I wince, and Alex nods. ‘Beat yourself up pretty good, didn’t you, Ma? You want me to get the photos back out?’
She doesn’t respond, and William asks, ‘What photos?’
‘The doctor said she’s going to have some short-term memory issues. I thought it might help her to look through some photos so I got some out the attic.’
‘Which ones?’
‘The whole box. You don’t know what’ll get through to her so I thought I’d cast a wide net.’ He turns back to Mimi, who stares vacantly ahead, mouth hanging slightly open. ‘I’ll go and get them, shall I, Mum? You stay here with Will and Frances.’
‘Where’s your father? Is he in the greenhouse?’
William and Alex exchange a concerned glance. The silence drips, drips, drips into the space until William turns away from Mimi to look out the window as he says, ‘That’s right, Mum. He’s just checking the tomatoes.’
Mimi says nothing. Her eyes are sunk deep into her narrow skull. She is wearing a dressing gown over her nightdress but she still seems to be shivering and when I touch her arm it is as cold as marble.
‘Maybe get another blanket for her, Alex?’ I say, and he calls back, okay, sure.
William and I drove the three hundred or so miles from Swindon beneath a gleaming cerulean sky laced with clouds as thick as whipped cream. Lewes is a small market town surrounded by the richly rolling Sussex Downs and backboned by the River Ouse. Sculpted white cliffs rise up over the tile-hung cottages and flint walls, while the smell of hops from the brewery permeates the air. Thorn House is set a couple of miles outside town, a large Georgian building of oak floors and draughty casement windows surrounded by overgrown allotment gardens and clipped hedges. Just beyond those is a meadow of wild clover and yarrow and the broad sweep of woodland descending into a valley thick with shadow. William once told me that when they were boys they’d discovered an old dry well in the forest there, partially concealed with ferns and nettles and brambles heavy with fruit. The two boys had taken their torches and shone them inside, and at the bottom, lying in the dark and the dirt, they’d found a dead sheep, partially rotted away. Twelve-year-old William had nightmares about their grisly discovery for months afterwards, but Alex, then only seven years old, had visited again and again, fascinated by the decomposition, the slow revealing of dark, spoiled flesh and yellowed bone, the low droning buzz of flies. When Mimi had found out she’d been horrified and had immediately instructed their father, Edward, to board the old well up. Her words, according to William, had been, ‘A fall like that will snap their necks.’ Edward had done as his wife requested, despite Alex’s weeping protests, but that night he had presented Alex with a souvenir he had excavated from inside the well itself – the sheep’s skull, bleached and cleaned to a bright white. Alex had put it in pride of place on his bookshelf over his bed, and William would avoid its dread, blank-eyed gaze for years afterwards. As far as I know, it’s still there.
William takes his phone from his pocket and examines it, frowning. One of the advantages of being down here is the limited phone reception. If you need to make a call you have to walk to the top end of the garden where the bench sits beneath the old apple trees, arthritic boughs bent and heavily knuckled. An old rope swing still hangs there, the rope grey and frayed, moving gently in the ghosts of a breeze.
‘I need to call work,’ William tells me. ‘Stay here with Mum, I’ll be back in a minute.’
I watch him leave the room, ducking his head beneath the small doorway. My anger curls and uncurls inside me, burrowing deep into my chest, glowing ember-bright between my ribs. I still haven’t told him I know about Kim, the photos, the payments, the transactions making the erotic beige and mundane. He will know something’s wrong, though. Sooner or later. It comes from me in waves of cold, like a hoar frost.
‘Which one are you?’
I look up at Mimi. Her head is turned towards me again. White hair floats about her patched skull in wisps of cobweb. Her skin is thin and as creased as crêpe paper.
‘I’m Frances, Mimi. William’s wife. Remember?’
‘Are you off the telly?’
I shake my head. It’s frightening how vulnerable she looks in the big white day bed.
‘I’m afraid not,’ I say.
‘Are you dead?’
‘I hope not!’ I laugh and after a moment she reaches up and touches my face. I try hard not to recoil from her cold fingers.
‘Are you real?’
‘Yes.’
She lowers her voice to a whisper. ‘Don’t let him hurt me.’
I stare at her, fear tracing a cold finger down my spine. Her eyes are watery and pale and she looks at me with utter conviction. I think of that twisted line of stitching running up the side of her skull, the way her thoughts seem tangled in each other. Alex told us to expect confusion, but it’s still jarring to hear her talking about her husband, Edward, a man a long time dead, or for her to whisper to me with her nails digging into my cheek. I’m opening my mouth to respond when Alex walks back into the room, a box held beneath his arm.
‘You saying hello to Frances, Mum? We’ve got some pictures in here of their wedding. You’ll like to look at those again, won’t you?’
Mimi’s hand drops away from my cheek. She turns back to the window and says, ‘Where’s that robin?’
I’m
