LITMIR.BIZ

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melting away. He encased both of my hands inside his, and kept them that way through the two-minute silence.

      As we walked from the outdoor memorial to the church that towered over it, he whispered, ‘I’m sorry, Holly. I feel left out, sometimes, of your life here. You’re such a part of things.’

      ‘You are too.’

      ‘Am I?’

      ‘Of course. It matters to me that you want to live here. I know you’re doing it for me. I’m moved by that.’

      We processed into the packed church together, and slipped into a pew at the rear. The pillars were garlanded in ribbons that had been strung with poppies. Zac did not bow his head for prayers or recite the Act of Penitence or sing any of the hymns, and certainly not ‘God Save the Queen’.

      After the service, he held my hand as we joined the parade, following the band and swinging our arms back and forth to ‘The British Grenadiers’. Zac sang along, and I loved that he knew every word. We were at the tail end, and when I finally glimpsed Milly and Peggy and James again, they were getting further and further ahead as we processed through the town.

      I tugged at Zac’s arm, smiling. ‘Shall we catch them up?’

      It was as if I had flicked a switch, turning him from happy to sad. ‘Don’t you want to be with me?’

      ‘Forever.’

      ‘The three of them are a family. It’s the two of us now.’ He smiled. ‘Or three. Yes?’ He put a hand on my tummy. ‘We’re making our own family. Aren’t we?’

      ‘Yes.’ I smiled up at him. When I broke his gaze, I realised that I had lost sight of my best friend and my surrogate parents. As far long as I could remember, I had walked with them, and until the last few years, with my grandmother too, claiming James’s arm during the Remembrance Sunday commemorations that St Ives did so beautifully.

      ‘Doesn’t that make you happy?’

      ‘Yes.’ I nodded to confirm it. ‘That’s a lovely thing. Yes.’ It was what I had always wanted. And I could see he was right about my not being a part of the family of three that was Peggy and James and Milly. But to be without them in that place, on that day, was like having a piece of myself cut away.

       Now The Backwards House

      Two years and five months later

      Bath, Tuesday, 2 April 2019

      The country lane that Maxine’s driver is speeding along is lined with golden daffodils. They flutter and dance and twinkle on their green banks in exactly the way Wordsworth said.

      I have the sense that Maxine is watching me, though she is slumped against the cream-coloured leather car seat and seeming to look at her own lap, where her hands are resting. Her nails, as usual, are long and perfectly manicured. The polish is what my grandmother calls dragon-lady red, and matches Maxine’s lipstick. I have never seen a chip in that polish.

      ‘Where are we going?’

      ‘Not far.’ She answers like a parent. Or at least how I think parents answer, because my own have been dead for too long for me to know this from experience, and I am not a parent myself, however much I try to tell myself that she counted and I am.

      The car enters a neighbourhood on the outskirts of Bath. Because the houses here are built on top of old quarries, they get alarming cracks from subsidence, so walls split and ceilings buckle, hurling dark-grey plaster dust and chunks of building into the rooms.

      Maxine’s driver turns onto a street that is filled with police cars and vans, all clustered near a modern, brick, perfectly square end-of-terrace house. The house is surrounded by police tape. ‘Come on,’ Maxine says, and I follow her out of the car.

      I stand a couple metres away as Maxine speaks to a tall man with dark hair and dark-rimmed glasses, wearing a dark suit and standing outside of the cordon. He looks like the prince of death as he peers at me. I decide he is more likely to be MI5 than police as he nods at Maxine and says, ‘Tess’s up there. She’s expecting you.’

      Maxine moves her head to signal that we need to go into the tent that encloses the house’s front door. The door has an awning with a strange coating of artificial grass. We are given forensic suits, so that our hair is obscured by white hoods, our mouths and noses covered by white masks, and our shoes enveloped in white footwear protectors. I want to hesitate, but I don’t let myself. Maxine marches into the house, and I march after her.

      ‘Don’t touch or move anything,’ she tells me, without turning round.

      The carpet inside the entryway is mink-grey and I can see the tracks left by the vacuum, despite the ghost-shapes of old spills that no amount of shampoo will remove. The air is scented with pine and lemon, and window cleaner, plus the lingering hint of something that makes my stomach clench because it reminds me of Zac’s soap.

      ‘The burglar alarm wasn’t tripped,’ Maxine says. ‘She either de-activated it to let someone in, or didn’t activate it in the first place. Good chance she knew them.’

      ‘She. Who is she?’

      Maxine is making a performance of looking around too attentively to notice that I have spoken.

      The house seems the wrong way round, with the sitting room at the back, spanning the building’s entire width. There are no books on the shelves of the fake wood bookcases, and no dust either. There is a single half-drunk cup of strong black tea on the cheap glass coffee table. Not many people drink their tea with no milk. I’ve known two, and though Milly likes hers weak, and Zac strong, it came as a surprise that she and Zac should share anything other than their mutual hatred.

      The kitchen is to the left side of the entry hall. It is also pristinely clean, though far from luxurious with peeling laminate cupboards, a half-size fridge like my own, and cork flooring.

      At the bottom of the stairs is a handbag, stiff and upright, the obvious item in any game of odd one out. Tan leather, shiny gold hardware, and the Hermès logo in its cleanly embossed capital letters. Only once before have I come across a designer bag of this ilk.

      Maxine answers one of the many questions I haven’t voiced. ‘It was a two-month holiday let, paid by credit card. They haven’t traced the holder of the card, but it didn’t belong to the woman who was occupying the house. She moved in a week ago – used a false name.’

      We crunch our way up the stairs, along a roll of white paper. I can see on either side of it that the stairs have been sanded and painted.

      At the top of the landing, straight in front of us, is an open bedroom door. A tall woman in another moon suit, glasses peeping out of her otherwise-covered face, emerges and squeezes onto the landing with us. ‘Hey, Maxine,’ the woman says.

      ‘Hey, Tess.’ It isn’t the forensic drama that brings home the fact that I am being allowed to see another version of Maxine, who is not slouching. It is Maxine’s use of the word ‘Hey’ and its attendant chumminess.

      ‘Needless to say,’ says Tess, ‘don’t touch anything.’

      ‘Sure thing,’ Maxine says, in more of the new Maxine language.

      Tess does not ask who I am when she motions for us to follow her. There is a frizz of grey hair on her temple, which has escaped the head covering. There are smile lines around her eyes, and my guess is that in the part of her life that doesn’t involve space suits and corpses, this woman is restrainedly contented, with wry good humour.

      Instead of moving forward when Tess beckons, though, I freeze. My head is telling me to go in, but my body does not seem to want to.

      I’d thought the sweat had dried on me in Maxine’s car after my run, but I am wet again, beneath my breasts, down my spine. The mask over my mouth is stopping me from breathing. My scalp is itchy and hot beneath

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