The Legacy

Chapter 6

Meredith’s laughter was the rarest of things. Even at the summer ball, or at the dinner parties she sometimes hosted-where children were not allowed and we would creep from our beds to eavesdrop-I hardly ever heard it. She would just smile, and sometimes make a single, satisfied sound in the back of her throat when something pleased her. Like most little girls, laughter came as easily to me as breathing. I remember thinking it must be something that got used up as you got older, as if laughter was like a mass of colored ribbons, bundled up inside you, and once it had all spooled out, that was it.

But I did hear it once, and I was stunned. Not just by the sound-high and loud, with a rusty edge like an old hinge-but by what had caused it. An overcast day, not long before Henry disappeared, with a quiet breeze blowing. We were in Mickey and Mo’s motor home, listening to the radio and playing rummy with Dinny, who had a slight temperature and had been told to stay indoors, much to his disgust. I tried to tempt him out, up into the tree house to play there instead, but he did what Mo told him. He was more obedient than Beth and I. The camp was quiet, most of the adults out working. Outside, sheets were drying on a line strung between the vehicles. They drifted in and out of view through the window, moving with a regular swell and fall. I could see them, in the corner of my eye, as I shifted my thighs against the vinyl bench and silently urged Beth to discard a four or a Jack. So I saw it first-the change in the view from the window. The sudden oddness of the sheets, the color, the way the sky above them thickened.

The sheets were on fire. I gaped at them, stunned by this unexpected thing. Pale yellow and blue flames tore across them in odd patterns, scribbling lines of charred black, pouring smoke up in clouds, reducing the fabric to dark shreds that tore away like cobwebs. There was a shout from outside and Dinny got up, leaned past me to look out of the window.

“Look!” I gasped uselessly.

“Erica! Why didn’t you say!” Beth admonished me as Dinny ran out and we followed. Outside, two women who had been laid up with the same bug as Dinny were yanking the sheets from the line, stamping at them frantically. The plastic-coated line itself had melted and fallen into pieces, scattering the burning remains of the sheets on the ground, which was perhaps for the best. On the side of the motor home, an ugly, brownish smear showed how close the flames had got.

“How the bloody hell did that happen?” one of the women swore, catching her breath as the last flames went out. Hands on hips, surveying the smouldering remnants.

“If we hadn’t been here… Mo only hung those just before she went off-they can’t even have been all the way dry yet!” the other exclaimed, fixing us kids with a serious eye.

“We were inside playing cards! Swear to God!” Dinny said emphatically. Beth and I nodded in frantic support. The smoke got into my nose, made me sneeze. The first woman crouched, picked up a shred of fabric with her fingertips, sniffed at it.

“Paraffin,” she said grimly.

Beth and I left then, running as soon as we were out of sight. We skirted the stables, looked in the coach house, found Henry in the woodshed. He had a flat plastic bottle of something, with a squeezy red nozzle on it. I thought of the patterns the flames had made, almost as though they’d been following lines. He put the bottle back on a high shelf, turned to face us, smiling.

“What?” He shrugged.

“You could have set the vans on fire. You could have killed somebody,” Beth said quietly, watching him with such a grave and serious look that I was even more upset, even more afraid.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Henry said loftily. The stink of paraffin clung to him, was on his hands.

“It was you!” I declared.

“Prove it.” He shrugged again, smiling now.

“I’m telling. You could have killed somebody,” Beth repeated, and now Henry stopped smiling.

“You’re not supposed to go to the camp. You won’t tell,” he sneered. Beth turned on her heel, stalked away toward the house. I followed, and so did Henry, and soon it became a race, and we thundered into the hall, shouting for Meredith, out of breath.

We thought that it was too serious not to tell. We thought that, even though Henry was her favorite, she would have to reprimand him for this. Making dogs sick was one thing, but Beth was right. The fire could have killed somebody. Even for Henry, it was too much.

“Henry set fire to the Dinsdales’ washing!” Beth got her words out first, gasping them as Meredith looked up from the letter she was writing, sitting at the davenport in the drawing room.

“What is all this racket?” Meredith asked.

“We were at the camp, and I know we’re not supposed to go, but we were only playing cards, and Henry set fire to the sheets that were hanging out on the line! He did it with paraffin from the shed! And the motor home nearly caught on fire, and somebody might have been killed!” Beth said, all at once but enunciating clearly.

Meredith took off her glasses, folded them calmly. “Is this true?” she asked Henry.

“No! I haven’t been near their filthy campsite,” he said.

“Liar!” I shouted.

“Erica!” Meredith silenced me, the word like a whip crack.

“So how did this fire start, if indeed there has been a fire?”

“Of course there’s been a fire! Why would I say-” Beth protested.

“Well, Elizabeth, you also said you weren’t going to associate with the tinkers, as I have repeatedly requested, so how am I to know when you are lying and when you are not?” Meredith asked, evenly. Beth clamped her lips together, her eyes fierce. “Well, Henry? Do you know how the fire might have started?”

“No! Except-well… these two seem to get on with the gyppos like a house on fire. Perhaps that’s what did it,” he said, looking up at her carefully, almost smiling, gauging her reaction. Meredith studied him for a moment, and then she laughed. That rare, loud sound that startled us all, even Henry. Two bright spots of pleasure bloomed in his cheeks.

In spite of the fact that Caroline never, apparently, went to visit her in Surrey, in spite of her no-show at Charles’ funeral, Meredith did come back to live here with her. Perhaps life got too hard, with no husband and two children. Perhaps Caroline needed looking after, and Meredith loved her in spite of everything. And she was to be the next Lady Calcott, after all; perhaps she thought it was her duty to return to the family seat. I’ll never know, of course, because the letters stop upon her return. I think of the care and attention she showed Caroline when she was ancient-feeding her, dressing her, reading to her. What if she did all that and still got no love back for her pains? What if she’d hoped for some deathbed confession that never came-that her mother had always loved her, that she had been a good daughter? What if she’d had dreams of marrying again, of starting over? Perhaps she expected Caroline to die soon after she returned, and had ideas about bringing the house back to life, of tempting a new husband with it, of having more children to fill it? But like the queen, Caroline lived on and on; and the heir grew old, waiting to ascend. I think it must have been something like that-some crushed hopes, some vast disappointment. To make Meredith turn out the way she did. To make her treat our mother so harshly, when our mother refused to make the same sacrifices.

These are my thoughts on Monday morning, as I dress in warm cords and slide the teething ring into my pocket. The bell makes a cheerful little giggling sound. I go to the study, look in the desk drawers for a pen and a pad of paper and stuff them into my bag. Outside is another of those crystal-clear days, painfully bright. I try to feel the optimism I felt the last time the sky was this blue, and we went to Avebury, and Eddie was here to make us glad. I leave Beth on the phone to Maxwell, bargaining for the return of her son. She sits by the kitchen window in a shaft of incandescent light that blanches out her expression.

The sun is low in the sky, inescapable. It stabs at me through the windscreen, lances up from the wet road so that I must drive through a blinding wall of light. I turn gingerly out of the village onto the main road and see a familiar figure walking along the frosty white verge. Light clothes, as ever; hands thrust into his pockets the only concession to the biting cold. Something leaps up inside me. I pull over, wind down the window and call to him. Dinny shades his face with one hand, hiding his eyes, leaving only his jaw visible-that flat line of his mouth that can look so serious.

“Where are you headed?” I ask. The cold stabs at my chest, makes my eyes water.

“To the bus stop,” Dinny replies.

“Well, I gathered that. Where then? I’m going into Devizes-do you want a lift?” Dinny walks over to the car, drops his hand from his face. With the sun this strong, I can see that his eyes are brown, not black. The warm color of conkers; touches of tortoiseshell in his hair.

“Thanks. That’d be great,” he nods.

“Shopping?” I ask, as I pull away from the verge, the engine sluggish with frost.

“I thought I’d get something for the baby. And I need a few supplies. What about you?”

“I’m going to the library-they’ll have internet access there, won’t they?”

“I don’t know-never been in, myself,” he admits, a touch sheepishly.

“For shame,” I tease.

“There’s more than enough drama in the newspapers, without reading made-up dramas as well,” he smiles. “Checking your email?”

“Well, yes, but I’m also going to look something up in the births, marriages and deaths index. I’ve been tracking down a Calcott family secret.”

“Oh?”

“I found a picture of my great-grandma, Caroline-do you remember her?”

“Not really. I think I saw her from afar a couple of times.”

“She was American. She came over to marry Lord Calcott late in 1904, but I’ve found this picture of her in 1904, in America, with a baby.” I fumble blindly in my bag and pass it to him. “Nobody seems to know what happened to that baby-there’s no record of her marrying before, but I’ve also found a letter that suggests otherwise.”

“Well, the baby probably died there, before she came over.” He shrugs slightly.

“Probably,” I concede. “But I just want to check-just in case he’s mentioned in the records. If he is… if I can prove that Caroline lost a child-another child, since we know she lost a daughter here in Barrow Storton-it might help explain why she was the way she was.”

Dinny says nothing to this. He studies the photo, frowning slightly.

“Perhaps,” he murmurs, after a while.

“I’ve been trying to find out, you see, why the Calcotts-the earlier Calcotts-had such a bee in their bonnets about you Dinsdales. Caroline and Meredith, I mean. I’ve been trying to find out why they behaved the way they did toward your family,” I say, suddenly keen to have his support in this quest.

“A bee in their bonnets?” he echoes quietly. “That’s a gentle euphemism.”

“I know,” I say apologetically. I change the subject. “So, how’s Honey doing?” We chat about his sister for a while, until I try to park in Devizes and am met by swarms of people, row upon row of parked cars.

“What on earth is all this?” I exclaim.

“Sale mania,” Dinny sighs. “Try Sheep Street.”

Eventually, I creep the car into a space, bumping the one next to me when I open the door. Skeins of exhaust twist up into the sky and the town hums with voices, the ring of purposeful footsteps. It all seems too loud, and I feel as though the quiet at Storton Manor has snuck into me, somehow. It’s performed a stealth coup; and now I notice its absence like something vital gone.

“Do you want a lift back as well?” I offer.

“How long will you be?”

“I’m not sure. An hour and a half? Maybe a bit longer?”

“OK-thanks. I’ll meet you back here?”

“How about in that café on the High Street-the one with the blue awning? It’ll be warmer if one of us has to wait,” I suggest. Dinny nods, twists his hand in salute and strides away between the packed cars.

The library is on Sheep Street, so I don’t have far to walk. The fan above the doors pours out a stifling wave of warmth and I stop the second I am through, struggle out of my coat and scarf in the cloying heat. It’s almost empty inside, with a few people perusing the shelves and a severe-looking woman at the desk who is busy with something and does not look up at me. Seated at a computer, I search for deaths in 1903, 1904 and 1905, to cast a wide net, and the names Calcott and Fitzpatrick, in London and in Wiltshire. I skim these results for the deaths of children under the age of two. My pad of paper remains blank on the desk beside me. After an hour, I scrawl on it: He’s not here.

I stare at the last list of names on the screen, until my eyes slide through the pixels, focus on a point in the middle distance. The baby probably died in America. That, and whatever happened to make Caroline leave the man who signed himself C, might even be what made her come over to England in the first place, and could certainly have contributed to her distance, her frigidity. So why can’t I let it go at that? What is it that is pulling at a far corner of my mind, begging me to grasp it? Something else-another thing-that I know and have forgotten. I wonder how many of these things are lurking in my head, waiting for me to chase them out. I pull the teething ring from my pocket, run my fingers around the smooth, immaculate ivory. Inside the bell, on the rim, is the hallmark. A tiny lion cartouche, an anchor, a gothic letter G, and something I struggle to make out. I turn it to the light, hold it close to my face. A flame? A tree-a skinny tree like a cypress? A hammer? The light bounces from it. It’s a hammer head. Vertical, as if viewed from the side when striking something.

I turn back to the computer, search for American silver marks G. Several online encyclopedias and silver-collecting guides appear. Searching entries under the letter G, it takes no time at all to find the stamp on the bell. Gorham. Founded in Rhode Island in 1831. An influential silver maker-made various tea sets for the White House, and the Davis Cup for tennis, but their primary trade was in teaspoons, thimbles and other small gift items. I find the vertical hammer head in the list of Gorham’s date marks-1902. This then I have managed to prove-whoever the baby in the photo is, and whoever his father was, and whatever became of him, this silver and ivory teething ring belonged to him. He was the fine son it was offered to. Not Clifford, not any other child Caroline lost once she had come over to England. I close my hand around it, feel my skin warm the metal; the stifled movement of the clapper inside, like a tiny, tremulous heartbeat.

It is slow work, making my way to the High Street, through knots of purposeful browsers. Shop windows ablaze with lurid banners promising unmissable bargains, ludicrous discounts; music and heat blaring out; people with four, five, six fat carrier bags, sprouting from the ends of their arms. I am barrelled this way and that and the café, when I reach it, is full to the brim. I feel a wash of irritation, until I see Dinny already at one of the small tables in the steamed-up window. The reek of coffee grounds is strong and delicious in here. I edge my way through the crowded tables.

“Hi-sorry, have you been waiting long?” I smile, draping my coat over the empty seat opposite him.

“No, not long. I got lucky with this table-a couple of old dears were just getting up as I came in.”

“Do you want another coffee? Something to eat?”

“Thanks. Another coffee would be good.” He clasps his hands on the sticky table top and looks so odd suddenly that I stare, can’t work out what I am seeing. Then I realize-this is one of only a scant handful of times I have seen Dinny indoors. Actually sitting at a table, in no hurry to be outside again, doing something as mundane as having coffee in a café. “What’s up?” he asks me.

“Nothing,” I shake my head. “I’ll be right back.”

I buy two big mugs of creamy coffee, and an almond croissant for me.

“Didn’t you have breakfast today?” Dinny asks, as I sit.

“Yes, I did,” I shrug, tearing off a corner, dunking it. “But it is Christmas,” I add, and Dinny smiles, tips one eyebrow in concession. The sunlight through the window gives him a bright halo; he is almost too dazzling to look at.

“Did you find what you were looking for?”

“Yes and no. There’s no record of the baby dying this side of the Atlantic, so I suppose he must have died on the other side of it, like you suggested.”

“Or…” Dinny shrugs.

“Or what?”

“Or, the baby didn’t die at all.”

“So where is he?”

“I don’t know-it’s your project. I’m just pointing out one reason why there might be no record of his death.”

“True. But on her marriage certificate, it says spinster. It couldn’t have said that if she’d come over with another man’s baby,” I counter. Dinny shrugs again. I pass him the teething ring. “I checked the mark on this, though. It’s a-”

“Teething ring?” Dinny says.

“Which apparently everybody knows but me.” I roll my eyes. “It’s an American mark-and it was made in 1902.”

“But didn’t you already know the baby was born in America? What does that prove?”

“Well, if nothing else, I think it proves that Caroline was his mother. When I showed Mum the photograph she suggested Caroline could have been its godmother, or it could have been a friend’s baby, or something. But for her to have kept his teething ring this whole time-she has to have been his mother, don’t you think?”

“I suppose so, yes.” Dinny nods, hands me back the ivory ring.

I gulp the hot coffee, feel it bring blood into my cheeks. Dinny casts his eyes back out to the thronging street, seems deep in thought.

“So, how does it feel to be the ladies of the manor? Are you starting to get used to it yet?” he asks suddenly, still looking out of the window, away from me.

“Hardly. I don’t think we’ll ever feel that the place is ours. Not really. And as for staying on to live… well. Aside from anything else, the upkeep costs alone would stop us.”

“What about all the Calcott riches village rumor has it you’ve inherited?”

“Just rumor, I’m afraid. The family wealth has been in decline since the war-and I mean the first war. Meredith was always complaining to my parents that they didn’t help enough-with the upkeep of the place. That’s why she had to sell off so much of the land, the best paintings, the silver… the list goes on. There was some money left, when she died, but it’ll be spent once the death duties are paid.”

“What about the title?”

“Well, that’s gone to Clifford, Henry’s father.” As I say his name I raise my eyes, lock with Dinny’s for a fleeting moment. “My great-grandfather, who was also a Henry, changed the letters patent by act of parliament, because he had no sons. He fixed it so that the barony could pass to Meredith, and then revert to male offspring. Her heirs-male of the body, or whatever they call it.”

“So that’s why Meredith stayed Calcott, even though she married? And why your mother is a Calcott too? But how come you and Beth are Calcotts, then?”

“Because Meredith bullied my parents into it. Poor Dad-didn’t stand a chance. She said the Calcott name was too important to cast off. Apparently, Allen just doesn’t have the same clout.”

“Odd, that she left the house to you girls if the title was going to your uncle, and she was so keen to keep the family line going and all the rest of it,” he muses, swirling his coffee around the bottom of the mug.

“Meredith was odd. She had no say in where the title went, but she could do what she liked with the house. Perhaps she thought we represented the best chance of keeping the family going.”

“So, after Clifford, it will be…?”

“Extinct. No more title. Theoretically, Clifford could go to court again, and have it pass to Eddie, but there’s no way in the world Beth would allow it.”

“No?”

“She wants nothing more to do with it. Or the house, really. Which kind of makes my decision for me, too-we would both have to live here if we wanted to keep it.” Dinny is silent for a while. I can feel the shape of Beth’s reluctance, the reason for it, trying to coalesce in the air between us.

“Not really surprising,” Dinny murmurs at last.

“Isn’t it?” I ask, leaning forward. But Dinny shrugs, leans back from the table.

“Why are you here, then? If you know you aren’t going to stay?”

“I thought it would be good. Good for Beth. For both of us really. To come back for a while and…” I wave one hand, struggle for words. “Revisit. You know.”

“Why would it be good for her? It doesn’t seem to me like she even wants to think about it, let alone revisit it. Your childhood here, I mean.”

“Dinny…” I pause. “When you came up to the house to see her, what did you mean when you said there were things she needed to know? Things you wanted to tell her?”

“You really were eavesdropping, weren’t you?” he says, his tone ambiguous. I try to show contrition.

“What things, Dinny? Something about Henry?” I press, my heart thumping.

Dinny looks at me with lowered brows.

“I think I owe it to her… no, not owe. That’s the wrong word. I think she ought to know some things about when we were young. I don’t know what she thinks, but… some things might not have been what they seemed,” he says quietly.

“What things?” I lean forward, make him meet my eye. He hesitates, stays silent. “Beth keeps telling me you can’t turn back the clock, and we can’t go back to the way things were,” I flick my eyes up at him, “but I just want to tell you that… that you can trust me, Dinny.”

“Trust you to do what, Erica?” he asks, and his voice has an edge of sadness.

“To do whatever. I’m on your side. Whatever happens, or happened,” I say. I know I am not making myself clear. I don’t know how to. Dinny pinches the bridge of his nose, screws his eyes shut for a second. When he opens them again I am shocked to see tears there, not quite ready to fall.

“You don’t know what you’re saying,” he says quietly.

“What do you mean?”

Again he pauses, lost in thought.

“You all done in town, then?” he says, ready to leave.

When I check my phone, there are three missed calls from my flatmate, Annabel. The name seems to come from another time, another world entirely. I wonder absently if there is some problem with the rent, or the radiator in my room that keeps leaking, staining the carpet. But these questions seem so very distant, irrelevant. And then I realize: that is not my life any more. It was the life I was living, and at some point, without me even realizing it, I stopped living it. And I don’t have very long to work out where that leaves me. I go up to my room to read letters, to think. I listen to the quiet, which resounds after the bustle of town. The muted yelping of the rooks outside. No musical bird song to charm the ear, no church bells pealing, no children laughing. Just the deep quiet that so upset me at first. I let it sink back into me. How amazing, that this could ever feel like home.

On Tuesday I drive to West Hatch, squinting into the lazy sun. It’s not a big village. I drive around it twice until I see what I’m looking for. In front of a compact brick bungalow, a piece of sixties-built convention, there’s a battered old motor home taking up the whole of the driveway. It was new once, cream-colored with a wide coffee-brown stripe running along each side. Now it’s green with algae, bald of tire. But I know it at once. I have been inside it, sat on a padded, sticky plastic bench and gulped down savage homemade lemonade. I am almost choked up at the sight of it now. Mickey Mouse’s house. I picture Mo as she was, round and slightly wry, leaning on the door jamb drying her hands on a blue cloth as Dinny and Beth and I turned our backs to her. Mickey with his elaborate moustache, in overalls always streaked with engine oil, black grime in the creases of his hands.

At the door I find my nerves fluttering. Excited rather than scared. The bell makes a soft, electronic ping… pong. I never thought Mo would answer to such a bell, but answer she does. She looks smaller, older, slightly denuded, but I recognize her at once. More lines on her face, and her hair a solid, unlikely chestnut color, but the same shrewd eyes. She looks at me with a steady, measuring gaze and I’m glad I’m not trying to sell her anything.

“Yes?”

“Um, I’ve come to see Honey? And the baby. It’s Erica. Erica Calcott.” I smile slightly, watch her recognize the name and search my face for the features she knew.

“Erica! By Christ, I would never have known you! You look so different!”

“Twenty-three years might do that to a girl.” I smile.

“Well, come in, come in, we’re all in the front room.” She ushers me inside, gestures to a doorway on the left and suddenly I’m nervous about going in. I wonder who we all are.

“Thanks,” I say, hovering in the hall, hands clammy on the plastic flower wrapper.

“Go on in, go on,” she says, and I have no choice. “I hear you nearly met little Haydee already, on the way to the hospital!”

“Nearly!” I reply. I find myself the only one standing in a room full of seated people. It’s stiflingly hot. The view from the window wobbles slightly in the radiator haze and I feel my face flush crimson. I glance around, smile like an idiot. Dinny looks up sharply from one end of the sofa, and he smiles when he sees me.

Honey sits next to him, an empty carrycot at her feet and a bundle in her arms. There’s another young girl I don’t recognize, with shocking-pink hair and a crystal in her lip. Mo introduces her as Lydia, a friend of Honey’s, and an older man, thin and beady, is Mo’s partner Keith. There’s nowhere for me to sit so I dither awkwardly in the small room, and Honey struggles to sit up straighter.

“Oh, no-don’t get up!” I say, proffering the flowers and chocolates, then shunting them onto the table through a clutter of empty coffee mugs and a plate of rich tea biscuits.

“I wasn’t. I’m passing her to you,” Honey says, flicking her kohled eyelids and carefully maneuvering the baby toward me.

“Oh, no. No. You look comfortable.”

“Don’t be chicken-shit. Take her,” Honey insists, half smiling. “How did you find us?” she asks.

“I went down to the camp first-bumped into Patrick. He told me you were home.” I glance at Dinny, I can’t help it. He is watching me intently, but I can’t guess his expression. I drop my bag and take Haydee from her mother. A small pink face, still creased and angry, below a shock of dark hair finer than cobwebs. She doesn’t stir as I perch on the arm of the sofa, or as I kiss her forehead and smell the baby smell of brand-new skin and milky spit. I am suddenly curious to know how it would feel if this baby were mine. To be in on those secrets-the strength behind Beth’s gaze when she watches her son; the way he raises her up, makes her whole, just by being in the room. These little creatures that have such power over us. The beginnings of a need in me that I hadn’t known was there.

“She’s tiny,” I say, breathlessly, and Honey rolls her eyes.

“I know. All that heaving and all this flab for a five-pound midget!” she says, but she can’t hide how pleased she is, how proud. This initiation over, the atmosphere in the room seems to ease.

“She’s beautiful, Honey. Well done you! Is she a screamer?”

“No, not so far. She’s been pretty chilled out.” Honey leans toward me, can’t stay even arm’s length from the child for long. Up close I see the dark shadows under her eyes, skin so pale that blue veins show through it, winding across her temples. She looks tired, but thrilled.

“She’ll get the hang of the yelling, don’t you worry,” Mo says ruefully, and Honey flashes her a mildly rebellious look.

“I’ll put another brew on,” Keith says, levering himself from his chair and collecting empty mugs onto a tin tray. “You’ll take a cup, Erica?”

“Oh, yes please. Thanks.” I can feel eyes on me and I look to my right. Dinny watches me, still. Those dark eyes of his, black as a seal’s again now; unblinking. I hold his gaze for two heartbeats and then he looks away, stands up abruptly. I suddenly wonder if he minds me gatecrashing his family like this.

“I have to get going,” he says.

“What? Why?” Honey asks.

“Just… things to do.” He bends down, kisses his sister on the top of her head, then he hesitates, and turns to me. “We’re all heading to the pub tomorrow night, if you and Beth want to come?” he asks.

“Oh, thanks. Yes-I’ll ask Beth,” I say.

“Raise me a glass,” Honey grumbles. “New Year’s Eve and I’ll be at home and in bed by nine.”

“Oh, you’ll soon get used to missing out on all sorts of occasions, don’t you worry,” Mo tells her brightly, and Honey’s face falls in dismay.

“I’ll be back later. Bye, Mum,” Dinny smiles, briefly presses his hand to the side of Mo’s face and then stalks from the room.

“What have you done to him, then?” Honey asks me, and she smiles but she’s guarded.

“What do you mean?” I reply, startled.

“He jumped like a rabbit when you walked in,” she observes; but her attention is back on Haydee, and I pass the baby back to her.

Keith returns with a fresh tray of steaming mugs, and the lights on the Christmas tree in the corner wink on and off; slow, then fast, then slow again. Mo asks me about the house, about Meredith and Beth and Eddie.

“Nathan tells me young Eddie was out playing with our Harry, when he was here,” she says.

“Yes, they got on brilliantly. Eddie’s such a great kid. He never judges,” I say.

“Well, Beth was always such a good girl. It’s no wonder really,” Mo nods. She blows on her tea, her top lip creasing like Grandpa Flag’s did. It gives me a shock to notice this resemblance, this sign of how much time has passed. Mo, becoming an old woman.

“Yes. She’s… a wonderful mum,” I say.

“God! It makes me feel ancient, to see you all grown up, Erica; and Beth too… with her own child, no less!” Mo sighs.

“Well, you are a grandma now, after all.” I smile.

“Yes. Not something we were quite ready for, but I am a grandma now,” she says, giving Honey a wry glance.

“Oh come on, Mum. We’ve had this conversation about a hundred times already,” Honey says, exasperated. Mo waves a conciliatory hand at her, then passes it wearily over her eyes.

“God, haven’t we though?” she mutters; but then she smiles. We sit quietly for a moment, as Haydee murmurs in her sleep.

“Mo, I wanted to ask you about something-if you don’t mind?”

“Fire away,” she says, but she laces her fingers in her lap, as if bracing herself, and there is tension around her eyes.

“Well, I was wondering if you’d tell me again why Grandpa Flag was called Flag? I know someone told me before, when we were little-but I can’t remember it properly now…” At this she relaxes, unknots her hands.

“Oh! Well, that’s an easy enough one to tell. His proper name was Peter, of course, but the story goes, as it was told to me, that he was a foundling. Did you know that? Mickey’s grandparents found him in the woods one day, in a patch of marsh flags-those yellow flowers, you know them? It was something like that, anyway. He’d been ditched by some young lass who’d got herself in trouble, no doubt”-a mutinous scowl from Honey, at this-“so they picked him up and took him in to raise as their own, and called him Peter; but more often than not Mickey’s grandma just called him ‘her baby of the flags,’ or some such fancy, and the name just stuck.”

“I remember. In a patch of marsh flags…” I say, and everything else about the story I remember being told before, except this part. With a tingle of recognition, I realize that this detail is not exactly right. “Do you know when that was? What year?”

“Lord, no! Sorry. In the early years of the last century, it would have been; but I couldn’t say any surer than that. Poor little mite. Can you imagine, leaving a baby out like that? No knowing if anyone would find it or if it would just lie there and suffer to the end. Terrible thing to do.” Mo slurps her tea. “Mind you, in those days once you had a kid no one would touch you, I suppose. Not for work or for marrying or nothing else.” She shakes her head. “Rotten bastards.”

“Do you know where they found him? Where in the country, I mean?”

“Well, here, of course. In Barrow Storton. He was a local baby, whose ever he was.”

I take this in, and I almost tell them what I think, but I don’t. It seems suddenly too big, the incredible, disturbing, seasick idea that I have; and the way it chimes with something Dinny said to me in the café yesterday.

“Why do you ask?” Mo says.

“Oh, just curious. I’ve been looking into the history of the Calcotts, and what have you, since I’ve been back. Shuffling through what I remember, trying to fill in the gaps,” I shrug. Mo nods.

“It’s always the way. We wait until the people who could answer our questions are dead and gone, and only then do we realize we had questions to ask them,” she says, somewhat sadly.

“Oh, I’m not sure Meredith would have answered any questions of mine, anyway,” I say wryly. “I was never her favorite.”

“Well, if it’s the history of the house you’re after, you should go and talk to old George Hathaway, over at Corner Cottage,” Keith tells me, leaning his sinewy elbows on his bony knees.

“Oh? Who’s George Hathaway?” I ask.

“Just a pleasant old boy. He ran the garage on the Devizes road most of his life. Retired now, of course. But his mother was a maid at the big house, back in the day.”

“How far back?” I ask eagerly.

“Oh,” Keith flaps a gnarled red hand over his shoulder, “right back. You know, they used to go into service at an early age, back then. I think she was only a girl when she started there. Before the first world war, it would have been.” I breathe deeply, excitement tickling the palms of my hands. “You know which one Corner Cottage is? On the way out of the village, toward Pewsey, where the lane bends sharp to the left? It’s the little thatched place with the green gates just there.”

“Yes, I know it. Thank you.” I smile. I leave them shortly afterwards, as Honey starts to drowse on the sofa and Mo takes the baby from her, puts her down in the carrycot.

“Come again, won’t you? Bring Beth-it’d be nice to see you both,” Mo says, and I nod as the cold outside makes my nose ache.

I go straight to Corner Cottage, which sits by itself on the outskirts of Barrow Storton; walls that were once white now streaked and gray. The render is cracking in places, the thatch is dark and sagging. The gate is closed, but I let myself in, cross the weed-choked driveway. I knock three times, hard; the heavy knocker so cold it burns my fingers.

“Yes, my love?” An old man, short and spry, smiles at me, keeps the chain on the door.

“Um, hello. Sorry to bother you-are you George Hathaway?” I say, hurriedly marshalling my thoughts.

“That’s me, my love. Can I help you?”

“My name’s Erica Calcott, and I was wondering if-”

“Calcott, you say? From the manor house?” George interrupts.

“Yes, that’s right. I was just-”

“Just a tick!” The door shuts in my face, opens a second later without the chain. “Never in all my years did I expect a Calcott to arrive at my door. What a turn up! Come in, come in; don’t dawdle on the step!”

“Thank you.” I step inside. The interior of the cottage is clean, tidy, warm. Pleasantly surprising, compared to the exterior.

“Come on through. I’ll put the kettle on and you can tell me whatever it is that brings you here.” George bustles ahead of me along a narrow corridor. “Coffee suit you?” The kitchen is low and crowded. The usual build up of paraphernalia-biscuit tins, spatulas, rusting sieves and onion skins; but other things besides. Things that speak of the absence of a woman about the house. A black and greasy engine part on the table. A set of spanners on top of the fridge. George moves with a speed and deftness that belies his years. Neat curls of white hair around a thin face; eyes a startling pale green, the color of a driftwood fire.

“I’ve only just got back myself, last night-you’re lucky to find me home. Been at my daughter’s for Christmas, over in Yeovil. Lovely to see her, and the grandkids of course, but just as lovely to be home again, isn’t that right, Jim?” He addresses a small, fat, wire-haired mongrel, which waddles from its basket to investigate my legs. It has the penetrating aroma of elderly dogs everywhere, but I scratch behind one of its ears, all the same. Pungent grease gathers under my nails. “Here you go. Sit down, my love.” He passes me a mug of instant and I cup my hands around it gratefully, slide onto a chair at the enamel-topped table. “You’ve moved into the big house, now, have you?”

“Oh, not really, no. We’ve been here for Christmas-my sister and I. But I don’t think we’ll be staying on permanently,” I explain. George’s face falls.

“Now that’s a shame! Not selling up, I hope? Shame for the place to fall out of the family, when it’s been in it so many years.”

“I know. I know it is. Only, my grandmother was rather specific about the terms of her will, and… well, let’s just say it might be very hard for us to keep to them,” I say.

“Ah, well, say no more. None of my business. Families is families, and they all have their ins and outs, Lord knows, even the grand ones!”

“Perhaps especially the grand ones.” I smile.

“My mother worked for your family you know,” George tells me, pride in his voice.

“I know. That was why I’ve come to see you, actually. The Dinsdales put me on to you-”

“Mo Dinsdale?”

“That’s right.”

“Lovely lady, Mo. Bright as a button. Normally, it’s the menfolk that brings a car in for work-I used to run the garage, you know, on the Devizes road. But when that big wagon of theirs needed fixing it was always Mo that came in with it, and she watched me like a hawk! Needn’t have-I knew better than to try to pull the wool over her eyes. Lovely lady,” George chuckles.

“I was wondering if your mother ever used to talk about the time she spent working at the manor?” I ask, sipping my coffee, letting it scald my throat.

“If she ever talked about it? Well, she never stopped talking about it, my love-not when I was a lad.”

“Oh? Did she work there a long time, do you know? Do you know when she started there?” I am keen, I lean toward George. Beneath the table, Jim sits on my foot, plump and warm. George grins at me.

“It was the length of time she worked there that was the cause of all the natter!” he says. “She was let go, you see. Only eight or nine months after she started. It was a bit of a source of shame, in our family.”

“Oh.” I can’t hide my disappointment, because I doubt that she can have learnt much in so short a time. “Do you know why? What happened?”

“Lady Calcott fingered her for stealing. Mother denied it with every breath she had, but there you go. The gentry didn’t need proof back then. Off she went packing, with no character reference or nothing. Stroke of luck that the butcher here-my dad-was in love with her from the second he set eyes on her-she married him soon afterwards, so she wasn’t without means for very long.”

“Which Lady Calcott was it? Do you know the year your mother was there?”

“Lady Caroline, she was. 1905, as I remember Mother telling me.” George rubs his chin, squints into the past. “Must have been,” he concludes. “She married my old man in the autumn of ’05.”

“Caroline was my great-grandmother. Would you like to see a picture of her?” I smile. I have it with me, in my bag. The New York portrait. George’s eyes widen with delight.

“Why, yes, look at that! She looks much the same as I remember her! Nice to know the old gray cells haven’t packed all the way up just yet.”

“You knew her?” I am surprised at this.

“Not knew her, so much-the likes of her didn’t come around to tea with the likes of us. But when I was a lad we used to see her, from time to time. She opened the church fête a couple of times, you know; and then there was the big bash we had for the coronation in fifty-three. They opened up the manor gardens, put some bunting around and the like. About the only time I remember them doing something so community-minded. The whole village poured in to have a gander, since, even for a bunch of toffs, and if you’ll pardon my saying, miss, the Calcotts have always been tighter than a gnat’s chuff. None of us was ever invited in for any other reason.”

“Please, call me Erica,” I tell him. “So, did your mother say anything else about her time working for Caroline? Like why she was accused of theft, if she said she didn’t do it?” At this, George looks a little sheepish.

“It’s a bit of a wild story, that one. Mother was always very straight, very honest. But most people had trouble believing what she claimed, so after a long old while she finally stopped talking about it. But I do remember, from when I was a lad, that she reckoned she knew something she wasn’t supposed to. Found something out she wasn’t supposed to-”

“What was it?” The air expands in my chest, makes it hard to breathe.

“I’ll tell you, if you give me half a chance!” George reprimands me with a smile. “She said there was a baby vanished from the house. She didn’t know whose baby it was-it just appeared one day, which was one of the things that made people doubt her. Babies don’t just appear, after all, do they? Some gal had to have carried him and birthed him. But she swore it-that there was a baby in the house, and that it vanished again, just as quick as it arrived. And about the same time, one was found out in the woods and the tinkers-Mo’s people-took it all round the village, asking who it belonged to. Nobody put their hand up, so they raised the child. But my mother could not let it lie-she swore blind to anybody that’d listen that that baby was in the manor house one day, and that Lady Calcott took him out and left him. So, of course Lady C wanted her gone. Accused her of stealing some trinket, and that was that. She was out of there so fast she never had time to get her coat on. Make of that what you will. Some in the village said my mother cooked this baby story up, to get her own back, you understand? To bring some heat on the Calcotts who’d left her without a job to go to. And maybe, maybe there’s some truth in that. She was so very young when all this went on, my mother. No more than fifteen or so. Perhaps she was too young for such a responsible position. But I can’t credit her just lying about something like that. Nor stealing, for that matter. She was straight as a die, my old mum.” George stops, stares into the past, and I realize I am holding my breath. My heart bumps painfully, makes my fingers shake a little. I tap one nail on the blurred baby in the New York picture.

“That’s the baby. That’s the baby that appeared at the manor. The baby that Caroline dropped out in the woods. Your mother wasn’t lying,” I tell him. George goggles at me and I feel the blessed relief of closure, of solving a puzzle, however distant from me it may be.

I tell him what I know, what I have gathered from her letters, from this photo, the teething ring, and the missing marsh flag pillowcase. And the age old animosity toward the Dinsdales. I talk until my mouth is dry and I have to swig cold coffee to wet it. And when I am done I feel bone weary but glad. It feels like finding something precious I thought I’d lost; like filling in a huge hole in my past-in our past. Mine, Beth’s, Dinny’s. He is my cousin. Not two families at war, but one family. At length, George speaks.

“Well, I’m staggered. Proof, after all these years! My mother-if she can hear you from wherever she is, believe me, my love, she’s doing a little victory dance right now! And you’re sure about all this, are you?”

“Yes, I’m sure. It probably wouldn’t stand up in a court of law, or anything, but I’m as sure as I can be. That baby came with her from America, and somehow she kept him hidden while she married Lord Calcott. But then he wound up here at the manor, somehow, and she had to get rid of him. That’s the part I’m most in the dark about-where he’d been in the meantime, and if she was married before and had a baby, why keep it hidden? But it’s too much of a coincidence. The baby that vanished and the one that was found have to be one and the same.”

“It is a pity that all those people who called my mother a liar aren’t around to find out better.”

“What was your mother’s name?” I ask, on a whim.

“Cassandra. Evans, as she would have been back then. Hold on, I’ll show you a photo.” George moves over to the dresser, opens a drawer and rifles through it. The picture he gives me is of Cassandra Evans on her wedding day. Cassandra Hathaway, as she had recently become. A small, delicate-looking girl with a determined glint in her eye and a broad smile. Smooth skin, dark hair caught up in coils, a garland of flowers pinned to it. Her dress is simple, shift-shaped with a panel of lace in the bodice and touches of net at the collar. This girl saw Grandpa Flag while he was still Caroline’s fine son. She might have known what it was that Caroline longed to confess to her Aunt B. I stare into the grainy dark spots of her eyes, trying to see that knowledge there.

I leave Corner Cottage a short while later, promising to go back and visit. “A new entente cordiale between Calcotts and Hathaways!” George announced, quite delighted, as I left. I hadn’t the heart to say I might never be back; to the village, the manor, any of it. Unexpected, the way this thought makes me feel, when for twenty years or more I have lived away quite happily. I feel at the edge of a terrible sadness, a deep pool of it that I could fall into, never climb out of; just as Beth feared I would at the dew pond. And yet I haven’t even unpacked, back at the manor. My clothes are still in my case. They are in disarray, like me. I’ve lurched out of my established trajectory and now I am freewheeling, uncertain of where to go next.

I think about blood as I drive back to the manor. About those little traces, the little tendencies all our ancestors have left in us. My propensity to clown in awkward situations; my mother’s ability to draw; Beth’s grace; Dinny’s straight brows and jet eyes. A blizzard of tiny traces, whirling at the core of each of us. I think about my blood and Beth’s. About Dinny’s, about Grandpa Flag’s. And Henry’s of course. Henry, the last scion of the Calcott line. He showed us Dinny’s blood once, up at the barrow. I think even Henry was a little shocked by it, just for a second. Shocked and then pleased, of course. Jubilant. It was the summer he disappeared, but it was early in the holidays. It might have been the first time they’d seen each other that year, but I don’t know for sure.

I’d seen boys fight before, of course. At school, in the far corner of the playground where the side of the games hall shielded the combatants from the watchful eyes of the break monitor. The corner. That’s what it was called. Whispered from ear to ear during lessons-the next assignation, the next death match. Gary and Neil in the corner at lunchtime! The scandal always thrilled me, although the fights never lasted long. Coat pulling; somebody spun around, thrown to the ground. Hair yanked, perhaps; a kicked shin, bruised knees. Then the monitor would notice the crowd, or one boy would start to cry. The victor won the right to escape, the loser had to stay and protest that nothing had happened.

But with Dinny and Henry it was different. We’d gone up to the barrow to test-fly the model airplanes we’d spent all morning making from brown paper and ice pops. We needed a good launch site, was the verdict-proper thermal updrafts, Dinny said. Meredith was stirring trouble in the village, as ever. She’d forbidden the estate’s tenant farmers to give work to any kind of itinerant worker, which left the farmers without the help they needed and could afford, and the Dinsdales without the summer jobs that they relied upon finding here. That was her aim, of course-although I’m not sure of that now. She must have known she’d have to back down eventually. I think she just did it to remind them. Remind them that she was there, and that she hated them. There were all sorts of arguments at the house, and we’d overheard a lot of them. And so had Henry, of course. He followed us up to the barrow with this as his ammunition.

“Shouldn’t you be out begging? Your whole family will have to go out begging soon, I expect; or thieving of course.” Sneering at Dinny; no preamble. “There’s no way you’ll be able to buy any food. Not if you stay around here.”

“Shut up, Henry! Go away!” Beth ordered, but he curled his lip at her.

“You shut up! You can’t tell me what to do! And I’m going to tell Grandma you’ve been playing with the dirty gyppos!”

“Tell her! See if I care!” Beth cried. She was rigid, as taut and straight as a javelin.

“You should care-if you’re friends with him then you might as well become a gyppo too. You already smell like one. You’re stupid enough to be one too, I suppose…” He was breathing hard from running up the hill to us; spite made his neck mottle. Dinny glared at him with such fury that I launched my paper plane in anxious desperation.

“Look! Look-look how far it’s going!” I cried, jumping up and down. But none of them looked.

“What’s the matter with you? Haven’t you learnt to talk yet? Are you too stupid?” Henry taunted Dinny. Dinny stared at him, knotted his jaw, said nothing. His silence was a challenge, and Henry didn’t back down. “I saw your mother just now, actually. She was looking in our dustbin for your supper!” Dinny flew at him. So fast that I wasn’t aware he’d moved until he cannoned into Henry and they both went staggering down the hill.

“Don’t!” Beth shouted, but I don’t know which of them she was talking to. I stood stock-still, rooted with shock. This was no playground scuffle, there was no coat pulling. They looked like they wanted to kill each other. I saw bared teeth, fists, young muscles straining.

Then Henry landed one lucky punch. Truly blind luck, because Dinny was clawing at his face so his eyes were shut. Henry flailed his arms, raining blows, and got lucky. His fist cracked Dinny’s nose and knocked him down. Dinny sat for a second, astonished, and then a rush of bright blood poured from his nose and began to drip from his chin. Beth and I were mute with horror. That Henry had won. That Dinny was bleeding so much. I had never seen blood like that. So red, so quick. Not like the dull smears on the butcher’s block when I went shopping with Mum. Dinny cupped his hand under his chin and caught the blood as if he wanted to keep it. It must have hurt. Tears welled in his eyes, slipped mutinously down his cheeks to join the blood. Henry, when he realized what he’d achieved, stood over Dinny and grinned. I remember his nostrils flaring whitely in triumph, how haughty he looked. He walked away with a swaggering step. Dinny watched him, and I watched Dinny. His eyes blazed, and for a long moment Beth and I were too afraid to go near him.

New Year’s Eve is a Wednesday and it really just feels like a Wednesday. None of the old excitement. It was always excitement tinged with dread anyway, I can tell myself now. The buzz and riot of the fireworks over the Thames, the grim knowledge of how long it would take to get clear of the crowds afterwards. Now it’s just a Wednesday, but with an encroaching deadline of another kind. Beth said she would stay until the new year. That’s what I begged from her-just until the new year. Tomorrow. There’s only one thing that I can think of that might make her stay longer, and that’s if she won the argument with Maxwell. If Eddie is coming again before school starts, then she might stay.

I am excited about something, of course. Excited about the announcement I plan to make this evening. It’s wild outside. I turn the radio up to drown out the moaning wind, harrying the corners of the house. It took a long time to convince Beth to come to the pub-I had to lie, say it might be the last time she sees Dinny before we leave. The wrenching sound of the wind might be all it would take to dissuade her.

“Hair up or down?” I ask Beth as she comes into the bathroom, holding my hair up in a twist to show her, then dropping it, shaking it out. She considers me, tips her head to one side.

“Down. We’re only going to the pub, after all,” she says. I rake my fingers through my hair.

“Yeah, I’m only going to put jeans on,” I nod. She stands behind me, bends to put her chin on my shoulder, peers at her own reflection. Can she see? That the bones of her face are so stark, compared to mine? That her skin looks too thin, too pale?

“I know it’s New Year’s Eve. But I just… I just don’t really feel like going out. We don’t know these people…” she says, moving away again.

“I’m starting to-you would, if you came out more. Please, Beth. You can’t just stay in on your own. Not tonight.”

“Why are you so obsessed with spending time with him, anyway? What good will it do? We don’t know him any more. We live utterly different lives! And soon we’ll have left and we’ll probably never see him again anyway.” She paces the floor behind me, agitated.

“I’m not obsessed,” I murmur, drawing silver powder across my eyelids and examining the effect in the mirror. I can feel her looking at me. “It’s Dinny,” I shrug. “He’s about the most important person from our childhood. Look,” I turn to her, make her look at me. “Let’s just not even think about any of that this evening, OK? Let’s just go out, drink the new year in and have a good time. OK?” I give her a little shake. She takes a deep breath, holds it for a moment.

“OK! You’re right. Sorry,” she relents. She sounds relieved, and smiles a little.

“That’s better. Now, go and pour us some whisky. Lots of whisky,” I command.

“Here you go,” she says, as I come down to the kitchen.

“This should get us a bit more in the party spirit.” I smile and take a glass from her. We clink, and drink. Beth’s smile looks a little forced, but she is trying. “How was Maxwell? Is Eddie coming back to stay?”

“What, here? No,” she says. “I want him to come and stay with me at home for the last weekend of the holiday. Max says they’re going to his parents… I don’t know,” she sighs. “I always feel like the one who has to fight to get the better slots in the timetable.”

“Well, we did have him for Christmas…” Disappointment bites me. Nothing will keep her here now. Something scrambles inside me, twists, tries to find a way to hold on to her, to hold on to our time here. I am not finished. I am jittery with need.

“A few days out of a four week holiday! It’s hardly fair.”

“A few pretty important days, though,” I argue, my voice high. I have lost track of the conversation. I should be urging her to fight harder, to get Eddie back-back here to his friend Harry. Beth sips her whisky. I watch the cartilage in her neck move as she swallows.

“I know. I just… I miss him so much, Rick. I don’t really see what the point of me is, when I don’t have him to look after,” she says forlornly.

“The point of you is to be his mother, whether he’s in the room or not. And to be my big sister. And, more importantly right now, your purpose is to drink whisky with me, because I don’t intend to be the only one starting the new year with a headache,” I say.

“Bottoms up, then,” Beth says gravely, tipping the entire contents of her glass down her throat, spluttering and laughing as it burns her nose.

“Now, that’s more like it!” I laugh.

It’s bitter outside. The air bites right through our clothes, and the glow of the alcohol; makes our eyes stream, our lips crack. We walk quickly with gritted teeth, hunched and inelegant. It’s clear; the sky is inky, torn across by the unrelenting wind. There are lights on all through the village, warding off the lonely night, and the heat and humanity of the White Horse crashes out like a wave when I pull the door open. It’s cheek by jowl. We breathe in the breath of others, swim through it; the heavy, happy stink of alcohol and bodies. Voices so loud, so close. I am sure the silence at the heart of Beth will be battered into submission. I thread us a path to the bar, searching the crowd for Patrick or Dinny, or anybody else I recognize. It’s Harry’s dreadlocks that I spot, in the snug room at the back of the pub. I buy two whisky and waters, tip my head and smile at Beth to follow me.

“Hi!” I shout, arriving next to the table. I recognize faces from the solstice party, faces I have seen coming and going around the camp. Denise, Sarah and Kip. Dinny and Patrick, of course. Patrick grins at me, and Dinny smiles, his eyes widening with surprise as they alight on Beth. A second later I wonder if it was Beth he was smiling at, not me, but I can’t be sure.

“It’s the ladies of the manor! Come join us, ladies!” Patrick calls, waving a magnanimous arm over the group. His cheeks are pink, eyes bright. Harry pats my arm and on impulse I bend to him, kiss his cheek, feel the brush of his whiskers. Dinny stares. There’s a shuffling, a bunching together along the horseshoe-shaped bench, and room is made for Beth and me at either end.

“I’ve never actually been in here before,” I shout. “We weren’t old enough the last time we came to stay!”

“That’s a crime! Well, this is your local now, so let’s get you acquainted with it. Cheers!” Patrick clatters our glasses together. Cold liquid see-saws out, catches the back of Dinny’s hand.

“Sorry,” I say, and he shrugs.

“No problem.” He sucks the whisky from his skin, grimacing. “I don’t know how you can drink that poison.”

“After the fourth or fifth nip you get used to it,” I reply jovially. “So, how are you getting used to being an uncle?”

“I’m not! I still can’t believe she’s had a baby-five seconds ago she was a baby herself, you know?” Dinny tips his head wryly.

“Make the most of her when she’s tiny,” Beth tells him, her words struggling to rise above of the mash of voices. “They grow so quickly! You won’t believe how quickly,” she tries again, louder now.

“Well, I do have the best of both worlds, I suppose. I get to have fun with the kid and then give her back when she stinks or starts howling,” Dinny smiles.

“That’s always been my favorite part of being an aunt,” I say, smiling at Beth. And so just like that we chat. We sit and talk like neighbors, like nearly friends. I try not to think about it, how miraculous it is; I don’t want to break the spell.

“How’s your family research going?” Dinny asks me a while later when my body is warm, my face slightly numb. I peer at him.

“You mean our family history?” I ask.

“Do I? What do you mean?”

“Well, what I’ve found out, basically, is that we’re cousins,” I say, smiling widely. Beth frowns at me, Dinny gives that quizzical look of his.

“Rick, what are you talking about?” Beth asks.

“Quite distant-half cousins, twice removed, or thereabouts. Seriously!” I add, when I am met with skepticism all around.

“Let’s hear it, then,” says Patrick, folding his arms.

“Right. We know that Caroline had a baby boy before she married Lord Calcott in 1904. There’s a photograph, and she kept hold of the kid’s teething ring for the rest of her life-”

“A baby boy who more than likely never came over the water with her, or she would have had trouble remarrying as a spinster, which she apparently did not,” Beth interjects.

“Just hear me out. Then there’s a pillowcase missing from one of the antique sets in the house-a pillowcase with yellow marsh flags stitched onto it. Now, Dinny, your grandpa himself told me the story of how he got his name, and your mum reminded me the other day, when I was over there. But I think some of the finer details have got scrambled over the years-Mo said Flag was found in a patch of marsh flags and got the name that way, here, in the Barrow Storton woods which slope and are pretty well drained and aren’t really good ground for marsh flags to grow in. I’m sure I remember Grandpa Flag telling me himself that he was found in a blanket with yellow flowers on it. It has to be the pillowcase-it has to be!” I insist, as Patrick scoffs and Dinny looks even more sceptical. “And today, I met George Hathaway-”

“The bloke who used to run the garage on the main road?” Patrick asks.

“That’s him. His mother worked at the manor house when Caroline first arrived there. She was sacked-ostensibly for stealing, but she insisted, George says, that she was sent away because she knew there had been a baby in the house-right at the time the Dinsdales found Flag. There was a baby in the house and then it vanished. Your grandpa was my great-grandmother’s son. I’m sure of it,” I finish, jabbing a tipsy finger at Dinny. He studies me, rubs his chin, considers this.

“That’s…” Beth gropes for the word. “Ridiculous!” she finishes.

“Why is it?” I demand. “It would explain Caroline’s hostility to the Dinsdales-she dumps the kid, wants rid of him, and they pick him up and raise him right on her doorstep. Every time they came back here, they brought that baby with them. It must have driven her mad. That was why she hated them so much.”

“Answer this, then,” Dinny says. “She brings the baby over with her. She has him with her while she remarries-for some reason her previous marriage is not recorded, but there’s no way she’d have wound up marrying a lord if the baby was illegitimate. So, she keeps the baby until she gets here, to Barrow Storton, and then she dumps it in the woods. My question would be why? Why did she do that?”

“Because…” I trail off, study my drink. “I don’t know,” I admit. I think hard. “Was your grandpa disabled in any way?”

“Fit as a fiddle, sharp as a tack,” Dinny shakes his head.

“Maybe Lord Calcott wouldn’t let her keep another man’s son?”

“Then he would have just not married her, surely, if he minded that much?”

“Isn’t it possible,” Patrick begins, “and indeed rather more plausible, that Caroline’s baby died in the States, one of the servants at the manor got herself in trouble-perhaps Hathaway’s mum-took a pillowcase from the house in a moment of desperation, and got rid of her illegitimate baby? It would hardly be surprising if she lied about it, or got fired for it,” he suggests cheerfully.

“He has a point,” Beth tells me. I shake my head.

“No. I know it was the baby in the picture. It has to be,” I insist.

“And as for her attitude toward me and mine,” Patrick goes on with a shrug, “she was just a product of her time. God knows we come up against enough prejudice these days, let alone a hundred years ago! Vagrancy used to be an actual crime, you know.”

“All right, all right!” I cry. “I still think I’m right. What do you say, Dinny?”

“I’m not sure. And I’m not sure I want to be a Calcott. They haven’t been very kind to the people I love, over the years,” he says, and his gaze is so direct that I have to look away.

“Well, drink up, cousin,” Patrick says. Conciliatory, but not convinced. The subject is changed, my parade rained upon.

“It was a good theory, though,” Beth says, chucking me with her elbow.

By midnight my ears are buzzing and when I turn my head the world blurs past, takes a while to settle back into the right order. I lean against Harry, who sits up straight and has drunk so much cola that he climbs over me to go to the toilet every twenty minutes or so. There is talk all around me and I am part of it, I am included. I am happy, drunk, blinkered. At midnight the barman turns the radio up loud and we listen to Big Ben, waiting with our breath paused in the gap before the first toll of the new year. The pub erupts and I think of London, of hearing those bells all the way from there, of my old life carrying on without me. I find I don’t want it back. Patrick and Beth and several others kiss me and then I turn to Dinny, proffer my cheek, and he plants a kiss there that I can still feel long after it’s gone, wonder if it will leave an indelible mark.

Not long afterwards Beth pulls my arm, says that she’s going. The crowd is thinning out, leaving the drunker people behind, of which I am one. I want to stay. I want to keep this party going, maintain the false impression that I belong with these people. Beth shakes her head and speaks into my ear.

“I’m tired. I think you should come too, so we can see each other safely back. You’ve had quite a bit to drink.”

“I’m fine!” I protest, too loudly, proving her point.

Beth gets up, smiles her goodbyes, starts to pull on her coat and hands me mine.

“We’re off,” she says, smiling in general but not meeting Dinny’s eye.

“Yep. Party’s pretty much over,” Patrick yawns. His bright eyes have turned pink.

“You can all come back to ours, if you want. Plenty of booze there,” I offer expansively. Beth shoots me a worried glance, but nobody takes me up-pleading lateness, drunkenness, impending headaches. I pull on my coat. I am clumsy, can’t find the arms. I knock the table as I climb out from behind it, rattling the glasses. As we turn to go Dinny catches Beth’s arm, pulls her down to him and speaks into her ear.

“Good night, cousin Erica!” he calls as I weave away.

“I’m right!” I insist, tumbling out of the pub.

“Erica! Wait for me!” Beth shouts into the wind as she emerges from the pub behind me. But I can’t seem to slow down. There’s a fire in my blood and it’s working my body, and I have no control. “Wait for me, will you!” She jogs to my side. “That was actually quite fun,” she says.

“Told you,” I say, loud above the buffeting air. I can’t quite name what I’m feeling. A huge impatience, the boundless frustration of knowing nothing for sure.

“What were you and Dinny whispering about back there?” I ask.

“He, uh…” She looks taken aback. “He just said to… see you safely to bed, that’s all.”

“That’s all?”

“Yes, that’s all! Erica, don’t start-you’re drunk.”

“I’m not that drunk! You two always did have your secrets and not much has changed. Why won’t either of you tell me what happened back then?”

“I… I’ve told you-I don’t want to talk about it and neither should you. Have you asked Dinny, then?” She sounds alarmed, almost frightened. I think back, muzzily, realize that I haven’t. Not outright.

“What did he really say just now?”

“I just told you what he said! My God, Erica… are you jealous? Still-after all this time?” I stop walking, turn to look at her in the last scatterings of light from the village. It never occurred to me that she knew. That they knew, that they noticed me clamoring for attention. Somehow, it’s worse that they did.

“I’m not jealous,” I mutter, wishing it were true. We walk on, stumble up the driveway in silence. As we get to the house I realize that I am uneasy. Some warning bell is trying to ring, beneath my drunken haze. It’s Beth’s silence, I think. The quality of it, its breadth and depth.

Beth opens the front door but I step back from the darkness inside. In the graphite glow of the moon, it looks like a grave mouth. Beth steps in, flicks on a blinding yellow light, and I turn away.

“Come on-you’re letting all the heat out,” she says at last.

I shake my head. “I’m going for a walk.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. It’s half past one in the morning and it’s freezing. Come inside.”

“No. I’ll… stay in the gardens. I need to clear my head,” I tell her flatly, backing away. She is an outline in the doorway, faceless and black.

“I’ll wait for you to come in, then. Don’t be long.”

“Don’t wait. Go to bed. I won’t be long.”

“Erica!” she calls, as I turn away. “You’re… you’re not going to let it drop, are you? You’re not going to leave it alone.” Real fear in her voice now. It sounds as brittle as glass. I am frightened too, by this change in her, by her sudden vulnerability, the way she braces herself in the door frame as though she might fly apart. But I steel myself.

“No. I’m not,” I say, and I walk away from her.

I won’t let this evening end until I have something, until I have resolved something. Until I have remembered something. I stride across the choppy lawn, my legs running away with me, joints swinging, elastic. Under the trees, the dark is solid. I look up at the sky, put my hands in front of me to feel the way, continue. I know where I am going.

The dew pond is just more blackness at my feet. The stone-and-mud smell of the water rises to greet me. Above me the sky hangs motionless, and it seems unreal that the stars should not move, should not be swept away in the wind. Their stillness makes me dizzy. Here I sit in the dead of winter, in the dead of night, a woman with a head full of whisky trying to go back, trying to be a child full of fantasies under a hot summer sky. I stare at the water, I take myself there. My breathing slows and I notice the cold for the first time, the press of the ground through my jeans. I hug my knees into my chest. Have you pissed yourself, Erica? Henry laughing, Henry smiling that nasty smile of his. Henry bending down, looking around. What was he doing? What was he looking for? What was I doing? I went back into the water. I’m sure I did. It was a diversion-I was trying to break the tension. I turned and took a run up, and made as big a splash as I could, scrabbling under the surface because my knickers threatened to desert me. And when I came up… when I dashed the water from my eyes… had Henry found what he was looking for?

Before I know what I am doing, I am in. I have put myself there. I take a run up, I make as big a splash as I can; and then reality comes pouring all around me and my skin catches fire at the cold of the water. The pain is incredible. I have no idea which way is up, no idea where to go, what to do. I have no control over my body, which flails and contorts itself. The air has vanished from my lungs, they have collapsed, my ribs are crushed. I will die, I think. I am sinking like a stone. I will reach the bottom at last, just like I always strove to. The water has no surface, there is no sky any more. And I see Henry. My heart seems to stop. I see Henry. I see him, looking down at me from the bank, eyes wide and incredulous. I see him teetering, and I see blood running down into his eyes. So much blood. I see him start to fall. Then I am in the air again and it is a blessing-so warm, so full of life after the knife strike of the water. A gasp rushes air into my lungs; I cry out in pain.

I can see the bank. It tips and blurs in my view as my body threatens to sink again. I try to make my arms work, to kick my legs. Nothing will move as it is supposed to. My heart beats wildly now, too fast, too big in my chest. It’s trying to escape from me, from this leeching chill. I can’t get air to stay in my lungs. It whistles out as the water squeezes me. I am flayed alive; I am burning. One hand hits the bank and I can’t feel it on my skin, only the resistance of it. I claw at it, force my fingers into the mud, try to make my other hand reach it, try to pull myself out. I struggle. I am a rat in a barrel, a hedgehog in a pond. I am whimpering.

Then hands grab me, under my arms, pulling me further out until my knees are grounded. One more pull and I am out, water streaming from my clothes and hair and mouth. I cough and start to cry, so happy to be out, hurting so much.

“What the fucking hell are you doing?” It’s Dinny. His voice echoes oddly in my ears and I can’t look up at him yet, can’t move my heavy head on my wooden neck. “Are you trying to kill yourself, for fuck’s sake?” He is rough, furious.

“I’m… not sure,” I croak, and concentrate on coughing again. Behind his head the stars judder and wheel.

“Get up!” he commands. He sounds so angry, and the last of my will leaves me. I give up. Lying down on the ground, I turn my head away from him. I can’t feel my body, can’t feel my heart.

“Just leave me alone,” I say. I think I say. I’m not sure if I have formed words, or just exhaled. He turns me over, stands behind my head and pulls me up by my armpits.

“Come on. You need to warm up before you can lie down and have a rest.”

“I am warm. I’m boiling hot,” I say, but tremors are starting to come, from my feet to my fingertips, convulsing every muscle. My head pounds.

“Come on, walk now. It’s not far.”

A short time later I become aware of myself, of the peeled feeling of my skin, the ache in my ribs and arms and skull. My fingers and toes are throbbing, agonizing. I am sitting in wet underwear in Dinny’s van. Wrapped in a blanket. There’s hot tea beside me. Dinny pours in sugar by the heaped spoonful, instructs me to drink it. I sip it, burn my tongue. I’m shaking still, but less now. The inside of the ambulance is warmer than I’d imagined. The embers in the stove light our faces. Narrow bunks along one side, cupboards and shelves and a counter along the other. A space for billycans. A kettle on the stove top, pans hanging on hooks.

“How come you were at the dew pond?” I ask. My voice has an unhealthy rattle to it.

“I wasn’t. I was going home when I heard the bloody great splash you made. You’re just lucky the wind’s blowing in from the east or I wouldn’t have heard it. I wouldn’t have come. Do you know what could have happened if I hadn’t? Even if you’d managed to get out and then lain on the bank for half an hour… do you understand?”

“Yes.” I am contrite, embarrassed. There is no trace of the whisky in me now. My swim has washed it all away.

“So what were you doing?” He sits opposite me on a folding stool, rests one ankle on the opposite knee, crosses his arms. All barriers. I shrug.

“I was trying to remember. That day. The day Henry died.” Died, I say. Not disappeared. I wait to see if Dinny will correct me. He doesn’t.

“Why would you want to remember?”

“Because I don’t, Dinny. I don’t remember it. And I have to. I need to.” He doesn’t answer for a long time. He sits and he considers me with hooded eyes.

“Why? Why do you have to? If you really don’t remember, then-”

“Don’t tell me I’m better off! That’s what Beth says and it’s not true! I am not better off. There’s a bit missing… I can’t stop thinking about it…”

“Try.”

“I know he’s dead. I know we killed him.” As I speak I shudder again, scattering drops of tea onto my legs.

“We killed him?” Dinny glares at me suddenly, his eyes alight. “No. We didn’t kill him.”

“What does that mean? What happened, Dinny? Where did he go?”

The question hangs between us for a long moment. I think he will tell me. I think he will. The silence stretches.

“These are not my secrets to tell,” Dinny says, his face troubled.

“I just want things to be as they were,” I say quietly. “Not things-people. I want Beth to grow up the way she should have grown up, if it hadn’t happened. It all starts there, I know it does. And I want for us to be friends, like we were…”

“We could have been, perhaps.” His voice is flat. I look up for an explanation. “You just stopped coming!” he exclaims, eyes widening. “How do you think that felt, after everything I-”

“After everything you what?”

“After all the time we’d spent, all the growing up… You just stopped coming.”

“We were kids! Our parents stopped bringing us… there wasn’t much we could do about it…”

“They brought you here the summer after. And the one after that. I saw you, even if you didn’t see me. But you never came down to the camp. My family were turned inside out by the police, looking for that boy. Everybody treated us like criminals! I bet they didn’t turn the manor upside down, did they? I bet they didn’t keep looking in the herb garden for a grave.” I stare at him. I can’t think what to say. I try to remember the police searching the house, but I can’t. “At first I thought you’d been forbidden to come down here. But you’d always been forbidden before and that had never stopped you. Then I thought perhaps you were scared, perhaps you didn’t want to talk about what had happened. Then I finally hit on it. You just didn’t care.”

“That’s not true! We were just children, Dinny! What happened was… too big. We didn’t know what to do with it-”

“You were just a child, Erica. Beth and I were twelve. That’s old enough. Old enough to know where your loyalties lie. Would it have killed you to come? Just once? To write down your address, to write a letter?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “I don’t know what happened. I… watched Beth for all my cues. Even now I can’t tell if I knew what we’d done, what had happened. I don’t know when it went out of my head. I can hardly remember anything I thought or did in those summers afterwards. And then we stopped coming.”

“Well, no wonder. If you were both acting so vacant, your mother must have thought it was damaging you.”

“It was damaging us, Dinny.”

“Well, there you go. What happened, happened. There’s no changing it now, even if you want to.”

“I do want to,” I murmur. “I want Beth back. I want you back.”

“You’re lonely, Erica. I was too, for a long time. Nobody to talk to about it all. I guess we have to take what’s due to us.”

“Whose secrets are they, Dinny, if they’re not yours or mine?”

“I never said they weren’t yours.”

“Mine and Beth’s?” He stares at me, says nothing. I can feel tears in my eyes, feel them start to run, impossibly hot.

“But I don’t know!” I say quietly.

“Yes. You do.” Dinny leans toward me. In the low light I can see every dark eyelash, outlined by the orange glow from the stove. “It’s time you went home to bed, I think,” he says.

“I don’t want to go.” But he is on his feet. I wipe my face, notice that my hands are red and angry, mud under the nails.

“You can keep the blanket for now. Give it back to me whenever.” He rolls my wet clothes into a bundle, hands them to me. “I’ll walk you back.”

“Dinny!” I stand up, stagger slightly. In the small space we are inches apart, but that is too far. He stops, turns to face me. I can’t think of any words to say. I clasp the blanket close to me and lean toward him, tilt my head so my forehead can touch his cheek. I take one step closer, shut my eyes, put one hand on his shoulder, curling my thumb into the hard jut of his collarbone. I stay that way for three heartbeats, until I feel his arms circle me. I lift my chin, feel his lips brush mine, and I lean into his kiss, clumsy with desire. His arms tighten around me, chase my breath away. I would halt the world, if I could; stop it spinning, make it so I could stay here for ever, in this dark space with Dinny’s mouth against mine.

He walks me back to the manor’s ponderous front door and as I shut it behind me, I hear a sound that makes me pause. Water running. The sound of it echoes faintly down the stairs; and in the walls, the corresponding wrenching of the pipes.

“Beth?” I call out, my teeth chattering. I struggle out of my soaked boots, make my way to the kitchen, where the light is on. Beth is not there. “Beth! Are you still up?” I shout, flinching from the glare of the lights, my head thumping. The water running still, drenching my thoughts with nauseating unease. I fight to focus my eyes, because there is something not right in here, in the kitchen. Something that makes the blood beat in my temples, dries my throat. The knife block, knocked roughly over and lying on its side on the worktop, and several of the knives pulled out, discarded beside it. For the second time on this black night, I cannot breathe. I turn, race to the stairs on legs that won’t move fast enough.