of the first obliging stranger he stumbled across.
‘This is Beatrix,’ he said. ‘She’s my niece. Say hello, Bee.’
She opened and closed her hand. Kite looked worried that he was going to frighten her.
‘She gets a bit neglected,’ Joe said, wanting to explain himself. ‘She’s got a twin brother. He’s loud and she fades into corners if you’re not careful. Don’t you?’ he added to her.
She nodded. He tickled her to make sure she knew it wasn’t an accusation, but she only looked down at her own chest.
‘Old soul,’ Kite said.
‘Yes.’ With a fresh ache, Joe missed the little girl who had turned out to be a false epilepsy memory; missed her just as if she’d been real, and taken away. He hugged Beatrix closer. Stealing the twins helped.
Unfortunately, this meant he talked about them all the time, even though he knew that for any thinking adult, there were types of yeast more interesting than other people’s children.
‘I think she’s going to be clever,’ he said, though everything in him yelled that everyone who had ever loved a child always thought it was the next Mozart. ‘God, I’m sorry. I bore on about them all the time, I plan not to and then it just sort of comes out, it’s unbearable.’
‘No. I think you’re right about her,’ Kite said, and Joe tried to imagine how anyone learned grace like that.
Beatrix patted his shoulder, worried now, and he realised she had come to fetch him because dinner was ready. Cutlery and glasses clinked along the corridor; the maids had gone.
‘Come on, she’s right. Better get up there before the gannets from the maths department pilfer everything.’
Kite looked unsettled when Beatrix leaned towards him.
‘You can hold her,’ Joe said.
‘But – I might drop her.’
‘Don’t be stupid,’ Joe said, and put her in Kite’s arms.
Kite held her properly, like she was precious, and for her part, Beatrix looked pleased with him. She put both her hands over one of his and rubbed to see if the scars would come off, and squeaked interestedly when they wouldn’t. He crooked his fingertip over hers, just, still afraid that he was going to hurt her. Beatrix curled against his chest. She must have felt safe. She was too used to being hauled around by people whose minds were on other things. Joe had to push away the urge to put his arm round them both. He couldn’t tell where it came from, or why it was so wonderful to see Kite with her. Clearly the epilepsy was determined to have a party tonight too. He shoved his hands into his pockets. If he could just not do anything insane or sinister in front of this poor man, it would be a good night.
Kite gave her back in the doorway rather than put her down. Joe smiled, but Kite didn’t stay with them at dinner. He sat with some cavalrymen who spent the whole evening boasting to him about some charge or other in the Sudan, but he seemed to mind that less than a small child and overfamiliar strangers.
Joe kept finding his attention straying down the table. The cavalrymen had managed to engage Kite a lot more than he had and now, they were laughing together. He kept deciding to concentrate on something else, but within a few minutes he was listening again, jealous.
He couldn’t shift the certainty that he knew the man. He couldn’t remember how. All the tired old dream-images were suggesting themselves for the job. Names on pillars, the sea, a book in French. They were so worn out he could see through the fabric of them. It made him sad, because shamefully, they were the brightest things he had.
He had to leave the room to try and make his brain reset itself with a change of scene.
Under the sweep of the stairs was a cupboard with low rafters and floorboards that still smelled new, because it wasn’t used for anything. The glow of the candle was good, and so were the striped shadows the light made in the rafters.
He liked it because it was a door to nowhere, and he kept looking at doors to nowhere as if there was something just past them he couldn’t see. It was maddening, but it was good at the same time, to feel like there was somewhere else, waiting.
The cupboard was like a ship’s cabin too. He loved ships.
He had a vision of sitting at a table aboard an old ship, the wood creaking with the