‘You are to have it, Natasha,’ Arvind says again. ‘She gave it to Cecily. Now it is for you. This is what she wanted.’ He puts it on my hand, his thin brown fingers clutching my large clumsy ones, and we stare at each other in silence. Arvind has never been the kind of grandfather who whittled toy soldiers out of wood, or mended your tricycle, or let you try the sausage on the barbecue. He is frequently obtuse and it is hard to understand what he means.
But while I don’t know what his final aim is, in this moment, looking at him, I know each of us understands the other. I put the ring on, sliding it onto the third finger of my right hand, like a wedding. My granny had strong, large hands, so do I. It fits perfectly. The flowers glint gently in the low light.
‘Thank you,’ I say softly. ‘It’s beautiful.’
‘Would you be very kind and please open the curtains,’ he says, after a moment. ‘I would like to see the sea. The moon is also out tonight. I don’t like to be shut in like this. They must understand this, in the new place. I want to see the moon. It wil remind me of home.’
I get up and draw the heavy fabric back. The moon is out and it shines, like the midnight sun, low and heavy on the black waters, golden light rippling towards the horizon. It is calmer now, but as a dirty cloud scuds across the surface of the moon I shiver. Something is coming. A storm, perhaps.
I open the window, breathing in the scent of the sea, fresh, dangerous, alive. The gold of Granny’s ring is warm against my fingers. I stare into the water, into nothing.
‘It’s a mild night,’ I say after a silence. ‘There’s something brewing,’ he says simply. ‘I can smel it in the air. That’s what happens when you’re old. Peculiar, but useful.’
I smile at him, and go back towards the bed. I notice the drawer of his bedside table is stil open, and I lean over to push it shut. But as I do, I see something staring up at me. A face.
‘What’s this?’ I say. ‘Can I see?’
I don’t know why I say this, it’s none of my business. But the idea that Louisa is going to go through this room, that everything is ending here at the house, emboldens me, I think.
‘Take it out,’ Arvind glances at it. ‘Yes, take it out, you’l see.’ I lift it out. It is a smal study in oils, no bigger than an A4 piece of paper, on a sandy-coloured canvas. No frame. It is of a teenage girl’s head and shoulders, half- turning towards the viewer, a quizzical expression on her face.
Her black hair is tangled; her cheeks are flushed. Her skin is darker than mine. She is wearing a white Aertex shirt, and the ring that is on my finger is around a chain on her slender neck. ‘Cecily, Frowning’, is written in pencil at the bottom.
‘Is that her?’ I am holding it up gingerly. I gaze at it. ‘Is that Cecily?’
‘Yes,’ Arvind says. ‘She was beautiful. Your mother wasn’t. She hated her.’
I think this is a joke, as Mum is one of the most beautiful people I know. I look again. This girl – she’s so fresh, so eager, there’s something so urgent about the way she is turning towards me, as if saying,
‘Where did – where was it?’
‘It was in the studio,’ Arvind says. ‘I took it out of the studio, the day after she died.’
‘You went in there?’
Arvind puts his fingers together. ‘Of course I did.’ He looks straight through me. ‘I never did before. She never went back in there, either. The day after she died, yes. I told myself I had to. She asked me to. To get what was in there. But it wasn’t al there any more.’
‘Get what was in there?’ I don’t understand.
I look at my grandfather, and his eyes are ful of tears. He lies back on the pil ows, and closes his eyes.
‘I am very tired,’ he says. ‘Yes, I’m sorry,’ I say. But I don’t want to put her back in the drawer, out of sight again, hidden away.
‘I’m glad you’ve seen her,’ he says. ‘Now you can see. You are so alike.’
This is patently not true, this beautiful scrap of a girl is not like me. I am older than she ever was, I am tired, jaded, dul . I stand up to put the painting back. As I do, something which had been stuck to the back of the canvas – it is unframed – fal s to the ground, and I bend and pick it up.
It is a sheaf of lined paper, tied with green string knotted through a hole on the top left corner, and folded in half. About ten pages, no more. I unfold it. Written in a looping script are the words:
I hold it in my hand and stare. There’s a stamp at the top bearing the legend ‘St Katherine’s School’. Underneath in blue fountain pen someone, probably a teacher, has written ‘Cecily Kapoor Class 4B’. It’s such a prosaic-looking thing, smel ing faintly of damp, of churches and old books. And yet the handwriting looks fresh, as though it was scrawled yesterday.
‘What is this?’ I ask, stupidly.
Arvind opens his eyes. He looks at me, and at the pages I am holding.
‘I knew she’d kept it,’ he says. He does not register surprise or shock. ‘There’s more. She fil ed a whole exercise book, that summer.’
I glance into the drawer again. ‘Where is it, then?’ Arvind puckers his gummy mouth together. ‘I don’t know. Don’t know what happened to the rest of it. That’s partly why I went into the studio. I wanted to find it, I wanted to keep it.’
‘Why?’ I say. ‘Why, what’s in it? Where’s the rest of it?’ Suddenly we hear footsteps at the bottom of the stairs, a familiar thundering sound.
‘Arvind?’ a voice demands. ‘Is Natasha in with you? Natasha? I just wonder, isn’t the cab going to be here
