Marian had always known the story of the lovely lady who shared a body with the old crone (she had imagined a fat sprawled dame with dabs of red and blue marking out a face on shapeless flesh, and wattles in her throat). She had always understood the point of it: as you are, so was I once; as I am, so will you be. Like mother-in-law jokes: the mother-in law dreaded and ridiculed because she is what the wife will become. But she used to think there were a thousand years, a lifetime, between the two kinds of women. Probably when she threw the pasta maker she thought there were a thousand years between the imperturbable beauty of her husband’s student and herself, overweight, sagging, lapsed into a mess of maternity, her hair already turning gray. These days she saw things in a different time scale. She knew that for the crone to change places with the lovely lady took almost no time at all, although you never saw it: it happened while you looked the other way.
* * *
ONE NIGHT NAOMI was ill. She had been drinking — she had stayed on at the bar after her shift at work. She was sick in her bed, and Marian had to change her sheets while she retched in the bathroom.
— It must be something I’ve eaten, she insisted woodenly. She kept on retching long after there was anything to bring up except a dark slime. Toby wiped her face with a flannel. Tamsin banged on the bathroom door and insisted she wanted a bath, could they please hurry up.
When finally Naomi was asleep, Toby sat cross-legged on his bed in Tamsin’s room and rolled up. Primly Tamsin, cross-legged on her own bed, frowned at him, tearing papers and sprinkling tobacco.
— I need to relax, he said.
— I disapprove.
— I keep having these dreams.
— What dreams?
— Well, not exactly dreams. That is, I’m not asleep, exactly. Sometimes it just happens when I’m walking upstairs.
— For God’s sake, Toby, what need have you for chemical stimulants if you’re already out of your mind? What kind of dreams?
— I’m carrying that girclass="underline" the one who died in the accident.
— Carrying her?
— Just carrying her. I can feel the weight of her in my arms. Her head’s sort of lolling down one side. She’s all wrapped up in something; I can’t see her face.
— And where are you carrying her to?
— I’m just carrying her. And then I’m up at the top of the stairs and it fades out, only there’s a sort of flickering light and I’m all pouring with sweat.
— You complete idiot.
— I suppose it’s because I probably did cause her death.
— What are you talking about?
— Two separate possibilities. I was sitting behind her. I was thrown forward when we hit the post. I probably broke her neck then. And then I moved her from the car, not thinking. You shouldn’t move spinal injuries. Perhaps if I hadn’t moved her, she’d have had a chance.
— Have you talked about this to anybody?
— Just to you.
— No, I mean these medical things. Do you know for certain how she broke her neck, for instance? Or whether she should have been moved?
— It wasn’t really like that. Everything was so mixed up. Nobody seemed interested in how it had happened. I think maybe one of the other girls thought it, about me being thrown forward; she said something about it, maybe, in Dutch, to the others. That’s all.
— But it wasn’t your fault, anyway: even if it was true. And you don’t understand Dutch.
— No, of course not.
— So you shouldn’t have those dreams.
— No.
Tamsin sat thinking while Toby lit up and smoked.
— I know a way, she said. We have to put our pajamas on. And clean your teeth. I can’t stand the smell of smoke.
When he came back from the bathroom she was sitting on her sheet with the duvet draped over her head like a tent. Come in here, she said. It’s like the games we used to have.
— You’re ridiculous, he said. I’m six foot two.
— Come on. Trust me. Put the light out, I’ve got my bike light.
Toby didn’t really have pajamas. He put on some old sweatpants; then he climbed in under the duvet with Tamsin, bending his back and stooping his head so he didn’t wreck the tent. The bike light lit her up improbably: she held it under her chin so that her face was a leering mask, then buried it in the duvet so they were in the dark. She put her arms round his neck and her mouth close to his ear; her flesh was as he remembered it; it was cool and firm and smelled of something like fruit.
— I’ve got a secret too, she whispered. Do you know I can’t do sex? Since Lu and the baby died. I’ve tried but I can’t. I just sort of seize up; my muscles clamp together. It’s got a medical name, I looked it up.
— No. No, he said. I didn’t know that.
— Nobody knows. I just thought I’d tell you. That boy who calls; that’s why I have to put him off. He just thinks I don’t like him anymore.
— You could get help.
— Can you imagine? Some hairy doctor. The idea makes me sick.
— Shouldn’t you talk to your mum, or Clare?
— Marian and Clare? What do they know? Look at the mess they’ve made of everything. Everything anyone in this family’s ever done is shit; it disgusts me, it all makes me sick. The past makes me sick.
— So what are you going to do?
— I invented this magic.
— How do you mean, magic?
— Don’t be scared.
She picked up the bike light and reached a battered leather wallet from under her pillow.
— Lu’s wallet, she said.
From the pouch she took out something wrapped in tissue: a small blade, the kind that comes with a craft kit. She slipped her pajama top down from her shoulders.
— Hold the light. Here. She showed him where to shine it. On her arm just below the round ball of her shoulder was a row of five precise cuts, each about four centimeters long, one under the other. The top cut was a healed pale line; the ones below looked successively newer; the last one was puffy with an ugly red scab.
— It’s a sacrifice. Like the Aztecs.
— But what’s it supposed to do?
— It makes you strong. It stops bad things happening.
— Does it work?
She shrugged exasperatedly. Toby, it’s just a game.
— I really don’t think it’s a very good idea.
— If you tell, I’ll kill you. I don’t do it very often. You have to use it with care, or it works against you. I’m doing this one specially for you. Keep the light steady.
She pressed the blade into position to make a new cut underneath the last one; then, with only a sharp suck of breath, she pulled it smartly across, slitting the skin. Beads of blood brimmed out of the cut and ran down her arm; she blotted them up with a handful of tissues she had ready, then pressed the tissues against the cut and held them there, hissing slightly through her teeth.
— Now give me the light. It’s your turn.
She gave him a new clean blade out of her wallet, then put the bike light under her face again and grimaced, making a leering mask.