Burial

20

Sometimes, in those early days, they weren't sure where to go. Trips to the theatre or the cinema seemed contrived -- but there was tacit agreement that Nathan should not invite Holly back to his flat, not even for a video and a Chinese takeaway. The moment she crossed his threshold would be charged with too much significance.

So they met at lunchtimes and ate at a nearby brasserie, or they met after work and spent an hour or two talking in the corner of some quiet pub or wine bar. Gradually, Nathan's neurotic desire to provide her with novelty began to diminish, and one place became their regular venue -- a stone-flagged bar in the basement of an Italian restaurant. Often, it was empty but for the skinny Russian waitresses, playing eighties pop on a cheap stereo. If it was empty, they sat in a corner anyway, and ordered something to eat and a bottle of wine.

Holly would tell him about her day. He learned a great deal about the day-to-day operation of being an estate agent. And he learned that Holly wasn't happy at work.

She'd taken a Business Studies degree at Southampton. Graham and June would've preferred her to do something else, something useless like English -- but Holly hadn't seen the point then and she didn't see the point now. She'd wanted to run her own business since she was fourteen years old.

Elise had changed all that. The job at the estate agency was supposed to be a temporary solution, something to bring in the money while their lives were off-kilter. But their lives were still off-kilter, and Holly was still an estate agent.

She didn't like her boss, a dick called Neil who had an eighties flick and a supercharged BMW. He was about twenty-two and still spotty round the chin -- but he had four children and an ugly house about which he never stopped boasting.

Holly still intended to be her own boss. It wasn't even a question of capital: her parents would remortgage their house, if necessary, and she had some savings - after all, she hadn't been paying rent for quite some time. Plus, her social life had been non-existent.

Then she dipped her head, exactly as she always did during these moments, and drew her finger around the rim of her wine glass. 'But the timing, you know.'

She told him about her parents.

'Dad was in the navy. It always gave him, what would you call it, this self-confidence. Like a dignity thing. But Elise, that sucked all the confidence from him. He's housebound. He potters all day in the garden or in his study. He won't go further than the garden gate for weeks on end, not even to go to the pub.'

This was the pub across the green where, two or three times a week since Holly was young, Graham had met his cronies to play dominoes, and poker at Christmas. One of those cronies had been Mark Derbyshire, whose name was no longer mentioned in the village.

'The press conferences were terrible for him,' she said. 'He used to throw up before leaving the house. I had to help him out to the car, like he was an old man.'

'Does he talk about her?'

'He can't. He just acts as if you're not talking. It used to drive me up the wall.'

'But not any more?'

'Well sometimes, yeah. But there was this one Sunday morning, I heard him crying. He was sitting on the floor behind the door of his little office. Just saying "My God, my God" over and over again, muffled, like he was biting his fist and trying not to cry. Like it hurt, y'know, like he was in physical pain. This is, like, a week before Elise's twenty-first.'

Nathan rested his jaw on his hands, saying, 'Oof.' And then, not wanting to hear the answer, he said, 'Your mum?'

'Mum used to be a secretary - she's organized. After she got married, she did work for charities, action groups, whatever. PETA, the WWF, the Women's Institute, homeless charities. She'd do this thing for the WI - she'd go to dodgy estates and teach single mothers and families on benefit how to budget - how to do cheap, home-cooked meals.

'So she knew what to do, to help her cope. She set up the foundation . . .'

This was the Elise Fox Foundation.

In time, other families of lost children had pledged effort and capital; the Foundation expanded, growing to offer a counselling service to the violently bereaved and to those, like June, whose grief lacked an object.

June had never sought therapy - the Foundation was her therapy.

But it grew so large that she became oppressed by it. Now she was its chair. Fund-raising and day-to-day operations were handled by a woman called Ruby, who lost her daughter on a French campsite in 1991.

With Ruby, June was at liberty to discuss Elise as something other than a girl whose primary characteristic was absence. She became a daughter again: a new baby, a stumbling toddler, a gawky, bespectacled eleven-year-old. While Ruby was around, Elise and her disappearance were not the same thing.

Nathan said, 'And what about you?'

'What's to say? Families pull together, or they break apart. I didn't have much choice.'

'But it's like . . .'

He waved his hand around, fighting for the word.

'I'll tell you what it's like,' she said. 'It's like being in open prison.

From the outside, it looks like I've got all the privileges: job, car, friends. Y'know. But all the freedom is gone. I'd always sort of assumed that Mum and Dad would become my responsibility, one day. But not so soon, you know? I had plans. Not big ones, necessarily.

Just normal plans: good job, nice husband, house, kids. Blah blah.

And suddenly, all that. . .'

Again, she fluttered her hand, following its progress like a departing bird.

Nathan leaned forward over the table.

'You're not even thirty yet.'

'Not yet. Ha. Okay, the thing is, I know I'll probably have all that.

But not in a way that'll seem natural. I'll always have this thing that happened to me, and nobody will be able to understand it. How do I have children? How do I even send them to school in the morning, after what happened to Elise? How do I tell them there's no such thing as monsters? How do I tell them not to be scared of the dark?'

She was becoming frustrated. She could explain, but not make him feel, the scale of this loss -- that, like an explosion, it expanded from a central point equally in all directions: that it stretched back in time, infecting the day of Elise's birth; and the night she was conceived - it was a ghost in the shadows of the evening June and Graham first met, first danced, first kissed. And it warped into the future, it coloured every breath Holly would ever take.

'And whatever I have,' she said. 'Whatever I get in the end, whatever kind of happiness I'm able to build, all of it will be stuff Elise was never able to have. How do I live with that? How am I supposed to have the husband and the kids and the house and the job and, I don't know, the three holidays a year in sodding Barbados when my sister went out one night - and just stopped?'

'I'm sure Elise wouldn't want you to be unhappy.'

'Of course she wouldn't. But just because the way you're feeling doesn't make sense, it doesn't stop you feeling it.'

'Are you seeing anyone?'

'What, like a counsellor?'

'Yeah.'

She laughed and slapped his wrist.

'What, do you think I'm mad?'

'Not a psychiatrist. Counsellors, they -- I don't know. They help you explore your emotions, or whatever.'

'I'm joking. Of course I saw a counsellor. But it wasn't for me.'

He topped up their glasses.

'And what about Ian?'

Ian was Holly's ex-boyfriend.

'What about him?'

'Do you ever see him?'

'Would it matter?'

'Of course not. I just--'

'No,' she said. 'I don't see him.'

The candle guttered in its bottle and she went on: 'I don't know. In some ways, I think breaking up with Ian was probably a lucky escape.'

'What was he like?'

'Well, nothing like you.'

'I'm not sure how to take that.'

'As a compliment, probably.'

He took a sip of wine.

She said, 'Look, he was supposed to love me enough to spend the rest of his life with me, sickness and health and all that blah. But when it came down to it, he didn't even bother to be my friend -- do you know what I mean? It was too much work, just to be my friend.

As soon as something bad happened, he couldn't handle it. It was too difficult for him. Poor puppy.'

Nathan lit a cigarette.

'You,' said Holly. 'You don't even know me. But you've been a better friend to me than Ian ever was. Than anybody was, actually.'

She drained her glass and they sat there, with one empty bottle and two empty glasses between them.

She said, 'I don't even know what you get out of this.'

'Out of this what?'

'You know what I mean. Spending time with me.'

'That's what I get.'

She put her head to one side.

'Why are you doing this?'

He wished there was wine in his glass. He cupped its fragile stem in his fist.

'I want to make things better.'

'And do you think you can do that?'

'I can try.'

She touched the back of his hand.

He said, 'The thing I'd like to do - more than anything in the world, the thing I'd like to do is make things better.'

He couldn't look at her. For a while, he thought she hadn't reacted.

A hot, shameful blush rose from his sternum.

Then Holly touched his cheek. He took her hand in his. Kissed her sharp little knuckles.

She said, 'I don't believe this is happening.'

Nathan said, 'Neither do I.'

At the end of April, Holly arranged to be absent when he arrived at Sutton Down. It was Saturday morning. In the boot of the car he had flowers and champagne.

He rang the doorbell. Graham answered. Now it was spring, he wore his pastel shirts short-sleeved.

Graham expressed pleasure to see him; he shook Nathan's hand and ushered him inside.

The front of the house was gloomy and cool. It was the kitchen and conservatory that caught the morning sun. Nathan walked towards the light, with Graham at his heel.

Outside, the orchard was in bloom. The kitchen windows were open to let in the crisp green air.

'Tea?' said Graham.

It had become the order of things that Graham would offer tea, which Nathan would then offer to make. But today that didn't seem right, so Nathan cleared his throat and said, 'Tea would be lovely.'

'Righto,' said Graham, and made for the kettle. He opened the window another notch and called out to June that Nathan was here.

Nathan heard the tone but not the content of her reply.

She came in, dressed in jumbo cords, muddy at the knees, and an anorak whose cut and colour dated it to the 1970s. People like June never threw anything away. Nathan admired that. The secateurs were in her hand, ugly and surgical.

He kissed her cheek. 'What are you up to?'

'Breeding lilacs from the dead ground.'

She saw his face and said, 'Never mind,' then hung the anorak over the back of a chair. Then she removed her gardening gloves and laid them next to the sink, saying, 'Holly's in town, at the shops. She shouldn't be long. She's taking a skirt back or something.'

Nathan coughed and said, 'I know.'

Then, before he had time to think about it, he said, 'Actually, I'd quite like a word.'

Graham and June stood next to each other. Hesitantly, June reached out and took Graham's hand.

Nathan said, 'I know that we - Holly and I ... I know that we haven't known each other very long. But the fact is, the fact is, this has been the happiest time of my life. I don't want you to think we're rushing into anything. And I don't want you to imagine I do this kind of thing often. Because I really don't. Not ever.'

'What are you trying to say?'

'That we'd like to -- with your permission. We'd like to get married.

If that's all right.'

Now it was said, he felt worn out and awkward.

He looked past them, at the blossoming orchard at the foot of the garden. It was so quiet in the kitchen. Just the ticking of the clock, the croaking of the birds outside.

Graham and June had not so much as exchanged a glance. But June was squeezing Graham's hand in hers.

Graham said, 'We would consider it an honour.'

Nathan shook the proffered hand with measured formality.

Holly arrived home an hour later. She opened the door on the latch and called out a speculative 'Hello?'

The champagne was already half drunk and June's flowers were in the vase.

Holly stepped into the kitchen. 'I see he's told you, then?'

June and Holly held each other's hands and sobbed, happy-sad.

Graham stepped back, casting his eyes upon his shoes. When June had disengaged, he hugged his daughter. He kissed her cheek and whispered something. It made her squeeze his hand and screw up her eyes and nod.

Nathan stood in the corner of the conservatory, watching them, the sunlight streaming in behind him, casting a faint amber lozenge on the floor.