Do you believe in reincarnation? asked Benjy.
Course not, said Alex. I mean, can you remember who you were last time round?
It was the wrong answer. He needed Alex to say, Yes, yes, of course I believe in reincarnation. Because Benjy wanted to come back as a panda or a gorilla, but he would agree to come back as anything if he could only be assured that he was coming back. He didn’t want to think about what had happened to the shrew, what had happened for Granny, so he stopped listening to what Alex was saying and wrote his name using risotto to stop himself crying.
Melissa brought in the two plates on which the treacle pudding bowls sat upturned. She placed them in the middle of the table and removed the bowls like a conjurer revealing rabbits.
Skinny jeans, for example, Louisa said to Alex. I just don’t get it. There, you see? That’s the middle-aged frump talking.
But I think you look really sexy, said Alex.
She looked at him, assessing whether this was just politeness.
Was Louisa doing it to spite him? Richard wondered. He forced himself to turn to Angela so that he did not have to watch the spectacle. I have an apology to make.
For what? said Angela.
Last night. You asked me a medical question. Should he explain how he knew? You never told me that you’d had a miscarriage.
Why should I have? Did that sound harsh?
Objection sustained. He took a spoonful of the treacle pudding. It was oddly dry. He rather wished he could mash it up with the vanilla ice cream like Benjy was doing. But it’s still a problem for you.
I talked to Louisa earlier. I’m not sure I can talk about it twice in one day.
I understand.
He and Louisa weren’t talking, were they? Angela could sense his sadness at being cut out of the loop.
He changed the subject. I’m assuming you don’t have any photographs of Dad.
I don’t have photographs of anything. Mum threw them all away. Or maybe they got carted off with everything else. I’m afraid I didn’t make a huge effort to hang on to stuff.
I have three.
Three what?
Photographs of Dad, said Richard. I’m no longer entirely sure how they came into my possession. I thought you might be interested. I should have brought them with me.
A little explosion of, what? excitement? pleasure? fear? She is trying to imagine what the pictures might be like but panicking because she is unable to do this. Stems and slime, that empty doorway.
Remind me and I’ll post them to you next week. To be honest, I’m not terribly fond of them, but I’ve always been chary of throwing them away. This fear that he would be angry with me. Absurd, isn’t it?
Throwing them away? Without telling her? She gets to her feet. I’ve got to go and check on Daisy. See how she’s doing.
♦
Dirty orange street lights in the not-yet-dawn as she walks across the wet black tarmac of the Wheelan Centre car park. Wet air and the clang of lockers, the flash of a blue verruca sock, pound in the slot, slam shut, keyband twisted out. She walks through the footbath into the hard white light of the pool, pushing her hair up into the rubber swimhat and snapping it down over her ears. The shriek and whistle of that ringing echo. She spits into her goggles and licks the rubber seal before flipping the elastic over the back of her head and sitting the lenses just right over her eyes. She stands and stretches beside the stack of red polystyrene floats, arms over her head, fingers laced, palms towards the ceiling. The black second hand ticks on the big white clock.
Getting in is like sliding feet first through a ring of cold. She dips down into the blue silence, looking up the pool to where the deep end vanishes in the chlorine blur, the air a ceiling of mercury studded with the red balls of the lane ropes. Someone kicks off beside her, trailing bubbles like silver coins. She stands and re-emerges into the noisy air. Sanderson is on the side wearing the world’s worst shell suit, mauve and blueberry, bright yellow whistle. People, people. He claps and the building claps back. Eight lengths warm-up. Let’s wake those legs and arms.
She pushes off, that first glide like slow flight, four butterfly leg kicks, then she breaks the surface, right arm arcing over, breathing behind that little bow wave the head makes. One, two, left. One, two, right. She tumbles at the end, flipping the world like a pancake. And Lauren is swimming beside her, that long stroke, the dolphin ease of it. They tumble together and swim in perfect unison. She is a bird of prey now, swimming up into the blue distance of the valley. The green of Lauren’s Speedo. That tiny tractor. Tumble, push, glide. Four lengths, five. Still the muffled secrecy of underwater but they’re no longer swimming, or are they? The air is warm and she can hear traffic. Or surf, maybe? The smell of cocoa butter suncream. They’re on an island. Kings and their judgement far away. Lauren leans back and snaps her swimhat off, shaking her long red hair free. Freckles on her shoulder and blue veins so clear under the skin that you could trace them with your finger.
Hey. Lauren turns and holds her eye. Crazy hazy Daisy.
♦
Alex is alone in the kitchen standing over the kettle, waiting for it to boil, when Richard comes in and walks over. Richard is never easy to read but Alex knows instantly from his expression what he wants to talk about and how he feels about it. He halts and pauses briefly, like a conductor, baton suspended before the downstroke. Stop flirting with my wife.
I’m not flirting.
Don’t lie to me. Richard had expected Alex to crumble. He is surprised by his own anger.
I didn’t mean… He had been concentrating on Louisa. I think you’re really sexy. It never occurred to him that Richard might have been listening.
I don’t give a damn what you meant or didn’t mean. This in a forced whisper so that no one hears it in the dining room. Richard is frightening himself but there is a relief too which is blissful. You’re flirting with my wife and you’re doing it in front of everyone and you’re making me look like an idiot.
Richard’s hand is raised and for a second or two neither of them is sure whether this will become physical. Then Richard lowers his hand, takes a step backwards and breathes deeply several times. He looks like someone watching a horror film and perhaps this is precisely what he is seeing in his mind’s eye. He turns and leaves the room.
Alex is shaking. The memory of Callum’s leg being broken rears up. Show some fucking respect. The fear that Richard is going to come back into the kitchen carrying that length of scaffolding. Richard the doctor, his uncle, the admirable man. Fixed landscape turning into ebb and flow. Fear turning to anger. He marches out of the kitchen. If he bumps into Richard he really will punch him in the face and fuck the consequences, but only Mum and Dad are sitting in the dining room and Dad says, Alex…? and the ordinariness of this is enough to restore a kind of sanity. Yeh. Sorry. I’m fine. He goes out of the front door, closes it behind him and punches the stone wall hard so that all the knuckles on his right hand bleed.