staring at nothing in the dark, while she was frozen stiff. At first he could tell she was careful not to drink too much, because she had to manage heating the patties up in the oven and getting them onto serving plates, while keeping watch over the barbecue; once everyone had had something to eat, she allowed herself to be more reckless. One or two of the smallest children had fallen asleep by this time and been put into the beds upstairs; the rest were playing hide-and-seek all round the house and garden and in the fields. Light was withdrawing behind mauve bars of cloud on the horizon; a fume of shadow spread under the old apple trees in the meadow, the children’s skulking or speeding forms indistinct in it, their noises amplified: a thud of footsteps if they were going for home, or the sudden yelp and relinquishment of defeat. The older children were organising this game, one of Ruth’s boys and a girl. Joni didn’t grasp the rules, or refused to play by them; she kept on running and squealing even after she’d been touched.
– I needed this, Elise said, swallowing mouthfuls of the punch thirstily, relaxing, dropping against the back of her cane chair. – I’ve been looking forward to this drink all day. Isn’t this perfect? What a perfect evening!
Perfect food too, everyone agreed.
Paul was talking to Carwen, a friend who was the education officer for the nearby conservation area, about what he’d been reading that afternoon, in the book on elegy, about the asymmetry in complex systems – how painstakingly long it took to construct them, and how almost instantaneously they could be destroyed: as true of social and cultural systems as it was of living organisms.
– It’s tragedy, built in to the very structure of things.
– You could choose to look at it like that, Carwen said. – But if I’m allowed to be a brutal scientist, destruction is also cleansing, it liberates the way for new systems.
– Isn’t that how tyrants have justified their wars? asked Ruth.
– We can’t afford to see it in that time scale, Paul said.
– Don’t you hate that word tragedy? said someone else. – Everything’s a fucking tragedy nowadays. They use ‘tragedy’ when they just mean an accident, or anything sad.
– Don’t spoil things, Paul, Elise said. – Don’t be all doom and gloom.
But in fact he was enjoying himself. He was buoyed up by his hopes for his new book. And he felt affectionate towards these people, even some of them he didn’t know very well, even Ruth. Ruth looked pretty, she was wearing some kind of long patterned smock over jeans and it made her seem less buttoned-up, more girlish. She had been nice to him since their vigil waiting for the otters – as if she withdrew somewhat from her solidarity with Elise, and felt sorry for him.
He took a call on his mobile, hurrying farther down the garden, where the signal was better. Elise tensed in her seat when she heard it ring, and he knew she was distracted from her own conversation, trying to work out who it was: afterwards he beckoned her to come over, so they could talk. Unsteady on her high heels when she stood up, she slipped out of the shoes and came in her bare feet across the grass. Bats were sketching their flight across the grey air. In the dusk her face was blurred, he could only clearly see her pale clothes, the dark of her cleavage where the top button of her shirt was undone.
– Who was it? Was it Gerald? Is he coming?
Her speech wasn’t slurred, but aggressive; some layer of concealment had been stripped from between them. Where their feet bruised it, the grass sent up its yearning green smell, tugging at his emotions. He seemed to guess how Elise felt, eaten up as if something essential was passing and she was prevented from reaching it, so that all she had to give, all her bloom, was going to waste.
– It’s Pia, he explained. – I have to go. Something’s up, I don’t know what, I don’t know exactly where she is, but she’s left the flat, she needs me to drive and pick her up.
– Oh, shit, Paul. Shit! You can’t drive anyway. You’re drunk.
– I’m not. I’ve only had a couple of glasses.
– Why can’t she go to Annelies?
– She’s already somewhere on her way here. She was hitching, she’s at a service station but she doesn’t know which one, she’s going to phone me back.
– Can’t she get a bus or something?
– She’s pregnant, El. And I don’t even know what’s happened, to make her leave. I’m afraid for her.
– All right. OK.
– I’ll come and make my excuses to everyone.
XI
B efore he started the car, he checked his phone for messages from Pia. He saw that he had missed a text from Gerald, saying he was on his way to the party. He didn’t see any need to pass this on. Gerald would be there in person soon enough.
Paul was sure he was all right to drive, although he had probably had more than the couple of glasses he’d owned up to. He liked night-driving. The empty roads weren’t banal as they were in the day – drawing the cover of darkness around them, they were transformed as if he was speeding through a different landscape, charged with mystique. He was full of apprehension for Pia. He had no idea what the matter was. She had refused to go into detail over the phone, she had been tearful, terse, desperate. Had she found out something about Marek, which she couldn’t live with? Perhaps he had been arrested, or they were going to deport him; perhaps it was something private, worse, some worm of deviancy or cruelty that he, Paul, had lived alongside and not detected. Perhaps Marek had only waited until Paul was out of the way to reveal himself. When he tried to imagine the man he had liked, he came up against the locked door of Marek’s unknown life. Already the time in that London flat was receding as if it had never belonged to him. When he thought about it from his perspective at Tre Rhiw, he was shocked at the casual drug-taking, the unfocused future, the lack of any genuine preparations for the baby’s arrival.
These anxieties circled round and round in his mind, but he also experienced a certain exhilaration: here he was, flying through the night towards his daughter when she needed him. This rescue seemed a simplifying and cleansing thing; a pure demand that he could meet and live up to. On the motorway he found himself, even at this late hour, backed up behind slowed traffic at some point after he’d crossed the bridge into England, funnelled into one lane. At least the traffic never stopped moving, and it didn’t take him too long to reach and pass the cause of the delay: there had been an accident, long enough ago for an ambulance to have arrived and for the police to be in charge. Two small cars were slewed across the road, facing the wrong direction altogether; the barrier along the central reservation was buckled, debris and broken glass strewn everywhere. Superstitiously, and out of respect, Paul didn’t look to see if anyone was badly hurt; he was aware that among the fluorescent jackets of the rescue services a few dazed young people stood around, woken up out of their lives into this disaster. He accelerated into the emptiness of the motorway ahead. When his phone buzzed, he pulled over onto the hard shoulder, more scrupulous after seeing the accident than he might have been. Pia texted that she was at Strensham services, and Paul answered that he’d be with her in less than an hour.
At that time of night the service area was ghostly: the staff outnumbered the customers, they looked around in the foyer from where they were grouped together, talking, when he walked in. One man was pushing a bucket on a wheeled trolley, washing the floor. Paul saw Pia in the cafe at once, bundled up in a windcheater with her back to him, her hair in two bunches, rucksack propped against the table beside her. The sight of her alone there, so intensely familiar, pierced him, and he hurried forward to claim her. When she turned around he saw that she had put the stud back in her lip. She was very pale. She hadn’t made up her face, and her sulky expression reminded him of her childhood.
– God, I couldn’t have waited here another moment, she said. – They’re all staring at me.
– I expect they’re only concerned about you. A pregnant young woman waiting here alone, late at night. You’re a bit of a mystery. And what were you thinking of, hitch-hiking? You should have called me, right away.
– I had a lift with a guy in a lorry, but he was turning off here. It’s better if you’re pregnant, they don’t try anything.
– I didn’t realise you’d hitch-hiked before.
She shrugged. – Well, I never told Mum when I did it, obviously.
