“What are you getting at?”
“I know you and Peter have always been mates—”
“Yes,” I said. “Yes we have.” And I got out and slammed the door.
A light was glowing in Mrs. East’s kitchen. I heard the van swing round and drive off. She came out onto the step and beckoned me over.
“Saw your mum take a fall today.” She indicated a spot a bit further up the road. “I offered to call a doctor but—” And she shrugged.
“Was she pissed?”
“She was in a bit of a state. A bit … confused. Have the empties been stacking up?”
I tried to think. “They could be in her room. Or out the back.”
“Might want to check on her, Andy.”
“I’ll look in.”
But I didn’t. I looked for cans or bottles, but there weren’t any. I stood outside her door awhile, a long while, staring at the doorknob. She was breathing at least. Part of me wanted to go in, but it was small and weak, and a much larger part of me wanted to be elsewhere, and before very long that was the part that won.
* * *
David was sleeping, lying on his back with the sleeping bag drawn down about his waist. The moon was waxing again. On the side was a pack of cigarettes. I guessed Peter had bought them for him. I slid one out and sparked it at the window. I fancied I could feel him wake, that there was the slightest perceptible change. He didn’t ask me what was up or why I was there.
Eventually, I said, “He hid them at night. We haven’t played at night yet.”
“Just us?”
“Yeah.” I heard him get out of the bag and slip on his jeans.
“Do you have them? Am I hiding them?”
“I want us to look for the real ones, for Mortimer’s ones.”
We went down the stairs in the darkness and then out into the courtyard.
The diamonds were there, I knew it. The lake shimmered and the wind swayed the trees. We looked together for an hour, maybe two. No luck. No luck anywhere. I sat down on the stone bench where Mortimer died and the tears rolled down my cheeks.
“What’s all this?” he said.
When I reached out for him, it was like grabbing a handhold because if you didn’t you were going to fall.
Did I cry because I wanted him to touch me? Possible. But I couldn’t have stopped it. Once we started touching, I couldn’t stop that either.
* * *
“Did you turn him down?” We were in the little room at the top of the house, pink sunrise flooding in so it was like being inside a jewel. I had my hand on the small hollow that lay in the center of David’s chest, a few inches down from his heart. Outside, under the eaves, the wood pigeons cooed. They were so fat now they could barely get off the ground, wobbling and bobbling their way across the lawn, fanning their tails at one another, courting.
“Not in so many words, but yes, I suppose I did.”
“You didn’t get off with him?”
“Would it make a difference?”
“I’d feel worse.”
“This makes you feel bad?” David turned on his side and laid the fingers of one hand on my stomach. The thing was, it should have, but it didn’t.
* * *
Three weeks? Less than a month certainly. Going back nights, waiting until Peter would have departed to meet his curfew. Then threading my way across the Downs, the rabbits bolting, the stretch through the copse, Crow Wood, lightless, where the night was thicker, heart picking up—the feeling of a presence there, nothing human, nothing in time—then down over the field, over the gate. The lawn wet. Looking for a light in the window.
I wouldn’t have given the journey up. Going through the dark alone to find another person, even if they were crooked and not offering anything.
“Here, I’m over here.”
My body drenched, the fear melting when he kissed me. It was like my heart was in a lift, and the lift would suddenly just fall, and then judder to a stop, and then fall some more. On the bed, in the darkness, I pressed down on David’s hands, my hair falling to cover his face, and I didn’t recognize my own voice.
* * *
One morning, slipping back in at five, I found my mother sitting at the kitchen table. My lips were tender, my whole skin felt raw. She looked up slowly, her face blank. Nothing dawned in her eyes. It was like she didn’t know me from Adam.
Maybe I didn’t know me either.
Who else knew? Em with her keen eyes? I watched Marcus go for a guy who squeezed up against me in a pub and thought maybe. Peter? A cold stream flowing between us, a bewildered, hurt look that made me wince. Not enough to stop.
* * *
“There’s jobs on the Greek islands. Bar jobs. Not now, but in summer. You can make good money.” I was testing the waters, not sure I could leave, even if David agreed to it. What would become of my mother without me?
“How much?”
“A few grand at least.”
David grimaced. He got up swiftly from the bed and went over to the window. I knew what he was thinking. David had spent a lot of time around rich people, at the fancy houses and holiday homes of school friends. It was where he felt he belonged. It wasn’t the money, he said, it was what it bought you, which was freedom. The freedom not to worry all the time, to not test the smoke alarm on Sunday mornings or write down everything you eat and spend in a book.
“How much would the diamonds be worth, do you think, Andy?”
But he came back. Lying down beside me, our fingers lacing. His lips on my collarbone.
When I awoke, David was gently shaking my shoulder.
“Is it time to go?”
“No.”
“What then?”
“You cry in your sleep.”
“I was crying?”
“You’ve done it before.”
I brought my hand to my face and it came away wet. Was there the slightest tinge of accusation to his voice?
“Peter said—”
“What?”
But he didn’t go on. Yet that final week, every time he looked at me it was like he had something he wanted to say, but then drew back from saying.
* * *
Mrs. White pointed me in the direction of the church. As I walked down the familiar stone path, the bells were silent in the tower. One was cracked. It always rang flat, a weird dissonant BOOOONG, clearly audible among the peals.
Peter was sitting at the organ and as I entered the nave and walked toward him down the aisle, he toyed with a number of chords, first this one and then another. The pipes breathed out and the air within the church hummed.
“What’s that you’re playing?”
“I’m just fiddling really.” I went to stand at his side, the place I took when I turned the pages for him. His long white fingers moved over the keys as though he was searching for something. “I suppose I was thinking people are like chords. I mean they can be. Listen.” His left hand roamed toward me. He played something that sounded like a wet fart and raised an eyebrow. “Doesn’t it make you think of Mrs. Duncan?”
Mrs. Duncan had been a dinner lady at our infant school, a gigantic, myopic Scot forever bursting into tears.