“Well, where has he been all these years? How come he was never found? They searched everywhere for him!”
“Nobody ever searches everywhere.” Dinny shakes his head. “He’s been here, with us. With my family, or with friends of my family. There’s more than one traveller camp in the south of England. Mum and Dad had plenty of friends to leave him with, friends who looked after him, until it had blown over. As soon as I was old enough to keep an eye on him myself, I did.”
“But… I saw him bleeding. I saw him fall into the pond…”
“And then you two ran away. I fished him out and I fetched my dad. He wasn’t breathing, but Dad managed to get it going again. The cut on his head wasn’t as bad as it looked… head wounds just bleed a lot.” He looks at his boot, twists the frayed end of a lace between his finger and thumb.
“And then? Didn’t you take him to the hospital? Why didn’t you come and find somebody at the manor?” I ask. Twenty-three years of my life are rewriting themselves behind my eyes, unravelling like wool. I can hardly focus, hardly think. Dinny doesn’t answer for a long time. He grips his chin in his hand, knuckles white. His eyes burn into me.
“I… wouldn’t say what had happened. I wouldn’t tell them how he’d got hurt… or by who. So Dad… Dad thought it was me. He thought Henry and me had got into a fight or something. He was trying to protect me.”
“But, you could have told them it was an accident-”
“Come off it, Erica. Everyone’s always looking to be proved right about us-all my life, people have looked to be proved right. That we thieve, that we’re criminals-that we’re scum. The social would have leapt at the chance to take me away from Mum and Dad. A spell in juvy, then a proper home, with a proper family…”
“You don’t know that…”
“Yes. Yes, I do. It’s you who doesn’t know, Erica.”
“Why is he… the way he is?”
“Not from the knock on the head, that’s for sure. Dad took him to an old friend, Joanna, who used to be a nurse in Marlborough. This was that same afternoon, before anyone even knew he was missing. She put a couple of stitches in his head, said he might have a concussion but it was nothing to worry about. We were going to wait for him to wake up, make sure he was OK, then drop him within walking distance of the village and disappear. That was the plan. Joanna looked after him for the first few days. He was out of it for two days straight and… then he woke up.”
“You could have brought him back then. You could have left him somewhere he’d be found, like you said. Why didn’t you?”
“By then the search was enormous. We were being watched. We couldn’t move without some keen copper noting it down. Henry would have told them we’d had him-when he was found, of course. But we thought we’d have a head start to vanish. By the time we realized there was no way we could bring him back without being seen, it was too late. And he wasn’t right, when he woke up. Anybody could tell that. Dad took me to see him, since I knew him best, out of all of us. Just tell me what you think, Dad said. I didn’t know what he was getting at until I saw Henry and spoke to him. Sitting up in Joanna’s spare bed, holding a glass of orange squash like he didn’t know what to do with it. I’d rather have been anywhere else in the world than in that room with him.” Dinny pushes his fingers through his hair, grips his scalp. “I tried talking to him, like Dad said I should. But he wasn’t the same. He was wide awake, but… distant. Dazed.”
“But why? You said his head wasn’t hit that hard?”
“It wasn’t. It was the time he spent not breathing. The time before Dad got to him and got air back into his lungs.” Dinny sounds so tired now, leaden. There’s a sparkle of pity, at the core of me, but I can’t let it fill me yet. Too many other things to feel.
I’ve finished my coffee before I speak again. I hadn’t noticed the silence. Dinny is watching me, tapping his ankle with one agitated thumb, waiting. Waiting for my reaction, I suppose. A defensive gleam in his eye.
“It didn’t blow over, you know. Not for his parents. Not for our family…”
“Do you think it blew over for me? For my family? I’ve had to see him nearly every day since then, wondering if it would have been different if I’d tried to revive him myself, that bit sooner… If we had taken him to hospital.”
“But you’ve never told. You’ve kept him-”
“Not kept him. Looked after him…”
“You’ve kept him and let his family-let his parents think he was dead! You’ve let Beth and I think he was dead.”
“No, I had no idea what you and Beth were thinking! How would I know? You ran, remember? You ran and washed your hands of it! You never even came to ask me about it! You left him with me and I… we… did what we thought was best.”
This I cannot dispute.
“I was eight years old!”
“Well, I was twelve-still just a kid, and I had to let my parents think I’d nearly killed another boy. That I’d brain-damaged another boy. At least, that’s what I thought I had to do. That’s what I thought was right. By the time I realized you two were never coming back, it was too late to change anything. How much fun do you think that was?”
I feel the blood run out of my face when he says this. I had to let them think… A memory fights its way through the clash in my head. Henry bending down, surveying the ground, gathering four, five stones. Water in my eyes and in one ear, which boomed and wobbled, mangling their voices; Henry, taunting, throwing names at Dinny; Beth’s shrill commands: Stop it! Go away! Henry, don’t! Henry said, Pikey! Filth! Dirty gyppo! Thieving dog! Tramp! With each word he threw a stone, whipping it from the shoulder with that throw boys are taught at school, but girls never are. A throw that would have sent a cricket ball back from the boundary, and a good aim. I remember Dinny crying out as one hit him, grabbing his shoulder, wincing. I remember what happened. And I picture Beth, in the doorway just now; her shout following us, and the terror on her face. No!
“I have to go,” I whisper, stumbling to my feet.
“Erica, wait-”
“No! I have to go!”
I feel sick. There’s too much inside me, something has to come out. I rush back to the house, tripping over my feet. In the cold downstairs toilet, where the frigid toilet seat makes your thighs ache, I collapse, throw up. But with my throat burning and the stink of it all around me, I somehow feel better. I feel justly punished. I feel as if some kind of retribution is beginning. Now I know what has tortured Beth all these years. Now I know why she has punished herself so, why she has sought such retribution. Splashing my face in the basin, I gasp for breath, try to find the strength to rise. I am cold with fear-I think I know what retribution she might seek from herself.
“Beth!” I call, coughing at the ragged feeling in my throat. “Beth, where are you-I have to tell you something!” On trembling legs, I run in and out of all the downstairs rooms, my heart skittering, making me dizzy. “Beth!” My voice is rising, almost a scream. I pound up the stairs, run to the bathroom first then along the corridor to Beth’s room. The door is shut and I throw myself against it. Inside, the curtains are closed, the room in darkness. And what I fear the most, what I dreaded to see is there in front of me. It fills my vision, hollows me out. “No!” I rush into the shadowed room. My sister, curled on the floor, her face turned away from me. Long-bladed scissors gripped in her fragile hand, and a dark pool around her. “Beth, no,” I whisper, with no more air in my lungs, no blood in my veins. I fall to my knees, gather her up; she is so light, insubstantial. For a second I am struck dumb by the pain, and then she turns her face to me, and her eyes are open, focused on mine, and I laugh out loud with relief.