IT’S SUNDAY. IT’S cold, far too cold to go out for a walk, with a bitter, gritty rain. I make popcorn, and we sit on the floor by the gas fire in the living room, the bowl of popcorn between us. We have cards and glue and scissors and heaps of old Sunday papers I’ve kept, and copies of Heat and OK! Today we will make a collage. I have the television on. It’s a black-and-white film from the thirties, starring Betty Grable with high suede pumps and complicated hair. Neither of us is watching it. This makes me guilty, always—they say it’s bad for children’s language, this constant background chatter—but it makes me feel less lonely, having other voices here.
I flick through a weekend supplement, distracted by the fashion pages, which have dresses made from recycled parachute silk. Lavinia would love them. Sylvie works steadily, nibbling her lip. She has to cut slowly, concentrating and squeezing hard with each cut, because the scissors are rather too big for her hands, and as she cuts, she holds her breath. When I find a picture I think she’d like, I add it to her pile.
An advertisement catches my eye. It shows a man on a wide, rocky shore, and he has the same body type as Dominic, that rather heavy, solid look, and he’s wearing a long green riding raincoat that swirls around him as he walks, exactly the coat that Dominic used to wear. I always instantly notice things that are like Dominic’s—his signet ring, club tie, the smell of his cigars. Sometimes I’ll turn in the street, reeled in by sudden longing because some passerby is wearing Dominic’s cologne. Now, looking at the photograph, I can smell him, feel his touch. The advertisement is for a firm that sells clothes for outdoor pursuits and sportswear. In the background, there’s an open, empty seascape—white sand, dark rocks, bright sky.
Sylvie notices me staring at the picture. She’s sitting opposite me, and she has to twist her head so she can see the picture properly. Her gaze flicks from the photo to my face and back again to the photo, her eyes widening, brightening; then she flings herself against me. The side of her face and body are hot from the gas fire. She gives me a brief, hot hug. I can feel her heart pound.
“You found it, Grace,” she says. Her smile is like a light switched on.
I don’t understand what I’ve done. I wonder briefly, crazily, if she has some secret knowledge of her father, if somehow, unknown to me, she has found out about him, if she knows this looks like him. She reaches out and touches the page with one finger, in the gentlest stroking movement, like a caress.
“There it is,” she says. “That’s my seaside, isn’t it, Grace?”
“Of course,” I say. “You can put it in your collage.”
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
She has a luminous, confident smile, as though something has happened that she has been expecting. She startles me. She’s so sure, so vivid.
I look at the picture more carefully. It’s a clever photograph. The light on the water is clear but somehow tentative. You can tell the weather keeps shifting here, blowing in from the sea. The white beach glimmers in the uncertain sunlight; the sand is flat and silky wet and just recently smoothed by the tide, and the black rocks have a crust of chalky barnacles. It’s shallow a long way out, the tide must sweep in rapidly, and the shadows of clouds are moving across the water, deepening its color to the most lavish cobalt blue. Right at the edge of the picture, there’s a little harbor with fishing boats.
“Yes. It’s beautiful,” I say.
I start to tear out the page.
She reaches over and grabs my arm.
“Be careful, Grace,” she says sharply. Her fingers are fierce on my wrist. “Don’t tear it.”
“Okay. I’ll cut it,” I tell her.
I take the scissors and start to cut. She watches me, holding her breath.
“Be very very careful,” she says.
I hand it to her.
“There. You can stick it down now.”
She shakes her head.
“I want it to go by my bed. Can we stick it by my bed, Grace?”
“Of course,” I say, surprised. “If you want to.”
I find the Blu-Tack, and we stick the picture to the side of her wardrobe so she’ll be able to see it when she’s lying in bed.
Her collage no longer interests her. She sits on the bed with her legs folded under her, gazing at the picture. Her face is flushed and thrilled. She sits there for a long time. All evening she seems happy.
That night, when I’ve tucked her in, I sit by her bed for a while. With only her bedside lamp on, her room seems larger, emptier. Dark thickens in the corners, and under her clothes that are hanging on pegs on the back of the door. Sitting here quietly, I start to see things in these patches and clots of impenetrable shadow—the shapes of spiders or distorted faces. I wish I could manage more furniture, perhaps a desk for Sylvie and a chest of drawers for her clothes. We look as though we’re just squatting, like we haven’t really moved in. If we had a bit more furniture, it might not feel so lonely here.
Sylvie is nearly asleep, her eyelids flickering extravagantly. She yawns, turns over; she has her back to me. My heart is racing, but I try to make my voice quite calm.
“Sylvie, tell me about your picture. Why’s it so special, sweetheart?”
For an instant I think I’ve missed the moment, that she’s asleep already.
But then she turns back to face me.
“That’s my seaside, Grace.” Very matter-of-fact, as though this should be obvious.
“It’s a beautiful place,” I say again.
“Yes,” she says. “I lived there, Grace.”
I sit very still for a long, slow moment. Cold moves over my skin.
“I don’t know about it,” I say.
“Don’t you, Grace?” She seems surprised.
“No. I’ve never been there. You’ll have to tell me. Can you tell me anything? Can you tell me about it?”
“It’s my seaside,” she says again. “I lived there.”
“Tell me where you lived,” I say.
“I lived in a little house,” she says. “A white house.” She turns away from me again, gives a vast yawn. “That’s where I lived. And I had a cave and a dragon.”
It’s the ordinary, the everyday, rushing in again, the world righting itself. I feel a wash of mingled disappointment and relief. It’s something she’s seen in a storybook at nursery school, or a fantasy she’s invented, part of an imagined world.
“Wow. A dragon’s cave,” I say, keeping my voice quite level. “A dragon is fabulous.”
She opens her eyes then. There’s a little vertical crease between her brows. Something in my voice doesn’t please her.
“Grace, I’m not being silly.” She frowns at me. She’s slightly annoyed at not being taken seriously. “I did. I had a dragon.”
“It’s certainly a lovely place,” I say again.
“Yes, Grace,” she says. “That’s where I lived. Before.”
Later, I ring Karen.
“This thing happened with Sylvie,” I say. “And I don’t know what to make of it.”
“Okay. Tell.” Wariness creeps into her voice.
“There was this picture in a magazine. Just a photo, in an advertisement. A scene beside the sea. And it was like she recognized it. Like it was somewhere she knew.”
“Grace, just slow down a bit, okay? What did she say exactly?”
“She said she used to live there.”
“That was it? She said she used to live there?”
“She said, ‘I lived in a little house.’”
She pauses, taking this in. I can hear Mozart playing on her stereo, the poised, elegant music she loves.
“Grace, kids do come out with all sorts of weird stuff, you know that. What else did she say?”
“She said, ‘I lived in a little house.’ And I said, ‘Tell me about it,’ and she said, ‘I had a cave and a dragon’ . . .”
“She said she had a dragon?”
I can hear the smile in her voice.
“I know how it sounds,” I say. “And half the time I think that too, that it was all just fantasy. But she really seemed to know the place.”
“It’s your filter, Grace. It’s since you read that article. Sometimes we hear what we’re looking to hear,” she tells me.
“Yes, I guess so . . . But perhaps I could find out where it is. You know—the place in the picture. Maybe if somebody knew where it was . . .”
“For God’s sake, Grace,” she says. “It doesn’t mean anything, what she’s saying. Kids say the oddest things. Well, don’t they? Lennie used to go on about this new mummy she had. Over and over. ‘I’ve got a new mummy . . .’ Then we realized she meant her babysitter . . .”
“It was strange, though,” I tell her. “Sylvie just seemed so happy.”
There’s a pause, as though this unnerves her.
“You need to get some perspective, Grace,” she says then. There’s a shred of anxiety in her voice. “You don’t want to feed her obsessions. I’m sure that isn’t the way.”
