Mum and I slide ourselves onto the kitchen benches, link hands across the table, our conversation hanging awkwardly around the urge to talk about Beth. I break the silence.
“I found a load of newspaper clippings in with the photos in one of Meredith’s drawers. About Henry,” I add, unnecessarily. Mum sighs, withdraws her hands from mine.
“Poor Henry,” she says, and strokes her fingers over her forehead, brushing back an imaginary hair.
“I know. I’ve been thinking about him a lot. About what happened-”
“What do you mean, about what happened?” Mum asks sharply. I look up from the thumbnail I was picking.
“Just, that he vanished. His disappearance,” I say.
“Oh.”
“Why? What do you think happened to him?”
“I don’t know! Of course I don’t know. I thought, for a while that… that perhaps you girls knew more than you were saying…”
“You think we had something to do with it?”
“No, of course not! I thought that, maybe, you were protecting somebody.”
“You mean Dinny.” Something flares inside me.
“Yes, all right then, Dinny. He had a temper, your young hero. But, Erica, Henry vanished! He was taken, I’m sure of it. Somebody took him, carried him off and that was the end of it. If anything had happened to him here on the estate, anything at all, then the police would have found some evidence of it. He was taken away, and that’s all there is to it,” she finishes, calm again. “It was a terrible, terrible thing, but nobody is to blame except the person who took him. There are just a few very dangerous people out there, and Henry was unlucky enough to meet one of them.”
“I suppose he was,” I say. None of this rings true to me. None of it convinces me. Eddie by the pond, throwing a stone; and that watery ache in my knees.
“Let’s not talk about it today, shall we?”
“OK, then.”
“How has Beth been?”
“Not great. A bit better now. We went to a party at the camp the other night, and she chatted to Dinny a bit; and she seemed to pick up a little. And now that you and Dad are here too…”
“You went to a party with Dinny?” Mum sounds incredulous.
“Yes. So what?”
“Well,” she shrugs, “it just seems so odd, after all these years. Taking up with him again…”
“We’re not taking up with him. But we are neighbors now. For the time being, anyway. He’s… well. He’s not really much different, and neither am I, so…” For a terrifying moment, I think I will blush.
“He was so in love with Beth, you know. Back when they were twelve,” Mum says, staring into the past and smiling. “They say you never forget your first love.”
I down the last of my champagne, get up to fetch the bottle. The heat of my blush remains, moves up to my nose, threatens to become tears. “Come on. These spuds won’t peel themselves!” I smile, proffering a paring knife at her.
“How long will Beth rest for?”
“A hour, perhaps. Long enough to dodge the potato peeling, that’s for certain.”
My eyes strain against the gathering dark. It’s not yet five o’clock but my feet are indistinct. They snag on tufts and twigs and roots that I can’t see. I’ve come to fetch Eddie. I make a pass of the camp but all is quiet. I am still not sure who each vehicle belongs to, and they look so tight, so closed up against the world that I am too afraid to go knocking on doors, asking for Harry. I cut into the woods but the darkness is even deeper here. I should have brought a torch. Night is coming fast; the light feels exhausted.
“Eddie!” I call, but it’s a pathetic sound. I can see the strict formations of the search teams, going through these woods twenty-three years ago. Five days after he vanished, but still they kept trying. Their faces grim; the dogs pulling at their leads. The crackle and click of CB radios. Henry! Their shouts were loud and clear but stilted even so, as if self-conscious, as if knowing the name was hurled in vain, would only reach their own ears. The weather was foul that weekend-it was the August bank holiday, after all. The tail end of Hurricane Charley, lashing Britain with wind and rain. “Eddie!” I try again, as loudly as I can. The quiet, when my clumsy feet go still, is astounding.
I come out of the woods beyond the dew pond. The barrow is a vague growth on the horizon. I skirt the edge of the field, along the fence, back toward the house, and slowly I see figures coming into being by the water. Two large, one small. I heave a lungful of air, feel a chill slide down my back. I had not known how afraid I was. Harry, Eddie, Dinny. They could be the three protagonists of a boy’s own story, and here they are, at the dew pond. Skimming stones in the near dark on Christmas Day.
“Who’s that?” Eddie says, when they notice me. His voice sounds high, childish.
“It’s me, you muppet,” I say, mocking my own fear at his expense.
“Oh, hi, Rick,” he says. Harry gives an odd hoot-the first real sound I have heard him make. He runs around the water’s edge to me-big clumsy strides. I hold my breath, wait for him to slip, stumble in, but he doesn’t. He presents me with a small stone, flat, almost triangular. I can just about see his smile.
“He wants you to have a go,” Dinny says. I walk carefully around to them. I turn the stone over in my hand. It is warm, smooth.
“I came to get Eddie. It’s time he was in-it’s pitch black out here,” I say to Dinny. I feel prickly, endangered. The water is nothing but a blackness at our feet.
“You just need to give your eyes time to adjust, that’s all,” Dinny tells me, as the others go back to their stones, the flat black water, the counting of white blooms in the gloaming.
“Still, we should go back. My parents are here…”
“Oh? Tell them hello from me.”
“Yes, I will.” I stand next to him, close enough for our sleeves to touch. I don’t care if I am crowding him. I need something near enough to catch, something to anchor me. I can hear him breathing, hear the shape he makes in the echoes from the pond.
“Aren’t you going to skim that stone?” He sounds wryly amused by the idea.
“I can hardly see the water.”
“So? You know it’s there.” He looks sideways at me. Just a silhouette, and I want to put my hands on his face, to feel if he’s smiling.
“Well, here goes.” I creep to the edge, find a firm footing. I crouch, swing my arm, and when I let go of the stone I follow it, toward the surface, toward the obsidian water. One, two, three… I count the splashes and then I stumble, my vision skids vertiginously, my feet slide over the edge of the bank and I gasp. What a place, I have sent that innocent stone to-what darkness.
“Three! Rubbish! Harry got a seven a little while ago!” Eddie calls to me. I feel Dinny’s hands under my arms, the reassuring weight of him pulling me to my feet. Panic fluttering in my chest.
“Not a great night for swimming, I think,” Dinny murmurs. I shake my head, glad he can’t see my face, the tears in my eyes.
“Come on, Eddie, we’re going in,” I say. A ragged edge to my voice.
“But I’ve just…”
“Now, Eddie!” He sighs, solemnly presents Harry with the rest of his stones. They make a warm, cheerful noise as they change palms. I walk away from the edge, back toward the house.
“Erica,” Dinny calls to me. I turn, and he hesitates. “Happy Christmas,” he says. I can tell this is not what he had intended to say, and even though I wonder, I don’t feel strong enough to ask right now.
“Happy Christmas, Dinny,” I reply.
Losing
1903-1904
The summer swelled and Magpie’s body ripened in time with it, seeming to expand by the day as her baby grew. She moved with an odd grace, as purposefully as ever but never suddenly, neatly angling her new width around the furniture and through the narrow door of the dugout she shared with Joe. Caroline watched her. She watched, and she wondered, her heart full of suspicions that she went from discrediting to confirming to herself twenty times a day. And more than anything, she was jealous. She felt sick and weak and full of something dark and bitter each time she saw the growing inches of the Indian girl’s body. And if anything could have driven her from the house and out into the summer sun, it was this.