She pushed the boxes towards Ian.
‘Have whatever you would like. I want you to.’
‘I would stay longer, Jess, if I thought I could do anything useful here.’
‘If I thought you could I would ask you to.’
They bent their heads simultaneously to the photographs.
‘Would you like to come out to Sydney for a couple of weeks’ holiday? Over Christmas or something? I’ll handle the airfare.’
His offer touched her, but she didn’t want to go. She couldn’t imagine doing anything except staying here, in this house.
‘Are you sure you won’t?’ Ian persisted. ‘If Beth came too?’
‘I’m sure. But I think it would be a good idea for Beth. Ask her, anyway.’
The pictures were fairly divided. They sat for a few moments longer in the shabby armchairs on either side of the hearth.
‘Danny,’ Ian said, on a long breath.
Jess feared the spillage of his grief. She kept her own balanced within herself, lapping the edges of her self-control. She stood up now, touched Ian lightly on the shoulder.
‘I’ll let you go to bed.’
He had slept every night on the sofa. Upstairs there was only the big room they had once shared, and Beth’s, and Danny’s. Jess thought of his dark bedroom now, and the darker outlines of the furniture and his belongings held frozen within it and the thin veil of dust over all the things he would never pick up again.
‘Good night then,’ she said abruptly to Ian.
When she looked in on her, Beth had fallen asleep, her arms tidily at her sides. Her breathing was inaudible; carefully Jess leaned over her until she felt the faint warmth of an exhalation on her cheek.
The day after Ian flew back to Sydney Jess drove Beth to Ditchley station. They peered through the streaming rain at the strings of coloured bulbs twisting in the wind that funnelled through the shopping precinct. Stronger gusts lashed the branches of the early Christmas tree mounted on the roundabout. It had been raining for days. Jess drove slowly, her eyes fixed on the road and the back of the mud-splashed bus ahead.
Ian would be safely in Sydney by this time, in the bungalow with a view of the blue harbour.
In the station car-park they struggled with Beth’s suitcase and an umbrella that the wind snatched and tore into a tangle of black ribs, then stood side by side on the platform to wait for the London train.
‘Are you sure you’re ready to go back to work?’
‘I can’t think what else to do. Can you?’
‘No.’
‘I’ll come home at the weekend.’
‘If it’s just for my sake, you know, you don’t have to …’
‘Mum. I want to come home.’
‘Good. It’ll be good to have you here.’
Even their voices sounded thinned out, drained of conviction.
Jess began carefully, because Beth had always been reticent about her private life and because she had been warned off the subject before, ‘Isn’t there anyone in London, anyone, you know, to look after you …?’
‘There’s no one at the moment,’ Beth said flatly. ‘Here’s the train now. Will you be all right, Mum?’
You have to be.
‘Yes. I will.’
They clung to each other, the constraints dissolving for a moment.
‘I’m sorry,’ Jess whispered.
‘For?’
‘For not being able to change anything.’
‘I don’t want you to say sorry for anything. It makes me feel worse. Look, I’ll be home on Friday night.’
‘Take care.’ Empty words.
After Beth had gone Jess drove home to the empty house.
Sam Clark sat in his office, half turned from his desk in his padded swivel chair. It was dark outside and he could see himself partially reflected in the plate glass of the window wall. Subconsciously he admired his well-cut but longish hair, cobalt-blue shirt and loosened Armani tie. He was talking to his wife, who was also at her desk in the features department of one of the tabloid newspapers. They were arguing, in reasonably good humour, about who should go home to see their three children for an hour before they met up again at a literary party.
‘I’m up to here, darling,’ Sam said pleasantly. ‘I’ve got an author coming in tomorrow first thing and I haven’t read his book yet. If I whip through it now I won’t have to do it later, and I can take you out to dinner after the party. Would you like that?’
‘You’re a snake, Sam. You manage to make ducking your turn to go home sound like you’re giving me a big treat.’
‘Where do you fancy? Ivy? Caprice?’
Sadie Clark gave a short laugh. ‘Christ. All right, I’ll go back tonight but do try and remember you were there at the conception all three times. They’re your kids as well as mine.’
‘And I’m almost as proud of them as I am of you.’
‘Christ,’ Sadie groaned again before she hung up.
As soon as she let herself into her flat Beth stepped over the scatter of mail on the doormat and went to the telephone. She dialled a number and while she listened to the ringing tone she stared unseeingly at her own face in the gilt-framed mantelpiece mirror.
‘Sam Clark, please.’
The receptionist trilled, ‘Who may I say is calling?’
Using the formula she had agreed with Sam, Beth murmured, ‘Sarah Sharpe, Forward Communications.’
She waited with the breath catching in her throat. Sometimes, in his egalitarian way, Sam answered his own phone. If his assistant intervened, doing the job she had once done herself, it was always much more difficult. Her face suddenly sprang forward out of the mirror’s murk, white and tense, the anxious eyes narrowed against the possibility of disappointment.
‘My darling. My poor little girl.’
The blessed warmth of his familiar voice. Beth relaxed a degree.
‘When did you get back?’ Sam asked.
‘Today.’ She wouldn’t admit to only two minutes ago.
‘How are you? I’ve hardly stopped thinking about you. Imagining what you must be feeling.’
She didn’t want to talk about any of these things on the telephone, although sometimes the telephone was their only connection for days at a time.
‘Can you come round?’
She heard the intake of breath and saw as clearly as if he were sitting in front of her his frown as he made the quick calculations that would enable them to steal an hour together.
‘Beth?’
‘I’m still here.’ Of course.
‘Expect me about six. It’ll only be an hour, darling. Sadie’s got us down for some drinks do later on.’
Beth had met Sadie two or three times in the days when she still worked for Sam. She was American, abrasive in manner, always