She had a quick shower and soon they'd arrived at Graham and June's house in Sutton Down.
Nathan hadn't shaved. He wore old jeans, trainers and an overcoat.
To his recall, he'd never allowed Holly's parents to see him dressed less than immaculately. Graham disapproved of slovenliness.
As
ever, his parents-in-law were dressed as if to receive visitors, although June had yet to apply any make-up. She looked shockingly naked without it.
Graham said, 'There's nothing wrong is there?'
In answer, Nathan showed him the carrier bags containing fresh bread, eggs, bacon and fruit juice they'd just bought from the farmer's market. For the second time that morning, Nathan prepared breakfast. Holly made a round of coffee.
June said, 'To what do we owe this honour?'
Holly looked at Nathan.
'Go on. Tell them.'
'Tell them what?'
'What you told me this morning.'
Nathan looked down at his poaching eggs.
'Tell them what?' said Graham.
Holly folded her arms. 'Nathan had an idea. To mark the anniversary -- we dig out all the old photos. The photos of Elise. And we rehang them. In our house and in yours. And I think he's right. I think it's the right idea.'
So they ate breakfast. Then Graham went and pottered in the greenhouse and Nathan sat in the conservatory reading the papers while Holly and her mother climbed into the attic and brought down several taped-up cardboard boxes. The framed photographs and albums had been parcelled up in bubble-wrap, secured with tape how typical of June, he thought, to be so organized about something so unendurable.
He wondered what he'd been doing and where he'd been, the day these photographs had been boxed -- and where he had been the day June decided to clear Elise's bedroom and put it to use as an office.
She'd hooked up a network of computers in there, and printers and scanners and filing cabinets. She'd given Elise's bed and wardrobe and other furniture to one of her charities. Elise's personal effects were boxed in the attic. Her clothes would sit there, folded and vacuum-sealed, coming slowly in and out of fashion.
He couldn't imagine where he'd been, or who. That person was alien to him, more insubstantial than a ghost.
He wandered into the dining room, where June and Holly were laying out the photographs on the table. They held hands and laughed. They reminisced about certain photographs - Elise as a fiveyear-old, chubby on a Cornish beach; as a eight-year-old in a polo neck, wanting front teeth. A scowling schoolgirl in a blue A-line skirt she'd loathed.
Tenderly, June said, 'She hated that skirt. She bought another one and altered it, turned it into a miniskirt. Changed into it when she got to school. Came home every night and hand-washed it in the bathroom, using shampoo. Dried it over a radiator, disguised by her towel.'
Then Holly reminded June how all the teacups and coffee mugs in the house eventually found their way into Elise's room, such that June had staged a monthly raid, carrying downstairs armfuls of mouldy mugs and hairy biscuits.
By now, they had divided the photographs into two lots: Holly's had been loosely repacked in a box that stood in the centre of the table. Nathan glimpsed corners of Elise's smiling mouth, the edges of her hair, a laughing eye.
He went outside again. He sat on a bench in the garden, watching the gentle sway of the apple trees. He watched the bright clouds.
Back inside, Holly was getting her coat on.
Nathan carried the box of photographs to the car. He kissed June.
They said goodbye, and drove home.
That evening, as Nathan watched television, Holly hung the photos.
He listened to the sounds of measurement and concentration and short, precise flurries of hammer blows. Then an hour -- a happy hour, he thought -- arranging and rearranging them on the wall. By the time she'd finished, it was nearly eleven. Nathan called out for curry and they ate it, tired, in front of the late film.
They crept up to bed after midnight. In the darkness on the stairs, Nathan could feel Elise's repeated image smiling at him. He tried not to turn, in case in one of the photos her smile had become a wet leer.
But he was weak. He did turn on the stairs. And they were only smiles.
In their first year of marriage, Holly borrowed enough money to mortgage three run-down houses. Two of them she converted into flats, the third she gutted and extended, rendering its exterior starkly modernist. The five- bedroom was a big risk and she never repeated it. They spent many sleepless nights discussing it -- but it sold, in the end, and she put the profits into more property.
She employed June as her sometime adviser and part-time PA. For a while they worked from home, but soon Holly rented some offices and expanded the business to incorporate third-party site management and architectural services. She employed four young architects, full-time.
Nathan remained at Hermes, where his early trajectory had been halted by Justin's profound tenacity.
He was offered other jobs, but Hermes always paid him to remain.
It wasn't the money that kept him there, though. He stayed because he liked the configuration of his life. Monday to Friday, he worked.
He set the alarm for 6.45 and rose at 7.15. Tuesday and Thursday evenings, he cooked. Fridays, they ate a takeaway, Chinese alternating with Indian. Saturday nights, Holly went out with friends -- once a month, she slept round Jacki's house. Sundays they spent in Sutton Down. Holly and June were careful not to talk shop at the dinner table. Sunday evenings, Nathan and Graham went to the pub; Graham bought the first drink, lager and lime in summer and cask bitter in winter.
They took one week's holiday per year with Graham and June; alternating June's choice of destination with somewhere Graham could play golf. Nathan had once protested that he would sooner die than find himself on a golf course -- but he didn't mind, not really, and Graham enjoyed it.
Every year, Nathan and Holly spent two weeks sizzling on a beach somewhere: Barbados or Bermuda. The deep-blue, gold-shot sarong knotted at her hip always aroused him. He liked to watch her walk into the sea; he loved the smell of salt and Ambre Solaire on her skin.
To mark Holly's birthday, they'd go away for a long weekend. For their anniversary, they spent a weekend in London or Paris.
Once or twice a year, Nathan and Graham went away to fish.
They'd erect tents by the river and lie in their sleeping bags, watching the stars. They rose early, while there was still mist on the water, and heated breakfast on a Primus stove.
He seldom thought about Elise. Except in the feverish immediacy of his dreams, he felt no link to the person he'd been the night she died. He still fell quiet when driving past the woods - the flickering in his peripheral vision -- but it had become almost a learned response, a Pavlovian reaction to an ancient, forgotten stimulus. Like the genuflection of a lapsed Catholic.
By 2007, they'd saved enough to buy a larger house in a better area.
But they knew they'd never leave this house while the painted nursery remained unoccupied. It would be bad luck.
The pattern of their sex life was ordinary - full of troughs and peaks. But Holly had long since given up elevating her hips on pillows after sex, and they'd long since given up holding hands and discussing names and local schools.
They took fertility tests. There was no pathology.
Nathan had no doubt the imperfection was his. He imagined Holly's gently luminous ovum withering at the touch of his infected sperm.
He'd first suggested the IVF programme a long time ago. Holly had rejected the idea: it would happen when it happened, she said, and it wasn't like they weren't busy. By now it was 2008 and they were considering it. Soon
