turned a page. She watched the way he reached out unseeingly for his glass, his fingers quivering a little until they connected with the stem.
Dinah looked at her husband and wondered, do I love him or hate him? Did I do it alone, this thing, or did I do it because it was what Matt wanted?
‘Matthew?’
He rubbed the inner corners of his eyes, sighing, working his middle fingers under the lenses so that the frame bobbed over his nose.
‘Yes.’
‘I’m all adrift here in this place. I want to go back home, to look for her.’
His face hardened. His flexible mouth became a slit and the planes of his cheeks and forehead turned boxy.
‘You can’t do that, Dinah. Why torment yourself?’
‘Why not be like you, you mean? Indifferent?’ Her voice whipped him.
‘I’m not indifferent.’
The telephone rang. For three, four rings neither of them moved, and then Dinah slowly got up and lifted the receiver. Even from where he was sitting Matt could recognise Sandra Parkes’s high insistent voice. Dinah listened as it nibbled on, saying yes, yes okay, nodding as she spoke.
‘Of course we can,’ she added at length. ‘If Milly’s happy with that we’d be glad to have her.’
There was another high-pitched torrent of talk. And then Dinah said, ‘Friday, then. Yes, yes. That’s fine.’ She replaced the receiver.
‘Ed and Sandra have got to go out to the coast for three days. Something to do with a movie deal for one of Ed’s books. Sandra wondered if Milly could come to us.’
‘I’m taking the boys up to the cabin in Vermont for the weekend. Had you forgotten?’
Max Berkmann had promised a loan of their summer cabin. Matt was going to take the boys fishing and hiking, although neither of them had shown much enthusiasm for the prospect.
‘Yes, I had,’ Dinah admitted. ‘It doesn’t matter. Milly and I will be okay here.’
She hesitated for a moment, but Matt was shifting his papers, ready to immerse himself in them again. He had closed off her plea with his hard face. Not now, she told herself. Don’t try to talk about it now.
‘I’m going up to bed,’ she said at last.
‘I’ll be up soon,’ he told her, although she knew he would not be.
Dinah imagined that to have Milly in the house for two or three days would be to have a companion.
In the muffled, dead-weighted time after her visit to Jenny Abraham, Dinah planned how Milly and she would cook and talk and watch TV together, maybe even go shopping for clothes. Out of the brief affinity that had flickered between them she constructed in her head a temporary daughter and allowed herself awkward, unspecific imaginings in which Milly confided in her in some way, and she was able to offer advice and comfort.
Dinah looked forward to the weekend visit, and when the time came she confidently waved Matt and the boys off at the beginning of their drive up into Vermont.
‘You won’t be lonely?’ Matt asked, as he was halfway into the loaded Toyota. ‘You could still join us, you know. Bring the Parkes girl as well.’
‘Milly. Her name’s Milly. No, we’re going to stay here and have a women’s weekend.’
Matthew caught her chin in his hand and looked into her eyes. After a minute he said, ‘Good. You look all right.’
‘Of course. Why not?’
After they had driven away Dinah went back into the house with the sense of having become someone who sometimes did not look all right, as if another person’s face had become superimposed upon her own.
Ed and Sandra arrived with Milly later that Friday evening. Milly unfolded herself from the back of the Porsche and hoisted a very small and shabby black canvas rucksack over her shoulder. She seemed to be wearing exactly the same clothes as the last time Dinah had seen her.
The adults moved into the house, with Milly at a little distance behind them. It was the first time the Parkeses had been to Dinah’s house. Looking at his watch, Ed refused her offer of tea or a drink.
‘We should get to the airport,’ he said. Out of the corner of her eye Dinah saw Milly turn her head to gaze blank-faced out of the window. She had not put her rucksack down.
‘Dinah, this is so good of you,’ Sandra murmured, but the words were at odds with her expression. She stood awkwardly halfway between Ed and Milly, unable to move closer to either of them. Clearly it was important that she go with Ed to perform whatever service it was he required of her, but equally clearly she did not want to leave Milly behind with Dinah. Torn between the two halves of her family, Sandra’s confusion crystallised in hostility to Dinah. She twisted the silver bracelets on her wrist as if adjusting her armour. Her face was cramped with jealousy. ‘I wanted Milly to come to LA with us, of course. But she absolutely won’t.’
Milly continued to stare in the opposite direction, her rucksack clutched against her chest. Dinah guessed that Milly knew exactly how to cause dismay and discord at home. She wondered what it was the child wanted to punish her parents for.
But she only said, ‘I’ve been looking forward to it. We’ll have a good time, the two of us.’
‘Sure you will,’ Ed said heartily. ‘Now, come on, honey. You know the Friday traffic.’
They went out into the street again, Milly trailing in her heavy boots, the embodiment of sulky reluctance. Dinah suppressed a sudden urge to turn round and shake her. The child was getting what she apparently wanted, after all.
Ed and Sandra both kissed Milly, who did not return their embrace. The Porsche cleared its throat, over-loud in the quiet of the street, and swung away towards Boston and the airport.
Milly tilted her head, and the black knotted strands of hair fell back to show her white neck.
‘Your house is the same as all the others.’
Without looking Dinah saw the various white wooden houses with green-painted shutters, porches and steps, old Mr Dershowitz’s at the end shabbier than the others, and grass dotted with shrubs and trees. She felt no more fixed in this serene suburbia than she had done a year before.
‘Similar. We can’t all live in fantasy castles in the woods, can we? You’re welcome here, anyway.’
‘Yeah,’ Milly said.
‘Is all your stuff in that one bag?’
‘Stuff?’
‘Everything you need for the weekend. Change of clothes, washbag, book, cosmetics. Middle-aged baggage, crap,
