“No. He must have forgotten,” I agree, breathless. “I’ll get some and take them over later.”
“Cool.” Eddie nods. He pulls open the back door with one hand, the other hand fighting its way into the Twix. So flippant. No idea how huge the thing that just happened is, here at the car window. I go back into the shop, buy salt-and-vinegar chips, and when I get back into the car I start the engine and take us home, and I don’t look at Beth because I feel too awkward, and the things I would ask I won’t ask in front of her son.
Eddie is lying on his bed, in pyjamas, tethered to his iPod. On his front with his heels swinging over his back. He’s reading a book called Sasquatch! and with his music on he can’t hear the owls outside, calling to each other between trees. I leave him. Downstairs, Beth is making mint tea, her fingers pinching the corner of the teabag and dipping it, over and over, into the water.
“I hope Dinny didn’t startle you, appearing at the car window like that?” I say. Lightly as I can. Beth glances at me, presses her lips together.
“I saw him go into the shop,” she says, still dipping.
“Really? And you recognized him? I don’t think I would have-not just from glimpsing him go by.”
“Don’t be ridiculous-he looks exactly the same,” she says. I feel inadequate-that she saw something I didn’t.
“Well,” I say. “Pretty amazing to see him again after all this time, isn’t it?”
“Yes, I suppose so,” she murmurs.
Now I can’t think what to ask. She should not be this careless about it. It should matter more. I search her face and frame for signs. “Perhaps we should ask them up to the house. For a drink or something?”
“They?”
“Dinny and Honey. She’s his… well, I’m not sure if they’re married. She’s about to have his baby. You could talk her out of having it in the woods. I think he’d be grateful for that.”
“Having it in the woods? How extraordinary,” Beth says. “What a pretty name though-Honey.” There is more to it than this. There has to be.
“Look, are you sure you’re OK?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?” she says, that same bemused tone that I don’t believe. She looks at me again, and I see that her fingers are in the hot water, mid-dip. Steaming hot water, and she does not flinch.
“But you hardly spoke to him. You two used to be so close… didn’t you want to talk to him? Catch up?”
“Twenty-three years is a long time, Erica. We’re totally different people now.”
“Not totally different-you’re still you. He’s still him. We’re still the same people who played together as kids…”
“People change. They move on,” she insists.
“Beth,” I say, eventually, “what happened? To Henry, I mean?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I mean, what happened to him?”
“He disappeared,” she says flatly, but her voice is like thin ice.
“No, but, do you remember, that day at the pond? The day he vanished? Do you remember what happened?” I press. I don’t think I should. I partly want to know, I partly want to move her. And I know I shouldn’t. Beth’s hand slips down to the worktop. It knocks her cup roughly aside, slops tea. She takes a deep breath.
“How can you ask me that?” she demands, constricted.
“How can I? Why shouldn’t I?” I ask, but when I look up I see she is shaking, eyes alight with anger. She doesn’t answer for a while.
“Just because Dinny’s around… just because he’s here it doesn’t mean you need to go raking up the past!” she says.
“What’s it got to do with Dinny? I just asked a simple question!”
“Well, don’t! Don’t keep asking bloody questions, Erica!” Beth snaps, walking away. I sit quietly for a long time, and I picture that day.
We got up early because it had been such a hot night. A night when the sheets seemed to wrap themselves around my legs, and I woke up again and again with my hair stuck in clammy rat-tails to my forehead and neck. We helped ourselves to breakfast and then listened to the radio in the conservatory, which faced north and was cool in the morning. Terracotta tiled floor, ranks of orchids and ferns on the window sill. We wallowed in Caroline’s swing chair, which had blue canvas cushions that smelt faintly sharp, almost feline. Caroline was dead by then. Dead when I was five or six years old. I ran past that swing chair once, a very little girl, and did not see her in it until her stick shot out and caught me. Laura! she snapped, calling me my mother’s name, Go and find Corin. Tell him I need to see him. I must see him! I had no idea who Corin was. I was terrified of the limp bundle of fabric in the swing chair, the incongruous strength behind that stick. I ducked beneath it, and ran.
We got dressed at the last possible minute, went reluctantly to church with Meredith and our parents, ate lunch in the shade of the oak tree on the lawn. A special little table laid there just for the three of us. Beth, Henry and me. Peanut butter-and-cucumber sandwiches, which Mum had made for us because she knew we were too hot and fractious to eat the soup. The itchy press of the wicker chair into the backs of my legs. Some small bird in the tree crapped on the table. Henry scraped it up with his knife, flicked it at me. I ducked so violently that I fell off my chair, kicked the table leg, spilt my lemonade and Beth’s. Henry laughed so hard a lump of bread went up his nose, and he choked until his eyes streamed. Beth and I watched, satisfied; we did not thump him on the back. He was vile for the rest of the day. We tried everything to lose him. The heat made him groggy and violent, like a sun-struck bull. Eventually he was called inside to lie down because he was caught tying a Labrador’s legs together with string while it panted, long-suffering and bewildered. Meredith would not stand for the torment of her Labradors.
But he came out again later, as the afternoon broadened. He found us at the dew pond. The three of us by then, of course. I had been swimming, pretending to be an otter, a mermaid, a dolphin. Henry laughed at my wet saggy knickers, at the bulge of water in the gusset. Have you pissed your pants, Erica? Then something, something. Running. Thoughts of the plughole at the bottom of the pond, of Henry being sucked down through it. That must have been why I said to them, again and again: Look in the pond. I think he’s in the pond. We were all at the pond. Even though they had looked, they told me. Mum told me, the policeman told me. They had looked and he wasn’t there. No need for divers-the water was clear enough to see. Meredith took me by the shoulders, shook me, shouted, Where is he, Erica? A tiny bubble of spit from her mouth landed warm and wet on my cheek. Mother, stop it! Don’t! Beth and I were given dinner in the kitchen, our mother spooning beans onto our toast, her face pale and preoccupied. As dusk bloomed the evening smelled of hot grass getting damp, and air so good you could eat it. But Beth did not eat. That was the first time, that evening. The first time I saw her mouth close so resolutely. Nothing in, and nothing out.
“What’s with all the chips?” Beth asks, poking the multipack of salt-and-vinegar chips among the breakfast detritus on the table.
“Oh… they were supposed to be for Honey. I forgot to take them down to her yesterday,” I say. Eddie is sitting on the bench with his back to the kitchen table, throwing a tennis ball against the wall and catching it. The ball’s flat, threadbare; it probably belonged to a Labrador once. He throws it with a maddening lack of rhythm. “Eddie, can you give it a rest?” I ask. He sighs, aims, throws the ball into the bin in one smooth arc.
“Great shot, darling,” Beth smiles. Eddie rolls his eyes. “Are you bored?” she asks him.
“A bit. No, not really,” Eddie flounders. The equal pull of honesty and tact.