***

Later, finding a quiet moment alone, she asked me about Michael’s limp.

“He was born like that,” I told her. “He had a bad case of talipes equinovarus—you know, clubfeet? Plus, some other stuff going on with his hips. He had a whole bunch of operations when he was a kid and not all of them went well, so both his legs were in plaster for ages, years, in fact. I walked before he did.”

“That’s awful.”

“Don’t,” I tell her. “It’s not a big thing. Okay, so he was never going to play rugby or run marathons or whatever, but that’s it. It’s literally never stopped him doing anything. And get this—I was so jealous of him. Dad used to walk around with him balanced on his feet, to build up his muscle strength. And believe me, Willa, I’ve never been allowed to forget that I had a massive tantrum about that one time, shouting and screaming, hurling myself on the floor, banging my little fists, the works. Turns out I wanted clubfeet too, so I could be walked around on Dad’s feet. Then, of course, he grew up to be a complete genius. Left me standing. No wonder I got into sport. It’s the only thing I’ve ever been able to beat him at hands down. So. There you have it. I was a brat,” I said, grinning at her, “which, of course, happens to be the natural role of little sisters.” Willa gave me a small smile.

“I suspect it is,” she said.

***

In the pottery Dad slammed the clay on to the wheel and showed Willa how to get it going.

“I can’t do it,” she said, as her birdlike hands were dragged wildly around. “I’m not strong enough.”

“You can,” Dad said. “You’re stronger than you think.”

He showed her how to focus on her core and work from there, to still her mind and body, then to power her thumbs down into the very middle of the clay, opening it from mousehole to fox hole, then widening into whirlpool, vortex, and eventually, fantastically, to a black hole with all the rings of Saturn spinning up its sides. Then the entire thing collapsed and hefted itself off to one side of the wheel like a midnight drunk.

“Sorry,” she said.

“There’s no need for sorry,” Dad said; “you’re learning. Have another go.” He scooped up the folds of wet clay and threw them into the recycling bin. Then he slammed another slab hard into the center of the wheel and off she went again, and again. I knew her back and arms would be aching like hell, but she wouldn’t give up. She made pots with strange lumps and heavy rims and thick bottoms, and Dad sliced each of them off and dumped them into the bin like wet rags.

And then it happened.

“Stop right there,” Dad said, slowing the wheel to a crawl. “That’s it. That’s the keeper. That’s the one.” In its center was a perfect pot, with thin, gray, even walls and a lovely open shape.

“That,” my dad said, “is a thing of beauty.” Willa grinned. It had taken her three hours. I’d known she was going to be good.

“Okay,” Dad said, “get out of here. Take a break.”

The pot had to dry out and be biscuit fired, which meant that it wasn’t until the last night of her stay that we could finally glaze the thing. The day had been too hot to do it, the air as languid and still as a sleeping lizard, so we waited until after supper.

The raku kiln lived on bricks in the yard and looked a bit like an old metal dustbin, which it was. Fired up, it radiated a fierce heat. Willa’s pot sat inside its glowing chamber, and Dad, usually so calm, fussed around the outside like a jackdaw, constantly checking the temperature and the seals.

“Okay,” he said, “we’re on.”

He kitted out Willa in a long leather apron, some goggles and a pair of thick gauntlets that almost covered her entire arms. Using metal tongs, he took the lid off the top of the kiln and lifted out her pot, now glowing orange-white with heat. “Open that one,” he said, pointing to another smaller dustbin; “that’s the reduction chamber.”

“Reduction of what?” Willa asked.

“Oxygen. Watch.”

It was full of woodchips. Dad positioned the glowing pot inside. Sparks and flames instantly burst out in every direction, hissing and sputtering. We all leaped back. Little spits of fire flew across my dad’s forehead and small puffs of smoke popped around his head. He clamped down the lid over the pot and stood back, a wild grin on his face.

“Give it a few minutes,” he said. A small part of his hair had withered into wiry crisps and one of his eyebrows was smoking. There was a long black smudge across his brow where he’d wiped his glove across his face.

“Kiln Face,” I said.

Dad stood with his hands on his hips. He couldn’t stop smiling. After a while, he gave the metal tongs to Willa so she could pick out her pot. It was still glowing a bit, smoky dark with wood ash and with a few curls of burning wood clinging to the surface. But we could already glimpse the glaze, iridescent and glittering beneath the blackened areas of ash, the colors of a bluebottle. Dad told her to plunge it into a bucket. The water hissed and spat. When he picked it back out, wild crackles had shot across its surface, thin and wiry in some places, dark and deep in others. The base of the pot was a deep copper umber and its rim a bright cobalt blue. It was absolutely lovely.

“Wow,” Willa said, her voice thrilled, “thank you.”

“You did it,” Dad said. “It’s your hard work. Take it home. Give it to your mum.”

***

And that was it. It was just a normal summer. We hadn’t done very much. We’d sunbathed in the garden and watched buzzards make lazy turns of the thermals above; read novels, painted our nails, listened to music and swum in the river. We’d walked the dogs to see wild ponies and had distant sightings of skittish deer. At night we’d sat in deck chairs with my parents and brother and looked at the stars. The weeks had just floated away.

Everyone offered to take Willa to the station on her last morning, so in the end we all went, even Michael, despite the fact it was practically two hours each way, so all three of us rammed into the back of the Landy. My brother sat jammed behind my mum, wearing a newly ironed shirt with long sleeves and a button-down collar, the burnished mahogany of his hair gleaming in the sun. He’s brushed it, I thought. Oh, Michael. He smelt of fresh linen and something else too, something nice. I sniffed in his direction. Aftershave.

On the station platform, I hugged Willa and she hugged Michael, even though his arms stayed clamped fast to his sides. Dad patted her shoulder and Mum held her tight for a moment and then got a little weepy and that set me off too. She’d stayed with us for a month after all, and that made her family as far as my lot were concerned. Dad had given her a pitcher from his pottery as a leaving gift, a tall, rounded vessel in a deep sea-green with an elegant curving handle, which he’d wrapped up together with her pot. He checked the package was safely wedged on the baggage shelf, then we all waved until the train rolled out of sight. And then she was gone.

***

Back in the car, Mum sat with her hands on the steering wheel, staring ahead. “Lovely girl,” she said finally. She turned in her seat so that she could look at the rest of us. “Is it not at all odd that—” She stopped. She looked at us. She took a breath. “If it was me,” she said, “if I was her mum, I know it’s far, but if it was me, I can’t help thinking I would have come to pick her up. I just don’t think I would have made her get the train.” She stopped. Then she said, “After all that has happened to that family.”

“She’s seventeen, Mum,” I said. “She’s not a baby.” Don’t ask me why I felt a sudden need to defend her parents—I’d never even met them.

“Perhaps,” my dad said, rearranging the crux of my thoughts into more diplomatic form, “they don’t want her to be afraid about going anywhere on her own.”

“I mean she’s got to get across London on the underground,” Mum said, “with all that baggage.”

There was a silence.

“I’m just saying,” Mum said, “all I am saying is, if that was my daughter, if Willa was my daughter, I wouldn’t want her doing that. I just wouldn’t.”

And there was no arguing with that.

5 Supper with Friends Robyn

A sound like a small bell pulls me back into the room: a fingernail tapping on glass. Jamie catches my eye and smiles, then nods at his empty glass. I pour him another glass of red.

“Now think about your earliest memory,” Liv says. “Okay, done that?” She looks around the table. “What is it?”

Jamie leans back, placing both hands flat on the table. “Easy,” he says, “sitting on my dad’s knee, drinking beer from his pint. I can even remember what I was wearing—stripy top, blue shorts.”

“How old would you have been?”

“Two, two and a half max.”

“Michael?”

“I remember Robyn being born. I would have been three years, eight months and, let me think, fifteen days old. Mum had her at home. Apparently Mum hadn’t realized how far along she was and suddenly it was all happening. Dad had to deliver her with one ear clamped to the telephone, following instructions from a midwife. I remember seeing her head coming out, then her body. They let me cut the cord.”

“Oh my God,” Willa says.