The Stopped Heart (30 page)

“Do?”

“I don't think I can have it. I can't, Eddie—if it turns out to be true, that is.”

He glances at her.

“True? But what are you saying?”

“Well, it can't be true, can it? How can it be?”

“You think they've got it wrong?”

“Well, they must have, yes.”

“But you say they did a test?”

She looks at him, her eyes filling up again.

“Please don't make me think about it,” she says.

Far off, the sound of a dog barking. Someone calling to it. Whistling. She feels him watching her again and she looks at him, noticing that dimple in his unshaven cheek.

“Well, miracles happen,” he says at last.

“Miracles.” She hears herself laugh.

He shakes his head.

“That's what it was. In the dream. Someone kept on saying it. A miracle, they said, it's a miracle.”

She lifts her head, looks at him. “I can't have a baby, Eddie. I just can't.”

“What do you mean, you can't?”

Mary says nothing. She glances down and for a moment she
sees his arms, his hands resting on his knees. The chunky metal wristwatch that looks like it means business. The light hairs on his forearms. The deep blue veins on the backs of his hands. His fingers, knuckles, nails.

“I just can't,” she says again.

“Look,” he tells her after a few more moments have passed, “I wasn't joking when I said it was a miracle. If anyone deserves a miracle, it's you. So maybe you should just think of it as a gift.”

“A gift?”

“My mother had a child that drowned. A boy.”

She stares at him.

“What? You mean your brother?”

He hesitates.

“My half brother, yes. He drowned at Christmas. Can you imagine? Christmas Day—Christmas morning—in the pond.”

Mary feels her blood jump. He takes a breath.

“But she went and got pregnant again the very next year and this time she had twins. What a blessing it was. A miracle, you see.”

She looks at him.

“I thought your mother died when you were ten?”

He blinks at her. Feeling around in his pocket for his cigarettes.

“Ah, but you see, all of this was long before I was born.”

“And the twins?”

“What?”

“They're still alive?”

He sighs. Pulls out a cigarette, looks at it.

“I've told you about my family. It's a messy business. God knows where the twins are now.”

“But are they boys or girls?”

“Girls. Women, I suppose. I don't know how old they'd be now.”

“You don't even know? You've never tried to find them?”

He rests his arms on his knees for a moment, lighter in one hand, cigarette in the other. Staring into the long grass.

“I haven't,” he says. “You're right. I feel ashamed now that I haven't bothered. I ought to have a go at finding them, I suppose.”

Y
OU DID SOMETHING TERRIBLE,
I
TOLD HIM.

He shrugged.

I wasn't intending to harm her. But what could I do? She asked for it. Come on, Eliza, we've been over this. It's not my fault.

Not your fault? Whose fault was it, then?

You know what a spiteful little bitch she was.

No one asks to be killed, I said.

I don't know what else I was supposed to do.

I stared at him in horror, then I couldn't help it—I started to laugh. But almost as soon as I'd started, the taste of the laugh in my mouth turned bad and I stopped.

You are unbelievable, I said.

He looked at me carefully for a moment, then he stuck out his lip in a sulky way.

A spiteful little blabbermouth, she was. You've no idea. I swear, I had no choice. I simply couldn't trust her anymore. She said she'd go straight to her ma and tell her everything she knew about me.

Now I stared at him.

Everything? What do you mean? What was it that she knew?

He shook his head then and blew out a long breath of smoke and looked down at his boots. I saw that they were unlaced just like Phoebe's boot was unlaced and there was mud all over them. His breeches too. He shook his head.

Nothing at all, he said. I mean it, Eliza. She had nothing on me. At the end of the day, it was all just guesses.

But what? What are you talking about? I don't understand. What thing did she guess?

He shrugged. His eyes were calm.

I don't know. Whatever it was that I'd been doing, I suppose.

A chill ran through me.

What had you been doing?

He raised his eyes and gave me a sticky look.

Nothing. I wasn't doing nothing.

I held my breath. Tears were coming up in my face but I swallowed them back down. Talking to James Dix in this mood was like swimming in a swamp—the more you kicked, the more you got sucked down.

I wish you'd never come here, I said. I wish I didn't know you. I would give the whole world not to know you. I wish that storm tree had flattened you and left you properly dead.

For the first time, he looked quite shocked.

You don't mean that, princess.

I do, I said. I do mean it. I mean it with all my heart. I can't love a murderer, James, I just can't.

He said nothing. Far off somewhere in the woods, an owl was calling. A terribly sad and lonely sound. I glanced over at Phoebe. No part of her was moving now. Her skin shone white in the moonlight. I used my apron to wipe the tears off my face. For a long while both of us were silent. I thought about everything James and me had done together—all the laughing and touching and dear little promises and happiness—and I waited for him to say something, but he didn't say anything. He did not speak.

But I won't have you go to jail or be hanged, I said at last. I won't do it. I can't.

His face lit up.

That's right, princess. I knew it!

What? I said, the speed of the change in him almost making me regret what I had said. What did you know?

That I could rely on you. I knew it. Oh, Eliza, you do love me, don't you?

I wasn't all that sure I did love him anymore. I pressed my lips together. It was like I wanted to press all the kisses out of them, the memories of all that warmth and kissing.

It's not about love, I said.

What then?

I shook my head. The truth was I didn't know what it was about. Perhaps all I wanted was for nothing to change—for everything to stay sweet and steady and the same, for the summer to go on exactly as it was. But I also felt impatient for something: what? I could hardly be bothered to explain it to myself, let alone try and make him see it.

But I looked at him sitting there and, remembering the peppery smell of the back of his neck and the way his eyes could melt me and all the times we'd had connection, the things we'd done, the backs of my knees went hot.

I've a better idea, I said. Of what to do with her.

“
D
ON
'
T GO HOME,” HE SAYS AS THEY MAKE THEIR SLOW, SUNLIT
way back along the rough-mown path by the golf course to his car. “Do you have to go? If Graham's not even there? Come back to ours for a bit.”

She hesitates. Looking at him.

“Is Deborah there?”

“I told you. She's in London today. Seeing her mother. I'm getting her from the station later.”

Mary says nothing. A quick picture of Deborah on a train,
her pale hair falling over her shoulder as she pushes down the window to open the door.

“What?” he says.

“Nothing.”

“You looked worried.”

“I'm fine.”

She does not look at him and then she does. He reaches out and touches her hand, just for a moment, the lightest touch.

“Go on,” he says. “I'm asking you. I'm begging you. I really want you to come.”

A
T THE HOUSE,
M
ARY
'
S STARTLED TO SEE
D
EBORAH
'
S BAG ON
the chair in the sunny, coir-matted hall. A cardigan flung over it.

She stops in front of it for a moment. Then follows Eddie into the kitchen. Watching as he goes over and fills the kettle, plonks it down and switches it on, turning back to her.

“She has another bag, you know.”

“What?”

“The bag. Out there. It's not the one she took with her. To London.”

“Oh.”

He comes over to her then—crosses the room and stands in front of her. She has no idea what he's going to do, and then she does. He puts his two hands on her shoulders. The unexpectedness of it—almost painful. She feels a flush spreading up from her chest to her neck, her cheeks.

“What are you doing?” she says.

He keeps his eyes on hers for a moment, then takes his hands away.

“I don't know. I haven't the faintest idea.”

He walks away, crossing the vast, blond space of the kitchen—its airy cleanness odd and alarming to her now, even though she's
eaten several suppers in here, even, one weekend, let herself in to feed their cat—and goes over to the polished counter of the island.

“An island!” Deborah said as she showed them around the house that first time. “I don't know what it is about islands, but I've always wanted one, haven't I, Eddie?”

Now he takes mugs off hooks. Puts them down on Deborah's island. Opens a drawer for a spoon. Goes to a cupboard by the sink, takes out a big, unopened box of tea bags, rips the cellophane off. Glancing across at her.

“Sit down,” he says.

Mary does nothing. She doesn't sit. He glances at her.

“She's not here. I told you.”

“What?”

“Deb. She had lunch with her mum and then they were looking at wallpapers or something. For the long-awaited bloody extension. She's going to text me when she's on the train.”

Mary says nothing. At last she pulls out a kitchen chair and sits down. Looking at the sagging sofa by the range where the elderly Siamese lies curled and motionless on a blanket that is thick with hair.

She feels Eddie watching her.

“Do you need to call Graham?” he says. “To see how she's doing?”

She shakes her head.

“I know he'll call when he has news.”

For a moment neither of them says anything. Eddie looks at her.

“This must feel so hard for you both. After everything that's happened—your daughters—after what you've already had to go through.”

The kettle comes to a boil. He pours water into the cups. Mary watches him in silence. He lifts his head and looks at her.

“What?” he says.

“What?”

“You. What are you thinking? You're thinking something. I can see it all over your face.”

She smiles. Shakes her head.

“I don't know. It's just that—well, you're the only person I've ever met who dares to do that.”

“Do what?”

“Refer to it. To the girls. And to what happened.”

He makes a face.

“Deb always says I don't think. That I just go blundering in.”

Mary looks at him.

“I wouldn't call it blundering.”

“You wouldn't?”

She takes a breath.

“When we were at the pub that time, and you asked me about the girls—you suddenly out of the blue asked me their ages and what they were called—well, this may sound strange, but I can't tell you how much I liked it.”

He looks at her. Lifting the tea bags from the cups.

“Really? You didn't mind it?”

“It was lovely. Lovely of you. Yes, really. A lovely thing to do.”

He sighs.

“It wasn't out of the blue actually. And it wasn't me blundering, not that time. I'd been thinking about it for a long time. Wondering whether I should. Trying to pluck up courage, I suppose.”

Mary stares at him.

“You had?”

“I wasn't sure, you see, whether it was the right thing. I very badly didn't want to upset you. Make you think about them, I mean.”

She looks at him.

“You didn't upset me. Not at all. And anyway, I want to think about them.”

“You do?”

Mary nods, suddenly both elated and embarrassed. He gazes at her.

“Of course. Of course you do.”

She sits up in her chair.

“No one ever asks me about them anymore. Literally never. Not even family, no one. People go out of their way not to mention them. No one ever says their names. Even Graham. Especially Graham. He just can't do it—he can't say their names.”

“He can't?”

“Not yet. It's not his fault. He just can't. I don't blame him for that. But what it means, you see, is that no one ever mentions them at all. Whole days—weeks—go by and I don't ever hear them mentioned—”

Her eyes fill with tears and she turns her head away quickly. A long silence. She turns back. Watching as he pours milk into the cups.

“I'm sure it's just that they're afraid to,” he says at last. “The people, I mean. They probably think you'll find it upsetting.”

Mary watches as he puts the milk bottle back in the fridge. She shakes her head.

“Well, I wouldn't. I wouldn't find it upsetting. What's upsetting is to have to live my whole life never talking about them as if they were—”

He turns from the fridge to look at her.

“Dead?”

She nods, feeling herself flush. A kind of shame creeping over her. But confidence too. A little bit of confidence. Allowing herself to glance at him.

“That's right. As if they were dead. Sometimes I still can't believe it. That they really are definitely dead. Not temporarily dead or just dead for the time being in some awful, painful way, but completely dead and gone—lost to me, completely lost, forever and ever.”

Eddie is silent for a moment.

“It's impossible. To think about.”