Chapter 5

For I was reared

In the great city, pent ’mid cloisters dim,

And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Frost at Midnight

On Boxing Day I wake up to hear voices in the kitchen, the clatter of the kettle on the Rayburn, the tap running, water clunking through the pipes in the wall by my bed. It sounds so like the mornings of my childhood here that I lie still for a moment, with the dizzying feeling that I have gone back in time. I expect I am the last one up, as I always used to be. Still full and heavy with yesterday’s rich food, I go up to the attic in my dressing gown, unwrap the bone ring from Caroline’s trunk and take it downstairs with me. On the stairs hangs the smell of coffee and grilled bacon; and against all logic my stomach rumbles.

The four of them are at the table, which is properly laid with plates and cutlery, coffee mugs and a huge French press, a platter of bacon and eggs, toast tucked neatly into a rack. Such quirks of the generation gap make me so fond. I would never think of setting the breakfast table, putting toast in a rack instead of on my plate. The four people I care most about in the world, sitting together at a laden table. I lean on the door jamb for a second and wish that it could always be this way. Warm steam in the air; the dishwasher grinding through its noisy cycle.

“Ah! You’ve decided to grace us with your presence,” Dad beams, pouring me a coffee.

“Cut me some slack, Dad, it’s only nine o’clock,” I yawn, sauntering to the table, sliding onto a bench.

“I’ve been out already, to fetch in loads more wood,” Eddie boasts, smothering some toast with chocolate spread.

“Show off,” I accuse him.

“Ed, would you like some toast with your Nutella?” Beth asks him pointedly. Eddie grins at her, takes a huge bite that leaves a chocolate smile on his cheeks.

“Sleep OK?” I ask my parents. They took the same guest room they always did before. So many rooms to choose from, and we all of us have filed into our habitual ones like well-behaved children.

“Very well, thank you, Erica.”

“Here, Mum—this is that bell I was telling you about, that I found up in Caroline’s things.” I hand it to her. “The handle looks like it’s bone, or something.”

Mum turns it over in her hands, glances up at me incredulously. “It’s not a bell, you dope, it’s a baby’s teething ring. A very lovely one, too. This is ivory, not bone . . . and the silver bell acts as a rattle. Added interest.”

“A teething ring? Really?”

“A very old-fashioned one, yes; but that’s certainly what it is.”

“I saw something like that on The Antiques Roadshow not that long ago,” Dad adds.

“Ivory and silver—it must have been for a pretty rich kid,” Eddie observes, around a mouthful of toast.

“Was it Clifford’s? Do you remember it?” I ask. Mum frowns slightly.

“No, I have to say I don’t. But I may have forgotten. Or . . .” she reaches behind her, takes the family tree from the sideboard. “Look at the gap between Caroline getting married, and Meredith being born—seven years! That’s rather unusual. There’s my great aunt, Evangeline—she died before her first birthday, poor thing.” She points to the name preceding Meredith’s, the pitifully short dates in brackets beneath. “Two babies in seven years is not very many. Perhaps she had a son that died, before she had Meredith, and this ring belonged to that poor little chap.”

“Maybe. But wouldn’t he be on the family tree, even if he’d died?”

“Well, not necessarily. Not if he was born prematurely, or was stillborn,” Mum muses. “I know that Meredith lost a child before I was born. These things can run in families.”

“Perhaps we could talk about something else at the breakfast table?” Beth says quietly. Mum and I button our lips guiltily. Beth miscarried a child, very early on, before Eddie was born. It was little more than a slip of life, but its sudden absence was like a tiny, bright light going out.

“What are we going to do today, then?” Dad asks, helping himself to more scrambled eggs. “I, for one, feel the need to stretch my legs a bit—walk off some of yesterday’s excess.”

“To make room for today’s excess, David?” Mum remarks, peering at his plate.

“Quite so!” he agrees cheerfully.

It is brighter today, but gray clouds nose purposefully across the sky and the wind is brisk, penetrating. We take a route through the village, westward past the little stone church that nestles into a green slope studded with the gravestones of generations of Barrow Storton’s dead. In the far corner is the Calcott plot, and in unspoken unity we drift over to it. It is about two meters wide, and as long. A cold bed of marble chippings for our family to sleep in. Henry, Lord Calcott, is in there, and Caroline, with the little daughter she lost before Meredith. Evangeline. And now Meredith has joined them. So recently that the remnants of the funeral flowers are still here in a small, brass pot, and the cuts of her name on the stone are sharp and fresh. I can’t help thinking she would rather have had her own place, or lie next to her husband Charles, than spend eternity cooped up with Caroline, but it is too late now. I shudder, make a silent pledge that I will never lie in this claustrophobic family grave.

“I suppose if Caroline had had a son, he’d be buried here, wouldn’t he?” I ask, breaking the silence. Beth sighs sharply and walks away, over to where Eddie is climbing the gabled lychgate.

“I suppose so. Probably. But, who knows? If he was very tiny, perhaps they’d have given him an infant’s grave instead,” Mum replies.

“What would that look like?”

“Just like a grave with a smaller stone, usually with an angel on it somewhere—or a cherub,” she says. Dad looks at me sidelong.

“I have to say, you’re taking a pretty keen interest in this all of a sudden,” he says.

“No, I just . . . you know. I never could stand an unsolved mystery,” I shrug.

“Then I fear you were born into the wrong family.”

“Hey, Eddie!” I call to him. “Look for small gravestones with angels on them, and the name Calcott!” Eddie rips me a smart salute, begins to trot up and down the rows of stones. Beth folds her arms and glares at me.

“Can we please stop looking for dead babies!” she shouts, the wind pulling at her voice.

“Give me five minutes!” I call back.

“Perhaps we should get on, Erica?” Mum says diffidently.

“Five minutes,” I say again.

I run my eyes along the ranks of stones, in the opposite direction to which Eddie has gone, but they all seem to be of regular size.

“Sometimes there’s a special area for the infant graves . . .” Mum sets her gaze to the far corner of the churchyard. “Try over there—do you see? Under that beech tree.” I walk quickly to where the wind is seething through the naked beech, sounding like the sea. There are perhaps fifteen or twenty graves here. On the older graves are little cherubs, their features blurred with lichen, chubby arms wrapped forlornly around the stones. There are a couple of newer stones too, carved with teddy bears instead; less celestial guardians which seem somehow out of place. But then that’s the point, I suppose. An infant has no place in a churchyard. Lives that had no chance to start, losses that must have torn their parents’ souls. All those broken hearts are buried here too, alongside the tiny bodies that broke them. It’s a melancholy sight and I scan the names and dates hurriedly, walk away from the sad little party with a shiver.

I have never before found graveyards eerie, or particularly depressing. I like the expressions of love on the stones, the quiet declarations of people having existed, of having mattered. Who knows what secret feelings lie behind the carved lists of offspring, siblings and surviving spouses—or if the memories they had were truly loving. But there is the hope, always, that each transient life meant something to those left behind; cast a vapor trail of influence and emotion to fade gradually across the years.

“Anything?” I ask Eddie.

“Nope. There’s an angel over there, but the lady was seventy-three and called Iris Bateman.”

“Can we go, now?” Beth says impatiently. “If you’re that desperate to know if she had a son, go and look it up in the births, marriages and deaths register. It’s all online now.”

“Perhaps she was married before, in America,” Mum says, taking my arm in a conciliatory manner. “Perhaps the baby in the photograph died there, before she came over.”

To the north of the village is a web of farm tracks and bridleways, dodging through the drab winter fields. We take a circular route, at a brisk pace, falling into pairs to pass along the narrow pathways. Eddie drops back to walk beside me. He is leaving later on today. I look at his sharp face, his scruffy hair, and feel a pull of affection. It gives me such an odd, desperate feeling for a second that I pause to consider how Beth must be feeling. As if reading my mind, Eddie speaks.

“Is Mum going to be OK?” A carefully neutral tone he is too young to have developed.

“Yes, of course,” I tell him, with as much certainty as I can find.

“It’s just . . . when Dad came to pick me up last time, before Christmas, she seemed . . . really unhappy about it. She’s getting thin again. And, like, today, just now, she was really snappy with you . . .”

“Sisters always snap at each other, Eddie. That’s nothing out of the ordinary!” I find a fake laugh and Eddie gives me an accusing look. I drop the bravado. “Sorry,” I say. “Look, it’s just . . . it’s hard for your mum, being back at the manor house. Has she told you about your great-grandma’s will? That we can only keep the house if we both come and live in it?” He nods. “Well, that’s why we’ve come to stay. To see if we would like to come and live here.”

“Why does she hate it so much? Because your cousin was kidnapped—and she misses him?”

“Possibly . . . possibly it’s to do with Henry. And the fact that, well, this place is in our past now, and sometimes it can feel wrong to try and live in the past. To be honest, I don’t think we’ll come to live here, but I’m going to try to make your mum stay for a bit longer at least; even if she doesn’t really want to.”

“But why?”

“Well . . .” I struggle for a way to explain. “Do you remember that time your finger swelled up to the size of a sausage and it was so sore you wouldn’t let us look at it properly, but it wouldn’t heal up so finally we did look and you had a splinter of metal in it?”

“Yeah, I remember. It looked like it was going to explode,” he grimaces.

“Once we got the splinter out it healed, right?” Eddie nods. “Well, I think your mum won’t . . . heal because she has a splinter. Not of metal, and not in her finger, but she’s got a kind of splinter inside her and that’s why she can’t get better. I’m going to get the splinter out. I’m going to . . . find out what it is and get rid of it.” I hope I sound calm, confident in this purpose; when what I feel is desperate. If I believed in God, I would be striking all kinds of fervent bargains right now. Make Beth well. Make her happy.

“How? Why do you have to be here to do it?”

“Because . . . I think this is where she got the splinter in the first place,” I say.

Eddie considers this in silence for a while, his face marked by worried lines I hate to see. “I hope you do. I hope you can find out what it is,” he says, eventually. “You will find out, won’t you? And she will get better?”

“I promise you, Ed,” I say. And now I must not fail. I cannot let us come away from here without a resolution of some kind. The weight of my promise settles onto me like chains.

Our parents leave soon after lunch, and by teatime Maxwell has come for Eddie as well. Maxwell is grouchy, blotches of overindulgence on his cheeks. He looks mealy-mouthed. I load carrier bags of presents into the trunk, Beth watching me blackly as if I am colluding in the theft of her son.

“See you, Edderino,” I say.

“Bye then, Auntie Rick,” he says, and climbs into the back. He is calm, resigned. He goes from one place of welcome to the next; he is practical, does not fret. He lets himself be ferried, and pretends not to notice Beth’s anguish. There’s the smallest hint of cruelty in this, as if he means to say, you made this situation, you set it up this way.

“Did you tell Harry you were going today?” I ask, leaning into the car.

“Yes, but you might have to tell him again, if you see him around. I’m not sure how much attention he was paying.”

“OK. Call your mum later on, won’t you?” I keep my voice low.

“ ’Course,” he mutters, looking at his hands.

The brake lights of the car gleam red as they pull out of the drive. It’s raining again. Beth and I stand and wave like idiots until the car is out of sight. Our hands drop, in near-perfect unison. Neither one of us wants to turn back to the house now this event is past. Christmas. The preparation of the house, the feeding and entertaining of Eddie, of our parents. Now what? No deadline, no timetable. Nothing to guide us but ourselves. I glance at Beth, see tiny drops of water beading the stray hairs around her face. I can’t even ask what she wants for lunch, can’t even impose this small future on us. The house is bursting with leftovers, ready to be grazed.

“Eddie’s so great, Beth. You’ve done so well there,” I say, needing to break the silence. But there’s a chilly, sad edge to Beth’s eyes.

“I’m not sure how much of it comes from me,” she says.

“All the best bits,” I say, taking her hand, squeezing it. She shakes her head. We turn and go inside again, alone.

When she is this quiet, when she is this pale and still, like a carving, I think of her in the hospital. At least I didn’t find her. I’ve only got Eddie’s descriptions, making pictures in my head. She was in her bedroom, lying on her side, bent at the waist as if she had been sitting up and then tipped over. He couldn’t see her face, he told me. Her hair had fallen right over it. He says he doesn’t know how long he stood there before going over to her, because he was too afraid of moving her hair, of seeing what was underneath. His mother, or his dead mother. He needn’t have touched her at all, of course. He could have just called an ambulance. But he was a child, a little boy. He wanted to make it right himself. He wanted to touch her and find her sleeping, nothing more. What courage he must have found. To do it—to push back her hair. I am so proud of him it hurts.

She had taken a lot of sleeping pills and then tried to cut her wrists—with the short-bladed paring knife that I had seen her use more than once, slicing banana onto Eddie’s cereal—but the conclusion drawn was that she had hesitated. She had hesitated—perhaps because the first cut, deep enough to look bad but not deep enough to do any real damage, had hurt more than she expected. And while she hesitated the pills sank into her bloodstream and she passed out. She had cut her wrist the wrong way. Horizontally, across the vessels and tendons, instead of parallel to them as any serious suicide, these days, knows is best. The doctors called it a cry for help rather than a genuine attempt, but I knew different. I clattered into the hospital, waited while they pumped her stomach. Opposite me in the corridor was a window, blinds drawn. My reflection stared back at me. In the greenish light I looked dead. Lank hair, face drooping. I fed money into a machine; it expelled watery hot chocolate for Eddie. Then Maxwell came and took him away.

When she woke up I went in to see her, and I had no idea until I got to her that I was angry. So angry with her. Angrier than I have ever been.

“What were you doing? What about Eddie?” These were my first words. Snapping like a trap.

A nurse with hair the color of sand scowled at me, said, “Elizabeth needs her rest,” in an admonishing tone, as if she knew her better than I. There was a bruise on Beth’s chin, purple hollows around her eyes, in her cheeks. What about me? I wanted to add. Hurt, that she would want to leave me. The same feeling as when she ran off with Dinny, snowballing down the years. She didn’t answer me. She started to cry and my heart cracked, let the anger run out. I picked up a matted length of her hair and began chasing out the knots with my fingertips.

It’s been a long time since I spoke to my Aunt Mary, let alone telephoned her. I am still reluctant to, but I have got a ball rolling now. I have started to learn things, started to uncover secrets. If I keep going, sooner or later I will get to the ones I am looking for. I shift uncomfortably in the chair as I wait to hear Mary’s voice. She was always mousy, quiet; so mild and meek that half the time we didn’t even notice her. A pink-skinned woman with pale hair and eyes. Neat blouses, tucked into neat skirts. It was a shock to hear her scream; to hear her shout and cry and curse in the aftermath of Henry’s disappearance. Then when that stopped she was even quieter than before, as if she’d used up all the noise she possessed in that one burst. Her voice is fluting and quiet, as precarious as wet tissue paper.

“Mary Calcott speaking?” So timorous, as if she’s really not sure.

“Hello, Aunt Mary, it’s Erica.”

“Erica? Oh hello, dear. Happy Christmas. Well, I suppose it’s a bit late for that now. Happy New Year.” There is little conviction behind these words. I wonder if she hates us, for surviving when Henry did not. For being around to remind her of it.

“And to you. I hope you’re well? You didn’t come down with Clifford, to collect those bits and bobs you wanted from the house?”

“No, no. Well, I’m sure you understand that Storton Manor is . . . not an easy place for me. It’s not a place I like to think of often, or return to,” she tells me, delicately. I can’t warm to her. To put losing her son in such limp terms, as if it was an embarrassing incident, best forgotten. I know how unfair I am being. I know she’s not a whole person any more.

“Of course.” I struggle to find more small talk, fail. “Well, the reason I was calling, and I hope you won’t mind me asking, is that I wanted to pick your brains a little about the family research you did, the year before last.”

“Oh, yes?”

“I’ve found a photo of Caroline, you see, dated 1904, and it was taken in New York . . .”

“Well, that certainly sounds right. She came to London in late 1904. It’s hard to be absolutely sure of the date.”

“Yes. The thing is she has a child with her, in the picture. A baby that looks about six months old or so. I just wondered if you had any idea who the baby might have been?”

“A child? Well. I can’t think. That can’t be right.”

“Was she married before, in the States? Only, the way she’s holding the baby . . . it just looks like a family portrait to me. She looks so proud . . . It looks to me like it’s her baby, you see.”

“Oh, no, Erica. That can’t be right at all. Let me just get the file down. One moment.” I hear rustling, a cupboard door creaking. “No, I’ve got a copy of her marriage certificate to Sir Henry Calcott here, and it clearly says, in the ‘condition’ column, that she was a spinster. A spinster at twenty-one! Hardly seems an appropriate label, does it?”

“Could she have . . . got a divorce, or something?” I ask, dubiously.

“Goodness me, no. It was very rare in that day and age, and certainly not without it being well talked about. Or mentioned on the occasion of her subsequent marriage. The child must belong to somebody else.”

“Oh. Well, thank you . . .”

“Of course, Caroline was always rather reticent about her early years in America. All anybody could discover was that she had grown up without any close family and had come to England to make a fresh start when she came into her money. She married Henry Calcott very soon after meeting him, which, I have always thought, perhaps shows how lonely she was, poor girl.” Twice now, she has said his name.

“Yes, it does sound that way. Well, thanks for looking it up for me, anyway.”

“You’re welcome, Erica. I wonder whether I might ask you to send me the photograph? To add to my presentation files? Early pictures of Caroline and her generation are so very scarce.”

“Oh, well actually, my mother has already asked me to give her any pictures I find. But I’m sure she’d be happy to send you copies of them . . .”

“Of course. Well, I shall ask Laura when I next see her.”

There’s a pause and I can’t quite bring myself to say goodbye, to admit that this piece of information was all I was after, and that I do not want to talk to her. There is so much to say, so much not to say.

“So . . . how was Christmas?” I ask. I hear her draw in a breath, steeling herself.

“It was fine, thank you.” She pauses again. “I still buy Henry a present every year, you know. Clifford thinks I am quite mad, of course, but he has never really understood. What it’s like for a mother to lose a child. I can’t just put it aside and move on, as he has managed to do.”

“What did you get him?” Before I can stop myself.

“A book about the RAF. Some new football boots, and some DVDs,” she says, her voice growing, as if she is pleased about choosing these gifts. Gifts she will never give. I can’t think what to say. I would be strangely fascinated to know whether she buys child-sized football boots, or has hazarded a guess at his adult shoe size. “Do you ever think about your cousin, Erica? Do you still think about Henry?” she asks, rushing the words.

“Of course. Of course I do. Especially now we’re . . . back here again.”

“Good. Good. I’m glad,” she says, and I wonder what she means. I wonder if she senses guilt, hanging around Beth and me like a bad smell.

“So there’s been no news? Of him—of Henry?” Ridiculous thing for me to ask, twenty-three years after he vanished. But what conclusion can I draw, from the gifts she still buys him, but that she expects someday to have him back?

“No,” she says flatly. A single word; she makes no effort to elaborate.

“Eddie’s been here with us for Christmas,” I tell her.

“Who?”

“Edward—Beth’s son?”

“Oh yes, of course.”

“He’s eleven now, the same age as . . . Well, he had a fine old time, anyway, carousing around out in the woods, getting filthy.”

“Clifford wanted to have another, you know. After we lost Henry. There might still have been time.”

“Oh,” I say.

“But I told him I couldn’t. What did he think—that we could just replace him, like a lost watch?” She makes an odd, strangled sound that I think is meant to be a laugh.

“No. No, of course not,” I say. There is another long pause, another long breath from Mary.

“I know you never got on. You girls and Henry. I know that you didn’t like him,” she says, suddenly tense, offended.

“We did like him!” I lie. “It’s just . . . well, we liked Dinny too. And we kind of had to choose sides . . .”

“Did it ever occur to you that Henry used to . . . act up, sometimes, because you always left him out of your games and ran off to play with Dinny?” she says.

“No. I . . . never thought he wanted to play with us. He never seemed like he wanted to,” I mumble.

“Well, I think he did. I think it hurt his feelings that you couldn’t wait to get away,” she tells me, resolutely. I try to picture my cousin this way—try to shape the way he treated us, treated Dinny, in these terms. But I can’t—it won’t fit. That’s not the way it was, not the way he was. A flare of indignation warms me, but of course I can say nothing and the silence buzzes down the line. “Well, Erica, I really must go,” she says at last, in one long exhalation. “It was . . . nice to talk to you. Goodbye.”

She hangs up the phone before I can respond. She does not do this crossly, or abruptly. Absently, rather, as if something else has caught her attention. She’s had lots of fads and projects in the years since Henry died. Tapestry, watercolors, horoscopes, brass rubbing, Anglo-Saxon poetry. The family genealogy was the longest running, the one she really followed through. I wonder if she did it because she got to say his name, over and over again, when Clifford would not allow her to speak of their son. Henry Calcott, Henry Calcott, Henry Calcott. Learning everything she could about his ancestors, the source of each component part of him, as if she could rebuild him.

He’s dead. This I know. He was not carried off. It wasn’t him, lying in the back of a car in a Devizes car park. It wasn’t him, being carried by a mysterious hobo on the A361. I know it because I can feel it, I can feel the memory of his death. I can feel it at the dew pond, even if I can’t see it. The way I could hear the shape of Dinny in the darkness on Christmas Day. We were there, Henry was there; and Henry died. I have the shape of it. I just need to color it in. Because I’ve stalled. I’m blocked. I can’t go in any direction until I can fill this hole in my head, until I can work Beth’s splinter free. Every other thought must detour around these missing things, and that will not do. Not any longer. And if I must start in 1904 and work my way toward it, then that is what I will do.

Through the kitchen window I see Harry, lingering by the trees at the far end of the garden. It’s still raining, harder now. His hands are thrust into the pockets of his patchwork coat and he is hunched, damp, forlorn looking. Without thinking, I pull leftovers from the fridge and larder and start to carve fleshy slices from the cold turkey with its burnt leg stumps. I slather mayonnaise onto two bits of white bread, cram in turkey, and stuffing the consistency of chipboard. Then I take it down to him, wrapped in foil, my coat draped over my head. He doesn’t smile at me. He shifts from foot to foot, in an apparent agony of indecision. Rain drips from the ends of his dreadlocks. I catch the scent of his unwashed body. A soft, animal smell, strangely endearing.

“Here, Harry. I made this for your lunch. It’s a turkey sandwich,” I say, handing it to him. He takes it. I don’t know why I expect him to speak, when I know he won’t. It’s such a fundamentally human thing, I suppose. To communicate with noise. “Eddie’s gone back to his dad’s house now, Harry. Do you understand what I’m saying? He’s not here any more,” I tell him, as kindly as I can. If I knew when Eddie was coming back, I would add this information. I don’t. I don’t know if we’ll be here. I don’t know anything. “His father came today and took him home with him,” I explain. Harry glances at the sandwich. A tiny metallic tune, as rain hits the foil. “Well, at least eat this,” I say gently, patting his hand on the sandwich. “It’ll keep you going.”

Beth finds me in the study. I am curled up in a leather bucket chair. I stood on the desk to get this book of wild flowers down from the top shelf. It brought a shower of dead flies with it, a smell of past lives. Now it’s open, heavy across my knees, at a double-page spread of yellow marsh flags. Ragged, buttery irises. Nonchalantly drooped petals on tall stems, like pennants on a still day. I recognized them as soon as I saw them. Marsh flags.

“The rain’s stopped. Do you fancy a quick walk?” Beth asks. She has plaited her hair, put on clean jeans and a sweater the color of raspberries.

“Absolutely,” I say, all astonishment. “Yes, let’s.”

“What were you reading?”

“Oh, just about wild flowers. There were three old pillowcases up in the press. They had yellow flowers embroidered on them, and I wanted to know what they were.”

“What were they?”

“Marsh flags. Does that ring any bells with you?”

“No. Should it? What kind of bell?”

“Probably a misplaced bell. I’ll just get some wellies on.”

We don’t walk very far, since the sky is like charcoal on the horizon. Just down into the village and then up to the barrow. I am sure I see one of the girls from the solstice party through the window of the pub. Sitting by the fire, accepting a fresh pint from a man whose back is turned to me. There’s a welcoming drench of wood smoke and beer and voices from the doorway, but we carry on past. Lots of villagers out and about today. Walking off the cake and puddings. They all greet us, although I am sure we are not recognized. A few faces tug at me. They slot into my memories somewhere, but too seamlessly for me to pick them out. A stout woman rides past on her horse, silver tinsel woven into its tail.

We cross the tawny grassland up to the barrow, scare up two dozen glossy rooks that had been strutting purposefully. The wind whisks them away, and from a distance they look like ragged shot-holes in the sky. Beth links her arm through mine, walks with a swinging step.

“You seem happy today?” I ask her, carefully.

“I am. I’ve come to a decision.”

“Oh? What kind of decision?” We’ve reached the barrow. Beth lets go of my arm, conquers the mound in three long strides and turns to gaze over my head into the distance.

“I’m going. I’m not staying,” she says, throwing her arms wide, girlish, dramatic. She takes a huge breath, lets it out with emphasis.

“What do you mean? Going where?”

“Going home, of course. Later today. I’ve packed!” she laughs, as if she is wild, reckless. “I’m taking that road,” she says, squinting and pointing to the line of tall poplars that march along the lane out of the village.

“You can’t!” The thought of being alone in the house fills me with a dread I can’t define. I would rather dive to the bottom of the pond, let it suck me down. I feel something like panic sputtering in my stomach.

“Of course I can. Why stay? What are we even doing here? I can’t even remember why we came. Can you?”

“We came to . . . we came to sort things out. To . . . decide what we wanted to do!” I grope for words.

“Come on, Erica. Neither of us wants to live here.” She drops her arms as she says this, looks at me suddenly. “You don’t, do you? You don’t want to live here? You don’t want to stay?”

“I don’t know yet!”

“But . . . you can’t want to. It’s Meredith’s house. Everything about it says Meredith. And then there’s . . . the other thing.”

“Henry?” I say. She nods, just once. Short and sharp. “It’s our house, Beth. Yours and mine now.”

“Oh my God, you want to stay. You do, don’t you?” She is utterly incredulous.

“I don’t know! I don’t know. Not for ever, perhaps. For a while, maybe. I don’t know. But please don’t go, Beth! Not yet. I’m . . . I’m not done. I can’t go yet and I can’t stay here on my own. Please. Stay a bit longer.” On top of the barrow Beth sags. I have stabbed her, let out all the air. We are quiet for a while. The wind rolls over the ridge, trembles the grasses. I see Beth shiver. She looks impossibly lonely up there.

At length she comes down to me, her eyes lowered.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

“What do you mean, you’re not done yet?” Her voice is flat now, lifeless.

“I need to . . . find out what happened. I need to remember.” A half-truth. I can’t tell her about her splinter. I can’t let her know what I am working toward. She would snatch herself away, not let me touch; just like Eddie with his swollen finger.

“Remember what?”

I stare at her. She must know what I’m talking about.

“About Henry, Beth. I need to remember what happened to Henry.” She glares at me now, eyes reflecting the gray sky. She searches my face, and I wait.

“You remember what happened. Don’t lie. You were old enough.”

“But I don’t. I really don’t,” I say. “Please tell me.” Beth looks away, past the rooftops and chimney trails of the village below and into the east, as if projecting herself there.

“No. I won’t tell you,” she says. “I won’t tell anyone. Not ever.”

“Please, Beth! I have to know!”

“No! And if . . . if you love me, you’ll stop asking.”

“Does Dinny know?”

“Yes, of course Dinny knows. Why don’t you ask him?” She flicks her eyes at me. There’s a chilly touch of resentment there. For an instant, then it’s gone. “But you know, too. And if you really don’t remember then . . . then maybe that’s a good thing.” She walks away from me, along the ridge toward the house.

She stops at the dew pond. This is the first time she’s been back to it, that I know of, and it halts her so abruptly that I almost run into her. The wind skids over its surface, turns it matt and ugly. I expect to see her crying, but her eyes are dry and hard. The sad lines on her face, etched deeper than ever. She stares down into it.

“I was so scared, the first time you swam here,” she murmurs, so quietly I can hardly hear. “I thought you wouldn’t be able to get out. Like the hedgehog in the pond at home, that time. Do you remember? It had swum around and around until it was too exhausted to swim any more, and then it just drowned. All those videos we were shown at school—never to swim in quarries or rivers. I thought water without chlorine in it had some dreadful, lurking power that waited and watched and ate little kids.”

“I remember you yelling at me like a harpy.”

“I was scared for you,” she says, shrugging minutely. “Now you spend all your time being scared for me. Except today. Why do I have to stay? You must see that . . . it’s bad for me, being here?”

“No, I . . . I think it could be good for you,” I force myself to say.

“What do you mean?” she asks me, darkly. My heart beats faster.

“I mean what I say. You can’t keep running from this, Beth! Please! If you would just talk about it—”

“No! I’ve told you—over and over. Not to you and not to anybody!”

“Why not to me? I’m your sister, Beth, nothing you could tell me would make me love you any less! Nothing,” I say firmly.

“That’s what you think, is it? That there’s something despicable in me that I’m trying to hide?” she whispers.

“No, Beth, that’s what I don’t think! You’re not listening to me! But you are hiding something—you can’t deny it. I have no secrets from you!”

“Everybody has secrets, Erica,” she snaps. It’s true, and I look away.

“All I want is for us to be able to leave this place behind . . .”

“Good! That’s what I want, too! So let’s do it—let’s leave.”

“Leaving it isn’t the same as leaving it behind, Beth! Look at you—since we’ve been back here it’s been like sharing the house with a ghost! You’re . . . miserable and you seem determined to stay that way!” I shout.

“What are you talking about?” Beth shouts back at me, spreading her hands in fury. “You’re the one determined to keep me here—you’re the one determined to make me miserable! I only came here at all because you pressured me into it!”

“I’m determined to get rid of whatever it is that’s keeping you down, Beth. And it’s here—I know it is. It’s here at this house—don’t walk away from me!” I grab her arm, stop her. Beth is breathing hard, will not look me in the eye. Her face is pale.

“If you don’t let me go, I might not ever forgive you. I don’t know what I will do,” she says, her voice trembling. Startled, I drop my hand from her arm but I don’t think this is what she means. I am afraid of what she will do. My resolve wavers, but I fight to hold on to it.

“Please, Beth. Please stay here with me. At least until the new year. Let’s just . . . figure this out. Whatever it is.”

“Figure it out?” she echoes me, bitterly. “It’s not a riddle, Erica.”

“I know that. But life can’t go on the way it has been. This is our chance, Beth—our chance to put things right.”

“Some things can’t be undone, Erica. The sooner you accept that the better,” she whispers. Tears are bright in her eyes, but when she looks up at me they are full of anger. “It can’t be put right!” she snaps, and storms away from me. I pause before I follow her, find that I am shaking.

For the rest of the day we play hide and seek. This house always was perfect for it. The rain comes in sideways, drafts creep down the chimneys. I bring Harry inside and make him a cup of sweet tea. He sits at the kitchen table sucking it from his teaspoon like a child. He drips water onto the floor, fills the room with the smell of wet wool. But I can’t find Beth to give her a cup of tea. I can’t find her to ask what she wants for dinner, if she wants to go out anywhere, if she wants to rent a film from the garage on the road to Devizes. I feel it is my job, now, to fill her time. Time I am forcing her to spend here. But she melts into the house like a cat, and I stomp from room to room in vain.

Henry once left her hiding for hours. Left her alone, trapped, panicked. He made me part of it, again. I was small. I must have been—Caroline was still alive. Earlier that day she’d been wheeled outside to the terrace. She had one of those grand old wicker wheelchairs. No gray NHS metal and plastic for her. It creaked as it rolled along, fine spokes glinting, but Henry said it was Caroline that creaked, because she was so old and mummified. I knew it was nonsense but even so, each time I heard it, I would think of papery skin tearing; of hair that would crumble to dust if you touched it; of a tongue gone stiff and woody in a shrivelled mouth. We were never made to kiss her, if we didn’t want to. Mum saw to that, and thank goodness.

By then she was mostly bedridden, but it was a fine day and we were all there—Clifford and Mary, my parents. She was wheeled to the table, presented with her lunch on a tray that slotted into the frame of the chair. The housekeeper brought out the soup in a white china tureen shaped like a giant cauliflower, and there were potatoes and salad and ham on the table. I was told off for dipping my fingers into the melted butter at the bottom of the potato bowl. Meredith helped Caroline to eat, sometimes feeding her the way you feed a baby. Meredith frowned as she did it; pinched her lips tightly together. Caroline’s hair was thin. I could see her scalp through it and it did look papery. The conversation went on around her, and I kept my eyes carefully on my plate. Only once did she speak up and, though her voice was louder than I expected, the words crept out ponderously.

“Is that man Dinsdale still alive?” She dropped her fork as she spoke, as if holding it and speaking were too many things to do at once. It clattered loudly, down onto the paving slabs.

“No, Mother. He’s not,” Meredith answered, and I burned with the knowledge that there were in fact many Dinsdales, alive and well not two hundred meters from where we sat. I knew better than to speak at the table. Caroline made a small sound, high and wavering, which could have been anything. Satisfaction, perhaps. “I believe his son is, however,” Meredith added.

“Can’t you get rid of him, child?” Caroline asked, and I was as puzzled to hear Meredith called child as I was outraged at the question. Across the table, Henry smirked, kicked me in the shin.

“No more than you could,” Meredith countered.

“Travellers,” Caroline mumbled. “They were meant to go. They were meant to move on,” she said.

“They go. And then they come back again,” Meredith muttered. “And sadly there is very little I can do about it.” At this Caroline went still. An unnatural pause, as if she was going to say something else. Everybody at the table waited, but she did not speak again. Meredith folded her napkin crisply onto her lap, began to serve herself with salad. But the frown stayed, knitted between her brows, and when I looked at Caroline she was staring out across the lawn, eyes boring into the far trees as though she could see straight through them. Her head wobbled on her neck, and from time to time her hands would twitch involuntarily, but that far, pale gaze never wavered.

After that lunch we children were sent to have an afternoon nap—because I was small and cross, Henry had been rude at lunch, and that left Beth with nobody to play with. Henry instigated the game. He hid first, and we found him at length in the attic room, behind the same crumbling, burgundy leather trunk I have so recently rediscovered. We stirred up motes of dust that flashed and swirled in the light from the eaves, circling slowly. I found a peacock butterfly, wrapped in spider webs and as mummified as I feared Caroline to be. I clamored for it to be my turn to hide, but Beth had found Henry first, so it was her turn. Henry and I knelt at the bottom of the stairs, shut our eyes, counted.

I don’t think I could count to a hundred at that age. I was relying on Henry, and he normally counted one, two, miss a few, ninety-nine, a hundred; so after what seemed a long time, listening to the housekeeper clattering dishes in the kitchen, I opened one eye to check on him. He wasn’t there. I looked up and saw him coming down the stairs. He smiled nastily at me, and I cast my eyes around. I did this instinctively, whenever I found myself alone with that look on Henry’s face. In case help was at hand. My heart pounded in my chest.

“Is it time to find Beth yet?” I whispered at last.

“No. Not yet. I’ll tell you when,” he said. “Come on, then, come with me.” He used his fake-nice voice, a high pitch that he also used to trick the Labradors. He offered me his hand and I took it unwillingly. We went into the study; he put the TV on.

“Is it time now?” I asked again. Something was wrong. I made for the door but he put out his leg, blocked me.

“Not yet! I told you—you can’t go and look until I say it’s time.”

I waited. I was miserable. I didn’t watch what was on the TV. I looked at Henry, at the door, back again. What’s time, when you’re five years old? I have no idea how long I was made to wait. It must have been over an hour, and it felt like an eternity. When the door creaked open, I ran to it. My father came in, asked where Beth was. He studied my anxious face and asked again. Henry shrugged. Dad and I went all over the house, calling. On the top floor corridor we heard her—banging, and faint sounds of distress. The final set of stairs, up to the attic, had a cupboard underneath, an iron key in the lock. Dad turned it, lifted the latch and Beth tumbled out, her face pale and streaked with dirt and tears.

“What on earth?” Dad said, gathering her up. She was breathing so hard that her own sobs half choked her, and her eyes stared out in a way that frightened me. It was as if she had closed herself off from me, from the world. Fear had made her hide inside her own head. The cupboard was cramped and cobwebby, and the light switch was on the outside. Henry had turned it off and turned the key in the lock while I kept my eyes closed and assumed he was counting. Left her alone in the dark with the spiders and no room to turn around. I knew all this, I told my dad, and he demanded the truth from Henry. Beth stood behind him, unnaturally quiet. There were pale patches of dust on her knees, grazes on the heels of her hands; something had caught a lock of her hair, pulled it out of her Alice band in a sagging loop.

“It was nothing to do with me. I’ve been down here all the time. We got bored of looking for her,” Henry shrugged, swinging his legs to and fro with excitement although he managed to keep his face straight. Beth had stopped crying. She was looking at Henry with a bright hatred that shocked me.

It’s mid-afternoon and I am upstairs, wedged onto the window sill in my bedroom. My breath has steamed up the glass, obscured the view, but I am reading so it doesn’t matter. More of Meredith’s letters to Caroline. I am surprised that Meredith kept them all—that she stowed them away with Caroline’s things, as a record of their troubled relationship. Letters belong to the recipient, I know, but it would have been easy, and understandable, for her to destroy them after her mother died. But perhaps she wanted them for exactly what they recorded. The fact that she tried to have another life, even if she failed.

Dear Mother,

Thank you for the card you sent. I can only say that I am as well as can be expected. I have my hands very full with Laura, who has recently started walking and has consequently taken to running rings around me—it is nigh on impossible to keep her out of mischief. Her particular passion this week is for mud and worms. I have an excellent nanny, a local girl called Doreen, who has a calming influence on the child—and on me, I must say. Nothing seems to fluster her, and in these troubled days, that is a virtue indeed. I have given your invitation to return to live with you at Storton Manor a great deal of thought, but for the time being I intend to remain in my own home. I have the support of my neighbors, who have proved themselves most sympathetic in my hour of need. Many of the local women have sons and husbands away fighting, and each time the much dreaded telegram arrives a contingent is dispatched to make sure that there is food in the house, and the children clothed, and the wife or mother still breathing. I dare say you would not approve of the social classes mingling in this way, but I was greatly moved to receive just such a visit myself when word of Charles’ death got about. I went to London last Friday, to collect what belongings of his remained at his club and offices. You would not believe the scenes of devastation I witnessed there. It was enough to chill the very heart of me.

So I will stay for as long as I can manage to do so, because, though it pains me greatly to commit such a thing to paper, I have not yet forgiven you, Mother. For not coming to Charles’ funeral. Your objections to him as a husband were never as great, and your dislike of travelling never so strong, that either should have prevented you from attending, and insulting him in this way. The snub did not go unnoticed amongst our acquaintances. And what of me? Do you not realize that I should have liked to have you there, that I needed your support on such a day? Surely there are limits to the stoicism a new widow should have to display? That is all I will say for the time being. I must grow accustomed to life without my husband, and I must take care of myself, little Laura and my unborn child. For now I do not think you or any one can ask anything more of me.

Meredith.

As I finish reading I am interrupted by the clang of the doorbell. I climb down from the sill, wincing, the blood rushing into my stiff legs. I make my way to the top of the stairs, pause when I hear Beth open the door, and Dinny’s voice. My first impulse is to carry on, rush down the stairs to see him, to ease things for them. But my feet don’t respond. I stay still, my hand on the banister, listening.

“How are you, Beth?” Dinny asks, and the question carries more weight than it normally would. More significance.

“I’m very well, thank you,” Beth answers, something odd in her tone that I can’t identify.

“Only . . . Erica said that you—”

“Erica said that I what?” she says sharply.

“That you weren’t happy to be back. That you wanted to leave.” I can’t hear Beth’s reply to this. If she makes one. “Can I come in?” he says, almost nervously.

“No. I . . . I think you’d better not. I’m . . . busy right now,” Beth lies, and I feel her tension, making my shoulders ache.

“Oh. Well, I really just came up to say thanks to Erica for the baby things she took down to Honey. Honey even smiled when I got back—it was amazing.” I smile as I hear this, but I don’t know if Beth will understand how rare Honey’s smiles seem to be.

“Oh, well . . . I’ll pass that on. Or shall I call her down?” Beth asks stiffly.

“No, no. No need,” Dinny says, and my smile fades. There’s a pause. I feel a draft from the open door, whispering up the stairs to me. “Listen, Beth, I’d like to talk to you about . . . what happened. There are some things I think you don’t understand—”

“No!” Beth interrupts him, her voice higher now, alarmed. “I don’t want to talk about it. There’s nothing to talk about. It’s in the past.”

“Is it, though?” he asks softly, and I hold my breath, waiting for Beth’s answer.

“Yes! What do you mean? Of course it is.”

“I mean, some things are hard to leave behind. Hard to forget about. Hard for me to forget about, anyway.”

“You just have to try hard,” she says bleakly. “Try harder.”

I can hear the movement of feet, on the flagstones. I can picture Beth twisting, trying to escape.

“It’s not that simple, though, is it, Beth?” he says, his voice stronger now. “We used to be . . . we used to be able to talk about anything, you and I.”

“That was a very long time ago,” she says.

“You know, you don’t get to call all the shots, Beth. You can’t just pretend nothing happened, you can’t wash your hands of it—of me.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” She emphasizes each word, hardens them with feeling.

“You may not have a choice. There are things you need to hear,” Dinny says, every bit as firmly.

“Please,” Beth says. Her voice has shrunk, it is meek and afraid. “Please don’t.”

There’s a long, empty pause. I daren’t breathe.

“It’s good to see you again, Beth,” Dinny says at length, and again this is not the flippant remark it usually is. “I was starting to think I never would. See you again, that is.”

“We shouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t be, if it weren’t for . . .”

“And you’ll go again soon, will you?”

“Yes. Soon. After New Year.”

“Never a backward glance?” he asks, a bitter edge to the words.

“No,” Beth says, but the word does not sound as firm as it should. The cold air makes me shiver and I am shot through with desperation again, to know what it is that they know, to remember it.

“I’ll go, then.” Dinny sounds defeated. “Thank Erica for me. I hope . . . I hope I’ll see you again, Beth. Before you disappear.” I do not hear Beth’s reply, only the door shutting and a sudden loud sigh, as if a thousand pent-up words rush out of her at once and echo around the hallway.

I stay on the stairs for a short while, listen as Beth goes into the study. I hear the whoosh of a chair as she sits down abruptly, then nothing more. It would be easier, I think, to squeeze truths from the stones of these walls than to squeeze them from my sister. In frustration, I return to the attic, flip open the lid of the red trunk with none of my usual care, and run my fingers through Caroline’s possessions once more. There has to be something more, something I have missed. Something to tell me who the baby in the photo was and what happened to him. Something to tell me why she hated the Dinsdales so much that there was no room left inside her to love her own child. But once I have taken everything out, I am none the wiser. I stop, sit back on my heels, notice that my hands are shaking. And as I pick up a paper parcel, reach in to put it back, something catches my eye. A tear in the lining paper at the bottom of the trunk; a tear that has left a loose flap. And, half hidden beneath the paper, an envelope. I reach for it, see that the handwriting is not Meredith’s, and as I read the letter inside my pulse quickens.

Scrambling to my feet, I rush down to the study. The fire is devouring a huge pile of wood, pouring out heat.

“Beth—I’ve found something! Up in Caroline’s things,” I tell her. She looks up at me, her face drawn. She has not forgiven me yet, for the things I said at the dew pond.

“What is it?” she asks flatly.

“It’s a letter to Caroline—it had got lost. I found it in the lining of her trunk, and it’s very old—from before she came to England. Listen to this!” The envelope is another very small one; the paper inside it so old that the ink has faded to a weak brown color. The pages are spotted and torn, as if much handled: read and reread over a long spread of years. When I open it out, the sheets tear along the folds a little. I touch it as gently as I can. In places, I can hardly make out what it says, but there is enough here, enough to prove a theory.

“April 22nd, 1902,” I read. “My Darling Caroline—I received your letter and was much dismayed to hear that you had not received mine—nor the one before it, it would seem! Please rest assured that I have been writing—that I do write, almost every night. There is so much work to be done here, to ready it for your arrival, that I am ending each day fairly well beat, but nevertheless I think of you every night, I swear it to you. We have been greatly hampered by spring storms here—the day before yesterday hailstones the size of my fist came down in a shower that could have killed a man! This wild land needs a gentle female hand to tame it, love. And I know that I will not be troubled by any such tempests once you are here at my side.

“Please do not fret about your Aunt’s departure—here you will have all the home and family that you will ever need! I know it troubles you to part on bad terms with her, but surely . . . I can’t make out what it says next. In fact, most of this paragraph . . .” I squint at it. “I have seen to it that . . . It pains me to . . . Be patient for just a little while longer, my darling, and before you know it we will be together. I have found a place beside the house where I am going to make you a garden. I remember you told me once how much you would love to have a garden. Well, you shall have one of your very own, and you can grow in it whatever you wish to. The soil here is a little sandy, but many things will flourish in it. And we will flourish here, I know it. My heart reminds me of your absence every day, and I thank God that we will soon be reunited.

“There’s a huge chunk here that I can’t make out at all—it looks like it got wet or something, at some point,” I interrupt myself, scanning down the rest of the page. “Then he finishes: I long to see you again, and it gladdens my heart to know that you will soon be setting out to journey here to me. Be at ease, darling—very soon we will begin the rest of our lives. Yours always, C. How about that, then?”

“So, she was married!” Beth exclaims.

“It would seem so . . . nothing actually says that they were but I can’t think of another reason, back then, that he would write a letter like that—about starting their lives together and her having a new family and all the rest of it.”

“Where was she travelling to? What does the postmark say?” I study the envelope.

“I can’t make it out. It’s totally worn away.”

“Shame. What if she was meant to travel out to marry him and something happened before she got there?”

“But then what about the baby?”

“True. So she lost a husband and a baby before she even came over here. And she was how old at that point?”

“Twenty-one, I think. She’d just come into her money.”

“How amazing—that none of it was on her marriage certificate, or was known until now! I wonder how it was forgotten?” Beth muses.

I shrug. “Who knows. If she divorced him, maybe she wanted it kept quiet? Mary said that Caroline never wanted to talk about her early years—perhaps she had something to hide. And remember that letter from Aunt B I showed you—that mentioned things that happened in America staying in America. She was definitely worried about a scandal of some kind. If her husband had died, it would have just said widow on her marriage certificate to Lord Henry. She must have left him. And if her baby died, that might explain why she was always so frosty, so impenetrable.” At this Beth falls quiet.

She has not mentioned Dinny’s visit to the house. She has not passed on his thanks to me, and I can’t find out if this is deliberate, or an oversight, without letting on that I was listening. But it is niggling me. I itch to hear what it is he wants to say to her.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

“Erica, why are you so keen to know all this? To know everything?” She looks across at me from the shadow of her hair, her long eyelashes. The fire behind her gives her an orange gleam.

“Don’t you find it interesting? I want to know why . . . why our family hates the Dinsdales. Hated the Dinsdales,” I correct myself. “I want to know how Meredith got as cruel as she did—as bitter and twisted as she did. And the answer seems to be that she inherited it from Caroline. And I just want to know why . . .”

“And you think you’ve found out?”

“Why they hated the Dinsdales? No. I have no clue about that. It couldn’t just have been class prejudice—it had to be more than that. It was more than that. It was personal. And anyway, in her letters it sounds like Meredith wasn’t that bothered when class barriers started to come down during the war. But at least I think I know why Caroline was so cold. Why, as Mum said, she never loved Meredith.”

“Because she lost a child?”

“Lost a whole life, by the sounds of it. You remember that time, at that summer ball, when Caroline thought she recognized the waitress?”

“Yes?”

“I wonder who she thought it was. I wonder why she was so upset by her.”

Again Beth doesn’t answer, blocks herself from me in that way I can’t stand. “And I can’t get those blasted marsh flags out of my head! I’m sure I remember something about them . . .” But Beth isn’t listening to me any more.

“Losing a child . . . I can’t imagine how that must feel. A child that has had the chance to grow, to become a real person. When your love for it has had years to deepen. I just can’t imagine.”

“Neither can I.”

“No, but you can’t even begin to, Erica, because you don’t know what it feels like—you don’t know how strong that love is,” she tells me intensely.

“There’s lots I don’t know,” I aver, hurt. In the silence, the fire pops, shifts as it burns down.

“We never missed Henry,” she murmurs, sinking back into the shadow of the armchair so that I cannot see her face clearly. “We saw the search for him and the way it nearly pulled the family apart. In a way, we saw the consequences of . . . what happened. But we never missed him. We were only ever on the edges of it . . . of the mess. The pain it caused . . .”

“It was hard to miss him, Beth. He was vile.”

“He was vile, but he was just a little boy. Just a little boy, Erica. He was so young! I don’t know . . . I don’t know how Mary survived it,” she says, her throat tightening around the words. I don’t think Mary did survive it, not entirely. For a hideous moment I picture Beth being like Mary. Beth, twenty years from now, every bit as empty and deadened as Mary. For surely that is how it will go, if I do not manage to heal her. If I have got it wrong—if I have made it worse, bringing her here. I do not trust myself to speak. In my hands the letter to Caroline is as light as air; so insubstantial, the words of this lost man barely touching the pages, his voice whispering down the years, fading into the past. I touch my fingers to the C with which he signed himself, send out a silent thought to him, back through time, as if he might somehow hear it, and take comfort.

It’s late now and Beth went to bed hours ago. Only two days since Christmas Day, since I last saw Dinny, and yet there’s a kind of quiet desperation gathering beneath my ribs. If Beth won’t tell me what happened then Dinny has to. He has to. Which means I have to ask him; and I know, I know he does not want to be asked. Pitch black outside but I haven’t bothered to draw the curtains. I like sitting in full view of the night. There’s some stupid film on the television, but the sound is turned down and I have been staring at the fire as it dies, and thinking, thinking. Nobody else to hear this wild weather but me, but it’s comforting to know she is up there. The house gives me an empty feeling. Without her it would be unbearable. Now and then a drop of rain makes it down to the embers, hisses as it lands. A shred of what was wrapping paper, now a gray ghost of itself, is stuck to the grate. It bends this way and that in the vacillating updraft, as the wind curls into the chimney pots. I am hypnotized by it.

What would have happened, if Henry hadn’t vanished? Perhaps Meredith wouldn’t have grown ever more unpleasant, as she did. Mum might not have fallen out with her as she did, finally driven to the end of her patience, the end of her forgiveness. Clifford and Mary would have kept on coming, would not have been passed over for the house when the time came. I know it irks Clifford terribly, to be missing out on the house. A king without a castle. He kept on visiting but it wasn’t enough. Mary’s refusal to come near the place peeved Meredith sufficiently. Does she want to be a Calcott or doesn’t she, Clifford? Such cowardice! Henry would be the Honorable Henry Calcott, just waiting for Clifford to die before he could slip on the Lord. Beth and I would have spent more summers here. Perhaps we would have grown up with Dinny. Beth and Dinny, together; awkward, tentative, passionate teenagers. I shut my eyes, banish the thought.

There’s a knock behind my shoulder, and a face at the black glass that makes me gasp. It’s Dinny, and I stare stupidly, as if he’s walked right out of my thoughts. The rain has slicked his hair to his forehead and his collar is turned up against the cold. I open the window and the wind snatches it, almost pulls it out of my hand.

“I’m sorry to . . . sorry it’s so late, Erica. I saw the light was on. I need help.” There is rainwater on his lips, and I can taste it. He is breathing hard, looks scattered.

“What’s wrong? What’s happened?”

“Honey’s gone into labor and . . . something’s wrong. Erica, something’s going wrong and all the vans are bogged in after all this pissing rain . . . We need to get to hospital. Can you take us? Please? It’ll be quicker than waiting for an ambulance to find the place . . .”

“Of course I will! But if I drive down to you my car will just get stuck too . . .”

“No, no—just go to the top of the green lane, can you? I’ll carry her up to you.”

“OK. OK. Are you sure you can carry her?”

“Just go, please—we need to hurry!”

Dinny vanishes from the window, back into the dark. I scrabble for my car keys, my coat, pause only for a second to think I should tell Beth. But she is probably asleep and I can’t wait to explain it to her. I shove my mobile into my pocket and run for the car. The rain streams over the windscreen in an unbroken wave. In the short sprint from the house my shoulders are soaked. I am breathing hard, too hard. My hands shake as I try to find the ignition and I have to stop, make myself calmer. The driveway is potted with puddles and I splash out onto the road, wipers flailing.

There’s no sign of them as I pull in at the top of the green lane. My headlights flare on the hedgerow, flood away toward the camp. I trot down the track, slipping. The ground is slimy. Grass pulls away beneath my feet, dissolves to nothing. I hear the wind plaguing the trees in the darkness. They crash like an invisible ocean. I stop at the far reach of the car’s headlights and stare into the blackness. Rain comes in through the seams of my shoes. Then I see them, making slow progress, and as I lurch toward them Dinny slips and falls onto one knee, fighting to keep his balance with the bulk of the pregnant girl teetering in his arms. Honey grips his shoulders, fear turning her hands into claws.

“Can you walk?” I ask Honey, as I reach them. She nods, grimacing. “Dinny, let go! Let her get to her feet!”

He tilts to the side, lowers Honey’s feet to the ground then levers her up. She is upright for a second before she doubles over, cries out.

“Fuck!” she howls. I take her other hand and her nails bite into me. Drenched hair shrouds her face. “This can’t be right . . . it can’t be right,” she moans.

“Her waters broke discolored,” Dinny tells me.

“I don’t know what that means!” I cry.

“It means trouble. The baby’s in trouble,” he says. “It means we need to move!” But Honey is still doubled up and now she is sobbing. In pain or fear, I can’t tell.

“It’s going to be OK,” I tell her. “Listen—really, it’s going to be OK. Are you sure you can walk? The car’s not much further.” Honey nods, her eyes tight shut. She is breathing like bellows. My heart is racing but I feel calm now. I have a purpose.

We reach the car and maneuver Honey into the back seat. I have mud up to my knees. Honey is soaked to the skin, pale and shivering.

“I’ll drive. You help Honey,” Dinny says, moving toward the driver’s door.

“No! She needs you, Dinny! And it’s my car. And the steering is a little snappy in the wet. It’ll be safer if I drive,” I shout.

“One of you fucking well drive!” Honey shouts. I push past Dinny, take the driver’s seat, and he climbs into the back. We skid off the verge, slalom down the lane, make for the main road.

I take us to Devizes at a reckless pace, as fast as I dare, squinting into the tunnelling rain. But when I corner Honey is thrown about in the back seat and so I slow down, unsure of what is best. She cries quietly between contractions, as if to herself, and Dinny seems dumbstruck.

“Not far now, Honey! You’re going to be fine, please don’t be scared! They’ll whip that baby out faster than you can say epidural,” I shout, glancing at her in the mirror. I hope I am not lying to her.

“It’s not far?” she gasps, eyes on my reflection, pleading.

“Five minutes, I promise. And they’ll take good care of you and the baby. It’s going to be fine. Right, Dinny?” He jumps as if I’ve startled him. His knuckles around Honey’s hands are white.

“Right. Yes, right. You’re going to be fine, sweetheart. Just hang in there.”

“Have you thought of any names?” I ask. I want to distract her. From her fear, from the cold, wet night, from the pain shining her face with sweat.

“Er . . . I think, um, I think . . . Callum, if it’s a boy . . .” she pants, and pauses, her face curling up as a contraction ripples across her midriff.

“And for a girl?” I press.

“Girl . . . for a girl . . . Haydee . . .” she groans, tries to sit up taller. “I need to push!”

“Not yet! Not yet! We’re nearly there!” I press the accelerator flat as the orange glow of town grows in front of us.

I pull up right in front of the hospital and Dinny is out of the car before it stops. He comes back with help, and a wheelchair.

“Here we go, Honey.” I turn around to her, take her hand. “You’ll be fine now.” She squeezes my hand, tears rolling down her face, and there is no trace of her attitude, her fire, the disdainful tilt of her chin. She looks little more than a child. The rain batters the roof of the car for one quiet moment, then the back door is pulled open, and they take her out, and she shouts at them, and swears, and we pile into the building, blinking in the harsh light. I follow them as far as I can, along three clattering corridors, through several doors, until I am lost. At the last set of doors somebody stops Dinny and me. A hand on my upper arm, kind but implacable.

“Partners only from here, I’m afraid. You can wait back down the hall—there’s a waiting room there,” the man tells me, pointing back the way we have come.

“You’re Honey’s partner?” he asks Dinny.

“Yes—no. I’m her brother. She’s got no partner,” he says.

“Right. Come on then.” They disappear through the doors, leave them swinging in their wake. The doors make a sweeping sound and a thump, as they pass each other, once, twice, three times. My breathing slows with them, and then they fall still. Dinny is her brother.

The clock on the wall is just like the one that used to hang in my classroom at school. Round, white plastic with a yellowing fade, the thin red second hand ticking around with a tremble. It says ten to one as I sink into a green plastic chair, and I watch as it creeps round and round, wondering how it hadn’t occurred to me that Dinny might have a sister. He didn’t have one when we were little, so I assumed he still didn’t have one. They look nothing alike. I think back, rake through all my memories, try to remember ever seeing them touch each other, or speak to each other as if they were a couple. They never did, of course. A feeling appears in me, to know he is not hers, it is not his baby. I feel a tentative hope.

Half past three and I am still the only person in this square waiting room. People go along the corridor occasionally, their shoes squeaking on the floor tiles. My legs are heavy from sitting too long. I am drifting into a kind of daze. I see Dinny’s camp in my mind’s eye, on a summer day—early summer, with spent tree blossoms raining down on a light breeze, and sunshine glancing from the metal grilles of the parked vans. Grandpa Flag dozing in his chair—the wind lifting the coarse ends of his graphite hair, but otherwise he would sit so still. He never said that much to us, but I always thought of him as kind, safe. He would slump, as if fast asleep, but then suddenly laugh at something that was said or done. A loud guffaw, booming from his chest. Always a battered hat, pulled low over his face; and in its shadow, dark eyes gleamed. Leathery cheeks, deeply scored. A lifetime outdoors had tanned him the color of hazelnuts. The color of Dinny’s arms in the summertime. They made him move, again and again. The police, in the days after it happened. Grandpa Flag watched them with his calm, penetrating gaze. They made everybody move their vans, time and time again, with a roar of engines and plumes of diesel smoke. One trailer, belonging to a man called Bernie, needed a tow to move it. Mickey and the other men put their shoulders to it, shifted it, did as they were told even though Bernie’s trailer was high enough from the ground to make looking underneath it easy. I asked Mum what they were looking for. Fresh earth, she told me shortly, and I didn’t understand.

A figure passing the door rouses me—Dinny, walking slowly. I run clumsily into the corridor.

“Dinny—what’s happened? Is everything OK?”

“Erica? What are you still doing here?” He looks dazed, battered and amazed to see me there.

“Well, I . . . I was waiting to hear. And I thought you’d want a ride back.”

“I thought you’d have gone—you needn’t have waited all this time! I can take the bus back . . .”

“It’s half past three.”

“Or a taxi then,” he amends, stubbornly.

“Dinny—will you tell me how Honey is? And the baby?”

“Fine, she’s fine,” he smiles. “The kid was upside down but she managed to do it, eventually. It’s a girl and she’s doing well.” His voice is rough, he sounds exhausted.

“That’s great! Congratulations, Uncle Dinny,” I say.

“Thanks,” he grins, a touch bashfully.

“So, how long do they have to stay in?”

“A couple of days. Honey lost a fair amount of blood and the baby’s a little jaundiced. They’re both fast asleep now.”

“You look shattered. Do you want a ride home?” I offer. Dinny rubs his eyes with his forefinger and thumb.

“Yes, please,” he nods.

The weather has not let up. I drive at a more cautious pace. The countryside is so black, empty. I feel as though we’re carving a tunnel through it, the only two people in the world. I am light-headed with fatigue but too tired for sleep. I have to concentrate hard on driving safely. I open my window a little; cold air hits me, flecks of rainwater. The roar of it fills the car, cloaks the weight of the silence between us.

“You never said Honey was your sister. I didn’t realize,” I say, not quite lightly.

“Who did you think she was?”

“Well . . . I thought she was . . . I don’t know . . .”

“You thought she was my girlfriend?” he asks incredulously, then laughs out loud. “Erica—she’s fifteen years old!”

“Well, I didn’t know that!” I say defensively. “What was I supposed to think? You didn’t have a sister the last time I saw you.”

“No, I didn’t. She was born well after you left. A late bonus, my mother called her.” He smiles slightly. “Now she’s not so sure.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you’ve met her. Honey doesn’t have the easiest temperament.”

“So what happened? How come she’s been staying with you?”

“The baby. When she got pregnant Mum wanted her to get rid of it. She thought it would ruin her life, having a baby so young. Honey refused. So Mum said fine, have it adopted, and again she wouldn’t. They had a massive row and then Keith weighed in as well. So Honey flounced out and was told not to come back.” He sighs. “They’re just angry with each other, that’s all.”

“Keith’s your mum’s new husband?”

“They’re not married, but yes, to all intents and purposes. He’s OK. A bit strait-laced.”

“I can’t really imagine your mother with somebody strait-laced.”

“No, well, neither can Honey.”

“But Honey must be used to a more . . . conventional sort of life, mustn’t she?”

“She travelled with us until she was seven, when Dad died. I guess it got into her blood. She’s never really settled into the mainstream.”

“But now, with the baby . . . surely she can’t stay with you for ever?”

“No, she can’t,” he says firmly, and I glance across at him. He looks careworn, and the silence settles back into the car.

“What happened to the father?” I ask cautiously.

“What happened to him? Nothing, yet. That may change if I ever get my hands on him,” Dinny says grimly.

“Ah. He’s not been a knight in shining armor about it all, then?”

“He’s a twenty-year-old townie idiot who told Honey she couldn’t get pregnant on her first time.”

“That old chestnut.” I wince. “And twenty years old? He must have known he was lying . . .”

“Like I say, if I ever catch up with him . . . Honey won’t tell me his full name, or where he lives,” Dinny says, blackly.

I cast him a wry glance, smile slightly. “I wonder why,” I murmur. “Still, it must be a great way to raise a child—living the way you do. Travelling around, wherever you feel like. No mortgages, no nine-to-five, no juggling with childcare . . . The great outdoors, no keeping up with the Joneses . . .” I venture.

“It’s fine for the likes of me, but for a fifteen-year-old with a fatherless kid? She hasn’t even finished school yet,” he sighs. “No. She needs to go back home.”

I park in front of the house. The study light I left on blooms out, lighting the stark tree trunks nearest the house.

“Thanks, Erica. Thank you for driving us. You were really great with Honey, back there—you’ve been great,” Dinny says, reaching for the door handle.

“Why don’t you come in? Just to warm up. There’s brandy, and you could have a shower, if you want. You’re covered in mud,” I tell him. He looks at me, tips his head in that quizzical way.

“You’re offering me a shower?” he smiles.

“Or whatever. I could dig out a clean T-shirt for you,” I flounder.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Erica.”

“Oh, for goodness’ sake, Dinny! It’s just a house. And you’re welcome in it, now. You’re not going to catch convention, just by using the plumbing.”

“I’m not sure how welcome I am. I came up to talk to Beth. She wouldn’t let me in,” he says quietly.

“I know,” I say, before I can stop myself. He shoots me a questioning glance. “I was listening. At the top of the stairs,” I say apologetically.

Dinny rolls his eyes. “Same old Erica.”

“So are you coming in now?” I smile. Dinny looks at me for a long moment, until I start to feel pinned; then he looks out at the hostile night.

“All right. Thanks,” he nods.

I lead Dinny through to the study. The fire has gone out but it’s still very warm. I go to draw the curtains.

“God, it’s black out there! In London you have to shut out the light, here you have to shut out the dark,” I say. The wind throws a dead leaf against the glass, holds it there. “Still think there’s no such thing as bad weather?” I ask him wryly.

“Yes, but I’ll admit that I’m definitely wearing the wrong clothes for it tonight,” Dinny concedes.

“Sit. I’ll get brandy,” I tell him. I creep to the drawing room, fetch the decanter and two crystal tumblers, make as little noise as I can. I shut the door softly. “Beth’s asleep,” I tell him, filling the glasses.

“The house looks just the same as I remember it,” Dinny says, taking a swig of amber spirit, grimacing slightly.

“Meredith was never one for unnecessary change,” I shrug.

“The Calcotts are part of the old guard. Why would she want anything changed?”

“Were old guard. You can hardly say that of Beth and me—I’m an impoverished schoolteacher, for God’s sake, and Beth’s a single working parent.”

Dinny smiles a quick, ironic smile at this. “That must have really pissed the old bird off.”

“Thanks. We like to think so.” I smile. “Do you want another?” I ask as he drains his glass. He shakes his head, then leans back in his chair, stretches his arms over his head, arches his back, catlike. I watch him, feeling heat in my stomach, the blood pounding in my ears.

“I might take you up on that shower, though. I’ll admit it’s been a while since I had access to facilities like these.”

“Sure.” I nod, casually. “This way.”

The room the furthest away from Beth’s is Meredith’s and its en suite has the best shower—the large glass cubicle is opaque with limescale, but it has one of those huge shower roses that pours out a wide cascade of hot water. I find new soap, a clean towel, and I turn on a bedside lamp because the main light is too bright and if Beth is awake she might see it as a strip under her door, might come and investigate. Dinny stands in the middle of the room and turns, taking in the huge bed, the heavy drapes, the elegant antique furniture. The carpet over the uneven boards is a threadbare sage green. That familiar faint smell of dust and mothballs and dog.

“This is her room, isn’t it? Lady Calcott’s?” Dinny asks. In the low light his eyes are black, unreadable.

“It has the best shower,” I say nonchalantly.

“It feels a bit . . . wrong, to be in here.”

“I think she owes you a shower, at least,” I say gently. Dinny says nothing, starts to unbutton his shirt while I hurry from the room.

Creeping softly away along the corridor I hear the shower come on, the pipes gurgling and popping in the walls, and I shut my eyes, hoping Beth won’t wake up. But even as I think it she appears, looking at me around the side of her door at the far end of the corridor. Her hair hangs down at either side of her face, bare feet white and vulnerable.

“Erica? Is that you?” Her voice is taut with alarm.

“Yes—everything’s fine,” I say quietly. I don’t want Dinny to hear that she is awake.

“What are you doing up? What time is it?” she yawns.

“It’s very early. Go back to bed, love.” Beth rubs her face. Her eyes are wide, confused, newly awake.

“Erica? Who’s in the shower?” she asks.

“Dinny.” I look at my feet in my grubby socks, shifting guiltily.

“What? What’s going on?”

“It’s no big deal. Honey had her baby tonight—I had to drive them to Devizes and we got soaked and muddy and . . . when we got back I said he could have a shower here, if he wanted,” I tell her, all in one breath.

“You’ve been to Devizes? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You were asleep! And I had to go in a rush—Honey didn’t feel right and . . . and it was all in a bit of a hurry, that’s all.” I crush one of my feet beneath the other. I am reluctant to meet her eye. I flash her a grin. “Imagine how Meredith would have gone off—to know a Dinsdale was in her shower!” I whisper, but Beth does not smile.

“Dinny is in the shower and you’re waiting outside the room like . . . like I don’t know what,” she says.

“I’m not waiting outside the room! I was just going to grab him a clean T-shirt . . .”

“Erica, what are you doing?” she asks me, seriously.

“Nothing! I’m not doing anything,” I say, but even though it’s true it doesn’t sound it. “Are you going to tell me that I shouldn’t have invited him in?”

“Maybe you shouldn’t have,” she says shortly.

“Why not?”

“It’s . . . he’s . . . virtually a stranger, Erica! You can’t just go inviting in random people in the middle of the night!”

“Not random people. Dinny,” I say firmly. I hold her gaze, see that I have won this argument. She can’t explain her objection, not without explaining other things. She says nothing more, turns slowly and shuts the door.

I hurry to my room, pull one of the over-sized T-shirts I wear for pyjamas out of my case and drop it outside Meredith’s door. Steam leaks out from under it, and the mineral smell of hot water. I hasten away down the stairs, retreat into the study, knock back the last of my brandy.

I emerge when I hear Dinny jogging down the stairs. The hallway is sunk in shadows. He pauses when he sees me.

“Erica! You made me jump,” he says, sounding tired, putting one hand up to his hair, raking it roughly with his fingers. Water drips from the ends of it, soaking the shoulders of my Rolling Stones T-shirt.

“So much for the dry clothes,” I say.

“Dry-er, anyway,” he smiles. “I’ll be wet again as soon as I go outside, but thanks all the same. That, I have to admit, is a great shower.”

I can’t seem to answer him; I can’t seem to breathe right. I feel as if I’ve forgotten how, as if breathing in no longer follows breathing out, as if I have lost the logic of it. He reaches the bottom of the stairs, is by my side, and I feel as if I am standing too close to him. But he does not move and neither do I. He tips his head, gives me a bemused look. The same look from decades ago, when I told him I saw trolls in the hollow on the downs, and I am suddenly beset by memories of him: teaching me to duck dive, watching my countless failed attempts; showing me how to suck the nectar from the white flowers of the dead-nettles, plucking one and offering it to me. Gradually his expression changes, grows more serious. I could dissolve under his scrutiny, but I can’t seem to turn as I should, or move away. I watch a drop of water trickle down his arm; watch the faint scattering of goose pimples in its path. My hand moves without my bidding.

I touch the place where the droplet stops, trace my fingers along his forearm, wiping away its cold trail. The shape of the muscles over the bones. The warmth of his blood beneath the skin. My skin feels raw where it touches him, but I leave my hand on his arm; I am grounded, I cannot move. For a second he is still too, as still as I am, as if I have frozen us both with this uninvited touch. The vast hall, ceiling scattered with echoes, seems to shrink in around me. Then he moves away; just slightly, but enough.

“I should go,” he says quietly. “Thanks for . . . all your help this evening—really.” He sounds puzzled.

“No . . . no problem. Any time,” I say, blinking, startled.

“I’ll see you around.” He smiles awkwardly, lets himself out into the bleak early morning.