Toby's Room

One

Elinor arrived home at four o’clock on Friday and went straight to her room. She hung the red dress on the wardrobe door, glancing at it from time to time as she brushed her hair. That neckline seemed to be getting lower by the minute. In the end her nerve failed her. She hunted out her pink dress, the one she used to wear for dancing classes at school, put it on and stood in front of the cheval mirror. She turned her head from side to side, her hands smoothing down the creases that had gathered round the waist. Oh dear. No, no, she couldn’t do it, not this time, not ever again. She wriggled out of it and threw it to the back of the wardrobe. Out of the window would have been more satisfying, but her father and brother-in-law were sitting on the terrace. She pulled the red dress over her head, tugged the neckline up as far as it would go, and went reluctantly downstairs.

Father met her in the hall and hugged her as if he hadn’t seen her for a year. Outside the living room, she hesitated, but there was no point wearing a red dress and then creeping along the skirting boards like a mouse, so she flung the door open and swept in. She kissed Rachel, waved at Rachel’s husband, Tim, who was at the far side of the room talking to her mother, and then looked around for Toby, but he wasn’t there. Perhaps he wasn’t coming after all, though he’d said he would. The prospect of his absence darkened the whole evening; she wasn’t sure she could face it on her own. But then, a few minutes later, he came in, apologizing profusely, damp hair sticking to his forehead. He must’ve been for a swim. She wished she’d known; she’d have gone with him. Not much hope of talking to him now; Mother had already beckoned him to her side.

Rachel was asking Elinor question after question about her life in London, who she met, who she went out with, did she have any particular friends? Elinor said as little as possible, looking for an excuse to get away. It was supplied by her mother, who appeared at her side and hissed, ‘Elinor, go upstairs at once and take that ridiculous dress off.’

At that moment the gong sounded. Elinor spread her hands, all injured innocence, though underneath she felt hurt and humiliated. Yet again, she was being treated like a child.

Father came in at the last minute just as they were sitting down. She wondered at the curious mixture of poking and prying and secrecy that ruled their lives. Mother and Father saw very little of each other. She needed country air for the sake of her health; he lived at his club because it was such a convenient walking distance from the hospital, where he often had to be available late at night. Was that the reason for their week-long separation? She doubted it. Once, crossing Tottenham Court Road, she’d seen her father with a young woman, younger even than Rachel. They’d just come out of a restaurant. The girl had stood, holding her wrap tightly round her thin shoulders, while Father flagged down a cab and helped her into it, and then they were whirled away into the stream of traffic. Elinor had stood and watched, open-mouthed. Father hadn’t seen her; she was sure of that. She’d never mentioned that incident to anyone, not even to Toby, though she and Toby were the only members of the family who kept no secrets from each other.

She sat in virtual silence for the first half of the meal — sulking, her mother would have said — though Tim did his clumsy best to tease her out of it. Did she have a young man yet? Was all this moodiness because she was in love?

‘There’s no time for anything like that,’ Elinor said, crisply. ‘They work us too hard.’

‘Well, you know what they say, don’t you? All work and no play …?’ He turned to Toby. ‘Have you seen her with anybody?’

‘Not yet, but I’m sure it’s only a matter of time.’

Toby’s joining in the teasing, however reluctantly, was all it took to chafe Elinor’s irritation into fury.

‘Well, if you must know I have met somebody.’ She plucked a name from the air. ‘Kit Neville.’

This was not true: she’d hardly spoken to Kit Neville. He was merely the loudest, the most self-confident, the most opinionated and, in many ways, the most obnoxious male student in her year, and therefore the person she thought of first.

‘What does he do?’ Mother asked. Predictably.

‘He’s a student.’

‘What sort of student?’

‘Art. What else would he be doing at the Slade?’

‘Have you met his family?’

‘Now why on earth would I want to do that?’

‘Because that’s what people do when —’

‘When they’re about to get engaged? Well, I’m not. We’re just friends. Very good friends, but … friends.’

‘You need to be careful, Elinor,’ Rachel said. ‘Living in London on your own. You don’t want to get a reputation …’

‘I do want to get a reputation, as it happens. I want to get a reputation as a painter.’

‘You know what I mean.’

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake.’

‘Elinor,’ her father said. ‘That’s enough.’

So even Father was turning against her. The last mouthful of cheese and biscuit sticking in her dry throat, Elinor followed her mother and Rachel out of the dining room. They sat over a pot of coffee that nobody wanted, staring at their reflections in the black windows that overlooked the airless terrace. The windows couldn’t be opened because of moths. Rachel had a horror of moths.

‘So who is this Mr Neville?’ Mother asked.

‘Nobody, he’s in my year, that’s all.’

‘I thought you said classes weren’t mixed?’

‘Some are, some aren’t.’ She could barely speak for exasperation; she’d brought this on herself. ‘Look, it’s not as if we’re going out …’

‘So why mention him?’ Rachel’s voice was slurry with tiredness. Tendrils of damp hair stuck to her forehead; she’d eaten scarcely anything. She yawned and stretched her ankles out in front of her. ‘Look at them. Puddings.’ She dug her fingers into the swollen flesh as if she hated it.

‘You must be worn out in this heat,’ Mother said. ‘Why don’t you put your feet up?’

Feet up in the drawing room? Unheard of. But then Elinor intercepted a glance between the two women, and understood. She wondered when she was going to be told. What a family they were for not speaking. She wanted to jump on the table and shout out every miserable little secret they possessed, though, apart from the breakdown of her parents’ marriage, she couldn’t have said what the secrets were. But there was something: a shadow underneath the water. Swim too close and you’d cut your feet. A childhood memory surfaced. On holiday somewhere, she’d cut her foot on a submerged rock; she’d felt no pain, only the shock of seeing her blood smoking into the water. Toby had taken off his shirt and wrapped it round her foot, then helped her back to the promenade. She remembered his pink fingers, wrinkled from the sea, the whorl of hair on the top of his head as he bent down to examine the cut.

Why couldn’t they leave her alone? All this nonsense about young men … It was just another way of drilling it into you that the real business of a girl’s life was to find a husband. Painting was, at best, an accomplishment; at worst, a waste of time. She was trying to hold on to her anger, but she’d suppressed it so long it was threatening to dissipate into depression. As it so often did. Why hadn’t Toby spoken up for her? Instead of just sitting there, fiddling with his knife and fork.

She was thoroughly fed up. As soon as possible after the men joined them, she excused herself, saying she needed an early night.

As she closed the door behind her, she heard Father ask, ‘What’s the matter with her?’

‘Oh, you know,’ Mother said. ‘Girls.’

Meaning? Nothing that made her feel better about herself, or them.

Next morning after breakfast Toby announced that he was going to walk to the old mill.

‘In this heat?’ Mother said.

‘It’s not too bad. Anyway, it’ll be cooler by the river.’

Elinor followed him into the hall. ‘Do you mind if I come?’

‘It’s a long way.’

‘Toby, I walk all over London.’

‘Don’t let Rachel hear you say that. Rep-u-tation!’

They arranged to meet on the terrace. Soon Elinor was following her brother across the meadow, feeling the silken caress of long grasses against her bare arms and the occasional cool shock of cuckoo spit.

‘You know this chap you were talking about last night …?’

‘Oh, don’t you start.’

‘I was only asking.’

‘I only mentioned him because I’m sick of being teased. I just wanted to get Tim off my back. Instead of which, I got Mother on to it.’

‘And Rachel.’

‘She’s worse than Mother.’

‘She’s jealous, that’s all. She settled down a bit too early and … Well, she didn’t exactly get a bargain, did she?’

‘You don’t like Tim, do you?’

‘He’s harmless. I just don’t think she’s very happy.’ He turned to face her. ‘You won’t make that mistake, will you?’

‘Marrying Tim? Shouldn’t think so.’

‘No-o. Settling down too early.’

‘I don’t intend to “settle down” at all.’

She hoped that was the end of the subject, but a minute later Toby said, ‘All the same, there has to be a reason you mentioned him — I mean, him, rather than somebody else.’

‘He’s perfectly obnoxious, that’s why. He was just the first person who came to mind.’

Once they reached the river path, there was some shade at last, though the flashing of sunlight through the leaves and branches was oddly disorientating, and more than once she tripped over a root or jarred herself stepping on air.

‘Be easier coming back,’ Toby said. ‘We won’t have the sun in our eyes.’

She didn’t want to go on talking. She was content to let images rise and fall in her mind: her lodgings in London, the Antiques Room at the Slade, the friends she was starting to make, the first few spindly shoots of independence, though it all seemed a little unreal here, in this thick heat, with dusty leaves grazing the side of her face and swarms of insects making a constant humming in the green shade.

She was walking along, hardly aware of her surroundings, when a sudden fierce buzzing broke into her trance. Toby caught her arm. Bluebottles, gleaming sapphire and emerald, were glued to a heap of droppings in the centre of the path. A few stragglers zoomed drunkenly towards her, fastening on her eyes and lips. She spat, batting them away.

‘Here, this way,’ Toby said. He was holding a branch for her so she could edge past the seething mass.

‘Fox?’ she asked, meaning the droppings.

‘Badger, I think. There’s a sett up there.’

She peered through the trees, but couldn’t see it.

‘Do you remember we had a den here once?’ he said.

She remembered the den: a small, dark, smelly place under some rhododendron bushes. Tiny black insects crawled over your skin and fell into your hair. ‘I don’t think it was here.’

‘It was. You could just hear the weir.’

She listened, and sure enough, between the trees, barely audible, came the sound of rushing water.

‘You’re right, I remember now. I thought it was a bit further on.’

She thought he might want to go there, he lingered so long, but then he turned and walked on.

The river was flowing faster now, picking up leaves and twigs and tiny, struggling insects and whirling them away, and the trees were beginning to thin out. More and more light reached the path until, at last, they came out into an open field that sloped gently down towards the weir. A disused mill — the target of their walk — stood at the water’s edge, though it was many years since its wheel had turned.

This had been the forbidden place of their childhood. They were not to go in there, Mother would say. The floorboards were rotten, the ceilings liable to collapse at any minute …

‘And don’t go near the water,’ she’d call after them, in a last desperate attempt to keep them safe, as they walked away from her down the drive. ‘We won’t,’ they’d chorus. ‘Promise,’ Toby would add, for good measure, and then they would glance sideways at each other, red-faced from trying not to giggle.

Now, Elinor thought, they probably wouldn’t bother going in, but Toby went straight to the side window, prised the boards apart and hoisted himself over the sill. After a second’s hesitation Elinor followed.

Blindness, after the blaze of sunlight. Then, gradually, things became clear: old beams, cobwebs, tracks of children’s footprints on the dusty floor. Their own footprints? No, of course not, couldn’t be, not after all these years. Other children came here now. She put her foot next to one of the prints, marvelling at the difference in size. Toby, meanwhile, was expressing amazement at having to duck to avoid the beams.

Because this place had been the scene of so many forbidden adventures, an air of excitement still clung to it, in spite of the dingy surroundings. She went across to the window and peered out through a hole in the wall. ‘I wonder what it was like to work here.’

Toby came across and stood beside her. ‘Pretty good hell, I should think. Noise and dust.’

He was right of course; when the wheel turned the whole place must have shook. She turned to him. ‘What do you think —?’

He grabbed her arms and pulled her towards him. Crushed against his chest, hardly able to breathe, she laughed and struggled, taking this for the start of some childish game, but then his lips fastened on to hers with a groping hunger that shocked her into stillness. His tongue thrust between her lips, a strong, muscular presence. She felt his chin rough against her cheek, the breadth of his chest and shoulders, not that round, androgynous, childish softness that had sometimes made them seem like two halves of a single person. She started to struggle again, really struggle, but his hand came up and cupped her breast and she felt herself softening, flowing towards him, as if something hard and impacted in the pit of her stomach had begun to melt.

And then, abruptly, he pushed her away.

‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Sorry, sorry …’

She couldn’t speak. How was it possible that anybody, in a single moment, could stumble into a chasm so deep there was no getting out of it?

‘Look, you go back,’ he said. ‘I’ll come home later.’

Automatically, she turned to go, but then remembered the river and turned back.

‘No, go on, I’ll be all right,’ he said.

‘They’ll wonder what’s happened if I show up on my own.’

‘Say you felt ill.’

‘And you went on and left me? Don’t think so. No, come on, we’ve got to go back together.’

He nodded, surrendering the decision to her, and that shocked her almost more than the kiss. He was two years older, and a boy. He had always led.

All the way home, treading in his footsteps, aware, as she’d never been before, of the movement of muscles in his back and legs, she was trying to tame the incident. Incident. But it wasn’t an incident, it was a catastrophe that had ripped a hole in the middle of her life. But then the flash of honesty passed, and she began again to contain, to minimize, to smooth over, to explain. A brotherly hug, nothing to make a fuss about, a kiss that had somehow gone a tiny bit wrong. That was all. Best forgotten. And as for her reaction: shock, fear, and something else, something she hadn’t got a name for; that was best forgotten too.

Her thoughts scrabbled for a footing. All the time, underneath, she was becoming more and more angry. For there was another possible explanation: that Toby had been conducting a rather nasty, schoolboy experiment to find out what it was like to be close, in that way, with a girl. But then, why would he need to do that? She knew perfectly well that young men had access to sexual experiences that girls like her knew nothing about. So why would he need to experiment on her?

She looked back over the last twenty-four hours: saw herself coming downstairs in the red dress, sitting at the dinner table boasting about having an admirer. Had it seemed to him that she was moving away, leaving him? His reaching out for her had felt a bit like that. He’d grabbed her the way a drowning man grabs a log.

By the time they got back to the house, she’d developed a headache, the beginnings of a migraine perhaps. She clutched at the excuse of illness and ran upstairs to her room, passing her mother on the stairs, but not stopping to speak.

‘What’s the matter with Elinor?’ Mother asked Toby.

‘Not feeling very well. Bit too much sun, I think.’

That made her angry too: the cool, rational, accepted explanation which emphasized her weakness, not his. She slammed her bedroom door, stood with her back to it and then, slowly, as if she had to force a passage through her throat, she began to cry: ugly, wrenching sobs that made her a stranger to herself.

Elinor missed lunch, but went downstairs for dinner, because she knew her absence would only arouse curiosity, and perhaps concern. Part of her expected, even hoped, that Toby would have made some excuse to return to London, but no, there he was, laughing and talking, just as he normally did. Though perhaps drinking rather more than usual.

She made an effort, chatting to her father, ignoring her mother and Rachel, flirting outrageously with Tim, no longer the little schoolgirl sister-in-law. Oh, no. Looking round the table, she resolved that never again would she impersonate the girl they still thought she was.

Toby didn’t look at her from beginning to end of the meal, but she made herself speak to him. Where the children were concerned, her mother was an acute observer, and though she’d never in a million years guess the truth, she’d notice the tension between herself and Toby if they weren’t talking and assume they’d argued. She wouldn’t rest till she found out what it was about, so a quarrel would have to be invented, and in that imaginary dispute Mother would side with Toby, and once more Elinor would be in the wrong. Somehow or other Elinor was going to have to get through the rest of the evening without arousing suspicion.

After dinner, she suggested cards. She knew Father would back her up: he loved his family but their conversation bored him. So the table was set up, partners chosen and all conversation was thereby at an end. Toby dealt the cards, smiled in her direction once or twice, but without meeting her eyes. Or was she imagining the change in him? Even now a little, niggling worm of doubt remained. Was she being — dread word — hysterical? Her mother had accused her of that often enough in the past. Elinor knew that even if there were any family discussion of the incident she would be made to feel entirely in the wrong. But there would be no discussion.

So the evening dragged on, until ten o’clock when she was able to plead the remains of a headache and retire early to bed.

Once in her room, she threw the window wide open, but didn’t switch on the lamp. No point inviting moths into the room, though she didn’t dislike them, and certainly wasn’t terrified of them as Rachel was. She thought she looked a bit like a moth herself, fluttering to and fro in front of the mirror as she undressed and brushed her hair. It was too hot for a nightdress; she needed to feel cool, clean sheets against her skin. Only they didn’t stay cool. She threw them off, looked down at the white mounds of her breasts, and pressed her clenched fists hard into the pit of her stomach where she’d felt that treacherous melting. Never again. She would never, never, let her body betray her in that way again. A little self-consciously, she began to cry, but almost at once gave up in disgust. What had happened was too awful for tears. She’d been frightened of him and he hadn’t cared: Toby, who’d always protected her. She saw his face hanging over her, the glazed eyes, the groping, sea-anemone mouth; he hadn’t looked like Toby at all. And then, when he pulled her against him, she’d felt –

Downstairs, a door opened. Voices: people wishing each other goodnight. Footsteps: coming slowly and heavily, or quickly and lightly, up the stairs. The floorboards grumbled under the pressure of so many feet. Two thuds, seconds apart: one of the men taking his shoes off. Then silence, gradually deepening, until at last the old house curled up around the sleepers, and slept too.

Not a breath of wind. A fringe of ivy leaves — black against the moonlight — surrounded the open window, but not one of them stirred. Normally, even on a still night, there’d be some noise. A susurration of leaves, sounding so like the sea that sometimes she drifted off to sleep pretending she was lying on a beach with nothing above her but the stars. No hope of that tonight. An owl hooted, once, twice, then silence again, except for the whisper of blood in her ears.

Was Toby lying awake like her? No, he’d drunk so much wine at dinner he’d be straight off to sleep. Imagining his untroubled sleep — Toby’s breath hardly moving the sheet that covered him — became a kind of torment. After a while, it became intolerable. She had to do something. Reaching for her nightdress, she got out of bed and let herself quietly out of her room.

On the landing she stopped and listened: a squeal of bedsprings as somebody turned over; her father’s fractured snore. She tiptoed along the corridor, avoiding the places where she knew the floorboards creaked. She’d made this groping journey so often in the past: the unimaginably distant past when she and Toby had been best friends as well as brother and sister. He’d shielded her from Mother’s constant carping, the comparisons with Rachel that were never in her favour, the chill of their father’s absence. And now, for some unfathomable reason, he’d left her to face all that on her own.

Outside his door, she hesitated. There was still time to turn back, only she couldn’t, not now, she was too angry. Something had to be done to dent his complacency. She turned the knob and slipped in. Once inside the room, she held her breath. Listened again. Yes, he was asleep, though not snoring: slow, calm, steady breaths. Not a care in the world.

She crossed to the bed and looked down at him. Like her, he’d left the curtains open; his skin in the moonlight had the glitter of salt. Leaning towards him, she felt his breath on her face. She knew there was something she wanted to do, but she didn’t know what it was. Jerk him awake? Shock him out of that infuriatingly peaceful, deep sleep? Yes, but how? There was a jug of water on the washstand near the bed. She twined her fingers round the handle, raised it high above her head …

And then, just as she was about to pour, he opened his eyes. He didn’t move, or speak, or try to get out of the way. He simply lay there, looking up at her. In the dimness, his light-famished pupils flared to twice their normal size, and forever afterwards, when she tried to recapture this moment, she remembered his eyes as black. Neither of them spoke. Slowly, she lowered the jug.

The chink, as she set it down on the marble stand, seemed to release him. He reached out, closed his hand gently round her wrist, and pulled her down towards him.

Two

Every window gaped wide, as if the house were gasping for breath. Barely visible above the trees, a small, hard, white sun threatened the heat to come. Mother’s precious lawn had turned yellow, with bald patches here and there where the cracked earth showed through.

Elinor chased clumps of pale yellow scrambled egg around her plate. It was absolutely necessary that she should appear to eat, but so far she hadn’t managed to force one mouthful down.

‘Water?’ Mother asked. She topped up her own and Elinor’s glass without waiting for a reply.

‘Look at Hobbes,’ Elinor said.

Hearing his name, Hobbes raised his head, fixed his bloodshot eyes on her for a moment, then sank his slobbering jowls on to his paws again.

Her mother’s face softened, as it never did when she looked at Elinor. ‘Poor old thing, he really hates this weather.’

‘Yes, imagine this in a fur coat.’

They ate in silence for a while.

‘You were very quiet last night,’ Mother said.

‘Headache, I expect. Where is everybody?’

‘Rachel’s having a lie-in. Your father’s in his study, been up since six, and Tim and Toby have gone shooting.’

‘Toby hates shooting.’

Her mother’s jaw clicked as she chewed on a triangle of dry toast. ‘Well, that’s where they’ve gone.’

Conversation wilted in the heat. Soon there was no sound except for a discreet, well-bred scraping of knives on plates. Elinor could feel her mother’s gaze heavy on the side of her face. She put her fork down.

‘Shall we have coffee outside?’ her mother said.

They took their cups on to the terrace where a table and chairs had been set up overlooking the lawn. The smell of dry grass tightened Elinor’s chest; she was finding it difficult to breathe.

‘Are you all right?’

‘I’m fine. Looks like we’re in for another scorcher.’

Her mother tested the cushion for dampness before sitting down. ‘It needs a thunderstorm, freshen things up.’

As she spoke, the crack of a rifle sent wood pigeons blundering into the air. Elinor drew a deep breath, or as deep as she could manage, and gazed straight ahead.

‘You and Toby haven’t quarrelled, have you?’

‘What makes you think that?’

‘I thought I detected a bit of an atmosphere last night.’

‘No, I was just tired.’

Mother sipped her coffee, put the cup down, dabbed her lips on the napkin. ‘I want to tell you something, Elinor.’

This might have sounded like the beginning of a mother — daughter chat, except that she and her mother never had them. That was Rachel’s province. The bare minimum of information that had been imparted to Elinor when she reached the age of thirteen had been conveyed by Rachel, in this, as in all other things, their mother’s deputy.

‘I don’t think I’ve ever told you Toby was a twin?’

This was the last thing she’d expected. ‘No, I had no idea. Well …’ She tried to gather her thoughts. ‘What happened?’

‘It died. She. It was a girl.’

She swallowed, obviously finding it difficult to go on. She was a reticent woman — or vacant — Elinor had never been sure which, though she was inclined to favour vacancy. ‘Bland’ was the word. It was almost as if her mother’s beauty, which even now was remarkable, had taken the place of a personality.

‘I never felt really well when I was expecting him, and with Rachel I had — in fact, I felt wonderful; but with Toby, no. I was so breathless by the end I used to sleep sitting up. And then when I went into labour it was … Well, it was difficult. A whole day and half the following night.’

Elinor winced. ‘I couldn’t do it.’

‘When you’re nine months pregnant, dear, you don’t have a lot of choice. Anyway, he was born, at last, and of course I felt relief and joy and all the things you do feel, and it actually took me quite a while to realize the midwife was looking worried. She called the doctor — he was downstairs having a drink with your father — and I’ll never forget him coming through the door.’ She cupped a hand over her right eye. ‘His eyes just bulged. And then there was a great flurry and panic and … this thing came out.’

She was folding her napkin, carefully running her fingers along the creases. ‘It had died quite late in the pregnancy, six, seven months, something like that. Normally, if a baby dies, labour starts straight away, but for some reason it hadn’t. And so Toby went on growing and, as he grew, he’d flattened it against the side of the womb. They didn’t want me to see it, but I said, “No, I’ve got to.” I said if they didn’t let me see it, I’d only imagine far worse things …’ She glanced at Elinor, then quickly away. ‘I don’t know what the worse things would’ve been. It had turned into a kind of scroll. You know the parchment things the Romans used to write on? A bit like that, but with features, everything. You could tell it was a girl.’

What to say? ‘That’s awful, I’m so sorry.’

‘It’s called a papyrus twin, when that happens. Apparently, it’s very rare. The doctor and your father got quite excited.’

‘I’m sure Father didn’t.’

Her mother smiled.

‘Does Toby know?’

‘I’ve never told him. Your father might have mentioned it, I don’t know.’

Another burst of gunfire from the wood. Rooks, crows and pigeons were circling over the treetops now, the air full of their cries.

‘When he was little, Toby, he had this imaginary friend. I suppose a lot of children do, but this one was very real; I mean, we had to set a place for her at the table, and everything. I wasn’t worried, I thought it would all disappear as soon as he started playing with other children and made some real friends. But it didn’t. I used to lie awake at night sometimes and listen to him talking to her. I think I almost started to believe in her myself.’

‘Did she have a name?’

‘D’you know, I can’t remember.’

‘So what happened? Well, she’s not still here, is she?’

Another, slightly acid, smile.

‘You. You happened. As soon as you could walk, you followed Toby round like a little dog. I used to think he’d get tired of it, but he never did. And the girl vanished. He didn’t need her any more, you see. He had you.’

Elinor was trying to read her mother’s expression. Jealousy? Yes. Resentment of their closeness, hers and Toby’s? Yes. But something else too. It occurred to her, for the first time, that perhaps Toby had formed so effective a barrier between herself and the rest of the family, that her mother might actually feel some grief for the loss of her.

No, no. She was being over-analytical, or just plain stupid. Her mother wouldn’t feel anything for the loss of her, except, quite possibly, relief.

And yet, if things had been different, she might have taken the place of the lost girl. In many families, that’s exactly what would have happened, but not in this one.

She said, stiffly: ‘Thank you for telling me.’

‘I thought it might help … You’re getting to know a lot of new people and that’s good, of course, but sometimes I think perhaps Toby’s a bit afraid of losing you. He hasn’t been happy recently, and I don’t know why.’

‘No, but then we don’t know very much about him, do we?’

She would have gone on, but her mother held up a hand. Toby and Tim were striding up the lawn.

Elinor felt as though she was watching them from a great height, almost as if she were one of the birds that their guns had startled into the air. Two young men in shooting jackets and cord breeches, squinting into the sun, while on the terrace a woman and a girl, both in white dresses, rose to meet them. A jarring of two worlds, or so it seemed to her, looking down.

Suddenly, she was hurtling to the ground. Back in her body, she stared at the thing that dangled from Toby’s hand: a gleam of white bone in a mess of blood-spiked fur, eyes filmed over. The silence gathered.

‘It’s a hare,’ she said.

‘Ye-es?’

‘It’s bad luck to kill a hare.’

‘Won’t stop you eating it, though, will it?’ Tim said, with an attempt at jocularity. He was no fool, he sensed the atmosphere; he just didn’t know what to do about it.

‘I thought it was a rabbit,’ Toby said.

She could see how he hated it, the limp, lifeless thing in his hand. Looking through his eyes, from his brain outwards, she saw the hare come over the hill, flowing like water through the long grasses. Oh, he’d have called the bullet back if he could, she didn’t doubt that, but it was too late. Flies were already laying their eggs inside the bloody hole.

‘Elinor —’

Refusing even to look at him, she turned and went back into the house.

Three

Climbing the stairs to her lodgings, Elinor felt vulnerable; an animal leaving a trail of blood behind in the snow. Even with the door locked, the gas ring lit and the kettle boiling, she still didn’t feel safe.

She forced herself to butter a slice of stale bread, but her stomach rose at the sight of it. Although it was still early she went into the bedroom and undressed, wrapped a robe tightly round her and then sat down at the dressing table to brush her hair. The nightly ritual: she’d done this every night since she was four or five years old. The face in the mirror stared back at her with no sign of recognition.

Suddenly, she was rummaging through the top drawer searching for her scissors. As soon as she found them, she began hacking away at her hair. The blades weren’t sharp enough; they mouthed thick clumps of hair like a snake struggling to ingest a rat. Still, she persevered. Floating between her and the glass, she saw the flattened, scroll-like body of the little female thing Toby had killed. Oh, what nonsense, of course he hadn’t killed it; he hadn’t killed anybody. It had died, that was all, it had died, and he went on growing, as he was bound to do, taking up more and more room until there was no space left for her.

How quiet it was in these rooms. She’d not yet learned to live alone, though she’d been excited at the prospect, not nervous at all. She had close friends near by, Catherine and Ruthie, so she knew she wouldn’t be lonely. Now, she realized that silence has a sound; well, this kind of silence did anyway: toxic silence. Somewhere between a hum and a buzz. Only the crunching of the scissors through her hair interrupted it. When she’d finished cutting, she raised both hands to the nape of her neck, feeling the dangerous freedom of the shorn ends. Her hair lay in coils and question marks around her feet. She scooped it up and put it in the bin.

Lying between the sheets, she felt different; her body had turned into bread dough, dough that’s been kneaded and pounded till it’s grey, lumpen, no yeast in it, no lightness, no prospect of rising. Her arms lay stiff by her sides. When, finally, she drifted off to sleep, she dreamt she was on her knees in a corner of the room, trying to vomit without attracting the attention of the person who was asleep on the bed. Her eyes wide open in the darkness, she tried to cast off the dream, but it stayed with her till morning.

At seven, she forced herself out of bed, determined to go into the Slade at her usual time. Everything was normal, she was normal, she wasn’t even going to think about it. Though she’d need to keep her hat on in the studio; she didn’t normally, but she just couldn’t face the inevitable comments on her hair.

In the ground-floor cloakroom, she bumped into Catherine, who asked about her weekend. Fine, she said, a really nice break. Then, quickly, she asked about the dressmaking session. It was a hoot, Catherine said. She should have seen them, giggling and sticking pins into each other. They were doing it again, next Saturday. Would she be able to come?

‘Yes,’ Elinor said.

‘Really? But you always go home.’

‘Not this weekend.’

She let Catherine go on ahead, pretending she had to look for something in her bag. As soon as she was alone, she took off her hat and stared into the brown-spotted mirror behind the washbasins. Huge, frightened eyes looked back at her. The cropped hair revealed the shape of her head, which was remarkably like Toby’s. All that chopping and hacking and all she’d succeeded in doing was to make herself look even more like him.

Impatient with herself, she turned away. She had to face people; there was nothing to be gained by putting it off. At least in her baggy, ankle-length smock she hardly looked like a woman at all. And that was a comfort: any exposed skin felt dangerous. Resisting the temptation to tuck her hands into her sleeves, she walked along the corridor to the life class. Even her hands looked different as she was signing the register: longer, thinner, with prominent tendons and raised veins. Her signature too, usually so sprawling and self-confident, seemed to have crumpled and folded in on itself, like a spider in the bath when the first swirl of hot water reaches it.

Professor Tonks had arrived early and was leaning against the wall at the far end of the room: a tall, formally dressed, thin, ascetic man with the face of a Roman emperor, or a fish eagle. Behind him, the wall was covered in palette-knife scrapings, the colours cancelling each other out, so that his black-suited figure was outlined in swirls of shimmering grey. Like birds’ feathers. It was actually rather a remarkable sight.

You wouldn’t need a plumb line to draw Tonks: his body was a plumb line. How tall would he be? Six five? Something like that. She remembered coming to the Slade for her admittance interview, how intimidated she’d been, by his height, by his manner; and his reception of her drawings had done nothing to make her feel less silly, less immature. Her schoolteachers had praised her work so highly; she’d won prizes, for heaven’s sake, and not piddling little local prizes either, proper prizes, national prizes. Tonks held those same drawings up to the light, and winced. It was like having a bucket of icy water thrown in your face. She’d come up gasping, shocked out of her complacency, and more alive than she’d ever felt.

Some of the other students had already started drawing. Reluctantly, she sat down and looked at the model. Slack breasts, belly wrinkled from decades of childbearing, and a greyish pallor to the skin, as if she’d kept herself going for years on doorsteps of bread and dripping and mugs of stewed tea. Not all the models looked like that; some of the younger ones were really beautiful. She’d overheard two male students laughing about Tonks and one particularly attractive model, insinuating that she was his mistress. Elinor hadn’t believed it, not for a second. But now, suddenly, she did.

She knew that some of the women students waited outside Tonks’s house for him to set off on his evening walk. So many Héloïses and only one Abelard: no wonder the atmosphere was fraught. Not that he’d be stupid enough to do anything with a female student. Flirtation, yes; never more. He’d go for models and married women, working, as so many men did, on the well-tried and tested principle that a slice off a cut cake won’t be missed. She remembered Father helping the dark-haired girl into the cab, his face, as he looked down at her, almost unrecognizable. All her life, Elinor had been brought up not to know things, but not knowing didn’t keep you safe.

She forced herself to pick up a pencil and at once, almost involuntarily, she began to draw Tonks, working with a sureness of touch she’d never experienced in this room before. All those things Tonks tried to drill into them, day after day: look for the line, try to see the direction, no such thing as a contour in nature — suddenly it all made sense. And it was easy, so easy: every mark the pencil made seemed to be the only mark possible. But then, Tonks moved away from the wall, breaking the pose and with it her concentration.

Reaching for a fresh piece of paper, she started work on the model. She knew before she started that the foreshortening of the pose was beyond her, but still she scraped away until, after forty minutes of dibbling and dabbling about, she sat back and contemplated her work.

‘God, that’s awful,’ she said, shocked into speaking aloud.

‘Hmm. Certainly isn’t your best.’

She hadn’t heard him approach. He bent forward, his sleeve a black wing brushing her face, and picked up the drawing. But in so doing he revealed the portrait of himself underneath.

She waited for the explosion of anger, one of his rare, white-lipped rages that she’d heard about but never witnessed.

Instead, he burst out laughing. ‘Really, Miss Brooke, you flatter me.’

Without further comment, he took her drawing of the model and began making quick, anatomical sketches in the margin, each of them better than anything she’d managed to achieve. Tonks’s skeletons had more life than her nudes. She tried to concentrate on what he was saying, but it was hopeless: she was too aware of whispers spreading round the room. By the end of the session, everybody knew what she’d done.

No sooner had Tonks left the room than her friends clustered round her. ‘Oh, Elinor, you didn’t.’ ‘What did he say?’ ‘Come on, let’s see it.’ ‘Don’t be such a spoilsport.’ Finally, a gasp of sheer horror: ‘It wasn’t nude, was it?’

She escaped as soon as she could. Outside the quad gates, she hesitated. If she went back to her lodgings now, she might well spend the rest of the day in bed with the covers pulled over her head. No, somehow or other, she had to keep going, and she had to get away from the Slade.

Russell Square was the nearest green space. She often came here, though not usually at lunchtime. The benches were crowded with people eating soggy sandwiches from greaseproof-paper bags. She found herself a place on the grass and lay down, lifting her face to the sun. Somewhere near by a fountain played, though the sound of trickling water brought no relief. God, it was hot. She could barely swallow, her throat was so dry. At the far end of the square was a hut with a few tables outside, where you could buy lemonade, but there was a long queue. Not worth it, she decided. Not in this heat.

Thoughts floated to the surface of her mind and burst like bubbles. I should have brought a drawing pad. You never really felt alone if you were drawing; it formed a sort of cocoon around you. And why didn’t I wear a thinner dress? That queue’s quite a bit shorter now. And why, why, wasn’t she wearing a straw hat? She had one — well, it was there somewhere — only that morning she’d been in such a state she’d grabbed the first thing she could lay her hands on. Black felt, oh God, far too hot in this weather, although at least she could pull it down and hide her cropped hair. But now her scalp itched. A bead of sweat ran down into her eye, burning like acid, and suddenly it was all too much. She tore the hat off, leaned forward and shook her fingers through her hair.

At the same moment, a shadow fell across her. Peering up through the mess of jagged ends, she saw Kit Neville, in a baggy, creased suit, looking down at her.

‘Miss Brooke, you look rather hot, I wonder if you’d like some lemonade?’

‘There’s a queue.’

‘It’s not so bad now. Shall I get us some?’

She nodded, trying to think of something slightly more gracious to say, but he’d already turned away. He’d startled her, appearing in front of her so suddenly. When he vanished behind a clump of bushes, she was half inclined to think he’d been a mirage, but no, minutes later, there he was again, his burly figure making great strides across the grass, a ragged shadow snatching at his heels.

He handed her a glass. ‘Don’t know how cool it is, mind.’

Cautiously, with an audible clicking of the knees, he lowered himself to sit beside her, risking grass stains on his obviously expensive suit. That was one of the things you noticed about Kit Neville. He wore extremely well-tailored suits, and he looked a mess. She didn’t particularly like the man — or, rather, she didn’t like what she’d heard about him. He was a bully, people said. But now, looking at him, she saw none of the swaggering self-confidence he projected so expertly at the Slade. He seemed, if anything, distinctly shy, afraid of rejection.

He took a sip of lemonade. ‘Ugh! Warm.’

‘Least it’s wet. And thank you for getting it, I just couldn’t face the queue.’

They drank in silence for a moment. Then: ‘Are you going back to college?’ he asked. ‘Only if you’re not, we could go on the river.’

The idea of playing truant for the whole afternoon shocked her. ‘No, I’ve got to get back.’

He was tempted to skip the men’s life class, he said. Couldn’t face another dose of Tonks. He seemed to have developed almost a feud with Tonks, whose excoriating comments on his work were passed from mouth to mouth, losing nothing in the repetition. ‘Did you hear what Tonks said to Neville?’ ‘Oh, he didn’t, did he?’ ‘I think if anybody said that to me, I’d leave.’ Suddenly, it all seemed rather immature to Elinor: the relish, the furtive excitement, children wetting themselves with glee because somebody else was in trouble. She had been guilty of it herself, more than once, but she wouldn’t do it again, because, in the length of time it took to drink a glass of lemonade, Kit had become a friend.

Getting up was difficult. She’d got pins and needles from sitting in the same position too long; she rested a hand, briefly, on his arm to steady herself and caught a glance of such open admiration that she blushed. He’d made no comment on her hair, but he hadn’t taken his eyes off it either. Perhaps short hair wasn’t such a disaster, after all.

They walked back to the Slade together. At the entrance to the quad, they paused. Groups of art students were chatting in circles on the grass, while on the steps of the medical school rows of young men were lined up side by side, looking, in their black suits, like swallows waiting to migrate.

‘Perhaps we should go in separately?’ he said. Male and female students were not supposed to mix.

‘No, I think we should have the courage of our convictions.’

She took his arm and, conscious of heads turning to follow them, they marched across the lawn, through the double doors and into the entrance hall, where a single glance from a disapproving receptionist was enough to make them collapse into giggles.

Suddenly serious, Kit said, ‘I enjoyed that. I hope we can do it again.’

‘Yes, I hope so too.’

They parted at the foot of the stairs. The last hour seemed extraordinary to Elinor, though they’d done nothing special. Only, for those few minutes, in spite of everything, she’d been happy.

Every afternoon, when Elinor left the Slade, she looked up at the steps of the medical school, half expecting to see Toby there, waiting for her, as he so often had in the past; but it was a week before she saw him again, and then he came to her lodgings.

She was sitting at her dressing table, getting ready to go out, when she heard footsteps running up the last — uncarpeted — flight of stairs. The door was unlocked. Toby called to her from the living room, briefly darkened the bedroom doorway, and came to stand behind her. She didn’t turn round, merely looked at his reflection in the glass.

He was staring at her hair. ‘My God, sis, what have you done?’

Sis?

‘What do you think? Do you like it?’

‘No, well, it’s a bit of a shock … No, no, it’s good, it suits you.’ His eyes skittered round the room. ‘When did you do it?’

‘When I got back.’

He sat on the bed, big hands clasped between his thighs, bulky, helpless. It made her angry.

‘I was surprised you left so early,’ she said.

‘Dad gave me a lift. No point hanging around.’

‘Mother was a bit put out.’ She waited. ‘We had quite a long chat, you know, Mother and me. While you and Tim were out shooting.’ Was that fleeting change of expression one of fear? ‘Did you know you were a twin?’

‘Yes.’

She was taken aback. ‘So why didn’t you tell me?’

‘Didn’t seem important.’

She thought of the boy in the garden playing with a girl whom nobody else could see. ‘Mother doesn’t even know where she’s buried.’

‘Buried?’

‘Well, yes. They wouldn’t —’

‘It’s in a museum, a medical museum. Edinburgh, I think.’ His eyes slid away. ‘They are quite rare.’

‘So what happened? The doctor gave her to a museum?’

He looked down.

‘No. Dad wouldn’t do that,’ she said. ‘His own flesh and blood?’

‘Oh, listen to yourself: “His own flesh and blood.” He’s a scientist, for God’s sake.’

‘I can see it mightn’t be much of a barrier to you.’

They’d got there, by a rather circular route, but there, nevertheless. She watched the Adam’s apple jerking in his throat. Like everything else about him, it seemed to be trying to escape.

‘You came to me,’ he said. ‘I’ll take ninety per cent of the blame, but I won’t take it all.’

It was impossible to speak without crying, and she was determined not to cry. So she said nothing, sitting there with her face in her hands and her eyes closed. After a moment, she felt him get up and come to stand behind her again. He reached out, but stopped just short of touching her shoulder, though close enough for her to feel the heat of his fingertips. She remembered the sea-anemone groping of his mouth, the shock of his harsh bristles on her skin.

‘If you like, I’ll stay away from you,’ he said. ‘You won’t have to see me again.’

Christmas? Birthdays?

She put up a hand and twined her fingers round his. ‘You know I don’t want that.’

‘Neither do I.’

They looked at each other in the glass, then for the first time she turned to face him directly. He touched the side of her face, lowered his head … With his mouth less than an inch away from hers, he recoiled violently, almost as if some external force had grabbed him by the hair and pulled him off. Breathing heavily, he said, ‘We’ve got to get back to the way things were.’

‘I don’t know how they were.’

‘We were friends.’

She shook her head. ‘No. If we’d been friends it would never have happened.’

‘We’ve got to try. Sis?’

‘Yes, I suppose we do. Bro.’

He took a short step back. Released.

‘I’ve brought my anatomy textbooks. You must be starting the course soon.’

How easily he’d returned to ‘normal’. She felt a spasm of anger, but relief too. A minute ago, she’d thought it was starting again, and she wasn’t sure she could have stopped him, or herself. Because he was right, she’d gone to him, gone in bewilderment and ignorance, nursing vague childish schemes of revenge, yes, but had that been her only motivation? The more she thought about that night the more … complicit she felt.

Now, she followed him through into the living room; they sat on the sofa, side by side, and talked about the anatomy course she’d be starting on Monday. And after a while, things did begin to seem normal, almost normal, though she noticed he sat a few feet away from her, about as far away as he could get. Even so, there seemed to be no space between them. If she closed her eyes for a second, she could feel the prickle of their shared sweat on her thigh.

Anatomy was Toby’s favourite subject, his passion, and he was a good teacher. As he talked, she forgot to feel distaste for the scurf of human skin on his notes, and simply marvelled, as he did, at the beauty and complexity of what lay beneath.

‘You’ll enjoy it, sis, honestly you will. Bit of a shock at first, but you soon get over that. I’m sure once you get the hang of it, it’ll really help your drawing, and then, wow — the next Michelangelo.’

‘I don’t like muscly men.’

‘Oh, well, never mind …’

He stayed for exactly one hour. It was like a tutorial. When he got up to go, she accompanied him to the front door, not wanting to be left, too abruptly, in a room that would still be full of his presence. He called her ‘sis’ again as he said goodbye. She watched him walk off down the street, unloading guilt behind him, step by step.

With his departure, her anger returned. All that stuff about bringing his anatomy textbooks … He’d come to say one word, no, not even that, the stupid, amputated stump of a word: sis. That was his pledge that what had happened between them would never happen again, that it would, in time, be forgotten.

And it was all lies. At one point, back there in the bedroom, they’d been on the verge of starting all over again. She’d felt it; she didn’t believe he hadn’t felt it too. How could he come as close as that, and then tell her to forget?

She mustn’t let herself slide into hating him. He was doing his clumsy best to repair the damage. And he did love her, she was sure of that. But in declaring that the events of that night must be forgotten, he’d left her, in effect, to face the memory alone. And that just wasn’t fair.

She watched him turn the corner into Bedford Square, but for many minutes, after he disappeared, she remained standing in the doorway, staring at the space where he’d been, feeling the empty air close around his absence.

Four

Elinor Brooke’s Diary

7 October 1912

The Indian summer’s well and truly gone. Today was cold and windy with bursts of torrential rain. I was almost blown into the hospital, dripping wet, and late, of course. I got up early, but then wasted time trying to decide what to wear. Don’t know why I bothered. I arrived looking like a drowned rat anyway.

The other girls were all waiting outside the lecture theatre. I must say my heart sank when I saw them — scrubbed faces, scraped-back hair, sensible shoes and suits. The jackets were cut exactly like men’s and the skirts swept the floor — so you got the worst of both worlds. Hats, of course. One or two of them were actually wearing ties. I’ve never seen that on a young woman before. Everybody had a good look at my hair. I stared back at them. At least my hair’s clean. I never noticed till the last few days how dirty most women’s hair smells. No wonder, when you think of the palaver of washing it — it used to take me an entire evening. I look back on that and I just think: what a complete waste of time.

The lecturer, Dr Angus Brodie, positively bounced on to the platform — short, red-haired, bristling with authority, skin speckled like a thrush’s egg. He took one look at me — I was sitting by myself right at the end of the third row — and said, ‘Miss Brooke, I presume?’ Then he made a concertina movement with his very small, neat hands. I shuffled along to join the others — blushing like mad and cursing myself for it — and he beamed. ‘There,’ he said. ‘Art and medicine reunited.’

Crime and medicine more like. Really, I had no idea. Leonardo was fascinating, of course, but there was a lot of boring stuff after that. Until he got on to Burke and Hare, that awful killing spree they went on, supplying cadavers to the Edinburgh medical schools, especially to Dr Robert Knox, who used to give public demonstrations of dissection. The last — second to last? Can’t remember — victim was a retarded boy known as Daft Jamie. He was a well-known figure on the streets, so when he turned up on Knox’s slab several of the students recognized him. He was known to be missing, his mother was doing the rounds asking if anybody had seen him. Knox must have heard the whispers because he changed his usual routine and started by dissecting the face.

Within minutes, Daft Jamie’s mother wouldn’t have known him. It horrified me, that. The cold-bloodedness of it. I seemed to hear Toby’s voice saying, ‘He’s a scientist, for God’s sake.’

Burke and Hare were caught not long after that. Knox got off scot-free, at least as far as the law was concerned, though the Edinburgh mob attacked his house. Hare turned King’s evidence; Burke was hanged. His death mask’s in the medical museum, in Edinburgh.

I lost interest after that. I kept seeing Toby’s twin, in a glass jar on a shelf. Why can’t he see how horrible that is?

At the end of the lecture, Dr Brodie offered us a way out. Dissection was not for everybody, he said. Women, in particular, found the long hours of standing difficult. Any young lady who discovered she’d been mistaken in her aptitudes should come to him at once — there’d be no disgrace in this, mind, none whatsoever — and he’d arrange for her to transfer to a more suitable course: biology or chemistry or — his face brightened — botany.

Ah, yes. Girls and flowers.

I don’t know what effect it had on the others, but it made me more determined to stick it out, no matter how hard it is. Anyway, by this time tomorrow, we’ll know what we’re in for. Toby says I’ll enjoy it, but I can’t see how that’s possible.

Well, I’m off to bed — an hour early! — hoping not to receive any visits from Daft Jamie and his ruined face.

Next day, in the changing room, the smells were of wet wool, hair and rubber. A cold wind was blowing: everybody’s eyelids and nose were a bright, unbecoming pink. One girl stifled a yawn and immediately an epidemic of yawns spread around the room. There was a good deal of nervous giggling as they helped each other tuck strands of hair inside the green rubber caps that were obviously designed to be worn by men. Rubber boots, gloves and aprons completed the garb. They looked and smelled unfamiliar to themselves. Every time they moved they either rustled or squeaked.

‘Hurry up, ladies,’ said a bored male voice from behind the door. ‘We haven’t got all day.’

Miss Cunningham, whom Elinor had spoken to briefly the previous day, looked around to check that everyone was ready, then pushed open the door. They filed into a long room where white-sheeted cadavers seemed to float like huge, dead fish in the subaqueous light. A fluttering sound was just perceptible above the squeaking of rubber-soled boots on the tiles. Elinor raised her eyes to the ceiling and saw that a small, colourless moth had become trapped inside the skylight and was fumbling against the glass, no doubt mistaking a watery sun for the moon.

Lowering her gaze, she saw that a thin young man had appeared in front of them. His name, he said, was Smailes, and it was his job to guide them through the process of dissection. He didn’t seem to be looking forward to it much. In fact, he sounded thoroughly bored and fed up. He kept scratching at a red patch on one side of his chin, pimples or a shaving rash or eczema, perhaps. Elinor was briefly curious about this yawning male presence, but nothing could distract her for long from what lay underneath the sheets.

She was directed, along with four other students, to the nearest cadaver. Miss Duffy and Miss Cunningham, who seemed to be friends, faced each other across the shoulders. Two other girls took up positions on either side of the torso. Elinor, in this, as in so much else, the odd one out, stood alone by the feet.

‘I think I’m going to faint,’ Miss Duffy said.

‘Don’t you dare,’ Miss Cunningham replied.

She sounded so fierce that the other girls immediately put all thoughts of fainting out of their heads, though the smell of formaldehyde and disinfectant — and another, nameless, smell — lay heavy on their stomachs.

‘All right,’ Mr Smailes continued. ‘Let’s unwrap the parcel.’

Miss Duffy and Miss Cunningham glanced at each other and then, with the determined calm of housemaids dealing with an unexpected death in the family, removed the sheet.

Mantegna’s Dead Christ. From where Elinor stood at the foot of the slab, the feet appeared huge, out of all proportion to the body. His face was dark, the eyes shuttered; nobody could have mistaken this stillness for sleep. Freed from the apprehension of an answering gaze, she let her eyes slide down, across the soaring chancel arch of his ribcage, along the flat nave of his belly to where his penis lay, a shrivelled seahorse on an outcrop of wrinkled and sagging skin.

Miss Duffy produced a sound midway between a giggle and a gasp. Of course, this would almost certainly be her first sight of a naked man. Elinor glanced at the other girls and saw from the slithering away of their eyes that the same was true of them. Mr Smailes smirked and suddenly, fiercely, Elinor hated him. But then at once she was back with the dead man. His skin glowed like a lit lampshade. Tiny moles and scars seemed to float on the surface where one quick flick of a palette knife would sweep them all away. She took a step back, and this movement seemed to break the stillness that had descended on them all.

‘Well, now,’ Mr Smailes said. ‘The first thing is to open the chest.’

A suture line ran along the base of the neck and down the centre of the chest. Under Mr Smailes’s direction, Miss Duffy wormed her fingers into the incision and pulled the chest wall back. Miss Cunningham did the same on the other side. The halves lay across his upper arms, almost casually, as if he’d done this to himself, removing his chest wall as nonchalantly as he might a shirt. It was rather horrible. But then they got their first glimpse of what lay beneath: the pectoral muscles, glistening under a translucent layer of connective tissue, fanning out in two huge wings to cover the ribs. It reminded Elinor of the roof of King’s College Chapel, though she had enough sense not to confide this thought in Mr Smailes, who would certainly have thought her mad.

Somebody had to make the first incision. ‘Miss Brooke.’

He was holding out a scalpel. She looked from him to the other girls, all of them training to be doctors, for God’s sake; she was an artist, no, not even that, an art student, she couldn’t be expected to –

Fumbling, she took the scalpel from him.

‘Careful! You could have your finger off with that.’

He placed his two index fingers on the cadaver’s chest, indicating the length and direction of the cut. Look for the line, she heard Tonks say. Oh, my God, how did he get in here? Evidently the honour of the Slade was at stake. Well, then. She positioned the scalpel, took a deep breath, and began the cut.

‘No, too hard. You don’t need to press.’

He was right there. She’d never encountered a knife as sharp as this. Flakes of putty-coloured flesh rose on either side of the blade as easily as water round the prow of a boat. When the incision was long enough and — she hoped — deep enough, but not too deep, she straightened up and immediately her hand began to shake.

She heard the other girls breathe out. Only one of them had held the scalpel, but all of them had followed its progress, inch by painful inch, and now they felt, with a great rush of blood to their faces: Yes, we can do this.

By the end of the session Elinor’s brain was aching almost as much as her back. She was too tired to follow Mr Smailes’s summing-up of what they’d learned and merely pretended to listen while gazing around the room. There were three cadavers. She worked out that the one on the next table was that of a very old man, though the fatty deposits around his nipples looked exactly like breasts. Perhaps that was what happened in extreme old age, the two sexes growing to resemble each other more and more, so that finally, in death, the body became androgynous again, as it had been in infancy? But the cadaver furthest away from her was no more than middle-aged and definitely female, despite the shaved head and sunken breasts. The width of the pelvis alone … Whatever tricks the flesh may play in death, the bones don’t lie.

Instantly, she wanted to transfer to that group, to work on the female body. She knew, without being able to say how or why, that her business as an artist was with women. Women’s bodies held a meaning for her, a spark, which the male body lacked. Might it be possible to switch groups? After all, they’d only done one session. Why not? But then, none of the other girls had requested a transfer, and they’d all, in their professional lives, be mainly concerned with women’s health, if only because no right-thinking man would let a lady doctor anywhere near him. If it made sense for her to work on a female cadaver, it made even more sense for them.

Still, it couldn’t hurt to ask …

After the other girls had gone, she lingered in the changing room, hearing their excited, chattering voices recede along the corridor. They knew each other now, were well on the way to becoming friends. When everything was quiet, she went in search of Mr Smailes.

She didn’t have far to look: he was standing by the lift, wearing his overcoat and hat. Divested of the rubber cap and apron, he looked more, rather than less, strange. For a moment, it crossed her mind that he might have been waiting for her, but she didn’t let the idea settle. His face, as he turned towards her, wore its usual slight sneer. He gave every indication of disliking her intensely, and she didn’t understand why. It couldn’t be anything personal: he didn’t know her. Of course, unlike the other students, she didn’t have the cloak of serious professional intent to hide her femaleness. Perhaps that was it. She could easily imagine what Mr Smailes would make of lady artists studying anatomy.

They got into the lift together. He pulled the door across with a clang and at once she felt trapped behind the iron grille as the lift began its slow descent. Neither of them spoke, and with every second of silence the awkwardness increased.

‘Mr Smailes?’

He turned to look at her, his eyes snot-green behind pinky-beige lashes.

‘I was wondering if it might be possible for me to transfer to the female cadaver?’

‘Now, why on earth would you want to do that?’

‘Well, you know, I suppose, I draw mainly women — well, nearly all women — and so I just think it would be more …’

She was gabbling, but it hardly mattered: he was already shaking his head.

‘Believe me, Miss Brooke, you do not want to work on a female cadaver. The fat gets under your fingernails and however hard you scrub you can never quite get it out.’

But surely he would always wear gloves? She looked down at his hands. The nails were neatly trimmed and immaculately clean, but the cuticles had been picked raw. She found it disturbing: the carefully tended nails embedded in half-moons of bleeding flesh; and she knew he’d enjoyed telling her about the fat on female cadavers, how repulsive it was.

The jolt of the lift arriving on the ground floor saved her from the need to reply. He pulled the gates open and stood aside to let her pass, but even that small courtesy struck her as sarcastic. She held her head high as she swept past him, but she felt her cheeks burn.

Five

At first, Elinor thought she’d never get used to the sight, sounds and smells of the Dissecting Room, but gradually, as the weeks passed, she became accustomed to them. As all the girls did. The cathedral hush of that first session had been replaced by chattering, even giggling. Left to herself for a moment, Elinor would slip into daydreaming, and at such times her thoughts invariably turned to Toby.

We’ve got to get back to the way things were.

I don’t know how they were.

Compulsively, now, she scrutinized the past, searching for the moment when it had gone wrong. She saw them walking through the woods together, watched them as if she were actually a third party present at the scene, a ghost from the future. They were off to the pond to collect minnows and frogspawn and they were taking it in turns to carry the big jar. At the pond, they took off their clothes, because the spawn was at the far side among the reeds. They looked like little albino tadpoles themselves, stirring up clouds of milky sludge as they walked around the edge. At the centre there was supposed to be a deep well, hundreds of feet deep, though perhaps their mother had told them that to stop them going so far in.

On the way home, Toby insisted he should carry the jar, which was heavy now, full to the brim with murky water that slopped over on to his chest with every step. They’d got masses and masses of frogspawn, and minnows too, and they’d remembered to put in a clump of reeds for food and shelter. They didn’t know that lurking in the reeds was a dragonfly larva, the most voracious of all pond creatures. Over the next few days it had devoured every other living creature in the jar.

‘Don’t they get on well together?’ one of the aunties said, watching them walk up the drive.

They did. They were about as close as any brother and sister could be. Dragging herself back to the present, Elinor found herself staring at the cadaver’s shrunken genitals, feeling again a spatter as of hot candle wax on the back of her hand. When had it become the wrong kind of love?

‘Miss Brooke, if we could have your attention, please?’

They were about to remove the lungs. Despite their increasing skill with the scalpel, this rapidly degenerated into an undignified tug of war. So much for treating the cadaver with respect. The chest cavity just wasn’t big enough to get the lungs out. Elinor gritted her teeth, tried not to think too hard about what she was doing, and pulled. At last they were out, lying side by side on the still-intact abdomen, like stillborn twins. Stillborn, black twins.

‘Why are they black?’ Miss Duffy asked.

‘I expect he was a miner,’ Mr Smailes said. ‘You might like to think about that the next time you’re toasting your toes in front of the fire.’

Elinor needed no urging to think about the cadaver away from the Dissecting Room. After a night out with Kit Neville, dancing or at a music hall, she’d return to her lodgings and lie in the darkness, sniffing the tips of her fingers, where, mysteriously, the smell of formaldehyde lingered. Gloves, scrubbing: nothing seemed to help. Sometimes she dreamt about him, hearing a hiss of indrawn breath as she made that first incision. Always, in the dreams, she avoided looking at his face, because she knew his eyes would be open. Even by day, he followed her. She didn’t know how to leave him behind in the Dissecting Room, where, session after session, the slim girls swarmed over him like coffin beetles, reducing him to the final elegance of bone.

She and Kit Neville had become close friends and spent a lot of time together. Kit was London born and bred, and he enjoyed showing her his native city. They went to Speakers’ Corner on Sunday mornings, sat in the gods at the music hall, danced the turkey trot till sometimes well past midnight or simply wandered along the Strand, tossing roasted chestnuts from hand to hand till they were cool enough to eat.

Away from the studio and the Dissecting Room, she lived a life almost obsessively devoted to triviality. She’d turned into a pond skater, not because she didn’t know what lay beneath the surface, but precisely because she did.

At the end of their evenings, Kit would escort her back to her lodgings, but he never tried to kiss her goodnight and he never asked to come in. They were both rather proud of their platonic friendship. She knew he had a life apart from her, that he was having an affair — if you could call it that — with one of the models, in fact with the same girl whose name had been linked with Tonks.

Laura, her name was. When she sat for the women’s life class, Elinor settled down to draw her with a painful sense of invading Kit’s privacy. Laura was beautiful: she had the milky white skin that sometimes goes with dark red hair. She was a wonderful subject. And yet Elinor produced a bad, weak, timid, insipid drawing, far below the standard of her recent work. She couldn’t seem to grasp the pose at all.

That night, when she’d finished undressing, she tilted the mirror to show the bed and lay down in the same pose. She told herself that an attempt at a self-portrait might serve, in Tonks’s words, ‘to explicate the form’, but she didn’t pick up the pencil. Instead, she cupped her breasts, feeling the warm, white weight of them, and then spread her fingers lightly over the curved flesh of her belly. After that, she simply lay and stared at herself, before, suddenly, jumping off the bed and pushing the mirror away.

Sometimes, like this morning when she’d looked at Laura on the dais, trying not to imagine her in bed with Kit, she felt … No, there was no point saying what she felt.

She felt spayed.

She saw Toby once or twice a week, never for very long, and he never again came to her rooms. The idea they’d once had that he would teach her anatomy was quietly dropped. Sometimes they’d meet for tea in a restaurant and then they’d talk at greater length, but this was a Toby who painstakingly called her ‘sis’ and teased her in a ghastly imitation of brotherly affection. He had nothing in common with the other Toby, whose weight on her chest in the darkness cut off her breath.

Once, she and Kit Neville were having tea in Lockhart’s, when Toby came in with a group of friends. Seeing her sitting there by the window, he came across to join them. As she introduced Kit she was aware of Toby’s eyes flaring: he’d recognized the name. He sat down; they talked, Toby drawing Kit out on the inadequacies of Tonks as a teacher. Not a particularly difficult subject to get Kit started on.

‘To hear Elinor talk you’d think he was God,’ Toby said.

‘Huh. To hear Tonks talk you’d think he was God.’

And then he was off, on the uselessness of drawing from the Antique, the blind worship of the past, the failure to engage in any meaningful way with the realities of modern life and, above all, Tonks’s deplorable tendency to devote too much time to teaching women and useless men.

‘Do you think time spent teaching women is wasted?’ Toby said, with a sidelong glance at Elinor.

‘Present company excepted, yes. Well. Largely.’

‘I don’t think Elinor wants to be that kind of exception, do you, sis?’

She could feel Toby walking round Kit, sniffing him, assessing him as a rival, rather than meeting him as his sister’s friend. It was a relief, to her at least, when he got up and went to rejoin his friends.

‘Nice chap, your brother,’ Kit said, later.

‘Hmm.’

Even now, she still craved Toby’s approval. When one of her drawings won a prize — an exceedingly small prize, but a prize nevertheless — her first thought was, I must tell Toby. It had been like this ever since she could remember; nothing really happened to her until she confided it in him.

She waited for him at the foot of the medical school steps. Students came and went in a steady stream. She was frozen by the time he appeared, muffled in a long coat with its collar turned up against the wind. He was coughing badly and stopped to get his breath, one arm resting on the plinth of the huge bronze male nude that towered above him. Somehow the statue’s heavily muscled torso served to emphasize how thin he’d become. She hadn’t noticed the change in him till now and the sudden perception produced a tweak of fear. When she ran up the steps to meet him, he waved her away.

‘You don’t want this.’

‘You should be in bed.’

Another fit of coughing. ‘Can’t. Exams.’

‘Toby, you look awful. Come on, let’s get you back to my rooms, I’ll make you a cup of tea.’

‘No, got to revise.’

‘Just for a few minutes; I’ll put the fire on.’

Did he hesitate? She thought he did, but then he fell into step beside her. For once, she was the one who had to slow her pace so they could keep in step. By the time they’d reached the top floor of her lodgings, he was gasping for breath and almost fell into a chair beside the fire.

Tight-lipped, she bent down to light it.

‘Seriously, Toby, you need to be in bed.’

‘No, if I miss the last two exams I’ll have to repeat the entire year —’

Again, a spasm of coughing cut off his breath.

‘Does Mother know you’re like this?’

‘No — and you’re not to tell her either.’

The room warmed up quickly; by the time she’d made the tea he was starting to breathe more easily. But he was sweating heavily, and when he took the cup from her his fingers felt clammy. He wouldn’t look at her.

‘There’s no reason to go putting the wind up people. It’s just a cold, everybody’s got it.’

‘Hmm. Have they all got it as bad as you?’

He shook his head. There was nothing to be gained by nagging him; he’d made up his mind. She sat in the other armchair. ‘Oh, one bit of good news: I’ve won a prize.’

‘That’s wonderful. Oh, I am so pleased.’

He was genuinely, unaffectedly delighted for her. Of course he’d been the one who’d fought for her to go to the Slade in the first place, when her mother and Rachel had been so resolutely opposed. Toby had badgered their father until suddenly the impossible had become possible. He was a good brother. She felt a sudden pang of grief for everything they’d lost.

‘What did you get it for?’

‘A female nude. Not very good.’

He raised his eyebrows.

‘No, no, really not very good. I only won because Tonks was the judge and the anatomy was spot on.’

‘So this course is helping?’

‘Well, I’m not sure it is, actually. My nudes used to look like blancmanges, now they look like prizefighters.’

As she chattered on, she was watching him intently, alert to every catch in his breath.

‘Where’ve you got to in the dissection?’ he asked.

‘The face. And I’m not sure I can face it.’ She winced. ‘Sorry, not intended.’

‘Why can’t you?’

‘The face is the person, I suppose. Cutting into that, it’s … I don’t know. Different. I keep thinking about Daft Jamie, which is …’

‘Daft?’

‘Well, yes, I suppose so. How did that dreadful man get away with it?’

‘Hare?’

‘No, Knox.’

‘He didn’t, I don’t think he ever practised medicine again.’

‘He didn’t die though, did he?’

‘No, but it might have felt like it — to him.’

Toby was breathing more easily now and some of his colour had returned.

‘The other girls call him George; the cadaver, I mean. One of them said she thought it was more respectful, to give him a name. I don’t know, I don’t see it like that. The fact is, he’s got a name. It’s just that we don’t know it.’

‘Ours was called Albert. It’s nearly always the royal family. Though I think one of the other tables called theirs Herbert. Asquith.’

She hoped he might stay for a while, perhaps even have something to eat, but as soon as he’d finished drinking the tea he was on his feet.

‘Can’t you stay? I’ve got some soup, I could —’

‘No, thanks all the same, but I need an early night. The first exam’s at nine …’

He touched her hand as he said goodbye, his fingertips as cold and slippery as a dead fish. He stood looking at her for a moment. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll be all right.’

But the cold air tightened his chest and he was coughing again before he reached the bottom step.

Six

December was unusually cold and foggy even by the standards of London in winter. Day after day went by with no glimpse of the sun and it never became really light, not even at midday. Whenever someone came through the doors of the London Hospital, wisps and coils of sulphurous smoke followed them in. The air on the ground-floor corridors tasted metallic.

These mornings Elinor went straight to the cupboard where the heads were kept. By now, in this final stage of dissection, the face had become unrecognizable. She identified him only by the name tag clipped to his right ear. Not his name, of course — officially he had no name — but hers. At the start of each session she looked into the pallid eyes, still in place inside the dissected orbits, and once again became possessed by the desire to know who he was. The need to name him, to understand how and why he’d come to this, grew in her with each stage of his disintegration.

As soon as she started work, however, this obsession with his identity fell away. Under Mr Smailes’s appraising eye, they teased out layers of muscle and exposed nerves and tendons to the light. He encouraged them to explore their own and each other’s faces: to feel the skull beneath the skin. It made sense to test what they’d learned against the living reality. All the same … Elinor couldn’t help noticing how Smailes’s lips parted as he watched their fingers probe and delve.

She hated these sessions of ‘living anatomy’, but they were probably more useful to her as an artist than the actual dissection. Certainly, she felt her growing knowledge was now feeding into her drawing, though for a long time she’d been unable to make a connection. The cadaver hadn’t helped her see the model on the dais more clearly. If anything, the dissection had become linked in her mind to the passion, bewilderment and pain of that night in Toby’s room. As if it were his body on the slab: familiar, frightening, unknown.

And then, one morning, it was over. Elinor left the Dissecting Room determined she would never go back. Next term the other girls would start work on another cadaver, the second in a long line, but for her there would only ever be this one. She lingered for a moment in the doorway, trying to squeeze out the appropriate emotion, whatever that might be.

As she closed the door behind her, one of the attendants was sluicing down the slab.

It was snowing when she left the hospital, as it had been, on and off, for the past two days; the sky above the rooftops had a jaundiced look that suggested more was on the way. The pavements had been trodden to a grey sludge. She stopped outside the main entrance to watch the flakes whirling down. Before the end of term — and that wasn’t far away now — she’d have to see Tonks and explain that she didn’t want to go on with dissection. She’d say she’d learned a lot and she was very grateful to have had the opportunity, but … But. Still planning what she’d say to Tonks, she set off to catch the bus home, walking fast, head down, arms swinging, away, away, away …

And then, just as she reached the bus stop, she realized she’d left her bag behind.

It was Friday afternoon, and the Dissecting Room would be locked up over the weekend. It was no use: she’d have to go back. She ran most of the way, a blundering, impeded canter through slush and icy puddles, slipping and slithering across patches of black ice. As she pushed the doors open, cold air rushed after her into the building. She waited impatiently for the lift and then ran all the way down the top-floor corridor.

The Dissecting Room smelled different: less formaldehyde, but enough bleach to make your eyes sting. The lights were still on, so somebody must be around. In the harsh glare, the organs in their display jars glittered like jewels. Forgetting her lost bag, she stood at the foot of the slab where she’d worked and slowly recreated the man who’d lain there, surrendering himself to their scalpels through the long hours of dissection. She remembered the shock she’d felt when the covers first came off; the glow of his uncut skin. Now, when there was nothing of him left, the full force of her desire to know who he was, who he’d been, returned.

The door at the far end of the room had been left ajar. Normally, it was kept locked. This was where the mortuary attendants disappeared to at the end of each session; access to students was strictly forbidden. She walked across the room, hesitated, then pushed the door further open. Nobody spoke, nobody demanded to know what on earth she thought she was doing, so she went in.

To her left, a trestle table ran the full length of the room. On it were three bundles of bones, each with a label attached. With a thud of the heart, she guessed the labels would have names on, and walked across to read them, but no, there were only numbers. Number three was hers, the little that was left of him. He looked like a Christmas turkey the day after Boxing Day, when all the bones have been picked clean.

She looked around for solace, for something, anything, to make this bearable, and her eye fell on a green ledger. The corners were furry with use and so smeared by greasy fingerprints they looked black. Of course: they’d have to keep records because these pitiable piles of bones had to be given a proper burial — and presumably they’d be kept under the names they’d borne in life. She picked up the book and, fully aware that she was breaking every conceivable rule, began shuffling through the pages. The last entry should give her three names, one of them female. That would still leave two possibilities, but, irrationally perhaps, she felt she’d know his name when she saw it.

‘Miss Brooke! Can I help you?’ The usual sneer.

‘I was looking for my bag.’

‘Well, you’re not likely to find it in here, are you?’

She tried to push past him, but he wouldn’t step aside. She was totally in the wrong, she knew that, but she didn’t take kindly to being bullied, and instinctively she went on the attack. ‘Why do you dislike me so much?’ she asked.

‘Because you think you’re the lily on the dungheap.’

So direct, so uncompromisingly contemptuous, it shocked her. ‘Well, somebody has to be and it’s never going to be you.’ How childish that sounded. How embarrassingly childish. ‘I just wanted to know who he was.’

He took the ledger away from her. ‘I think you’ll find your bag’s in the changing room.’

He waited till she reached the door. ‘It wouldn’t have done you any good anyway,’ he said, holding up the ledger. ‘He was one of the unclaimed. Nobody knows who he was.’

‘The unclaimed?’

‘Found in a shop doorway, I expect.’

She nodded, took one last look at the heap of bones, and went in search of her bag.

Seven

That evening Elinor sat alone in her lodgings. She’d had a bath, washed her hair, put on her dressing gown and curled up in front of the fire. Only now, when it was over, did she realize how much the work of dissection had taken out of her. She stared at the blue buds of the fire, listening to its hissing and popping, but saw only the nameless man as he’d been on that first morning: the huge, yellow-soled feet and the flat plain of the body stretching out beyond them. What a dreadful end. Even Daft Jamie had had a name.

She ought to make the effort to go out, if only round the corner to Catherine’s. A few of the girls had started to meet and do life drawing away from the college, taking it in turns to pose. They were supposed to be meeting tonight, but nobody would show up in this weather. Still, an evening alone with Catherine — the little German girl, as Kit Neville rather patronizingly called her — would be good too. Cocoa and gossip, that’s what she needed. But how bad was the snow? The way it was falling when she came in, it might be impossible to get out.

She couldn’t see much from the window, so she went downstairs and looked out into the street. Snow was still coming down fast, six inches at least had piled up against the door; it must have been falling steadily ever since she got home. Looking up into the circle of light around the street lamp, she could see how big the flakes were. Whirling down from the sky, each flake cast a shadow on to the snow, like big, fat, grey moths fluttering. She’d never noticed shadows like that before. Mesmerized, she stood and watched, trying to follow first one flake and then another, until she felt dizzy, and had to stop.

When she looked up again, she realized she wasn’t alone. A man was standing at the foot of the steps, only five or six feet away from her. The snow must have muffled the sound of his approach. She took an involuntary step back.

Instantly, he took off his hat. ‘Miss Brooke?’

‘Ye-es?’

‘My name’s Andrew Martin. I’m a friend of Toby’s.’

Yes, she remembered seeing him on the steps of the medical school with Toby. ‘Is he all right?’

‘Well, no, not really, that’s why I’m here.’

Fear slipped into her mind so easily, it might always have been there. ‘How bad is it?’

‘I think you should come.’

‘I’ll get dressed. You get back to him.’

‘No, it’s all right, I’ll wait.’

She stepped back. ‘Well, at least wait inside.’

He brushed past her. She closed the door, shutting out the dervish dance of flakes and shadows. He stood awkwardly, snow coating his shoulders as if he were a statue. Big, raw, red hands — he’d come out without gloves — a long nose with a dewdrop trembling on the tip, and a terrible, intractable, gauche shyness coming off him like a bad smell.

‘I won’t be a minute,’ she said.

She ran upstairs, burst into her bedroom, snatched up the first clothes that came to hand, put on her coat and wound a scarf round her neck, all the time trying to think what she would need to take. She’d be staying all night; she might have to stay longer than that. Nightdress, then: soap, flannel, toothbrush, toothpaste, brush, comb. What else? She snapped the lock shut and carried the case downstairs.

The snow on his boots had melted to a puddle on the floor.

‘Can we get a cab?’

‘No, I tried on my way here but they said they’re not taking fares.’

London had become a silent city. For Elinor the stillness added to the strangeness of this walk through deserted streets with a man she didn’t know to a place she’d never been. How secretive Toby was, really. She hadn’t realized till now. He always seemed so laughing and open, so uncomplicated, and yet he’d never once invited her to his lodgings or offered to introduce her to his friends.

‘Has he seen a doctor?’

‘Two days ago, he said go home and go to bed.’

‘Which of course he didn’t.’

‘No, well, he had to go into college; he had an appointment with his tutor. And he didn’t seem to be too bad. But then last night his temperature absolutely shot up.’

‘What’s his breathing like?’

‘Quite bad, I think it might be pneumonia.’

‘Is there a telephone?’

‘I think the landlady has one, but she lives next door.’

‘It’s just I’ll have to tell my parents.’

‘No, you mustn’t, he doesn’t want them to know. He’s afraid if your mother comes she’ll get it herself.’

‘They’ve got a right to know.’

‘You talk to him then, he might listen to you.’

Mother would come and nurse him. Surprising, perhaps, in such an indolent woman, but she’d have been on the next train.

‘Is term over?’

‘Finished yesterday. That’s why he wouldn’t give in, you see. He won’t take time off.’

She caught the note of hero worship in his voice. When Toby was at school, he’d always had hero-worshipping younger boys trailing round after him, coming to stay in the holidays, taking him away from her. This Andrew might think he was special but he was merely the latest in a long line.

They were climbing a steep hill now, which at least allowed her to stop talking for a while. The smell of sulphur that had hung over the city for weeks had gone; the air tasted crisp and sweet. With each step she pressed her foot down hard, relishing the squeak of her boots on the impacted snow. Odd, to be able to feel pleasure at such a time. She didn’t, even now, believe Toby was really sick, or in any danger. He never had been. Apart from the usual childhood things that everybody gets, she couldn’t remember a time when he’d been ill.

The houses on either side were more imposing now, set well back from the road and screened by trees. She bumped into a low-hanging branch that sent snow cascading over her head and shoulders. Taking off her hat, she beat it against the side of her coat.

Andrew was staring, as if he’d only just seen her. ‘You’re awfully like him, aren’t you? I didn’t think boy/girl twins could be identical.’

‘They can’t,’ she said. ‘One’s a boy, one’s a girl.’ He was supposed to be a medical student, for God’s sake. ‘Anyway, we’re not twins.’

‘Oh. I’m sure Toby said —’

‘I think I’d know.’ That verged on the sharp. ‘Toby was a twin, the other one died.’

‘Sorry, I must’ve got it wrong.’

He was still looking puzzled: Toby had said they were twins. She didn’t understand any of this, but there was no time to think about it now. ‘Is there anybody in the house who can help look after him?’

‘No, not really. I live at home, I can come in during the day, but I couldn’t stay overnight.’

‘I meant the landlady, somebody like that.’

‘I’m afraid she’s much too grand for anything like that. And I don’t think he knows any of the other tenants.’

The walk took a lot longer in the snow than it would normally have done. By the time they reached Toby’s lodgings Elinor was gasping for breath, in no state to face four flights of stairs, or brace herself for what she might find when she reached the top.

Andrew pushed open the door, called out a cheerful greeting and then stood aside to let her go in first. Her nostrils caught the usual sickroom fug of camphor and stale sweat. The room was in darkness except for a circle of firelight flickering on the hearthrug. She couldn’t see where she was going, but then Andrew stepped in front of her and lit the lamp. A bristle of meaningless detail: clothes, shoes, socks, furniture, books, dirty dishes piled up in a sink. None of it registered. She saw only Toby’s face.

‘Elinor.’

Three quick strides took her to the bed. ‘It’s all right,’ she was saying. ‘It’s all right.’

He gazed up at her, and a thick, pasty-white tongue came out and licked his cracked lips.

‘Don’t try to talk.’

As she spoke, she was pulling off her coat and scarf. She tossed them on to a chair and stamped her feet to shake off the curds of snow. The room filled with the smell of wet wool and the cold air they’d brought in on their skins.

Elinor glanced round. The fire was burning low, but there was a basket full of logs, presumably carried up by Andrew. There was a jug of water by the bed. As for food, well … She doubted if Toby could eat anything and she certainly didn’t want to.

‘You won’t tell Mother, will you?’

‘She’s got a right to know. And Father.’

‘Honestly, Elinor, this is a terrible thing …’ He was struggling to sit up. ‘Don’t let —’

He’d always been like this about Mother. Nothing must be allowed to upset or disturb her at all. It made Elinor actually quite angry: so much concern for Mother, so little for her. It obviously didn’t matter if she got ill. And Father, where was Father in all this? Nowhere. Rachel, not even mentioned. But she could see he was becoming more and more agitated.

‘All right,’ she said, at last. ‘I promise.’

He closed his eyes then and let her settle him on to the pillows, which were damp with his sweat.

When she’d made him as comfortable as she could, she turned to Andrew, who’d been hovering, awkward and clumsy, by the door, his gaze fixed on Toby’s flushed and sweating face.

‘I’ll be all right now, if you want to get off.’

He glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece. ‘I don’t want to, but I think perhaps I’d better.’

He went to stand by the bed. For some extraordinary reason she felt she ought to look away, but then, deliberately, didn’t. She watched him wrap one big red hand round Toby’s twitching fingertips.

‘Right, then, I’ll see you in the morning.’

‘What time?’

‘Nine-ish.’

‘Oh. Not till then?’

‘All right, I’ll try to get in for eight.’

Toby seemed about to say something else, but then shook his head.

She followed Andrew out on to the landing.

‘Look,’ he said, ‘here’s my telephone number. You will let me know, won’t you, if he gets worse?’

‘Yes, of course,’ she said, automatically, though she thought: I’ve just promised not to tell my mother and father. Why on earth would I tell you?

She stood in the darkness, listening to his footsteps going down the stairs, until she heard the click of the front door closing behind him. When she got back to the room, Toby’s eyes were shut, though she didn’t think he was asleep. Perhaps he wanted to avoid the rawness of undiluted contact with her, now that his friend had gone and they were alone. She looked down at him. There was a grey tinge to his complexion now, except for two patches of dark red on his cheeks that seemed to get more intense as she watched. The effect was ridiculous and even slightly sinister; he looked like a broken doll.

He’d thrust the bedclothes down below his waist. She tried to pull them up again, but he resisted. ‘No, I’m too hot.’

‘You’ve got a temperature.’

When she touched his forehead the heat frightened her, but a few minutes later he’d started to shiver and complained of feeling cold. She tucked the coverlet up around his chin, but almost immediately he started tugging at it, fighting to get it off. He opened his eyes and looked at her.

‘Has Andrew gone?’

‘Yes, just now.’

He nodded, but kept glancing towards the door.

‘He left me his telephone number.’

‘You won’t ring him, will you? He lives at home.’

‘No, I won’t ring.’

The port-wine stains on his cheeks turned him into a stranger. She sat by the bed, suddenly frightened, dreading the long night ahead.

‘I don’t know what to do,’ he said.

Bizarrely, he’d voiced her thoughts. ‘I think the best thing you can do is get some sleep.’

He lapsed into silence then, his eyes fluttering upwards behind his half-closed lids. Perhaps he would sleep. She sat back in the chair and gazed around the room. It was very much a student’s lodgings, right down to the cheap prints tacked on to the walls. Books were stacked on every available surface, sometimes spilling over on to the floor. In one corner, wedged between the wardrobe and the window, was a skeleton, wearing Toby’s hat.

A carriage clock on the mantelpiece ticked out the slow minutes. She felt lonely, and she hadn’t expected that. She’d thought they’d be in this together, but they weren’t. Toby had vanished into his illness, leaving her to face the night alone.

As his temperature rose, he began to mutter, a jumble of words that made no sense. He seemed to think he was back at home, in his own room. Once, he even called her Mother.

She touched his hand. ‘It’s Elinor.’

‘Oh, yes.’ He managed a smile. ‘I’m glad it’s you.’

But then he started rambling and the muttering got louder. He seemed to be saying one word over and over again. She bent closer, getting the full blast of his rancid breath.

‘Toby, I can’t hear you.’

‘Sorry. Sorry sorry sorry sorry …’

‘Shush.’

She put a hand over his mouth, but the sorries kept streaming out of him. He must be apologizing for what had happened between them, at the old mill and later in his room. What else could it be? Without warning he threw the covers off and swung his legs over the side of the bed. She pushed him back, knowing if it came to a fight he was almost certainly, in spite of his illness, stronger than her. She couldn’t make out what he was trying to do. He seemed to be staring at something, not at her, something or somebody behind her.

‘Sorry, I am so sorry.’

‘Go to sleep, Toby. Please.’

Sleep was what he needed, but she wanted him unconscious as much for her sake as his. He lay back, defeated, and closed his eyes. At first, he simply tossed and turned, made restless by the tightness of his breathing, but then, at last, he slipped into a deep sleep, and she was able to relax, a little.

A sulky fire burnt in the grate, spitting whenever a flake of snow found its way down the chimney and hit the hot coals. The room was beginning to feel cold. She pressed a log down hard on to the embers, but the flames that licked round it would take an hour or more to get a hold. The chair she was sitting in had springs sticking through the cushions. She twisted and turned, trying to get comfortable, but nothing worked, and the coat she’d wrapped round herself was still wet from the long walk through the snow. Toby was clinging to the edge of the bed, leaving plenty of space on the other side. Without undressing, or even loosening her belt, she climbed across him, and curled up in the narrow space between his spine and the wall.

She pulled the damp sheet over her, convinced she wouldn’t sleep, not with those dreadful rattling breaths beside her, but after a while she did manage to doze off, though she was aware, all the time, of the other body beside her, kicking, turning, never still, not for a moment, always wanting more room, more room. Without waking, he rolled over towards her. She wriggled away, but he seemed to be following her, pressing in on her, until her face was only a few inches from the wall. And he was pouring out sweat. At last, she gave up, and went back to sitting in the chair, trying to persuade herself that the curtains were beginning to let in a little more light. Though the clock said it was only twenty past three: the dead of night, the hour when the grip on life weakens.

She lit the lamp and brought it closer to his face so she could see the colour of his skin. The extent of his deterioration was frightening. While she’d been dozing, he’d turned from a doll into a clown. She put a hand on his chest and felt the huge, dark muscle of the heart labouring away in its cage of bone. Somehow or other she had to get his temperature down. She looked around for something to put water in, but all she could see was the jug by the bed. There had to be bowls somewhere. She found one in a cupboard beside the sink, and another in the bathroom across the landing. She filled them with tepid water and carried them to the marble washstand beside the bed.

As she brought the wet flannel close to his face, he said, ‘No!’ loudly, almost shouting, and reared away from her.

‘We’ve got to get your temperature down.’

He withdrew from her then, from his own body almost, straining his neck and head back as if to disassociate himself from the sweating bulk on the bed. She began to wash him down, singing little snatches of songs: Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do, I’m half crazy … How different this body was from that other one on the slab, and yet how alike too. The glow of his wet skin in the lamplight … All for the love of you.

She worked rapidly, drying and covering him again as she went, so that he wouldn’t get chilled. Nursing was the only part of her education that hadn’t been neglected, until she’d gone to the Slade and met Tonks. At the end, she soaked the flannel in cold water and laid it across his eyes. She felt the darkness on her own lids, the cold weight, like the pennies they used to put on the eyes of the dead. As soon as the thought occurred she wanted to snatch the flannel away, but no, he was making little grunts and murmurs of pleasure, so she left it there, wetting it again to cool it down whenever it warmed through.

After that he slept for almost three hours. But then, gradually, inexorably, his temperature rose again, until he was twisting and flailing about, trying to escape from the bedclothes, even, it seemed, from his own body. And the muttering started again, but this time she couldn’t make out the words. Something about a train, was it?

‘You don’t need to go anywhere, Toby. Lie down.’

He gripped her by the upper arms so tightly it was an effort not to cry out.

‘Elinor?’

‘I’m here.’

He looked puzzled. Obviously he’d no idea where he was, or why she was here, but he let her plump up his pillows and straighten the sheets.

When she was sure he’d stopped struggling, she stepped away from the bed. Looking down at him, rubbing her arms, thinking: That’ll bruise. The fight seemed to have gone out of him. She didn’t know whether that was a good thing or a bad thing, and she was almost too tired to care. She sank back into the chair, pulled the coat over her again, and slept.

She woke an hour later with dry lips and a dry tongue; she must have been sleeping with her mouth open. Toby was awake, watching her. She was so stiff it was a struggle to get out of the chair, but she managed to hobble the few steps to the bed and touch his hand. She was amazed to find it as cool as her own.

‘You look a lot better.’

‘Yes, I think I am.’

‘Do you think you could eat something?’

He was staring up at her, dazed by his recovery, but then suddenly his expression darkened. ‘I must have talked an awful lot of rubbish last night.’

She busied herself straightening the sheets. ‘No, you rambled on a bit, but I couldn’t make any of it out.’

His gaze wandered round the room, no longer with the confusion of high fever, but with a baby’s indiscriminate curiosity.

‘Have you been here all night?’

‘Yes.’

‘I hope to God you don’t get it.’

She shrugged. ‘Lap of the gods. Do you think you could manage a cup of tea?’

As she searched for cups and saucers she felt his gaze heavy between her shoulder blades, but he said nothing and before the kettle boiled he’d drifted off to sleep.

She went to the window and looked out on to the garden far below. Snow, snow everywhere. Every roof, every gable, every branch of every tree had changed shape overnight. Big white birds circled over the gardens searching for scraps, finding none, until the back door of one of the houses opened and a woman carrying a blue-and-white serving dish came out. She threw a chicken carcass on to the lawn, and then stood scraping small bones and scraps of fat off the plate with the side of her hand. The minute she turned to go back in, the birds swooped down, fighting over the carcass in a great flurry of wings and snow.

How close had Toby come to dying last night? Easy, sitting here in broad daylight, to think she must have exaggerated the danger. He was, after all, young and strong, and strong young men don’t die.

What would her life have been like if he had? She couldn’t bear to think about it, not now, not while the fear was still present. But perhaps, after this illness, it would always be there? For a few hours last night, the unthinkable had become entirely possible, and from a realization like that there’s no going back.

She turned and looked at him. His mouth had slackened in sleep; each breath puckered the upper lip. But his colour was so much better; he would get over this. And the separation, the distance, that had grown up between them in the last few months, that had to end. Now. Toby had been right all along. Somehow or other they had to get back to the way things were. What had happened was not something that could be talked about, or explained, or analysed, or in any other way resolved. It could only be forgotten.

She stood at the window, timing her breaths to match the rise and fall of his. After a while, out of a white sky, more snow began to fall, tentatively, at first, then thick and fast, covering up the signs of battle on the lawn.

Eight

A few days later Elinor was sitting under the tall window outside Tonks’s room. There was a row of five chairs, but she was the only person waiting. She was nervous, as she always was before meeting Tonks, and the bright light from the window hurt her eyes. She hadn’t had much sleep the last few days. Toby had now gone home to recuperate, but worrying about him still kept her awake. Silly, really, because he was getting better.

She was here to tell Tonks that she didn’t want to continue with the anatomy course, and she didn’t know how he’d respond to that. He’d gone to a lot of trouble to get her on to it. She looked at her watch: five minutes past the time of her appointment, but there was no sound from behind his door.

Tonight, she was going to the end-of-term Christmas party: one of the social highlights of the Slade year. Normally, she loved parties, she loved dressing up, but this particular one aroused mixed feelings because it marked the end of Kit Neville’s time at the Slade. Tonks had told him he was wasting his time, he’d never make an artist, and Kit had said, ‘That’s it, then, I’m off.’ His leaving wouldn’t make any difference to their friendship, they’d still see each other, but all the same … The last few days she’d had a constant sense of change, of movement, gears shifting, life taking a new shape, a new direction. Asking to see Tonks, taking the initiative, rather than waiting, passively, for him to send for her, was part of that. She was beginning to feel she belonged here: this was her place.

She looked up. A man was coming down the long corridor towards her. At first, he was merely a dark, indistinct shape, moving between patches of light and shade as he crossed in front of the windows. As he came closer, she could see he was wearing a black overcoat so long it nearly reached the floor, and so shabby it must surely be second-hand. He sat down, three chairs away from her, clutching a battered portfolio to his chest. A prospective student, God help him. She felt a stab of sympathy, remembering the day she’d come to the Slade to show her drawings to Tonks. How totally crushed she’d been. She wanted to reach out to him, to say something encouraging, but she couldn’t catch his eye. He had one of the most, if not the most, remarkable profiles she’d ever seen. She wondered if he knew.

The door opened. Tonks appeared and waved her to a chair in front of his desk. All her carefully prepared speeches crumbled into dust. She sat there, in the light from the window behind him, gobbling like a turkey that’s just realized why it’s been invited to Christmas dinner. At last she dribbled into silence.

‘You’ve had enough?’ Tonks said.

‘Yes.’

‘All right. Though I hope you don’t feel it was a waste of time —?’

‘Oh, no, not in the —’

‘Because, actually, your work’s come on leaps and bounds this term. After’ — he smiled, delicately — ‘a somewhat shaky start.’

Oh, God. He hadn’t forgotten the drawing.

‘It’s been very useful,’ she said.

Was that it? Evidently it was. Tonks was on his feet, escorting her to the door, saying he hoped to see her at the party that night. ‘Oh, if there’s a young man out there, could you ask him to wait a few more minutes? There’s just something I need to do …’

She left the room, thinking: Leaps and bounds? Leaps and bounds? Praise from Tonks was so rare she could’ve leapt and bounded all the way along the corridor. But there was the young man, head down, picking at a ragged cuticle on his right thumb. He looked up, startled, when she approached.

‘Professor Tonks says he’ll see you in a moment. He’s just got something he has to do.’

He was struggling to his feet. She’d noticed before how surprised men were when girls spoke directly or behaved confidently. Almost as if they were so used to simpering and giggling they didn’t know how to react.

She held out her hand. ‘Elinor Brooke.’

‘Paul Tarrant.’

‘Are you coming to the Slade?’

‘Don’t know. Doubt it.’

The northern working-class accent came as a bit of a shock. ‘Well, don’t let Tonks put you off, his bark’s worse than his bite.’

Liar. She smiled and walked off, already thinking about the dress she was going to wear to the party that night, but at the end of the corridor, she turned and looked back. He was still on his feet, watching her. She gave him a little wave, before leaping and bounding down the stairs.