Part Two


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The Mirror Twins

JULIA AND VALENTINA POOLE walked off the plane and into Heathrow Airport. Their white, patent-leather shoes hit the carpeting in perfect step, with movie-musical precision. They wore white kneesocks, white pleated skirts that ended four inches above their knees, and plain white T-shirts under white woollen coats. Each twin wore a long white scarf and wheeled a suitcase behind her. Julia’s suitcase was pink and yellow terry cloth, and had a Japanese cartoon-monkey face that leered at the people walking behind her. Valentina’s blue-and-green suitcase’s cartoon face was a mouse. The mouse looked both regretful and shy.

Outside the airport windows the morning sky was blue. The twins made their way through the endless corridors, stood to the right on people-movers, followed exhausted passengers down ramps and stairs. They stood in the queue for the Immigration officials, holding hands, yawning. When their turn came, the twins handed over their virginal passports.

“How long will you be staying?” asked the tired woman in the uniform.

“Forever,” said Julia. “We’ve inherited a flat. We’ve come to live in it.” She smiled at Valentina, who smiled back. The woman scrutinised their residency visas, stamped their passports and waved them into the UK.

Forever, Valentina thought. I will live forever with Julia in our apartment in London, which we have never seen, surrounded by people we haven’t met, forever. She squeezed Julia’s hand. Julia winked at her.

The black cab was draughty and cold. Valentina and Julia dozed in the backseat, their feet crowded by piles of luggage, still clutching each other’s hands. London streets flashed by or stood still; other drivers whooshed along, following incomprehensible traffic laws. Julia and Valentina had learned to drive, but as the taxi wove through congested serpentine streets, Julia realised that driving in London was going to be impossible, even for her, and certainly for the Mouse. The Mouse didn’t like to get lost, didn’t like to be in strange places. Plus they didn’t own a car. Julia resigned herself to taxis and public transportation. She watched a red double-decker bus swaying along beside them. Everyone inside looked tired and bored. How can you be bored? You live in London! You’re breathing the same air as the Queen and Vivienne Westwood!

The taxi passed a tube station. People swarmed out of it. Julia looked at her watch, which read 4:15. She reset it to 10:15. They turned onto Highgate Road, and Julia thought they must be getting close. She looked at Valentina, who was sitting up now and staring out the window. The taxi began to climb a steep hill. SWAINS LANE. “Is that like Lover’s Lane?” Valentina asked. “More like swine, miss,” said the driver. “They used to drive the pigs along here.” Valentina blushed. Julia took out her lipstick and applied it without a mirror, offered it to Valentina, who did the same. They looked at each other. Julia reached out and wiped a tiny bit of errant pink lipstick from the corner of Valentina’s mouth. Over the radio came a long string of code-like names and numbers: Tamworth one, Burton Albion one; Barnet nil, Woking nil; Exeter City nil, Hereford United one; Aldershot two, Dagenham and Red-bridge one… “Football scores, miss,” said the driver when Julia asked.

They reached the top of the hill and drove along a narrow street with a park on one side, brick houses on the other. A large church stood in the middle of the block, and the cab pulled up halfway between it and the blank-faced stucco building just after it. “Here it is. Vautravers Mews.” The driver took Julia’s money. She was shocked when she realised they’d just spent almost $120 on a cab ride. She tipped ten per cent. “Thank you,” said the driver. Valentina opened the taxi door and cold wet wind rushed at her.

“I don’t see it,” she called to Julia. The church was on the left, and the stucco building was number 72. Between them was a narrow asphalt path that descended precipitously into gloom. It was overshadowed by a huge brick wall that bounded the church’s property. But Valentina couldn’t see any house that might be theirs.

“It’ll be along here,” said the taxi driver. “Shall I help you with those?” He picked up an impossible number of suitcases and walked down the path. Julia and Valentina followed, wheeling their terry-cloth suitcases. The little path led them behind the stucco house, and then they saw a high stone wall with spikes set on top. Rampant birch trees spilled over it. Valentina smelled damp earth, and it made her homesick. Julia was opening a heavy wooden gate with a large key. The gate swung silently, and Julia disappeared behind the wall. The driver had placed the suitcases in a neat row; Valentina stood on the asphalt near them, reluctant to go in. The driver looked at her curiously. He was a thinnish, oldish man with watery blue eyes. He wore a bright green cardigan and brown plaid trousers. “Are you all right, miss?” he asked.

“Yes. I’m fine,” said Valentina, although she actually felt somewhat nauseated.

“Come on, Mouse!” Julia yelled. Her voice sounded muffled and remote.

“You’re Americans?” said the driver.

“Our aunt left us her apartment in her will,” Valentina said. Then she felt foolish. Why should he care?

“Ah,” said the driver. This seemed to satisfy his curiosity about them. Valentina felt a surge of gratitude. He wasn’t going to ask about them being twins. Maybe he felt that would be too personal. Or maybe he hadn’t noticed. She loved it when people failed to notice.

“Mouse!”

The driver gave her a little smile. “Go on, then.” Valentina smiled back, and dragged her suitcase through the gate.

Julia was standing at the front door with her hand on the doorknob. She waited for Valentina to make her way over the squishy moss that covered the stones in the footpath. Valentina looked at the great dark bulk of Vautravers, at the black windows and elaborate ironwork, and shivered. It wasn’t quite raining, but it wasn’t exactly not raining either. She heard the driver squelching along the path behind her. Julia opened the door.

They stepped into the front hall. In contrast to the outside of the building, it was warm, neat and virtually empty. The walls were painted a pinkish grey, a colour that reminded Valentina of brains. To the right was a closed oak door with a tiny hand-lettered card that read FANSHAW. In front of them a small table held three empty baskets; an umbrella leaned against the table. To their left was a staircase, which curved and rose above their heads. Valentina thought there ought to be a little bottle labelled DRINK ME, but there wasn’t.

“You can just leave those here,” said Julia to the driver. Valentina said, “Thank you.” The driver replied, “Good luck, then,” and was gone. Valentina felt a little bereft. “Come on,” said Julia. She bounded up the stairs as though she’d been released from gravity. Valentina followed more sedately.

On the next landing a faded Oriental carpet appeared. The stairs continued, but the twins stopped. The card on the door was pale green, and NOBLIN was typed on it, apparently with an actual typewriter. Julia inserted the key into the keyhole. She had to wiggle it back and forth a few times before she got the lock open. She looked back at Valentina. Valentina took Julia’s hand, and together they walked into their new home.


The front hall was full of umbrellas and mirrors. The twins were reflected eighteen times in as many mirrors, and their reflections were reflected, and on and on. They were startled by this; both stood perfectly still and were each unsure which reflection belonged to which girl. Then Julia turned her head: half of the reflections also turned; the effect was diminished. “Spooky,” said Julia, to mar the silence. Valentina said, “Uh-huh.” She put a hand out in front of her like a blind person and moved through the passageway from the hall into a large dark room.

Elspeth was dozing in her drawer. Voices woke her.

As Julia stepped into the front room behind Valentina, she had a sensation of being underwater, as though the room were at the bottom of a pond. All the things in the room were bulky shadows; Valentina was a slim shadow moving in the gloom. Julia heard a noise (which was Valentina tripping over a pile of books), and then light entered the room as Valentina drew the curtains on the tall wide windows. The light was cold and grey and sort of particulate. The room was very dusty.

“Look, Julia-an owl!” It hung suspended from the high ceiling, in place of an absent light fixture that had left a small hole with wires coming out of it. The owl’s wings were spread and its talons were open to grasp some small prey. Julia reached up and carefully touched one of the feet, which set the owl spinning, slowly. “It’s an owlicopter,” she said, and Valentina laughed.

Elspeth stood in the doorway watching the twins. Oh, I missed you. I wanted to see you again, and now you’re here. She hugged herself, eager and apprehensive.

As Edie had predicted, all of the furniture was heavy, ornate and old. The sofas were pale pink velvet, beast-footed, many-buttoned. There was a baby grand piano (the twins were distinctly unmusical) and a vast Persian rug which was chrysanthemum-patterned, soft to the touch, and had at one time been deep red, now faded in most places to dull pink. Everything in the room seemed to have been drained of colour. Julia wondered if the colour had all collected somewhere else; perhaps it was in some closet, and when they opened that door it would all flood back into the objects it had deserted. She thought of Sleeping Beauty, and the palace, still for a hundred years, full of motionless courtiers. Edie and Jack preferred new things. Julia ran her finger across the piano, leaving a trail of shining black amid the dull dust. Valentina sneezed. Both girls looked at the doorway as though expecting to be caught intruding on the silence of the flat.

Elspeth stepped forward, about to speak, then realised they couldn’t see her.

There were books everywhere: entire walls of bookcases, piles of books on tables, on the floor. Valentina knelt to collect the pile she had tripped over, a little island of bestiaries and herbals. “Look, Julia, a manticore.” The twins wandered back into the hall. Elspeth followed them.

They crossed a rather bare dining room which contained only a formal table and chairs and a large sideboard; a little tufted ottoman stood orphaned in a corner. Bleak daylight seeped in through huge French windows that led to a diminutive balcony. The twins could see the church rising over a wall of ivy.

Next, a room that was meant to be a parlour but had been used by Elspeth as an office. There was an enormous, ornate desk with a clunky fifties office chair. On the desk sat a scruffy computer, heaps of papers, more books, a credit-card-processing machine, a delicate white and gold teacup with long-evaporated tea at the bottom and apricot lipstick staining the rim. Bookcases lined the walls, stuffed with reference books and a complete OED. An anomalous shelf was bare and dust-free. The room was bursting with flattened packing boxes, bubble wrap, file cabinets and a small stuffed ermine, which peered at them from its perch atop a set of library card catalogue drawers. The room seemed to have been neatened without actually becoming neat. Valentina sat down at the desk and pulled out the centre drawer. It contained invoice pads, Smints, paper clips, rubber bands and business cards:

Elspeth Noblin

Rare and Used Books

Bought and Sold

enoblin@bookish.uk.com


Valentina said, “Do you think all these books were for her, or to sell? I wonder if she had a shop?”

“I think this was the shop,” said Julia. “None of these receipts has an address on it. I bet she worked from here. Besides, the will didn’t mention anything besides this place.”

“I wish Mom knew more. It’s so lame that they didn’t talk to each other.” Valentina got up and examined the ermine. It stared back at her, insouciant. “What do you suppose his name was?” Valentina asked. She thought, It’s sad that we don’t know.

Margaret, Elspeth thought. Her name was Margaret.

“He looks like George Bush.” Julia headed back through the dining room as she spoke, and Valentina followed her.

A swinging door at the far end of the room led to the kitchen. It was old-fashioned, and the appliances were, by the twins’ American standards, dollhouse-sized. Everything was compact, serviceable, white. The only thing that seemed new was the dishwasher. Valentina opened a cupboard and found a washing machine inside. There was a contraption that sprung into a complicated configuration of clothesline and metal. “Guess that’s the dryer,” said Julia, refolding it. The electrical outlets were shaped differently here. All the kitchen implements were subtly weird, foreign. The twins exchanged uneasy looks. Valentina turned on the tap, and water spurted out with a grunt. She hesitated, then ran her hands under the rust-coloured stream. It took awhile to get warm.

Elspeth watched the twins puzzling over her very ordinary belongings. She listened to their American accents. They’re strangers; I didn’t expect that.

Behind the kitchen was a small bedroom. It was full to the brim with boxes and dusty furniture. There was a tiny, plain bathroom attached to it. The twins realised that it must have been intended for a servant. Here was the back door and the fire escape, here an almost-empty pantry. “Mmm,” said Julia. “Rice.”

Back to the hall (“We should collect two hundred dollars every time we go through here,” said Valentina) and into the bedrooms. There were two, connected by a splendid white marble-tiled bathroom. Each bedroom had a fireplace, elaborate built-in bookshelves, windows with window seats.

The other bedroom, which had obviously been Elspeth’s, overlooked the garden, and Highgate Cemetery.

“Look, Julia.” Valentina stood at the window, marvelling.

Vautravers’ back garden was small and austere. Though the front yard was a deranged tangle of bushes, trees and clumpy grass, this little back garden was almost Japanese in its arrangement of gravelled sloping walks, a stone bench and modest plants.

“I can’t believe it’s so green in January,” said Julia. Back home in Lake Forest the snow lay ten inches thick on the ground.

There was a green wooden door in the brick wall that separated the garden from the cemetery.

“I wonder if anyone goes in,” said Valentina. The ivy around the door was tidily clipped back.

“I will,” said Julia. “We’ll go on picnics.”

“Mmm.”

Beyond the wall, Highgate Cemetery spread before them, vast and chaotic. Because they were on a hill, they might have seen quite far down into the cemetery, but the density of the trees prevented this; the branches were bare, but they formed a latticework that confused the eye. They could see the top of a large mausoleum, and a number of smaller graves. As they watched, a group of people strolled towards them along a path and then stopped, evidently discussing one of the graves. Then the group continued towards them and disappeared behind the wall. Hundreds of crows rose into the air as one. Even through the closed window they could hear the rush of wings. The sun abruptly came out again and the cemetery changed from deep shade and grey to dappled yellow and pale green. The gravestones turned white and seemed to be edged with silver; they hovered, tooth-like amid the ivy.

Valentina said, “It’s a fairyland.” She had been nervous about the cemetery. She had imagined smells and vandalism and creepiness. Instead it was verdant, full of mossy stone and the soft tapping noises of the trees. The group of people wandered away from them, strolling down the path on the opposite side from which they’d come. Julia said, “They must be tourists, with a guide.”

“We should do that. Go on the tour.”

“Okay.” Julia turned and considered Elspeth’s bedroom. There was a huge nest-like bed, with numerous pillows, a chenille bedspread and an elaborate painted wooden headboard. “I vote we sleep in here.”

Valentina surveyed the room. It was nicer than the other bedroom; larger, cosier, brighter. “Are you sure we want the room that overlooks the cemetery? It seems weird, you know; like, if this was a movie, there would be all these zombies or something creeping out of there at night and climbing up the ivy and grabbing us by our hair and turning us into zombies. Plus it was Aunt Elspeth’s bedroom. What if she died in here? I mean, it seems like we’re sort of asking for it, you know?”

Julia felt impatience rise up in her throat. She wanted to say, Don’t be an idiot, Valentina, but that was not the way to soothe the Mouse when she was being irrational. “Hey, Mouse,” she cooed. “You know she died in the hospital, not here. That’s what the lawyer told Mom, remember?”

“Ye-ssss,” Valentina replied.

Julia sat down on the bed and patted the coverlet, inviting. Valentina walked over and sat next to Julia. They both lay back on the soft bed, their thin white legs dangling over the edge. Julia sighed. Her eyelids wanted to close for just a second, just a moment more, just one more minute…


“This must be jet lag,” Valentina said, but Julia didn’t hear her. In a minute Valentina too was asleep.

Elspeth walked over to the bed. Here you are, all grown up. How strange this is, you here. I wish you had come before…I didn’t realise, it would have been so simple. Too late, like everything else. Now Elspeth leaned over the twins and touched them very lightly. Her reading glasses hung around her neck, and they brushed against Valentina’s shoulder as Elspeth bent over her. She saw how the little mole by Julia’s right ear repeated itself by Valentina’s left ear. She put her head on their chests and listened to their hearts. Valentina’s had a disturbing swoosh, a whisper instead of a beat. Elspeth sat on the bed next to Julia and petted Julia’s hair: it barely moved, as though a miniature breeze had come in through the closed windows.

Like, but unlike. Elspeth saw in Julia and Valentina the strangeness, the oneness that had always so discomfited people in herself and Edie. She thought of things that Edie had written to her about the twins. Do you mind Julia bossing you all the time, Valentina? Have either of you got any friends? Lovers? Aren’t you a bit old to be dressing alike? Elspeth laughed. I sound like a nagging mother. She felt exhilarated. They’re here! She wished she could welcome the twins somehow, sing a little song, do an elaborate pantomime demonstrating how glad she was that they’d arrived to alleviate the boredom of the afterlife. Instead she gave each twin a delicate kiss on the forehead and settled cat-like on the pillows to watch over their sleep.

Almost an hour later, Valentina stirred. She had a little dream as she woke. She was a child, and Edie’s voice came floating into her ears, telling her to get up, it was snowing and they would have to leave early for school.

“Mom?”

Valentina sat up hurriedly and found herself in a strange room. It took her a moment to think where she was. Julia was still asleep. Valentina wanted to call their mother, but their cell phones didn’t work internationally. She found a telephone by the bed, but when she raised the receiver it was disconnected. No one can call us, and we can’t call anyone. Valentina started to feel lonely, in the enjoyable manner of those who are seldom alone. If I left now, before Julia wakes up, no one could find me. I could just vanish. She slid off the bed carefully. Julia didn’t stir. There was a dressing room connected to Aunt Elspeth’s bedroom, a kind of walk-in closet with a built-in dresser and a full-length mirror. Valentina glanced at herself in the mirror: as always, she looked more like Julia than herself. She opened a drawer in the dresser, found a vibrator, and shut the drawer again, embarrassed. Elspeth stood in the doorway, slightly apprehensive. She watched as Valentina tried on a pair of red platform heels. They were just a bit long, maybe a half size. They would fit Julia better. Valentina took a grey Persian-lamb coat off its hanger and put it on. Elspeth thought, She’s a mouse in sheep’s clothing. Valentina rehung the coat and went back into the bedroom. Elspeth let her walk through her. Valentina shivered and rubbed her upper arms briskly with her hands.

Julia woke and turned her face towards Valentina. “Mouse,” she said thickly.

“I’m here.” Valentina climbed back onto the bed. “Are you cold?” She pulled the bedspread over the two of them and twined her fingers into Julia’s hair.

Julia said, “No.” She closed her eyes. “I had such a bizarre dream.”

Valentina waited but she did not continue.

Eventually Julia said, “So?”

“…Yes.” They smiled at each other, their faces pumpkin-coloured in the filtered light under the chenille.

Elspeth stood watching them, fused together into a single form under the coverlet. She had not seriously worried that they might refuse her, but she was still giddy with pleasure now that she understood that they would stay. Think of all the things that will happen to you-to us! Adventures, meals…Books will be taken off shelves and opened. There will be music and perhaps parties. Elspeth twirled around the bedroom a few times. She swapped the red wool jumper and brown corduroy trousers she’d been wearing for a bottle-green strapless gown she had once worn to a summer ball up at Oxford. She hummed to herself, twirling out through the bedroom door, into the hall where she danced up the walls and across the ceiling à la Fred Astaire. I’ve always wanted to do that. Hee hee.

“Did you hear something?” asked Valentina.

“Huh? No,” replied Julia.

“It sounded like mice.”

“Zombies.” They giggled. Julia got off the bed and stretched. “Let’s bring up the luggage,” she said. Elspeth followed them to the door and made little skipping steps as she watched the twins dragging their belongings into her flat, ecstatic with novelty as they hung their clothes next to hers, stuck bottles of shampoo in the shower and plugged their laptops in to charge. After some discussion, they set up Valentina’s sewing machine in the guest bedroom, where it was to gather dust for months. Elspeth watched them with delight. You’re beautiful, she thought, and was surprised to be so surprised. You’re mine. She felt something like love for these girls, these strangers.

“Well, here we are,” said Julia, after they had emptied their suitcases and fussed over the placement of every sweater and hairbrush.

“Yep,” agreed Valentina. “I guess.”


Mr. Roche

THE FOLLOWING morning Julia and Valentina went to see Mr. Xavier Roche, their solicitor. Actually, he was Elspeth’s solicitor; the twins had inherited him along with the rest of Elspeth’s things. For many months now Mr. Roche had been sending them papers to be signed, as well as instructions and keys and dry, admonitory emails.

Their cab deposited them in front of a faux-Tudor Hampstead office block. The firm of Roche, Elderidge, Potts & Lefley was above a travel agency. The twins climbed the narrow stairs and found themselves in a small anteroom which contained a door, a bare desk, a swivel chair, two uncomfortable armchairs, a small table and a copy of The Times. The twins sat in the armchairs for ten minutes, feeling anxious, but nothing happened. Finally Julia got up and opened the door. She beckoned to Valentina.

In the next room was another desk, but this one was occupied by a neat, elderly secretary and an enormous beige computer. The office was done in a style that Elspeth had always referred to as Early Thatcher. To the twins it seemed oddly modest; it was their introduction to the British proclivity for making certain things important and shabby, expensive and self-deprecating all at once. The secretary ushered them into another office decorated in the same style but with more books, and said, “Please sit down. Mr. Roche will be with you directly.”

Mr. Roche, when he arrived, was startling, even Dickensian, but not in the way the twins had imagined. He was an old man. He had been quite small to begin with and had shrunk with age; he walked using a stick, slowly, so that the twins had plenty of time to consider his comb-over, his prodigious eyebrows and his well-made but loose-fitting suit as he crossed the carpet and took each of their hands in turn, gently. “The Misses Poole,” he said, in a grave voice. “It is a great pleasure to meet you both.” He had dark eyes and a prominent nose. Julia thought, He looks like Mom’s gnome cookie jar. Elspeth had sometimes called him Mr. Imp, though never in his hearing.

“Let’s sit here at the table, shall we?” he said, moving incrementally. Valentina pulled out a chair for him and then the twins stood and waited while he eased himself into it. “It’s so much nicer and more informal than the desk, don’t you think? Constance will bring us some tea. Oh, thank you, my dear. Now then, tell me all about your adventures. What have you done since you’ve arrived?”

“Slept, mostly,” said Julia. “We’re pretty jet-lagged.”

“And has Robert Fanshaw been to see you?”

“Um, no. But we just got here yesterday,” Julia said.

“Ah, well, I expect he’ll come by today, then. He’s very eager to meet you.” Mr. Roche smiled and looked at each of them in turn. “You are astonishingly like your mother’s side of the family. If I didn’t know better I’d think I was sitting with Edie and Elspeth, twenty years ago.” He poured them each some tea.

Valentina asked, “You knew them then?” Mr. Roche was so ancient that she would have believed it if he claimed acquaintance with Queen Victoria.

He smiled. “Dear child, my father was your great-grandfather’s solicitor. I dandled your grandfather on my knee when he was tiny, and when your mother and aunt were small they used to sit on that carpet and play with blocks whilst I talked to their parents, just as the three of us are talking now.” The twins smiled back at him. “It’s a pity that Elspeth is no longer here to greet you. But I can tell you that she was excited about your coming to live here, and she has provided for you quite handsomely. I hope the terms of the will are clear?”

“We have to live in the flat for a year before we can sell it,” said Julia.

“Mom and Dad can’t visit us,” said Valentina.

“No, no,” said Mr. Roche. “I certainly hope your parents will come and visit you; that isn’t what Elspeth meant. She only stipulated that they aren’t to be in the flat.”

“But why not?” said Valentina.

“Ah.” Mr. Roche looked regretful. He spread his gnarled hands, tilted his head. “Elspeth often kept her own counsel. Have you asked your mother? No, I imagine she wouldn’t want to discuss it.” Mr. Roche watched the twins as he spoke. It seemed to Julia that he was expecting some kind of reaction from them. “People can be odd about their wills. All sorts of strange things get put into wills, often with unintended effects.”

He waited for them to say something. The twins shifted in their chairs, embarrassed by his scrutiny. Finally Julia said, “Oh?” But Mr. Roche only lowered his eyes and reached for a folder.

“Now then,” he said, “let me show you how your money is invested.” The twins found the next half hour confusing but thrilling. They had made money babysitting, and had spent one summer as counsellors at a Girl Scout camp in Wisconsin, but they had never imagined possessing the sums Mr. Roche spread before them.

“How much is there altogether?” Julia asked.

“Two and a half million pounds or so, if we include the value of the flat.”

Julia glanced at Valentina. “We can live on that pretty much forever,” she said. Valentina frowned.


Mr. Roche shook his head very slightly. “Not in London. You’ll be surprised at what things cost.”

Valentina said, “Can we work here?”

“You don’t have the proper visas, but we can certainly apply. What sort of work do you do?”

Valentina said, “We aren’t sure yet. But we’re planning to go back to school.”

“Actually, we’re done with school,” said Julia.

Mr. Roche looked from one to the other and said, “Ah.”

“We were curious,” said Julia. “Why did Aunt Elspeth leave everything to us? I mean, we’re really grateful and all, but we don’t understand why she never came to see us but she left us her stuff.”

Mr. Roche was silent for a moment. “Elspeth was not a very-nurturing sort of woman, but she did have a strong family feeling.” He added, “I’m afraid I really couldn’t say why, but here we are.”

Couldn’t say, or wouldn’t say? the twins wondered.

“Can I answer any other questions?”

Valentina said, “We don’t exactly understand how the heating works in the apartment. It was kind of cold in there last night.”

“Robert can help you with that; he’s a very practical chap,” Mr. Roche said. “Do say hello to him for me, and ask him to give me a ring, there are one or two things we ought to go over.” He bid them goodbye. Julia turned back as they were leaving and found him standing with both hands on his stick, watching them with a bemused expression.

When they got back to Vautravers the building was quiet and cheerless. In the front hall Julia said, “Maybe we should just knock on his door.”

“Who?”

“This Robert Fanshaw guy. We could ask about the heat.”

Valentina shrugged. Julia knocked; she could hear the sound of a television playing faintly in the flat. Julia waited and then knocked again, louder, but no one came to the door. “Oh well,” she said, and they went upstairs.


The Upstairs Neighbour

MARTIN PUT the phone down on the bed. The bed was an island. Around the bed was a sea of contamination. Martin had been crouching on the bed for four hours. Luckily there were survival tools there in bed with him: the telephone, some bread and cheese, his worn copy of Pliny. Martin wanted very much to leave the bed. He needed to pee, and he was hoping to get some work done today. His computer sat waiting for him in the office. But somehow Martin sensed, he knew, that there had been a hideous accident in the night. The bedroom floor was covered with filth. Germs, shit, vomit: someone had got into the flat and smeared this horrible slime over the floor. Why? Martin wondered. Why does this always happen? Is this possible? No, it’s not real. But what can I do about it?

As if he had asked the question out loud, an answer came to him: Count backwards from a thousand, in Roman numerals. Touch the headboard while you do it. Of course! Martin began to comply, but faltered at DCCXXIII and had to start again. As he counted, he wondered, with a separate part of his brain, why this was necessary. He lost track again, started again.

The telephone rang. Martin ignored it and tried to focus on counting. It rang three more times, then the answering machine picked up. Hello, this is Martin and Marijke Wells. We’re not here now. Please leave a message. Beep. A pause. “Martin? Come on, pick up, I know you’re there. You’re always there.” Robert’s voice. “Martin.” A click. Martin realised that he had lost track of his counting again. He threw the telephone across the bedroom. It smashed against the wall and began to buzz. Martin was horrified. Now he would have to replace the phone. It was on the floor, contaminated. The light in the bedroom was afternoon light, slanted. He had failed to escape from the bed. Once again, he had allowed his madness to rule him.

But an idea came to him. Yes: he would simply move the bed. The bed was large, wooden, antique. Martin clambered to the footboard and began to rock the bed, to propel the bed towards the bathroom. The bed moved in inches, its small wooden wheels scraping the floorboards. But it did move. Martin was sweating, concentrating, almost joyous. He rode the bed across the bedroom, inch by inch, and finally, stepping onto the bath mat, he was free.

A few minutes later, just as he had finished peeing and was beginning to wash his hands, Martin heard Robert moving through the flat and calling his name. He waited until Robert was in the bedroom before he said, “In here.” He heard a sound which he thought was probably Robert moving the bed back to its usual location.

Robert stood outside the door. “Are you all right in there?”

“I’m fine. I think I’ve broken the phone. Could you unplug it?”

Robert walked away and came back with the telephone in his hands. “It’s fine, Martin.”

“No, it’s…it was on the floor.”

“So it’s contaminated?”

“Yes. Could you take it away? I’ll order a new one.”

“Martin, couldn’t I just decontaminate it for you? This is the third phone in what? A month? I was just listening to a report on Radio Four about how British landfills are chock-full with old computers and mobiles. It seems a shame to toss a perfectly functional phone.”


Martin didn’t answer. He began to wash his hands. It always took a long time for the water to get hot enough. He was using carbolic soap. It stung.

Robert said, “Are you coming out anytime soon?”

“I think it might be a while.”

“Can I do anything?”

“Just take the phone away.”

“All right.”

Martin waited. Robert stood on the other side of the door for a minute, then left. Martin heard the front door slam. I’m sorry. The phrase began to repeat in his head, until he replaced it with another, more secret refrain. The water was satisfyingly hot now. It was going to be a long afternoon.

Robert went back to his own flat and called Marijke at work. She had told him not to do this unless there was an emergency, but she never answered her mobile and she wasn’t returning calls. She worked at VPRO, one of the quirkier Dutch radio stations. Robert had never been to the Netherlands. When he imagined Holland he thought of Vermeer paintings and The American Friend.

Strange Dutch ringing sounds: a voice, not Marijke’s. Robert asked for Marijke and the voice went to get her. Robert stood in his front room with his phone pressed to his ear, listening to the noises of the radio station. He could hear muffled voices: “Nee, ik denk van nie…” “Vertel hem dat het onmogelijk is, hij wil altijd het onderste uit de kan hebben…” Robert imagined the receiver sitting on Marijke’s desk like a marooned insect. He imagined Marijke walking towards it, her plain, gently creased face, her tired green eyes, her mouth red with too-bright lipstick and tense at the corners, seldom quite smiling. Robert pictured her in an orange jumper she used to wear for days at a time every winter. Marijke’s fingers were never still, always holding a cigarette or a pen, picking at imaginary lint on someone’s collar, fiddling with her limp hair. She drove Robert crazy with her fidgeting.


Now she picked up the receiver.

“Hallo?” Marijke had a sultry voice. Robert always told Martin she could have made a fortune in phone sex. In her old job at the BBC she had read the afternoon traffic reports; sometimes men appeared in the lobby of Broadcasting House asking for her. At VPRO she was a very popular programme host on a show that mostly featured stories about human-rights catastrophes, global warming and terribly sad things that happened to animals.

“Marijke. It’s Robert.”

He felt her discomfort come at him through the telephone ether. After a pause, she said, “Robert, hello. How are you?”

“I’m fine. Your husband is not fine.”

“What do you want me to do? I am here, he’s there.”

“I want you to come home and take him in hand.”

“No, Robert, I won’t do that.” Marijke covered the phone with her hand and said something to someone, then returned to him. “I’m absolutely not coming back. And he can’t even walk downstairs to get the mail, so I don’t imagine we’ll be seeing each other soon.”

“At least ring him.”

“Why?

“Persuade him to take his medicine. Cheer him up. Hell, I don’t know. Don’t you have any interest in helping him sort himself out?”

“No. I’ve done that. It’s not a joke, Robert. He’s hopeless.”

Robert stared out the windows at Vautravers’ chaotic front garden, which sloped up away from the house so that it was like watching an empty raked stage. As Marijke declared her complete lack of interest in Martin’s future, the twins opened the front door of Vautravers and walked up the footpath to the gate. They were dressed in matching baby-blue coats and hats and carried lavender muffs. One twin was swinging her muff on its wrist-strap; the other twin pointed at something in a tree, and both girls burst out laughing.

“Robert? Are you there?”

One twin walked slightly in front of the other; to Robert they appeared to be two-headed, four-legged, two-armed. They let themselves out of the gate. Robert closed his eyes, and an afterimage formed on the backs of his eyelids, a silhouette-girl shimmering against darkness. He was enchanted. They were like an early Elspeth, a previous version that had been withheld from him until now. They’re so young. And so strange. My God, they look like they’re about twelve.

“Robert?” His eyes flew open; the twins had gone.

“Sorry, Marijke. What were you saying?”

“I have to go. I’m on deadline.”

“Er-right, then. Sorry to have bothered you.”

“Robert, is something wrong?”

He thought about it for a moment before he answered. “I just saw something rather marvellous.”

“Oh,” said Marijke. “What was it? Where are you?” For the first time she sounded interested in the conversation.

“Elspeth’s twins have arrived. They just walked through the front garden. They’re a bit-surprising.”

“I didn’t know Elspeth had children.”

“They belong to Edie and Jack.”

“The famous Edie.” Marijke sighed. “I never quite believed in Edie; I always suspected Elspeth might have invented her.”

Robert smiled. “I was never sure about Jack, myself. The legendary fiancé who eloped with the demon twin to America. It seems they were real after all.”

Marijke covered the phone with her hand. When she spoke again it was to say, “I really do have to go, Robert.” She paused. “Do they look like Elspeth?”

“If you come home you can see for yourself.”

She laughed. “I’ll call him, but I’m not coming to London. It never quite was my home, you know, Robert.” Marijke had lived in London for twenty-six years. For twenty-five years she had lived with Martin. Robert couldn’t imagine how she had done it. He pictured her with other Dutch people, tall sturdy people who spoke five languages and ate herring they bought from little carts on the streets. In London Marijke had always seemed worried and deprived. Robert wondered if her return to her own city had restored what she had craved.

“He’s waiting for you, Marijke.” Silence, static over the phone. Robert relented. “They do look rather like Elspeth. They’re more blonde, though. They aren’t as fierce as Elspeth, either, I don’t think. They look like kittens.”

“Kittens? How incongruous. Well, kittens will be good for the place. You gloomy men could use some kittens. I must go, Robert. But thanks for calling.”

“Bye, then, Marijke.”

“Bye.”

Marijke stood in her cubicle with her hand on the receiver. It was a little after three o’clock, and she could spare a few minutes, despite what she’d said to Robert. She should do it now. Martin had caller ID, so she would only call him on her mobile. She felt a pang of guilt. When she’d left, a year ago, she had called every few weeks. Now she had allowed two months to go by without calling. She held the phone to her ear, counting the rings. Martin always answered on the seventh ring; yes, here he was.

“Hello?” He sounded interrupted; she wondered what he had been doing when the phone rang, but she knew better than to ask.

“Hallo, Martin.”

“Marijke…” She stood with the phone pressed hard against her ear. She had always loved to hear him say her name. Now it made her sad. Marijke leaned over with the mobile still pressed against her ear and then crouched down next to her desk, so that when she looked up she saw only the walls of her cubicle and the acoustical tiles of the ceiling. “Marijke, how are you?” He did not sound any different than the last time she’d spoken to him.

“I’m fine. I got promoted. I have an assistant now.”

“Stellar, that’s excellent.” There was a pause. “Male or female?”

She laughed. “Female. Her name is Ans.”


“Hmm, okay, well, that’s great. I don’t want you being swept off your feet by some young Adonis with”-here Martin lowered his voice-“fab-u-lous e-nun-cia-tion.”

“Don’t worry, you, there’s nobody here but us radio geeks. The young ones are too busy chatting each other up to be bothered with the likes of me.” Marijke felt oddly pleased that Martin imagined she was beset by suitors. She could hear him lighting a cigarette, and then the soft exhalation of smoke.

“I quit smoking,” she told him.

“Surely not. What will you do with your hands? Your poor hands will go crazy without a ciggy to occupy them.” Martin’s tone was caressing, but Marijke could hear the effort to be casual. “When did you give up?”

“Six days, twelve hours, and”-she looked at her watch-“thirteen minutes ago.”

“Well, marvellous. I’m jealous.” At the word jealous there was a mutual pause.

Marijke combed her brain for a new topic. “What are you working on? The Assyrians?” Martin occasionally worked for the British Museum, and the last time they’d talked he had mentioned some Aramaic inscriptions that he was translating.

“Mmm, I finished those. They’ve got me onto a little trove of poems, an Augustan lady named Marcella is supposed to have written them. If they were real they would be rather exciting; there are hardly any surviving works by women from that period. But they aren’t quite right. I think that Charles has been hoodwinked, alas.”

“How do you know they are not right? Surely Charles had them vetted?”

“As objects, they seem fine. But the language is wrong in all sorts of small ways. It’s sort of how it would be if you decided to forge some new Shakespearean sonnets; even though your modern English is lovely and charming, you would make odd little mistakes with the archaic turns of phrase, the grace notes that would have come naturally to a writer of that time. I think the writer is a twentieth-century Frenchman with an excellent command of nineteenth-century Latin.”

“But aren’t they copies of copies? Perhaps the mistakes were introduced…”

“Ah, well, they were found at the library at Herculaneum, you see, so they were supposed to be the genuine article. I must call Charles today. He’ll be hopping-”

Marijke’s boss appeared in the entrance of her cubicle, looked around confusedly and discovered her sitting on the floor. Marijke looked up at Bernard from her crouch and mouthed, Martin. Bernard rolled his eyes and continued to loom over her, his sparse grey hairs standing up as though he were a cartoon character who had been electrocuted. He pointed to his watch. She stood up and said, “I’ve got to go, Martin. I’m on deadline.”

Martin experienced a jolt-talking to Marijke was so comforting, so normal and right, that he had almost forgotten; it had been so much like the conversations they used to have every day, he had forgotten that it would soon be over. And when would she call again? He panicked.

“Marijke-”

She waited. She wished Bernard would stop looking at her. She made a little rotating motion with her free hand. Yes, I know. I’ll be off in a moment. Bernard wiggled his enormous eyebrows at her warningly and went back into his office.

“Call again soon, Marijke.”

“Yes.” She wanted to. She knew she wouldn’t. “Groetjes, my love.”

Doeg! Ik hou van je…” They both paused. She hung up first.

Martin stood in his office, holding his mobile. A crowd of emotions filled him. She called. She said “my love.” I should have asked her more questions, I talked too much about my work. She said she would call soon. How soon? But she didn’t say she would call until I asked her to call. But she called today, so she will call again. When will she call? I should write downquestions to ask her. She gave up smoking, that’s amazing. Maybe I should too. We could do it together, next time she calls I could tell her. But when will she call? Martin shook another cigarette from the pack and lit it. She called me. A minute ago, we were talking. He pressed the mobile to his cheek. It was warm. He felt affection for the little phone, it had brought Marijke’s voice to him. Carrying the phone in one hand and the cigarette in the other, Martin walked to the kitchen. When he got there he walked back to his office again. She called me. She promised to call again. She called. When will she call again? Maybe I should give up smoking…

Marijke flipped her phone shut and put it in her pocket. She finished the piece for Bernard, emailed it to him. She heard the ping from his computer that said the piece had crossed the twelve feet between their desks. Someone said, “You’re on air in fifteen minutes.” She nodded and made her way towards the studio, but detoured into the loo, where she leaned against the wall and cried. He doesn’t change. She wished she hadn’t called. On the phone it was too easy to remember Martin as he had once been. Marijke washed her face and ran to the studio, where her engineer gave her an annoyed look. Months would go by before she called Martin again.


Stalking

ROBERT HAD been imagining the arrival of the twins for a year. He had whole conversations with them in his mind: he told them about London, the cemetery, Elspeth; he chatted to them about restaurants, his thesis, all sorts of things. As he went about his days in the long year of their imminent arrival, Robert noted points of interest-There’s Dick Whittington’s cat. They’ll want to know about that…I’ll take them to Postman’s Park, to the Hunterian Museum, to the John Soane. We’ll ride the London Eye at sunset. He and Elspeth had done all these things together. We’ll go round Dennis Severs’ house at Christmas. And the Foundling Museum. Robert became, in his imagination, the tour guide of the twins’ London lives, their indispensable sherpa, their native speaker. They would naturally come to him with their little dilemmas and queries; avuncular, he would advise them and aid them in their London initiation. Robert had looked forward to the twins. He had enveloped them with so many witticisms, expectations and hopes that now, when Julia and Valentina had finally actually arrived, Robert was quite frightened of them.

He had thought that he would simply walk upstairs, knock on their door and introduce himself. But the sound of their footsteps and laughter paralysed him. He watched them come and go, traipsing through the front garden in matching frocks, carrying bags of groceries, flowers, an ugly lamp. Why do they need a lamp? Elspeth has plenty of lamps.

They knocked on his door once or twice a day. Each time, Robert stood motionless, interrupted at his desk, or during his dinner; he could hear them speaking softly to each other in the hall. Just open the door, he told himself. Don’t be such a wanker.

He hesitated before their twinness; they seemed sublime and inviolable together. Each morning he watched them navigating the slippery path to the gate. They appeared so self-sufficient, and conversely so reliant on each other, that he felt rejected without having ever exchanged a word with either of them.

One bright chilly morning Robert stood at his front window, coffee in hand, wearing his coat and hat, waiting. Eventually he heard the twins galumphing down the stairs. He watched them cross the yard and let themselves out of the gate.

Then he followed them.

They led him across Pond Square, through Highgate Village and along Jackson’s Lane to the Highgate tube station. He hung back, let them disappear, then panicked that a train might come and whisk them off. He ran down the escalator. The station was nearly deserted, it was half eleven. He found them again on the southbound platform, positioned himself just close enough to get into the same carriage. They sat near the middle doors. He sat across from them, fifteen feet away. One twin studied a pocket tube map. The other leaned back in her seat and studied the adverts. “Look,” she said to her sister, “we could fly to Transylvania for a pound each.” Robert was startled to hear her soft American accent, so different from Elspeth’s confident Oxbridge voice.

He avoided looking at them. He thought of a cat his mum had, Squeak; every time they took it to the vet’s surgery, the cat tucked its head under Robert’s arm and hid. She seemed to think that if she couldn’t see the vet, the vet couldn’t see her. Robert did not look at the twins, so they would not see him.

They got off at Embankment and changed for the District line. Eventually they emerged from Sloane Square station and wandered haltingly into Belgravia, stopping often to consult their A-Z. Robert never came to this part of London, so he, too, became quickly lost. He hung back, keeping his eye on them and feeling pervy and gormless, not to mention highly noticeable. Smart young Sloanes of both sexes marched past him, toting inscrutable shopping bags, mobiles clamped to their ears. Little fogs of breath emanated from their mouths as they rushed by, chatting to themselves like actors rehearsing. The twins seemed tentative and childish by comparison.

They wandered into a side street and became suddenly excited, skipping along and craning their necks at the shop numbers. “Here!” said one. They went into a tiny hat shop, Philip Treacy, and spent an hour trying on hats. Robert watched them from across the street. The twins took turns with the hats, turning in front of what must have been a mirror. The shopgirl smiled at them and offered an enormous lime-green spiral. A twin put it on her head and all three of them looked quite pleased.

Robert wished that he smoked, as it would have provided an excuse to stand about in the street looking pointless. Maybe I should go and have a pint. They look as though they’ll be at this all afternoon. The twins were exclaiming over a plastic orange disc that reminded Robert of the dinner-plate-like halos in medieval paintings. I need a disguise. Maybe a beard. Or a hazmat suit. The twins came out of the shop without any bags.

Robert trailed them all over Knightsbridge, watching them window-shop, eat crepes, gawk at other shoppers. Midafternoon they vanished into the underground. Robert let them go and took himself to the British Library.

He put his things in a locker and went upstairs to the Humanities 1 reading room. The room was crowded and he found a seat between a beaky woman surrounded by books about Christopher Wren and a hirsute young man who seemed to be researching Jacobite housekeeping practices. Robert did not order any books; he didn’t even check on the books he had previously ordered. He put both palms flat on the desk top and closed his eyes. I feel odd. He wondered if he was coming down with the flu. Robert was aware of a split within himself-he was filled with contradictory emotions, some of which included shame, exhilaration, accomplishment, confusion, disgust with himself and a strong desire to follow the twins again tomorrow. He opened his eyes and tried to pull himself together. You can’t spy on them like this. They’ll notice sooner or later. Robert imagined Elspeth chiding him: “Don’t be gutless, sweet. Just open the door the next time they knock.” Then he thought she would have laughed at him. Elspeth never understood shyness. Don’t laugh at me, Elspeth, Robert said to her in his mind. Don’t.

The call light at his desk lit up. Robert realised that he must be sitting in someone else’s seat. He glanced around, then got up and left the reading room. He took the tube home. As he walked down the path to Vautravers he saw lights in the windows of the middle flat, and his heart contracted in joy. Then he remembered it was only the twins. Today was a one-off. Tomorrow I’ll knock on their door and introduce myself properly.

The next morning he followed them to Baker Street and paid twenty quid to wander around Madame Tussauds at a discreet distance from the twins as they made fun of wax versions of Justin Timberlake and the Royal Family. The day after that they all went to the Tower and then took in a puppet show on the Embankment. Robert began to despair. Don’t you ever do anything interesting? Days passed in a blur of Neal’s Yard, Harrods, Buckingham Palace, Portobello Road, Westminster Abbey and Leicester Square. Robert sensed the twins’ determination: they seemed to be circling London’s most public spheres, looking for a rabbit hole into the real city underneath. They were trying to construct a personal London for themselves out of the Rough Guide and Time Out.

Robert had been born in Islington. He had never lived anywhere but London. His geography of London was a tangle of emotional associations. Street names evoked girlfriends, schoolmates, boring afternoons playing truant and doing nothing in particular; rare outings with his father to obscure restaurants and the zoo, raves in East-London warehouses. He began to pretend that the twins were taking him on school outings, that they were all three attending an exotic public school with odd uniforms and a curriculum of tourism. He stopped thinking about what he was doing, or worrying very much about being caught. Their obliviousness frightened him. They lacked the urban camouflage skills young women ought to have. People stared at them all the time, and they seemed to be aware of this without making very much of it, as though being the objects of constant attention was natural to them.

They led and he followed. He went to the cemetery intermittently. When Jessica asked, he told her he was working at home on his thesis. She looked at him curiously; later he noticed the messages piled up on his answering machine and understood that she thought he was avoiding her.

Then the twins stayed in several days running. One twin did little errands by herself. Robert worried. I should go up and check on them. By now he felt that he knew them well, but he had never spoken to them. He missed them. He berated himself for becoming immersed in their lives. Still, he hesitated to begin. He found himself spending whole days sitting quietly in his flat, listening, waiting, worrying.


Sick Day

VALENTINA DIDN’T feel well that morning, so Julia went to the Tesco Express to buy chicken soup, Ritz crackers and Coke, which the twins considered to be the proper cuisine for invalids. As soon as Julia left, Valentina dragged herself out of bed, threw up in the toilet, went back to bed and lay on her side, knees pulled to her chest, burning with fever. She stared at the rug, tracing the gold-and-blue shapes with her eyes. She began to fall asleep.

Someone leaned over and looked at her closely. The person did not touch her; she merely had the feeling that someone was there, that this person was concerned about her. Valentina opened her eyes. She thought she saw something dark, indistinct. It moved towards the foot of the bed. Valentina heard Julia come in the front door, and she woke up completely. There was nothing at the foot of the bed.

In a little while, Julia came into the room with a tray. Valentina sat up. Julia put the tray down and gave her a glass of Coke. Valentina rattled the ice cubes against the glass, touched it to her cheek. She took a tiny sip of Coke, then a bigger sip. “There was something weird in the room,” she said.

“What do you mean?” asked Julia.


Valentina tried to describe it. “It was like a smudge in the air. It was worried about me.”

“That’s nice of it,” Julia said. “I’m worried about you too. Want some soup?”

“I think so. Can I just have the soup part and not all the noodles and stuff?”

“Whatever.” Julia went back to the kitchen. Valentina looked around the bedroom. It was just its regular morning bedroom-self. The day was sunny, and the furniture seemed warm and innocent. I must have dreamed it. How bizarre, though.

Julia came in and gave her the soup in a mug. She put her hand on Valentina’s forehead exactly the way Edie did. “You’re burning up, Mouse.” Valentina drank some soup. Julia sat at the foot of the bed. “We should find you a doctor.”

“It’s just the flu.”

“Mouse…you know you can’t not have a doctor. Mom would freak. What if you have an asthma attack?”

“Yeah…can we call Mom?” They had called home yesterday, but there was no rule that said they couldn’t call twice in one week.

“It’s 4 a.m. at home,” Julia said. “Later we can.”

“Okay.” Valentina held out the mug. Julia put it on the tray. “I think I want to sleep.”

“’K.” Julia drew the curtains, took the tray and left.

Valentina curled up again, content. She closed her eyes. Someone sat next to her and smoothed her hair. She fell asleep smiling.


Valentina and Julia Underground

VALENTINA DIDN’T like the underground. It was dark and fast and dirty; it was crowded. She didn’t like being pressed against people, feeling someone’s breath on her neck, hanging onto a pole and being pitched against sweaty men. Most of all, Valentina did not like being underground. Somehow, the fact that the whole thing was called the underground made it worse. She took the bus whenever she could.

She tried not to let Julia know that the tube frightened her, but somehow Julia guessed. Now, every time they went out, Julia would spread out the tube map on the dining-room table and plot out elaborate routes that necessitated at least three changes. Valentina never said anything. She trudged along beside Julia, rode endless escalators into bottomless underground stations. Tonight they were going to the Royal Albert Hall to see a circus. They began at Archway. At Warren Street the twins had to change from the Northern line to the Victoria line, and found themselves moving with a number of other people down a long white-tiled corridor. Valentina held Julia’s hand. She mentally checked the zipper of her purse, thinking of pickpockets. Valentina wondered if everyone could tell they were Americans. The crowd moved like syrup.

Valentina noticed a man walking in front of them.

He was quite tall and had ear-length, brown wavy hair. He wore a white button-down shirt tucked into brown corduroy trousers and carried a thick paperback book. He wore wingtip shoes without socks. The man walked with the long, loose-jointed stride of a Labrador retriever or a tree sloth. He was soft-bodied and pallid. Valentina wondered what he was reading. The twins followed him onto an elevator. He walked ahead of them through tunnels and then they stood behind him on the escalator, one of the long ones that made Valentina feel as though the world had tilted, as though she were subject to some new, weird gravity. Finally they found the platform for the Victoria line.

Valentina tried to catch a glimpse of the book’s title. It ended in sis. Kafka? Too thick. He wore small gold wire-rimmed glasses and had a kind face, a face with lots of jaw and a long narrow nose, which he proceeded to stick into his book. His eyes were brown and hooded, heavily lashed. The train was coming. It was packed, and the doors opened and shut without anyone getting off or on. The man glanced up and resumed reading.

Julia was talking about an accident she had seen that morning, in which a pedestrian, an older woman, had been hit by a moped. Valentina tried not to listen. Julia knew she was afraid of crossing the streets. Valentina always stubbornly waited for the green man, even when there were no cars in sight, even when Julia skipped across the street and stood waving at her from the other side. “Stop it,” she said to Julia. “If you don’t shut up I’m going to stay home forever, and you’ll have to carry all the groceries yourself.” Julia looked surprised, and to Valentina’s relief, she was silent.


The next train was in one minute. This one was less crowded, and the twins pushed their way into it. Julia delved her way towards the middle of the carriage, but Valentina stood clinging to the pole near the door. As the train pitched forward, Valentina looked up and saw that the man she had been watching was standing pressed against her. He caught her eye, and she looked away. He smelled like grass, as though he had been mowing a lawn, and sweat, and something Valentina couldn’t place. Paper? Dirt? It was a good smell, whatever it was, and she inhaled it as though it had vitamins in it. Someone’s shopping bag was chafing her leg. Valentina glanced up again. The man was still watching her. She blushed, but held his eyes. He said, “You don’t like the tube much, do you?”

“No,” said Valentina.

“Nor I,” he said. His voice was pleasant and low. “It’s too intimate.”

Valentina nodded. She was watching the man’s mouth as he spoke. His mouth was wide, the upper lip a bit rabbit-like, showing his slightly protuberant teeth, teeth that could have used orthodontia. She thought of the years she and Julia had spent at Dr. Weissman’s, having their teeth straightened. She wondered what their teeth would have looked like if they’d just been left alone.

“Are you Julia, or Valentina?” he asked.

“Valentina,” she replied, and was instantly appalled at her own boldness. But how did he know their names? The train slid into a station, throwing her off balance. The man caught her by the elbow, held her up until the train stopped. This is Victoria, said the disembodied female voice of the underground.

“Mouse! This is our stop, Mouse. We have to change here.” Julia’s voice rose above the wall of people between them as the doors opened. Valentina twisted her head to look at the man.

“I have to get off,” she told him. There was something reassuring about the way he regarded her, as though they were travelling together and had been riding this train for hours.


“Where are you going?” he asked her. Julia was pushing her way towards them. Valentina stepped off the train.

“The circus,” she said as Julia landed next to her. He smiled; the doors closed; the train moved forward. Valentina stood for a moment, watching. The man raised his hand, hesitated, waved.

“Who was that?” Julia asked. She took Valentina’s hand, and they began walking with the crowd to catch the District line.

“I don’t know,” Valentina replied.

“He was cute,” said Julia. Valentina nodded. He knew our names, Julia. We don’t know anyone here. How did he know our names?

Robert watched Valentina and Julia as they slid away. He got off at the next stop, Pimlico, walked to the Tate Gallery, and sat on its steep front steps staring at the Thames, deeply agitated. What are you so afraid of? he asked himself, but he could not answer.


A Deluge


IT WAS very late at night, past 2 a.m., and the twins were asleep. It had been a chilly evening. The twins still hadn’t figured out the heating system-tonight it didn’t seem to want to come on, even though it was colder than it had been. They were used to their overheated American home; all through the evening they had each placed their hands on the radiators, wondering why they were lukewarm. Now they slept with several quilts covering them. They had found a hot-water bottle in a drawer, so they had that tucked under their feet. Valentina lay on her side in a foetal ball. Her thumb was not actually in her mouth; it hovered nearby, as though she had been sucking on it and it had become bored and wandered away. Julia spooned around Valentina, her body pressed into Valentina’s and her arm resting along Valentina’s thigh. This was a habitual sleeping position for the twins, it echoed the way they had slept in utero. Their faces were set in different expressions: Valentina slept lightly, her brow furrowed and her eyes squinched up. Julia twitched with a dream. Her eyes raced back and forth under her shell-thin eyelids. In her dream, Julia was on a beach, back home in Lake Forest. There were children on the beach. They shrieked with pleasure; they were knocked over by little waves. Julia felt the wet of the lake on her skin and twisted in her sleep. In her dream it began to rain. The children raced back to their parents, who packed up the toys and sunblock lotion. The rain was coming down in sheets. Julia tried to remember, Where is the car?-she was running now-

Water splashed Julia’s face. She put her hand to her cheek, still dreaming. Valentina woke up, sat up and looked at Julia. A thin trickle of water began to pour from the ceiling and onto the quilts, just where Julia’s breasts were.

“Ugh, Julia, wake up!”

Julia woke with a snort. It took her a minute to understand the situation. Valentina had already run to the kitchen and returned with a gigantic soup pot by the time Julia crawled out of bed. Valentina stuck the pot under the leak, and the water rattled in it. The bed was soaked. The ceiling plaster above the bed was slick and crumbly. The twins stood watching as the water collected in the pot. Small pieces of plaster bobbed in the water like cottage-cheese curds.

Valentina sat down in the armchair next to the bed. “What do you think?” she asked. She was wearing boxer shorts and a spaghetti-strap T-shirt, and she had goosebumps all over her arms and her thighs. “It’s not raining.” She tilted her head back, stared at the ceiling. “Maybe someone was going to take a bath and left the water running?”

“But why doesn’t it leak over here, then?” Julia walked into the bathroom and flipped on the light. She scrutinised the ceiling. “It’s totally dry,” she told Valentina.

They looked at each other as more water trickled into the pot. “Huh,” said Julia. “I don’t know.” She put on her bathrobe, an old pink silk thing she had found at Oxfam. “I’d better go upstairs and see.”

“I’ll come too.”

“No, stay down here in case the pot overflows”-which was a good idea because the water was indeed threatening to reach the top of the pot.


Julia marched out of the apartment and up the stairs. Julia had never gone upstairs before. There were piles of newspapers, mostly the Guardian and the Telegraph, stacked on the landing. The door stood ajar. Julia knocked. No one responded.

“Hello?” she called. All she could hear was a noise that sounded like something being sanded, a rhythmic, abrasive noise. Someone, a man, was speaking in a low voice.

Julia stood in front of the door nervously. She didn’t know anything about the neighbours. She wished she had brought Valentina with her. What if these people were Satanists, or child abusers, or people who cut up inquisitive young women with chainsaws? Did they have chainsaws in Britain, or was that only an American serial-killer thing? Julia stood with her hand on the doorknob, hesitating. She imagined water filling their whole flat, all of Aunt Elspeth’s furniture floating around, Valentina swimming from room to room trying to save stuff from the deluge. She opened the door and walked in, calling “Hello?” as she went.

The flat was very dim, and Julia immediately ran into a pile of boxes that filled the hall. She had a sense of many objects oppressively close together. Somewhere there was a light, across the hall, in another room, but here there was only a dim reflection. The wooden floor felt sticky and gritty under her bare feet. There were pathways within the hall; on each side of the pathways were stacks of boxes. The boxes reached the ceiling, towered ten feet from the floor. Julia wondered if the boxes had ever fallen down and crushed anyone. Maybe there were people buried under the piles of stuff? She navigated by touching the boxes with her hands, like a blind woman. She could smell cooked meat and fried onions. The sweet smell of tobacco. The sharp, complicated smell of bleach-based cleaner. Rotting fruit; lemons? Soap. Julia tried to sort out the smells. They made her nose itch. Please, God, don’t let me sneeze, she thought, and she sneezed.

The muttering and the sanding stopped abruptly. Julia stood still. The noises resumed after what seemed to Julia to be an eternity. Her heart pounded, and she turned to see if she had left the front door open, but it had vanished. Breadcrumbs, Julia thought. String. I’ll never find my way out of here.

The boxes disappeared under her fingertips, and she stretched her hand out and felt a closed door. This would be the front bedroom, if this were their flat. The noise was louder now. Julia crept down the hall. Finally she stood in the doorway of the back bedroom, and she looked in.

The man had his back to her. He crouched, knees bent, only his feet and the scrubbing brush touching the floor as he washed it. Julia was reminded of a man imitating an anteater. He wore jeans and nothing else. The overhead light was intense, much too bright for the small room, and the bed was huge. There was a lot of clothing and books and junk scattered around. There were maps and photographs pinned to the walls. The man was reciting something in a foreign language as he scrubbed. He had a beautiful voice, and Julia knew that whatever he was saying, it was sad and violent. She wondered if he were a religious fanatic.

The floor was dark with water. The man reached into the pail and brought the scrubbing brush out full of suds and more water. Julia watched him. After a while, she realised that he was simply scrubbing one section over and over again. The rest of the floor remained dry.

Julia began to feel desperate. She wanted to say something, but she didn’t know how to begin. Then she told herself that she was behaving like the Mouse, and that gave her the impetus to speak.

“Excuse me,” Julia said softly. The man had his hand in the pail, and he was so startled that he jerked it over, and water spilled across the floor. “Oh!” Julia said. “Oh, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry! Here, let me-” She dashed across the spreading water, into the bathroom, and came darting back with towels. The man crouched on the floor, watching her, with an expression of incredulity, almost stupefaction. Julia worked at containing the flood, using the towels as fabric dams, like sandbags. She dashed back into the bathroom, bringing another armful of towels, babbling apologies. Martin was so struck by Julia’s energy and by her nonstop stream of contrition that he simply stared at her. Her pink robe had come undone, and her hair was messed up. She had the general appearance of a small girl who had been riding a waltzer in her nightclothes. She was showing a lot of leg, and Martin thought that it was charming of this girl to barge into his flat wearing an old dressing gown and knickers, and although he didn’t understand what she was doing here, he felt relieved to see her. The overwhelming anxiety he had been feeling was gone. Martin dried his hands on his trousers. Julia finished drying the floor, wadded up all the towels and heaved them into the bathtub. She returned to the bedroom feeling pleased with herself, and saw Martin crouching with his arms folded across his chest, looking up at her.

“Um, hello,” said Martin. He extended his hand, and Julia grasped it and pulled. She noticed as she let go of his hand that it was bleeding; a thin glaze of blood covered her palm. Martin had expected her to shake his hand, so he was surprised to find himself standing. Julia, in turn, was surprised at how agile Martin was. She found herself staring up at a slender, middle-aged man whose horn-rimmed glasses were askew. He seemed rather knobbly to her; his knees and elbows and knuckles were prominent. He was not at all hairy. Julia noticed that his chest was a little concave. She blushed and looked up. He had short salt-and-pepper hair. He seemed kind.

“I’m Martin Wells,” he said.

“I’m Julia Poole,” Julia replied. “I live downstairs.”

“Oh, of course. And…you were lonely?”

“No, see, the water…Our bed’s right under here, and there was a lot of water coming through the ceiling, and it, like, woke us up.”

Martin blushed. “I’m terribly sorry. I’ll call someone to fix it. He’ll put it right for you.”

Julia looked away, at the pail and the scrubbing brush, at the wet floor. She looked back at Martin, puzzled. “What are you doing?” she asked.


“Cleaning,” he replied. “I’m washing the floor.”

“Your hands are bleeding,” Julia told him.

Martin looked at his hands. The palms were crisscrossed with open cracks from long hours in water. His hands were shiny and bright red. He looked back at Julia. She was looking at the bedroom, at the stacks of boxes that lined the walls.

“What’s in the boxes?” she asked.

“Things,” he replied.

Julia abandoned tact. “You live like this?”

“Yes.”

“You’re one of those people who wash all the time. Like Howard Hughes.”

Martin didn’t know what to say, so he simply said, “Yes.”

“Cool.”

“Um, no, it isn’t, at all.” Martin went into the bathroom, opened the medicine cabinet and took out a tube of lotion, which he began to rub onto his hands. “It’s an illness.” He straightened his spectacles with a lotiony finger. Julia felt that she had made a faux pas.

“I’m sorry.”

“That’s all right.”

There was an awkward pause during which neither looked at the other.

Julia began to feel nervous. I was right before-he’s mentally ill. She said, “I should go back downstairs. Valentina is probably wondering.”

Martin nodded. “I’m sorry about your ceiling. I’ll ring up someone first thing tomorrow. I would come down myself-”

“Yes?”

“But I never leave my flat.”

Julia was disappointed, even though she had been intent on getting away from him just moments before. “Not at all?”

“It’s part of-my illness.” Martin smiled. “Don’t look like that. You are quite welcome to come and visit me.” He guided Julia through the maze of boxes. When they arrived at his front door he let her open it and step into the landing. “I hope you will come again. For tea? Tomorrow, perhaps?”

Julia stood on the well-lit landing and peered at Martin, who hung back from the door in his dark hall. “Okay,” she said. “Sure.”

“And your sister is welcome, as well.”

Julia felt a tiny pang of possessiveness. If he met Valentina he would probably like her better. Everyone did. “Um, I’ll see if she’s available.”

Martin smiled. “Until tomorrow, then. Four o’clock?”

“Okay. It was nice to meet you,” Julia said, and fled downstairs.

Valentina had just emptied the soup pot when Julia returned. The ceiling was still dripping and the bedding was a sodden mess. The twins stood together and surveyed the damage. “So what happened?” Valentina asked.

Julia told her, but she had trouble describing Martin. Valentina looked horrified when Julia said they’d been invited to tea. “But he sounds awful,” said Valentina. “He never leaves his apartment?”

“I dunno. He was super polite. I mean, yeah, he’s obviously crazy, but in a nice eccentric English way, you know?” The twins began to strip the quilts off the bed. They carried them into the bathroom and tried to wring the water out of them. “I think maybe these are ruined.”

“No, it’s only plaster. It should rinse out. Maybe we could soak them?” Valentina put the stopper in the plughole and began to run warm water into the tub.

“Anyway, I said I’d come and have tea and you can come if you want. I think you should at least meet him. He’s our neighbour.”

Valentina shrugged. They finished stripping the bed and left the soup pot sitting on the mattress to collect the drips. They put themselves to bed in the spare bedroom (which was rather clammy) and each went to sleep worrying about home repair and tea.


The Delicate Thing

THE TWINS found virginity burdensome, each in her own way.

Julia had experimented some. In high school she had let boys kiss and/or fondle her in cars, in the bedrooms of friends’ parents at parties when those parents were out of town, once in a ladies’ room at Navy Pier, and several times on the doorstep of Jack and Edie’s unimpressive ranch house, which she always wished was a gigantic Victorian with a porch so she could sit with the boy in a porch swing and eat ice cream and they could lick it off each other’s lips while Valentina spied on them from the darkened living room. But there was no porch, and the kisses were as lacklustre as the house.

Julia remembered fending off boys on the beach, behind the shelter in West Park after ice skating, in a music-practice room at the high school. She remembered each boy’s reaction, the various shadings of confusion and anger. “Well, why d’ya come in here, then?” the boy in the practice room had asked her, and she had no answer.

What did she want? What was it she imagined these boys could do to her? And why did she always stop them before they could do it?

Valentina was more sought after, and not as proficient at saying no. During the twins’ teen years it was Valentina who was singled out by the quiet boys, and by the boys who thought of themselves as nascent rock stars. While Julia chose boys who weren’t interested in her and then chased them, Valentina dreamily ignored them all and won hearts. She was always surprised when the boy who sat behind her in algebra declared his love as she unchained her bike; when the editor of the school paper asked her to the prom.

“You should let them come to you,” Valentina said, when Julia complained about the discrepancy. But Julia was impatient, and cared about being passed over. These things are fatal to romance, especially if a more indifferent version of yourself is nearby.

Sex was interesting to Valentina, but the individual boys she might have had sex with were not. When she focused her attention on a boy, that boy always seemed to her unfinished, dull, absurd. She was used to the profound intimacy of her life with Julia, and she did not know that a cloud of hope and wild illusion is required to begin a relationship. Valentina was like the veteran of a long marriage who has forgotten how to flirt. The boys who followed her through the hallways of Lake Forest High School at a safe distance lost their ardour when it was met with polite bewilderment.

And so the twins had remained virgins. Julia and Valentina watched all of their high school and college friends disappear one by one into the adult world of sex, until they were the only people they knew who lingered in the world of the uninitiated. “What was it like?” they asked each friend. The answers were vague. Sex was a private joke: you had to be there.

The twins worried about virginity individually, and they worried about it together. But the most basic problem was one they never talked about: sex was something they couldn’t do together. Someone would have to go first, and then the other would be left behind. And they would each have to pick different guys, and these guys, these potential boyfriends, would want to spend time alone with one or the other; they would want to be the important person in Julia or Valentina’s life. Each boyfriend would be a crowbar, and soon there would be a gap; there would be hours in the day when Julia wouldn’t even know where Valentina was, or what she was doing, and Valentina would turn to tell Julia something and instead there would be the boyfriend, waiting to hear what she was about to say although only Julia would have understood it.

It was a delicate thing, their private world. It required absolute fidelity, and so they remained virgins, and waited.


Pearls

JULIA PRESENTED herself at Martin’s door at exactly four o’clock the next afternoon; Valentina had had an attack of shyness and refused to come. A man had arrived that morning and had begun to repair their bedroom ceiling, so Julia felt she ought to keep her promise.

Julia wore jeans and a white blouse. When Martin answered the door she was startled to see that he wore a suit and tie. He was also wearing latex surgical gloves, which made him look like a TV butler.

“Do come in,” he said. He led her through the flat to the kitchen, which was surprisingly cosy, though the windows were covered in newspaper and tape. “We always eat in here,” Martin said. “The dining room has been taken over by boxes.” He said this as though he had no idea how it had come to pass.

“You have a family?” It had not occurred to Julia that anyone might be married to this crazy person.

“Yes, I have a wife and a son. My wife is in Amsterdam and my son is up at Oxford.”

“Oh. Is she on vacation?”

“I suppose you could put it that way. I’m not really sure when she’s coming back, so I’ve been making shift for myself. Things are a little improvisational here at the moment.” Martin had set out three places at the kitchen table. Julia sat down at the one that faced the back door, in case I need to escape.

“Valentina couldn’t come. She isn’t feeling too well,” Julia said; it was sort of true.

“That’s unfortunate. Another time,” said Martin. He felt pleased with himself; he had contrived, at short notice, a very passable afternoon tea. There were fish-paste sandwiches, as well as cucumber and cress; there was a Victoria sponge cake. He had set out Marijke’s mother’s china, and there was a little jug of milk and a bowl of sugar cubes. He thought it looked quite as nice as what Marijke would have done. “What kind of tea would you like?” he asked.

“Earl Grey?”

He pressed the button on the electric kettle and plopped a tea bag into the teapot. “This isn’t how it’s supposed to be done, but one gets lazy.”

“How are you supposed to do it?”

“Oh, you warm the pot, you use loose tea…but I can’t taste the difference, and I drink a lot of tea, so the ritual has devolved somewhat.”

“Our mom uses tea bags,” Julia assured him.

“Then that must be correct,” said Martin gravely. The water boiled (he had actually boiled it a few times before Julia arrived, just to make sure the kettle was working) and Martin made tea. Soon they were both seated, drinking tea and eating sandwiches. Well-being pervaded Martin. He had not realised how much he’d missed sharing a meal with another human. Julia looked up and saw him beaming at her. He might be insane, but he’s very cheerful.

“So, um, how long have you lived here?” she asked him.

“Twenty-some years. We lived in Amsterdam when we were first married, and then we lived in St. John’s Wood. We bought this flat just before Theo was born.”


“Have you always…stayed in?”

Martin shook his head. “That’s a recent development. I used to work at the British Museum, translating ancient and classical languages. But now I work from home.”

Julia smiled. “So they bring the Rosetta Stone and all that here to you?” The twins had been to the British Museum the previous week. Julia thought of Valentina bending over Lindow Man, nearly in tears.

“No, no. I don’t often need the actual objects. They take photographs and make drawings-I use those. It’s all become so much easier now everything is digital. I suppose someday they’ll just wave the objects over the computer and it will sing the translation in Gregorian chant. But in the meantime they still need someone like me to work it out.” Martin paused, then said, rather shyly, “Do you like crossword puzzles?”

“We aren’t very good at them. Mom does the New York Times ones. She tried to teach us, but we can only do Mondays.”

“Your Aunt Elspeth was a whiz at them. I used to set special cryptics for her birthday.”

Julia wanted to ask about Elspeth, but she understood that Martin was actually inviting her to ask him about his puzzles, so to be polite she said, “You make crosswords?”

“I do. I set them for the Guardian.” Martin said this as though he were confessing to a secret identity as a superhero.

Julia arranged her face into what she hoped was an expression of appropriate awe. “Wow. We never thought of anybody making them. They just kind of appear in the paper, you know?”

“It is an underappreciated art form.” Ask her about herself; you’re monopolising the conversation. “What do you do?”

“We don’t know yet. We haven’t decided.”

Martin sipped his tea and looked at Julia quizzically. “Do you often refer to yourself in the first person plural?”

Julia frowned. “No-I mean me and Valentina. We haven’t found anything we both want to do as a profession.”


“Do you both have to do the same thing?”

“Yes!” Julia paused and reminded herself that she was talking to a stranger, not the Mouse. “I mean, we want something we can do together. So maybe we could do two slightly different jobs that fit together somehow.”

“What sorts of things do you each like to do?”

“Well, Valentina likes clothes. She likes to take clothes and make new things out of them, you know, like she might take your suit and slit open the back and make a corset or a bustle or that kind of thing. She’s, like, a slave to Alexander McQueen.” Julia glanced at the place setting meant for Valentina and wondered what her twin was doing; Martin pictured himself wearing a bustle and smiled.

“And you?”

“Um. I don’t know. I like to find out about things. I guess.” Julia looked at her plate as she said this. The rim of the plate was painted with blue morning glories. Why do I feel like I’m at the edge of a hole?

Martin said, “More tea?” Julia nodded. He poured. “You’re quite young, aren’t you? My son doesn’t know what he wants to do yet either. He’s studying maths, but he doesn’t have the passion for it. I imagine he’ll end up in finance and spend all his time planning exotic holidays. Everything he enjoys is somewhat dangerous.”

“Like what?”

“Oh-motorcycling. I think he goes mountain climbing, but no one will confirm or deny that. It’s just as well I don’t know.”

“You worry about him?”

Martin laughed. He hadn’t felt so lighthearted in months. “Dear child, I worry about everything. But yes, I worry about Theo in particular. That’s just the nature of parents. The moment Theo was conceived, I started to worry about him. I don’t think it’s done him a whit of good, but I can’t help it.”

Julia thought of Martin washing the floor. You’re like a dog licking the same spot over and over. “So you wash things?”

Martin leaned back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest. “That’s very perceptive. Yes, that’s right.” He looked at Julia and she looked back at him. They each experienced a little jolt of recognition. She thought, He’s insane and I understand him. But maybe he isn’t completely crazy. Like a sort of lucid craziness, like a dream. Martin said, “You like to find out about things. What sort of things?”

Julia tried to put it into words. “Just-everything. I’m curious about things that people aren’t supposed to see-so, for example, I liked going to the British Museum, but I would like it better if I could go into all the offices and storage rooms, I want to look in all the drawers and-discover stuff. And I want to know about people. I mean, I know it’s probably kind of rude but I want to know why you have all these boxes and what’s in them and why all your windows are papered over and how long it’s been that way and how do you feel when you wash things and why don’t you do something about it?” Julia looked at Martin and thought, Now he’s going to ask me to leave. They sat in uncomfortable silence for what seemed a long time. Then Martin smiled.

“You’re very-American, aren’t you?”

“Is that a euphemism for ‘very rude’? Yes, I am very rude. Sorry.”

“No, no, don’t apologise. That’s my job. More tea?”

“No thank you. If you give me too much caffeine I totally lose all restraint. Maybe that already happened,” Julia said.

Martin poured himself another cup of tea. “Do you actually want to know all those things?” he said. “Because if I answer all your questions I might lose my air of mystery, and you won’t come and visit me again.”

“I would visit you.” You’re the oddest person I’ve ever met. You couldn’t get rid of me if you tried.

Martin opened his mouth, hesitated, and said, “Do you smoke?”

“Yes,” Julia replied. Martin brightened. He left the table and came back with a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. He shook a cigarette out of the pack and offered it to Julia. She took it and put it to her lips, let him light it for her and immediately had a severe coughing fit. Martin jumped up and fetched her a glass of water. When she could speak she said, “What the hell was that?”

“Gauloises. They’re unfiltered-I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to kill you.”

She handed him the lit cigarette. “Here, I’ll just inhale your second-hand smoke.”

Martin took a deep drag and let the smoke trickle from his mouth. Julia thought she had never seen such an expression of raw pleasure on anyone’s face. She understood then how he had managed to woo and marry a girl: He just looked at her like that. Julia wished someone would look at her that way. Then she felt confused.

Martin said, “Curiosity killed the cat.” He took another drag on his cigarette.

“I know. But I just feel like my head’s going to explode if I don’t find out-whatever it is.”

“You would make a good scholar.”

Julia was fascinated to see that smoke came out of his mouth in little gusts as he spoke. I thought Dad was a hard-core smoker, but this guy is definitely in another league. “I can’t sit still that long. I want to find out now, and then find out the next thing.”

“A journalist, then.”

Julia looked dubious. “Maybe. But what about Valentina?” She noticed that Martin had removed his surgical gloves in order to smoke the cigarette. They lay crumpled beside his cup and saucer.

“Don’t you think that each of you might be happier pursuing your own interests?”

“But we’re together-we’ve always done things together.”

“Hmm.”

Julia had the uncomfortable feeling that someone had snuck upstairs before she’d arrived and told Martin the Mouse’s point of view on things. “What?” she said, resentfully.

“It’s a pity you won’t meet Elspeth. She had some interesting things to say about being a twin.”


Julia was all attention. “Like what?”

Martin asked, “Would you like some cake?” Julia shook her head. “I think I will have a small piece,” he said. He delicately cut a sliver of cake and laid it on a plate, then ignored it as he continued to smoke. “Elspeth thought that there was a limit to how far the twin relationship should go, in terms of each person giving up their own individuality. She felt that she and your mother had exceeded that boundary.”

“How?”

Martin shook his head. “She didn’t tell me. You ought to ask Robert; if she told anyone it would have been him.”

“Robert Fanshaw? We haven’t met him yet.”

“Hmm. I’d have thought he’d’ve been round to introduce himself first thing. How odd.”

“We’ve knocked on his door, but he’s never home. Maybe he’s out of town,” Julia said.

“I just saw him this morning. He arranged for your ceiling to be repaired.” Martin smiled. “He ticked me off properly for annoying you.” Martin stubbed out his cigarette and then carefully put on his gloves.

“Huh. I wonder how come-I mean, what’s he like?”

Martin ate a bite of cake and Julia waited while he chewed and swallowed. “Well, he was very devoted to Elspeth. I think perhaps her death has unhinged him a bit. But he’s a good fellow, he’s very patient with all my mishaps.”

“Do you have a lot of-um, should we expect the ceiling to cave in all the time?”

Martin looked embarrassed. “That’s only happened once before. I’ll try very hard not to do that again.”

“Do you have a choice about it?”

“There’s a little bit of leeway. Usually.”

Julia felt dizzy from all the cigarette smoke. “Can I use your washroom?”

Martin said, “Of course.” He pointed towards the servant’s room. “There’s one in there.” Julia rose unsteadily and made her way through the box-filled room into the tiny bathroom. There were more boxes stacked in the bathtub. It must be like living in a self-storage unit. She used the toilet and splashed water on her face and felt better. When she got back to the kitchen she said, “So what’s in the boxes? I mean, it looks like you just moved in.”

Martin regarded her tolerantly. “All right, Miss Pandora Poole. As a special treat you may open a box.”

“Any box?”

“Maybe. I can’t always remember what’s in them, so it doesn’t much matter which box.”

They both stood up. It’s like Easter. Or Christmas. “Any hints?”

“No,” he said. “Most of them aren’t too exciting.” They moved into the dining room. Julia stood staring at the towering piles of boxes. Martin said, “Perhaps you could pick one from the top? So we don’t have to shift them all?”

Julia pointed at a box and Martin carefully took it off the pile and handed it to her. It was embalmed in tape, so he went and got a Stanley knife. She put the box on the floor and sliced into it, kneeling beside it. When she opened the box Martin stood back as though it might explode.

It was full of plastic. At first Julia thought plastic was the only thing in the box, but as she delved into it she realised that there were a number of items, each wrapped in plastic and taped. She looked up at Martin. He stood in the doorway, nervously tugging at his gloved fingers. “Should I stop?” she asked.

“No. Unwrap something.”

She groped in the box and pulled out a small plastic package. She unwrapped it slowly. It was an earring, a single pearl in an elaborate silver setting. She offered it up to Martin. He leaned forward to look. “Ah,” he said. “That’s Marijke’s. She’ll want that back.” He did not take it from Julia.

She said, “Do you think the other earring is in here?” He nodded. She went through the box until she found a similar package. When she had both earrings Julia stood up. She went to Martin and held out her hand. He cupped his gloved hands together and she put the earrings into them. Then she put all the plastic back in the box, and placed it back on the pile. She didn’t want to know what else was in there. They went back to the kitchen and stood awkwardly next to their chairs. Martin put the earrings carefully into Valentina’s teacup. He said, “Sometimes a thing is-too much-and it has to be isolated and put away.” Martin shrugged. “So what’s in the boxes is-emotion. In the form of objects.” He looked at Julia. “Is that what you wanted to know?”

“Yes.” It seemed like a completely sensible system. “Thank you.”

“Any other questions?”

She stared at her shoes. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean-it was nice of you-” She stopped because she was about to cry.

“Hey, hey, it’s all right, child.” Martin put his thumb under her chin and lifted her face. “No harm done.” She blinked at him. “Don’t look so tragic.”

“I felt like I really was Pandora for a minute there.”

“No, not at all. But I’m going to send you home now, I think.”

“Can I come again?” It seemed urgent to Julia, to know.

“Yes,” said Martin. “That would be delightful. You know, you’re very like your aunt. Please do visit again. Any time,” he added.

“Okay,” said Julia. “I will. Thank you.” They navigated the aisles between the boxes until they stood at Martin’s front door. He watched as Julia disappeared, foreshortened, down the stairs. She stopped and waved just before vanishing. He heard her door open and close, heard her calling “Mouse!” and an answering call. “Goodness,” Martin said to himself, and turned and shut his door.


Her Electrical Nature

IT WAS a dreary Saturday evening in mid-February. Rain was lashing the windows; Elspeth wondered if perhaps that would wash any of the grime off them. Julia and Valentina were eating their dinner in front of the TV. They’re going to get some kind of vitamin deficiency, Elspeth thought. They never seem to eat anything green. Tonight it was tinned chicken soup, peanut butter on toast and semi-skimmed milk. The twins watched copious amounts of television (Julia joked that they had to learn the language somehow), but tonight they seemed to be making a point of sitting down to watch a particular programme. It turned out to be Doctor Who.

Elspeth hovered above them, lying on her stomach, chin resting on folded arms. Isn’t there anything else on TV? She was a snob about science fiction and hadn’t seen an episode of Doctor Who since the early eighties. Eh, I suppose it’s better than nothing. She watched Julia and Valentina watching the television. They ate their soup slowly from mugs and looked keen. Elspeth happened to glance at the screen in time to see the Doctor walk out of the TARDIS and into a defunct spaceship.

That’s David Tennant! Elspeth zoomed over to the television and sat herself a foot away from it. The Doctor and his companions had discovered an eighteenth-century French fireplace on the spaceship. A fire burned in the hearth. I want a fire, Elspeth thought. She had been experimenting with warming herself over the flames of the stove on the rare occasions that the twins cooked anything. The Doctor had crouched down by the fire and was conversing with a little girl in Paris in 1727 who seemed to be on the other side of the fireplace. Is it sad to fancy David Tennant when you’re dead? This is a very strange programme. The little girl turned out to be the future Madame de Pompadour. Clockwork androids from the spaceship were trying to steal her brain.

“Cyber-steampunk, or steam-cyberpunk?” asked Julia. Elspeth had no idea what she meant. Valentina said, “Look at her hair. Do you think we could do that?”

“It’s a wig,” said Julia. The Doctor was reading Madame de Pompadour’s mind. He put his hands on her head, palms enclosing her face, fingers delicately splayed around her ears. Such long fingers, Elspeth marvelled. She placed her small hand on top of David Tennant’s. The screen was deliciously warm. Elspeth sunk her hand into it, just an inch or so.

“God, that’s weird,” said Valentina. There was a dark silhouette of a woman’s hand superimposed over the Doctor’s. He let go of Madame de Pompadour’s face, but the black hand remained where it was. Elspeth took her hand away; the screen hand stayed black. “How did you do that?” said the Doctor. Elspeth thought he was speaking to her, then realised that Madame de Pompadour was answering him. I must have burned out the screen. What if I could do that with my face? She tucked her entire self into the TV and found herself looking out through the screen. It was wonderful inside the television, quite warm and pleasantly confining. Elspeth had only been in there for a second or two when the twins saw the screen go black. The TV died.

“Drat,” said Julia. “It looks like a newish set too.” She got up and started fiddling with the buttons, to no avail.

“Maybe it’s under warranty,” said Valentina. “I wonder where she got it?”


John Lewis, Elspeth remembered. But I think the warranty must have expired by now. She passed out of the television and stood before it, hoping it would revive. That was rather exciting-they saw me! Well, they saw my hand. She waited for the screen to flicker back to life, but it remained stubbornly dark. Think about this. I short-circuited an electrical thing. Am I electrical? What am I made of, anyway? She stared down at her hands, which, to her, looked like-hands. Elspeth floated over to a floor lamp which stood in a corner of the room. It was turned off. She reached through the fixture and touched her fingers to the base of the lightbulb. It began to glow, faintly. Ah, that’s bloody brilliant. She looked to see if the twins were noticing, but they weren’t.

“Maybe that guy upstairs would let us watch his TV,” said Valentina. Her reluctance to meet Martin was evenly matched by her desire to see the rest of the episode.

“I’m not sure he has one,” said Julia. “It was kind of hard to tell with all the stuff he’s got piled up.” They stood looking at each other in silence, irresolute.

“Maybe there’s a Scrabble set around here somewhere.” Valentina got up, and Julia followed her out of the room. Elspeth stood holding the lightbulb, feeling a distinct sense of anticlimax. It’s in the wardrobe in the guest bedroom, she thought. She let the lightbulb go, and the glow vanished. She could hear the twins ransacking her office. I’ve got to get more serious about this. I wish I’d read more ghost stories, I’m sure I could have found some tips in Le Fanu and that lot. Maybe there’s something on Wikipedia. I wonder if I can turn on the computer? No, I’d probably just wreck it. Elspeth climbed back into the defunct television, which was still warm. What’s wrong with me? I feel positively fuckwitted, I think death has knocked fifty points off my IQ. I used to be able to reason. Now I just waft around making random experiments regarding the nature of existence. And wallowing in self-pity.

When the last of the heat was gone from the TV, Elspeth left it and wandered into the guest room. The wardrobe stood slightly open. The Scrabble set was on the top shelf, under the Monopoly box and an old cribbage board. Elspeth got onto the shelf and behind the games. She began pushing. It was useless; the boxes were too heavy for her. Sod it.

She went to her office to see what the twins were doing. They were sitting together on the floor, huddled over an old issue of The Face. Elspeth felt irritated. Idiot girls. You’re sitting in a flat that’s chock-full of fabulous printed matter and what are you reading about? Morrissey.

“Don’t,” said Valentina.

“Don’t what?” replied Julia.

“Don’t be mad at me. It’s not my fault about the TV.”

“I’m not mad at you.” Julia put the magazine down and looked at Valentina. “I’m kinda bored, but not mad.”

“Huh. I just felt this-like you were really annoyed with me.”

“Well, I’m not.”

“Okay.”

They went back to their reading. Elspeth crouched on the floor a few feet away and stared at them. Valentina raised her head and surveyed the room, perplexed. Seeing nothing, she looked down again. Julia turned the page.

All right then, Elspeth thought. We’re getting somewhere, you and I.

Valentina said, “It’s so cold in here. Let’s just go to bed.” Julia put the magazine away and flipped the light switch. Elspeth sat by herself in the dark, listening to the twins brushing their teeth. When the flat was quiet she went to her desk and touched her fingers to the lightbulb in the desk lamp. It glowed.


Squirrels

FOR DAYS Martin had been hearing noises in the eaves. Something was scampering, clawing, scratching in the space between his ceiling and the roof. Martin called Robert. Robert called the pest-control man, whose name was Kevin.

Kevin duly arrived first thing Monday morning. He was an enormous man, at least twenty stone, both tall and wide. He didn’t say anything as Martin and Robert led him through the darkened rooms with their piles of boxes. Martin wondered how such an immense human was going to manage to get through the small trapdoor in the dressing room ceiling that provided access to the eaves.

Kevin pulled down the ladder, took out a torch and squeezed himself through the hole with a soft grunt. Robert and Martin heard his boots treading from joist to joist. Martin felt a bit queasy, staring up at the hole. Something might come running out of it. Perhaps whatever it was had fleas; perhaps Kevin would bring the fleas down with him on his boots. He seemed to be up there a long time. Martin became very uneasy. Robert said, “You don’t have to stand here. Why don’t you go and have a fag at your desk. I’ll wait for him.” Martin shook his head. The faint boot treads seemed to be moving around the outer perimeter of the building. “Have you ever been up there?” Robert asked.

“When we first lived here Marijke went up. And we had some problems with the roof, but that was before you came. It’s just boards and insulation.” Martin wondered if he could persuade Kevin to remove his boots before he stepped off the ladder. Not likely.

The boot treads approached; Kevin appeared in the opening, lowered himself onto the ladder. Martin stared at his boots. Robert said, “See anything?”

“There’s nowt up there,” said Kevin. “You’ve got very empty eaves.”

“Hmm,” said Robert. “They must be on the roof, not in the roof.”

“That’ll be it, perhaps.”

Robert saw him out and came back upstairs. Martin was scrubbing the dressing-room floor.

“Well?” said Robert.

“That’s a deep subject,” Martin replied.

“My grandfather used to say that.”

Martin said, “Why haven’t you introduced yourself to Elspeth’s girls? They’ve been here for six weeks.”

Robert leaned against the doorjamb and thought about it. “I don’t know. I’ve been rather busy. I had their ceiling fixed, though.” He watched Martin scrubbing and said, “You might use a bit less water when you do that, or you’ll be bringing down their dressing-room ceiling as well and all Elspeth’s shoes will be ruined.”

“They’re charming. Or, one of them is. I haven’t met the other one. She was quite Elspeth-like.”

“In what way?”

“That devastating forthrightness. Elspeth could wield it better, of course; Julia seems a bit out of control. But really, she’s a lovely girl. Nothing to be afraid of.”

Robert made a little snorting sound that Martin correctly translated as Kindly back off. “These noises you’ve been hearing. Are you sure they’re animal noises? I noticed the big oak has grown over the roof. Perhaps we need to call a tree surgeon and get things trimmed up. It couldn’t hurt.”

“All right.” Martin was convinced that the eaves were infested with something, but he knew better than to insist on it now that the pest-control man had checked things out and found nothing. Martin knew that there were two realities: the actual one and the felt one. In the past he had tried to explain, but Robert didn’t understand and invariably started talking about medication in a serious, almost patronising manner. Martin stopped scrubbing and stared at the floor, then closed his eyes and consulted his feeling about the floor. The urge to clean it was satisfied. He stood up and gathered his bucket and brush.

“How’s your thesis coming along?” he asked Robert.

“Fine. I’m off to the Royal Society of Medicine today. I’m helping Dr. Jelliffe with his pamphlet on all the medical practitioners buried in Highgate.”

“Oh, what fun,” Martin said wistfully. Of all the things he missed about the world, researching in actual libraries ranked near the top. Robert opened his mouth to say something, changed his mind. Martin said, “Say hello to the doctor, then. And for heaven’s sake go and introduce yourself to those twins.”

Robert smiled and gave Martin an enigmatic look. “Okay. I’ll get right on it.” He left Martin’s flat and went down the stairs. On the first-floor landing he stood facing the door, staring at the little card with Elspeth’s name on it. He raised his hand to knock, then didn’t, and continued walking down the stairs and into his flat.


Primrose Hill

IT WAS A GREY, cold day. Rain was imminent. Julia and Valentina were walking up Primrose Hill. They were bundled up against the cold, and the effort of walking uphill made their cheeks pink. Julia had bought a book called Super-Mini British Slang Dictionary in an Oxfam shop. She occasionally referred to it as they walked.

“Bubble and squeak,” Julia said.

Valentina pondered. “It’s something to eat. Is it steak and kidney pie?”

“No, steak and kidney pie is steak and kidney pie.”

“Well, it’s like a stew.”

“Cabbage and potatoes chopped up and fried together,” said Julia. “Okay, here’s a good one: codswallop.”

“Nonsense.”

“Very good, A plus for our Mouse. Now you do some for me.” Julia handed Valentina the book. The twins reached the top of the hill. London spread out before them. The twins were unaware of it, but Winston Churchill had often stood on the spot they happened to be standing on, thinking over strategy during World War II. The twins were disappointed with the view. Chicago was dramatic; if you went to the top of the John Hancock Center you felt a little bit of vertigo and saw a city full of huge buildings beside a gigantic body of water. Standing on Primrose Hill, the twins saw Regent’s Park, which was drab in February, and tiny buildings in the distance all around.

“It’s bloody cold up here,” said Julia, jumping up and down and hugging herself.

Valentina frowned. “Don’t say ‘bloody.’ It’s swearing.”

“Okay. It’s jolly cold up here. It’s blooming cold. Gorblimey, it’s cold up here.” Julia began to do a sort of dance. It involved running in circles, skipping and hopping in place every now and then while throwing her body sideways. Valentina stood with her arms crossed, watching Julia carom around. Now and then Julia bumped into her. “C’mon, Mouse,” Julia said, grabbing Valentina’s mittened hands. They two-stepped around in a circle for a few minutes until Valentina was out of breath. She stood leaning over with her hands on her knees, wheezing.

“You okay?” Julia asked. Valentina shook her head and her hat fell off. Julia replaced it. After a few more minutes Valentina’s breathing returned to normal. Julia felt as though she could jog up and down the hill ten times without getting as winded as Valentina had been after a couple minutes of dancing. “You okay now?”

“Yeah.” They began to walk down the hill. The wind dropped almost instantly. Valentina felt her lungs unclench. “We should figure out how to get a doctor.”

“Yeah.” They walked in silence for a while, following the same train of thought: We promised Mom we’d find a doctor right away and not wait until Valentina has some kind of emergency. But we’ve only been here six weeks, so really this is still “right away.” Besides, there’s a hospital just down Highgate Hill, so if anything does go wrong we could go to the emergency room. But we’re still not insured, so we’d end up having to tell Mom and Dad. But how do we figure out the National Health Service? Maybe that lawyer who did Aunt Elspeth’s will could explain it.


“We should call Mr. Roche,” they said in unison, and laughed.

Julia said, “Jinx.”

Valentina said, “I’m better now.” Then she had the feeling she often had lately, of being watched. Sometimes it went away; she hadn’t felt it up on the hill. She turned and looked around, but they were alone on the street except for a young woman pushing a pram with a sleeping baby in it. The houses shut them out with blank narrow faces, windows curtained. The twins walked down some steps to the path along the Regent’s Canal; the canal was placid, with wide paths on each bank. The houses loomed over them in strange perspective, as though they were walking underneath a transparent street. Cold fat raindrops fell sporadically. Valentina kept looking over her shoulder. There was a teenage boy on a bike; he rode past them without a glance. Someone was keeping pace with them on the street above. Valentina could hear footsteps crunching alongside them as they walked.

Julia noticed Valentina’s unease. “What is it?”

“You know.”

Julia was about to say the same thing she’d been saying for days, which was: That’s crazy, Mouse. But suddenly she became aware of the footsteps too. She looked up. There was nothing to see but the wall and the railing and the houses. She stopped walking and so did Valentina. The footsteps continued, one two three four, then stopped. The water had exaggerated the footsteps; now their absence was enlarged by the canal lapping at its cement banks. Julia and Valentina stood facing each other, heads tilted to catch the sound. They waited and the footsteps waited. The twins turned and walked back the way they’d come. The footsteps walked on, away from them, hesitated, and then continued, growing faint as they moved away.

The twins came to the steps. They ascended to the street. In the distance was a man in a long overcoat, walking away from them hurriedly. Valentina frowned. Julia said, “Do you want to go home?”

Yes, but not in the way you mean. “No,” said Valentina. She had the feeling more intensely inside the flat. “Let’s go to the V &A and look at Queen Caroline’s clothes.”

“Okay,” said Julia. They stopped while Julia consulted the A-Z. Valentina stood watching, but whatever it was had gone.


Elspeth felt that she was on the verge of a breakthrough. She had been giving serious thought to haunting. There’s a balance between the aesthetics and the practical side of it. I’ve been muddling around trying to do the things living people do, messing with objects and such. But I can do things they can’t do: I can fly and pass through walls and blow out TVs. I’m not exactly matter so I must be energy. Elspeth wished she’d paid more attention to physics. Most of her knowledge of the hard sciences came from quiz shows and crossword puzzles. If I’m energy, then what? She didn’t understand why Valentina seemed to be able to sense her while Julia couldn’t. But Elspeth redoubled her efforts: she followed Valentina around the flat, turning lights on and off. Valentina complained to Julia about the old wiring and worried that the building was going to burn down. When the twins were out Elspeth gave herself exercises to do: cast a shadow, make a Tesco’s receipt float a few inches off the dining-room table. (She couldn’t manage either task.) She imagined grand tableaux: I’ll pull all the books off the shelves, break all the windows, play the “Maple Leaf Rag” on the piano. But she was too weak to sound even one note. She walked over the piano keys, stomping as hard as she could in her yellow Doc Martens. The keys depressed a few millimetres; she thought she heard the strings whisper, but really there was nothing at all. She was more successful with doors; if the hinges were well oiled she could close a door by leaning against it and pushing with all her might.

So she kept practising. If I’d worked out this hard when I was alive I could have lifted a MINI Cooper. The results were gradual, but definite. The most effective thing Elspeth did was simply to stare at Valentina.


Valentina didn’t like it. She seemed to pick up on Elspeth’s emotional states. But even when Elspeth tried to project brightness and smiles, Valentina was uneasy. She would look around, get up and move, abandoning her book, taking her cup of tea to some other room. Sometimes Elspeth followed her and sometimes she let her escape. Elspeth tried staring at Julia, just to be fair, but Julia was impervious.

One morning Elspeth came upon them at breakfast in the dining room. As she entered the room Valentina was speaking. “-I don’t know, it’s like, a ghost, just, you know, a presence. Like someone’s there.” Valentina looked around the room, which was bright with morning sun. “It’s here now. It wasn’t a minute ago.”

Julia obediently cocked her head and sat still, trying to feel the ghost. Then she shook her head and said, “Nope.”

Do something, Elspeth thought. She was excited because Valentina had actually used the word ghost. Elspeth walked behind Julia’s chair and bent over her, wrapped her arms around Julia’s shoulders and placed her hands over Julia’s heart. Julia let out a little shriek and exclaimed, “Yowza!” Elspeth let go of her and Julia huddled in her chair, shivering.

“What?” said Valentina, alarmed.

“It just got super cold in here. Didn’t you feel it?”

Valentina shook her head and said, “It’s the ghost.” Elspeth ran her fingers up Valentina’s arm. She was afraid to embrace Valentina the way she had just done to Julia; she wasn’t sure Valentina’s heart would stand it. Valentina rubbed her arm and said, “It is kind of draughty in here.” Both of them sat concentrating, waiting. Now, it’s now or never. Elspeth scanned the room for anything delicate enough for her to move. She managed a slight quivering of Valentina’s spoon against her teacup. The twins sat watching it, looking at each other, then back to the spoon. Elspeth illuminated the lightbulbs in the wall sconces. The room was bright and the twins didn’t see her do it so she went back to rattling the spoon.


“Well?” said Valentina.

Julia said, “I don’t know. What do you think?” Humour her.

“Something’s going on.”

“Ghosts?”

Valentina shrugged. Elspeth felt a surge of delight: We’re on the verge. Valentina said, “It’s happy.”

“How do you know?” Julia asked.

“Because I suddenly felt happy, except I’m not happy. It was like it came from outside me.”

“At least it’s not a mean ghost. You know, like in Poltergeist, where they put the house on top of the cemetery,” Julia said. She looked at Valentina doubtfully.

“You think it’s something from the cemetery?” Valentina imagined a vaporous slimy dead thing climbing over the cemetery wall, up the side of the house and into their flat. “Ugh.” She stood up, ready to flee.

“This is getting weird,” Julia said. “Let’s go out.” Julia could see that the Mouse was freaking; it would be better to get moving, to go outside.

Valentina said, “We’re going out, ghost. Please don’t follow us, I hate it when you do that.”

What are you talking about? I never leave the flat. Elspeth watched the twins as they dressed and then followed them to the front door. Valentina said, “Bye, ghost,” in a voice tinged with hostility, and let the door slam in Elspeth’s face. She tried not to take it personally.


The Little Kitten of Death

THE FOLLOWING night it snowed. Valentina and Julia walked carefully down the icy path that led from South Grove to Vautravers. There was only half an inch of snow, but they were wearing smooth-soled leather shoes, and the path descended at an angle that made walking without traction an adventure. They were discussing whether clearing the path was their problem or their neighbours’. St. Michael’s wall threw the path into shadow. Above them the night sky was bright; the full moon and the snow had turned Highgate Village into a glittering fairyland. Julia was smoking a cigarette. Its orange tip floated a few inches from her shadowed face, bobbing along as they walked, then arcing down as Julia took it from her lips and blew the invisible smoke above her head. Valentina was annoyed; Julia would smell like smoke in bed, and her breath would reek in the morning. But she didn’t say anything. Valentina figured if she kept quiet about it, Julia wouldn’t start smoking all the time just to bug her. Just then Julia inhaled too deeply and had to stop and cough for a minute. Valentina stood staring past Julia’s hacking frame and it was then that she saw a small white thing scurrying through the ivy, straight up the church’s wall. It was about the size of a squirrel, and Valentina wondered if they had white squirrels here in London. Then she thought of the ghost, and her throat contracted. The thing darted towards the top of the wall and then seemed to hang there, as though it knew it was being watched. Julia stopped coughing and straightened up.

“Look,” Valentina whispered, pointing. The white thing heaved itself toward the top of the wall, and as it stood up silhouetted the twins saw that it was a cat, a little cat: a kitten. It stretched itself and sat down on the wall. It looked down at them, scorning their inferior position. The wall was fifteen feet high, so the kitten appeared both small and incongruous.

“Whoa,” said Julia. “Can cats do that? It’s like a monkey.”

Valentina thought about a white tiger they had seen once in a circus. It had placed its paw on the shoulder of its keeper so gently, as though it meant to dance with him. The tiger had walked on a tightrope ten feet off the ground.

“It’s the Death-Defying Kitten,” Valentina said. “Do you think it lives in the cemetery?”

“It’s the Little Kitten of Death,” said Julia. “Hi, Little Kitten of Death!” She made what were meant to be cat-calling noises, sk-sk-sk, but the kitten shrugged itself and disappeared over the wall. They could hear it thrashing through the ivy on the other side.

When they got home, Valentina put out an old chipped teacup full of milk and a saucer of tuna fish on the dining-room balcony. Julia noticed it the next morning at breakfast.

“What’s that for?”

“The Little Kitten of Death. I want it to come up to us.”

Julia rolled her eyes. “More likely you’ll just get raccoons. Or those foxes.”

“I don’t think they climb like that.”


“Raccoons climb anywhere they please,” Julia said, munching her buttered toast.

The tuna and milk sat there all day, attracting a few curious birds. Valentina snuck into the dining room a few times to see if anything had visited, but the cup and saucer sat untouched until dinner.

“That’s gonna attract ants if you leave it there long enough,” said Julia.

“It’s winter. All the ants are hibernating,” said Valentina. Later she dumped the milk down the sink, washed the cup and refilled it with fresh milk; likewise the tuna. She put the cup and saucer back in their positions on the balcony and went to bed.

The following morning Valentina opened the French windows to the balcony and inspected the cup and saucer. She was pleased to see that something had been at them: the tuna was gone and the milk was only about half as full as it had been the night before. She removed the dishes before Julia came in. That night she filled them and put them on the balcony, turned out the lights and sat on the floor of the dining room, waiting.

She could hear Julia moving around the flat. At first she was just moving: undressing for bed, washing her face, brushing her teeth. Then she began moving through the apartment in search of Valentina. “Mouse?” Julia’s footsteps went down the hall and into the front of the flat. “Mouse?” Valentina sat silent, as though they were playing hide-and-seek. Julia was walking along the hall, she was outside the dining room. Warmer, warmer. “Mouse? Where are you?” She opened the door and saw Valentina sitting in the pool of moonlight beside the French windows. Hot. “What are you doing?”

Ssh. I’m waiting for the kitten,” Valentina whispered.

Ohh. Can I wait too?” Valentina wondered how it was possible for Julia’s whispering to be louder than her normal speaking voice.

“Okay,” Valentina replied, “but you have to be totally silent.” The twins sat side by side on the floor. Neither of them had a watch. Time passed.


Julia stretched out on the floor and fell asleep. It was cold in the room, and colder on the floor. Julia was wearing sweatpants and a long-sleeved Wilco T-shirt she had stolen from Luke Brenner, a boy she’d had a crush on in high school. Valentina thought about getting some pillows and blankets for Julia, who looked uncomfortable. Valen-tina was fully dressed, but her hands and feet and nose were cold. She considered making herself a cup of tea. She got up and left the room.

When Valentina came back with the tea, the pillows and the blankets, Julia was awake. She put her finger to her lips as Valentina came in. There was a rustling noise, as though something was swimming through dry leaves. Valentina sank to the floor, cushioned in pillows. She set the tea down silently.

Julia looked over at her twin, whose eyes shone in the half-shadow. Valentina hadn’t washed her hair that day, and it hung lank and darkish. Valentina breathed deeply, focused on the cup and saucer. Julia smiled and looked at the cup and saucer too. She loved it when Valentina wanted something badly.

The noises came closer, then stopped. The twins were still. Everything paused, and then the white kitten launched itself from the wall onto the balcony.

It was small and thin. The twins could see its ribs. The kitten had immense, bat-like ears. Its fur was matted and short. But somehow it was not pathetic; it came off as determined. There was nothing especially preternatural about it. It was businesslike, and immediately ran to the saucer to gulp down the tuna fish. The twins could see its sides working as it fed. Valentina thought of the jellyfish she had once seen washed up on a Florida beach. The kitten was so thin she felt as though she could see all its internal organs. It was a female kitten. Valentina was entranced.

The kitten finished eating and sat cleaning herself. She looked at them briefly (or in their direction; Valentina wasn’t sure the kitten could see them, since the moon had moved and they now sat in shadow). Then she hopped off the balcony and rustled away.


Julia held out her palm, and Valentina high-fived her. “That was really cool, Mouse. Are you going to keep feeding her?”

Valentina smiled. “I’m going to adopt her. Before you know it she’ll be wearing a collar and sitting on my lap.”

“But don’t you think she’s a little…feral? What if she’s not litter-box trained?”

Valentina shot Julia a look. “She’s a kitten. She’ll learn.”

The scene was repeated on subsequent nights. Valentina went to Sainsbury’s and bought tins of cat food and a litter box. Each night she sat and waited for the Little Kitten of Death to arrive. Usually she sat well back from the French windows and simply watched. After five nights she left the windows slightly open, and tried to entice the kitten inside, but this only frightened it, and Valentina had to start again. The kitten was truly wild, and would not be coaxed.

“I thought she’d be sitting on your lap by now,” Julia teased.

“You try,” retorted Valentina.

Julia gave it some thought, and that night she showed up in the dining room with a spool of thread from Elspeth’s sewing box. She waited for the kitten to finish her meal, then rolled the spool out onto the balcony. The kitten eyed it suspiciously. Julia tugged a bit on the thread. The kitten put out a tentative paw. Soon the kitten was chasing the spool across the balcony, madly pouncing and hopping, waiting for the next tug on the thread. But as soon as Julia pulled the spool into the room, the kitten looked up, saw Julia and darted off the balcony into the ivy.

“Nice try,” Valentina said. She was secretly pleased that the kitten had not come in for Julia either, though by now Valentina wanted the kitten so badly that it almost wouldn’t have mattered.

In the end, it was neither Valentina nor Julia who lured the Little Kitten of Death indoors. One Tuesday night in late February, Valentina prepared the kitten’s food and was negotiating the dining-room door with the tray in her hands when she heard something skittering, ivy rustling. The French windows were ajar, and cold air flowed into the room. Out on the balcony the kitten frisked and pounced. The spool of thread jerked and rolled, controlled by an imperceptible hand: now just outside the white kitten’s grasp, now flicking across the balcony, checked by the kitten’s spread paw. Valentina stood still. The spool of thread spun into the space between one of the doors and the sill. It rocked there, enticingly. The kitten hesitated. It gathered itself, and pounced. Its momentum sent it scooting forward into the room. The door shut behind it.

Valentina and the kitten stared at each other, equally shocked. They recovered at the same moment. Valentina put the tray on the floor. The kitten began to run back and forth, scrambling on the parquet floor for an escape. Valentina shut the dining-room door and put her back against it.

“Who’s there?” she said. She meant it to sound normal, but her voice came out squeaky. “Who is it?” The spool of thread sat immobile on the floor. Everything in the room was still, except the kitten, who flattened herself under the skirts of the ottoman and hid. Valentina stood listening, or rather, feeling the room with her body, trying to discern whether there was anything there. But she was shaking, and she couldn’t feel anything besides the cold air and the kitten’s fright. Then something pushed on the other side of the door she was leaning against. Valentina went weak.

“Mouse?” It was only Julia. Valentina let out her breath and opened the door a crack. “Come in quick,” she said. Julia did, slipping through six inches of open door and pushing it closed. “Did you catch her?” Julia asked, her face alight.

“No,” said Valentina. “The ghost caught her.” She expected Julia to be scornful, but Julia looked at Valentina and saw that she was shaking. Julia flipped the light switch and the dining room filled with the weak light of the chandelier.

“C’mere,” said Julia. She pulled out one of the spindly chairs that clustered around the dining-room table and Valentina sat down on it. Julia glanced around the room. “So if the ghost caught her, where is she?”


“She’s under that ottoman.”

Julia got down on her hands and knees in front of the ottoman and carefully lifted the fringe. She saw a small animal with glowing green eyes that bared its teeth and hissed at her. “She’s all yours,” said Julia.

Valentina smiled. “Here, put the tuna close to the ottoman, maybe she’ll come out to eat.”

Julia did this. “Hey,” she said, “how did the ghost do it?” She had decided to put aside her disbelief in the ghost for the moment. Julia liked the idea of a ghost that made itself useful.

“The ghost did it just the same way you did, only the kitten couldn’t see the ghost, so she just pounced right into the room and then the ghost shut the door.”

“So maybe that means the ghost watches us?” Julia was getting creeped out in spite of herself. “Because otherwise how would the ghost even know you wanted the kitten? Did you leave the spool of thread here, or was it in the sewing box?”

“No, it was here.”

“Hmm.” Julia was pacing back and forth with her hands clasped behind her back. Valentina thought of a Sherlock Holmes movie they had seen over and over on Channel Nine when they were kids. Holmes was always pacing. Valentina half-expected Julia to say, It’s elementary, my dear Watson, but Julia only sat down on the floor and stared at the ottoman, frowning. “Do you think the ghost is still here?”

Valentina looked around. There weren’t very many places a ghost could be in here; the dining room was somewhat bare. “I guess,” she said. “But the ghost is mostly a feeling, at least before tonight. It’s not like I’ve ever seen it. And I don’t feel it right now.”

Elspeth stood on top of the dining-room table. She was wearing a blue chiffon cocktail dress and spiked heels with fishnet stockings. Elspeth delighted in the fact that she could walk on the smooth wood of the table without marring it. She was also tremendously pleased that she had caught the kitten, and that Valentina had seen her do it. That’s it, then. I’ve done it! They’ve got to believe in me now.


The Little Kitten of Death sat under the ottoman, enraged. She knew that there was tuna quite close by, but she did not want to give anyone the satisfaction of seeing her eat it. After a while, Julia grew bored with watching the ottoman and went to bed. Valentina put a litter box in the dining room, hoping that the kitten wouldn’t pee all over everything. She turned out the lights and also went to bed. Elspeth sat on the table, waiting.

“Sk-sk-sk,” she said, knowing the kitten couldn’t hear her. After half an hour of complete silence, the kitten crept out and looked around, circling the room, hunting for a way out. Elspeth hopped off the table and sat on the ottoman. She waited for the kitten to calm down, stroked it as it gulped down the tuna. It didn’t notice.


A Tour of Highgate Cemetery

JESSICA STOOD in front of the Eastern Cemetery’s gates on a brisk Sunday in early March, watching the visitors assembled before the main gate on the Western side. They were an unpromising lot: an American couple wearing intimidating trainers and impressive cameras; a quiet, middle-aged man with a receding hairline and binoculars; three young Japanese men in baggy denim trousers and baseball caps; a woman with a rather aerodynamic-looking pram; and a stout man with an enormous backpack, who paced back and forth with bouncy energy.

A black van sped along Swains Lane. The gilt, circus-poster-style lettering on its side said only: TEMERITY.

Indeed, thought Jessica. She checked her watch. It was quarter to three. She glanced behind her at Kate, a round, pleasant, American volunteer who was chatting with some grave owners about the renovations to the Eastern Cemetery’s wall. When Jessica returned her gaze to the group at the gate she saw that they had been joined by two girls dressed from head to toe in white. The girls stood by themselves, holding hands. They wore white hooded sweatshirts with fur trim, white miniskirts, leggings and boots. Their white knitted caps were almost the same colour as their hair. The girls had their backs to Jessica, but she knew without seeing their faces that they must be twins. How darling they are. She wondered if they realised how muddy the cemetery paths were, and whether they were younger than sixteen.

Julia and Valentina stood in front of the gates, shifting from foot to foot and shivering. Julia wondered where everyone was; all was quiet inside the gates. She could see a wide courtyard beyond the gatehouse and a colonnade which extended in a half-circle around it. She heard someone using a walkie-talkie, but there were no people in sight. Across the road was the other half of the cemetery, where Karl Marx was buried. It looked more open, more like a regular American cemetery. The guidebook said that the Western Cemetery was more interesting, but could only be visited on the tour. Anyway, it was the Western side that the twins’ windows overlooked.

Jessica crossed Swains Lane, strode through the little crowd and unlocked the massive gates. She was dressed entirely in shades of violet and mauve, and wore a hat that Valentina instantly coveted, a large-brimmed felt affair with a sweeping black feather tucked in the band. Valentina and Julia’s first impression was of royalty, a duchess, perhaps, who had come to the cemetery for the afternoon to cut a ribbon or visit a loved one and had stayed on to help out. This notion was not immediately dispelled when she spoke. “Do come in now, my dears. Has everyone read the notices? Right, please leave all luggage in the office. I’m terribly sorry, but no children under the age of eight are allowed in the Western Cemetery. Photographs may be taken for Personal Use Only. This way, please, kindly perch yourselves in front of the War Memorial on the far side of the courtyard there, we’ll be right with you.” The twins obediently sat on a bench and waited.

Robert walked out of the office with the ticket box, distracted by a crossword clue James had just read to him. He joined Jessica and they crossed the courtyard together. He saw the twins and his stomach clenched. The sensation reminded him of stage fright; then he realised it was guilt.

“Don’t charge them,” he said to Jessica.

“Why ever not?”

“They’re grave owners.”

“Surely n-oh,” she said, looking more carefully. “I see.” They continued walking. “Will you be all right, then? Shall I ask Kate to give the tour?”

“Don’t be silly. I’ve got to meet them eventually.”

The twins watched them arrive. Julia elbowed Valentina. “Isn’t that the guy you met on the tube?” she whispered. Valentina nodded. She watched Robert tearing tickets, Jessica accepting £5 from each person. The twins were at the end of the row of benches. When she had taken the money from the American couple Jessica closed her money box and winked at them. Julia held out £10, but Jessica shook her head and smiled. The American woman gave them an annoyed look. Julia squeezed Valentina’s hand.

“Welcome to Highgate Cemetery,” Jessica said. “Robert will be your guide. He is one of our most Learned Guides, an historian of the Victorian Era, and is writing a book about this cemetery. All of our work is done on a voluntary basis, and every year we must raise over three hundred and fifty thousand pounds just to keep the cemetery open.” Jessica flirted with them as she spoke, and exhibited the green box. “As you leave, a volunteer will be stationed at the gate with this green box, and any help you can give will be Much Appreciated.” Robert watched the tourists fidget. Jessica wished them a Pleasant Tour and went back to the office. She felt a flutter of excitement. Why? She stood at the office window and watched Robert gather his group in front of the Colonnade steps. He stood two steps up and spoke to them, looking down, gesturing. From where they stood, the tourists could not see anything but greenery and the steps. Thosegirls look extraordinarily like Elspeth. How amazing life is. I hope he’ll be all right. He looked a bit pale.

Robert tried to clear his mind. He felt as though he were watching himself, as though he had separated into two Roberts, one of whom was calmly giving a tour, the other mute with nerves, trying to think what he might say to the twins. Bloody hell, you’d think you were seventeen. You don’t have to talk to them. They’ll talk to you. Wait.

“At the beginning of the nineteenth century,” Robert began, “London’s graveyards were shockingly overcrowded. Burial in churchyards had been the custom for hundreds of years. People were flocking to the city: there was an industrial revolution going on, and the factories needed workers. There was no space left to bury anyone, yet people died anyway. In 1800, London’s population was approximately one million. By the middle of the century it was well over two million. The churchyards couldn’t keep up with the relentless pace of death.

“The churchyards were also a health hazard. They contaminated the groundwater and caused epidemics of typhoid and cholera. Since there was no space for more graves, corpses had to be disinterred so that the newly dead could be buried. If you’ve read your Dickens, you know what I’m talking about: elbows poking out of the ground, grave robbers stealing the dead to sell them to the medical schools. It was an absolute shambles.

“In 1832, Parliament passed a bill allowing the establishment of private, commercial cemeteries. In the next nine years, seven cemeteries were opened, situated in a ring around what was then the edge of the city. These became known as the Magnificent Seven: Kensal Green, West Norwood, Highgate, Nunhead, Brompton, Abney Park and Tower Hamlets. Highgate was opened in 1839, and it quickly became the most desirable burial ground in London. Let’s go up the steps, and you’ll see why.”

The twins were at the back of the group, so all they saw was other people’s legs as they ascended. When they got to the top, Robert was standing with the group ranged in a circle around him. They saw a dense clamour of large, tilting graves, crowded and encroached on by trees and greenery. Valentina had a powerful feeling of recognition. I’ve been here before!-but not really; maybe I dreamed it? A crow flew close over their heads and swooped across the courtyard, landing on the apex of the chapels’ roof. Valentina wondered what that would be like, to fly brazenly through the cemetery; she wondered what the crow thought about the whole thing. It’s so strange, to put people in the ground and put stones on top of them. She felt a surge of wonder that people should all agree to be put in the ground together.

Robert said, “We’re standing on top of the Colonnade. If you’ll look towards the chapels, there, where you came in: there were two chapels, Anglican and Dissenters’, joined together in one building, quite unique. We are in the Western Cemetery, the original part. There are seventeen acres, and two of those are set aside for Dissenters-that is, Baptists, Presbyterians, Sandemanians, and other Protestant sects. Highgate was so popular that by 1854 they needed to expand, and so the London Cemetery Company bought the twenty acres across Swains Lane to create the Eastern Cemetery. This led to a problem. Once the service had been conducted in the Anglican chapel, how were they to get the coffin over to the Eastern side without taking it off consecrated ground? They couldn’t consecrate Swains Lane, so instead they used typical Victorian ingenuity and dug a tunnel under the road. At the end of the service, the coffin would be lowered by a pneumatic lift down into the tunnel. The pallbearers would meet it and take it across, where it would ascend on the Eastern side in a touching allusion to the Resurrection.”

Julia thought, He looks really pleased with himself, like he invented the whole thing. She felt kind of crabby, cold and damp. She glanced at Valentina, who was staring at the guide with rapt attention. Robert ran his eyes over the group. Most of them had their cameras ready, itching to take photos, to move on. He saw Valentina staring at him and turned to the grave they were standing next to.


“This grave belongs to James William Selby, who was, in his day, a famous coachman. He was fond of driving fast and in all weathers. The whip and horn signify his profession, the inverted horseshoes tell us that his luck has run out. In 1888 Selby accepted a wager to drive from London to Brighton in less than eight hours. He made it in seven hours and fifty minutes, using seven teams of horses. He won a thousand pounds, but died five months later. We speculate that his winnings might have been used to buy him this very handsome memorial. Mind the path, it’s fairly bad today.”

Robert turned and began walking uphill. He could hear the tourists scrambling after him. The main path was rocky, muddy and full of tree roots and holes. He could hear cameras clicking like digital insects as they walked. His stomach was churning. I wonder if I could park them all at Comfort’s Corners and just go and quietly puke in the shrubbery? He soldiered on. He showed them the Gothic-style grave with the empty stone chair, signifying that the occupant was gone, never to return. He led them to the tomb of Sir Loftus Otway, an enormous family mausoleum which had once featured large panels of glass: “You could look down into the tomb and see the coffins. This wasn’t for our voyeuristic pleasure, mind you; many Victorians hated the thought of being buried six feet under, and quite a number of the burials in this cemetery are aboveground…” He told them about the Friends of Highgate Cemetery, how they had saved Highgate. “Before the First World War the staff included twenty-eight gardeners. Everything was tidy, spacious and serene. But all the able-bodied men went to fight, and things were never quite the same. The vegetation began to take over, they ran out of space to make new graves, the money stopped coming in…and in 1975 the western side was padlocked and essentially abandoned to Satanists, nutters, vandals, Johnny Rotten-”

“Who’s he?” one of the young Japanese men wanted to know.

“Lead singer of the Sex Pistols, used to live nearby, in Finchley Park. Right, so you may have noticed that the neighbourhood surrounding this cemetery is a bit posh, and the neighbours got alarmed about the grave-desecrating and the wrong element hanging round. A group of local people got together and bought Highgate Cemetery for fifty quid. Then they went about trying to put it right again. And they invented what they call ‘managed neglect,’ which means just what it sounds like: they didn’t try to make it all tidy and imitate what the Victorians had done. They work things in such a way that you see what time and nature have made of the place, but they don’t let it go so far that it gets dangerous. It’s a museum, in a sense, but it’s also a working Christian burial ground.” Robert glanced at his watch. He needed to get them moving; Jessica had spoken to him only yesterday about Getting the Tour Back in a Timely Manner. “This way.”

He led them at a faster pace to Comfort’s Corners, then began to tell the story of Elizabeth Siddal Rossetti. As always, Robert had to fight the urge to tell the group everything he knew; they would be here for days, gradually collapsing with fatigue and hunger while he went on and on. They mainly want to see the place. Don’t bore them with too much detail. He walked them to one of his favourites, a ledger-style tomb with a bas-relief of a weeper, a woman sitting up at night with the coffin. “Before modern medical technology, people had a difficult time determining when someone was really dead. You might think that death would be pretty blatant, but there were a number of famous cases in which a dead body sat up and went on living, and many Victorians got the jim-jams just thinking about the possibility of being buried alive.

“Being a practical people, they attempted to find solutions to the problem. The Victorians invented a system of bells with strings attached that went through the ground and into the coffin, so if you woke up underground you could pull on your bell till someone came to dig you up. There’s no record of anyone being saved by one of these devices. People made all sorts of odd stipulations in their wills, such as asking to be decapitated as insurance against an undesired revival.”


“What about vampires?”

“What about vampires?”

“I heard there was a vampire here in the cemetery.”

“No. There were a bunch of attention-seeking idiots who claimed to have seen a vampire. Though some people do say that Bram Stoker was inspired to write Dracula by an exhumation here at Highgate.”

Valentina and Julia hung back at the edge of the group. They were having decidedly different experiences. Julia wanted to leave the group and go exploring. She detested lectures and professors and Robert was making her itch. You’re just bloviating. Get on with it. Valentina was not following Robert’s commentary very closely because she was occupied with an idea that had been nudging at her since Jessica had introduced him: You’re Elspeth’s Robert Fanshaw. That’s how you knew us. She was disquieted by the thought that he must have seen them before without them knowing. I should tell Julia. Valentina glanced at Julia. No, better wait. She’s in a mood.

Robert turned and led them further uphill, stopping at the entrance to the Egyptian Avenue. Robert waited for the American couple to catch up; they tended to fall behind as they tried to photograph everything. You’ll never make it, folks, there’s 52,000 graves in here. One of the Japanese men said, “Wow.” He drew it out so that it sounded like whoooohow. Robert loved the drama of the Egyptian Avenue; it looked like a stage set for Aïda.

“Highgate Cemetery, in addition to being a Christian burial ground, was a business venture. In order to make it the most desirable address for the eminent Victorian dead, it needed what every posh neighbourhood needs: amenities. In the late 1830s, when High-gate opened, all things Egyptian were quite popular, and so here we have the Egyptian Avenue. The entrance is based on a tomb at Luxor. It was originally coloured, and the Avenue itself was not so dark and gloomy. It was open to the sky, and there were none of these trees that lean over it now…

“The mausoleums in the Avenue can hold eight to ten people. There are shelves inside for the coffins. Note the inverted torches; the keyholes are upside down as well. The holes on the bottom of the doors let the gases escape.”

“Gases?” asked the quiet man with the binoculars.

“As the bodies decomposed, they gave off gases. They used to put candles in there with them to burn it off. Must have been rather spooky at night.” They went through the Egyptian Avenue and stood at the other end, the twins hugging themselves for warmth even in the strong sunlight. Robert looked at them and was hit by a memory of Elspeth standing in almost the same spot, her face tilted to catch the sun. Oh, you… He faltered. Everyone waited for him to continue. Don’t look at them. Don’t think about her. Robert stared at the ground for a moment and then pulled himself together.

“We are standing in the Circle of Lebanon. This was the most coveted address in the cemetery. It gets its name from the enormous Cedar of Lebanon tree you see up there above the mausoleums. The tree is approximately three hundred years old now, but even when Highgate Cemetery was founded it would have been impressive. The land was originally part of the estate of the Bishop of London, and when they came to make the Circle they cut down around the tree; it stands on what was originally ground level. Imagine trying to shift all that earth with 1830s equipment. The inner circle was made first, and it proved so popular that the outer circle was begun twenty years later. You can see the changing tastes in architecture, from Egyptian to Gothic.”

Robert led them through the Circle. This is not getting easier. He glanced at his watch and resolved to skip a few graves.

“This is the mausoleum of Mabel Veronica Batten and her lover, Radclyffe Hall…Here we have a columbarium. The name comes from the Latin columba, meaning ‘dove,’ and originally meant compartments for doves to live in…Follow me up these stairs, please…Right. This is the grave of George Wombwell, a famous menagerist. He got his start by buying two boa constrictors from a sailor…” Robert skipped over Mrs. Henry Wood, the Carter family’s faux-Egyptian tomb and Adam Worth and led the visitors around the top of the Circle to admire the view of St. Michael’s. He then herded them to stand between the Terrace Catacombs and the enormous Beer family tomb. The twins realised that they were looking at the huge mausoleum they could see from their bedroom window. They backed up, trying to see over the Catacombs, but although they could see Martin’s flat, their own wasn’t visible.

“Julius Beer was a German Jew who arrived in London with no money and made his fortune on the Stock Exchange…” Valentina was thinking about the fact that she had never exactly thought about death. The cemetery at home in Lake Forest was tidy and spacious. Jack’s parents were buried there in a modest plot with matching pink granite markers. The twins had never met any of their grandparents. We don’t know anyone who died. It’s hard to imagine not being here, or Julia not here… She felt a spasm of loneliness, or homesickness, she wasn’t sure which. Valentina watched Robert. He was ignoring her; he seemed to be deliberately focusing on the man with the binoculars. He knew Elspeth. He was her lover. He could tell us about her.

“…Julius Beer was unable to secure a position in Victorian society, because in addition to being a foreigner and Jewish, he had made his money rather than inheriting it. So he erected this rather large mausoleum where no one could possibly miss it. The Beer mausoleum blocks the view if you happen to be promenading on the roof of the Terrace Catacombs, as Victorian ladies liked to do of a Sunday afternoon.” Valentina thought of the green door in their back garden. She imagined herself and Julia wearing crinolines, strolling atop the hundreds of rotting bodies lying in the dark nasty Terrace Catacombs. Those Victorians sure knew how to have fun.

Robert led them along paths, past the Dissenters’ section; he showed them Thomas Sayers’ grave, where Lion the stone dog kept patient vigil; skipped Sir Rowland Hill, inventor of the Uniform Penny Post. He passed the Noblin family mausoleum without comment. Fifty yards on, Robert turned to say something to the group and saw that he had lost Julia and Valentina. They were standing in front of the Noblins, arm in arm, conferring. Robert parked the group in front of Thomas Charles Druce and jogged back to the twins.

“Hello,” he managed.

They went still, like rabbits looked at too directly. Valentina said, “You’re Robert Fanshaw, aren’t you?” Julia thought, What?

Robert’s stomach lurched. “Yes. That’s right.” A look passed between Valentina and Robert that Julia could not interpret. “We’ll talk after the tour, shall we?” he said, and walked with them back to the front of the group. He fumbled through Thomas Charles Druce’s exhumation, skipped murder victim Eliza Barrow and also Charles Cruft of dog-show fame. He somewhat regained his form while talking about Elizabeth Jackson and Stephan Geary, then fairly hustled the group down the Cuttings Path. Jessica was waiting for them at the gate with the green box. Robert said to her, “I’m just going to take the twins back and show them their family grave.” He half-hoped Jessica would refuse him, but she only smiled and waved him along.

“Don’t be long,” Jessica said. “You know we’re short-handed today.” As Robert walked towards Valentina and Julia he saw them framed together before the arch over the Colonnade stairs, two white statues radiant against the gloom. It seemed to him inevitable that he should meet them here.

“Come on, then,” he said. They followed him, alert and curious. He felt their eyes on him as he led them up the stairs and along the paths. The twins grew uneasy; on the tour Robert Fanshaw had seemed garrulous, eager to please; now he led them through the cemetery without comment. The sounds of the cemetery itself filled the silence: the squish of their boots on the path, the whisper and roar of the wind in the trees. Birds, traffic. Robert’s overcoat flapped behind him and Valentina recalled the retreating figure she had seen that day by the canal. She began to be frightened. No one knows we’re here. Then she remembered the duchess at the gate and felt reassured. They came to the Noblin mausoleum.


“So,” Robert said, feeling like an absurd parody of a Highgate tour guide, “this is your family’s grave. It belongs to you, and you can come and visit whenever you like, whenever the cemetery is open. We’ll make you a grave owners’ pass. There’s a key in Elspeth’s desk.”

“A key to what?” Julia asked.

“This door. You also have a key to the door between our back garden and the cemetery, though we’re asked by the cemetery staff not to use it.”

“Do you go in?”

“No.” His heart was pounding.

Valentina said, “We’ve been wondering about you. We wondered-why we didn’t see you. We thought maybe you were out of town or something-”

“Martin said you weren’t,” interrupted Julia.

“So we were confused, because Mr. Roche said you would help us…” Valentina looked up at Robert, but he was looking at his feet and it seemed like a long time before he replied.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

He was unable to look at the twins, and they pitied him, although neither was at all sure why. Julia was amazed to see this man who had been so voluble, so eager to tell them more than anyone could possibly want to know about the cemetery, now standing inarticulate and frightened. His hair hung over his face; his posture was abject. Valentina thought, He’s just very shy-he’s afraid of us. Because Valentina was shy herself-because she had spent her life with an extrovert who never tired of mocking her timidity-since she had never met a person who seemed normal and was abruptly revealed to be acutely inhibited, because there was a profound intimacy in observing Robert’s fear, because she was emboldened by Julia’s presence: Valentina stepped closer to Robert and put her hand on his arm. Robert looked at her over the rims of his glasses.

“It’s okay,” she said. He felt, without being able to express it to himself, that something lost had been restored to him.


“Thank you,” he replied. He said it quietly but with such intensity that Valentina fell in love with him, though she had no name for the feeling and nothing to compare it to. They might have stood that way for a long while, but Julia said, “Um, maybe we should go back,” and Robert said, “Yes, I told Jessica we wouldn’t be long.” Valentina felt as though the world had paused. Now it continued; they walked together side by side down the Colonnade Path.

Julia asked Robert about his thesis, and his answer carried them back to the cemetery’s gate. As they passed the office door Jessica popped out; Robert guessed that she had been watching for them. She took the twins’ hands in hers and said, “Elspeth was very dear to us all. We’re delighted to finally meet you both. I do hope you’ll come and visit often.”

“We will,” said Julia. She liked the idea of getting behind the scenes, of finding out what went on in the cemetery when the tourists left. Valentina met Jessica’s eyes and smiled. Robert was standing slightly behind Jessica, watching them. “Bye,” Valentina said as she and Julia slipped through the gate. Valentina’s face showed Robert something that filled him with apprehension-her face mirrored his own feelings. He understood and he didn’t want to know.

“Goodbye, my dears,” said Jessica. She turned the key in the lock and watched as the twins walked up Swains Lane. Why so worried? she asked herself. They’re darling. Robert had disappeared into the office. She found him counting out the change into little plastic bags.

“Are you all right?” she asked him.

“I’m fine,” he said, without looking at her. She was about to question him further when the walkie-talkie squawked out Kate’s request: more tickets for the Eastern gate. Jessica grabbed a book of tickets and left Robert to his mood. The rest of that Sunday was a blur of guides and visitors, counting receipts and closing; by the time she thought about Robert again they were standing by the Western gates, locking up.


Phil and some of the younger guides were headed up the hill to have a pint at the Gatehouse. “D’you want to come along?” Phil asked Robert.

“No,” Robert said. He wanted a drink, but he didn’t want to talk to anyone. He wanted to think about the afternoon, to relive it, to make it come out differently, to arrive at some other conclusion. “No, I think I’m coming down with something.” He turned and walked off, startling the rest of them with his abrupt departure.

“What’s eating him?” Kate asked Jessica.

Jessica shook her head. “With our Robert one never quite knows,” she replied. “It’s probably just Elspeth.” Everyone agreed that yes, it was probably Elspeth. They went up the hill to the Gatehouse and gossiped about Robert for a while, then lost interest and turned to the more urgent pleasures of trading stories about odd things that had happened that day on their tours and trying to outdo each other in their knowledge of obscure cemetery anecdotes. Kate drove Jessica home, and they agreed that something was definitely amiss with Robert and that Elspeth was at the bottom of it. Having settled that, they turned their attention to Monday’s funerals.

Robert went home and gathered a glass, a bottle of whisky and the key to the green door, then let himself into the cemetery. He didn’t venture forth but sat down with his back to the wall and poured himself some whisky. He sat there staring absently at the top of Julius Beer’s mausoleum and drinking until evening fell. Then he returned unsteadily to his flat and went to bed.


Breathe

DAYS WENT BY and nothing much happened. Julia and Valentina tried to civilise the Kitten, cajoling her with food and little balls of aluminium foil, sitting in the dining room chatting to her while she regarded them sceptically from underneath a chair. Elspeth played with her when the twins were out or asleep, glad to have someone to engage with, even if that someone was an angry white kitten. Gradually the Kitten became less outraged and was allowed into other parts of the flat. She occasionally let herself be petted. To Elspeth’s dismay she shredded the spine of a Hogarth Press To the Lighthouse and the back of the sofa. Valentina was delighted with the Kitten’s progress and looked forward to what she described to Julia as “total kitten happiness” in the near future.

The twins saw nothing of Robert, though they sometimes heard him showering or watching TV. He was hunkered down in his flat, slogging through a chapter about Highgate Cemetery as nature reserve. Every afternoon he went to the cemetery and took notes while Jessica and Molly tried to teach him about the flora and fauna. They chivvied him into going on nature walks and pointed out demure wild-flowers that wouldn’t bloom for months, taught him their Latin names, tut-tutted over invasive species, reminisced about long-ago cemetery landscaping triumphs and exclaimed over rare spiders. Robert wallowed in his own ignorance and tried to keep up with the two of them as they briskly dragged him into distant recesses of the cemetery. Molly and Jessica beamed at him whenever he managed to ask an intelligent question. It kept his mind off the twins, and he slept better for being thoroughly exhausted.

Julia visited Martin, but he politely asked her to come back in a few days, as he was behind with his work. The moment she left he went back to cleaning the bathroom floor tile with straight bleach and a toothbrush. Marijke’s birthday was coming up and Martin was worrying over whether he would be able to call her, and how he might send her a present. These problems had absorbed him for days, but he didn’t find himself any nearer to solving them. More cleaning might do the trick.

Elspeth had relented in her haunting of the twins, at least for the time being, and steered clear of them. There was no point in forcing them to acknowledge her existence if they disliked her, and they had made it obvious that they were sceptical (Julia) or hostile (Valentina). Elspeth kept to herself, practised her peculiar pursuits and waited. So Valentina found herself suddenly free. Robert had ceased to shadow the twins, and Valentina no longer had the feeling of being watched on the street; she began to relax and enjoy their outings again.

The twins very seldom bought anything when they went shopping. They had a flat full of Elspeth’s belongings, which they treated as though it were a combination archaeological dig/magic hat; whatever they required seemed already to be somewhere at hand. They made their life out of Elspeth’s, as if they were hunter-gatherers living on top of ruined Troy.

Today they were in Harvey Nichols. The shop girls had them pegged as noncustomers, so service was slow, but the twins strutted about in Prada and Stella McCartney all afternoon with perfect contentment. In the dressing room Valentina turned things inside out, meditated on garment construction and fabrics. Julia watched her, happy in Valentina’s happiness. A plan (not even a plan; a need, really) had been forming in Valentina’s mind for some time, and later when they sat upstairs in the café drinking tea she said to Julia, “I want to go to Central Saint Martins College and take some classes.”

“Classes? Why?”

“I want to be a fashion designer.” Valentina tried to smile confidently, as though she were presenting Julia with a delightful gift. “Alexander McQueen went there.”

“Um. What am I supposed to do while you’re doing that?”

“I don’t know.” Valentina paused. She thought, I don’t care. Do whatever you want. She wasn’t sure whether she needed Julia’s consent to take money out of their account. She would ask Mr. Roche. Valentina didn’t want to argue about it, so she said, “You could be my manager?”

Julia pouted. “That sounds kind of boring.”

“Well, don’t, then.”

They sat in silence, staring off in opposite directions. The café had high ceilings, numerous small tables full of mums and prams, a safe ordinary clatter of silverware and dishes, laughing female conversation all around them. Valentina felt as though she had finally thrown down the gauntlet; she imagined a heavily fortified glove lying between them among the tea things. I always back down, but not this time. She said, “We have to work someday. And you promised we’d go back to school when we got here.” Julia glared at her but didn’t reply.

The waiter brought the bill. Julia paid. Valentina said, “Let’s look up the University of the Arts on the Web when we get home. Maybe there’s something you would like.”

Julia shrugged. They walked through the shop without speaking and out onto Knightsbridge. Valentina thought the tube ought to be just to the left, but Julia turned right and began walking very quickly. They passed Hyde Park Corner tube station. Valentina said, “There’s the tube,” but Julia ignored her. They crossed into Mayfair and began to zigzag, making random turns, Julia leading, Valentina trotting after her. Valentina knew they would continue walking until Julia decided to speak to her again; meanwhile they would get thoroughly lost.

It was rush hour and the streets were crowded. The evening was clear and cold. Valentina saw familiar shops, squares, street names, but she had no internal map of London, no way to organise her surroundings; that was Julia’s job. Valentina had not bothered to pay attention. Valentina began to be frightened. She wondered if she should just walk off and find a tube station; they were in central London; there ought to be stations all around. I should leave her and go home. Valentina had never tried that, abandoning Julia in the middle of a fight. She experienced a qualm at the thought of taking the tube by herself-she hadn’t done it without Julia. Then she saw the familiar red, white and blue sign: OXFORD CIRCUS.

The twins crossed Regent Street and were immediately caught in a crush of people trying to enter the tube station. There were currents within the crowd, and for a few minutes they found themselves walking against the stream. Julia was struck by how calm everyone was, as though they all did this every day at 6:30 p.m.; perhaps they did. Valentina was behind her, and Julia could hear her breathing hard. She reached her hand back and Valentina took it. “It’s okay, Mouse,” she said. They found the current of people moving in the direction they wanted to go. Now they were not pushed and jostled so much.

Valentina felt as though she were drowning. She could not draw a breath; she was pressed by people on all sides. All thought of going into the tube station vanished. She wanted only to get out of the crowd. Elbows and backpacks jabbed her. She heard the buses and cars going by a few feet away. People muttered their annoyance to themselves and each other, but to Valentina all the noise seemed muted.


There was a surge in the direction of the tube entrance. Julia was pushed forward, Valentina backwards. Julia felt Valentina’s hand pull out of her grip. “Mouse!” Valentina lost her footing and fell sideways into the oncoming people. A man said, “Whoops! She’s down! Stand back, please!” in a jocular tone, but no one could move. It was like being in a mosh pit. Hands groped for Valentina; she was put back on her feet. “All right, then, luv?” someone asked. She shook her head, she could not answer. She heard Julia calling her name but couldn’t see her. Valentina tried to catch her breath. Her throat closed; she tried to suck in air very slowly. She was walking, the crowd pushed her forward.

Julia stood outside the crowd, panicking. “Valentina!” No answer. She dived into the crush again but could only see the people next to her. Ohmigod. She saw a flash of bright hair and lunged towards it. “Watch it there.” Valentina saw Julia and put her hand to her throat. I can’t breathe. Julia grabbed her, began to elbow and push at the people in front of them. “She’s having an asthma attack; let us out!” The crowd tried to part. No one could see what was happening. At last the twins spilled out onto the Oxford Street pavement.

Valentina leaned against a brightly lit shop window full of cheap shoes, gasping. Julia ransacked Valentina’s purse. “Where’s your inhaler?” Valentina shook her head. I don’t know. A concerned knot of bystanders watched. “Here, use mine.” A teenaged boy, long hair occluding his face, skateboard in one hand, proffered an inhaler with the other. Valentina took it, sucked at it. Her throat opened slightly. She nodded at the boy, who stood with his free hand slightly extended, as though he might need to catch her. Julia watched Valentina breathe, tried to make her breathe by breathing deeply herself, willed Valentina to breathe. Valentina took a few more puffs on the inhaler, stood with her hand pressed against her sternum, breathing. “Thanks,” she said eventually, handing it back to the boy.

“Sure, anytime.”

The little crowd that had been watching dispersed. Valentina wanted to hide. She wanted to get out of the cold. Julia said, “I’m going to get us a cab,” and strode off. It seemed like hours before Valentina heard her calling, “Mouse! Over here!” and she could climb gratefully into the warmth of the black cab. Valentina plopped down on the seat and began scooping the contents of her handbag onto her lap until she found her inhaler. She sat with the inhaler clutched in her hand, weapon-like. Despair blossomed in her. This is crazy. I can’t spend my whole life as a Mouse. Valentina glanced over at Julia, who was staring impassively out of the window at slow-moving traffic. You think I need you. You think I can’t leave you. Valentina looked out at the unfamiliar buildings. London was endless, relentless. If I had died in that crowd…? She imagined Julia calling their parents.

Julia looked at her. “You okay?”

“Yeah.”

“We should get you a doctor.”

“Yeah.”

They rode back to Vautravers in silence. “You want to look at that web site?” Julia asked as they let themselves into the flat.

“No,” said Valentina. “Never mind.”


The Diaries of Elspeth Noblin

VALENTINA AND JULIA were puzzled by an empty shelf in Elspeth’s office. Since the office was jam-crammed with every conceivable kind of book, knickknack, writing implement and other things useful and useless, space was in short supply-therefore the existence of a pristine, thoroughly empty shelf was a conundrum. It must have held something once. But what? And who had removed it? The shelf was twelve inches deep and eighteen inches wide. It was the third shelf from the bottom in the bookcase next to Elspeth’s desk. Unlike the rest of the office, it had been somewhat recently dusted. There was also a locked drawer in the desk, for which they could find no key.

The former contents of the shelf were now sitting in Robert’s flat, along with all the other things he’d removed from Elspeth’s, in boxes on the floor next to his bed. He had not touched anything in the boxes except Elspeth’s jumper and shoes, which he had placed in their own drawer in his desk. Now and then he would open the drawer and pet them, then close it and go back to his work.

He had placed the boxes on the side of his bed away from the door, so it was possible for him not to look at them for days. He considered putting the boxes in the spare bedroom, but that seemed unfriendly. Eventually he would have to explore the contents. Before Elspeth died he had thought he wanted to read her diaries. He thought he wanted to know everything, be privy to all her secrets. Yet for quite a long time he put off touching the diaries or bringing them into his flat. Now they were here, and still he did not open them. He had his memories, and he did not want them altered or disproved. As a historian he knew that any trove of documents has incendiary potential. So the boxes sat like unexploded ordnance on the floor of his bedroom and Robert did his best to ignore them.


Birthday Greetings

IT WAS 12 MARCH, a grey, lowering Saturday; Marijke’s fifty-fourth birthday. Martin woke up at six and lay in bed, his mind flitting from happy anticipation (she would expect him to call and must surely answer the phone) to anxious consideration of his birthday tribute to her (a dauntingly complex cryptic crossword in which the first and last letters of each clue made multiple anagrams of her full name and the solution was an anagram of a line from John Donne’s “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning”). He had given the crossword and her present to Robert, who had promised to send it express. Martin had decided to wait until two to call. It would be three o’clock in Amsterdam; she would have had her lunch and would be in a relaxed, Saturday-afternoon mood. He got out of bed and began to make his way through his morning routine, feeling like an only child waiting for his parents to wake on Christmas morning.

Marijke woke up confused, late in the morning, in weak sunlight that came through the shutters and onto her pillow. It’s my birthday. Lang zal ze leven, hieperderpiep, hoera. She had no plan for the day, beyond coffee and cake with some friends that evening. She knew Martin would call, and hoped that Theo would-sometimes Theo forgot; he seemed to deliberately cultivate a protective layer of obliviousness. She always called Theo to remind him of Martin’s birthday; perhaps Martin did the same for her? She had dreamed about Martin, a very aangename dream of their old gezellig flat in St. John’s Wood. She had been washing dishes and he had come up behind her and kissed the nape of her neck. Memory or dream? She imagined his hands on her shoulders, his lips brushing her neck. Mmm. Marijke had been policing her erotic imagination since she’d left Martin. Usually she was quick to boot him out of her mind when he tried to sneak in, but this morning, for a birthday treat, she let the dream-memory unfurl.

The package arrived around noon. Marijke put it on her kitchen table and spent some minutes hunting for a Stanley knife as the package was almost completely covered with tape and beseechments to HANDLE WITH CARE. It looks like it’s from an insane person. But he’s my insane person, my very own. She ferreted through the plastic packing and pulled out a fat envelope and a pink box. The pink box contained a pair of cerulean-blue leather gloves. Marijke slipped them on. They fitted perfectly; they were soft as breath. She ran her gloved fingers over the invisible hairs on her arm. The gloves disguised her knobbly knuckles and age spots. She felt as though she’d been given new hands.

The envelope contained a letter and a crossword, with the solution in another, smaller envelope. Marijke opened the smaller envelope straightaway; she had no talent for crosswords, and Martin knew this. She could never have begun to solve the masterpieces he made for her each year, and they both understood these birthday crosswords for what they were: a demonstration of devotion, the equivalent of the intricate, eye-popping jumpers Marijke knitted for Martin on his birthdays. Inside the envelope were two stanzas of the Donne poem:

If they be two, they are two so

As stiff twin compasses are two,

Thy soule the fixt foot, makes no show

To move, but doth, if th’other doe.

And though it in the centre sit,

Yet when the other far doth rome,

It leans, and hearkens after it,

And growes erect, as that comes home.

Marijke smiled. She opened the letter and a tiny package fell into her blue-gloved hand. She had to take the gloves off to open it. At first she thought it was empty-she shook the package and nothing came out. She probed with a finger, and found two bits of metal and pearl clinging inside. They spilled onto her palm. Oh, oh! My earrings. Marijke carried them to the window. She imagined Martin hunting among the boxes for days, excavating layers of plastic-embalmed possessions, just to find her earrings. Lieve Martin. She closed her hand around the earrings, closed her eyes and let herself miss him. All this distance…

She raised her head, looked at her one-room flat. It had been the hayloft of a livery stable in the seventeenth century. It had pitched ceilings, heavy beams, whitewashed walls. Her futon occupied one corner, her clothes hung in another corner behind a curtain. She had a table with two chairs, a tiny kitchen, a window that overlooked the little crooked street, a vase of freesias on the windowsill. She had a comfortable chair and a lamp. For more than a year now this room had been her haven, fortress, retreat, her triumphant, undiscoverable gambit in her marital game of hide-and-seek. Standing there, clasping the earrings in her hand, Marijke saw her snug room as a lonely place. Apartment. A place to be apart. She shook her head to change her thoughts and opened Martin’s letter.

Lieve Marijke,

Happy Birthday, Mistress of my heart. I wish I could see youtoday; I wish I could embrace you. But since that isn’t possible, I send you surrogate hands to slip over your own hands, to lurk in your pockets as you walk through your city, to warm you, to remind you of blue skies (it’s grey here too).

Your loving husband,

Martin


Perfect, Marijke thought. She arranged the gloves, the earrings, the crossword and the letter on her table like a still life. It’s almost too bad he’s going to call and ruin it.


Martin stood in his office with the phone in his hand, watching the clock on the computer count up to two o’clock. He was wearing a suit and tie. He was holding his breath. When the clock hit 14:00:00 he exhaled and pressed 1 on his speed dial.

Hallo, Martin.”

“Marijke. Happy birthday.”

“Thank you. Thank you.”

“Has Theo called yet?”

Marijke laughed. “I don’t think he’s even awake yet, hmm? How are you? What’s new?”

“I’m fine. Everything’s fine.” Martin lit a cigarette. He glanced at the list of questions on his desk. “And you? Still no smoking?”

“Yes, no smoking. It feels amazing, you should try it. I can smell things. I had forgotten what things smell like, water, freesias. There are so many beautiful smells. Those gloves you sent, they smell like the first day of winter.”

“You like them?”

“Oh, it was all perfect. I can’t believe you found my earrings.”

“The Americans have a new word for that: regifting. It seemed a bit miserly to send you your own earrings on your birthday, but having found them…” Martin thought of Julia putting the earrings into his hands. Marijke thought of the occasion upon which Martin had originally given her the earrings, which was Theo’s birth.

“No, I was so happy…and the letter, and the crossword…”

“Have you worked it out yet?” he teased her.

Ja, I sat down and did it straight away, twenty minutes.” They both laughed.

There was a contented pause. “What are you going to do for your birthday?” he said finally.

“Mmm, coffee and cake with Emma and Lise. I’ve told you about them.”

“Oh, right. And dinner?”

“No-I’ll eat at home.”

“By yourself?” Martin was inspired. “That’s no good. Listen-let me take you out for dinner.”

Marijke frowned. “Martin-”

“No, listen, here’s how we’ll do it. Pick a restaurant, somewhere nice. Make a reservation, wear something beautiful, bring your mobile. We’ll talk on the phone, you have a lovely dinner, it will be almost as though we’re together.”

“Martin, those kinds of restaurants don’t allow mobiles. And I would feel conspicuous eating by myself that way.”

“I’ll eat too. We’ll eat together. Just in different cities.”

“Oh, Martin…” She weakened. “What language?”

“Whatever you like. Nederlands? Français?”

“No, no. Something unusual, for privacy…”

“Pali?”

“It would be a very short dinner, then.”

Martin laughed. “Think about it and let me know. What time shall we dine?”

“Half eight your time?”

“Okay, I’ll be here.” He thought perhaps he shouldn’t have reminded her of that. “Don’t forget to charge up your mobile.”

“I know.”


“Tot ziens.”

“Tot straks.”

Martin put the phone in its cradle. He had been standing in the same spot for the duration of the conversation, leaning over the phone on the desk. Now he straightened and turned, smiling-and his hand flew to his heart. “Oh!”

Julia stood in the doorway, a dark form against the dim light. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.”

He lowered his face and closed his eyes, almost as though he were going to hide his head under a wing; he waited for his heart to slow. “That’s all right. Have you been there long?” He looked at her. She stepped into the room, and became only herself.

“No. Not very long. Was that your wife?”

“Yes.”

“Did she like the gloves?”

Martin nodded. “Come into the kitchen, I’ll make tea. Yes, she liked the gloves very much. Thank you for choosing them.” He followed her through the aisle of boxes that led across the dining room and into the kitchen.

“Um, Valentina actually picked them. She’s the one with clothes-sense.” Julia sat down at the table and watched Martin getting out tea things. He put on a tie to talk on the phone with his wife. For some reason this made Julia a little depressed.

“You’re like an old married couple, you and Valentina. You have everything divvied up, all the talents and the chores.” Martin glanced at her as he ran water into the electric kettle. There was something different about her. What’s wrong? She seems wrong. “Did someone hit you?” There was a bruise rising over Julia’s cheekbone.

She put her fingers on the bruise. “Do you have any ice?”

Martin went to the freezer and shifted things around until he found an ancient bag of frozen peas. “Here.” Julia clamped the bag to her cheek. Martin went back to his tea-making. Neither of them said a word until he had finished pouring out.


“Choccie biccie?” he offered.

“Yeah, thanks.”

“Would you care to talk about it?”

“No.” Julia stared at her teacup, her expression hidden behind the peas. “She didn’t mean it.”

“Nevertheless.”

“How long have you and your wife been married?” she asked.

“Twenty-five years.”

“How long has she been gone?”

“One year, two months, six days.”

“Is she coming back?”

“No. She isn’t.”

Julia leaned her elbow on the table, leaned her face into the peas so that she was regarding him at an angle. “So…?”

“One sec.” Martin walked to his office and gathered his cigarettes and lighter. By the time he returned to the kitchen he had worked out his answer. “I’m going to Amsterdam.” He lit a cigarette and smiled, imagining Marijke’s surprise.

Julia said, “Great. When?”

“Oh, erm, soon. When I’m able to leave the house. Maybe in a week or two.”

“Oh.” She looked disappointed. “So, like, never?”

“Never say never.”

“You know, I’ve been doing some research. They have drugs for OCD. And there’s behavioural therapy.”

“I know, Julia,” he said gently.

“But-?”

“Part of the condition is refusing treatment for the condition.”

“Oh.” She took the peas in both hands and tried to break up the big clumps. Martin thought the bruise had become darker, though the swelling had perhaps lessened. The peas made a crunching sound that Martin found distressing. “It’s not your problem, my dear. I’ll get to Amsterdam eventually.”


Julia gave him a small smile. “Yeah. Okay.” She sipped her tea, then put the peas against her cheek.

“Are you going to be all right?”

“What? Oh, sure, it’s just a little sore.”

“Does that happen often?”

“Not since we were little. We used to hit and bite and spit and pull hair and everything, but we kind of grew out of it.”

Martin said, “Will you be safe when you go back to your flat?”

Julia laughed. “Of course. Valentina’s my twin, she’s not some huge monster. She’s actually pretty timid, usually.”

“Mmm. Timid people can surprise you.”

“Well, she did.”

Martin smoked and thought about Marijke. What will she wear? He imagined her getting out of the cab, walking into a restaurant, flowers, white tablecloths. Julia thought about Valentina, who had locked herself in the dressing room. Julia had stood by the door, listening to Valentina sob, waiting. Maybe I should go back. She stood up.

“I’m going to see how she is.”

“Why don’t you take these?” Martin handed her the packet of chocolate digestives. “A peace offering.”

“Thanks. May I borrow the peas? We don’t have any ice cubes.”

“Of course.” He stood up, smiling, and led the way through the boxes. Peas, peace, piece, please, pleas…Say something. “Somehow I always thought Americans were obsessed with ice, all those iced drinks and such. You don’t have a herd of little glaciers in your freezer?”

“No, they evaporated…You know, we’re half-English. Maybe we’re not totally average Americans, you know?”

“I’m sure you’re not average at all,” Martin said. Julia smiled and went downstairs. Peas, peace, pleas… He looked at his watch. Three hours and twenty-eight minutes to kill before dinner. Just enough time for a shower.


Marijke sat at a long table in the Restaurant Sluizer, clutching her mobile under the tablecloth. She had explained her predicament to the head waiter, and he had kindly escorted her to a room that was usually reserved for private parties. He lit several candles and quickly cleared away a few of the surplus table settings, leaving her in solitary possession of a room that could have seated twenty. She skimmed the menu, even though she always ordered the same thing here.

Her phone rang just as the waiter brought her a glass of wine. “Martin?”

“Hello, Marijke. Where are you?”

“Sluizer. In a private room.”

“What are you wearing?” he asked.

She glanced down; she was wearing slacks and a grey turtleneck. “That red dress with the low back, open-toed heels, my earrings.” She actually was wearing the earrings. “What are you having for dinner?”

“Mmm, I thought I’d go with the Seekh kabob of mutton starter, and then roast saddle of Oisin red deer with pickling spices for the mains. And a nice Merlot.”

“That sounds meaty. Where are you pretending to be?”

“The Cinnamon Club.”

“Isn’t that the Indian restaurant that’s in a library?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve never been there.”

“Neither have I, I’m experimenting.” Martin was ripping open boxes of frozen food as he spoke, his mobile clamped between head and shoulder. Chicken tikka masala and saag aloo. The Cinnamon Club didn’t do takeaway. “Are you having your usual sea bream?”

“Yes, indeed.” The waiter arrived and took her order. Marijke handed him her menu and stared at her own reflection in the restaurant window. In the soft light of the reflected candles she looked almost young. She smiled at herself.

“Did Theo call?” asked Martin.

“He did, yes. Just as I was going out, so we didn’t talk long.”


“How is he?”

“He’s fine. He may come and visit over the break. And he has a new girlfriend, I think,” said Marijke.

“Ah, that’s news. Did he tell you much of anything?”

“Her name is Amrita. She’s a foreign student, from Bangladesh. Her family has a tea-towel factory, or something like that. According to Theo, she’s a looker and a genius. And she can cook, he says.”

“He sounds smitten. What sort of genius is she?” Martin pressed the buttons on the microwave and the food began to rotate.

“Maths. He explained but I’m afraid I didn’t comprehend. You’ll have to ask him yourself.”

Martin felt a sudden lightness, a temporary lifting of worry. “That’s excellent. They’ll be able to talk about their work.” He and Marijke had met in a Russian class; they had always enjoyed being able to share the intricacies of translation, of one language melting into another. “I was afraid he’d end up with a kindergarten teacher, one of those terribly cheerful women.”

“Mmm, don’t marry him off yet.”

“Yeah, I know.” He poured himself more wine. “That’s the thing about living vicariously; it’s so much faster than actual living. In a few minutes we’ll be worrying about names for the children.”

She laughed. “I have them all picked out. Jason, Alex and Daniel for the boys, and Rachel, Marion and Louise for the girls.”

“Six children?”

“Why not? We don’t have to raise them.” Her food arrived. Martin removed his from the microwave. It looked rather colourless, and Martin wished himself at the Cinnamon Club in reality, not just imagination. Then he thought, That’s silly. I wish we were eating together, anywhere.

“How’s yours?” he asked her.

“Delightful. As always.”

When the table had been cleared and she was sipping her brandy, Marijke said, “Diz-me coisas porcas.” (“Talk dirty to me.”)


“In Portuguese? Kind mistress, that’s going to require a dictionary or two.” He went to his office, grabbed their Portuguese-English dictionary, went to their bedroom. He took off his shoes and climbed into bed. Martin thought for a moment, riffling through the dictionary’s pages for inspiration. “Okay, here we go. Estamos a sair do restaurante. Estamos num táxia descer a Vijzelstraat. Somos dois estranhos que partilham um táxi. Sentados tão afastados um do outro quanto possível, cada um olhando pela sua janela. Vaiser uma longa viagem. Olho de re-lance para ti. Reparo nas tuas belas pernas, collants de seda e saltos altos. O vestido subiute até às coxas, terá sido quando entraste no táxi, ou talvez o tenhas puxado para cima deliberadamente? Hmm, é difícil dizer…” (“We’re leaving the restaurant. We’re in a taxi, driving down Vijzelstraat. We’re strangers, sharing a cab. We’re sitting as far apart as possible, each looking out of a window. It’s going to be a long ride. I glance over at you. I notice your beautiful legs, silk stockings and high heels. Your dress has ridden up your thighs, maybe when you got into the taxi, or perhaps you deliberately pulled up your dress? Hmm, it’s hard to tell…”)

Marijke sat by herself at the long table, brandy in hand, mobile at her ear, her mind in the past and in a taxi meandering through the streets of Amsterdam. I want you. I want us, the way we were before.

“Marijke? Are you crying?”

“No. No, go on…” Talk as long as you can, until the batteries run down, until dawn, until I see you again, my love.


Postman’s Park

THE NEXT day was strangely mild, the kind of day that induces people to say, “Global warming,” and smile ruefully. Robert woke up early to the sound of church bells and thought, Today is the perfect day to picnic in Postman’s Park.

He gathered his courage, went upstairs and invited the twins. By noon he had assembled sandwiches, bottled water, apples and a bottle of Pinot Blanc into an ancient picnic basket borrowed from Jessica and James. He decided they should take the bus, partially to accommodate Valentina’s tube phobia and partly because he thought the twins ought to get to know the bus system. By the time they arrived at the unassuming gates of the park all three of them were hungry, and the twins were quite lost.

Robert carried the picnic basket into the park and set it on a bench. “Voilà,” he said. “Postman’s Park.” He had not told them what to expect; they had imagined something like St. James’s or Regent’s Park, and so they stood and looked about, perplexed. The park occupied a narrow space between a church and some nondescript buildings. It was neat, shady and devoid of people. There was a diminutive fountain, eight wooden benches, a scattering of trees and ferns, a low, shed-like structure at one end and some old tablet-style gravestones leaning against the buildings.

“It’s a cemetery?” asked Julia.

“It was an old churchyard, yes.”

Valentina looked quizzical but said nothing. The park was sort of drab and she couldn’t see why Robert had been so intent on bringing them here.

“Why is it called Postman’s Park? I don’t see any postmen. Or postpersons,” said Julia.

“The old Post Office was nearby. The postmen used to eat their lunch here.”

Valentina wandered over to a sign on the church wall. GUILD AND WARD CHURCH OF ST BOTOLPH-WITHOUT-ALDERSGATE. She looked at Robert, who smiled and shrugged. She took a few steps towards the shed at the back of the park.

“Warmer,” he said. Julia was there and Valentina hurried to join her. The shed building was covered in beautiful white tiles, which were lettered with blue inscriptions:

Elizabeth Boxall, aged 17 of Bethnal Green who died of injuries received in trying to Save a Child from a runaway horse, June 20, 1888.

Frederick Alfred Croft, Inspector. Aged 31 Saved a Lunatic Woman from suicide at Woolwich Arsenal Station. But was Himself run over by the Train. Jan. 11. 1878

The twins wandered back and forth, reading the plaques. There seemed to be hundreds of them.

David Selves, aged 12 off Woolwich supported his drowning play-fellow and sank with him clasped in his arms September 12, 1886

“You’re kind of sick, you know that?” Julia told Robert. He looked slightly hurt.


“They’re memorials to ordinary people who sacrificed themselves for others. I think they’re beautiful.” He turned to Valentina, who nodded.

“They’re nice,” she said. She wondered why Julia was being so mean. Usually this was exactly the sort of thing they both found interesting. There was something very strange about the plaques; the stories were extremely abbreviated, hinting at mayhem, but they were decorated with flowers and leaves, crowns, anchors. The ornamentation belied the words: drowned, burned, crushed, collapsed.

Sarah Smith, Pantomime Artiste at Prince’s Theatre died of terrible injuries received when attempting in her inflammable dress to extinguish the flames which had enveloped her companion. January 24, 1863

All these ordinary catastrophes crowded in on Valentina. She went back to sit on the bench. Just to be sure, she got out her inhaler and took two puffs. Julia and Robert watched her.

“She has asthma?” Robert asked.

“Yeah. But I think at the moment she’s trying to fend off a panic attack.” Julia frowned. “Why did you bring us here?”

“This was one of Elspeth’s favourite spots. If she was around to give you the grand tour she would have brought you here herself.” They began walking towards Valentina. “Shall we have lunch?” Robert unpacked the sandwiches and distributed food and drink to the twins. They sat in a row on the bench and ate quietly.

“Are you okay?” Robert asked Valentina.

She glanced at Julia and said, “I’m fine. Thanks for bringing lunch, this is good.” Say something nice, Julia.

“Yeah, really good. What are we eating?”

“Prawn-mayonnaise sandwiches.”

The twins inspected the insides of their sandwiches. “It tastes like shrimp,” said Julia.


“You would call it a shrimp-salad sandwich. Though I’ve never understood where the salad idea comes into it.”

Julia smiled. “We’ve been trying to teach ourselves British. Logic does not apply.”

Valentina said, “Have you ever been to America?”

“Yes,” Robert replied. “Elspeth and I went to New York a few years ago. And the Grand Canyon.”

The twins were puzzled. “Why didn’t you come to see us?” Julia asked.

“We talked about that. But in the end she decided not to. There were some things she never told me. Perhaps if she’d known she was going to die-?” Robert shrugged. “She was reticent about her past.”

The twins looked at each other and silently agreed that Valentina would ask for the favour. “But you have her papers, right? So you know everything now, right?” Valentina put down her sandwich and tried to seem casual.

“I do have her papers. I haven’t read them.”

“What? How could you not read them?” Julia could not suppress her indignation.

Hush, Julia. I’ll do it. “Aren’t you curious?”

“I’m afraid,” Robert said.

“Oh.” Valentina glanced at Julia, who looked about ready to run home and read Elspeth’s papers whether Robert liked it or not. “Well, we were wondering, um, if you would mind, if we could read them? I mean, we’re living in her place with all her stuff, and we don’t know her, and, you know, we’re interested. In her.”

Robert was shaking his head before Valentina finished speaking. “I’m sorry. I know she was your relation, and ordinarily I would gladly hand over the lot. But Elspeth told me you weren’t to have them. I’m sorry.”

“But she’s dead,” Julia said.

They sat in silence. Valentina was sitting next to Robert, and without Julia seeing she reached down and took his hand. Robert laced his fingers with hers. Valentina said, “It’s okay. Pretend we didn’t say anything about it. We’re sorry.” Julia rolled her eyes. Her bruise was smaller today; she had covered it with make-up, but Valentina felt bad just looking at her. She wondered if Robert had noticed.

“It’s not my decision,” he said. “And not knowing what’s in there, I can’t tell you why it would be better if you don’t read her papers. But Elspeth did care about you, and I don’t think she would have been so adamant about this if it wasn’t important.”

“All right, all right,” said Julia. “Never mind.”

Clouds had appeared in the narrow sky above the park and scattered drops of rain began to fall. Robert said, “Perhaps we’d better pack up.” The picnic had been a failure, not at all the urban idyll he had imagined that morning. They filed out of the park, each dejected in various degrees. But on the bus Valentina sat next to Robert and Julia sat in front of them, and he offered Valentina his hand. She placed her hand in his and they rode in surprised and contented silence back to Highgate.


Squirrels in Human Form

MARTIN DREAMED he was on the underground. It was a Circle-line train, the sort of carriage where all the seats face the aisle. At first he was the only passenger, but soon people began to get on, and he found himself staring at his knees to avoid looking at the crotch of the man crowded against him. He wasn’t sure what station he was supposed to get off at; since it was the Circle line they would all come round again and again, so he stayed where he was, trying to remember where he was going.

Martin heard peculiar noises coming from the seats directly across from him-crunching, ripping, chewing sounds, which increased in volume as the train went on. Martin began to be anxious-the sounds worked on his nerves like grinding teeth. Something rolled up against his foot. He looked down. It was a walnut.

The train stopped at Monument and quite a few people got off. Now he could see across the aisle. Two young women sat together. They wore scuffed white trainers and medical scrubs, and each had a shopping bag resting on her lap. Both women had protruding eyes and pronounced overbites. They wore wary expressions, as though prepared to defend their bags against thieves. Both women delved into the bags with shovel-like hands, scooping out walnuts and ripping them open with their huge teeth.

“Wotchalookin’ at?” said one to Martin. He could hear walnuts rolling all over the floor. No one else seemed to notice. Martin shook his head, unable to speak. To his horror, the women got up and seated themselves on either side of him. The one who had spoken before leaned over and put her mouth to his ear.

“We’re squirrels in human form,” she whispered. “And so are you.”


Breathe

WE’VE GOT to get you to a doctor,” said Julia. Valentina nodded and wheezed.

But this was easier said than done. The twins were blissfully unaware of the intricacies of the NHS. Robert tried not to sound exasperated as he filled them in.

“You can’t just show up and expect them to attend to your problem,” he told Valentina when the twins accosted him outside his door. He stood holding a sheaf of letters and waved them about for emphasis as he talked. “You have to find out which GPs are accepting new patients and ring them to make an appointment to register. And then you fill out a pile of forms and give them your history. And then, and only then, are you allowed to make an appointment.” Valentina started to say something and coughed instead.

Julia shook her finger at Robert as though he had personally invented the National Health Service. “No way,” she said. “The Mouse needs a doctor right now.”

“Go over to Whittington Hospital, then, to A & E.” And that was what they ended up doing. Robert came with them.

Whittington Hospital was a sprawling thing located just down Highgate Hill, on the other side of Waterlow Park. They walked there. The spring wind was damp and stiff, and by the time they arrived Valentina was breathing in deep, stomach-clenching gasps.

After some questions and some waiting, Valentina was whisked away by a young Pakistani nurse. Julia and Robert could hear the nurse making low-pitched sounds of reassurance as she hustled Valentina through the double doors that separated the waiting room from the A & E department proper. They settled down to do the forms with the middle-aged, basset-jowled white man who sat at the intake desk.

“Allergies?”

“Tetracycline, mould, soy,” said Julia.

“Existing conditions?”

“Well,” said Julia, “she has situs inversus.” The intake man, who had seemed utterly bored with them, now looked up at Julia and raised his eyebrows inquisitively. “We are mirror twins, and she’s mostly reversed inside. Her heart’s over here,” Julia laid her hand on her chest, just to the right of her sternum, “and her liver and kidneys and whatnot are all backwards of mine.” The man considered this, and then began typing rapidly.

“I didn’t know that,” said Robert.

“Well, now you do,” said Julia irritably. “It’s not like it matters or anything, unless you’re Valentina’s doctor.”

“I meant the bit about you being mirror-image twins. I thought you were identical twins. That is, wouldn’t mirror twins be more…opposite?”

Julia shrugged. “We’re pretty symmetrical, so it doesn’t show that much in our faces. You can notice it better if you look at the way our hair parts, or our moles, or if you saw a pair of X-rays, then you could really see it, because she’s so opposite. She has an asymmetric non-flail mitral-valve prolapse,” she added, to the intake man.

“What does that mean?” asked Robert.

“There’s a valve that isn’t formed right,” replied Julia. “That’s why I’m so worried about her breathing like that. It might put a strain on her heart, and then we’d be in big trouble.”

“I can’t believe you’ve been in London for almost three months without getting her a doctor!” Robert was feeling extremely anxious, suddenly, and he spoke sharply.

She retorted, “We were going to do it and we’ve just been putting it off ’cause we weren’t sure how to find one. It’s not like we haven’t been thinking about it.” Julia knew that this was an inadequate reason, and it made her cross. She finished the paperwork and they went back to their seats in the waiting room.

The diagnosis was bronchitis. They took a cab up the hill, Valentina huddling in Julia’s arms, coughing. In the front hall, back at Vautravers, the twins began to walk upstairs, and Robert tried to follow them. “No,” said Julia. “We’re all right. Thanks.” She turned away brusquely.

Robert said, “But she needs-”

I take care of her. That’s my job.” Julia watched Valentina slowly ascending the stairs, pausing on each step.

“I could get the prescription,” Robert offered.

Julia considered. It would be helpful; Boots was a bus ride away. “Okay. Here.” She handed over the prescription as though she were doing Robert a favour, not the reverse. He went out the front door, a man on a mission. I take care of her. Not you, Julia thought. She followed Valentina into their flat. She filled the hot-water bottle before she took off her coat, and went to the bedroom, where Valentina was slowly undressing.

“Where’s Robert?” Valentina asked, as though she hadn’t heard their conversation.

“He went to Boots,” Julia said.

Valentina got into bed without comment. Julia gave her the hot-water bottle, set up the vapourizer, fetched the book Valentina had been reading, made tea; she did all these things purposefully and quite happily, humming to herself as she accomplished all the little comforting tasks. She came into the bedroom with the tea to find the Kitten curled up near Valentina’s head and Valentina herself asleep. The Kitten stretched out a paw and placed it protectively on Valentina’s shoulder, eyeing Julia with suspicion. You too? Julia thought. We all want to be her only one. She set the tea tray on the bedside table. It occurred to Julia to wonder, If I got sick, would everyone rush to my bedside? The thought made her irritable. She never got sick, what was the point of wondering that? Valentina’s breath rattled in her throat. Julia settled herself in the window seat with her own cup of tea, causing Elspeth, who had been there all along, to get up and stand next to the bed, biting her thumb, worrying. It was an anxious day for everyone: humans, cats, and ghosts.

Edie sat at her dining-room table drinking coffee with the telephone at her elbow; she was not actually looking at the phone, just having it near because it was going to ring in a few minutes. Jack wandered over, carrying the Sunday Times. He began to separate it into his and hers piles. Edie put her hand out and he placed the business section in it. She flipped it open and ran her finger down the stock tables, making little tsking sounds as she did so. The phone rang. Edie took a sip of her coffee as though she were in no hurry and let it ring three times. Jack went down the hall to pick up in their bedroom.

“Mom?”

“Hi, Julia,” said Edie.

“Valentina?” said Jack.

“Hi, Dad,” said Valentina. She tried to make her voice sound normal but the effort sent her into a coughing fit.

“Oh my God,” said Edie. “That doesn’t sound good.”

“It’s just bronchitis,” said Julia. “We went to the doctor.”

“I’m better today,” Valentina said. She put her phone down and went into the bathroom to cough. Julia watched her standing bent over, elbows on the sink, hand over her mouth to suppress the sound of the coughing.


“Did they give you antibiotics? Are you taking that mucus-reducing stuff Dr. Brooks gave you?” Edie and Julia embarked on a leisurely and detailed discussion of everything they could and should do for Valentina’s bronchitis. Eventually Valentina came back to the phone.

“We met Robert Fanshaw,” she said, mostly in order to change the subject.

“Finally,” said Jack. “Where’s he been all this time?”

“He’s helping us get signed up for the NHS,” Julia said.

“Oh,” said Edie. “Huh. What’s he like?”

“Mopey,” said Julia. “Kind of freaky and weird. If he was our age he’d probably be a Goth, you know, all pierced and tattooed.”

“No,” said Valentina. “He’s nice. He’s kind of shy, and you can tell he misses Elspeth. He has little glasses like John Lennon.” She wanted to say more, but had to put the phone down and cough.

“Valentina has a crush on him,” Julia informed them. Valentina drew her finger across her throat. Don’t, Julia.

“Surely he’s a bit old for her. He must be our age?” Jack said.

“I think he’s younger. Mid-thirties, maybe?”

Valentina came back to the phone. “I don’t have a crush on him. But he’s nice.” Edie thought, Uh-oh, but she knew better than to say anything. The conversation turned to the weather, movies, politics. After they all hung up Valentina said crossly, “Now they’re going to obsess. Why did you say that?”

“It will distract them from you being sick,” Julia replied.

“It’s not true, though.”

Julia just laughed.

Edie and Jack hung up simultaneously and met in the hallway. “Don’t look so worried,” Jack said. “She says it’s nothing.”

Edie snorted. “That’s exactly when you should get very worried.”

He put his arm around her. “She did sound awful.”

“Maybe we should go there. We wouldn’t actually go to the flat, but just be in London. We could rent a flat nearby…” Edie nestled into him. She loved how big Jack was, how small she felt next to him. It was very comforting.

He stroked her head. “How would you have felt if your mom followed you across the ocean and moved in across the street from us?”

“That was different.”

“They’re managing. Let them be.”

Edie shook her head, but smiled at him. That’s it, just smile and be my Edie, that’s enough for me. He kissed the top of her head. “It’ll be all right.”


Robert and Jessica were having their afternoon tea in the upstairs office at Highgate Cemetery. Jessica fixed Robert with a Purposeful Look, and he steeled himself for one of her Talks. He expected the Talk to be about Not Letting the Tourists Slow Down the Tour by Taking Endless Videos, or even possibly Please Remember Not to Go About With Your Hands Thrust into Your Pockets as It Looks Undignified, but she surprised him.

“Don’t you think,” asked Jessica, “that she is a bit too young for you?”

“A bit?”

“Ridiculously young for you?”

“Maybe,” Robert said. “How young is too young?”

“Not so much in years, because I have known many people at twenty-one to be quite mature-but both of them seem so very young. They remind me of my girls at sixteen.”

“That has a certain appeal, Jessica.”

She waved her hand at him. “You understand me. It seems strange that after Elspeth, who was such a dear girl, so level-headed and not a flibbertigibbet-Valentina seems an odd match for you.”

“Some people thought I was too young for Elspeth.”

“Did I say that?”

“I believe you did, actually. Here in this very office, as I recall.”

“Surely not.”


“I’m nine years younger than Elspeth. I’m catching her up, though.”

“Yes…”

“You’re younger than James.”

“James is ninety-four. I’m eighty-six this July.”

“I wonder why it’s more socially acceptable for the man to be older?”

“I believe the men arranged it that way.”

“Ah. I don’t think you’ve ever mentioned how you and James met?”

Jessica hesitated before she answered. Robert thought, It must be something rather risqué. She looks as though I’ve asked for her bra size. “We met during the war. I was James’s assistant at Bletchley Park.”

“No kidding? I’d no idea. You were code breakers?”

“Actually, what we did was more…administrative.” Jessica pursed her mouth, as though she had said more than she thought strictly necessary.

“I thought you read law.”

“One may do many things in a long life. I also played a great deal of tennis and brought up three children. There’s time for all sorts of adventures.”

“And you saved the cemetery.”

“Not single-handedly, as you well know. Molly and Catherine, Edward…we had help from a great many dear people. Though of course there’s never enough help for all the little things that need doing. That reminds me, would you take these with you up the hill on your way home and just drop them in Anthony and Lacey’s letterboxes? It will save the stamps.”

“Of course.”

Jessica sighed. “I must say, I do feel just a tiny bit fatigued thinking of all the letters I have to write.” She put her teacup on the desk and held out both hands to him. “Come on, help the old thing out of her chair.”

Robert spent the afternoon sitting in the Strathcona mausoleum by the Eastern Cemetery gates, selling tickets and watching the landscaping team trimming trees. It was a slow day, and he had time to wonder if Jessica was right. Perhaps Valentina was too young for him. Perhaps he should let her be and go back to mourning Elspeth. Not that he had stopped; the thought of Elspeth was a sharp ache. But Robert had to admit that he didn’t think of her quite as often as before, and that the arrival of the twins had coincided with this slackening of Elspeth’s presence in his every waking thought. He felt ashamed, as though he were a sentinel who had abandoned a guard tower to the enemy. But Elspeth wouldn’t want me to spend the rest of my life mourning her. Would she? It was not exactly something they had discussed, but he felt wrong whether he devoted himself to her memory or allowed Valentina to waft into reveries that would have once featured Elspeth. He lived in a state of aroused guilt. It was very confusing, but somewhat pleasurable.


Early one morning Robert found Valentina sitting in the back garden with a thermos of tea. He was letting himself in through the green door and had no idea she was there until she said, “Good morning.”

“Good lord,” he said, after he’d stepped backwards and nearly broken his ankle on a gravestone. “I mean, good morning.”

Valentina was sitting on the low stone bench and wearing a quilted dressing gown. Her feet were bare. “Oh-I’m sorry!”

“Aren’t you cold?” It was going to be a warm day, but the dawn was chilly.

“Yes, I am now. My tea’s gotten cold.”

“Come in, why don’t you?”

She glanced up at the first-floor windows. “Julia’s still asleep.”

Valentina picked her way across the damp moss and Robert held his door open for her. When she went in under his arm he felt as though he’d caught a bird.

“Do you want a jumper, or anything warm?”

“No, but maybe some more tea?” Robert put the kettle on. He went to change his muddy clothes. When he emerged Valentina was standing at his desk. “Who are all these women?”

The wall above Robert’s desk was covered with postcards, magazine clippings, images printed off the Internet and copied from books, all of women. They radiated in a boxy sunburst pattern from the centre of the wall; there were clusters of them, as though they charted solar systems in a galaxy of women. “Oh. Well, that’s Eleanor Marx, Karl’s daughter. That’s Mrs. Henry Wood. This is Catherine Dickens…”

“They’re all buried at Highgate?”

“Yes, exactly.”

“No men?”

“The men are over here.” He had another galaxy tacked to the adjacent wall. “I’d rather stare at the women when I’m blocked; the men are collectively somewhat dour.”

Valentina turned on the desk lamp, to see better. The kettle whistled and Robert bounded out of the room. He returned with Valentina’s tea and she said, “We saw that painting at the Tate.” She pointed to a postcard in the centre of the wall. “Who is she?”

“That’s Millais’ Ophelia. The model is Elizabeth Siddal.” Robert felt his face flush just as Valentina turned to him. She said, “You have lots of pictures of her.”

“She was Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s muse. He painted her over and over. She was the It girl of the Pre-Raphaelites. I’m a little obsessed with her.”

“Why?”

“Why, indeed? She doesn’t seem to have been especially attractive as a person; she was rather needy and sickly. Perhaps because she was beautiful and died young.” Robert smiled. “Don’t look so worried. It’s a very mild obsession.”

“You seem to have a thing for dead girls,” Valentina said.

She was joking, but Robert replied defensively. “Not because they’re dead. Though unattainability is always attractive.”

“Oh.” What does he mean by that?


Robert cleared a space in the piles of paper and sat down on his desk. He offered her the swivel chair and she spun around 360 degrees with her bare feet stuck out in front of her, holding the mug of tea carefully level. She looked so childish that Robert found it painful to watch her. I think dead girls are the least of my problems at the moment.

Valentina said, “You don’t have very much furniture.”

“No. This place is far too big for me. And too expensive, really.”

“How come you live here, then?”

“It’s all Elspeth’s fault.”

Valentina grinned at him and spun around again. “Same here.” She stretched out one bare foot and stopped her revolution, then spun slowly in the other direction. “Did you move here because she was here?”

“We met in the front garden, actually. I was poking around because there was a To Let sign and I’d been looking for a flat that bordered the cemetery, because I wanted one of those little doors, you know, in the garden wall…So there I was, writing down the estate agent’s number, when Elspeth hops out of the front door and says she’s got the key and would I like to see the flat? Of course, I say Yes, please, because I did want to see it. And she showed me round. And it’s immediately obvious that it’s far too large, but there’s nothing like an attractive woman in an empty flat…” Robert was lost in his story and temporarily oblivious to Valentina. “So I ended up moving in. Though I must say, I was so thickheaded that it took me years to work out that she’d picked me up and not vice versa. I was very young.”

“When was that?”

Robert calculated. “Almost thirteen years ago.”

“Oh.” We were eight years old then. Valentina had a sudden thought. “Why didn’t you live together? I mean, these apartments are huge. It seems funny to have two giant flats for two single people. And it’s not like you have a lot of stuff.”

“No. I don’t, do I?” Robert stared at Valentina’s knees. “Elspeth wasn’t keen. She’d lived with someone once and hated it. I think she felt differently towards the end, when I was taking care of her all the time. I think she realised that it could have worked, us living together. I’m fairly self-sufficient and so was she. She liked to be alone, knowing I was nearby if she wanted me.”

“Our mom is like that.”

“Is she?”

“I think Dad is always kind of confused, you know, sometimes Mom seems like she’s just visiting, she’s super detached, and then she’ll be, like, really fun and sort of more present, you know?” Valentina peered up at him. “Was Elspeth like that?”

Robert paused to sort out her syntax. “Yes,” he said. “Sometimes she was far away, even when she was right there.” He was thinking of a certain way Elspeth had, after they’d made love, of seeming to forget him even as he lay sweat-sticky collapsed over her.

“Yeah, totally. Did Elspeth like to boss everyone? Our mom is always in charge of everything all the time.”

“Hmm. I suppose she did, but then, I enjoy being bossed. I come from a family of aunts, I spent my childhood being ordered about by women.” He smiled at her. “I get the impression that Julia bosses you.”

“I don’t like it.” Valentina made a face. “I don’t want to boss anyone and I don’t want to be bossed.”

“That seems reasonable.”

“What time is it?” Valentina asked. She sat up and put her mug on the desk, suddenly anxious.

Robert glanced at his watch. “Half seven,” he told her.

“Seven thirty? I’ve got to go.” She stood up.

“Wait,” he said. “What’s wrong?” He slid off the desk and stood facing her.

“Julia will freak if she wakes up and can’t find me.”

Robert hesitated. She’ll come back. Let her go. He felt acutely alone even before Valentina turned to leave. He followed her to his back door. She put her hand on the doorknob. Awkwardness overcame them.

“Would you like to have dinner with me sometime?” he asked her.

“Yes.”


“This Saturday?”

“Okay.” She continued to stand there, waiting. It occurred to Robert that he might kiss her, so he did. The kiss surprised him because it had been so long since he’d kissed anyone but Elspeth. It surprised Valentina because she had hardly ever kissed anyone that way-to her, kissing had always been more theoretical than physical. Afterwards she stood with her eyes closed, lips parted, face tilted. Robert thought, She’s going to break my heart and I’m going to let her. Valentina let herself out and padded up the steps. He heard their door latch. Robert stood there trying to sort out what had just happened, failed and gave in to giddy confusion. He made himself a drink and went to bed.


The following Saturday evening Robert presented himself at the twins’ front door wearing a suit. Valentina slipped out and said, “Let’s go.” He had a glimpse of Julia in the hall mirrors, standing forlorn in dim light. He started to wave to her but Valentina was hurrying down the stairs so he followed. He glanced up just as Julia poked her head into the hallway. She scowled at him and closed the door.

He had ordered a minicab. “Andrew Edmunds, in Soho,” he told the driver. They sped through Highgate Village, Kentish Town. Robert looked more attentively at Valentina and saw that she was wearing Elspeth’s clothes, a black velvet dress and a white cashmere wrap which awoke memories of other evenings, years ago. Even the shoes had been Elspeth’s. What does she mean by that? Then he realised that Valentina might not have brought evening clothes with her from America. He thought rather irritably that Elspeth had left the twins more than enough money to buy new clothes. Valentina seemed older in Elspeth’s clothes, as though she had taken on bits of Elspeth. She was staring out of the window. “I never know where I am.”

Robert glanced past her and said, “Camden Town.”

Valentina sighed. “It all looks alike. And there’s so much of it.”

“Don’t you like London?”

She shook her head. “I want to like it. It isn’t home, though.”


It hadn’t occurred to Robert that she wouldn’t stay once the year was up; now he felt an urgency, a need to convince her of London’s desirability. “I can’t imagine living anywhere else. But then, I grew up here. I think if I left I’d feel a bit cut off. All my memories are here.”

“Well, exactly. That’s how I feel about Chicago.”

He smiled at her earnestness. “Aren’t you terribly young to be so nostalgic? I’m a fusty old historian, I’ve a right to be calcified. But you ought to be out having adventures.”

“How old are you?” she asked.

“I’ll be thirty-seven the week after next,” he told her. He noticed that she did not contradict his description of himself as old.

Valentina smiled. “We should have a party for you.”

At first Robert thought she meant we to mean the two of them, himself and her; then he realised she meant herself and Julia. He imagined Julia’s likely reaction and said, “I think we’re having tea and cake at the cemetery; why don’t you come by and meet everyone?”

“Okay.” She smiled. “I’ve never been to a birthday party at a cemetery.”

“Oh, it isn’t a party, just ourselves having a slightly more elaborate tea than usual. There won’t be presents or anything of that sort.”

They began to exchange birthday stories: “We went to the circus for the first time…” “I ended up in hospital having my stomach pumped…” “Julia was so mad…” “My father showed up that morning and I had never met him before-”

“What?”

Robert paused, unsure whether he had meant to tell her this story so early in their acquaintance. He kept forgetting they barely knew one another. “Erm, well. My parents weren’t actually married to each other. In fact my father had another family, in Birmingham. They were his proper family-they still are-and they don’t know about my mum and me. I didn’t meet him until my fifth birthday. He showed up in a Lamborghini and took us out on a day trip to Brighton. It was the first time I ever saw the sea.”


“That’s so weird. How come he waited all that time to see you?”

“He’s a very self-absorbed man, and he doesn’t like children. It’s funny, too, because I have five half-siblings. My mother says he came to meet me because she finally asked him for money. After that he would come round occasionally, bring us impractical presents…He’s quite entertaining, and completely undependable. When I was younger I used to worry that he was going to take me away from my mum and I’d never see her again.”

Valentina looked at Robert. Is he joking? If he was, she couldn’t detect it. The cab pulled up in front of the restaurant. Valentina had expected it to be large, well upholstered and quiet, but found herself in a tiny crowded room full of age-blackened wood and low ceilings. She had a rare sensation of being too big. This is the real London, where the Londoners eat. A welter of emotions hit her: triumph at finally being a nontourist; satisfaction because she was here and Julia wasn’t; inadequacy to the task of conversing with Robert. What do you say to someone when he says he thought his dad was going to kidnap him? What would Julia say? Once they were seated at a small table squeezed between an exuberant party of City people and a literary agent wooing an editor, Valentina said, “Why would he do that?”

Robert looked at her over the menu and said, “Sorry?”

“Um, your dad? You said…?”

“Oh, right. I know now that he never would’ve, but he was always joking about it, saying how great it was, just him and me, and how he was going to take me up north…To me he was like a goblin. I was quite frightened of him until I was in my teens.”

Valentina looked at him wide-eyed, then took refuge in her menu, at a loss for a reply. He seems so calm about it. I guess no matter what your family is like, you’re not surprised. She had the feeling, now very familiar to her, of being absurdly young and midwestern.

I’ve gone too far, Robert realised. He said, “Would you like a glass of wine? What are you having to eat?” They began to chat haltingly, righting the conversation with shared affection for Monty Python, anecdotes about the cemetery, the antics of Valentina’s kitten, appreciation of the fennel soup. By the end of the meal they were easy with each other again, or at least less uneasy than they had thus far managed to be.


It was a long evening, alone in the flat. Julia considered going upstairs to see Martin, but she was angry at being left on her own and determined to have the most miserable evening possible. She was gratified that the TV was still broken.

Julia heated some tomato soup and sat in the dining room, eating while reading an old copy of Lucky Jim she’d found in Elspeth’s office. Elspeth sat across from her and watched her. Don’t spill soup on that, it’s a signed first. Elspeth realised that she should have left more detailed instructions for the twins. Without meaning to be destructive, they were maddeningly casual with her things: they read rare editions of Tristram Shandy and Villette in the bath, they tucked Daniel Defoe pamphlets into their handbags to read on the tube. Elspeth yearned to snatch the book away from Julia. But why do I mind? It’s a book, she’s reading it, I ought to be fine with that. I shouldn’t be bothered that Valentina is wearing my clothes and having dinner with Robert-but I am, I am very bothered indeed. Julia finished her soup, shut the book, cleared the dishes and washed up. She played with the Kitten until the Kitten got bored and disappeared into the dressing room to nap. Then Julia lay on the sofa in the front room and stared at the ceiling until she couldn’t stand it and had to turn on her computer. She managed to kill a couple hours writing emails to a few long-neglected high school friends. Elspeth retreated to her drawer to sulk. At ten o’clock Julia took a bath. At ten thirty she began to think that Valentina really ought to be home any minute now. By midnight she had called Valentina’s phone three times and was beginning to panic. Elspeth watched Julia pacing and had a premonition of…what? Trouble. Danger. It was too much, the past repeating itself with unnerving variations. Elspeth imagined all the places Robert might have taken Valentina, favourite bars, cherished walks…Come home, come herewhere I can keep an eye on you. Julia went to bed but lay awake, fuming. Elspeth sat in the window seat. They waited.


“Would you like to walk along the South Bank?” Robert asked Valentina. He had paid the bill, they were gathering themselves to leave the restaurant. Valentina hesitated. She considered the shoes she was wearing. They were pointy and spiky and half a size too large. “Sure,” she said.

They took a cab to Westminster Bridge. The streets were strangely empty. Their footsteps sounded sharp on the pavement, they could hear laughter across the river. Valentina had never been in Westminster at night. It’s so much nicer without the crowds. Robert led her across the bridge and down some steps. They stood side by side at the railing looking over the Thames at the Houses of Parliament. There was a low orange moon slung just above Big Ben. Robert put his arm around her. She stiffened. They stood that way for a few minutes, each wondering what the other was thinking. Eventually he said, “Shall we walk? You must be getting cold.”

“Yeah, a little,” she said. They went back up the steps. It was a relief to Valentina to be walking. She was unsure of the protocol; she thought he would kiss her, but would he expect more than that? Did he imagine she would go home with him? Did he understand how impossible that would be? What time is it? Julia would be upset if she wasn’t home soon. She’s upset anyway, but she’ll totally freak out… Valentina tried to read Robert’s watch without him seeing. Then she remembered where she was and turned to see Big Ben. It was almost midnight. They walked past Waterloo Bridge, Blackfriars Bridge. Her feet were on fire. He was talking to her about an exhibit he’d seen at Tate Modern. She looked at each bench they passed with longing. They were near London Bridge when she said, “Can we sit down?”

“Oh,” he said, realising. “I’m awfully sorry-I forgot about your shoes.”

Valentina sank onto a bench and slipped her feet out of the shoes. She wriggled her toes and rotated her ankles. Robert stooped and picked up the shoes. He sat beside her, a hand in each shoe. The shoes were warm and a little damp. “Your poor feet,” he said.

“They aren’t my shoes,” she said.

“I know.” He put Elspeth’s shoes on the bench. “Here,” he said, holding out his hands. “Give me your feet.”

She looked dubious but complied. He eased her around so she was leaning back on her elbows with her feet in his lap.

“Could you take off your stockings?”

“Don’t look,” she said.

He began to massage her feet. At first she watched him, but soon she let her head hang back and all he could see was her long neck and her little pointed chin. He gave himself over to her feet, feeling that he had achieved a new level of debauchery, giving a foot massage to a young girl in public. I wonder if they arrest people for this? He stopped thinking. The world shrank to their bench, her feet, his hands.

Valentina raised her head. She was dizzy and deeply relaxed. Robert leaned down and kissed her feet. “There you are,” he said.

“Oh my God,” she said. “I don’t think I can walk.”

“I’ll carry you,” he said, and he did.


It was almost 2 a.m. when Julia and Elspeth heard footsteps on the stairs. Julia jumped out of bed, unsure if she should go to meet Valentina or wait for her. Elspeth flew to the hall and saw the door open slowly; she saw that Robert was carrying Valentina; she saw him deposit her gently onto her bare feet, she saw Valentina teeter slightly, a shoe in each hand, and Elspeth knew as though she had seen it exactly what had passed between them. Valentina stood peering into the dark flat. She turned to Robert and gave him a small wave. He bowed slightly to her with a smile, handed her her stockings and went downstairs. Valentina stepped into the flat and closed the door. She made no sound as she walked into the bedroom.

Elspeth stayed in the hall. She had no appetite for the fight the twins were about to have. Been there, done that. She wanted to leave the flat, to be alone, to sort herself out. She wanted to find Robert and plead with him. But what would I ask of him? What would I say? Elspeth wanted a stiff drink, a good long cry in the bath. She wanted to walk until she was exhausted enough to sleep. Instead she went into her office and looked out at the front garden in the moonlight. Let me go, she asked of whatever it was that held her here. I want to die now, please; really die and be gone. She waited, but there was no response. Please, God, or whoever you are, please let me go. She looked out at the garden, up at the sky. Nothing happened. She understood then that no one was listening. Anything that happened to her now would be her own doing.


Valentina crept into the bedroom, still holding the shoes and stockings. Julia sat on the bed in her pyjamas, feet dangling. She turned as Valentina came in. “Do you know what time it is?”

“No.”

“It’s nearly two a.m.”

“Oh.”

Julia hopped off the bed. Valentina thought, I can use the shoes to defend myself if she tries to hit me. They stood facing each other, each reluctant to say the next words that would provoke the argument. Julia thought, We should just go to bed. But she couldn’t resist saying, “Is that all you have to say? ‘Oh’?” She mimicked Valentina’s attempt at innocence. Oh, oh, oh.

Valentina shrugged. “It’s not like I have a curfew. And you aren’t my mom. And even if you were my mom, I’m twenty-one years old.” So whatcha gonna do about it, huh, Julia?

“It’s common courtesy to let me know when you’re coming home, otherwise I worry.” I’m more than Mom. You can’t just go off on your own.

“That’s not my problem. You knew where I was and who I was with.” You don’t own me.

“You went out for dinner. Dinner doesn’t last until two a.m.!” What were you doing for seven hours?


“I went out on a date and none of this is any of your business!” Let go of me!

“It is! What do you mean?” We don’t have secrets from each other ever.

“Don’t you think it’s time we started having our own lives?” Oh, God, just let go, Julia.

“We do! We have our own lives together-” Valentina!

“That’s not what I mean!” Valentina threw the shoes across the room. They bounced harmlessly on the carpet. “You know what I mean-I want my own life. I want privacy! I’m sick of being half a person.” She burst into tears. Julia stepped towards her and Valentina shrieked, “Don’t touch me! Don’t-” and ran out of the room.

Julia stood with her arms at her sides, her eyes closed. Tomorrow she’ll be normal. It will be like this didn’t happen. She got back into bed and lay there trying to hear Valentina somewhere in the flat. Eventually she fell asleep and dreamt she was upstairs in Martin’s flat, wandering by herself through the endless paths between the piles of boxes.

Valentina put herself to bed in the spare bedroom. The sheets were clammy and she felt oddly sophisticated sleeping in her underwear. I can’t remember ever sleeping by myself. She was too excited to actually sleep. The fight with Julia occupied her mind; the evening with Robert seemed weeks ago, a dim and pleasant interlude in the real battle. She saw herself as rational and victorious: I won, she thought. I said exactly what I wanted to say. She was wrong. She knew I was right. From now on things will be different.

In the morning the twins met shyly in the kitchen. They made scrambled eggs and toast, and had their breakfast together in the cold light of the dining room without saying very much. Things between them went back to normal, but things were different.


Vitamins

YOU LOOK terrible,” Julia said to Martin a few days later. “I’m going to buy you some vitamins.”

“Now you sound like Marijke.”

“Is that good or bad?” They were in Martin’s office. It was late afternoon; Valentina was at the cemetery with Robert, so Julia had come upstairs like a stray creature, complaining loudly that she had been deserted and hoping that Martin would watch TV with her. But Martin was working, so she hovered around him, bored but expectant.

Martin smiled and swivelled to look at her. In the dim light of the computer screen he seemed otherworldly; Julia thought him beautiful, though she knew it was the beauty of damage. His face was bluish and his hands were an extraordinary blood-orange colour in the warm desk-lamp light. “It’s nice. It’s good to have someone worry about me, just a bit. I wouldn’t want you to worry too much, though.”

An idea was forming in Julia’s mind. “I won’t. But would you take vitamins if I got you some?”

Martin turned back to the screen. He was building the grid for a crossword. He clicked and three squares went black. “Maybe. I’m not very good at remembering to take pills.”

“I could remind you. It could be my job.”


“I suppose it’s easier than actually eating fruit and veg.”

Julia said, “Okay, I’ll go to Boots tomorrow.” She hesitated. “Are you going to work all night?”

“Yes, I should have started this yesterday, but I got sidetracked. It’s due day after tomorrow.” Martin made a note on his handwritten sketch of the crossword. “If you want to watch TV, go ahead.”

“No, I don’t feel like watching by myself. I’ll go downstairs to read.”

“Well, sorry to be such poor company, but I really do have to finish this or my editor will be at my door with a truncheon.”

“S’okay.” By the time Julia was back in her own flat her plan was complete.

“You can’t do that,” Valentina said when Julia told her. “You can’t just give him medicine and not tell him.”

“Why not? He says refusing treatment is part of the disease. So I’m going to sneak it into him. He’ll be glad when it works and he can go outside.”

“What about side effects? What if he’s allergic? And how are you going to get your hands on medicine for obsessive compulsive disorder, anyway?”

“We’ll just go to the doctor and pretend to have OCD. I’ve been reading about it, it’s not hard to fake. I was thinking I would tell the doctor I’m super afraid of snakes. And maybe pluck out all my eyebrows.”

“Whadaya mean we? I’m not going with you.” Valentina held onto the arms of her chair as though she thought Julia might pull her out of it.

Julia shrugged. “Okay, fine. I’ll go by myself.”

It was much more complicated than she had anticipated, but Julia did eventually manage to get a prescription for Anafranil. She decanted the capsules into a vitamin bottle and presented herself in Martin’s office one evening after dinner.

“Look, I remembered,” she said, shaking the bottle so the pills rattled.

He was bent over some photographs, lost in another language. “Sorry, what? Oh, hello, Julia. What’s that? That’s very kind, thank you. Here, I’ll put them next to the computer so I remember to take them.”


“No,” said Julia. “I’ll keep them and make sure you take them. That’s our deal, right?”

“Was it?” he said. She went to the kitchen to get a glass of water. When she handed him one capsule and the glass, Martin let the pill rest in his palm and glanced at it. He looked up at her inquisitively but didn’t say anything.

“Aren’t you going to take it?” she asked nervously. ANAFRANIL 25 MG was printed right on the capsule; she was counting on Martin’s near-sightedness to conceal that.

“Hmm? Oh, yes.” He put the pill in his mouth and gulped it down with water. “There you are, Nurse.”

Julia laughed. “You look better already.” She rattled the vitamin bottle flirtatiously and went downstairs. Valentina was sitting on the floor of Elspeth’s office peering into her laptop.

“You’re going to kill him,” Valentina said.

“No, I’m not. What are you talking about?”

“Look at this.” Valentina swivelled her computer towards Julia, who sat on the floor next to her. “Look at the side effects.”

Julia read. Blurred vision, constipation, nausea, vomiting, allergies, heart palpitations… It was a long list. She looked at Valentina. “I’m up there a lot. I see him more than a doctor would. I just have to monitor him, that’s all.”

“What if he has a heart attack?”

“That’s probably not going to happen.”

“What if he gets seizures? He’s not going to tell you if he’s suddenly impotent or constipated.”

“I just gave him a little dose.”

Valentina logged off and shut down the computer. She stood up.

“You’re an idiot,” she told Julia. “You can’t just decide things for people. And you look weird without eyebrows.”

“You haven’t even met him,” Julia said, but Valentina had already left the room. Julia heard her walking through the flat, out the front door and down the stairs. “Fine,” Julia said. “Be like that. You’ll see.”


Birthday

ROBERT’S BIRTHDAY dawned clear and balmy. He had gone to sleep at a reasonable hour the night before, so he bounded out of bed feeling oddly joyous and expectant. “Dadadadadada-blahblahblahblah BIRTHDAY…” He sang in the shower and ate a soft-boiled egg and toast. He spent a luxurious morning rewriting the chapter of his thesis devoted to Stephen Geary, Highgate Cemetery’s architect. He presented himself at the cemetery before noon and pottered in the archives with James until it was time to give the two o’clock tour. All the familiar memorials seemed to salute him: Eventually you’ll be dead, too, but not today. When he returned from the tour he found the ground-floor office empty except for Nigel, the cemetery’s manager, and a young couple who were discussing the funeral arrangements for their baby. Robert hastily withdrew and went upstairs.

Valentina was perched on one of the office chairs, effacing herself. Jessica was on the phone; Felicity was making tea and talking softly to George, the stone carver, about a memorial he was designing; James called down to Jessica from the archives; Edward was photocopying and Phil was unboxing a cake. Thomas and Matthew came in, rather shyly, and the office seemed suddenly overfull as the burial team seldom came indoors and both of them were very tall.

“Look,” said Phil. “I had them do the Egyptian Avenue in icing.”

“Wow,” said Robert. “That’s really-unappetising.”

“Yeah,” Phil said. “Grey icing is not enticing.”

Felicity laughed when she saw the cake. Then everyone shushed, remembering the bereaved parents in Nigel’s office below. “That’s brilliant,” she said in a whisper. She started placing little pink candles on the cake. Jessica put the phone down and said, “Behave yourselves,” to no one in particular. She winked at Valentina and went downstairs.

The only people Valentina had met before besides Robert were Jessica and Felicity. When Robert came in he’d smiled at her and Valentina felt a jolt of confidence. She watched with surprise as Robert bantered with Phil and parried jokes about his advancing mortality with Thomas and Matthew. It’s like being a zoologist, watching the rare animal in its natural habitat. Robert didn’t seem at all shy here. He summoned Valentina from her chair in the corner and began to introduce her around, one hand touching her back lightly. Valentina was excited to be seen by Robert’s friends as part of a couple, even as she was conscious of how much this would have irritated her if it was Julia claiming her instead of Robert.

James came down from the archives and gingerly settled at Jessica’s desk. Jessica walked into the office followed by Nigel. “Oh-” he said. “What’s the occasion, then?”

“We’re having a twentieth of April party, Nigel,” Felicity said. “Didn’t you bring your costume?”

“It’s Robert’s birthday,” James told him.

“Of course it is,” said Nigel regretfully. “I’m afraid my mind’s somewhere else.”

“Is it all arranged?” James asked.

“Yes,” he replied. “The funeral is on Monday at eleven.” A pall came over the office; no one liked babies’ funerals. Robert thought, Italways rains when we bury the babies. Then he thought that couldn’t be true really. But I’ll bring an umbrella just in case.

“Oh dear,” Nigel said, noticing the cake. “What happened there?”

“Hey, now,” said Phil, “don’t disrespect the cake.” He took a picture of it with his phone-“for the archives.”

Felicity lit the candles. Everyone clustered round Robert who stood looking self-consciously pleased as they sang “Happy Birthday” to him. Valentina sang and felt as though she’d known all these people for years: Phil with his leather trench coat and tattoos; George with his shirtsleeves rolled up and his baritone voice, a pencil sketch of a gravestone loosely held in his graphite-smudged hands; Edward who reminded Valentina of a leading man in an old black-and-white movie, dignified in his suit and tie, singing with his hands clasped in front of him, as though he were in church; Thomas and Matthew in their high boots and braces smiling as they sang; Nigel sad-faced as though the singing was a very solemn task which might have unpleasant consequences; Felicity kind and clear-voiced; Jessica and James singing breathily like overblown flutes-all singing together, Happy birthday, happy birthday to you. At the end of the song Robert closed his eyes and wished just to be happy again and blew out all the candles but one. There was a murmur of not-quite-concern in the group, then he took another breath and finished off the last candle. Applause, laughter. Robert cut the cake and gave Valentina the first piece. She held the paper plate in one hand and the plastic fork in the other, and watched him hand out slices. Felicity poured tea into the cemetery’s motley collection of mugs and china cups. Robert ate a bite of cake; the grey icing tasted just like any other colour. He glanced at Valentina and found her staring at him, solemn and silent in the midst of the conviviality. Suddenly Valentina smiled and he felt lighthearted: the past seemed to dissipate and it was all about the future now. Robert walked over to Valentina and they stood side by side, eating cake, happily quiet together amid the humming birthday party. It’s going to be all right, he thought.


Jessica watched them. She looks so much like Elspeth, she thought. It’s quite unnerving. She thought of the couple she had just met, the young parents. They had leaned into each other as they went out through the cemetery’s gate as though confronting a strong wind imperceptible to anyone else. Robert and Valentina were not touching at all but Jessica was reminded of that leaning together. He seems happy enough. She sighed and sipped her tea. Perhaps it will be all right.


Ghostwriting

ELSPETH WAS working with dust. She couldn’t think why she had not understood before the communicative powers of dust. It was light and she could move it easily; it was the ideal medium for messages.

When the twins first arrived in the flat, Julia had idly run her finger across the dust on the piano, leaving a shiny trail. It had been bothering Elspeth, and she had begun to laboriously put the dust back, to erase Julia’s thoughtless defacement, when she realised that she had stumbled across what amounted to a tabula rasa. Dust was a megaphone that could amplify her distress call. She was so excited that she immediately went to her drawer to think over the possibilities.

What to say, now that she finally had the chance? “Help, I’m dead.” No, they can’t do anything about that. It’s better not to seem too pathetic. But I don’t want to frighten them. I want them to know it’s me, not a trick. She thought of Robert. She could write to him; he would know she was here.

The next morning was Sunday. It was raining and the front room was suffused with an even, feeble light. Elspeth floated above the piano. If she had been visible to anyone, she would have appeared as only a face and a right hand.

The twins were in the dining room, lingering over coffee and the remains of toast and jam. Elspeth could hear their amiable, desultory conversation, the midmorning debate over what manner of amusements to pursue today. She shut them out and concentrated on the dull dusty expanse before her.

Elspeth placed a tentative fingertip on the piano. She recalled reading somewhere that household dust was largely comprised of shed human skin cells. So perhaps I’m writing with bits of my former body. The dust gave way, soft particles yielding as she traced a shiny path. She exulted in the ease of it; she took care with her writing, so that Robert must know it as hers. She spent almost an hour writing a few lines. The twins had gone out by the time she was finished. Elspeth hummed and hovered over her work, admiring the flourish of her signature, the exactness of her punctuation. With great effort she switched on the floor lamp she had once used to illuminate sheet music. They can’t miss that, she crowed, and took a celebratory flight around the flat, shooting through doors and skimming ceilings. She managed to drop a lump of sugar on the Kitten’s head as it slept on a chair partially tucked under the dining-room table. What a glorious morning!

Robert spent the day, which happened to be May Day, at the entrance to the Eastern Cemetery pointing a great many people, most of them Chinese, towards Karl Marx’s grave. That evening he sat at his desk, exhausted. He stared at his computer and tried to work out what it was exactly that irritated him so about Chapter III. There was something wrong with the tone of the thing: it was a rollicking, almost jolly chapter about cholera and typhoid. It wouldn’t do. He couldn’t fathom why epidemics had once seemed so delightful.

He was highlighting all the essential bits in red when he heard someone banging on his door.


Both twins stood in the front hall looking solemn. “Come upstairs,” said Valentina.

“What’s wrong?”

“We have to show you something.”

Julia followed Valentina and Robert upstairs. She was conscious of feeling hopeful.

The flat was blazing with light. The twins escorted Robert to the piano and stepped back. He saw Elspeth’s handwriting:


GREETINGS, VALENTINA AND JULIA-

I AM HERE.

LOVE, ELSPETH


and:


ROBERT-22 JUNE 1992-E


Robert stood there, blank-minded. He put his hand out to touch the writing but Valentina caught his wrist. “What does it mean? The date?” asked Julia.

“It’s something…only she and I would know.”

Valentina said, “She turned on that lamp.”

“What happened that day?” said Julia.

Valentina said, “The writing looks just like Mom’s.”

“What happened-”

“It’s private, okay? It’s between Elspeth and me.” Robert spoke sharply. The twins looked at each other and sat down on the sofa, hands folded. Robert read and reread the message. He thought about that first day: he stood in the front garden, taking down the estate agent’s number off the To Let sign. Elspeth was looking down at him through her front windows. She was waving and he’d waved back; she disappeared and came almost immediately-she must have run down the stairs. She was wearing a white sundress; she had her hair pulled back with a clip. She wore those cheap rubber sandals-What were those called? They flapped at the bottoms of her feet as she went ahead of him up the steps, into the flat. It was completely empty, that day, his flat. She took him through it but they talked about other things. What had they said to each other? He could not recall. He remembered only following her, the way the sundress revealed the wings of her back, the delicate vertebral knobs that vanished into the trough of her spine, the zipper of the dress, the tight waist and the full skirt. She had a slight tan that summer. Later they had gone upstairs, to her flat, and they had drunk shandy in this room and later still they had gone to her bedroom and he had unzipped that dress and it had fallen off her like a shell. She was warm under his hands. Later he rented the flat, but that afternoon he forgot why he was there, forgot everything but her bare feet, the way her hair kept escaping from the clip, her face without make-up, the way her hands moved. I’m going to fall apart, Elspeth. I can’t-I don’t know what to feel.

He stared at the writing. Valentina thought, He doesn’t feel that for me. Julia waited. She wondered if Elspeth was in the room with them. The Kitten jumped up on the sofa and perched herself on one of its arms. She folded her paws under her chest and watched them, obviously indifferent to any spirits that might be present.

Finally Robert said, “Elspeth?”

Each of them in turn felt their whole bodies go deep, fleeting cold. Robert said, “Will you write something for us?” The twins got up and the three of them stood at the piano, watching the surface.

It was like a slow stop-action cartoon. The dust seemed to displace itself; the letters emerged through invisible agency: YES.

Elspeth saw that Robert was struggling to reconcile past with present, that he was excited and disturbed. Valentina watched him and Julia watched Valentina. That’s how it is, Elspeth thought. Hard on all of us. She began to wander around the room, pushing at things. Doors swayed, drapes fluttered. Robert looked up from his contemplation of the piano as she turned a table lamp off and on a few times.


“Come here, sweet,” he said, and she flew to his side, suddenly happy. He felt her as a proximity, a cold presence. How did I not understand, before? She was here, and I left her alone. Robert thought of all his visits to her grave, thought of himself sitting for hours on the steps of the Noblin mausoleum chatting away pointlessly, remembered his evening by the river with Valentina and felt foolish and a little nauseated. But I didn’t really believe she was there. Did I? He stood shaking his head. He stopped when he realised he was doing it. “Tell us what it’s like…How is it?…How are you?” Robert wanted to say things he could not say with the twins present. Elspeth positioned herself over the piano and began to consider the question. How am I? Well, dead. Um, try to be positive about that. Hmm… She made a little spiral in the dust while she thought about it. Robert remembered her pages and pages of spirals doodled whilst talking on the telephone. You’re here, really here.

Valentina and Julia watched the shiny spiral appear, bystanders. We’re, like, the sheep at Jesus’ birth, Julia thought. Valentina wondered if Elspeth watched them all the time. What does she know about us? Does she like us? It all seemed very uncomfortable. Valentina tried to remember if either of them had ever said anything unkind about Elspeth. When the twins were tiny they had scared each other with the idea of God watching them every minute of every day. You could never be good enough… She watched Robert’s face. He had forgotten her. He was waiting for Elspeth to write again.

Letters began to appear: LONELY. TRAPPED IN FLAT. HAPPY TO SEE V & J. MISS YOU.

Julia said, “Is there anything you want?”


READ BOOKS. PLAY GAMES. PAY ATTENTION.


“Pay attention to you?”

YES. TALK TO ME, PLAY WITH ME. Elspeth wrote as quickly as she could. Her writing was uncontrolled and large, and she could see that the surface of the piano was not going to allow unlimited conversation. Just then the Kitten leapt on the piano keys with a musical crash and up onto the middle of the piano lid, obliterating Elspeth’s writing as efficiently as a duster. “Ugh,” said Valentina, scooping her up, “bad girl.” She threw the Kitten onto the sofa. The Kitten, thus rejected, went under the piano to sulk.

Now half the dust was gone from the piano. Elspeth wrote along the edge of the music stand: R-seances-Ouija?

“Right, the Victorians used Ouija boards. And automatic writing, spirits would possess the medium and speak through them. I mean, that’s what the mediums pretended they were doing. But they were frauds, Elspeth.”


MAYBE.


“Right, okay. Do you want to try?”


OUIJA?


“I’ll have to make the board.” He turned to the twins. “Do you have a large sheet of paper? We need a notebook, a biro and a drinking glass to be the planchette.” Julia went to the kitchen and returned with a juice glass and a pen. Valentina brought the notebook and a few sheets of white paper from the computer printer. She taped them together.

Robert wrote the letters of the alphabet in three rows. He wrote the words Yes and No in the upper corners of the paper. He put the paper on the coffee table and the glass upside down in the centre of the paper.

Elspeth thought, That glass is too heavy. She managed to rattle it as though it were having its own private earthquake, but she could not make it glide even an inch.

Robert said, “We need something that hardly weighs anything. Perhaps a bottle cap?” Julia ran back to the kitchen and returned with the round blue plastic safety strip she had peeled off the milk bottle that morning. “Yes, brilliant,” Robert said. He placed it where the glass had been and it began to skitter around the paper like it’s glad to be out of the garbage can, it’s like a happy water bug, Julia thought. It was easy to imagine Elspeth here in the room when she wrote on the piano; when she moved the plastic strip it seemed as though the thing itself had become a creature, moving under its own volition. Julia and Valentina sat down on the floor next to the coffee table. Robert sat on the sofa and leaned over the board. The plastic thing stopped expectantly, as though listening. The Kitten came over and began marching her hind legs and preparing to pounce. Get that animal out of here, Elspeth thought. As though Elspeth had spoken out loud, Valentina got up and put the Kitten in the dining room and shut the door.

When she had settled again Valentina asked, “What do you mean you’re trapped in the flat? Have you been here all the time?” She didn’t say, Are you watching us all the time? even though she wanted to.

The plastic thing spelled slowly. No one touched it; it moved with intention along short straight paths. YES ALWAYS HERE CANT LEAVE Robert wrote down the letters in the notebook as the plastic circle paused over them. He thought that he should have included punctuation on the board.

Julia asked, “What about heaven? Or, you know, all that stuff they tell you in church?”


NO EVIDENCE PRO OR CON JUST HERE WAITING


“Ugh,” said Julia. “Forever? Does anything change?”


I GET STRONGER


“Does this happen to everyone who dies?”

DONT KNOW ONLY ME HERE Elspeth wanted to ask questions, not just answer them. Hows Edie, she spelled before Julia could ask anything else.

The twins exchanged glances. “She’s fine,” said Valentina. “She was sad that you said she couldn’t visit us here,” said Julia.

The plastic circle spun around the paper aimlessly. Finally Elspeth spelled, DONT TELL EDIE

“Don’t tell her what?” asked Robert.


DONT TELL IM GHOST DONT TELL ANYONE


“Nobody would believe us,” Valentina told her. “You know Mom, she would think we were totally lying. And she would think it was, you know, mean.”


YES MEAN DO YOU SPEAK FRENCH


“Yes,” said Julia.


LATIN


“Uh, no.”

VENI HUC CRAS R UT TECUM EX SOLO COLLOQUAR

Robert smiled. Julia said, “No fair having secrets.” Valentina thought, They have years of secrets already. She wanted to throw up. Robert reached over and stroked her hair. She looked at him doubtfully. Julia and Elspeth each felt a twinge of jealousy, and each felt strange about that for her own reasons.

Elspeth spelled out TIRED

“Okay,” said Robert.


GOODNIGHT


“Goodnight, sweet.”

“Goodnight, Aunt Elspeth.”

Robert and the twins stood up. There was an awkwardness; they had nothing to say to each other in front of Elspeth. They each would have liked to go somewhere else and burst into exclamations over the strangeness, how peculiar and how exciting and disturbing, and what about it? “Well, goodnight, then,” Robert said, and went downstairs to his own flat. “Goodnight,” said the twins, as they watched him leave. He shut his door and stood looking at his ceiling, completely gobsmacked. Then he started laughing and couldn’t stop. The twins heard him. They sat at the little coffee table, flicking the planchette back and forth, not speaking. Elspeth lay on the floor in the hall for a while, listening to Robert laughing, worrying about him. When he quietened down she went back to the front room. She touched each twin on the crown of her head. Goodnight, goodnight. Elspeth curled up in her drawer in an ecstasy of satisfaction.


The next morning was still damp and drab. Robert lay in bed listening to the twins walking around their flat. He was afraid they might stay in, the weather was so unpromising. He could hear their kitten galloping through rooms at random. How can a creature that sounds like the cavalry look like an oversized lab rat? Robert hauled himself out of bed. He made coffee and showered. By the time he had dressed and drunk his coffee the twins were at his door.

“Do you want to go to the Cabinet War Rooms with us?” Valentina asked.

“Erm-I do, but I had better do some work. I’ve got horribly behind on my thesis. Jessica’s insinuating that I’ve given it up.”

“Oh, come anyway.” Julia spent a few minutes trying to persuade him, perfectly aware that she sounded insincere. Valentina looked beseeching. Robert gently urged them on their way, and they finally left without him. Robert watched through his front window as they angled their immense tartan golfing umbrella through the gate.

He waited until he thought they must be safely on the tube. Then he gathered pencil and paper and retrieved Elspeth’s key from a little drawer in his desk. He went upstairs and let himself into the flat.

He stood in the hall and wondered how best to proceed. He decided that the dining-room table would be most comfortable and sat down with the Ouija board, plastic circle and his pad of paper before him.

“Elspeth?” He spoke softly. Perhaps she’s sleeping. Do dead people sleep? “Elspeth, I thought we might try automatic writing because it seems like a lot of work for you to push a planchette around a Ouija board. Do you want to try?”

He sat for what seemed to him a very long time, hand poised over the paper in silence, waiting.

He fell into a reverie that featured the many soft-boiled eggs he had eaten whilst sitting in this very chair at this very table. The first morning he had breakfasted with Elspeth she had asked, “How’d you like your eggs?” and he’d replied, “Soft-boiled.” He showed her how to cook them; Elspeth ate her eggs scrambled. And every breakfast thereafter she had presented him with a perfectly soft-boiled egg in a little blue egg cup. He wondered where the egg cup was. Robert was thinking about getting up to look for it when his hand went cold and jerked sideways. He looked around, saw nothing. He picked up the pencil and repositioned himself.

This time he let the tip of the pencil touch the paper. The cold came gradually into his hand. The pencil began to move over the paper.

Circles, loops, spiky lines that looked like seismographs filled the page. Robert sometimes felt his fingers gripping the pencil without his willing them to do it. Sometimes it seemed to be the pencil itself that moved with unseen volition. He leaned over the paper, watching. The meaningless lines became smaller, tighter. Robert remembered his infant school days, practising the alphabet with a thick pencil on coarse paper. His fingers ached from the cold.


WHAT ARE YOU THINKING ABOUT?


He let go of the pencil and it dropped on the table, inert.

“Soft-boiled eggs,” said Robert quietly.

The pencil spun around a few times, as though it was amused, or perhaps upset at being abandoned. Robert picked it up with his left hand, to give his right hand a chance to warm.


LOL I MISS YOU.


“Likewise. Understatement. I just-this is bollocks, Elspeth. I didn’t understand. I’ve been having all these dreams about you, where you’re alive and I’ve been ignoring you-there was one a week ago where I was looking for you in Sainsbury’s and you had turned into a lettuce and I had no idea…and now it turns out that that is essentially the case…I mean, not that you are a lettuce, but that you are here and I didn’t realise.”


NOT YOUR FAULT.


“I keep thinking I’ve let you down.”


I DIED. NOT YOUR FAULT.


“In my head I know that…”

The twins sat on the kitchen floor listening, ears pressed to the dining-room door. Julia glanced at the trail of muddy water they’d tracked across the linoleum. I hope he won’t come in here, cause there’snowhere to hide. Valentina wished they had really gone to the museum. She didn’t want to listen to whatever Robert had to say to Elspeth. She looked at Julia, who was sprawled in an uncomfortable posture so as to get her ear in the best possible spot. Julia was rapt; she loved spying on people.

Elspeth sat on the table, watching Robert’s face as he spoke to her. It was as though he’d gone blind; he’d no idea where she was, so he sat gazing upward as he talked.

“…so I can’t seem to get on, things are a bit meaningless. And now here you are, but not exactly.” Robert paused, waiting to see if Elspeth would reply. When she didn’t, he said, “Maybe I could come to you. If I died…”

No.

“Why not?”


WHAT IF YOU ENDED UP STUCK IN YOUR FLAT?


“Ah.”

I COULDN’T BEAR IT IF YOU DIED.

Robert nodded. “Let’s talk about something else.”

They both became aware of the breathing at the same moment. Elspeth wrote, KEEP TALKING, and Robert began to tell her about something Jessica had said to him the day before, an anecdote about her law-school days. Elspeth went to the kitchen door and stuck her head through it. At first she didn’t see anything. Then she looked down and saw the twins. Elspeth laughed and flew back to Robert. SPIES, she wrote. COME BACK ANOTHER DAY.

HOW WILL I KNOW WHEN TO COME? Robert wrote back.

I’M ALWAYS HERE, Elspeth replied.

“I’ve got to go, sweet. It’s almost noon, I told Jessica I’d help with the newsletter.”


I LOVE YOU.


He opened his mouth to say it, then wrote it instead. I LOVE YOU TOO. ALWAYS.

Elspeth ran her finger over the writing. She wished she could have the paper, then thought, No, it’s just a thing. Robert gathered up the notebook and put the chair back where it had been. He stood in the front hall, not wanting to leave her. A wave of cold passed through him. It made him feel nauseous. He waited for the feeling to pass, and left.

Elspeth went back to the kitchen expecting to find the twins. There were only thin trails of mud on the floor. Elspeth went to the back-door window and was able to see Valentina and Julia creeping down the fire escape, soundlessly. When they got to the bottom they ran across the moss and disappeared into the side garden. They’re cleverer than they look. She wasn’t sure if that was a problem; she was aware of mixed emotions-pride and wariness, nostalgia and exasperation. I wish I could stow them away somewhere while I frolic with Robert. She sighed. What a bad mother I would have been.

What is more basic than the need to be known? It is the entirety of intimacy, the elixir of love, this knowing. Robert gave himself over to it. He and Elspeth spent hours each day-whenever the twins were out of the flat-engrossed in each other, reliving with paper and pencil fragments of days that had once seemed ordinary but were now precious and in need of lapidary acts of shared memory.

“Do you remember the day you broke your toe?”


IN GREEN PARK.


“I’d never seen you cry.”

IT HURT. YOU WOULD’VE, TOO.

“I imagine so.”


THAT NICE TAXI DRIVER.


“Yes. And we ate all that ice cream, later.”

AND GOT DRUNK. THE HANGOVER WAS WORSE THAN THE TOE.

“Lord, I’d forgotten that.”


And:

“What do you miss most?”

TOUCHING. BODIES. DRINKING, THAT HEAT IN THE THROAT. SUBSTANCE-


HAVING TO ACTUALLY LIFT MY HAND OR LEG, TURN MY HEAD. SMELLS. I CAN’T REMEMBER HOW YOU SMELL.

“I kept some of your clothes, but the scent has faded.”


TELL ME HOW YOU SMELL.


“Oh. Let’s see…”


DIFFERENT PARTS SMELL DIFFERENT.


“Yes…my hands smell like pencils, and lotiony, it’s that cucumber one you used to buy me…I had pepperoni for lunch…Hmm. I don’t know if it’s possible to know one’s own smell. Sort of like not being able to ever see one’s own face, don’t you think?”

I CAN’T SEE MYSELF IN MIRRORS.

“Oh. That seems-lonely.”

Yes.

“I wish I could see you.”

I’M ON YOUR LEFT, LEANING OVER YOU.

“Mmm. No. Perhaps you’re in some other part of the spectrum. Ultraviolet? Infrared?”


YOU NEED GHOST SPECS.


“Brilliant! We could patent them, people could walk down the street and see all the ghosts riding the bus, haunting Sainsbury’s-”

YOU COULD WEAR THEM IN THE CEMETERY. LOADS OF GHOSTS THERE?

“I wonder. I mean, you aren’t in the cemetery, which is where I rather expected to find you.”


TWINS ARE COMING.


“Oh dear. Till tomorrow, then.”


And:

WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO? YOU CAN’T LIVE THIS WAY.

“What do you mean? I’m happy. That is, I’m happy, considering.”


VALENTINA IS IN LOVE WITH YOU.


Robert put down the pencil. He got up and walked around the perimeter of the dining room, his arms wrapped around his torso as though for warmth. Finally he sat down again. “What do you want me to do?”


I DON’T KNOW.

He stood up again. “I don’t know what to say, Elspeth.” He gathered up the notebook and pencils and went downstairs. Elspeth thought, Say you love me. Two days went by before Robert reappeared in the dining room, notebook in hand. “I’ve been thinking,” he said, and sat with his hand poised over the paper, waiting for Elspeth to turn up. She was already there but she made no sign to him. She sat on one of the straight-backed chairs across the table from him, arms folded, eyes slitted.

Finally Robert said, “Elspeth, I’ve been trying to sort things out. About Valentina. And I’m just very-confused.”

Silence. Robert could hear his nervous system whining in his head. It was a soft dark rainy day and the dining room was very gloomy.

“Okay, then. I’ll just sit here and talk to myself.” He paused. Elspeth waited. “Elspeth, what did you think was going to happen? You died almost a year and a half ago. I spent a year just-mourning you, and wishing I could die, thinking quite seriously in fact of killing myself, and just when things seemed to be lifting somewhat, the twins arrived. And if you think back, you had hinted or, actually, you’d said it more than once, that you were sending the twins here as a sort of substitute for yourself. And just as I began to regard them, or rather Valentina, in that light, you reappear-well, not appear, but you reveal yourself to be here, and while that’s absolutely wonderful it does seem as if we are rather stuck.”

Elspeth had a feeling about Robert then that she had never had when she was alive. He’s going to leave me, she thought. He doesn’t love me any more. It was something about the tone of his voice.

“Elspeth, if I could come and get you-if I knew where to go and how-or even if I could join you, I would do it.”

She went and stood next to him, afraid to hear what he would say next and afraid to interrupt him.

“But we’re both betwixt and between, aren’t we? I’m caught here in my body, and you’re caught-here, without any body at all; no body, no voice…I go downstairs and look at all these pages of writing, and I think I’m losing my mind.”

She caught his hand and made a jerky line with the pencil. When she got it under control she wrote: YOU WANT ME TO HAVE A BODY?

“It’s what I’m used to,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

Elspeth let herself rise, until she was looking down at Robert from the ceiling; she was somewhat entangled in the chandelier. She began to run her hands through the little crystals and Robert looked up. It’s as though I’m a cloud, and he’s expecting rain.

“If you want me to give up Valentina I’ll do it.”

Is that what I want? she wondered. Why does he make me decide? She put her fingers to the base of one of the delicate flame-shaped light bulbs in the chandelier. It surged with light and exploded. Robert averted his face, put up his hands to shield his eyes. He sat that way for what seemed to Elspeth a long time. Then he said quietly, “Why did you do that?” He picked up the pencil, put his hand over the paper gingerly, avoiding the shards of light-bulb glass.

SORRY SORRY SORRY. BY MISTAKE-I WAS THINKING.

“Are you angry with me?”


HURT & CONFUSED, NOT ANGRY.


“Wait here, Elspeth. I’m going to clean up the glass. It will give us both time to think.” He went to the kitchen and found the dustpan and brush. After he had swept up all the slivers and replaced the bulb he sat down again and stared at the paper. He looks so depressed, Elspeth thought. It’s not good for him to sit in the dark scribbling with the dead lady. If this were a fairy tale the princess would come and save him. The least I can do is let him go.

IT’S ALL RIGHT, she wrote. IF VALENTINA MAKES YOU HAPPY, GO AHEAD.

“Elspeth-”

DON’T FORGET ME.

“Elspeth, listen…”

But she had left the room, and she did not come back to talk with him that day or for many days to come.



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