“That was horrible,” Marianne adds, sniffling a little.
“He was pretty awful,” I agree.
“He looked like he might be nice, but he wasn’t at all. And we still haven’t found the cat.”
You’d think facing down an intruder would distract her, but when it comes to cats, Marianne is relentless.
“Okay, so here are the options. Either it’s being looked after by someone, in which case they’ll let us know so we can take it to a shelter, so we don’t need to worry. Or, it’s run away and found itself a new home somewhere, so we still don’t need to worry.”
“But what if they don’t know we’re here and they don’t bring it back?”
“Then it’ll have a lovely new home. And we still don’t need to worry.”
“But couldn’t we—”
“The important thing is, it’s definitely not here.”
“But—”
“No, no more. That’s it. Let’s find breakfast.”
There’s plenty of cereal, as long as you like your cereal brown and austere and loaded with bran, but the milk in the fridge has set into a pale quivering blancmange, the bacon’s turned green around the rinds and the single carton of orange juice has swollen up like a toad. The eggs are two weeks out of date. Gingerly, I take the top off the bread bin. A cloud of blue spores float out, so I cram the lid back on and back away. We’ll have to make do with what we brought with us, and then we need to get dressed and go foraging. I should have thought of this when I packed, but there was no time.
While Marianne is in the bathroom, hosing herself diligently off with the pale green tap attachment that Lily – in the teeth of the evidence – insisted was a perfectly good substitute for a shower, I go to Lily’s bedroom to return the sapphire ring. The swan’s neck is bare, the rings scattered loosely on the dressing table. The sight causes a sinking feeling in my stomach.
“Who do you think he is?”
In Lily’s little red dining alcove, Marianne and I sit opposite each other across the round mahogany table, its surface wiped hastily free of dust with a cloth I found beneath the sink. This small act of cleaning has had the unintended effect of making everything else look much dirtier. I sit in Lily’s place, determined not to repeat the past. The table has a handle that unwinds it to an unfeasible length, which is something I imagine Marianne would enjoy seeing. Perhaps I’ll show her later, but not today. Today we have things to do.
“He told us,” I say. “He lives downstairs.”
“Yes, but why did he have her key?”
I bite into my toast. It tastes of cheap margarine, faintly separated. Marianne has skimmed hers with a layer of bramble jelly from the pantry, but I prefer the taste of lightly curdled vegetable oil. “Because she gave it to him, like he said.”
“Mum.” Marianne gives me the patient look she uses when people she loves act like idiots. “What I meant was, why would she give her key to some random man just because he lives downstairs?”
I know what Marianne’s getting at, but I stubbornly refuse to pick up on her hints. “Well, maybe they used to meet on the way to collect their post or something. Eat your toast.”
“Are we going to invite him to the funeral?”
“The undertakers will place a notice in the paper. If he sees it he’s welcome to show up.”
Marianne looks at me, then back at her plate.
“He looked so sad,” she says, almost to herself. I take another bite, enjoying the sensation in my skull as the toast crunches, refusing to feel guilty. He looked angry to me, not sad; and besides, James Moon’s emotional well-being is not my problem. “Mum, can I ask you something?”
“It’s all right, he won’t be coming back. I’ve got the key now. He can’t get in.”
“Yes, I know, I wasn’t worried about that. I just wanted to ask if you’d told Dad.”
The words are like an electric shock. How have I not told Daniel?
“It’s all right,” Marianne adds, seeing my face. “I don’t think it’s a good idea either. He’ll only worry.”
“No, you’re right, I need to tell him.”
“Mum, that’s not what I said. I said I think you’re right, we shouldn’t tell him.”
I can already imagine his reaction. Not telling him would be so easy. “No, we can’t keep secrets from your dad.”
“It’s not a secret, it’s just something he doesn’t need to know about. Like if I cut my knee or something, but then you put a plaster on it and it was fine, he wouldn’t need to know, would he?”
“This is different though. I’ll tell him the next time I speak to him.” Marianne looks disbelieving. “Look, we’ll talk about it later. We need to get dressed. We’re meeting the registrar in two hours.”
“Well, I won’t tell him, anyway,” Marianne says, and returns to her toast.
Can I possibly get away with not telling Daniel? It would certainly make life easier. If he finds out he’ll be devastated, but perhaps he won’t ever find out. I take my plate to the kitchen and scrape crumbs into the bin, which – thank God – Lily must have emptied the day she was taken into hospital. The air is losing its chilly, unoccupied scent and now smells comfortingly of tea and toast. I like it, but I’ve been eating it, so I would. I need to keep Lily’s flat as clean and impersonal as possible, so it will sell quickly and for a good price. I open the window to let it air out. Back in the sitting room, I’m caught by the photographs that stare out at me from the table by the fireplace.
Lily had a rare and compelling talent for photography, easily the best amateur I’ve ever known. Perhaps in a different life she might have made it into a profession, instead of running a hotel. Sometimes she’d let me watch, breathless, in the cellar darkroom, as my slightly younger selves swam up from their chemical bath. I pick up the picture of the little girl with the fat brown pigtails hanging over her shoulders, staring at a hermit crab picking delicately across a slab of rock. I’m someone else entirely now, but Lily has preserved my childhood self for ever, trapped until time and light steal the colour from the paper. Years before, another camera caught my dad in almost the same spot, his face round and laughing as he brandished a handful of seaweed.
“Who’s this?” Marianne reaches for a photo of a small pretty young woman in a tiny, immaculate garden, reaching high into a tree to pick an apple. The wind is undoing her carefully set curls and blows the bottom of her skirt into the shape of an opening flower. “Is this Lily?”
“No, that’s Margaret, her younger sister. She—”
“—had a weak heart and died.” Marianne nods. “That’s sad. She looks nice.” She replaces Margaret in her spot and reaches for another. “And who’s this?”
“My dad.”
She peers at him critically. “He looks like you.”
“Does he? Yes, I suppose he does.”
“How old was he when he died?” she asks, all in a rush as if she’s afraid of being told off for asking.
“Fifty-six.”
“Is it all right to ask? I wanted to write it on the family tree.”
“Of course it’s all right.”
“Only you never really talk about him. Oh! What’s this? Have I broken it? I didn’t mean to.”
She holds out her hand guiltily to show a tiny wizened handful of russet-coloured berries. In spite of myself, my heart thumps.
“It’s all right, you haven’t broken anything. They were stuck to the back of the frame, that’s all. Throw them away and get dressed, we need to get on.”
“What are they?”
“Nothing, just some berries.”
“But why are they there?”
“Time to get ready. Scoot. Off you go.” I take the photo back from Marianne and replace it in the clean spot among the dust.
Hawthorn is good for the heart. The look on Lily’s face as she cut the berries from the tree with her pocketknife, intent on her task even as she laughed at her own superstition. She knew, somehow, what was coming, what lay in her son’s fu
ture; she knew what no one else ever suspected and what no doctor ever diagnosed. I will not cry. I will not cry. I reach angrily for another photo.
This one shows Lily herself. She is looking back at the camera from beneath a buddleia bush, holding a long purple frond against her cheek and laughing. A tortoiseshell butterfly sips greedily at the flowers, refusing to be dislodged. The photo lacks the crisp definition of the shots Lily herself took, and the framing is slightly too far to the left. She’s also older than I ever saw her; the skin over her cheekbones is more pleated, the fingers that hold the buddleia more knotted, the veins on her hand more prominent. Nonetheless, she is beautiful in this photo. I think the person who took it must have loved her.
Helping yourself to all her private things. James Moon and his burning outrage, furious with me even though he was the intruder. And here I am, doing exactly what he said I’d do. Maybe later I’ll do more, rummage into all the corners to see what terrible secrets I can find. Perhaps I’ll even find that voodoo doll Daniel was only half joking about. If Mr Moon had any idea what Lily was really like, he’d understand why I never visited. When I was small I was convinced she was a witch.
I wonder if James Moon can smell the food we’ve been eating.
I wonder if Lily ever cooked for him.
I’m surprised to find I’m a little jealous.
Chapter Four – Lily
“I can’t sleep,” I confess to Lily, standing on one leg in the doorway of her bedroom.
She looks at me over the top of her copy of The Great Gatsby, hastily removing her glasses (thick-rimmed and, she claims, ugly – she refuses to be seen wearing them). To my eight-year-old eyes she’s so old that she’s long past any question of ugliness or beauty, but her hair remains defiantly lovely, clean and lavender-scented, its colour a rich golden white, like sun shining on snow.
She puts her finger in her book to mark her place. “What’s the matter?”
“I just can’t sleep,” I repeat, feeling mulish. It’s the hottest week in decades, and too much time in glaring sunshine has left me with a sick headache. My room, normally a blessed peaceful sanctuary, is strange and hot and filled with unexpected shadows. I’ve tried putting the main light on, rereading my favourite Rupert Bear annual, putting the light off again, and visiting the toilet; but my room stubbornly refuses to feel safe. It has, I feel, betrayed me. Sometimes my friends are allowed into their parents’ beds when they have nightmares, although mine have never let me. I wonder if Lily will invite me to sleep with her. I’m not sure how I feel about this. Lily looks at me thoughtfully.
“Wait a minute.”
She reaches across to her bedside table and tucks her bookmark into her book. She folds back the covers of her bed, smoothing the sheet so it looks neat. Lily never likes to be hurried into leaving a mess. Her nightdress is white and crisp and voluminous. It makes me think of medieval castles.
“Back to your room,” she orders.
I scurry in and start to scrabble beneath the covers, but Lily shakes her head and folds the sheets and blankets back to the foot of the bed, then snaps on my bedside light and briefly adjusts the curtains.
“Sit there,” she tells me, pointing to the end of the bed.
Part of Lily’s magic is that she can give orders without upsetting me. I sit obediently on the neat folds and wait. She’s only gone a moment.
“I’ve never told you this before,” she says, holding out her hand to reveal a clutch of bright treasure, nested in the pleats of her palm. “But I think you’re old enough now. My rings are magical. Choose one to wear, and in five minutes you’ll be cool and sleepy, and you’ll stay that way all night.”
My heart jumps gladly in my chest.
“Which is the most magical?” I stir them greedily with my finger. I want to choose the best one.
“I don’t need to tell you that. You’re my clever granddaughter. Take your time and you’ll know which is the right one for you.”
It takes me a long time to choose, but Lily doesn’t seem impatient. She doesn’t try to guide my choice, or tell me to get on with it because it’s late and we both need to go to sleep. She simply sits and watches me, her face grave and still and attentive like a cat’s face, as I try each ring in turn on every one of my fingers. They’re far too big even on my thumb, but the jewels flash and leap in the light – sapphires and diamonds, tiny drops of ruby, a huge rectangular stone the colour of the heart of a wave.
“Where did they all come from?” I ask.
“All over the world,” Lily says. “India and Burma and Africa, Australia maybe, China, Sri Lanka.”
This wasn’t what I meant, but it distracts me for a moment. I try a ring like a flower from an old tapestry, its tiny yellow heart surrounded with pearl petals, admiring how it looks against my smooth brown finger. Burma. China. Sri Lanka. Beautiful words to conjure with.
“But who gave them to you?” I persist, sliding the flower ring off again and returning to the magnificent sapphire surrounded with diamonds.
“That one, the one you’re wearing now, that was my engagement ring from my husband, Richard.”
“And he was killed in the war?”
“That’s right. And that little flower ring you tried, that was my sister’s engagement ring. Margaret means Daisy, you see, and her husband called her Daisy as a pet name.”
If I had the choice, I’d much rather be called Daisy than Margaret. I slide off the sapphire and try on a ruby with its ornately crafted surround set with sprinkles of diamond.
“That’s another one of Margaret’s. He gave her that just before he died. She never wore it much.”
“He must have really loved her.”
“His family had money, so he could afford it. That one once belonged to his mother.”
“And how about this diamond one?”
“That was from when your father was born. An unbroken ring of stones like that is called an eternity ring. You give one when your first child’s born.” I pick up a ring shaped like a Roman shield. “And that’s another one of Margaret’s, a birthday present I think.”
“Would Margaret mind me wearing them?”
“She’d be delighted. She would have loved you. She always wanted – here, try this one.” Lily hands me a slim platinum band with a huge emerald-cut aquamarine. “I bought this for myself when we moved here. I found it in an antique shop and it reminded me of the sea.”
“And were the rings all magic when you got them? Or did you put a spell on them?”
“That’s my secret,” Lily says, and I accept this, because I want to concentrate on trying on jewellery.
I finally settle on the circle of diamonds, sliding it onto my index finger and holding it breathlessly in place so I can see the tiny fires leap and dance in the stones’ cold bright hearts. Lily gives a nod of satisfaction, pats my cheek and stands up so she can tuck me in securely. So powerful is the magic of Lily’s promise that the sheets now feel deliciously cold and crisp against my skin. Or maybe it’s simply that she’s opened the window a fraction so the garden can steal the damp heat from my bed and breathe fragrance over my cheek.
“Don’t worry,” she says, perhaps seeing the regret for the other rings I haven’t chosen flicker across my face. “You can choose a different one tomorrow.”
“Are you sure you don’t mind?”
“Of course I don’t mind. They’ll be yours one day anyway.”
“How can they be mine? They’re yours.”
“Well, one day you’ll be grown up,” Lily improvises.
I wonder what she means, then realise she’s talking about her own death, which is something I don’t want to think about. I can’t imagine my life without Lily in it, without the glorious freedom to escape to another life every summer.
“But what if someone else wants them?” I ask, to distract myself.
“Who else would I give them to?”
“Maybe my mum,” I say, knowing even as I say the words how silly I’m
being. Lily would never leave anything precious or breakable to my mother.
“No, they’re for you. I’ll always love you best. You know that.”
I wonder how my mother will feel about this, but it’s so far in the future I decide not to worry about it. Instead I slide the diamonds up and down my finger, casting rainbows on the curtains.
“But what if I lose it in the night?”
“You won’t lose it,” Lily says, with such finality that I can’t even think about arguing. “You’re my granddaughter. I can trust you with anything.”
And she’s right. In all the years I go to bed wearing Lily’s rings, I never once lose one.
Chapter Five – Thursday
Morning gorgeous husband xxxxx
Morning gorgeous favourite wife. I dreamed about you last night xxxxxx
That’s funny. I dreamed about you too
Really? What was I doing?
In my dream, Daniel was in the music room, having sex with a beautiful dark-haired woman in a red satin dress. The woman was a prostitute, whose time Daniel had agreed to pay thousands of pounds for. When I looked at her, I felt anxiety rather than betrayal.
You were in the music room, talking to a woman with a red frock on. And you were drinking a beer
What?
Am I dream-stalking you again? :)
I swear to God Jen, that is so spooky how you do that. Are you sure you don’t have hidden cameras or something?
Don’t go all woo on me. It’s a coincidence and you know it.
So what were you doing? You weren’t really with a woman in a red dress were you?
Um…
Come on. Tell me
Well, I borrowed this lush red guitar from Connor. He’s selling it
You’re not buying it though are you?
LOL no. Just borrowing it before it disappears for ever. It’s lovely mind you. I wouldn’t mind buying it
But you haven’t? Right?
No! It’s worth thousands. You know I’ll check before buying anything big. I always do, don’t I? Although I was talking to my accountant the other day and apparently we are rich now.
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