“Why don’t you deliver those chips to Honey?” I suggest, swigging the remains of my tea.
“I’ve never even met Honey. And I only met that bloke once, yesterday. I can hardly go marching into their front yard waving chips, can I?”
“I’ll go with you,” I say, swinging my legs around and getting up. “Do you want to come, Beth? The camp’s just where it always was,” I can’t resist adding. I don’t know how she can not want to go back, to see.
“No. No thanks. I’m going to… I’m going to walk into the village. Get the Sunday paper.”
“Can I have a Twix?”
“Eddie, you’re going to turn into a Twix.”
“Please?”
“Come on, Eddie. We’re going. Boots on, it’s pretty muddy on the way,” I say.
I take us to the camp the long way, via the dew pond. It’s becoming a daily pilgrimage. It’s just a cold brown day today, none of the ice and sparkle of yesterday. I pause to walk to the edge, look into the depths of it. It’s unchanged. It gives me no answers. I wonder if I just wasn’t paying attention, when whatever it was happened? My mind wanders sometimes-gets snagged on a background thought, gets coaxed away. When other teachers talk to me, sometimes it happens. I don’t like to think about repressed memories, about trauma, amnesia. Mental illness.
“I think you’re a bit obsessed with this pond, Rick,” Eddie tells me gravely. I smile.
“I’m not. What makes you say that, anyway?”
“Every time we come near it you go all Luna Lovegood. Staring into space like that.”
“Well, excuse me, I’m sure!”
“I’m only joking,” he exclaims, pushing me awkwardly with his shoulder. “But it does kind of look the same every time. Doesn’t it?” He turns away a few paces, crouches to pick up a stone, hurls it into the water. The surface shatters. I watch him and suddenly my knees ache, sickeningly, as if I’ve missed my step on a ladder.
“Come on, then,” I say, turning away quickly.
“Did something happen here?” Eddie asks in a rush. He sounds tense, worried.
“What makes you ask, Eddie?”
“It’s just… you keep coming back out here. You get that look in your eye, like Mum gets when she’s sad,” Eddie mumbles. I curse myself silently. “And Mum seems… she doesn’t seem to like it here.” It’s easy to forget how clearly a child can see things.
“Well, something did happen here, Eddie. When we were small our cousin Henry disappeared. He was eleven, the same age as you are now. Nobody ever found out what happened to him, so we’ve kind of never forgotten about it.”
“Oh.” He kicks up sprays of dead leaves. “That’s really sad,” he says, eventually.
“Yes. It was,” I reply.
“Maybe he just ran away and… I don’t know, joined a band or something?”
“Maybe he did, Eddie,” I say, hopelessly. Eddie nods, apparently satisfied with this explanation.
Dinny is standing with a man I don’t recognize as the dogs come charging over to us, circling proprietorially. I smile and wave as if I pop in every day, and Dinny waves back, more hesitantly. His companion smiles at me. He’s a thin man, wiry, not tall. He has fair hair, cropped very close, the tattoo of a tiny blue flower on his neck. Eddie walks closer to my side, bumping me. We move nervously into the circle of vehicles.
“Hi, sorry to interrupt,” I say. I try for bright, but to my own ears I sound brassy.
“Hello there, I’m Patrick. You must be our neighbors up at the big house?” the wiry man greets me. His smile is warm and real, his handshake rattles my shoulder. At such a welcome I feel a knot in my stomach begin to loosen.
“Yes, that’s right. I’m Erica and this is my nephew, Eddie.”
“Ed!” Eddie hisses at me sideways, through unruly teeth.
“Ed, good to meet you.” Patrick rattles Eddie’s shoulder too. I notice Harry sitting on the step of a van behind the two of them. I think about calling out a greeting, but change my mind. Something in his hands again, something the focus of immense concentration. Most of his face is hidden behind hanging hair and thick whiskers.
“Well, uh, this might sound a little odd but we noticed you’d forgotten to get Honey’s chips yesterday. In the shop. So, we brought some over for her. That’s if she’s not craving pickles this morning instead?” I wave the big sack of chips. Patrick gives Dinny a look-not unkind, slightly puzzled.
“I know how fed up I get when Mum forgets my food when she goes shopping,” Eddie rescues me. At the sound of his voice, Harry looks up. Dinny shrugs one shoulder. He turns.
“Honey!” he yells at the ambulance.
“Oh! There’s no need to disturb her…” I feel color in my cheeks. Honey appears at one of the small windows. It frames her face. Pretty, petulant.
“What?” she shouts back, far louder than she needs to.
“Erica has something for you.” I squirm. Eddie edges closer to Harry, trying to see what he’s working on. Honey appears, picking her way carefully down the steps. All in black today, hair arrestingly pale against it. She stands at a distance from me and watches me suspiciously.
“Well. Silly really. We got you these. Dinny said you fancied some, so…” I trail off, I dangle the bag. Slowly, Honey steps forward and takes them from me.
“How much do I owe you?” she asks, scowling.
“Oh, no, don’t worry. I don’t remember. Forget it.” I wave my hand. She shoots Dinny a flat look and he puts his hand in his pocket.
“Two quid cover it?” he asks me.
“There’s really no need.”
“Take it. Please.” So I take it.
“Thanks,” Honey mutters, and goes back inside.
“Don’t mind Honey,” Patrick grins. “She was born in a bad mood, and then it got worse in puberty, and now that she’s expecting… well, forget it!”
“Fuck you, Pat!” Honey shouts, out of sight. He grins even wider.
Eddie has got closer and closer to Harry. He is peering at the man’s hands, and probably blocking his light.
“Don’t get in the way, will you, Ed?” I say, smiling cautiously.
“What is it?” Eddie asks Harry, who doesn’t reply, but looks at him and smiles.
“That’s Harry,” Dinny tells Ed. “He doesn’t really like to talk.”
“Oh. Well, it looks like a torch. Is it broken? Can I see?” Eddie presses. Harry opens his hands wide, displays the tiny mechanical parts.
“So, will you be down for our little solstice party this evening, Erica?” Patrick asks.
“Oh, well, I don’t know,” I say. I look at Dinny and he looks back, steadily, as if working out a problem.
“Of course you are! The more the merrier, right, Nathan? We’re lighting a bonfire, having a bit of a barbecue. Bring some booze and you’re most welcome, neighbor,” Patrick says.
“Well, maybe then.” I smile.
“Your dreadlocks are wicked,” Eddie tells Harry. “You look a bit like Predator. Have you seen that film?” He has his fingers in the mess of torch parts, picking bits out, putting them in order. Harry looks faintly astonished.
“I’ve got to run. I’ll catch you later.” Patrick nods at Dinny and me. He leaves the camp with a springing step, hands thrust into the pockets of a battered wax coat.
I look at the muddy toes of my boots, then at Eddie, who is piecing the torch back together before Harry’s incredulous eyes.
“Ed seems a good lad,” Dinny says then, and I nod.
“He’s the best. He’s a great help.” There’s a long silence.
“When I spoke to Beth… she seemed, I don’t know,” Dinny says, hesitant.
“She seemed what?”
“Not like she used to be. Almost like there was nobody home?”
“She suffers from depression,” I say, hurriedly. “She’s still the same Beth. Only she’s… she got more fragile.” I have to explain, even though I feel treacherous. He nods, frowns. “I think it started here. I think it started when Henry disappeared,” I blurt out. This is not what Beth has told me, but I do think it’s true. She told me it started one stormy day, driving home at dusk. The clouds were heavy, but on the western horizon as she drove toward it, they broke into slivers, and stripes of bright pale sky showed behind them. One of those wet mackerel skies. She said she suddenly couldn’t tell what was the horizon and what was the sky. Hills or clouds. Earth or air. It was so bewildering that she almost drifted into the oncoming traffic, and she felt seasick all evening, as if the ground were moving beneath her feet. After that, she told me, she wasn’t sure what was real any more, what was safe. That’s when she thinks it started. But I remember her the evening Henry vanished. Her silence, and the uneaten beans on her plate.