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  About anyone.

  ‘Marianne?’ It was Patrick, approaching her like she was a wild horse he was trying to slip a bridle on.

  She spun round. ‘I suppose you knew,’ she said.

  ‘I—’

  ‘Of course you did. You’re her golden boy. The only one she didn’t manage to wreck.’

  ‘Marianne, please, you—’

  ‘How long does she have?’

  ‘I think you sho—’

  ‘How. Long.’

  Patrick took a breath and his body seemed to sag all of a sudden. ‘Maybe three months.’

  Marianne glared at Fadela. ‘Is that right?’ she said.

  Fadela nodded slowly. ‘I’m so sorry, Marianne.’

  Chapter 26

  Marianne did not return to Rita’s room to collect her anorak or her handbag. She did not wait for the lift to arrive. She took the stairs, two at a time, pounding down them like she pounded down the treacherous, moss-slick steps to the beach at Ancaire.

  On the ground floor she marched down the corridor towards the front door but then, on her left, she saw the gift shop. She tried to urge herself past it but could feel herself slow as she approached it, her feet nearly too heavy to lift now, like they were tethered to the ground. Through the window, she saw the racks of glossy magazines. The boxes of Milk Tray. Black Magic. The bars of Lindt. Green and Black. She saw the cards. Get Well Soon. The baskets of grapes. The books of crosswords. Suduko. Word searches.

  She did not need any of those things. She did not want any of those things.

  She stepped inside.

  Behind the counter was a jaded man with thick glasses and one of those faces that seemed colourless, as if it had faded, like a photograph left on a windowsill for years. He did not appear to notice Marianne’s arrival. She glanced around. There were no other customers in the shop. She moved to the back of the shop, stood beside a shelf of toiletries, her fingers reaching for a Lynx deodorant.

  She twisted off the lid. Held the nozzle to her nostrils. Sniffed it. The smell was overpowering. Saccharine and dense. She thought she might throw up. She slipped the bottle into the pocket of her tracksuit bottoms. Into the other pocket, she shoved a bottle of Johnson’s Baby Shampoo. No More Tears. Guaranteed.

  She moved to the magazine rack. She picked one up, leafed through it. How to shed eight pounds in two weeks. Ten ways to spice up your sex life. Get brow ready. Photographs of an actor, smelling a melon in a supermarket. Agony aunt. I think my husband is having an affair with my brother. Horoscopes. A change of plan is imminent. Embrace it. Ads for collagen injections. Nips and tucks. Botox. How to make your mother-in-law like you. How to look good naked. How to look good with your clothes on. How to look good in a bikini. How to look good pregnant.

  Marianne rolled the magazine up tight and pushed it down the waistband of her tracksuit bottoms. She walked towards the door of the shop. Behind the counter, the man shifted his weight from one foot to the other and then slowly, slowly, looked up. His eyes settled on Marianne, blinking as he processed her.

  ‘Can I help you?’ he asked eventually.

  Marianne could feel the magazine slip from the grasp of her waistband, which had lost some of its elasticity from overuse. It slipped down her leg, the gloss of the cover cold against her skin. Marianne shivered. The magazine got all the way to the bottom before it stopped, held in place by the elasticated ankle, which Shirley had taken exception to.

  ‘No. Thank you,’ Marianne managed.

  The shopkeeper continued to examine Marianne. ‘Are you buying something?’ he said, after an interminable pause during which Marianne could smell nothing but the sickening sweetness of the deodorant.

  ‘I’m just … browsing,’ she said.

  ‘Hmm,’ he said, his eyes fixed on the bulge of the shampoo bottle in Marianne’s tracksuit bottoms. Why did she have to take such a big bottle?

  Why did she have to take anything at all?

  What was she going to do with No More Tears baby shampoo? Give it to bloody Brian for the twins?

  ‘Have you got a magazine down the leg of your trousers?’ the man said then, his tone more curious than confrontational. Marianne looked at him mutely.

  ‘If you do, I’m going to have to call the police,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘It’s my policy now. Because they’re all at it. Patients, visitors, nurses. Even one of the fecking consultants tried it. Like what am I running here? A charity?’ His look to Marianne was imploring, willing her to understand, hoping perhaps that she might pull up the leg of her trousers and reveal something other than contraband. A sticky-out bit of a prosthetic leg perhaps? They were in a hospital, after all.

  Marianne felt the fight go out of her all at once, like a tyre punctured by a long shard of glass. She almost heard the hiss of it. She lowered her head and pulled up the leg of her tracksuit. The magazine fell onto the floor with a dull slap. A beautiful woman on the cover in a sequined dress, wrapped snugly around her pregnant belly. It was true, Marianne supposed. Some women could indeed have it all. Career, babies, startling good lucks. Marianne hadn’t wanted any of that. She’d been happy with her lot, hadn’t she? And now it felt like everything was just sort of falling down around her. Like she was standing in the middle of a derelict house in a storm, tiles flying off the roof and water gushing out of pipes. She felt cold. And alone. It had never bothered her before. Being alone. She didn’t know why it felt so raw now.

  ‘And you needn’t bother turning on the waterworks,’ said the shopkeeper, hanging up the phone. Had he already called the police? ‘You should have thought about the consequences before you went on the rob.’

  Marianne picked up the magazine and placed it on the counter, then removed the deodorant and shampoo from her pockets, set them in front of the man, who looked at the items, shook his head. ‘I just don’t know at all at all at all,’ he said, his voice weary. ‘What goes on in your head, like?’ He looked at Marianne as if he really wanted to know but she had no answers to give him. She walked to the far end of the shop and sat on the floor, her back against the wall. She closed her eyes. She thought she could sleep, right here, at the back of this tiny gift shop, on the cold, stained floor.

  ‘Get up outta that,’ the shopkeeper snapped at her. ‘I have customers to think about, you know. Paying ones, some of them.’

  Marianne ignored him and tried to think about nothing at all, which was much more difficult than it used to be.

  She thought about Flo.

  She had tried so hard not to think about Flo.

  She taught Flo how to ride her bicycle. Flo was five. It was September. Flo’s voice, high and shaking, as she pedalled furiously, Marianne running alongside her, trying not to trip over Bruno, who insisted on running alongside Flo too.

  ‘Are you holding onto me, Marianne?’ Flo shouted at her big sister. ‘Are you still holding on?’ And Marianne, running alongside her, lifted her hand from the back of the saddle and shouted, ‘Yes,’ and Flo, cycling on, her small feet a blur of pedals, her face flushed with the possibility of success.

  Marianne slowed and slowed and eventually stopped. Flo kept going, still shouting, ‘Are you still holding on, Marianne?’ but she didn’t seem to notice that there was no response. She was cycling now. Cycling on her own.

  Marianne’s abiding memory of that moment, watching Flo cycling on her own, was one of acute anxiety. That she might fall. That she might hurt herself. That she might blame Marianne, who had, after all, told her she would never let her go.

  Chapter 27

  ‘What time was I actually born?’ Flo asked that morning. Marianne was making her bed, folding her pyjamas under the pillow. Flo sat cross-legged on her bed, Bruno’s head in her lap, the dog succumbing to Flo’s efforts to tie a pink ribbon around his neck.

  ‘Caroline Cassidy knows the exact time she was born. Her mother wrote it in a book.’ Flo looked a little put out.

  ‘Why does it matter, what time you were born?’ said Marian
ne, reaching across the line she had drawn down the middle of their bedroom to pick up Flo’s denim jacket. She arranged it on a hanger, put it into the wardrobe.

  ‘So I’ll know exactly when I’ll be ten,’ said Flo, her small, heart-shaped face serious. ‘Do you think Mum will know?’ Flo’s big blue eyes settled on Marianne’s face as if Marianne knew everything. As if Marianne had all the answers.

  ‘You were born at eleven o’clock,’ Marianne said, closing the wardrobe door.

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Aunt Pearl told me.’

  Flo nodded. If Aunt Pearl said it, it must be true.

  ‘Now come on,’ said Marianne, ‘shift yourself so I can make your bed.’

  ‘Eleven in the morning or in the night-time?’ asked Flo.

  ‘Night-time,’ said Marianne.

  Flo held a hand mirror in front of Bruno’s face so he could admire the bow she had fashioned for him.

  ‘Get your brush and I’ll do your hair,’ said Marianne.

  ‘French plaits?’

  ‘Ah, Flo, that takes ages.’

  ‘It’s my birthday.’

  ‘Okay, fine. But you have to promise not to moan when I brush your knots out.’

  ‘I promise.’

  Rita and William were celebrating their daughter’s tenth birthday by throwing one of their lavish parties. It was April but the house looked like Christmas, fairy lights strewn across mantelpieces and windowsills, and candles glowing in every window. A band was setting up in the drawing room, playing jazz. Caterers arrived in vans, carrying platters of smoked salmon, quiche Lorraine, beef wellington, jacket potatoes, salads, apple tarts and cream. By noon, the guests began to arrive and they kept arriving until it seemed to Marianne as if the house might burst at the seams.

  She and Flo and Bruno arranged themselves on the wide windowsill beneath the long, narrow window on the first floor, watching the antics like it was a film reel.

  That was the version of her sister that Marianne remembered most vividly. Flo, in the midnight-blue party dress that had been Marianne’s, when Marianne was ten. They both adored it because of the tulle, beneath the silk, that made the skirt spool like a ballerina’s tutu.

  Flo, small and slight, sitting in a cloud of blue silk on the window sill, her arm around Bruno’s neck, watching Rita and William as they danced on the lawn, holding onto each other. Holding each other up.

  Marianne remembered hearing the grandfather clock in the hall chime and she counted the chimes as was her habit, then went downstairs to get a plate of food for her and Flo. ‘I’ll be back in five minutes, okay?’ she said to her sister.

  ‘How long before I’m ten?’ asked Flo, yawning.

  ‘One more hour,’ Marianne told her before she left.

  In the dining room, the buffet. Rita, pouring a bottle of gin into an enormous bowl of punch with pieces of fruit floating at the top. She picked up a ladle and stirred the punch so that it swirled around the sides of the bowl, the liquid breaching the top and spilling onto the table, down onto the floor. A man exclaimed as drops stained the front of his linen trousers and Rita clamped her hand across her mouth. Marianne could see her face creasing in laughter and, after a while, the man laughed too.

  On the other side of the room, William bent towards a young woman in a sequined dress, her back pressed against the wall. He whispered in her ear and a tendril of her hair escaped from a complicated up-do and swayed gently against her long, pale neck. William wound this fallen piece of hair around his finger and the woman giggled as if he had tickled her.

  There was a chance that Marianne could make it to the buffet and smuggle some food into the pockets of her dungarees but she didn’t want to run the risk of Rita spotting her. Rita might remember then. She might insist that Marianne bring Flo downstairs. Roar at everyone to, ‘Shut up, shut up,’ and insist they sing ‘Happy Birthday’. Stick candles in the remains of a side of salmon because no one had remembered to pick up the birthday cake she’d ordered from the bakery. Or put her on a man’s shoulders like she had done last year. Flo hadn’t cried when the man stumbled. When he fell. She hadn’t hurt herself but she’d been frightened. Marianne could tell from the way she’d wrapped her thin arms around Marianne’s neck afterwards, when she carried her up the stairs.

  Marianne ducked out of sight and crept into the kitchen, which was crowded enough so she could pick her way through the thicket of adults without being noticed. A woman stood in front of the fridge, crying. She grabbed Marianne’s arm and told her that she must never, ever fall in love because men did nothing but break women’s hearts. ‘Do you hear me?’ the woman said. Marianne nodded and the woman tightened her grip and asked again, louder this time. ‘Do you hear me?’

  Marianne nodded. In her experience, it was easier to agree with adults. You got away quicker if you agreed. She tried not to wince at the sour, stale smell of the woman’s breath.

  ‘Do you think I’m old?’ the woman said, clamping her hands on Marianne’s shoulders now. Marianne shook her head.

  ‘Don’t you speak?’ the woman said, her hands tightening like a vice.

  ‘Come along, Bea darling, let’s get you a little something to eat, shall we?’ A man in a beret and a cravat put an arm around the woman’s waist and winked at Marianne.

  When they were gone, Marianne opened the fridge and stood on her tiptoes to reach two mini quiches and half an apple tart. She clamped a carton of orange juice under her arm and crept back up the stairs, glancing at the clock as she went.

  It was twenty past ten.

  Another forty minutes and Flo would be ten.

  Flo and Bruno weren’t on the windowsill when Marianne returned. Nor were they in the bathroom. Or the studio where Flo sometimes liked to make a fort out of Rita’s self-portraits.

  Marianne looked in all the bedrooms. Apart from Aunt Pearl’s, obviously. She even opened the door that led to the attic. She stood at the bottom of the stairs and called up.

  ‘Flo?’

  There was no answer.

  Downstairs, Rita was dancing with a woman. A tall, stately woman with black nail polish and a diamond in her nose. They were swaying with their eyes closed and their arms above their heads. Marianne tapped her mother on the back. When Rita didn’t respond, Marianne grabbed a handful of Rita’s dress and tugged it.

  ‘What is it, darling?’ Rita didn’t stop dancing but her eyes were open now as she did her best to focus on Marianne.

  ‘I can’t find Flo.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘She was upstairs with Bruno. But now she’s not.’

  ‘You just haven’t looked properly,’ said Rita.

  ‘I have.’

  ‘Have you asked Daddy? He probably knows.’ Rita lifted the strap of her black velvet dress, which had fallen down her arm, rearranged it onto her shoulder. She was wearing the pearl ring William had bought her that Christmas and her nails were long and bright red. Marianne remembered thinking that her mother looked beautiful at that moment, with her dark brown hair, glossy and wild, pouring like a waterfall over one shoulder and down towards her waist, clashing gloriously with the chilly blue of her eyes, grown up and sophisticated in the small, pale circle of her face.

  Marianne tugged again at her mother’s dress. ‘Daddy won’t know,’ she said.

  ‘Stop it, you’ll tear my dress,’ snapped Rita, pulling the material out of Marianne’s grip. Marianne didn’t move. She looked at her mother.

  ‘Sorry about this,’ Rita said to the tall, stately woman, who shrugged and lit a cigarette.

  Everybody looked for Flo in the end. Marianne remembered shadowy outlines of people in the garden, calling, ‘Flo? Flo? Where are you?’

  She remembered one woman asking another what Flo was short for.

  ‘I don’t know. Florence, I imagine.’

  Marianne had never known that Flo was short for something.

  When Rita started panicking, racing about the garden with a flashlight, sh
rieking, ‘FLO!’ over and over again at the top of her voice, Marianne still thought everything would be all right. Flo must have fallen asleep somewhere. Maybe in Bruno’s basket. Marianne had found her there one time, curled between the dog’s front paws as he sat up tall, as if he was standing sentry over her. But when she went to look, Bruno’s basket was empty, the blanket lining the bottom cold to the touch.

  Memory became ragged after that. The sound of sirens in the distance. It didn’t occur to Marianne that they had anything to do with Flo. She kept searching, looking in increasingly unlikely places. Behind the dresser in the drawing room. The cupboard in the back kitchen where the mop and sweeping brush was kept. The coal shed. The poky room at the end of the hall that didn’t have a name and was stuffed full of old books and suitcases and a box of rusting keys and black and white photographs of people nobody remembered any more.

  The sirens, closer now. Marianne remembered sitting on the first step of the stairs. The flashing of lights – blue and red – through the fanlight. Somebody opened the front door. She remembered the light pouring into the hall, across the floor, a disco ball of lights with no music and no dancing.

  She remembered the policeman getting out of the car, opening the back door and then Bruno jumping out. The relief then. Marianne remembered that. Relief. The solidity of it. Like algebra. Undeniable.

  Flo had taken Bruno outside to do his business and he had caught the scent of a hare on the wind and ran off. He sometimes did that.

  And Flo had followed him.

  And maybe, because it was so dark, Bruno had run further than he usually did.

  And Flo had followed him.

  That was all.

  Marianne waited for Flo to jump out of the police car.

  She remembered the policeman – a big slab of a man with a soft, pained face – approaching Rita, talking, saying something.