A warm wind ran over the surface of the wheat, turning it into a golden sea.
I took a long time to find the right words. Eventually I said, “The police thought that girl was Laika, didn’t they? They thought Dad had killed Laika.”
“But he didn’t, Willa. He can’t have. It’s just not possible. I was gone minutes. And, anyway, she left the house, Willa, we know that. Felicity Williams saw her talking to Cox.”
“But what if she went back?”
“Then something would have been out of place. But it wasn’t: everything was exactly as it was. Cox had gone, your father was in his study, and everything was quiet. If anything had happened, I’d have known. I would have noticed something. No. Whatever happened to Laika that morning, it didn’t involve your dad.” My mother paused. Then she said, “Sweet girl, do you honestly think I’d have stayed with your father if I’d thought he’d killed Laika? Or let him anywhere near you? Good grief, Willa, I would have been the first person to have told the police. Trust me, murder is not his modus operandi.” She gave a short, humorless laugh. “Torture, maybe. Murder, no.”
I took a breath. I said, “What about you, Mum? What about when Dad comes back? How will things be for you?”
My mother looked away and let a long moment pool between us. Keeping her eyes on the distant horizon, she said, “He doesn’t hit me anymore.”
The world seemed to tilt a little on its axis. For the first time in my entire life, something unspoken had been spoken, a secret truth known by our family alone.
She turned to meet my eyes. “It stopped after Laika disappeared. And I honestly don’t think it will happen again, really, not ever. I think he feels under scrutiny, like everyone is watching him these days: our neighbors, the police, the press, the entire world. Even more so now.” We stood in silence, watching a group of crows passing between the field and the towering mountains of cloud. Then my mother said, “I can’t leave him, Willa. I couldn’t when you were small—I was terrified that he would somehow get custody, that he’d somehow spirit the two of you away.” I saw her eyes fill with tears and she quickly brushed them away. “Even if we’d been awarded joint custody, you two would have spent half your holidays with him, on your own, and every other weekend with him, on your own, and there was no way, no way…” Her voice cracked. She breathed deeply through her nose, pulling up her chin.
“Mum—”
“No, don’t feel sorry for me. I’m not asking for that. Anyway, I had you, my beautiful, beautiful girls. I’d never, ever change that.” She shook her head. “I know what they say about women like me: Why don’t they leave? Ignorant pricks. Of course I couldn’t leave. I had to protect the two of you. And now I won’t. Do you understand that? I am not leaving her home, Willa, I am not. I just can’t. It’s where she knows, where she would come back to. And, anyway, you don’t need to worry about me anymore. I’m safe. I’ve become untouchable.”
I put my arms around my mother’s waist and she pulled me close. Then we turned and looked again at the hypnotic drifts of wheat, bending and lifting in waves like a living, breathing thing. A break appeared in the clouds and all at once the late-afternoon sun streamed through, drenching the world in brilliant light, turning the stalks of wheat into long, flaming tapers. In that moment everything looked beautiful. The entire landscape had changed.
***
On the way home a rabbit ran in front of the car and, in order to avoid it, I swerved and drove us into a ditch. My mother kept talking as the car slid sharply down the bank and came to an abrupt halt in a clump of hogweed.
“God,” I said, “I didn’t mean for that to happen. Sorry.”
My mother said, “You know something, lady? You inspire revenge.”
“Are you quoting Dynasty?”
“Every time you come into my life something terrible happens to me.”
“What are we going to do?”
My mother looked at me, her expression unperturbed. “Did I tell you?” she said. “Deedee really has got enormously fat.”
We left the car where it was and walked home along the lanes, and when we got in my mother called a recovery company and asked them to please go and drag it back out.
***
That summer, that is, the summer I left school, when my father first took off overseas, neither my mother nor I had any idea how long he’d be away, but, as it turned out, she and I had almost two entire months on our own. He finally returned at the end of August. I couldn’t say what he’d been up to in that time. He never said.
The summer was at an end. Over the next few weeks the skies turned gray and autumn set in. A soundless atmosphere descended on the house, and I decided it was time to look for a job.
Throughout that summer, Robyn had called my parents’ home repeatedly, leaving multiple messages on the answering machine. When I didn’t call back, she wrote me long letters on lined yellow paper. She wrote again in September, before she went to uni. She’d missed out on her place to read medicine by two grades, she said, but she’d found a place to read radiography through clearing and so she’d be in London; perhaps we could meet up.
***
I often think about watching her walk out of our little study-bedroom that day, the back of her head, the way her two stubby little plaits stuck out at odd angles, the crooked line of her parting. The next time I saw her she didn’t wear her hair like that anymore. It was almost four years before I could face seeing her again, and by that time everything had changed.
11 Supper with Friends Willa
Cat opens the door, the warmth of her smile instantly dispelling the wintry air of Forest Hill. She gives me a quick hug and her lips brush my cheek. “Lovely to see you,” she says. Then she turns to Jamie. “Hi,” she says, her voice falling through the keys of a minor scale, “come on in.” Jamie and I step into the hallway and I hand over a large bunch of flowers.
I like Cat, of course I do. She’s quick-witted, plain-speaking and terrifyingly smart, plus she exudes a sort of artless confidence that I’d love to have, the worldliness of the well-traveled, I suspect. Cat’s mother is Irish and her father is from Queens, New York, and she lived in both those places as a child. Her parents still live in the States. Her mother lectures in Urban Design at NYU and her father writes for the New York Times. Despite the physical distance, they’re really close, and Cat and Robyn take the kids out to see them at least once a year. Cat herself is an architect. I’ve seen Cat discussing the future of sustainable housing and fire-safety measures and I’ve also seen her doing the cha-cha at house parties dressed in a gold jumpsuit. I can see why Robyn loves her, what the fascination is. And it’s not like she and I don’t get on. She’s just…I don’t know. She’s very different from me.
“You look nice,” she says, giving a single glance to the green dress that has cost me almost a week’s wages. Cat herself is wearing cropped velvet leggings.
I leave her with Jamie to sort out his coat while I whip on ahead to find Robyn. Before the others follow me in, I want to grab a quiet moment with her, without either Cat or Jamie around, just to tell her what I’ve been thinking since I saw her this morning. I don’t get the chance. I’ve barely made it into the kitchen before Sophie, their eldest, hurtles in, throws her arms around my waist and snatches that time away. Much as I’d hoped for that small moment, I can’t mind too much. I always love seeing Sophie. She’s a true delight, and seems completely tickled by the little gifts I’ve brought her. She takes my hand and drags me straight back out of the kitchen and up the two flights of stairs to her little attic bedroom. Then she makes me lie with my head beside hers on her pillow and together we look at the glow stars that she tells me her Uncle Michael has stuck on to her ceiling, a task, I note, he has completed not randomly but organized into proper constellations.
I turn my head and smile at my precious, brilliant god-daughter, a child still young enough to smell of talcum powder and soap.
“What?” she says.
“Nothing.”
I run a hand over her dark, curly hair and down across her cheek. She is the most wonderful child I know, beautiful in every way, as joyful and uncomplicated as Robyn herself. I shut my eyes. The pain is almost physical. There is nothing, nothing I long for more than this.
***
When Michael arrives, I watch the warmth of the sibling hug he shares with Robyn with no small pang. All that understanding, I think, all that shared history. All those strong, unspoken bonds. The tsunami of grief I once felt for Laika’s absence is more like a quiet wave these days, something that resides deep inside me, lapping somewhere at the edges of my mind. It’s been so long, but it’s there. It’s always, always there.
Michael hugs me too; I’ve known him for years. Then I turn to meet his girlfriend, Liv, biting my lip as some secret part of me steps forward. Get a grip, I tell myself, this is Michael’s girlfriend. But the thing is, Liv is a very attractive woman. She barely needs the touch of eyeliner that outlines her eyes; she’s just one of those women who is startlingly beautiful in a completely natural, unstudied way. She brushes a stray lock of hair away from her face and tips her head on one side, listening carefully to Michael as he speaks. According to Robyn, Michael said she reminds him of me. That’s nice, I think, she’s lovely. I’m flattered we’ve been compared.
I’m not the only one watching Liv. Robyn is too. In fact, with the exception of Cat, all of us are watching Liv, including, I note, my boyfriend. I watch Jamie rise from the table and pull himself up to his full height, then move toward her with the fixed gaze of a cat watching a bird. Greeting her, he liquifies into charm personified, his voice lowered to almost a purr, a slow smile edging across his face. He seats her opposite him, pours her a glass of wine and pulls her into conversation. I wait to feel the dark burr of jealousy but it doesn’t come. I think, You big tart, but not with any particular rancor. I don’t actually feel anything.
