Quarter Past Two on a Wednesday Afternoon (28 page)

The earth turned on its axis/

Creating night and day/

And clocks ticked through the hours/

In the usual way/

But something changed for ever/

On that incredible day/

CODA: Only a day/

Only a day/ (overlapping)

Only a day/

Yes it was only a day/

We travelled to the island/

Then we came down to the bay/

And the words were lost inside me/

The things I never could say/

Too big a risk to tell you/

You might have laughed it away/

You’d think I was only teasing/

That it’s some new game to play/

I’d better stop pretending/

That you could want me that way/

And I knew I’d never have my fill/

On this or any other day/

CODA: Only a day, etc
…
Do you remember that day (Riff)

Then a feeling passed between us/

That words could never convey/

And I know I wasn’t dreaming/

No need to shrug it away/

In my mind you’re standing with me/

Looking down at the bay/

And I’ll keep us there for ever/

The way I wish we could stay/

CODA: Only a day/Only a day/Only a day … (repeat to fade)

Sandy gazed and gazed at the words, thinking of Roland writing them alone in his room. From what Phil had said, he must have finished it the night they’d talked – the vodka night, as she thought of it. He’d gone upstairs and finished his poem, while she slept in the next room. Maybe because of the conversation they’d had. It was his last song. A song full of joy and love that had led to his death.

‘Roly,’ she whispered, and looked at the poem for one last time before refolding the paper. She went after Phil, who was walking slowly along the tide’s edge, head down.

‘Thank you,’ she said softly. ‘It’s beautiful. Keep it.’

Phil held the page in his hand for a few moments, looking at it, before putting it carefully back into his shoulder bag. Sandy stooped to pick up a pebble, choosing a flinty one; she weighed it in her hand, feeling its smoothness and its one sharp edge, then threw it into the sea, as far and as hard as she could. Phil did the same. He didn’t look at her, but she saw his eyes shiny with tears.

She touched his sleeve; then his arm went round her and they stood together without speaking. At first she thought only of the comfort of another body warm against hers, sheltering her from the wind; her face was against his jacket, his arms held her, and here was the one person who knew exactly the blend of pain and guilt, anger and bewilderment that held her and wouldn’t let go. It was too cold to linger; they retreated up the beach, still linked, to a notch in the sandy cliff that offered shelter. There they huddled together, embracing like survivors. Their first kiss tasted of salt, his tears and her own; then hands reached and grasped and slid inside clothing, and her breath quickened with his. Her head swam with the certainty that Roland was here too; that they were doing this for him.

Chapter Sixteen

Ruth thought that the weekend would be soon enough for Anna to move to Rowan Lodge, but Anna insisted on going the next evening. Ruth drove her there, taking her bags and some kitchen equipment, regretting now that they’d emptied the cupboards so efficiently and given so much to charity shops. An old bike was strapped to the roof of the car; Ruth said that she hardly used it any more and certainly wouldn’t miss it. When they arrived, she checked the oil tank and got the boiler going, turned on an electric fire and showed Anna the central heating controls. ‘Are you sure you’ll be all right? The phone’s disconnected, but call me on your mobile if we’ve forgotten anything.’

‘I’ll be fine,’ Anna said, although at that moment she was wishing more than anything that she could go back with Ruth and sit in the warmth of the kitchen over a pot of coffee. She’d forgotten how dark it was here at night, without street lights, and so few other houses nearby. Still, she’d chosen this; she couldn’t change her mind now. The house was frigid with winter and neglect, but – to Anna’s relief – held less of Bridget’s presence than it had on her first visit. She didn’t want to share with Bridget.

‘Coffee, tea, bread, milk, yoghurt, cheese, butter.’ Ruth unpacked a cardboard box. ‘It seems a bit like camping, but I can always come over tomorrow night and take you to the supermarket in Epping.’

‘You’ve got enough to do,’ Anna told her. ‘I don’t want to be an extra burden.’

‘You’re not. I’ll miss you! It’s been fun having you to stay.’

‘Thanks again, for everything.’ They went to the door together, and hugged; Anna felt suddenly tearful as Ruth went out to the car. Backing out to the lane, Ruth waved, and pulled away up the hill. Although it meant letting precious warmth out of the house, Anna stood watching from the open door until the car’s rear lights were quite out of sight.

Silence and darkness settled around her like a cloak. She remembered telling Jamie that she was waiting for something, though she didn’t know what. Maybe this was the way to find out. In spite of her doubts earlier, she felt oddly comforted, contained in her own stillness. I can’t live in London, she thought. I need trees, quietness, space, a garden. I should have known.

Her attention was caught now by the stars: how startling they were, how brilliant, with no intrusive streetlamps to blot them out, no lit buildings apart from the cottage behind her. It felt like a gift, a dazzling display, a blessing on this new phase of her life. There they were in their slow wheeling, which Rose had said you could almost see if you stood for long enough, east horizon to west. And there to the south stood Orion, the bold, unmistakable pattern of belt and sword and raised arm that Anna had known since childhood. He towered high, dominating the southern sky. Turning, Anna saw patterns and clusters, more and more stars pricking through until she felt she could fall into them, and her neck ached with tilting. There weren’t many more constellations she could identify: the Plough, the wide W of Cassiopeia, and – yes – the Pleiades, the Seven Sisters, in the horned shape of Taurus. She remembered that.

How many stars can you count?

Seven. Seven Sisters.

No, more than seven. Don’t look straight at them. Look to one side, so you can catch them out.

But the more you look, the more you can’t see, and the Rose of her imagination was there beside her, so close that Anna ought to be able to reach out and grab her by the wrist and not let go. Rose, who always knew more, always several steps ahead.

‘Where are you?’ Anna asked, and was startled to realize that she’d spoken aloud, and that she was alone in the dark, with Ruth gone, and the empty house behind her.

Going in, she turned the key in the door and slid the bolt across – no multi-point locking here – then made up her bed, with the sheet and duvet cover Ruth had lent her. She’d decided that it would be too creepy to sleep in Bridget’s double bed, and was installing herself instead in the smaller room overlooking the garden, the one Ruth had used whenever she stayed. Sometime this week, one lunch time, she’d go back to the flat and collect more of her clothes, CDs and toiletries. Smuggle them out, perhaps, bit by bit, till she had all her belongings here? But if this was a final separation from Martin, as it seemed to be, she ought to tell him, and make it definite. She would have to find the words for that – words that wouldn’t yet come, but how could it be done without them?

Staying here for a while would make it easier. She thought of herself, Ruth and Martin as marker-pins on a map, forming an elongated triangle. At a proper distance from each other.

August 1990

The Wednesday of Rose’s leaving divided everything into Before and After. It was the day when normal life stopped being safe, predictable, even boring, and became something too big and terrifying to endure.

Time thickened like treacle. Anna floundered through it in a daze. Everything was too brightly coloured, too loud, too bewildering. There were things like meals, and bed, and deciding what clothes to wear, but it all felt irrelevant. There was another girl doing these things; looking, to any observer, like the usual Anna.

A whole day went by, and another. It began to feel normal to have police in the house – at first two male sergeants and a WPC, later the WPC on her own. Photographs were produced, a description written. There were questions, questions. How had Rose seemed? What had she been wearing? What did they think she’d taken with her? Anna and her mother tried to work out what was missing from the wardrobe, but could only say what Rose
hadn’t
taken: not the crochet sandals, not the appliquéd denim skirt, not the floaty green top. Her bag had gone, with her purse in it. No one knew how much money the purse had held. Anna told them that Rose had been drawing that morning, but her sketchbook seemed to have gone with her.

The house was suspended in time, waiting. The air felt still, too still.
Something awful’s happened
. The thought kept nudging at Anna’s brain.
Something so awful I can’t think about it.
At the same time she expected Rose to come back, surprised to find everyone anxious and agitated. The straining of ears and will to hear Rose’s key in the lock, her usual clattering entry with bags and art folder, was a physical ache.

Dad went to school to collect Rose’s exam results. The envelope sat on the mantelpiece for three days before Mum opened it so that they could tell her if she phoned. She’d got her three As; there should have been celebrations. The phone kept ringing: both lots of grandparents, Rose’s friends, the police. Every time the phone rang, Mum’s eyes seemed to darken, her body to shrink into itself, but usually it was only someone asking for news, or the police confirming that there was no news. There was nothing.

‘A girl with three A grades has got enough brains to keep herself out of trouble,’ Dad kept saying, repeating it like a mantra.

After a whole interminable first week, the police phoned. There was a body that might be Rose. The body of a teenage girl, washed up on a beach near Whitstable. Anna’s parents were required to go and identify it.

That evening lodged in Anna’s memory, thrillingly awful. Mum and Dad getting ready to go, talking to each other in shaken, subdued voices, speaking for the comfort of keeping some things ordinary: ‘Are you ready, love? Got your keys? Hadn’t you better take your coat? It’ll be cold later.’ Beneath the talking, each of them was shut up with the horror of what was to come.

Anna didn’t go with them. Gran and Grandad Skipton came over, to stay with her while Mum and Dad were driven to a morgue or hospital or police station; Anna wasn’t sure where they had to go. She watched the police car drive slowly down the road and out of sight, and stayed there at the window, breathing on the glass, pulling the curtains round her like a shawl. She wanted to hold tightly to the last minutes of Rose still being alive. She knew from television how it would be. Someone quiet and respectful would pull back a sheet, and there would be Rose’s drowned face, bruised and swollen from being in the water. Dad would say in a quavering voice, ‘Yes, that’s her, that’s Rose,’ and Mum would break down in terrible racking sobs. Rose would be covered up again, the sheet touching her eyes, her mouth. The fabric would shape itself to her face, covering the bruises and the swelling. She would be unblemished again, untouched. She would be one of those stone effigies in cathedrals, the folds falling gracefully from her limbs. Time would lose its meaning, and she’d be fixed like that for ever, a girl of stone.

Anna’s reflection stared back at her from the blackness of outside. It swam and blurred and became Rose’s drowned face, with staring eyes. Anna tugged the curtains together to shut her out. She went back to sprawl on the carpet, the TV on for company. None of them could settle, but Gran and Grandad were trying to pretend that things were normal, for Anna. ‘I can’t ask them, I can’t,’ Anna had heard Mum whispering to Dad. ‘It’s Roland all over again. I can’t put them through that. It’s too terrible to think about.’