and shape renewed itself in her mind, bringing with it sharp recollections of how they had lived together. From being unable to imagine how he had ever been her husband, it became hard for an instant for Jess to remember that he no longer was. Would they go upstairs together, treading on the step that always creaked, reveal what each of them already knew, only now freighted with loss?
Ian was right in a way, they had disappointed one another. By slow degrees and tiny irreversible steps, imperceptibly, beginning not so long after the days in Majorca. Of course they would not go upstairs together.
If we had not parted already, Jess understood, we would have to do it now.
They held on to each other without speaking. Then Ian leaned forward and carefully kissed her forehead, and the touch itself was like an absence, a ghostly negative of a kiss.
‘Shall we divide the pictures so you can take some back to Sydney with you?’ Jess offered.
She began to sort through them again, shuffling quickly through the boxed memories, overtaken by fear that reality and truth were no longer superimposed. She wanted to tuck the truth away, behind the coarse screen of present reality, from where it threatened to escape.
Ian’s relationship with Danny had never been quite as easy as his with Beth. Ian was a flatly conscientious man, unimaginative and as intolerant as careful people often are. Danny had regularly made him angry, with his easy negligence and flashes of irresponsibility that were redeemed for most other people by his charm. Jess had sometimes seen Ian look at Danny with an expression of blunt incomprehension. So the family had divided, mother and son, father and daughter. Yet Ian had loved him. His inarticulate, unchannelled grief at the loss of him was proof enough.
She pushed the boxes towards Ian.
‘Have whatever you would like. I want you to.’
‘I would stay longer, Jess, if I thought I could do anything useful here.’
‘If I thought you could I would ask you to.’
They bent their heads simultaneously to the photographs.
‘Would you like to come out to Sydney for a couple of weeks’ holiday? Over Christmas or something? I’ll handle the airfare.’
His offer touched her, but she didn’t want to go. She couldn’t imagine doing anything except staying here, in this house.
‘Are you sure you won’t?’ Ian persisted. ‘If Beth came too?’
‘I’m sure. But I think it would be a good idea for Beth. Ask her, anyway.’
The pictures were fairly divided. They sat for a few moments longer in the shabby armchairs on either side of the hearth.
‘Danny,’ Ian said, on a long breath.
Jess feared the spillage of his grief. She kept her own balanced within herself, lapping the edges of her self-control. She stood up now, touched Ian lightly on the shoulder.
‘I’ll let you go to bed.’
He had slept every night on the sofa. Upstairs there was only the big room they had once shared, and Beth’s, and Danny’s. Jess thought of his dark bedroom now, and the darker outlines of the furniture and his belongings held frozen within it and the thin veil of dust over all the things he would never pick up again.
‘Good night then,’ she said abruptly to Ian.
When she looked in on her, Beth had fallen asleep, her arms tidily at her sides. Her breathing was inaudible; carefully Jess leaned over her until she felt the faint warmth of an exhalation on her cheek.
The day after Ian flew back to Sydney Jess drove Beth to Ditchley station. They peered through the streaming rain at the strings of coloured bulbs twisting in the wind that funnelled through the shopping precinct. Stronger gusts lashed the branches of the early Christmas tree mounted on the roundabout. It had been raining for days. Jess drove slowly, her eyes fixed on the road and the back of the mud-splashed bus ahead.
Ian would be safely in Sydney by this time, in the bungalow with a view of the blue harbour.
In the station car-park they struggled with Beth’s suitcase and an umbrella that the wind snatched and tore into a tangle of black ribs, then stood side by side on the platform to wait for the London train.
‘Are you sure you’re ready to go back to work?’
‘I can’t think what else to do. Can you?’
‘No.’
‘I’ll come home at the weekend.’
‘If it’s just for my sake, you know, you don’t have to …’
‘Mum. I want to come home.’
‘Good. It’ll be good to have you here.’
Even their voices sounded thinned out, drained of conviction.
Jess began carefully, because Beth had always been reticent about her private life and because she had been warned off the subject before, ‘Isn’t there anyone in London, anyone, you know, to look after you …?’
‘There’s no one at the moment,’ Beth said flatly. ‘Here’s the train now. Will you be all right, Mum?’
You have to be.
‘Yes. I will.’
They clung to each other, the constraints dissolving for a moment.
‘I’m sorry,’ Jess whispered.
‘For?’
‘For not being able to change anything.’
‘I don’t want you to say sorry for anything. It makes me feel worse. Look, I’ll be home on Friday night.’
‘Take care.’ Empty words.
After Beth had gone Jess drove home to the empty house.
Sam Clark sat in his office, half turned from his desk in his padded swivel chair. It was dark outside and he could see himself partially reflected in the plate glass of the window wall. Subconsciously he admired his well-cut but longish hair, cobalt-blue shirt and loosened Armani tie. He was talking to his wife, who was also at her desk in the features department of one of the tabloid newspapers. They were arguing, in reasonably good humour, about who should go home to see their three children for an hour before they met up again at a literary party.
‘I’m up to here, darling,’ Sam said pleasantly. ‘I’ve got an author coming in tomorrow first thing and I haven’t read his book yet. If I whip through it now I won’t have to do it later, and I can take you out to dinner after the party. Would you like that?’
‘You’re a snake, Sam. You manage to make ducking your turn to go home sound like you’re giving me a big treat.’
‘Where do you fancy? Ivy? Caprice?’
Sadie Clark gave a short laugh. ‘Christ. All right, I’ll go back tonight but do try and remember
