November 1991
DOMINIC DID RETURNto Summerbourne after dropping Ruth and Vera at their hotel. It was already dark, and he brought the crisp chill of the November night into the hall with him.
“Guess where we’re going tomorrow,” he said to Edwin. “I’ll give you a clue: lots of water and lots of fishes.”
“The sea!” Edwin shouted.
“The aquarium,” Dominic said. He gave me a quick grin. “Didn’t fancy going back to work just for one day.”
When I came down from putting Edwin to bed, Dominic called me into the sitting room. The curtains were open, and he was gazing out at the sky, his back to me.
“It’s a blue moon tonight,” he said. “Come and look.”
I stood alongside him. Warm air rose from the radiator and mingled with the cold breath of the glass.
“It doesn’t look blue.”
He chuckled. “It’s an old farmer’s term. When a season hasfour full moons instead of three—it doesn’t happen very often—the third one is called a blue moon.”
“Oh. I didn’t know it was an actual thing.” I thought about it. “Why isn’t it the last one that’s called the blue moon? The fourth one is the extra one, surely?”
He gave me a sideways glance. “I’ve no idea. I never thought about it like that.”
I leaned closer to the window to peer at it, my breath misting the glass.
“I’m shocked,” I said. “That it’s not actually blue.”
“Wait ’til you see a black moon.” He turned to me, his hip against the windowsill. “Next summer. I’ll find the date for you. You’ll be quite overwhelmed.”
“Oh.”
He smiled. “Some people say a blue moon is just a second full moon in a calendar month. Much more common.”
I sucked in my breath. “How dare they!”
A bark of laughter escaped him, and he swiveled farther round to lean back against the radiator. The surprise in his eyes blinked into a more focused gleam.
“There’s more to you than you let on, isn’t there?” he said.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“You never talk about yourself. Your home.”
I shrugged. “I don’t think about it much.”
“To a lot of people it’s the most important thing about them. Where they come from. Who their family is.”
“Not to me,” I said.
“You lived with your mum, before this?”
I nodded. “And Beaky. Her partner. He doesn’t like me.”
Dominic’s eyebrows shot up. “Beaky?”
“Yep.”
He studied my face. “Was it that bad?”
