was absence. She became a daughter again: a new baby, a stumbling toddler, a gawky, bespectacled eleven-year- old. While Ruby was around, Elise and her disappearance were not the same thing.
Nathan said, 'And what about you?'
'What's to say? Families pull together, or they break apart. I didn't have much choice.'
'But it's like . . .'
He waved his hand around, fighting for the word.
'I'll tell you what it's like,' she said. 'It's like being in open prison.
From the outside, it looks like I've got all the privileges: job, car, friends. Y'know. But all the freedom is gone. I'd always sort of assumed that Mum and Dad would become my responsibility, one day. But not so soon, you know? I had plans. Not big ones, necessarily.
Just normal plans: good job, nice husband, house, kids. Blah blah.
And suddenly, all that. . .'
Again, she fluttered her hand, following its progress like a departing bird.
Nathan leaned forward over the table.
'You're not even thirty yet.'
'Not yet. Ha. Okay, the thing is, I know I'll probably have all that.
But not in a way that'll seem natural. I'll always have this thing that happened to me, and nobody will be able to understand it. How do I have children? How do I even send them to school in the morning, after what happened to Elise? How do I tell them there's no such thing as monsters? How do I tell them not to be scared of the dark?'
She was becoming frustrated. She could explain, but not make him feel, the scale of this loss -- that, like an explosion, it expanded from a central point equally in all directions: that it stretched back in time, infecting the day of Elise's birth; and the night she was conceived - it was a ghost in the shadows of the evening June and Graham first met, first danced, first kissed. And it warped into the future, it coloured every breath Holly would ever take.
'And whatever I have,' she said. 'Whatever I get in the end, whatever kind of happiness I'm able to build, all of it will be stuff Elise was never able to have. How do I live with that? How am I supposed to have the husband and the kids and the house and the job and, I don't know, the three holidays a year in sodding Barbados when my sister went out one night - and just stopped?'
'I'm sure Elise wouldn't want you to be unhappy.'
'Of course she wouldn't. But just because the way you're feeling doesn't make sense, it doesn't stop you feeling it.'
'Are you seeing anyone?'
'What, like a counsellor?'
'Yeah.'
She laughed and slapped his wrist.
'What, do you think I'm mad?'
'Not a psychiatrist. Counsellors, they -- I don't know. They help you explore your emotions, or whatever.'
'I'm joking. Of course I saw a counsellor. But it wasn't for me.'
He topped up their glasses.
'And what about Ian?'
Ian was Holly's ex-boyfriend.
'What about him?'
'Do you ever see him?'
'Would it matter?'
'Of course not. I just--'
'No,' she said. 'I don't see him.'
The candle guttered in its bottle and she went on: 'I don't know. In some ways, I think breaking up with Ian was probably a lucky escape.'
'What was he like?'
'Well, nothing like you.'
'I'm not sure how to take that.'
'As a compliment, probably.'
He took a sip of wine.
She said, 'Look, he was supposed to love me enough to spend the rest of his life with me, sickness and health and all that blah. But when it came down to it, he didn't even bother to be my friend -- do you know what I mean? It was too much work, just to be my friend.
As soon as something bad happened, he couldn't handle it. It was too difficult for him. Poor puppy.'
Nathan lit a cigarette.
'You,' said Holly. 'You don't even know me. But you've been a better friend to me than Ian ever was. Than anybody was, actually.'
She drained her glass and they sat there, with one empty bottle and two empty glasses between them.
She said, 'I don't even know what you get out of this.'
'Out of this what?'
'You know what I mean. Spending time with me.'
'That's what I get.'
She put her head to one side.
'Why are you doing this?'
He wished there was wine in his glass. He cupped its fragile stem in his fist.
'I want to make things better.'
'And do you think you can do that?'
'I can try.'
She touched the back of his hand.
He said, 'The thing I'd like to do - more than anything in the world, the thing I'd like to do is make things better.'
He couldn't look at her. For a while, he thought she hadn't reacted.
A hot, shameful blush rose from his sternum.
Then Holly touched his cheek. He took her hand in his. Kissed her sharp little knuckles.
She said, 'I don't believe this is happening.'
Nathan said, 'Neither do I.'
At the end of April, Holly arranged to be absent when he arrived at Sutton Down. It was Saturday morning. In the boot of the car he had flowers and champagne.
He rang the doorbell. Graham answered. Now it was spring, he wore his pastel shirts short-sleeved.
Graham expressed pleasure to see him; he shook Nathan's hand and ushered him inside.
The front of the house was gloomy and cool. It was the kitchen and conservatory that caught the morning sun. Nathan walked towards the light, with Graham at his heel.
Outside, the orchard was in bloom. The kitchen windows were open to let in the crisp green air.
'Tea?' said Graham.
It had become the order of things that Graham would offer tea, which Nathan would then offer to make. But today that didn't seem right, so Nathan cleared his throat and said, 'Tea would be lovely.'
'Righto,' said Graham, and made for the kettle. He opened the window another notch and called out to June that Nathan was here.
Nathan heard the tone but not the content of her reply.
She came in, dressed in jumbo cords, muddy at the knees, and an anorak whose cut and colour dated it to the 1970s. People like June never threw anything away. Nathan admired that. The secateurs were in her hand, ugly and surgical.
He kissed her cheek. 'What are you up to?'
'Breeding lilacs from the dead ground.'
