The Legacy

Chapter 3

I have been trying to remember good things about Henry. Perhaps we owe him that, because we got to grow up, live lives, fall in love, fall out again. He liked to tell stupid jokes, and I loved to hear them. Beth was always kind, and took me with her, and helped me, but she was rather serious, even as a child. Once I laughed so hard at Henry’s jokes that I nearly wet myself-the fear of it abruptly stopped the giggles, sent me scrambling for the toilet with one fist corked between my legs. What do you call a dinosaur with only one eye? Do-you-think-he-saw-us. What do you call a deer with no eyes? No idea. Why do elephants paint the soles of their feet yellow? So they can hide upside down in custard. What’s orange and sounds like a parrot? A carrot. What’s small, brown and wrinkly and travels at two hundred miles an hour? An electric currant. He could keep it up for hours, and I pushed my fingers into my cheeks where they ached.

He was telling me stupid jokes one day when I was about seven. It was a Saturday, because the remains of a cooked breakfast were still scattered on the dining room table; sunny outside but still cool. The French doors onto the terrace were open, letting a breath of air sneak in, just cold enough to tickle my ankles. I wasn’t really watching what Henry was doing as he reeled out his jokes. I wasn’t paying attention. I just followed him, stood close enough behind him to trip him, prompted him whenever there was a pause: Say another one! How do you know when there’s an elephant in your bed? You can see the “E” on his pyjamas. What’s brown and sticky? A stick. He had the biscuit barrel and he was cementing two plain shortbreads together with a thick daub of English mustard. The extra strong stuff, ugly colored, that Clifford liked on sausages. I was trying to remember a good thing about him, and now this.

I didn’t think to ask why. I didn’t ask where we were going. He wrapped the biscuits in a napkin, pocketed them. I followed him across the lawn like a tame monkey, demanding more jokes, more jokes. We went west, not south into the trees but to the lane instead; skirted along it, behind the hedge, until we got to Dinny’s camp. Henry hunkered down in the ditch, pulled me in with him. A foaming, pungent wall of cow parsley to sink behind. At this point only did I think to whisper, “Henry, what are you doing? Why are we hiding?” He told me to shut up so I did. A spying game, I thought; tried not to rustle loudly, checked beneath myself for nettles, ants’ nests, bumble bees. Dinny’s grandpa was sitting on a folding chair outside his battered white motor home, waxed hat pulled low over his eyes, arms folded, hands tucked into armpits. Asleep, I think. Deep, dark creases running from the sides of his nose to the corners of his mouth. His dogs lay either side of him, chins on paws. Two black and white collies called Dixie and Fiver, who you weren’t allowed to touch until Grandpa Flag had said it was OK. They’ll ’ave those fingers, you give ’em cause.

Henry threw the sandwiched biscuits over the hedge. The dogs were on their feet in an instant, but they smelt the biscuits and they didn’t bark. They crunched them down, mustard and all. I held my breath. I said Henry! in my head. Dixie made a hacking noise, sneezed, put her muzzle down on one paw and rubbed at it with the other. Her eyes squinted up; she sneezed again and shook her head, whimpered. Henry had his knuckles in his teeth, his eyes bright, intent. Lit up inside, he was. Grandpa Flag was murmuring to the dogs now, awake. He had his hands in Dixie’s ruff, was peering at her as she retched and snuffled. Fiver walked a small, slow circle to one side, heaved, threw up a disgusting yellow mess. A sob of laughter escaped around Henry’s fist. I was strangled with pity for the dogs, boiling with guilt. I wanted to stand up and shout, It wasn’t me. I wanted to disappear, run back to the house. I stayed, rocked on my crouched legs, hid my face in my knees.

But the worst of it was that when I was finally allowed to leave, a pinch on the arm to rouse me, we’d gone a scant twenty paces before Dinny and Beth appeared. The hems of their jeans soaked with dew, a small green leaf in Beth’s hair.

“What have you two been doing?” Beth asked. Henry scowled at her.

“Nothing,” he said. Able to inject a world of scorn into a single word.

“Erica?” She looked at me sternly, incredulous that I should be with Henry, that I should look guilty. That I should betray them that way. But where had they been, without me? I wanted to shout. They had left me. Henry glowered at me, gave me a shove.

“Nothing,” I lied. I was quiet and sullen for the rest of the day. And when I saw Dinny the day after, knowing that he had been home, I couldn’t look at him. I knew he knew. Because of Henry’s jokes.

“Rick? Can we go now?” Eddie’s head appears at the door to my room, where I, for once, have been skulking. Staring through the foggy glass at the white world beyond. Tiny crystals in the corners of the pane, feathery and perfect.

“The frost performs its secret ministry, Unhelped by any wind,” I quote at him.

“What’s that?”

“Coleridge. Sure, Eddie, we can go. Give me five seconds.”

“One-two-three-four-five?”

“Ha, ha. Push off. I’ll be down in a moment-I can hardly go out in my dressing gown.” I was defiantly still in it when I opened the door to Maxwell earlier.

“Not today,” Eddie agrees, retreating. “It’s cold enough to freeze the arse off a penguin out there.”

“Charming, dear,” I call. The frost has cast the trees in white. It’s like another world out there-a brittle, albino world where white and opalescent blues have replaced dead grey and flat brown. It’s dazzling bright. Every tiny twig, every fallen leaf, every blade of grass. The house is made new; no longer the ghost, or the corpse, of a place I remember. I am soaring with optimism today. It would be hard not to be. After so many overcast days, the sky seems to go up for ever. It’s giddy, all that space up there. And Beth has said she’ll come with us-that’s how vibrant the day is.

When I told her Dinny was here she froze. I was scared for a minute. She didn’t seem to breathe. The blood could have halted in her veins, her ticking heart gone silent, such was the stillness in her. A long, hung moment in which I waited, and watched, and tried to guess what was next. Then she looked away from me and licked her lower lip with the tip of her tongue.

“We’d be strangers, now,” she said, and walked slowly into the kitchen. She didn’t ask me how I knew, what he looked like now, what he was doing here. And I found I didn’t mind not telling her. I didn’t mind keeping it to myself. Keeping the words he had spoken in my head alone. Owning them. She was relaxed again when I went to find her, as we made mugs of tea and I dunked Hobnobs in mine. But she didn’t eat that night. Not a Hobnob, not the plate of risotto I put in front of her, not the ice cream afterwards.

It’s the twentieth of December today. The car steams up as I drive east through the village and then turn north onto the A361.

“One more day, guys, and then it’s all downhill until spring!” I announce, flexing fingers stiff with chill inside my gloves.

“You can’t wish the winter away until Christmas has been,” Eddie tells me firmly.

“Really? Not even when my hands have frozen to the wheel? Look, I’m trying to let go and I can’t! Frozen on-look!” Eddie laughs at me.

“Keeping hold of the steering wheel while you drive could be considered a good thing,” Beth observes wryly from the passenger seat.

“Well then, it’s a good job I’m frozen on, I guess.” I smile. I take the turning to Avebury. Eddie’s been doing prehistory this term. Wiltshire’s riddled with it. We park, decline to join the National Trust, join instead the steady trickle of people going along the path toward the stones. The ground twinkles, the sun is overwhelming.

A fine Saturday and there are lots of other people at Avebury, all bundled up like we are, shapeless and dark, moving in and out of the ancient sarsen stones. Two concentric rings, not as high as Stonehenge, not as grand or orderly, but the circles far, far bigger. A road runs right through them; half the village is scattered amidst them, although the little church sits chastely without. I like this set-up. All those lives, all those years, piled up in one place. We walk all the way around the ring. Beth reads from the guidebook but I am not sure Eddie is listening. He has a stick again. He is sword-fighting somebody in his head and I wish I could see whom. Barbarians, perhaps? Or somebody from school.

“The Avebury Stone Circles are the largest in Britain, located in the third largest henge. In all, the surrounding bank and ditch and the area enclosed cover eleven point five hectares…”

“Beth!” I cry. She is wandering close to the edge of the bank. The grass is slick with frost-melt.

“Oops.” She corrects her course, gives a little laugh.

“Eddie, I’m going to test you on this later!” I shout. My voice blares in the still air. An elderly couple turn to look. I just want him to listen to Beth.

“The quarrying methods used include antler picks and rakes, ox-shoulder blades and probably wooden shovels and baskets…”

“Cool,” Eddie says, dutifully. We pass a tree grown into the rampart, its roots cascading above ground like a knotty waterfall. Eddie scrambles down it, commando-style; crouches down, clings to it, peers up from three meters below us.

“Are you an elf?” Beth asks.

“No, I’m a woodsman, waiting to rob you,” he replies.

“Bet you can’t get me before I pass this tree to safety,” Beth challenges him.

“I’ve lost the element of surprise,” Eddie complains.

“I’m getting away!” Beth goads, sauntering onward. With a rebel yell Eddie scales the roots, slipping and sliding, bashing his knees. He grabs Beth with two hands, makes her squeal. “I submit, I submit!” she laughs.

We walk out, away from the village along the wide avenue of stones that leads away to the south. The sun shines on Beth’s face-a long time since I saw it lit this way. She looks pale, older, but there are blooms in her cheeks. She looks serene too. Eddie leads us, sword aloft, and we walk until our toes get too cold.

On the way back I pull up at the Spar in Barrow Storton for some ginger beer for Eddie. Beth waits in the car, quieter again now. Eddie and I are pretending not to notice. There’s a horrible feeling of her teetering, being on the edge of something. Eddie and I hesitate, wanting to pull her one way, scared of accidentally nudging her, tipping her the wrong way.

“Can’t I have Coke instead?”

“Yes, if you’d rather.”

“I’m really not that bothered about alcohol, to be honest. I had some vodka last term, in dorm.”

“You’ve been drinking vodka?”

“Hardly drinking. Drank, once. And I felt sick, and Boff and Danny were sick, and it stank the place out. Gross. I don’t know why grown-ups bother,” he says, airily. His cheeks have a glorious pink flare from the bite outside. Eyes bright as water.

“Well, you might change your mind later on. But for Christ’s sake don’t tell your mother! She’ll have a fit.”

“I’m not stupid, you know.” Eddie rolls his eyes at me.

“No. I know.” I smile, wincing at the weight as two huge bottles of Coke go into the basket. As we approach the till, Dinny comes in. The bell rings above his head, a jaunty little fanfare. At once I don’t know where to look, how to stand. He has walked right past Beth, in the car. I wonder if she saw him, if she knew him.

“Hullo, Dinny,” I greet him. I smile. Casual neighbors, nothing more, but my heart is high in my chest. He looks up at me, startled.

“Erica!”

“This is Eddie-I mean Ed-who I was telling you about. My nephew-Beth’s boy.” I pull Eddie to my side, he grins affably, says hi. Dinny studies him closely, then smiles.

“Beth’s son? It’s nice to meet you, Ed,” he says. They shake hands, and for some reason I am moved, I am choked. A simple gesture. My two worlds coming together with the press of their skins.

“Are you the Dinny my mum used to play with when she was little?”

“Yes. I am.”

“Erica was telling me about you. She said you were best friends.” Dinny looks at me sharply, and I feel guilty, even though what I said was true.

“Well, we were, I suppose.” His voice calm and low, always measured.

“Stocking up for Christmas?” I butt in, inanely. The Spar is hardly bursting with seasonal fare; threadbare tinsel taped to the edges of the shelves. Dinny shakes his head, rolls his eyes slightly.

“Honey wants salt-and-vinegar chips,” he says, then looks away sheepishly.

“Did you see Mum, outside? She’s out there in the car-did you say hello?” Eddie asks. A flutter in the pit of my stomach.

“No. I didn’t. I’ll… I will now,” Dinny says, turning to the door, looking out at my grubby white car. His eyes are intent; he moves straight, shoulders tense, as if compelled to go to her.

I can see him, through the glass in the door. Between the spray-on drifts of fake snow in its corners. He bends down at the window, his breath clouding the air. Beth rolls the window down. I can’t see her face with Dinny in the way. I see her hands go up toward her mouth and then flutter away again, drifting as if weightless. I duck; I crane my neck to see. I strain my ears, but all I can hear is Slade on the radio behind the counter. Dinny leans his bare arm on the roof of the car and I feel the ache of that cold metal on my own skin.

“Rick-it’s our go,” Eddie says, nudging me with his elbow. I heave the basket onto the counter, am forced to break off my surveillance and smile at the gloomy-looking man at the till. I pay for the Coke, a Twix and some ham for lunch, and rush to get back out to the car.

“So what do you do now? You always wanted to be a concert flautist, if I remember rightly?” Dinny is saying. He straightens up from leaning on the car, folds his arms. He looks defensive suddenly, and I notice that Beth has not got out of the car to talk to him. She barely looks at him, keeps rearranging the ends of her scarf in her lap.

“Oh, that didn’t quite pan out,” she says with a thin little laugh. “I got to grade seven and then…” She pauses, looks away again. She got to grade seven the spring before Henry disappeared. “I stopped practicing as much,” she finishes, flatly. “I do some translating now. French and Italian, mostly.”

“Oh,” Dinny says. He studies her, and the moment hangs, so I blunder in.

“I struggle enough with English-trying to teach it to teenagers is like trying to push water uphill with a fork. But Beth always did have a gift for languages.”

“You have to listen, that’s all, Rick,” Beth says to me, and it is a reproof of some kind.

“Never was my strongest suit,” I agree with a smile. “We’ve just been to Avebury. Ed was keen to see it because they’ve been doing it at school. Mind you, once we got there you were more interested in having a hot fudge sundae in the pub, weren’t you, Ed?”

“It was amazing,” Eddie assures us. Dinny gives me a quizzical smile, but when Beth asks him nothing more, his face falls slightly and he steps back from the car.

“So, how long are you staying?” he asks, and he addresses this to me, since Beth is staring straight ahead.

“For Christmas, definitely. After that, we’re not really sure. There’s a lot of sorting out to be done,” I say. Which is honest and ambiguous enough. “How about you?”

“For the time being,” Dinny shrugs; even more ambiguous.

“Ah.” I smile.

“Well, I’d better be getting on. Good to see you again, Beth. Nice to meet you, Ed,” he says, nodding to us and walking away.

“He didn’t get the chips,” Eddie observes.

“No. He must have forgotten,” I agree, breathless. “I’ll get some and take them over later.”

“Cool.” Eddie nods. He pulls open the back door with one hand, the other hand fighting its way into the Twix. So flippant. No idea how huge the thing that just happened is, here at the car window. I go back into the shop, buy salt-and-vinegar chips, and when I get back into the car I start the engine and take us home, and I don’t look at Beth because I feel too awkward, and the things I would ask I won’t ask in front of her son.

Eddie is lying on his bed, in pyjamas, tethered to his iPod. On his front with his heels swinging over his back. He’s reading a book called Sasquatch! and with his music on he can’t hear the owls outside, calling to each other between trees. I leave him. Downstairs, Beth is making mint tea, her fingers pinching the corner of the teabag and dipping it, over and over, into the water.

“I hope Dinny didn’t startle you, appearing at the car window like that?” I say. Lightly as I can. Beth glances at me, presses her lips together.

“I saw him go into the shop,” she says, still dipping.

“Really? And you recognized him? I don’t think I would have-not just from glimpsing him go by.”

“Don’t be ridiculous-he looks exactly the same,” she says. I feel inadequate-that she saw something I didn’t.

“Well,” I say. “Pretty amazing to see him again after all this time, isn’t it?”

“Yes, I suppose so,” she murmurs.

Now I can’t think what to ask. She should not be this careless about it. It should matter more. I search her face and frame for signs. “Perhaps we should ask them up to the house. For a drink or something?”

“They?”

“Dinny and Honey. She’s his… well, I’m not sure if they’re married. She’s about to have his baby. You could talk her out of having it in the woods. I think he’d be grateful for that.”

“Having it in the woods? How extraordinary,” Beth says. “What a pretty name though-Honey.” There is more to it than this. There has to be.

“Look, are you sure you’re OK?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” she says, that same bemused tone that I don’t believe. She looks at me again, and I see that her fingers are in the hot water, mid-dip. Steaming hot water, and she does not flinch.

“But you hardly spoke to him. You two used to be so close… didn’t you want to talk to him? Catch up?”

“Twenty-three years is a long time, Erica. We’re totally different people now.”

“Not totally different-you’re still you. He’s still him. We’re still the same people who played together as kids…”

“People change. They move on,” she insists.

“Beth,” I say, eventually, “what happened? To Henry, I mean?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I mean, what happened to him?”

“He disappeared,” she says flatly, but her voice is like thin ice.

“No, but, do you remember, that day at the pond? The day he vanished? Do you remember what happened?” I press. I don’t think I should. I partly want to know, I partly want to move her. And I know I shouldn’t. Beth’s hand slips down to the worktop. It knocks her cup roughly aside, slops tea. She takes a deep breath.

“How can you ask me that?” she demands, constricted.

“How can I? Why shouldn’t I?” I ask, but when I look up I see she is shaking, eyes alight with anger. She doesn’t answer for a while.

“Just because Dinny’s around… just because he’s here it doesn’t mean you need to go raking up the past!” she says.

“What’s it got to do with Dinny? I just asked a simple question!”

“Well, don’t! Don’t keep asking bloody questions, Erica!” Beth snaps, walking away. I sit quietly for a long time, and I picture that day.

We got up early because it had been such a hot night. A night when the sheets seemed to wrap themselves around my legs, and I woke up again and again with my hair stuck in clammy rat-tails to my forehead and neck. We helped ourselves to breakfast and then listened to the radio in the conservatory, which faced north and was cool in the morning. Terracotta tiled floor, ranks of orchids and ferns on the window sill. We wallowed in Caroline’s swing chair, which had blue canvas cushions that smelt faintly sharp, almost feline. Caroline was dead by then. Dead when I was five or six years old. I ran past that swing chair once, a very little girl, and did not see her in it until her stick shot out and caught me. Laura! she snapped, calling me my mother’s name, Go and find Corin. Tell him I need to see him. I must see him! I had no idea who Corin was. I was terrified of the limp bundle of fabric in the swing chair, the incongruous strength behind that stick. I ducked beneath it, and ran.

We got dressed at the last possible minute, went reluctantly to church with Meredith and our parents, ate lunch in the shade of the oak tree on the lawn. A special little table laid there just for the three of us. Beth, Henry and me. Peanut butter-and-cucumber sandwiches, which Mum had made for us because she knew we were too hot and fractious to eat the soup. The itchy press of the wicker chair into the backs of my legs. Some small bird in the tree crapped on the table. Henry scraped it up with his knife, flicked it at me. I ducked so violently that I fell off my chair, kicked the table leg, spilt my lemonade and Beth’s. Henry laughed so hard a lump of bread went up his nose, and he choked until his eyes streamed. Beth and I watched, satisfied; we did not thump him on the back. He was vile for the rest of the day. We tried everything to lose him. The heat made him groggy and violent, like a sun-struck bull. Eventually he was called inside to lie down because he was caught tying a Labrador’s legs together with string while it panted, long-suffering and bewildered. Meredith would not stand for the torment of her Labradors.

But he came out again later, as the afternoon broadened. He found us at the dew pond. The three of us by then, of course. I had been swimming, pretending to be an otter, a mermaid, a dolphin. Henry laughed at my wet saggy knickers, at the bulge of water in the gusset. Have you pissed your pants, Erica? Then something, something. Running. Thoughts of the plughole at the bottom of the pond, of Henry being sucked down through it. That must have been why I said to them, again and again: Look in the pond. I think he’s in the pond. We were all at the pond. Even though they had looked, they told me. Mum told me, the policeman told me. They had looked and he wasn’t there. No need for divers-the water was clear enough to see. Meredith took me by the shoulders, shook me, shouted, Where is he, Erica? A tiny bubble of spit from her mouth landed warm and wet on my cheek. Mother, stop it! Don’t! Beth and I were given dinner in the kitchen, our mother spooning beans onto our toast, her face pale and preoccupied. As dusk bloomed the evening smelled of hot grass getting damp, and air so good you could eat it. But Beth did not eat. That was the first time, that evening. The first time I saw her mouth close so resolutely. Nothing in, and nothing out.

“What’s with all the chips?” Beth asks, poking the multipack of salt-and-vinegar chips among the breakfast detritus on the table.

“Oh… they were supposed to be for Honey. I forgot to take them down to her yesterday,” I say. Eddie is sitting on the bench with his back to the kitchen table, throwing a tennis ball against the wall and catching it. The ball’s flat, threadbare; it probably belonged to a Labrador once. He throws it with a maddening lack of rhythm. “Eddie, can you give it a rest?” I ask. He sighs, aims, throws the ball into the bin in one smooth arc.

“Great shot, darling,” Beth smiles. Eddie rolls his eyes. “Are you bored?” she asks him.

“A bit. No, not really,” Eddie flounders. The equal pull of honesty and tact.

“Why don’t you deliver those chips to Honey?” I suggest, swigging the remains of my tea.

“I’ve never even met Honey. And I only met that bloke once, yesterday. I can hardly go marching into their front yard waving chips, can I?”

“I’ll go with you,” I say, swinging my legs around and getting up. “Do you want to come, Beth? The camp’s just where it always was,” I can’t resist adding. I don’t know how she can not want to go back, to see.

“No. No thanks. I’m going to… I’m going to walk into the village. Get the Sunday paper.”

“Can I have a Twix?”

“Eddie, you’re going to turn into a Twix.”

“Please?”

“Come on, Eddie. We’re going. Boots on, it’s pretty muddy on the way,” I say.

I take us to the camp the long way, via the dew pond. It’s becoming a daily pilgrimage. It’s just a cold brown day today, none of the ice and sparkle of yesterday. I pause to walk to the edge, look into the depths of it. It’s unchanged. It gives me no answers. I wonder if I just wasn’t paying attention, when whatever it was happened? My mind wanders sometimes-gets snagged on a background thought, gets coaxed away. When other teachers talk to me, sometimes it happens. I don’t like to think about repressed memories, about trauma, amnesia. Mental illness.

“I think you’re a bit obsessed with this pond, Rick,” Eddie tells me gravely. I smile.

“I’m not. What makes you say that, anyway?”

“Every time we come near it you go all Luna Lovegood. Staring into space like that.”

“Well, excuse me, I’m sure!”

“I’m only joking,” he exclaims, pushing me awkwardly with his shoulder. “But it does kind of look the same every time. Doesn’t it?” He turns away a few paces, crouches to pick up a stone, hurls it into the water. The surface shatters. I watch him and suddenly my knees ache, sickeningly, as if I’ve missed my step on a ladder.

“Come on, then,” I say, turning away quickly.

“Did something happen here?” Eddie asks in a rush. He sounds tense, worried.

“What makes you ask, Eddie?”

“It’s just… you keep coming back out here. You get that look in your eye, like Mum gets when she’s sad,” Eddie mumbles. I curse myself silently. “And Mum seems… she doesn’t seem to like it here.” It’s easy to forget how clearly a child can see things.

“Well, something did happen here, Eddie. When we were small our cousin Henry disappeared. He was eleven, the same age as you are now. Nobody ever found out what happened to him, so we’ve kind of never forgotten about it.”

“Oh.” He kicks up sprays of dead leaves. “That’s really sad,” he says, eventually.

“Yes. It was,” I reply.

“Maybe he just ran away and… I don’t know, joined a band or something?”

“Maybe he did, Eddie,” I say, hopelessly. Eddie nods, apparently satisfied with this explanation.

Dinny is standing with a man I don’t recognize as the dogs come charging over to us, circling proprietorially. I smile and wave as if I pop in every day, and Dinny waves back, more hesitantly. His companion smiles at me. He’s a thin man, wiry, not tall. He has fair hair, cropped very close, the tattoo of a tiny blue flower on his neck. Eddie walks closer to my side, bumping me. We move nervously into the circle of vehicles.

“Hi, sorry to interrupt,” I say. I try for bright, but to my own ears I sound brassy.

“Hello there, I’m Patrick. You must be our neighbors up at the big house?” the wiry man greets me. His smile is warm and real, his handshake rattles my shoulder. At such a welcome I feel a knot in my stomach begin to loosen.

“Yes, that’s right. I’m Erica and this is my nephew, Eddie.”

“Ed!” Eddie hisses at me sideways, through unruly teeth.

“Ed, good to meet you.” Patrick rattles Eddie’s shoulder too. I notice Harry sitting on the step of a van behind the two of them. I think about calling out a greeting, but change my mind. Something in his hands again, something the focus of immense concentration. Most of his face is hidden behind hanging hair and thick whiskers.

“Well, uh, this might sound a little odd but we noticed you’d forgotten to get Honey’s chips yesterday. In the shop. So, we brought some over for her. That’s if she’s not craving pickles this morning instead?” I wave the big sack of chips. Patrick gives Dinny a look-not unkind, slightly puzzled.

“I know how fed up I get when Mum forgets my food when she goes shopping,” Eddie rescues me. At the sound of his voice, Harry looks up. Dinny shrugs one shoulder. He turns.

“Honey!” he yells at the ambulance.

“Oh! There’s no need to disturb her…” I feel color in my cheeks. Honey appears at one of the small windows. It frames her face. Pretty, petulant.

“What?” she shouts back, far louder than she needs to.

“Erica has something for you.” I squirm. Eddie edges closer to Harry, trying to see what he’s working on. Honey appears, picking her way carefully down the steps. All in black today, hair arrestingly pale against it. She stands at a distance from me and watches me suspiciously.

“Well. Silly really. We got you these. Dinny said you fancied some, so…” I trail off, I dangle the bag. Slowly, Honey steps forward and takes them from me.

“How much do I owe you?” she asks, scowling.

“Oh, no, don’t worry. I don’t remember. Forget it.” I wave my hand. She shoots Dinny a flat look and he puts his hand in his pocket.

“Two quid cover it?” he asks me.

“There’s really no need.”

“Take it. Please.” So I take it.

“Thanks,” Honey mutters, and goes back inside.

“Don’t mind Honey,” Patrick grins. “She was born in a bad mood, and then it got worse in puberty, and now that she’s expecting… well, forget it!”

“Fuck you, Pat!” Honey shouts, out of sight. He grins even wider.

Eddie has got closer and closer to Harry. He is peering at the man’s hands, and probably blocking his light.

“Don’t get in the way, will you, Ed?” I say, smiling cautiously.

“What is it?” Eddie asks Harry, who doesn’t reply, but looks at him and smiles.

“That’s Harry,” Dinny tells Ed. “He doesn’t really like to talk.”

“Oh. Well, it looks like a torch. Is it broken? Can I see?” Eddie presses. Harry opens his hands wide, displays the tiny mechanical parts.

“So, will you be down for our little solstice party this evening, Erica?” Patrick asks.

“Oh, well, I don’t know,” I say. I look at Dinny and he looks back, steadily, as if working out a problem.

“Of course you are! The more the merrier, right, Nathan? We’re lighting a bonfire, having a bit of a barbecue. Bring some booze and you’re most welcome, neighbor,” Patrick says.

“Well, maybe then.” I smile.

“Your dreadlocks are wicked,” Eddie tells Harry. “You look a bit like Predator. Have you seen that film?” He has his fingers in the mess of torch parts, picking bits out, putting them in order. Harry looks faintly astonished.

“I’ve got to run. I’ll catch you later.” Patrick nods at Dinny and me. He leaves the camp with a springing step, hands thrust into the pockets of a battered wax coat.

I look at the muddy toes of my boots, then at Eddie, who is piecing the torch back together before Harry’s incredulous eyes.

“Ed seems a good lad,” Dinny says then, and I nod.

“He’s the best. He’s a great help.” There’s a long silence.

“When I spoke to Beth… she seemed, I don’t know,” Dinny says, hesitant.

“She seemed what?”

“Not like she used to be. Almost like there was nobody home?”

“She suffers from depression,” I say, hurriedly. “She’s still the same Beth. Only she’s… she got more fragile.” I have to explain, even though I feel treacherous. He nods, frowns. “I think it started here. I think it started when Henry disappeared,” I blurt out. This is not what Beth has told me, but I do think it’s true. She told me it started one stormy day, driving home at dusk. The clouds were heavy, but on the western horizon as she drove toward it, they broke into slivers, and stripes of bright pale sky showed behind them. One of those wet mackerel skies. She said she suddenly couldn’t tell what was the horizon and what was the sky. Hills or clouds. Earth or air. It was so bewildering that she almost drifted into the oncoming traffic, and she felt seasick all evening, as if the ground were moving beneath her feet. After that, she told me, she wasn’t sure what was real any more, what was safe. That’s when she thinks it started. But I remember her the evening Henry vanished. Her silence, and the uneaten beans on her plate.

“I would hate to think that what happened then has made her ill all this time,” Dinny says quietly. He knows what happened. He knows.

“Oh?” I say. If only he would go on, say more. Tell me. But he doesn’t.

“It wasn’t… well. I’m sorry to hear that she’s not happy.”

“I thought coming back here would help, but… I’m worried it might be making her worse. You know, bringing it all back. It could go either way, I think. But it’s good that Eddie’s here. He takes her mind off things. Without him I think she’d even forget it was Christmas.”

“Do you think Beth will come to the party tonight?”

“Truthfully, no. I’ll ask her, if you like?” I say.

Dinny nods, his face falling. “Ask her. Bring Eddie too. He and Harry seem to be getting on well. He’s great with kids-they’re less complicated for him.”

“If you asked her, I’m sure she’d come. If you came up to the house, that is,” I venture. Dinny shoots me a brief, wry smile.

“Me and that house don’t really get along. You ask her, and perhaps I’ll see you both later.” I nod, bury my hands in the back pockets of my jeans.

“Are you coming, Ed? I’m going back to the house.” Eddie and Harry look up from their work. Two sets of clear blue eyes.

“Can’t I stay and finish this, Rick?” I glance at Dinny. He shrugs again, nods.

“I’ll keep an eye out,” he says.

We smuggled Dinny into the house once, when Meredith had gone into Devizes for a dental appointment. Henry was at the house of a boy in the village with whom he had taken up. A boy whose house had a proper swimming pool.

“Come on!” I hissed at Dinny. “Don’t be such a baby!” I was desperate to show him the big rooms, the huge stairs, the enormous cellars. Not to impress him, not to show off. Just to see his eyes widen. To be able to show him something for a change, to be the one in charge. Beth hunkered down at the back of the three of us, smiling tensely. There was nobody about except the housekeeper-who never paid us much attention-but still we crouched to scuttle in. Behind the last sheltering bush, I was close enough to feel Dinny’s knee pressing into my hip; smell the dry, woody smell of his skin.

Dinny was reluctant. He had been told enough times, heard enough stories from his grandpa, Flag, and his parents; had even had fleeting encounters with Meredith. He knew he wasn’t welcome there, and that he shouldn’t want to look. But he was curious, I could tell. As a child will be when a place is forbidden. I had never seen him that unsure; I’d never seen him hesitate, and then choose to carry on. We went from room to room, and I gave a running commentary: “This is the drawing room, only nobody ever does any drawing in it, not that I’ve seen. This is the way to the cellar. Come and see! It’s the size of another whole house! This is Beth’s room. She gets the bigger room because she’s older but from my room you can see right into the trees and I saw an owl, once.” On and on I went. The Labradors followed us, grinning and wagging excitedly.

But the more I went on, and the more we showed him, the more rooms we dragged him into, the quieter and quieter Dinny got. His words dried up, eyes that were wide fell flat again. Eventually even I noticed.

“Don’t you like it?”

A shrug, a tip of the eyebrows. And then the sound of the car on the driveway. Freezing, panicking, hearts lurching. Trying to hear: were they coming in the front, or the back? A calculated risk and I chose wrong. We ran out onto the terrace as they appeared at the side of the house. Meredith, my father, and worst of all Henry, back from his visit. He grinned. After a hung moment I grabbed Dinny’s arm, yanked it, and we tore across the lawn. The greatest act of insurrection I think I ever performed and it was to save Dinny. To save him from hearing what Meredith would say to him. She was shocked into silence, just for a second. Standing tall and thin in a crisp linen suit, duck-egg blue; hair set, immaculate. Her mouth was a hard red line of pigment, and then we were away and it cracked open.

“Erica Calcott, you come back here this instant! How dare you bring that filth into my house? How dare you! I insist that you come back here immediately! And you, you thieving gypsy! You’ll scuttle off like vermin, will you? Like the vermin that you are!” I like to think my father said something. I like to hope Dinny didn’t hear, but of course deep down I know that he did. Running away like a thief. Like a trespasser. I thought I was being brave, I thought I was being a hero for him. But he was angry with me for days. For making him go into the house, and then for making him run away.

I’m up in Meredith’s room. This is the biggest bedroom, of course, with an ugly four-poster bed, heavy with carvings. The base is high and the mattress deep. How will the next owners move this bed? It’s huge. Only by taking an axe to it, I think. To be replaced with something contemporary and probably beige. I fling myself across it, over the stiff brocaded bedspread, and count how long it takes me to stop bouncing. Who made this bed? The housekeeper, I suppose. The morning that Meredith collapsed on her way into the village. Gradually I become still and realize that I am bouncing on my dead grandmother’s bed. The very sheets she slept in the night before she died.

In here more than anywhere the ghostly remains of her seem to linger. As is only natural, I suppose. Part of me wishes that I’d come to see her as an adult. That I’d pinned her down, made her tell me where all that bad feeling came from. Far too late now. Her dressing table is a huge thing-deep, wide; several drawers in columns on either side, a wide drawer in the middle that opens into my lap; a triptych mirror set on a box of yet more drawers. The top is satin smooth, a patina wrought by centuries of soft female fingers. I think Mum should have jewelry as well as photos. Meredith made no bones about telling us she’d sold off her best pieces, like the best of the estate’s land, to pay for repairs to the roof. She told my parents this accusingly, as if they ought to have put their hands in their pockets, looked under the sofa cushions and produced thirty thousand pounds. But there has to be something left for my thieving hands to find.

Lipsticks and eyeshadows and blushers in the top right-hand drawer. Small dunes of loose make-up powder, shimmering underneath all the metal tubes and plastic compacts. Belts in the next, coiled like snakes. Handkerchiefs, hair clips, chiffon scarves. This drawer smells powerfully of Meredith, of her perfume, and the slightly doggy notes of the Labradors. In the bottom right drawer are boxes. I take them out, put them up where I can see them. Most are full of jewelry-dress pieces by the looks of it. One box, the biggest, shiny and dark, is full of papers and photographs.

With a prickle of excitement, I sift through the contents. Letters from Clifford and Mary; holiday postcards from my mum and dad; odd bank statements, secreted away into this secretive box for who knows what reason. I read odd snatches of each, feeling the illicit thrill of prying. Some photographs too, which I put to one side; and then I find the newspaper clippings. About Henry, of course. Local papers started the coverage. Lady Calcott’s Grandson Missing. Search for Local Boy Intensifies. Clothes found in Westridge woods did not belong to missing boy. Then the nationals joined in. Abduction fears, speculation, a mysterious hobo spotted walking the A361 with a bundle that could have been a child. Boy matching the description seen lying in a car in Devizes. Police very concerned. I can’t take my eyes from it. As if a hobo could have carried Henry any distance at all. Big-boned, solid Henry. We never saw any of this, Beth and I. Of course we didn’t. Nobody reads the paper when they’re eight years old, and we weren’t allowed to watch the news at the best of times.

It looks like she bought several papers, different ones every day. Did she cut these out at the time, or later, years afterwards, as a way to keep hope alive, to keep him alive? I had no idea it was such a big story. I hadn’t connected, until right now, the reporters milling at the gates with any kind of national infamy. Of course, I realize now why they were there, the reporters; why the story ran and ran, getting fewer and fewer column inches as the months went on, until it disappeared altogether. Children shouldn’t just vanish without trace. That’s the worst fear, worse even than finding the body, perhaps. Having no answers, having no idea. Poor Meredith. She was his grandmother, after all. She was meant to be looking after him.

I am staring, staring hard at a grainy, enlarged photo of Henry. A school photo, neat and tidy in a blazer and stripy house tie. Hair combed; toothy, decorous smile. That photo on posters in the shop window, on telegraph poles, on newspaper pages, in doctors’ waiting rooms and supermarkets and garages and pubs. No websites back then, but I remember seeing this photo all over the village. The one in the shop window was in color. It quickly faded in the sunshine, but it was bright when I first saw it. Can I go to the shop? No! You’re to stay indoors! I couldn’t understand why. Mum went with me in the end, and held my hand, and politely asked the reporters to let us through, to not follow us. A couple of them did anyway, took some pointless shots of us emerging from the shop with orange ice lollies. One tiny cutting from late August, 1987. A full year later. The regretful last line: Despite an extensive police investigation, no trace of the missing boy has yet been found.

There’s an ache in my ribs and I realize I’ve been holding my breath. As if in anticipation; as if the story could have had any other ending. I notice the rain falling faster, louder. Eddie is out in the woods. He’ll be soaked. It seems so unreal, reading about Henry in the press, reading about that summer. Unreal, and at the same time all the more real. All the more terrible. It did happen, and I was there. I put the clippings back in the box, careful not to crease them. I will keep these, I think; in the very same box, so coffin-like, that Meredith put them in twenty-three years ago.

I pick up the pile of photographs and flick through them, shaking off the shadow of the newspaper clippings. Random family portraits and holiday shots for the most part-the sort of thing Mum was after. A small black-and-white photo of Meredith and Charles on their wedding day-my grandfather Charles, that is, who was killed in World War II. Charles wasn’t in the armed forces, but he went up to London on business one week and a stray V2 found its way to the club where he was having lunch. The best shots of their wedding day are on the piano in the drawing room, in heavy silver frames, but in this little shot Meredith is bent at an odd angle, twisting to look back over her shoulder, away from Charles, as if the hem of her dress has caught on something. They are emerging from the church, coming out of the dark into the light. In profile Meredith’s face is young, painfully anxious. Her hair is very fair, eyes huge in her face. How did such a lovely girl, such a nervous young bride, ever become Meredith? The Meredith I remember, cold and hard as the marble shelves in the pantry.

Only one other photo arrests me. It’s very old, battered around the edges; the image surfaces from a sea of fox marks and fade. A young woman, perhaps in her early twenties, in a high-necked dress, hair pinned severely back; and on her lap a child in a lace dress, not more than six months old. A dark-haired baby, its face slightly smeared, ghostly, as if it wriggled just as the exposure was taken. The woman is Caroline. I recognize her from other pictures around the house, although in none of them does she look as young as this. I turn it over, read the faint stamp on the back: Gilbert Beaufort & Son, New York City; and hand written, in ink that has almost vanished, 1904.

But Caroline did not marry Henry Calcott, my great-grandfather, until 1905. Mary was seized by a genealogy fad a few years back-traced the Calcott family lineage that she was so proud to have married into and sent us all a copy in our Christmas card that year. They married in 1905, and they lost a daughter before Meredith was born in 1911. I frown, turn the picture to the light and try to find any more clues within it. Caroline stares calmly back at me, her hand curled protectively around her baby. Where did this child go? How did it fall from our family tree? I slip the photo into my back pocket, begin to pick through the jewelry, hardly seeing it. A brooch pin catches my fingertip, and I sit there a while, tasting my blood.

After dinner Eddie escapes from the table to watch TV. Beth and I sit among the dirty plates and bowls. She has eaten a little. Not enough, but a little. When she senses Eddie watching her, she tries harder. I steal one last potato from the bowl and lean back, feel something stiff in my back pocket.

“What’s that?” Beth asks, as I pull out the photo of our great-grandmother. She hasn’t spoken to me much since I asked her about Henry, and now her voice is slightly stiff. But I know an olive branch when I see one.

“I found it up in Meredith’s room-it’s Caroline,” I tell her, passing it over.

Beth studies the young face, the pale eyes. “Gosh, yes, so it is. I remember those eyes-even when she was ancient, they stayed that bright silver color. Do you remember?”

“No, not really.”

“Well, you were pretty small.”

“I used to be so scared of her! She hardly seemed human to me.”

“Were you really? But she never bothered us. Never paid us much attention.”

“I know. She was just so… old!” I say, and Beth chuckles.

“That she was. From another era, well and truly.”

“What else do you remember about her?” I ask. Beth leans back from the table, pushes her plate away from her. Half of her slice of quiche is still on her plate, untouched.

“I remember that look Meredith used to get on her face whenever she had to feed her, or dress her. That look of such careful neutrality. I always remember thinking she must have been having terrible thoughts, such terrible thoughts to have been so careful not to let them show on her face.”

“But what about Caroline? Do you remember anything she said, anything she did?”

“Well, let me think. I remember the time she went mad at the summer party-when was it? I can’t remember. Not long before she died. Do you remember it? With the fireworks and all the lanterns strung along the driveway to light the way up to the house?”

“God! I’d totally forgotten about that… I remember the fireworks, of course, and the food. But now you remind me I do remember Meredith wheeling Caroline inside, because she’d been shouting something about crows… what was it about? Can you remember?” I ask. Beth shakes her head.

“It wasn’t crows,” she says. And as she tells me, the scene slides into focus in my mind, as if it had always been there, waiting for Beth to point it out to me.

The Storton Manor summer party was an annual affair, usually held on the first Saturday in July. Sometimes we were there in time for it, sometimes not, depending on the school calendar. We always hoped to be-it was the one occasion when we wanted to take part in something of Meredith’s, because the lights and the people and the music and the dresses turned the manor into another place, another world. That year, Beth spent hours doing my hair for me. I’d been crying because my party dress had got too small for me, something we hadn’t discovered until I put it on earlier in the evening. It was too tight under the arms and the smocking pinched my skin. But there was no alternative so I had to wear it, and to cheer me up Beth braided turquoise ribbons into my hair, fifteen or twenty in total, which came together in a plume of curled ends at the back of my head.

“Last one-sit still! There. You look like a bird of paradise, Erica!” she smiled, as she knotted the last one. I tipped my head this way and that, liked the brush of the ribbons against the back of my neck.

Flaming torches marched up the driveway, reeking of paraffin and guttering in the night air. They made a sound like flags flying. There was a string quartet on the sun terrace near where long tables had been set up, draped with white cloths and loaded with ranks of shining glassware. Silver ice buckets on long legs held chilled bottles of champagne, and the waiters raised their eyebrows at me when I dipped my fingers in, filching ice cubes to suck. The food was probably wonderful, but I remember snatching a caviar blini, cramming it into my mouth and then spitting it into the nearest flowerbed. Adult conversation that we didn’t understand volleyed over our heads; gossip and hearsay bandied back and forth, oblivious of we little spies, infiltrating the crowd.

Most of our extended family, people I never see any more, attended, as well as everyone who was anyone in county society. A photographer from Wiltshire Life circulated, snapping the more attractive women, the more titled men. Horsey women with flat hair and big teeth, who wore garishly expensive evening gowns in shades of pink, peacock and emerald. They dug out their diamonds for the occasion-rocks glittering against freckled English skins. The whole garden was flooded with the smell of their perfumes, and later, when the dancing started, that of fresh sweat. The men wore black tie. My dad fidgeted with his collar, his cummerbund, not used to the stiff edges, the layers of fabric. Insects swirled around the lanterns like sparks from a fire. The lawns rang with voices and laughter, a steady roar that grew with the number of empty bottles. Only the fireworks silenced it, and we children stared, rapt, as the purple night sky exploded into light.

A whole crew of staff was brought in to cater the party. Wine waiters; cooks who took over the kitchen; waitresses to ferry the trays of hot canapés they produced; calm, implacable butlers who lingered indoors, politely directing people to the downstairs bathrooms and discouraging the curious from peering into the family rooms. It was one of these anonymous workers that Caroline attacked, inexplicably. She had been positioned in her chair on the veranda, near enough to the terrace to hear the music, but still within the shelter of the house. People drifted over to pay their respects, bending forward awkwardly so as not to tower over her, but they drifted away again as soon as it was polite to do so. Some of them Caroline acknowledged with a faraway nod of her head. Some she just ignored. And then a waitress went over with a smile, offered her something from a tray.

She was dark, I remember that. Very young, maybe only in her teens. Beth and I had noticed her earlier in the evening because we envied her hair. Her skin was a deep olive and she had the most luxurious black hair, hanging in a thick plait over her shoulder. It was as deep and glossy as ink. She had a neat rounded body, and a neat rounded face with dark brown eyes and apples high in her cheeks. She might have been Spanish, or Greek perhaps. Beth and I were nearby because we’d been following her. We thought her incredibly lovely. But when Caroline looked up and focused on the girl her eyes grew huge and her mouth dropped open-a damp, lipless hole in her face. I was close enough to see that she was shaking, and to see a frown of alarm pass over the waitress’s face.

“Magpie?” Caroline whispered, a ragged breath forming the word so loosely I thought I’d heard it wrong. But she said it again, more firmly. “Magpie, is that you?” The waitress shook her head and smiled, but Caroline threw up her hands with a hoarse cry. Meredith looked over at her mother, drawing down her brows.

“Are you all right, Mother?” she asked, but Caroline ignored her, continuing to stare at the dark-haired waitress with a look of pure terror on her face.

“It can’t be you! You’re dead! I know you are… I saw it…” she wailed.

“It’s OK,” the girl said, backing away from the old woman. Beth and I watched, fascinated, as tears began to slide down Caroline’s cheeks.

“Don’t hurt me… please don’t,” she croaked.

“What’s going on here?” Meredith demanded, appearing next to her mother, glaring at the hapless waitress, who could only shake her head, at a loss. “Mother, be quiet. What’s the matter with you?”

“No! Magpie… how can it be? I was sure I didn’t… I didn’t mean for it…” she begged, putting trembling fingers over her mouth. Her face was aghast, haunted. The waitress moved away, apologizing, smiling an uncomfortable smile. “Magpie… wait, Magpie!”

“That’s quite enough! There’s nobody here called Magpie! For goodness’ sake, Mother, pull yourself together,” Meredith admonished her, sharply. “We have guests,” she said pointedly, leaning forward to speak right into Caroline’s ear. But Caroline just kept staring after the black-haired girl, frantically searching the crowd for her.

“Magpie! Magpie!” she shouted, still weeping. She grasped Meredith’s hand, fixed her daughter with wide, desperate eyes. “She’s come back! Don’t let her hurt me!”

“Right. That’s enough. Clifford-come and help me.” Meredith beckoned sharply to her son and between them they turned Caroline’s chair and manoeuvred her in through the tall glass doors. Caroline tried to fight them, kept craning her head to look for the girl, kept saying the name, over and over again. Magpie, Magpie. It was the first and only time I remember feeling sorry for her, because she sounded so frightened, and so very, very sad.

“Magpie, that was it. Funny name,” I say, as Beth stops speaking, undoes her own long plait and runs her fingers through her hair. “I wonder who she thought that girl was?”

“Who knows? She was obviously pretty confused by then. She was over a hundred, remember.”

“Do you think Meredith knew? She was so brusque with her about it!”

“No. I don’t know,” Beth shrugs. “Meredith was always brusque.”

“She was horrible that night.” I get up, clatter the kettle onto the hotplate for coffee.

“You should go and have a root around in the attic if it’s old pictures and papers you’re after,” Beth says, suddenly keen.

“Oh?”

“That old trunk up there-when we came here for Caroline’s funeral I remember Meredith putting everything she could find of hers up in that old red leather trunk. It was almost as if she wanted everything of Caroline’s out of her sight.”

“I don’t remember that. Where was I?”

“You stayed in Reading with Nick and Sue next door. Dad said you were too young to go to a funeral.”

“I’ll go and have a look up there later, then,” I say. “You should come up, too.”

“No, no, I’ve never been that bothered about family history. You might find something interesting, though,” she smiles. I notice how keen she is for me to investigate this distant past rather than our more recent one. How keen she is to distract me.