Lucy makes a strangled noise, deep from her throat. Anna looks over at her to see she’s flushed completely; even the tips of her ears are bright red.
‘I’m sorry,’ the girl says, the words bursting out of her. ‘I didn’t know you had a baby.’
‘It’s not bad enough that he’s married?’ Rachel says, more gently than Anna would have expected under the circumstances.
‘I don’t . . .’ Lucy says. ‘I mean . . .’
‘He can’t help it, you know. It’s how he’s put together. None of it means anything to him, not really. It’s a curse, being so handsome. People just throw themselves at him. And he’s very bad at saying no.’
Lucy makes another strangled sound. Anna looks from her to Rachel, back to Lucy again, realisation dawning on her. The girl can’t possibly go any redder than she already is – Anna half wonders if steam might start coming out of her ears. The tension Anna sensed from the start builds so high that she is about to stand up, run out of the room to get away from it, but after a moment, Rachel laughs, as if she’s decided that she’s tormented Lucy enough.
‘Look, I’m not blaming you for it – but I do think maybe you should protect yourself a bit more. It will only end in tears. The only thing he takes seriously is his work. Ever since Gabriela died . . .’ She stands up. ‘OK. Rowan’s going to be asleep for a while yet – there’s time. Will you come with me? I want to show you something.’
Before Anna can quite clock what’s going on, they’re sitting in Rachel’s car, a Mini, driving up Banbury Road out of Oxford. Anna is sitting in the front beside Rachel, Lucy in the back. The girl is so crumpled, so shrunken, that Anna reckons they could have stuck her in the boot and she wouldn’t have complained. The afternoon has darkened to evening, a couple of stars beginning to shine in the dark blue of the sky, all lit up by a huge moon. The worm moon. Sometimes known as the death moon. Anna remembers the lunar names, learned long ago at school. A chill runs across her skin.
They drive for a while. Every traffic light is red against them.Stop. Don’t go. Anna wants them to take the hint, turn round. She can’t stand the increasing pressure. The indicator is ticking, a relentless noise that’s getting inside her head, buzzing under her skin.
‘For God’s sake,’ she starts to say, but at that moment they take a left turn off the main road. Anna catches a glimpse of a sign, only able to read the word ‘Cemetery’ before they drive past it, slowing near a series of low buildings. Rachel pulls the car over into a parking space and gets out, Lucy following. Anna sits for a moment, reluctant to go anywhere further with these women, to be caught up anymore in the madness of it.
She could walk away now, disappear quietly into the night. It’s not her problem; not her side of the road to clean. These people have nothing to do with Kelly. It’s not like she has anywhere else to go, though, and her bag is back at the house, all her worldly goods. She’s got too little to be able to leave that behind. No choice. Not really. She gets out of the car and joins them.
Rachel leads them forward. It’s nearly dark, but still light enough to be able to see the path, the gravestones laid out neatly in a row. Far tidier than an old Victorian graveyard, the stones are straight here, not tumbled over by tree roots and subsidence. Rachel is ahead of Anna, Lucy by her side, and they stop walking after a couple of minutes. Anna catches up with them.
They’re standing by a white marble headstone, engraved in gold. Rachel shines the torch from her phone on to it.
GABRIELA RODRIGUES PEREZ
1985–2014
MUCH LOVED, MUCH MISSED
‘What are we doing here?’ Lucy says. She’s clearly as confused as Anna.
‘She haunts Edgar,’ Rachel says. ‘Or rather, her death does.’ She kneels and pulls a couple of weeds up from next to the headstone, rearranges a wreath that’s leaning up against it. ‘We didn’t bring this wreath, you know. I came up to visit at the beginning of this week. That’s when I knew something might be up,’ she says, her voice slightly sing-song, far away, as if she’s already halfway through a conversation that Anna and Lucy haven’t been able to hear until now.
‘It could’ve been Edgar?’ Lucy says.
Anna is saying nothing. She doesn’t want to know.
‘He hardly ever comes up here; never, really. I sometimes visit, just to pay my respects, let her know how he’s getting on. It feels like the least I can do. No one else visits, though. Her family are all in Bolivia, what’s left of them. I was really confused when I found the wreath here.’
Anna draws closer, a wave of sadness passing over her. This poor woman, dead in a strange land, no one to visit her other than the new wife of her bereaved husband. She looks more intently at the wreath. It’s withered now, the colour faded, the petals pale in the gloaming. But it was clearly expensive, an impressive arrangement of roses and lilies, ornate in its presentation.
‘Who do you think left it?’ Lucy says.
‘I wasn’t sure,’ Rachel says. ‘But when Victor turned up at the house yesterday, I knew. He was a friend of Gabriela’s. Knew her family back in La Paz.’
‘Why are you showing us this?’ Lucy says.
‘Because something’s up. There are things here that should be left buried.’
45
It’s so dark that even though the path is smooth, Lucy nearly stumbles as they walk back to the car. No one is speaking. It must be a beautiful place in many ways, trees all around, beds of roses, but all Lucy can see are the bones under the grass, skulls grinning out at her from every headstone.
Lucy sits in the front on the way back, watching Rachel as she drives, staring intently through the windscreen as she negotiates the dark streets on the way back to the house in Woodstock Road. It’s busy, but not overly so – it feels like no time until they’ve arrived, Rachel pulling into the drive with a crunch of gravel.
Lucy is exhausted. She’s kept clear of cemeteries and the like ever since her mother’s funeral, a short, fraught event, the details of which she’s mostly managed to erase from her mind. There weren’t any flowers, that much she does remember – her father told the few mourners to give the money to charity instead, and the coffin went into the crematorium oven unadorned.
