*
The storms were past, and a period of fine dry weather followed.
Well, that’s OK, he thought. But if she was still there in winter he was going to have to tell someone. He’d got a bead on her now. While she was asleep he’d gone through her coat. It was a long thick tweedy thing with deep pockets. He found a purse, a really old worn-out leather one with a bit of colour just filtering through here and there. She had a Visa card and some store loyalty cards and loads of bits of paper all crammed in everywhere. She had a bit of silver and some coppers and a five pound note very neatly and meticulously folded like a work of art. And a couple of cheaply developed colour photographs, finely creased all over like ancient faces. Two girls. Big grins in a garden. A pretty girl, looked like Caribbean blood, maybe even Polynesian. A merry-looking girl, any age from twelve to twenty, he could never tell. He felt bad looking at them so he shoved them back in and closed the purse guiltily. A bus pass. Picture. Her but different. So she’s Lorna Gilder. Lorna Gilder. Seemed funny her actually having a name. And there was a little book with numbers and addresses in it. He scanned it eagerly. A dozen or so names. One of them was Harriet Gilder. Aha! Could be a daughter or something, a niece. Even a sister. Someone might want to know. Not fair on them. So he wrote down Harriet Gilder’s address and email and phone, it was all there, written in elegant longhand in black ink. Quink. He really ought to let this daughter know.
Anyway, if she was fool enough to try and go through the winter in there, he had a number to call. Or give it to Madeleine, someone who knows what to do in these cases. Not his responsibility anyway. He wished he’d never gone out that night, she was all right, she wasn’t dying or anything, she was doing OK. Just couldn’t get his head round it, the horrible dark of the wood, the wetness, the simple inaccessibility. Might as well be on top of a rock somewhere in the sea far west of the Outer Hebrides.
18
I dreamed I was disposing of your body.
Night, a little drizzly, damp on the air, settling on me. I was driving very slowly down a narrow track in the countryside between high hedges. You were in the back, on the floor. The feeling was solemn but I had hardened myself and was outwardly calm. The path ended where a wide gate blocked the way into a field. I stopped the car, got out, undid the rope holding the gate and pushed it open. The field was muddy, the sky blotched and thick with cloud.
And then I realised how crazy this was. Look at me, my stick arms. I could never dig a hole big enough to bury you deep, not if I dug all night. Even though the ground was soft. I hadn’t thought this through.
The sky was heavy. My heart too. The world was heavy.
When I woke up it was in my head, a country tune. I turned it into a country song and went about singing it all day.
*
Great trees had been uprooted. Walking in the aftermath was strangely painful, the sight of ripped-out roots provoking thoughts of toothache. I stood looking round and the drizzle turned to soft rain. Poor wood. Seen it before, said the wood, with a little nervous blasé shrug. The smell of it all, green and rank; if you were painting it you’d want the blackest green you could get. Talk about aromatherapy. Just stand here and breathe in. It’s like being under the sea. Lily didn’t like these woods. If you stood still, she said, they closed in on you. She’d think I was mad. Quite the claustrophobe, Lily. She had to talk or whistle all the time she was in here, keep the real feeling of the place away. Never liked lifts, and even small rooms unnerved her. Hated going to the toilet, got in and out as quick as she could, then she’d have to go again ten minutes later. Funny little thing she was, always bouncing around and laughing and standing on her head against the wall. Then when she was eleven she started dressing like a Times Square prostitute going out to meet her pimp. We didn’t let her, of course, but she sneaked out like that anyway sometimes. And there’s Eve downstairs saying, ‘It’s only like dressing up, there’s no harm in it, she’s being creative,’ and me: ‘Yeah but what about all the predators?’ and Eve banging on that when she was a kid they could roam for hours unsupervised and nothing ever happened to anyone in those days. Well, you can pull the heavy parent act when they’re only eleven, but it gets harder. By the time she was fourteen, me and Johnny had turned into repressive elders. The scenes, the tears, the grindings of teeth, that night, the night of the big melt-down, everyone there watching, and Eve came in with nothing on but her knickers and Lily in those fishnet tights. There was a big demo in town and everyone was going but me. I couldn’t stand crowds. You could call it crowdphobia, there’s a word for it, no doubt. I couldn’t even go to the Notting Hill Carnival or Glastonbury. She was in her room. Harriet was eating cold pasta with her fingers in front of Play School. Maurice stood in the
