LITMIR.BIZ

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hesitated and saw John unwillingly nod. ‘I’ll dress those fingers,’ she said.

      There was a first-aid box in one of the cupboards. She fetched it, checked the lacerations for splinters of glass and swathed May’s hand in bandages. May sat silent, uncomplaining. At the same time John swept up the broken glass and wrapped the jagged fragments in newspaper. He found a piece of a cardboard carton and cut it to fit over the hole in the window, then taped it securely in place.

      At last May sat nursing her bandaged fist in her lap. Leonie made a cup of tea and gave it to her, and the child obediently drank it. Then she put the empty cup aside and stared through the window with its disfiguring patch of card at the velvety sky beyond. There was a bruised quiet.

      John sat down on the chesterfield at May’s side. ‘Do you think we should talk about this? About what you saw happening between Leonie and me?’

      May turned her head stiffly. She darted a look at Leonie, not her father. ‘Not now. I don’t want to.’

      ‘Why did you try to hurt yourself?’

      ‘I don’t know. I just did it.’

      Leonie sensed that it was the truth. Also that there were too many other things that May did not know or understand.

      ‘You won’t do it again,’ John said.

      ‘No,’ May answered quietly. After a moment she added, ‘I think I’ll go upstairs now.’

      They waited until they heard the door of her bedroom close and the faint creak of footsteps subside overhead.

      John dropped his head into his hands. ‘Jesus.’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘I’m sorry she had to see what she did. But doesn’t she have to learn to accept sooner or later that there’s a world beyond her immediate wishes and concerns?’

      ‘Yes. But I don’t know how that happens.’

      They sat in silence after that, occupied with their separate fears.

      May felt calm, as if breaking the glass and shattering the image behind it had been a catharsis. She walked the thirteen steps across her room and back again, then touched the tips of her fingers to the door, checking that it was firmly closed. She turned again and saw the three books innocently lying in their place on the shelf.

      Without thinking she picked one up and awkwardly flipped the pages with her bandaged hand. It was the whaling book and she looked with indifference at the heavy old-fashioned type until she noticed some pages near the end that were marked with pencil. Words were faintly underlined, not consecutive words, nor did they make any sense when she read them in order, but still some faint association nagged in her mind. She frowned at the brown-edged pages, then at the pencil marks themselves because they seemed to contain some familiarity that maddeningly swam just beneath the surface of her consciousness. She riffled through the pages in the opposite direction and found nothing. She was about to discard the book again when frustration made the connection for her.

      She had flipped the pages of Doone’s diary in this way and felt just the same baffled impatience with a secret she couldn’t unlock. The skin at the back of May’s neck suddenly prickled with cold.

      She placed the whaling book open and face up on the top shelf, and picked up the red-and-black diary. Some of Doone’s last entries, the coded ones scribbled with such heat that the groups of numbers were gouged into the underlying pages, were written in pencil. The same soft, blunt pencil.

      May stared at the trios and pairs of numbers. She realised that her mouth was open and her breath snicked audibly in her chest. Eagerness fought with an impulse to throw the books aside and never look at them again. With exaggerated care she smoothed both sets of pages, glancing from one to the other.

      Then she remembered the birthday present. It had been a gift from an English relative of Alison’s when Ivy turned thirteen. The great-aunt hadn’t seen Ivy or May for a long time and the present was much too young for Ivy, whose interests had long ago switched from toys to nail polish and sleep-over pyjamas. May had inherited the book. She remembered the laminated white board covers and bold tide lettering quite clearly. It was Great Games, Puzzles and Quizzes for Kids. One of the pages was headed ‘Secrets to Share: a simple book code’.

      May licked her dry lips. That was what it was, of course, Doone’s secret code. Simple, once you knew which book she had chosen. The trios of numbers were page, line and word. Where there were only pairs of numbers she had found the word she wanted on the same page.

      May chose a group of numbers at random. Her bandaged fingers and the way her hand shook made it hard to turn the pages of the Dolphin book. The first set of three numbers – page, line and word, she murmured to herself as she laboriously counted them off – yielded I. The second gave her followed and the third, which she knew would be proof that her guess was right, was him.

       I followed him.

      Breathlessly she took the next chunk of numbers and slowly counted out their placings too. She was staring at it so intently that the book’s sullen typeface began to blur in front of her eyes. It took her several minutes to decode Doone’s words but at last she had He turned around and saw me.

      She glanced up briefly at the bare room. There was the rug covering the burn mark in the haircord carpet, the faint outlines on the walls where Doone’s posters had been taped, the French bed.

      Now, May thought. Now I’ll know.

       Eight

      By nine o’clock in the morning on Pittsharbor Day preparations in Main Street and on the green beside the church were in full swing. Flags and bunting strung between the Wigwam craft gallery and Sandy’s Restaurant stirred in a gentle breeze off the sea. Main Street was closed to traffic for the day and storekeepers were laying out displays of goods on the sidewalk in front of their windows. The Wigwam’s owner made a pyramid of Native American baskets and arranged an armful of dried flowers on the top.

      ‘Going to be a good one,’ Alton Purrit remarked to Edie Clark in the Sunday Street Bakery.

      ‘I don’t know as it makes much odds,’ Edie said with a touch of sourness. The home-bake stalls on the green took away more business than the day’s extra visitors ever brought in.

      ‘Well, there’s no harm in getting the town talked about by the rest of the county,’ Alton chuckled. The Jenny Any would be full all day long taking visitors on twelve-dollar trips around the bay and islands.

      ‘Talk never cost anything, of course.’ Edie had to have the last word. She bundled his bread into a brown bag and folded the mouth with a sharp crease before handing it over. When Alton took it without a word she was afraid she might have been unfriendly and to make amends she nodded towards two people passing beyond the bakery window. ‘Nice to see Aaron out and about.’

      He was leaning heavily on Hannah’s arm. They shuffled slowly down the sidewalk towards Main Street and the harbour.

      ‘Mhm. He don’t look too bright, though,’ Alton said. ‘Morning, Edie.’ He tucked his bag inside his year-round windbreaker and headed out into the street.

      Aaron stopped for breath on the corner of Sunday and Main. Glancing at his face, Hannah steered him to a bench in the shade in front of Howard’s Hardware. They sat in silence for a minute between two pyramids of saucepans and shiny galvanised buckets, while Aaron sucked the mild air into his lungs. ‘Just look at it,’ he rasped, when he could speak again.

      Hannah surveyed the flags and flowers and tables of goods for sale. ‘It’s only a day, what harm can it do? The visitors like it and so do the children.’

      When she turned her head again she was pained to see that the seams in Aaron’s cheeks were glistening with tears. She knew him perfectly, from so many years of watching and

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