‘It’ll take some time to get used to the idea. I was against it at first too,’ she’s saying in a soothing voice. ‘But after the whole rowing-boat fiasco… well, I had to reconsider. Dad is right, Faith. It would be kinder. To all of us.’

  ‘When?’ I ask tightly.

  ‘We’ll put the house on the market in the next week or so,’ she glances at my face and adds quickly, ‘but I should think it’ll take a while to find a buyer. It won’t be an easy house to sell.’

  Summer is slipping away. I can see a few yellow leaves on the trees, imagine the smell of wood smoke in the air. Term is about to start. I think of scratched wooden desks, the stink of rubber and sweat in the changing rooms. The bell for break, a rabble of children’s voices, all of us trapped, running round and round the square of tarmac that teachers call a playground. And I still haven’t managed to get to the island. I feel panicky, as if something is chasing me–a creature with wings spread wide.

  Mum is talking to me again: ‘Don’t, Faith. Leave your warts alone or they’ll never go.’

  I look down and realise that I’ve been scratching, digging my fingernails under the lumps. I fold my hands up into fists, ball them in my lap, and stare out of the window at the blur of passing landscape.

  Dad is glued to the television. Mum is in the bath. I can hear music coming from Sophie’s room. They all think I’ve gone to bed. But I’m not asleep. Every night I practise holding my breath so that I’ll have more chance of saving myself if I fall in when I go to the island.

  Sitting cross-legged in the middle of my patchwork eiderdown, Granny’s old one, I close my eyes and suck up as much air as I can, holding the air prisoner behind my lips.

  My lungs are pressed shut. I can hear my heart banging inside my ribs. I don’t like it. It makes me panic. It reminds me of being under water, like the time we capsized. There’s a bubbling inside, as if liquid is boiling and snapping through me like an ocean. A dull thundering starts up in my brain. Everything hurts. My eyes are going to pop out. I’m desperate to open my mouth. I clench my lips tighter, and snatch a glance at the clock on my bedside table. But I’ve already forgotten what time it was when I began. Lights flash on and off. When I close my eyes, sticky blobs of colour crawl across my inside eyelids. I feel dizzy and sick. I open my mouth to gasp air, big shuddering breaths, one after the other, my chest heaving.

  Falling sideways, I do nothing but breathe. Air is delicious. I catch a waft of rose oil, the comfort of Granny rising from the worn eiderdown. When I begin to feel normal again, I’m angry. I pinch the skin on my arm, twisting till it burns. I’m useless. I must keep practising. It’s the only way to get better. Dad was always telling me and Eva that success is ten per cent inspiration, ninety per cent perspiration. But not breathing feels like suffocation. I’m not sure if I can do it again. Not yet anyway. I reach out my hand to switch off the light, slipping my legs under the covers and pulling the pillow under my head. Lying on my back, looking into the darkness, I wonder if I’m a coward. I wish that I was as strong as Eva, but my sister has inherited the brave genes, leaving me the little withered ones that make me afraid.

  31

  Billy hasn’t mentioned Jack and Granny again. Nothing has changed. I am still a prisoner and I don’t know why. If anything, Billy is being even more careful about locking us in at night, even more diligent about tying my hands whenever we’re out of the pagoda, which is less and less.

  The hours pass slowly. Small things have to entertain me. He passes me a bruised apple and I take it gratefully. Eating it will fill in some time. His knuckles are a mess of broken skin and weeping flesh. They look as though they might be infected. I wince and look away, and can’t stop myself blurting, ‘Why do you do that?’

  He frowns and turns his back on me as if I’ve offended him. It seems as though he’s gone into one of his silent moods. He can keep it up for hours. I bring the apple closer to my lips, my mouth filling with saliva in anticipation, but he’s contemplating me, chewing his lip and scowling. He jabs a finger. ‘Reckon you’ve got a whole heap of things you could do with your life if you wanted it. Privileged, aren’t you, with your books and painting?’

  I stare at him, my mouth slack. He glares and our eyes hold each other’s. Nervously I shuffle back until I’m pressed against the cold wall.

  He waves his hand. ‘Not many choices–not where I come from. Nobody was an artist there. If I’d stayed at home it would have been the end. Trapped. Not just the tunnels. I mean the drudge of it: each day the same, sucking the life out.’

  I slide down into a sitting position. My lips are dry and I curl my tongue, wetting the lizard texture of them. He’s not looking at me anymore. He’s staring at the walls and his eyes are bright in the mask of his face.

  ‘There were only two choices. Go down the pits or join up. I always wanted to be a soldier.’ Then he asks quietly, slyly, ‘What do you think soldiers are for?’

  I grip the apple’s fat, waxy contours, uncertain if it’s a rhetorical question or a trick. After a moment, he says, ‘Trained to kill, aren’t they? For king and country and all that.’

  I nod, drawing my knees up tighter into my hungry belly. I don’t understand why he’s telling me this, but I don’t like where it seems to be headed.

  ‘Thought it was fuckin’ brilliant when I got my tour of duty in Northern Ireland. I’d been a squaddie for two years and I knew the weight of a rifle in my hands, the pull against my shoulder when I squeezed the trigger. You kept your gun closer than a girl, looked after it better too.’ He tilts his chin. ‘I was a good soldier. Even after a beasting, I just set me lips and picked it all up, started over. It’s all in the mind, see.’ He taps his forehead. ‘That’s the trick. Never giving up. It’s about endurance.’

  He pulls at the straggling hair of his beard. Flecks of spittle show white in the corner of his mouth. He paces backwards and forwards, takes a glance to see my face. ‘Operation Banner. Mean anything to you?’

  I frown, puzzled.

  ‘Hunger strikers. Bobby Sands dying in his shit-smeared cell. Got everyone wound up.’ He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘That was the buzz in the barracks. We hadn’t been told anything from high up. I knew what nasty fuckers the IRA were though. The thought of killing one made my pulse race. It was what I’d been training for.’ He stares at me.

  I nod.

  ‘Northern Ireland was different from what I expected. Felt like a lie from the moment I got there. Didn’t like being cooped up in the sangars. Felt like a fuckin’ sitting duck. Places stank. Some of the men pissed in them. Going out on patrol was best. With my rifle in my hands, all of me on red-alert, I could hear better, see more clearly. I was sharp. Had all the right instincts.’

  ‘Why did you leave?’ I watch him pacing the pagoda. ‘What happened?’

  He ignores me. His eyes are glazed again, as if he’s sleep-walking. ‘On the streets there’s this smell of burning peat. You’re a ghost: nobody looks at you. Not straight on.’

  I press the apple to my lips. Its scent reminds me of early autumn mornings, wet grass and wood smoke. Helping Dad in the garden, sweeping leaves into mounds, Faith throwing handfuls of them at me, wet shapes fluttering down, burnished and gleaming.

  ‘First riot I was in, you wouldn’t believe the noise: banging dustbin lids, referee’s whistles. A mob roars like the sea. One woman spat in my face.’ He’s looking at me again, pacing up and down. ‘A bottle hit Napper,’ he shakes his head, ‘broken glass, blood everywhere, him on his knees, clutching at his eyes, screaming. There’s me hauling him towards the truck, and I look up, right at this kid who couldn’t have been more than ten, lad with freckles. The kid hurls a brick at me, hard as he can.’ He screws the heel of his hand into an eye. ‘They hated us. All of ’em. But I’d never felt anything like it before, an excitement, felt it knocking at me ribs.’ He pats his chest. ‘It’s like a drug, you see. That feeling. An addiction.’ He squats on the floor next to me so that our knees are touching. ‘Army is full of people who are like me. Like I used to be. Lads who have no choice, who want to be told what to do. Easy targets for brainwashing.’

  His left eye flickers, his mouth sagging inside stained hair. He looks exhausted.

  ‘But your hands…’ I remind him cautiously.

  He glances down at his knuckles and spreads his fingers wide with a look of surprise. He stares, contemplating the shape of his hands as if he’s admiring them. ‘Just a scratch.’

  The evenings are drawing in. Shadows are longer; the sun seems lower in the sky. In the early hours a mist comes creeping, different from a summer mist; this one has the promise of frost in it. I don’t need a watch to tell the time. I can see it in the sky and in the way the light falls. It’s September. The change in weather has given me a sore throat, a scratchy tickle like sharp fingers working inside the texture of my flesh.

  Life is distilled here. There is only the movement of the sea and the sun coming up and setting again. Those rhythms inhabit me; I feel the measure of them inside my pulse, my breathing. I thought I knew this place when Faith and I used to steal across on the boat. I thought it was barren then, devoid of life. How could I have been so blind? Tiny white flowers push up between pebbles. Tall yellow grasses move like a wheat field, whispering in the wind. I’ve seen small brown voles, a stoat once. Rabbits scatter, darting into their burrows, running blind with panic in the wrong direction. I saw a fox yesterday. It crept under the gorse bushes, belly low to the ground, rust coat shining in the light. When it sensed me it froze, turning its mask towards me. I remembered the dead fox that Faith and I found, the carcass writhing with maggots. There is nothing left of it now. Not even a bone.

  Billy isn’t asleep. He’s sitting in the doorway, his legs in the corridor, smoking. I can see the curl of smoke, his bowed head. He turns, looking towards my corner. Moonlight catches the planes of his face, turns his eyes into empty sockets.

  ‘You asleep?’ he asks me.

  ‘No.’

  He throws his cigarette butt away. I watch the spit of red. ‘I keep praying for her to come back.’ His voice is tight and I see his head in silhouette drop forward into his hands.

  I raise myself onto my knees, hearing them creak. The floor is hard and cold. ‘Who do you mean?’ I ask quietly.

  His tone is flat, expressionless. ‘The voice.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’ I wish I could see his face properly. I can’t judge his mood without a visual guide. He hasn’t tied me tonight, so I walk cautiously through the darkness, feeling my way around the pit, stepping across milky stripes of moonlight.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he says, hesitating over his words. ‘I’ve done what she asked. I need to know what comes next. She must be testing me.’

  I’m standing close to him, my heart knocking so loudly at my ribs that the thud of it feels audible. I take a deep breath. ‘Perhaps it’s over,’ I say softly. ‘Perhaps… perhaps now it’s time to let me go. There isn’t anything else she wants you to do.’

  Billy is very still. I clear my throat. ‘It’s what Jack would have wanted too, I think—’

  Billy has uncurled in one fluid movement. He’s standing in the doorway with his legs spread, widening to fill the frame. ‘Don’t tell me what Gramps would have wanted.’ He shakes his head and grabs my arm, holds it tight. ‘You don’t know.’

  I swallow. ‘I’m sorry. You’re right. But, please, just let me go. I’ll never tell anyone.’ My voice falters. ‘Never.’

  ‘No,’ he says, thick and low. ‘It’s not time.’

  I can smell him, the prickle of sweat and fear, the unwashed stench of his skin and greasy hair, the bitter tang of cigarette smoke. I lick my lips, trying to pull away, but he holds on, fingers wrapping tightly, and there is a tremor in his body, a shake. He gives me a push. ‘I never said you could get up. Go back to your corner. Lie down.’

  He stoops above me, binding my hands. ‘You’re trying to trick me,’ he mutters, yanking the rope tighter. ‘Is it them? Did they get to you?’

  ‘No,’ I tell him. My throat closing. ‘No.’

  ‘If you don’t shut up I’ll gag you.’

  ‘Please don’t.’ A cough grates in my chest.

  His mouth is set in a line as he ties the knot at my wrists. ‘I’m doing this for you.’ He sounds disappointed as he stoops over my legs to bind my ankles. ‘For you, Eva.’

  I am passive, unresisting. He pulls at the rope until it bites. I thought things were changing. After finding out about Jack and Granny, after his rant about the army, I hoped it signalled a change, that he’d begun to open up to me, begun to trust me. The rope is too tight around my wrists. I can’t get comfortable. Lying on my back I stare into the lofty heights of the roof, watching the movement of clouds through the opening, narrow slices of open sky caught between the concrete bulk of the building and the heavy roof. The tickle is in my throat again and I cough. My chest feels bruised, as if I’ve fallen down a flight of stairs.

  32

  As she hurries out of the library after work, her mind busy with plans to call into the supermarket and pick up a packet of pasta, some milk perhaps, and dog food, mustn’t forget dog food, Clara stumbles into someone. There’s a jolt. She feels a frail arm against her ribs, an elbow jabbing her side. The folds of a black habit flutter across her. A cross swings on a chain, silver in the light. The collision is over in a few seconds. Clara steps back. A tiny, stooped nun smiles with ancient, washed-out eyes, nodding forgiveness.

  Clara stands on the pavement apologising, staring after her, watching as the elderly nun crosses the street. She appears gently purposeful in her floating robes, diminutive, harmless. Clara breathes fast, air sticking in her chest. Her lungs don’t work properly. It makes her feel dizzy, as if she might faint. She puts a hand against the library wall, 1960s breezeblocks grazing her palm.

  She keeps having the same dream. She and Suky blur at the edges, blending into one person, lying in bed in the darkness, with her newborn baby beside her. And always there are nuns bending over the cot, picking Eva up with spiky fingers, carrying her away. Sometimes, at unexpected moments during the day, Clara hears Suky singing to her drowned daughter, or her voice telling Clara: You’ve lost my baby.

  Clara can’t contradict the ghost. The voice in her head. Eva has been lost and it is their fault. Max and Clara. Eva was entrusted to them. Trusted them. Believed they were her parents. Max had always wanted to tell Eva that she was adopted. He’d argued with Clara after Faith was born, but Clara had gestured towards the baby suckling noisily in her arms. Couldn’t he see that having Faith made it more impossible? How could they tell Eva without making her feel rejected? As far as Clara was concerned, Eva was her child; she felt that belonging in her bones, in the fibre of her being.

  As Faith grew up, Clara and Max spotted characteristics and features in her that reminded them of each other, of their parents. They were careful not to mention it in front of the girls. Strangers considered the girls, acknowledging how different their colouring was, and Clara would smile and hold her breath until invariably someone pointed out some imagined family likeness. ‘Their eyes are the same shape,’ or ‘You can see those cheekbones came from the same gene pool.’ People saw what they wanted. And always, Eva’s height connected her to Max: one blonde and one dark, the two of them heading towards the river with loping strides. Clara had mourned the loss of the small toddler who’d followed her from room to room. Eva was no longer her constant sticky-fingered companion, but a leggy child that craved independence, looking past her mother to the excitement of her father and the sea. But even as she’d missed her, Clara had been glad that Max and Eva shared a passion. She’d trusted him to take care of her.

  When Clara arrives home, her arms full of shopping, she doesn’t mention the nun to Max. She hasn’t told him about her recurring dream. She guesses that he must have his own unspoken nightmares. Anyway, they’ve stopped talking about anything except the necessary, the everyday. She can’t seem to do anything about it. There’s a voice inside her screaming, but her lips won’t make the shapes to let it out. As if she is paralysed.

  She calls goodnight from the threshold of his study door. He turns and gives her the hesitant smile she’s come to dread: lips folded over guilt and resentment, unhappy eyes that beg her for something she can’t give. She mounts the stairs, her hand heavy on the bannister. She knows that when she falls asleep she’ll see the face of a dead woman, Suky coming to her to share a grief that nobody else understands.

  While Max sleeps fitfully at his desk, files pressing a ridge into his cheek, he dreams that Clara comes downstairs to find him. He thinks he feels the light touch of her fingers on the back of his head, tracing the raised line of his scar. When he wakes, he’s alone.

  Upstairs, he opens the door to their bedroom quietly. Clara is in a deep sleep, sprawled across the bed on her front with her arms flung out. It’s a warm night and the window is open. He blinks in the darkness, using the trickle of moonlight filtering between the curtains to see. Clara’s nightdress has rucked up underneath her, showing the smooth slope of her lower back, the rise of her buttocks. He sits on the bed and puts his hand towards her. Even without touching her, he can feel heat rising from her skin, soft and intimate. Leaning close, he inhales her sleeping breath. She moans faintly and turns her head and he stands up quickly, his heart beating.

  Max wakes to the sound of wood pigeons. He can hear wind in the trees, and a sound of waves in the distance, the pull and push of water on a shore: air in and out of lungs. He hates that sound. It used to mean home to him; it used to mean freedom. Now he can’t look at the water beyond the sea wall without thinking about Eva. If he could change places with her he would. He wishes every day that it had been him that was lost and her that was found. His brain is trying to recover something that he knows is there. He can almost touch it–the thing that will tell him how it happened, how his daughter died.