prints. The large vase of pussy willow on the apothecary-style coffee table. Fleur herself is sitting in the rocking chair, which has a print of dark pink and purple organisms that are almost, but not quite, recognisable flowers. Clem and Bryony are sitting together on the pinker of the two George Walton sofas. In front of them Charlie is pleased to see the Wedgwood Golden Bird tea set he bought Fleur for her thirtieth birthday. He, of course, is still wearing the labradorite pendant she made for him all those years ago. They’ve hardly spoken for months after that argument about Pi last July, although of course they saw each other earlier at the funeral, but from opposite ends of a row. Now here he is.
‘Hello,’ says Fleur. ‘I’d offer you a cup of tea but actually we’re due to have cocktails in half an hour when the others arrive so unless you’re desperate . . .’
The smell of Fleur’s lapsang souchong blend. But . . .
‘I’m fine. Can I help with anything?’
‘Yes, actually,’ says Fleur. ‘Come and help me pick some mint.’
There is a frost on the morning after Oleander’s funeral. When the robin wakes up, his wings are glary and frozen, and he has to shake himself for several seconds to free them before he can even think about flying. When he gets to the large stone birdbath he finds that there is no water, just a large slab of ice that he can’t drink or bathe in. But there is something on his table, at least: not dried mealworms; not slugs. The robin likes spelt pastry but does not like smoked salmon because it tastes of fire and danger. Norman Jay does not like smoked salmon either, and the no-name woodpecker doesn’t even come to the bird table. The bad-luck magpie will have to eat it when he comes later in the morning, or else the bigfat pigeon will have it, or his mate will.
After he has eaten several poppy seeds and the remainder of his pink macaron, the robin flies to the other birdbath on the steps leading up the side of the cottage, where it is warmer. He drinks slowly, and then washes, his lacklustre wingflap signifying that he does not want what is coming soon: finding a mate, nesting, providing. He is tired: it is his eighth spring. Through the bedroom window he can see that Fleur is nesting. Fleur often nests. But she never lays any eggs. That man in her nest has made it yblent. Did he make Fleur put out the firedangerfish? Did he eat the other macarons? Did he make her cry out in the night, as she so often does now? The robin heard nothing, so perhaps this is the one who makes her silent. The one with feathers like a blackbird, although he has not been in Fleur’s nest for years. The robin suddenly wants to be alone, so he flies to the top of the holly tree, puffs out his chest and sings his most violent song. The song, roughly translated, tells of hard beaking, in both a sexual and non-sexual way. It has woodness, but also intense fertee.
Fleur is not asleep. Fleur is not really awake either. She is wondering about the Scottish woman, and all those things she said. And how she wants to give her something in the morning, which is more or less now. She said she had something else from Oleander, that Oleander couldn’t give Fleur while she was still alive. Fleur can hear the robin singing something deep and far away. The woman – Ina, her name obviously the end of something else, hopefully not Nina, for obvious reasons – had travelled from her croft on the Isle of Lewis, in the Outer Hebrides. Oleander used to go on mysterious ‘Scottish trips’, setting off on a sleeper train roughly twice a year. But she never talked about who she saw or what she did. Fleur had imagined her in Edinburgh, Miss-Jean-Brodieing around castles and tweedy shops before meeting sad, wildered celebrities in hotel suites or mansions overlooking the Firth of Forth. She was wrong.
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