by Abigail Dean
‘Neutral territory,’ I said. ‘This is new.’
She asked about the graduation ceremony; about Christopher and Olivia; about my plans for the summer. Then, with her face turned away from me, up to the jumbled townhouses and the strips of sky between them, she smiled.
‘I don’t think that I need to see you any more, Lex,’ she said.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘It’s been nine years,’ she said. ‘More than nine years, actually, since that first day in the hospital. Do you remember it? I’m sorry. Of course you do. But what you may not know is that I was nervous. Young, and nervous. I worried about every single thing that I said. You’ll know what I mean, once you start work. Early on, one worries about every damn thing. And now – here we are. It’s a kind of vindication, I think. For us both.’
‘You never seemed nervous,’ I said.
‘Good.’
‘Are you sure, though? That this is it?’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I am. You’ve done it, Lex. You, and me, and the Jamesons. And I know that there were some terrible days, and things that were very hard to hear. Yet here we are. With the rest of your life waiting.’
She had already been drinking that afternoon. There was a mania to her joy which I hadn’t seen before. In the autumn, when I started law school, I read that she had been appointed as a guest fellow at Harvard, and I wondered if this had been the day she found out. In that case, it wasn’t just that she had served her purpose to me, but that I had served mine to her.
‘It’s up to you, of course,’ she said. ‘We can see each other for however long you would like. All I’m saying is that we no longer need to.’
‘It seems like the right time,’ I said. ‘I guess.’
We talked into the darkness, even after the champagne was gone. I told her that Dad was considering retirement: ‘But who will I call,’ she said, ‘when I’m losing all faith in humanity?’ I told her that he had cried at graduation, straggling behind Mum as they walked across the lawn after the ceremony, using the spare few seconds to scrub his eyes. ‘That,’ she said, ‘doesn’t surprise me at all.’
I had a strange desire to give her a happy ending in every respect, so I told her, too, about the man whom I had met a fortnight earlier, at one of the university balls. It was four o’clock in the morning, and breakfast and the day’s papers were served in the gardens. He was standing behind Olivia and me in the queue for bacon sandwiches, and as we approached, it became clear that they were running low. I tried to calculate if there would be enough left for me, but I was too drunk, and too tired. ‘This’ll be close,’ he said.
The server handed me the final sandwich, and offered him a vegan patty.
‘I don’t suppose you feel like sharing,’ he said. He had a long-broken nose and he ate like he was starving. He had opened his collar and lost his dinner jacket, and I could see the press of his shoulders against his shirt.
‘Not really,’ I said, and took a bite.
‘It’s terrible hospitality,’ he said. ‘I travelled from London for this.’
‘To deign us with your presence?’ I said, and regretted it right away. I understood that there was a difference between being playful and cruel, but I only ever recognized it once the words were said. He chewed a mouthful of his patty, still smiling, and shrugged.
‘You don’t sound like you’re from London,’ I said, to make amends.
‘It’s a recent thing. But be warned. When you leave this place, you have to become serious. I’d advise against it.’
‘His name’s Jean Paul,’ I said, to Dr K. ‘But he isn’t French. Don’t you think that’s odd?’
‘I think that his parents might be odd,’ she said. ‘Certainly.’
There were things that I didn’t tell her. The following afternoon, after we had slept apart, I took him to the all-day breakfast cafe in town. That was our first in-joke: the bacon sandwich. That night, in my room, he asked if I was usually so bad at sharing. ‘I’m sharing my bed,’ I said, ‘so perhaps you should be more careful.’
‘Let me guess. You’re an only child.’
I hadn’t expected that. ‘Yes,’ I said, reminding myself that he was older than me, and already a barrister. I would probably never see him again, and the lie would neither need to be maintained nor corrected. He laughed.
‘Me, too,’ he said. ‘And there’s no way I would have shared it.’
Dr K took my disclosures as an offer; she felt that she owed me something in return. She leaned into me, close enough to see the pores and the lines beneath her foundation, and to smell a warm champagne burp which popped from her throat. I had never expected to encounter her this dishevelled, and I never did so again. ‘Let me tell you a secret,’ she said, ‘about the night that you escaped. When something like that happens, the police put together a list. It’s like a who’s who of practitioners, I suppose. The best psychologists that they’ve worked with. And for something like Moor Woods Road, everybody wants to be on that list. They only needed a handful of us, of course, and I understand that I was the last one to be included. I’d worked with the DI a few times, and that’s what he said: “You were the wild card”. But by the time they started to call us – midnight, one o’clock – I was the only one to answer the phone. I was working, I suppose – I don’t really remember. Anyway. When they called me, I requested – quite firmly – that I be assigned to you.’
‘To me? Why?’
‘Girl A,’ she said. ‘The girl who escaped. If anybody was going to make it, it was going to be you.’
There was no service to London for twenty minutes. A village station on a Sunday evening: it was the loneliest place in the world. I waited in the car, not wanting to be alone on the platform. It seemed important to speak to somebody before the train arrived. Evie answered right away, as she always did. ‘Lex,’ she said. ‘You don’t sound well.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Not really.’
‘One moment,’ she said, and the noises around her dimmed.
‘I’m sorry. It’s just—’
‘Don’t be stupid – you don’t need to be sorry. Are you OK?’
‘I found Gabriel,’ I said. ‘But he’s so ill, Evie. I don’t know if he’s going to sign the papers.’
‘He isn’t?’
‘I don’t know. He’s confused.’
‘Don’t give up on him, Lex. Ethan – Delilah – they always know what they want. And there’s something Gabe’ll want, too.’
‘It isn’t just that, though. It was hard to look at him. And then I thought – when I had left him – about when he was younger. He was such a good kid. For the longest time, he never minded about anything.’
‘Stop, Lex. It’s OK.’
‘I don’t know if it is. Seeing him – you just remember things. Don’t you? Things that you couldn’t think about every day.’
‘I’m going to come,’ Evie said. ‘I can come to see you, and we can sort things out. We can go to the house together. I can come any time this month. Whenever your deal’s over.’
‘You can’t,’ I said.
‘Let me, Lex. It’s been too long.’
‘Don’t, Evie. I’m OK.’
‘Stop it,’ she said. ‘I’ll come with you. I’ll come home.’
When she had gone, I saw myself in the mirror, smiling. It was the thought of her, back in the country. In the passenger seat. A stay in Hollowfield, she had said. It isn’t exactly the road trip we had planned. I watched the train arrive, pause, depart. There was nobody around to board it. Without Gabriel’s signature, the exercise would be redundant. The house would be sold, in ruins, or pilfered by the moor which surrounded it. I started the engine and turned the car around.
The Lifehouse was finished the summer before I started secondary school. For two weeks, Father patrolled the high street, handing out leaflets advertising the grand opening and talking to anyone who would listen about the love of God. At night, he walked the residential streets, posting flyers. He had
, he said, left piles of them hidden in the pews of other churches in town, hoping that members of the congregation would sense that God was directing them elsewhere. On the eve of the opening, he instructed us to wear our red T-shirts from the holiday to Blackpool. Mine was embarrassingly tight at the chest and Ethan’s tore at his shoulders. When we congregated in the kitchen, Father surveyed us with disgust. ‘What’s wrong with you?’ he asked. We were permitted to wear something white and modest, instead.
Jolly travelled from Blackpool. Evie cut chains of paper angels to string in the windows. Mother descended from her bedroom and baked late into the night. It had been a long time since she was pregnant, and Father had prescribed rest, with a doctor’s certainty. When she emerged, she looked white and lumpen, like part of the bedding.
Before I went to sleep, I wandered to the kitchen and offered to help her. She was surrounded by sponge cakes, whipping cream, her eyes fixed on the spoon in the bowl. ‘Aren’t you too clever for this kind of thing?’ she said, but she didn’t refuse. The kitchen bulbs were bright; still uncovered. I could see the psoriasis at her elbows and throat. As soon as I took the bowl, she folded herself away from me and gripped at her sleeves.
‘Is there anything else to do?’ I said. ‘After this?’
‘The other one needs icing.’
‘Leave it for Evie. I’d probably destroy it.’
Our reflections hovered in the kitchen window, expressionless and close.
‘The new school,’ she said. ‘What’s it like?’
‘It’s OK. We did a lot of the stuff already, at Jasper Street. Or else Ethan told me it.’
‘Are you still at the top?’
I glanced up. She was turned away, picking at baking paper. ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Probably.’
‘Make sure of it.’
I spread the cream onto the sponge, and Mother manoeuvred a second one on top of it. She took her hands away tentatively, trembling, and covered her eyes. ‘Please, God, let this be a success,’ she said, and I realized that I had never heard her pray like that before – like God was in the kitchen.
We were at the Lifehouse at eight o’clock the next morning, carrying decorations and baked goods. I had visited the weekend before, to touch up the paint, and I had liked the new wood smell. I could see, tying balloons to the pulpit, that Father had created something simple and strangely beautiful from the husk of the shop. Light fell through the old glass windows and careened down the aisle. There was a neat wooden bar at the back of the room, where Mother had laid out the cakes.
The service was due to start at eleven (‘To ease them in,’ said Father), but with five minutes to go, nobody had arrived. We had spread ourselves out, tactically, across the first two rows. Ethan turned around every few seconds to check the door; after a time he stood, straightened his shirt, and joined Father outside. I could hear snippets of their conversations with passers-by, some of them gentle and some of them scoffing. Two teenage girls slipped in, giggling, and took a handful of Mother’s flapjacks each. They sat on the back row, close to the door. A pensioner joined them, and one of the drunks from the pub across the road. Somehow, this meagre crowd – witnesses to Father’s embarrassment – was worse than no crowd at all.
At quarter past eleven, Father stepped up to the makeshift pulpit and cleared his throat. He had never needed a microphone. I heard Ethan slide into the pew beside me, but I didn’t look at him; when Father caught our eyes, I knew that it would be important for him to see that he had our absolute attention. ‘Welcome to the Lifehouse,’ he said.
Late that night, when I couldn’t sleep, I heard somebody in the kitchen. I untangled my body from the sheets and walked down the hallway and the stairs, knowing them now, stretching my feet to the quieter floorboards. I hoped that it would be Ethan, that we would be able to discuss the day. Downstairs, I stood in the darkness and watched Father at the kitchen table. He held the liquor in one hand; with the other he gestured, his lips moving but no sound coming out. The final sad sermon of the day. I thought for a long time about joining him. I still think of it now. I have selected the exact verses that might have offered him comfort. Instead, I made my way back to the bedroom. That night, eleven and confused, I didn’t yet know what to say.
The palace was orange and pink beneath the evening sky. This time, I didn’t park between the lines, or speak with the receptionist, or wait to be summoned. I arrived at Gabriel’s room out of breath, with a nurse at my heels.
‘There’ll be something for addiction,’ I said. ‘At the community centre. It’ll be a condition of the proposal.’
Gabriel was in institution pyjamas, propped in the chair at the window. ‘I thought that you would be back,’ he said. And to the nurse: ‘It’s OK. I know her.’
‘There could be meetings,’ I said. ‘Drop-in sessions. Whatever – whatever you think might have helped.’
‘I’d like that,’ he said. His fingers and thumbs shaped a plaque in the air. ‘Funded by Gabriel Gracie,’ he said.
‘That’s right.’
‘And will I be able to take part, do you think? I could speak there – if that would help.’
‘Maybe. When you’re better, and you’re out of here, you can do whatever you want.’
‘You think so?’
‘I know it.’
‘Whatever you did,’ Gabriel said, ‘it worked.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘He didn’t come by,’ Gabriel said. ‘After you left. He passed a message to one of the nurses, instead – just to say goodbye. He did love me, Lex. In his own way.’
Perhaps, I thought. In his own way.
Gabriel stood to navigate the little room, touching the furniture as he went, as if we were in the dark. He took the papers from his bedside table and handed them to me, and I saw that they were already signed.
‘Out there this afternoon,’ he said. ‘You reminded me of Delilah.’
‘I’m not nearly that fierce, Gabe.’
‘What did you say?’
‘Nothing exciting. The law, mostly.’
‘Delilah uses books in her way,’ Gabriel said. ‘And I guess you use them in yours.’
5
Noah (Boy D)
LATE IN THE EVENING, waiting for Devlin to call, I opened my favourite bookmark and checked the weekend’s results. On Sunday, the Cragforth Under 17s Junior Cricket Team had been all-out for ninety-seven, and defeated. Not such a good week.
I hovered at the tab beside Results, which was How to Find Us.
‘Come on,’ I said, to myself, and wandered down to the kitchen. With a kind of mundane magic, the lights in the corridor flicked on ahead of me. It was three thirty a.m. I assembled a bowl of cereal and black coffee, and returned to my desk. Devlin hadn’t called. The cursor still rested on How to Find Us.
I had only heard of Cragforth once, many years before. I was twenty, and had just secured my place at university. My parents and I had been for dinner, and Mum was upstairs, getting ready for bed. Dad and I sat at either end of the sofa, our legs touching in the middle, reading different sections of the newspaper. He balanced a glass of whisky on his chest.
My reading was a sham. In my head, I drafted and rephrased a question I had contemplated for some time. I had plotted various routes to it, discounting some and awaiting the right weather for others. This, I decided, was the day of the attempt.
‘I wonder if the others will go to university,’ I said, not looking up from the paper. ‘Besides Ethan, I mean.’
‘I don’t know,’ Dad said. ‘You’d hope so. But take you – it’s not as if it was easy. You had a lot of catching up to do.’
I turned the page. ‘That would be true for Delilah, too, I suppose,’ I said. ‘But the others were younger. Do you think Noah will, Dad?’
‘Noah’s different. He isn’t expected to remember anything at all. And he had an easier time than the rest of you. As things went – in that house – he was lucky.’
‘Where is h
e?’ I asked, and Dad stopped reading and stared at me.
‘Lex. You know—’
‘I’d just like to be able to think of him. That’s all.’
A toilet flushed upstairs, and I knew that Mum would soon be on the way down, coming to say goodnight and another congratulations. She was fiercely professional – she protected patients’ confidentiality like state secrets – and she wouldn’t entertain this line of questioning.
‘I don’t know much about it,’ Dad said, ‘other than that he’s well. The family who adopted him were in a little town – Cragforth, I think it was.’
I returned to the paper. He was strangely still, and no longer reading.
‘What?’ I said.
He shook his head.
‘Nothing.’
In the weeks that followed, it was clear that Dad deeply regretted this disclosure. The morning after, he arrived in my room in his dressing gown, bearing a teacake. ‘This feels like a bribe,’ I said, and propped myself up in bed.
‘I had trouble sleeping last night,’ he said. ‘I shouldn’t have told you that, Lex. You need to promise me that you won’t use that information for anything at all.’
He was unable to say Noah’s name. He handed me the plate and sat at the end of my bed.
‘If you were anybody else,’ he said, ‘I would hope that you might just forget it.’
‘I won’t do anything,’ I said. ‘Really. I just wanted to know where he’d ended up.’
‘No emails or messages?’
To my dad, both the Internet and my intellect were all-powerful. I could be on a video call with Noah that afternoon.
‘No.’
He was beginning to smile. ‘And no carrier pigeons, either.’
‘Nothing, Dad.’
And for a while, that was true. At university, I often searched for Noah and Cragforth online, but with a habitual curiosity, the same way that I checked the weather or legal updates. I had become accustomed to the three results which returned to me on each occasion: a theological essay by Bradley Cragforth of Wisconsin State University, which involved a close analysis of Genesis (and which was, I thought, rather good); details of Cragforth Primary School’s reception class syllabus, which included ‘listening to and discussion of stories from both the Bible and other religions (e.g. Noah and the Ark)’; and an advertisement for the amateur dramatic performance of The Grapes of Wrath, held in Cragforth Park in the summer of 2004, which featured Gary Harrison as Noah Joad.