Burial

21

A week before Holly's thirtieth birthday, she organized a table at a Greek restaurant, so Nathan could meet her friends. He was late; he hurried upstairs, clutching the flowers he'd bought as a gift for Holly's best woman.

Five women and a man were seated round a long table. Holly was in the centre, with Nathan's seat empty beside her.

Breathless, Nathan presented the flowers in a general, speculative way to the people seated round the table, saying: 'These are for Jacki.'

By the way all the faces turned to face one person, he guessed that Jacki was the woman sitting opposite Holly. She turned to him and stood, smiling.

He recognized her at once as the police officer who'd come to his flat with Detective William Holloway. He remembered how she had stood silently, watching the passing buses.

She said, 'Nathan?'

He nodded.

'Come here and give me a hug.'

He and Jacki hugged. The table clapped and whooped and whistled.

He handed her the bouquet, then crab-stepped round the table, saying hello to everyone. He sat next to Holly. She squeezed his knee.

'You okay?'

'Fine, fine.'

'You look pale.'

'Mad rush. Bad day at work. The traffic's insane. The taxi was late.'

'Anyway,' said Jacki. 'Aren't you going to introduce us?'

Holly pressed Nathan's hand flat to the table. 'This, everybody, is Nathan.'

He gave a fey half-wave like an ailing monarch. There was more hand clapping, more whooping.

Only Jacki was in focus. She was pretty short - shorter than he'd imagined police officers were allowed to be. Practical haircut: sleek and dark, tucked behind her ears.

She said, 'We've heard a lot about you.'

'Not all bad, I hope.'

'Not all of it,' said the man, Martin.

(Everyone laughed, as if he'd voiced a broad innuendo.) Holly squeezed Nathan's hand. It was a question. He squeezed back a reply: Really, I'm fine.

He feared the light of recognition in Jacki's eyes. That she'd drop her fork, clattering on the edge of her white dinner plate, and the table would fall silent and heads would turn and that would be the end of it all.

Nathan forced down his starter, then bolted a glass of wine. Steph leaned over to top him up. He thanked her. He could feel the wine, cold in his guts. He wanted a cigarette, but nobody was smoking.

Finally, a waiter arrived to clear the first course. Jacki produced a pack of Silk Cut, dumping them on the table like a deck of cards. In relief, Nathan reached into his own pocket.

Jacki looked round the table. 'Nobody else smoking?'

She half stood, grabbing Nathan's hand.

'Then it's the perfect opportunity to give my warning speech to the groom.'

Nathan allowed himself to be dragged outside. Martin made a loud and witless joke about handcuffs and going quietly. Nathan looked pleadingly over his shoulder. The table laughed.

Outside, Nathan and Jacki stood beneath a lamp post. Drizzle swarmed like midges in its yellow light.

Jacki lit a Silk Cut, offered the pack to him. He thanked her, said no thanks, took one of his own.

She blew a long plume of smoke and said, 'She doesn't know, does she?'

A car went past. Nathan followed its progress.

'No.'

'What did you think you were playing at?'

'I didn't know.'

'Ha.'

'She never talked about it. And by the time she did, by the time she told me, it was too late.'

'You have to tell her.'

'Tell her what? That, along with about a million other people, I was at the same party as her sister?'

'The night she disappeared, yeah. And that you knew the suspect.'

'It was his party. I was employed by him. I hated his guts. And he was never even charged.'

They fell silent and stepped aside, allowing two lovers to pass huddled together, heads down in the rain.

'She's got a right to know.'

'It would break her heart.'

Jacki glared at him, defiant.

'Look,' said Nathan. 'For Christ's sake, she's happy. What else matters?'

'Yeah,' said Jacki. 'Well.'

'I know you care for her.'

'I've known her since she was eleven. Don't talk to me about caring for her.'

'Okay. I haven't known her as long as you have. But Jesus. Please.

Come on.'

'Jesus,' said Jacki, and shook her head.

'Come on,' said Nathan. 'Please.'

Jacki made a face. He thought she was about to spit. She threw down the stub of her cigarette and watched it bob in the gutter.

'I hadn't seen Holly for years. Not since we left school. But it was me she came to, when Elise didn't come home. It was me she came to, because we were friends. I made her a promise. Do you understand that?'

'Of course. Of course I do.'

'I won't let you hurt her.'

'I don't intend to.'

'If you're not on the level, I'll fucking have you. I'll cut your cock off 'But it's the last thing in the world--'

'It had better be. Is what I'm saying.'

He said, 'Trust me. Come on.'

Back inside, nobody seemed to notice how long they'd been gone.

Nathan drank two glasses of wine in quick succession. He and Jacki avoided eye contact, like guilty lovers.

The friends around the table had known each other for many years; the anecdotes were polished smooth with use, the language full of private references and arcane in-jokes. Early attempts to include Nathan fell away with the drink -- everybody, Holly included, grew weary of explaining everything to him.

He barely noticed. But when the evening ended and the bill was paid and the coffees were drunk and everyone was gathering their coats and bags and calling taxis, Jacki made a show of hugging him.

She planted a kiss on his cheek and told him -- perhaps too stridently -- how pleased she was for both of them, that she wished them every happiness in the world. That nobody deserved it more than Holly.

He thanked her. She tottered downstairs, to her waiting taxi.

Nathan and Holly sat alone at the table. Holly looked flushed and happy. Nathan was drunk. Acid spit in his gut. Holly asked him for a cigarette, her first since their aborted date.

'Are you sure?'

She moved her hand like somebody winding up a poor comedian.

He passed her a cigarette.

He said, 'Are you okay?'

Deep dimples at the corners of her mouth.

'I'm happy.'

'Good,' he said. 'That's all that matters.' And it was true.

They married in September, at the small Norman church in Sutton Down. Nathan invited a few guests, all of them colleagues.

They were mixed in with Holly's apparently vast network of friends, relations and neighbours. Holly wore white. As she progressed down the aisle in satin heels, there were some tears from her cousins, her aunties, her old primary school teacher.

At the reception, having raised a toast to his daughter, Graham remained standing. He rode out the guests' slight befuddlement, waiting for them to sit and grow still. Then he said, 'Now, this isn't the normal order of things. And - as many of you gathered here will know - usually I'm a stickler for order.'

He paused for laughter - a fond ripple of it.

'But June and I wanted to take this opportunity to say that a few months ago -- a very few months . . .'

More laughter.

'Nathan blew into our lives a bit like a whirlwind. And the truth is, as many of you will also know, perhaps we needed a little whirlwind in our lives.'

And now there was no laughter. Just silence.

'This young man didn't just win my daughter's heart, but my heart, and June's heart too - for the life he brought into our home.

And for that, we'd like to thank him. So: to Nathan.'

They drank a toast while Nathan sat proud and terrified at the top table.

When the time came to give his own speech, he paused to gather himself and for a while could not speak. There were more tears at that, and some laughter.

When Nathan sat, Holly gripped his hand and Jacki came round to hug him from behind. She crossed her arms across his chest and squeezed, hard.

Holly had insisted on one more toast. She stood, raising her glass, saying: 'We all know there's a guest missing today. Since we were tiny, Elise and I talked about this day. We talked about what we'd wear, which pop star we'd marry. She was pretty stuck on George Michael, I seem to remember. That is, when she agreed to marry a boy at all; she was mostly interested in the dress and walking down the aisle with her beloved dad. She thought having a boy there would spoil it.'

Graham was looking at the table, smiling.

'But Elise is here. I can tell she approves of the boy I decided to marry -- even though he's not a pop star.' She had to pause. 'And I can feel her, being all impatient for the disco to start. By now, she'd want to get her kitten heels off and her Doc Martens on. So I'd like you please to stand, and charge your glasses. Please join me in toasting my dear sister -- Elise.'

Two hundred people stood and raised their glasses. They said her name, and sounded like the ocean.

Their first dance was to Van Morrison - 'Brown Eyed Girl'.

Later, Nathan hoped that nobody heard him, sobbing in the toilets.

In a hotel room in Barbados, he undressed her for the first time.

Nathan had been celibate for five years. He and Holly had never slept in the same bed.

He woke in the tropical night to find her propped on an elbow, looking down at him in the darkness, her eyes unreadable.

He said,'What?'

'You know what.'

He kissed the softness of her belly.

"Me too.'

She twirled an index finger through his bed-addled hair.

He wrapped an arm around her warm and naked waist.

She closed her eyes and smiled, drifting to sleep.

They were away for fourteen days.

Naturally, it was Holly who found them a house.

She led him round a damp Victorian shell with leprous, floral wallpaper, telling him about its potential. He pretended he could imagine it -- but he was worried about the previous occupant. The old man who lived in this house had died in a nursing home, but before that he had succumbed to a lonely kind of dementia; his neighbours had found him billeted in the back room, half starved. Nathan winced to think of it, but Holly laughed and slipped her arm through his and told him not to be so stupid -- it was part of the reason the house was such a bargain.

He looked at the yellow ceiling and said, 'Are you sure?'

She was sure.

Holly employed the architect and Holly employed the builders and Holly employed the site manager. Nathan visited the unfinished house only two or three times. Each time, it seemed to be in worse condition, not better; full of ripped-up floorboards and skinny men in painty jeans, and cups of tea. He decided the house was way too much to worry about, and stopped going. Holly learned to tell him about setbacks and reversals only when they'd been put right.

Most of their furniture had gone into this house a week before the wedding. Nathan spent a strange, transitional week in the almost empty flat above the nursery, sitting in his one remaining chair, watching television.

He'd wondered if perhaps a wisp of Elise - the wisp he'd trailed with him - might be trapped here in this flat, like a moth in a jar. She'd be a flavour in the atmosphere, detected and dismissed by the next tenants - until she evaporated like a dab of scent on a human throat.

June had organized things such that, when they returned from honeymoon, the house was ready to be lived in; there were clothes in the wardrobes, cutlery in the drawers, washing powder in the cupboard and Fairy Liquid next to the sink. There were flowers on the dining table, next to a Welcome Home card. Nathan examined the back of the card to see which of Hermes' rivals had produced it.

He set his luggage down next to the clean bed, never slept in, and said, 'This is so weird.'

Holly was still wearing holiday shorts.

'Well, from now on, this is it. So we'd better get used to it.'

He tested the bed with his hand.

'Shall we try it out?'

They tried it out. They tried out the other bedrooms, too: and the bathroom, and the living room. He fucked her on the windowsills and the stairs. Each time, it was quick. He would grasp her hair in his fist and she would arch her back and thrust herself towards him and he couldn't help it.

she didn't seem to mind. Afterwards, she would walk semi-naked and laughing, barefoot, brushing back her disarrayed hair with her palms, a pearl of semen glinting on her pubic hair.

Usually, Nathan was ready again in a few minutes. When that happened, he made sure it was okay; when her orgasm gathered he grinned to himself, and when he entered her, she screamed and dug her nails into his arse.

On her first day back at work, he looked at her in her sober grey suit and white shirt with wing collars, and he lifted the skirt to her hips and fucked her against the door; and when she came home that evening he undressed her before she said hello and fucked her on the sofa.

She said, 'It's only natural. Your body is trying to make me pregnant.'

'Reckon?'

'Reckon.'

'And how do you feel about that?'

'About what?'

'My body trying to get you pregnant.'

'Well, I don't want you to stop or anything.'

'But what if it worked?'

'What if what worked ?'

'My body. Trying to get you pregnant.'

She sat up, propped on an elbow. 'How do you feel about it?'

'That depends.'

'On what?'

'On how you feel about it.'

She lay on her back with a forearm across her eyes, slapping at his upper arm.

'I feel pretty good about it.'

What does "pretty good" mean?'

'I'm ready if you are.'

'Okay.'

'It's not too soon?'

'I don't see why.'

She sat up again.

'Have you been thinking about this?'

'Of course.'

'For how long?'

'Since forever. I don't know.'

She tickled the short hairs on the nape of his neck.

'You're sure you're sure?'

That night they stood together over the lavatory and, one by one, pressed her birth control pills from the blister pack and dropped them like confetti down the bowl. She pulled the flush and watched them bob and dance away.

She said, 'It's not too late.'

He led her by the hand to the bedroom and laid her down. When they were done, she placed the palm of his hand loosely on the soft swell of her belly, and they fell asleep like that.

Late that night, she turned on to her side and nuzzled him. He pulled the duvet over her. He lay awake. He thought of the dark rooms below, and the dark hallway, and the dark bathroom with its uncovered mirrors. He thought of the dark cupboard under the stairs, where a human form could curl, to reveal its smiling face when the door was opened. And he thought of the flickering scraps of life, his essence, struggling blind inside Holly.

Eventually, in the darkness, he slept.

When her period arrived, they pretended not to be disappointed.

They'd only been trying for a couple of weeks. They were too polite around each other, but only for a day or two.

When it happened again, four weeks later, it was a little worse -- but only a little. But it was a little worse again, the month after that, and the month after that. But it was still early days, and they were young, and it was still fun trying.

And they tried and they tried -- but there was always blood at the end of the cycle. And with the blood came another spectral bereavement; the idea of a boy or a girl -- no more than a scrap of possibility, but beloved for all that -- had been wiped from the world.

Every year, as the anniversary of Elise's disappearance drew near, Holly became withdrawn. Slower to speak in the morning, she walked round the bedroom befuddled, as if her mind was elsewhere, before grabbing a towel or a clean pair of knickers or her watch.

One Sunday morning -- near Christmas, 2004 -- Nathan rose early and cooked Holly breakfast in bed, taking it up on a tray.

She sat up. Her hair was awry and the rucked bed linen was imprinted on her breasts and ribs. There was a diffuse red flush on her sternum. He passed her a T-shirt because she didn't like to eat naked.

She sat cross-legged with the tray balanced on her lap. She took a sip of orange juice, then coffee and said, 'So what's all this in aid of?'

'It's in aid of, I'm worried about you.'

She took the scrunchy band from her wrist and made a loose ponytail.

She pushed some scrambled egg on to an upturned fork.

'Worried about me how?'

'You know how.'

she popped the eggs into her mouth.

He watched her eat, saying: 'Look, it's not healthy.'

She gave him a silent warning.

He was longing for a cigarette. But he'd given up, long ago.

He said, 'You never really talk about her. Even now.'

'That's not fair. I talk about her all the time.'

'You think about her all the time. That's different.'

'What do you want me to say? You always look so uncomfortable whenever I mention her.'

He hadn't known that.

He said, 'That's not fair. How am I supposed to react? You don't give me any clues. Am I supposed to be comfortable about it?

Because I'm not.'

'I really don't want to argue about this.'

'I don't want to argue about it either.'

'Then what were you saying?'

'Look, Jesus. You haven't got any photographs of her. Perhaps it would be better, I don't know, after all this time - perhaps it would be better if you just hung some photos or something.'

For a long time, she was very still. And then she said, 'Sometimes, I don't believe you.'

He looked at her with a swell of horror.

But she was paying him a compliment. She drained the coffee and leapt from bed and scuttled around the room, naked but for his Tshirt, the pale ghost of a suntan still visible around her arse. She was gathering clothes. She had a quick shower and soon they'd arrived at Graham and June's house in Sutton Down.

Nathan hadn't shaved. He wore old jeans, trainers and an overcoat.

To his recall, he'd never allowed Holly's parents to see him dressed less than immaculately. Graham disapproved of slovenliness.

As

ever, his parents-in-law were dressed as if to receive visitors, although June had yet to apply any make-up. She looked shockingly naked without it.

Graham said, 'There's nothing wrong is there?'

In answer, Nathan showed him the carrier bags containing fresh bread, eggs, bacon and fruit juice they'd just bought from the farmer's market. For the second time that morning, Nathan prepared breakfast. Holly made a round of coffee.

June said, 'To what do we owe this honour?'

Holly looked at Nathan.

'Go on. Tell them.'

'Tell them what?'

'What you told me this morning.'

Nathan looked down at his poaching eggs.

'Tell them what?' said Graham.

Holly folded her arms. 'Nathan had an idea. To mark the anniversary -- we dig out all the old photos. The photos of Elise. And we rehang them. In our house and in yours. And I think he's right. I think it's the right idea.'

So they ate breakfast. Then Graham went and pottered in the greenhouse and Nathan sat in the conservatory reading the papers while Holly and her mother climbed into the attic and brought down several taped-up cardboard boxes. The framed photographs and albums had been parcelled up in bubble-wrap, secured with tape how typical of June, he thought, to be so organized about something so unendurable.

He wondered what he'd been doing and where he'd been, the day these photographs had been boxed -- and where he had been the day June decided to clear Elise's bedroom and put it to use as an office.

She'd hooked up a network of computers in there, and printers and scanners and filing cabinets. She'd given Elise's bed and wardrobe and other furniture to one of her charities. Elise's personal effects were boxed in the attic. Her clothes would sit there, folded and vacuum-sealed, coming slowly in and out of fashion.

He couldn't imagine where he'd been, or who. That person was alien to him, more insubstantial than a ghost.

He wandered into the dining room, where June and Holly were laying out the photographs on the table. They held hands and laughed. They reminisced about certain photographs - Elise as a fiveyear-old, chubby on a Cornish beach; as a eight-year-old in a polo neck, wanting front teeth. A scowling schoolgirl in a blue A-line skirt she'd loathed.

Tenderly, June said, 'She hated that skirt. She bought another one and altered it, turned it into a miniskirt. Changed into it when she got to school. Came home every night and hand-washed it in the bathroom, using shampoo. Dried it over a radiator, disguised by her towel.'

Then Holly reminded June how all the teacups and coffee mugs in the house eventually found their way into Elise's room, such that June had staged a monthly raid, carrying downstairs armfuls of mouldy mugs and hairy biscuits.

By now, they had divided the photographs into two lots: Holly's had been loosely repacked in a box that stood in the centre of the table. Nathan glimpsed corners of Elise's smiling mouth, the edges of her hair, a laughing eye.

He went outside again. He sat on a bench in the garden, watching the gentle sway of the apple trees. He watched the bright clouds.

Back inside, Holly was getting her coat on.

Nathan carried the box of photographs to the car. He kissed June.

They said goodbye, and drove home.

That evening, as Nathan watched television, Holly hung the photos.

He listened to the sounds of measurement and concentration and short, precise flurries of hammer blows. Then an hour -- a happy hour, he thought -- arranging and rearranging them on the wall. By the time she'd finished, it was nearly eleven. Nathan called out for curry and they ate it, tired, in front of the late film.

They crept up to bed after midnight. In the darkness on the stairs, Nathan could feel Elise's repeated image smiling at him. He tried not to turn, in case in one of the photos her smile had become a wet leer.

But he was weak. He did turn on the stairs. And they were only smiles.

In their first year of marriage, Holly borrowed enough money to mortgage three run-down houses. Two of them she converted into flats, the third she gutted and extended, rendering its exterior starkly modernist. The five-bedroom was a big risk and she never repeated it. They spent many sleepless nights discussing it -- but it sold, in the end, and she put the profits into more property.

She employed June as her sometime adviser and part-time PA. For a while they worked from home, but soon Holly rented some offices and expanded the business to incorporate third-party site management and architectural services. She employed four young architects, full-time.

Nathan remained at Hermes, where his early trajectory had been halted by Justin's profound tenacity.

He was offered other jobs, but Hermes always paid him to remain.

It wasn't the money that kept him there, though. He stayed because he liked the configuration of his life. Monday to Friday, he worked.

He set the alarm for 6.45 and rose at 7.15. Tuesday and Thursday evenings, he cooked. Fridays, they ate a takeaway, Chinese alternating with Indian. Saturday nights, Holly went out with friends -- once a month, she slept round Jacki's house. Sundays they spent in Sutton Down. Holly and June were careful not to talk shop at the dinner table. Sunday evenings, Nathan and Graham went to the pub; Graham bought the first drink, lager and lime in summer and cask bitter in winter.

They took one week's holiday per year with Graham and June; alternating June's choice of destination with somewhere Graham could play golf. Nathan had once protested that he would sooner die than find himself on a golf course -- but he didn't mind, not really, and Graham enjoyed it.

Every year, Nathan and Holly spent two weeks sizzling on a beach somewhere: Barbados or Bermuda. The deep-blue, gold-shot sarong knotted at her hip always aroused him. He liked to watch her walk into the sea; he loved the smell of salt and Ambre Solaire on her skin.

To mark Holly's birthday, they'd go away for a long weekend. For their anniversary, they spent a weekend in London or Paris.

Once or twice a year, Nathan and Graham went away to fish.

They'd erect tents by the river and lie in their sleeping bags, watching the stars. They rose early, while there was still mist on the water, and heated breakfast on a Primus stove.

He seldom thought about Elise. Except in the feverish immediacy of his dreams, he felt no link to the person he'd been the night she died. He still fell quiet when driving past the woods - the flickering in his peripheral vision -- but it had become almost a learned response, a Pavlovian reaction to an ancient, forgotten stimulus. Like the genuflection of a lapsed Catholic.

By 2007, they'd saved enough to buy a larger house in a better area.

But they knew they'd never leave this house while the painted nursery remained unoccupied. It would be bad luck.

The pattern of their sex life was ordinary - full of troughs and peaks. But Holly had long since given up elevating her hips on pillows after sex, and they'd long since given up holding hands and discussing names and local schools.

They took fertility tests. There was no pathology.

Nathan had no doubt the imperfection was his. He imagined Holly's gently luminous ovum withering at the touch of his infected sperm.

He'd first suggested the IVF programme a long time ago. Holly had rejected the idea: it would happen when it happened, she said, and it wasn't like they weren't busy. By now it was 2008 and they were considering it. Soon they were talking about names again, and schools. They stood in the doorway of the empty bedroom, looking to the future.

And then Bob came back, to tell Nathan they were digging up the woods to build a housing estate.