since. But still: it would have been so heart-stoppingly easy for us to miss one another, for me or Abby to show up an hour later for registration, for Justin to refuse our invitation, for Rafe to be just that little bit snippier so that we backed off and left him alone. Do you see now why I believe in miracles? I used to imagine time folding over, the shades of our future selves slipping back to the crucial moments to tap each of us on the shoulder and whisper: Look, there, look! That man, that woman: they’re for you; that’s your life, your future, fidgeting in that line, dripping on the carpet, shuffling in that doorway. Don’t miss it. How else could such a thing have happened?”
He bent down and picked up our butts from the paving stones, one by one. “In all my life,” he said simply, “these are the only four people I have ever loved.” Then he stood up and walked off across the grass towards the house, with the bottle and the glass dangling from one hand and the cigarette butts cupped in the other.
20
The others came back still heavy-eyed and headachy and in a prickly mood. The film had been crap, they said, some awful thing with a random Baldwin brother having endless supposedly comic misunderstandings with someone who looked like Teri Hatcher but wasn’t; the cinema had been full of kids who were clearly below the age limit and who had spent the whole two hours texting each other and eating crackly things and kicking the back of Justin’s seat. Rafe and Justin were still very obviously not talking, and now Rafe and Abby apparently weren’t either. Dinner was leftover lasagna, crunchy on top and scorched on the bottom and eaten in tense silence. No one had bothered to make a salad to go with it, or to light the fire.
Just when I was about ready to scream, Daniel said calmly, glancing up, “By the way, Lexie, I meant to ask you something. I thought I might touch on Anne Finch with my Monday group, but I’m awfully rusty. Would you mind giving me a quick rundown, after dinner?”
Anne Finch wrote a poem from the point of view of a bird, she showed up here and there in Lexie’s thesis notes, and that, since there are only twenty-four hours in a day, was basically all I knew about her. Rafe would have pulled something like this out of pure malicious mischief, yanking my chain just because he could, but Daniel never opened his mouth without a solid reason. That brief, strange alliance in the garden was over. He was showing me, starting with the little things, that if I insisted on sticking around he could make my life very, very awkward.
There was no way I was going to make an eejit of myself by spending my evening babbling about voice and identity to someone who knew I was talking rubbish. Lucky for me Lexie had been an unpredictable brat-although probably luck had nothing to do with it: I was pretty sure she had constructed that side of her personality specifically for moments a lot like this one. “I don’t feel like it,” I said, keeping my head down and jabbing at my crunchy lasagna with my fork.
There was an instant of silence. “Are you OK?” Justin asked.
I shrugged, not looking up. “I guess.”
Something had just hit me. That silence and the fine thread of new tension through Justin’s voice, and quick glances flicking back and forth across the table: the others were, instantly and so easily, worried about me. Here I’d spent weeks trying to get them to relax, drop their guard; I had never thought about how fast I could send them skidding in the opposite direction, and how serious a weapon that might make if I used it right.
“I helped you with Ovid when you needed it,” Daniel reminded me. “Don’t you remember? I spent ages finding you that quote-what was it?”
Obviously I wasn’t about to rise to that one. “I’d only get mixed up and end up telling you about Mary Barber or someone. I can’t think straight today. I keep…” I shoved lasagna bits aimlessly around my plate. “Never mind.”
Nobody was eating any more. “You keep what?” Abby asked.
“Leave it,” Rafe said. “God knows I’m not in the mood for Anne bloody Finch. If she’s not either-”
“Is something bothering you?” Daniel asked me, politely.
“Leave her alone.”
“Of course,” Daniel said. “Get some rest, Lexie. We’ll do it another night, when you’re feeling better.”
I risked a quick look up. He had picked up his fork and knife again and was eating steadily, with nothing on his face but thoughtful absorption. This move had backfired; he was calmly, intently considering his next one.
I went for a preemptive strike. After dinner we were all in the sitting room, reading, or anyway pretending to-no one had even suggested anything as social as a game of cards. The ashes from last night’s fire were still in a dreary pile in the fireplace, and there was a soggy chill in the air; distant bits of the house kept letting out sharp cracks or ominous groans, making us all jump. Rafe was kicking the hearth-rail with the toe of one shoe, in a steady, irritable rhythm, and I was fidgeting, changing position in my chair every few seconds. Between the two of us, we were making both Justin and Abby tenser every second. Daniel, head bent over something with an awful lot of footnotes, didn’t seem to have noticed.
Around eleven, like always, I went out to the hall and put on my outdoor stuff. Then I went back to the sitting room and hung in the doorway, looking unsure.
“Going for a walk?” Daniel asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “It might help me relax. Justin, will you come with me?”
Justin started, stared at me like a rabbit in headlights. “Me? Why me?”
“Why anyone?” Daniel inquired, with mild curiosity.
I shrugged, an uneasy twitch. “I don’t know, OK? My head feels weird. I keep thinking…” I twisted my scarf round my finger, bit my lip. “Maybe I had bad dreams last night.”
“Nightmares,” Rafe said, without looking up. “Not ‘bad dreams.’ You’re not six.”
“What kind of bad dreams?” Abby asked. There was a tiny, worried furrow between her eyebrows.
I shook my head. “I don’t remember. Not properly. Just… I just don’t feel like being out in the lanes alone.”
“But I don’t either,” said Justin. He looked really upset. “I hate it out there-really hate it, not just… It’s horrible. Eerie. Can’t someone else go?”
“Or,” Daniel suggested helpfully, “if you’re this anxious about going out, Lexie, why don’t you stay at home?”
“Because. If I sit around in here any longer, I’m going to go crazy.”
“I’ll go with you,” Abby said. “Girl chat.”
“No offense,” Daniel said, with a slight, affectionate smile at Abby, “but I think a homicidal maniac might be less intimidated by the two of you than he should be. If you’re feeling nervous, Lexie, you should have someone large with you. Why don’t you and I go?”
Rafe raised his head. “If you’re going,” he told Daniel, “then so am I.”
There was a small, tight silence. Rafe stared coldly at Daniel, unblinking; Daniel gazed calmly back. “Why?” he asked.
“Because he’s a moron,” Abby said, to her book. “Ignore him and maybe he’ll go away, or at least shut up. Wouldn’t that be fun?”
“I don’t want you guys,” I said. I was all ready for this, Daniel trying to join the party. I hadn’t counted on Justin having some weird unexplained phobia of country lanes, though. “All you’ll do is bitch at each other, and I’m not in the mood. I want Justin. I never see him any more.”
Rafe snorted. “You see him all day, every day. How much Justin can one person take?”
“That’s different. We haven’t talked in ages, not properly.”
“I can’t go out there in the middle of the night, Lexie,” Justin said. He looked like he was actually in pain. “I would, honestly, but I just can’t.”
“Well,” Daniel said to me and Rafe, putting his book down. There was a glint in his eye, something like a wry, tired triumph: one all. “Shall we go?”
“Forget it,” I said, giving them all a disgusted glare. “Just forget it. Never mind. You can all stay here and bitch
