ON SATURDAY EVENING Karen comes around to my flat with a bottle of cabernet sauvignon.
I’m so happy to see her. But it feels a little awkward between us. There’s something new about her, something remote, reserved, as though she’s still angry with me.
I tell her everything that’s happened—about seeing Dominic, which appalls her, as I knew it would; about losing the place at the nursery.
“Jesus, Grace,” she says. “How on earth will you manage?”
“I don’t know,” I tell her.
She smooths her hair back. She looks somehow out of place on my sofa, in her sleek black cashmere clothes, with her handbag of rich dark leather with all its elaborate pockets and zips. When Karen comes here, I always notice how tatty everything is—my flimsy furniture, my chipped paintwork. I have my gas fire turned up full, but these walls hold a chill that never seems to thaw, and I worry that it’s too cold for her.
“You’ve got to get this sorted, Grace,” she tells me. “You’ve got to.”
But her voice sounds rather weary. She doesn’t think I will.
“I’m trying,” I tell her. “We’re going to see a new person, Sylvie and me.”
I keep my voice quite low. I worry Sylvie could hear our conversation—the walls of our flat are so thin. But maybe Sylvie is fast asleep. There’s no sound at all from her room.
“You’ve found a better psychiatrist?” says Karen hopefully. “I was going to say you should do that—you have a right to a second opinion, of course. You obviously didn’t like that doctor you saw . . .”
“It’s not another doctor.” I take a gulp of wine. I know I’m drinking too fast. “It’s someone at the university, in the psychology faculty.” I breathe in deeply, not knowing quite how to go on. “I mean, I’m not sure about it, but I thought it was worth a shot.”
“Okay,” she says warily. There’s a question in her gaze.
“It’s that guy I read about—the one who investigates the paranormal—”
“No, Grace.” Her voice has a sharp edge.
“It’s not like you think—really. It’s all aboveboard. You know, kind of academic. I’m not sure he really believes it all—he just does the research.”
Karen stares at me. “Grace. How can some weird ghost-busting creep possibly be aboveboard? How can this possibly help Sylvie?”
“He wants to try and understand her—to understand what’s going on.”
“And how does he propose to do that, exactly?”
“Well, you know. Talk to her, do some tests. Sometimes with these cases—I mean, I don’t know what I think about this—but they’d want to take the child back there, to the place they seem to remember.”
Her mouth thins. “I think that’s a simply appalling idea,” she tells me briskly. “He’s using you, Grace. He just wants you for his research. Academics are like that.”
“Well, some of them, maybe,” I say.
“No, trust me, Grace. It’s not what Sylvie needs. What Sylvie needs is a therapist. Someone to help her let go of that stuff, not just get deeper in.”
“But nothing can make her let go of it. I’ve tried to ignore it, not pay attention. Nothing makes any difference. I thought I could give this a go—perhaps just for a couple of sessions. Maybe there’s something in it. I mean, how much do we really know—about life and death and everything?” I can feel myself becoming expansive because of the cabernet sauvignon. “We don’t really understand how the world works, do we? Not really. How could we? Our minds are just so limited . . .”
Karen leans toward me, fixing me with her anxious, troubled gaze.
“Grace.” Her voice is gentle. “She said she had a dragon.”
Afterward, I walk her out to her car. I’m so used to living here now, but I know that these streets must seem threatening to her. There’s a nail-paring moon, and a thin glaze of ice on the puddles. The prostitutes are standing on the corner, smoking and talking softly. One of them cups her hands together to light her cigarette, and the burning tip flares briefly like a red and winking eye. An elderly woman who’s sleeping rough has settled down for the night in the alley next to Kwik Save, with all her bulging shopping bags beside her. She’s wrapped in a filthy pink eiderdown, and I feel so sorry for her, to think how cold she will be. I wonder what Karen makes of all this.
“It was good to see you,” I tell her. “We must do this again soon.”
“Yes, we must,” she says. “Of course.”
She drives off a little too rapidly.
I open the door of Sylvie’s room, moving very slowly, trying not to click the latch, wanting to check that she’s still sleeping.
But she isn’t asleep. She’s sitting up in her bed, and she’s taken the picture down from the wardrobe and has it in her hand. She looks up at me as I come in.
“Where’s Lennie, Grace?” she says.
Her face is puzzled, perplexed. The dim light of her bedside lamp seems to emphasize all shadows. There are patches dark as bruises underneath her eyes.
She must have heard Karen’s voice. She must have wondered why Lennie didn’t come too. I don’t want to tell her the truth, don’t want her knowing what Karen said—not now, not ever.
“I’m sure that Lennie’s fast asleep,” I tell her brightly. “And so should you be.”
I go to tuck her in.
She holds the picture out toward me. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it, Grace?”
“Yes, it’s a beautiful place.”
“Coldharbour,” she says. Setting the word so carefully down between us, like some precious thing.
“Yes. Coldharbour. Shall I stick it back on your wardrobe?”
“No,” she tells me.
She slips the picture under her pillow and slides down into her bed.
“I had a little white house when I lived in Coldharbour, Grace.”
Her voice is calm and measured.
It’s so chilly in her bedroom. I pull my cardigan close around me.
“What was it like, your house?” I say.
“It was nicer than this house,” she says.
I’m blurred and vague from the wine. It dulls the hurt a little.
“Can you tell me more about it?”
“You could see the sea from my house.” Her voice has a yawn behind it, she’s on the edge of sleep now.
“Anything else you can tell me, sweetheart? I mean, I’ve never been there, I don’t know anything about it . . .”
“Don’t you?” she says.
She pulls her duvet up to her chin. Her face smudges and softens with sleep.
“No, sweetheart.”
She yawns widely.
“There were fishing boats on the sea,” she says.
I think of the picture and know what Karen would say. For God’s sake, Grace, the boats are there in the photograph . . .
“I liked to look at the boats,” she says. “Before.”
She falls asleep abruptly, like a door closing.