Our Endless Numbered Days: A Novel (33 page)

“They searched the other side of the river, but there was no camp. Do you understand, Peggy?”

Softly, I pressed my fingers down. The piano didn’t make a sound. I thought again about the beautiful silent piano in die Hütte cleaved in two with the axe that Reuben had used to kill my father.

“They found your den, but they didn’t find Reuben’s hat. There was no hat, Peggy!”

I lifted my fingers off the keys and heard the muffled click of the hammers moving.

“They only found blue mittens, that is all there was.” Ute leaned forward and the concave scoop of the piano held her. “They found two names cut in the wood. But they told me that when they cleaned your room in the hospital, they see that you cut the same names into the wall. Peggy?” She looked at me, wanting answers, but I had none to give her. “They said you have invented Reuben, but if that is so, then it wasn’t Reuben who killed James. And if Reuben isn’t real, it means the baby . . .” She looked at my stomach again and didn’t finish her sentence.

I pressed the keys once more, harder this time, and let my fingers follow the flow and pattern they knew by heart. I was aware of Ute turning toward me, of a sharp intake of breath which she held while I played, but I closed my eyes and went with the music. And when Ute propped open the piano lid, the room was filled with a magical sound and I knew the music came from somewhere real and true.

My mother stood at the kitchen sink, peeling potatoes. I put on my duffle coat and lifted the torch from a hook behind the cellar door.

“I won’t be long,” I said to her, and stepped outside the back door before she could stop me. Even though it
was night, the frost was gone and the air warmer. I let my eyes get used to the dark, following the same route down to the bottom of the garden that Oskar and I had taken earlier that day, to the chain-link fence. I lifted it up and slipped underneath. The smell of ivy and undergrowth in the cemetery was stronger than before. I still didn’t put the torch on, but let my memory guide me through the trees until I came out beside Rosa Carlos. I switched the light on and shone it up into the angel’s face, illuminating the underside of her chin, the concern in her brows, and the narrow slit of her eyes as she looked sorrowfully down at me. I bent and scrabbled in the same dirt I had dug in only hours earlier, and with the help of the torch I found James’s face, undamaged despite his time in the ground. I put him in my pocket and switched off the light, letting the night settle around me, and went home.

“Let’s have some hot water, Mrs. Viney,” I said to my mother as I went past her in the kitchen.

She gave a half-hearted laugh and carried on preparing dinner. I went into the sitting room, and from the bureau drawer I got the photograph with the hole where James’s face should have been. On my way upstairs to Oskar’s room I turned the thermostat down and heard the heating click off.

“Have you got any tape?” I asked him.

He was lying on his bed, reading a book about knots.

“Desk,” he said, without taking his eyes off the page. “Did you know, the only animals that are able to tie knots are the gorilla and the weaver bird?”

I fished the dot of James’s face from the corner of my coat pocket and placed it on a piece of tape. I set the photograph over the top so that James’s face slotted back into the space he had left earlier that day. I put the picture on Oskar’s desk; he didn’t look up from his book when I went from his room.

In the bathroom, I ran a shallow bath and took off my clothes, letting them drop on the floor. I slid into the tepid water, watching the very top of my belly rise above it like a tiny island. I closed my eyes and remembered the warm summer sun turning the tips of Reuben’s hair orange.

Acknowledgements

Many thanks and much love to Tim, who not only tolerated me spending so much time writing, but encouraged it, and without whom our family would be hungry and without clean clothes. Thank you also to India for her critical eye, and to Henry for the fishing advice.

I’m incredibly grateful to Jane Finigan for her enthusiasm and guidance, as well as the rest of the team at Lutyens & Rubinstein; to Juliet Annan for making every page stronger and to everyone else at Fig Tree and Penguin who has had a hand in publishing this book; and to Janie Yoon for her invaluable suggestions. Thanks also to Masie Cochran for her attention to detail, and to all the team at Tin House.

For reading and giving feedback, thank you to Louise Taylor, Jo Barker Scott, the rest of the Taverners, Heidi
Fuller, and Steve Fuller. Special thanks to Ursula Pitcher for her boundless excitement. I’m also hugely indebted to Judy Heneghan for her unfailing support and advice. Finally, thanks to Sam Beam for providing my writing soundtrack.

PHOTO © TIM CHAPMAN

CLAIRE FULLER lives in Winchester, England.

Our Endless Numbered Days

BOOK CLUB QUESTIONS

1.
  
What do you think of Peggy’s attachment to her doll, Phyllis? Is it a normal childhood attachment or a sign of something more?

2.
  
Some might call Peggy an unreliable narrator. At what point did you question the authenticity of her story, if indeed you do?

3.
  
Peggy seems to blame Oliver for what happened. Who do you think is the most culpable of the adults in the novel and why?

4.
  
Many lies are told in the novel—characters lying to each other and to themselves. What do you think is the biggest lie in the novel?

5.
  
How did you feel when Peggy first meets Rueben in the woods?

6.
  
Do you agree with Peggy’s doctor that she has Korsakoff’s syndrome and that malnourishment has had an effect on her memory? Or do you think it is something else?

7.
  
What do you think of the ending? What do you prefer to believe?

8.
  
How well do you think you would survive in the wild with only an axe and a knife?