The Stopped Heart (52 page)

She liked to say that she knew the exact moment.

“It was as if each of them had their own particular flavor and it made itself felt immediately, literally that second,” she liked to say. And even though he laughed, she knew that he believed her absolutely. That was the thing about Graham. He always got it, he always understood.

But on that dark winter's morning when they brought Ella home from the hospital and, wrapped in her white blanket in her straw Moses basket, they laid her in the middle of their vast double bed, she found herself suddenly unable to bear the sight of that tiny asleep face and those tight-curled hands, and she wept.

He discovered her there, in the armchair. The front of her nightdress wet with tears.

“It's because she's so small,” she said. “And the bed's so big.”

He knelt down, put an arm around her, kissed her shoulder, her wet and salty cheek, her neck.

“What? You'd have liked her to come out bigger?”

Still crying, she buried her face in his sweater that smelled of the hospital and she laughed.

“I don't want her ever to go out in the world,” she said, taking the box of tissues that he passed her.

“Fine,” he said. “That's easily fixed. We'll keep her at home. We'll have special locks fitted.”

She laughed again, blew her nose.

“I love you,” she said.

B
EHIND THE APPLE SHED, NO MOON.
B
LACKNESS OF WEEDS.
Prickling tangle of the hedge. The outline of the old tree. My breath, hurting in my chest because of what he's done to me. A sudden loosening. Blood running down my arm, my legs.

He is standing above me now, looking down. So high, I think, so tall and high, his pale face bobbing up there in the darkly waving tops of the trees.

I try to look at him. His face going in and out, blurry and sharp, sometimes there, sometimes not.

Blood. My hair is sticky with it. The bodice of my dress, soaked. But it doesn't matter because here we all are, riding in the cart, all of us—my father and mother and all the kiddies. Jazzy and Lottie and Charlie and Minnie and Honey and dear Frank coming with us too. Even the dog, her black ears streaming in the wind. I ask my father where we're going and he says the sea.

The sea, Eliza, we're going to the sea—

The sea. I try again to take a breath, but something is stopping it. Blood again. His face, coming closer now.

What is it, Eliza?

I blink. Something bubbling in my throat, a terrible taste, like old tin cans.

I thought it would hurt a lot more than this, I say.

He smiles.

I wouldn't ever hurt you, Eliza. Not if I could help it. You know I wouldn't.

I feel my eyes closing.

We're going to the sea, I tell him.

It's called the High Striker, Eliza.

No, I say. It's not right, it's not right—

It is, that's what it's called.

The last thing I feel is not pain at all but the bright smashed feeling as the cart rolls around the corner and the lane drops down and suddenly there it is—

I turn on my side and see the dark, moldy wood of the apple shed.

Don't leave me, I say. Please, James. Don't leave me here.

When I open my eyes again, I see that he has a spade in his hands.

Don't worry, he says. I won't.

T
HAT HOLIDAY ON
E
LBA, THE HOLIDAY WHEN THEY BOUGHT
the dish. Two or was it three years ago? Sitting in the little osteria as the sky grew velvety, they all watched as a goat herder brought his whole flock hurrying past. Hundreds of goats of every possible size and shape and color, bells clanging, bleating loudly, hooves scraping through the dust.

The girls were dazzled. They shrieked and laughed and clapped
their hands. Even Mary was amazed at how the animals just kept on coming and coming, seemingly endlessly rushing past them out of the black darkness until the sound of the bells receded into the distance and—

Silence. Ella looked at her.

“Is it finished?”

And Mary was about to tell her that it was, but no, a whole minute later, here was the very last one, the smallest goat of all, a little gray one, skidding around the corner as fast as he could, bleating loudly and struggling to catch up.

Flo screamed with delight, but Ella, watching it disappear around the corner, was upset. What if this one didn't manage to catch up with the others? What if he was lost? How did they know for certain that the man would wait? Would he have counted them? How would he know there was one more left to come?

Mary leaned over to cut up Ella's spaghetti.

“Ah, but didn't you know, the goat who's allowed to go last is always the bravest and the cleverest.”

Ella stared at her.

“He is?”

Mary smiled and looked at Graham.

“It's the rule in the goat world, isn't it, Daddy?”

Graham put on a serious face.

“It is. It definitely is. Only the very bravest goat is allowed to go last.”

Ella listened, fork in hand, napkin tied around her neck, tears still standing in her eyes.

“What a brave goat!” she said.

Mary smiled.

“That's right.” She felt Graham squeeze her knee under the
table. “He's a very special goat. That little goat is definitely the very bravest of them all.”

S
EVENTEEN MONTHS.
T
HAT
'
S ALL IT
'
S BEEN.
B
UT ONE DAY IN A
future that she can scarcely imagine but one that she knows lies only just around the corner, it will have been seventeen years.

Seventeen years.

But she won't think of that now.

T
HERE WAS ANOTHER HOLIDAY.
E
ASTER, WAS IT?
S
HE RENTED A
house by the sea, just her and the girls without Graham, and the three of them woke early, to the most perfect morning. Let's walk to the harbor for breakfast, she said.

She remembers every detail. Bright sun, blue sky, the air, sharp and chilly. Sea smooth, brown as a pebble, barely a ripple on it. Not yet eight in the morning and not a soul about, not even a dog walker, the beach eerie and wide, emptier than she'd ever seen it.

At first the girls walked along with her. Ella chattering about this and that. Flo singing and laughing, every third or fourth step a little skip and a hop.

But soon they both got lively and, electrified by all that space and light, they started to run ahead and, because it was so safe and because she knew they could not come to any harm, she let them.

She remembers it all perfectly, the bright elasticity of that moment. The sand beneath her feet. Glittering sea. Early-morning sun in her eyes. The two small girls in jeans and T-shirts, tearing ahead of her over that wide, unearthly landscape.

She thinks that what happened next is they got to the harbor, but the place where she thought they could get breakfast was shut and the sun went behind a cloud and the day turned that
little bit grayer and colder and by the time she'd got them back to the house and bought cereal and milk from the co-op, Flo was scratchy and all Ella wanted to do was watch TV.

But in fact, she tells herself, that's not what happened. It's not what happens. Not what will happen now. What will happen is, she will keep on following them over that stretch of bright, early-morning sand, the two people she loves most in this world, small dots of darkness getting smaller and smaller and farther and farther away.

And she ought to worry, but she isn't worried. She could call them back, but she won't do that. She won't do any of these things. What she will do is she will just keep on walking—nothing but that. It's far simpler than she ever realized, the simplest thing in the world, just to walk, just to keep on going, to follow them forever, her girls, her daughters, her eyes on them both, keeping them safe as they race together over this wide, exhilarating earth.

A heartfelt thank you to Alex Bowler and Dan Franklin at Jonathan Cape, Claire Wachtel at HarperCollins US, and Iris Tupholme at HarperCollins Canada for their many meticulous readings and invaluable insights. They turned out to be right about just about everything, and anyone who thinks that novels are not edited these days should see an early draft of this one.

Big thanks, too, to the brilliant (and brilliantly unstoppable) Karolina Sutton and everyone at Curtis Brown: your passion and excitement is a real inspiration.

Finally, thank you doesn't begin to describe what I owe my former agent, Gill Coleridge of Rogers, Coleridge & White. When I was nine years old, I used to dream of being an author. She made it happen. After twenty years together, this novel is dedicated to her, in friendship, gratitude, and with so much love.

JULIE MYERSON
is the author of nine novels, including the internationally bestselling
Something Might Happen
, and three works of nonfiction. As a critic and columnist, she has written for many newspapers including
The Guardian
, the
Financial Times
,
Harper's Bazaar
, and the
New York Times
.

Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at
hc.com
.

FICTION

Sleepwalking

The Touch

Me and the Fat Man

Laura Blundy

Something Might Happen

The Story of You

Out of Breath

Then

The Quickening

NONFICTION

Home: The Story of Everyone Who Ever

Lived in Our House

Not a Games Person

Living with Teenagers

The Lost Child: A Mother's Story

Cover design by Gregg Kulick

Cover photographs: © Joanna Cepuchowicz / EyeEm / Getty Images (window); © Aurelia Frey / Millennium Images, UK (background)

This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

THE STOPPED HEART.
Copyright © 2016 by Julie Myerson. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

FIRST U.S. EDITION

EPub Edition March 2016 ISBN 9780062409331

ISBN 978-0-06-240932-4 (pbk.)

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