It is the mother’s task to be attentive to the child’s needs (for food, sleep, warmth, movement, comfort, company), not to misunderstand them, or to confuse them with each other, and to fulfil them, not according to her own speed and rhythm, but by adapting her actions to the child’s.

– Anna Freud, Indications for Child Analysis and Other Papers (London: Hogarth Press, 1969), p. 591

There were two major crises on the island of Colsay during the eighteenth century. In 1724, a schooner sailing out of Glasgow ran adrift in a heavy fog on the skerries to the north-east of the island. There were rumours, persistent into this century, that the islanders’ interest in the cargo of the John Frederick overcame their humanity with regard to the survivors and particularly to the bodies of the majority of the crew, who did not survive. These rumours are now impossible to substantiate or disprove, but what remains sure is that the people of Colsay soon had reason to regret any contact with the fated ship. Smallpox broke out—

‘Oh,’ said Giles. ‘You’re busy.’

I looked up. ‘Sure am.’

‘Is that the book?’

‘Yes.’

‘Really?’

‘It’s the book, Giles. I’m producing deathless prose which will change the face of eighteenth-century historiography and redeem my career from the morass of nappies and spat-out biscuits into which it has fallen.’

‘Oh.’

The space hopper stopped and Raph appeared behind Giles at the back door.

‘So can I come too?’ he asked.

‘Judith and Brian need a lift to Colla.’ Giles leant on the door jamb. ‘I was hoping to finish some data collection.’

I glanced up to where the rising dough was pushing against the tea-towel over the bowl. SAVE CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL, though the tea-towel did not elaborate on the threat from which Canterbury Cathedral needs to be saved.

‘Judith doesn’t like my driving. And the bread’s going to need shaping and baking in the next hour or so, after Moth wakes. Why don’t you take Raph to the library? Fiona Firth said she’d get some more space books for him. And we’re nearly out of olive oil, I forgot to order so it’ll have to be the best Spar can provide.’

He stood up. ‘OK, OK, we’re going.’

‘And another pack of baby wipes, just to tide us over. And if you want a salad tonight you should get lettuce. We’ve still got avocados.’

‘Come on, Raph. I’ll take you to the pub for crisps if you like.’

‘And don’t get drunk and push Judith into the Sound!’ I shouted after them.

Antonia Rivett would have given up on the Reverend. Clearly, probably, must have been, seems to have been. ‘Reserve your energies for explicating what you actually know.’ She had no truck with theories of history suggesting that we don’t actually know anything at all, regarding this epistemological flaw – perhaps rightly – as a disability common to most human endeavour and one that, if not regarded in the proper spirit, would bring us all to stupid silence. Like death. Wilful stupidity is the basis of intelligent thought. Ignore the chasm beneath your feet.

‘Anna?’ Zoe, framed by the door. ‘Oh, sorry. You’re working. I thought Moth would be up by now.’

14:37. ‘Oh fuck. You’re right, he should. He’ll never to go bed now.’

I pushed the book into my laptop bag and rearranged the pile of monographs that should have been absorbing my attention. ‘Sit down, if you like. Make some tea. I’ll be down in a minute.’

Moth was sleeping as if far out of sight of land, adrift wherever it is that the toddler unconscious needs to go. In the end I picked him up limp with sleep and took him downstairs to be woken by the novelty of Zoe.

‘I made you some tea,’ she said. ‘And I think the bread’s overflowing; do you want me to knead it again?’

I sat down and arranged Moth on my lap, floppy as a doll. He opened his eyes and looked at Zoe as if she had just landed from Pluto.

‘Yes, please. If you don’t mind. And could you put the oven on? About two hundred?’

Zoe peeled Canterbury Cathedral off the dough and began to knead. I hoped her hands were clean.

‘You’ll need extra flour. Bottom cupboard.’

Moth took my hand and sucked my knuckle as if it were full of milk.

‘Moth love. Do you want a drink?’

He rubbed his face against my jumper and I hugged him. He won’t always want to sit in my lap. I kissed his hair, and looked up to see Zoe watching us.

‘It’s so sweet. I know my mum never did that.’

‘Zoe, I’m sure she did. All mothers do this. It’s not even about love, it’s not as complicated or demanding as love, it’s just animal physicality.’

She sprinkled flour on to the dough. ‘All my mother’s animal physicality is directed towards food. And drink. You know that ice cream I bought? For the children? Well, the next day when I went to look it was gone. She hadn’t even recycled the pot, it was in the bin. I suppose she thought I wouldn’t look there. There’s about three thousand calories in a litre of that stuff.’

I sipped tea and felt tired. Moth wriggled on my lap. ‘Moth do kneading?’

‘Can you give him a bit, Zoe? Just a small handful.’

Moth slid down and wobbled over to her, and then sat on the floor and pressed his dough.

‘Don’t worry, we won’t eat that bit.’ I watched her hands moving like crabs in the dough. ‘Zoe, are things OK? Over at Black Rock?’

I would never have gone on holiday with my parents at eighteen. Nor would they have invited me. I could see the muscles in Zoe’s arms moving like ropes between bone and skin. She tossed her hair. Another health and safety issue in re bread.

‘No. But they made me come. Now she keeps saying I ought to be grateful when she’s spent all that money bringing me here. They were paying for the cottage anyway, and it’s not as if my presence in the car is going to add much to the petrol consumption. Not with her up front.’

I had a vision of the three of them on the motorway, Brian driving, Judith issuing a running deprecation of the landscape, other drivers, the lack of foresight shown by those using service stations and not bringing their own sandwiches, the weather, and anything else that came to mind, as if with enough superiority she could earn her daughter’s health. And Zoe getting obstinately thinner in the back and an empty space where Will used to be. It’s a long way from Manchester to Colla.

Moth threw his dough at floor. ‘Splat! Squash a dough!’

‘Yes, but don’t stand on it, please. Look, knead it like Zoe.’

‘Splat!’

I stood up. ‘Sit down and have some tea. I’ll do this. You don’t honestly look up to the work anyway.’

She looked away. ‘I’m fine. I went running this morning. It’s Mum who’s not fit.’

‘Well, I shouldn’t think that makes her happy.’ I floured the bowl and began to knead. ‘So do you have plans for the next year? Or are you going to see if you can go to Cambridge in October? If someone’s missed their grades they might have a place for you.’

She ran her finger round the top of the mug. ‘If I decide to go at all.’

‘Old MacDonald!’ said Moth. ‘Old MacDonald had a dragon!’

‘You might as well try it,’ I said. ‘You can always leave.’ I could hear the law tutors at Trinity cursing me. ‘Surely you’d be better there than at home. Are you looking forward to the work? Old MacDonald had a farm, ee-i, ee-i, o. And on that farm he had a dragon, ee-i, ee-i, o.’

‘Yes. I’m not doing it for the reasons you think.’

‘More dragon!’

‘With a puff, puff here and a puff, puff there, here a puff, there a puff, everywhere a puff, puff. What do I think?’

‘I’m doing law because I want to join the Establishment and make lots of money.’

‘Old MacDonald had a leopard.’

‘Old MacDonald had a farm, ee-i, ee-i, o. Not at all. You might want to work in a women’s refuge or with socially disadvantaged children. I imagine that would annoy your mother. And on that farm he had a leopard, ee-i, ee-i, o.’

‘I just like the idea. It’s a matrix that makes sense of what people do. I mean, you can be driving along listening to whatever and thinking about whether to buy a pair of shoes and if you’re doing it at twenty-nine miles an hour you’re innocent and if you’re doing it at thirty-six miles an hour you’re guilty. It’s like, we make it sound objective but it’s all about telling stories. Pushing people under trains is illegal but if they were trying to knife you at the time it’s probably OK. Eating bananas is totally fine unless you haven’t paid for them. But it looks exactly the same at the time whether you’re becoming a criminal or not. I like the way law makes sense out of the way people behave. It’s kind of reassuring, I suppose. Like there’s something consistent.’

‘Leopards say roar! Leopards on a farm!’

‘With a roar, roar here, and a roar, roar there. Ee-i, ee-i, o.’ Killing babies is wrong but if it is your own baby you may be mad, which is not a criminal offence. Zoe passed me the bowl and I pulled the dough apart into three more or less equal pieces. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I see the appeal of that. History is also about narrative, in the end. Whether the gaps and silences might mean anything. Though the consequences of the stories you tell are much more general. Cultural memory and national identity rather than who goes to prison. And you don’t get to think about individuals in quite the same way.’

‘Wolf on a bus.’ Moth held up his dough, grey now and with a small feather partially embedded in it. ‘Moth made bread.’

‘Thank you, Moth.’

‘Wolf on a bus!’

‘The wolf on the bus goes munch munch munch, munch munch munch, munch munch munch. The wolf on the bus goes munch munch munch, all day long.’ I drank some more tea. ‘Not that he’s seen a bus in months.’

‘People do go to prison because of cultural memory and national identity,’ said Zoe. ‘Most kinds of terrorism are kind of about cultural memory, aren’t they? Righting the wrongs of history? It’s all, like, story-telling in the end.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘You know, Zoe, you’d be good in a tutorial.’

‘Do you miss Oxford?’ she asked.

I floured the loaf tins.

‘Less than I did,’ I said. ‘Less than I did.’

I put the loaves in their tins and set them to rise again.

‘Moth, shall we bake your bread?’

He looked appalled, as if I’d suggested wiping his nose or combing his hair.

‘No. Moth looking after bread.’

He carried it off to the playroom, cupped in his hands like a baby bird or an insect, glancing back over his shoulder in wonder at my barbaric ideas.

‘Come on, Moth’s bread. We play with a animals in a par cark.’

Maybe Raph brings on the apocalypse and Moth plays at the nuclear winter that follows, where animals browse car parks and make nests in office buildings cracked open like Easter eggs.

I filled the mixing bowl with hot water. Zoe was picking at the skin around her nails.

‘So what happened in Canada? You were on a conservation project?’

She glanced out of the window, where heavy clouds were congregating in the north. Giles and Raph should be safe in Colla, cocooned in the warmth of the library or absorbing the smell of chips and beer in the pub. The washing up seemed to have proliferated inexplicably, as it does when people won’t reuse plates from which it is easy to shake a few crumbs. I poured Zoe some more tea.

‘At first it was great. There were six of us. Volunteers. The others were all Canadian. And there was Bill. Bill runs the place. We slept in this wooden hut with a veranda and you could just step out into the forest in the morning. The trees were like taller than I’ve ever seen, taller than this house, and it’s like being in a greenhouse. This ceiling of pine branches, and underneath a huge space for growing. And we could hear the sea in the night. It felt so totally far from home. It was so cool, thinking about the world and my parents right round on the other side of it. I’d never seen the Pacific before. I mean, you think it’s all just sea but it was different, all the shells and things were different. Everything smelt of trees and rain. And one of the guys – Hayden – we got together. And I really liked him.’

She ran her finger round the inside of her mug’s handle. From the playroom, I heard Moth singing ‘Pop Goes the Weasel’.

‘It sounds lovely.’ I began to scrub the flour that had dried on to the mixing bowl. Gap years were still a minority pursuit when I was eighteen, Grand Tours for the rich and indecisive. Giles had one. I went to skivvy in France and told my mother it was to save some money for university.

‘And then I met this woman one day. I was out for a walk on my own and I was like a bit worried about bears. They have these signs telling you what to do if you meet one but it’s really obvious that the things they tell you are just ways of amusing yourself until the bear eats you. You know, make lots of noise, stay in groups. The bit I liked said, “Exercise extra caution walking into the wind or near water,” but it didn’t say how. And then if you do meet one you’re supposed to back away slowly and talk to it in soothing tones. Can you imagine? Don’t worry, bear, I’m on my way. Don’t eat me. And if that doesn’t work, you use your backpack to protect your head. I mean, wouldn’t you rather it ate your head first? And if you’ve still got your head on you can try climbing trees, except that black bears are better at climbing trees than people are, and then if you end up in a tree with a bear you’re meant to try to like intimidate it. It’s not really advice so much as a manual for a messy death.’

Moth put his head around the door. ‘Mummy laughing,’ he remarked, disapproving as if Mummy were throwing her bra at the stage.

‘Anyway, so I didn’t want to be scared by these ridiculous signs but I also didn’t want to turn into bear lunch before I’d even got to Cambridge, and there was no one around so I was sort of walking along singing. The signs tell you to make a noise. Jerusalem the Golden, actually. I went to that kind of school. And I met this woman so I was embarrassed and she thought it was totally funny and we got talking. And it turned out she was running a campaign group against logging and fish farming. And that was when I realized.’

She pushed her hair back. There were tears in her eyes and her voice was harsh.

‘None of it’s real, Anna. There’s almost no virgin forest left. It’s all been like logged and they’ve let some of it grow back because in the pretty bits by the sea they can make more money out of tourism than logging. In the middle of the island where tourists don’t go, there are hundreds of miles where it looks like a nuclear bomb fell. They’ve just totally obliterated it. All those centuries of slow growth. They just take these horrible diggers that’re designed to go up almost any mountain and they raze the rainforest. All of it. And the blue inlets I liked are full of fish farms, which fill the water with antibiotics and pesticides and poison everything else, and the fish farmers kill all the seals and bears they can get their hands on to stop them eating the farmed fish.’

She put her hands over her face.

‘They don’t even always shoot them. There were some baby bears – I don’t want to think about it. I mean, I know it’s kind of sentimental to get upset about baby bears because they’re totally cute but it’s not just that, it’s the mountains and the sea. I mean, I went to this place because I thought it was the real thing, you know, one of those rare bits of the planet we haven’t utterly fucked up, and I was wrong. It’s fucked up but we’re so totally good at fucking up the planet now that we can do that and still make money out of morons like me who think the cultivated bits round the edges are the real thing. And it’s too late now. My parents’ generation have totally screwed the entire planet beyond any possibility of redemption and when they’ve finished spending their retirements buying like new teak garden furniture and flying to New Zealand because sixty is the new thirty and they can still go bungee jumping they’re going to die and leave the rest of us to kill each other for water and oil. I mean, Jesus, Anna, how could you have kids when there’s nothing left for them because my mother’s eaten it all?’

I rinsed the bowl and rebuilt the pile of wet dishes on the draining board to accommodate it. You wouldn’t want to eat off anything that had been dried on our tea-towels.

‘We worried,’ I said. ‘People have always worried that it’s a stupid time to have children, even in the eighteenth century. And the seventeenth. That’s where the hostages to fortune quote comes from, Bacon. We wanted them. That’s the only good reason for having babies. They’re people who are wanted. At least at the beginning. And you never know, they might change the world.’

She pushed her hair back. ‘They might have to.’

‘Well,’ I said. ‘If they have to, they probably will. People usually do what they have to do. I mean, Raph’s working on it already. And it sounds to me as if you’ve got some excellent reasons there for being the best lawyer you possibly can be. Go to Cambridge and specialize in environmental legislation or work for Greenpeace or something.’

‘It’s too late,’ she said. ‘Don’t you understand? There’s nothing left to save.’

I watched the water pooling along the tidemark on the draining board. The bottom of the tap was encrusted with something brown. The problem with the logic of despair is that it is right, only not useful.

‘There are six billion people, or whatever it is. And you’ll need to do something with your life. You can’t help consuming, so you might as well produce something useful. You’re here now.’

I sounded like a Girl Guide leader. I looked at the ribs poking through her sweater. There are, of course, ways of not consuming, though I’m sure full blown anorexia must in the end have a higher carbon footprint than Giles’s kind of eating. All those plastic tubes, for one thing. But the moral argument for consuming less is from any point of view incontrovertible, and I do not know that I can argue that there is still time to save the world.

Rain spattered the window. Those clouds had taken over the sky. ‘Remember telling your mother she’s not a superior being? Well, you’re not either. You’ve got a body and a mind just like everyone else. There are no career opportunities in being an anchorite these days.’

She looked at me. ‘I’m not like my mother. She thinks she’s better than everyone else. She thinks Judith Fairchild is like the measure of humanity and everyone else falls short.’

‘Well,’ I said. Looking at the bones in her hands, I thought there was nothing to lose if I upset her. She couldn’t eat less. ‘You’re not the Messiah either. You might as well join in and have some chance of making a difference. On whatever scale.’

There was an alarming silence from the playroom.

‘It’s too late.’ She twisted her fingers.

I held out my hand to her as if she were Moth.

‘Come on, let’s see what Moth’s up to. And then I want to go down to the jetty and see if we can see the boat. I don’t like those clouds.’

 

By the time we had bundled Moth into his puddle suit and wellies, I needed the light on to tie my shoelaces. Outside, the sky hung low and the clouds had a purple tinge. The rain was provisional, a prelude to the torrents we could see hurrying across the sea towards the island. Raph would probably be enjoying it. I shifted Moth on to the other hip.

‘Down!’ he said.

He ran unsteadily towards the pebbled beach. I’m sure he wouldn’t really walk into the sea. The waves crashing on to the stones were taller than he is, a more obvious hazard than a glass cliff, and even toddlers must have some residual, atavistic sense of self-preservation or it is hard to see how we reached the over-populated mess in which we now find ourselves. The boat was coming round the headland, sitting low in the water. Giles was steering for a point on the horizon wide of Colsay, avoiding turning side-on to the rising waves. I could see Raphael, a red curve in a grey seascape, kneeling in his favourite place in the bows, and the white lumps of Judith and Brian in the middle. I hoped Giles had thought to make Raph wear a harness as well as the lifejacket.

‘Your parents aren’t wearing lifejackets,’ I said.

Zoe shivered in the wind. ‘Mum probably thinks she can walk on water.’

Moth was arranging piles of small stones. Choking hazards. I went over to him, keeping an eye on the boat.

‘Moth, do you want to see the boat? With Daddy and Raph on it?’

He looked up. ‘No. Moth building a train. Where Moth’s bread?’

Damn, the bread. Forgotten again. I looked out to sea again. Giles had changed direction and was making for the landing stage. Raph waved.

‘Hold on to the boat,’ I muttered. ‘Never mind waving.’ I waved back.

‘Moth, do you want to wave to Raphael?’

‘No.’

My watching wouldn’t keep the boat afloat, but on the other hand if they foundered close to land I could jump off the rocks and save Raph. Assuming Moth stayed put while I did it. Assuming Raph wasn’t harnessed to the boat. Assuming I could get through the waves. And back. I decided the chance was worth letting the dough spill over. I stood there on the beach with Moth at my feet, poised to save one child from choking and the other from drowning, while Giles brought the boat to land. The rain gathered strength and began to hiss into the sea. I thought Zoe said something.

‘What?’ I shouted.

‘I don’t feel well. Do you mind if I go in?’

I picked up Moth and went towards her.

‘Down! Moth in a rain!’

‘Wait a minute,’ I said. ‘Go see Zoe. Zoe, are you OK?’

She applied a smile. Her face was bone yellow inside her hood.

‘I think I need to lie down.’

The boat was inside the bay, almost within shouting distance. Within swimming distance.

‘Go lie on the sofa,’ I said. ‘I’ll be there in a minute. I’ll bring your dad.’

She walked slowly across the grass, bent into the rain, hunched and stiff as an old woman.

‘There’s boat!’ said Moth. ‘Hello, boat!’

He wriggled. I put him down and we walked hand in hand along the landing stage, built and rebuilt by the villagers over a couple of centuries until the last families left. I smiled at Giles, helped Raph on to the stones and put my arm round him.

‘Brian,’ I said. ‘Zoe’s just gone back to the house. She said she needed to lie down. She didn’t look very well.’

Judith snorted. ‘She was all right this morning. I hope she hasn’t been bothering you all afternoon.’

Moth tried to push my hair back into my hood.

‘No,’ I said. ‘She helped me make bread.’

‘I’ll go,’ said Brian. ‘I’m not surprised.’

We stood back as he jogged towards the house with the loping gait of the long distance runner.

‘Is she OK?’ asked Giles.

I squeezed Raph against my side. ‘I wouldn’t have let her go back alone if I thought she was about to collapse. Not that I’d know. Come on, let’s get you two warmed up.’

I left Giles to tidy up the boat and took the children back to the house. Judith followed.

‘Did you have fun, Raph?’ I asked.

He nodded. ‘Lots. Daddy bought me some chips in the pub and Fiona Firth told me to say hello and she’ll see you soon.’

‘See me soon?’

He shrugged. ‘That’s what she said.’

Zoe was lying on the sofa reading The Lighthouse Keeper’s Lunch with Brian perched at her side like a seagull. His hand, hairless as my own and tanned, lay on her shoulder. I put Moth down and started taking his boots and suit off.

‘You OK?’ I asked her.

‘She says she won’t let me take her blood pressure,’ said Brian. ‘Zoe, please will you eat something. Or drink something.’

‘I’ve been drinking tea.’ She didn’t lift her eyes from the book. ‘Ask Anna.’

‘Lapsang without milk,’ I said.

‘Zoe,’ said Brian. He stroked her hair. ‘If you collapse, we’ll call out the helicopter. And they’ll take you to hospital, where they’ll put you on a drip. With sugar in it. I really don’t want you sectioned and I really don’t want anything to happen to you without your consent. You’re running out of options, sweetie.’

Yes, I thought, but she needs a reason as well as a method for staying alive and in my understanding Freud himself can offer nothing more convincing than convention. Or maybe love, which is insufficiently sophisticated for a bright eighteen-year-old.

‘Is that what you want?’ Judith stood in the doorway with water dripping from her cagoule on to the floorboards. ‘Well, Zoe? You’d rather be in hospital than with us, would you? How do you think I’d feel, coming to see you on some filthy NHS ward with tramps and schizophrenics and drug addicts? When you could be at Cambridge? Don’t think we’ll go private this time. You’ll get bedpans on a mixed ward instead of Trinity College. And God knows what the admissions tutors will think, I doubt they let people straight into Cambridge out of the psychiatric ward.’

Zoe’s face reddened but she flicked the page. She will need to have her own children to learn that mothers’ fears speak in anger, anger that life does not recognize our children’s glory, that every step into the fallen world is a step away from the inhuman perfection of the newborn’s ten new wrinkled red fingers and new eyebrows sketched on a new face. Her eyes scanned the page. Every morning, Mrs Grinling made a delicious lunch for the lighthouse keeper. And there is freer passage than Judith imagines between psychiatric wards and Oxbridge colleges.

Brian looked tired. I should perhaps have felt sorrier for him from the beginning. ‘Judith, that’s not helpful.’

She sniffed. The smell of alcohol, tentative on the cold air, reached my side of the room. Moth came over and held his arms out. ‘Up!’

‘I’m going away,’ said Raph. ‘I don’t like this.’

Zoe turned another page. Mrs Grinling sent the lunch out to the lighthouse in a basket.

‘Oh, you know what’s helpful to the children, do you?’ said Judith. ‘Because I must not have noticed you around helping for the last twenty years.’

Moth hid his face. Sometimes marriage seems like an alternative to self-control.

Brian stood up. ‘In case it escaped your attention, I’ve “helped” by buying you that house and paying the fees for the schools you chose and clearing your credit card every month. Oh, and saved a few people’s lives every week or so. You’ve kept Zoe dependent on you all these years because otherwise you’d have to face the fact that you’ve done nothing with your life except spending what I earn. And now she can’t handle it any more and you’re drinking because you’ve got nothing else left.’

Judith’s face darkened. Her voice shrilled and I knew she’d lost the argument. ‘You think you know what I’ve done with my life? Raising your children and scrubbing your shit off the toilet and picking your socks off the floor year after bloody year?’

Brian pretended to laugh. ‘Wrong script, darling, you forget you’ve had a cleaner for the last twenty years.’

I checked to see what she might throw. There was nothing irreplaceable immediately to hand. Moth grasped my hair as if he were falling through the branches. I kissed his head and took him upstairs to find Raph. Voices rumbled through the ceiling while I answered questions arising from Raphael’s perusal of the World Atlas and eventually allowed jumping on the bed as an alternative to a ringside view of family breakdown. I kept wondering if Zoe was able to get off the sofa, and whether the helicopter could land here in the dark. At last the front door banged and there were footsteps on the stairs. Giles came in as the children bumped into each other and collapsed into a giggling heap. I established Moth on top and looked up.

‘Have they gone?’

‘Judith has. Brian says can Zoe stay here tonight. But that’s not why I came up. There was a letter for you at the post office.’

He held out a crumpled white envelope. A fat, crumpled white A5 envelope from Glasgow, containing more pages than it takes to thank someone for their interest in your vacancies and regret that on this occasion they have not been shortlisted.

‘Oh.’ I took it out on to the landing; I couldn’t face the three of them watching me open it. Dear Dr Bennet, I am writing to invite you— I felt my face flushing.

‘Giles! Giles, I’ve got an interview. At Glasgow. But it’s next week.’

He appeared round the door. ‘See, I told you you could do it. Well done.’

‘I won’t get it,’ I said. ‘They probably just have to include at least one woman on the shortlist.’

‘So they thought they’d pay your expenses from here and hotel there as the cheapest way of ticking the equal opps box?’

Giles has served on Oxford appointments committees and therefore, I suppose, must be assumed to know about ticking boxes.

‘I can’t go overnight,’ I said. ‘What about the children?’

Raph came out to join us. ‘What about us? Where are you going?’

‘Mummy’s got a job interview,’ said Giles. ‘In Glasgow. And if she gets the job, which she will, we can all move up here.’

Raph looked from Giles to me and back. ‘But she said she wouldn’t live here. Can we really? Please?’

Moth came and put his arms round my leg. ‘Where Zoe gone?’

I picked him up. ‘I won’t live here. Not on the island. Well, not unless Daddy wants to stay here with you while I commute to Glasgow.’ I could be the one with the pristine flat. I could use it to eat ready meals and have a clean bathroom and spend my salary on cut flowers that are actually supposed to die and get thrown away and replaced.

‘You can’t do that!’ Raph came to hold on to me too, as if it might require physical restraint to stop me running for the metropolis.

‘No.’ Giles ruffled Raph’s hair. ‘Mummy’s teasing. No, we’d find a house for all of us. Bigger than in Oxford. And a new school for you.’

‘Moth new school too.’

‘And a new nursery for you.’

‘If I get the job,’ I said. ‘Remember I probably won’t. Anyway, I can’t go overnight. And I haven’t anything to wear.’

Giles grinned. ‘Then you’ll have to go overnight, won’t you, to buy yourself a suit. We can cope, you know, for thirty-six hours.’

There were footsteps downstairs. ‘Hello?’ called Brian.

Giles leant over the banisters. ‘Sorry, Brian. We got distracted. Down in a minute.’

He ushered us all back into Raph’s room. ‘Anna, is it OK if Zoe stays with us tonight?’

‘She can’t sleep in here,’ said Raph. He climbed on to his bed and opened The Way Things Work, which is not as useful a book as the title suggests.

‘Is that because she’s too weak to get to Black Rock House or because he can’t face having her and Judith under the same roof?’

Giles frowned. ‘The latter. He says he thinks she might eat something if she doesn’t have to deal with Judith. He says if he could send her away from Judith without putting her in hospital, he would, but she’s in no state to go anywhere on her own. It sounds to me as if they’ve got a lot to say to each other that Zoe really doesn’t need to hear.’

The last thing Zoe needs is to feel more powerful than she already does. Medieval women who starved themselves were revered for their holiness, their miraculous ability to live without food, which must have made it hard to start eating again. I sighed. The ethos of the Hôtel de la Mère does not encourage taking responsibility for other people’s dysfunctional adolescents. In fact, taking responsibility for other people’s dysfunctional adolescents may well entitle you to a very long stay there. I thought of Zoe walking through the rainforest, singing ‘Jerusalem the Golden’ and deciding that she’d rather be eaten head first. And lying on our sofa because she no longer has the energy to stand up. Judith could probably use a couple of weeks in the Hôtel as well. ‘Oh, all right. I’ll make her some hot chocolate or something. But she has to come to the table like everyone else. I’m not playing handmaid to Zoe’s decline on the sofa.’

‘I’ll go tell Brian. You should look in your wardrobe and think about booking train tickets.’

I already knew what was in my wardrobe (in fact very little; most of my clothes get put back on before they have quite dried and the remainder are draped damp over chairs and heaters in a spirit of quaint optimism). More pressingly, I thought, I should think about what to say, which was more or less compatible with cooking.

The children thought that if Zoe was allowed hot chocolate just before dinner then so were they, and having conceded that point the only reason I could see for not having it myself was that we’d run out of milk sooner and have to brave the Sound again. The wind had risen and rain whipped the windows. We’d probably have to go back to Colla in the next couple of days anyway, to facilitate Judith’s exhaustive investigation of the distilleries of the West Coast. The bread had overflowed again, so I masked it with tinned tomatoes, garlic and some cheddar from which I cut the blue furry bits to construct a form of nourishment inspired by the idea of pizza. Zoe ate more than Moth.

 

I woke to daylight: 07:08. Moth must be ill. Maybe something fell on him in the night, maybe the ceiling fell in. Maybe he scorned the ‘pizza’ because he was in the early stages of meningitis which got worse while I slept like a pig. Maybe he did wake and cry and I was too sodden with sleep, too pleased with myself, to hear, and maybe he tried to get out of his cot and fell on his head. Maybe I hadn’t sewed that ribbon on to his bear as firmly as I thought and it got round his neck in the night. Giles was still asleep, as if he didn’t care that it was morning and his own son had been silent for nearly eleven hours. I flung the duvet right back and Giles grunted and felt about.

‘Giles! Did you get up to Moth in the night?’

‘What?’

‘Did you deal with Moth in the night?’

He pulled the duvet back around himself, leaving a tuft of hair poking out.

‘No. Don’t think so.’

I pushed the duvet back down and touched the floor with my toes. The last few minutes of normal life before I’d have to find Moth and face what had happened. I went slowly to his door. He was breathing. I went in. He was lying on his front, legs tucked under his bottom as usual, one thumb fallen from his open mouth and the other hand clasping his bear. I touched his cheek. No warmer than it should be. I opened the curtain so I could see if he was pale or blue around the mouth.

‘Mummy. Porridge now?’

He sat up, pink-faced and damp with sleep.

‘Hello,’ I said. I scooped him up and hugged him. ‘You slept all night.’

He frowned at the grey sky.

‘Morning now.’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘Come and tell Daddy.’

I plopped him down on to our bed. He giggled.

‘Jumping on Mummy’s bed?’

I sat down and tucked my feet under my thighs, feeling the cold seeping through the folds of my nightdress. ‘Find Daddy.’

He crawled over the pillow, pulled Giles’s hair and burrowed under the duvet.

Giles sat up. ‘Bloody hell, what time is it?’

‘Seven o’ clock,’ I said. ‘He slept through. I had to wake him.’

‘You had to what?’

Moth pulled Giles’s nose. ‘Beep!’

‘Wake him. I was worried. Anyway, he wouldn’t sleep after lunch if I let him sleep now. Or go to bed before midnight.’

‘Daddy, beep!’

‘Beep,’ said Giles. ‘Well, are you going to get him up, then?’

I lay down and held out my arms. ‘Cuddle Mummy. No, I thought you could do that.’ Moth crawled over my stomach and rubbed his nose on my shoulder, leaving a shining trail. ‘You’ll have to, won’t you, if I go to Glasgow next week?’

Giles looked down at me. ‘You are going to Glasgow. And of course I can get him up. What are you worried about? You went off to that conference, didn’t you?’

I stroked Moth’s head. ‘They were at school and nursery. And I left you lists.’

‘Do you really not believe I can look after my own children for thirty-six hours?’

I haven’t, I thought, seen any evidence that you can.

Moth poked my eye. ‘Mummy got blue eyes.’

‘I’m sure Zoe will help.’ I intercepted Moth’s next poke. ‘Raph really likes her.’

Giles got out of bed.

‘Mummy not going away,’ said Moth. ‘Moth come too.’

 

There was a knock on the door while we were having breakfast. Zoe was still asleep in the spare room, on Julia’s old bed with its horsehair mattress and blankets and a silk counterpane that slides off every time you move. She was also still breathing, appropriately coloured and warmer than my hand, although life is, I know, more complicated than that when you’re eighteen.

‘I’ll go,’ I said.

The newspaper rustled. He must have scored a Guardian in the pub yesterday. ‘It’ll be Brian.’

It was Judith, in the Liberty peacock skirt and her cagoule, her eyelids painted the steel grey of the battleships that sometimes pass through the Sound. I stood in the door. Putting Zoe up for the night didn’t seem sufficient reason to deal with Judith before breakfast.

‘I just wanted to check Zoe is all right.’ She looked behind me, up the stairs. ‘I kept worrying about her in the night.’

‘She’s asleep. I checked. She’s warm and pink and breathing evenly. I expect she needs the rest.’

‘Did she – did she eat anything?’

‘Yes,’ I said. The sun was breaking through the cloud and shining white on the sea, and there was the smell of warm grass. A breeze slipped past Judith and stirred the pages of a book about whales that Raph had left open on the floor.

‘Mummy!’ called Moth. ‘Down! Find Mummy!’

I gave up. ‘Do you want to come in? We’re having breakfast.’

Judith shuffled her feet in their heavy boots. ‘Did she eat what you cooked?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Mummy! Where’s Mummy gone?’

‘Come in, Judith.’

She put her hand on the door. ‘I’m sorry. About Zoe.’

Don’t tell me, I thought. ‘Not to worry. Families are messy things. You can’t control children.’

She started to say something and then stopped. ‘Thank you.’

I left her in the hall and went back to the kitchen.

‘It’s all right, love. Mummy was just answering the door.’

Moth held up his arms to me. ‘No door. No answering.’

The Guardian flapped like a flustered seagull. ‘Where is she?’

Judith appeared in the door. She was wearing pink towelling socks, worn at the toes.

‘Oh God,’ said Raph. ‘Not her again. I’m going upstairs.’

‘Raphael!’

He looked round. ‘Excuse me.’

Moth stroked my cheek. There was porridge on his fingers. ‘Raph gone away.’

‘He’ll come back,’ I said. ‘Judith, tea?’

She looked at the teapot as if it were a hand grenade. ‘Do you have any Earl Grey in?’

‘No,’ I said.

Giles put the paper down. ‘I’ve got work to do. See you later.’

‘Not so fast. I’ve got work to do too.’

He stood up. ‘I need to observe the birds.’

‘I need to write the book. And my presentation.’

Judith was reading a bank statement. I reached out and turned it over.

‘Don’t you have a filing system?’ she asked.

‘No,’ I said. ‘Too busy writing books.’

‘I find it saves time.’

‘No doubt. Giles, I’ll do the morning if you’ll take over at lunchtime. That way you get the nap.’

‘No nap,’ said Moth. I frowned at him.

‘I never expected Brian to look after the children.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Well. It was different for your generation, wasn’t it? You could manage a mortgage on one salary. And no student debt.’

She sniffed. ‘We were careful with our money.’

‘I’ll be back later.’ Giles left.

I hugged Moth a moment, letting time pause as it does when adult conversation leaves the building.

‘Moth, will you help Mummy tidy up?’

He looked disbelieving. ‘Tidy up?’

‘Oh, never mind. Can you find the ark? And the animals?’

‘No.’ He clung to my leg.

‘See if you can find a fire engine. A noisy fire engine.’

‘No.’

I reached over and unhooked the steel pasta pot.

‘OK, play at cooking. Here’s a spoon.’

He sat down, turned the pan over and began to bang it with the wooden spoon. If toddlers didn’t have such an uncomplicated relationship with anger you’d have thought he was engaging in some kind of primal therapy. I reckoned even Judith wouldn’t compete with that. The house is so solid it seemed unlikely to wake Zoe.

Judith was reading our post again.

‘Sit down,’ I shouted over the din. ‘Or go wake Zoe.’

She sat down. I stacked plates.

‘Anna?’

‘What?’

‘What did Zoe eat?’

I ran the hot tap.

‘Some hot chocolate and some dinner.’

‘What dinner?’

No wonder the girl starves herself.

‘A kind of pizza thing.’

Judith frowned.

‘Can you get mozzarella from that shop?’ she shouted.

Moth redoubled his efforts.

‘No,’ I shouted back.

‘What, frozen pizza?’

‘No.’

She frowned again.

‘What kind of hot chocolate?’

I put the scrubbing brush down.

‘Judith, do you think she might be happier if you were less … curious?’

‘What?’

I crouched by Moth. ‘Moth, love, can we take that in the playroom? It’s noisy.’

‘No playroom.’

‘If you take it in the playroom you could use the jingle bells as well. Come on. And the maracas.’

 

I came back. The cacophony was greater but further away.

‘Don’t you think if she’s anxious about what she eats, feeling watched all the time will make things worse? I mean, I eat more when I’m on my own. Don’t you?’

Wrong rhetorical flourish. Obviously she does or she wouldn’t be the size she is.

‘No. I can’t say I do.’

I went back to the washing up. ‘Well, maybe Zoe would. I would.’

Judith jabbed at the pad of her forefinger with her thumbnail.

‘I don’t know why she came back from Canada. If I’d had my way, she’d never have gone.’

‘Have you asked her?’

The sun was stronger. Shadows appeared on the grass outside.

‘She says I wanted her to fail all along.’

‘And did you?’

‘Of course not. But I knew she wouldn’t cope and I told her so.’

I waited, but Judith was not alive to the advantages of self-reflection.

‘And now she’s got herself into such a state I’m not sure she’ll cope with Cambridge either.’

‘She might be better there,’ I said. ‘I’ve certainly taught students who’ve been more settled at university than at home.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with Zoe’s home life. My son is doing very well indeed. Reading medicine, at King’s.’

‘I know. You told me. So did Zoe. Look, Judith, I’m not trying to upset you. I thought you were asking what I thought.’

I finished washing the plates and started on the knives.

‘She was a lovely little girl,’ said Judith. ‘So pretty. We used to go shopping together. Now she says I was dressing her up like a doll but she doesn’t remember what it was like, she loved every minute of it. And everyone used to say what good manners she had.’

‘You said.’ I wondered where she had learnt the manners. ‘She’s lovely,’ I said. ‘She’ll do well at Cambridge. She’s old enough to go to Canada and come home and go to university and be rude or polite all on her own. She has good qualities, even if they’re not the ones you wanted for her. She’ll be fun to teach. But maybe you’ll have to let go of her.’

Judith looked up. ‘Hardly. She won’t eat enough to stay alive. Her clothes are awful, I had to force her into a suit for her Cambridge interviews. She couldn’t cope with Canada and she’s appallingly rude. Honestly, Anna, she’s not ready to leave. I’m amazed she could even manage the flights on her own. We got one of Brian’s colleagues to pick her up in Vancouver. God knows what people in Cambridge will think.’

I dried my hands. Moth had gone quiet. ‘Maybe you need to trust her. Or at least behave as if you do.’

‘She’d kill herself,’ said Judith. ‘She’d be dead in six weeks.’

It wasn’t clear to me that Zoe’s life expectancy was significantly longer than that under the current regime. There were slow footsteps on the stairs, as if the ghost had finally decided to make an appearance.

‘Here she comes,’ I said. ‘I’m going to find Moth.’

He was sitting on the floor, leafing through one of Raphael’s more basic science textbooks.

‘Moth, love, are you all right?’

He looked up and held out the book. ‘Mummy sing a stars.’

Many of the stars that you can see in the sky at night are actually bigger than our sun. They are so far away that we measure their distances in light years.

‘Mummy sing twinkle twinkle.’

I took him on my knee and began. He joined in, and behind our disharmony I heard Zoe greet her mother.

‘What do you think you’re doing here?’

Judith’s chair scraped.

‘I was worried about you. Zoe, I just want you to be well, and happy. That’s all I’ve ever wanted for you.’

That’s all any of us want for our children, but since we can’t achieve it ourselves it seems an unreasonably heavy burden to place on the next generation.

‘Come on,’ I said to Moth. ‘Let’s find Raph and go see how those apple trees are doing in the garden.’

4th Dec.

 

Since I am hardly about to ask Mrs Barwick the favour of sending this at the moment, I have kept it open. Well, the child is sick. I tried to visit again today and was again denied at the door, but when I met Mrs Gillies at the stream and questioned her she agreed that the babe, a girl, cannot feed and lies screaming as if in the throes of pain, which it no doubt is. I could hear the screams from the ‘street’ outside, and when I peered through the door the child lay in a box on the table with no one near. It appeared to be wrapped in a meal-sack and I saw no sign of our layette.

I meant to walk on up the hill, perhaps along the clifftop from where it is sometimes possible to see the ships bound for America and Canada, but although the morning was clear enough I soon found the wind so hard that I was forced to turn back. I had thought that winds strong enough to strike an adult to the ground were a mere figure of speech, or at least a reality known only to those who make a point of presenting themselves to the least hospitable climates on the globe, but it is not so; I turned back when a certain gust laid me flat on the turf, albeit with more damage to my dignity and my hooped petticoat (frequently, I find, closely related to each other) than any other part of my anatomy! It was as well that the local people have more sense than to offer themselves to such inclement elements and so my disarray went unwitnessed, though from the look Mrs Barwick cast towards me on my return you would think she had spies in the very rocks to report on my foolhardiness and its consequences.

You can imagine Mrs Barwick and I are living on fine terms now. I have had no clean linen since the confinement and not even the luxury of a bannock to vary the dried fish and oatmeal – think of me as your Christmas preparations progress! (Don’t fret, I am not really hungry, only bored by a monotonous diet which will do me no harm and probably much good in the general scheme of life.) I would write to Miss Emily in complaint at Mrs Barwick’s insolence – except that it is beginning to cross my mind to doubt whether my letters to her are being sent.