That morning she’d spent an hour in front of the bathroom mirror tying her hair up, then down, then up again, putting on lip colour she hoped her grandmother wouldn’t notice, changing her dress twice. When she was ready, she’d walked the two blocks between her grandparents’ South Kensington house and the Eliots’, trying not to bite her lip. William had answered the door in a collared shirt and beige trousers, a towel in his hand, his short brown hair still wet from the shower. He stood in the doorway longer than usual, as if over the span of a day and a half he’d forgotten what Jane looked like — her thick fringe and serious expression — and was trying to put her into context. Jane, flustered, had blushed. She’d wanted this exact kind of looking for the two weeks she’d been coming to babysit. Then he grinned at something, some private thought she sensed had nothing to do with her, and jutted his chin in the direction of the kitchen—“Your charge awaits, Miss Standen”—ruffling his hair with his towel and heading upstairs.
Lily had glanced up when Jane came into the kitchen. The curtains on the French doors were tied back so the room was brighter than usual. The counters and sinks were spotless because it was Sunday and the cleaning lady William had hired while Lily’s nanny was in Spain had been coming in on Saturdays. Seeing it was just Jane, Lily went back to running her blue crayon over the side of the ceramic milk jug, her cereal bowl half full in front of her, a few slices of apple scattered around the placemat.
“Need some help with your drawing?”
The girl tilted her head as if she was still unsure how much authority Jane had or how useful she was. She inspected the crayons spread out around her juice box, rolled the red one Jane knew she liked best under her palm a few times and then said, “Okay.”
“Hmm. How about we do it on paper? Then we can draw something for your dad.”
Lily glanced toward the entry where she could see William. He was running up and down the stairs, dropping specimen bags and wellies by the door. The excursion was to be part fun, part field trip. William was finishing a research proposal on the Victorian plant hunter George Farrington and his estate gardens in Inglewood and wanted to take a last look at the original plantings along the old estate trail before he submitted the final application. He only had a week before the deadline and the drive was four-plus hours each way, so he’d invited Jane for a day in the country to help with Lily and to thank her for filling in for Luisa, who’d had a family emergency back in Spain.
Jane tore a piece of paper off the scratch pad that Luisa kept in the oak sideboard and gave it to Lily. Then she pulled up a chair and watched as the five-year-old drew a red sun and then a blue flower and a blue whale swimming through puffy yellow clouds. Lily pushed the drawing toward Jane when she was done and then took it back at the last second, adding five blue squiggles in the top right-hand corner.
“What are those?” Jane asked.
“A secret.”
“Oh. Can I guess?”
Lily nodded.
“Birds?”
“No.”
“Bumblebees?”
“No.”
“Airplanes?”
“No.”
“Drops of rain?”
“No.”
“Flying girls?”
“No, no, no.” She smacked her lips, satisfied.
“How about the flags of invisible cities?”
Lily, liking that, giggled.
When they first set out along the trail William stayed with Jane and Lily, pointing out various kinds of Rhododendron and Chimonanthus, cupping the glossy plant leaves in his hand and explaining that the shrubs liked acidic soil best, that they bloomed in winter and the flowers were pungent—“spicy smelling, actually; quite lovely”—which made Jane think of the cologne she’d found in William’s bathroom cabinet, its woodsy clove scent. He’d started to give a brief history of the estate and of the Farrington family—“George was a great botanist, his brother an amateur geologist”—trying, and failing, to make it interesting to Lily, who kept interrupting to complain that she was too warm or thirsty. After ten minutes of walking together, he pulled out his notebook and said he was going to get started, that he wouldn’t be far. Sometimes after that they’d round a corner and see him in the distance standing near a bed of fern, or just off the lake side of the footpath, a handsome thirty-five-year-old man in beige trousers and a navy jacket, two canvas specimen bags around his waist, wellies up to his knees in case he wanted to scramble down the verge, down the muddy ravine.
The trail was narrow but flat. The Farrington estate had been in the hands of the local Trust for twenty-some years and over that time the path had become a popular walking trail, as much for the three caves at the end of it as for the rare alpine and Asian specimens George Farrington had brought back from the Himalayas and planted in the late 1870s. The farther in they walked, the cooler it became, though the temperature was changeable: one minute Jane and Lily would be walking in shade and Jane would get goose pimples, then a few minutes later they’d come to a section of clear sky where sunlight blanketed the trail. The stickiness of the drive up and the summer heat followed by the blue coolness of the woods reminded Jane of summers at her family’s cottage at the Lakes when their mum was between research posts or teaching semesters — summers full of walks and hill climbing. Jane had been twelve and Lewis ten and bratty the last time they’d gone up. Lewis’s favourite pastime that year was sailing through the main room of the cottage to thwap whatever book Jane was reading with his hand before presenting himself to their mum and stating, “Claire, we need milk,” or “Claire, I’d like a microscope.” And Claire would glance up from the clutter of papers on her desk under the open stairs and say, “Of course, Mr. Standen, whatever you want.”
About twenty minutes into their walk, the trees to Jane and Lily’s left thinned, and Jane could make out the edge of a flat pasture at the top of a sloping rise, a ribbon of sun along its border. After a while a stone fence took its place, and every now and again one of the sheep in the upper field would baa and Lily would stop and stare at the ridge as if she expected to see a lamb standing there. William, by then, had gone even farther ahead, moving through the brome and couch grass, the troughs of fern. When he’d been gone for a while Lily started to pick up leaves and snatch bits of bushes, trying to imitate her father. Wiping her hands on her red dungarees and traipsing along beside Jane, she asked a litany of questions that all began with Why? or How come? or What if? Jane tried her best to answer, to explain why some animals had stripes and some spots, why leaves float and why if Luisa said that Lily’s mother was in heaven, then that was clearly where she was. Lily made a fish face at that and blew on the key that swung from a white ribbon around her neck. It was the key to Jane’s grandparents’ house. Lily had noticed it on the ribbon wound around Jane’s wrist during lunch at the pub in the village; she’d gently tried to tug it off while Jane was doing her best to sit up straight and have a grown-up conversation with William over soggy cod and chips.