I realize I’m nodding.
“Well.” He puffs out a breath. “Let’s hope this Kiara woman can sort everything out.” He gives me a small smile. “I’ll still be here afterward. I’m not going anywhere.”
A short while later, I show him up to the guest bedroom, feeling suddenly shy in the shadows on the landing.
“Night, Seraphine,” he says. His pupils are enormous in the dim light. I’m forcibly reminded that he is the one—the one I have always, deep down, wanted to share my life at Summerbourne with. I’m so tempted to reach out and run my fingertips over the smooth skin of his arm, to step closer, to hold on to him. When I force myself to look away, I notice the moonlightglinting on a small shard of broken china nestled up against the skirting board.
“Good night,” I whisper, and I retreat to my bedroom. I’m tired of puzzling over the threats; I’m tired of keeping secrets from Edwin and Danny; I’m worried about Kiara coming for lunch the day after tomorrow. But Joel’s presence across the landing makes me think that perhaps it’s going to be okay. And we’ll sort everything out between us. Once this is all over and done with. Once I know for sure who I really am.
18
Laura
December 1991
CHRISTMAS AT MUM’Swas miserable. Beaky interrogated me on a range of subjects: Dominic’s job; whether Vera would hand Summerbourne over to Ruth one day; whether the family had given me a Christmas bonus. I had only applied for the au pair job at his insistence—I still remembered his exact words on the day I left hospital and moved back home:“Get down to the agency first thing tomorrow. Let’s see how you like looking after someone else’s brat.”Now that he realized I was genuinely fond of my small charge, he grew increasingly critical of the slightest change in me and mimicked anything I said in a mock upper-class accent.
“Oh, we don’t do it like this at Summerbourne,” he would say. And then, “I saw your ex down the Feathers again last night. Had a nice chat with him. He couldn’t remember your name.”
“Don’t listen to him, love,” Mum told me afterward. “He’s just not used to you growing up yet. Just don’t go on too much about this Summerbourne, yeah? It gets his back up.”
I spent most of the fortnight in my old bedroom. My Bon Jovi posters had been peeled off the walls, and Beaky’s boxes of duty-free wine took up most of the floor space, but my bed was still there, with my swimming trophies lined up along the shelf above it. I sat cross-legged on the bed with my textbooks open, wondering if my ex-boyfriend remembered shoving me out the door, calling me an attention-seeking bitch. He was the total opposite of Alex.
My thoughts drifted frequently to the way Alex looked at me when he asked me about myself, and the way he listened to me with a half smile forming. I wondered whether he would come back to Summerbourne, and whether he knew yet about Ruth’s pregnancy. I thought about Ruth on the beach saying,“He’d love to have children of his own, of course.”My notes grew dimpled with tears.
On Christmas morning I hid in that room to unwrap my presents from the Mayes family: a beautifully soft lamb’s wool scarf with matching gloves from Ruth and Dominic, an address book from Vera, and a box of chocolates from Edwin. Mum cooked a turkey with roast potatoes and chipolatas, but my stomach was unsettled all day, and I could only pick at the meal and duck away from Beaky’s permanent glare.
My birthday two days after Christmas was uneventful. Mum gave me a book, and some pajamas that were too small for me. My friends were all busy, and I hadn’t mentioned the date to the Mayes family. I read my new book in my room and munched my way through the chocolates. When Pati, Jo, and Hazel called by a couple of days later, I told them I was too unwell to come out. I didn’t feel like explaining Summerbourne to anyone else, and I didn’t relish hearing about their new lives either.
Returning to Summerbourne was like waking from a bad dream. I traveled back on New Year’s Eve—or Old Year’s Night, as they called it in the village—so that I could look after Edwin while Ruth and Dominic attended a party at Kemi and Chris Harris’s house. I felt as though I ought to be paying them for having me back rather than the other way around.
Edwin danced around me in the hall as Dominic paid the taxi driver behind me.
“Laura! I got a red bike from Father Christmas. Can we go out and play?”
The last day of the year was cold and gray, and the interior of the house offered a warm welcome, but I was desperate to wash my lungs out with fresh Summerbourne coastal air.
“Get your coat on then, quick,” I said, and we took his new bike out for a tour around the garden, giggling at his wobbly progress and delighting in being reunited.
After Ruth and Dominic had left for the party and Edwin had fallen asleep, I wandered around the sitting room and browsed through the family’s Christmas cards. There must have been over a hundred—arranged along the mantelpiece, the bookshelves, the sideboard. Eventually, I found one from Alex:Have a great Christmas, it said.Hope to see you in the New Year.He won the prize for the blandest message.
I turned up the volume on the television in the sitting room and listened to Big Ben strike midnight with my face pressed against the window in the hall, watching fireworks explode over the village. The Luckhursts were close neighbors of the Harrises, and I suspected that both Joel and Ralph would still be up, enjoying the celebrations with their parents. I was glad Edwin was safely tucked up asleep in his bed.
“Happy Old Year’s Night,” I whispered to the darkness. Alone ball of light flared and swooped in a downward arc, leaving a trail like a silver scar in the sky. I was tempted to make a wish, as if it were a falling star. But it was just a firework, and anyway—I didn’t know whether to wish that Alexwouldcome back or that he wouldn’t.
19
Seraphine
JOEL KNOCKS ONmy bedroom door early on Friday morning and carries a mug of coffee in to my bedside table. I’ve been awake for a while, mulling over last night’s conversation, and I wish now I’d got up sooner and brushed my hair, put on something more attractive than this old gray T-shirt of Edwin’s that I adopted because it’s so comfortable. I pull my sheet closer to my chin, and he smiles down at me.
“I have to go—check on Michael before I go to work. You going to be okay ’til Edwin and Danny get here?”
I nod.
“Be careful,” he says. “Ring me if you need me.” He pauses at the door on his way out. “Oh, and you look gorgeous by the way.”
The coffee is the perfect temperature, and I smile into it. But as the caffeine sharpens my thoughts, I am struck by the certain knowledge that Michaeldoeshave a key to Summerbourne. When Edwin still lived here, before he moved intoWinterbourne, he lost his key at the beach one weekend. He’d joked afterward that he’d been preparing to survive on the fruits of the greenhouse until I got home, cursing his bad luck that none of the usual doors or windows had been left unlocked. But in the end, he said, he’d jumped the wall by the stable block and walked down to Michael’s cottage, and Michael had produced a huge set of assorted keys, one of which had opened Summerbourne’s front door.
