was electric, completely quiet, Hank and the screenwriter waiting behind its milky windows for Ruth to get in. ‘Sorry to miss Andrew,’ Hank called, winding down the glass. ‘International man of mystery. Tell him thanks.’
‘Sure.’ Her basket was laden with baby squash and rocket and she wanted to give Ruth something for the trip, a memento, but she couldn’t take vegetables, no.
‘OK.’ Ruth unhooked the basket from Dorothy’s elbow and placed the basket on the gravel at their feet. They hugged. Dorothy felt her sister’s body against hers.
‘Have a great time,’ she said.
‘Thank you,’ said Ruth. ‘I’ll miss you.’ She drew away.
Dot nodded. ‘Miss you too.’ Ruth folded herself into the back of the car and the screenwriter backed down the drive, drove out of sight. The edges of the silence filled with a tinselly buzz of cicadas. Dot’s sandals crunched on the gravel as she took slow steps back round the side of the house, towards the garden.
The photograph that came a few weeks later, from the States, had caught both sisters unawares through a soft-focus crinkle of peach-tree leaves. Amy stood at Dot’s side, studying the picture. ‘You do look alike,’ she said.
Donald walked through the kitchen, carrying paint-splattered dustsheets from the girls’ room. He followed their gaze to the picture and said, ‘Who’s that?’
‘Auntie Ruth. I’ve met her,’ said Amy in the airy tone of sibling one-upmanship.
‘Why haven’t I?’
‘Come on, Donald, you didn’t want to leave the beach.’ She should have insisted that the kids come back early from camping. It hadn’t even entered her mind, which now seemed inexplicable. ‘OK, give me a hand to clear the table, it’s dinnertime.’
‘Where’s Dad?’ said Donald. In her peripheral vision, Dorothy could tell that Amy was giving him a look. ‘What?’ he said. ‘I just asked where he is. I need the key to the shed.’
‘It’s in the door, you fool.’
He humped the dustsheets out there, calling, ‘Your face is the fool,’ over his shoulder.
Out of habit Dot slid her hand into the card-backed envelope that Ruth had sent the photo in, to check it was empty before it hit the recycling pile. Her fingers met paper edges: she reached in and drew out a cheque. The skin up her back tingled as she made sense of the amount. It was a lot. She turned it over and read scrawled on the back, in her sister’s handwriting: Your share.
After she’d washed up and everyone had gone to bed, in the creaking, darkened house, Dorothy sat in the pool of light cast by the kitchen-table lamp and wrote five cheques, one for each of her children and one for Lou. She finished and put the pen down, rubbed at the ink smudge on her index finger. On the table lay a disc Ruth had left behind, a little silver moon. She put it on the stereo and listened.
16. Fire
It said he was in a relationship. He listed himself as ‘retired’, a joke, and ‘spends most of his time travelling’, which might also have been a joke except for the photographs from a recent trip to Rio, for the carnival. The same elfin-featured girl was in most of them, looking to be about twenty-one, long brown limbs draped over Daniel, her short blonde hair catching the light. That would be right. She’d have been the one to design this page. Although Daniel had known how to use the Internet to his advantage, it only operated for him as an old-fashioned Rolodex might. Follow Daniel on Twitter! Poke Daniel! Send Daniel a gift today!
Daniel’s page showed a photo of a man who looked older, but not old.
Dot left the tablet on the bench and paced the room.
Across the dry garden, between the house and the road, wisps of dirt rose as if the earth was smouldering. There came a sudden rattle of rain. Hannah and Destiny ran towards the house from the cruddy old car, towels tenting their heads, shrieking. It was crazy at the beach, they said, the wave-tips ultraviolet through the storm light, the sky so dark it looked like an eclipse.
The kids went round the house shutting windows and putting lights on, and the wind noise picked up, and from her bedroom Dot watched distant cars driving with headlights on, grass flattened on the hills, trees trembling. Andrew lay on the bed watching rugby. A battle long lost, the screen on the chest of drawers, and the truth was she didn’t mind, enjoyed late-night cop shows and documentaries, a