by Abigail Dean
As it turned out, I was never bored.
There were seven lessons a day. There was learning to fasten a tie. There was homework. There were swimming lessons, where I floundered a few widths and disrupted the other students’ lengths. There was operating Microsoft Word. There was an extensive school library, where you could take out eight books – ‘Eight,’ I said to Mum, on our way home – and where the librarian informed me that she could procure any book which I believed was missing, provided that it wasn’t pornographic or Mein Kampf.
I was assigned two welcome buddies, girls from my class who accompanied me to lunch and between lessons, ensuring, at all times, that I had somebody to sit with; that the correct textbooks were in my bag; that I knew exactly where I was going. After the first week, I no longer required their services, and in time they peeled away and left me to navigate the corridors alone. The other students were pleasant enough, but in the evenings, I missed the slew of text messages that would form tomorrow’s gossip. After my first term, I wasn’t invited to many parties.
Still, then: friendship eluded me. I studied the students at lunchtime and in our breaks, trying to understand this particular form of magic. They laughed so easily – stupidly, really – about anything. None of them seemed as interesting as Ethan, or as bright as Evie.
‘It isn’t magic, Lex,’ Dr K had said. ‘You just have to’ – she shrugged – ‘put yourself out there.’
I imagined this: sidling up to a table of my peers and setting down my lunch tray beside them. ‘Which school were you at before here?’ somebody would ask, as they had done already, and I would shift forward in my chair: ‘Well—’
I raised an eyebrow, and Dr K started to laugh.
‘For what it’s worth,’ she said, ‘I never found it particularly easy myself.’
And I wasn’t unhappy. Each evening, at the dinner table, my parents were endlessly interested in my day. At night, I spoke to Evie, at first as if she was there, beside me in my new, clean bed, and later with my phone held to my ear, so that it was easier to believe. Nobody laughed when I responded to a question in class, or read my essay aloud. I was strange and tolerated. ‘I’m not lonely,’ I said, to Dr K, and that was the truth of it.
And there was the day when I ate Christmas.
My first December with the Jamesons. We had performed all of the traditions of a family. Tentatively wearing our new lives. We had walked to town to collect a tree, which smelt like the cold, and which was much, much too tall for the living room. ‘It will never fit,’ I said to Mum, waiting outside the garden centre for Dad to pay; this seemed like a waste of expenditure, and it concerned me.
‘I wouldn’t worry,’ Mum said. ‘This is an annual event.’
And when she saw that I was still frowning: ‘We’ll laugh about it later. I promise.’
I had a new range of Christmas paraphernalia: a CD of classic Christmas songs, and an advent calendar, and a jumper with penguins on it. To my scepticism, I had a stocking.
‘Santa Claus doesn’t exist,’ I said.
‘Well, yes,’ Dad said. ‘But presents do.’
We spent Christmas Eve finalizing our preparations. I wrapped presents at a glacial pace, with a stern eye for detail. ‘They don’t have to be that neat, Lex,’ Mum said, but I was determined that they would be. Carols pealed from the kitchen. Mum baked in a frenzy, so that every half an hour, the oven alarm signalled a new smell. We were summoned for strange, specific tasks: dressing the gingerbread men, or counting the cheeses.
In the night, the smells stirred all through the house. I lay in bed, glowing with the pleasures of the day, contemplating everything that we had made: the crimped crusts of the mince pies; the snap of each gingerbread man; the vat of custard, speckled with vanilla. My stomach churned, haunted with the ghosts of hunger past.
I lifted my arms over my head. Freedom.
First the stairs, and then the kitchen. The fridge bulged from the darkness, stuffed. Just one thing, I thought. Something small.
I heaved the cheeseboard from the top shelf, and set it on the kitchen counter. I unwrapped the first little paper parcel and tugged away a slab of Comté. My hands were shaking. The taste of it spread across my tongue. Already my fingers were unravelling the next wrapper. Please, I thought: stop. This is a terrible idea. I was eating faster, now, and the hunger demanded something new. In the first cupboard I tried was the Christmas cake, sealed in its special festive tin. That, then. The gingerbread men lay beside it, and I took them too.
For fifteen minutes, I feasted in the dark. A starved Christmas spirit, gorging at the family table. There was food on my chin, and beneath my nails. A dull, helpless horror had set across my limbs, weighing me to the table. By the time my parents reached the threshold, I was contemplating my next, grotesque course: the plump, pink turkey, or the dish of brandy butter in the fridge door.
In the kitchen light, I could see that it didn’t look good. The cake was a rubble of fruit. The gingerbread men were massacred. Cheese sweated across the table. The fridge door was still parted, and humming.
I swallowed.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I don’t—’
‘God,’ Mum said. ‘It was meant to be perfect.’
There was a thing on her face which I hadn’t seen for a while. The wrinkle of it in her mouth and between her eyes. Dad saw it, too, and took her arm so hard that she yelped.
‘Don’t you—’ he said, and she turned to him. He said something too quiet for me to hear. He was still holding her arm. When she looked back to me, the ugliness had gone, and she was only incredulous. She was just about to laugh.
‘We thought that you would be looking for presents,’ she said, and instead of laughing, she turned into Dad’s chest, and started to cry.
The days were long, but weeks were passing. When I had last spoken to Ethan, he had been terse, and uninterested in how I was.
‘You wouldn’t believe,’ he said, ‘the questions that I’ve been asked in the last fortnight.’
I was in my bedroom, with a book to hand, and I opened it. ‘Such as?’ I said.
‘About how we would like to be announced,’ he said. ‘About whether we would like champagne brought to us pre- or post-confetti.’
I found my place. There were a few neat flecks of rain on the window, and below it, Mum was gathering laundry. The lull of a dull Sunday.
‘About the placement,’ he was saying, ‘of fucking cutlery.’
He paused.
‘You’re still coming,’ he said. ‘Aren’t you?’
‘I hope so,’ I said.
All of the arrangements had been made. I could see the journey: the train to London and the flight to Athens; the smaller plane after that, and a drive to a pink villa, fifty metres from the sea. Sometime after that, Ethan at the end of an aisle. Pleased to see me.
‘It means a great deal to me,’ he said, ‘that you’ll be there.’
‘As I said. I hope so.’
I spent the final afternoon in my bedroom, gutting the contents of my childhood and filling a bin bag with the scraps. The letters and gifts had continued to arrive long after the escape, even after we left the hospital. The nurses forwarded them to the cottage, accompanied by a series of wry covering notes. About a metre-high teddy bear: We’re not sure that this is age-appropriate. About a dismal, hand-painted replica of the photograph from the beach at Blackpool: We thought that this would give you a laugh. About a bottle of champagne: We don’t know what they were thinking.
That first year, there had been a novelty in owning things. My bed was lined with stuffed animals, the kind made for children of five or six. I erected a little shrine of gifts in the corner of my room, which I could peruse every day, inspecting a T-shirt or a football or a book, and setting it back, just where it had been. I arranged my cards along my windowsill, at just the right distance between the glass and the rim. Dear Girl A …
Even when I realized the absurdity of it – the fact that people
at school selected their own belongings, rather than relying on the morbid fascination of strangers – I couldn’t bring myself to throw all of the items away. Now, filing through the remains of them, I shrank at the embarrassment of it. They were cracker gifts, unwanted and odd. There were picture books; board games with missing pieces; letters offering me a whole multitude of thoughts and prayers, with little idea of what had been lost. There was one letter which I had been waiting for, and when I came to it, I uncrossed my legs and crawled up to my bed, making myself comfortable. I wanted to savour it.
Dear Lex, the letter said. I have spent some time trying to put into words what I wish to say to you. You may not remember me. I taught you at Jasper Street Primary School between the ages of nine and ten. At the time, I was deeply troubled by your family’s situation. I think that I believed that education and books might be enough to save you – the notion of a young, naive teacher, who didn’t realize that she was out of her depth. I have spent many years regretting my failure to act on my concerns, both before and after I learnt what had happened to you and your siblings. I am so very sorry that I didn’t do more to help you. It is something that I will think about for the rest of my life. All the best, Lex, and – though books cannot save you from everything – I hope that you are still reading.
There was Miss Glade, her hand raised at the end of a cheerful corridor. I read the letter again, one more time, and added it to the black bag.
The last supper. In the afternoon, Dad disappeared, and returned with two bottles of the same red wine, held aloft.
‘Your favourite,’ he said. ‘Isn’t it?’
I didn’t recognize the label, but I nodded, and took the corkscrew from the drawer. ‘Thanks,’ I said.
‘To Lex,’ Dad said. ‘Always one for a comeback.’
The three of us drank, then took our seats at the table. For the first time during my stay, we were awkward, and I kept drinking, to hide it.
‘I didn’t do enough vegetables,’ Mum said. ‘Did I?’
‘It’s great,’ I said.
‘How did the clearing go?’
‘Another few bags. I’ll leave them in the bedroom. There’s a lot more space, now – you could use it.’
‘The way those parcels came,’ Mum said, ‘in the beginning. We thought they’d never stop.’ She glanced at Dad. ‘Dr K wanted us to throw them away. Do you remember that?’
‘Yes. I remember.’
‘I didn’t see the harm in it,’ she said. ‘Well. Except for the bees.’
It had been the first record in our family’s folklore. A large rectangular box arrived at breakfast time; the postman held it straight before him, like an offering, and set it on the doorstep. Handle with care, it said. Package Bees. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it,’ he said, and retreated. The three of us stood at the front door and surveyed the box. Serious as a bomb disposal unit, and still in our dressing gowns. The bees were accompanied by an earnest, handwritten note, wishing me well, which concluded: We have found beekeeping to be extremely therapeutic.
‘Therapeutic,’ Dad said, laughing still.
A local beekeeper had retrieved the package. He was, he said, grateful that we had thought of him.
We ate on, to the chimes of metal on china.
‘There’s one thing,’ Dad said, ‘and I have to say it—’
He set his hands on the table, palms up, as if he was about to begin grace. I took one hand, and Mum took the other.
‘This wedding,’ he said. ‘We’re worried, Lex.’
A petition, then. I let go of his hand, and kept eating.
‘Seeing them isn’t good for you,’ Mum said. ‘Isn’t that what Dr K says? We just – we want you to get back to New York. Back to work – safe and happy. You don’t owe Ethan anything.’
‘It’s a family wedding. A holiday.’
Mum looked to Dad, and Dad looked to me.
‘What did Dr K say?’ he asked.
The old trust between them, forged in hospital corridors and windowless rooms.
‘She isn’t concerned,’ I said.
‘In that case—’
My parents looked at empty plates, like they were still waiting for a serving of reassurance.
‘If you have to know,’ I said, ‘I have a date.’
Olivia and I flew out in the middle of the week, and early. At the airport we moved listlessly from WHSmith to Boots, bug-eyed and bored, looking at things which we would never buy. We tried on sunglasses, none of which concealed how old I looked at this time in the morning.
‘Champagne?’
‘Sure.’
There was one of those obnoxious white bars, dumped in the centre of the departure lounge. A few long-dead lobsters languished on ice.
‘Did you see that JP’s baby was born?’ I asked.
There had been a picture of JP online, with a white bundle in his arms. Mother and baby were doing well. They had called the child Atticus, and even alone, I had rolled my eyes.
‘That’s nice,’ Olivia said. ‘I suppose.’
‘I hope that it’s a difficult baby,’ I said. ‘Nothing wrong with him, obviously. Just difficult.’
‘Furious,’ Olivia said.
‘Fucking incandescent, to be honest,’ I said, and she snorted into her champagne flute, and reached for my hand.
Olivia had instructed me to start spending more money, so I hired the single convertible from the island airport. It was just like I had expected as a child, with one button to roll back the rooftop. As soon as she saw it, Olivia started laughing, and she laughed all along the road, gripping her sunglasses and handbag and hair.
Pebbled steps led to the pink villa, with its veranda and shutters, and geckoes flashing up the walls. The hill of the island hovered in the distance. The garden was shaded by a fat fig tree, and tapered into a scrub of wildflowers and pine trees; below that was a cove, and the ocean. We left our suitcases on the veranda and scrambled down to the beach, neither of us ready to speak; the quiet was so absolute that you imagined somebody must be listening. A makeshift jetty bobbed in the tide, the wood of it slick and splintered, and in the shade of the cove there was a rudimentary rowing boat, upturned and missing its oars. There was something improbable about the mundane items in isolation, as if they must be magical, or cursed.
Olivia sat down on the pebbles and pulled off her shoes and socks, and then her jeans. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘It’s too good to wait.’
We staggered to the sea, hand in hand, and into the shallows. Feet alabaster beneath the water. Shoals of translucent fish swarmed between us, neat as starlings.
That first night, in a strange bed with the wrong kind of pillows, I received an email from Bill. They’ll fund it, the email said.
I lay there for a few long minutes, reading the message again. The happy thumping of my heart was too loud for the bedroom. Olivia was already asleep, and I couldn’t speak to anybody else I’d have liked to tell. I padded down to the kitchen, poured a glass of wine, and took it out to the veranda. The night was warm and silvered, and I raised my glass, to no one in particular.
Soon, there would be a curtain of scaffolding around 11 Moor Woods Road, and behind it, the house would change.
The rooms are full of people, bearing power tools and flasks. They drain the floors and the garden. They shift the upstairs weight from the old walls and knock them through. They joke about the contents of the garden, but only in the daylight. Christopher visits, wearing cashmere and high vis. Nobody wants the site waste, even for scrap. They plaster in the New Year, then leave the house to dry. They fit windows, lights, sockets, switches. They hang the doors and furnish the rooms. Last of all, they decorate. In the library, a local artist paints a girl and a boy, hand in hand, life-size. They are running, in motion, about to slip from the wall. The boy is seven or eight, and the girl is already a teenager. They are older than they have ever been, and they share a knowing smile.
We lived for three days in extended celebration
. Slow and planless, and often drunk. I ran in the morning, when the light was still cool and new. We swam before lunch. Olivia crawled far out, beyond the cove and into the open water, until her body was indistinguishable from the sea and the sunlight. I stopped when the water line cut my throat and hovered there, inelegant, listening to my breath and the lap of the tide. I surveyed the beach and the rocks above it. The whole island dotted with secret coves and olive groves. You could believe the myths, when you were here. You could believe anything. I waded back to the shore and across the pebbles, trailing saltwater.
It was the kind of happiness which you try to preserve for more difficult days. I was blonde again: Ethan will approve, I thought. We drank through the afternoons and cooked extravagant dinners: a fish course, a meat course. Cheese. We sat on the veranda late into the night, talking or reading. Olivia didn’t ask about the events of the summer, and I didn’t speak of them.
‘When we’re old,’ Olivia said, ‘we can buy a taverna.’
‘Without any customers, though,’ I said.
‘God, no.’
‘We’ll turn people away,’ I said, ‘even when there isn’t a soul in the place.’
‘“Have you got a reservation?”’
On the day before the wedding, I woke to voices from the cove. An intrusion; maybe something left over from a dream. I climbed from bed and wandered to the bottom of the garden, coffee in hand. A yacht had moored at the bay, fifty metres out to sea, and the dinghy was already on the beach. A man sprang from the jetty, rolled in the air, and crashed through the water. When he surfaced, he shouted back to a group on the deck, at breakfast. English. I felt bitter disappointment. The magic was broken. The wedding guests had started to arrive.
