I shake my head.
“One day, maybe. I’m getting married later this year.” I hold up my hand so she can see the engagement ring on my finger. Lisa coos, leaning toward me to better see it.
“A winter wedding? How lovely. How long have you been with—?”
“Oscar. Uh, about three years. Engaged for one. I met him at university.”
I actually met Oscar in the student union. I was drunk, he was sober, and he escorted me back to my room on campus,making no attempt to kiss me, even when I desperately leaned in for it. Older than me by ten years, he was a mature student with a degree in physics who had just received a grant to begin research into zodiacal dust clouds. When he finally asked me out a week later, we drove to the coast to watch a meteor shower up on the cold, windswept cliffs. With his frank, open gaze and his surety, so certain in himself—inus—Oscar was unlike the other people I’d dated, other students, boys my own age with empty wallets and heavy, probing tongues in my mouth. He drove an Austin Metro with an interior of bright paprika orange and took me to the observatory at Herstmonceux and for dinners in Rye and Bath, places rich in history. I took my first foreign holidays with Oscar, visiting Gothic abbeys in France and Germany and the ghostly ruins of Pompeii. While all my peers were listening to the Eurythmics and Gary Numan, Oscar introduced me to the Carpenters and Joni Mitchell who sang that we are stardust, billion-year-old carbon.
“Whatever you have has to be better than mine and Paul’s wedding.” Lisa laughs, interrupting my thoughts. “Me, eight months pregnant and wearing one of Mum’s old dancing dresses with taffeta frills and the number seventy-nine pinned to my back. The registrar getting my name wrong, calling me Laura. I thought Paul was going to run out halfway through, just right on out into the road and keep going, never mind the flippin’ traffic.”
I nod, suddenly wrung out and homesick. The heat, this unfamiliar house, those strange people outside the front door—I have a frightening feeling that I have made a terrible mistake coming here.Should’ve listened to Oscar,I tell myself sternly.
“Why don’t you take your things upstairs, Mina? We’ve putyou in Billy’s room at the front. He’s in with us. The girls share the room next door. Sam, I’m afraid you’re on the sofa. It’s a bit of a squeeze but we’ll manage.”
“Thank you,” I say, as another wave of that homesickness washes over me. “You’re very kind.”
SIX
Upstairs I find myself in a gloomy hallway with scuffed skirting boards and faded floral wallpaper. At one end, a doorway leading into the small bathroom with a mustard-yellow bathtub and a narrow window of frosted glass, the upper corner gaffer-taped where a crack runs through it. At the other, Billy’s room. It’s a box room, small and dark and stuffy, with a narrow bed pushed against a wall covered in posters of footballers and racing cars, the wallpaper scraped away in long, curling strips. I unfasten my suitcase and lift out my washbag, putting it carefully on the bed. Inside it is the small package the doctor gave me the previous day. I hadn’t told Oscar about the doctor’s appointment. It hadn’t gone on the calendar, or in the notepad next to the phone. I’d kept it a secret, barely believing I would be brave enough to attend, even as I’d stood outside the surgery in the swelteringheat, my heart palpitating. “I had a pregnancy scare,” I told the doctor, knitting my fingers between my knees and leaning forward on the leatherette chair, “and I really ju— Ican’t.Do you understand that? Ican’tbe pregnant, not now.”
The doctor looked at me sympathetically, eyes dropping briefly to my engagement ring. She did not ask me any further questions as she filled out a prescription for the pill, and I was relieved. After all, how could I explain that the thought of having a baby with the man I am due to marry fills me with anxiety? That the idea of Oscar being a father—cautious, dutiful, resigned—makes me feel cold with a dread which I can’t name and daren’t examine, afraid of what it might mean? Instead I silently carried the little white box home from the chemist wrapped in a scarf and hidden in the bottom of my handbag. After all, if you’re careful, you’re safe, right? I turn back to my case and push aside the folded clothes, reaching into the small inner pocket. I pull out the photograph, carefully and reverently folded, the one taken in a restaurant in Crete with my brother in the background, appearing just over my shoulder. I study it, pressing my fingers gently to Eddie’s form. A psychometry token of my own, I think.
“That your husband?”
I jolt, looking up to see a young girl in the doorway. She is barefoot, pressing her toes deep into the carpet. With her denim cutoffs and wheat-colored hair, she’s a miniature version of Alice, only she has a frank, open gaze and a curiosity I hadn’t seen in her older sister.
“No, it’s my brother. You must be Tamsin.” I quickly fold the photograph away. “You gave me a fright.”
“You’re in Billy’s room. Poor you. He farts like mad.” She covers her mouth to hide a muffled laugh.
“Oh dear. But I think he’s sleeping with your mum and dad, so I should be safe. Do you share a room with your sister?”
She nods, chewing one of her fingernails. A soft toy hangs over her forearm, limbs dangling.
“That must be nice. I used to share a room with my brother when we were younger.”
“Alice hates it. Said she can’t wait to leave home.”
I study her. All three of the Webber children have a confidence I never had as a child; a willingness to look adults in the eye without fear of their scrutiny. It’s slightly disturbing. I’ve always assumed most children had been whittled into quiet obedience like Eddie and I had. It’s a shock.
Tamsin steps right into the room. It’s only small, and she is suddenly very close to me, enough that I can smell her breath, slightly sour. She looks around her with unconcealed distaste for her brother’s toys and clutter. She hooks her hands into her pockets, one leg wrapping around the other like a yogi.
“You’re here because there’s something wrong with Alice. Aren’t you?”
“Yes. But that’s not quite—”
“Will we be in the newspaper?”
“It’s not up to me, Tamsin. We’ll have to see what happens.”
“Huh.” She loses interest then, reaching for one of Billy’s toy cars. She spins the wheels of it with the palm of her hand. Her nose wrinkles. “I don’t like this room. It’s too small. My dad says when we get our new house we can have a bedroomeachand I’m going to get a cat of my very own.”
“Is that right?”
“Yeah. We’ll have enough room for a pinball machine and a pool table, he says. Mum said she wants a tumble dryer with lotsof different settings. Will you come live with us, too? You won’t have to sleep in Billy’s disgusting old room neither.”
“Well, I’ll be married by then, Tamsin, so I think I’ll need to live with my husband.”