SUNDAY IS A gorgeous day, with a wide-open sky and the light so vivid the world seems crowded with things.
I spend the morning out in the garden with Sylvie. The air smells different, and you can see much farther than before. The trees in the Kwik Save car park are fizzing and seething with starlings, a whole flock of them that have settled there. They’re dark as wet tree branches, with greenish beaks and heads that flicker and twitch. I cut back the straggling roses and tie up the dying snowdrops with raffia from the flower shop. Sylvie has a miniature rake, and she rakes the leaves from the lawn.
“I like to work in the garden,” she says. She’s bright-eyed, rather out of breath.
“I know you do. And you’ve always been such a help. Even when we first came here, when you were only two. You’ve always helped me.”
“Even when I was really small?”
“Yes, even then,” I tell her. “Though I had to keep my eye on you. Once, I had my back toward you and suddenly you went quiet, and when I turned round, you were eating a handful of earth.”
“I don’t know, sweetheart. You seemed to be enjoying it.”
“Did I really?”
“Yes, really.”
She’s pleased by this picture of her younger, more delinquent self.
“I wouldn’t do that now,” she says.
“No.”
“What was I like when I was little?” she says.
“You had the tiniest fingers . . . Like this.”
I show her how tiny by touching her wrist with my fingertip, just a feather touch. But I’m wary. I don’t know where this conversation might lead—going back in time like this. It always happens so rapidly, between one breath and the next, the most innocuous comment undermining everything, taking her away from here, from me and the life that we share.
The starlings take off in a great swirling mass. They darken the garden as they pass over, as though the sun has gone in. I wait for what Sylvie will say.
But this time she just smiles at me.
“That’s very tiny, Grace,” she says.
We’re invited to Lavinia’s for an afternoon party. There will be wine and Earl Grey tea and crumpets, and music around the white piano in her living room.
The house is full when we get there. There are smells of claret and cigarette smoke and the lavish scents of candles from the flower shop. Light through the crystals in the windows throws colors all over the floor.
Lavinia brings me wine and beckons to someone’s teenage daughter. The girl is wearing denim shorts and massive slouchy boots and extravagant purple lipstick, and she plainly adores small children. She tells me she is Tiffany, and she’d love to take Sylvie upstairs, where she says there is a PlayStation. Sylvie goes happily with her.
I stand by Lavinia’s Buddhist altar, sip rather too fast at my wine. A man comes over to talk to me. He has freckles and an engaging smile, and I immediately like him. Then he tells me he is a healer, and I feel my heart sink a little. I have such a longing for ordinariness. I’d like to talk about the local elections or how much everyone misses the London Routemaster bus—anything concrete and solid and indisputably real. But I ask him politely about it, and he tells me to hold out my hand. I wonder if this is some kind of come-on, like when men try to read your palm, but he doesn’t touch me. He holds his own hand out, just over mine.
“There. Can’t you feel it?” he says.
But I can’t feel anything.
“Can’t you sense the vibration?” he says. “A bit like pins and needles?”
“No, I’m sorry,” I say.
I feel I have disappointed him. Perhaps I should have pretended.
I’m relieved when the musicians start to play. We all crowd into the living room to listen. There are three of them—clarinet, saxophone, and piano. They’re gray-haired and rumpled and casually, dazzlingly skilled. The music wraps around you, seems to become part of you.
Sylvie comes downstairs with Tiffany, drawn by the music. She comes to find me, slips her hand in mine.
“Was she okay?” I whisper to Tiffany.
“Of course. She’s gorgeous,” she says. “She was really chatty—weren’t you, angel?” She bends, smooths Sylvie’s hair.
I’m so pleased that it all went well, that Sylvie behaved like any normal child.
Tiffany straightens up again.
“But I think she liked your other house better—the place where you lived before,” she says. “She told me all about it. She must have a really good memory.”
I try to ignore this, pretend it isn’t happening.
“I guess she does,” I say vaguely.
“It’s amazing when she’s still so small, remembering all those things like that. You must be so proud of her,” she says.
“Well, thanks for looking after her. You’ve been so helpful,” I say.
The musicians are playing “Summertime.” My heartbeat slows as I listen. Sylvie looks up and smiles at me—her face is shining with pleasure. The music throws its bright nets over everything, and I try to live in this moment and think of nothing else. I tell myself this is good, this is all that anyone could ask for—the music all around us and Sylvie’s hand in mine.
Mostly, we are happy at Lavinia’s.
But in the night she wakes me. She’s standing at the side of my bed. When I turn on my lamp, her vast vague shadow is thrown against the wall. She’s sobbing, her body shaking.
I put my arms around her. I feel her sobs move through me, as though we are one person. The sobs seem too big for her body.
“Sweetheart, you’re here with me,” I tell her, as I always do. “You’re safe here. Whatever you saw—it’s all over. What you saw was only a dream.”
She goes on crying. Her face is marked with the shiny tracks of tears that glimmer in the light of my lamp. I’m seized by a panicky helplessness. I can’t reach her, can’t comfort her.
She quiets a little, and there are words in her crying.
“No no no no.”
At first I think she wants to push me away, that she’s telling me to let go of her. But she’s clinging to me, pressing up against me.
“Sweetheart, you’re safe now. You’re safe here with me. It wasn’t real, what you saw.”
“No no no no.”
I have the strangest sensation—that it’s not Sylvie’s voice exactly. The intonation sounds somehow off. As though the words aren’t precisely hers, as though they’re someone else’s words. The little hairs stand up on my neck. The room seems tilted, unsafe.
I push back the covers so she can get into my bed. She climbs in. She’s sitting up, her back straight, rigid. Her crying is suddenly torn off.
“Grace.” Her voice is high, shrill. “I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe.” She clutches at my arm, her thin fingers digging into me. “Grace.”
Fear surges through me. I don’t know how to help her.
I put my hands on her shoulders, looking into her face.
“You’re breathing, sweetheart. You’re breathing fine. If you can speak, you can breathe . . .”
I try to keep my voice quite level.
“We’ll breathe together,” I tell her.
We breathe in time. She takes big, noisy gulps of air. The panic leaves her. She moves down under my duvet, and her eyes roll upward and close.
But I lie awake for hours and hours, hearing her crying in my mind. I’m still awake when the first frail light of dawn slides under my curtains. It’s such a lonely sight.