The windows of the house are blank, showing dark reflections of the naked trees all around. These trees seem taller now, and they lean too close to the house. They need cutting back. Am I thinking of things to do, things to improve? Am I picturing living here? The house is ours now, all twelve bedrooms; the soaring ceilings, the grand staircase, the underground rooms where the flagstones are worn smooth from the passage of servile feet. It’s all ours, but only if we stay and live here. That’s what Meredith always wanted. Meredith-our grandmother, with her spite and her hands in bony fists. She wanted our mother to move us all in years ago, and watch her die. Our mother refused, was duly cut off, and we continued our happy, suburban lives in Reading. If we don’t move here it will be sold and the money sent to good causes. Meredith a philanthropist in death, perversely. So now the house is ours-but only for a little while, because I don’t think we can bear to live here.
There’s a reason why not. If I try to look right at it, it slips away like vapor. Only a name surfaces: Henry. The boy who disappeared, who just wasn’t there any more. What I think now, staring up into the dizzying branches; what I think is that I know. I know why we can’t live here, why it’s even remarkable that we’ve come at all. I know. I know why Beth won’t even get out of the car now. I wonder if I shall have to coax her out, the way one must coax her to eat. Not a single plant grows on the ground between here and the house-the shade is too deep. Or perhaps the ground is poisoned. It smells of earth and rot, velvety fungus. Humus, the word returns from science lessons years ago. A thousand tiny insect mouths biting, working, digesting the ground. There is a still moment then. Silence from the engine, silence in the trees and the house, and all the spaces in between. I scramble back into the car.
Beth is staring at her hands. I don’t think she’s even looked up yet, looked out at the house. Suddenly I doubt whether I’ve done the right thing, bringing her here. Suddenly I fear that I’ve left it too late, and this fear gives my insides a twist. There are sinews in her neck like lengths of string and she’s folded into an angular shape in her seat, all hinges and corners. So thin these days, so fragile looking. Still my sister, but different now. There’s something inside her that I can’t know, can’t fathom. She’s done things that I can’t grasp, and had thoughts I can’t imagine. Her eyes, fixed on her knees, are glassy and wide. Maxwell wants her hospitalized again. He told me on the phone, two days ago, and I bit his head off for suggesting it. But I act differently around her now, however hard I try not to, and part of me hates her for it. She’s my big sister. She should be stronger than me. I give her arm a little rub, smile brightly. “Shall we go in?” I say. “I could use a stiff drink.” My voice is loud in such close quarters. I picture Meredith’s crystal decanters, lined up in the drawing room. I used to sneak in as a child, peer into the mysterious liquids, watch them catch the light, lift the stoppers for an illicit sniff. It seems somehow grotesque, to drink her whisky now she’s dead. This solicitude is my way of showing Beth that I know she doesn’t want to be back here. But then, with a deep breath, she gets out and strides over to the house as if driven, and I hurry after her.
Inside, the house does seem smaller, as things from childhood will, but it’s still huge. The flat I share in London seemed big when I moved in because there were enough rooms not to have to peer through drying laundry to watch the TV. Now, faced with the echoing expanse of the hallway, I feel the ridiculous urge to cartwheel. We dither there, drop our bags at the foot of the stairs. This is the first time we’ve ever arrived here alone, without our parents, and it feels so odd that we mill like sheep. Our roles are defined by habit, by memory and custom. Here, in this house, we are children. But I must make light of it, because I can see Beth faltering, and a frantic look gathering behind her eyes.
“Stick the kettle on. I’ll dig out some booze and we’ll have tipsy coffee.”
“Erica, it’s not even lunchtime.”
“So what? We’re on holiday, aren’t we?” Oh, but we’re not. No we’re not. I don’t know what this is, but it’s not a holiday. Beth shakes her head.
“I’ll just have tea,” she says, drifting toward the kitchen. Her back is narrow, shoulders pointing sharply through the fabric of her shirt. I notice them with a jolt of unease-just ten days, since I saw her last, but she is visibly thinner now. I want to squeeze her, to make her be well.
The house is cold and damp, so I press buttons on an ancient panel until I hear things stirring, deep pipes complaining, water seething. There are rank ashes in the fire grates; there are still tissues and a sweetly rotting apple core in the wastepaper basket in the drawing room. Encroaching on Meredith’s life like this makes me feel uneasy, slightly sick. As if I might turn and catch her reflection in the mirror-an acid grimace, hair tinted falsely gold. I pause at the window and look out onto the winter garden, a mess of leggy plants falling over, unpruned. These are the smells I remember from our summers here: coconut sun cream; oxtail soup for lunch, no matter how hot the weather; sweet, heavy clouds from the roses and lavenders around the patio; the pungent, meaty smell of Meredith’s fat Labradors, panting their hot exhaustion onto my shins. So different now. That could have been centuries ago; it could have happened to someone else entirely. A few raindrops skitter onto the glass and I am a hundred years away from everything and everyone. Here, we are truly alone, Beth and I. Alone, in this house again, in our conspiracy of silence, after all this time in which nothing has been resolved, in which Beth has pulled herself apart, a piece at a time, and I have dodged and evaded it all.
First we have to sort, to make some order of all the layers of possessions, of the items that have gathered into drifts in corners. This house has so many rooms, so much furniture, so many drawers and cupboards and hiding places. I should feel sad, I suppose, to think of it sold; the line of family history down the years to Beth and me, breaking. But I don’t. Perhaps because, by rights, everything should have gone to Henry. That was when it all got broken. I watch Beth for a while, as she lifts lace handkerchiefs out of a drawer and piles them on her knee. She takes them out one by one, studying the patterns, tracing the threads with her fingertips. The pile on her knee is not as tidy as the pile in the drawer. There’s no point to what she’s doing. It’s one of those things she does that I can’t understand.
“I’m going for a walk,” I announce, rising on stiff knees, biting back irritation. Beth jumps as if she’d forgotten I was there.
“Where are you going?”
“For a walk, I just said. I need some fresh air.”
“Well, don’t be long,” Beth says. She does this sometimes, as well-talks to me as if I’m a wilful child, as if I might run off. I sigh.
“No. Twenty minutes. Stretch my legs.” I think she knows where I’m going.
I follow my feet. The lawn is ragged and lumpy; a choppy sea of broken brown grasses that soak my feet. It all used to be so manicured, so beautiful. I had been thinking, without thinking, that it must have got out of hand since Meredith died. But that’s ridiculous. She died a month ago, and the garden shows several seasons of neglect. We have been neglectful of her ourselves, it would seem. I have no idea how she coped before she died-if she coped. She was just there, in the back of my mind. Mum and Dad came to see her, every year or so. Beth and I hadn’t been for an age. But our absence was understood, I think; it was never tested too hard. We were never pestered to come. Perhaps she would have liked us to, perhaps not. It was hard to tell with Meredith. She was not a sweet grandmother, she was not even maternal. Our great-grandmother, Caroline, was also here while our mother grew up. Another source of discomfort. Our mother left as soon as she could. Meredith died suddenly, of a stroke. One day ageless, an old woman for as long as I can remember; the next day no longer. I saw her last at Mum and Dad’s silver wedding anniversary, not here but in an overheated hotel with plush carpets. She sat like a queen at her table and cast a cold glare around the room, eyes sharp above a puckered mouth.