“Nothing, darling. It was a joke. We had a little argument, that’s all.”
But it hadn’t sounded little.
“Were you listening to all our conversation?” Edie was lying on her bed. There were clothes everywhere, bags on the floor where she’d dropped them, teetering piles of magazines, even a plate with food crusted on it on the dressing table. It wasn’t right. Edie was a neat freak, usually.
“No,” she said, because she was afraid of the distress in her mum’s eyes, afraid that it would worsen if Imogen admitted the truth, or that Edie would get angry with her.
Lately, Edie’s heavy grief has been punctuated with scarier moments when she seems frightened and lashes out, though she tries to cover it up afterward, to pretend everything’s fine.
Imogen felt as if this was what was happening. She didn’t want a row over eavesdropping. Anyone could have heard what Edie was saying. Her side of the conversation wasn’t quiet.
Now she wishes she hadn’t lied that morning, that she’d questioned her mum about what was going on, because there’s definitely something off about him and off about how Imogen’s feeling and the fact that she can’t remember last night at all and it’s totally freaking her out.
The Land Rover rumbles uphill again, slower than yesterday, because the condition of the lane has deteriorated so much overnight. It’s like being on a slow-motion roller coaster, powered in fits and starts. William drives. John sits beside him.
In places, the fog is so dense that branches and twigs look like arms and hands reaching toward them with bent fingers. Emily flinches when they scratch the windows.
Emily sits in the back, beside Maggie and the dog and her ankle protests every bump and turn and lurch. The pain is hot and white.
All Emily can think about is whether Paul is on his way up here. Is he halfway, yet? Did he leave extra early, as he promised? She expects him to arrive mid- to late morning at the latest and it’s already nine o’clock.
Changing out of Maggie’s clothes and back into her own this morning was a relief. She let Maggie’s strange, frumpy garments fall to the bedroom floor with relish. They lay in a heap like a discarded skin and not a skin Emily ever wants to wear again.
When Emily said she was going back up to the barn with the men, Maggie argued that she should do no such thing, that they should take her to the hospital to have her ankle looked at, but Emily’s priority is to borrow a phone from Jayne or Ruth, who will have Paul’s number, or be able to get it.
She’s going to collect her stuff while she’s there and get back down to the farmhouse and call Paul, who, hopefully, will be on his way here and the bad dream that was last night will evaporate.
She’s trying to be strong but it’s a fragile act, the brave face she’s putting on in front of the Elliotts. She feels as if her lip might wobble at any moment. Humiliation at what happened to her last night, and terror that Paul has come to harm lurk just beneath the surface.
Every so often, William stops the car and John gets out to pull debris from the track in front of them. They barely speak. The family are strangely muted, Emily thinks, but she’s grateful for the silence.
When the vehicle emerges from the forest track, high up, she glimpses the sun rising through the mist. It’s hardly spectacular, more of a pale yolk uncertain on the horizon. She can’t feel any warmth on her face when she turns toward it but something about the spreading light encourages her to be strong.
She exhales and shuts her eyes.
It will be okay, she thinks, I’ll see him soon. If he’s alive.
Her fingernails dig painfully into her palms.
Eggs. She said she wasn’t hungry but sometimes a parent has to take the initiative.
I’m doing them easy over. They look messier that way, I know, but who has the patience for the perfect sunny side up? Life’s too short.
I open the bread bin to find we haven’t got any fresh bread. I check the freezer. It isn’t large, just one of those small spaces beneath our fridge. It doesn’t resemble the chest freezer in my locker at all, but the combination of the sound of the plastic suction breaking as I open it and the shock of the cold does something to me.
Proust’s madeleines, if you like.
How to describe the effect on me? Stone-cold horror would cover it.
I grab two slices of bread and slam the freezer shut, but the bread transfixes me. I see ice crystals embedded in it and I imagine Edie’s face, frozen the same way, skin glimmering, shimmering with cold beauty, eyelash tips laden with snowflakes, eyes so clear you could float in them, set sail across them. I wish I could have.
Why did she have to listen to other people? Why did she have to believe them? I would have made life good for her, loved her, looked after her, completed her family, made us whole.
But someone got between us, whispering into her ear, telling tales, poisoning her against me until I had no choice but to say goodbye to her.
The eggs burn. I bin them. The bread goes into the toaster.
I feel deeply sorry that Edie has to be cold in death. She hated the cold. Is Imogen the same? That’s something I need to find out about her.
