LITMIR.BIZ

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was a tragedy for both of them in this. For May, Alison had remained perfect and intact. And her preservation of her mother’s inviolability had been a way for them to preserve it in part for themselves.

      ‘Well, she did. And I… I laughed at her a bit for being upset by the memory. It’s so long ago and Mom’s dead, isn’t she?’

      John didn’t answer. It seemed that he was looking into his own memories for the spectres that hid there.

      ‘Wait a minute. She asked me if it was just once and I said no, of course not. She must have seen something, I guess. And not understood what was happening.’ Ivy rubbed her face with the back of her hand, an uncharacteristic, savage gesture. The ligaments joining history and today were thick and ugly, and too strong to be severed. May’s awkward anger and her irritating needs and hurts made more sense when they were connected up to Ali and John. It was the same tangle that caught her, too, Ivy supposed, only she dealt with it in a different way. With Lucas and the others she proved to herself that it was no big deal, sex, or love if that was what it was supposed to be. ‘We had a quarrel. She punched me in the face and I took the bread-knife to her. Just in self-defence, I … never touched her. It was over as quickly as it started, I swear.’ Her voice dropped suddenly. ‘God. What can have happened? How can we find out where she’s gone?’

      ‘We’ll find her,’ John said grimly. ‘What about her things? Has she taken anything with her?’

      They hunted through the room, trying not to think that they might only be the first to search it for clues to where May could have gone.

      It didn’t take long. Her clothes were all there, down to a knotted pair of shorts left damp and sandy on the floor. Her comb lay on the top of the dresser with a couple of dark, wiry hairs caught in the teeth. Her Walkman was on a shelf, pushed almost off the edge so that the wires and earphones trailed on the floor. There was an Anne Rice novel beside the bed, her place marked with a postcard view of Pittsharbor, and two other old books neither of them had seen before. In the bathroom her toothbrush, toiletries and cosmetics were undisturbed.

      ‘She hasn’t taken a thing. Nothing,’ Ivy cried.

      ‘All right. First we ask everyone else on the beach if they’ve seen her. We call a couple of people in New York, her friends, in case she was planning to run back there. Maybe they’ll know other places she might have gone. Can you think of anywhere?’

      Ivy shook her head. Looking back at it across the gulf of the morning May’s life seemed dull and predictable, only now with the skew of loneliness. She hadn’t wanted to consider the possibility of her sister’s unhappiness before. The effort of keeping back tears made Ivy glare.

      ‘After that, if we don’t find her, it’s the police.’

      ‘Yeah.’

      ‘Have you told me everything, Ivy?’

      It was a shock when their eyes met because it happened so rarely. He thought, I haven’t seen either of them properly for so long. I’ve seen a collision of reproach and guilt and disability, not my children at all. And now, if it’s too late, how will that be?

      ‘Yes, I have.’

      Her glare dissolved for a second and he put his arms around her shoulders. ‘We’ll find her, wherever she’s gone,’ he promised emptily.

      Ivy scrubbed her face again and twisted away to look out of the window.

      John telephoned the other houses. The news of May’s disappearance caught everyone and slowed the stream of time so it seemed they were moving backwards, sliding in reverse into a day that had already gone.

      ‘I don’t believe it,’ Karyn Beam said after she told the others. She lifted Sidonie and held her so tightly that the child squirmed and yelled to be put down. No one had seen May since the afternoon before.

      Tom had come back from his run and was sitting with Marian on the porch. Shelly had whispered to Richard that she couldn’t understand why Tom still had to go running when his wife had just left him, but Richard had only said that he supposed Tom couldn’t think what else to do with himself. Marian looked tired and confused. There were no silver or tortoiseshell combs or jaunty scarf in her hair and the mad tousled sheaf of it made her look suddenly like a long-stay inmate of a hospital or a residential home.

      ‘What’s happening up here?’ Marian kept asking. ‘What’s going wrong with everything?’

      No one could answer her.

      ‘Is John going to start a search? Does he need help?’ Richard demanded. Karyn said John would call as soon as he had a plan or any more news.

      They sat waiting on the porch. A little gnawing wind rustled off the sea. In the lulls of it they could hear the voices of Lucas and the younger children out on the tennis court.

      When the telephone rang again Karyn ran to it. She came back and said to Tom, ‘It’s Leonie.’

      He closed the door behind him so no one could overhear. ‘Hello?’ he said into the mouthpiece.

      ‘Hello,’ she answered, a statement not a greeting.

      ‘Where are you? When are you coming back?’

      ‘It doesn’t matter where I am. Tom, I’m not coming back.’

      ‘What do you mean?’

      ‘Don’t you understand the words?’

      ‘Yes. I don’t follow the reasoning.’

      Leaning against the sheltered store wall in Haselboro and listening to the passing traffic, Leonie thought herself back to the bluff. There were the gulls’ cries and the scrape of water, and the layers of voices and questions and family commandments from which she had removed herself into silence. By rights she supposed she should feel like a solitary separated wife, a dry husk winnowed out of the corn. She spread the fingers of one hand over her belly in a gesture of consolation. She felt a leap and twist within it, as if her womb had suddenly sprung to life. ‘I’ve left you. I don’t want to come back. I want to talk about a separation.’

      ‘Why now? Why so sudden?’

      It wasn’t sudden, it had been gradual but inexorable. ‘We don’t love each other any more.’

      He didn’t try to deny it. There was another breath-taking spasm within her as she wondered if she should try to take back the words, if after all it might not be too late. ‘Tom?’

      ‘Yes. What do you want to do? You’re not at home, I called there.’ His voice was flat, weighty with resignation.

      He wouldn’t make himself the villain, she remembered. Nor would he put himself out to rescue the two of them, after their eleven years of marriage. The wringing in her stomach transmuted itself into a flutter of excitement, of liberation. ‘No. I rented a place, I just want to stay here for a while to think things out. I called because I didn’t want you to worry about where I am.’

      ‘Thank you.’ There was sarcasm now, a familiar weapon. He added, remembering, ‘There is a worry here. The younger Duhane girl has gone missing. Her father called, she’s been out all night.’

      She said stupidly, ‘What?’ although she had heard too clearly. And she remembered the harbour wall and Doone’s waterlogged body brought ashore. The bustling street had gone so still and she had watched in the middle of it with the condensed chill of the Ice Parlour bag squeezed to her chest.

      Not again. Another adolescent, neither child nor woman. ‘Leonie? Is this anything to do with you?’

      Tom had made a connection. It was one of those sudden, blinding flashes of insight, which illuminate a landscape better left in merciful darkness. She knew it and she didn’t care. ‘No. I don’t see how it could be.’

      He didn’t reply at once. There was some noise in the background, confused Beam voices.

      Leonie drew herself inwards, even

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