The Stopped Heart (49 page)

T
HAT NIGHT THEY GO OVER AND STAY WITH
D
EBORAH UNTIL
her sister and brother-in-law arrive. She insists that it's not necessary but they tell her that it is.

“You've had a big shock,” Mary tells her. “You need company. I don't want to leave you all alone.”

“Turns out I've been alone for a very long time,” Deborah says.

The sister brings a bottle of whiskey, half a cooked chicken and some sleeping pills. The brother-in-law is holding his car keys and keeps on looking at his watch.

“I'm picking his mum up from the station in a minute,” he says.

“His mum?” Mary catches her breath.

Deborah looks at her.

“She's devastated. She can't believe it. She's always been completely supportive of me and we get on like a house on fire. I told her she doesn't have to take sides, but she insisted on coming. She's furious with him, poor Jane.”

Mary stares at her.

“But I thought his mother was—”

Deborah looks at her.

“What, oh, he gave you all that stuff about his mother dying when he was ten, did he?” She shakes her head. “That's us, I'm afraid.” She looks at her sister. “We lost our mum when we were—well, I was ten and you were older, weren't you?”

The sister nods.

“Car crash,” she says.

Deborah folds her arms and looks at Mary.

“His mum, Jane, lives in Berkshire. She's a district nurse. A lovely woman, who thinks the world of him. We see her all the time.”

For a few moments they all stand together in the middle of Eddie and Deborah's huge, clean kitchen. The knives in their block. The mugs on their mug tree. The bowl of fruit on the island.

Mary feels Graham's fingers searching for hers.

“We should leave,” he says.

She goes over and puts an arm around Deborah, kisses the side of her head.

“You know where we are if you need us,” she says.

B
ACK HOME, THEY OPEN A BOTTLE OF WINE—“
I
CAN
'
T TAKE ANY
more fucking tea,” Graham says—and sit together on the old bench in the thick, starry darkness of the middle of the garden. The dog wanders in and out of the shrubs and bushes, sniffing.

“What's she looking for?” Graham says. “What is it that she's after in there?”

“Toads,” Mary says. “I think she can smell toads.”

“You think there are toads in there?”

“She brought one out the other day. I had to make her drop it. Though I think she was more frightened of it than I was.”

Mary calls to the dog, who comes over briefly, tail wagging, then goes straight back to the bushes. Graham looks at her.

“What did you call her just then?”

Mary hesitates.

“What? The dog?”

“Tuffy? Did you call her Tuffy?”

Mary smiles.

“Do you mind? You don't think it's too weird? It just seems like quite a good name for her, that's all.”

Graham is gazing at her. He looks back toward the bushes.

“You've been calling her that?”

“Well, only sometimes. When we're out here in the garden on our own. I suppose I'm trying it out. We really can't keep on just calling her ‘the dog,' can we? What?” She looks at him. “Is it a bad idea? You don't like it?”

She watches his face. He's smiling.

“I think it's a very good idea. As long as Flo wouldn't mind.”

Flo. She hasn't heard him say it in so long. A shiver of warmth through her arms and down into her fingertips. Flo. She swallows.

“I don't think she'd mind. I think she'd like it. In fact, I think she'd love it. It would make her laugh, wouldn't it?”

For a moment, she almost hears it: the naughty, out-of-control giggle that was the sound of Flo laughing.

“Where did that name come from anyway?” Graham says now. “Tuffy. She made it up, didn't she?”

“One of her silly words,” Mary says.

Graham takes a breath.

“All those silly words of hers.” He's silent for a moment. “Well, I like it,” he says. “That's it, then. From now on, it's official. She's Tuffy. Tuffy!” he calls, and the dog looks up for a moment, then returns to the bushes.

“See,” Mary says. “She already knows it.”

Graham laughs and turns back to her.

“It doesn't guarantee obedience, of course. And we'll have to check it with Rubes.”

“Of course. Of course we will.”

He's silent a moment.

“You know what I heard the other day? I heard her talking to Lisa about Ella.”

Ella. Mary turns to him, startled all over again.

“I shouldn't have been listening really. It was wrong of me. I suppose I was eavesdropping. I was just trying to find out what they were up to, that's all. And what I heard was—”

He stops for a moment.

“What?” Mary says.

“She was telling Lisa about when Ella was a baby. How she used to carry her around for us. Walking up and down the hallway with her in her arms to get her to sleep. Hours and hours, she'd do it. Do you remember that?”

Mary looks at him. A sudden memory of Ella's mousy head on Ruby's shoulder. The white baby blanket. The ferocious eight-year-old with the long dark plait.

“Yes. I remember.”

“She was telling her all of this in such a proud voice, with such, I don't know, such sweetness. I just—I didn't know what to think. For a moment, I almost thought I was imagining it. She's
so hard these days, so tough. I didn't think she had any memory of stuff like that. It didn't really sound like her.”

Mary thinks about this.

“Of course she remembers. And anyway, that's just the part she shows us.”

“What?”

“The tough side.”

Graham says nothing. For a moment they're both silent. Mary sees him turning and glancing back at the house, at Ruby's lit-up window.

“Do you think she's OK?” she says.

He shakes his head. “How can you tell? I've absolutely no fucking idea. What's she thinking? What's she doing? I'm beginning to think I'm never going to be able to talk to that girl.”

Mary looks at him.

“You can. You can talk to her. You don't realize. It's fine. It will be fine. You're very good with her.”

“No, I'm not.”

“You are. You are, you know. You forget how good you are.”

Mary thinks of Ruby as she was back then, before Ella was even born, six years old, the day she met her. Cartwheeling over the lawn as Graham watched, unable to take his eyes off her. An odd lump in her throat as she stood there watching the two of them, trying to take in the hugeness of what her life was about to turn into.

“Anyway, it will all change,” she says then. “You'll see. Any moment now, she'll change all over again.”

He picks up his wineglass.

“Why do you say that?”

“Because she always does. Ruby changes all the time. Haven't
you noticed? That's what teenagers do. Like you just said. So many different Rubies, and just when you think you've got used to one of them, up comes another.”

She feels him thinking about this.

“That's nice. That's a lovely thing to say,” he says at last. “I like it. It feels hopeful. Fluid anyway. Flexible. And true. I suppose things always do. Change I mean.”

Mary takes a breath.

“Sometimes they change for the worse.”

“That's right. Sometimes they do.”

From where they sit, she can just about make out the outline of the old fallen tree. For a moment, as she watches, it isn't there at all. Just an open, empty space. She gasps.

“What?” he says. “What's the matter?”

“Nothing. Just for a moment I thought—the tree. It wasn't there.”

“It's very dark.”

“No. I don't mean that. I mean it suddenly just wasn't there at all.”

He yawns.

“That tree's been there a very long time. It's not going anywhere.”

“I can see it,” Mary says. “I can see it now.”

Still unnerved, she watches the tree as its outline comes back into focus.

Graham sighs.

“This garden,” he says. “I hope we can still—I wish I'd never done it now, of course. Pulled that thing down. It could have just stayed there, couldn't it? You were right. If only I'd left it. We'd never have known.”

“Wouldn't we?” says Mary. She hesitates, feeling him looking at her. At last he reaches for her hand.

“Of course,” he says. “You knew all along, didn't you?”

“I don't know,” Mary says.

“Yes, you do. You did.”

Neither of them speak for a moment.

“Anyway, I guess it will fade, with time,” he says. “I suppose one day we just won't think about it anymore.”

Mary looks at her hand in his.

“Don't say that.”

“You don't want it to fade?”

“No.”

He smiles.

“All right,” he says. “I won't say it.”

She lets go of his hand. Glances back at the tree. Not allowing her eyes to go beyond it, though—to the place where the apple shed stood, open now to the fields, the stars. She shivers and takes a breath, tilting her head back, looking up at the vast blackness of the sky, pricked with stars.

“But it feels like home,” she says.

“What?”

“This place. It does to me. I love it.”

“You do?” He leans forward. “I never thought I'd be able to feel it about a place where we don't have them. Where they've never lived.”

“But you do feel it.”

It's not a question. She doesn't expect an answer. There is no answer. No answer, probably, that she could bear to hear.

She breathes in then, a deep breath. After a few minutes, he puts his arm around her. She's glad of it. She leans her head against him.

She thinks again about Eddie, his constant talk of love. Love is nothing, she thinks. It's nothing. Just the very smallest sliver of a so much larger and more complicated thing.

He asks her what she is thinking.

“I'm thinking about magpies,” she says.

“Magpies?”

“Well, a magpie actually. Just one. I thought I saw one, just now as we walked back. In the lane.”

He turns to look at her.

“Do you even get magpies at night?”

“I don't know. You're the bird person. You didn't see it?”

“No, I didn't. I thought one magpie was bad.”

“Bad?”

“Bad luck.”

“You don't believe that,” she says.

He laughs.

“You really think it was a magpie?”

“I don't know. I saw a black-and-white bird in a country lane in the middle of the night, that's all.”

“That's all? That's not enough for you?”

She laughs and he hugs her to him.

“That's nice,” he says.

“What's nice?”

“I've forgotten what your laugh sounds like. I like your laugh.” She laughs again, puts her lips on the bristle of his cheek. Warm, familiar, slightly stale and tired. “I'm sorry, by the way,” he says. “Sorry about the way I behaved. Over you and Eddie.”

“What?” She feels herself stiffen.

“I think I was just jealous of your friendship. All that talking. All that intimacy. I didn't want you to be telling him things that you wouldn't tell me.”

Mary takes a breath.

“I didn't. Tell him things, you know. I didn't tell him very much anyway.”

“It doesn't matter if you did.”

“I'm saying I didn't.” She doesn't add that she did a lot of other things, things that she now feels so ashamed of she can hardly bear to think of them. She feels Graham hesitate.

“All right. Don't worry. I believe you.”

“And he didn't tell me much either. Nothing that was true anyway.”

Silence as they both think about this.

“Poor Deborah,” he says.

“Yes. Poor Deborah.”

He pours her more wine.

“And you,” he says, still holding her. “What about you?”

“Me?”

“Are you all right?”

She swallows. “Interesting question.”

“You're not all right?”

“I've no idea. Are you all right?”

“It's been a very difficult day.”

“Yes. Yes, it has.”

“Tomorrow will be better.”

“Will it?”

He squeezes her to him.

“Well. We can hope.”

They sit very still. Far off, there's a noise, sudden and low and thrilling.

“The owl,” she says.

“Yes,” he says. And then, “It's Flo's birthday tomorrow, isn't it?”

Flo. She does not miss a beat.

“Today, you mean.”

“What?”

“It's today. It's already today.”

Listening to his breath in the darkness as he realizes. The
damp, dewy darkness. Everything is changing—yes, she thinks, she can feel it. Something is over. It doesn't even feel like summer anymore.

She shivers. Waiting.

“Of course,” he says. “You're quite right, of course you are. Today.”

T
HE GIRLS ADORED TO HEAR THE STORIES OF THEIR BIRTHS.
They knew every single detail off by heart. Each time it all had to be told in the exact same order—the timings thrillingly precise, the narrative almost biblical in its momentum.

They knew that Ella was born in winter and took eight hours to make her way into the world.

“Eight whole hours!” Ella counted under her breath. “But that's more time even than we're at school.”

“That's right,” Graham said. “And it was the middle of the night. Your poor mummy. The middle of the night in a freezing January. You certainly picked your time, Ella.”

“I was the easiest!” Flo said. “I taked no time at all. I came out at lunch.”