At the time the family had put his sudden passions down to the eccentricity of an academic. Now Emma wondered again when the fixations had begun. With the move to Elvet or Abigail’s murder? And were they as harmless as they had seemed at the time or the indication of a deeper disturbance? She wished she’d made more effort to understand him when they’d both been living at home, decided that his appearance was a good sign. It wasn’t too late to understand him better.
They ate at first in silence. The wind had dropped to a murmur, but Emma was aware of it still in the background. She made a few attempts at conversation, asking about Christopher’s work, the flat in Aberdeen, but soon realized that he was exhausted. He sat with his left elbow on the table, resting his head on his palm, holding his fork in his right hand, pushing pasta into his mouth. She could tell James disapproved. He had an obsession about table manners. Occasionally Chris’s eyelids would droop, then something would jerk him awake and he would stare wildly at them for a moment as if he’d forgotten who they were. He had drunk the beer and most of a bottle of Australian red. Emma considered what problem might have brought him home. Could he have become addicted to drugs? Is this how someone who was suffering withdrawal might behave? She had no idea. Perhaps his depression she thought he probably was depressed was the result of the end of a love affair. It didn’t occur to her that Chris’s arrival in Elvet could have anything to do with Abigail Mantel.
They had moved on to the cheese and fruit. James said to him, quite gently, “Look, you’re obviously tired. Go to bed whenever you like. We won’t mind.”
“No!” Christopher’s head jerked back in spasm again. “It’s no good. I won’t sleep yet.”
“Well, I think I’ll go. I’ve got an early start in the morning.” He gave Emma a meaningful look. Perhaps he thought they could carry on where they’d left off when Chris interrupted them.
“I won’t be long.” But she was careful to keep any hint of promise from her voice. And she knew him. Once James was in bed he would go straight to sleep.
She waited until he’d gone upstairs then fetched more wine from the kitchen, opened it and poured ‘each of them a glass. It was the most she’d drunk since she’d found out she was pregnant. She’d never had to play big sister before. As a child she’d been the needy one. Chris had been independent, self-contained.
“What is it, Chris?” she asked. “What’s the matter?”
He sat upright for the first time, looked directly at her.
“Don’t you know?” Brutal, cruel. “Really, are you so thick that you never realized?”
She felt her eyes prick with tears.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m a mess. I haven’t slept since it all started again.”
“What?” she demanded. “What started?”
Abigail Mantel. All that.”
“Jeanie’s suicide was only in the paper yesterday.” She couldn’t make sense of it.
“That was what made me come, of course,” he said. “But it started long before that. There was that piece in the Guardian. It seems as if people have been talking about her for weeks.”
“I didn’t realize she meant anything to you.” i She thought of the evening after she had found Abigail’s body, the two of them looking out of his bedroom window at the moonlit image of the stretcher bearers. He hadn’t seemed upset then, had he? Or had she been so absorbed by her own place in the drama that she hadn’t noticed?
“She meant everything,” he said. At the time.”
“But you were young.”
“Fourteen,” he said. “Given to obsessions.”
“You can’t have gone out with her?” Abigail had considered herself too sophisticated for the lads in their own year. Certainly she would never have deigned to go out with someone like Chris.
“No,” he said. “Nothing like that.”
“Well then?”
“I followed her. Everywhere she went. All that summer.” He stared into his glass. “It started when we met up on the Point. The first time you spoke to her. We’d just moved. Dad had dragged us out for a bike ride. You remember?”
“We were eating ice creams.”
“Yes!” he was almost shouting. “Yes!”
“And Abigail arrived in her father’s car and got out to introduce herself.”
“That was the start of it. After that I couldn’t stop thinking about her. Literally. I’d wake up thinking about her, she was there, lurking at the back of my mind all day, and at night I’d dream about her.”
“She was your project for the summer.” She was frightened by his intensity and hoped to tease him out of it, but he answered her seriously.
“No. Projects are intellectual. Abigail was more than that. I can’t explain it even now. I don’t expect you to understand. Look at you. Married, a mother, too sensible to have dreams.”
“Marriage doesn’t stop you dreaming,” she said, but very quietly and anyway, he wasn’t listening. She thought suddenly, If Abigail had heard me say that she’d have pretended to be sick. So predictable. So cheesy. For the first time in years she missed the girl who had been a real friend despite all the later misgivings.
He went on. “It’s never gone away, you know. If she hadn’t died I expect I’d have moved on, got over her. As it’s I’m stuck with it. A passion I’ll never satisfy. A fantasy I can never make real.” He tried to smile. “Crazy, huh?”
He reached for the wine bottle. She saw that his hand was shaking. “Do you know I’ve never had a girlfriend,” he said. “Not a real one. The occasional fumbled one-night stand. Usually when I’m drunk. Usually with a girl with red hair. But nothing more than that.”
For a moment Emma said nothing to him. She looked at him across the table, not sure what to make of it. Christopher had never spoken to her like this before. He had never spoken to her about anything important. She wasn’t even sure she believed him.
“I never realized,” she said in the end. “Why are you telling me now?”
“Because I had to talk to somebody. I think I’m going mad. I’m not sure what’s true any more.”
“It is crazy,” Emma said. “You have to let go.”
And did you?”
“What do you mean?”
, “You’re holding onto stuff. What is it? Guilt? You never liked Abigail much, did you? It must have been a shock but I doubt if you felt much grief.”
“She was my best friend.”
“No,” he said. “She was your only friend. All you had. And she never let you forget it, did she? She never let you forget how much you owed her.” He held her eyes for a moment. “I always thought,” he paused, ‘that deep down you hated her.”
“No,” she said, but the image she’d had a moment before, of Abigail pulling faces, of them laughing together, had already faded.
Chapter Fifteen
Emma left Chris sitting at the table, staring moodily into his wine glass. He had become silent and unresponsive, and when she said goodnight he seemed not to hear. She climbed the stairs slowly, not prepared to make more effort on her brother, but not yet ready for bed.
The day before, they’d moved Matthew into his own bedroom. James had prepared it when she was pregnant. A labour of love, because the colours she’d chosen hadn’t been to his taste at all. Under her instruction he’d painted the grubby wallpaper yellow and stuck up a frieze of waves and boats and fish. A mobile of silver stars hung from the ceiling. At the open door she paused to look in. The baby was lying on his back in his cot, his arms flung out, relaxed and floppy as a rag doll.
As she’d expected, James was already asleep. She stared down at him trying to recreate something of the excitement she’d felt when she’d touched him earlier, but it had quite gone. He didn’t stir when she moved around the room. She began to undress, but still felt too restless for sleep. The wooden floorboards were uncarpeted, stained and varnished and the feel of them on her bare feet always reminded her of PE lessons in the gym at school. One of the teachers had been keen on contemporary dance, and dressed in black leotards, they’d leapt and writhed around the hall to weird electronic music. Expressing themselves. Abigail had thought the exercise ridiculous and made her feelings clear. Emma had been torn. Secretly she’d enjoyed the freedom of the movement. It was like running across a beach towards the sea. The same exhilaration. But because of Abigail, she’d had to sneer too.