I catch sight of a familiar figure, brown hair swinging across her shoulders. Sophie is on the quay, talking to Joanna. Joanna points again and Sophie turns to follow the direction of her finger.

  ‘My au pair is coming.’ I flush as I say the words, knowing the others don’t belong to a world where you have such a thing. ‘Better go. We should move the boat early.’ I keep an eye on Sophie as she gets nearer. ‘Tomorrow,’ I hiss. ‘First thing, before people are up.’

  Sophie steps over the anchor chains and ropes with care.

  ‘Your mother ask me to fetch you.’ She wipes imaginary dirt from her trousers, gives Fred, Joe and Penny a warning look. ‘You can’t play anymore. Come.’ She beckons to me. ‘Vite.’

  We walk back to the house in silence. She’s been shopping for Mum and I can see a loaf of bread, a fat green lettuce and half a dozen eggs poking out of her straw basket. When she stops by the front door, leaning to slip the key into the lock, shiny plastic bangles rattle around her wrist. They are exactly the same as the ones on Eva’s dressing table. There’s no point in mentioning it to Dad. He would repeat that she is alone and far from home and we must be kind. Only I’m afraid that she wants more than a wristful of plastic bangles, more than the pearls even. She wants my father. I can’t tell Mum or Dad. It sounds mad, and they have enough to worry about. They wouldn’t listen anyway; losing Eva has made my parents deaf and blind.

  21

  I was nervous because Marco was coming to see me for the first time. His bus was due at the village square in an hour. I’d already spent ages trying to decide what to wear. Piles of clothes littered the floor. I’d just settled on my purple mohair jumper when Faith barged in. She began to dance, knocking her knees together, flapping her hands in and out, toes and heels twisting. She kicked her legs up, hands making circles in the air. ‘Look, Eva,’ she said, ‘look at this.’

  She bounced onto my bed, sitting cross-legged, gabbling so fast that she tripped over her words, telling me that she’d danced in an old people’s home. Jack was teaching her the Charleston; ‘I’m going to do another performance.’ She rolled onto her stomach. ‘This time on my own,’ she nodded, ‘a solo.’

  I paused in the middle of colouring in my eyelids, wondering if glittery purple was too much for daylight, and glanced at her in the mirror. Her cheeks were flushed. I grunted, rubbing off the purple, thinking I must be mad to meet Marco right under Mum’s nose. My head was full of trying to imagine him in familiar places and thinking up excuses in case I was spotted. I couldn’t take in enough air. Faith’s chatter pecked at me like a swarm of hungry sparrows. I glanced at my watch. I didn’t want to tell her about Marco. I knew she’d want to see him.

  ‘Will you get out of my room?’ I turned in exasperation, hands on my hips. ‘I don’t want to hear about some poxy dance that’s sixty years out of date. I have other things to do.’

  She tightened her lips, trying to control their tremble, her eyes suddenly bright. She went without another word. I heard her footsteps on the stairs.

  Silver, lying on my bedroom floor, put up his head and looked at me with his yellow gaze. ‘It’s not my fault she can’t make friends,’ I muttered and the dog tucked his nose under his paw.

  I’d found her crying once. Hidden under her eiderdown in the middle of the day. ‘The kids in my class laugh at me,’ Faith had said, her beetroot face smeary. ‘Nobody likes me. They make fun of my warts.’

  ‘It’s because they’re inbreds,’ I’d told her. ‘It’s better in Ipswich. There are different kinds of people. Sixth-form college is OK.’

  ‘But that’s years and years away. I’m stuck here,’ she’d screwed up her eyes, ‘with the inbreds.’

  I’d smiled as if it was a joke. I should have told her that I’d suffered too, explained how I’d been teased at school for being different. For being too tall, and having darker skin than everyone else. I hated my springy black ringlets. I’d even tried to iron them. My hair just sizzled at the ends, and the point of the iron clipped my chin. It left a triangle scar. I’d shut the door on that part of my life, moved on. Meeting Marco had set me free. I felt like I belonged with him, with people like him.

  I got to the bus stop early, loitering near the wooden shelter, listening for the sound of the diesel engine. Faith’s teacher went past on a bicycle; I pretended that I hadn’t seen her. People came and went out of the post office. Two women with brown paper shopping bags in their arms paused outside to chat. I stared into the window of the antique shop, gazing at a round table and an ugly blue vase as if I was interested in buying them. How weird, I was thinking, that out of the three shops in the village, one sold something as useless as antiques.

  The bus pulled up, the door opening with a hiss. I watched as five people got off slowly, pulling hats down, fastening coats, the last one a young woman with a toddler in her arms. Marco appeared, dark glasses on, his legs slender in black drainpipes, pausing at the top of the steps. We stood and stared at each other until the bus driver leaned over. ‘You getting off, or what?’ Marco winked at me over his glasses, jumping down. He looked fragile in the morning light. He wasn’t wearing anything but a thin jacket, a crucifix dangling over his grey T-shirt. He sneezed. It was a chilly spring day and I was bundled up in a winter coat. I pulled the coat open at my neck, flicking my hair back from my face, licking my lips. ‘Hi,’ I said, aiming for a relaxed drawl, but it came out as a kind of squeak.

  I hurried him away from the bus shelter. I didn’t want him to see my name scratched into the wood, rude things scrawled in green paint. When he tried to hold my hand, I pulled away. ‘Not yet,’ I hissed. He took no notice, tickling me until, in the end, he’d been impossible to resist. I let him grab me close, hooking his arm around my neck. ‘What’s your hurry?’ he asked. ‘We’ve got all afternoon.’

  Tucked under his armpit, I smelt spicy aftershave and stale nicotine, the chemical scent of hair gel. I looked down at our feet striding in unison, feeling the rub of his hipbone against my own, and a rebellious thrill rushed through me, excitement prickling my skin. We sauntered down the lane that went past the castle, him talking about his new guitar and me glancing around for snoops that might report back to my parents.

  The path along the seawall is too narrow for more than one, but with our hips stuck together, his arm tight around my shoulder, we managed. I sneaked looks from under my hair. The weather had blasted his skin, turning it bluish. His cold had rimmed his nostrils with red, and he had a spot on his temple. I considered him lovely. His heavily lidded eyes gave him a sleepy, languid look. I got butterflies in my stomach every time he turned that look on me.

  I stopped and took a roll of paper out of my inside coat pocket. It was slightly bent. ‘For you.’ I handed it to him, watching him unroll it, my throat tightening. ‘It’s not very good…’

  He was looking at my picture. ‘You did this for me?’

  I nodded. I’d used black pen, drawing Dracula playing a guitar, a whole host of strange winged animals crowding into the background. Every part of the paper was covered with delicate lines. It had taken me ages. ‘Cool.’ He rolled it up carefully and put it in his jacket pocket.

  We continued along the muddy path and our shoes grew heavier and heavier with cloying earth. He slipped and I braced myself to take his weight.

  ‘This place,’ he gestured to the river and the sea beyond, ‘shit, it’s bleak.’ He inclined his head towards the island. ‘What’s that out there? Looks like factory chimneys. Is it an island?’

  I nodded. ‘Ministry of Defence.’

  He sneezed again. Turned up the collar of his jacket. ‘Think I’ll always be a city boy. Give me some pollution, I can breathe more easily.’

  I smiled as if I knew what he meant. It was true that I longed to escape the village, to get away from small-town minds, go to London and be free. But this was my home. I felt torn.

  Something moved in the corner of my vision, a blur of kingfisher colour. I looked round sharply, fearing the worst: Robert and his mates back to laugh at us. I stared hard at the reeds at the foot of the bank, watching a slight tremor, the rustle of stems. A white swan raised its head above the line of the rushes.

  ‘Is it true,’ Marco pointed at it, ‘they can break a man’s arm?’

  ‘Only if you do something stupid to annoy them,’ I answered, giving the swan and the rushes one last keen stare.

  We walked on into the wind, Marco complaining about a new single by The Cure: ‘Shame, but they’ve sold out, you know. Since “The Love Cats” they’ve really got commercial.’

  ‘Who’s your favourite band then–the most gothic of the gothic?’

  He sighed. ‘I still can’t believe Bauhaus have broken up–“Bela Lugosi’s Dead” is one of the all-time great tracks.’

  He stopped and turned, dipping his face abruptly to kiss me. His lips, at first dry against mine, became wet as his tongue moved in soft circles. I smelt the gluey taste of his germs, but it didn’t stop my stomach caving in with wanting, the feeling of melting creeping into my legs, making them hollow. I dug my fingertips into the sinews of his arms.

  There was a sound, a snorting gasping noise, not animal. A human. We broke apart, scanning the undergrowth with quick, jittery glances. It came again, smothered, and I recognised it as laughter. There were cows moving slowly on the horizon. The swan, calm and curved, moved at a sedate pace along the stream. Then I saw the shine of blonde hair, the blue of a familiar jumper, her shoulder poking out from behind an alder tree.

  ‘Faith Gale,’ I called out. ‘I can see you. You’d better go home now, or there’ll be trouble.’

  I glanced up at Marco apologetically, but he was smiling, in relief or amusement I couldn’t tell.

  Billy is mending his fishing line. He bends over it in concentration. I am feeling frustrated, bored.

  ‘Music,’ I say, ‘you must like music. What do you listen to?’

  ‘Nothing.’ He shrugs. ‘I don’t think about it.’

  ‘Really? I thought all “young people” liked music. Isn’t it our expression, our way to tell the world who we are, what we think?’

  ‘I don’t want some pop star to speak for me, tell me what to think. Don’t need music here, do you? Not with the sea and the wind.’ He glances up at me. ‘I like silence.’

  ‘So you’ve never listened to any bands?’

  ‘Genesis,’ he mumbles. ‘I’ve listened to them.’

  ‘God, Phil Collins!’ I snort, covering my mouth with a hand. ‘Aren’t they a bit old?’

  ‘Laugh all you like. Pop stars don’t know anything worth hearing. Think you’re clever, do you, girl?’ He raises his eyebrows. ‘What bands do you listen to then?’

  ‘Eva,’ I say quickly, my heart beating faster, ‘remember? My name is Eva.’

  He runs the fishing wire through his fingers, testing it, and looks up at me, frowning. He bows his head again, examining the line in his hand. ‘Eva,’ he repeats quietly.

  I am filled with a tingling sense of something like pleasure. And my body softens with relief. He looks at me and I flush, dropping my gaze.

  ‘I listen to Bowie sometimes,’ I say. ‘He’s classic. Siouxsie and the Banshees. New Order. Sisters of Mercy.’ I talk quickly, reeling off bands that I remember Marco talking about, playing to me, placing the stylus carefully, drawing breath as the first chord sounds. I hope Billy doesn’t notice the shake in my voice. I’m trying to cover it up. I clasp my knees with my hands.

  Outside, waves sweep onto the pebbly shore, rattling stones, swilling foam and rubbish up onto the shoreline. Gulls swoop and moan in white circles as usual. But everything is different, because he has used my name.

  22

  1967

  The phone call came at three in the morning. Max answered, stumbling into the cold living room, half-asleep, to hear Charlie’s muffled, shocked voice. Suky had gone into premature labour. Something had gone wrong. She’d been transferred to hospital in a coma, but the baby was safe.

  Max went alone to the Mission. He felt that until he had the child in his arms, he couldn’t trust that they wouldn’t be disappointed again. He knew that Clara couldn’t bear that. The nun that picked the baby out of the cot and handed it over was motherly-looking, plump and lined, but her small eyes were impenetrable as olive stones. He wrote his name in a book called ‘Register of Removals’. It felt oddly furtive. The creature was tiny, an exhausted, angry red face swaddled in scratchy grey blankets. He remembered the soft fabric in Suky’s hands, the blanket she’d been embroidering for her child. ‘Is there another blanket, Sister?’ he asked the nun. ‘A blue one, with dragons?’ The woman shook her head with an impatient frown, opening the door, standing aside to let him leave.

  As Max placed the baby in the carrycot on the back seat and drove home, he was scared, overwhelmed by sudden responsibility, disorientated by the abrupt switch into the world of parenting. He didn’t feel like a parent. The baby was an alien creature. It screamed all the way, not soothed by the engine, or the motion of the car.

  Clara opened the front door, her face tense with anxiety. He lifted the child from the carrycot, terrified that he was going to drop it, and placed it in her arms. There was a distinct smell of fetid, soiled nappies. But Clara softened, her face shining bright. ‘What is it?’

  ‘A girl.’ Max said.

  Suky died without coming out of the coma. She never saw her daughter. Max’s memory of the girl in the dormitory–fingers holding a needle, embroidery in her lap and swollen ankles up on the bed–faded. Although sometimes he woke at night, and lying in the darkness he would suddenly recall the look on her face as she’d handed him the necklace.

  The baby that Max had placed in her arms wasn’t the plump, cherubic creature of Clara’s imagination. There’d been no blonde curls or blue eyes gazing up at her. Eva was oddly skinny, her premature body covered with flaking skin. Black hair stood up in a thick, inky thatch; a scrunched face refused to look at the world.

  With her toothless mouth hinged open as wide as it would go, the baby spread her wrinkled fingers and screamed. At the blast of anguish, Clara’s breasts tingled. She put her hands over them in surprise. She slipped her finger into the child’s mouth, feeling a gummy suction pulling at her. Immediately Eva spat the finger out in despair, yelling again even harder. ‘Well,’ Clara told her. ‘You know what you want, don’t you?’

  Clara’s fears of being an inadequate mother disappeared. Instinct took over. Eva took over. She’d howled night after night, sicking up her formula milk and contorting her tiny body in colicky spasms. There was so much to do that there was no time to think. Eva needed her, and that was enough. As days passed and familiarity grew, Eva began to respond to Clara, to echo her facial expressions, to relax at her touch.

  Feeding Eva her bottle, Clara found herself gazing into a deep frown of concentration, milk bubbles collecting at blistered lips, eyes screwed tightly shut, and knew that this small being was a survivor. The spirit of the person she was going to grow into radiated from her, so that sometimes Clara glimpsed inside the unformed face the child that Eva would become, and layered beyond that her teenager and adult selves staring back. ‘You’re going to be all right.’ Clara squeezed the wriggling toes gently. ‘I somehow think you’re going to have us both twisted around your little finger. And then the whole world.’

  It didn’t matter that Eva hadn’t heard Clara’s voice in the womb. It didn’t even matter that Clara had never met Suky, had no idea who Eva’s real father was. Because now Clara understood: all babies are strangers from a watery, distant planet. They come trailing secret dreams behind them, the alchemy of their characters forming with their first gasp of air.

  Mother and daughter learnt about each other through days of windy colic, inexpertly fastened nappies, long afternoon naps and sleepless nights. It wasn’t easy, but there was never a moment that Clara regretted their decision to adopt. One evening she saw a piece on the news about a mother cat adopting a baby squirrel and it made her realise that the drive to be a mother went beyond reason: the need to love and nurture a creature that needed you was stronger than blood ties, stronger even than the boundaries of species.

  Eva was with her constantly, night and day, clinging to her, her lolling head tucked into her shoulder as she was carried around the flat with Clara singing softly. All the love that Clara had been unable to give to the four lost babies was funnelled into this small daughter. So much love that she thought it would burst out of her like a river. Eva had a Moses basket next to the bed, but in the bleary hours of early-morning feeds, Clara didn’t put her back, so that Eva slept between her new parents, her limbs flung open in trust.

  When Max suggested a fresh start, a move to Suffolk so that they could be near his mother, close to the river and the sea, Clara agreed. She’d become a recluse after the last miscarriage, depressed and unable to leave the flat, seeing no one, even her old theatre friends. Because of that it had been possible to present Eva to the world as their baby, telling friends that Clara hadn’t wanted to let anyone know that she was pregnant; and everyone who knew their history was sympathetic, not wanting to ask questions, only relieved that there was a happy ending after all. Max was embarrassed about the lie. But although he would have felt more comfortable telling people the truth, he remembered the nun bundling Eva into his arms, and the way she’d slipped the envelope of cash into a pocket hidden in the folds of her habit. It had left him with a bad taste in his mouth, an uneasy feeling in his gut. Better to put it behind them and move on, he’d thought. He found a house deep in the countryside and neglected to leave a forwarding address at the London flat.

  When they’d arrived in Suffolk, the hedges had been thick with white flowers, different shades of green sprouting from trees and ground. Max had shown her the house, looking excited but anxious. ‘It’s not too big, is it?’ he’d asked. ‘You won’t feel isolated, will you?’