“You mean reworking events to fit our own narrative,” says Cat.
“Exactly. And now it gets really interesting: transference of memory, by which I mean absorbing other people’s memories, taking possession of them, as if they belonged to you. And, as it happens, this is my area of research. We all do this, to some extent. For instance, we all have that one story that gets slightly embellished in the retelling and, over time, the exaggerated story becomes the version we actually believe, indistinguishable from the original in our own minds. And here’s another example, and you don’t have to answer this out loud, but did you ever date someone who, when you look back, you think of as highly irritating?” There’s an awkward laugh, and a pause in which no one meets anyone else’s eye. “Well, it’s a bit like that,” she says. “You’ve shifted your perception of them. Your memory is colluding with your subliminal desire to put that person firmly outside your emotional reach. And this shift in thinking happens on a cultural level too—take Princess Diana, for example—she was treated like a saint when she died, whereas now she’s very often described as if she were slightly unhinged. How did that shift in thinking happen on a national—even a global—scale?”
“We’ve been collectively manipulated,” Cat says, “to remember things differently.”
“Precisely,” Liv says.
“It’s important research,” Michael says, “given we’re constantly bombarded with information, much of which comes with a certain agenda attached. We need to know the extent to which our memories are reliable, and, equally, the extent to which memory itself can be deliberately constructed.”
I look at my beautiful, brilliant brother and smile. He sounds so flipping earnest and I love him for that. He’s always been that way, Michael. Even as a kid he was that person, a small, ardent professor of life, even then when we were both so utterly unfettered by life’s responsibilities, entirely free to do whatever we liked. How green I must have been, somehow imagining my summers would always be like that: just an endless stream of warm, carefree days that seemed to stretch on forever. Then Willa came to stay and everything changed after that. Michael was there too, that summer, and I wonder now just how much he still remembers of that time: how much he saw in the first place, how much he missed.
Me? I remember it all.
4 Summer Break Robyn
When Dad taught Willa how to throw a bowl, even Michael came to watch, which just goes to show that we were all a little in love with my friend. Mum said she had very nice manners, which meant she called her Mrs. Bee. She called my dad Chris. I watched my brother’s eyes following her around the house. I’d never seen my brother pay attention to anyone before, let alone one of my friends. After all, he was nearly four years older than me. He used to call me Kid.
“Don’t they have girls at Oxford?” I asked him when Willa was in the shower. “What makes you think she’d be interested in you?” In my head those words had sounded playful and fun, but that’s not the way they came out. I grinned. I poked him in the ribs. “Just joking,” I said.
Michael even invited Willa into his bedroom to look at his rock collection, a gray cardboard box filled with a variety of specimens, some from the moor but others from far more exotic locations. Each one was nestled in a tiny bed of cotton wool: malachite, azurite, obsidian, rock rose, and Brian, a yellow pebble I’d found in the river and gifted to my brother, writing his name on a tiny paper slip in the same miniature handwriting that Michael used to label everything else. Willa trailed slow fingers over the fossils on his windowsill.
“Do you ever collect birds’ eggs?” she said. She would honestly ask the oddest questions at times.
“You mean from nests?”
She nodded.
“Well, no,” my brother said. “First off, that’s illegal. But, more than that, it would be wrong.”
Willa nodded and moved on around his room. For the longest time she stared at a map of the oceans that Michael had pinned to the wall.
“Show me where there are blue holes.”
“Blue holes? Sure. The one everyone’s seen pictures of is here”—Michael pointed toward Belize—“but there are others too, less well known, not as big or impressive. There’s one off the coast of South Africa. One here, near Egypt. The Caribbean. There’re lots of them, actually, even inland ones. Here—Oman. They’re all just sinkholes, but aerial photos make them look really impressive—like you’re looking into an abyss.”
Willa seemed to sigh and for a beat we all stood in silence. Then I showed her the line my brother had drawn on the boards of his floor, marking the point I wasn’t allowed to cross until I was almost thirteen.
“She was a contamination hazard,” Michael said. “She contained glitter.”
***
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.”
