All the Places that Were Hurt E-Book

Mish Cromer

• Herausgeber: Cinnamon Press
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 679

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

After a decade trying to accept that London is home, a devastating bereavement pushes 29 year old May to return to the rural Vermont town she fled so long ago. Ignoring her sister's strong misgivings, she immerses herself in creating a healing garden, bringing people together with the food she loves to cook, and renovating a dilapidated farmhouse until she starts to find a sense of peace and purpose. But as spring turns to sultry summer and she is thrown increasingly together with Harley, the man she loved and left ten years before, May is torn. Will she take a risk and follow her heart, or go back to London where her ever loyal sister is longing for her return? Mish Cromer's latest novel of love and friendship and the healing power of the natural environment explores the impact of family, trauma and loss, and the powerful need we all have to find the place where we belong. Praise for Mish Cromer's debut novel: Alabama Chrome You'll come for the wonderful characters — gruff Cassidy with a dark past, wise Lark, Belle and her beauty parlour, Evangeline the mechanic, Brooke Adler the hard-nosed reality TV presenter... then you'll be swept away by the fantastic sense of place. Set in small-town Kentucky and focusing on the bar which acts as the town's front porch where stories are told and secrets are ultimately revealed, Alabama Chrome is a beautifully written page-turner, told in a voice that will stay with you — along with the book's big heart. — Alison Chandler You begin to understand, reading this story, how important it is to allow yourself to be understood, — Joanne Merrison A compassionate and skilful tale of a soulful young man's struggle, vividly intertwined with the characters of a remote US town who welcomed him, and their reaction to the arrival of a controversial reality TV presenter. A gripping read. — Isabella

Leseprobe

Contents

Acknowledgements

Epigraph

Dedication

PART ONE

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

PART TWO

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

PART THREE

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

38

39

40

41

42

43

44

45

All the Places that were Hurt

Mish Cromer

Published by Leaf by Leaf an imprint of Cinnamon Press,

Office 49019, PO Box 15113, Birmingham, B2 2NJ

www.cinnonpress.com

The right of Mish Cromer to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act, 1988. © 2021, Mish Cromer

Print Edition ISBN 978-1-78864-930-8

Ebook Edition ISBN 978-1-78864-951-3

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data. A CIP record for this book can be obtained from the British Library.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior written permission of the publishers. This book may not be lent, hired out, resold or otherwise disposed of by way of trade in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published, without the prior consent of the publishers.

Designed and typeset by Cinnamon Press.

Cover design by Adam Craig © Adam Craig.

Cinnamon Press is represented by Inpress.

Acknowledgements

My heartfelt thanks go to Adam Craig, Jan Fortune, and Rowan Fortune at Cinnamon Press who once again, in the teeth of a pandemic, turned my manuscript into a book. 

To Alison Chandler and Shanti Fricker who see everything I write before anyone else and give me purpose and structure and the kind of feedback that matters. Alison, every time I find myself flagging or in the grip of self-doubt, you find ways to make things feel new again and help me to locate my courage. Thank you.

Tracy Harvey, Lindsay Latimore Masters, Jenny Olivier, Susan Olivier, Kathy Colby Scott, Harriet Wheeler, Marianna Wiener, all of you read early drafts of this and encouraged me with corrections and suggestions and general cheerleading. You cannot know how much this kept me going, thank you.

To Paul Crosfield for helping me with the Spanish, to Juana Espasa for checking the copy (any errors are mine.)  

To The Muppets of Alpha Theta: thank you for giving me a home when I needed it, for encouraging me to think differently about myself and for inspiring this story; I wouldn’t be the person I am without you all, and that’s a good thing.

Molly, Casey and Ruby—always my inspiration, this one is for you who were there from the first storm and taught me the truth and beauty of unconditional love. 

And for the late Diane Wales a dynamic and encouraging neighbour and friend who, on learning that I was secretly writing a novel, said that she believed I could do it, and that I should meet Alison. She was right about both.

All the Places that were Hurt

There is something beautiful about all scars of whatever nature. A scar means the hurt is over the wound is closed and healed, done with.

Harry Crews

For Tom—my love, healer of all the places.

PART ONE

1

In the thin and colourless light of the early morning, drifting between sleep and consciousness, she heard him say her name… once… twice, the sound riding on a sigh, a huff of breath, held out, offered, taken back. And as she emerged into the tired flatness of another day, she tried to stay soft, slip back into sleep, remain oblivious of where she was. If she could just hear it again…

May’s head pounded, her mouth hard-scrabble dry. She lay listening to the rushing sound, as a fast rain fell hard and steady in the area outside her window. She peered through the open curtains at the wet, grey, concrete stairs winding from her basement flat, the damp terracotta pots climbing up the first couple, then giving up. She could just make out the black glossed iron railings at street level, edges softened by the shrouding orange cast from the street lamp.

Her eyes hurt. They hurt when she opened them and hurt when she closed them, as though her lids were a fine grade sandpaper. She lay very still for a moment, breathing, almost sucking in a deep lungful of air before letting it out long and slow and pressing the heels of her hands over her closed lids. She let go and stared up at the ceiling, motionless except for her eyes, which traced the watermark around the light fixture. She’d painted over it but still it worked its silent, persistent way through.

‘Do you want some tea?’

‘Hmm?’ May glanced up as her older sister, Lallie, leaned through the serving hatch from the kitchen. She’d been scrabbling about, boxing up the things neither of them was keeping.

‘Tea,’ she said again. ‘Do you want some?’

‘Okay…’ May murmured, looking back down. ‘Thanks.’

It had been a slow and mizzling day, damp and grey, the earlier promise of a storm petering out and disappointing. She sat on the living room floor of the Shepherd’s Bush house she’d grown up in, the soles of her feet together, knees splayed, going through a box of letters and photographs. There was an aching chill in the still air and she reached for her wool knit hat, pulling it on and settling it low on her brow.

‘How can it be colder inside than out?’ she wondered, beginning again to sort through the tissue-fine airmail paper, looking at the stamps and trying to discern dates.

‘Bugger. There’s no milk,’ Lallie said.

May reached for her scarf. ‘Doesn’t matter.’ She wound its length around her neck and yanked her long, dark hair out of the coils.

‘Listen to this Lal, it’s brilliant.’ She gave a short laugh. ‘Did you know that Sarah and Dad ever went to Tunisia? Where were we do you think?’

‘When?’

‘While they were in Tunisia?’

‘What are you talking about?’

May sighed and tried again. ‘There’s a postcard from them to us from Tunisia, I can’t see the date, but…’ She gave another quick laugh. ‘Listen, listen… Girl and Small Girl, We are being spat at by camels and I have sold Sarah to a very handsome Bedouin who liked her skills with the needle. Have decided to send for you and join them in the desert. I think this would solve the unbearable problem of school and Small Girl threatening to run away if I don’t Sort It Out At Once.’

Lallie, laughing, reached through the serving hatch for the postcard. ‘Let me have that… I’d forgotten you thought school was child abuse! “Look after Granny,”she read aloud, “and don’t let her out too often, it goes to her head. All love, Dad and Sarah x”.Oh my god that’s hilarious!’ Lallie handed the card back to May. ‘Honeymoon maybe? Shame the date is faded.’

‘I don’t remember them being gone.’

‘Well,’ Lallie said. ‘We spent so much time just you and me, maybe you didn’t notice!’ She wrinkled her nose at May and turned back to the kettle.

May thought about this. Before their father had met Sarah, it had been a quiet, sometimes melancholy home. Their mother had left almost before May could talk, and she’d always told anyone who asked that she’d never missed her as she’d never had her. But maybe it was me that was melancholy, she thought.

As she looked around the room, her eyes grazing and glancing off familiar objects and paintings, she realised she rarely saw them; the Dufy print of some high-spirited little boats, in a sun-drenched harbour, the vibrantly quilt-draped armchair Sarah’s cat Orpheus had always hogged, the small collection of antique chandelier crystals that hung on a fishing line at the now dust-filmed living room window. These had been gathered and pieced together by Sarah. They’d become part of the house, bringing colour and light, structure even. To remove them now… It might fall apart. Blimey, it’s true what they say, she thought with a wry grimace. Grief really can make you a bit bonkers.

She picked up a photo of Sarah and William sitting in the back of an open estate car, looking sun-browned and windswept and conspiratorially happy. A wave of loneliness, of almost unbearable longing, pulled through her.

‘Come on May,’ Lallie was saying. ‘We need to get on. I want some time with Sam, he’s going away for work tomorrow. Oh love…

What is it?’

May found she was crying, an unchecked flow of silent tears. It was the way they spilled from her, undammed, that scared her. Lallie was quickly beside her, stroking a gentle hand across her back.

‘It’s shit, isn’t it?’ she said quietly.

‘Yeah.’ May stood, knowing it wasn’t just about Sarah, but unable yet to make sense of it she couldn’t say any more to her sister and that hurt too. She padded to the armchair and reached a chilly hand to stroke the soft velvet nap on one of the quilted patches. Crazy. Sarah had always preferred that irregular, random form of quilting to any other. Not for her the neat precision and repetition of log cabin or birds in flight.

But it’s not slapdash, she'd assert, stitching one of her exuberant pieces. It all fits like a puzzle. May had loved them because the colours and shapes always seemed to her to sing, or hum and dance a little as she looked at them.

‘There’s always something else to see if you keep looking,’ she said, stroking her fingertip along some feather-stitching. ‘I feel as though I’ve looked at every square inch, but I don’t remember this. Do you think she just secretly kept adding bits whenever the fancy took her?’

Lallie came across the room laughing softly and they sat together, touching random patches, playing again the game they'd shared so often.

‘Yours or mine?’ she asked, tapping a light finger on a patch of deep rose satin.

‘Mine,’ May answered without hesitation.

Sarah had rarely sent any worn or outgrown clothes to the charity shop, preferring to use them in her textiles. There'salways a story or a memory in a piece of cloth, she would tell them, why get rid of it? Lallie laughed as May jealously stroked the smooth cloth.

As a six-year-old, she had loved that dress; the way it felt, heavy and substantial, shushing her softly as she moved. She’d like to be somewhere that sounded like that, she’d think, and imagined the rolling grassland and soaring skies of the prairie books her granny had sent.

‘Do you remember how furious you were when she cut that dress up? You insisted that you could still wear it—but you couldn't even button the back up!’

‘I wore a cardi with it to hide the gaping at the back.’

‘No you didn't. You didn't care who saw.’

‘Really…’ May hesitated, unsure now of her own recollection. She watched her sister’s face, so calm and assured.

‘Yours or mine?’ she said in a rush, moving on to an emerald patch of baby-cord.

Lallie cocked her head for a moment, frowned squintingly, then burst out, ‘Ha! Trick question!’ She grinned at May before saying ‘both’ in triumph.

They'd fought tooth and claw over that cloak. ‘Typical,’ their father William had muttered, clenching his jaw and leaving them to it.

May moved to the sofa, with her cup clutched hot in her hands and sat, leaning her head back, closing her eyes.

‘Sis,’ Lallie said. ‘Is there anything else up? Apart from having to deal with all this I mean?’

May shook her head vaguely. ‘It’s been a long year,’ she said and felt strangely disloyal; they had always shared, but she had no idea where to begin, she barely understood herself what she was going through.

After they’d decided they’d done enough for a night, May let herself into her flat, and stood motionless in the hall. Tired, she thought. Just so tired. She sat in the deep sofa, drawing one of Sarah’s soft velvet quilts around herself without bothering to turn on the lamp.

Lallie had dropped her off on her way back to Sam and the kids, shouting through the open window of her car for May to come and have supper with them in the week, before bibbing her horn lightly and driving off into the oily-dark night.

The growing silence swelled through the room, pressing against her as she sat in the dark, listening to the rain drumming like so many fingers on the roof of the conservatory. She closed her eyes with a sigh; she could never hear a hard rain now, without remembering; remembering how there’d been no rain for weeks, how the parched ground had been so cracked, that the front yard had looked as if it was crazy paving, and how everything had opened up and come alive for her after that one summer storm in Vermont, ten years before.

May flopped onto the covered porch, gasping for air and through the shimmering heat haze far down the road, saw her roommates emerge; Stella and Danielle were heading towards her. They were walking so slowly it seemed they were getting no closer, as though the heat was too thick to push through. Danielle had a sarong tied and twisted around her head and looked like a serene African princess, slowly undulating along the road. Stella, wearing only a swimsuit and someone else’s boxer shorts, kept pace, her usually sleek hair pushed back from her face, damp and sticky.

As they got closer, May could hear Stella muttering, ‘God damn! It’s so hot the road’s melting.’

They made it to the porch and collapsed onto the floor, letting out great whooshes of air as they lay sprawled, panting rhythmically like dogs.

‘Man, I hope it rains soon, it feels like something’s going to explode if it doesn’t.’

The light was so white it hurt to look out without sunglasses and May stayed in the shade of the porch as her friends discussed the class they’d just had.

‘Are you done for the day?’ she asked.

‘Yup. No more classes now til Monday. Party time!’

Stella raised a single eyebrow at Danielle. ‘How can you even think of partying? It’s too hot to do anything. I’m still hungover from last night, anyway.’

‘Lightweight,’ Danielle said, poking Stella with a bare foot. ‘Hey! Would you look at that! Where the hell did those come from?’ Danielle jerked her head towards a bank of trees along whose edges thick, low clouds were beginning to ooze and jostle for room.

The rest of the sky soared incandescent blue, dropping a hot shimmer onto the yard.

May pushed her hair up off her forehead and let the sweat catch the air. She sighed. The minutes crawled by, heavy air sucked at her bones. Slowly, slowly the clouds built up, overflowing the confines of the horizon and occupying more and more space, bullying, cajoling. May moved herself to a half sitting position and peered out at the swollen sky.

A long, low rumble tumbled towards them from beyond the river. Her skin prickled and she sat a little straighter. Another came, grumbling and complaining, rising reluctantly.

And then a drop of rain fell. No one spoke. May held her breath, waiting for another drop. It came. Then another, fat and heavy drops that plopped into the dust. There came more fast and fat drops, steaming as they landed on the heaving ground, quicker and quicker.

May was on her feet, poised, breathless, watching it come down in sheeting torrents. The ground sighed its gratitude and in seconds she was down the sagging wooden steps and out in the bubbling, pounding rain.

Oblivious to the splitting, shattering thunder, she shook her head back and let the warm water pour hard as a massage shower onto her face. She was soaked in seconds, her skin tingled and her heart was pounding as all that energy that had been sucked up and stored in those clouds poured onto her, into her. She felt a great whooping shout of joy burst from her lungs and the others who had been stupefied, petrified, came to life and clattered down the steps into the rain as it went on, on, on.

‘Who wants a swim?’ May called out and ran barefoot and laughing down the middle of the deserted road, towards the Connecticut River.

As she came to the steep sweep of road that wound past woodland and down to the river, she slowed her pace and they jogged steadily, three abreast until the road met the river and a series of floating jetties. It was deserted and the rain continued to drum onto them, thunder and lightning crashing and cracking.

Without pausing, May flung herself in, plunging under the water into a deep, full silence. She surfaced moments later to see the other two girls, one arching into a dive the other bombing with a great shout of joy into the water.

Oh! What it is to be alive, she thought as the river swelled warm and held her body, and the rain continued its tingling strum across her scalp, its swift, prickling sweep across the surface of the river sending a constant rippling quiver over to the far shore.

Stella struck out for the opposite bank and slowly the rain subsided, becoming thinner until gradually it stopped. From their shelter beneath the bridge, unseen until now, two canoes slipped, silent.

‘I didn’t know there were mermaids in the Connecticut River!’ one of the occupants called out with a long wave as they sculled slowly over to where the girls were treading water. May hung an arm over the edge to steady herself and opened her mouth as she was offered grapes and a morsel of soft, ripe brie. Stella joined them and someone else offered them a drink over the side.

‘With ice and lemon, no less,’ quipped Stella. ‘Classy!’

May swam off to duck Danielle. The canoes and their occupants slowly drifted away and the three girls swam to the shore. The air was still very warm, but had lost its aggressive edge and they slowly walked up the hill towards Main Street. Soaking leaves dripped from darkened branches and the sound of water rushing through the drains and gutters at the edge of the road was almost enough to drown out the first chirruping announcements of the birds, as they emerged from their shelter.

‘Oh my God—I can’t believe we did that,’ burbled Stella, ‘Tanqueray and Tonic in the Connecticut river in a thunder storm. It didn’t even occur to me how dangerous that might be. Lightening, alcohol, water. May, you’re crazy.’

She shrugged. ‘You loved it.’

She lay, sleepless and exhausted, her mind grabbing at vanishing details that felt crucial to recall until she did. Eventually she got up and wrapping herself in her quilt, padded on chilly feet into the kitchen to make herself some chamomile tea. Standing on one foot, rubbing the other for warmth on the back of her calf, she stared at the pin board above the counter, layered with postcards, receipts, photos, tickets, eyes drifting, unseeing, the sound of the kettle, rolling loud, louder than it ever seemed to in the daylight.

Something caught at her eye, whisper light but persistent. She reached out and pulled at the corner of a photo behind a postcard of The New Yorker. She laughed, then her eyes filled with tears. You’re a bloody wreck, May.

Someone had taken it during her first year in Vermont, on one of the many days she’d spent by the river with Stella, Danielle, Courtney… It looked as though it was towards the end of a fine summer day. The angled sun slanted golden bright through slender, fir-fringed branches that reached towards the water’s edge, making this shallow, rocky part of the river look as though it had been embellished with silver leaf.

In the lower left-hand corner of the photo, May crouched, bare-armed, bare-legged, hair caught up in a loose knot on top of her bowed head, as she looked down into the water. A box or basket of some kind sat just behind her along with a jumble of… what, clothes? It was hard to make out any detail because of the angle of the sun. It was the overall impression that felt important to May; it was why she’d kept this photo where she could see it, before it had slowly disappeared behind a steady build-up of the receipts and reminders of a life lived full of distracting activity.

As she continued to stare into the photo, she felt a hard knot in her chest, twisting and holding fast. The tenderness of the warm air, the sun filtering through the trees and warming that body—her body, her skin—was unreachable now. She looked at that girl and felt again that she’d left herself behind. How careless. Almost without thinking, she picked up the phone and dialled Stella’s number in Vermont, mentally counting backward five hours to reassure herself she wouldn’t be waking anyone.

‘Mayflower! Yay!’ Her friend’s voice came tumbling over the line, so warm and full of laughter she had to squeeze her eyes and draw a deep breath to stop herself from crying. ‘What time is it there?’ Stella sounded breathy, rushed.

‘Oh, late. One… something. Don’t know. I just wanted to see how you were.’

Stella laughed with her but May could hear the concern in her voice. ‘Are you okay?’

‘Yeah, yes. I’m fine. I miss you. And we’ve been going through all Sarah’s stuff…’

‘We miss you too!’ Stella broke off and May heard her muffled voice say something before she became clear again and said, ‘Honey, I’m real sorry but I can’t talk right now. I have a faculty meeting and Pete says he can give me a ride if we split now. How about I call you tomorrow, what time’s good for you?’

‘Oh don’t worry,’ May wished she had not made the call. ‘You’re busy, I’m busy. It was just on the off chance.’

‘Hey! Don’t be doing that! This is me you’re talking to, not some any-ol-body. I’ll call you tomorrow.’ Stella was emphatic. ‘I was going to call you anyways to see how you and Lallie were doing, but when I have time, it’s the wrong time for you—I can never get my head round the time difference. Go nowhere tomorrow. Call in to work “stupid” and sit by the phone until I call!’

May laughed and the tinny echo of the long-distance line threw her laugh back at her, making it sound forced and self-conscious. The voice in the background was more persistent and Stella said in a low urgent tone, ‘Quit, Pete, it’s May.’

Pete’s voice called loudly for May to ‘come visit’.

‘Honey, I’m so sorry, I really have to go, Pete can’t wait and it’s snow up to here and I don’t want to walk…’

‘It’s fine, Stella. Don’t worry, I’m fine.’

May put down the phone and felt lonelier than ever.

2

‘Alex told me I have to reapply for a job at the magazine.’ May was making soup in her sister’s kitchen a few nights later. ‘They’re “restructuring”. They’ve already fired half the PR department and want it to get sucked up by production.’

She could hear Tillie, and her little brother, Max, shrieking and splashing upstairs. Their father, Sam, was admonishing them to ‘pipe down.’ She knocked a lump of pale butter into a pan and watched it slide about and melt.

‘Oh no!’ Lallie stopped fighting with the booster seat she was trying to attach to the edge of the table and scrunched her face in sympathy. ‘That’s awful. You love that job.’

‘No, not really. Not for a long time and Alex knows it. She says I’ve lost my spark and she’s right.’

Lallie looked furious. ‘Of course you’ve lost your spark!’ she exploded and May flinched. ‘You were nursing your dying stepmother and trying to produce a glossy-bloody-fashion mag for her. Alex did know, right? You did tell her, didn’t you?’

‘Yes, Lallie,’ she said wearily. ‘Of course I told her and she was brilliant about it. But she’s not stupid. She knows my heart’s not in it any more. I was feeling like this long before Sarah got ill.’

Lallie was at a loss, and hurt. ‘Why didn’t you say anything? To me I mean?’ Then, changing gear abruptly to a brisk upbeat tone. ‘Anyway, you’ll be fine. I’m sure it’s a formality on their part. You’ll walk it.’

May turned to put a pan of potatoes on the hob, listening for the click, click, click, voomph of the gas as it caught light. She left it to boil and sliced leeks with long, clean strokes, scooping the fragments in two hands and dropping them into the foaming butter.

‘I’m not going to apply, Lal. I loathe PR. I’m going to take redundancy.’

‘Not going to… what? It’s your job! You need to keep some structure in your life; the last thing you need is too much time on your hands.’

May had an urge to bite something. ‘I spoke to Stella the other night.’ She hoped a change of subject might ease the tension.

Her sister paused. ‘Oh yea? How is she?’

‘Good, I think. Settling into her new job. She sends her love.’ She felt a ratcheting, tightening sensation in her belly. Why am I nervous? ‘Lallie…’

‘What?’ she’d given up on the booster and was piling books on a chair. ‘Max’ll have to sit on these until Sam can fix this bloody thing.’

‘I might take a bit of time and go out there.’ She hadn’t planned to say this, hadn’t even consciously decided to visit, but now the words were out, she felt it was the only thing she knew for certain.

‘Really?’ Lallie sounded wary. ‘When were you thinking of going?’

‘Soon I suppose. Couple of weeks? I haven’t made plans.’

‘Hang on a minute.’ May thought she heard something combative crouching in her sister’s words. ‘Stella’s new teaching job. It’s at her old university, isn’t it?’

‘Yes!’ May tried to sound bright, casual. ‘Well remembered. It’s funny that she should end up teaching back at Hartland.’

‘Hmm.’ The sound came out as a kind of grunt. ‘But not so funny if you end up back there.’

May tensed. ‘What do you mean? It’s a lovely town. I had a great time there.’

‘Yeah. Until you didn’t.’

May flushed, but before she could say anything Sam ambled in chatting, Max in his arms rosy and damp haired and cosy looking. Tillie scampered along beside him talking and clutching a picture book.

‘Oh!’ she yelped, then looked accusingly up at her father. ‘You didn’t tell me Aunt May’s here. He didn’t say, did he Maxie? Aunt May, he didn’t say!’

Max shrugged sleepily and snuggled closer against his father. May stroked Max’s hair and scooped Tillie up.

‘Hello, my darling, I should’ve shouted up, I’m sorry. Come on.’ She settled her more comfortably on her hip. ‘Help me with the supper.’

They peered into the pot at the glistening leeks, pale and limp against the black of the pan and together turned and stirred, turned and stirred, scraping the bottom with the wooden spoon.

‘There’s nothing worse than a burnt leek,’ May said, adding the cooked potatoes to the softened mass before filling up the pot with pale, golden stock. ‘Unless it’s garlic.’ She pulled a face. ‘Ugh! Burnt garlic is the worst.’

Tillie giggled and slid down as May loosened her hold. She lifted a spoonful of the soup to her lips, slurping in air so as not to burn her mouth.

‘It’s ready, sit everyone.’

Lallie gave her a smile as she settled the children and reached for the bread Sam was buttering, but May, strangely ashamed by her sister’s earlier reaction, found it hard to smile back and focused on the children.

‘What’s that book you’ve been carting around with you, Tillie?’

‘It’s Katie, and she can climb into the pictures in the gal-er-ee, and be there with all the people in the pictures, and the animals, and she has all adventures and… Can you read it? Can she Mama? Can she read my story?’

Lallie raised her eyebrows questioningly at May and she nodded vigorously.

‘Love to, darling. After supper, yes?’

After the children settled in bed and Sam had left them to talk, Lallie pressed the heels of her hands into her closed eyes and sighed. May waited, reluctant to open it up herself.

‘May, is this really the right time to be visiting Stella?’

‘Why wouldn’t it be?’

Lallie shuffled. ‘It feels impulsive. A bit…’ she trailed momentarily, while May thought to herself, that ten years spent thinking about whether to go back was hardly impulsive. She said nothing and her sister went on. ‘A bit Running Away.’

‘Can we not make a big deal out of it? It rather neatly coincides with me being out of a job, don’t you think?’

‘Well, you’re not officially out of a job. Not yet. But if you’re not careful you will be.’ May tried to respond, but Lallie raised her voice. ‘But it’s not so much that, that’s bothering me. I get you need a break; I knew it was getting too much. I should have helped you more when Sarah was ill, but I…’

‘You had the kids and Sam,’ May managed to break in. ‘You couldn’t have done more and I keep trying to tell you, it’s not just about Sarah.’ She flushed hot all over. ‘Lallie, I’m not in a good way, I’m ill all the time, I’m too thin, my skin’s crap. Don’t say you haven’t noticed.’ She could see from Lallie’s face that she couldn’t deny it. ‘I’ve got—nothing. Nothing, Lallie. Look at you—all this. Home, kids, Sam. A job you love.’ She hated how this sounded; childish, jealous. ‘I’m nearly thirty years old and I feel like an old woman.’

‘And that’s exactly why going to Hartland right now would be an absolute bloody disaster! When you lived there before, it wasn’t real life, it was a gap-year, you were just bumming around with a bunch of students.’ Lallie grasped May’s forearm. ‘It won’t be the same.’

May withdrew inside. Just let her get on with it, she thought. No point arguing. She stared at the floor as her sister pressed on.

‘And clearly you don’t remember the state you were in when you came home. Sarah and I were so worried.’

But she did remember. It wasn’t the kind of thing you forgot; that kind of desolation. It had haunted her.

‘Lallie, this has got nothing to do with that. I want to be with Stella, that’s where she is and—and if you must know, Hartland is the one place I have ever felt really at home.’

She had a vivid image of the river, the sun leaping about, of tumbling clouds and most particularly, feeling alive.

‘I think I’d go back, Stella or no Stella. I still miss it. I loved it there.’

And never, not once did I stop missing it, she thought. Why has it taken me this long? She was crying, and felt stupid and vulnerable for showing how unravelled she was. Lallie would never take her plans seriously, now.

‘Oh, May,’ Lallie said, sounding almost relieved, as though she now knew that this would blow over because May was just overwrought. ‘Don’t you know it won’t be the same? It will have changed and that happiness—it was because you were in love. Don’t you see?’

But May knew that it was her sister who didn’t see, who couldn’t know that she had loved the place, long before she had loved Harley.

At the top of the hill, she stopped walking and looked along the road towards the house, then back towards the centre of town and hesitated.

‘Who’s hungry?’ Stella asked and without waiting for an answer headed off. May broke into a jog and she and Danielle caught up with their friend as she stopped in front of Everybody’s and peered in to the steamed-up windows.

‘Uh huh!’ she said in a low but triumphant voice and May smiled as she saw Stella’s new boyfriend Pete, sitting with a crowd of their friends.

‘Didn’t know you meant that kind of hungry…’ she murmured, just loud enough for Stella to hear. Pushing open the plate glass door, she flung a bare, brown arm around her friend and, dripping rainwater all over the greasy, tan, carpet tiles of the campus pizza joint, headed towards Pete’s crowded table.

‘Hey-hey!’ he called out with a great friendly grin. ‘Why are you so wet?’

Stella rolled her eyes, but May glanced down at herself and laughed. They really were very wet.

‘It’s been absolutely pissing with rain,’ she said in her clipped English. ‘And we’ve been jumping in puddles.’

She wasn’t sure why, but something made her look over at the next booth and a dark-haired boy, whose long legs were jutting out into the aisle, caught her eye. He was staring intensely at her. May felt aware of herself; of her mouth moving clumsily over her teeth as she spoke, of her wet boxer shorts and t-shirt, her hair sticking to her back. She smiled at him and he looked abruptly away, as though she’d severed something.

‘Scoot over guys, c’mon,’ Stella ordered and perched on the edge of the highly-glazed bench of the packed booth.

‘Aww, quit it Stella, you’re peeing rainwater all over me,’ said Pete, but he squeezed closer to her rather than further away.

‘Yeah well, it’s a fuckin monsoon out there you wuss, where’ve you been hiding?’ Pete ducked as she aimed a swipe at his head and he grabbed her round the waist, butting at her middle with his head like a young steer.

‘You’ll never win!’ May raised her voice above the row. ‘You do know you’re messing with the new captain of the women’s soccer team?’

There was a clash of raised voices as Pete leapt up, sending a tray of red plastic cups filled with iced water crashing over the table. Delight wreathed his messy features as he failed to notice his companions’ frenzied moppings and groaning, complaints that he always did that.

‘No way! When did this happen?’ he asked and without waiting for an answer, enveloped Stella in a huge hug. ‘That is awesome.’ Then, ‘Man, you’re wet.’

‘That, my friend, is cause and effect. What’s the matter with you? I thought you were a science major. You’re just a big fraud!’ Pete went for her again.

‘Back off man—it’s all gonna change now. You can look at the merchandise but no touching. I’m out of your league now.’

Everyone laughed and from across the aisle, as the noise level decreased, the dark boy tilted his head back fractionally and looked out from under his hair.

‘Way to go, Stella,’ he said, his voice low and ever so slightly gravely around the edges. May thought she noticed a familiar Southern warmth about it, but couldn’t be certain.

‘Thanks!’ Stella’s smile was a dazzler, ‘I’m really psyched.’

May stood at the edge of the table feeling the air conditioning vent blasting her wet legs and looking curiously at the boy, trying and failing to place him, when a waiter came scuttling, brandishing a huge pile of paper towels and looking embarrassed.

‘I’m sorry, we have a no shoes policy,’ he said, as he started mopping up the spills.

May lifted one of her bare feet and smiled, ‘What a coincidence, so do I.’

The waiter looked crestfallen and began stumblingly to explain, but May cut him off. ‘Oh I’m only teasing, don’t worry, we’ll just order a takeaway quickly and wait outside.’

The young waiter glanced furtively around. ‘Uh, it’s okay, I guess. You can sit with your friends while you wait. Shall I take your order?’

May thanked him as she and Stella, who kept chuckling and shaking her head, somehow found space to sit.

‘That accent sure is strong currency,’ she teased. ‘You don’t have to develop a personality at all, you still get all the perks! Like overly pretty girls. No impetus to develop a personality.’

‘So how come you got one, hmm?’ Pete said and everyone groaned, laughing.

The talk turned from raucous banter to which campus party to go to that night.

‘We have to go to Dougie’s,’ someone shouted above the voices. ‘It’s his birthday and he’s bought a keg of decent beer.’

‘What? Not your usual gnat’s piss?’ May asked mockingly.

‘Yay! Then we can get May drunk and she’ll forget she’s too cool for school and dance with us!’ Stella added.

‘What are you talking about? I always dance,’ protested May, but stopped when she saw the look in Stella’s eye. ‘Oh, okay,’ she backtracked hurriedly. ‘You mean that Dance.’ She mimicked Stella’s deep Missouri accent artfully, earning herself another swipe at the head. ‘You’re right, I’d have to be pretty wasted to do that with you.’

There was general jeering and Stella said, ‘See, too cool for school. I rest my case.’

The dark boy remained quiet, his eyes tracking back and forth to whoever was speaking, smiling when they laughed, body relaxed and slightly slumped against the bench. He was just removed from the group, May thought, his face occasionally betraying a flicker of something difficult to read; an ironic dismissal, but not quite. He looked unbelievably chilled and yet the fingers of one hand seemed to be drumming out a continual phrase on a table top piano.

Their order arrived and as the two girls got up to leave, he addressed May directly for the first time. His hand closed briefly around her forearm as she moved past.

‘Well?’ he asked, voice low, ‘Are y’all going to be drinking Dougie’s beer tonight?’

May shivered. The air conditioning vent on her legs? The warmth of his grasp? She looked over at Stella, eyebrows raised in question.

‘Yeah. Maybe. Whatever.’

May chuckled. ‘I just love that decisive quality of yours, Stel.’ She turned back to the boy. ‘Look out for us,’ she said, ‘it sounds as though we might, maybe, whatever be there.’

There was a flash of what was perhaps a smile and May thought he said ‘cool’ but couldn’t be sure.

As she and Stella walked up Main Street, through the now fine, misting rain, trying to keep her voice light and casual, May asked, ‘Who was that boy?’

Stella lowered her head and kicked a puddle at May, her laughter bouncing off the walls of the library as they passed. ‘“That boy”, oh Best Beloved, is Harley Daniels. And no, you are not the first new girl in town to ask.’ She laughed as May shot her a filthy look.

‘How do you know him?’

‘Oh, we met my Freshman year at some party. He was a Senior then.’

‘Oh. So he’s not a student?’

‘Grad student. I’m not sure if he’s done yet, but he works at Hartland Strings… the music shop? Up the far end of Main Street.’

‘Where’s he from?’ May asked, wanting to flatter herself that she’d clocked his accent correctly.

‘His Mom is from one of the North Dakota tribes, South Dakota. I don’t know. Somewhere out in the Mid-West I think. Oh who cares, May?’ she finished with a laugh, kicking at a puddle in May’s direction again.

The night before her flight to Boston, May stayed at her sister’s.

‘Do you remember, Lal, how Sarah used to tell us stories of our life?’

‘Of course,’ said Lallie. A smile softened her face. ‘She always said that no matter what, no one could change what we already had.’

‘Ours’ for keeps.’ May thought about Sarah’s passionate belief that life was about experiences, shared and otherwise.

Anyone can take stuff from you, she used to say. You lose things and they rot and decay, but memories of the things you’ve done… people you’ve loved… good food you’ve eaten… they’ll sustain you always.

At bedtimes, even the night of their father William’s funeral, she sat by their bunks. Holding their hands, one arm reaching up to Lallie on top, the other holding May’s. She said as she had for as long as May could remember, ‘Best thing about today?’ and then, ‘Worst thing?’

‘Do you think that’s a bit weird now?’ asked May as though Lallie could read her mind.

‘What?’

‘That even the day of Dad’s funeral, she asked the bedtime questions?’

‘Yeah, maybe. But that was so Sarah, wasn’t it?’

‘I didn’t think anything at the time…’ but May didn’t want to tell her sister that she wished just sometimes she’d been allowed to wallow. ‘Can you remember what she said was her best thing?’ she asked instead.

‘That the robin came into the kitchen for something to eat.’

‘I couldn’t remember. I thought it was something about the birdfeeder. I remember now, she was just so genuinely touched that Dad’s robin had come. And I do remember I couldn’t think of a single best thing that had happened,’ said May. ‘Dad dying was all there was.’

May remembered also the confusion of defiance and guilt she’d felt when she’d said it. Not playing the game, letting Sarah down. Letting the side down.

‘Sarah said that there would be days like that and that was when you use your memories.’

And that’s what I’ve been doing for the past ten years, thought May.

‘I don’t want to spend my life being sustained by the past, Lallie. I want…’

‘May,’ her sister broke in, ‘I can see you need to do this and get it out of your system. My hope is that in a month or so, with a bit of distance and perspective, you’ll see that what you’ve got going for you here is pretty good. And just remember that wherever you go…’

‘Yeah, yeah…’ May said and they finished together, ‘there you are.’

3

An exhilarating shock of biting wind came from the direction of the ocean hitting her full in the cheeks and she threw back her shoulders and looked up, almost laughing. The icy blue sky spread with soaring clarity above her.

After a moment, she looked for signs to the bus stop and picked her way across the salt and grit of the walkways. Stella had tried to insist on meeting her at the airport, but May had been firm. She wanted, once again, to see the country unfold quietly from the picture window of the bus, just as she had ten years before.

‘No,’ she’d said emphatically. ‘I’m feeling nostalgic.’

Everything around her dazzled and shone; great expanses of glass in the terminal building reflected the sharp winter sun; chrome, steel and the shining white curves of aircraft flashed and winked with shafts of light. She felt about in her bag for her sunglasses and, impatient to see the countryside she’d come for, waited restlessly.

The afternoon rush hour traffic seemed to stand still and yet the bus managed slowly to edge forward onto I-93 and begin its journey north. The tangle of flyovers and freeways, gleaming office blocks and construction works gave way to frost-fringed trees and snowy fields whose swooping dips and thickly drifted hills picked up the cool pinks and purples of the now setting sun.

She was tired and ready to be there as the bus slowly pulled up at the stop opposite the Hartland Inn. May’s eyes felt sandy and hot behind her lids and the skin on her face, tight and grimy. Her knees creaked and clicked as she stood; three hours on a bus, on top of the transatlantic flight, had left her cramped and stiff.

The driver hauled himself out of his seat and thump-thumped down the steps onto the slushy roadside. May peered round his dark, polyester bulk into the belly of the bus, indicating which bags were hers and helped him drag them out.

‘Thanks very much,’ she said.

‘No problem ma’am, enjoy your visit.’

She smiled at this unfamiliar nicety and stood where she was for a minute watching the bus pull out and head off down the road towards the river, leaving her in the quiet darkness of a glittering cold.

On the far side of the snow covered green, the illuminated clock tower showed 7.20; it was after midnight at home, no wonder she was tired. It took her a moment to recognise that what she was also feeling, was excitement. It’s been a long time, she thought. She stood there in the dark, looking around at the shadowy shapes of faculty buildings and the dim warmth of the shops and businesses lit behind her along Main Street. She snuggled her scarf around her neck more securely.

She was really beginning to feel the cold after the drowsy, drying heat of the bus, when a large, murky jeep pulled alongside and a familiar voice drawled through the open passenger window. ‘Hey lady! You wanna date?’

‘Stella!’ cried May as a bundle of quilted jacket, jeans and Timberland boots fell out of the door into her arms. Her throat tightened sharply as they stood hugging and rocking from side to side, snuggling into one another’s necks, babbling you’re here and I’m here and I can’t believe it and nothing that really mattered.

It was Stella who loosened her hold first. ‘Well, let me look at you!’

May drew back and, wiping her eyes, saw the swiftly concealed shock in Stella’s face.

‘Honey, you got so thin,’ she said.

‘Don’t be daft.’ May laughed it off and noticed Pete for the first time, hovering just behind Stella, big and rangy and muffled in a trapper hat and down coat.

‘Hello,’ he said, drawing the word out long and friendly; his warm smile touched May in such a tender and vulnerable place she felt almost scared at how raw she was.

‘I’m getting in back with you,’ Stella said, putting a possessive hand through the crook of May’s arm. ‘Drive on, my man!’ she called out to Pete, in what May always used to call her Lady Penelope voice.

It was a short drive to Stella and Pete’s house, made shorter by the buzzing whirl of chatter and silly jokes. May felt at once overwhelmed and delighted that they did seem to pick up where they had left off.

It had always been this way. Each summer after Stella’s family had relocated back to America, they had returned to England to visit and May had looked forward to these long summers and the annual fusing of their two families, unflaggingly. Stella’s quick, covetable wit coupled with her unselfconscious, sincere warmth had been the icebreaker every time. Stella loved her friends, and nothing ever seemed to interfere with that.

‘Stella,’ May said with a shudder. ‘That is the most disgustingly enormous pizza I have ever seen. Are you expecting company?’ She was sitting on the floor in front of a cast-iron wood burner an hour later and Stella was opening a huge flat box that had just been delivered.

‘Lady, you have been gone waaay too long. This is a regular pizza. Regular.’ She handed her a bottle of Rolling Rock and they settled back on the floor, the pizza between them.

‘Pete? Play May’s song,’ she said as he returned from the kitchen with a bottle opener and some paper napkins. He looked briefly puzzled, then his face cleared and with a huge smile he went over to the stereo and flipped it on. Van Morrison sang Brown Eyed Girl.

‘Oh my god, Stella! Not this,’ May said with a groan, but she couldn’t help grinning.

‘You love this,’ Stella giggled and sang along into her beer bottle, then hugged May. ‘You’re our—da-da-da—Brown Eyed Girl!’

The room was almost too warm from the fire and it wasn’t long before May wilted.

‘Come on, honey,’ Stella hoiked herself off the floor. ‘Let me show you your home from home.’

May woke the next morning with the sun in her eyes, unsure where she was. She felt disorientated about where she lay in relation to the door. Surely the door should be over there, in the direction her feet pointed. As she became fully awake, she remembered with a melting pleasure.

There was a quiet stillness, dotted with birdsong, and as she lay on her back, her thoughts meandering lazily, she could hear the town waking. The steady, unhurried crunch of feet on the pavement beyond the front garden; the slow spattered crinkling of tyres on the road; a screen door slamming and a faraway dog answering one closer by.

She turned onto her side and propped herself on one elbow. Reaching for a glass of water, she drank thirstily and looked out of the window. The sky was a bright, soft blue with puffs of white speeding across, high, in billowy gusts. The road beyond the wide, short garden lawn was dark with the wet of melted slush and mud as each solitary car, usually a jeep-type thing, crept by, the wheels spattered mud and gritty slush all over the sidewalk and the deep piles of shovelled snow. The little house was very quiet and still.

In the kitchen, a note was propped against a jug of pale tulips, so open and relaxed they looked as though they had taken their corsets off and were lolling around with the girls. May smiled as she read:

Mayflower,

Didn’t want to wake you, there’s coffee on the counter. I’ll be back around 5. My extension # is 6531 if anything comes up.

Love Stellaxxxx

She pottered around the little kitchen, finding a mug and some milk and spreading peanut butter onto toast. She had forgotten how sweet everything tasted and glanced down the list of ingredients on the jar, curling her lip. How could there be so many in a thing as simple as ground up peanuts? She sat and drank her coffee, idly sifting through newspaper clippings and correspondence and last Sunday’s New York Times, looking in a vague purposeless way for something to read. It was not as late as she had thought, Stella and Pete must have had an early start. The day stretched ahead, unplanned.

She spent the morning unpacking, making the little bedroom hers. All the forgotten aspects of American life came back, familiar again the instant they happened; the soft foaminess of the tap water; the way the phone rang—long, bubbling, trilling; the brightness of everything; the Now! Hey! Wow-ness of packet labels and adverts and magazine covers; the insistent, endless advertisements on the radio, with the voice-over rushing the words out, then inhumanly speeding to spit out the disclaimer at the end and wash their hands of it all.

The house was warm and May stepped out onto the deck to feel the air. It was much colder than the clear blue sky and sharp white sunlight promised and she scurried inside to pull on another layer. Looking at herself in the mirror on the back of her bedroom door, she quickly twisted her hair into a long plait, not bothering to comb out the infernal tangle of knots and, unsure whether she would need a hat, tucked one into her pocket.

4

Pete and Stella’s house was on a side street less than half a mile from the town’s main street and the college buildings they worked at, although you wouldn’t know, reflected May wryly, as she noticed both cars were missing from the driveway. It was typical of many houses in the area; detached, single-storey, white clap-boarded buildings, with green painted shutters and a fenceless lawn that ran in a short slope down to the pavement and the road beyond. The only thing that showed the boundaries to each property were the mailboxes, standing like wading birds on a long thin leg, and the placement of dustbins and driveways.

As she made her way along the smooth tarmac pavement, flanked by lawns on one side and a narrow verge on the other, peppered by fire hydrants and cavernous gutters, she was reminded again of the American fondness for flags and whimsy. She passed dog walkers, commuting cars and huddles of kids walking to school; she wanted to call out, ‘Hey! Look! I’m back!’

She took a left at the end of the street and headed uphill along a wide, curving road banked by high, snowy inclines and woodland, then turned and stood, in the middle of the steep sweep of road, watching as it disappeared around a knot of trees heading for the river. How often had she and her friends walked this way, killing time, making each other laugh? I wonder where they all are now, she thought. Danielle… Courtney? Scattered across the states, like a handful of chicken feed. And what of Harley? He would have left Hartland long ago, she knew, camera on his shoulder, focussing on something or someone else.

The road came out at the green in the town centre, marking the beginning of Main Street. May hesitated. Main Street could be covered in ten minutes if you strolled. She decided to walk around the green and then up toward the old co-ed house she had shared with Stella and her college friends nearly ten years before, and then do Main Street, maybe stop at Lou’s for a coffee, if it was still there.

She was unprepared for the swell of love and sadness when she saw the old house. It looked tired and in need of sunshine. The pine trees that shielded it from the road had grown surprisingly tall and been badly neglected. Someone had attempted to cut back some of the branches that would make access through the front door a little tricky; it seemed as though they had not had the right tools, their cuts were ragged and torn. She wondered if the trees knocked on that upper bedroom window on windy nights, as she stepped tentatively up towards the front door and tried the handle. It never used to be locked and she remembered that the brass handle was always loose and wobbly. You could always hear when someone was trying to sneak in, by the familiar rattle, just so long as the music wasn’t too loud. She turned the stiff knob and nothing happened. Locked. Things change.

Stepping back, she looked up at the second storey sun porch. The only way to access it was either by climbing the iron fire escape, or through the window that looked out onto it. That had been May’s old bedroom. Well, not hers exactly. It was Stella’s and her roommate Danielle’s, while they were undergrads. She’d come to visit Stella for a couple of weeks in what was meant to be a gap-year of travel, and stayed put. It occurred, surely not for the first time, that they had been unbelievably relaxed and generous. How many people would tolerate a person crashing in their room like that? For a week or so maybe, but months? How had she been so lucky? She looked up at the window as though she might see an old friend appear.

She turned onto Main Street, thoughts still far away in that old house, remembering hot summers and breathless nights, getting bitten to pieces by mosquitoes, drinking weak beer, smoking far too much and singing, and she was just crossing the road at the edge of the green when a swift prickle of pins and needles netted across her scalp. She stopped walking, paralysed and conspicuous.

A man was leaning into the open bonnet of a black pickup, parked by the kerbside, stretching and muttering something to the engine, the mannerisms so familiar to her that she knew just before he did it that he would rub an open palm thoughtfully over his mouth and shake his hair out of his eyes as soon as he straightened. Wiping his hands on a rag and slamming the bonnet, he turned towards her and for a moment went utterly still.

There was no mistaking him. Same faded jeans and heavy boots and his thick, dark hair, although shorter than she remembered, still long enough over his brow for her to recognise the characteristic way he slightly cocked and tilted his head back to look out from under it. It gave him a slightly arrogant, appraising air she knew was deceptive.

His breath held stillness was somehow contagious. She stood motionless until she heard him say, ‘Piper, get up,’ in a low imperative voice and point through the open door at the inside of the truck. A sleek, black dog leapt then scrambled up into the passenger seat, and the man’s face broke into a beautiful, flashing smile as he praised her. He jerked his head from May, jumped into his truck and drove off, music pounding out of the open window.

A rush of tears, which she managed to hold back fiercely, almost overwhelmed her and she stood there until the pounding in her ears had subsided. Seeing him like that frightened her. And yet to see him there, amongst all that was familiar and beloved felt right; it fit. He was as much part of this place as the trees and the river and she’d been a fool to think he wouldn’t have been, even if he had been gone.

She waited in the lush chill until her pumping veins had stilled a little and headed, subdued, towards Lou’s.

In the pounding smoke and roaring darkness of the house party, May leaned against a basement wall and watched Stella and Danielle shooting a game of pool with another of their housemates, Courtney.

‘I see you found your shoes.’

She turned to see the dark boy standing beside her. Breathe, she told herself, pulse banging. He was not as tall as he had looked, all stretched out in the pizza place earlier, but she still had to look up and his eyes, oh… they were so dark it was hard to tell where the iris ended and pupil began. Mesmerising, she thought.

‘Well, what about that?’ May said, smiling at him. ‘So I did. I was just thinking about you. Did you just get here?’

‘Nah…’ He pulled out a packet of Marlboro Lights, and raised his eyebrow in a question.

‘Sure.’ She nodded, congratulating herself on how cool she was managing to be.

‘I’ve been stuck over there with the guys.’ He indicated with a nod to the other side of the crowded basement and she wondered how she’d missed him.

‘I managed to make my excuses when they started in on a game of beer-pong.’ She gave him a quizzical look. ‘You don’t want a know.’

He lit a cigarette, took a drag and passed it to her. She was surprised by the gesture, hesitated, then took it, saying with a suppressed smile, ‘That’s very Now Voyager! Are you a film studies major?’

His eyes were lowered as he lit another for himself, but she could see the crinkles of a smile and when he looked at her again she realised with something like shock, that his smile made him completely visible. It was in the way his eyes flashed, unguarded. She wanted to make him smile like that again. He looked at her steadily.

‘No,’ he said and the corner of his mouth tipped up a little. ‘And anyway, it was two. He always lit two at a time.’ May laughed and was about to ask what he did study, when he continued. ‘You look different from today.’