Yours,
Edwin
Edwin, my big brother, who is upstairs finding clean clothes for his best friend, Joel. His best friend, Joel, who would do anything for him, and who left our house before midday today and returned covered in Laura’s blood.
22
Laura
March to July 1992
THE GARDEN, THElane, the village—wherever I walked that March, I was faced with the nodding yellow heads of daffodils promising more cheerful times to come. Everyone in the village predicted that Ruth would start to bloom soon—surely, they said, she deserved a few months of radiant well-being before this pregnancy was over. They were wrong. She suffered aches and twinges; she slept badly by night and napped resentfully by day; she was prone to outbursts of tears and occasionally hysterical laughter. Meanwhile, Edwin’s behavior deteriorated, with frequent tantrums and wild declarations that nobody loved him. Even on good days he took to whining when he didn’t get his own way.
All three of us had coughs and colds again through April, and much as I wanted to get Edwin outside to play every day, it was frequently impossible due to either wet weather or the fact that we felt too unwell. We baked biscuits and cakes when we felt up to it, the warm, steamy atmosphere in the kitchensoothing our symptoms as we waited for the oven timer to ping. Even a stroll into the village to collect a prescription, or to choose treats to cheer ourselves up, felt like an effort.
There was no further mention of Edwin attending preschool after Easter, but as the weather grew warmer in May and Michael increased his hours in the Summerbourne garden, we began to see more of Joel again. Only Joel could bring that deep chuckle out of Edwin and make his blue eyes sparkle with mischief, and I begged Michael to bring him over as often as he could. Kemi, Joel’s mother, wanted him with her on the days she didn’t work, but this left us with a pattern of three days a week where Joel spent the afternoon with us, and Edwin’s mood improved enormously.
I withdrew from most of their family activities at weekends, claiming that I wanted to study for my exams. I returned to Mum’s for the exam fortnight, and for once Beaky left me in peace to concentrate on my final preparations. I’d dreamed of a career in scientific research since I was at primary school, and I needed an A and two B grades to get onto my chosen biochemistry degree course. The math and biology papers went well, and the chemistry practical wasn’t as hard as I’d expected. I headed back to Summerbourne cautiously confident that I’d achieve my grades.
Despite no longer having the studying excuse, I continued to avoid family meals at weekends. On Saturdays, I caught the bus into Norwich, spending some of my accumulated pay on clothes and makeup, and going to the cinema by myself. When I grew bored of this, I sat in the city library and immersed myself in a novel for hours without interruption. It was refreshing to see different faces around me, even if they were all strangers.
It was during one of those library visits that I hunted out a book with a lunar calendar. Sure enough, June had two new moons that year—one on the first of the month, which I had already missed, and then another on the thirtieth of the month—the black moon that Dominic had mentioned. It was only when I examined the diagrams that I understood there would be nothing to see. A new moon has its sunlit face turned completely away from us: it would indeed appear black in the dark night sky—as invisible up there as I frequently felt down here on the ground.
The black moon was on my mind as I made a second round of toast for myself and Edwin on that last day in June. The sky was a glorious blue, the sun cheerful, and I felt better than I had done in months. We devoured several slices of toast and marmalade between us.
“Guess what?” I said. “It’s a special day today. Something’s going to happen that doesn’t happen very often.”
His gaze traveled around the kitchen as he munched on a huge mouthful of toast. He shrugged, spraying crumbs across the table. “What?”
Something tightened inside me suddenly, and I drew a deep breath. It was a bad idea to mention the black moon to Edwin. What if he said something to Dominic at the weekend? I didn’t want Dominic to think I was dwelling on what we’d done that evening—or worse, to think I was talking to Edwin about it.
“Oh, just look outside. It’s a proper summer’s day at last. I think we should walk into the village and buy some sweets. What do you think?”
Edwin nodded, dropping his last crust onto his plate. “Can we go to the play park?”
“Of course.”
“And look through the fence? See if Joel’s there?”
A few weeks earlier, we had stood outside the preschool field, watching the children participating in a sports day with their sacks and Hula-Hoops and sit-on bouncy balls.
“Yep. We can do that too.”
Ruth preferred to rest at home, so Edwin and I set off together. The sickly smell from the rapeseed fields had faded now that most of it had been harvested, and the scent of lavender from the front gardens of the flint cottages stayed with us all the way into the village. As the village green came into sight, Edwin and I spotted the low yellow car at the same time.
“Hey, isn’t that...?” Edwin tugged on my hand, pointing. I stared. It was almost eight months since we’d last seen that yellow car at Summerbourne. Eight months is a long time for a child who’s not yet five. But Edwin liked cars, and Edwin liked Alex.
“It’s Uncle Alex’s car!” Edwin shouted.
I felt like a clockwork figure, as though someone had wound me up with a key months ago, kept hold of it tightly until this precise moment, and then let go. Whirring cogs drove my heart in athud-thud-thudrhythm. All I could think was:Has he missed me? Has he missed me?Edwin and I looked up and down the street and across the green, but Alex was nowhere in sight.
“The shop, Laura?” Edwin tugged on my hand.
The bell jingled as we pushed the door open, warm bread and coffee smells greeting us. And there he was, down at the far end of the right-hand aisle, the top of his hair just visible over the rows of tins. My clockwork heart kept drumming.
Edwin trotted down the middle aisle, and then there was a squeal of delight and an exclamation of surprise, and Alex was walking toward me, his arms outstretched.
“Laura.” He kissed me on each cheek. His skin smelled of soap and limes; his hair was shorter.
