their afternoon rest and the adults and older children would move softly, allowing them their sleep.
‘Will Ivy and May wonder where you are?’
‘Ivy won’t. I don’t know about May. You saw her, this morning.’
Skewering them with her eyes. Jealous and dismissive at the same time. ‘Yes.’ The talk veered again. They were zigzagging close to intimacy.
‘They were both so hostile to Suzanne. I was amazed by the intensity of it. She was the first potentially serious involvement I’d had after Alison died, and it was almost three years later. At the beginning, when I first introduced her, they were welcoming enough, even friendly. And Suzanne did everything she could.’
I’m sure she did, Leonie thought.
‘She used to come round for dinner at first, and the girls and I would get together and plan a meal we could cook for her. Then she went shopping with them once or twice. May wanted a special outfit or something and Suzanne was a store buyer. Then the four of us went on a couple of weekend trips, which worked out fine. I thought we were going to make something of it, in the end maybe turn into a family.’
Leonie could see how John would want a mother for his girls, as well as a woman for himself. That was natural. But she guessed there were cross-currents of jealousy and mistrust in children, which ran invisible and powerful against the tide of what seemed natural. ‘What happened?’
‘Suzanne began to stay over at the apartment. Not all the time, not even often. But as soon as she did they turned against her.’ He rotated the stem of his glass in his fingers, watching the splintered lozenges of light it threw on the table-cloth. ‘Not difficult to understand why. But it finished everything off in the end.’
Leonie could imagine it. Suzanne’s retreat, John’s resentment, the girls’ pleasureless triumph in their achievement. She began to understand what a landscape the unspoken negotiations between John Duhane and herself might have to cover. A sudden jagged breath caught in her windpipe and even as she pressed her thighs together against the loosening between them, she was forbidding herself anything more. She was married and none of these silent phrases had been in her vocabulary for a long time.
Then something happened. She was gazing at some paired cherries on John’s plate. And as clearly as she saw their waxy sheen and wishbone stalks in front of her she knew that she no longer loved Tom any more than he loved her in return.
The cherries looked so ordinary, and the detritus of the meal spread over the cloth, and yet her bearings had shifted so suddenly and radically that she half-expected them to mutate into different objects. A knife-blade reflected a little asterisk of light at her as she stared at it. For more than ten years she had made her judgements and interpreted her place as Tom’s partner. Now she understood that each of those daily measurements was wrongly calibrated and therefore worthless, because they had no love left for each other. All the pressure of needing a child, and the bitterness and anger and violence that blossomed between them, were rooted in this one truth. A child would just have been a diversion. A bandage for a mortal wound.
For a moment she felt cold and calm, like the oily sea under a flat Maine mist. Then a wave of panic shrugged itself up and washed over her. The plump cherries blurred in front of her eyes, turning to dull blotches of crimson.
‘Are you all right?’ There was a crease between John’s eyebrows and one corner of his mouth was bitten in.
‘Yes. But I’m … thinking. We should take that shopping home.’
The crease stayed, but he was already signalling to the waiter for the check.
Outside he took her arm and steered her between the cars. The line of traffic at the lights was shorter now, and an afternoon daze of heat and lassitude had settled on Pittsharbor. They crossed the car-park to John’s station-wagon and he leant forward to open the passenger door for her. Leonie heard the words in her head. What the hell? she was saying. What does it matter now anyway? She tipped back her head and tilted it sideways a little, so that her mouth connected with his. The kiss shivered through her.
He would have put his hands on her shoulders, gently drawn her against him, but Leonie opened her eyes and over the hot metal curve of the car’s roof she saw Spencer Newton. His dark-green Jaguar was parked in the next slot, there was a brown bag of groceries under his arm and Alexander Gull was following behind him.
‘Hello, Leonie,’ Spencer said, with his feline smile.
‘Spencer, I didn’t know you were up here. Hi, Alexander.’
‘We’ve just arrived. I’m taking some supplies home to mother.’ The corners of his smile curled higher.
Without looking to see his expression Leonie introduced John to them, explaining that he had rented the Captain’s House.
‘I see,’ Spencer murmured.
The men shook hands and accepted one another’s assurances that they would meet again on the beach.
John drove with his eyes fixed on the road, but Leonie saw a twist of concern around his mouth. She said as lightly as she could, ‘Spencer is Elizabeth’s son. So he’s an old Pittsharbor man, like Tom. Alexander is Spencer’s partner, they have a rather wonderful gallery in Boston. Alexander paints. Hopperish. Not bad, in fact.’
‘I thought they were sweet,’ John said, and Leonie laughed and broke the tension between them.
‘Oh, Spencer and Alexander are anything but sweet. Spencer is trying to bully his mother and Aaron Fennymore into selling him the land behind the beach. He and Alexander want to build rental condos.’
‘I see. That would change the old place, wouldn’t it?’
‘It won’t happen. Aaron will never let go.’
‘And what about what Spencer just saw?’
‘Can’t I kiss a friend who just bought me lunch?’
‘Of course. If that was what it was.’
Neither of them spoke again. When they reached the Beams’ entrance John took Leonie’s shopping out of the trunk and piled it into her arms.
She said defensively, ‘Marian’ll be waiting for me. There are no cookies for the kids until I get back.’
He touched her arm. ‘Did something happen back there?’
Their eyes met. Leonie wanted to acknowledge to him what her words and manner denied. We’re both wary, she thought. And defensive. ‘Yes,’ she said simply.
He nodded, and turned back to the car.
She called after him, ‘Thank you for lunch,’ and he lifted his hand in acknowledgement. Leonie’s breath was jagged in her chest again as she carried the bags of groceries up to the house.
May idly let her paddle rest across her knees and the canoe drifted, the prow turning parallel with the island’s beach. The sea was flat, like oiled glass, and the afternoon sun plastered thick layers of light across the water and over the lip of beach. The rocky crescent reminded her of a mirthless smile and the trees and scrub that fringed it became a throat, opening, ready to swallow. She hoisted herself abruptly, causing the canoe to rock violently,
