So Many Ways to Begin

~ ~ ~

He left Eleanor at home, to pack a suitcase or to decide that she didn't want to make the long journey with him after all, and drove round to see his mother, looking for a few more photographs to take with him. She was standing outside when he pulled into the small cul-de-sac of sheltered bungalows, waiting for him, watering the potted flowers they'd bought her as a moving-in present.

No Eleanor then? she said as he got out of the car, barely looking up.

No, he said, she's busy sorting a few things out.

Pity, she said, putting down the watering can and tilting her cheek towards him to be kissed, it's been a little while. Her skin was dry against his lips, and her body felt thin and fragile as he put an arm around her.

They're looking nice, he said, nodding down at the flowers. She looked at them, sceptically.

Well, she said, as good as can be expected with the light they're getting there. She turned away, leaning on the walking stick which had been propped up by the drainpipe, and eased her way back into the house. He tried to take her elbow, to support her weight, but she shrugged free of his grip and headed into the kitchen. He stood in the small entranceway for a moment, watching her stiffened movements, slower versions of the ones he'd grown up with, watching as she filled the kettle, plugged it in, opened the cupboard, took out the teabags. The bones of her hand looked as though they had shrunk, leaving the skin loose around them. There was a brown spot on the back of her wrist which he hadn't noticed before. She put a plate of biscuits on the table, and a pair of cups and saucers, and sat down. As the kettle came to the boil, David filled the pot, brought it to the table, and sat down beside her. She turned the handle towards him and waited for him to pour.

So, he said. How are things, Mum? How are you finding it? She smiled slightly, looking past him towards the window, looking over at the other bungalows with their ramped entrances and grab handles beside the door, their groups of potted flowers and thin strips of lawn.

Oh, it's all very nice, she said. I've got no complaints. It's warm, and dry, and clean. It does me okay.

It had taken them a long time to persuade Dorothy to move. They'd reminded her, more than once, that the doctor had said the stairs were doing her hips no good, and she'd told them she could get one of those stair-lift things, what did they call them? They're ever so expensive, Susan had said, and Dorothy had looked at her, narrowing her eyes, saying are they now Susan, is that right?

They'd asked her what would happen if she slipped in the bath one night and had no way of calling for help. They'd told her the house was too big for her to keep clean any longer, and she'd said well, I know that, what do you think I keep asking you lot round for? But she'd agreed in the end, grudgingly, saying she supposed it was better than going into a home like Julia had done, saying she'd go along with it if only to stop them all harping on.

The night before she finally moved out, they cooked her a dinner and kept her company until late in the evening, sitting around the same kitchen table she'd been putting food on for more than fifty years. David and Susan, with the help of Susan's son Mark, spent the day emptying most of the house, taking some things to the bungalow and the rest to charity shops and auction yards, or to their own garages and lofts. Dorothy kept out of the way, saying she was sure they knew what they were doing, talking to Eleanor in the garden or on the way to and from the shops, and in the evening they laid the table as they would for Sunday lunch, with warmed dishes for the vegetables, white sauce in a jug, separate serving spoons, napkins in rings. Eleanor suggested candles, and they found some left in the cupboard under the stairs, and put them on the table in half-sized wine bottles with the labels scrubbed off. They poured drinks for everyone, and drank a toast to Albert, to the house, to new beginnings.

When his mother had poured out a second cup of tea for them both, he said listen, is there anything you want me to do, while I'm here?

Well you're not leaving yet are you? she asked.

Not straight away, he said, but I can't be too long. We should try and get going before lunchtime. He put his hands on the table, as if he were about to get up, and she looked at him.

We? she said. Is Eleanor coming with you now? He nodded, and Dorothy smiled.

Oh, I am pleased, she said. I never did think it was a good idea to go on your own. He shrugged, looking around the room.

Is there anything you want me to do though? he said again. She watched him for a moment and shook her head.

There's not an awful lot to be done, she said.

No hoovering or anything? he asked.

Now then, she said, watch yourself. I'm not an invalid yet. But you can wash these things when we're done, she added, glancing at the cups and saucers on the table. He nodded.

He said, almost as an afterthought, oh and Mum, I was still hoping to borrow those photos, you remember? She looked at him. Do you mind if I have a look for them? he said. I was hoping to take them with me. He said the words quickly, quietly, picking crumbs from the lace tablecloth as he spoke.

Oh, she said. Well. Of course. She nodded towards a stack of cardboard boxes behind the door. I think they're still packed in there.

Can I look? he asked again. She waved her hand towards them, nodding, in a gesture which might have meant be my guest if she hadn't also turned her face away and lifted her cup of tea unsteadily to her lips.

The albums were still packed where she'd put them when she moved out of the house, wedged in between recipe books and old gardening magazines. He stood in the corner of the room to look through them, knowing already which pictures he wanted, removing them quickly and laying them to one side on the worktop; his and Susan's first days at school, Albert and Dorothy moving into the house, a summer holiday with his grandparents, small square snapshots with rounded edges and faded colours. His mother carried on looking out of the window, fiddling with the sleeves of her cardigan, rolling the cuffs back and straightening them again. Each time he peeled back the plastic cover of an album page it made a sound like tearing paper and she glanced at him anxiously.

You will be careful with those, won't you? she said. He nodded, still flicking quickly through the heavy pages, squeezing each album back into the box when he was done.

Look, Mum, he said when he'd slipped the chosen pictures into a clear plastic binder, are you sure you don't mind?

When they'd had dinner together that evening, the night before Dorothy had moved into the bungalow, some awkward things had been said. She'd drunk too much wine, and had let her anxiety about what he was doing spill out, saying I'm not going to stand in your way but you shouldn't think I'm happy about all this, saying isn't it a bit late now, really? Saying oh this is all Julia's fault. But now, with only a cup of tea passing her lips, and with the sharp summer light filling the small and tidy room, she had nothing left to say.

Really, I don't mind, she said eventually. You go and get on with it. She stood up suddenly, looking around the room as if she wasn't sure where she'd put something, as if she wasn't sure what it was she was looking for, and sat down again. Say hello to Eleanor for me, won't you? she said, her voice sounding tired and faint. Tell her I said to look out for you.

He said that he would, and he carried the cups and saucers across to the sink, rinsing them under the tap and balancing them on the draining rack, glancing up at the clock.

41 Cut fragments of surgical thread, in small transparent case, dated July 1983

It wasn't until he'd been out of hospital for three or four months that Kate saw his scar for the first time. She was fascinated. She knelt beside him and peered down at it, at the two faint dotted lines either side of the ridged pinch of flesh, the scarred surface puckering away into healthy skin. He propped himself up on his elbows, watching her face, the concentration in her eyes, the pursed lips and lowered eyebrows which meant she was working hard inside her young head to process this new information. She reached out to touch it and Eleanor caught her hand with a sharp uh-uh and a shake of the head. Wash your hands first, she said, still holding on to Kate's wrist. Kate looked at her hands. They were covered in soil and grass from where she'd been digging in the far corner of the garden with the bucket and spade Dorothy had given her; looking for museum things she'd said. She stood up and went into the house, looking worriedly at David as she went.

Eleanor smiled at him and shuffled across the ground to kiss his neck and his ear. He broke off a handful of grass and threw it at her as she turned away. She broke off a handful herself, and was just about to throw it back at him, laughing at his cowering face, when they heard the gurgle and splash of water down the outside drain and saw Kate reappear at the back door, holding up her wet hands.

Good girl, Eleanor said, and Kate hurried over to kneel beside David's stomach again. She looked at the scar, and up at him, and back at the scar again. She seemed to be waiting for his permission. He watched her. Be careful, Eleanor said, moving round to sit beside her. He felt like a patient again, lying in bed watching doctors and students make comments about his body, taking it in turns to pinch and prod at his flesh.

Kate's small finger brushed against the damaged skin, pulling away suddenly, reaching back. She traced the line of the scar, and the two dotted lines where the stitches had been, and the pinched line of the scar again. She looked round at Eleanor.

It's like on my elbow, she said, sounding surprised.

Well, said Eleanor, it's similar, isn't it? Kate lifted her arm and ran her finger along the faded scar she'd got from falling on to a piece of glass in the street a year before. She ran her finger along his scar again, and along hers, and smiled up at him, the seriousness gone from her face.

It's like my elbow, she said, as if she thought he hadn't heard her speaking to her mother a moment before.

Yes, he said, it is.

Does it hurt? she asked.

No, he said, not any more. She looked at it again, thinking about something.

Have I got a pendix? she asked.

Appendix, Eleanor said, correcting her. Kate looked up at her mother, frowning.

I said a pendix, she said; have I got one too? She looked down at herself, prodding her stomach. Eleanor smiled.

No, it's an appendix, she said again, and you have got one, don't worry.

Have you got one? Kate asked, looking up.

Yes I have, said Eleanor.

But Daddy hasn't? she asked.

No, Eleanor said quietly, not any more. She looked at David, her eyes narrowing very slightly. Kate looked at his scar once more, satisfying herself that she understood, then stood up and went back to her archaeological exploration in the corner of the garden, plunging her hands into the warm soil to look for Roman pottery, Bronze Age coins, snail shells. David lay down again, the late afternoon sun on his face, and closed his eyes, his own hand reaching automatically for that stiff pinched reminder of a few months before.

He must have woken a few times before he managed to speak, struggling in and out of consciousness, because he didn't remember being surprised to see Eleanor sitting there when he finally opened his eyes.

Hello, he said, and his mouth felt swollen and stuffed with rags and he didn't think she could have heard him. Hello, he said again, the word cracking in half across his dry lips. She looked up at him suddenly, leaning forward and smiling, her eyes wet and blinking quickly. She looked very tired. You alright there love? he said, trying to lick some softness back into his mouth and his words. You been here long? She pulled her chair closer to the bed, reaching for his hand.

A wee while, she said, smiling again and tilting her head to line it up with his. He smiled back and immediately felt a swirl of nausea in his empty stomach.

What time is it? he asked, and closed his eyes.

When he woke again, there was no one there. He could feel a sharp thudding pain in his stomach somewhere. There were metal rails along the sides of the bed, and he tried to remember where he'd seen that before. There was the brown plastic chair that Eleanor had been sitting in, but there was no sign of her. The room was darker than it had been. He could hear a hushed voice somewhere and he couldn't tell if it was coming from a radio or from someone talking, or if they might be talking to him.

David? She was standing right next to the bed this time, trailing the tips of her fingers across his forehead, brushing his damp hair away from his face. He looked up at her.

Hello again, he said. She smiled, and it was a smile of such open pleasure and warmth that he didn't quite know how to respond.

How're you feeling there? she said.

Sore, he told her, and sick, and a bit dizzy. She ran her hand down the side of his face, and he turned to kiss her palm. She looked round, and leant over to kiss his forehead, his cheek, the end of his nose.

Bloody hell David, she whispered, you had me worried there for a while. She reached down for his hand, held it, pulled the brown plastic chair closer to the bed and sat down, tugging his hand into her lap. Look at the bloody state of you, she whispered.

There was a vase of flowers on the locker next to the bed, and a card. From your Mum, she said, when she saw him looking at them. She'll be back down later.

Is Kate with her? he asked.

Oh, yes, she said, I was there with them both last night. I think your Mum likes the idea of having her to stay; I think it's an adventure for them both.

Have you told her? he asked.

Kate? she said. I've told her that you had to have an operation; I said they had to fix your tummy but you're alright now and you'll be home soon and right as rain. I told her it was your appendix, she added softly. She squeezed his hand, and traced the outline of his fingers with her thumb. She seemed okay with that, she said. Oh, look at you, she said again, running her eyes across the dark swollen bruises on the side of his face, his thick and broken lips, the mottled stains across his ribs.

Someone at the other end of the ward was watching television. He couldn't see the screen, but he could see a slight flickering glow on the man's face, and hear the rustle of studio applause. He was an old man, his hair cut fuzz-close to his head, his mouth hanging slightly open. He was wearing blue-and-white striped pyjamas, and a thin grey cardigan, sitting up in bed with a pile of pillows behind him. Through the window at the end of the room, David could see the top branches of two trees, shifting together and apart in a light breeze, the dark green leaves billowing and swooping towards each other. The sky was white with sliding clouds.

I brought you some grapes she said, trying to smile, do you want some? He reached out to the bowl on the bedside locker, tugging feebly at a grape. As it broke off the stalk he dropped it deliberately to the floor, letting his hand fall weakly to the side of the bed.

I don't think I've got the strength, he said.

You're unbelievable you are, she said, biting back a smile and standing closer to the top end of the bed. You're supposed to be sick and exhausted. She plucked a handful of grapes off the stalk, her hips tilting ever so slightly towards him, and fed the grapes into his mouth, poking each one into the reluctant press of his lips, withdrawing it with a teasingly raised eyebrow, slipping it back in, running the broken edge against the licked bite of his teeth. You should be careful of your blood pressure there old man, she murmured.

I'm being as careful as I can, he replied, but you're not helping much. He reached his hand up and curled it around the lean of her waist.

She stood away from the bed suddenly, closing her eyes and covering her mouth with her hand, catching her breath, looking around to see if anyone had been watching. She shook her head at him. You'd better be home soon, she said.

I'll see what I can do, he told her. I think they're going to want my bed back before too long. She sat down, looking at him and smiling as though she were the keeper of some great secret.

A nurse came and took his temperature, asked how he was feeling, and changed the bedding. There was some blood mapped out across one of the sheets where he must have caught a stitch as he turned over in his sleep. A man came round with a trolley, selling sweets and newspapers, books of crossword puzzles. People came round with food which tasted like it had been warm for a long time, and slid it in front of him on wheeled tables. After a couple of days he was able to sit up in bed, and then to get out of bed, and then to walk the short distance to the toilet. A doctor came, dragging the curtains closed around the bed, and listened to his breathing through a stethoscope, and looked into his eyes with a bright light, and tugged painfully at the ends of the blood-encrusted stitches. Time you were off I think, Mr Carter, he said vaguely, looking around as if he'd forgotten something. I think we've done all we can, he added, and slipped away again.

A police officer came, and sat by the bed with a notebook, and asked him what had happened. He told him, more or less, and the police officer wrote it down, watching David, asking questions, asking for a better description. David said it was unclear, that things had been quick, and confused. I'm not sure I'd recognise the man if I saw him again, he said. It's difficult to be certain, he said. I didn't even get a look at his face really, it was over so quickly, he said.

He lay back in a hot bath, steam rising from the still surface of the water and filling the darkened room, clouding the mirror and the window, curling and spreading across the ceiling. The two candles at the end of the bath burnt steady and still, their light streaming up the shining tiles behind them. Eleanor knelt on the floor beside him with a handful of cotton wool.

Kate was still at his mother's. Eleanor had said she wanted her to stay there a few more days, that she didn't want her to see him like this. She'd said it would frighten her. The house felt strange without her, empty and awkward, her toys still spread across her bedroom floor, her school satchel hanging by the door. But when he'd spoken to her on the phone she hadn't seemed unsettled by what was going on at all. Are you looking after Granny? he asked her. Are you cooking her dinner and making her bed? No! she said, giggling once she realised he was joking. Are you reading her a bedtime story? he asked. No Dad, she said. You're just being silly now, she said, and asked to speak to Eleanor. He missed her being in the house incredibly. They both did.

Sit up, Eleanor said quietly. She leant over, dipping a piece of cotton wool in the water, squeezing it out between her fingers. She pressed it on to the dried blood around the stitches, the grainy crust softening and dissolving and trickling down on to his skin. The cotton wool soaked red and brown, and she reached over to drop it into the bin. She dipped a fresh piece into the water and repeated the process, looking up at him now and again to see if it was hurting, carefully dabbing and wiping away the blood until there were only the pressed pink edges of the wound, the shining black stitches knotting it together, the red dotted punctures where the thread wove in and out of his skin. Stand up, she said, and he did, and the water streamed off him with a sudden plunging rush, the candlelight flapping for a moment in the shaken air. She held a towel up against him, drying his hair, his face, his chest and arms and back, pressing it carefully against his belly. When she pulled it away, it was marked with a small kiss of fresh blood. She soaked a pad of cotton wool in iodine and held it towards him. This is going to sting, she murmured, pressing it against the wound. It was cold, and he jerked back instinctively, but she kept it pressed against him as the initial jolt became a duller throbbing pain. He sucked air through his teeth, and smiled as she looked up at him. She dropped the cotton wool into the bin. There, she said, sitting back on her heels as if admiring her handiwork, how's that now?

He looked down at the scar, pink and hot from the bath, wreathed in the steam still rising from the water. I think that'll do, he said. Thanks, he said. They looked at each other for a moment, and she held back the beginnings of a smile at the corner of her mouth. Water had run down her arms and soaked the ends of her shirt sleeves. As he stood there, looking down at her, he felt the familiar flush and pulse of an erection beginning to swell. She watched it for a moment, the shift and stretch of the skin, the darkening of the veins. She stood up, shaking her head.

You're a disgrace, she said, laughing, passing him the towel as she left the room.

42 Pocket address book, w/page torn out, c.1982

It was nobody's fault, he told himself later. It was just something that happened, something they'd both drifted towards without thinking it through. They spent so much time together at work, that was part of it. And they had a lot to talk about, things they could share, that was a part of it as well. They both had good reasons to stay at work late, not to go home, to find themselves yet again the only two left in the building.

We must stop meeting like this, she said to him once, laughing, as they both left the building after a long evening spent assembling new display panels. He laughed too, and said, right, well, see you tomorrow, and nodded a surprised hello to Chris, who was waiting for her at the bottom of the steps; and the next time they worked late she said, I didn't mean that you know, we shouldn't stop meeting like this at all.

She touched him, more than once, brief nudges and shoves which were never supposed to mean any more than oh stop it now, or go on then, or, occasionally, are you okay? No more than friendly, playful gestures. But he felt the soft pressure of those touches for hours afterwards, like pale bruises, and he started to want to feel them again.

It was nobody's fault. It was just something that happened.

She asked him how Eleanor was, still, and these conversations seemed to restore the innocence to the time they spent together. They made it okay; they were having the conversations good friends would have. He could say it was good for a long time after Kate was born but now she's started at school I think Eleanor doesn't know what to do with herself, I think she's just exhausted, and Anna could say oh David I'm sure she'll be better soon, as any friend would do. It was only talking, what they were doing. He could even say well I'm sleeping on the sofa now you know, just for the moment, she says she can't sleep when I'm there, she seems to flinch whenever I go near her, she's so withdrawn, and Anna could say oh it must be hard for you David, and this could be okay as well.

It was nothing. There was nothing going on. He told himself this, many times. He asked himself what she would see in him anyway, and there was nothing he could think of, and this proved to him that there was nothing going on at all.

But she told him once, outright. She said, I like you David, you know that, don't you? She said you're so, I don't know, dependable, reliable, no, that sounds wrong, solid, I mean like strong in your own way, oh listen to me, sorry, I don't even know what I'm trying to say. Saying all this while he stood looking at her, motionless, astonished, his breath caught in a fist-like knot in his throat. And she tried again: I like it when you're around, that's all, okay? Laying her hands on his shoulders when she said this, looking straight into his eyes, and only moving away when they both heard footsteps out in the corridor.

He was putting dinner on the table one Friday night when Eleanor said someone phoned for you today, I forgot to tell you. She gazed down at her plate as she spoke, her hands flat on the table in front of her. She was still wearing her dressing gown, and her hair was hanging down around the sides of her face. Kate looked up at him, holding her knife and fork in her small fists, waiting to be told she could start. He sat down, the oven gloves still flung over his shoulder, and nodded at her.

Oh? he said, to Eleanor, only half interested, watching Kate scoop her peas into a crater of mashed potato.

Her name was Anna. She wanted to speak to you but I told her you weren't in, Eleanor said. Her voice wasn't quiet, but it sounded distant somehow, as if she was calling from another room and not sitting next to him at all.

Oh, right, he said. Something about work probably. I'll speak to her on Monday, I'm sure it can wait. He looked over at Kate, who was sticking two halves of fish finger together with a mashed potato cement, her mouth full, watching her mother curiously.

Did you have a good day at school? he asked. She thought about it for a moment.

Yes! she said. But Robin got in trouble, for breaking my pencil, because he did it when I was on the sand table, she said.

Did Mrs Ellson give you a new one? he asked. She nodded.

He glanced across at Eleanor again. She was eating very slowly, pushing small forkfuls of food around her plate as if checking to see that they were safe. But she was eating. He wanted to push her hair away from her face and be able to look her in the eye. He wanted to be able to ask how her day had been.

Kate put down her knife and fork and asked if she could go and play. He told her she could. Eleanor looked up.

Who's Anna? she said. He tried to explain.

Anna from work, he said, you know. The Assistant Curator, she does transport, young woman, dark hair. She started in '73 but she'd been doing placements before that, remember? You met her at the Christmas party the year before last, Anna Richards, you know. Speaking lightly, cutting his fish fingers into small squares as he spoke, heaping his peas up on to his fork, Speaking as though it wasn't at all important and he couldn't quite remember.

No, she said. I don't know.

Dark curly hair, he said, down to here, quite slim. She looked at him very briefly, her head held low.

No, Eleanor said, I don't know her. She got up from the table and turned the television on, sitting at the end of the sofa and resting a cushion on her lap, pulling her dressing gown across her knees. Kate stood up from the floor with a doll still in her hand and went to sit next to her, shuffling across to rest her head against her mother's arm. Eleanor edged away for a second before lifting her arm and wrapping it around her daughter's back.

Half a year later, with Christmas and New Year and winter behind them, with Kate at his mother's house and Eleanor still hiding in bed, he phoned Anna. He thought they should discuss the themes for the next foyer display, he said. As if it couldn't have waited until the next day. As if it was perfectly usual to speak about work like that on a Sunday afternoon. As if he hadn't known that Chris was going to be working away all weekend.

They talked about the foyer for a minute or two, no more, and fell silent. And he lowered his voice as he said, so, shall I come round?

She was quiet at first, and he wasn't sure if she'd heard him. He could hear a lawnmower somewhere nearby, and music. It sounded as if she had the back door open, and he imagined her sitting there with a warm breeze blowing through the house. Sorry? she said.

He looked up at the ceiling, squeezing the back of his neck.

I was just wondering, he said. If you're not doing anything. If you've not got anything to do, maybe I should come round. I'm not doing anything, he added. She hesitated for only a moment.

Okay, she said. Yes. Okay. He held the phone away from his face, looking at it, wondering what he was doing.

Okay, he said.

43 Small fragment of metal, unidentified, 1983

For a long time, he thought about it every day. That strange expectant atmosphere. The feeling of needing to leave but being unable to. The shock of that first touch, the dizzying force of it. Later, he found himself able to not think about it for days at a time, weeks even, caught out only by some passing reminder — birdsong, summer evening sunlight, rubble overgrown with birch trees and wildflowers. He would see these things, hear them, and he would remember.

But eventually even these things failed to bring it to mind, and he was able to go for months without remembering what had happened that day. And by the time he and Eleanor were driving to Liverpool to catch the Belfast ferry, almost twenty years later, it took something as direct as her stroking the bare warm skin of his belly and catching her finger on the old faded scar to bring it suddenly back.

She said are you sure you don't mind me coming with you? He drew his breath in sharply and laughed.

Well, it's a bit late now isn't it? he said. Her finger was still moving back and forth across the scar, looking for and finding the twin trails of tiny dotted lines where the stitches had once been, and he thought once more of the things he'd never told her, the things he wasn't going across the water to say.

The first punch was a shock. It shouldn't have been. He should have been thinking more clearly, when Chris suggested it, he should have thought about whether it really was quicker to cut across the site of the old car factory on their way back home, squeezing through a gap in the fence while Chris talked about the work he'd once done there, pointing out the brickworked outlines of the old warehouses and offices, the paint shops, the testing bays, the assembly line. He should have wondered if there was more to the conversation's drift towards marriage and trust than just the two pints of beer swimming through them, the long sloping fall of the evening's light and the birds sliding across the sky. He should have listened, and thought, and realised what might be coming. He should have known that the offer of a drink after work was out of the ordinary, that their talk had been a little too awkward, a little too forced, that Chris had seemed all along to be waiting for something. But he hadn't thought about any of these things; or if he had, he'd done nothing about them, and so when that first punch came, it came as a shock.

He turned just as Chris caught him with it in the stomach, noticing the strange grim look of concentration on his face, even as his body folded around that lump of a fist, even as his feet were scraping and scrabbling across the stony ground. He looked up, almost laughing, as if it might have been a joke or he could turn it into one, and he said what what are you doing what's this? Chris said nothing, and brought the heel of his open hand crashing into the side of David's head like a hammer.

And even as the punches were falling across his face, his ribs, his kidneys, David still found the time to be surprised, the breath to say but but what no but I didn't do anything what are you fuck I didn't do a thing. Chris laughed when he heard this, and kicked David's legs out from under him, the sun-baked concrete cracking hard against the side of his face as he fell to the floor.

What did you think you were doing, mate? Chris said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. How did you think you were going to get away with it?

I didn't do anything, David said, there's nothing, we only, and Chris called him a liar, a liar and a cunt, kicking him in the side of the head as he lay on the ground.

It was a hot summer' s day when he went to her house, when he telephoned and asked if he should come round and she said okay, when he walked over there and she opened the door and said hello. She'd tied her hair up, and long curls of it were falling loose across her face, and she kept blowing them out of her eyes, fanning herself with a piece of paper and saying it's hot, I'm hot, aren't you? And every time she said it she giggled, nervously or embarrassedly or excitedly, he couldn't tell. She had a laugh that made his ears flush red. She asked him in, and she poured them both a drink, and she dropped ice cubes into the glasses. She dared him to suck a whole ice cube and he dared her back, and they stood there in her kitchen with their mouths puckered around a block of ice each, grimacing at each other, her eyes watering and sparkling, and when she spat hers out, laughing, she touched him once again. Her two hands flat to his chest, gently, briefly. It had been months since Eleanor had touched him like that.

She was wearing a blue dress, a very pale blue, as though it had been washed too often, cut low and hanging from her bare round shoulders on straps as thin as parcel string. Her feet were bare. She caught him looking at her and smiled.

They sat in the front room with their drinks. They sat next to each other, and she turned towards him, folding her legs beneath her and stretching one arm out along the back of the sofa. And she talked a lot, quickly, she laughed and the way she laughed made him feel uncomfortable and good at the same time. And when she didn't talk she took a long slow sip of her drink, looking at him over the top of her glass, a long slow look which he wanted to turn away from but couldn't. He had no idea what he was doing, now that he was there, and he wanted to leave, and he didn't want to leave. She asked him how things were with Eleanor, and he said the same, that she wasn't spending so long in bed but that she still wouldn't leave the house and she still looked puffy-eyed when he came in from work. He told her the doctor had been talking about a different medication and that he wasn't sure it was really the answer. It was almost a routine conversation by then.

How long has it been now? she asked. He had to think for a moment.

He said, she's not always like it, you know, it comes and goes. She was fine when she was pregnant, and fine for a while afterwards. But it just comes on sometimes, he said. It doesn't seem like there's anything either of us can do to stop it. I'm not even sure the pills make much difference, he said; they just make it easier to deal with, they're only damping things down. She wras watching him while he told her this, nodding, leaning towards him slightly.

She said, it's good, you know, what you do for her, it's impressive.

He said, well no, not really, I mean, she's my wife, what else would I do?

She was wearing a long bead necklace, she was twisting it between two fingers and when she let it go it fell against her bare skin and again he couldn't help looking.

She said, I'm glad you're here, it's good to have you here.

Well, it's good to be here, he said, trying to be mock-polite but actually meaning it. It was good to be there, on her sofa, with a cold drink on a hot afternoon, and her sitting there in that dress, blowing curls of dark hair out of her eyes, and talking, and laughing, and touching her fingers to her lips.

She said, is it? suddenly, demandingly. Is it good to be here, are you glad you're here?

Yes, he said, yes it is, yes I am, and he was confused and she was quiet.

He finished his drink. He went to the toilet. He washed his face and his hands, and when he came out of the bathroom at the top of the stairs she was there.

She was standing in the open doorway of the room next to the bathroom, leaning against the door frame slightly, one ankle curled round behind the other. The blue dress hung down to her knees, but with one leg lifted like that it rode up higher, almost halfway up her thigh. He looked at her. That was all. He just looked at her. She lifted a hand to adjust the knot of hair at the back of her head, and she smiled. That was enough. That moment, standing there looking at her, and her smile, her smile for him, that hot day with the windows open and the sleepy sounds of summer drifting through the house, a lawnmower somewhere, children shouting, that was enough.

How do I look? she said.

She told me David, she fucking told me, Chris said. He lit a cigarette, breathing heavily, and told David to stand up, half helping and half pulling him up by the collar of his jacket. David lifted his hand to his face, checking his swollen lips, his cheeks, the bruises around his eyes, looking at the blood on his fingers as he pulled his hand away. Hecoughed, and spat blood on to the ground, and wondered if that was it over already.

He said, Chris, look, it wasn't like that, it wasn't, we didn't. Chris lifted his hand, already starting to turn away.

Fuck it, he said. Forget it, he said. He turned back towards David, and for a moment David thought he was reaching out to shake his hand, that this was the end of it after all; but instead he reached for the collar of David's jacket, yanking him towards the ground, leaning over to spit the words into his ear. He said, you and Eleanor, that's your problem. He said, I don't care if she's not giving you any or if she makes you sleep in the spare room or if she won't even undress in front of you ever again mate. He said, it don't bother me, it's not my problem, it's nothing to do with me, but you fucking keep your eyes off mine, alright? He said these things quietly, with a smile in his voice as though he was trying not to laugh, and he gripped David's jacket tighter, so that the collar squeezed and cut into his neck. And all David could think about, as he felt the veins on his neck starting to pulse, was that there was only one way Chris would have known about those things. There was only one person he'd ever discussed them with.

Alright? Chris said again, and David nodded, making a noise which was supposed to be yes, okay, I understand. Chris stood up straight, and as he did so he pushed David away. David felt his feet slip from under him, felt his face smack against the warm hard ground again, felt small stones and grit grinding against the skin of his cheek. There was something sharp underneath him, jutting into his stomach, and just as he was arching his back away from it, he felt the weight of Chris's feet stamping on his back, a sudden gasp of pain as the something sharp broke through his skin, gouging and twisting and tearing into his muscles and his flesh.

Chris backed off, and he rolled over to look down at the pain. For a moment, there was nothing; a rip in his shirt, a glimpse of something hard and rust-coloured. But as he looked, and as Chris began to turn and walk away, the blood suddenly poured out, seeping through the fabric of his shirt, sliding thickly across his skin. He looked at the blood, and he looked at Chris, still only a few yards off but moving further, and he looked up at the empty pale blue sky.

He washed his face and his hands, he came out of the bathroom, and there she was, standing there in that dress, looking at him. How do I look? she said, and it seemed as if she really wanted to know, as if she wasn't sure, when every inch of her was breathtaking and desirable, her elegant bare feet and the smooth straight rise of her legs, the way her dress pulled against the curve of her hips and the press of her breasts, her shoulders, her neck, her eyes. Her eyes looked strange for a moment, when he looked, anxious almost.

He said, you look good, and she said, do I? really? as if she genuinely didn't think so, as if she thought he might be humouring her somehow. As if there was no one who told her each day how very good she looked.

He said, softly, yes Anna, you do, you look very good. She smiled again, looking away for a moment, looking over her shoulder into the room. He still hadn't moved. When she turned back her eyes looked different and she wasn't smiling.

She said, quietly, looking straight at him, alright then, come on, and she turned quickly in the doorway, stepping into the room, out of sight.

He didn't even breathe.

That movement, the turn of her hips, the swing and lift of her dress around the backs of her legs.

He found it difficult to remember, later, how long she had waited, how long he had stood there looking at the open door.

He didn't move. He couldn't.

She reappeared, and when she spoke this time her eyes spilled clearly over into tears, her voice cracking. She said don't be shy. She said I thought you wanted to.

He said, I do.

She said well come on then, and she opened her mouth slightly, and there were tears down both her cheeks, shining.

He wanted her, immensely.

He couldn't move.

Later, he would have liked to have been able to say that he thought of Eleanor at that moment, that he remembered how much he loved her still and how important it was that he went straight back home and told her. Or that he thought of Kate, and how privileged he felt to be a part of her life, and that he knew with sudden clarity that he could do nothing to jeopardise that. But these things wouldn't have been true. It was only fear which kept him from moving towards her. Fear of what might happen if he did, fear of what might happen then, and next, and for the rest of his life.

He turned and walked down the stairs, slowly, his knees buckling with each step, feeling the weight of her gaze on his shoulders, watching him. He hesitated again at the bottom of the stairs, wondering whether he should turn and say something, or change his mind, or stay for another drink so that they could both pretend nothing had happened at all. He heard the swirl of her dress behind him as she turned away from the top of the stairs, and he heard her bedroom door closing, and he thought, even then, about going back. He wiped his face with the sleeve of his shirt and opened the front door, stepping out into the afternoon sun and walking quickly away.

He was surprised, as he lay there, by just how much pain there was, a ragged-edged, nameless, roaring pain. He was surprised by how much blood continued to spill out of him, pooling thickly across the cracked and broken ground. He tried to bring his hands to the place where it hurt, to see if he could take out what had broken into him, to pinch the edges of the wound and stop the endless outpouring of blood. But his hands quivered uselessly when he tried to move them, lifting weakly into the air, falling again. He turned his head, watching Chris moving further away, watching the birds cluster and sweep across the evening sky.

He thought about when Kate had been born, and the visceral sense he'd had of the need to protect her, the violence he'd felt rising in his body at the thought of anyone so much as intending her harm. He realised that he'd already failed her, and he wondered who would be there to protect her now, if they would do a better job than it seemed he was capable of.

He saw Chris turning round without breaking his stride, looking back from fifty yards away. He saw him stopping, turning again, shielding his eyes from the low sun. They looked at each other. David lifted his bloodied hands, in some feeble gesture of need, and Chris ran, stumbling, across the broken ground.

44 Pair of child's gloves, striped, c.1983

When Eleanor was eight years old, she told him once, she lost a pair of gloves on the way home from school. It was getting close to spring and the day had turned warm, so she'd left them in her coat pocket, not realising they had fallen out until just before she got to her front door. She spent an hour looking for them, running back to school with her head down, scanning the pavement and the gutter and the railing tops. She got to the school just as her teacher was leaving, and he let her back in to look under her desk, in the cloakroom, in the corridor, in the outside toilets, but they weren't there. She ran back to the house, her frantic search blurred by hot, frightened tears. I didn't want to get into trouble for being home late, she told him, but I didn't want to get into trouble for losing the gloves either. When she gave up, and knocked on the door, and wasn't able to meet her mother's questioning glare, she got into trouble for both. She was sent to bed without any tea, and smacked on each step of the steep stairs, and wasn't allowed another pair of gloves until she was old enough to buy them for herself. I used to wear socks on my hands, she said, when it was deathly cold, and hoick my hands up into my sleeves so that no one could see.

When Kate was seven years old, the autumn after David had been in hospital, Eleanor bought her a new pair of gloves and attached them to her winter coat with two lengths of bright red wool. She took a sewing kit out from the cupboard under the stairs one Sunday afternoon and settled down into the sofa by the window. Kate stood and watched her for a few moments, distracted from the farm she was building in front of the fireplace, a look of puzzled concentration in her eyes.

What are you doing? she asked. Eleanor looked up from trying to thread the needle, her daughter's coat laid out across her lap, the two gloves nestling together on the arm of the sofa.

I'm going to sew these gloves to your coat, she said. So you don't lose them. Kate thought about this for a moment, and turned away.

Okay, she said, as though giving permission. She went back to the farm, her grandmother watching her fondly and asking where she was going to put the sheep. In here! Kate announced, dunking the two plastic sheep into a felt duck-pond, picking up a horse and galloping it around the farm in circles, neighing loudly, knocking over dry stone walls and stumbling into a tractor, saying ow the horse has broke his leg he has to go to hospital and have stitches, her voice loud and shrill and excited. Dorothy glanced across at Eleanor, ready to shush her granddaughter, but Eleanor was still concentrating on threading the needle and didn't say anything. David came back inside from putting out the rubbish.

The aerial's come loose, he said, I'll have to go up on the roof and fix it. Or get someone round. No one replied, so he went back into the kitchen to make a start on the washing up, standing in the doorway a moment while he waited for the water to run hot, watching his wife and his daughter and his mother sitting together in his home on a quiet Sunday afternoon. He had discovered, with surprise, that this was one of the deepest pleasures in his life, to cook dinner for these three people, to eat with them, and to settle into a long afternoon of being in their presence. He liked to sit at the end of the sofa with his eyes closed, so that they would think he was asleep, so that he could be there without being there, listening to their lazy talk, Kate's babbling chatter, his mother's commentary on the afternoon's films. And he liked to listen to them before dinner, through the doorway, Eleanor telling Dorothy about their week, Dorothy telling Eleanor about hers, Kate interrupting to ask questions and tell them both about something that had happened at school, their conversation sharpened by hunger as he kept busy in the kitchen — checking the roast in the oven, lifting it out to spoon more juices over its back, sliding a knife between the bones to see if it was cooked, draining the vegetables over the sink with a rush of steaming water knowing that his mother would be listening, would be thinking that she'd taught him something at least.

Eleanor finally managed to thread the needle, and reached for the long hanging end of the thread, twisting it round her finger to make a knot. As she did so, the needle spilt out of her fingers and down between the cushions somewhere. She slammed her hand on to the arm of the sofa in frustration, knocking the gloves to the floor and saying a loud shit! before catching herself. David turned the tap off and stepped forward, wanting to help. Kate looked up, startled, with a hand over her mouth, saying Mummy said a naughty word, naughty word, Mummy said a naughty word, saying it almost as a song to herself, crouching back down amongst the pieces of her farm. Dorothy looked across at Eleanor, trying not to smile, and stood up.

Shall we go up and play with Sindy now? she asked Kate, reaching for her hand. Kate looked at her, and stood up as well.

Okay, she said, without seeming to think about it, and the two of them went away up the stairs.

You okay? David asked, moving towards Eleanor. She smiled, shaking her head, wiping her eyes with the tips of her fingers.

I'm fine, she said. It's just, sewing's not really my strong point, you know?

It went down the side there, he said, pointing to where he'd seen the needle fall. Stand up a minute. She stood up, and he lifted the cushion away, peering in at the fluff and the crumbs, picking out a pen, some scraps of paper, three halfpenny coins, and the needle.

It's like an archaeological dig in there, he said, smiling, handing her the needle as she sat down again; there you go.

Thanks, she said. Anyway, how about you soldier, you okay? She looked up at him, reaching out and pulling him a little closer by the hem of his shirt, lifting the thick cotton and gazing at the small dotted scar, still raised and raw. How does it feel? she asked.

It's okay, he told her. It doesn't hurt really. Just sometimes when I stand up too quickly, or bend over. She pulled him closer, and kissed the faintly bruised skin around the scar.

I'm going to have to keep a closer eye on you, aren't I? she said, trying to re-thread the needle. Do a bit more looking after you. He sat on the arm of the sofa, not sure what she meant. I'm going to have to pay more attention, she said, glancing up at him; wouldn't you say?

They could hear, upstairs, his mother talking softly as Kate's feet pounded across the floor and she acted out Sindy's catwalking at the top of her voice. He glanced upwards.

David? she said, lowering the needle and thread into her lap. David, what happened? I mean, what really happened? He kept his eyes on the ceiling.

You know what happened, he said, his voice low and steady. She noticed him gripping the edge of the sofa-arm, trying to keep his balance. I've told you what happened, he said. I don't remember all that much about it, he said.

But why would someone do that? she asked. It doesn't make sense. For no reason?

He could have told her then, he thought later, he should have told her then. Things would have been better that way, maybe.

I don't know Eleanor, he said quietly. It was just some drunk. I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. She held his gaze, winding and unwinding the thread around her finger.

She said, I just want to understand David, I just want to know why it happened. I want to know what it is you're not telling me. She turned away, squinting at the needle, easing the thread through its narrow eye.

He said, what do you mean? He said, there's nothing I'm not telling you. It was just some drunk. It was an accident almost. Don't worry about it now, he said. He leant forward and kissed the hair on the top of her head, and she told him he was in her light. He sat back again, moving his shadow away from her face and her hands, watching as she picked up a length of wool and one of Kate's small neat gloves.

She said, it just doesn't make sense David, and he said, I know, I know.

He went outside to look at the aerial again. It was swinging in the light breeze, angling towards the roof, looking like it would take a tile off in a strong wind. He wondered who he could borrow a ladder from. He wondered if he would ever tell Eleanor what had really happened with Chris, what had almost happened with Anna. He wondered how she would react if he did. He walked to the end of the garden to put the lid back on the dustbin, and went inside to finish the washing up, watching Eleanor's sewing as he put away the last of the plates and the pans.

How's it going now? he asked her. Fine, she said, nearly done. She knotted the last stitch, snapped the loose thread across her hand, and held the coat up for him to see. The two gloves hung down from the cuffs, turning slow circles in the air, and he pictured them swinging back and forth as Kate ran towards him in the park, kicking up leaves, stumbling over divots and molehills, laughing.

There, she said, try that. David tugged at one of the gloves to test it, and it pulled away in his hand, dangling a long strand of red wool with a tail of broken stitches beneath it. He looked at her in anticipation, but she just shrugged, smiling as she pulled at the other glove and it snapped away in turn.

This is definitely not my strong point, David, she said, breaking into a laugh, and he agreed that, no, she was right, it probably wasn't.

45 Job application form, Head Curator, c.1984

He was going through the filing cabinet in his office when he heard someone come into the room and quietly close the door. He'd been looking through the records of old exhibitions, looking for the acquisitions list from a watchmaking display he'd put together in 1978, but when he heard Anna gently coughing and shuffling her feet he slid the drawer shut and turned around. Hello, she said quietly, not quite looking at him. He nodded.

He'd been trying to avoid her since he'd started back at work, spending as much time as possible in his office, being careful whenever he'd needed to venture into the corridors and galleries. When they had come across each other, in the staff-room, or in a meeting, they'd spoken as briefly and as distantly as possible, avoiding each other's eyes, their voices thick with self-control. Talking to her made him feel uncomfortable in a different way from before; talking to her now made him want to look over his shoulder and see if anyone was there.

Hello, he said, still holding a folder from the filing cabinet. It was clutched against his chest, as if he thought she was going to try and take it from him.

I haven't seen much of you since you came back, she said, stepping forward from the door.

No, he said. No, I suppose not. I've been catching up on some paperwork. It builds up, doesn't it? He tried to smile. He noticed that she'd cut her hair much shorter, pinning it back into a tight knot on the back of her head. He noticed that she kept opening and closing her hands, smoothing them down the sides of her skirt.

How's Eleanor? she said. And Kate? How are they both doing? She smiled, and tilted her head to one side, and he already wanted to tell her to leave.

They're fine, he said. They're both doing fine. She waited for him to say something more, and he realised he should ask how Chris was. He said nothing, and he felt his breath catch at the top of his lungs, felt his arms starting to shiver against his chest. They're fine, he said again.

Anna stepped closer to the desk. I wanted to say sorry, she said, so quietly that for a moment he wasn't quite sure what he'd heard. It wasn't supposed to happen, she said, not like that. He almost smiled, wondering how it had been supposed to happen.

He said, have you heard back from Manchester about those loan requests?

She said, you're doing the right thing you know. There was a knock at the door. He looked at her. She moved closer, until there was only the corner of the desk between them.

He said, they should have got back to us by now. It's been six weeks, hasn't it?

Not telling anyone I mean, she said, resting one hand on the desk. I mean, no one needs to know do they? There was a second knock at the door, and Christine from decorative arts came in, hesitating slightly as she saw David and Anna move a step back from each other.

Sorry, she said. Sorry, but David, there's a problem with this delivery, from the V&A, you remember? Could you come and have a look at the paperwork before the driver leaves?

I'll be right there, he said, holding up a finger to say just give us one moment. Anna looked down at the floor, and they both waited for Christine to go. He wanted to tell Anna that it wasn't for her to say whether or not he told anyone what had happened. He wanted to ask her who she thought she was to come into his office and say these things. He looked at her, his tongue fat and dry in his mouth, and he said, sorry Christine, could you excuse us, I'll be with you in just a minute. Christine looked at them both, stepped back, and closed the door. He waited for her footsteps, and heard nothing. Anna looked up and smiled.

You know Malcolm's leaving at the end of next year, don't you? she said. He shrugged, and nodded, and turned away to put the folder he was still holding back into the filing cabinet, trying and failing to hide his surprise. Malcolm Newbold was the Head Curator and had been there since the museum first opened. I thought I might go for the job, she said, but I'm not sure about it. He kept his back to her, thumbing through the files, wanting her to leave. He felt her moving closer, and wondered if that was her breath he could feel on the back of his neck.

Do you think I should? she asked. I mean, do you think there'd be any point? The uncertainty in her voice surprised him. He turned round, not understanding why she even needed to ask, why she needed to ask him. She was sucking her lip, anxiously, fiddling with the hair on the back of her head. He wanted to reassure her, despite everything, to touch a hand to her arm and say that of course she should apply, she was perfectly capable, she should know that.

He said, I don't know Anna. That's for you to say.

How about you? she asked. Will you apply?

I don't know, he said again. He moved past her, their sleeves touching as he did so, and opened the door. Christine was still waiting. Sorry about that, he said, and followed her down towards the delivery doors. At the end of the corridor he glanced over his shoulder and saw Anna standing behind his desk, sliding his papers and pencil pots into slightly different positions, adjusting the angle of the lamp and, just as he turned the corner, reaching for his chair.

46 Hand-drawn family tree (incomplete), dated May 1984

Kate knelt up on her chair, stretching out across the table for the big pack of felt-tip pens. And anyway, she said, Mrs Dunn said Lisa's picture was too messy to go in the class-book, I heard her saying it to Lisa, she said Lisa would have to do it again. Kate's friends both sniggered, ducking their heads as if they were still in the classroom and were trying to hide something, or as if they thought Kate's dad might hear.

Yeah and plus as well, said Becky, sitting across from Kate and chewing the end of a pencil, I heard her say she was going to send it to Tony Hart. The three girls laughed again, and Rachel stuck her tongue into her lower lip, making a sound like a der-brain.

Be funny if she did, they'd probably put Lisa Jones age five on it because they wouldn't believe she was eight, she said, and they all sank into their seats with laughter.

They worked quietly for a moment, passing the pencils and rulers and rubbers and felt-tips backwards and forwards across the table.

Have you done all the people on yours yet? Rachel asked, looking across the table at Becky's work.

Nearly, Becky said. Have you?

Nearly, Rachel said, picking her pencil up again and crossing something out. She paused. Kate, have you decided who you're inviting to your birthday yet? she said. Kate didn't look up.

Nearly, she said.

David stood in the kitchen, next to the open back door, listening. He knew he shouldn't, that Kate would see it as some kind of betrayal, would shriek indignantly if she saw him standing there, but he couldn't help it. It was the same impulse which made him close his eyes and pretend to be asleep when she came into the room, or wait just around the corner when he collected her from school, or crouch beside her bed and watch her as she slept; the need to know more about her, to gain some admittance into the ever-enlarging secret territories of her life, to be granted a glimmer of understanding of this confident child his baby girl had become.

Does your dad draw family trees all the time? he heard Becky say.

No, Kate said airily, only sometimes because most of the time he finds old stuff in the ground or at jumble sales, I think, and he collects it for the museum and he makes expeditions of it.

Exhibitions, said Rachel quickly.

That's what I said, Kate replied.

Didn't.

Did.

Didn't.

Did.

David smiled. He liked the thought of his making acquisitions at jumble sales; he wondered what misunderstanding that had grown out of, what else there was about his job that she couldn't really grasp. He'd taken her down to the museum a few days earlier, and shown her some old family trees they had in the archives, to help her understand what her teacher was asking them to do; he'd got out the long rolls of darkened paper, cracked and smudged with age, and when he'd said that the family tree she was drawing would one day look like that, faded and almost illegible, she'd only gazed at him blankly, disbelievingly, not yet old enough to share his sense of the long hurried march of time. It was only the second time she'd even been to the museum; she didn't like history, she said. She was going to be a fashion designer, she said, so why did she need to know about history?

But she'd come to him when she needed help with the class project they'd been set, asking him what was a family tree and how do you know what to write on it and what is a maiden name, and her friends had been keen to come round and share in his expertise; had in fact squabbled, from what he could tell, for the privilege. He'd sat round the table with them, asking if they had their lists of brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles and cousins and grandparents, and the dates of when these people had been born and maybe married and maybe died, and he'd drawn an example of how a family tree might look, with the carefully ruled straight lines, the generations, the branches, the blank spaces where there was any uncertainty. He tried to explain that it didn't actually have to look like a real tree, that it was just a way people had of describing it, but they were determined to use the felt-tips so he didn't argue and instead left them to it, telling them he was going out to the garden to make the most of the first decent Sunday afternoon they'd had all year.

Who's got the green pen? asked Becky.

David opened the back door, hesitating, trying to make himself go outside.

Kate's using it, Rachel murmured, still colouring in the trunk of her tree with a brown felt-tip. She's had it for ages, she added, and Kate sighed and tutted and muttered that it was her pen anyway. Becky sat back in her chair, waiting, looking across at the other girls' work.

You haven't got all the dates on yours, she said, leaning towards Kate. How come?

My mum didn't know all of them when I asked her, Kate said, not looking up, it's all my nana' s brothers and sisters and she said she couldn't remember all of them, there was too many.

Why don't you ask your nana? Becky asked.

We never see her, Kate said. Rachel looked up from her work, first at Kate, and then at Becky, and then at Kate again.

You never see your nana? Why not? she said.

She lives in Scotland, Kate said. It's too far away.

It's not, said Rachel, we went on holiday in Scotland last year so it's not too far. Kate didn't say anything for a moment.

But anyway we don't see her, she said quietly.

Why don't you phone her up and ask her then? asked Becky.

Mum won't let me, Kate said.

Oh, Becky said. The three of them were silent again, concentrating on their drawings, Becky tracing over her pencilled branches with a biro while she waited for the green felt-tip, the scrape and scribble of the other girls' pens the only sound for a moment.

They always say it's too far away but really I think my mum doesn't like her mum, Kate said abruptly. I think she was not very nice to her or something. The others looked at her. Anyway I've finished now anyway, she said, passing the green pen to Becky and sitting back in her chair.

Let me see let me see, said Rachel, pulling Kate's piece of paper across the table and looking at it for a moment before passing it back. It's nice but it doesn't look like a tree much, she said. Kate gasped.

Yeah it does, she said loudly. Yeah it does, it looks more like a tree than yours does, yours is all a funny shape, look, it looks stupid.

Looks more like a tree than yours does, Rachel insisted; your drawing's even more bad than Lisa's is so there. Kate threw a felt-tip at Rachel, and stuck her tongue out, and then smiled.

I thought you wanted to come to my birthday, she said. Becky, who'd been keeping out of things by concentrating on colouring in the leaves of her tree, looked up and smiled as well. Rachel looked at them both.

Yeah I did but I don't now, because it's going to be boring anyway, she said.

No it's not, said Kate, smiling to herself.

Yeah it is, Rachel repeated. Who are you inviting anyway then, she said, her voice wavering a little; I bet you're inviting Paul because I bet you fancy him, everyone knows.

No I don't! Kate shrieked, and then all three of them looked up at the ceiling as they heard a steady thump-thump-thump from the room above.

Who's that? Becky whispered, as all three of them ducked back down over their work.

My mum, said Kate. She's in bed. We were supposed to be quiet and not wake her up. She looked pointedly at Rachel as she said this, as if it was all her fault.

What's she doing in bed? said Rachel. Is she working nights?

No, Kate said. She's ill, she's got a cold or something like that. Have you finished yet Becky? I want to go out now.

Yeah, said Rachel, this is boring.

Nearly, said Becky, as the other two started putting the lids back on the pens. Give me a chance, you were hogging the green for ages.

David closed the back door loudly, and the girls looked up as he appeared in the kitchen doorway.

All done? he said, smiling at them; how did you get on?

There was a pause as each girl waited for the other to speak.

Alright, Kate said eventually. We're finished now, can we go out? David stood over the table, looking at each of the family trees.

These look really good, he said. Did you all manage to fit everyone in? Kate nodded; the other girls shrugged.

Yeah and we've finished now Dad, Kate said, tucking all the pens back into their plastic pouch. Can we go out?

David backed away, raising his hands. Sorry, he said. Pardon me for taking an interest. Of course you can go out — where are you going?

Park, Kate said as they all stood up.

Well, make sure you cross at the crossing, David said. Bye girls, he added, as the three of them slipped out through the door.

Bye Mr Carter, they mumbled back.

Say hello to your parents for me, he added, but the front door was already closing and they were gone.

47 Envelopes w/Aberdeen postmarks, occasional 1984–2000

A letter came for him at the museum. It was from Donald, Eleanor's brother, with a photograph of his eldest son's first baby, and a short note saying when he'd been born and how much he weighed and that the mother and father were doing fine. It is strange to find myself a grandfather already, the note said, and young Eleanor a great aunt too. But we are none of us getting any younger.

Where did he get the address from? Eleanor asked when he showed her, putting the photograph down and looking at the envelope instead.

Eleanor, David said, impatiently; it can't have been difficult, can it? There's only one museum in Coventry. That's not the important thing, he said. She put the envelope down, closing and rubbing her eyes for a moment.

How are you feeling? he asked. Eleanor shrugged.

Fine, she said, fine. Why?

I was just wondering, he said. Do you miss them? She sighed, and stood up, and started to clear the table.

David, she said, don't. I mean, yes. Of course I do. But there's nothing I can do about it now. She carried the dishes through to the kitchen and closed the door behind her.

David gathered up the photo, the envelope, the note, tucking them into his jacket pocket.

I trust this finds you both well, the note said. We often wonder how you are keeping.

The letter had arrived almost a week earlier, but Eleanor had been in a strange mood when he'd got home, brittle and tearful, and on Friday morning she'd refused to get out of bed. He'd known immediately that she was having one of her increasingly unusual and short-lived depressions; that he would have to take Kate to his mother's for the weekend and let Eleanor sleep, and be there if she wanted to talk but more likely leave her alone while she waited for the increased dose of medication to grind into effect. By Monday evening she'd been well enough to come downstairs and eat with them but he'd waited another two days before taking Donald's letter from his jacket and showing it to her. He listened to her in the kitchen now, remembering when a weekend like the one they'd just had would have stretched into weeks and sometimes months; dark slow days when he would flounder helplessly and resentfully around, wanting desperately to make things better but unable to find any way of doing so.

It was hard to say what had happened, really, what had changed. They hadn't spoken about it much. When Kate was born he'd thought that she might be cured, that the energy and devotion she was putting into raising a daughter might perhaps let some light into the darkened room her life had sometimes become. But that turned out not to be quite true. And then later he'd thought, guiltily, that the time she'd spent looking after him when he came out of hospital had cured her, that being relied upon in that way had given her some strength or vitality or reason to be. But that had turned out not to be the way things were either. These things were partly true, some of the time; they helped, and she never again sank so deeply into the speechless unreachable despair she'd struggled through before Kate had been born. She still had bad days, bad weeks, but she'd learnt to live with it somehow, had lost her fear of it, had found, crucially, a sympathetic and imaginative doctor who'd worked to develop the best levels of medication and treatment for her. It had become just another part of their lives now; something they dealt with and wondered occasionally how it had come so close to breaking the both of them.

Do you want a hand in there? he called out, standing up suddenly. Eleanor appeared in the doorway, drying her hands on a tea towel.

It's okay thanks, she said, smiling. I've finished now.

48 Photographs of Kate at eight years old, with birthday cards, 1984

His mother spotted them first, over by the ice-cream van. Isn't that your friend from work? she said to David. What's her name — Ann? He turned, and saw Anna standing there with Chris, laughing. He felt his body tensing for a moment, and turned away.

It's Anna, he said, correcting her, reaching across for another sandwich, hoping someone else would say something. Susan turned to look.

Aren't you going to say hello? his mother asked, lifting her hand towards the two of them, trying to catch their eye. Eleanor shifted round on the blanket and glanced at David.

I see her at work every day, David said, trying to sound indifferent. She probably sees enough of me as it is, he said.

Yes, but, his mother said, waving in their direction, you could offer them some birthday cake at least. Hello! she called out suddenly, waving more vigorously; Anna! Hello! David stood, and waved as well, taking a few steps towards them. They looked over, Anna waving back, Chris nodding and moving closer towards her. Come and have some birthday cake! Dorothy called, beckoning them over and pointing at the half-eaten cake in the centre of the blanket. They hesitated, looking at each other, looking at David. Chris looked over his shoulder, and said something into Anna's ear. David watched them, and noticed Chris wiping a hand on the back of his trousers, and noticed Anna avoiding his eyes.

The birthday picnic had been his mother's idea. Susan came, with her children, and they let Kate choose three friends from her class to invite, and they all sat round a chequered blanket eating crustless sandwiches and crisps, drinking fizzy drinks, and singing happy birthday as Kate waited to blow out the eight pink candles on the chocolate ladybird cake Dorothy had magically produced from a box in her wheeled shopping bag. By the time Dorothy spotted Anna and Chris, the children had got bored of sitting down and were chasing each other around the park, playing a complicated game which Kate appeared to be making up as they went along.

Do you want to see if they're all okay? David said to Eleanor quietly, as Anna and Chris walked towards them. She looked up at him, and over towards Kate, and stood up.

Right then, she said, wandering over to where Kate and Mark were trying to pull a balloon out of each other's hands. David moved away from the blanket.

Hello there, he said, a little too loudly, holding up one hand as Anna approached, waving faintly.

Hello Anna, said Dorothy, standing up uncomfortably, brushing crumbs from her blouse and skirt. What a lovely coincidence, she said, smiling.

Hello Mrs Carter, Anna replied, stepping past David and reaching a hand out to Dorothy's arm. Someone's birthday is it? she asked. Chris stood back warily, not saying anything yet.

It's Kate's birthday, David said, turning away from Chris, gesturing over to where his daughter and her cousins and friends were still playing, noticing Eleanor watching him. She's eight, he said. Have you met Susan, my sister? he added. Susan looked up, and smiled, and they said hello to each other, Anna nodding as if she thought they might have met before, brushing her hair behind her ears.

There was a moment when nobody spoke, the children's voices careering across the grass, and then Anna said oh, yes, sorry, this is my husband Chris; Chris, this is Mrs Carter, and Susan, and you've met David before, and that's David's wife Eleanor over there. She put her hand behind Chris, drawing him in, gesturing to each of them, and Chris smiled and nodded at each one of them in turn.

No, please, David's mother said, call me Dorothy. Eleanor smiled and lifted a hand in greeting when they all looked at her. Kate stopped chasing a boy from her class for a moment to see what was happening, then ran on. Dorothy looked at David, wondering why he wasn't saying anything. Chris looked over his shoulder.

Would you like a piece of cake? Dorothy asked Anna. There's plenty to go round, she said, already kneeling to flip a slice on to a paper napkin.

Oh, no, thanks, Anna said quickly. We should be getting on, really. We've got things to do, she said, glancing at Chris, meeting David's eye by mistake and looking away.

Oh, come on, Dorothy insisted, you can take it with you if you want. It'll only go to waste, she said. Anna smiled awkwardly.

Well, okay, thanks very much, she said, stepping closer and kneeling down on the edge of the blanket. Susan shifted further round to make room for her, not saying anything.

Here you are then, Dorothy said, passing Anna a slice each for her and Chris. Thanks Dorothy, Anna said, this looks lovely. She turned, and tried to pass Chris a slice; but he was standing too far away, so David had to take it from her and pass it on himself. Their eyes met as Chris took the cake.

Cheers, he said. David looked at him. How's it going? Chris said, and David shrugged and said fine, you know, things are fine. Lovely day for a birthday party, he added, and Chris nodded.

I heard you were in hospital, he said as he bit into the cake; nothing serious was it? You alright now? David looked at him. He felt Anna glancing up at them both, and Susan turning to look across as well.

No, nothing serious, he said slowly, calmly. I'm right as rain now, he said, oddly. Chris finished his cake, crumpling the napkin in his hand, and with his mouth full he said something like, good, good, that's alright then, fighting fit, eh? Excuse me, he said, pointing to his mouth and turning away slightly.

Well, Dorothy said, after a moment's silence, this is lovely, isn't it? All of us together like this. She looked over at Eleanor, walking back now with Mark and Claire holding her hands, Kate skipping along behind them, the other children — Becky and Lisa and Paul — hanging back a little. We should do this more often, she said. It's such a shame your John couldn't be here though, she added to Susan, saying it almost as an afterthought, almost as though she'd forgotten he should have been there at all. He's often very busy with work, she explained to Anna. He's in management you know, she said, and Anna nodded and tried to look interested.

Chris leant closer to David, while the others were speaking, and lowered his voice to a mutter. You've never said anything, have you? he asked. David felt a pulse of adrenalin sear through his veins. He shook his head, once, almost imperceptibly, feeling his breath tighten, his eyes widen. You're not going to, are you? Chris said, as Mark and Claire threw themselves at Susan, bouncing balloons off her head and scrabbling across the blanket for crisps and chocolate buttons, and as Kate's friend Lisa said she needed to go to the toilet. David looked at Chris, and although at first he thought this was a threat, he realised, abruptly, by the way Chris was looking at him, steadily, uncertainly, waiting for an answer, that it was a plea. That somehow the balance of power had shifted between them, simply by his holding their secret to himself. He held back for a moment, and then shook his head, once.

Kate came over to David, curling her arms around his legs, pushing her face against his stomach, and as he reached down and wrapped his arms around her he held Chris's eyes for a moment longer, allowing himself the faintest of smiles. He lifted her up against his chest, feeling her thin warm arms around his neck, her legs around his hips, her hair brushing against his face as she wriggled into a comfortable position. She was too heavy to hold up like this now, but he held her tightly, briefly, and he looked at Chris as he put her back down, the smile flickering across his lips again. Chris turned away.

Thanks for the cake then Dorothy, Anna said, pushing herself up from her knees. We'll be getting on now though. Things to do, she said, smiling. She passed the paper napkin back to Dorothy, who shook the crumbs out on to the grass and smoothed it across her lap, folding it and putting it back into her bag.

Oh you're welcome, she said, it's nice to meet you again. Say hello to Daddy's friend, she said to Kate, and Kate turned in David's arms to look at this strange woman who'd been eating her cake.

It's my birthday, she said, a little too softly, overawed.

I know, Anna said. How old are you? Kate looked at her, and turned her face in to David's shoulder, embarrassed. Are you eight? Anna asked, moving closer, peering in to the gap between David and her. Kate looked out at her and nodded. I thought so, Anna said. You look very grown up for eight. Kate smiled, proudly.

I got a watch for my birthday, she announced, holding her wrist out for Anna to see.

Chris shifted uncomfortably, touching Anna on the arm, saying Anna can we, and Dorothy suddenly produced a camera from her bag.

I've just thought, she said. Could you do us a favour love, while you're here? Could you take a picture of us all? Anna glanced at Chris, and smiled awkwardly at Dorothy.

Well, I don't know, she said, I'm not much of a photographer.

Oh I'm sure you can manage this old thing, Dorothy said, holding the camera out towards her, clearing a space on the blanket for them all to sit together and pose.

Anna, Chris said again as she took the camera, nodding his head towards the park gates.

Oh it won't take a moment, Dorothy said to him, you don't mind, do you? It's so long since we've had a picture of us all together. She beckoned Susan round to kneel next to her, arranging Mark and Claire in front of them, showing Eleanor and David where they should go, telling Lisa that someone would take her to find a toilet in just a moment. Anna stood back with the camera.

Anna, Chris said. Have you told David the news yet? David glanced up from helping Kate to kneel in front of him with the cake on her lap. Anna turned suddenly to Chris, shaking her head.

What's that then love? asked Dorothy, stretching her arms around Susan and David, reaching out to pull Eleanor a little closer into the group. You've got some good news? Anna tried to laugh.

No, it's nothing, she said. Chris nudged her as she lifted the camera again.

You should tell them, he said, starting to smile. Anna looked embarrassed.

It's not you-know-what is it? said Dorothy, with a singsong in her voice, ignoring Susan's tut and roll of the eyes.

No, said Anna, it's not that, it's nothing, really.

Oh no dear, Dorothy said. You'll have to tell us now. You can't leave us guessing like that.

She got the head curator job, Chris said abruptly, fixing David's gaze as he said it, smiling. Anna lowered the camera and looked at the ground for a moment, and looked at David, an apology briefly in her eyes.

Oh, well done! said Dorothy. Now, shall we get this picture taken?

As the two of them were walking away across the park, having given the camera back and wished Kate a happy birthday again, having said goodbye and thank you for the cake, Dorothy broke the silence by saying well really. There's no need to gloat. Really. I thought you'd been working there longer than her anyway? she said to David.

Yes Mum, he said, I have. Thanks for reminding me. He started to tidy away the crisp packets and drinks bottles, glancing over at Anna and Chris as they reached the gates of the park, Chris with one hand around Anna's shoulder, the other hand wiping the back of his leg.

He remembered things. He sat in his office at work, writing reports and assessments so that he could keep out of everyone's way — could keep out of Anna's way — and he looked out of the window, and he remembered things.

He remembered Chris swearing, asking him what the fuck he'd done, calling him a silly cunt, asking him what the fuck he thought he was supposed to do now. He remembered Chris's voice sounding very much as though he was crying. He remembered Chris sliding his arms under his body and picking him up, and the agonising pain of each of those jolting steps.

It was difficult to accept, Anna getting the job he'd always imagined would be his, the job which should have been only the first step towards all those grand ambitions he'd had as a child, as a young man, the job which now seemed feebly out of reach. It was difficult to take instructions from Anna, to have to answer to her after everything that had happened.

He remembered Anna, the way she'd stood there in that dress. Her bare shoulders. The movement of the dress when she'd turned in the doorway, the way it had swung around the backs of her long bare legs.

He remembered Chris, laying him down by the telephone box, saying bloody hell, fucking hell, you're not going to tell anyone, are you, you're not going to say it was me? Saying it was an accident, mate, fucking hell, it was an accident.

He remembered lying there on the ground, the flow of blood seeming to slow and the sound of an ambulance in the distance, watching Chris wipe his hands across the backs of his trousers as he walked away.

49 Library tickets, green card with handwritten annotations, c. 1980s

Eleanor came to him that evening with a familiar urgency in her eyes, and they made love for the first time in months. You're safe now, she kept whispering, pulling him closer and closer against her, as if she'd understood far more about the scene in the park than he'd realised, as if by these fierce clinging acts of love she could protect him from it all.

He was reading a library book, sitting on the edge of the bed in his pyjamas and dressing gown, and when she came into the room he didn't even look up. She took the book from his hands, kissed him, and pulled at his belt and his pyjama buttons until her hands were against his bare skin, pressing and stroking and pulling and pinching. She pushed him back on to the bed, clambering after him, kneeling over his body and working her way forward until, shrugging her dressing gown from her shoulders, she could lower herself towards his mouth.

It was quick, and it was unexpected, but by then it almost always was. A stray glance, a quiet evening, a warm day, and the weeks and months of shared solitude — brief dry kisses, hugs, little more — would be swept aside in a hurried series of remembered moves and gestures. The hand on the back of the head. The unbuttoned skirt. The kneeling. The tugging at underwear. The clutching at each other's bodies. And the kissing, always the kissing. We should do this more often, they usually said, afterwards, but they didn't.

She fell back on to the bed, pulling him towards her, saying come here come here, you're safe now, come here, and as he felt the heat of her skin against his, the pull of her legs around his waist, he tried to remember when the last time they'd done this had been.

Two months, three months ago, with mud on their shoes and leaf-litter in their hair, an afternoon in the park with Kate having degenerated into a tickling match, the press and wrestle of their laughing bodies in the cold clear air reminding them again of what they'd been missing; and when they'd got home, for once she wasn't too tired, or too tearful, or too concerned about Kate playing alone in her room, and the moment hadn't passed, and they'd faced each other in their room and begun in the usual way. It was almost always the same. She would unbutton the back of her skirt, or he would do it for her. She would smile slyly, and meet his eye, and they would kiss. Her skirt would be pulled or pushed or wriggled to her ankles, and her knickers would follow, and then she would place her hand on the back of his head and push him lightly but firmly to the floor. He would kiss her, kneeling, and she would sink back on to the edge of the bed, and he would keep kissing her until she had finished. She would pause, and call him up on to the bed, and the two of them would be together again, holding, moving, murmuring.

Hey, she said, later. How're you doing? They were both sitting up in bed, dressed in their pyjamas again, reading. He looked at her and smiled.

Not bad, he said. Not bad at all. She laughed, embarrassed, and lowered her eyes.

No, but apart from that, she said. I mean, you know, what happened today and everything. He put his book down.

It's okay, he said. It was fine. Why? She looked at him and said nothing.

She said, and the job? Were you, are you very disappointed? He thought for a moment, and when he spoke he almost sounded surprised.

No, he said. No, I'm not. I thought I would be, but I'm not, I don't think. I don't know, he said. Maybe I'm just losing interest in the whole business. Maybe I'm growing out of it, he said, smiling. He picked his book up and started reading again, and she didn't ask him any more about it.

50 DHSS Booklet, Guide to Services for the Newly Unemployed, 1986

This was what it took, in the end, to break him. A five-minute meeting in a basement office. A man in a suit, ten years younger than him, talking about the need for efficiencies. Talking about the importance of restructuring, the generous size of the package being offered. Economic conditions are putting the whole sector at the back of the queue, Daniel, the younger man said. It's a tragedy for heritage in the county but we have to do our best with it.

It's David, he said tautly, leaning forward, placing his forearms on the desk. It was the same desk that had been there since the museum opened, a heavy modernist piece which had seen four directors sit where the young man was sitting now, and slide important pieces of paper across its polished surface. David had even taken his place there for a week once, standing in for a director who'd gone to the British Museum for a conference. How long have I got? he asked, cutting across the young man's continued explanations. The man looked up, meeting his eye for the first time since he'd started talking. He seemed confused by the interruption, frowning slightly.

I'm sorry? he said. David rubbed his forehead, holding his hand over his eyes for a moment.

Please, he said, gesturing vaguely at the papers on the desk, don't bother with all this. Just tell me how long I've got. A month? Three months? The man looked down at the papers in front of him, as if to check, tugging at his earlobe and sweeping his hand across the top of his head.

Well, he said. If you'll let me finish.

There was a filing cabinet behind the desk that contained the records of every exhibition held since the museum opened, the loans, acquisitions, searches and sales which had been necessary to facilitate them, the planning which had gone into them, the interpretative text which had been used in the displays, the visitor responses, the press coverage, the layout diagrams, everything. And with the exception of the years 1965–1968, between the museum opening and David starting work, there wasn't a single exhibition that he hadn't been involved with in some way. He wondered if the young man knew that. He wondered if the young man knew how often he'd sat in his bedroom as a child, sketching out exhibition spaces for the air-raid finds his father brought home for him from the building sites; or how many times he'd been to London to study the exhibitions there, the correlation of displays and texts, the skill needed to draw a visitor through a collection of objects and bring them out with a lived sense of one particular moment in time. He remembered the excitement he'd felt when he first took the job, and how he'd managed to hold on to something of that excitement even as the collections were being reduced, the staffing levels cut, even as he lost faith in his ambition of one day opening a museum of his own, or saw how easily the documents and objects in the archives would rot and crumble no matter how carefully they were kept. He wondered, looking at the locked filing cabinet, if he would ever be able to do anything else.

The young man was still talking, reading through a sheaf of papers spread out in front of him, the words chattering past unheard until David caught the phrase with immediate effect. He looked at the man and sat further forward in his chair.

Immediate effect? he said. The man nodded.

I'm so sorry, he said, tilting his head to one side and trying to make a sympathetic expression.

Right now? David said stupidly. The man nodded again. Bloody hell, David said. After twenty-three years? The man lifted his hands off the desk, holding his palms up towards him.

David, he said, I know. Your length of service is reflected more than adequately in the package we're offering to—

Twenty-three years, David said again, interrupting. I'm forty-one years old. This is all I've ever done. What am I going to do now? What the hell am I going to do now?

He might have signed something. He might have been handed a bundle of papers which he rammed furiously into a briefcase. Possibly the man stood and tried to shake his hand, and he either didn't notice or refused. Anna might have appeared on his way out of the building, to offer her apologies or her condolences or just to hold up her hands and say there was nothing she could have done. He couldn't remember. He wasn't sure how he got from the office to the house, whether he said goodbye to anyone on the way out, or said anything at all, shouted anything, kicked or slammed any doors. He wasn't in the mood, for once, to keep a record of the event.

51 Video cassette: World's Greatest Boxing Heroes, c.1987

He was watching one of his new videos, with his feet up on the coffee table and the curtains closed, when he heard Kate letting herself in through the front door, dropping her school bag on the stairs and walking straight past him into the kitchen. He sat up a little straighter, rubbing at the skin around his eyes and wondering what time it was. He heard her take a glass out of the cupboard and help herself to some orange squash, and he noticed for the first time that she no longer had to stand on a stool to reach it.

She came back into the room without saying anything, sitting at the far end of the sofa and slowly swinging her legs. She was eleven years old, and he realised that she was on the verge of no longer being a child. He watched her for a moment, her face lit up by the television screen, a biscuit in one hand and the glass of squash in the other, apparently unaware that he was looking at her. Her blonde hair was tied back into a neat ponytail, the arms of her small silver-framed glasses tucked into the hair around her ears. As she bit into the biscuit, she kept bringing a finger or a thumb up to her lips to poke stray crumbs back into her mouth, pinching up any that fell further down on to the front of her school uniform, her eyes staying fixed on the screen, the two men in black and white circling each other with their gloved fists raised, her face almost expressionless. He found something compulsive about watching her; something about her neat smallness, the delicate shapes of her hands, her ears, the soft roundness of her nose; something about the way each time he looked at her he saw some faint echo of Eleanor, or himself, or even of Ivy; something about the way each time he looked closely some part of her seemed to have changed, stretched and grown while he wasn't looking, the colour of her hair darkening slightly, the burnish of the skin on her face coarsening a little, the shape of her eyebrows shifting and settling, her feet stretching a little further towards the floor each time she sat at the far end of the sofa with a biscuit and a glass of orange squash. She would never again be the same as this one moment he was watching her now. Before she'd been born, he'd never understood what a privilege this would be. He watched her carefully, not quite turning towards her, trying not to let her see. She picked the last few crumbs from her sweater and gulped down the rest of her drink.

Dad, she said, turning to him suddenly, what do you do? He looked at her. She turned back to the screen.

What do you mean? he asked, taking his feet down from the table and sitting up, leaning towards her.

I mean, what do you do, she said again, emphasising the do, as if her question was obvious.

Well, he said, and then he didn't know what to say, and almost as suddenly as she'd started the conversation she seemed to lose interest.

Can I watch my programmes? she asked.

In a minute, he said. Do you mean what do I do for a job? he asked. She nodded.

Mrs Smithson went round the class and everyone had to say what their dad did, and I didn't know what to say and everyone laughed, she said, matter-of-factly.

Did everyone else have something to say? he asked her. She nodded again. Even Carl? he asked. And Robin?

Carl said his dad was an RAF pilot and Robin said his dad worked in America, she said. He smiled gently.

Oh, he said, I see. Well, you know that I used to work at the museum, don't you? You know I was a curator? Why didn't you say that? She sighed loudly, as if what he'd just said was too boring to even respond to. Kate? he said. She turned to him, resting her chin on her hand and lifting her eyebrows in an impression of her mother. Why didn't you say that? he asked again.

But you don't do that now, she said, her voice rising indignantly. I had to say what you do now not what you used to do. What do you do now, Dad? she said again. They looked at each other for a moment.

I don't know, he said quietly. I've been having a rest for a while, he said. Like when you have a summer holiday. She looked at him, small flickers of disbelief wrinkling across her face.

Grown-ups don't get holidays like that though, do they? she said. He stood up.

Yes Kate, he said, I'm afraid sometimes they do.

52 Hand-drawn family tree, marked 'Believed Complete', dated 1988

Eleanor went out to the garden and sat beside him, wiping the evening's dew from the plastic chair. He shifted in his seat as she sat down but said nothing. They listened to the night's sounds for a moment: the call of a bird from the tree in next door's garden, televisions chattering through open windows, traffic on the main road. She leant across and touched his leg. It's dark now, she said, are you coming inside?

It wasn't the first time she'd had to do this. He seemed to lose himself sometimes.

You'll catch a chill, she said. It's getting damp out here. Come on. He nodded but didn't move. She picked up the folded beer cans from the lawn, and rubbed her hand across his shoulders. You can't stay out here all night, she said.

A long percussive sigh broke from his lips and he shook his head as he stood up. He rubbed his face and looked around for a moment, as if he was unsure of where he was, as if he was seeing for the first time the weed-choked flower borders, the flimsy fences, the soaring leylandii three gardens away. He turned and looked at the house, seeing the light still on in Kate's bedroom, and glanced up at the roof. That aerial needs fixing, he said, again. Eleanor nodded and put her arm around his waist as they walked back into the house together.

He hadn't known what to do when he lost his job. They told him that they'd had to let him go because he was the only member of curatorial staff without formal qualifications, and they'd tried to encourage him to go in for training. We appreciate your knowledge and experience, they'd said, but the museum environment is changing. They said they were sure, once he'd retrained, that he'd have no trouble finding another job; they sent him course literature in the post, application forms, funding information, usually with a note in Anna's handwriting saying that everyone wished him well in his career development. He threw it all in the bin. I know how to do the bloody job already, he said, whenever Eleanor tried to press him on it. It's just not me, going to university, not at my age. At which Eleanor usually smiled, and stroked the hair on the side of his head, and said what do you mean your age?

It was easier when the redundancy money ran out, once he'd spent it on a wish list of trinkets and comforts and toys a video recorder, a camera, clothes for Kate to grow out of, jewellery which Eleanor never admitted she didn't really like, a microwave, a stereo and a drinks cabinet with a spotlight that came on when he opened the door — and he had no choice but to find work again. It gave him something to do at least. They were warehouse jobs, admin jobs, serving customers at the garden centre — never jobs he was interested in — but they gave him a reason to leave the house in the morning, and they put money in the bank, and they kept him from feeling like he'd completely failed as a father and a husband. It made him feel useful again, to come home from a day at work. It gave him some of his old energy back; if not the energy to reconsider the curators' training courses he was still being offered, then at least the energy to take an interest again, to visit museums occasionally, to look over his old archives, to think about working on projects of his own. He went through boxes of old photos, arranging them into albums. He dug out the scrapbook from his trip to Ireland, reading slowly through the pages, wondering. He found the family tree Kate had drawn for her school project, looking over the faded felt-pen lines and blank spaces and deciding to finish it for her, phoning Donald to ask him for help and only realising as they started speaking how much of a shock it was to be in contact after all this time. He wrote down Donald's answers to his questions — Ivy Munro b.1910 m.Stewart Campbell b. 1900 d.1981. Hamish b.1931, Donald b.1932, William b.1933, John b.1936, Tessa b.1938, Eleanor b. 1948 — and listened to Donald say that he should be sure to phone again, that it was good to be in touch, that he hoped Eleanor and Kate were both well.

He spent an afternoon filling in the missing names, redrawing the broken lines, drafting and redrafting the diagram to make all the branches fit. And it was this that he'd shown to Eleanor earlier in the evening.

Oh David, she'd said, startled for a moment and then apparently touched, looking over it, tracing the lines with her fingers. Oh David, it's lovely. But I don't think it's finished at all, do you? Really?

He'd looked at her a moment, and she'd said I'm sorry David but just, sometimes, I think, maybe you need to, I don't know. Her words stopped and hesitated under his narrowing gaze. Maybe, she said, I don't know. Maybe you should think about it again. I mean. And he'd said nothing in reply, snatching up the piece of paper, folding and refolding it as he moved towards the back door, stopping only to take a clutch of beers from the fridge.

There was no need for her to have brought that up. She didn't know. She didn't need to have mentioned it. He thought she'd just be pleased with what he'd done, pleased that he was taking an interest in something again. He didn't need to have bothered. She didn't need to have said that.

She came out to see him later, after telling Kate it was time she went to bed. Kate moaned, and said do I have to I'm not a baby any more, but she stood up all the same. Eleanor noticed her glancing out at David before she went upstairs.

She doesn't like it you know, she told him as she sat down. It unsettles her, when you're like this. You're supposed to be the steady one out of us two. He shrugged and scratched his head and said nothing.

He said there's nothing wrong with me, I'm just sitting out in the garden having a drink. There's nothing wrong with that is there?

No, she said, there's nothing wrong with that, but it's just— She stopped. She said, I'm sorry about what I said before, for bringing it up, I mean. He shrugged again.

That's okay, he said. Doesn't matter. He looked up, and saw Kate standing at her bedroom window, looking down at them both for a moment before pulling the curtains closed. He dragged his fingers through his hair and said but you don't honestly think it's something I forget about, do you?

No, she said, quietly, following his gaze up to Kate's window and turning back to him, reaching out and touching his cheek; of course I don't. But sometimes you forget to talk about it, she said. He pulled his face away from her hand, sharply.

What am I supposed to say? he said. What is there to talk about? What do you want me to say, Eleanor? His voice was tense and defensive, raised against her intrusion. She sat back in her chair, leaning away from him.

No, she said, nothing really, you're right. Nothing.

I mean, do you want me to tell you about it all over again? he asked. You want to be my counsellor or something? I'm supposed to unburden myself, am I? Like, oh Eleanor I can't stop thinking about it I feel rejected and cut adrift, oh Eleanor I need some answers oh please help me — something like that?

She said nothing, waiting for his blurred sarcasm to wear itself out.

You want me to have a weep about it or something, you think I should stop bottling it up? he said. Or maybe you think I should take up painting and learn to express my inner feelings? He reached under his chair and opened another beer. Eleanor stood up.

No David, she said. Don't be stupid. I just don't think you should give up, that's all.

He watched her walk back into the house, slam the door and tug the curtains across the back-room window. He saw the side-light going on, and the blue-white flicker of the television. He hung his head over the back of the chair and looked up at the darkening glow of the sky. He hadn't even been thinking about that when she came out. He patted the folded family tree in his pocket, checking it was still there. He noticed the faint white lights of an aeroplane overhead, the first of the evening's stars, the last of the daylight draining down to the horizon. He folded his arms across his chest. He hadn't even been thinking about that. She'd got that wrong. No. He'd been thinking about Kate asking if she could go on the school skiing trip, and having to say no, and that no matter how much Eleanor insisted that plenty of other parents would have to refuse it had still made him feel like a failure again. He'd been thinking about his father, working his hands raw each day until a few weeks before his death, and what he would have thought of a son who'd only worked half a life in cramped basement offices and dust-free store-rooms and now sat around feeling sorry for himself. He'd been thinking, again, that the loss of the job he'd been so proud of was his own fault for what he'd allowed to happen with Anna, and that he was failing his family by no longer being a working man. He'd been thinking, as he did again and again and again, that the failure to tell Eleanor about what had happened was the lowest failure of all.

He finished his beer. He tried to stand up. He sat down again. He rubbed at his face and tried to remember what Eleanor had said. He patted his pocket again. She was wrong. He hadn't been thinking about that. She thought she knew him so well, but she didn't.

He noticed that the television wasn't on any more, and then he heard the back door open again, and then he realised that Eleanor had sat down beside him. It's dark now, she said. Are you coming inside?

53 Home videos featuring Kate Carter, 1991–1994

The gravelled surface of a car park, the rush of traffic in the background, the flap and flutter of wind across the microphone. David's voice saying is it working? Is it on?

A blur of camera movement, a streak of blue sky and green hills, a painfully slow pan from right to left: a copse of trees by the side of the road, a low stone wall, a long stretch of meadow leading up to a hill, a noticeboard, and then Kate, turning her back as she appeared on the screen. And from behind the camera, his voice distorted and thick, David saying so here we are in deepest Warwickshire on this fine summer's day, here for a walk in one of Kate's favourite spots. Can you tell us a little bit about it Kate? The camera circling round her, trying to persuade her to show her face, while she let her long thick hair fall across her eyes, her head lowered, her hands pulled up into the loose tattered sleeves of her jumper, her legs vanishing into boots two sizes too big. Kate saying Dad, stop it will you you're so embarrassing, and David laughing, clumsily, trying to make it seem like a game, trying to make it seem as though she was still young enough to play these games. She walked away from the camera, dragging her feet, and the camera followed, David's footsteps grinding across the gravel, David saying come on love, not even a smile for us now? Her back turned, the camera no longer circling around to face her, an awkward pause. Kate's voice, drowsy with sulkiness, saying I can't believe you Dad, you're a nightmare. David, a little quieter, a little hurt-sounding, saying Kate love, just a quick smile for the camera? Kate turning, quickly, lifting her dyed-black hair away from her face, a brief grimacing smile. Is that okay? she said sarcastically, already beginning to walk away. David's voice, chuckling as if it was still a game, saying end of take one, the camera fixed on Kate's back for a moment more, waiting to see if she would turn round, and then a blur of colour and a shot of gravel as he looked for the button to turn the bloody thing off.

Kate at her cousin's birthday party, standing in Susan's elegant garden with a glass of wine and a paper plate of food, talking to some of Mark's friends and turning her back as soon as she saw the camera, the camera drifting instead across the rhododendrons and fuchsias which Susan spent so much time on.

Kate on a day out in London, standing on a bridge over the Thames, watching a barge churn upstream, smiling, saying hello Mum.

Kate on her sixteenth birthday, getting ready to go out and meet her friends, unwrapping presents from her parents, her auntie, her gran. Relaxed about being filmed now, partly because she was used to it, partly because she'd been sipping from a quarter bottle of vodka in her room — David had known about this, had been able to see it in the happy excited glaze of her eyes, and had chosen not to say anything — and partly because she was just beginning to grow out of her acute embarrassment at being seen in the world. Kate with her hair away from her face, still dyed black but knotted and piled up on to her head, frayed strands sticking out in all directions. Still wearing the ragged blacks and purples of a year before, but no longer hiding behind them, her clothes a little less shapeless and baggy, her make up less smudged. She unwrapped a large square present, saying what could it be? to the camera, and she looked genuinely pleased and surprised when she saw which band the record was by, holding it up to the lens and saying hey wow, thanks Dad, thanks Mum, leaping up in a clatter of jewellery to kiss Eleanor wetly on the cheek. Eleanor, slightly uncomfortable, embracing her in turn, saying we asked your friend Becky and she said this was one you'd like. Kate nodding and saying I do, the camera focusing on Eleanor for a moment, her happy smile and the anxious twisting of her hands, then moving back to Kate as she ripped open her next present.

Eleanor didn't like the way Kate dressed or wore her hair, the music she listened to, the places she thought she might be going to, but she was careful never to say anything. You tell her, she whispered urgently, when they got back from a restaurant one night to find the washbasin stained an inky-blue and Kate sitting up in bed with her hair wrapped in a ruined towel. She's not going out like that, she muttered, another evening, when Kate came downstairs with stockings torn from her ankles to the hem of a very short skirt; you tell her. I don't want to get involved. Kate ignored what David said, of course, saying he was so unfair and slamming the front door as she left, and Eleanor watched her walking down the street from the upstairs window, turning to David as he came upstairs and saying my God David, what does she think she looks like? But she still said nothing; not when Kate came home with her ears bloody and studded with piercings, not when the school sent them a letter about her absences, not when she stayed out at a party until five in the morning. She faded into the background, telling David what she thought but withholding comment from Kate for fear of speaking the way her mother had once done. Sometimes, David thought, she was so busy trying not to repeat Ivy's mistakes that she was unable to see how uneventful her relationship with Kate had become. In many of the scenes on the tape, Eleanor wasn't there at all, and when she was she seemed to be pressing herself into the background, waiting for David to say something from behind the camera, waiting for the focus to move away from her.

Kate in the garden, in the summer, doing a guided tour of the borders, laughing and joking, welcoming the attention of the camera now, saying Dad planted these raspberries when I was a kid and most of them get eaten by the birds but we always get a few at least.

Kate in the garden in the winter, putting the head on a snowman with her friend Becky, throwing a snowball towards her dad, the sudden jerk and jolt of the picture as he ducks. Her hair back to something like its original colour, still tangled and long but a familiar mousey-blonde again.

This was why he'd bought the camera, using up some more of the redundancy money, so he could pin her down on tape before she'd gone. Because even when she was still thirteen, fourteen, he could imagine all too easily sitting in a quiet and empty house after she'd left, wondering what she was doing at that very moment, wishing he could picture more clearly the times they'd spent together when she'd still been at home.

Kate in her room with her hair tied neatly back, looking serious, a pile of textbooks on the desk beside her and a chewed-up pen in her hand. Saying this is my revision timetable, pointing at a sheet of paper on the wall, patchworked with highlighter squares. And how long did it take you to do that? David's voice asked, squashed against the microphone. Two days, she said, smiling and glaring at the same time. And when do your exams start? he said. Next month, she replied, standing, pushing her hand against the lens; so get out now and let me work, go on, get out! The door closing against the camera, and the sound of her happy gentle laugh.

This was his favourite scene, and the one he could hardly bear to watch; Kate on the very brink of being an adult, her purposeful seriousness reminding him of his own adolescent self when he first started work; Kate with her smile and her bursts of energy, leaping up from the desk to usher him out of the room in the same way she once threw herself at him in games of football at the park; Kate, closing the door, shutting him out, moving on, her laugh still reaching him from behind the closing door.

54 Examination results; University prospectus, 1994

It seemed effortless, the way Kate passed her exams and got into university. She seemed to take it for granted, just as she seemed to assume there was no reason why she wouldn't leave home and begin again in some other town she knew nothing about, with people she had to hope would become her friends. She belonged to a generation which took these things for granted, which saw staying at home as something unnatural, and education as something which could be continued on a whim, and so she barely noticed the daunted and tentative way Eleanor moved around her while she was studying for her exams.

I don't want her to think I'm worrying, Eleanor would whisper when they were lying in bed at night and wondering if she was doing okay. I don't want her to think I'll be cross if she doesn't do well. She will do well though, won't she? she said urgently.

She kept a copy of Kate's exam timetable by the bedside, hidden under some books, and slipped a packet of multivitamins into her room, and watched for some clue in her face or her voice as they ate tea together after each exam. She asked Becky's mother how she thought the exams had gone, but she didn't dare say anything to Kate herself.

And when the end of August came, after a long summer of waiting and worrying and pretending that she didn't mind, she was up and awake with the first thought of morning, much earlier than Kate was; standing at the bedroom window, looking out for the postman, waiting breathlessly for Kate to wander downstairs and find the envelope lying behind the front door. Listening to the rip of paper in the front room, leaving it a few minutes before going downstairs to see what news had finally come.

And when Kate left home the house seemed to change, doubling in size and sinking into silence. They found themselves meeting each other on the stairs like strangers, lost in their own house. It took a long time to adjust. When he got back from driving her to the university it even took David a while to find Eleanor; he called out to her as he came in through the door, and as he went into the kitchen and up the stairs, but there was no answer. She wasn't in their room, or in the bathroom, or out in the garden, and it was only when he went back upstairs that he found her in Kate's room, sitting on the end of the bed, with a pile of clothes Kate had left behind on her lap. She was folding them into neat squares, picking off long stray hairs and bobbles of lint, stacking them into a pile on the floor beside her. She barely seemed to notice him coming into the room. He kissed her on the forehead, and she smiled softly up at him.

That didn't take very long, did it? she said.

No, it was fine, he said, traffic was clear all the way back to the ring road. She smiled again, holding up a long blonde hair and twisting it round her finger.

That's not what I meant, she said.

55 Illustrated Book of Knots, 7th Edition, c.1947

When Eleanor's oldest brother Hamish left home, before she was even born, his uncle gave him a knot-tying book as a leaving gift, saying it's not much but it'll see you well. Hamish was seventeen years old and ready to go; his bags were packed and the first ship of his apprentice life was set to leave in the morning, carrying timber to London. His parents brought the neighbours round to see him off, pushing the furniture back against the walls, hoisting open the windows to let the warm spring air in and the tobacco smoke out, baking up cakes and scones and sending young Donald round to the store for another bottle of whisky while Hamish stood awkwardly in the middle of the floor saying hello and thank you and aye I'm looking forward to it as the guests arrived and found a seat or leant against the wall or stood wherever they could find a space. Stewart made his way around the crowded room, filling glasses and saying hello, while Tessa, ten years old and forced uncomfortably into a dress, followed her father round with an overburdened plate of cakes. Will you have another piece? she said to each guest in turn, her voice quiet but confident, her gaze steady and solemn; and each of the guests, with a glass of whisky in one hand and a keen appetite in the other, said please Tessa, thank you, lifting a slab of ginger cake from the pile.

From the doorway Ivy watched her son standing stiffly in the centre of the small room, his shoulders forced back and the stubborn tuft of hair already springing up where she'd just licked her fingers and pressed it down. She knew, really, that he'd be fine when he was gone, that he'd been carrying his share of the household's weight for long enough, that he would manage on his own. But still, it was a hard thing to look at her own son, with the same snubbed features he'd had as a three-year-old, with the bumps and scars of childhood still mapped out across his skin beneath that proud new suit, and to see him as a man ready to head out into the world on his own. She watched the way he spoke to the friends and neighbours in turn, smiling and nodding at their jokes and suggestions, saying thanks for the gifts of warm socks, accepting firm handshakes and leaning forward to place brisk kisses on beaming wrinkled cheeks. Her hands twitched with the memory of holding his tiny warm body up against her face. Her hips shifted with the ghost weight of him, of bearing him or of propping his clinging body up with one arm while she busied around the house with the other. Cooking, cleaning, scrubbing, ironing. Her bones ached with the seeping tiredness of those many long years, the guilty resentment of it all, and she leant back against the door frame, still watching. She saw the way young Rosalind was looking at him, her warm eyes flicking up to his face and his chest when she thought no one was looking.

Rosalind's mother, Ellie, saw where Ivy was looking, met her eye, and smiled. Will I help you with that last lot of scones Ivy? she said, sweeping her friend into the kitchen at the back of the house, the room bursting into laughter as Stewart made some joke behind them. Aye she's a thing or two to learn about discretion that girl of mine, she muttered, as Ivy opened the oven door to a blast of hot air, sweet and damp with the smell of fresh scones.

Ivy laughed. The way she's staring, you'd think she'd never seen a good-looking boy in a suit before, she said. But I don't think you need to worry about our Hamish noticing any, he's not so quick that way just yet. Ellie fetched a cooling rack down from the shelf above the oven, put it on the kitchen table, and passed Ivy a palette knife.

Well, some are quicker than others she said, glancing down at Ivy's almost un-noticeably swollen belly. Ivy stopped sliding the scones on to the cooling rack and looked up at her. Looks like it's not just scones you've got in the oven there, Ellie added, her eyebrows raised a little and her mouth breaking into a smile. Or Ivy said, there's something I've to tell you and Ellie said, there's no need I can see for myself. Ivy looked at her, put the baking tray down beside the sink, and rested her oven-gloved hands across her stomach.

Oh, Ellie, is it showing already? she said, whispering, her voice cracking and her eyes edged with tears. Or she turned away and said, Eleanor Davies, I really don't know what you're talking about, slamming a baking tray into the sink a little harder than she meant to. Or she looked at her friend and knew there was nothing to say.

Ellie pulled a chair across for Ivy to sit on. She sat beside her and pressed a hand to her arm, or around her shoulder, or wanted to touch her but kept her hands twisted together under her chin.

Aye love, it is, she said. Is that a problem? Ivy smiled thinly.

Of course it is, she whispered, it's a big problem, isn't it? You know I'm too old to do this all over again.

Nonsense, said Ellie, tutting, you're still young yet, and she smiled. Ivy didn't smile back but looked up at Ellie.

No, she said. You know what the doctor told me, she said. The two women looked at each other, and Ivy didn't need to remind Ellie what she meant; that each of her five pregnancies had been difficult, marked by debilitating sickness and pain, that each birth had been harder, longer, and more dangerous than the one before, that the arrival of her long-awaited daughter, the source of such happiness, had nearly killed her and Tessa both.

Aye, said Ellie, quietly. Aye, I know love. The singing faded away next door. There was a bump and a crash, and an indignant shout from young John. Ivy looked up, startled, relaxing again when she heard him laugh. Ellie smiled at her. It never stops, does it? she said, and Ivy smiled back.

No, no it doesn't, she said. Ellie took the oven gloves from her, hung them up, and popped the cooling scones on to a blue-and-white dinner plate. She passed Ivy a handkerchief from her cardigan pocket; clean this morning, she said, and Ivy took it and dabbed at her eyes and blew her nose.

I'm just wondering if it's worth it at all, you know? she said, as Ellie stood at the sink wiping down a baking tray. I just don't know why I bother, she said. You near kill yourself bringing them into the world, you break your back bringing them up, and all for what? They cut loose first chance they find, and they're gone, eh? she said, nodding her head in the direction of the other room. I'm just wondering, she said, her voice brittle with the tense shame of what she was daring to say; I'm just wondering. There's people can fix these things, aren't there? She grasped the handkerchief between her thumb and fingers, twisting it into a cord, twisting the cord into a knot. Ellie turned to look at her, and heard a noise from the far side of the room. Hamish was standing in the open doorway, looking at the two women.

Uncle James is wanting more cakes, he said, looking reluctant to come any closer. Ellie walked briskly across to him with the plate of scones.

There you go, she said, see how he goes on with these, eh? Hamish took the plate, and Ellie shut the door behind him, turning back to Ivy with her eyes wide and fearful as the scones were greeted with a cheer in the room next door.

56 Ration books, Union cards, Co-op dividend stamps, 1930s and 1940s

Well and you know our mother's not very well at all. Not at all. Donald's voice was calm and measured as it came down the phone line, and David waited for him to go on. Aye, Donald said. The doctors have told us not to expect her back out of the hospital. They've said it'll probably be months at the most, he said.

David wondered what he was supposed to say, what he was supposed to feel. I'm sorry, he said. He'd assumed it would be something like this, when the card from Donald had been forwarded on to him from the museum — Please telephone as soon as is convenient, it said simply — but he was still unprepared. I'm sorry, he said again.

We thought you'd want to know, Donald said, Ros and me, and the others. He coughed. We thought Eleanor would want to know, he said. He coughed again. Excuse me, he said.

He asked Eleanor if she wanted to go there, if she wanted to see her mother, and she couldn't bring herself to answer him straight away. But what did Donald say? she asked, and he told her again. Her mother was ill, she didn't have long left, they were welcome to go up and visit if they wished.

What do you think he means by welcome? she said.

It was more than five years since Kate had left home, and their lives had finally settled back into some kind of routine, some kind of direction. Eleanor was working part-time at the city council, and David had found a temporary post at the archives office. They had time to eat breakfast together, and two days a week they would catch the same bus into work, kissing each other briefly goodbye amongst the push and hurry of the nine o'clock crowds. They took it in turns to cook dinner, experimenting with new recipes they got from the friends they ate out with once or twice a week. Susan came to stay, regularly, sleeping in the room which had always been Kate's but which they'd started learning to call the spare room. And most weekends they went to his mother's, to keep her company and to do the jobs around the house she'd started struggling to do. They were almost busy, as David joked to Eleanor one worn-out evening, and they were happy, in the ordinary ways which had evaded them for so long.

A week after that first brief conversation with Donald, they met each other from work and walked home. It was cold enough for gloves and scarves, and Eleanor reached into David's pocket for extra warmth as they walked through the centre of town. They'd been talking about Ivy's illness for days, and about whether they should go up to Aberdeen. They'd argued about it, and they'd both said things they regretted, and in the end he'd said that he'd leave it to her to make up her mind; he didn't want to talk about it any more. She turned to him now, squeezing his hand, her voice low and determined. So, she said, I've decided. About my mother. I don't want to go. He looked at her. I can't, she said. It's too late now.

David had never known much about Ivy, besides the bare facts which Donald had outlined for him when he was working on the family tree, besides what little Eleanor had said. But as he spoke to Donald over those last few months, following the progress of Ivy's swift decline, he found out a little more.

He learnt that her own mother had died while she was still a very young child, and that no one had ever known Ivy mention her in company. I couldn't even promise you her name right, Donald said; it's Lizzie I think but I could be wrong — it's been known, he said wryly, before asking after Eleanor and telling David to phone again in a week for more news.

He learnt that she'd picked up most of the household's income for the first six or seven years of her marriage, taking in laundry and finding cleaning jobs in the big houses while Stewart spent his days lined up outside the shipyards waiting for rumours of work to drift in on the tide, and that she'd done all this work whilst carrying the first three of her six children. I think she was exhausted even by the time John came along, Donald said. Her sister told me that, he added, not long ago.

The phone often went unanswered when David called, and when he managed to speak to Donald he'd usually either just come back from the hospital or was getting ready to go. His voice was tired, his words strung between breathy pauses, but he never seemed reluctant to talk. He seemed keen to tell David these things, and David only had to add oh really is that right? for Donald to carry on.

She was sometimes very hard on Eleanor, he said, another time. I understand that. But she was still a good mother, you understand? No one ever went hungry in our house. And for those days, believe you me, that's saying something.

For a time, David kept these conversations a secret from Eleanor, assuming they would upset her or even that she would resent him for them. But one evening she came back from a friend's house unexpectedly early, and as she walked through to the kitchen he could see that she'd already guessed who he was speaking to. She stopped in the doorway, watching him.

Oh but she's always been able to hold a grudge, Donald was saying, I'll grant you that. She's had her fair share of those, he said, laughing in that strange rueful way he had, while Eleanor stepped closer and held David's gaze.

Is that right? he asked, awkwardly.

Oh aye, said Donald. There's a neighbour down the way here she's not spoken to for nearly twenty years, on account of an argument the two of them once had in the pub. He paused. And you know Da told me once that she didn't speak to him for a fortnight after Eleanor left with you. David looked at Eleanor, reaching out his hand and holding hers, squeezing it.

Well, he said. It must have been very difficult for them. Donald didn't say anything for a moment.

Well, aye, he said. It's a long time ago now though, he added. Eleanor was standing close enough to David to hear Donald's voice; not to hear his words perhaps, but to hear the buzz and crackle of it coming down the line.

Sorry Donald, I should be going now, David said. I've got some things to sort out for the morning.

Right you are, Donald said quickly. Sorry, I didn't mean anything just then, when I said—

Oh, no, no, David said, that's fine, not at all. I'll speak to you soon.

You don't mind do you? he asked Eleanor, after he'd hung up. She shook her head.

How're things? she asked.

She's not very well at all, he said. She nodded.

And Donald? she asked.

He learnt that Ivy had been ill before, that this was a recurrence of the same condition she'd had when Stewart had died. He learnt that Donald and Rosalind were spending most of their time at the hospital now, that Hamish and his wife were there as well, as was Hamish's daughter Cathy. He learnt that Donald had been feeling at something of a loose end since he retired. He learnt that Ivy had never really got over having to move out of the old house when it was demolished as part of the council's rebuilding programme. He learnt, more than once, that Donald thought it was funny the way things turned out.

And once Eleanor had found out, she didn't seem to mind him having these conversations at all. Sometimes she asked him, afterwards, what they'd been talking about, and asked him questions which he asked Donald the next time they spoke. Sometimes she asked how her mother was doing, although the answer was always the same; not well, getting worse. One evening, while Donald was telling him about Ivy's habit of still using a top-loader, even when all four sons had offered to buy her a modern washing machine — she's stubborn, he said, no one can deny that — Eleanor came into the room asking David if he wanted a cup of tea, not realising until it was too late that he was on the phone. Donald caught himself mid-sentence.

Eh, is that Eleanor there? he asked. Eleanor had her hand over her mouth.

It is, David said. There was a pause.

Sounds like she's lost her accent a wee bit, Donald said.

Well, I suppose she has, yes, David said. Eleanor's eyes widened at the thought of Donald saying something about her.

Mind, said Donald, it's been a while.

It has, David agreed, realising now what Donald wanted to ask. There was another long pause.

Eh, is she still there, or has she gone to put that kettle on now? Donald said.

No, no, David said, she's still here. Eleanor wiped her mouth and looked around her, and then she moved closer towards him, closer towards the voice on the phone. Would you like to speak to her? he asked. Donald said nothing for a moment, and there was only the sound of him breathing in and out.

Aye, he said. If I could. David held the phone out to Eleanor, raising his eyebrows. She looked at it a moment, wiping a hand across her mouth again, and took it from him.

Hello? she said. Hello Donald. How are you?

57 Printed service sheet, Ivy Elaine Campbell, 1909–2000', 23 April 2000

Before the service, having tea and cake at Donald and Rosalind's house, Donald showed Kate a photograph of her grandfather. That's your Granda Stewart, he said, holding it up to her. That photo was taken eighty-nine years ago, he added, as proudly as if he'd taken it himself. So don't you be getting sticky fingers on it now, he said, and everyone in the room laughed.

Oh, no, I won't, Kate smiled, perching on the arm of the sofa with a cup of tea in one hand and the photo in the other, holding it carefully by the edges.

See that wee boat there? Donald asked. They say he carried that boat around with him everywhere, after his father died. The other conversations in the room dropped away, and people turned to look.

His father made it for him, before he was lost, said Hamish.

Is that so? asked Donald, looking over at his brother, well, I never knew that. Kate looked at the photo again — Stewart holding a small model fishing boat, his brother and three sisters beside him, his mother standing behind them with a hand resting lightly on his head. She must have recognised the boat, and David was impressed that she was careful not to say anything.

I suppose you don't know too much about the family history though do you hen? said Donald, tucking the photo back into the envelope with the others.

Not really, said Kate, Mum doesn't really — you know; and she trailed off to take a sip of tea, and Donald's weather-beaten face coloured a little. The crowded room was heavy and still for a moment, until Donald's wife got to her feet and started saying you'll be wanting another one then to each of the guests in turn, filling their cups from a huge pot on the table, cutting second slices of dense brandy-fumed fruitcake, and Kate stood and said no, not for me thanks, I think I'll just, and Donald directed her to the left of the top of the stairs.

As soon as she was out of the room, John's wife turned to David and said oh but she's the spit of her grandmother, is she not?

I suppose she is, he said, smiling.

Oh aye, said Hugh, as a murmur of agreement ran around the room, it's uncanny, isn't it? And even though of all those there Ivy's brother Gordon was the only one old enough to remember her as a young woman, they could still see something in Kate that reminded them of her. The way she lifted her head when she smiled. The shape of her eyes. Something about the way she had held herself when she first stepped into the room and said hello. Some faint echo, sounding on down the bloodline.

There was talk of arrangements, of where to park and who couldn't make it and who would be taking the cords. There were more trips to the toilet and a few more pieces of cake. And then when everyone was in the room Donald looked at his watch and said right well I think that's us away then, and they all stood and filed out of the small front room, ladies first, after you, placing empty cups and crumb-laden plates on to the kitchen table as they passed into the passageway and out through the front door to the street, all sober and dark and tight-collared. The women in rarely worn hats and M&S dresses, carrying weighty handbags and helping each other down the front step and along to the cars. The men straightening their shoulders and their ties as they stepped out into the crisp afternoon light, blinking a little, clearing their heads from the warmth of the house and readying themselves for what was to come. Everyone moving with a well-rehearsed confidence, as though it was every day they put on these clothes and drove to the cemetery to bury their mother, or sister, or aunt. Slipping into their seats in the four shining cars, scooping the hems of their dresses neatly beneath them or straightening the lines of their heavy jackets. Keeping their thoughts to themselves as they drove smoothly through the bungalowed streets and along the coast road towards the town, round past the industrial estates and through the familiar terraced streets of their childhoods.

Was that the same boat Mum's got at home? Kate murmured to him as they got out of the car at the cemetery, the one in that photo? He looked at her and nodded, holding her gaze for a moment so she could see that it wasn't something to be talked about just then.

In the evening, once people had started to go home from the wake, Donald took a large brown envelope from Rosalind's handbag and pulled out some more photographs. I thought you'd be interested in seeing some of these, he said, your line of work being what it is. He spread them out across the table. We found them in a chest of drawers in Ivy's room. David leant across and glanced at the pictures, damp-spotted black-and- white snapshots of weddings, birthdays, day-trips.

There's some other bits and pieces we found as well, Rosalind said, squeezing the edges of the envelope and tipping out a pile of ration books, union cards, Co-op stamps, pamphlets. Hamish, sitting on the other side of the table, reached forward suddenly, frowning, and picked out a grease-stained Illustrated Book of Knots.

That'll be mine for starters, he said. Where'd you find that?

David looked at a pale studio picture of Ivy and Stewart holding up a young baby, the baby dressed in a long gown and white bonnet, the edges of the picture a little out of focus, none of them smiling. He held it up, questioningly.

We're not sure but we think that's Eleanor, said Donald. Doesn't look much like I remember her, but we can't think it's anyone else.

It's been a long time since I've seen this though, Hamish announced, thumbing through the book of knots, pushing his thick-lensed spectacles up his nose, launching into the story of the grand send-off the family had given him when he'd first joined the merchant navy.

David half-listened, looking through the pictures, holding up a large print of a young couple on their wedding day, two sets of parents next to them, brothers and sisters fanning out on either side. Rosalind leant towards him.

Aye, that's us, she whispered, smiling shyly, glancing over at Hamish to be sure he couldn't hear her interruption. Seems like a fine long time ago now though, eh?

There were that many folk there, Hamish continued, oblivious. David pointed to a girl in the picture who looked about fifteen, with long hair and a blank expression.

Eleanor? he mouthed. Donald and Rosalind looked at each other.

Eh, no, that's her sister, Donald said quietly. Tessa.

She's in America now of course, Rosalind added. Has been for years. She stopped herself. You didn't know that though, did you? she said, her voice dropping away.

No, David said. I wasn't sure you were still in touch.

We get Christmas cards, Donald said, no more.

Are you folks listening at that end? Hamish asked, knocking the table, and the three of them turned back to face him.

Of course we are, said Rosalind.

You carry on there, Donald agreed. David finished the whisky Donald had put in front of him and listened to the rest of Hamish's story, looking around the emptying room, wondering where Kate had gone.

58 Email messages; printed copies dated March 2000

He'd always known how it would be, when it happened. He would be heaving great volumes down from dusty shelves in an archive office somewhere, turning thick pages and scanning endless rows of names until he found what he was looking for. He'd be filling out small pink request slips, waiting long afternoons while under-staffed departments worked their way through to his search. He knew, or he thought he knew, that when it happened he would be sitting in a room with notices saying Pencils only please; bags must be left at the front desk, where no one would notice the rush of exhilaration and fear which would shoot through him as he noted down the reference numbers for the copies he required, and carried them, trembling, to the counter.

But in the end, when it happened, it was nothing like that at all. He was sitting in front of a computer screen in Kate's old room, a mug of hot chocolate going cold beside him, the modem flickering as he checked his email, listening to Eleanor brush her teeth in the bathroom, listening to the radio he'd left on by their bed.

Kate had shown him how to use the computer on her first break back from university. He'd bought it a few years earlier with what was left of the redundancy money, but had only ever used it for writing letters. She'd shown him how to get connected to the internet, how to follow the links on the different pages, how to use the search engines to look for information on any possible subject he could think of. They'd sat side by side in front of the screen for most of an afternoon, while she showed him weather reports from Sydney Harbour, lecture notes from degrees at Leeds University, catalogues from the British Museum, the wedding photos of a couple called Jack and Mary somewhere in Florida, job adverts, property adverts, television listings, introductory guides to museums and exhibition centres, anything he suggested or which took her fancy as she clicked on the links from page to page. She kept tutting as she waited for the sites to load on to the screen, saying God I can't believe how slow this is, you should get a new computer Dad, this is well slow compared to the ones at uni, and every time she said it he looked at her in disbelief. A few minutes' wait seemed like a small price to pay for information from all over the world to come tumbling into your home.

He'd found the experience difficult to absorb at first. He'd become so used to the idea of information existing as a physical fact; books, papers, photographs, objects, the parched fragments of ancient civilisations inscribed on to stone and metal, kept secure in controlled environments. The idea that all information would eventually exist in this cacophonous airborne form astonished and alarmed him. It was overwhelming, unknowable, uncategorisable. The first few times, once Kate had finished showing him what to do and left him to it, he did nothing — sat in front of the screen with the browser logged on to a search engine, the cursor blinking impatiently in its small rectangular box. The endless choices that had suddenly reared up before him left him unable to move. He had no idea what he wanted to know.

Except, of course, that he did. He had every idea. There was only one thing he had ever wanted to know.

He started by simply entering her name into the search engines. Mary Friel, or Mary Friel + 1945, or Mary Friel + 1928/1929/1930, or Mary Friel + Donegal. The results came back either blank or with thousands of entries. So he started searching for adoption, tracing, family history, online archives, parish records. He looked at tourist information sites, local history sites, sites dedicated to the history of the Irish diaspora, sites concerned with the study of genealogy. And he realised, as he clicked and scrolled through the endless lists of links and databases, that the only way he would find her would be if she was waiting to be found. If she was sitting in front of a computer screen somewhere, tapped into this flood of new memories, clicking through these same sites and links with the same destination in mind. He didn't have enough information just to stumble across her on his own. She could have married, changed her name, left the country. She could have lied in the first place, and never been Mary Friel at all.

And he discovered that he wasn't alone. There were thousands of people doing just what he was doing, hundreds of thousands, listing themselves on databases and posting messages in the hope of finding the missing other. I was born in 1953, I gave up my daughter in 1942, I saw my son for the first and last time in 1962. He scrolled through these lists endlessly, looking for the name he wanted, looking for the date. Mary Friel, 1945. He chose a site to register with, paid the joining fee, and added his details to the list. Adopted son seeks birth mother. David Carter/Mary Friel /Believed March 1945. He put believed because it seemed to be the standard format, because there were so many stories of dates being mixed up, falsified, misremembered. Because people in his position were no longer sure what to believe.

When it happened, he had more or less given up. It was only habit which drew him back into Kate's old room a few evenings each week, looking for something to do before he went to bed; working his way through the lists, checking his email, searching through slowly and methodically and without any conviction that it was a worthwhile thing to do. He would sit on the folding metal chair in his pyjamas, running his bare feet back and forth across the carpet, squinting at the scrolling names or gazing blankly at his reflection in the darkened window while he waited for the modem to connect.

New Messages (1). Dear David. My mother's name is Mary Carr but her maiden name was Friel. She was in London during the war and gave up a baby boy for adoption in 1945. We'll need to talk more but I think she would be very interested to meet you.

When he called Eleanor's name, she came into the room with a toothbrush still in her mouth, her dressing gown hanging open around her nightdress. She said something inaudible, and he just pointed at the screen. She looked, and looked closer, toothpaste dribbling from the corner of her mouth as she tried to say it never is, is it? He nodded, not looking at her, not knowing what to say. They both looked at the words on the screen together, silently. She wiped at the spilt toothpaste with her sleeve, and laid her hand on his shoulder. He turned his face against her hand, and closed his eyes.

What are you going to do? she asked. He kissed her hand, and said nothing.

59 Ferry tickets; handwritten letter; route map (from website); all June 2000

It wasn't yet light when the ferry arrived. He stood out on the deck, his eyes stinging with sleep in the cold wet morning air. He looked out over the warehouses and lorry-parks, tracing the light-strung line of the motorway as it skirted around Belfast and headed towards the Lough. There was a map and a list of directions in the car's glove compartment, but he knew he wouldn't need them. He murmured the route to himself as the boat settled in against the jetty wall: M2 towards the airport, past Antrim, through Randalstown, through Londonderry, across the border. .

I'm going to Donegal, he'd said to his mother, a month ago, and she'd nodded and said right then, okay, okay. I've been in touch with a woman called Mary, he'd said, as gently as it was possible to say such a thing, her maiden name was Mary Friel, and she'd nodded and smiled and said right then, okay, okay, turning her face away from him as she started to cry, and he'd noticed again how much older she was looking, the veins of her neck swollen behind the skin like knotted cords, the backs of her hands arching at the knuckle.

They'd been driving for an hour when he saw the first flag, a worn-looking union flag hanging from a telegraph pole, and he remembered how very many more there had been the last time he was there. He counted another three union flags and a half-dozen tricolours, no more. The sun began to burn more brightly through the mist hanging low over the fields, the land falling away to their left as they climbed higher. Muddy-footed sheep scrambled away from the side of the road as they passed. He asked Eleanor how she was feeling, but she was asleep, or trying to be, and before he'd even noticed how far they'd come they were driving down the long hill overlooking Londonderry, across the bridge and out along the wooded road on the other side.

They were almost twenty miles into Irish territory before he realised they'd crossed the border, that they'd long since passed the spot where once there had been concrete blocks and tall steel fences, razor wire, soldiers with loaded guns and crackling radios; now there was nothing except a gravelled change in the texture of the road. They stopped in a lay-by for sandwiches and coffee and pieces of foil-wrapped cake, looking down over the long narrow bays of the inner coastline, the still grey water glinting in the strengthening light. Eleanor stretched, arching her back and lifting her face, and leant against David's shoulder.

All this sitting down's no good for an old body, she said, rubbing the sides of her legs and bending her knees.

Well, David said, you're not that used to it. Maybe you should go for a run before we go any further, he joked, get the blood moving. She laughed sarcastically and then turned to face him.

Do you think I look old though? she asked. She lifted her hand to her hair; I mean, does this count as grey hair now?

He smiled, and looked away, and said I don't know, maybe you could call it highlights. Distinguished highlights, he said, smiling. She laughed again, swirling the last of the coffee around in the bottom of the plastic mug, stepping away from the car and flicking the dregs on to the ground. She watched the shadows of small clouds slipping across the hillside on the other side of the narrow bay. They both stood still for a moment, listening to the quietness of the morning, not saying anything.

It doesn't seem like all that long since I was here before, he said. She pressed closer against him.

It's more than twenty years, she said. Kate was only three.

I know, he said. A lorry roared and clattered past, and they turned away from the dust and grit thrown up in its wake.

Where does it all go? Eleanor said. I don't feel old enough to have a daughter in her twenties already. He slipped his arm around her waist, pushing her round to face him. And you don't look old enough either, he said, smiling, really.

I do too, she said, pulling away, embarrassed. She looked down at the water again, watching a small red fishing boat struggling out on the tide, and said, you know, when I phone her up I'm still thinking of a ten-year-old Kate answering the phone, I don't know why, I can't help it.

I know, he said, me too. And he found himself thinking about her again, about how much of an adult she'd seemed at the funeral. He wondered what she would say if he told her now why he'd made that first trip to Ireland, the one she could barely remember, and why he was making this second one now. He tried to imagine being able to say such a thing. He wondered if she would understand, or if her indignant words would be familiar: Why didn't you tell me before? How long have you known? How could you not have told me this before? He thought about the photos he had of her in the albums on the back seat, which one of them showed her as someone old enough to have been told: the young woman leaving for university, the almost-teenager starting at big school, the young girl sugar-drunk with birthday-cake excitement, the toddler sitting on her proud grandmother's knee.

They got back into the car and headed for Letterkenny.

David,

I don't think I've written you a letter since you spent that fortnight in London with Julia, when you were fourteen. Do you remember? You said you wanted to see all the rooms in the British Museum instead of just a few. I'm not sure if you managed it. I can't remember why I wrote to you then, I think I was sending you some socks, wasn't I? Or I just wanted to know how you were. Stupid really, but I think I was missing you, and people didn't use the telephone so much in those days, did they? It was strange writing to you though, it took me a long time to think what to say.

But listen to me. I'm not getting to the point at all. There are some things I've been trying to say to you, and I haven't managed, so I'm writing them down and I'll give this to Eleanor to give to you before you go. Does that make me a coward, would you say?

Now I've been sitting here for half an hour, looking at the wall, and I don't know where to start. We've been over it so many times, maybe there isn't much point trying to explain myself again. I did the wrong thing, not telling you. You know that. But I thought it was the best thing to do and maybe you'll understand that one day. Maybe you already understand but you just haven't told me yet.

The truth, David, is that I chose you. I chose to keep you. I think sometimes you forget that, or maybe you never understood it in the first place. I could have taken you back to the hospital and owned up. Or I could have let Julia be your mum instead. But as soon as I picked you up that first time, with Susan there next to me and the picture of Albert up on the mantelpiece, you were part of our family and I knew I couldn't not keep you. I was there from the very beginning, David. I might not have carried you in my womb, but I changed your nappies and I fed you, I was there when you learnt to walk, and to talk, and when you fell over and cut your knees. I don't have to try very hard to remember the weight of you on my hip, or the feeling of holding your hands above your head as you took your first steps, or the smell of your skin when I tucked you into bed at night. Your first word was Mum, David, and you said it to me.

But I can understand why you were angry when you found out. I can understand why you might still be angry now, after all this time. I think I would be, in your position. But I was never a bad mother, was I? We looked after you, and fed you, and clothed you, and tried to do our best for you, didn't we? Sometimes, and I'm sorry to say it, I don't think you've given us enough credit for that. I made one mistake, David, one wrong choice, and I don't want you to punish me for it for the rest of my life.

So that's what I wanted to say. If you're reading this you should be halfway to Mary's house by now. Be careful, will you? And say hello to Mary for me. Tell her I'd like to meet her one day, if that would be possible, if it seems like things are working out that way.

There's a programme starting that I wanted to watch, so I'll leave it there. I think I've probably said more than enough already anyway. But I hope you find what you're looking for over there, David, and I hope you'll be able to tell me something about it when you come home. Phone me if you get the chance, if you want to. And please be careful.

Love, Mum

They arrived in Letterkenny just after lunchtime, crawling the last couple of miles through traffic cones, surrounded by the heaped mud and painted stakes of new building works, bulldozers and diggers circling through the fields on either side of the road. Eleanor unfolded the emailed directions and waited for David to ask for them, but even here, as he drove through the crowded and narrow streets of the town centre, past the bus station and the shopping arcade and the school, he could recite the route by heart. They drove out of the centre along a main road, past an estate of new bungalows, and then suddenly they were there. They parked the car outside, and sat for a moment, looking. This is definitely it then? Eleanor said. He nodded, squeezing the back of his neck. You okay? she asked. He looked at her and smiled weakly.

I don't know what I'm going to say, he whispered. She put a hand on his knee.

You'll think of something, she said. Come on.

They got out of the car and stood at the front door. She looked at him. He wiped his face with the back of his hand and he knocked.

60 Biscuit tin, rusted, used as money box or for keepsakes, c.1944

When Mary's husband died, her eldest daughter persuaded her to move into town, into a small bungalow just around the corner from her, so that she'd be closer to other people if anything should happen. She hadn't liked it at first. She'd missed the open fire, the view across the fields, the smooth shine of the worn stone floor. She'd missed the smell of their clothes hanging together in the wardrobe. The weekly steaming ritual of the bath being filled. The photos and drawings pinned up across the walls, the tools hanging up on the back of the door, all the familiar bits and pieces of a home she had spent a lifetime making her own. The walls were thin in the new place, the doors hollow, and the electric heaters took so long to warm up and cool down that she had to watch the weather forecast just to know when to turn them on.

You're only lonely without Daddy, her children told her, when she said she wanted to go back, and she didn't think they were right but they were. You'll get used to it, they said, you'll like it there soon enough, and she found it hard to believe but she eventually did. She started to like sitting by the window, watching people walk in and out of town, waving back at anyone who smiled or waved. She started to like not having to worry so much about dust and draughts and smoke and ash. She liked being able to put her wet clothes into a machine and take them out as dry as if they'd been on the line for a week. And now that she had two rooms she didn't need, she liked having the children come to stay, bringing their own children with them, and boxes of toys, and new photographs for her to put up on the wall, filling her front room with stories of their new lives and jobs in the places they'd settled now, retelling old stories of the life they remembered growing up with.

And one day, barely stopping to think what she was doing, she told her eldest daughter what had happened all those years ago, when she worked in the big house in London, and got into trouble, and had to come home with her hands empty and her heart broken. You can understand why I didn't tell you before, can't you? she said, when her daughter had finished asking questions, and Sarah nodded, and shook her head, and said well of course, I suppose I do.

She'd thought that would be the end of it, a sad story to add to the collection, but Sarah began to ask more questions, and write things down, and to ignore her when she said that was enough she didn't want to talk about it any more it was done it was finished. And one day Sarah came round saying something about the internet, explaining things which were hard to take in for a soul who'd grown up with no telephone and no electricity and a postman who only came once a week if at all. I've found him, Sarah kept saying, and it took her some minutes to understand what her daughter meant.

I've found him. He's coming over to see you.

She wondered if it really could be as simple as that. She wondered if she was ready, having imagined it and prepared for it all those years, to finally open the door and say hello to him after all. She asked Sarah if she was sure, if there wasn't some mix up with the dates, if it wasn't odd that he was asking for her by her name and not by the name she'd given all those years ago, but Sarah said no it had to be right, it had to be him, he must have discovered the real name somehow and it was surprising what computers could do these days.

Aren't you excited? she kept asking. Aren't you pleased?

61 Paper package of selected photographs (reprints), c. 1950–2000

Well. Now. This is something, isn't it so. She stood in the doorway, looking up at him, her hands clasped together, a short white-haired woman with taut reddened skin and soft blue eyes, smiling faintly and saying well, well, right then.

Mrs Carr? he asked.

Ah, call me Mary, she retorted, laughing briefly and shaking her head. So, she said again. You'll be David. He nodded, and when he tried to say yes, that's me, I'm David Carter, his mouth went numb and only the first cracked half of his name came out. He nodded again.

She nodded back, as if agreeing with him, and unclasped her hands. Well, now, she said. He had no idea what to say. He just looked at her. Her mouth was small, the corners pulled tightly back into her cheeks. Her nose was very slightly turned to one side. She had a dark brown mole on the side of her face, just lower than her ear, with two thick hairs springing out of it. Her eyebrows were thick, and neatly arched, blackened with a little make up.

A voice called out from behind her in the house somewhere: Mummy, will you not invite the poor man inside? He heard quick, clipped footsteps, and a woman a few years younger than him appeared, smiling nervously, touching Mary's arm, saying I'm sorry, please, come inside would you?

I've got some things in the car, he said, half turning away, gesturing over his shoulder.

Oh, leave those for now, the younger woman said, get yourself inside and sit down. You must be tired. That's an awful long way to drive. Most people fly these days. She backed away from the door, as though drawing him in. Mary didn't move, looking up at him, squinting slightly, not quite smiling.

Well, he said. We thought we'd make the most of the journey. Enjoy the scenery, you know. He caught himself, and indicated Eleanor, saying sorry, this is my wife, Eleanor. The three of them said hello to each other, Mary's daughter introducing herself as Sarah and asking them again to come inside. Mary backed away, following her daughter into the lounge without actually turning away from him, her smile beginning to broaden. They wiped their feet on the mat and followed her.

There was a table by the window, set out with a spread of sandwiches and cakes, home-made biscuits and shortbread and soda bread, cups and saucers, a jug of milk, a bowl of sugar. He heard the younger woman's voice from somewhere, and saw her silhouette through the frosted glass panels which divided the kitchen from the lounge. Is tea okay for you both? she asked.

Please, he replied, glancing at Eleanor, that'd be great, thanks.

Take a seat there, she said, appearing in the doorway, I'll be right through. He sat at the table, and when he turned to smile at Mary, to perhaps say something, he realised she'd slipped away to the kitchen. He could see her silhouette through the thick glass. Eleanor was still holding the bag of cakes she'd brought in from the car. I, well, I brought these, she said, stepping towards the kitchen, lifting one of the cakes out of the bag. I didn't realise you'd — and she gestured towards the table, so covered with home-baking that there was little room for anything else more than a pot of tea. There was a moment's silence, and he heard Sarah say oh before she caught herself and took the bag from Eleanor. Oh well that's smashing of you, she said; we'll certainly not go hungry now, will we?; laughing a little too loudly and saying thanks again. Eleanor turned to him, pulling a brief embarrassed face, and edged round the table to sit in front of the window, and when he sat down beside her she reached across and squeezed his hand.

It was a large room, made larger by the wide open screen of the window which took up the entire end wall. There was a gas fire set into the redbricked chimney breast, turned on low, a broad mantelpiece crowded with framed photographs and painted china figures. He looked at the photos and wondered how long it might be before he knew who all those faces were, knew their names and their stories, if he would meet them, if he would come to think of them as brothers and sisters and cousins. He wondered if it would come to that at all.

Right then, here we go, said Sarah, carrying a teapot and a place-mat into the room, sorry to keep you waiting there. Mary followed, staying close to her daughter.

Not at all, David said, standing up without really knowing why, this is great, thanks. She looked at him, smiling.

Oh, it's only a pot of tea now, she said, it's not all that much. He smiled, dropping his head, embarrassed. Anyway, she said. Sit yourself down. I'm going to keep quiet now. I'm sure you and Mummy have a lot to be talking about.

Mary looked up at Sarah, and at David and Eleanor, and leant forward to serve the teas. She trickled a little milk into each cup, and then took the pot in both hands to pour out the tea before sliding a cup across the table to each of them. She looked up at David, finally, and smiled. They looked at each other for what felt like a long time, taking in the details of each other's faces, the folds and creases and colours of the skin, the shape of the eyes, the way that the light coloured and shone in the eyes, the cut of the hair, the weight of the hair, the way the hair fell across the other's face or down the sides of the head, the line of the jaw, the shape of the chin, the colour and shape and tiny movements of the mouth and lips.

Well, she said. Now. Here we are then. So.

He smiled. Yes, he said. Here we are. It's been a long time, he said, smiling, and they both tried to laugh.

It has, said Mary, holding his gaze, it has.

Longer for you though, he said, saying it half as a question but knowing it was true. She considered the thought for a moment.

Aye, I suppose so, she said, a few years more at least, in a way. He hesitated and pushed on.

No, a lot longer I'd say, he said. I didn't know until I was an adult. I was twenty-two when I found out. Her eyes widened a little. She put her teacup down and peered at him. Sarah leant forward in her chair.

Is that so? Mary asked. Well, there's a thing. I'd never thought of that. She picked up her teacup again. Well, she said, shaking her head, well, there's something.

Didn't you ever wonder? asked Sarah. Did it never cross your mind? He looked at her. I mean, sorry, she said, it's not really my business, but. She sat back in her chair. I wonder why they waited so long to tell you, she said, I wonder what it was — Mary turned to her, frowning, and Sarah stopped herself. Sorry, she said. Look at me now. It's not my place, I'm sorry. She pulled the collar of her blouse away from her neck and looked towards the gas fire. Are you too warm there? she said, to David and Eleanor, and they both shook their heads.

No, he said, it's okay, I'm fine, thanks. He glanced across at Mary, her face patient and impassive. He was surprised by how calm everything had been so far, how formal. He had thought, on the many many occasions he had imagined this scene in his mind, that by now there would have been tears, garbled explanations, tentative embraces. He realised, already, that this was unlikely.

They didn't tell me, he said, answering Sarah's question but looking at Mary as he spoke. My father died before I found out, I'm not sure that he knew either. As he said the word father he noticed something flicker across Mary's face, some slight pinch of the lips, a turn of the head, and he realised that there was going to be an awkward uncertainty around their use of these words. A friend of my mother's told me, he said. It was an accident. She was getting old, and forgetful, and one day she lost sight of it being a secret at all, and told me as though I'd always known. He was surprised by how easily the words were coming. He had the sense that now he'd started he'd be able to talk until the light failed outside, and on until the sun came up again.

Well now, Mary said. That must have been some surprise. He laughed, nodding, covering his eyes for a moment, clearing his throat. She looked at him, smiling faintly, pleased with her own understatement.

Yes, he said, you could say that. It was something of a surprise. He finished his tea, and she immediately reached over to refill his cup.

And have a cake there, she said, pushing the plate across the table towards him. She refilled her own cup, and the pot trickled empty. She turned to her daughter; would you make us another pot Sarah? she asked. Sarah stood up and moved towards the kitchen, taking the pot with her, keeping her eyes on David as she left the room. Eleanor stood up as well, suddenly, and said I'll give you a hand, touching David's shoulder as she edged back round him and followed Sarah into the kitchen.

Well then, Mary said, here we are. Let me get a look at you, properly. He turned more fully towards her, feeling his face colouring under the fixed attention of her gaze. She sat back in her chair, slowly looking him over, measuring him out as an artist might measure out a life model before setting the pencil against the page. Stand up, she said softly. He stood, moving away from the table, aware of Sarah standing close to the frosted glass. Mary got up from her chair and stepped back a little, looking up at his face, moving around him. He followed her with his eyes, watching her steadily taking him in, and realised with a hard inward jolt what she was doing. The tears came then, at last, hot and stinging at the corners of his eyes, and he did his best to keep them hidden there, blinking them back, biting the inside of his cheeks. He saw that the rims of her eyes were reddening as well, and her small bony hands were curling into red-knuckled fists. I'm just wondering who it is you look like, she said, whispering.

Before Julia had let things slip, it had never occurred to him to wonder who he looked like. He had the same colour hair as his father, and the same colour eyes as his mother, and that seemed enough. He grew at about the same rate as his sister, and when they were younger and had their hair cut the same way there had been a similarity between them, and so there had never been a reason to think about it. He'd wondered, once he knew, if his mother had ever worried about these things as he was growing up, if she ever checked his growing hair for telltale signs of redness, or scanned his face for freckles, or looked into his eyes for any giveaway flecks of green. He wondered how she might have explained these things away if they had appeared, or if she might perhaps have used them as reasons to tell him the truth.

When he'd found out, he'd stood in front of the mirror with a family photograph held up beside him, looking for similarities, astonished at how few there were. It had never occurred to him before. But why would it? he asked Eleanor angrily, when he told her and she asked him this. Did you never look at yourself next to them and wonder? she said. Why would I think to do that Eleanor? he'd almost shouted, angry that she seemed to be implying some fault of his own, some blindness, some weakness in the ease with which he'd been taken in. That my parents spent my whole life lying to me? he said, shaking his hands in the air, why would that cross my bloody mind Eleanor?

I've got a few things in the car, he said later, as they were finishing the second pot of tea. I brought a few things with me. Mary and her daughter both looked at him, not sure what he meant. He stumbled over his words anxiously. I brought some things, in the car, he said, I mean, just some photos and things, I thought you might like to have a look, you know. Sarah looked at her mother. Her mother looked at David. I mean, only if you want to, he said. I thought you might like to see what I looked like growing up, where I lived, that kind of thing. Mary didn't say anything for a moment. He could feel sweat forming in the folds of the palms of his hands. He saw, from the corner of his eyes, Eleanor looking at Sarah, their eyes meeting, some understanding passing between them.

Well, Mary said, smiling. It would be one way to begin, wouldn't it? Her voice caught slightly as she spoke. Please, she said. I'd like that very much.

And at first it was just as he'd always imagined it would be. Mary and Sarah standing back while he opened the albums and the scrapbook and laid them on the table, pushing back the plates of cakes and biscuits, the basket of bread, leafing through the pages: photographs of him as a child, of the house in Coventry, of his mother and father in the garden; photographs of Julia, of her house in London, of Laurence glowering at the camera; photographs of summer holidays with his grandparents in Suffolk. A page of wedding photographs. A photo of Kate, taken when she was a baby. Another one of her eighth birthday, and of her leaving for university. And, tucked loosely into the pages of the scrapbook, his birth certificate, the hospital admissions card he'd found at Julia's, a map of all the places he'd been to the first time he'd come to Donegal.

He turned the pages backwards and forwards, looking at Mary, not knowing where to start, not knowing if he should say something. Eventually, he stepped back, gesturing vaguely at the opened albums as if to say here, help yourself, please.

She stood in front of it all, uncertainly, resting her weight on the edge of the table, her glance scattering from the album to the scrapbook and back to the album again. Sarah stood in the kitchen doorway, her back half turned, and Eleanor sat on the sofa. David watched her, this woman, as she looked over his life. She was so very different from his own mother was all he could think. Quieter. Shorter. Fuller in the face. Her voice, when she spoke, seemed lighter, calmer, more ready to listen. He wondered how the two of them would react to each other if they ever did meet. He wondered if it would ever come to that.

She turned to him, the rims of her eyes reddening again, opening and closing her mouth as if she wasn't quite sure what to say. Perhaps you should tell me about some of these, she said. He nodded, and stood a little closer. He reached across the table and started to point things out. Here, this is my mother. My father. Me. My sister. Our house. My first day at school. My first day in my job at the museum. That's Eleanor, of course, and our daughter. She leant over each photograph as he described it for her, peering at it closely, tilting the pages towards the bright light from the window, touching her finger, once or twice, against the face of the person pictured.

And this is when you moved into the new house then? she asked, pointing to a picture of the four of them by the front door, Susan clutching her father's hand, David held against his mother's chest. David looked at it a moment.

Yes, he said, that's 1947.1 would have been two, two and a half more or less. Mary looked at him, oddly, as if trying to remember something, as if there was something she wanted to ask. But she turned the page over without saying a word. This was how it was supposed to be. This was what he had planned. She would look at these things closely, ask him what that was, who this was, what they were doing in the picture and what they were doing now. And he would tell her. It was all he'd ever wanted, someone to tell these things to. My father was a builder. My mother was a nurse during the war. My father made this garden himself, when we moved to Coventry; look, he planted these, and these, and these. He died when he was fifty-one, exhaustion they said but we think now it may have been asbestos. This is my Auntie Julia. A friend of my mother's. She was a nurse as well. She wasn't my real aunt but I was very close to her. When I started working at the museum she came up especially to see me and made me give her a guided tour. This is when I met Eleanor. She was working at the tea rooms at a museum I visited for work, up in Aberdeen. She wrote her address on this napkin look. I know, it's funny, isn't it, the way these things happen? This is our wedding certificate. This is Kate again, this is her graduation photo — Eleanor was furious with her for not smiling.

Once, just once, she turned away from him, fumbling into the sleeve of her cardigan for a screwed-up tissue and holding it tightly against her face, covering her nose and the corners of her eyes, nodding her head soundlessly. He turned to the window, standing very close to the glass so that the warm light shone against his wet face, listening to Sarah saying oh Mummy, hey now, wishing it could be him folding his arms around her and holding her comfortingly against his chest. Just once, and it only took her a minute or two before she turned back to him, saying oh well will you look at me now, you mustn't take any notice, wiping the tissue around the edges of her eyes and tucking it back inside her sleeve. Where were we then? she asked, smiling.

When he talked to Eleanor about it later, he said I don't know though El, it's strange, I think she knew even then, don't you? I think she knew as soon as she opened the door. But she was still so interested, she asked me all those questions, and then she cried like that, did you see? I can't really work it out, he said, and Eleanor sighed impatiently and said David, it's a bit obvious, don't you think?

She'd looked through almost everything in the albums when he noticed her hesitating, looking as though she wanted to turn away, to sit down and bring the scene to a close. He reached past her and picked up the hospital admissions card. And there's this, he said. She nodded, looking at it, and he could see that she'd been looking at it all along. I found this when we were clearing out Julia's house after she died, he said. I don't know why she had it. She must have taken it just in case, in case my mother ever needed to know, or in case she thought I might want to know. My mother said she had no idea Julia had taken it, he said.

Is that so, Mary murmured, looking closely. Mary Friel, she said softly, as if trying to remember writing those words, as if she wasn't sure that it had ever been her name at all. He didn't say anything. Sarah moved closer to them, looking over her mother's shoulder.

She told me they panicked when you didn't come back, he said, and maybe Julia took this in case there was some trouble about it. She told me they tried to find you but there wasn't enough information here. She looked, and nodded.

Well now, she said, taking the card from David's hands and laying it down on the table without quite letting go. I suppose it's my turn now. Would you get me those albums from the bureau in my room? she said, over her shoulder, and Sarah turned towards the door, gesturing with her head for Eleanor to go with her. They listened to the two of them walking down the hall and away into another room.

Mary turned to him, and put her hand on his, and he realised immediately that he knew what she was going to tell him, and that there was nothing he could do to stop her saying it aloud.

What you should understand, she said very quietly, letting go of the card and stepping back slightly, is that most girls would have given false names to the nurses, you know? For fear of someone being told.

She didn't look at him as she spoke, and at first he wasn't quite sure what she'd said.

Absolutely, she said, they'd have given false names. That's what I did, she said.

I can't find them here, Sarah called through from her mother's bedroom, and Mary left the room to go and help her.

So when they sat down on the long plump sofa opposite the gas fire, Mary adjusting the cushions behind her and opening the first of the albums out across their laps, they knew, they both knew what was happening. But neither of them said anything about it. Sarah, standing back again, watching from the kitchen doorway, didn't know, and so perhaps it was for her that they kept quiet. Eleanor, sitting at the table in the window again, didn't know, although she immediately saw some small change in David's manner, and in his voice, and so perhaps it was also for her that they kept quiet. Or perhaps it was because they weren't quite sure and they both preferred, for the moment, not to know.

Well then, Mary began. I suppose my story's longer than yours, on account of my being around a lot longer, so it's a good job we're sitting down. He smiled, and leant a little closer towards her, a little closer to the pictures in the album.

So, she said. This is the first photo of us. This is us at my sister Cathy's wedding, all of us except Jack, who was away. I'm fifteen, that's me there, see? This would have been just before I went over to England for the first time, she said. Just before we went to the hiring fair in Deny.

He listened to the words, to the soft drifting sound of her voice, and he looked at the pictures. He found his hand moving towards each photograph the way Mary's had done at the table, as though his fingers might feel something more than he could find with his eyes, some extra detail, some texture or colour or life. But there was only the glossy press of the cellophane laid over each page, the slight ridge of each photograph's edge.

She talked on, explaining each picture, talking around it, telling the story of growing up in such a large family, of having to follow her brothers in travelling for work, of what had happened in London, of coming home to raise a family of her own. She sent Sarah back to her room to look out the biscuit tin from under her bed, with her rainy-day money in; will you look now, she said, that's the same tin I had back then. The words came easily, the story tumbling out with the pictures the way that she'd always imagined it would, sitting in a room with the fixed and silent attention of a man like this, her long-rehearsed words filling the room. She talked on, and he listened, and he asked questions, and she answered, and she was still talking by the time Sarah had turned on the side lights, and cleared the table, and twice offered them another pot of tea.

And when she had finished they both sat together for a time, not speaking, their hands touching lightly against each other, both knowing what needed to be said now but neither of them wanting to be the one to begin.

62 Bill for room and board, Conway's of Letterkenny, June 2000

As they were leaving, Mary produced a package of photographs, reprints of the ones she'd shown him in the album. It was neatly tied with string, and wrapped in a plastic bag to keep it out of the rain. I'd still like you to have these though, she said, all the same. If you'd like them. David took the package, and nodded, and tried to say yes, thank you, I would. Eleanor moved away to the car, and Sarah backed away into the house, as if they thought they should make way for one last private moment; but as the two of them stood there they could do little more than smile.

I'm sorry, said David.

Oh, not a bit, said Mary. It's you that's come all this way now. He shrugged. I should be apologising to you. I think Sarah got a bit carried away with herself there, I think maybe she found what she wanted to find, you know? I think she didn't stop to be sure. She only said you were coming a few days ago, I haven't had a chance to. . she said, her voice fading, her hands reaching for what she was trying to say. It would have been nice though, wouldn't it? she said. Before it was too late. She stopped, and closed her eyes, and he thought about calling Sarah back outside. But it's okay, she said, finally. I don't mind. And I don't think you'll mind, will you?

No, he said. No, I won't.

It's better than nothing though, isn't it? she said, almost smiling, and he could only nod in reply.

They didn't drive straight to the hotel. It was earlier than they'd expected, and Eleanor said they should have a look at the scenery while there was still some light. They drove north out of Letterkenny, following a road he half remembered from his previous visit, heading up towards the Fanad peninsula. They didn't speak much. Neither of them seemed certain what to say.

Are you glad you came, at least? Eleanor asked eventually, and he took so long to answer that she thought he hadn't heard her. They drove into a small market town, coming to a river at the bottom of a steep hill, and as they crossed an old stone bridge he glanced at her and said yes, yes I am.

Well, she said. That's the main thing. They followed the road out of the town, through another small village, and out to the shore of a long narrow bay, pulling off the road on to a gravelled car park by a slipway. He turned the engine off, and they watched a pair of men working on a fish farm in the middle of the bay.

I was expecting more people though, he said. Not that it matters now. She shifted in her seat, turning her body towards him, waiting for him to say more. He opened the car door. I thought there'd be a whole crowd of them there, he said, waiting to meet me. I didn't think it would just be the two of them like that. I think I thought it would be more of a get-together, he said, swinging his legs out and resting his feet on the gravel.

Maybe that would have come later, she said softly. He looked at her, and she saw for the first time the disappointment he was feeling, etched across his face, darkening in his eyes.

Maybe, he said.

He got out of the car and wandered over to the water. She reached for the door handle on her side, but stopped, letting her hand fall as she watched him kicking small stones from the concrete slipway into the sea. She thought he might pick one up and skim it across the water, remembering when she'd first taught him how, a young woman showing her landlocked boyfriend the way to search out a flat stone and curl his finger around its corner, to bend his knees as he flicked it across the waves. She remembered his boyish delight when he'd finally made one bounce, and she wondered whether she'd ever really imagined, then, still being with him now, still being able to see that fizzing, sparking, skinny young man in the ageing figure he'd become, with his greying hair, his loosening skin, his tired and heavy heart. She couldn't remember being able to think that far ahead.

He didn't skim any stones. He kept his hands in his pockets, and his eyes down, and the waterproofed men on the fish-farm rafts finished up their work, and a pair of diggers on the other side of the bay fell quiet and after a few minutes he got back into the car.

It's getting dark, he said. Shall we go back to the hotel?

She waited until he'd run a bath and settled into it before asking him anything else. She put the lid down on the toilet and sat there, watching him smooth soap lather up each of his arms and across his chest, watching him slide down into the water to rinse it off.

She said, David, were you surprised though? The way it turned out? He looked at her, sitting up a little straighter. He splashed water over his face, and wiped it away with his hands. She said, tentatively, I mean, could you not have asked a few more questions before we came over? Didn't the dates seem wrong from the start?

I don't know, he said. It seemed to just about fit. I think it was Sarah who got the dates muddled. You know she was doing all this without telling her mother? he said, turning to Eleanor. Eleanor's eyes widened and she shook her head.

No, she said. Oh no, really? David nodded, and shrugged, and sat forward to wash his feet.

Maybe I knew all along, he said. Maybe Mary did too. Maybe we were both just kidding ourselves, really. She leant towards him, her face in her hands and her elbows on her knees, waiting for him to go on. He looked at her, almost apologetically. I wanted it to be her, he said. I so much wanted it to be her. And I assumed Sarah was talking to her mother about it, checking things. I just didn't know. I thought it was worth taking the chance. He sat up straighter, sluicing handfuls of water across his body. I had all this stuff, he said, waving his hands as if to conjure the photos and scrapbooks out of thin air. I just wanted to hear what she would say, he said. He slipped back down into the water, closing his eyes and laying his hands across his face, and she stood up to leave.

But there was so much more I would have told her Eleanor, he said, his voice muffled by his hands. There was so much I wanted to be able to say. She looked at him.

I know, she said. He lowered his hands, and looked at her.

I know, she said again.

She closed the bathroom door and left him to it, turning on the television news, looking at the supper menu and the tourist leaflets in the folder by the bed, wondering what he thought he was going to do now. Later, she heard the water draining from the bath, and the rattle of it being refilled, and she looked up to see him coming out, avoiding her eyes, sitting on the edge of the bed with water trickling down his hunched back. She said nothing, but undressed quickly and quietly, slipping into the bathroom and closing the door behind her. She expected to find him asleep when she came back out, or watching television, or sitting blankly by the window, or even to have gone out walking and left her a note. So she was surprised, when she opened the bathroom door, to find him waiting for her, with his towel wrapped around his waist and a look in his eyes that she recognised at once.

Really? she said, arching an eyebrow and taking a towel to dry her hair, nodding over at the supper menu: aren't you hungry?

Really, he said, moving towards her, placing his shaking hands against her warm damp skin.

It was always almost the same. The unbuttoning of the back of the skirt. Half a smile at the corner of the mouth. Her hand, sooner or later, on the back of his head. Sometimes the smile would come first, sometimes the unbuttoning, and sometimes, catching him by surprise, the hand pressing lightly on the back of his head, making him kneel.

They would almost always be in the bedroom, and almost always on the bed, the curtains closed or half open, the window hauled up or bolted down, the lights on or off or lowered. Sometimes the rain would hurtle across the roof and against the window while he pulled her shirt or her sweater up over her head, pressing his mouth against her neck and her shoulder and her collarbone, kissing her throat until her familiar faint sighs brushed against the top of his head. Sometimes the evening's light seemed to last for hours, the warmth throbbing up from the hot dry streets and in through the open window while they lay naked together on the bed. Sometimes the sky would be flat and still and grey.

There would be the feel of her thighs beneath the stretched fingers of his hands, hot and red from the bath, still smelling of soap and towel, or cold from a long day outside. The skin gradually less smooth than it had once been, less soft, her waist a little fuller, her legs a little heavier, and what Kate had once called her creases becoming ever more pronounced beneath the touch of his own ageing hands.

Sometimes it would be snowing, and the room would be filled with a wavering white light, shadows and refractions falling across the walls.

She would step backwards, and sink on to the bed, and lie back with her legs trailing to the floor, both of her hands pushing against the back of his head, and he would follow her with his mouth.

Sometimes, when they were older, his knees would make a cracking sound as he lowered himself to the floor. I think I'm getting too old for this, he would say, and she would shush him as she worked her fingers into his hair. Sometimes his jaw would click, loudly, and they would both have to stop and laugh for a moment.

It would be in the morning, when neither of them were in a hurry to go out, or it would be in the afternoon when they both got home, or it would be last thing at night. It would almost always be the last thing at night.

She would shift on the edge of the bed, and make the sounds he liked to hear, and almost always reach that moment, the jerking forward of her head, the sudden lift of her legs around his ears, the look of someone bolting awake from a dream before settling gently down with a long slow sigh.

He would trail his fingers across her waist, her belly, her breasts. He would pinch her skin. He would stand up — and sometimes it would take him longer to stand than it might once have done, pushing himself up from the floor with a hand on the edge of the mattress, rubbing his knees — and he would look down at her, stretched out, lying across their bed in the bedroom they had shared for so long.

There were times when they went without these things for weeks at a time, months, a year. There were times when they undressed in the evenings with their backs to each other, or in another room, climbing into two halves of a silent bed and staring at opposite walls of the room in the near-darkness. There were times when they slept in different rooms, and woke a little colder than usual, blinking, trying to remember what was wrong.

Sometimes he would bring her a cup of tea in the morning and put it by the side of the bed and open the curtains a little. He would watch her, as fragile-looking in sleep still as she had always been, her eyelashes flickering, her clenched hands drawn comfortingly up against her face, and want nothing more than to climb into bed beside her, to curl up into her warmth. He would wake her, a hand resting on her shoulder and his voice low and steady, and tell her that he wanted her to take the pills before he went to work.

Sometimes she would bring him a cup of tea in the morning, and he would already be awake. Sitting up against the wall in the corner of Kate's old bed, reading, or watching the grey light brighten through the open curtains. Unable to sleep because he'd already slept through most of the previous day. Without his work, he told her once, the work he'd spent his whole life either doing or preparing for, he'd been lost for what to do with his time. I feel so tired all the time now, he would tell her, his voice flat and low. I feel uncomfortable, like I need a bath or like I need clean clothes. I feel like I'm letting you down and I can't do anything about it, he would say, his head lowered, his voice drained. I know, she would tell him, touching his hand. Really. I know.

The doctor told me I should find a new hobby, he said to her once, coming back from an appointment. They caught each other's eye in sudden recognition, and laughed for the first time in weeks.

She would almost always open her eyes after a few moments, propping herself up on her elbows and looking at him expectantly, or sitting forward and drawing him towards her, kissing and stroking and taking him into her mouth until he was ready to join with her on the bed. Sometimes it took him longer to be ready than it once had. It seemed to be one of the things that happened, with the cracking knees, the thinning hair, the fatter waist; a slower response of the body to the prompting of the excited mind, or the mind simply slipping for a moment to something else altogether; to whose car alarm that was going off outside, to how Kate was getting on at school, to whether tomorrow was the day for putting out the bins.

Sometimes the phone would ring, and they would ignore it, letting its shrill little grab for attention go unanswered while they moved closer together in the familiar way. Sometimes the phone would ring and one or other of them would say sorry, hold on, but it might be, I was expecting, and leave the other one waiting, impatiently or patiently or finding their place in the book they were halfway through.

They tried to use the lounge again after Kate left home, when they had the house to themselves once more. They tried — after a slow stunned month of feeling lost in their own home, of not knowing quite what shape their days should take now that they didn't have a daughter to feed or provide for or watch growing up — to undress each other on the rug in front of the new sofa, and to kiss, and to relearn what it meant to be just the two of them in their world. But they would hear voices somewhere, footsteps, and turn to the door suddenly, or check for the third time that the curtains really were closed, or be distracted by the draught coming under the kitchen door, and they would almost always move back up the stairs to their bed.

Sometimes he would shape a hand around her breast, and hold it there, still, feeling its weight as they moved.

Sometimes he would reach behind her and trace his fingers up and down her spine until she shivered.

His sister's children had left home two years before Kate did, rushing off to university in London and in Leeds, and she'd warned them what it would be like. You spend so long fitting your life around theirs, she said, you forget what you used to do before they were born. You look forward to having all that time to yourself, and then you want to phone them every night to see how they're getting on. She came to visit them a lot after she and John were divorced, staying with Dorothy or, later, in Kate's old room. He was a very good man, she said to them once after a bottle of wine, a very good father, but I was just so bored. We had nothing to say to each other, she said.

They waited a moment, settling together on the bed, and she tilted his head up with one finger so that she could kiss his throat. He shifted her arm so that it stretched out across the pillow, and held it there with his fingers curled into her hand, and they began to move. The bed was smaller than theirs, and softer, and for a moment it felt strange. But the bath had woken them up a little, and they were both full of nervous energy from the way the afternoon had unfolded, and it felt good to be doing this thing that was almost but never quite the same. It was the first time they'd been away for the night together since before Kate had been born, and there was an excitement to being in an unfamiliar bed, and a comfort to being in each other's familiar arms. She reached around to the back of his legs, tracing a line from his thighs to the back of his neck.

Their bags were on the chest of drawers by the door, the envelope of reprinted photos Mary had given them as they left spread out to one side. His trousers, shirt and jumper were folded across the back of the dressing-table chair. Her skirt was heaped halfway between the bed and the en suite bathroom. The fan in the bathroom was still whirring, shakily. They could hear the voices of the kitchen staff echoing up from the courtyard below.

He shifted his weight a little, and slid one hand beneath the small of her back. She kissed him, hard, pulling his mouth down to hers with both hands on the back of his head. He caught his breath and hesitated. She tipped back her head, pushing her shoulders into the bed and lifting her back into a shallow arch. He kissed her throat, her cheeks, her eyes, her ears, quickly, holding her face between his hands. She lifted her legs a little higher, the rough soles of her feet scratching against the backs of his knees.

He dipped his head, awkwardly, and kissed each of her breasts. They heard the fan in the bathroom stop, and were suddenly more aware of each other's sounds: their breathing, their small concentrated gasps, the soft percussion of lips against skin. She circled her fingers across his back, scratching a sharp line from his shoulder to his waist, until suddenly, as always, there it was. She watched him, holding his face in her hands, catching her breath even as he was gasping for his. And the look in his eyes, as it almost always was, was a look of wonder and surprise, as if even after all that time it was something he hadn't quite been expecting, something he didn't quite believe he deserved.

He lay back on to the bed and pulled the covers up across them both. The light was fading outside, the noise from the bar getting louder as more people arrived for the night. She spread her fingers out across his chest as his breathing slowed and tugged gently on his ear, leaning towards him to whisper, hey, don't fall asleep. He turned his head on the pillow to look at her. She smiled.

What do you want to do now? she asked. He smiled and closed his eyes for a moment more. David? she said, nudging him again. He opened his eyes and looked at her.

I want to go home, he said.