Part One


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The End

ELSPETH DIED while Robert was standing in front of a vending machine watching tea shoot into a small plastic cup. Later he would remember walking down the hospital corridor with the cup of horrible tea in his hand, alone under the fluorescent lights, retracing his steps to the room where Elspeth lay surrounded by machines. She had turned her head towards the door and her eyes were open; at first Robert thought she was conscious.

In the seconds before she died, Elspeth remembered a day last spring when she and Robert had walked along a muddy path by the Thames in Kew Gardens. There was a smell of rotted leaves; it had been raining. Robert said, “We should have had kids,” and Elspeth replied, “Don’t be silly, sweet.” She said it out loud, in the hospital room, but Robert wasn’t there to hear.

Elspeth turned her face towards the door. She wanted to call out, Robert, but her throat was suddenly full. She felt as though her soul were attempting to climb out by way of her oesophagus. She tried to cough, to let it out, but she only gurgled. I’m drowning. Drowning in a bed…She felt intense pressure, and then she was floating; the pain was gone and she was looking down from the ceiling at her small wrecked body.


Robert stood in the doorway. The tea was scalding his hand, and he set it down on the nightstand by the bed. Dawn had begun to change the shadows in the room from charcoal to an indeterminate grey; otherwise everything seemed as it had been. He shut the door.

Robert took off his round wire-rimmed glasses and his shoes. He climbed into the bed, careful not to disturb Elspeth, and folded himself around her. For weeks she had burned with fever, but now her temperature was almost normal. He felt his skin warm slightly where it touched hers. She had passed into the realm of inanimate objects and was losing her own heat. Robert pressed his face into the back of Elspeth’s neck and breathed deeply.

Elspeth watched him from the ceiling. How familiar he was to her, and how strange he seemed. She saw, but could not feel, his long hands pressed into her waist-everything about him was elongated, his face all jaw and large upper lip; he had a slightly beakish nose and deep-set eyes; his brown hair spilled over her pillow. His skin was pallorous from being too long in the hospital light. He looked so desolate, thin and enormous, spooned around her tiny slack body; Elspeth thought of a photograph she had seen long ago in National Geographic, a mother clutching a child dead from starvation. Robert’s white shirt was creased; there were holes in the big toes of his socks. All the regrets and guilts and longings of her life came over her. No, she thought. I won’t go. But she was already gone, and in a moment she was elsewhere, scattered nothingness.

The nurse found them half an hour later. She stood quietly, taking in the sight of the tall youngish man curled around the slight, dead, middle-aged woman. Then she went to fetch the orderlies.

Outside, London was waking up. Robert lay with his eyes closed, listening to the traffic on the high street, footsteps in the corridor. He knew that soon he would have to open his eyes, let go of Elspeth’s body, sit up, stand up, talk. Soon there would be the future, without Elspeth. He kept his eyes shut, breathed in her fading scent and waited.


Last Letter

THE LETTERS arrived every two weeks. They did not come to the house. Every second Thursday, Edwina Noblin Poole drove six miles to the Highland Park Post Office, two towns away from her home in Lake Forest. She had a PO box there, a small one. There was never more than one letter in it.

Usually she took the letter to Starbucks and read it while drinking a venti decaf soy latte. She sat in a corner with her back to the wall. Sometimes, if she was in a hurry, Edie read the letter in her car. After she read it she drove to the parking lot behind the hot-dog stand on 2nd Street, parked next to the Dumpster and set the letter on fire. “Why do you have a cigarette lighter in your glove compartment?” her husband, Jack, asked her. “I’m bored with knitting. I’ve taken up arson,” Edie had replied. He’d let it drop.

Jack knew this much about the letters because he paid a detective to follow his wife. The detective had reported no meetings, phone calls or email; no suspicious activity at all, except the letters. The detective did not report that Edie had taken to staring at him as she burned the letters, then grinding the ashes into the pavement with her shoe. Once she’d given him the Nazi salute. He had begun to dread following her.

There was something about Edwina Poole that disturbed the detective; she was not like his other subjects. Jack had emphasised that he was not gathering evidence for a divorce. “I just want to know what she does,” he said. “Something is…different.” Edie usually ignored the detective. She said nothing to Jack. She put up with it, knowing that the overweight, shiny-faced man had no way of finding her out.

The last letter arrived at the beginning of December. Edie retrieved it from the post office and drove to the beach in Lake Forest. She parked in the spot farthest from the road. It was a windy, bitterly cold day. There was no snow on the sand. Lake Michigan was brown; little waves lapped the edges of the rocks. All the rocks had been carefully arranged to prevent erosion; the beach resembled a stage set. The parking lot was deserted except for Edie’s Honda Accord. She kept the motor running. The detective hung back, then sighed and pulled into a spot at the opposite end of the parking lot.

Edie glanced at him. Must I have an audience for this? She sat looking at the lake for a while. I could burn it without reading it. She thought about what her life might have been like if she had stayed in London; she could have let Jack go back to America without her. An intense longing for her twin overcame her, and she took the envelope out of her purse, slid her finger under the flap and unfolded the letter.

Dearest e,

I told you I would let you know-so here it is-goodbye.

I try to imagine what it would feel like if it was you-but it’s impossible to conjure the world without you, even though we’ve been apart so long.

I didn’t leave you anything. You got to live my life. That’s enough. Instead I’m experimenting-I’ve left the whole lot to the twins. I hope they’ll enjoy it.

Don’t worry, it will be okay.

Say goodbye to Jack for me.

Love, despite everything,


e


Edie sat with her head lowered, waiting for tears. None came, and she was grateful; she didn’t want to cry in front of the detective. She checked the postmark. The letter had been mailed four days ago. She wondered who had posted it. A nurse, perhaps.

She put the letter into her purse. There was no need to burn it now. She would keep it for a little while. Maybe she would just keep it. She pulled out of the parking lot. As she passed the detective, she gave him the finger.

Driving the short distance from the beach to her house, Edie thought of her daughters. Disastrous scenarios flitted through Edie’s mind. By the time she got home she was determined to stop her sister’s estate from passing to Julia and Valentina.

Jack came home from work and found Edie curled up on their bed with the lights off.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Elspeth died,” she told him.

“How do you know?”

She handed him the letter. He read it and felt nothing but relief. That’s all, he thought. It was only Elspeth all along. He climbed onto his side of the bed and Edie rearranged herself around him. Jack said, “I’m sorry, baby,” and then they said nothing. In the weeks and months to come, Jack would regret this; Edie would not talk about her twin, would not answer questions, would not speculate about what Elspeth might have bequeathed to their daughters, would not say how she felt or let him even mention Elspeth. Jack wondered, later, if Edie would have talked to him that afternoon, if he had asked her. If he’d told her what he knew, would she have shut him out? It hung between them, afterwards.

But now they lay together on their bed. Edie put her head on Jack’s chest and listened to his heart beating. “Don’t worry, it will be okay.”…I don’t think I can do this. I thought I would see you again. Why didn’t I go to you? Why did you tell me not to come? How did we let this happen? Jack put his arms around her. Was it worth it? Edie could not speak.


They heard the twins come in the front door. Edie disentangled herself, stood up. She had not been crying, but she went to the bathroom and washed her face anyway. “Not a word,” she said to Jack as she combed her hair.

“Why not?”

“Because.”

“Okay.” Their eyes met in the dresser mirror. She went out, and he heard her say, “How was school?” in a perfectly normal voice. Julia said, “Useless.” Valentina said, “You haven’t started dinner?” and Edie replied, “I thought we might go to Southgate for pizza.” Jack sat on the bed feeling heavy and tired. As usual, he wasn’t sure what was what, but at least he knew what he was having for dinner.


A Flower of the Field

ELSPETH NOBLIN was dead and no one could do anything for her now except bury her. The funeral cortège passed through the gates of Highgate Cemetery quietly, the hearse followed by ten cars full of rare-book dealers and friends. It was a very short ride; St Michael’s was just up the hill. Robert Fanshaw had walked down from Vautravers with his upstairs neighbours, Marijke and Martin Wells. They stood in the wide courtyard on the west side of the cemetery watching the hearse manoeuvring through the gates and up the narrow path towards the Noblin family’s mausoleum.

Robert was exhausted and numb. Sound seemed to have fallen away, as though the audio track of a movie had malfunctioned. Martin and Marijke stood together, slightly apart from him. Martin was a slender, neatly made man with greying close-cropped hair and a pointed nose. Everything about him was nervous and quick, knobbly and slanted. He had Welsh blood and a low tolerance for cemeteries. His wife, Marijke, loomed over him. She had an asymmetrical haircut, dyed bright magenta, and matching lipstick; Marijke was big-boned, colourful, impatient. The lines in her face contrasted with her modish clothing. She watched her husband apprehensively.


Martin had closed his eyes. His lips were moving. A stranger might have thought that he was praying, but Robert and Marijke knew he was counting. Snow fell in fat flakes that vanished as soon as they hit the ground. Highgate Cemetery was dense with dripping trees and slushy gravel paths. Crows flew from graves to low branches, circled and landed on the roof of the Dissenters’ chapel, which was now the cemetery’s office.

Marijke fought the urge to light a cigarette. She had not been especially fond of Elspeth, but she missed her now. Elspeth would have said something caustic and funny, would have made a joke of it all. Marijke opened her mouth and exhaled, and her breath hung for a moment like smoke in the air.

The hearse glided up the Cuttings Path and disappeared from sight. The Noblin mausoleum was just past Comfort’s Corners, near the middle of the cemetery; the mourners would walk up the narrow, tree-root-riddled Colonnade Path and meet the hearse there. People parked their cars in front of the semicircular Colonnade, which divided the courtyard from the cemetery, extricated themselves and stood looking about, taking in the chapels (once famously described as “Undertaker’s Gothic”), the iron gates, the War Memorial, the statue of Fortune staring blank-eyed under the pewter sky. Marijke thought of all the funerals that had passed through the gates of Highgate. The Victorians’ black carriages pulled by ostrich-plumed horses, with professional mourners and inexpressive mutes, had given way to this motley collection of autos, umbrellas and subdued friends. Marijke suddenly saw the cemetery as an old theatre: the same play was still running, but the costumes and hairstyles had been updated.

Robert touched Martin’s shoulder, and Martin opened his eyes with the expression of a man abruptly woken. They walked across the courtyard and through the opening in the centre of the Colonnade, up the mossy stairs into the cemetery. Marijke walked behind them. The rest of the mourners followed. The paths were slippery, steep and stony. Everyone watched their feet. No one spoke.


Nigel, the cemetery’s manager, stood next to the hearse, looking very dapper and alert. He acknowledged Robert with a restrained smile, gave him a look that said, It’s different when it’s one of our own, isn’t it? Robert’s friend Sebastian Morrow stood with Nigel. Sebastian was the funeral director; Robert had watched him working before, but now Sebastian seemed to have acquired an extra dimension of sympathy and inner reserve. He appeared to be orchestrating the funeral without actually moving or speaking; he occasionally glanced at the relevant person or object and whatever needed doing was done. Sebastian wore a charcoal-grey suit and a forest-green tie. He was the London-born son of Nigerian parents; with his dark skin and dark clothes he was both extremely present and nearly invisible in the gloom of the overgrown cemetery.

The pall-bearers gathered around the hearse.

Everyone was waiting, but Robert walked up the main path to the Noblin family’s mausoleum. It was limestone with only the surname carved above the oxidised copper door. The door featured a bas-relief of a pelican feeding her young with her own blood, a symbol of the Resurrection. Robert had occasionally included it on the tours he gave of the cemetery. The door stood open now. Thomas and Matthew, the burial team, stood waiting ten feet along the path, in front of a granite obelisk. He met their eyes; they nodded and walked over to him.

Robert hesitated before he looked inside the mausoleum. There were four coffins-Elspeth’s parents and grandparents-and a modest quantity of dust which had accumulated in the corners of the small space. Two trestles had been placed next to the shelf where Elspeth’s coffin would be. That was all. Robert fancied that cold emanated from the inside of the mausoleum, as though it were a fridge. He felt that some sort of exchange was about to take place: he would give Elspeth to the cemetery, and the cemetery would give him…what, he didn’t know. Surely there must be something.

He walked with Thomas and Matthew back to the hearse. Elspeth’s coffin was lead-lined, for above-ground burial, so it was incongruously heavy. Robert and the other pall-bearers shouldered it and then conveyed it into the tomb; there was a moment of awkwardness as they tried to lower it onto the trestles. The mausoleum was too small for all the pall-bearers, and the coffin seemed to have grown suddenly huge. They got it situated. The dark oak was glossy in the weak daylight. Everyone filed out except Robert, who stood hunched over slightly with his palms pressed against the top of the coffin, as though the varnished wood were Elspeth’s skin, as though he might find a heartbeat in the box that housed her emaciated body. He thought of Elspeth’s pale face, her blue eyes which she would open wide in mock surprise and narrow to slits when she disliked something; her tiny breasts, the strange heat of her body during the fevers, the way her ribs thrust out over her belly in the last months of her illness, the scars from the port and the surgery. He was flooded with desire and revulsion. He remembered the fine texture of her hair, how she had cried when it fell out in handfuls, how he had run his hands over her bare scalp. He thought of the curve of Elspeth’s thighs, and of the bloating and putrefaction that were already transforming her, cell by cell. She had been forty-four years old.

“Robert.” Jessica Bates stood next to him. She peered at him from under one of her elaborate hats, her stern face softened by pity. “Come, now.” She placed her soft, elderly hands over his. His hands were sweating, and when he lifted them he saw that he’d left distinct prints on the otherwise perfect surface. He wanted to wipe the marks away, and then he wanted to leave them there, a last proof of his touch on this extension of Elspeth’s body. He let Jessica lead him out of the tomb and stood with her and the other mourners for the burial service.

“The days of man are but as grass: for he flourisheth as a flower of the field. For as soon as the wind goeth over it, it is gone: and the place thereof shall know it no more.”

Martin stood on the periphery of the group. His eyes were closed again. His head was lowered, and he clenched his hands in the pockets of his overcoat. Marijke leaned against him. She had her arm through his; he seemed not to notice and began to rock back and forth. Marijke straightened herself and let him rock.

“Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God of his great mercy to take unto himself the soul of our dear sister here departed, we therefore commit her body to its resting place; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust; in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ; who shall change the body of our low estate that it may be like unto his glorious body, according to the mighty working, whereby he is able to subdue all things to himself.”

Robert let his eyes wander. The trees were bare-Christmas was three weeks away-but the cemetery was green. Highgate was full of holly bushes, sprouted from Victorian funeral wreaths. It was festive, if you could manage the mind-flip required to think about Christmas in a cemetery. As he tried to focus on the vicar’s words he heard foxes calling to each other nearby.

Jessica Bates stood next to Robert. Her shoulders were straight and her chin was high, but Robert sensed her fatigue. She was Chairman of the Friends of Highgate Cemetery, the charity that took care of this place and ran the guided tours. Robert worked for her, but he thought she would have come to Elspeth’s funeral anyway. They had liked each other. Elspeth had always brought an extra sandwich for Jessica when she came to have lunch with Robert.

He panicked: How will I remember everything about Elspeth? Now he was full of her smells, her voice, the hesitation on the telephone before she said his name, the way she moved when he made love to her, her delight in impossibly high-heeled shoes, her sensuous manner when handling old books and her lack of sentiment when she sold them. At this moment he knew everything he would ever know of Elspeth, and he urgently needed to stop time so that nothing could escape. But it was too late; he should have stopped when she did; now he was running past her, losing her. She was already fading. I should write it all down…but nothing would be adequate. Nothing I can write would bring her back.

Nigel closed the mausoleum door and locked it. Robert knew that the key would sit in a numbered compartment in a drawer in the office until it was needed again. There was an awkward pause; the service was over, but no one quite knew what to do next. Jessica squeezed Robert’s shoulder and nodded to the vicar. Robert thanked him and handed him an envelope.

Everyone walked together down the path. Soon Robert found himself standing again in the courtyard. The snow had turned to rain. A flock of black umbrellas opened almost at once. People got into cars, began to proceed out of the cemetery. The staff said things, hands patted him, there were offers of tea, something stronger; he didn’t quite know what he said to people, but they tactfully withdrew. The booksellers all went off to the Angel. He saw Jessica standing at the office window, watching him. Marijke and Martin had been standing apart; now they came to meet him. Marijke was leading Martin by the arm. His head was still bowed and he seemed to be intent on each sett in the courtyard as he walked across it. Robert was touched that he had managed to come at all. Marijke took Robert’s arm, and the three of them walked out of the cemetery and up Swains Lane. When they reached the top of Highgate Hill they turned left, walked for a few minutes and turned left again. Marijke had to let go of Robert in order to hurry Martin along. They walked down a long narrow asphalt path. Robert opened the gate, and they were home. All three apartments in Vautravers were dark, and the day was giving way to evening so that the building seemed to Marijke even more heavy and oppressive than usual. They stood together in the entrance hall. Marijke gave Robert a hug. She didn’t know what to say. They had already said all those things, and so she said nothing and Robert turned to let himself into his flat.

Martin’s voice came out hoarse. He said, “Sorry.” The word startled each of them. Robert hesitated and nodded. He waited to see if Martin would say anything else. The three of them stood together awkwardly until Robert nodded again and disappeared into his flat. Martin wondered if he had been right to speak. He and Marijke began to climb the stairs. They paused on the second landing as they passed Elspeth’s door. There was a small typed card tacked to it that said NOBLIN. Marijke reached out and touched it as she passed. It reminded her of the name on the mausoleum. She thought that it would every time she went by it, now.

Robert took his shoes off and lay on his bed in his austere and nearly dark bedroom, still wearing his wet woollen coat. He stared at the ceiling and thought of Elspeth’s flat above him. He imagined her kitchen, full of food she would not eat; her clothes, books, chairs which would not be worn or read or sat in; her desk stuffed with papers he needed to go through. There were many things he needed to do, but not now.

He was not ready for her absence. No one he loved had died, until Elspeth. Other people were absent, but no one was dead. Elspeth? Even her name seemed empty, as though it had detached itself from her and was floating untethered in his mind. How am I supposed to live without you? It was not a matter of the body; his body would carry on as usual. The problem was located in the word how: he would live, but without Elspeth the flavour, the manner, the method of living were lost to him. He would have to relearn solitude.

It was only four o’clock. The sun was setting; the bedroom became indistinct in shadow. He closed his eyes, waited for sleep. After some time he understood that he would not sleep; he got up and put on his shoes, went upstairs and opened Elspeth’s door. He walked through her flat without turning on any lights. In her bedroom he took his shoes off again, removed his coat, thought for a moment and took off the rest of his clothing. He got into Elspeth’s bed, the same side he had always slept on. He put his glasses in the same spot they had always occupied on the nightstand. He curled into his accustomed position, slowly relaxing as the chill left the sheets. Robert fell asleep waiting for Elspeth to come to bed.


She’s Leaving Home

MARIJKE Wells de Graaf stood in the doorway of the bedroom she had shared with Martin for the last twenty-three years. She had three letters in her hand, and she was debating with herself about where to leave one of them. Her suitcases stood on the landing by the front stairs with her yellow trench coat neatly folded over them. She had only to leave the letter and she could go.

Martin was in the shower. He had been in there for about twenty minutes; he would stay in the shower for another hour or so, even after the hot water ran out. Marijke made a point of not knowing what he was up to in there. She could hear him talking to himself, a low, amiable mumble; it could almost have been the radio. This is Radio Insanity, she thought, coming at you with all the latest and greatest OCD hits.

She wanted to leave the letter in a place where he would find it soon, but not too soon. And she wanted to leave it in a spot that wasn’t already problematic for Martin, so that he’d be able to pick the letter up and open it. But she didn’t want to put it in a place which would be contaminated by the presence of the letter, which would then be forever associated with the letter and therefore out-of-bounds to Martin in the future.

She’d been pondering this dilemma for weeks without settling on a spot. She’d almost given up and resolved to post the letter, but she didn’t want Martin to worry when she didn’t come home from work. I wish I could leave it hovering in midair, she thought. And then she smiled and went to get her sewing kit.

Marijke stood in Martin’s office next to his computer, trying to steady her hands enough to thread the needle in the pool of yellow light from his desk lamp. Their flat was very dark; Martin had papered over the windows and she could only tell that it was morning by the white light that showed through the Sellotape at the edges of the newspaper. Needle threaded, she whipped a few stitches around the edge of the envelope and then stood on Martin’s chair to tape the end of the thread to the ceiling. Marijke was tall, but she had to stretch, and for a moment she had a sensation of vertigo, wobbling on the chair in the dark room. It would be a bad joke if I fell and broke myself now. She imagined herself on the floor with her head cracked open, the letter dangling above her. But a second later she recovered her balance and stepped off the chair. The letter seemed to levitate above the desk. Perfect. She gathered her sewing things and pushed in the chair.

Martin called her name. Marijke stood frozen. “What?” she finally called out. She set the sewing supplies on Martin’s desk. Then she walked into the bedroom and stood at the closed bathroom door. “What?” She held her breath; she hid the remaining two letters behind her back.

“There’s a letter for Theo on my desk; could you post it on your way out?”

“Okay…”

“Thanks.”

Marijke opened the door a crack. Steam filled the bathroom and moistened her face. She hesitated. “Martin-”


“Hmm?”

Her mind went blank. “Tot ziens, Martin,” she finally said.

Tot ziens, my love.” Martin’s voice was cheerful. “See you tonight.”

Tears welled in her eyes. She walked slowly out of the bedroom, edged her way between the piles of plastic-wrapped boxes in the hall, ducked into the office, picked up Martin’s letter to Theo and continued through the front hall and out the door of their flat. Marijke stood with her hand on the doorknob. A random memory came to her: We stood here together, my hand on the doorknob just like this. A younger hand; we were young. It was raining. We’d been grocery shopping. Marijke closed her eyes and stood listening. The flat was large, and she couldn’t hear Martin from here. She left the door ajar (it was never locked) and put on her coat, checked her watch. She hefted her suitcases and carried them awkwardly down the stairs, glancing briefly at Elspeth’s door as she went by. When she came to the ground floor she left one of her envelopes in Robert’s mail basket.

Marijke did not turn to look at Vautravers as she let herself out of the gate. She walked up the path to the street, rolling her suitcases behind her. It was a cold damp January morning; it had rained in the night. Highgate Village had a feeling of changelessness about it this morning, as though no time at all had passed since she’d arrived there, a young married woman, in 1981. The red phone box still stood in Pond Square, though there was no pond in Pond Square now, nor had there been for as long as Marijke could remember, just gravel and benches with pensioners napping on them. The old man who owned the bookshop still scrutinised the tourists as they perused his obscure maps and brittle books. A yellow Labrador ran across the square, easily eluding a shrieking toddler. The little restaurants, the dry-cleaners, the estate agents, the chemist-all waited, as though a bomb had gone off somewhere, leaving only young mums pushing prams. As she posted Martin’s letter to him, along with her own, Marijke thought of the hours she’d spent here with Theo. Perhaps they’ll arrive together.


The driver was waiting for her at the minicab office. He slung her suitcases into the boot and they got into the car. “Heathrow?” he asked. “Yes, Terminal Four,” said Marijke. They headed down North Hill toward the Great North Road.


Somewhat later, as Marijke queued at the KLM desk, Martin got out of the shower. A spectator unfamiliar with Martin might have worried about his appearance: he was bright red, as though a superhuman housewife had parboiled him to extract impurities.

Martin felt good. He felt clean. His morning shower was a high point of his day. His worries receded; troubling things could be tackled in the shower; his mind was clear. The shower he took just before teatime was less satisfactory because it was shorter, crowded by intrusive thoughts and Marijke’s imminent return from her job at the BBC. And the shower he took before going to bed was afflicted by anxieties about being in bed with Marijke, worries about whether he smelled funny, and would she want to have sex tonight or put him off until some other night? (there had been less and less sex lately) not to mention worries about his crossword puzzles, about emails written and emails unanswered, worries about Theo off at Oxford (who always supplied less detail about his daily life and girlfriends and thoughts than Martin would have liked; Marijke said, “He’s nineteen, it’s a miracle he tells us anything,” but somehow that didn’t help and Martin imagined all sorts of awful viruses and traffic accidents and illegal substances; recently Theo had acquired a motorcycle-many, many rituals had been added to Martin’s daily load in order to keep Theo safe and sound).

Martin began to towel himself off. He was an avid observer of his own body, noting every corn, vein and insect bite with deep concern-and yet he had hardly any idea what he actually looked like. Even Marijke and Theo existed only as bundles of feelings and words in Martin’s memory. He wasn’t good at faces.

Today everything proceeded smoothly. Many of Martin’s washing and grooming rituals were organised around the idea of symmetry: a stroke of the razor on the left required an identical stroke on the right. There had been a bad period a few years ago when this had led to Martin shaving every trace of hair from his entire body. It took hours each morning, and Marijke had wept at the sight of him. He had eventually persuaded himself that extra counting could be substituted for all that shaving. So this morning he counted the razor strokes (thirty) required to actually shave his beard, and then deliberately put the razor down on the sink and counted to thirty thirty times. It took him twenty-eight minutes. Martin counted quietly, without hurrying. Hurrying always mucked things up. If he tried to rush he wound up having to start again. It was important to do it well, so that it felt complete.

Completeness: when done correctly, Martin derived a (fleeting) satisfaction from each series of motions, tasks, numbers, washing, thoughts, not-thoughts. But it would not do to be too satisfied. The point was not to please himself, but to stave off disaster.

There were the obsessions-these were like pinpricks, prods, taunts: Did I leave the gas on? Is someone looking in the back-door window? Perhaps the milk was off. Better smell it again before I put it in the tea. Did I wash my hands after taking a piss? Better do it again, just to be sure. Did I leave the gas on? Did my trousers touch the floor when I put them on? Do it again, do it right. Do it again. Do it again. Again. Again.

The compulsions were answers to the questions posed by the obsessions. Check the gas. Wash my hands. Wash them very thoroughly, so there can be no mistake. Use stronger soap. Use bleach. The floor is dirty. Wash it. Walk around the dirty part without touching it. Use as few steps as possible. Spread towels over the floor to keep the contamination from spreading. Wash the towels. Again. Again. It feels wrong to enter the bedroom this way. Wrong how, exactly? Just wrong. Do it right foot first. And turn to the left with my body, there, that’s it. That feels better. But what about Marijke? She has to do it this way too. She won’t like it. Doesn’t matter. She won’t do it. She will. She has to. It feels too wrong if she doesn’t. As though something dreadful will happen. What, exactly? Don’t know. Can’t think about it. Quick-multiples of 22: 44, 66, 88…1,122…

There were good days, bad days, very bad days. Today was shaping up to be a good day. Martin thought about his time at Balliol, when he had played tennis every Wednesday with a bloke from his Philosophy of Mathematics course. There were days when he knew, even before he unpacked his racquet, that every stroke would be sweet. Today had that feeling about it.

Martin opened the bathroom door and surveyed the bedroom. Marijke had laid out his clothes on the bed. His shoes sat on the floor, neatly aligned with the legs of his trousers. Every article of clothing was arranged in a precise pattern. No piece of clothing touched any other. He contemplated the hardwood floor of the bedroom. There were spots where the finish of the wood had been worn away, places where the floor was warped from moisture-but Martin disregarded all that. He was trying to discern whether the floor was safe to walk on in his bare feet. Today, he decided that it was. Martin strode to the bed and began to dress himself very slowly.

As each piece of clothing settled onto his body, Martin felt increasingly secure, enveloped in the clean, worn fabric. He was very hungry, but he took his time. Eventually, Martin slid his feet into his shoes. The shoes were problematic. The brown oxfords were a sort of negotiation between his clean body and the always unnerving floor. He disliked touching them. But he did, and managed to tie the laces. Marijke had offered to get him trainers with Velcro straps, but Martin felt aesthetically repelled by the very idea.

Martin always dressed in sober, dark clothing; he exuded formality. He did not go so far as to wear a tie around the flat, but he always looked as though he had just removed one, or was looking for a tie to put on before he rushed out the door. Since he had stopped leaving the flat, his ties stayed on the rack in his wardrobe.

Dressed, Martin walked cautiously through the hall and into the kitchen. His breakfast was laid out on the kitchen table. Weetabix in a bowl, a small jug of milk, two apricots. He pressed the button on the electric kettle, and in a few minutes the water boiled. Martin had few compulsions associated with food (they mainly involved chewing things a certain number of times). The kitchen was Marijke’s domain, and she always made him take whatever was bothering him to another part of the flat. He tried never to turn on the stove, because he found it impossible to be sure that he’d turned it off again and would stand for hours with his hand on the knob, turning it back and forth. But he could make tea with the electric kettle, and he did so.

Marijke had left the newspapers next to his bowl of cereal. They were pristine, still neatly folded. Martin felt a little surge of gratitude-he liked to be the first to open the fresh newspapers, but he never got to them before she did. He unfurled the Guardian and went directly to the crossword.

Today was Thursday, and for Thursdays Martin always set a crossword with a scientific theme. This particular one concerned astronomy. Martin scanned it briefly to be sure that everything was correct. He was especially proud of the puzzle’s form, which sprawled across the grid in the shape of a rather boxy and completely symmetrical spiral galaxy. He then turned to the solution for yesterday’s puzzle, a strict Ximenean which had been set by his fellow compiler Albert Beamish. Beamish set under the name Lillibet; Martin had no idea why. He’d never met Beamish, though they spoke on the phone occasionally. Martin always imagined him as a hairy man in a ballet costume. Martin’s own setting name was Bunbury.

Martin opened The Times, the Daily Telegraph, the Daily Mail and the Independent and began combing through them for interesting news items. The crossword he was working on at the moment was about the history of warfare in Mesopotamia. He wasn’t sure if this was going to fly with his editor, but like any artist he felt the need to express his preoccupations through his work, and Iraq had been much on Martin’s mind lately. Today the news was full of an especially bloody suicide bombing in a mosque. Martin sighed, got his scissors and began cutting out the articles.

After breakfast, he washed up (in a fairly normal fashion) and stacked the papers neatly (though they had become somewhat lace-like). He went into his office, bent over to turn on the desk lamp. As he straightened up something brushed his face.

Martin’s first thought was that a bat had somehow got into the office. But then he saw the envelope, swinging gently on its thread, hanging from the ceiling. He stood and considered it. His name was written on it in Marijke’s bold handwriting. What have you done? His mind went blank, and he stood in front of the dangling envelope with his head bowed and his arms crossed protectively over his chest. At last he reached out and took it, gave a little tug that detached the thread from the ceiling. He opened it slowly, unfolded the letter, groped for his reading glasses and put them on. What has she done?

6 January


Lieve Martin,

My darling husband, I am sorry. I cannot live this way anymore. By the time you are reading this letter I will be on my way to Amsterdam. I have written to Theo to tell him.

I don’t know if you can understand, but I will try to explain. I need to live my life without being always vigilant to calm your fears. I am tired, Martin. You have worn me out. I know that I will be lonely without you, but I will be more free. I will find myself a little apartment and open the windows and let the sun and the air come in. Everything will be painted white, and I will have flowers in all the rooms. I will not have to always enter the rooms with my right foot first, or smell bleach on my skin, on everything I touch. My things will be in their cupboards and drawers, not in Tupperware, not wrapped in cling film. My furniture will not wear out from being scrubbed too much. Maybe I will have a cat.

You are ill, Martin, but you refuse to see a doctor. I am not coming back to London. If you want to see me, you can come to Amsterdam. But first you would have to leave the flat, so I am afraid that we may never see each other again.

I tried to stay but I failed.

Be well, my love.

Marijke


Martin stood holding the letter. The worst thing has happened. He could not take it in. She’s gone. She would not come back. Marijke. He bent slowly at his waist, hips, knees until he was crouching on the floor in front of his desk, the harsh light shining on his back, his face inches from the letter. My love. Oh my love… All thought fled from him, there was only a great emptiness, the way the water draws back before a tsunami. Marijke.


Marijke sat on the train, watching the flat grey land along the track from Schiphol Airport as it blurred past her. It had been raining, the sky was low. I’m almost home. She checked her watch. By now Martin must have found her letter. She took her mobile phone out of her bag and opened it. No calls. She snapped it shut. The rain streaked sideways across the train’s windows. What have I done? I’m sorry, Martin. But she knew she would not be sorry once she was home, and only Amsterdam could be home to her now.


February

ROBERT HAD given a special tour of the Western Cemetery to a group of antiquarians from Hamburg, and now he stood under the arch by Highgate Cemetery’s main gate, waiting for his group to buy postcards and collect their belongings so he could shoo them out and lock up. In the winter there were no regular weekday tours. He liked the subdued, workaday quality the cemetery had on these quiet days.

The antiquarians straggled out of the former Anglican chapel that served as a makeshift gift shop. Robert shook the green plastic donation box at them, and they threw in their change. He always felt embarrassed at this little transaction, but the cemetery didn’t pay VAT on donations, so everyone at Highgate begged as enthusiastically as they could manage. Robert smiled and waved the Germans out, then turned the old-fashioned key in the massive gate’s lock.

He went into the office and put the key and the donation box on the desk. Felicity, the office manager, smiled and dumped out the contents. “Not bad, for such a dreary Wednesday,” she said. She held out her hand. “Walkie-talkie?”

Robert patted his mackintosh pocket and said, “I’ll bring it back.”


“Are you going out, then?” Felicity asked. “It’s starting to rain.”

“Just for a bit.”

“Molly’s on the gate across the way. Could you give her these?”

“Okay.”

Robert took the pamphlets from Felicity and an umbrella from the stand by the stairs. He headed across Swains Lane. Molly, a lean elderly woman who wore green dungarees and an anorak, sat on a folding chair inside the Strathcona and Mount Royal memorial, which lurked in pink granite splendour just beside the Eastern Cemetery’s gate. She peered out of the gloom patiently and took the pamphlets from Robert, tucking them into the little rack that sat beside her. The pamphlets featured Karl Marx on their covers; he and George Eliot were the star attractions among the dead on this side of the cemetery.

“D’you want to go in and warm up?” Robert asked her.

Molly’s voice was slow, raspy, sleepy; she had a slight Australian accent. “I’m all right, I’ve got the heater on. Have you had your visit?”

“No, I just got done with the tour.”

“Well go on, then.”

As he recrossed Swains Lane, Robert thought about the way Molly had said “your visit” as though it were now part of the official daily schedule of the cemetery. Perhaps it was. He thought about the way the staff had made space for his grief as if it were a tangible thing. Out in the world people drew back from it, but at the cemetery everyone was accustomed to the presence of the bereaved, and so they were matter-of-fact about death in a way that Robert had never appreciated until now.

The drizzle turned to rain as Robert came to Elspeth’s mausoleum. He put up his umbrella with a flourish and sat down on the steps with his back against the door. Robert leaned his head back and closed his eyes. Less than an hour ago he had walked right past this spot with his tour. He had been chatting to the group about wakes and the extreme measures the Victorians had taken for fear of being buried alive. He wished that the Noblin tomb was not on one of the main paths; it was impossible to give a tour without passing Elspeth, and he felt callous leading groups of gawking tourists past the small structure with her surname carved into it. It had never bothered him when it was only her family’s grave-but he had never met her family. For the first time he properly understood why Jessica was so adamant about decorum in the cemetery. He had been inclined to tease her about that. For Jessica, Highgate was not about the tours, or the monuments, not about the supernatural or the atmosphere or the morbid peculiarities of the Victorians; for her the cemetery was about the dead and their grave-owners. Robert was working, rather slowly, on a history of Highgate Cemetery and Victorian funerary practices for his doctoral thesis. But Jessica, who never wasted anything and was supremely adept at putting people to work, had said, “If you’re going to do all that research, why don’t you make yourself useful?” So he began to lead tours. He found that he liked the cemetery itself much better than anything he wrote about it.

Robert settled into himself. The stone step he sat on was cold, wet and shallow. His knees jutted up almost to shoulder height. “Hello, love,” he said, but as always felt absurd speaking out loud to a mausoleum. Silently he continued: Hello. I’m here. Where are you? He pictured Elspeth sitting inside the mausoleum like a saint in her hermitage, looking out at him through the grate in the door with a little smile on her face. Elspeth?

She had always been a restless sleeper. When she was alive her sleep was punctuated by tossing and turning; she often stole all the blankets. When Elspeth slept alone she lay spreadeagled across the bed, staking her territory with limbs instead of a flag. When she slept with Robert he was often awoken by a stray elbow or knee, or by Elspeth’s legs thrashing as though she were running in bed. “One of these nights you’re going to break my nose,” he’d said to her. She had acknowledged that she was a dangerous bedmate. “I apologise in advance for any breakage,” she’d told him, and kissed the nose in question. “You’ll look good, though. It’ll add a certain hooliganish glamour to you.”

Now there was only stillness. The door was a barrier he could have passed through; there was a key in Elspeth’s desk in addition to the one in the cemetery office. Elspeth’s body sat in a box a few feet away from him. He chose not to imagine what three months had done to it.

Robert was struck once again by the finality of it all, summed up and presented to him as the silence in the little room behind him. I have things to tell you. Are you listening? He had never realised, while Elspeth was alive, the extent to which a thing had not completely happened until he told her about it.

Roche sent the letter to Julia and Valentina yesterday. Robert imagined the letter making its way from Roche’s office in Hampstead to Lake Forest, Illinois, U.S.A., being dropped through the letter box at 99 Pembridge Road, being picked up by one of the twins. It was a thick, creamy envelope with the return address of Roche, Elderidge, Potts & Lefley-Solicitors debossed in glossy black ink and the twins’ names and address written in the spidery handwriting of Roche’s ancient secretary, Constance. Robert imagined one of the twins holding the envelope, her curiosity. I’m nervous about this, Elspeth. I would feel better if you’d ever met these girls. You don’t have to live with them-they could be awful. Or what if they just sell the place to someone awful? But he was intrigued by the twins, and he had a certain irrational faith in Elspeth’s experiment. “I can leave it all to you,” she’d said. “Or I can leave it to the girls.”

“Let the girls have it,” he had replied. “I have more than enough.”

“Hmm. I will, then. But what can I give you?”

They were sitting on her hospital bed. She had a fever; it was after the splenectomy. Elspeth’s dinner sat untouched on the wheeled bedside table. He was massaging her feet, his hands slippery with the warm, fragrant oil. “I don’t know. Could you arrange to be reincarnated?”

“The twins are rumoured to be pretty close copies.” Elspeth smiled. “I’ll make them come and live in the flat if they want it. Shall I leave you the twins?”

Robert smiled back at her. “That could backfire. That could be quite-painful.”

“You’ll never know if you don’t give it a whirl. But I want to give you something.”

“A lock of hair?”

“Oh, but it’s bad hair now,” she said, fingering her downy silver fuzz. “We should have saved a bit when I still had my real hair.” Elspeth’s hair had been longish, wavy, the colour of winter butter.

Robert shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. I just wanted something of you.”

“Like the Victorians? It’s a pity it isn’t longer. You could make earrings or a brooch or something.” She laughed. “You could clone me.”

He pretended to consider it. “But I don’t think they’ve worked all the bugs out of cloning. You might turn out morbidly obese, or flipper-limbed or whatnot. Plus I’d have to wait for you to grow up, by which time I’d be a pensioner and you’d want nothing to do with me.”

“The twins are a much better bet. They’re fifty per cent me and fifty per cent Jack. I’ve seen photos, you really can’t see him in them at all.”

“Where are you getting photos of the twins?”

Elspeth covered her mouth with her hand. “Edie, actually. But don’t tell anyone.”

Robert said, “Since when are you in touch with Edie? I thought you hated Edie.”

“Hated Edie?” Elspeth looked stricken. “No. I was very angry with Edie, and I still am. But I never hated Edie; that would be like hating myself. She just-she did something quite stupid that bollixed up our lives. But she’s still my twin.” Elspeth hesitated. “I wrote to her about a year ago-when I first got diagnosed. I thought she ought to know.”

“You didn’t tell me.”

“I know. It was private.”

Robert knew it was childish to feel hurt. He didn’t say anything.


She said, “Ah, come on. If your father got in touch would you tell me all about it?”

“I would, actually.”

Elspeth put her thumb in her mouth and bit gently. He had always found this highly sexual, a huge turn-on, but now it was somehow devoid of that power. She said, “Yes, of course you would.”

“And what do you mean they are half you? They’re Edie’s kids.”

“They are. They are her kids. But Edie and I are identical twins, so her kids equal my kids, genetically.”

“But you’ve never even met them.”

“Does it matter so much? All I can say is, you haven’t got a twin, so you can’t know how it is.” Robert continued to sulk. “Oh, don’t. Don’t be that way.” She tried to move towards him, but the tubes in her arms overruled her. Robert carefully set her feet on a towel, wiped his hands, got up and reseated himself on the arc of white sheet next to her waist. She took up almost no space at all. He placed one hand on her pillow, just beside her head, and leaned over her. Elspeth put her hand on his cheek. It was like being touched with sandpaper; her skin almost hurt him. He turned his head and kissed her palm. They had done all these things so many times before.

“Let me give you my diaries,” Elspeth said softly. “Then you’ll know all my secrets.”

He realised later that she had planned this all along. But then he had only said, “Tell me all your secrets now. Are they so very terrible?”

“Dreadful. But they’re all very old secrets. Since I met you I’ve lived a chaste and blameless life.”

“Chaste?”

“Well, monogamous, anyway.”

“That’ll do.” He kissed her, briefly. She was more feverish now. “You ought to sleep.”

“Do my feet more?” She was like a child asking for her favourite bedtime story. He resumed his place at her feet and squeezed more oil onto his hands, warmed it by rubbing it between his palms.


Elspeth sighed and closed her eyes. “Mmm,” she said after a while, arching her feet. “That’s bloody marvellous.” Then she had slept, and he’d sat there holding her slippery feet in his hands, thinking.

Robert opened his eyes. He wondered briefly if he had fallen asleep; the memory had been so vivid. Where are you, Elspeth? Perhaps you’re only living in my head now. Robert stared at the graves across the path, which were dangerously tilted. One had trees growing on both sides; they had lifted the monument slightly off its base so that it levitated an inch or so in the air. As Robert watched, a fox trotted through the ivy that choked the graves behind the ones on the main path. The fox saw him, paused for a moment and disappeared into the undergrowth. Robert heard other foxes howling to each other, some close by, some off in the deeper parts of the cemetery. It was the mating season. The daylight was going; Robert was chilled and wet. He roused himself.

“Goodnight, Elspeth.” He felt silly saying it. He got up and began to walk back to the office, feeling much the way he had as a teenager when he realised that he was no longer able to pray. Wherever Elspeth might be, she wasn’t here.


The Mirror Twins

JULIA AND Valentina Poole liked to get up early. This was curious, because they were out of school, unemployed and rather indolent. There was no reason for the twins to be up with the dawn; they were early birds who weren’t particularly interested in getting the worm.

On this particular Saturday in February the sun was not quite up. The twelve inches of snow that had fallen overnight looked bluish in the half-light; the huge trees that lined Pembridge Road bowed under the weight of it. Lake Forest was still asleep. The yellow brick ranch house where the twins lived with their parents felt quiet and snug under the snow. All the usual traffic, bird and dog noises were stilled.

Julia turned up the heat while Valentina made hot chocolate from a mix. Julia went into the family room and clicked on the TV. When Valentina came into the room with the tray, Julia was standing in front of the TV flicking through the channels even though she knew what they wanted to watch. It was always the same, every Saturday. The twins loved the sameness, even as they felt incapable of enduring it for one more minute. Julia paused on CNN. President Bush was talking to Karl Rove in a conference room. “Nuke them,” said Valentina. The twins gave the finger to the president and his aide in unison, and Julia changed the channels until she got to This Old House. She turned the sound up, careful not to blast it and risk waking their parents. Valentina and Julia settled onto the couch, wrapped around each other, with Julia’s legs resting on Valentina’s lap. Mookie, their aged tabby cat, sat next to Valentina. They pulled the plaid wool blanket over themselves, warmed their hands with their mugs of chocolate and stared at the TV, lost to everything else. On Saturday mornings they could watch four reruns of This Old House back to back.

“Soapstone kitchen counters,” said Julia.

“Mmm hmm,” said Valentina, entranced.

The family room was dim; the only light came from the television and the front window. But if the light had been stronger the room would have been hard to look at, because everything in it was Kelly green, bright red plaid, or related to golf. The entire house was aggressively decorated. All the furnishings were either overstuffed, covered in chintz, made of brushed metal or frosted glass, or painted in colours with names that sounded like ice-cream flavours. Edie was an interior decorator; she liked to practise on their house, and Jack had given up trying to have any say in the matter. The twins were convinced that their mother had the most egregious taste in the entire world. This was probably not true; most Lake Forest homes were decorated in more expensive versions of the same. The twins liked the family room because it was their dad’s, and therefore ironically hideous. Jack took a certain pleasure in acquiescing to the demands of his tribe as long as he was comfortable.

The twins themselves looked odd in this house. Actually, they looked odd everywhere they went.

They were twenty years old, on this winter Saturday. Julia was the older twin by six (to her, very significant) minutes. It was easy to imagine Julia elbowing Valentina out of the way in her determination to be first.


The twins were very pale and very thin, the kind of thinness that other girls envy and mothers worry over. Julia was five feet, one and a half inches tall. Valentina was one quarter of an inch shorter. Each twin had fine, floating, white-blonde hair, bobbed at their ear lobes, hanging in spiderweb curls around their faces, giving them the look of dandelions gone to seed. They had long necks, small breasts, flat stomachs. The vertebrae in their spines were visible, long straight columns of bumps under their skin. They were often mistaken for undernourished twelve-year-olds; they might have been cast as Victorian orphans in a made-for-TV movie. Their eyes were large, grey, and so wide-set that they appeared almost wall-eyed. They had heart-shaped faces, delicate upturned noses, bow lips, straight teeth. Both twins bit their fingernails. Neither had any tattoos. Valentina thought of herself as awkward, and wished that she had Julia’s splendid air of belonging. In truth, Valentina looked fragile, and this attracted people to her.

The thing that made the twins peculiar was hard to define. People were uneasy when they saw them together without knowing exactly why. The twins were not merely identical: they were mirror-image twins. The mirroring was not limited to their appearance, but involved every cell in their bodies. So the small mole on the right side of Julia’s mouth was on the left side of Valentina’s; Valentina was left-handed, Julia right-handed. Neither looked freakish by herself. The marvel was most evident in X-rays: while Julia was organised in the usual way, Valentina was internally reversed. Her heart was on her right side, with all its ventricles and chambers inverted. Valentina had heart defects which had required surgery when she was born. The surgeon had used a mirror to help him see her tiny heart in the way he was accustomed to seeing. Valentina had asthma; Julia rarely had so much as a cold. Valentina’s fingerprints were almost the opposite of Julia’s (even identical twins don’t have exactly the same fingerprints). They were still essentially one creature, whole but containing contradictions.


The twins sat attentively, watching a gigantic house near the Atlantic Ocean being reshingled, sanded, painted. Dormers were restored, a chimney rebuilt. A new inglenook replaced one that had been torn out.

The twins were avid for things that belonged to the past. Their bedroom looked as though it had once been part of another house, as though it had strayed and been adopted by this ordinary ranch house out of charity. When the twins were thirteen they had stripped the blowsy floral wallpaper off their walls, sent all their stuffed animals and dolls to AMVETS and declared their room a museum. The current exhibit was an old birdcage stuffed with plastic crucifixes, which rested on a crocheted doily draped over a small table which had been completely covered with Hello Kitty stickers. Everything else in the room was white. It was a bedroom for Des Esseintes’ sisters.

Outside, snow blowers began to roar. It was becoming a clear, blindingly sunny morning. As the credits rolled on the fourth episode of This Old House, the twins sat up, stretched, turned off the TV. They stood at the window squinting in their paisley bathrobes, watching Serafin Garcia (who had been mowing their lawn and blowing their snow since they were babies) as he cleared the driveway. He saw them and waved. They waved back.

They heard their parents stirring, but knew that this did not mean they would be getting up any time soon. Edie and Jack both liked to sleep in on the weekends. The night before they had been at a party at the Onwentsia Club; the twins had heard them come in around three. (“Shouldn’t it be the other way around?” Julia said to Valentina, not for the first time. “Shouldn’t it be us causing them anxiety?”) The twins moved on to the next part of their usual Saturday morning: pancakes. They made enough so that when Edie and Jack eventually did emerge, they could microwave some pancakes if they felt like eating. Julia made the batter, and Valentina poured it onto the griddle and stood staring at the pale yellow circles as air bubbles formed and popped. She loved flipping the pancakes. She made five baby pancakes for herself and five for Julia. Julia made coffee. They ate in the kitchen, sitting at the island surrounded by African violets and a cookie jar that looked like a gnome.

After breakfast the twins washed the dishes. Then they put on jeans and hooded sweatshirts with BARAT printed on them. (This was the local college; the twins had attended it for a semester and then dropped out, claiming that it was a waste of their time and Jack’s money. It was the third college they had attended. They had originally matriculated at Cornell; Julia had stopped attending classes in the spring semester, and when she was asked to leave Valentina came home with her. At the University of Illinois they’d lasted a year, but Julia refused to go back.) The mailperson trudged up the walk and shoved the mail through the slot. It landed on the floor of the foyer with a loud thud. The twins converged on it.

Julia grabbed the bundle and began to spew each piece of mail onto the dining-room table. “Pottery Barn, Crate and Barrel, ComEd, Anthropologie, letter for Mom…letter for us?” The twins rarely received mail; all of their correspondence took place online. Valentina took the heavy envelope from Julia’s hand. She stood weighing it, feeling the texture of the paper. Julia took it back from her. They glanced at each other. It’s from a law firm. It’s from London. The twins had never been to London. They’d never left America. London was where their mom was from, but Edie and Jack seldom spoke about that. Edie was an American now-she had gone native, or faux native; the Poole family lived in a suburb of Chicago that had pretended, from its inception, to be an English village. The twins had noticed that Edie’s accent tended to reappear when she was mad, or trying to impress someone.

“Open it,” said Valentina. Julia’s fingers fumbled with the stiff paper. She moved to the living-room window and Valentina followed her. Valentina stood behind Julia and put her chin on Julia’s shoulder and her arms around Julia’s waist. The twins looked like a two-headed girl. Julia raised the letter so Valentina could see it better.


Julia and Valentina Poole

99 Pembridge Road

Lake Forest, IL 60035 USA

Dear Julia and Valentina Poole,

I regret to inform you of the death of your aunt, Elspeth Alice Noblin. Though she never met you, she was interested in your welfare. Last September, knowing that her illness would soon result in her death, she made a new will. I am enclosing a copy of this document. You are her residuary legatees; that is, she has bequeathed to you her entire estate, with the exception of a few minor bequests to friends and charities. You will receive this inheritance when you reach the age of twenty-one.

The bequest is given to you with the following conditions:

1) Ms. Noblin owned an apartment in London, in Vautravers Mews, Highgate, N6. It borders Highgate Cemetery in Highgate Village, a very lovely part of London indeed. She bequeathed this apartment to you on the condition that you both live in it for one year before you may sell it.

2) The entire bequest is given on the condition that no part of it shall be used to benefit Ms. Noblin’s sister, Edwina, or Edwina’s husband, Jack (your parents). Also, Edwina and Jack Poole are forbidden to set foot in the flat or inspect its contents.

Please let me know if you care to accept Ms. Noblin’s estate on these terms. I am always available to answer any questions you may have in regard to this matter.

Ms. Noblin’s executor is Robert Fanshaw. He will be your neighbour if you accept your aunt’s bequest as he lives in the flat just below hers. Mr. Fanshaw can also assist you in matters pertaining to the estate.

Regards,

Xavier Roche

Roche, Elderidge, Potts & Lefley LLP-Solicitors

54D Hampstead High Street

Hampstead, London, NW3 1QA


Julia and Valentina exchanged looks. Julia flipped to the next page. The handwriting was disturbingly similar to Edie’s.

Dear Julia and Valentina,

Hello. I was hoping to meet you both someday, but now that won’t happen. You might wonder why I am leaving all my flotsam and jetsam to you and not to your mother. The best reason I can give is that I feel rather hopeful about you. I wonder what you might make of it all. I thought it might be interesting, even fun.

Your mother and I have been estranged for the last twenty-one years. She can tell you about that if she wants to. You may think that the conditions of my will are a bit harsh; I’m afraid you will just have to decide for yourselves whether to accept on these terms. I am not trying to create discord in your family. I’m trying to protect my own history. A bad thing about dying is that I’ve started to feel as though I’m being erased. Another bad thing is that I won’t get to find out what happens next.

I hope you will accept. It gives me great pleasure to think of the two of you living here. I don’t know if this makes a difference, but the flat is large and full of amusing books, and London is an amazing place to live (though rather expensive, I’m afraid). Your mother tells me you have dropped out of college but that you are autodidacts; if so, you may enjoy living here very much.

I wish you happiness, whatever you may choose to do.

With love,


Elspeth Noblin


There were more sheets of paper, but Julia put the sheaf down and began pacing around the living room. Valentina perched on the back of an armchair and watched Julia orbiting the coffee table, the sofa, then winging off to circle the dining room table a few times. London, thought Valentina. The thought was large and dark, the word was like a giant black dog. Julia stopped, turned and grinned at Valentina.


“It’s like a fairy tale.”

“Or a horror movie,” said Valentina. “We’re, like, the ingénues.”

Julia nodded, resumed pacing. “First, get rid of the parents. Then, lure the unsuspecting heroines to the spooky old mansion-”

“It’s only a flat.”

“Whatever. Then-”

“Serial killers.”

“White slavery.”

“Or it’s like, you know, Henry James.”

“I don’t think people die of consumption any more.”

“They do in the Third World.”

“Yeah, well, the UK has socialised medicine.”

Valentina said, “Mom and Dad won’t like it.”

“No,” said Julia. She ran her fingers across the dining-room table and discovered a bunch of crumbs. She went into the kitchen, moistened a washcloth and wiped the table.

Valentina said, “What happens if we don’t accept?”

“I don’t know. I’m sure it says in the letter somewhere.” Julia paused. “You can’t seriously be thinking about not accepting? This is totally what we’ve been waiting for.”

“What’s that, sweetie?” Edie stood squinting at them from the archway between the living room and the hallway. Her hair was mussed and she had a generally crumpled aspect. Her cheeks were very pink, as though someone had pinched them.

Julia said, “We got a letter.” Valentina scooped it off the side table and brought it to her mother. Edie looked at the return address and said, “I can’t possibly deal with this before I’ve had my coffee.” Valentina went to pour her a cup. Edie said, “Julia, go wake up your dad.”

“Um…”

“Tell him I said so.”

Julia bounded down the hall. Valentina heard her shrieking “Dad-deeeeeeee” as she opened their parents’ bedroom door. Nice, Valentina thought. Why not just use an ice pick? Edie went hunting for her reading glasses. By the time Jack lumbered into the dining room she had read the first few pages of the letter and was making her way through the will.

Jack Poole had once been handsome, in a corn-fed, college-athlete sort of way. His black hair now had a sumptuous grey streak. He wore it longer than the other guys at the bank. He was quite tall and towered over his petite wife and daughters. The years had coarsened his features and thickened his waistline. Jack wore suits so much of his waking life that on the weekends he liked to be slovenly. At the moment he was wearing an ancient maroon bathrobe and a splitting, enormous pair of sheepskin slippers.

“Fee, fi, fo, fum,” Jack said. This was an old joke, the rest of it lost in the mists of the twins’ earliest childhood. It meant, Get me some coffee or I will eat you. Julia poured a cup for her father and set it before him. “Okay,” he said. “I’m up. Where’s the fire?”

“It’s Elspeth,” said Edie. “She’s not just leaving it to them, she’s prying them away from us.”

“Say what?” Jack held out his hand and Edie put part of the letter into it. They sat next to each other, reading.

“Vindictive bitch,” Jack said, without much emotion or surprise. Julia and Valentina sat down at the table and watched their parents. Who are these people? What happened? Why did Aunt Elspeth hate them? Why do they hate her? The twins widened their eyes at each other. We’ll find out. Jack finished reading and groped in his bathrobe pocket for his cigarettes and lighter. He put them on the table but did not light one; he glanced at Valentina, who frowned. Jack put his hand over the pack to reassure himself that it was there. Valentina took her inhaler from her sweatshirt pocket, set it on the table and smiled at her father.

Edie looked up at Valentina. “If you don’t accept, most of it goes to charity,” she said. The twins wondered how much of their conversation she had overheard. Edie was reading a codicil of the will. It instructed someone named Robert Fanshaw to remove all personal papers from the flat, including diaries, letters and photographs, and bequeathed these papers to him. Edie wondered who this Robert person was, that her sister had made him custodian of all their history. But the main thing is she’s arranged for the papers to not be in the flat when the twins arrive. That was the thing Edie had most feared, the intersection of the twins and whatever Elspeth had left in the way of evidence.

Jack put the letter from Elspeth on the table. He sat back in his chair and looked at his wife. Edie held the will at arm’s length and scowled at it, rereading. You don’t seem all that surprised, darling, thought Jack. Julia and Valentina were watching Edie read. Julia looked rapt, Valentina anxious. Jack sighed. Although he had been trying to push his daughters out of the ranch house and into the real world, the world he had in mind was college, preferably an Ivy League college on a full scholarship. The twins’ SAT scores were almost perfect, though their grades were wildly uneven and by now their transcripts would give any director of admissions pause. He imagined Julia and Valentina safely ensconced at Harvard or Yale, or even at Sarah Lawrence; heck, Bennington would be okay. Valentina glanced at him and smiled, raised her nearly invisible eyebrows just slightly. Jack thought about Elspeth as he had last seen her, weeping in line at the airport. You don’t remember her, girls. You have no idea what she was capable of. Jack had been relieved when Elspeth died. I didn’t realise you had any more tricks up your sleeve, Miss Noblin. He had never failed to underestimate her. He stood up, scooped his cigarettes and lighter into his palm and headed for the den. He shut the door, leaned against it and lit up. At least you’re dead. He inhaled smoke and let it stream through his nostrils slowly. One Noblin sister is the most anyone should have to cope with in a lifetime. He considered that he had ended up with the right sister, after all, and was thankful. He stood smoking, and thought about other ways things might have turned out. By the time Jack reentered the dining room he felt steadier, almost cheerful. Wonderful substance, nicotine.


Edie was sitting very straight in her chair; the twins each leaned forward, elbows on the table, chins in hands, Valentina listing sideways as Julia said, “But we never met her; why would she leave us anything? Why not you?”

Edie regarded them silently as Jack sat down in his chair. Julia said, “How come you never took us to London?”

“I did,” Edie replied. “We went to London when you were four months old. You met your grandmother, who died later that year, and you met Elspeth.”

“We did? You did?”

Edie got up and walked down the hall to her bedroom. She disappeared for a few minutes. Valentina said, “Did you go too, Daddy?”

“No,” said Jack. “I wasn’t too popular over there then.”

“Oh.” Why not?

Edie came back holding two American passports. She handed one to Valentina and the other to Julia. They opened the passports, stared at themselves. It’s weird to see new baby pictures. The stamps said HEATHROW AIRPORT, 27 APRIL, 1984 and O’HARE INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, JUNE 30, 1984. They traded and compared the photos. Without the names it was impossible to tell which twin was in each photo. We look like potatoes with eyes, Julia thought.

The twins laid the passports on the table and looked at Edie. Edie’s heart beat fast. You have no idea. Don’t ask. It’s none of your business. Just let me be. Let me be. She stared back at them, poker-faced. “Why didn’t she leave it to you, Mom?” asked Valentina.

Edie glanced at Jack. “I don’t know,” she said. “You’d have to ask her.”

Jack said, “Your mother doesn’t want to talk about it.” He gathered the papers that were strewn across the table into a stack, tapped the bottom of the stack against the table to align it and handed it to Julia. He stood up. “What’s for breakfast?”

“Pancakes,” said Valentina. They all stood, all tried to segue into the normal Saturday-morning routine. Edie poured herself more coffee and steadied the cup with two hands as she drank it. She’s frightened, Valentina thought, and was frightened herself. Julia walked down the hall doing a little dance, holding the will over her head as though she were fording a rising river. She went into their bedroom and closed the door. Then she began jumping in place on the thick carpeting, her fists pounding the air over her head, shouting silently, Yes! Yes! Yes!


That night the twins lay in Julia’s bed, facing each other. Valentina’s bed was rumpled but unused. Their feet were touching. The twins smelled faintly of sea kelp and something sweet; they were trying out a new body lotion. They could hear the settling noises their house made in the night. Their bedroom was dimly illuminated by the blue Hanukkah lights they had strung around the wrought-iron headboards of their beds.

Julia opened her eyes and saw that Valentina was staring at her. “Hey, Mouse.”

Valentina whispered, “I’m afraid.”

“I know.”

“Aren’t you?”

“No.”

Valentina closed her eyes. Of course not.

“It’ll be great, Mouse. We’ll have our own apartment, we won’t have to work, at least for a while; we can do whatever we want. It’s, like, total freedom, you know?”

“Total freedom to do what, exactly?”

Julia shifted onto her back. Oh God, Mouse, don’t be such a mouse. “I’ll be there. You’ll be there. What else do we need?”

“I thought we were going back to college. You promised.”

“We’ll go to college in London.”

“But that’s a year from now.”

Julia didn’t answer. Valentina stared into Julia’s ear. In the semi-dark it was like a little mysterious tunnel that led into Julia’s brain. If I were tiny I would crawl in there and tell you what to do and you would think it was your own idea.

Julia said, “It’s only for a year. If we don’t like it we’ll sell it and come back.”

Valentina was silent.

After a while Julia took her hand, interlaced their fingers. “We’ve got to prepare. We don’t want to be like those dumb Americans who go to Europe and only eat at McDonald’s and speak English real loud instead of the local language.”

“But they speak English in England.”

“You know what I mean, Mouse. We need to study.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.” They shifted so that they lay side by side, shoulders touching, hands clasped. Valentina thought, Maybe in London we can have a bigger bed. Julia stared at the terrible Home Depot light fixture on the ceiling, mentally listing all the things they would need to find out about: exchange rates, vaccinations, soccer, the Royal Family…

Valentina lay in Julia’s bed thinking about the inside of Julia’s ear, how her own ear was the exact reverse, and if she pressed her ear against Julia’s and trapped a sound, would it oscillate back and forth endlessly, confused and forlorn? Would I hear it backwards? What if it was a London sound, like cars driving on the wrong side of the road; then maybe I would hear it forwards and it would be backwards for Julia. Maybe in London everything will be opposite from here…I’ll do what I want; no one will be the boss of me… Valentina listened to Julia breathing. She tried to imagine what she would do if it was just her, on her own. But she had never done anything on her own, so she struggled to formulate some kind of plan, and then gave up, exhausted.


Edie lay in bed waiting for Jack to fall asleep. Usually she tried to get to sleep first, because Jack snored, but tonight her mind was racing and she knew it was pointless to even try. Finally she turned onto her side and found Jack facing her with his eyes open.


“It’ll be all right,” said Jack. “They’ve been away before and it was all right.”

“This is different.”

“Because it’s Elspeth?”

“Maybe,” she said. “Or, just-it’s so far away. I don’t want them there.”

He put his arm around her waist and she burrowed into him. I’m safe. I’m safe here. Jack was her bomb shelter, her human shield. “Remember when they were at Cornell?” he said. “How great it was to have the house to ourselves?”

“Yeah…” It had been a revelation: married life without children was a blast. For a while, anyway.

“They’re twenty years old, Edie. They should have been long gone. We should have sent them to separate schools,” said Jack.

She sighed. You don’t understand. “It’s too late. Elspeth’s taken it out of our hands.”

“Maybe she’s done us a favour.”

Edie didn’t reply. Jack said, “When you were their age you were very eager to be on your own, as I recall.”

“That was different.”

He waited for her to continue. When she didn’t, he said, very quietly, “Why, Edie? Why was it different?” But she pressed her lips together and closed her eyes. He said, “You could tell me.”

She opened her eyes and smiled. “There’s nothing to tell, Jack.” She turned again, so she faced away from him. “We should try to sleep.”

That was close, he thought. He wasn’t sure if he was disappointed or relieved. “Okay,” Jack said. They lay together for a long time, listening to each other’s breathing, until Jack began to snore and Edie was alone with her thoughts.


Bleach

THE INVENTION of the Internet had allowed Martin to abandon the outside world. Or rather, the Internet had enabled him to relegate that world to the role of support system for his world, the one that flourished inside his flat.

Martin had not expected Marijke to leave him. She had acquiesced in his rituals, had aided and abetted his increasingly stringent compulsions, for almost twenty-five years. He couldn’t understand why she would leave now. “You are like a bad pet,” she’d told him. “You’re like a human squirrel that never goes out, that just sits in the flat all day and all night, licking the same spot. I want to be able to open the windows. I want to walk into my own flat without having to put bags on my feet.” They’d had this conversation in the kitchen. The windows were taped shut and papered over, and both of them were wearing plastic bags over their socks. Martin was empty-handed; he had nothing he could use to counter Marijke’s assertion. He was a human squirrel and he knew it. But who would take care of him if she left? “You’re a fifty-three-year-old PhD with a telephone and a computer. You’d be fine. Get Robert to take out the rubbish.” Two days later, Marijke was gone.

She left him with two weeks’ worth of frozen meals and a list of websites and telephone numbers. Sainsbury’s delivered groceries and cleaning products; Marks & Spencer sent pants and socks. Robert posted his letters and carried the rubbish down to the dustbin.

At the end of the day, it wasn’t a bad way to live. There was no one to please but himself. He missed Marijke terribly, but he did not miss her reproving glares, her loud sighing, the way she rolled her eyes when he asked her to leave a room and come in again because she’d entered with the wrong foot first. Marijke wasn’t there to frown when he ordered five thousand pairs of latex surgical gloves from a dodgy outfit on the Internet. While he was at it, he also bought a kit for measuring blood pressure, a gas mask and a desert camouflage army-surplus jumpsuit which the site claimed could withstand chemical weapons.

There were bargains to be had. From a different site he ordered four fifty-litre drums of bleach. This brought Robert to his door.

“Martin, there’s a bloke downstairs with an enormous amount of bleach. He says you ordered it, and it has to be signed for. Do you think it’s safe to have that much bleach around the house? The containers have all sorts of scary pictographs of hands with smoke coming off them, and warnings galore. Are you sure this is a good idea?”

Martin thought it was a brilliant idea; he was always running out of bleach. To Robert he only said that he would be very careful, and to please put the bleach in the kitchen.

The more Martin delved into the cyber world, the more he realised that there was absolutely nothing he couldn’t have brought to his door, for a fee. Pizza, cigarettes, beer, free-range eggs, the Guardian, postage stamps, lightbulbs, milk: all this and more appeared when required. He ordered books by the dozen from Amazon, and soon the unopened boxes piled up in the hall. He missed browsing in Stanfords, the map shop on Long Acre, and was overjoyed when he discovered their website. Maps began arriving, along with guidebooks to places Martin had never visited. Inspired, he ordered everything Stanfords offered on Amsterdam, and covered his bedroom walls with maps of that city. He traced what he imagined might be Marijke’s routes. He guessed, correctly (though he did not know it), that she lived in the Jordaan district. He assigned her a routine and mentally accompanied her as she rode her bike along canals and shopped for all the odd vegetables she loved that he wouldn’t eat. Fennel, Jerusalem artichokes, rocket. He didn’t consider any of it to be food. Martin lived on tea, toast, eggs, chops, potatoes, beer, curry, rice and pizza. He had a weakness for pudding. But in his imagination Marijke lingered in Amsterdam’s outdoor markets, filling the basket of her bike with freesias and Brussels sprouts. He remembered walks he and Marijke had taken together there decades before, marvellous spring evenings when they were besotted with each other and Amsterdam seemed hushed and the sounds of boats and seagulls bounced off the seventeenth-century canal houses as though they were recordings being played back from the past. Martin would stand in his bedroom with the tip of his index finger pressed to the map over the location of the radio station where Marijke now worked. He would close his eyes, repeat her name silently, moving his lips, one hundred times. He did this to prevent himself from calling her. Often it sufficed. Other times he had to call. She never answered. He imagined her flipping open her mobile, frowning at his number, flipping it closed.

Martin’s desk was an island of normality in the wreck of his flat. He had succeeded in keeping his workspace compulsion-free; if an obsession began to trouble him at his desk he would get up and take it to some other part of the flat to deal with it. Aside from cleaning rituals at the beginning and end of each work session, Martin had maintained his desk as a peaceful oasis. His computer had been for work only; email had been for corresponding with editors and proofreaders. In addition to setting his crossword puzzles, Martin also translated various obscure and ancient languages into various modern ones. He belonged to one online forum that existed to allow scholars worldwide to debate the merits of various texts and to amuse each other by ridiculing the work of translators who didn’t belong to the forum.


But now the Internet began to interfere with his cherished desk-isle, and he found himself monitoring eBay auctions of aquarium filtering machines and checking Amazon every ten minutes or so to see how his crossword books were selling. They always had depressing numbers like 673,082 or 822,457. Once his latest had made it up to 9,326. It had given him a happy afternoon, until he logged on before going to bed and found it at 787,333.

Martin discovered that while he could find Young Girls Hot to Meet You!!!, Big Busted!?! S*xy Moms and a plethora of other opportunities to satisfy his lust and other people’s avarice, he could not find Marijke on the Web. He googled her repeatedly, but she was one of the rare, delicate creatures who managed to exist entirely in the actual world. She had never authored a paper or won a prize; she had kept her phone number unlisted and didn’t partake in any chat rooms or listservs. He thought she must have email at work, but she wasn’t listed in the radio station’s directory. As far as the Internet was concerned, Marijke didn’t exist.

As the days went by, Martin began to wonder if there had ever been a woman named Marijke who lived with him and kissed him and read him Dutch poems about the beginning of spring. Months disappeared, and Martin worked on his crosswords and translations, washed his hands until they bled, counted, checked, admonished himself for washing and counting and checking. He microwaved a monotonous array of frozen foods, ate at the kitchen table while reading. He did his laundry, and the clothes got thinner from too much bleach. He could hear the weather sometimes; rain and sleet, rare thunder, wind. He sometimes wondered what would happen if he stopped all the clocks. The cyber world ran outside of time, and Martin thought that he might cycle around the clock untethered. The idea made him depressed. Without Marijke he was only an email address.

Martin lay in their bed each night imagining Marijke in her bed. Over the years she had become a little plump, and he loved her roundness, he loved the warmth and heft and curve of her under the covers. She snored sometimes, softly, and Martin listened in the dark until he could almost hear her small snores drifting through her Amsterdam bedroom. He would say her name over and over until it devolved into meaningless sounds-mah REI kuh, mah REI kuh-it became an entry in a dictionary of loneliness. He thought of her alone. He never allowed himself to wonder if Marijke might have found someone else. He could not bear to even frame the question in his mind. Only when he had imagined her quite completely, the folds of her face against the pillow, the hump of her haunch under the blankets; only then could Martin let himself sleep. He often woke to find that he had been crying.

As each night passed he found it more difficult to evoke Marijke precisely. He panicked and pinned up dozens of photographs of her all over the flat. Somehow this only made things worse. His actual memories began to be replaced by the images; his wife, a whole human being, was turning into a collection of dyes on small white rectangles of paper. Even the photographs were not as intensely colourful as they had once been, he could see that. Washing them didn’t help. Marijke was bleaching out of his memory. The harder he tried to keep her the faster she seemed to vanish.


Night in Highgate Cemetery

ROBERT SAT at his desk with the lights off, watching through the front windows as Vautravers’ tangled front garden disappeared in the dusk. It was June, and the light seemed to hang there, as though the garden had fallen out of time and become an enormous image of itself. The moon rose, almost full. He got up and shook himself, gathered his night scope and a torch and walked through his flat to the back door. He slipped down the steps quietly; Martin worried about intruders. Robert avoided the gravel path through the back garden, instead squishing across the mossy earth to the green door in the garden wall. He unlocked it and passed through the wall into the cemetery.

He was standing on asphalt, the roof of the Terrace Catacombs. There were steps leading to ground level at both ends of the catacombs; tonight he took the western steps and headed towards the Dickens Path. He didn’t use the torch. It was dark under the thick canopy of leaves, but he had done this route in the dark many times.

He liked Highgate Cemetery best at night. At night there were no visitors, no weeds to pull, no enquiries from journalists-there was only the cemetery itself, spread out in the moonlight like a soft grey hallucination, a stony wilderness of Victorian melancholy. Sometimes he wished he could stroll with Jessica along the dim paths, enjoying the evening noises, the animals that called out to each other in the distance and stilled as he passed. But he knew that Jessica was at home, asleep, and that she would certainly exile him from the cemetery if she knew about his night sojourns. He rationalised, telling himself that he was patrolling, protecting the cemetery from vandals and the self-described vampire hunters who had plagued it in the 1970s and ’80s.

Robert did sometimes meet other people in the cemetery at night. Last summer, for a short while, there had been a railing missing in the spiked iron fence that ran along the southwestern edge of the cemetery. It was during this period that Robert began to see children in the cemetery in the evenings.

The first time, Robert was sitting in the midst of a cluster of graves from the 1920s. He had cleared a place for himself in the tall grass and was sitting very quietly, looking through his video camera with the night vision scope on, hoping to videotape the family of foxes whose burrow was just twenty feet from where he sat. The sun had set behind the trees, and the sky was yellow above the silhouettes of the houses just beyond the fence. Robert heard a rustling sound and turned his camera in that direction. But instead of foxes, the view-finder suddenly filled with the spectre of a child running towards him. Robert nearly dropped the camera. Another child appeared, chasing the first one; little girls in short dresses, running between the graves silently, breathing hard but running without calling out. They were almost upon him when a boy shouted, and they both turned and ran to the fence, squeezed through the gap, and were gone.

Robert reported the broken railing to the office the next morning. The children continued to play in the cemetery in the evenings, and Robert occasionally observed them, wondering who they were and where they lived, wondering what they meant by the strange games they silently played among the graves. After a few weeks a man came and put the fence right again. Robert walked along the street that evening and felt a bit sad as he passed the three children gathered there with their hands on the railings, peering into the cemetery, not speaking.

Robert’s PhD thesis had begun as a work of history: he imagined the cemetery as a prism through which he could view Victorian society at its most sensationally, splendidly, irrationally excessive; in their conflation of hygienic reform and status-conscious innovation, the Victorians had created Highgate Cemetery as a theatre of mourning, a stage set of eternal repose. But as he did the research Robert was seduced by the personalities of the people buried in the cemetery, and his thesis began to veer into biography; he got sidetracked by anecdote, fell in love with the futility of elaborate preparations for an afterlife that seemed, at best, unlikely. He began to take the cemetery personally and lost all perspective.

He often sat with Michael Faraday, the famous scientist; Eliza Barrow, who had been a victim of the notorious serial murderer Frederick Seddon; he spent time brooding over the unmarked graves of foundlings. Robert had whiled away a whole night watching as falling snow covered Lion, the stone dog that kept watch over Thomas Sayers, the last of the bare-fisted prizefighters. Sometimes he borrowed a flower from Radclyffe Hall, who always had an abundance of blooms, and relocated it to some remote and friendless tomb.

Robert loved to watch the seasons revolve in Highgate. The cemetery was never without some green; many of the plants and trees had symbolised eternal life to the Victorians, and so even in winter the haphazard geometry of the graves was softened by evergreens, cypress, holly. At night stone and snow reflected back moonlight, and Robert sometimes felt himself become weightless as he crunched along the paths through a thin coverlet of white. Occasionally he brought a ladder from Vautravers’ garden shed and climbed up to the grass in the centre of the Circle of Lebanon. He would lean against the three-hundred-year-old Cedar of Lebanon, or lie on his back and watch the sky through its gnarled branches. There was seldom a visible star; they were all hidden by light pollution from London’s electric grid. Robert watched aeroplanes blinking through the Cedar of Lebanon’s leaves. At such times he felt a powerful sense of rightness: under his body, beneath the grass, the dead were quiet and peaceful in their little rooms; above him the stars and machines roamed the skies.

Tonight he stood by the Rossettis and thought about Elizabeth Siddal. He had rewritten the chapter devoted to her numerous times, more for the pleasure of thinking about Lizzie than because he had anything new to say about her. Robert fondled her life’s trajectory in his mind: her humble beginnings as a milliner’s girl; her discovery by the Pre-Raphaelite painters, who enlisted her as a model; her promotion to adored mistress of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Unexplained illnesses, her long-awaited marriage to Rossetti; a stillborn daughter. Her death by laudanum poisoning. A guilt-ridden Dante Gabriel, slipping a unique manuscript of his poems into his wife’s casket. Seven years later, the exhumation of Lizzie at night, by bonfire light, to retrieve the poems. Robert relished all of it. He stood with his eyes closed, imagining the grave in 1869, not so hemmed in by other graves, the men digging, the flickering light of the fire.

After what seemed to him a long time, Robert followed the obscure path back through the graves and began to wander.

He was unable to believe in heaven. In his Anglican childhood he had imagined a wide, spacious emptiness, sunlit and cold, filled with invisible souls and dead pets. As Elspeth began dying he’d tried to revive this old belief, digging into his scepticism as though belief were simply an older sediment, accessible through strip-mining layers of sophistication and experience. He reread Spiritualist tracts, accounts of hundred-year-old seances, scientific experiments with mediums. His rationality rebelled. It was history; it was fascinating; it was untrue.


On these nights in the cemetery Robert stood in front of Elspeth’s grave, or sat on its solitary step with his back against the uncomfortable grillwork. It did not bother him when he stood by the Rossetti grave and couldn’t feel the presence of Lizzie or Christina, but he found it disturbing to visit Elspeth and find that she was not “at home” to him. In the early days after her death he’d hovered around the tomb, waiting for a sign of any sort. “I’ll haunt you,” she’d said when they’d told her she was terminal. “Do that,” he had replied, kissing her gaunt neck. But she was not haunting him, except in memory, where she dwindled and blazed at all the wrong moments.

Now Robert sat at Elspeth’s doorstep and watched as dawn came over the trees. He could hear the birds stirring, singing, rioting and splashing across the street in Waterlow Park. Every now and then a car whooshed past along Swains Lane. When there was enough light for him to read the inscriptions on the graves across from Elspeth, Robert got up and made his way towards the back of the cemetery and the Terrace Catacombs. He could see St. Michael’s, but Vautravers was invisible beyond the wall. He walked up the steps at the side of the Terrace Catacombs and across the Catacombs’ roof to the green door. Fatigue clutched him. It was an effort to make it all the way into his flat before sleep overtook him. Outside, the cemetery assumed its daytime aspect; dawn gave way to day, the staff arrived, phones rang, the natural and the human worlds spun on their separate but conjoined axes. Robert was asleep in his clothes, his muddy trainers beside the bed. When he presented himself, noonish, at the cemetery’s office, Jessica said, “My dear boy, don’t you look all in. Have some tea. Don’t you ever sleep?”


Sunday Afternoon

LONDON WAS baking under a cloudless July sky. Robert reclined on a decrepit wicker chaise longue in Jessica Bates’s back garden, a gin and tonic sweating in his hand. He was watching Jessica’s grandchildren preparing to play croquet. It was Sunday afternoon. He had a vague sense of being in the wrong place; usually he and Jessica would both have been at the cemetery. On a glorious Sunday like this there would be loads of tourists clustered at the gates, wielding cameras and protesting at the rules about proper attire and no water bottles. They would be whingeing about the £5 charge for the tour and pointlessly insisting on bringing in prams and children under eight. But for some reason today there had been extra guides, and he and Jessica had been sent off with orders from Edward to “amuse yourselves, we’ll be fine here, don’t even think about us.” So now Jessica, who was eighty-four and incapable of leisure, was in her kitchen putting together lunch for twelve, and Robert (who had offered to help and been firmly escorted outside) lay idly watching as the children pounded the hoops and stake into the ground.

The grass was too long for croquet, but no one seemed to mind. “I wanted to get some sheep to crop the grass, but Jessica overruled me,” said James Bates. Jessica’s husband sat tucked into his lawn chair with a thin blanket; it made Robert hotter just to look at him. He was a tall man who had shrunk with age, and his gentle voice trembled a bit. He had large glasses that magnified his eyes, frail bones and a decisive manner. He had been a headmaster and now served as the cemetery’s archivist.

James gazed at his grandchildren fondly. They were bickering over the rules and trying to choose teams. He longed to get out of his chair, to walk across the lawn and play with them. He sighed and looked down at the book of crosswords in his lap. “This is quite ingenious,” he said, turning the page towards Robert. “All the clues are mathematical equations, then you translate the answers into letters and fill it in.”

“Ugh. Is that one of Martin’s?”

“Yes, he gave it to me for Christmas.”

“Sadistic devil.”

The children had arranged themselves around the first hoop and began to knock the coloured balls through it. The bigger children waited patiently for the smallest child to make her shot. “Well played, Nell,” said the tallest boy. James pointed his pen at Robert. “How are you getting on with Elspeth’s estate?”

A small feud erupted between two cousins over a ball hit out of bounds. Robert’s mind returned to Elspeth, who was never far from his thoughts. “Roche is corresponding with the twins. Elspeth’s sister was threatening to contest the will, but I think Roche has convinced her she’d lose. It must be something about America, this urge to litigate.”

“I still find it curious that Elspeth never mentioned having a twin.” James smiled. “It’s hard to imagine another one like her.”

“Yes…” Robert watched the children decorously tapping the balls across the lawn. “Elspeth said she and Edie weren’t very much alike in their personalities. She used to just hate being mistaken for her. Once we were in Marks & Spencer and this woman walked up to Elspeth and started chatting away, and it turned out that she was the mother of some boy Edie had gone out with. Elspeth was quite awful to her. The woman went off in a huff, and Elspeth had this rather puffed-up look about her, like one of those Brazilian frogs that get very large and spit at things that want to eat them.”

James laughed. “She was very large for such a small woman.”

“I used to carry her around. I carried her across Hampstead Heath once-she’d broken a heel.”

“Such high heels she used to wear.”

Robert sighed and thought about Elspeth’s dressing room, which doubled as an impromptu shoe museum. He had spent part of an afternoon there recently lying on the floor, petting her shoes and wanking off. He flushed. “I don’t know what to do with all her stuff.”

“Surely you needn’t do anything; when the twins come they’ll have to sort it out.”

“But they might throw things away,” said Robert.

“That’s true; they might.” James eased himself into a different position in his chair. His back hurt. He wondered why Elspeth had left all her worldly possessions to these girls, who might come and heave everything she’d loved into a skip. “Have you ever met them?”

“No. Actually, Elspeth never met them. She and Edie hadn’t spoken to each other since Edie ran off with Elspeth’s fiancé.” Robert frowned. “It’s a very odd will, really. The twins inherit most of the estate, but not until they’re twenty-one, at the end of this year. And they only inherit the flat if their parents never set foot in the place.”

“That’s a bit vengeful, don’t you think? How did she expect you to enforce that?”

“She just threw that in because she couldn’t stand the idea of Edie or Jack getting their hands on anything of hers. She knew it wasn’t practical.”

James smiled. “Such Elspethness. Why leave it to their daughters, then? Why not to you?”

“She left me the things that mattered to me.” Robert stared across the lawn, not seeing. “She was rather secretive about the twins. I think she had a sort of soft spot for them because they were twins; she imagined herself as Auntie Elspeth, even though she never even sent them birthday cards. It’s the extravagance of the thing that appealed to her, you know. It will completely alter their lives, and scoop them right out of their parents’ laps and into Elspeth World. What they will do with it is anyone’s guess.”

“Pity she won’t be able to meet them.”

“Yes.” Robert felt disinclined to discuss the will any further. The croquet game was degenerating into a free-for-all. Some of the younger boys were using their mallets as swords, and the girls were throwing Nell’s ball over her head as she leapt between them trying to rescue it. Only the two oldest boys were still doggedly hitting the balls through the hoops. At this moment Jessica happened to walk into the garden, noticed the mayhem, and stood with her arms akimbo, the very image of indignation. “Ahem,” she said. “What are you doing?” Jessica had a voice that rose and fell like a swooping kite. The children instantly stopped what they were doing and looked self-conscious, like cats that have fallen off something ungracefully and now sit licking themselves, pretending nothing has happened. Jessica walked carefully to where Robert and James sat. Two of her friends had broken their hips recently, so she had temporarily modified her habit of striding boldly wherever she went. She pulled up a chair and sat down next to James.

“How’s the lunch?” he asked her.

“Oh, it’ll be a while, the chicken’s roasting.” Jessica blotted her forehead with her handkerchief. Robert realised that he was not going to be able to eat roast chicken in this heat. He pressed his glass full of almost-melted ice to his cheek. Jessica looked him over. “You don’t look well,” she told him.

“No sleep,” he replied.

“Mmm,” Jessica and James said together. They exchanged glances. “Why’s that?” Jessica asked.


Robert looked away. The children had reverted to their game. Most of them were clustered around the stake in the middle, though Nell was flailing at a ball that was stuck in a clump of iris. She whacked and some irises came flying out of the dirt. He looked at Jessica and James, who were watching him uneasily. “Do you believe in ghosts?” Robert asked.

“Certainly not,” said Jessica. “That’s a lot of claptrap.” James smiled and looked down at Martin’s crossword puzzle in his lap.

“Well, right, I know you don’t believe in ghosts.” Highgate Cemetery had suffered from the attentions of paranormalists and Satanists in the past. Jessica spent a great deal of time discouraging Japanese television programmes and enthusiasts of the supernatural from promoting Highgate as a sort of haunted cemetery Disneyland. “I just…I’ve been going into Elspeth’s flat, and I have this feeling that she’s…there.” Jessica’s mouth turned down at the corners as though he’d made an off-colour joke. James looked up, curious. “What sort of feeling do you mean?” he asked Robert.

Robert considered. “It’s rather intangible. But, for example, there’s something very odd about the temperature in her flat. I’ll be sitting at her desk, sorting papers, and I’ll suddenly be very cold in one specific part of my body. My hand will be freezing cold and then it will go up my arm. Or the back of my neck…” Robert paused, staring at his drink. “Things move, in her flat. Tiny, tiny movements: curtains, pencils. Movement at the edge of my peripheral vision. Things aren’t where I put them when I come back. A book fell from the desk onto the floor…” He looked up and caught James shaking his head slightly at Jessica, who put her hand over her mouth. “Yeah, okay. Never mind.”

Jessica said, “Robert. We’re listening.”

“I’m losing it.”

“Well, perhaps. But if it makes you feel better…”

“It doesn’t.”

“Ah.” The three of them sat quietly.


James said, “I saw a ghost once.”

Robert glanced at Jessica. She had a rather resigned expression, her smile one-sided, her eyes half-closed. Robert said, “You saw a ghost?”

“Yes.” James shifted in his chair, and Jessica leaned over and adjusted the pillow that supported his lower back. “I was quite small, only a lad of six. So let me see, that would have been in 1917. I grew up just outside of Cambridge, and the house my family lived in at that time had once been an inn. It was built around 1750. It was very large and draughty and stood by itself at a crossroads. We didn’t use the second floor, all of our bedrooms were on the first floor. Even the maid slept on the first floor.

“My father was a don at St. John’s, and we used to have a great many visitors come to stay with us. Ordinarily there were enough rooms to accommodate everyone, but on this occasion there must have been more visitors than usual, because my younger brother, Samuel, was put to sleep in one of the unused bedrooms on the top floor.” James smiled to himself. “Sam was generally a pretty cool customer, as the Americans say, but he howled all night, until my mother went up and took him to sleep in her room.”

Robert said, “I didn’t know you had a brother.”

“Sam died in the war.”

“Oh.”

“So, the next night, I was to sleep in the second-floor room-”

“Wait. Did Sam tell you why he’d cried?”

James said, “Sam was only four, and of course I teased him, so he wouldn’t say. At least that’s what I remember. So, I was put to bed upstairs. I remember lying there with the blanket pulled up to my chin, my mother kissing me goodnight, and there I was in the dark, not knowing what terrible thing might be ready to slink out from the wardrobe and smother me…”

Jessica smiled. Robert thought it might be a smile for the morbidly fantastical imaginations of children.


“So what happened?”

“I fell asleep. But later that night I woke up. There was moonlight coming in through the window, and the shadows of tree branches fell onto the bed, waving gently in the breeze.”

“And then you saw the ghost?”

James laughed. “Dear chap, the branches were the ghost. There weren’t any trees within a hundred yards of that house. They’d all been cut down years before. I saw the ghost of a tree.”

Robert thought about it. “That’s rather elegant. I was expecting ghouls.”

“Well, that’s just it, you see. I think perhaps if that sort of thing does happen-ghosts-it must be more beautiful, more surprising than all these old tales would have us believe.”

Robert happened to look at Jessica while James was speaking. She was gazing at her husband with an expression that combined patience, admiration, and something very private that seemed to Robert like the distillation of a lifetime of marriage. He felt a sudden need to be alone. “Do you have any ibuprofen?” he asked Jessica. “I think the sun’s given me a headache.”

“Of course, let me get it for you.”

“No, no,” he said, getting up. “I’ll just have a lie down before we eat.”

“There’s some Anadin in the cabinet in the ground-floor loo.”

Jessica and James watched Robert walk stiffly across the terrace and into the house. “I’m really worried about him,” Jessica said. “He’s lost the plot, a bit.”

James said, “She’s only been dead eight months. Give him some time.”

“Ye-es. I don’t know. He seems to have stopped-that is, he’s doing all the things one does, but there’s no heart in him. I don’t think he’s even working on his thesis. He’s just not getting over her.”

James met his wife’s anxious eyes. He smiled. “How long would it take you to get over me?”


She held out her bent hand, and he took it in his. She said, “Dear James. I don’t imagine I would ever get over you.”

“Well, Jessica,” said her husband, “there’s your answer.”

Inside the house, Robert stood in the dim ground-floor hallway with two tablets in his hand. He swallowed them without water and leaned his forehead against the cool plaster wall. It felt marvellous after the relentless sunlight. He could hear the children calling to each other, croquet abandoned for some other game. Now that he was alone he wanted to go back outside, to distract himself, talk of something else. He would go back in a few minutes. His throat felt constricted; the pills had gone down the wrong way. He realised that he was leaving sweat on the wall, and wiped it with his forearm. Robert shut his eyes and thought of James, a small boy sitting up in bed, staring at the shadows of absent trees. Why not, he thought. Why not?


The History of Her Ghost

ELSPETH NOBLIN had been dead for almost a year now, and she was still figuring out the rules.

At first she had simply drifted around her flat. She had little energy and spent a great deal of time staring at her former possessions. She would doze off and reawaken hours, perhaps days later-she couldn’t tell, it didn’t matter. She was shapeless, and spent whole afternoons rolling around on the floor from one patch of sunlight to another, letting it heat every particle of her as though she were air, so that she rose and fell, warmed and cooled.

She discovered that she could get into small spaces, and this led to her first experiment. Her desk had one drawer which she had never been able to open. It must have been stuck, because the key that unlocked all the others didn’t work on the lower-left-hand drawer. It was a shame; it would have been handy for keeping files. Now Elspeth drifted into it through the keyhole. It was empty. She was slightly disappointed. But there was something about being in the drawer that she liked. Being compressed into two cubic feet gave her a solidity that she quickly became addicted to. She didn’t have separate body parts yet, but when she crowded into the drawer Elspeth felt sensations akin to touch: feelings that might be skin against hair, tongue against teeth. She began to stay in the drawer for long periods, to sleep, to think, to calm herself. It’s like going back to the womb, she thought, happy to be contained.

One morning she saw her feet. They were hardly there, but Elspeth recognised them and rejoiced. Hands, legs, arms, breasts, hips and torso followed, and finally Elspeth could feel her head and neck. It was the body she had died in, thin and scarred by needle holes and the wound where the port had been, but she was so glad to see it that for a long time she didn’t care. She gained opacity gradually-that is, she could see herself better and better; to Robert she was quite invisible.

He spent a lot of time in her flat, winding up her business, wandering around touching things, lying on her bed curled up with some piece of her clothing. She worried about him. He looked thin, ill, depressed. I don’t want to see this, she thought. She vacillated between urgently trying to make him aware of her and leaving him alone. He won’t get over it if he knows you’re here, she told herself.

He’s not getting over it anyway.

Sometimes she would touch him. It seemed to affect him like an icy draught; she could see the goosebumps rise on his skin as she ran her hands over him. He felt hot to her. She could only feel warmth and coolness now. Rough and smooth, soft and hard: these were lost to her. She had no sense of taste or smell. Elspeth was haunted by music; songs she had loved, or hated, or barely even noticed now played in her mind. It was impossible to be rid of them. They were like a radio played at low volume in a neighbouring flat.

Elspeth liked to close her eyes and caress her own face. She had substance under her own hands, even though the rest of the world slid through her as though she were walking in front of a film projected on a screen. She no longer went through any daily rituals of washing, dressing or applying make-up: calling a favourite jumper or dress to mind was enough to find herself wearing it. Her hair did not grow, much to Elspeth’s disappointment. It had been hard to see it all fall out, handful by handful, and when it had begun to come in again it was someone else’s hair, silver-grey in exchange for her blonde. It felt coarse when she ran her hands over it.

Elspeth was no longer reflected in mirrors. It drove her mad-she already felt marginal, and not being able to see her own face made her lonely. She sometimes stood in her front hall, looking intently into the various mirrors, but the most she caught was a dark, smudgy indication, as though someone had begun to draw on the air with charcoal and then rubbed it out, incompletely. She could hold out her arms and see her own hands quite visible before her. She could bend over and stare at her well-shod feet. But her face eluded her.

Being a ghost was mostly like that: it forced her to feed off the world. She no longer possessed anything. She had to take her pleasure in the doings of others, in their ability to move objects, consume food, breathe air.

Elspeth badly wanted to make noise. But Robert could not hear her, even when she stood inches away from him and yelled. Elspeth concluded that she had nothing to make a sound with-her ethereal vocal cords weren’t up to the task. So she concentrated on moving things.

At first things were utterly unresponsive. Elspeth would gather all her substance and fury and hurl herself at a sofa cushion or a book: nothing would happen. She tried to open doors, rattle teacups, stop clocks. The results were indiscernible. She decided to retrench, and began to attempt very small effects. One day she triumphed over a paper clip. By dint of patient tugging and pushing she managed to move it half an inch over the course of an hour. She knew then that she was not a negligible being: she could affect the world if she tried hard enough. So every day Elspeth practised. Eventually she could push the paper clip off the desk. She could flutter curtains and twitch the whiskers of the stuffed ermine who sat on her desk. She started to work on light switches. She could make a door sway a few inches, as though a breeze had come through the room. To her joy, she succeeded in turning the pages of a book. Reading had been Elspeth’s great pleasure in life, and now she could indulge in it again, as long as the book was left lying open for her. She began to work on pulling books from their places on the bookshelves.

As insubstantial as objects were to Elspeth, or she to them, the walls of the flat were absolute barriers and she could not pass beyond them. She didn’t mind this at first. She worried that if she went outside she would be dispersed by wind and weather. But eventually she became restless. If her territory had included Robert’s flat she would have been content. She tried many times to sink through the floor, but only ended up in a sort of puddle, like the Wicked Witch of the West. Attempts to slide under the front door into the hallway were also unsuccessful. She could hear Robert down in his flat, taking a shower, talking to the TV, playing Arcade Fire on the stereo. The sounds filled her with self-pity and resentment.

Open windows and doors were inviting but useless. Elspeth found herself dispersing, shapeless but still in the flat, as she tried to pass through them.

Elspeth wondered: Why? What is all this for? I understand the rationale behind heaven and hell, reward and punishment, but if this is limbo, what is the point? What am I supposed to be learning from the spiritual equivalent of house arrest? Is every dead person consigned to haunt his or her former home? If so, where are all the other people who lived here before me? Is this an oversight on the part of the celestial authorities?

She had always been lax when it came to religion. She had been C. of E. in the same way everyone else was: she supposed she believed in God, but it seemed rather uncool to make a fuss about Him. She had seldom been in church unless someone was dead or being wed; in retrospect she felt even more remiss because St. Michael’s was practically next door. I wish I could remember my funeral. It must have happened while she was rolling around the floor of the flat in an amorphous mist. Elspeth wondered if she should have been more assiduous about God. She wondered if she was going to be stuck in her flat for all eternity. She wondered if someone who was already dead could kill herself.


The Violet Dress

EDIE AND VALENTINA sat together in Edie’s workroom, sewing. It was the Saturday before Christmas; Julia had gone downtown with Jack to help him shop. Valentina pinned the dress pattern to yards of violet silk, careful to lay out the pieces without wasting fabric. She was making two identical dresses, and she wasn’t sure she’d bought enough silk.

“That’s good,” Edie said. The room was warm in the afternoon sun, and she felt a little sleepy. She offered Valentina her best scissors and watched the steel work through the thin material. That’s such a great sound, the blades moving together that way. Valentina handed Edie the pieces, and Edie began to transfer the seam lines from the pattern to the fabric. They passed the silk back and forth, working companionably out of long habit. Once the fabric was marked and unpinned and repinned without the pattern, Valentina sat at her sewing machine and carefully stitched the dress together while Edie began to pin and cut out the second dress.

“Look, Mom,” said Valentina. She stood and held the front of the dress against her chest. Static electricity wrapped the skirt around her with a crackle. There were no sleeves yet, and the seams were raw; Edie thought the dress was like a costume for a fairy in a Christmas pantomime. “You look like Cinderella,” Edie said.

“Do I?” Valentina went to the mirror and smiled at her reflection. “I like this colour.”

“It suits you.”

“Julia wanted me to make them in pink.”

Edie frowned. “You’d look like twelve-year-old ballerinas. We could have made hers pink.”

Valentina caught her mother’s eye, then looked away. “It wasn’t worth the hassle. She wanted whatever I was making for myself.”

“I wish you’d stand up to her more often, sweet.”

Valentina peeled the dress away from her and sat down at the machine. She began to make the sleeves. “Did Elspeth boss you around? Or did you boss her?”

Edie hesitated. “We didn’t-it wasn’t like that.” She laid the second dress flat on the table and began to roll the tracing wheel over the seam lines. “We did everything together. We never liked to be alone. I still miss her.” Valentina sat still, waiting for her mother to continue. But Edie said, “Send me photos of the flat, will you? I imagine it must be full of our parents’ furniture; Elspeth loved all that heavy Victorian stuff.”

“Okay, sure.” Valentina turned in her chair and said, “I wish we weren’t going.”

“I know. But it’s like your dad says: you can’t stay home forever.”

“I wasn’t going to.”

Edie smiled. “That’s good.”

“I wish I could stay in this room forever, and sew things.”

“That sounds like a fairy tale.”

Valentina laughed. “I’m Rumpelstiltskin.”

“No, no,” said Edie. She put down the dress pieces and went to Valentina. Edie stood behind her and put her hands on her shoulders. She leaned over and kissed Valentina on her forehead. “You’re the princess.”


Valentina looked up and saw her mother smiling at her upside down. “Am I?”

“Of course,” said Edie. “Always.”

“So we’re going to live happily ever after?”

“Absolutely.”

“Okay.” Valentina had an acute moment, an awareness of a memory being formed. We’re going to live happily ever after? Absolutely. Edie went back to the other dress, and Valentina finished the first sleeve. By the time Jack and Julia got home, Valentina was wearing the violet dress and Edie was crouching in front of her with a mouthful of pins, hemming the skirt. It was all Valentina could do to hold still; she wanted to twirl and make the dress flare out like a carnival ride. I’ll wear it to the ball, she thought, when the prince invites me to dance.

“Can I try it on?” said Julia.

“No,” said Edie through the pins, before Valentina could speak. “This one is hers. Come back later.”

“Okay,” said Julia, and she turned and ran off to wrap the presents Jack had bought.

“See,” said Edie to Valentina. “You just open your mouth and say No.”

“Okay,” said Valentina. She twirled and the dress flared. Edie laughed.


Boxing Day

JACK WALKED into his den and found the twins watching a movie. It was midnight and usually all three of them would have been in bed by now.

“That looks somewhat familiar,” said Jack. “What are you watching?”

“The Filth and the Fury,” Julia said. “It’s a documentary about the Sex Pistols. You and Mom gave it to us for Christmas.”

“Oh.” The twins were sprawled together on the couch, so Jack lowered himself into the recliner. As soon as he was seated he felt exhausted. Jack had always enjoyed Christmas, but the days after Christmas seemed vacant and cheerless. The effect was compounded by the fact that the twins were leaving for London in a few days. Where did the time go? Five days until their twenty-first birthdays. Then gone.

“How’s the packing going?” he asked.

“Okay,” said Valentina. She turned off the sound on the TV. “We’re going to be over the weight limit.”

“Somehow that’s not surprising,” Jack said.

“We need to get converters, you know, to plug in our computers and stuff.” Julia looked at Jack. “Can we go downtown with you tomorrow?”

“Sure. We’ll have lunch at Heaven on Seven,” Jack said. “Your mom will want to come with.” Edie had been shadowing the twins for weeks, hoarding them, memorising them.

“That’s cool, we can go to Water Tower. We need new boots.”

Valentina watched Johnny Rotten singing silently. He looks deranged. That’s a great sweater. She and Julia had studiously prepared for the trip to London, reading Lonely Planet and Charles Dickens, making packing lists and trying to find their new flat on Google Earth. They had speculated endlessly about Aunt Elspeth and the mysterious Mr. Fanshaw, had been very pleasantly surprised by the amount of money in their new bank account at Lloyd’s. Now there was hardly anything left to do, which created an odd void, a feeling of restless dread. Valentina wanted to leave right this minute, or never.

Julia watched her father. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. Why?”

“I dunno, you seem kind of wiped.” You’ve gained a huge amount of weight and you sigh a lot. What’s wrong with you?

“I’m okay. It’s just the holidays.”

“Oh.”

Jack sat trying to imagine the house/his marriage/his life without the twins. He and Edie had been avoiding the subject for months, so now he thought about it obsessively, oscillating between fantasies of marital bliss, his actual memories of the last time the twins had left home and his worries about Edie.

For some time before Elspeth’s death Edie had been distracted. Jack had hired the detective in hope of discovering the reason for her absentmindedness, her vacant stare, her bright, false cheer whenever he asked her about it. But the detective could only observe Edie; he had no answers for Jack’s questions. After Elspeth’s death Edie’s distraction had been replaced by a profound sadness. Jack could not comfort her. He could not seem to say the right thing, though he tried. Now he wondered how Edie would fare once the twins were gone.

Each time the twins left for college, things started out well. Jack and Edie revelled in their freedom: there would be late nights, loud sex, spur-of-the-moment amusements and slightly excessive drinking. But then a kind of bleakness always set in. Soon it would be upon them, their empty house. They would eat dinner together, just the two of them; the evening would stretch out before them in silence, to be filled with a DVD and perhaps a walk down to the beach or the club. Or they would retreat to opposite ends of the house, he to surf the Internet or read a Tom Clancy novel, Edie to work on her needlepoint while listening to an audio book. (She was currently listening to Brideshead Revisited, which Jack thought was pretty much guaranteed to produce a serious bout of depression.)

Tonight he didn’t see much to look forward to after the twins were gone. He felt grateful to them for having stuck around as long as they had, grateful to Edie and Elspeth for having arranged things so that Julia and Valentina could grow up in this ugly, comfortable house, so he could be Dad, so the girls could sit here in his room watching Johnny Rotten spastically singing “God Save the Queen” with the sound turned off; suddenly Jack was overwhelmed with a gratitude that felt like grief, and he struggled out of his chair, muttered Goodnight and left the room, afraid that if he sat there one minute longer he would cry or blurt out something he’d regret. He walked into his bedroom, where Edie slept curled up, faintly blue in the clock-radio light. Jack undressed silently, got into bed without brushing his teeth and lay there in an abyss, unable to imagine any happiness for himself ever again.

Valentina turned off the TV. The twins rose and stretched. “He seems really down,” said Valentina.

“They’re both, like, suicidal,” replied Julia. “I wonder what will happen when we’re gone?”

“Maybe we shouldn’t go.”


Julia looked impatient. “We have to go somewhere, eventually. The sooner we’re gone, the sooner they’ll get over it.”

“I guess.”

“We’ll call them every Sunday. They can come and visit.”

“I know.” Valentina took a breath. “Maybe you should go to London and I’ll stay here with them.”

Julia experienced a frisson of rejection. You’d rather stay with Mom and Dad than be with me? “No!” She paused, trying to quell her irritation. Valentina watched, a little amused. “Mouse, we both have to-”

“I know. Don’t worry. I’m coming with you.” She pressed against Julia, put her arm around Julia’s shoulders. Then they turned out the light and walked to their room, glancing at their parents’ door as they passed.


New Year’s Day

ROBERT STOOD in Elspeth’s office. The twins would arrive tomorrow. He had brought along an external hard drive and a few boxes from Sainsbury’s; these stood empty and open next to Elspeth’s enormous Victorian desk.

Elspeth sat on her desk and watched Robert. Oh, you don’t look happy, love. She had no idea how much time had passed. Had she died months ago? Years? Something was happening; until now Robert had kept her flat almost unchanged. He’d thrown out most of the food and cancelled her credit cards. She no longer received mail. He had closed her business and written personal letters to her customers. It was becoming very dusty in the flat. Even the sunlight seemed dimmer than she remembered; the windows needed washing.

Robert went through the drawers of Elspeth’s desk. He left the stationery and the invoices. He took some packets of photographs and a notebook she’d doodled in while she talked on the telephone. He went to the bookshelves and began carefully removing the ledgers she’d used as diaries, dusting them and placing them in the boxes. Open one, Elspeth said. Open that one. But of course Robert couldn’t hear her.

He worked in silence. Elspeth felt slighted; sometimes he talked to her when he was in the flat. Photo albums, a shoebox full of letters, notebooks went into the boxes. She wanted to touch him but held back. Robert plugged the hard drive into her computer and transferred her files. Then he wiped the computer of everything except the system and applications. Elspeth stood behind him and watched. How strange, to feel sad about the computer. I must really be dead now. Robert unplugged the hard drive and put it in a box.

He began roaming through the flat, box in hand, Elspeth trailing behind him. The bedroom, she urged silently. When he got there he stood in the doorway for a few minutes. Elspeth flowed by him and sat on the bed. She looked at him: there was something about her sitting here and the way he stood there and the light, the way the light bathed the room in dusty warmth. In a moment he’ll come over here and kiss me. Elspeth waited, forgetting. They had done this so many times.

Robert opened the door of her dressing room. He put the box down and opened a drawer. He put a few camisoles, a couple of bras and some of her fancier knickers into the box. He stood surveying her shoes. He’ll take the pink suede heels, Elspeth thought, and he did. He adjusted the position of the other shoes so there was no gap. Don’t forget the letters. He opened a drawer full of jumpers and smelled each one. The one he picked was a nondescript blue cashmere; she imagined it must not have been dry-cleaned since she’d worn it last. He opened another drawer and scooped their sex toys into the box. You missed one, Elspeth said, but he shut the drawer.

Robert reached up and retrieved a box from the top shelf. Elspeth smiled. She had counted on him to be thorough, and he was. He set it beside the box full of clothing.

Robert cleared out the bathroom. He threw most of her toiletries in the bin, but stood holding her diaphragm for a moment. What a daft thing to get sentimental about, she thought. Then that, too, went into the bin.

He shut the bathroom door and stood next to the bed, thinking. Then he lay down on the bed. Elspeth lay beside him, careful not to touch, hopeful. What if I don’t see you again? He was taking the things she had given him; he was leaving the flat. Don’t be shy, sweet. It’s justyou and me. She cheered when he undid his belt buckle and unzipped his fly. She imagined herself naked beside him, and she was.

Sometimes he imitated her technique, but today he was rougher, more utilitarian with himself. Elspeth watched Robert’s face. She sat up and leaned over him; his eyes were closed. She touched his hair. She put her face close to his, let his breath warm her. So warm, so solid. She would have given anything to be alive with him then, to touch him. Elspeth knew that her touch was cold to him; whenever she’d tried to touch him he would shiver and shrink. So she knelt beside him, watching.

She had often marvelled at the play of expression in Robert’s face during sex. Desire, concentration, pain, endurance, hilarity, desperation, release: she sometimes felt as though she were watching a pageant of the extremes of Robert’s soul. Today it was determination, a kind of grim plea; it seemed to take a long time, and Elspeth began to be anxious. Enjoy it, at least. For both of us. She watched his hands on his cock, watched the way his toes curled, the sideways jerk of his head as he came. His body went slack. Robert opened his eyes and stared through Elspeth at the ceiling. I’m here, Robert.

A tear rolled halfway across his cheek. Don’t, sweet. Don’t cry. Elspeth had never seen Robert cry, not even in hospital, not even when she’d died. Oh, hell. I don’t want you to be so miserable. She reached down and touched the tear. Robert turned his head, startled.

I’m here I’m here I’m here. She looked around for something she could move, and began to sway the curtains, slightly. But Robert was sitting up, wiping his hands, fastening his trousers, not watching. She tried to shake the box of sex toys and knickers, but it was too heavy for her. She stood in the middle of the room, exhausted. Robert went into the bathroom and washed, came out holding the bin bag full of her things. He put it down and began straightening the bedclothes. Elspeth sat on the bed while he did this, and when he leaned over she put her hands against his chest, reaching through his shirt, touching his skin lightly. He recoiled.

“Elspeth?” He was whispering, urgent.


Robert. She ran her hands over his skin, slowly: back, hips, legs, cock, stomach, hands, arms. He stood with his head turned and lowered, his eyes closed. She imagined what he might feel-perhaps it was like ice cubes moving over his body? She pushed her hands into him and he gasped. You’re so warm, she thought, and knew what he must feel; her immaterial coldness must be the opposite of his lovely hot liquid body. She took her hands away. She could still feel his warmth in her hands. She looked at them, expecting them to glow a bit. Robert had crossed his arms over his chest and stood hunched over, shivering. Oh sweet, I’m sorry.

“Elspeth,” he whispered. “If that’s you-do something-do something only you’d know-an Elspeth thing…”

She put the tip of her finger between his eyebrows and slowly stroked it down his nose, his lips, his chin. She did it again.

“Yes,” he said. “My God.” He sat down on the bed again, elbows on knees, head in hands, and stared at the floor. Elspeth sat next to him, ecstatic. Finally! She was virtually drunk with relief. You know I’m here!

Robert groaned. Elspeth looked at him: his eyes were screwed up tight and he was rhythmically hitting his forehead with both fists. “I’ve completely-lost-my bloody-mind. Shit.” He got up, grabbed the boxes and the bin liner, and walked quickly back to her office. Elspeth followed, disbelieving. Wait-Robert-don’t-

He hefted each box, strode through the hall and across the landing and carted it all down the stairs to his flat. She stood at her open front door, listening to his footsteps moving through his flat and then back up the stairs. She let him walk right through her each time he came up, and trailed after him, catching stray mutterings as he stalked along.

“Jessica said I was losing the plot, and right she was! ‘You’re going to make yourself ill,’ she said, and damned if I haven’t…What have I been playing at, she’s not coming back…Oh, God, Elspeth.”

The door shut. Elspeth was alone, again. Tears, she thought, as though she were summoning a jumper. She put her hand to her face and felt tears. Gosh, I’m crying. She paused to marvel at her new accomplishment. Then she turned to face her silent flat.


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