The last properly sunny autumn day lay behind them. The train was running along the grey river. The trees were dripping with wet fog.
‘Want to come?’ Liss had asked that morning. ‘I’m going to fetch the bike.’
She’d been a little startled at first. She hadn’t quite known whether she wanted to go to the ossuary again. But perhaps Liss had wanted her to come. So she’d nodded. They’d loaded Liss’s bike into the trailer and taken the tractor down to the station.
‘You park it in the car park?’ Sally had asked, nonplussed, when Liss had turned into the station square.
‘I can hardly leave it on the road,’ Liss had answered drily. ‘Will you get a ticket?’
Standing at the pay-and-display machine, she thought the tractor looked kind of awesome amid all the family cars. And she wondered where Liss would stick the ticket. The tractor didn’t have a windscreen.
‘Why didn’t we take the motorbike?’ she asked, once they’d heaved the bicycle onto the train and found seats.
Liss looked out of the window.
‘I thought it might be nice to go for a ride together again.’
‘Aren’t you scared?’ Sally asked after a while. A solitary barge drifted past on the water. Liss shrugged her shoulders.
‘Sure. But not so much that I’d rather abandon the bike there.’
Sally had to smile.
It didn’t take half as long by train as it had seemed that time on the motorbike. Liss didn’t talk much, and she wouldn’t want to talk much either. But it wasn’t a heavy silence.
The station lay outside the old town gates, right in the industrial area. Sally hadn’t often seen a town that had two such extremes: so ugly and so pretty.
Liss carried her bike up the underpass steps then they headed through the town gate and up steep, winding cobbled streets. Liss was still not talking. But as they crossed the marketplace, Liss pointed to a café they’d been to before and said:
‘We can have a coffee before we ride back.’
Sally just shook her head, but she was relieved. There would be a ‘later’. Stupid thought, but it’d been there. It wasn’t to do with the place, but the people who were shaped by the place. And the Liss pushing her bike beside her was no longer the Liss she’d found in the ossuary.
‘I hope it’s still there,’ she said, for something to say.
Liss suddenly stopped and turned to her.
‘I danced yesterday,’ she said calmly, and then a miniscule smile played around her lips. ‘There’s still sugar in my hair. I’m not killing myself today. We’re just retrieving a bike.’
‘OK,’ she answered. She suddenly felt very much lighter. They climbed the three steps up to the churchyard. The bike was still there. Some kind soul had leant it up against the wall.
‘An orderly country,’ remarked Liss in such an ironic tone that Sally had to laugh. ‘Come on.’
To her surprise, Liss didn’t turned downhill, but kept pushing on up.
‘We can ride along the ridge,’ she explained briefly.
There was a small, very steep road leading up through a gap in the church wall, becoming a forest path almost immediately.
‘I’m just asking,’ said Sally, ‘but are we going to walk all the way back?’
‘Still feeling the wine harvest?’ Liss retorted, smiling wickedly.
Wow. OK. That was the real Liss. Sally had to smile too, but looked at the ground so that Liss wouldn’t see.
‘Here,’ said Liss, as the little copse opened out again. She laid her bicycle in the dry leaves at the side of the path. Sally just stared. They were standing in front of a ruined castle, which had simply appeared out of nowhere. Three storeys of empty windows. A massive hall without a roof. Steps that soared into nothing. Liss walked into the castle as if she knew exactly where she wanted to go, climbed the steps to what had once been the second floor, where a broad ledge ran along the wall, leading to the largest arched window. There were no railings anywhere. And although the ledge was wide, it suddenly felt much narrower when you walked on it. She was glad when she caught up with Liss by the window.
‘Look,’ said Liss.
Sally looked. It was a grey autumn day, but the view was stunning. It was as though you could see across the whole country. The river was a never-ending ribbon that at some point just melted into the horizon. Towns and villages lay scattered between the vineyards, which went on forever. Right in the distance, to the north, rose a row of mountains, a shade darker than the mist. It was a picture like still water; as if you were quenching a thirst that you hadn’t previously noticed.
‘What a beautiful landscape,’ Sally said, sometime later.
Liss inclined her head ever so slightly in agreement.
Later, they rolled along the country road on the hilltop, through little villages and past harvested orchards. There was a fine drizzle now and then, they had a tailwind and cycling was easy. Things are in balance, she thought.
Liss caught up and rode beside her. Calmly, she said:
‘I think you should go home.’
Sally turned to her, ripped right out of what she’d been feeling, stiffened for the anger that would boil up, and was surprised when it didn’t come.
‘You’re welcome to stay. But I think that you shouldn’t … make the mistake I made. You’re … I think you’re very intelligent.’
Sally rode beside her in silence. She didn’t know exactly what she felt.
‘You didn’t let me run away,’ Liss said eventually, with an effort. ‘I want … I can’t let you run away either.’
‘But I don’t want to…’ Sally began, but then she understood what Liss meant.
‘I should go back?’
Liss thought for a while, as she rode by her side. The road was starting to descend into the town.
‘You should come to me whenever you like. But I think you should finish school. It sounds stuffy and boring, but it would be a mistake not to. And besides…’
‘What?’ Her insides were tangling.
Liss suddenly braked and stood up.
‘Besides, I know what it feels like to lose your child!’
Liss almost shouted it, realised and lowered her voice.
‘Put that right. You can’t leave like that. Or you shouldn’t. Even if they … I don’t know what they’re like. I only saw them once, and then I just argued with them. But somehow or other, they love you all the same.’
Sally took a breath. She wanted to say a thousand things. Explain to Liss that she’d got it wrong. That she hadn’t a clue. That…
‘Be sensible, right?’
Liss shook her head wildly.
‘You don’t understand! I want you to be able to come anytime. But I don’t want you to stay because you have to stay. Look at me. Don’t you get it? I had to stay. But I don’t want it to be like that for you. I want the exact opposite – for you to be able to keep the freedom you have. You’ve … you’re incredibly strong. That’s what you have to keep. You’re strong enough to go home to your parents. To finish school. To decide for yourself when you come to me and when it’s time to go. Get that? Who’s going to tell you but me? Who are you going to believe it from but me?’
Liss was breathing very fast now, and Sally stood very quietly. She didn’t like it. She didn’t like it, but it was true. She laid her bike on the road and went over to Liss. She didn’t avoid her eyes.
‘OK. I’ll go back. But you give me the letters.’
‘What?’
‘You give me the letters. If I go back to my parents, you give me the letters for Peter.’
Liss’s face lost all expression.
‘No.’
Sally couldn’t help it, she screamed.
‘Yes! We’re both going the same way now. Both of us. I didn’t take the fucking gun off you so you could carry on living like before. Here!’
She pressed their foreheads together.
‘We’re alive. We’re warm. We’re alive. Give me the letters! If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. But you’re not even giving him the chance to love you. Give me the letters or I won’t leave.’
She’d put her arms round Liss; brow to brow they stood there in the middle of the country lane, like a strange pair of lovers, filled with rage and love, as Sally breathed wildly and never stopped pressing her forehead against Liss’s, as if she could transmit her thoughts to her too.
Very slowly, Liss softened in Sally’s grasp. Her muscles relaxed.
‘Fine,’ she mumbled, almost inaudibly.
‘No,’ Sally demanded, ‘you have to want it. Do you want it? Do you really?’
‘Yes!’ yelled Liss, tearing herself free furiously. ‘Yes. Of course. You get the letters. And now let’s go.’
She grabbed up her bike and rode away, as fast as she could. But Sally wouldn’t be shaken off. They were both pedalling as hard as they could. They were neck and neck, and Sally rode the anger and jitters and a dash of fear out of her body as the road grew ever steeper and they plunged towards the town.
‘Faster!’ she screamed to Liss. ‘Ride faster.’
The wind roared around their ears and their jackets fluttered as they raced side by side, took the corners together, and finally passed the town sign, behind which a sad smiley lit up, announcing affrontedly, in red digital letters: Your speed: 42 kph. Please slow down!
Then she heard Liss laugh, and then she could brake.
They were sitting on the tractor, driving through the early dusk. The village appeared on the horizon. A few windows here and there were already lit up. They’d been sweating and now it was getting chilly.
‘What will you do with the letters?’ asked Liss.
‘Burn them,’ said Sally. She had to laugh when she saw Liss’s face. ‘No. I’ll send them to him. One at a time. He has to get to know you again before he sees you.’
Liss took her foot off the accelerator. They turned onto the track that was a shortcut to the farm.
‘Maybe he won’t want to see me.’
‘Maybe he won’t,’ said Sally. ‘But maybe he will. Why shouldn’t he? You’re an amazing woman.’
They fell silent. Sally stretched out her hand as they passed the bare hazel bushes. Liss saw it and it was as though she could feel the dewdrops and the rough bark in her own palms.
‘Once I’ve done my shitting exams,’ Sally said, ‘we’ll go to the Med.’
Liss didn’t answer until they turned into the farm.
‘I’ll pick you up,’ she said, lifting the wheels of the trailer.
‘You haven’t got a car.’
Liss pointed at the trailer.
‘You can’t see it yet, but one day that’ll be a caravan. On the day you get your results, I’ll be standing outside your school.’
‘With the tractor?’
Sally had to laugh at the idea. Liss smiled and shrugged.
‘You said it. I haven’t got a car.’
They were standing in the yard. The streetlamps were coming on. The church clock struck quarter to. The fallen leaves under the tree by the front door gave off a strong smell of walnuts. Coming very slowly round the corner was a rickety bicycle. Anni was riding to the church to do the flowers. When she saw the two of them, she stopped.
‘You two will look after each other, yes!’ she said in her brittle, elderly voice, and it wasn’t a question.
‘Yes,’ said Sally.
‘Yes,’ said Liss.
Anni climbed off, leant the bike thoughtfully against the fence, bent and picked up a walnut.
‘Like I said,’ she remarked with satisfaction, as if to herself, getting back on her bike, ‘a lovely autumn.’