“Those pictures belong to Charles Aubrey’s next of kin,” he said, and to his surprise, Hannah smiled.
“Yes, I know that. And you’re looking at her.”
“I’m what?”
Dimity could hear them speaking downstairs, but she couldn’t understand their words, so she stopped trying, and let them wash over her like the blurred sounds of the wind and rain outside. None of it mattered anymore. The room was empty. Charles was gone. No way to explain to them that keeping the door closed had kept her heart beating. No way to explain that as long as she couldn’t see that he’d gone, she could dream he was still there. The shifting of the house that sounded like his footsteps, the breeze moving his papers that sounded like him working. She had come to believe it, over the last few years. Come to feel like he had not gone, and the long, happy years she had spent looking after him still continued. The sudden emptiness of the house was as cold and deep as death. She could hardly find the breath to go on living. The chill of his absence crept closer all around her, leaching the warmth from her blood and bones. Every limb felt heavy, every breath was a labor. Her heart was as vast and hungry as the sea; as empty as a cave. Life was just a burden, with the room upstairs sitting empty. The long debate of the young man and woman downstairs kept the other voices of The Watch quiet, at least. The living were louder than the dead. But there was a new face in the shadows; come to see her at last, come to haunt her. A silent reprimand of wide eyes, full of anguish. Delphine.
She came to The Watch one day. Out of nowhere, on a still, yellow autumn morning tangy with the smell of dew and dead leaves. The war went on, all unobserved. Charles had been with her for over a year and they had settled into their strange new life together, finding a rhythm to it, the comfort of habit. And for Dimity, the joy of having everything she ever wanted. A person to love, and be loved by; to be needed by.
“Hello, Mitzy,” said Delphine with a cautious smile, and all at once the ground yawned open at Dimity’s feet again, vertiginous as the cliff edge, just ready for her to teeter and fall. Delphine looked older. Her face was longer, and thinner. Her jaw followed an elegant curve; her hair was parted to one side, and swept back in gentle waves, soft and shiny. Her brown eyes were deeper than they’d been before. As deep as the earth; they seemed far older than the rest of her. “How are you?” she asked, but Dimity couldn’t answer her. Her heart was beating too hard, her thoughts clamored, and no words would come. Delphine’s smile faltered, and she fiddled with the clasp of her handbag. “I was… just hoping to see a friendly face. A familiar face, you know. And I… I wanted to make sure you know about… Father’s death. Last year. They sent me a telegram at school. Did you know?” she said, in a rush. Delphine’s eyes flooded with tears as Dimity nodded. “Well, I thought I should check. I thought you ought to know. Because… well, you loved him, too, didn’t you? I didn’t like it at the time, when Mummy told me. But why shouldn’t you love him, too, just because we did?”
“I… I loved him,” Dimity said, with a tiny nod of her head.
They faced each other across the step for a while, and Delphine seemed undecided about what to do or say next.
“Listen, I… Could I come in, for a while? I’d like to talk to you about-”
“No!” Dimity shook her head rapidly, as much in refusal as in denial-in response to the small voice at the back of her mind that was telling her that of all the wrong things she had done, turning Delphine away would be one of the worst. She buried the voice, stood firm.
“Oh,” said Delphine, taken aback. “Oh, right. Of course… Will you come out for a walk then? Down to the beach? I don’t want to go just yet. I don’t… know where to go next.” Dimity stared at her for a moment, and felt her careful emptiness deserting her; felt the falling start. But Delphine’s eyes were meek, imploring, and in the end she could not refuse her.
“All right. To the beach then,” she said.
“Just like old times,” said Delphine. But it wasn’t, and neither of them smiled.
They went down the valley, through Southern Farm’s fields, then onto the shore. They walked westwards into the late-season sun, weaving through the boulders to the shingle by the water’s edge. It was a flat sea that day, all silvery and pretty, as though the world was a calm and safe place. The two young women, as they walked, knew otherwise.
“How is your mother?” Delphine asked. “I think back a lot, you know. Over the time we all spent here. I think back and I can see, now, how hard it must have been for you, for us to just come and go. And I can… guess, now, how hard a time your mother must have given you. All the bumps and bruises you always had… I was so blind, at the time. I’m sorry, Mitzy,” she said.
“She’s dead now,” Dimity said hurriedly. She could not bear to hear Delphine apologize.
“Oh, I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be. I don’t miss her. Maybe that’s not what I should say, but it’s the truth.” Delphine nodded a little, and didn’t ask anything else about Valentina.
“But aren’t you a bit lonely now, up there all by yourself?”
“I’m not…” Dimity’s heart gave a jolt. She had been about to say that she wasn’t alone; she had been about to give herself away. She had to learn to think faster, to say less. “I’m not lonely,” she managed, her voice uneven because her blood was buzzing like insect wings. Delphine glanced at her and frowned, not believing her.
“When the war is over, things will be different,” she said. “When the war is over, you’ll be able to go wherever you want, do whatever you want.” She spoke with certainty, and Dimity stayed silent, wondering how on earth a bright girl could still think things like that.
They had come to a wide stretch of sand, smoothed by the tide, immaculately flat and even. Delphine stopped, and stared at the place with a frightening intensity.
“There-can’t you just see her?” she whispered.
“What? See who?”
“Élodie. Wouldn’t she have just loved this spot? She’d have written her name in the sand, or drawn a picture.”
“She’d have done cartwheels,” Dimity agreed, and Delphine smiled.
“Yes, she would. She’d have complained that we were walking too slowly, and that she was hungry.”
“She’d have told me I was a stupid know-nothing.”
“But she’d have listened to you, all the same. To your stories, and your folklore. She always listened, you know. She was just jealous of you-of how grown-up you were, and how free. And that Mummy and Daddy took to you so.”
“I was never free. And Élodie never liked me,” Dimity insisted.
“She was too young to know why not, though. It wasn’t your fault, or hers.” Delphine stared at the buff-colored sand, the silver waterline. “Oh, Élodie!” she breathed. Her eyes shone with tears. “When I think of all the things she’ll never do, and never see… I can hardly bear it. I can hardly breathe.” She pressed her fists into her ribs. “Have you ever felt like that? Like you’ll just stop breathing, and die?”
“Yes.”
“I dream about her sometimes. I dream that it’s Christmas, and she’s all grown up. I dream about how beautiful she would have been, how smart and sharp. She would have broken hearts, Élodie would. But I dream that she comes to me at Christmas, and we stand and talk beneath this huge tree, all covered with lights. She’s all lit up by fairy lights, in her eyes and in her hair. She wears a silver dress, and her hair is blacker than jet beads. We have a glass of champagne, and we laugh and swap secrets, and gossip about her newest beau. And I…” Delphine trailed off, gripped by a silent sob that stole her voice. “And I… wake up so happy from those dreams, Mitzy. So happy.” Delphine put her face in her hands, and wept. And Dimity stood beside her, and could not breathe, and felt like she would die.