Neither of us speaks of it in the morning.

  He handed me a brown paper bag yesterday, smoothing out the creases, and then reached into his pocket for a stub of pencil. ‘Here,’ he said. ‘I know it isn’t much, but you could do a bit of drawing if you like.’

  Holding the pencil, I felt excited, the shape of it familiar in my grasp. I sat outside the pagoda, resting the paper on my knees, and drew the outlines of the gorse bushes and a seagull hovering overhead. My fingers were stiff. I was out of practice. Billy lay on the pebbles nearby, having a smoke. He pointed upwards with the tip of his rollie to the sign over my head that read ‘Prohibited Area–Photography and Sketching Forbidden’, took a drag, winking at me. Afterwards he crouched beside my knee.

  ‘That’s good,’ he said. ‘I like pictures of real things. You’ve got the look in that bird’s eye–evil things, gulls. Scavengers.’ I smelt the nicotine on his breath. On the back of the bag I attempted to draw a portrait of Faith. I tried to capture the fine lines of her bones, the questioning look on her face, her mouth about to smile.

  ‘My sister,’ I said, when he looked over my shoulder. He just made a noise with his teeth. I have never spent so much time with one person and said so little. He’ll never let me go if I don’t make him see me as myself, as Eva. I want to hear him say my name. I’m beginning to forget the sound of it.

  ‘Eva,’ Marco said, elongating the sound as he drew the swirling shapes of my name on his arm with his finger. He traced each letter carefully. E.V.A. ‘What do you think?’ he asked. ‘It could go just here…’ He tapped his left forearm, the skin pale, speckled with black hairs. ‘I’ve been thinking of getting another tattoo.’

  My heart jumped. I reached out to rub my thumb over his skin, feeling the grain of his flesh, uncertain if he was teasing or not. ‘Hmmm, I think it would look good.’ I nodded seriously, as if considering it carefully. ‘Not too many letters. Lucky for you I have a short name. Less pain.’

  He laughed then.

  He took me home to meet his parents. They were folk singers, a singing duo with guitars and a tambourine. His dad had a drooping moustache. He smiled at me, top lip hidden under a fringe of hair, showing stained teeth. Marco’s mum patted her dark bun with a white streak running through it, silver bangles clattering around slender wrists. They told me to call them Pete and Paula, offered me a glass of red wine and invited me to supper.

  They made their own bread, yeasty brown bricks that Paula sliced into thick doorsteps. There was a yoghurt maker in the airing cupboard and weird things in their fridge: soya milk, packets of wheatgerm. ‘The bud of the glug glug cabbage,’ Marco said, spooning a slippery piece of palm heart into my mouth.

  He led me upstairs to his bedroom. It was painted dark purple and covered in posters. His guitar was propped on a stand in the corner. Music sheets covered with scribbled notes and lyrics were scattered on a table with a pile of dog-eared NME magazines. We lay down on his bed with the curtains closed and he played me music on his stereo. He cocked his head to one side, eyes closed, stroking my stomach in circles, his fingers loose against my skin as if they were acting out an impulse that was separate from him. ‘ “Temple of Love” is one of the most important records of our time,’ he told me quietly. ‘Listen to the lyrics. Bloody brilliant.’

  From deep in my belly I felt the beginnings of a loud gurgle, and clenched my stomach muscles, holding my breath against my body’s treachery.

  ‘Yeah. Amazing,’ I managed.

  Dust motes shimmered in the streetlight that slipped between the curtains. My skin crawled with feeling, desire flickering through my limbs like tiny flames.

  ‘My parents like you,’ he said later, casually, as he walked me to the bus stop.

  I sat on the bus and smiled to myself, staring out over dusty hedges at endless fields, ponderous cows whisking skimpy tails, and thought about Paula and Pete. They seemed to think that I should be planning a trek to Nepal, a pilgrimage to India or a year out in the Australian bush. Sitting at their scratched pine table, they told me about the adventures they’d had while travelling in America in a Winnebago with Marco as a baby strapped in his carry-cot, interrupting each other and laughing. The stories made me laugh too, but at the same time I was filled with a lurching vertigo, as if I was standing at the top of a tall building, the world spread before me.

  As the bus swayed around corners, I imagined being in London with Marco; his favourite place was Camden, with its cafés and stalls near the dank canal. You could find silver earrings shaped like skulls, buy Jamaican jerk chicken, spicy and hot from a barbecue. He’d talked about the bands he’d seen in pubs, waving his hands as he’d explained his passion for the new sounds. No wonder he couldn’t wait to get back to the city. I wouldn’t be an oddity there, I thought. In the city I wouldn’t be the girl who was too dark, too tall and too loud. The girl with the wrong kind of hair. There would be thousands of people of all shapes and sizes and colours. My mind stalled at imagining the sheer weight of humanity all in one place. I knew that Dad and Mum had started out married life in a flat in Hammersmith and I wondered what had made them move to Suffolk, to live in a backward village on the edge of a marsh.

  I gesture towards Billy’s knuckles. ‘You should give them a wash. Have you got anything to make a dressing?’

  He stares at me and then down at his hands as if he’d never noticed the sting of raw flesh, bloody lumps, tendrils of skin peeling away. He frowns and shakes his head. ‘It’s nothing.’

  Have it your own way, I think. Get blood poisoning then, and I’ll escape and leave you here. He’s chopping vegetables: carrots and courgettes. They are going into a pan to be cooked into a tasteless soup without salt or pepper. It’s the broth we live off, in between occasional rabbits and fish. His hands move steadily, the knife fast and sure in his fingers.

  ‘I was just beginning to teach myself to cook curries when I was at home,’ I tell him. ‘Never really taken much interest in cooking before, but my boyfriend likes Indian food, so I thought I’d try and make it.’

  At the word boyfriend, he pauses for a second before slicing neatly into a carrot.

  ‘It takes the whole day,’ I continue, ‘so many herbs and spices need chopping and mixing: cumin, coriander and turmeric. I wouldn’t want to be a woman in India–you’d spend your whole time cooking.’ I’m aware of rambling; but he seems to be listening to me and so I keep talking. ‘It’s delicious when it’s finished though.’ I inhale, almost able to smell the tang of a curry sauce, creamy and golden, bubbling as I stir it, my mouth watering. ‘It’s different from the Indian food you get in restaurants. There’s only one Indian restaurant and that’s in Ipswich. I went with my parents for my last birthday. Everything was oily.’

  He grunts impassively. Takes the pan of vegetables and water carefully and lowers it onto the Primus stove. The stove is a new acquisition. It means we can have more cooked food, as there’s no danger of betraying ourselves with cooking smoke. It is battered and rusted. I wonder where he found it. He strikes a match with a quick flick of his wrist.

  ‘What about you?’ I prompt. ‘What kind of food do you like?’

  He shrugs. ‘Don’t care much what it is. Just fuel to me.’

  ‘Did your mother like to cook though?’ I persist, my heart beating fast, aware of crossing a line.

  He is silent, staring into the hiss of orange and blue under the pan.

  ‘My… mother,’ he repeats slowly, imitating my voice. ‘She did well just to get a meal on the table.’

  ‘Mine can’t cook for toffee.’ I feel tears pressing in behind my words.

  He rubs his chin with the palm of his hand. I can hear the scritch and scratch of beard against skin.

  ‘What are we doing here?’ I ask in a rush, my voice wobbling, and I feel sick, knowing that I’m risking his rage. But the relief of honesty, of asking real questions is taking over, pushing the fear away. ‘I don’t understand. What do you want from me? We can’t stay here for ever.’

  He unfolds his long body and paces the pagoda, backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards. Then his shoulders tense and he lunges forward to slam his fist into the wall. I jump, hugging myself tightly. Dust crumbles, sprinkles the ground with a dry patter. ‘Don’t ask questions–it’s not right.’ His voice is a low growl. ‘I told you before. I don’t want to hurt you.’ The cut on his knuckles oozes fresh blood.

  ‘You don’t know anything about me.’ I’m trembling. ‘You’ve taken me away from my life. My family probably think I’m dead and you don’t care.’

  He rubs his face roughly. ‘It doesn’t matter–what you were before–that’s over.’ He looks at me. There’s a streak of red smeared across his cheek. ‘I’m keeping you safe. All right? That’s all you need to know.’

  ‘But couldn’t you at least get a message to my family, let them know I’m alive?’ I bite my lip. I’ve been planning to ask him this for ages, thinking of ways to persuade him, and now it’s come out wrong.

  He looks at me as if I’m the mad one. ‘We can’t take those kinds of risks. You need to stay here. With me.’

  ‘But I want to go home.’ I begin to cry silently, rubbing my face with my hands. I don’t care if he thinks I’m weak. ‘Please. Just let me go.’

  He walks up and down with quick, agitated steps. ‘Things have taken away my life. I’m not the same as I was. I’m not crying about it, am I?’

  ‘What things? What changed you?’ I lower my voice, looking up at him.

  I’m breathless, waiting for his answer. His words have begun something, opened a small crack. I want to hear more, to know more. I will him to speak. But he jolts as if I’ve stung him. Squatting on his haunches, he ignores me, prodding the vegetables with the knife. His hair falls over his face. ‘You don’t know anything.’ His voice is cold.

  I slump onto my hip, exhausted from my efforts, and press my hand over my aching forehead, touching hot, sticky skin. We are silent, listening to the hissing Primus and the bubbling water.

  18

  Mum has taken the dog for a walk. It’s her new habit. She wakes early and has breakfast before us. Then she’s off, the dog running before her down the lane to the marshes, tail wagging, nose to the ground, following smells. And Mum paces behind, shoulders back, striding out as if she has somewhere important to go. She can be gone for hours. She’s always vague about where she’s been. ‘Oh, just along the sea wall,’ she’ll say. ‘Trekked around the village, through the alder woods, you know.’

  She’s tanned from being out in the sea air and sunshine. Her hair is longer, straggly down her back. She comes home bringing scents of earth and sap. Before, she always had perfume on her skin, the papery aroma of books, and in the winter she smelt of wood smoke from sitting so close to the fire. Now, instead of curling up with a novel, she drums her fingers on surfaces, shifts her weight from one hip to the other. I’ve seen her in Eva’s bedroom. She stays there for ages, just standing and staring out of the window towards the sea.

  When she is in the same room as Dad they are too nice to each other. It’s not normal. They act as if the other one is made of porcelain, like one of Granny’s ornaments. I think it would be better if they shouted. But Mum hates raised voices, says that arguments give her migraines.

  Dad is hunched over his coffee in the kitchen, his tie skewed around his neck. He’s reading the newspaper, sighing and blowing air out from between pursed lips.

  ‘Terrible thing, this miners’ strike,’ he says to nobody in particular, folding the floppy paper with a shake, his hand smoothing down the creases. ‘Poor buggers. It’s dragging on for ever.’

  I am eating a bowl of cornflakes with strawberries sliced on top. Sophie is drying up, polishing each cup and plate carefully before placing it on the shelf. She crosses the kitchen with swinging hips and asks Dad if he’d like more coffee.

  He nods, ‘Thanks.’

  The light sliding in through the window shines on the threads of grey in his hair. There are lots of lines at the corners of his eyes stretching out in a fan. He is thinner, deep gouges running from his nose to his mouth like a ventriloquist’s dummy. He turns the pages of the newspaper, shaking his head. I crunch through a spoonful of cornflakes and try and think of something funny or clever to say to him. I don’t know anything about the miners’ strike. I’ve seen footage of it: hordes of angry men shouting at a van driving slowly through them. They banged on the sides of it with their fists, chanting. It looked frightening. But it was happening far away and we didn’t know any miners, so I’d turned away from the TV, bored, and gone to my room to finish my book.

  Sophie leans over Dad, pouring a stream of steaming liquid into his cup from her cafetière. As she straightens, her hand touches his shoulder lightly, moves across his shirt, fingers curving around the shape of his muscles.

  I remember Jack stroking Granny’s cheek. ‘You’re never too old to fall in love.’

  Dad doesn’t seem to notice her fingers on his shoulder. My heart is hammering at my ribcage and I have a sense of panic, of not being able to pull enough air into my lungs. I choke on a strawberry and spit it out; milk slops over my bowl and spills in pale drops on the wood.

  Dad looks at me, his eyebrows raised. ‘Better get a cloth.’

  Before I can move, Sophie is at the table beside me, nimble fingers wiping at the splatters, taking the bowl away. He puts down his newspaper, and tugs up his cuff to see his watch. ‘Have to go.’ He blows me a kiss and stands up, reaching behind him for his jacket hanging on the chair.

  Sophie has it ready for him. She helps him slide his arms into the sleeves, smiling at Dad, ‘Have a good day, Mr Gale.’ Her accent means she can’t pronounce the ‘h’.

  ‘Max, please.’ He smiles back. ‘I keep asking you to call me Max.’

  I frown. Sophie doesn’t always do what Mum asks her to, but whenever Dad is in the kitchen, it seems that Sophie is there too, cleaning and cooking and glancing at him from under her hair. And he makes such an effort to be nice to her. I don’t understand why he tries so hard. He doesn’t need to. Sophie can look after herself.

  I trail after him to the door and watch him climb into the car, shutting the door with a clunk, leaning forwards to turn the key. He rolls down the window, glancing at the cloudless sky with sailor’s eyes. ‘Going to be another hot one.’ The engine starts. He gives a brief wave. I wonder how badly he misses being out on the river and the sea. He used to run his hands over a boat as if it was alive, speaking to it as if it was a creature that could be settled by the tone of his voice. He bought an abandoned dinghy once with the words H.M.S Fuck Off scratched into the fibreglass. The sailing club had sold it off cheaply because of the graffiti. Dad said he bought it because he liked to see the people at the yacht club gasp. But I know that he believed it needed loving. That’s another thing about Dad; Mum says he can’t resist lame dogs.

  He looks different now that he’s not sailing: he has faded and drooped. The red in his cheeks has gone. He doesn’t look as tall as he used to.

  I lean against the doorframe watching the car disappear up the road, humming. Love is the strongest thing, the oldest yet the latest thing…

  From the outside the nursing home looked like a forbidding stately home, grey stone stretching up to meet turrets and gables. Inside it smelt of public lavatories and boiled food. I held my breath as I followed Granny and Jack down long corridors. The linoleum floor was sticky underfoot. There were handrails all along the wall, the paintwork smudged from ancient fingers.

  A smiling lady in a bright-green dress came forward to take Granny’s hand. ‘Nice of you to come again, dear. They loved it last week.’

  ‘This is my granddaughter, Faith.’ Granny gestured for me to come forward and the woman patted my hair. ‘Ahh, bless.’

  I wriggled away, scowling, but the woman didn’t notice–she’d opened a door to a large room. Heat hit me like a blast from an oven. Chairs had been placed in a wide semi-circle and in each chair a wizened person drooped, spine caving inwards, or slumped forward, some leaning on metal walkers, some on the arms of their chairs. I saw skin wrinkled as waterlogged paper, trembling hands, glazed eyes staring blankly in our direction. I took an uncertain step backwards, but Jack placed a hand on my shoulder. ‘Steady lass. Give ’em one of your hundred-dollar smiles.’

  Granny led me around the group, bending down, smiling and touching. ‘Hello, Keith, brought my granddaughter along to join in.’

  A grey man lifted his head slowly and winked. ‘Nice to see a young face.’

  Jack was placing the stylus on a record player in the corner. As he straightened, music came wafting into the room. The sounds of strings swept through the old people, heads began to bend and nod, shadows trembled, the dusty aspidistra plant in the corner lifted its leaves. Keith wiped his pale, watery eyes. ‘My Mavis liked this one.’

  Granny and Jack were dancing a foxtrot in the centre of the circle. I hummed and tapped my fingers against my thigh. Some of the old people smiled and watched. Some were asleep with their chins tucked into sagging chests, saliva wetting their lips. Granny broke away at the end of the song and held out her hand to Keith. ‘Care for a waltz?’

  As Keith rose slowly from his chair and shuffled towards Granny, Jack was bowing to me. ‘Madam?’

  I remembered the steps. One, two, three. One, two, three. Jack’s strong arms holding me up.

  The kitchen is dim and shadowy after the brightness of the morning. I blink at the threshold. Sophie is shoving cereal packets back in the cupboard. She slams the fridge door as she spins away, looking at her watch.

  ‘You like my Dad, don’t you?’

  Heat rushes to my cheeks. I didn’t mean to say it. It came out before I could stop the words. She pauses for a moment and blows through her lips making a puffing sound. She nods and shrugs her shoulders. ‘Of course,’ she says. ‘Why not?’