“Be honest,” my father said. “We can stay if you want.”
“Go,” I told them. “You’ll just be down the road. I’ll be fine.” I smiled at my mother. “Don’t worry, Mum,” I said. “I’ll keep all the doors locked, promise.”
At nine o’clock I stood in the shadow of an unlit window as they arranged themselves in my father’s Mercedes to drive the quarter-mile to the Williamses’ house.
Then I went into Laika’s room.
I turned on the light and stood in the doorway. It was exactly as she had left it, her clothes still draped on her chair, the covers still on the bed. I pulled up the duvet and looked underneath. I lay down and buried my head in her pillow and tried to pick up her scent. Then I turned over and looked at the ceiling. After a while I pushed my fingers down between the mattress and the bed frame and felt all the way along. Nothing. I stood and lifted the mattress. Nothing. Way too obvious.
I stood and looked round the room. I felt under her clothes in each of her drawers. I checked the pockets of her jeans. I looked at her desk, my eyes drifting over pens, pencils, tubes of paint, a notebook full of drawings, a dictionary, a copy of Jonathan Livingston Seagull left upside down on its spine. I had no idea what I was looking for. Still I went on. I picked up her desk chair and lifted it inside her wardrobe. Then I stood on it and, on tiptoe, felt along the top of the inside frame, that tiny gap between the wood and the plaster of the wall, where she used to stash the notes she lifted from my father’s wallet, rolled up into tight little tubes. Nothing.
I went back to her desk and looked through the jumble of things she’d left on the top of her chest of drawers—the hair ties and clips meant to tame her unruly hair, beads, a peacock feather. A china cat. A felt mouse. She was so messy. There wasn’t an order to any of it. I opened her pink jewelry box, a relic from childhood, and jumped as a small pink plastic ballet dancer sprang up and shuddered into life, turning on its stand to tinny music. Amazing the thing still works, I thought. I listened to the tune, feeling rushed backward through time as an image filled my mind: my mother one day pretending to be that doll, turning jerkily on the spot with a strange, fixed smile on her face, while Laika and I danced around her, giggling like mad. It was funny, because, as children, we honestly believed our mother was the clumsiest person on earth. She always told us she couldn’t walk through a doorway without accidentally banging into it. Bruises bloomed like flowers on her arms. Silly me, she’d say, when we pulled up the long sleeves she always wore, when we traced their outlines with small fingertips, when we tried to kiss them better.
I snapped the lid shut.
Almost immediately I opened it again. There was something bright in there, something I’d not noticed before: a discarded thing in a child’s jewelry box, just one trinket among many others, easily overlooked.
With slow fingers I lifted out the object and held it up: a tiny silver dolphin, curled into a dive, shaped like a crescent moon. I stretched out the little silver chain. It was broken. The ballerina kept turning.
I love it.
I’m never going to take it off.
Something like static seemed to hiss and spit inside my brain, scattering my thoughts.
I folded my hand around the dolphin and squeezed my eyes shut. There was too much noise, so much noise. I slammed the lid of the box. The music stopped but the buzzing inside my head carried on. Blood was rushing in my ears. I felt impossibly hot, like I was burning with fever. I went and stood by the window. I put my head to the cool glass, then the flats of my palms. Then I stood there, thinking, over-thinking, not thinking at all.
The minutes clicked past midnight. Distant fireworks lit up the sky, momentarily illuminating the outline of the stone steps and the dark garden, the black water of the swimming pool, the dark shadow of the pool house, the long sloping lawns and the flowerless winter beds, the leafless webs of oak and laburnum, and, all around the perimeter, the towering wall of rhododendrons.
I stood there for a long time. The last fireworks faded into the night. I left Laika’s room, snapped off the light, and shut the door behind me. Then, before my parents came back, I hid the dolphin and its broken chain deep within my school bag.
***
The morning I was due to return to school I was packed up and ready to go straight after breakfast. I found my mother sitting in the kitchen. I sat next to her. I placed the tiny leaping dolphin on the table between us.
My mother’s hand flew to her mouth. “Where did you find it?” Her voice was breathy and came out in a rush.
“In her bedroom.” I pushed the chain around so she could see the break. My voice was low, urgent. “Tell me about that morning, Mum. What happened after I went to school?”
She glanced once in the direction of my father’s study, then back at me.
“You left. I nipped next door to give the new neighbors some flowers. I was only quick. I wanted to give her a lift to school so she wouldn’t be late. When I came back, she was gone. Your father told me she’d left for school.”
“You left them on their own?”
“No, the builders were here, pouring the concrete floor.”
I felt a prickling heat rising fast up my neck. I looked toward the conservatory. I said, “Oh my God.”
Something was building in my chest—something that would burst out of me, urgent, savage, uncontrolled. I opened my mouth. “Mum—” I stopped. From the hallway we heard my father’s study door opening, his footsteps in the hall; both of us glanced toward the kitchen door. As my mother’s hands reached for mine the edges of her silk blouse pulled back, exposing the white skin of her wrists. Automatically I checked them for marks. Then I gave her fingers a quick squeeze and before my father arrived in the kitchen I swept the silver dolphin off the table and folded it into my palm.
8 The Fermi Paradox Willa
The January term started with a blizzard. The school cranked up its ancient heating system and the radiators threw off so much heat you could almost see it blistering the air. One minute we were frozen, the next we were dripping with sweat.
At night our room was so stuffy we could barely breathe. We threw off the duvets first, then our pajamas. In the middle of the night I watched Robyn as she stood naked, tugging at the metal hooks of the ancient sash window. She rammed it up a few inches and a cool river of chilled air flooded in, fresh and bright and clean.
“Better?” she said, looking round. I nodded. “I’ll leave the curtains open.” The moon touched her hips, her small breasts, the dark tuft between her legs.
“You’re so beautiful,” I said. The words were out of my mouth before I realized I’d said them aloud.
“I’m not.”
“You are,” I said.
“I have a runner’s body. I could do with a few more curves.”
“Wish I had a runner’s body.”
She climbed back into bed, and I shifted over to make space.
“Thank you,” I said.
“For what?” She turned on her side to face me. I knelt on my elbow and moved a lock of hair from where it fell across her eyes.
“For everything,” I said. “For being you.”
Her eyes moved between mine, her face an open question. The cool air pooled between us and my skin brightened, prickling into goosebumps. Her eyes were clear and dark in the silver-gray light.
