Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,
Whether the summer clothe the general earth
With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing
Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch
Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch
Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eve-drops fall
Heard only in the trances of the blast,
Or if the secret ministry of frost
Shall hang them up in silent icicles,
Quietly shining to the quiet Moon.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Frost at Midnight
The stairs take the last of my energy, so when I reach the bathroom door I am gulping, fighting for breath. The light is on inside, tendrils of steam creeping under the door. And the tap still running. With my hand on the door I freeze, shut my eyes for a second. I am so afraid; so afraid of what I might see. I think of Eddie, pushing back Beth’s hair when he came home after school and found her. How I need his courage right now.
“Beth?” I call, too meekly. No reply. Swallowing, I give two tiny knocks then throw open the door.
Beth is in the bath, her hair floating around her, water perilously close to the rim, escaping into the over flow. Her eyes are shut and for an instant I think I have lost her. She is Ophelia, she will ebb away from me, float off into serene oblivion. But then she opens her eyes, turns her face to me, and I am so relieved I nearly fall. I stumble in, sit abruptly on the chair where her clothes are folded.
“Rick? What’s going on? Where are your clothes?” she asks me, pushing the tap closed with her big toe. I dropped them and Dinny’s blanket in the hallway, before I ran. I am wearing wet, muddy underwear, nothing more.
“I thought . . . I thought . . .” But I don’t want to tell her what I thought. It seems a betrayal, to think that she would do that to herself again.
“What?” she asks, her voice flattening out, growing taut.
“Nothing,” I mumble. The light stabs at my eyes, makes me flinch. “Why are you in the bath at this time of night?”
“I said I’d wait for you to get back,” she replies. “And I was cold. Where have you been?” she asks, sitting up now, wet hair smoothing itself to her breasts. She bends her knees, wraps shining arms around them. I can see every rib, every bump of her spine, marching down into the water.
“I was with Dinny. I . . . fell into the dew pond.”
“You did what? What was Dinny doing there?”
“He heard me fall in. He helped me out.”
“You just fell in?” she asks incredulously.
“Yes! Too much whisky, I suppose.”
“And did you just . . . fall out of your clothes? Or did he help you with those as well?” she asks tartly. I give her a steady look. I am angry now—that she scared me so. That I scared myself so.
“Who’s jealous now?” I ask, just as tart.
“I’m not—” she begins, then puts her chin on her knees, looks away from me. “It’s weird, OK, Erica? You chasing after Dinny is weird.”
“Why is it weird? Because he was yours first?”
“Yes!” she cries; and I stare, amazed by this admission. “Just don’t get involved with him, all right? It feels incestuous! It’s just . . . wrong!” She struggles to explain herself, stretching her hands wide. “I can’t stand it.”
“It’s not wrong. You just don’t like the idea, that’s all. But you needn’t worry. I think he’s still in love with you,” I say quietly, feeling my own heart sink inside me.
I wait to see her expression change, but it doesn’t.
“We should go, Erica. Can’t you see? We should leave here and not come back. It would be by far the best thing. We could go tomorrow.” Her voice gains conviction, she fixes me with desperate eyes. “Never mind sorting out all Meredith’s things—that’s not why we came here, not really. The house clearance guys can do it! Please? Let’s just go?”
“I know why I came here, Beth.” I am tired of not talking about it, tired of tiptoeing around it. “I wanted us both to come because I thought I could make you better. Because I want to find out what it is that torments you, Beth. I want to bring it to the surface. I want to shine a light on it, and . . . show you that it’s not so bad. Nothing is as bad in the light of day, Beth! Isn’t that what you tell Eddie when he has nightmares?”
“Some things are, Erica! Some things are as bad!” she cries, the words torn from her, terrified. “I want to leave. I’m leaving, tomorrow.”
“No. You’re not. Not until we’ve confronted this. Whatever it is. Not until we’ve faced up to it!”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about!” she shouts harshly. She stands abruptly, sends water cascading onto the bathroom floor, reaches for her dressing gown and shrugs it on violently. “You can’t stop me if I want to go.”
“I won’t drive you to the station.”
“I’ll take a taxi!” she hisses.
“On New Year’s Day? Out here in the sticks? Good luck.”
“Goddamn it, Rick! Why are you doing this?” she swears, anger snapping in her eyes, clipping her words. They echo from the tiled walls, attack me twice.
“I . . . I promised Eddie. That I’d make you better.”
“What?” she whispers.
I think carefully, before I speak again. I think about what I saw, as the dew pond closed over my head.
“Tell me what Henry was looking for at the side of the dew pond,” I demand softly.
“What? When?”
“At the side of the dew pond that day. The day he disappeared, and I’d been swimming in the pond. He was looking for something on the ground.” I hear Beth’s sharp intake of breath. Her lips have gone pale.
“I thought you said you didn’t remember?” she says.
“It’s coming back to me. A little. Not all of it. I remember jumping back into the pond, and I remember looking up at Henry, and he had been looking for something on the ground. And then I remember . . .” I swallow, “I remember him bleeding. His head bleeding.”
“Shut up! Shut up! I don’t want to talk about it!” Beth shouts again, puts her hands over her ears, shakes her head madly. I watch, astonished, until she stops, stands snatching at the air, chest heaving. I take her arm carefully and she winces.
“Just tell me what he was looking for.”
“Stones, of course,” she says, quietly, defeated. “He was looking for stones to throw.” She pulls away from me then, slips from the bathroom into the dark of the corridor.
No sleep for me. I try counting my breaths, counting my heartbeat; but when I do this my heart speeds up, as if startled by such scrutiny. It rushes along, makes my head ache. I shut my eyes so tightly that colored shapes bloom in the dark and flounce across the ceiling when I open my eyes again. There’s a bright moon tonight, and as I skim sleep, as the hours spin past, I see it sail heedlessly from one pane of the window to the next.
I feel dreadful when I get up: heavy and tired. My throat is sore; there’s an ache behind my eyes that won’t go. It was a hard frost last night—Dinny was right about what might have happened if I’d lain about on the ground, drunk and befuddled. Now there’s a dense mist, so pale and luminous that I can’t tell where it ends and the sky begins. The thing is, we ran. That day. Beth and I ran. I remember scrambling out of the pond as fast as I could, bruising my feet on flints. I remember Beth’s fingers closing tightly on my arm like little bird claws, and we ran. Back to the house, back to lie low, to hide and stay quiet until the trouble started. Or rather, until the trouble was noticed. We didn’t go back, I am sure of it. The last time I saw Henry he was by the side of the dew pond; he was teetering. Did he fall? Was that why I got out, so desperately fast? Was that why I told them all he was in the pond—why I insisted upon it? But he wasn’t, and there was only one other person there. There is only one person who can have moved Henry, who can have taken him somewhere else, because I know he didn’t take himself. He was taken somewhere so secret and so hidden that twenty-three years of searching couldn’t uncover him. But I am close now.
It could be this memory that I’ve fought so hard to regain that’s hurting my head. I don’t have to concentrate to recall it now. It capers in my mind’s eye of its own accord, again and again. Henry bleeding, Henry falling. It worries me that I didn’t want breakfast. I looked at the food and I remembered Henry and there was no question of eating anything. No question of putting anything into my mouth, of enjoyment or satisfaction. Is this how Beth has felt, for twenty-three years? The thought turns me cold. It’s like knowing there’s something behind you, following you. That neck-prickling feeling, a constant distraction. Something as dark and permanent as your shadow.
The doorbell startles me. Dinny is there, wearing a heavy canvas coat for once, his hands thrust deeply into the pockets. In spite of it all my cheeks glow and I feel a wave of something ill-defined. Relief, or perhaps dread.
“Dinny! Hello—come in,” I greet him.
“Hi, Erica, I just wanted to check you were all right. After last night,” Dinny says, stepping over the threshold but staying on the doormat.
“Come in—I can’t shut the door with you standing there.”
“My boots are muddy,”
“That’s the least of our problems, believe me.” I wave my hand.
“So, how are you? I wondered if . . . if you’d swallowed any of that pond water, it might have made you sick,” he says. An awkwardness about him that wasn’t there before, a diffidence that touches me.
“I’m fine, really. I mean, I feel like death, and I’m sure I look like death, but other than that, I’m OK.” I smile nervously.
“You could have killed yourself,” he tells me gravely.
“I know. I know. I’m sorry. That wasn’t my intention, believe me. And thank you for rescuing me—I really owe you one,” I say. At this he looks at me sharply, his eyes probing my face. But then he softens, puts out his hand and brushes cold knuckles lightly down my cheek. I catch my breath, shiver slightly.
“Idiot,” he says softly.
“Thanks,” I say.
There’s a thump from upstairs. I picture a full suitcase, pulled off a bed. Dinny drops his hand quickly, puts it back in his pocket.
“Is that Beth?” he asks.
“Beth or the ghost of Calcotts past. I expect she’s packing. She doesn’t even want to stay for one more day.” I give a helpless little shrug.
“So you’re leaving?”
“I . . . I don’t know. I don’t want to. Not yet. Maybe not at all.” I glance at him. I really don’t think I could stay in this house by myself.
“No more Dinsdales or Calcotts at Storton Manor. It’s the end of an era,” Dinny says, but he does not sound regretful.
“Are you moving on?” I ask. My heart gives a little leap of protest.
“Sooner or later. This is a rotten place to camp in the winter. I was only really here because of Honey—”
“I thought you said you saw Meredith’s obituary?”
“Well, yes, and that. I thought there was a good chance you and Beth might be around.” For a moment we say nothing. I am still too unsure of him to test this tide that’s towing us apart. Perhaps Dinny feels the same way.
“I’d like to say goodbye to Beth before you disappear,” he says quietly. I nod. Of course he does. “I didn’t get the chance, the last time you went,” he adds pointedly.
“She’s upstairs. We had a fight. I don’t know if she’ll come down,” I tell him. I study his hands. Square shaped, smeared with grime. Black crescents under the nails. I think of the mud by the dew pond, him hauling me out. I think of the way he held me, just for a while, while the embers sank low and my body shook. I think of his kiss. How I want to keep him here.
“What did you fight about?”
“What do you think?” I ask bitterly. “She won’t tell me what happened. But she has to face up to it, Dinny—she has to! It’s what’s making her ill, I know it!” Dinny sighs sharply, shifts his weight onto the balls of his feet, as if he would run. He rubs a hand over his forehead, exasperated. “You never did get to tell her the things you wanted to, Dinny. But . . . you can tell me instead,” I say.
“Erica—”
“I want to know!”
“What if knowing changes everything? What if, for once, your sister and I are right and you’re better off not remembering?” Fierce eyes lock on mine.
“I want it to change everything! Change what, anyway? She’s my sister. I love her and I’ll love her no matter what she does. Or did,” I declare adamantly.
“I’m not just talking about Beth,” he says.
“Who, then? What then? Just tell me!”
“Don’t shout at me, Erica, I can hear you. I’m talking about . . . you and me.” His voice grows softer. I am silent for two heartbeats. They come quickly, but seem to take for ever.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean . . . whatever this is . . . whatever it might have been, it would all change.” He looks away from me, folds his arms. “Do you understand?” he asks. I bite my lower lip, feel my eyes stinging. But then I see Beth, in the bath, as she was last night; whole in body, but slipping away. I swallow the hot little flame that Dinny has just lit inside me.
“Yes. But I have to know,” I whisper. My nose is running. I scrub it with the back of my hand. I wait for him to speak, but he doesn’t. His eyes dart from the floor to the door to the stairs and back again, focusing on nothing. Knots in his jaw, tying themselves tighter. “Just tell me, Dinny! Beth and I ran off. I don’t know what happened, but I know we ran off and left you and Henry at the pond. And that was the last anybody saw of him and I want you to tell me!” My voice sounds odd, too high.
“Beth should—” he begins.
“Beth won’t. Oh, maybe she will, one day. Or maybe she’ll try to kill herself again, and this time she’ll manage it! I have to get this out of her!” I cry. Dinny stares at me, shocked.
“She tried to kill herself?” he breathes. “Because of this?”
“Yes! Because she’s depressed. Not just unhappy—ill, Dinny. And I want to know what caused it. If you don’t tell me then you’re just helping keep her like she is—haunted. Just tell me what you did with his body! Tell me where he is!” I plead. My blood is soaring like a tidal wave, roaring in my ears.
“Erica!” Beth’s shout echoes across the hallway. Dinny and I jump, like guilty children. “Don’t!” she cries, running down the stairs to us. Her eyes are wide, face marked with fright.
“Beth, I wasn’t going to tell her—” Dinny starts to say, holding up a hand to placate her.
“What? Why not—because Beth has told you not to?” I snap at him.
“Don’t tell anybody! Ever!” Beth says. I hardly recognize her voice. I grasp at her hands, try to make her look at me, but her eyes are fixed on Dinny’s and something passes between them that I can’t bear.
“Beth! Please—Beth, look at me! Look at what trying to keep this secret has done to you! Please, Beth. It’s time to get rid of it. Whatever it is, let it go. Please. For Eddie’s sake! He needs you to be happy—”
“Don’t bring Eddie into this!” she snaps at me, her eyes awash with tears.
“Why not? It’s his life that this is affecting too, you know! He’s your responsibility. You owe it to him to be strong, Beth—”
“What would you know about it, Erica? What would you know about responsibility? You haven’t even got a permanent job! You change flats every six months! You’ve been living like a student since you left home—you’ve never even had a pet so don’t tell me about my responsibilities!” Beth shouts, and I recoil, stung.
“You’re my responsibility,” I say quietly.
“No. I’m not,” Beth replies, holding my gaze.
“Beth,” Dinny says. “I’ve been trying to talk to you since you got back here and I know you don’t want to hear what I have to say, but it’s important, and . . . I think Erica has a right to hear it too—”
“She was there, Dinny! If she doesn’t remember then she doesn’t need to. Now can we please leave it alone? Dinny, I . . . I think you should go.”
“No, he shouldn’t! Why should he go? I asked him in. In fact,” I cross to the door, stand with my back to it, “nobody’s going until I have had the truth from one or both of you. I mean it. The truth. It’s long overdue,” I say. My heart trips, hurls itself against my ribs.
“Like you could stop me,” Dinny mutters.
“Erica, stop asking!” Beth cries. “Just . . . stop asking!”
“Beth, maybe it would be better to just tell her. She’s not going to tell anybody. It’s just the three of us. I think . . . I think she has a right to know,” Dinny says, his voice soft. Beth stares at him, her face so pale.
“No,” she whispers.
“Christ! I don’t know why you even came back here!” he shouts, throwing up his arms in exasperation.
“Dinny, tell me. It’s the only way to help her,” I say firmly. Beth’s gaze flickers from me to Dinny and back again.
“No!” she hisses.
“Please. Tell me where Henry is,” I urge him.
“Stop it!” Beth commands me. She is shaking uncontrollably. Dinny grinds his teeth together, looks over his shoulder, looks back at me. His eyes are ablaze. He seems torn over something, undecided. I hold my breath and my head spins in protest.
“Fine!” he barks, grabbing my arm. “If you think this is only way to help her. But if you’re wrong, and when everything is different, don’t say I didn’t warn you!” He is suddenly angry, furious with us. His fingers bruise me; he tows me away from the door and wrenches it open.
“No! Dinny—no!” Beth shouts after us, as he pulls me outside.
“Ow—stop it! What are you doing? Where are we going?” On instinct I fight him, try to dig my heels in, but he is far stronger than me.
“You want to know what happened to Henry? I’ll show you!” Dinny spits the words out. Fear grips my insides. I am so close to finding Henry, so close that it terrifies me. Dinny terrifies me. Such strength in him, in his grip; such an implacable look on his face.
“Dinny, please . . .” I gasp, but he ignores me.
“Erica! No!” I hear Beth’s ragged shout chasing us but she does not follow. I look back over my shoulder, see her framed in the doorway, mouth distorted, hands grasping the jamb for support.
Dinny marches me across the lawn, out of the garden through the trees, and I think we are going to the dew pond. Suddenly I know, for absolute sure, that I do not want to go there. Dread makes my knees weak; I renew my struggle to get free.
“Come on!” he snaps, pulling me harder. He could wrench my arm clean away from my body. But we are not going to the dew pond. He is heading west now. We are going to the camp. I follow him like a reluctant shadow, weaving and stumbling behind him. My heart pummels inside me. Dinny pulls open the door of the nearest van, not bothering to knock. Harry looks up, startled; smiles when he recognizes us. Dinny propels me up the steps into the van, which smells of crisps and dog and damp clothing.
“What the hell is this?” My voice is shaking, I can’t get my breath, I am ready to shatter.
“You wanted to know where Henry was.” Dinny raises his arm, points at Harry. “There’s Henry.”
I stare. My head empties, the plug is pulled. I’m not sure how long I stare, but when I speak my throat is dry.
“What?” The word is a feeble little thing, a faint shape around the last scrap of air in my chest. The floor is tipping underneath my feet; the earth has rolled off its axis, is wheeling away with me, dizzy and helpless. Dinny lowers his arm, shuts his eyes and puts a hand over them, wearily.
“That’s Henry,” he repeats; and again I hear the words.
“But . . . how can it be? Henry’s dead! How can this be Henry? Not Henry. Not him.”
“He’s not dead. He didn’t die.” Dinny drops his hand and the fire has gone out of him. He watches me but I can’t move. I can’t think. Harry smiles, uncertainly. “Try not to shout. It upsets him,” Dinny says quietly. I can’t shout. I can’t anything. I can’t breathe. Pressure is building inside my head. I worry that it will explode. I put my hands to my temples, try to hold my skull together. “Come on—let’s go. Let’s go outside and talk,” Dinny murmurs, taking my arm more gently now. I snatch it away and lean toward Harry. I am so scared as I look at him. Scared enough for my knees to sag—there’s a hollow thump as they hit the floor. Scared enough for a shocking nausea to sweep through me. I am chilled to the roots of my hair, and burning all over. I push stray dreadlocks back from Harry’s face, peer into his eyes. I try to see it. Try to recognize him, but I can’t. I won’t.
“You’re wrong. You’re lying!”
“I’m neither. Come on, we can’t talk about this here.” Dinny pulls me to my feet and takes me outside again.
For the second time in twelve hours I sit in Dinny’s van, shivering, stunned, stupid. He makes coffee on the stove in a battered steel pot, the liquid spitting and smelling delicious. Sipping from the cup he gives me scalds my mouth, and I feel it revive me.
“I . . . I can’t believe it. I don’t understand,” I say quietly. Outside a door bangs. Popeye and Blot woof gently behind their teeth; more a greeting than a warning. Dinny has one ankle propped up on the other knee, his familiar pose. He looks both hard and nervous. He sighs.
“What don’t you understand?” He says this quietly, in the spirit of genuine enquiry.
“Well, where has he been all these years? How come he was never found? They searched everywhere for him!”
“Nobody ever searches everywhere.” Dinny shakes his head. “He’s been here, with us. With my family, or with friends of my family. There’s more than one traveller camp in the south of England. Mum and Dad had plenty of friends to leave him with, friends who looked after him, until it had blown over. As soon as I was old enough to keep an eye on him myself, I did.”
“But . . . I saw him bleeding. I saw him fall into the pond . . .”
“And then you two ran away. I fished him out and I fetched my dad. He wasn’t breathing, but Dad managed to get it going again. The cut on his head wasn’t as bad as it looked . . . head wounds just bleed a lot.” He looks at his boot, twists the frayed end of a lace between his finger and thumb.
“And then? Didn’t you take him to the hospital? Why didn’t you come and find somebody at the manor?” I ask. Twenty-three years of my life are rewriting themselves behind my eyes, unravelling like wool. I can hardly focus, hardly think. Dinny doesn’t answer for a long time. He grips his chin in his hand, knuckles white. His eyes burn into me.
“I . . . wouldn’t say what had happened. I wouldn’t tell them how he’d got hurt . . . or by who. So Dad . . . Dad thought it was me. He thought Henry and me had got into a fight or something. He was trying to protect me.”
“But, you could have told them it was an accident—”
“Come off it, Erica. Everyone’s always looking to be proved right about us—all my life, people have looked to be proved right. That we thieve, that we’re criminals—that we’re scum. The social would have leapt at the chance to take me away from Mum and Dad. A spell in juvy, then a proper home, with a proper family . . .”
“You don’t know that . . .”
“Yes. Yes, I do. It’s you who doesn’t know, Erica.”
“Why is he . . . the way he is?”
“Not from the knock on the head, that’s for sure. Dad took him to an old friend, Joanna, who used to be a nurse in Marlborough. This was that same afternoon, before anyone even knew he was missing. She put a couple of stitches in his head, said he might have a concussion but it was nothing to worry about. We were going to wait for him to wake up, make sure he was OK, then drop him within walking distance of the village and disappear. That was the plan. Joanna looked after him for the first few days. He was out of it for two days straight and . . . then he woke up.”
“You could have brought him back then. You could have left him somewhere he’d be found, like you said. Why didn’t you?”
“By then the search was enormous. We were being watched. We couldn’t move without some keen copper noting it down. Henry would have told them we’d had him—when he was found, of course. But we thought we’d have a head start to vanish. By the time we realized there was no way we could bring him back without being seen, it was too late. And he wasn’t right, when he woke up. Anybody could tell that. Dad took me to see him, since I knew him best, out of all of us. Just tell me what you think, Dad said. I didn’t know what he was getting at until I saw Henry and spoke to him. Sitting up in Joanna’s spare bed, holding a glass of orange squash like he didn’t know what to do with it. I’d rather have been anywhere else in the world than in that room with him.” Dinny pushes his fingers through his hair, grips his scalp. “I tried talking to him, like Dad said I should. But he wasn’t the same. He was wide awake, but . . . distant. Dazed.”
“But why? You said his head wasn’t hit that hard?”
“It wasn’t. It was the time he spent not breathing. The time before Dad got to him and got air back into his lungs.” Dinny sounds so tired now, leaden. There’s a sparkle of pity, at the core of me, but I can’t let it fill me yet. Too many other things to feel.
I’ve finished my coffee before I speak again. I hadn’t noticed the silence. Dinny is watching me, tapping his ankle with one agitated thumb, waiting. Waiting for my reaction, I suppose. A defensive gleam in his eye.
“It didn’t blow over, you know. Not for his parents. Not for our family . . .”
“Do you think it blew over for me? For my family? I’ve had to see him nearly every day since then, wondering if it would have been different if I’d tried to revive him myself, that bit sooner . . . If we had taken him to hospital.”
“But you’ve never told. You’ve kept him—”
“Not kept him. Looked after him . . .”
“You’ve kept him and let his family—let his parents think he was dead! You’ve let Beth and I think he was dead.”
“No, I had no idea what you and Beth were thinking! How would I know? You ran, remember? You ran and washed your hands of it! You never even came to ask me about it! You left him with me and I . . . we . . . did what we thought was best.”
This I cannot dispute.
“I was eight years old!”
“Well, I was twelve—still just a kid, and I had to let my parents think I’d nearly killed another boy. That I’d brain-damaged another boy. At least, that’s what I thought I had to do. That’s what I thought was right. By the time I realized you two were never coming back, it was too late to change anything. How much fun do you think that was?”
I feel the blood run out of my face when he says this. I had to let them think . . . A memory fights its way through the clash in my head. Henry bending down, surveying the ground, gathering four, five stones. Water in my eyes and in one ear, which boomed and wobbled, mangling their voices; Henry, taunting, throwing names at Dinny; Beth’s shrill commands: Stop it! Go away! Henry, don’t! Henry said, Pikey! Filth! Dirty gyppo! Thieving dog! Tramp! With each word he threw a stone, whipping it from the shoulder with that throw boys are taught at school, but girls never are. A throw that would have sent a cricket ball back from the boundary, and a good aim. I remember Dinny crying out as one hit him, grabbing his shoulder, wincing. I remember what happened. And I picture Beth, in the doorway just now; her shout following us, and the terror on her face. No!
“I have to go,” I whisper, stumbling to my feet.
“Erica, wait—”
“No! I have to go!”
I feel sick. There’s too much inside me, something has to come out. I rush back to the house, tripping over my feet. In the cold downstairs toilet, where the frigid toilet seat makes your thighs ache, I collapse, throw up. But with my throat burning and the stink of it all around me, I somehow feel better. I feel justly punished. I feel as if some kind of retribution is beginning. Now I know what has tortured Beth all these years. Now I know why she has punished herself so, why she has sought such retribution. Splashing my face in the basin, I gasp for breath, try to find the strength to rise. I am cold with fear—I think I know what retribution she might seek from herself.
“Beth!” I call, coughing at the ragged feeling in my throat. “Beth, where are you—I have to tell you something!” On trembling legs, I run in and out of all the downstairs rooms, my heart skittering, making me dizzy. “Beth!” My voice is rising, almost a scream. I pound up the stairs, run to the bathroom first then along the corridor to Beth’s room. The door is shut and I throw myself against it. Inside, the curtains are closed, the room in darkness. And what I fear the most, what I dreaded to see is there in front of me. It fills my vision, hollows me out. “No!” I rush into the shadowed room. My sister, curled on the floor, her face turned away from me. Long-bladed scissors gripped in her fragile hand, and a dark pool around her. “Beth, no,” I whisper, with no more air in my lungs, no blood in my veins. I fall to my knees, gather her up; she is so light, insubstantial. For a second I am struck dumb by the pain, and then she turns her face to me, and her eyes are open, focused on mine, and I laugh out loud with relief.
“Erica?” Her voice is tiny.
“Oh, Beth! What have you done?” I smooth her hair back from her face and then I realize. She has hacked it off, all of it. The dark pool on the floor is the severed length of her hair. Without it she looks like a little girl; so vulnerable. “Your hair!” I cry, and then I laugh again and kiss her face. She has not cut herself, is not bleeding.
“I couldn’t do it. I wanted to but . . . Eddie . . .”
“You didn’t want to do it! You don’t want to do it! I know you don’t, not really,” I tell her. I pull her further into my arms, rock her gently.
“I did! I did want to!” she weeps angrily, and I think she would pull away from me if she had the strength. “Why did you make him tell you? Why wouldn’t you listen to me?”
“Because it had to happen. It did. But listen to me—Beth, are you listening? This is important.” I glance up, catch my reflection in the dressing table mirror. I look gray, spectral. But I can see it in my own eyes—the truth, waiting to spill out. I take a deep breath. “Beth, Henry’s not dead. Harry is Henry! It’s true! Dinny told me the whole story . . . he didn’t die. They took him off to some friend of theirs for first aid and then they moved him around different camps for years and years. That’s why none of the searches ever found him.”
“What?” she whispers. She watches me like she would a snake, waiting for the next strike.
“Harry—the Harry your son just spent the Christmas holiday playing with—Harry is our cousin Henry.” Oh, I want to release her; I want to mend her! In the silence I hear her breathing. The fluttering of air, pushed from her body.
“That’s not true,” she whispers.
“It’s true, Beth. It’s true. I believe it. Dinny wouldn’t tell anyone what had happened, so Mickey thought Dinny had done it, and they didn’t want him to be taken away . . .”
“No, no, no! None of that is right! I killed him! I killed him, Rick.” Her voice rises to a wail, wanes to a sliver. “I killed him.” She says it more calmly now, as if almost relieved to let the words out.
“No, you didn’t,” I insist.
“But . . . I threw that stone . . . it was too big! I should never have thrown it! Even Henry wouldn’t have thrown one that big. But I was so angry! I was so angry I just wanted to make him stop! It went so high,” she whispers.
I can see it now. Finally, finally. Like it was there all along. Girls aren’t taught to throw properly. She flung her whole body behind it, let go of it too soon, sent it too high. We lost sight of it against the incandescent summer sky. Henry was already laughing at her, laughing at the ineptness of the throw. He was already laughing when it came back down, when it hit his head with a sound that was so wrong. Loud, and wrong. We all knew the wrongness of that sound at once, even though we’d never heard it before. The sound of flesh breaking, of a blow to the bone. It was that sound that made me sick just now. As if I were hearing it again for the first time, and only now rejecting it. And then all that blood, and his glazed look, and my scramble from the water, and our flight. I have it now. At last.
“I didn’t kill him?” Beth whispers at last, eyes boring into my face, mining me for the truth.
I shake my head, smile at her.
“No. You didn’t kill him.”
I see relief seep into her face, slowly, so slowly; like she hardly dares believe it. I hold her tightly, feel her start to cry.
Later, I go back to the camp. In the early afternoon, with the sun burning through the mist. As the first glimpses of sky appear—gauzy, dazzling shreds—I feel something in me pouring out, pouring up. I’m left with a neutral feeling that could become anything. It could become joy. Perhaps. I sit next to Harry on the steps of his van. I ask him what he’s doing and although he doesn’t speak, he shows me, opening his hands. A tiny penknife in one hand, a half-cylinder shard of tree bark in the other, and patterns scratched into it, geometric shapes bumping and overlapping. He is miraculous to me now. I try to take his arm but he shuffles, doesn’t want me to. I don’t force it. Miraculous. That Henry could grow into this gentle soul. Was he damaged or, rather, was something knocked out of him by Beth’s blow? The spite? The childish arrogance, the aggression? All the base things, all of Meredith’s legacy, all the hate she taught him. He is a cleanly wiped slate.
I let him keep working, but I tie his dreadlocks into a chaotic knot behind his head so I can see his face. I sit, and he works, and I watch his face. And slowly, familiar things surface. Some of his features settle back into the shapes I knew. Just here and there, just traces. The Calcott nose we all have, narrow at the bridge. The blue-gray shade of his irises. He doesn’t seem to mind me watching. He doesn’t seem to notice.
“He recognized you, I think,” Dinny says quietly, coming to stand in front of us. His arms hang loosely at his sides, hands in fists, as if he’s ready for something. Ready to react. “That first time you saw him in the woods and he stopped you passing by. I think he recognized you, you see.” I look up at Dinny, but I can’t speak to him. Not yet. Tendons standing out on his forearms, ridges under the skin, tense with the clench of his hands. He was right. Everything has changed. Across the clearing, Patrick emerges from his van and gives me a solemn nod.
I go up to fetch Beth as the light is failing. She has been lying down for hours. Assimilating. I tell her who is downstairs and she agrees to see him. All the solemnity and the dread of one going to the gallows. Her bluntly cropped hair lies at odd angles, and her face is immobile, unnaturally still. Some force of will it must be costing her, to keep it that still. In the kitchen the lights are on. Dinny and Henry, sitting opposite each other at the table, playing snap and drinking tea as if the world has not just tensed itself up and thrown off everything our lives were based upon, like a dog shaking off muddy water. Dinny glances up as we come in, but Beth only looks at Henry. She sits down, at a safe distance, and stares. I watch and wait. Henry shuffles the cards clumsily, dropping a few onto the table that he slides back into the deck, one by one.
“Does he know me?” Beth whispers; her voice so thin, so precarious. Something about to break. I sit beside her, put my hands out to catch her.
Dinny shrugs slightly. “There’s really no way of knowing. He seems . . . comfortable around you. Around both of you. It usually takes him a while to warm up to strangers, so . . .”
“I thought I’d killed him. All this time, I thought I’d killed him . . .”
“You did,” Dinny says flatly. Her mouth opens in shock. “You knocked him out and left him face down in the water—”
“Dinny! Don’t—” I try to stop him.
“If I hadn’t pulled him out, he would be dead. So just remember that before you start judging what I’ve done, what my family’s done . . .”
“Nobody’s judging anybody! We were just kids . . . we had no idea what to do. And yes, it was lucky you thought so fast, Dinny,” I say.
“I’d hardly call it lucky.”
“Well, whatever you want to call it then.”
Dinny draws in another breath, eyes narrowing at me, but Beth starts to cry. Not soft, self-pitying tears. Ragged, ugly sobs, torn out from the heart of her. Her mouth is a deep red hole. Low wails, rising from a darkness inside that’s almost palpable, horrible to hear. I sit back down, put my arms around her as if I can hold her together. Dinny goes to the window, leans his forehead against the glass as if he wants nothing more than to be gone from this place. I press my cheek against Beth’s back, feeling shudders pass up through her and into me. Henry sorts the cards into their suits in neat piles on the table. I can’t begin to decipher what I feel about Dinny, about this secret he’s been keeping. Henry, squirrelled away in England’s labyrinth of lay-bys and green lanes; in vans and motor homes and caravans and lorries; a simple side-step but a world away from the door-to-door search for him in the neat and tidy villages. It’s too big. I can’t see it clearly.
We part some time later, to deliver our respective charges to bed. Dinny goes into the night with Henry; I walk up the stairs with Beth. She cried for a long time and now she’s quiet. I think her mind is rewriting itself, like mine had to, and that she needs time. I hope that is all she needs. Her face looks raw. Not just red, not just rubbed. Raw like it is new-made, like it has yet to be shaped, yet to be marked by life. A childlike delicacy. I hope I see something wiped from it, some of her caginess, some of the shadow and fear. Too soon to tell. I pull the blankets up to her chin like a mother would, and she smiles a half-mocking smile.
“Erica,” she says, and sighs a little. “How long have you been in love with Dinny?”
“What?” I shrug one shoulder to dismiss her, realize too late that it’s a gesture of his that I’ve picked up.
“Don’t deny it. It’s written all over you.”
“You need to sleep. It’s been a rough day.”
“How long?” she presses, catching my hand as I move away. I look at her. In this light her eyes are unreadable. I can’t lie, but I can’t answer.
“I don’t know,” I say shortly. “I don’t know that I am in love with him.” I walk to the door, stiffly, feeling betrayed by every line of my body, every tiny move I make.
“Erica!”
“What?”
“I . . . was pleased, when you said you didn’t remember what had happened. I didn’t want you to remember. You were so young . . .”
“Not that young.”
“Young enough. None of it was your fault, I hope you know that. Of course you know. I didn’t want you to remember, because I was so ashamed. Not of throwing a stone back at him, but of running. Of leaving him there, and never telling Mum and Dad. I don’t know why. I don’t know why I did that! I’ve never known!”
“It wasn’t—”
“It was a thing to be decided on the instant. That’s what I’ve come to think, as I’ve got older. A decision made in an instant and once it’s made you can’t go back on it. Do you face up to a mistake, even one so terrible, or do you run away from it? I ran. I failed.”
“You didn’t fail, Beth.”
“Yes, I did. You only ever did what I did. I was the leader, the eldest. If I’d spoken up straight away he could have lived.”
“He did live!”
“He could have lived normally! Not been so damaged . . .”
“Beth, there’s no point to this. He lived. It can’t be undone now. Please stop torturing yourself. You were a child.”
“When I think of Mary, and Clifford . . .” Tears blur her eyes again, spill over. I can think of nothing to say to this. Clifford and Mary. Their lives were ruined more completely than ours. The thought of them settles like lead around my heart.
I am awake in the clinging darkness before sunrise, and creep quietly to the kitchen. That odd state, exhausted and electrified at once. I make coffee, drink it strong and too hot. The cold of the floor numbs my feet through my socks. The little clock on the microwave tells me it’s half past seven. Silence in the house but for the creak of the heating as it fights its losing battle. I fetch yesterday’s paper, stare at it blankly and fail to do the crossword. The caffeine bustles my brain awake, but it doesn’t help me think. How can we not tell Henry’s parents that he’s alive? How can we not? We can’t not. But they will want to know what happened. Even placid Mary, so broken, will want to know what happened. And Clifford will want justice. Justice as he would see it. He will want charges brought against the Dinsdales for kidnapping, for withholding medical treatment. He will probably want charges brought against Beth and me, although these would be harder to bring. Grievous bodily harm, perhaps. Perverting the course of justice. I have no idea what charges apply to children. But I can see him clearly, with the three of us in his teeth, shaking and shaking. So how can we tell them?
Outside the sky lightens slowly. Beth appears, fully dressed, at ten o’clock. She stands in the doorway with her bag on her shoulder.
“How are you doing?” I ask her.
“I’m . . . OK. I’ve got to go. Maxwell’s dropping Eddie off after lunch tomorrow and nothing’s ready, and . . . and I need to get to a hairdresser before he arrives. I’ve got him until he goes back to school on Wednesday.”
“Oh, right. I thought . . . I thought we were going to talk about it? About Henry?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “I’m just not ready to talk about it yet. Not yet. I feel better, though.”
“Good, good. I’m glad, Beth. Really, I am. I want nothing more than for you to be able to put all this behind you.”
“That’s what I want too.” She sounds lighter, almost bright; smiles in readiness to depart, grips her bag convincingly.
“Only . . . I don’t know what we should do about Clifford and Mary. What we should do about telling them . . .” I say. Her face falls. She is on the same train of thought as me, I think, only I am some hours ahead of her. She licks her lips, quickly, nervously.
“Right now I have to go. But honestly, Rick, I don’t think I should have any say in what happens next. I don’t have the right. I don’t want the right. I’ve done enough to him. To them. I don’t think any idea of mine would be a good one.” Little shadows chase across her face again.
“Don’t worry about it, Beth. I’ll sort it out.” So sure of this, I sound. She smiles at me, diaphanous and wonderful as new butterfly wings; comes over and hugs me.
“Thank you, Erica. I owe you so much,” she says.
“You don’t owe me anything.” I shake my head. “You’re my sister.”
She squeezes me with all the strength in her willow-switch body.
It starts to sleet from a flat gray sky as we get into the car, and I have just started the engine when Dinny appears from beneath the trees, knocks on the window.
“I was hoping I’d catch you. I guessed you’d be off this morning,” he says to Beth. Just the faintest hint of a rebuke, but enough to put a line between her brows.
“Beth has to catch the next train,” I say. He flicks his eyes to me and nods.
“Look, Beth, I just wanted to say . . . I just . . . when I said last night that you’d killed him, I didn’t mean that . . . that you’d done it deliberately or anything,” he says. “I used to ask my parents why Henry was such a bastard. Why he was such a bully, such a vicious little git . . . They told me over and over again that when children behave that way it’s because they aren’t happy. For whatever reason they’re full of fear and anger and they take it out on other people. I didn’t believe them then, of course. I thought it was just because he was an evil sod, but I believe it now. It’s true, of course. Henry wasn’t happy then, and, well, he is happy now. He’s the happiest, most peaceful soul I know. I just . . . I just thought you should think about that.” Dinny swallows, tips his chin at us and steps back from the car.
“Thank you,” Beth says. She can’t quite look him in the eye, but she’s trying. “Thank you, for what you did. For never telling anybody.”
“I’d never have done anything to hurt you, Beth,” he says softly. My knuckles on the steering wheel are white. Beth nods, her eyes downcast. “Will you ever come back this way?” he asks.
“Perhaps. I think so. Sometime in the future,” she replies.
“Then I’ll see you around, Beth,” Dinny says, with a sad smile.
“Goodbye, Dinny,” she says quietly. He smacks the roof of the car with the flat of his hand and I pull away obediently. In the rearview mirror I see him standing there, hands in his pockets, dark eyes in a dark face. He stays until we have driven out of sight.
Saturday the third of January today. Most people will be back at work on Monday. I will call the Calcott family lawyer, a Mr. Dawlish of Marlborough, and tell him he can put Storton Manor on the market. I have decisions to make, now that I can go forward again. There’s nothing missing any more, no cracks, no excuses to stall. I am quiet as I move around the house. I don’t want the radio on, or the TV for company. I don’t hum, I try not to bang; I put my feet down softly. I want to hear the clear bell-tone of the truths I know ringing in my head. I could leave it all—leave the huge tree and all the holly I painted gold. They could stay, gathering dust and cobwebs until the auctioneer has been and gone with all the good stuff, and the house clearance men have been for the rest. Relics of this odd, limbo Christmas of ours. But I can’t bear the thought of it. That shreds of our lives should be left like Meredith’s apple core in the drawing room bin. Discarded and repugnant.
Industry is good. It keeps my thoughts from overwhelming me. Three things only I will keep: Caroline’s writing case and the letters within it, the New York portrait and Flag’s teething ring. The rest can go. I strip the tree of baubles and beads and clear the last of the Christmas leftovers from the fridge and the larder, scattering the lawn with anything the birds or foxes might fancy. I find pliers in a scullery drawer, climb the stairs to where the Christmas tree is fixed to the banisters, and cut the wire. “Timber!” I cry, to the empty hallway. The tree sags slowly to one side, then flops to the floor like an elderly dog. A delicate, muffled crunch tells me I didn’t find every bauble. Dry needles cascade from the branches, carpet the flagstones. With a sigh, I fetch a dustpan and brush and set to chasing them around the floor. I can’t help conjuring a life for myself with Dinny, picturing staying with him. Sleeping on a narrow bunk in the back of his ambulance; cooking breakfast on the tiny stove; perhaps working in each new town. Short contracts, sick-leave cover. Tutoring. As if anybody would hire a supply teacher with no fixed address. Lying close each night, hearing his heartbeat, woken by his touch.
There’s a knock, and Dinny’s voice startles me from my reverie.
“Is this a bad time?” His head appears around the front door.
“No, it’s perfect timing, actually. You can help me drag this tree out.” I smile, climbing to my feet and wincing. “I’ve been on my knees for too long. And not for any of the best reasons,” I tell him.
“Oh? And what are the best reasons?” Dinny asks, with an arch smile that warms me.
“Why, prayer, of course,” I tell him, all sincerity, and he chuckles. He hands me an envelope.
“Here. A card from Honey. For your help the other night, and for the flowers.” He takes an elastic band from his pocket, holding it in his teeth while he gathers up his hair, pulls it back from his face.
“Oh, she didn’t have to do that.”
“Well, after you’d left Mum’s the other day she realized that she hadn’t actually said thank you. And now that the hormones are settling down, I think she appreciates how vile she’s been for the past few weeks.”
“She had good reason, I suppose. Not an easy time for her.”
“She didn’t make it easy. But it all seems to be working out now.”
“Here—grab a branch.” I open both sides of the front door wide and we grasp the tree by its lowest branches, tow it across the floor. It bleeds a green wake behind it.
“Perhaps you shouldn’t have swept up until after we’d moved the tree?” Dinny observes.
“Could be,” I agree. We abandon the tree on the driveway, brush the needles from our hands. Everything is dripping wet out here, weighed down with water. Dark streaks on the trees, like a fever sweat. The rooks clamor from across the garden. Their disembodied voices hit the house, come back again as metallic echoes; I think I can feel them watching us with their hard little eyes like metal beads. My heart is the quickest thing for miles around. My thoughts the least quiet. I look at Dinny, suddenly shy. I can’t give a name to what’s between us, can’t quite feel the shape of it. “Come for dinner tonight,” I say.
“OK. Thanks,” he replies.
I’ve made a meal with the last of anything edible from the larder, the fridge, the freezer. This is the last time. I will throw the rest away. Ancient tins of custard powder; dog biscuits; jars of treacle with rusted-on lids; sachets of ready-mix béchamel. The house will go from lived-in to empty, from home to property. Any time now. I said he could bring Harry, if he wanted. It seemed only right. I feel I ought to have some part in looking after him, in supporting him. But Dinny sensed this, and he frowned, and when he arrives at seven he’s alone. A tawny owl shrieks in the trees behind him, heralds him. A still night, cold and dank as a riverbank pebble.
“Beth seemed a bit better when she left,” I say, opening a bottle of wine and pouring two large glasses. “Thank you for saying . . . what you said. About Henry being happy.”
“It’s true,” Dinny says, taking a sip that wets his lower lip, traces it with crimson.
All along, he has known. All this time, all these years. He can’t know, then, how I feel now—looking down and seeing I wasn’t walking on solid ground after all.
“What is this, anyway?” he asks me, turning the food over with his fork.
“Chicken Provençal. And those are cheese dumplings. Mixed bean salad and tinned spinach. Why? Is there a problem?”
“No, no problem,” he smiles, and gamely begins to eat. I take a forkful of dumpling. It has the texture of plasticine.
“It’s horrible. Sorry. I never was much of a cook,” I say.
“The chicken’s not bad,” Dinny says diplomatically. We are so unused to this. To sitting and eating together. Small talk. The idea of us together, in this new world order. The silence hangs.
“My mum told me that you were in love with Beth back then. Is that why you would never say what had really happened? To protect Beth?”
Dinny chews slowly, swallows.
“We were twelve, Erica. But I didn’t want to tell on her, no.”
“Do you still love her?” I don’t want to know, but I have to.
“She’s not the same person now.” He looks down, frowns.
“And me? Am I the same?”
“Pretty much,” Dinny smiles. “As tenacious as ever.”
“I don’t mean to be,” I say. “I just want to do the right thing. I just want . . . I want everything to be all right.”
“You always did. But life’s not that simple.”
“No.”
“Are you going back to London?”
“I don’t think so. No, I’m not. I’m not sure where I’m going.” I look at him when I say this and I can’t keep the question from my eyes. He looks at me, steadily but without an answer.
“Clifford will make trouble,” I say at length. “If we tell them. I know he will. But I’m not sure if I could live with myself, knowing what I know and letting him and Mary think Henry’s dead,” I say.
“They wouldn’t know him now, Erica,” Dinny says seriously. “He’s not their son any more.”
“Of course he’s their son! What else is he?”
“He’s been with me for so long now. I’ve grown up with him. I’ve seen myself change . . . but Harry just stayed the same. Like he was frozen in time the day that rock hit him. If anything, he’s my brother. He’s part of my family now.”
“We’re all one family, remember? In more ways than one, it seems. They could help you look after him . . . or I could. Help support him . . . financially, or . . . He’s their son, Dinny. And he didn’t die!”
“But he did. Their son did. Harry is not Henry. They’d take him away from everything he knows.”
“They have a right to know about him.” I shake my head, I cannot let this lie.
“So, what—you’re picturing Harry living with them, cooped up in a conventional life, or in some kind of institution, where they can visit him whenever they like and he’d be plonked in front of the TV the rest of the time?”
“It wouldn’t be like that!”
“How do you know?”
“I just . . . I can’t even imagine what it must have been like for them, all this time.” We are quiet for a long time. “I’m not going to decide anything without you,” I tell him.
“I’ve told you what I think,” Dinny says. “It would do them no good to see him now. And we don’t need any help.”
He shakes his head and looks sad. I cannot bear this thought, that I am making Dinny sad. I put my hand across the table, mesh my fingers into his.
“What you did for us—for Beth—taking the blame like that . . . it’s huge, Dinny. That was a huge thing that you did,” I say quietly. “Thank you.”
“Will you stay?” I ask him, late in the evening. He doesn’t answer, but he stands up, waits for me to lead. I won’t take him into Meredith’s room. I choose a guest room on the top floor, in the attics of the house, where the sheets are chilly with the long absence of warm bodies and the floorboards creak as we cross them. The silence makes us quiet, and the night outside the bare window sketches us in silvery grays as we undress. My skin rises where he touches me, the tiny hairs on me reaching out. He is so dark in this monochrome light, his face a depth of shadow I can’t fathom. I kiss his mouth, bruise my lips against his, drink him in. I want there to be no space between us, no part of my body not touching his. I want to wind myself around him like ivy, like a rope, binding us together. He has no tattoos, no piercings, no scars. He is whole, perfect. The palms of his hands are rough on my back. He coils one through my hair, tips my head back.
I close my eyes and watch with my body—each sure move of his hands, the warm brush of his breath, his weight over me. I pull his elbows out from under him. I want him to cover me, to crush me. Nothing guarded about him now, no hesitation, no thinking. A frown of a different kind as he puts his hands under my hips, lifts me, fits me to his body, pushes hard. I want to ink my mind with this, always keep him in this room with me; keep the taste of him on my tongue, make the beat between each second last, unending. Salt sweat on his top lip, ragged words mumbled into my hair. I want nothing else.
“I could stay with you,” I say afterwards. My eyes are shut, trusting. “I could stay and help you with Harry. I can get work anywhere. You shouldn’t have to support him alone. I could help. I could stay with you.”
“And travel all the time, and live like we do?”
“Well, why not? I’m homeless now, after all.”
“You’re a long way from being homeless. You don’t know what you’re saying.” His fingers are curled around my shoulder, and they smell of me. I lean myself against him. His skin is hot and dry beneath my cheek.
“I do know. I don’t want to go back to London, and I can’t stay here. I’m at your disposal,” I say, and the absurdity of this statement makes me chuckle. But Dinny does not laugh. There’s a growing tension in his frame that makes me uneasy. “I don’t mean . . . I’m not trying to foist myself on you, or anything,” I add hurriedly. No grip of mine could hold him, if he wanted to go. He sighs, turns his head to press a kiss onto my hair.
“It wouldn’t be so bad having you foisted on me, Pup,” he smiles. “Let’s sleep on it. We can sort it out tomorrow.” He says it so softly, so quietly that I decipher the words from the rumble in his chest beneath my ear. Deep and resolute. I am awake long enough to hear his breathing deepen, slow down, grow even. Then I sleep.
When I wake up I’m alone. The sky is flat, matt white, and a fine drizzle sifts down through the trees. A rook perches on a bare branch outside the window, feathers fluffed against the weather. Suddenly, I long for summer. For warmth, and dry ground, and a mile-wide sky. I run my hand across the side of the bed where Dinny was when I fell asleep. The sheets aren’t warm. There’s no indent in the pillow, no echo of his head. I could have imagined him here with me, but I didn’t. I didn’t. I won’t race down there. I won’t be alarmed. I make myself get dressed, eat breakfast cereal with the last of the milk. Today I will either have to shop or leave. I wonder which it will be.
I slip across the sodden lawn, wellies slick with water, papered with dead leaves. I feel clear-headed today, purposeful. It’s misplaced, perhaps, when I have not yet made the decisions that need making, but perhaps I am finally ready to make them, perhaps that’s what this feeling is. I’ve got a box of things for Harry. I found them in some drawers in the cellar, had earmarked them for the bin when I realized he might like them. A broken Sony radio, some old torches and batteries and bulbs and small metal objects of unknown provenance. They rattle against the cardboard under my arm. My back aches from the strain of Dinny’s weight, pushing against my pelvis. I shiver, cradle this physical memory close to me.
I stand for quite some time in the center of the camp clearing, while the rain begins to soften the box I carry. No vans here now, no dogs, no columns of smoke. It is deserted and I am left behind—alone in an empty clearing churned muddy by feet and wheels; and me, churned muddy by him. By the getting of him, and now the losing. My long-lost cousin, my childhood hero. My Dinny. Perfect calm, and stillness. No breath of a breeze today. I can hear a car, speeding along the lane from the village, tires crackling in the standing rainwater. I have no phone number for him, no email address, no clue in which direction he has gone. I turn in a slow circle, in case there is something behind me, something that waited for me, or someone.