The Red House (38 page)

I hope she’s OK
.

Louisa spun the last of her orange juice around the base of her glass.
She’s like her father. She’ll be hugely successful and make vast amounts of money and never stop being angry
.

Alex showers and packs, stuffing everything haphazardly into his one sports bag. Dry, damp, clean, dirty.

Angela finds Richard trying to lug a suitcase downstairs and forces him to sit down while she wheels it outside and hoists it into the boot.

Dominic walks into the shed. Spark plugs, the horse’s skull. In the corner a tub of old paint, four liters, Dulux magnolia. He finds a big screwdriver, jams it under the lip and heaves. The lid squeaks and bends and finally pops open, spraying tiny orange flakes of rust in his face. The paint separated but still liquid, dishwater gray with snotty
lumps. Hard to believe it would turn white if you mixed it. He takes his phone out of his pocket, touches the surface of the liquid and lets go. He expects it to clunk faintly against the bottom of the tin but it simply vanishes. He imagines it falling slowly down a tube that carries on till it reaches the center of the earth.

Dominic?
Angela is calling.

Louisa puts her hand on the bumpy wall and listens. Paint over plaster over stone. Nothing. Complete silence.

Benjy comes out of the house carrying his rucksack and the taxi pulls into the drive simultaneously, as if this whole holiday has been his own personal arrangement and everyone else is merely tagging along.

One last photo
, says Richard. So Dominic balances the camera on the wall, a wedge of flint under the lens to get the elevation right. He presses the timer release then scoots across the grass and slots himself in beside Melissa. Just before the shutter clicks Daisy catches sight of something moving up there on the hill and turns to look, so that when Alex plugs it into Photoshop later that same evening she will be a blur, unreadable, but more alive than all her frozen family. They will look at this photograph many years later and realize that the camera saw something more clearly than any of them.

It’s the same Viking guy with the scar who brought them at the beginning of the week, but he’s driving a people carrier this time, which strikes Richard as odd because they always seem permanently attached to one vehicle, like centaurs. Everyone apart from Benjy and Melissa turns to one another, trying to gauge the expected warmth of the parting, but it’s Louisa who breaks the spell and hugs Daisy and says,
We’re going to visit you, both of us, soon
. It’s obvious to everyone that she hasn’t mentioned this to Richard and equally obvious that she doesn’t need to.

The hug takes Angela by surprise. A little jag of shame, though she is glad that Daisy and Louisa can act as deputies for each family, displaying the familiarity that she and Richard do not feel and probably never will. She shakes Richard’s hand, clasping it between both
of hers to prevent the gesture seeming too formal.
Thanks. It was really generous of you
. It sounds like an apology, which it is, of course.

Alex tries to catch Melissa’s eye but she is staring adamantly elsewhere. He wants someone else to know what happened last night, someone who knows Melissa, someone who understands how extraordinary it was. He wonders whether he can tell Daisy.

Goodbye, Benjamin
. Richard squeezes his shoulder, but he has never had children of his own and doesn’t understand that vacant look in Benjy’s eyes, the way he disengages while adults do their tricky dances of arrival and departure.

Benjy?
Dad is looking at him with raised eyebrows.

He returns briefly to the moment.
Thank you, Uncle Richard. The vinegar rocket was really good
. Then he is gone again.

You’re welcome
.

So …
Dominic blows into his hands as if he’s cold.

Two, three seconds of discomfort then some silent signal releases them. They climb into the taxi, into the Mercedes. Doors slide and thunk shut. The taxi does a four-point turn and bumps through the gate onto the rutted stony mud of the track, the Mercedes in its wake. A single pane of glass rattles. The brief scent of exhaust, the noise of engines fading as they circle the house and head toward the main road.

So little of them left, the faintest smell of cocoa butter, dirty sheets and pillowcases, muddy towels, a purple Gogo under the fridge, a hinge from a briefcase under the sofa, the makeshift circlip behind the washing machine.
I liked walking up the hill
. The burnt and cracked head of a china doll in the ashes of the stove.

Cloud moving in from the east and thickening. Specks of rain. A red Datsun making its way up from Longtown. Joan and her daughter, Kelly, who come every Friday to clean the house during the holiday season and make it ready for the next guests who will arrive later in the afternoon, though Kelly will spend most of the time sitting in the little window seat in the kitchen, rocking gently back and forth, tapping her chin with her fist and singing a song that has no words.

Framed watercolors of mallow and campion.
Secrets of the Night. A Sparrow Falls
. The banknote. The brass spoons.
Brother, my Lungs are not Goode
. The pattern of ancient paths. Hay Bluff, Lord Hereford’s Knob. Heather and purple moor grass and little craters of rippling peaty water. High up, a red kite weaving its way through the holes in the wind.

ALSO BY MARK HADDON

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

The Talking Horse and the Sad Girl
and the Village Under the Sea: Poems

A Spot of Bother