Ruth sounds impatient. “You’re making a mountain out of a molehill. Why didn’t you tell him you’d seen her and ask him who she is?”

“I can’t explain.” Amy curls the telephone cord round her fingers until it hurts. “I don’t want to pry.”

“Look, Amy. Suppose your dad has got a girlfriend. It’s been years since your mum . . .”

“Six years,” Amy says abruptly.

“Exactly. So why shouldn’t he?”

“Because –” Amy is surprised and alarmed that her eyes sting with tears – “because he belongs to me.”

“Hey, come on, Amy. Get a life. You’re his daughter, not his –”

“I know what I am.” Amy rubs the base of her right hand into her eyes. “You don’t need to remind me.” She hears Ruth’s front-door bell ring.

“Eddie’s here.” Ruth’s voice is flustered. “Sure you won’t come with us?”

Amy stares across the hall floor. The late-evening sun filters through the stained-glass windows in the front door, dappling the tiles with rainbow-coloured, gently moving shadows.

“I’m not in the mood. Those exams have worn me out.”

“You’ll be sorry.”

No, I won’t. All that silly chat, all that noise. And Pete, with his skinny chest and big ears. Why would anyone want to spend the evening with him?

Amy goes back to the kitchen, clatters plates into the dishwasher, lays the table for breakfast. Then she runs up to the room which is her special sanctuary: Mum’s study.

That day of the funeral, in the evening, when everyone had gone, she’d written Dad a note: Please can we keep Mum’s room just as it is? Not touch anything? Ask Dora to keep it clean, but not to move anything or make it different?

Dad had nodded, immediately understood.

Now Amy opens the door. The room lies directly above her own bedroom and shares the view of the garden. Here she can see over the paved terrace leading from the house, over the lawn and the rose garden, out across the silver birch and rowan tree to the Common and the deep fir woods beyond.

The sun lies low in the June sky; a blackbird sings from the birch. Amy looks at the old sofa and slouchy chairs, the wide desk under the window, the shelves piled with books on gardening and design. Even now, when she buries her face among the cushions, she remembers the smell of Blue Grass, the perfume her mother always wore, its pungent freshness.

One cushion in particular. Mum had made it as a present for her, that last Christmas. She’d embroidered her favourite stained-glass window from Saint Luke’s: Saint Elizabeth, standing proud and stocky with her bare arms and feet, holding in her apron nine pink roses and a loaf of bread.

“She’s carrying her garden with her,” Mum always said. “What I love about her is her strength.”

Amy raises her head.

“Something’s going on, Mum. I don’t know what it is and I could be wrong. But at supper tonight, Dad lied to me. That’s never happened before and I’m scared.”

She looks above the small stone fireplace. On the wall hangs Mum’s portrait, painted by a student friend. Mum sits in a garden on a curly iron chair, behind her a pale purple lilac tree in full bloom. She wears jeans and a white shirt, the sleeves rolled to her elbows. She holds an apple, out of which she’s taken a single bite. Her hair hangs loose on her shoulders, thick, curling, dark red. Amy’s inheritance.

“I don’t know what to do.”

Mum stares down at her, the half-smile lifting her mouth, lighting her extraordinary pale grey-green eyes.

The silence in the room intensifies.

“Talk to me,” Amy says. “If you were me, Mum, what would you do?”