“What’s our getting married got to do with anything?”
“You must be blind if you haven’t noticed the change in her since we gave her the news.”
Beryl shrugged. “Then I must be blind. Far as I can see, she acts no different.”
“On the surface, no. She hasn’t said anything, it’s the way she looks at me. The way she smiles.”
Beryl leaned over the rail, as charmed by what she saw as Gordon was disturbed. The miniature house among the bright flowers, the two children sitting on the green grass munching their sandwiches, the midday sun spreading a kind of golden varnish over the scene.
“Look at them, will you?” she said. “Did you ever see such a picture of innocence? Like an illustration in a storybook.”
“Yeah, very pretty.”
“Oh, do lighten up, darling. Exercise your body instead of your imagination while I make lunch. You’ll love the avocado salad.”
The following day was as warm as midsummer, the evening as delightfully balmy, with a gentle breeze coming off the lake. Ordinarily, Beryl would express no objection to Selena spending the night in the playhouse; she had dismissed Gordon’s quibble as too fanciful to take seriously, yet she felt obliged to offer at least a token maternal resistance.
“Honey, I’m not sure it’s wise for you to be alone at night down there.”
“Don’t be silly, Mother. I’m perfectly safe. There aren’t any grizzly bears.”
“I wasn’t thinking of grizzly bears.”
“Don’t worry, there’s a lock on the door. Besides, I have to sleep there tonight. Tonight’s special.”
“Special?”
Selena regarded her accusingly. “Don’t you remember?”
“Remember what?”
“It was three years ago tonight. You know, when it happened. The fire and everything.”
Beryl’s hand rose to her lips. “Oh God, yes, you’re right. Fancy your remembering.”
Selena gave her mother a long, considering look. “Mother, dear, I remember everything.”
“Yes, well, maybe it’s wiser not to remember some things.”
“That all depends, doesn’t it? Anyway, I want to spend tonight with Daddy.”
Beryl made a faint choking sound. “With Daddy?”
“With his picture, I mean. Didn’t Gordon tell you? I keep it right next to my cot in the playhouse.”
“That’s sweet.”
There were times when Beryl could not get out of her daughter’s presence soon enough.
Selena did not go to bed at her usual time that night. There was no point; she dared not risk falling asleep. Instead she sat on the shore below the garden watching the lights in the houses across the lake go out, one by one, as the full moon sank lower among the stars. Selena sometimes wondered if she were some sort of freak, born without nerves; she marveled at the absence of any inner turmoil or excitement as the time grew near when she must return to the playhouse and do what had to be done. Her child-woman’s imagination could foresee no possibility of her plan’s failure, compounded though it was of a bizarre mixture of adolescent logic and adult deviousness.
When the hour seemed right, when the profound stillness of night was invaded by the twittering of those birds that herald the dawn’s approach, Selena ended her vigil and ran lightly across the dew-soaked lawn to the playhouse, where she calmly proceeded to empty the contents of the milk jug over the floor and those few sticks of furniture in the single rectangular room. Then, outside the door, she lit the torch Rob had fashioned for her and tossed it into the room, quickly backing away and removing herself to a safe distance as the flames erupted.
She thought of Rob hidden somewhere in the patch of woodland separating the Winship property from the adjoining modest cottage. Selena was confident he would not disappoint her. He desperately wanted that ten-speed bike.
The firemen found her, seemingly in a state of shock, cowering at the edge of the lawn. They could make little sense of her incoherent babbling, which instantly dried up as Beryl and Gordon came racing down from the house. Beryl whisked Selena away, and after getting her tucked into bed found one of the firemen, apparently the one in charge, waiting for her on the terrace, where he was looking down on the smouldering ruins of the playhouse.
“She’ll be all right,” said Beryl, plainly in shock herself, or close to it. “I gave her a sleeping pill.”
“Lucky kid, Mrs. Winship. She must have a guardian angel to have got out of there alive. Place must have gone up like a torch.”
Beryl couldn’t stop trembling. “It’s too terrible. I can’t bear to think about it. But who called in the alarm?”
“A neighbor. Didn’t give his name.”
“But how did it start?” cried Beryl. “There’s no electric power down there. No candles.”
“One of our men did get a few words out of the girl. None of it made much sense. One thing, she kept asking if we’d got her daddy out.”
Beryl’s head jerked back as if he’d slapped her. “Her—? Oh, his picture. She meant his picture. She kept a picture of her father in the playhouse. I still can’t understand how it could have happened.”
“I’m afraid it didn’t just happen, Mrs. Winship. The fire was deliberately set. We found a plastic milk jug on the grass a few feet from the structure. It reeked of gasoline.”
Beryl seemed about to faint, reached out blindly for support. “Oh God.”
“That’s not all. Your daughter said something else. She said, ‘I saw him. It was the milkman. I saw his face.’ Does that make any sense to you?”
Beryl clutched her throat, as if to prevent a scream from reaching her lips. Then she said weakly, “No. No, it doesn’t. No sense at all.”
“Like I say, she was pretty incoherent. The inspector can question her later... and the police.”
“Gordon’s gone,” announced Selena with the faintest of pussycat smiles. It was late afternoon. She and Rob were sitting on the shore tossing pebbles out into the lake.
“Gone for good?”
“Good is the word. Rode off into the sunset on his beloved Harley.”
“What happened?”
“Let’s just say Gordon decided it might be healthier somewhere else. You know what a health nut he is.”
“Come on, Selena, tell me the truth.”
Selena giggled. “The truth, dear boy, is not for your tender ears. I’ll tell you this much. There’ll be no more Gordons. Not ever. Beryl will be a good little mummy from now on.”
“But what did you tell them, about the fire?”
Selena examined an especially interesting spotted pebble before tossing it into the water. “What I told them? Or what I told Beryl? What I told Beryl is that I woke up and looked out the playhouse window and saw this man standing on the lawn in the moonlight holding a milk jug. I said I got scared and crept out and ran down and hid by the lake before the playhouse went up in flames. I told her the man wore his hair in a pigtail. And then she called me a liar and a wicked girl and I had to remind her that the fire sparked — pardon the pun — certain memories, but not to worry. I wouldn’t want to get her into trouble.”
Rob’s pleasant but somewhat dull features betrayed a mental struggle to comprehend all this, as if it were the plot of a story beyond his intellectual grasp. “What memories?”
“None of your business. Anyway, we had a cozy little chat and I promised I’d tell them I must have been dreaming, and as for the milk jug on the lawn, we’d say you left it there after mowing. Remember that, in case you’re asked. As I told Beryl, that’ll be my story as long as I don’t see that man with the pigtail again. Ever. Poor Beryl. She ran out of the room crying and shortly after that I looked out and saw Gordon strapping a knapsack on his Harley and off he went.”