“I even made the pastry myself,” he said.
The kitchen light was so bright she couldn’t see him properly. But she saw the winter apples — their pile had shrunk. He offered her a slice of pie, saying something about it being an attempt to replace Lind, that he knew she was feeling down about that.
She took the slice he offered her and tossed it into the bin, saucer and all. She peered at him. Why couldn’t she see him properly? It was hard to talk to him without opening her mouth fully. If she stood at a distance and in the dark, he would not notice. She stepped out into the passage and switched off the light. The air was crowded with droplets of rose attar and loomed behind her.
“I can’t see you properly,” she said to him. “Come out here.”
He meant something by the pie. He meant to poison her in some way, to disable her. Or, misguidedly, he meant to cure her.
“Why did you use the winter apples?” she asked. He wouldn’t come into the dark.
“What are you talking about?”
She beckoned him frantically, but he stayed where he was.
“Why did you use the winter apples?”
“Miri,” he said. His eyes were wet. Or maybe not, it wasn’t clear. The goodlady called to her. She should not have to go to trapdoor-room alone.
“Bad. You are bad.” They were the only words she could fit her astonishment inside.
He said something, but she could no longer bear his voice. When he left her and went upstairs, she followed him, silent and intent, delaying her steps until he was safely in his room. Bob Dylan crooned scratchily. Her breath on the wood of his closed door. She could see him, her thoughts bent against him, if she wanted to she could strip him down to true red, the thing hinted at in rouge and roses
(no he’s eliot eliot is me we were once one cell)
he would be sour.
She ran downstairs, away from him. There was someone strange at the front door. They stood where the Christmas tree had stood until the day after Boxing Day, when Sade had dismantled it for fear of bad luck. The stranger wore a big black hat and she didn’t dare to pass them. Their back was to her, and they stood very straight, with a shapeless coat draped over them in such a way as to put the existence of limbs in doubt. And yet they stood. It was in trapdoor-room that she fell, and the house caught her. She had thought she would find the goodlady below, or Lily, or Jennifer, or her GrandAnna, but there was no one there but her. In trapdoor-room her lungs knocked against her stomach and she lay down on the white net that had saved Ore but would not save her. Two tiny moons flew up her throat. She squeezed them, one in each hand, until they were two silver kidneys. Acid seeped through her.
•
It’s July. I’ve been listening to one song by the Shirelles over and over. Will you still love me tomorrow? It’s July and the low-growing plants in the garden are choked with humidity, but I’ve caught a cold in my head. It might be the song. I think this is the song that Miri liked to play, but I’m not sure, I just can’t be sure. Her favourite songs sounded just like each other — she stuck to one musical era, twelve years in a row, holding hands like shy sisters going out into the world.
Dad has closed the bed-and-breakfast. That was three weeks ago. He couldn’t run the place without help, and I haven’t been any help. I’d push the Hoover down hallways with my foot, wishing the sound it made was quieter. What if the phone rang? What if it had news to tell? Miri may have been found drowned, washed up at the foot of the cliff with tiny seashells in her ears. Dad was aware of the phone too, of its power. When he answered a call he’d twist the wire between his fingers, moving down as far as he could, as if checking and double-checking that all was as it should be, that the line was in order and the phone was actually connected.
We couldn’t find a recent photo of Miri to give to the police, so her missing person’s poster features a girl with long hair and dreamy eyes that don’t see the fracture coming. I tried to explain to the police officer who visited, but she nodded and said, “We’ll mention that she wears a shorter hairstyle now.” She was right to say that, there was nothing else she could say. Shadadapsha, shadadapsha.
I didn’t even know Dad was going to close the bed-and-breakfast until I saw him unscrewing the sign that said The Silver House from the gate. He made me set an answer-machine message saying that reservations are no longer being accepted. At first I said I wouldn’t do it. Why should I? He was the one closing the place down. He picked up the receiver and slammed it into my chest. He didn’t do it angrily; he did it as if he’d seen a groove in my chest that fitted the shape of the receiver. He wrote the message on some notepaper and I said the words, stumbling, for no real reason, over the last part: “We regret any inconvenience caused.”
Sylvie and The Paul came to stay for the fifth time since Miri left, even though Dad told them not to come this time. I was glad to see The Paul. Every day we got The Times and The Daily Telegraph, because there was more in them to read than in tabloids. I think Sylvie expected that by now she would have to cook for us and take care of us, but Dad made three meals a day in the kitchen, chopping and whisking with a grim energy that pushed her out, pushed all of us out. Sylvie kept looking at us with doe-eyed shock, as if she couldn’t believe that Dad and I hadn’t died of grief. Sylvie phoned Lind. To ask if Miri had been upset by a boy. “Why else would a young girl run away? It must be love.”
“She’ll come back,” The Paul said to me, over the top of The Guardian. “All the best people run away from home when they’re young. I ran away when I was just twelve years old, and I came back when I was bored of it.” Sylvie and The Paul only ended up staying for a week. Dad spent most of his time blatantly avoiding them (I mean ducking into rooms and stepping hastily around corners when he saw them, as if he was regressing into boyhood) and it was getting tense.
“Telephone if you want anything, or if you want to come to us,” Sylvie said.
She kissed my cheek and then dabbed at it with her perfumed handkerchief.
“Take care of your father,” The Paul said.
Dad and Lily would never have this, they would never be old together and think inside each other’s clockwork.
Sylvie and The Paul went back to Paris, and Dad moved around the house normally again.
The Shirelles block my nose. I breathe with my mouth open and my mouth is dry. Headaches mean that from my seat on the roof I mistake the cliffs for Table Mountain. The headache that comes with this cold is invisible assault, like being thrown into a sack and pummelled with rocks.
Sometimes Dad comes and stands in the garden while I’m on the roof. We don’t address each other, but we’re aware of each other. I look at the top of his head while he looks out in the direction of the road behind our house. He tries to find it, whatever it is he wants to say, then he gives up and goes back inside.
In the past couple of weeks he’s been to London and Brighton, Liverpool, also Manchester, I think, to eat at restaurants. He comes back to write about what he’s eaten. When he’s away I eat refried beans cold out of the tin, sometimes with lettuce for nutrition. I’m glad when he’s away because he keeps asking me questions. He thinks he’s Inspector Morse. For some time it was the apples.
“Where did the apples come from?”
“They were on the kitchen table when I came down.”
“Fresh apples? I didn’t put them there.”
“Maybe Sade did, before she went.”
“Why would she? She knows that in winter I use preserves.”