‘I’m not surprised. Is that why you came back here?’
‘To be honest, I really don’t know why I’m here. I’ve no connection with the place any more. It just seemed… safe.’
‘You grew up in Cranborne, Eve. Amongst these hills. They’re part of you. Are you staying in the town?’
‘Yes, with a witch called Philippa.’
He laughs.
‘What’s funny?’
‘Nothing, really. Philippa Penrose is a bit of a local celebrity. Finding missing cats, curing migraines, cursing river polluters, that sort of thing. And the odd bit of glamour work too, from what I’ve heard.’
‘Glamour work?’
‘Photographic modelling. I think more saucy than actually pornographic.’
‘A girl’s got to live,’ Eve murmurs.
‘I couldn’t agree more. I’m not judging her; in fact, I think she’s a thoroughly good sort. Her boy Tom’s a bit of a liability, though. He’s got in with some fairly scuzzy types.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Drug dealers. I’d be worried if I was his mum. He’s a vulnerable kid.’
‘What was your wife’s name?’
‘Claire. Claire Bowden.’
‘She did sixth form too, didn’t she?’
‘Yes. Do you remember her?’
‘I think so. If she’s the person I think she is, she had a Tamagotchi which she starved to death.’
Jack laughs. ‘I didn’t know that. Perhaps it’s lucky she and I didn’t have children.’
Eve feels a sharp, unexpected pang of hunger, and glances towards the town. When she looks back, Jack’s hands are thrust purposefully into his pockets, and he’s staring in the opposite direction with the air of one keen to move on. ‘I should go,’ she murmurs.
He grins. ‘If you’re here for a bit, it’d be nice to see you again.’
‘I don’t have a phone. But you know where to find me.’
Well, there’s a surprise. Jack Demerell, of all people. He really is very different from how I remember him. And that date, details of which are coming back to me. The film was a riff on Shakespeare’sTwelfth Night, a fact which sailed way over my head at the time. And then there was the bus ride home from the cinema. When we sat down Jack put an arm round my shoulders, or more precisely laid it along the back of the seat, and then leaned in for a kiss at the exact moment that I rose to my feet to get off the bus. I could have ducked back down. He’d been nice, and we hadn’t quite reached my stop. But I didn’t. I just gave him a wave and a tight smile, and that was it. I saw him around the school a couple of times before I left for the US, and we exchanged awkward how-are-yous, but that failed kiss was always hanging in the air between us.
Why did I come back to Cranborne? It certainly wasn’t to get back in touch with anyone I used to know here. I could’ve done that any time in the last decade, and I never did. It’s beautiful round here, but it’s also the place I grew up, the place where I was a bored child and an awkward, sulky teenager, and this gives it a weird time-frozen air. Why was I always so cranky and difficult? I can’t, for the life of me, remember. But then my entire pre-Oxana self is hazy and indistinct. Oxana changed everything. She likes to say that she created me, and for all her bullshit, that’s kind of true.
Am I here in search of an earlier version of myself? Yesterday, I felt so sure that coming to Cranborne was the right thing to do. But do I really want to go back in time? Is it too late to cut open the Oxana snakebite and suck out the poison? Or is it already, irreversibly, racing through my bloodstream?
11
Oxana and her friends are sitting at the back of an infant welfare class. The class is being taken by Miss Scott, a firm-but-fair type who has been darting uncertain glances at Oxana throughout the lesson. ‘I want to talk to you today,’ she says, ‘about emotional self-control. You all know that, however kind the family you’re attached to, and however much they make you feel a part of that family, the day will come when you have to leave. So how do you protect yourself? How do you ensure that you don’t get hurt?’ She looks round the room. ‘Let’s ask our new girl.’
Oxana is staring out of the window with her mouth open, and Georgie digs her in the ribs with her elbow. ‘Ox,’ she hisses.
‘Yes,’ Oxana says, snapping awake.
‘How do you make sure that you don’t get hurt?’ Miss Scott asks.