In a Good Light (36 page)

I gave a snort. ‘I doubt it. They've probably been lying there since whatever they used to be fell down.'

‘Good. I'm going to use them to edge the flowerbeds. You can go and get another barrowful when you've finished that, if you like.' And he started unloading them in a neat criss-cross stack.

A moment later we heard the sound of a car engine, and the yellow Mini came bouncing up the drive towards us, raising clouds of dust. Penny jumped out, looking pristine in a mint-green halter dress and white sandals. She had the sort of even strapless tan that results from regular devotions on a sunbed. Someone else had completed the braiding job I'd begun on her hair: the beads clattered like distant applause as she walked. ‘Wow!' she said, surveying the results of our labour. ‘What a transformation.' We fell back, grubby serfs, to let her pass. ‘I'm just going to pick up some things of Christian's,' she explained, heading for the house. ‘Don't let me interrupt.'

‘A goddess has come amongst us,' I observed, not entirely ironically.

‘Trollop!' Donovan hissed, rolling his eyes wrathfully, and I had only just mastered my giggles by the time Penny reappeared, carrying Christian's swimming gear and a change of clothing.

‘God, I don't know how you can work in this heat,' she said, watching my exertions with the lawnmower. ‘I'm good for nothing when it's over eighty.' She got back in the Mini, yelping as her bare legs contacted the simmering vinyl. She solved the problem by sitting on Christian's shirt, and drove off, spraying gravel.

I fetched the rest of the bricks from the back of the shed as instructed, and while Donovan laid them out end to end along the borders, I combed the lawn clippings into a pile with a spindly leaf rake and transported them in the barrow to the now-towering mound behind the greenhouse.

The garden shimmered and sweltered in the heat of the afternoon. The bushes seemed to hiss with invisible insect life, and everywhere I looked filaments of silver spider silk
caught the sunlight as they drifted in the breezeless air. I eased off my plimsolls and allowed my crumpled feet to expand, enjoying the scratchiness of the parched grass against my skin. High above me an aeroplane gouged its chalk trail in the blue. I put my head back and watched its progress dizzily. It occurred to me that, apart from those raspberries, I hadn't eaten all day, which probably accounted for my feeling of lightheadedness.

I flung the last armful of grass onto the heap and leant the empty barrow against the side of the greenhouse, catching sight of my reflection as I did so. My arms and legs were covered in scratches and weals from my tussles with the brambles and giant stingers, there was that raspberry wound on my shirt, in the midst of other grime, my face was streaked with dirt and there were bits of twig in my hair. To make matters worse I could feel an unmistakable prickling sensation at my neckline, and when I pulled open my shirt to inspect the damage I could see a burnt pink triangle pointing down my cleavage. ‘Look at the state of you,' I said in disgust.

Something moved in the reflection and I spun round to find Donovan standing behind me. For a second those cold, green eyes of his stared into mine with an intensity that unnerved me, and then before I could collect myself, he launched himself at me – that's the only way to describe it – and kissed me. I felt it right through me, a swooping, sinking feeling of pleasure and fear. Somehow our arms had got round each other, and we swayed and staggered, still kissing, and I slammed hard back against the rotten frame of the greenhouse. There was a crack, and a sheet of glass like the blade of a guillotine came scything down off the roof inches from my cheek and exploded in pieces at our feet.

IF THE ONLY
two witnesses to an event refuse to acknowledge that it took place, and refuse even to acknowledge their refusal, then for as long as that equilibrium is maintained
it never happened
.

At the sound of shattering glass, Donovan and I broke apart and looked at each other with matching expressions of shock, and something else – dismay, I think. There was just a moment when salvage might have been possible, when one of us might have thought of the right word or gesture to carry us forward from the shame of self-revelation to a safer harbour, but the moment passed. The remaining poppers of my shirt had burst open in the collision to display my sunburnt cleavage and a once-white bra. It was Donovan who looked away first, and I stepped around him, buttoning myself up, and walked up the garden and into the house. When I looked back from the safety of the kitchen's dark interior, I could see him sweeping up the broken glass.

I went upstairs and lay on my bed for a long time, looking at all the familiar things in my room that spoke so clearly of childhood, and felt utterly alienated from them. There were my shelves containing all the books I'd ever owned, from Enid Blyton and
Jennings
right up to
Tess of the D'Urbevilles
, my trinket dish, a charcoal drawing of Christian that I'd copied from a school photo, my glass-topped dressing table, dusted with joss-stick ash, a turquoise candle – too pretty ever to be lit. In spite of the heat I felt shivery, so I wrapped myself in my knitted counterpane, a poor relation of the Universal Quilt that had been on my bed since I was tiny. I knew every square of it, every pulled thread, every dropped stitch. It had a reassuring, doggy smell, like one of Mum's Shetland pullovers, which reminded me of the bristly cuddles she used to give me. This memory of mother love was oddly comforting.

Why did I feel so agitated? Why wasn't I laughing and dancing around the room, enjoying this moment of epiphany? It was because I had let myself go and kissed him back with such fury. I had abandoned all reserve, all detachment, all dignity, and I knew without a whisper of doubt that if it hadn't been for that providential pane of glass we would have kept right on and I would have let him go

All

The

Way.

After lying in the foetal position for some time I ran myself a bath and washed all traces of the garden from my skin and hair. I put on a long white skirt and T-shirt, and went downstairs to face Donovan down with a display of complete normality.

He was nowhere to be seen, but Penny, Christian and Wart were in the kitchen making margaritas. Penny and Wart had met Christian from work and been for a swim at the Old Turtonians'. From the way they were all laughing and fooling about it seemed likely that they'd been at the tequila already. Wart kept putting his head back, blowing an ice cube high into the air and catching it in a glass. He checked me over with his usual carnivorous gaze. ‘You're looking very virginal,' he said. I replied with a frigid stare.

‘Front garden's a bit different,' said Christian approvingly.

‘I'll say. Christ!' Wart said with feeling. He still hadn't forgiven it for the assault on his MG.

‘Was that your doing?' Christian asked. He was pounding a bag of ice cubes with a meat mallet.

I nodded. ‘Donovan started it. I just sort of joined in.'

At that moment in he walked.

‘I can't believe what you just did out there,' said Christian. Donovan looked wary. ‘What a transformation.'

Donovan relaxed. ‘I quite enjoyed it,' he replied.

‘Oh so
you're
the famous Donovan,' said Wart significantly, to the mystification of everyone else. Please, Wart, choke on an ice cube, drop down dead, spontaneously combust, I prayed.

Penny, who had been rooting in the larder, backed out carrying a jar of fine white crystals, and a lemon-squeezer with the snout chipped off. ‘Do you suppose this is salt or rat poison?' she asked. ‘Here, Wart, try it and see.'

He dipped his finger in and licked it obligingly. ‘Salt,' he said, then, ‘No, wait a minute,' and he threw himself on the floor and lay there twitching, while Christian and Penny went into convulsions of laughter.

Donovan and I, on the sober fringes of all this hilarity, were forced to exchange a careful, neutral smile.

Penny held up the broken lemon-squeezer for our inspection. ‘I don't know what it is about this house,' she said, ‘but I don't think I've ever drunk out of a teacup or glass here that wasn't chipped or cracked or held together with glue.'

I thought of my recent brush with broken glass and stared at the floor.

Wart, who had stood up and dusted himself off, having picked up quite a coating of fluff and grit, began halving lemons. ‘Right. Who's for margaritas?' he said, pointing the knife at each of us in turn. ‘You drinking, Donovan?'

‘All right,' said Donovan, who still hadn't committed himself to the conversation and was only just inside the doorway.

‘You can't, Esther,' said Wart. ‘You're underage.'

‘I don't want anything,' I said.

‘Sour lemons,' said Wart.

There came the creak and jingle of a bicycle from outside and a moment later Mum appeared at the back door, carrying a newspaper. She raised her eyebrows to find the kitchen so crowded with people and bottles.

‘Goodness, a party,' she said, removing a moulting straw hat and impaling it on a hook. She was pink in the face and perspiring freely. ‘What are you making?'

‘Margaritas,' said Christian, measuring tequila into the cocktail shaker.

‘That sounds alcoholic,' said Mum. She climbed on a chair and deposited a fistful of loose change in the charity jar on the dresser.

‘We could do you a non-alcoholic version,' Penny offered. She checked the recipe on the bottle. ‘It would be just lemon juice, by the look of it.'

‘Lovely,' said Mum. She snapped open the newspaper and
spread it on the table for our inspection. ‘Apparently your father's got a letter in. Oh, hell's teeth! He's given our home address. I told him to do it from work.'

We crowded round and read the following:

Dear Sir

The Home Secretary is to be applauded for his bravery in taking the unpopular but nonetheless proper and necessary decision to release Janine Fellowes.

If the prison system cannot rehabilitate an eleven-year-old girl, it may as well admit publicly that all rehabilitation is beyond its power.

Those who feel ten years' imprisonment to be an insufficient punishment should remember that the ten-year stretch from eleven to twenty-one is indeed a life sentence.

Furthermore, Janine Fellowes has acknowledged her guilt, reflected at length on the effects of her crime, and expressed profound remorse. There are many convicted killers released from our prisons without a public outcry in whom this process is far from complete.

Obviously, to point out that society is in no way served by the indefinite incarceration of Janine Fellowes is not to condone her crime.

Yours faithfully

Rev Gordon Fairchild

The Old Schoolhouse

Knots Lane

Knot

Kent.

Mum chewed her lip thoughtfully. I could see she was bothered about the address. This was uncharacteristic: she wasn't generally a worrier. ‘There'll be trouble,' she said.

‘He's not saying anything especially controversial,' said Christian.

‘No one could take offence at that, surely?' Penny agreed.

‘Unfortunately it's one of those subjects that inflame people,' said Mum. ‘Particularly the family of the victim.'

‘They may not read
The Times
,' Donovan pointed out.

‘I'm quite sure they don't,' Mum said. ‘I'd be amazed if they can read at all. But once you've linked your name to a cause, news gets around. And Gordon has been outspoken on the subject before, during the trial.'

‘I don't suppose there'll be the same intensity of feeling after so many years,' said Penny, soothingly.

‘No, I'm probably worrying unnecessarily,' Mum said, but she didn't sound especially convinced.

The conversation moved on to plans for Penny's forthcoming birthday. She had left it too late to organise a party, and, besides, the Old Hag and the Raving Tory had made it clear they wouldn't welcome an invasion of drunken undergraduates dropping beer and cigarette ash on the blond carpets. Christian would have to take her out for a meal instead. Somewhere special. Christian rolled his eyes at this: he knew enough of Penny's tastes and expectations to deduce what this would cost him.

Acting normally is harder than it sounds when you are suffering from the impaired concentration of the newly kissed, and I could feel the old, familiar awkwardness begin to affect my limbs. I was glad when Donovan sat down at the table, apparently absorbed in the foreign news pages of the paper, and I could escape unnoticed.

In my bedroom I found a note had been pushed under the door. I scanned it as quickly as possible to see whether it contained good or bad news, before reading it properly and committing it to memory (providently, as it turned out).

Dear Esther

I'm sorry if I offended you just now. I didn't mean to do that. Perhaps it was the sun. If you want to go back to how we were before, that's fine. You are special to me. I can't explain.

D.

Please let me know if you forgive me.

I spent a long time analysing this message, and picked it over and pulled it apart so mercilessly that pretty soon all the meaning had drained away and I couldn't work out if he was glad or sorry. It wasn't clear whether it was kissing me he regretted, or just the possibility of giving offence, but one word leapt out at me again and again. Special. You are special: the mere fact of his writing it made it true.

Everything depended on my reply.

The letter I composed, with this in mind, was very short, though long in the composition.

Dear Donovan

No need to apologise, there's nothing to forgive.