Hanging Hill

‘Oh, this and that. Actually…’ she glanced at the cottage ‘… I’d like a cup of tea. If that’s not too much trouble.’

Sally kept her gaze on the fields, trying to guess what was coming. She’d never been any good at reading her sister. That was just the way it was. She put down her rake and went towards the cottage, pulling off her gloves. Zoe followed, stooping to get through the low doorway. While Sally boiled the kettle, scooped tea into the pot, Zoe wandered around the kitchen, picking up things from the shelves and examining them, stopping to peer at a painting Sally had done of a tulip tree. ‘So,’ she said, ‘this is where you live now.’ She studied a photo of Millie and the other kids – Sophie, Nial and Peter – pictured walking in a line across a ploughed field. ‘You going to tell me about it? What happened to Julian?’

‘There’s nothing to tell. He found a girlfriend. They’ve got a baby.’

‘Is Millie OK with it?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I saw her the other day, Millie.’

‘I know.’

‘She looked well. She’s growing up fast. She’s very pretty. Is she well behaved?

‘Not really. No.’

Zoe gave a small smile and Sally stopped spooning tea.

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Is that what you came to talk about? Millie?’

‘In a way. There’s some news. Ralph Hernandez – her friend? He’s going to be OK but he tried to kill himself this morning.’

‘Ralph?’ She put the tin down with a clunk. ‘Oh, good Lord,’ she muttered. ‘It just doesn’t seem to stop.’

‘We’ve got someone talking to the headmaster at Kingsmead. I guess he’ll decide how to break the news to the kids.’

‘But is it Ralph’s way of…’ she tried to find the right word ‘… his way of admitting that he had something to do with Lorne?’

‘Some people think so.’

Sally lowered her eyes and put the lid back on the tea tin. She’d never met Ralph, but she knew all about him. She pictured him tall and dark. So, then, a suicide attempt. Another thing for Millie to carry. As if this household didn’t have enough weighing on it. She cut slices of an orange-iced almond cake she’d made at the weekend in an optimistic attempt to cheer herself up. She got out plates, napkins, forks, and had turned to the fridge for the milk when behind her Zoe said, ‘But that’s not really why I’m here.’

She stopped then, her hand on the fridge door, her back to the room. Not moving. David, she thought. Now you’re going to ask me about David. You’re so clever, Zoe. I’m no match for you. Her head drooped so her forehead was almost touching the fridge. Waiting for the axe to fall. ‘Oh,’ she said quietly. ‘Then why are you really here?’

There was a moment’s silence. Then behind her Zoe said quietly, ‘To apologize, I suppose.’

Sally stiffened slightly. ‘To… I beg your pardon?’

‘You know – about your hand.’

She had to swallow hard. It was the last thing. The very last thing… The accident with her hand hadn’t been referred to by anyone in the Benedict family since the day it had happened, nearly thirty years ago. To mention it was like saying the name of the devil aloud. ‘Don’t be silly,’ she managed to say. ‘There’s nothing to apologize about. It was an accident.’

‘It wasn’t an accident.’

‘But it was. An accident. And all a long time ago. Really, so long ago we hardly need to go back and-’

‘It wasn’t an accident, Sally. You know it, I know it. We’ve spent nearly thirty years pretending it didn’t happen, but it did. I pushed you off that bed because I hated you. Mum and Dad knew it wasn’t an accident too. That’s why we got sent to separate schools.’

‘No.’ Sally closed her eyes, rested her fingers on the lids and tried hard to keep the facts straight. ‘We got sent to separate schools because I wasn’t clever enough for yours. I failed the test.’

‘You could hardly hold the damn pen, probably, because your finger was broken.’

‘I could hold the pen. I didn’t get into the school because I was stupid.’

‘Don’t talk bullshit.’

‘It’s not bullshit.’

‘Yes, it is. And you know it.’

There was a long, hard choke wanting to come up from Sally’s stomach. She struggled to keep it under control. Finally, and with an immense effort of will, she opened her eyes and turned. Zoe was standing awkwardly on the other side of the table. There were red patches on her cheeks as if she was ill.

‘I need to make amends, Sally. Everyone does. If we want to live well in the present we need to face the failings of our past.’

‘Do we?’

‘Yes. We have to. We have to make sure we… make sure we connect to other people. Be sure we never forget that we’re part of a bigger pattern.’

Sally was silent. It sounded so weird, words like that coming out of Zoe’s mouth. She’d never thought of her sister as connected to other people. She was something quite out on her own. A lone planet. She needed nothing. No people. It was what Sally envied most, maybe.

‘Yeah, well.’ Zoe cleared her throat. Raised a dismissive hand. ‘I’ve said my piece, but now I’d better go. Villains to catch. Kittens to rescue from trees. You know how it is.’

And she was gone, out of the kitchen, out of the cottage, striding across the gravel, spinning her keys on her hands. She didn’t look back as she drove out on to the lane so she didn’t see Sally watching her from inside the kitchen. Didn’t see that she didn’t move for several minutes afterwards. A passer-by, if there had been any passers-by in that remote place, would have thought she was frozen there. A fuzzy white face on the other side of the leaded panes.

15

Just as Sally’s job was finishing that afternoon, Steve called and asked her to meet him in town. There wasn’t enough time to get to his house before she picked up Millie so he suggested they met at the Moon and Sixpence, the place they’d first had dinner together. She used the bathroom she’d just cleaned to have a hurried wash, and straightened her clothes. She put on a little makeup, but in the mirror her reflection was still tired and drawn. She couldn’t stop turning over what Zoe had said that morning. About amends and patterns and the past.

She got to the cafe by four and found him sitting on the terrace, dressed in a suit and camel overcoat, drinking coffee. She sat down opposite him. He turned his grey eyes to her and studied her. ‘Are you OK?’

‘I think so. How was the meeting?’

He nodded in the direction of the third seat at the table. ‘In there.’ He had the weary, resigned look of a man who’d just woken up to the fact that the world was going to disappoint him for ever. ‘In there.’

She saw a rucksack on the seat. ‘Is that…?’

He nodded. ‘I got paid in Krugerrands.’

‘Krugerrands?’

He nodded. ‘Had to go and change it in Hatton Garden. I got a good deal – there’s more than thirty-two K in there.’

Sally shivered. Thirty-two thousand pounds for killing a man. Blood money, they’d call this. She should be revolted by it, but she wasn’t. She just felt numb. ‘What are you going to do with it?’

‘I’m not going to do anything with it. It’s yours.’

‘But-’