“So you ordered some ahead of time?” said Pippa.
“Yes.” Ari started to fold up the piece of paper, but Pippa snatched it from his hand and read it.
“Three cases?” she said, incredulous. “And you’re going to pay for that how?”
“I thought . . .” he began, then looked hopefully at Harold. “Any ideas?”
“Sorry, old chum, those brass handles don’t grow on trees either.”
“Wait,” I said, remembering the stash of pound notes. “I think Peggy left something to pay for it.” I fetched the photograph album that had been moonlighting as a bank, and explained that the money had been hidden in Peggy’s fur coat. With all of them watching intently, I was nervous opening the album and my hands jittered on its yellowing, vellum pages. Done in haste, my attempt at stuffing had been poor, and the notes came out creased and in bunches. Harold held out his hands to form a collecting bowl, and Ari took the notes from him and acted as bank teller. The album was wide, and I had to reach far into the corners of the pocket to pull out the stragglers. As well as the money, a clutch of folded scrap paper—the papers I hadn’t looked at before—fell out.
“Two thousand, seven hundred and fifty pounds,” announced Ari, counting the last pile of notes. “But just to make sure, I’m going to count it again.”
Pippa was flabbergasted. “But she always needed to borrow money off us to pay for gas and electricity—and her phone was always getting cut off.”
“Well, now you know why,” said Harold. “She was hoarding it.”
“Maybe she forgot it was there,” said Caleb. “She was pretty mental at the end.”
“I don’t think so,” Pippa said. “She was adamant about bringing her mink over, even though it’s ninety degrees in the shade.”
“No wonder that effing coat weighed a ton,” said Harold, cracking a smile for the first time that day.
“She knew where the money was, all right,” I confirmed. “And when I stayed at her flat, I caught her hiding jewelry in the curtains.”
“Oh God,” said Pippa. “She was still hiding stuff from Jimmy.”
“But Jimmy’s dead—right?” I said.
“We think so,” said Pippa. “But no one really knows what happened to him. One day he just disappeared from his flat, leaving everything in it. The police came to ask us if we’d seen him, but no one had. He was a sitting tenant, like Peggy, so after a while, when he still hadn’t reappeared, they presumed he was dead and the landlord sold the flat.”
“And that’s when they renovated and found out what he’d done?” I asked.
Pippa nodded. “Mummy said she felt like he had been spying on her. It was awful.”
“But he didn’t spy on her—did he?”
“We don’t think so,” said Ari. “But who knows what he got up to. A man like that was capable of anything.” He gathered the pound notes into a wad and smacked it on the table. “Well, this should pay for the wake,” he said, smiling.
“Not all of it, darling,” said Pippa. “Peggy will have bills to pay.”
She held out her hand, but Ari hesitated. “Do you always have to spoil my fun?”
Pippa smiled, and Harold touched her shoulder. “You don’t need to this time,” he said. “I’ll find a way to help out with the bills. I believe it’s probably my turn.”
Pippa looked sharply at her brother, and I thought, for a second, she was going to refuse his offer. But she softened. “Thanks. That would really help.”
The whole time we’d been talking, I had been sitting with the photograph album and a pile of scrap-paper notes in my lap. Now I picked one up and unfolded it. Scrawled on it in curly, old-fashioned script, was a short sentence: “To Caleb, I leave my birdcage.” I unfolded another, written in the same handwriting. “To Harold,” it said, “I leave my photographs.”
“I think Peggy has left a sort of will,” I said. “Look.” I handed Harold and Caleb their bequests.
“Lame,” said Caleb, after reading his. “Those stuffed birds are utterly rank.”
“It’s the thought that counts,” said Pippa.
“No it isn’t,” said Caleb. “She could have left me some coin.”
Everyone was curious to see what was written on the remaining pieces of paper, so I unfolded them and handed them to the various beneficiaries. One or two were for Harold and Ari, plus another for Caleb, before one finally came up for Pippa. “One dress for Pippa—the rest to the Victoria and Albert museum,” it read.
Pippa laughed when she saw it. “So begrudging, to the end.”
“At least you can see the funny side,” said Harold.
“I have to,” said Pippa. “Otherwise I’d slash my wrists.”
One piece of paper was left, and I unfolded it, then read and reread the message, for I could not believe my eyes. “I want Suki to have Madeline,” it said, and then: “She is to be treasured, not left on the curb.”
I showed the note to Pippa, who smiled. “I told you she remembered your name. And how thoughtful of her to leave you that ghastly old thing.”
“Ghastly is right,” I said. “I can’t think of anything I’d less like to own.”
By evening, the black-shawled women had left the villa, but other than to take toilet and tea breaks, none of the family except Caleb had moved from the table. A few hours earlier, he’d stood up and announced he was going to hang out at Yanni’s house where, he said, at least people would be acting “normal.” It was a warm night, the air thick with chirruping cicadas and Saturday-night festivities—unnatural, boisterous sounds, so discordant with our mood. We had all forgotten about the embalmer, about his work, so it was a shock when he emerged in the courtyard to inform us that Peggy, in her coffin, had been laid out on a trestle table and was ready to receive visitors.
It seemed so like her to have kept us waiting until she was ready to make her entrance, and I forgot, for a second, that he was talking about a corpse. We filed in to see her, to stare at her garishly made-up face, a face that looked more alive in death than it had in months. But no one commented on her appearance—it would have been too obvious, too tasteless—and Pippa, Harold, and Ari went to stand wordlessly at her side. Another wave of sorrow engulfed the room, but I felt immune from it this time, and left the family alone to grieve for their loss.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Skyros, 2003
I had a walk in mind, and set off down a steep cobbled street toward the village, but a little way along I was taken aback by the sight of so many people not stricken with grief and turned back toward the villa. I went to bed, wanting only to pass out, but I was overtired and my body trilled with nerves that made it impossible to sleep. My mind was a shambles, overrun with chaotic thoughts of Caleb and coffins and my mother, all of it incoherent. I tried to think of nothing—the insomniac’s meditation—but I was too wired even for that. I had left the others still sitting round the table, but after an hour or two there was a brief flurry of noises—toilets flushing; faucets turning on and off; Elena shuffling past, switching off her halos—followed by the deep hush of collective slumber.
When I was sure they had all gone to sleep, I climbed down from my bed and crossed over to the courtyard door. I’d not heard scraping metal or any other noise, but as I put my hand on the door to push it open I was still apprehensive and held my breath a little, just in case. But on the other side of the door were only the ordinary features of Elena’s courtyard—the olive tree, low white wall, and a dark expanse of sky. No garden, nor anything even to suggest a recent death.
That the courtyard should be so oblivious seemed a little disrespectful, and I crossed to Peggy’s room to remind myself that she had really passed away. Since I’d last been in there, the family had lit candles, a whole flotilla of them, and the room smelled strongly of hot, melting wax. Under their golden flames, Peggy’s skin was at last glowing with her longed-for tan, and I smiled for her benefit. Her body looked heavier than it had, but also deserted, and I remembe
red how my mother’s corpse had looked the same way, unoccupied by the person I loved.
For good measure, I added another candle to the blaze and bent to kiss Peggy’s forehead, bidding her farewell. Beneath my lips, her skin felt cold but firm—blood turned marble—and I was still thinking about how unexpectedly dense it was when out of the corner of my eye I saw something move. It was very fast, a shadow passing quickly from one side of the room to the other, and when I looked behind me to see what it was, Peggy’s door clicked shut, as though whatever it was had slipped outside.
I remembered what Peggy had said near the end about how Madeline would visit her at night and sit by her bed. How she would keep vigil. I had thought at the time that it was only the ravings of a dying woman, but now I couldn’t help but wonder: had the spirit of Madeline come to pay her final respects? It seemed to make an absurd sort of sense that if I could return to Ladbroke Gardens from Greece, Madeline might be able to travel the other way, that perhaps she had been doing so all along. A chill went through me and I was seized with an urge to bolt from the room. In a fraction of a second, I reached the door, swung it open, and strode out into the courtyard—then abruptly came to a halt. Spread out in front of me was not Elena’s courtyard but the garden, my old garden, only viewed from a different angle than on previous nights.
Behind me, the door closed with a satisfied thud, and I froze, too stunned even to breathe.
I stood in the center of the patio looking straight out toward the white picket fence and the narrow gate to the communal lawn. I had not come out of the service door this time, but had walked out through the French doors—straight out from our old flat. When I turned around, I could see into my parents’ old bedroom, and farther, all the way through to the living room beyond, where dim lights and laughter flared. The sight of the impromptu party in full swing was too much for me, and I hurried toward the service entrance to make my way out.
But the door there was shut—literally painted into its frame, unopened since the paint had been applied. As my fingers scrabbled at its edges, desperate to find an opening, I heard a man’s footsteps land on the stone patio and turned around, my own feet betraying me with a shuffling noise. The man—my father—looked over in my direction just as I ducked behind the barbecue and waited, chest sucked in, paralyzed, for him to walk over and find me. But he didn’t, and after a time I peered over the brick ramparts and searched for him in the garden. He was weaving in the direction of the air-raid shelter, tripping on uneven flagstones and flowerpots and I could tell he was drunk. The hatch was open, and he bent loosely over the heavy iron trapdoor and tried to lift it. When it didn’t budge, he wedged something long and thick underneath it—a branch perhaps—and the familiar scrape of metal on concrete sounded out across the yard.
The hatch moved a few inches before the branch snapped and my father tossed it aside and gave up. He turned around and stomped across the patio, this time kicking aside whatever got in his way.
I knew what had to happen next, had been over it in my head a thousand times. I had ten minutes, perhaps fifteen—the length of time it would take for my father to round up Jean Luc and Henri.
The open hatch was about ten meters away, and I crossed that distance in no time at all. I got down on my knees, peered into the hole, and braced myself against the side. A waft of cold air reached my face, followed by a faint whine, and I got to my feet and shook off the soil that had already stuck to my hands. Balancing my weight on one leg, I slowly lowered the other foot onto the top step and pressed down on it to make sure the surface was as solid as it looked. Though the stairs appeared to be made of concrete, I half-thought they might be an illusion that would give way and swallow my foot, then the rest of me. But the step held my weight, and I placed both feet on it and stared squarely into the dark cavity in front of me. I thought of all the candles burning so brightly in Peggy’s room, how useful they would have been for what lay ahead.
The staircase was narrower than I remembered, and when I passed beneath the opposite side of the hatch I had to duck my head. Once I had gone under the hatch, it became harder to see, and I remembered how the time I had been down there as a child, it had at least been daylight outside. This time, only a pale wash of moonlight filtered down, and after a few more steps even that was gone—when I waved my hand in front of my face, I sensed the air displace but could not see my fingers. Without visual bearings I was forced to use the wall to steady myself, even though I cringed each time my fingers touched the cold, wet surface. With every step, I fought the urge to turn back, but when some moist thing writhed under my palm, and I cried out, my short yelp was answered by a soft whimper from farther down in the bunker. Someone was definitely down there—a child who needed my help.
The stairs seemed to go on forever, though I’d been too frightened to count them, and when I finally reached the bottom my leg jarred as it tried to continue down another step. I was standing in a puddle an inch or two deep; ice-cold water sluiced the soft skin between my toes.
The child, or whoever it was, was sobbing again, a wretched whine that would curdle milk. It sounded like a girl, and I thought she must be somewhere in front of me. I stepped in what I thought was her direction then stopped. If I went any farther, I wasn’t sure how I would find my way back to the foot of the stairs. I could only hope that once I was really in the pit of the chamber, the stairs, dipped in that faint wash of moonlight, would appear fractionally less dark than their surroundings.
I took another step forward, and another, until I hit a hard lump that gave way under my foot and made a sickening squelching sound. I hoped it was nothing more than a beetle or a snail, but remembered the grisly textures that had been in the bottom of the bunker when my hand had closed around the shoe. My breathing quickened to a shallow rasp, and I moved forward another ten or so steps before stopping abruptly. I could see no boundaries, had no idea of the bunker’s dimensions, and I felt suddenly disoriented, as though I were standing on a tiny fragment of rock in some deep undersea cavern. No sounds issued from the chamber, and I wondered if the child had been nothing more than a decoy to lure me down here. But who would play such a joke? Was some malevolent force really out to get me, or was this all my own creation—an elaborate manifestation of the list?
I’d read somewhere once that if you died in a dream you died in real life too, and I wondered if that was what was happening to me now. All the visions, hallucinations, whatever they were, of a decaying body in a watery hole had been leading to this: my own grave. I had been the one buried here, the one who did not get out alive.
In perfect despair, I dropped to my hands and knees and felt myself give in to the self-destructive thoughts I had tried for so long to resist. Released from its bindings, the list unfurled with violent force. I was stuck inside a dream that wasn’t a dream, but there was no exit and no way to wake up. For several minutes I crouched there in the muck, lacking the courage even to turn around and crawl for the stairs. But then something kicked in, not self-preservation exactly, but the threat of a terror more prolonged than any other I had known. I did not want to become the diabolical soup of hair and teeth, to rot in a place where no one would find me.
I meant only to turn around, to search for a haze of light, but in so doing, my hand swept forward and hit human skin so warm it burned my fingers. My hand closed around a slender ankle, perhaps a wrist, and traveled up to find a swatch of fabric, a cotton dress, sopping wet. Enfolded in the dress was a girl, motionless. She was all arms and legs, a spidery tangle of limbs, but I managed to feel my way toward her head. Her hair was wet, with blood or water I could not tell. Nor did I stop to check if she was breathing—her warmth was enough. Moving fast, I linked my arms behind her slim waist and pulled her to me in a loose bear hug. She was heavier than I expected—roughly half my size—but the fact that I had found her, and that she was alive, boosted my strength. I was no longer alone in this dungeon and, feeling my spirits soar, I hauled us both to our feet.
/> As I’d hoped, the darkness was less concentrated at the other end of the bunker. With the girl hoisted under one arm and bolstered by the other, I made my way toward the grayish haze. Halfway across the flooded chamber, one of my flip-flops got hooked on something under the water and came off, but I wasn’t about to waste time trying to find it. Instead I limped on with one bare foot, trying not to slip in the soft, buttery mulch.
At the foot of the stairs, I leaned on the wall to rest for a few moments. In my arms, the girl stirred, and coughed once or twice. Even though she felt hot to the touch, she was also shivering, and I guessed she had some kind of fever. Pulling her closer to my body, I began the ascent, each step slow and torturous. The girl’s head lolled at an impossible angle, hiding her face from me, and I worried that her skull might scrape against the narrow stairway, or worse, that I would drop her.
But I didn’t drop her, at least not until we had climbed out of the bunker and I had stumbled a few feet across the grass. My arms literally gave way then, and she slid down the length of my body and landed in a pile at my feet. The jolt must have roused her, because she started to cough again—a little more violently this time—and I crouched next to her and rubbed her back. She was turned away from me, and long strings of wet hair covered her face, but I finally had enough of my wits about me to notice what she was wearing: a simple dress, made from a cotton printed with strawberries. The dress was soaked and stained, but I recognized it immediately. It had been my favorite, a dress made for me by my mother. I had been wearing it the day after the party.
I stopped rubbing her back, and sat down heavily on the grass, watching her. She lifted her head and I caught her profile—her nose had a small bump from wearing spectacles, and her full lips turned down in a sulk. A thin line of blood trickled from one corner of her mouth, but what took away my breath was her big mole eyes, the way she was straining to see me without her glasses on; the way she gave up trying and looked away, frustrated. My whole life, I had been doing that, been blind when I most needed to see.
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