Joel had scowled, not meeting my eyes. “Something strange happened here on the day they were born, that’s all,” he’d muttered.
This only encouraged their speculation. The mock alarm escalated, and the jokes continued.
I had expected Edwin to cut them off, to explainthat was the day our mother died, actually, to make them feel guilty. But he joined in the laughter and didn’t stop them. And the more they teased, the closer to tears I became, until eventually, I fled, knocking a glass from the poolside table as I ran, covering my ears as I sprinted into the house and up the stairs to sob under my bedcovers. The memory of Danny’s easy ability to laugh along with their jokes had made me feel even worse.
I avoided Joel for months after that. Even when Edwin explained that Joel had just found out about Michael’s dementiadiagnosis that morning, that he’d been preoccupied and miserable about his grandad. Even when Vera left me notes on the hall table saying Joel had rungagain, and would I please ring him back. I thought about him every day, but I barely spoke to him for the best part of two years.
And then I did the only thing left that could possibly make the situation worse. I kissed him.
It happened at Edwin’s graduation party, surrounded by all of Edwin’s friends who were celebrating the end of their three-year degree course. I drank too much white cider, and I launched myself at Joel without warning and kissed him. In the ensuing confusion, Ralph Luckhurst misread the situation and punched him, and after that Joel no longer made an effort to talk to me at all.
Now he’s renting somewhere in the village, apparently, working as a family physician for several medical practices to cover gaps in their rosters while he looks for a permanent job. I presume this pattern of work means he can also keep an eye on his grandad while his parents are away. He and I exchange civil words when we have to, and as far as anyone else is concerned, there’s no bad feeling between us, but we are certainly no longer friends.
I cup water in my hands and rinse my face repeatedly before I pull the plug on the cooling bathwater. I refuse to waste another moment dwelling on Joel Harris.
The summerborn sprites. The Summerbourne sprites. I mull over the phrase as I dry my hair and pull on a dress.“Something strange happened here on the day they were born.”Mum thought someone was trying to steal her baby. Just the one baby. She posed for a photograph with just one baby. She gave birth here at Summerbourne with no midwife present, but wouldn’t that have been risky with a twin pregnancy?
I stare at myself in the mirror. Could I get hold of my mother’s medical notes, her pregnancy record, after all these years? It’s ironic that Joel, as a doctor, might be able to tell me the answer, but I’m not about to run downstairs and ask him. Instead, I’ll make an appointment at the village doctor’s office for Monday morning. Pamela Larch has been the nurse there for longer than I can remember, and she knows everything about everyone around here. Maybe she can help me.
6
Laura
September 1991
FROM THE MOMENTAlex sprang out of his bright yellow sports car onto the Summerbourne driveway, I detected an undercurrent between him and Ruth. It crackled between them, adding an edginess to the social niceties, pulsing in the mistiming of their reactions to each other.
“I’ve got the keys!” Alex waved them in one hand, raising a bottle of champagne in the other. “And I realized this morning it’s ten years since we met. Can you believe it?”
Dominic took the bottle and shook his hand, and Ruth stepped forward to kiss him on both cheeks while Edwin danced around him on the gravel.
“Ten years since freshers’ week? Good God,” Dominic said. “We’re getting old.”
Alex lifted a bouquet of yellow and orange flowers from the passenger seat, and Ruth smiled at them.
“Freesias,” she said. “How lovely.” She dipped her face to them.
“And roses,” Alex said. Edwin scuffed his sandal into the gravel, and Alex made a show of clapping his hand to his forehead.
“I almost forgot the most important present of all.” He encouraged Edwin to feel around under the seats and peer into the glove compartment, until Edwin finally persuaded him to check in the Alfa Romeo’s little trunk. A yellow toy dumper truck was discovered, and Edwin dashed off with it to test it in his sandpit.
I hovered on the front step until Dominic called me over. Alex took my hand in his.
“Lovely to meet you, Laura,” he said, a trace of the smile from Edwin’s antics still lingering on his lips. He was shorter than Dominic but broader shouldered, his muscled arms smooth and brown, his handshake surprisingly gentle. For a moment the three of us blinked in a circle around him, transfixed, as he closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath.
“Ah, can’t beat that Summerbourne air,” he declared.
“Too right,” said Dominic. “Does you the world of good, escaping to the coast after a hard week in the office. You know you’ve started a trend—the Mellards viewed a really dilapidated place last week. Closer to the beach than yours, though. Lots of potential, apparently.”
Alex grinned. “Money pit, more like.”
Ruth groaned. “Can you imagine the Mellards descending on the village every weekend? We’d have to escape into town.” Both men laughed.
I hung back as they made their way through to the kitchen, talking over the top of one another, discussing estate agents and solicitors and surveyors. Dominic was keen to open the champagne straightaway.
“Let’s wait ’til we’re on the beach, darling,” Ruth said. “We’ll have it with lunch.”
I escaped through the door at the back of the hall and joined Edwin at his sandpit. We chatted companionably until the kitchen doors were flung open.
