8

1976

IT SURPRISED LYDIA HOW THE evenings crept in, how the days turned from bright to black almost without her noticing. And sometimes the night would arrive in the sitting room while the garden was still lit gold at the back, as though the house itself divided the light.

Beneath her room were the twins in their adjoining bedrooms that faced out on to the garden. Underneath the twins were Sara in the master bedroom and Owen in his nursery next door, and Philip, at the front, looking out over the sea. The back bedroom on the second floor was turned into Sara’s office, and she worked with her back to the ivy-covered window, often with the door propped open with a wedge of paper to hear the baby. Sometimes Lydia was grateful not to be on the main floors, tangled up with the rest of them. And sometimes it made her feel othered, outcast, the stranger in the attic.

The house always felt more relaxed with Dot it in – her relentless good humour wore away at the rigid unease that dogged Lydia now, a constant companion since she’d found the bird in the fireplace. As though the house had known she was there, crouching and listening, and had sent her a message. She tried to avoid the nursery as much as possible, and disliked turning her back to the chimney.

As the sun set across the garden, the trees and the pond disappeared gradually into the evening. Dot hefted a basket of clean laundry on to the kitchen table to fold small clothes with deft hands and pestered Lydia, again, to come out with her, down to the pub in the village on one of her Friday nights off. ‘Come on, it’ll be a laugh. You hardly ever leave the house, you deserve a night out.’

‘Who else will be there?’

Dot laughed. ‘There’s some good-looking lads in the village, you know, but if that’s what you’re worried about I’ll tell them to stay away. Tell them you have a piece back in the city.’ She winked, salacious.

‘It’s not that! And I don’t. Have a piece – you know what I mean. There was someone, you know that. But not for a long while.’

‘Why did you finish?’

Such a simple question, but Lydia found that she had no answer. ‘I don’t know. I suppose I moved here.’

‘He didn’t fancy moving as well, then?’

Lydia was faintly shocked. ‘I couldn’t have asked him to do that.’

‘Why not?’

Why hadn’t she asked Danny about coming with them? They could have rented a house in the village together, made a life. Why hadn’t she said? Why hadn’t he said? ‘I suppose I didn’t think I was allowed.’

Dot threw her head back, strong teeth gleaming. ‘What do you mean, “allowed”? Haven’t you ever just asked for what you wanted?’

‘No. No, I don’t think I have.’ And Lydia laughed, too, at the utterly ridiculous notion that she could ever be a person to ask for what she wanted, and at the following absurd realisation that not being that person could very well mean a life of never getting what she wanted. How odd. How funny.

‘Will you come, then? There’s usually a crowd of us; you won’t stand out.’

‘I don’t mind standing out, Dot. I just don’t want to not know anyone, I don’t want to be a lemon.’

‘But, once you’ve actually met everyone, then you will know them. Right?’

Lydia had always enjoyed being persuaded. ‘Sure, all right. I’ll come.’

After Dot had left and the children were in bed, Sara motioned for Lydia to follow her into the kitchen, where she hunted in the cupboard for two clean glasses, switched on the radio, and kicked off her shoes under the table. She lit a cigarette, tapped the packet and winked.

‘How are they getting on, then?’ Sara flicked ash into the saucer on the table. She really only smoked inside when it was warm enough to leave the doors open; during the winter, Lydia often spotted her hunched against the orangery, grinding the ends into the patio slabs. Once, coming back from the village up the cliff path, she crested the hill and saw Sara sitting out on the drawing-room windowsill, wearing two coats, framed by the bare wisteria branches and wreathed in blue smoke.

‘Fine. All right. Philip asked me to set him maths homework yesterday.’

Sara shook her head. ‘Just like his dad – what a little swot.’

‘Shall I?’ Lydia took a cigarette, even though she didn’t really want one.

Sara stretched her arms above her head and yawned. Wisps of residual smoke curled from her nostrils on the exhale. ‘Don’t see why not. If it keeps him busy. Do you think the girls need it?’

‘Do you think they’d do it, even if I set it?’

‘Good point.’ Sara leaned over and topped up Lydia’s wine. She’d donated their set of wedding crystal, never used, after Doug died, and replaced it with fashionable green glass dotted with artistic knobbles. Lydia didn’t like the new set much; it made her think of warty toad skin.

‘Thanks.’ Her mouth tasted of ferment and ash.

‘Debussy.’

‘What?’

‘The radio – Debussy. “Feuilles mortes”, I think. French, means “dead leaves”.’

‘Oh. It’s nice. Relaxing.’

Sara sat back in the chair and pulled her knees up so that her feet rested on the edge of the seat. They looked like a bird’s feet, like talons curled under. ‘I know you don’t agree with me.’

‘What?’

‘About school. About all this – taking the year.’

‘It’s not that I think it’s bad, I just wonder if –’

Sara interrupted. ‘I understand that it’s not exactly what Philip would prefer. I know it suits the girls better. I just want them all to have a bit of time together, a bit of time off real life, before we all have to start again.’

‘No, I do understand. I know it’s been hard. After.’

‘You know more than anyone, Lydia, what we all went through. And I know it was hard on you too – you were a lifeline. I’m glad – really, I am glad – that you came with us. We wouldn’t be able to do this without you. It’s so important for the children to have something constant, especially now that I’m working. We all need to be together.’

‘I know. And I’m glad you asked me.’ Lydia felt the praise like alcohol in her blood. The warm rush of it made her want to do anything Sara asked.

When they’d hired her, Doug and Sara asked, tentatively, how much they should pay her. Lydia had been astonished, opened and closed her mouth like a fool and stared at them across the coffee table in the parlour. ‘Ah, I’m not sure? It depends, I think – what do you want me to do? Weekends, and so on – it’s different with every family.’

‘Right, yes, of course.’ Doug looked at Sara, who shrugged, and then proposed a figure that wasn’t incredible, but wasn’t insulting, either. Lydia knew they could probably have afforded more, but she’d never been much of a negotiator. Sometimes, when she was counting out coins for the gas meter, she thought about the enormous cupboard under the stairs in Doug and Sara’s house, fitted with multiple racks to store wine that Doug didn’t drink, but instead ‘invested’ in. Sara sold it when he died; a short man in brown overalls came with a clipboard and made a list and the next day it was hauled away in packing cases stuffed with straw and hessian, and loaded into vans. Lydia watched it leave the house in a similar way to how Doug had left, in the end: upended, in a box.

Sara kept a few of the cheaper bottles and once in a while she would open one of an evening and tell Lydia to sit with her. Lydia loved those times best, when Sara invited her into a different life. They would talk about their parents, and about old boyfriends, never really about the children. They never talked about Doug. Sara would ask her about her friends, and going out, and nightclubs, and sometimes Lydia invented wild stories of being offered very expensive drugs by very unsuitable men and Sara would scream and open another bottle. It was something approaching a friendship – the only one Sara really had, out here in Dorset.

But as the months went on, those evenings became more and more infrequent. Sara would excuse herself after supper with a headache, or a pointed comment about the work she had to do to sustain them all in the house, and Lydia would feel guilty for wanting her time. She had to make the most of the moments she did get with Sara, tried to cram in conversations about the children when they had five minutes together. Sara had said that coming out here was about being together, but they all saw less and less of her.

Sara drained her glass and yawned. ‘Lock up, would you?’

Up in the black attic, a pile of magazines toppled over and slithered on to the floor as Lydia groped in the dark, trying to find her pyjamas and the battery lamp. She swore, quietly and with feeling, when she knocked her forehead against one of the low beams and sighed when her hands finally found the lamp. A moth fluttered against the plastic and Lydia shook it off and smothered it with a tissue. The idea of it landing on her face while she slept made her feel panicky and ill.

Lydia thought again about Danny. She’d given him the address and phone number of the house, but he hadn’t used them. Maybe he was punishing her for leaving, maybe for something else. Danny was usually punishing her for her transgressions, real or imagined. She never knew what would rile him up – he’d sometimes find it funny how other men came on to her when they were out, and then whip round and tell her that she couldn’t possibly go to the supermarket in that skirt, it was far too short. He dazzled and enraged her equally and she felt tired when she remembered him, and how often she fell short of the requirement to keep up with his lightning moods and unspoken expectations.

She turned off the lamp. Sara had made a point of telling Lydia that she was buying rather a lot of batteries, and Lydia had thought, Well, maybe you should put electrics up there like you promised? But she didn’t say it.

Something moved in the dark below.

Lydia lay very still. The door to the attic steps was closed, and although there was a hook-and-eye catch on the inside, Lydia never latched it, to allow the children in. The connecting door between the attic rooms was also closed – Lydia couldn’t sleep in the face of an open door. Her bed and one of the dressers occupied the room at the far end, the one that contained the rise of the chimney breast, and the first room she used for the rest of her clothes and boxes of books and shoes.

Faintly, she heard the attic door open, and then very soft footsteps on the stairs. She wondered if one of the children had come up looking for her – but generally the children raced up the stairs like a herd of goats, stamping and biting. These footsteps came even, slow, measured. Louder now, as they crossed the attic. Lydia opened her mouth to call out, and then closed it again. The sound stopped at the door.

A heavy thump on the glass of the dormer window made her cry out; she put a hand over her mouth. She was so frightened she felt queasy and the back of her neck left a wet patch on the pillow. She was cold now, but didn’t want to move to retrieve the quilt – the bedstead was old and squeaked viciously. She turned her head on the pillow and stared at the pale shape of the door. The lamp was on the floor, too far to reach without making a sound.

Lydia lay and watched the door for a long time. After a while, she closed her eyes. Just to rest them, just for a moment. Still no one came through the door, but she hadn’t heard the footsteps leave.

Lydia fell asleep with her face towards the door, and when she woke in the hot light of the early morning she saw that the door at the bottom of the attic steps was open, pushed right back against the wooden panelling of the corner room that Sara used to store old toys and junk and boxes of things from London that they had no use for in this new life. The dormer window shone oily, streaked with dirt where the bird had hit it.

Downstairs, she made a pot of tea and took it out to the picnic table on the patio. Sara appeared almost an hour later, still drowsy from bed. Lydia tasted the old tea, coppery and thick, and poured out the last drops for Sara.

‘Children aren’t up yet, then?’ Sara reached across for the milk bottle, warm from the morning sun.

‘Haven’t heard anything; I’m enjoying the peace!’

Sara laughed and sat back in her chair, closed her eyes and tilted her face to the sun. ‘Such a beautiful day. I feel so lucky to be out here, you know. I can’t imagine being in London in this heat.’

Lydia remembered the hot, gritty air of the Tube in summertime, the crush of sweaty bodies and the rank stink of the river. Sara never really took the Tube; she and Doug hailed black cabs everywhere they went. And their house had such a lovely garden, with smart outdoor furniture and a perfect lawn. If Lydia wanted to escape the gasping heat of her flat, she had to make do with the dusty scrub of the Heath.

‘Sara – did you come up last night, to the attic?’

‘What? Why would I do that? This tea is stone-cold, Lydia, did you know that?’

‘Yes. So you didn’t come up to my room?’

Sara took the teapot and called out from the orangery, ‘No – was it one of the children?’ She disappeared into the kitchen.

Lydia took in the gleaming lawn, the flawless sky. She turned in her chair and shielded her eyes from the sun and looked to the very top of the house, where her bedroom squatted under the violent point of the roof.

The pub was too warm for a summer evening like this one, crammed with Friday-night locals. The low ceiling was stained with nicotine and soot from the open fire that was, inexplicably, going full-tilt in the old inglenook fireplace, and tarnished horse brasses hung from the wooden beams propping up the bar. It smelled sharply of stale beer and sweat and too much perfume.

Dot waved towards the back exit; Lydia left her ordering at the bar and went out to the beer garden to snag one of the few remaining trestle tables. A fragrant haze of cigarette smoke hung over the tables crowded together, and Lydia wished she’d swiped a packet of Sara’s before leaving the house.

Dot appeared with two very full wine glasses and two very tall men, who sat down across from Lydia with such enthusiasm that the table rocked and Lydia slid forwards on the bench.

‘Shit, sorry!’ The men laughed, and the taller one put out his hand. ‘Lee. Lee Barrow.’

‘Wheelbarrow.’ The other one smiled at Lydia. ‘That’s what we all call him, since school.’

‘Hi. Hi. I’m Lydia?’

‘Yeah, we know, Dot said.’ Lee tapped his packet of cigarettes. ‘Want one?’

‘God, yes. Yes, please.’

‘She’s keen!’ Not-Lee winked at her, and Lydia flushed.

‘Shut up, Freddie. Sorry, Lids. I promised you nice boys, but I could only find these two fools.’

Lee smiled at Dot, and Lydia knew immediately that, if she stayed, she’d end up stuck with Idiot Fred, who had dirty fingernails and a hole in the collar of his shirt.

‘How’re you finding the big house, then?’ Lee reached over and lit Lydia’s cigarette for her. He struck the match against his thumbnail and it flared blue then orange.

‘Fine. It’s good. I like it out here, I like it more than London.’

Fred waggled his eyebrows and gulped at his brown pint. ‘Seen the ghosts yet?’

‘What?’

Dot flicked an old cigarette end at Fred. ‘Fuck’s sake, Fred.’

Lydia leaned forwards. ‘What do you mean, “ghosts”?’

Lee rolled his eyes. ‘It’s nothing, just stupid stuff folk round here say. Lot of people have come and gone from that house, no one stays long. People joke that it’s because of ghosts. Really, I think it’s just a bit of a shit house.’

‘A shit house?’

‘Just because of where it is.’ Dot sipped her wine and made a face. ‘Christ, this is awful. Well done asking for the red, Lids, this white tastes like piss.’

‘Oh yeah, and you’d know, would you?’ Fred stuck his tongue out.

‘You’re disgusting.’

Lydia asked again, cold now even in the heat of the evening, ‘Why is it a shit house?’

Dot sighed. ‘You know, it’s big. Expensive. Bit isolated, out on the cliff, right out of the village like that. People like the views, then they realise they don’t actually like living in it. Gets cold up there, with the wind, especially in winter. You know that. If we get a load of snow, you can be really cut off.’

‘Right. Yeah. So no ghosts, then?’ Lydia laughed, and it came out too high, too fast.

Lee shifted on the bench. ‘I mean, there have been a few accidents up there, and so on. But, like, years ago. Not recent. Right, Dot?’

Smoke streamed from Dot’s lips. ‘Not recent, no. My mum talks about a little girl that died there, but ages ago.’

‘A kid? When?’ Lydia reached over for another cigarette, the packet jumped away when her fingers touched it.

‘Years and years ago, before my mum was even born. Before the war – first, not second. My grandad remembers it, he went to the funeral. All the village did, for things like that. Drowned.’

‘At the beach?’

‘No, up at the house. The pond.’ Dot inhaled. ‘My grandad said she was missing for a few days, so everyone was searching, but she’d got tangled in the weeds. So when she came up after a week – not pretty. An accident, though. Sad, but things like that happen.’

The silver foil from the cigarette packet fluttered on the table for a moment and was whipped away by the salt-breeze from the cove, only a few streets away from the pub. Lydia reached for her wine and finished it very quickly.

Dot continued, ‘Anyway, we’ve never seen a ghost, have we, Lids?’ She laughed and dropped her cigarette butt into the creamy dregs of Fred’s pint, and the three of them moved on to something else.