‘Hi. I’m May Duhane.’
‘I’m happy to meet you, May. I saw you arriving last night.’
‘Yeah? All that rain.’
‘You reminded me a little of Doone. You still do remind me of her, as a matter of fact. Perhaps only because you’re the same age.’
‘Doone? Who’s she?’
In the quiet that followed voices carried up to them from the beach. One of them was Ivy’s and a burst of laughter came after it.
Elizabeth said, ‘Would you like to come round to my side and have a closer look at the garden?’
‘Okay,’ May said. ‘I can get over the fence here, look.’
After the tour of the garden they sat in deep wicker chairs on Elizabeth’s porch. At first sight of her May had thought that Mrs Newton must be dressed up ready to go out somewhere, maybe to a coffee party or a town meeting, or whatever it was that old ladies did in Pittsharbor. She had on a dress, silky and pleated, with a brooch pinned to the collar. She was wearing tights, too, fine pale ones that showed the brown marks on the skin of her legs, and proper leather shoes. Then, when she didn’t mention having to hurry off anywhere, May came to the conclusion that this must be how she always chose to look. It made her seem even older than she really was, as if she belonged to history instead of to May’s grandparents’ generation.
Elizabeth had proper lemonade, which she served in a tall glass jug with intricate diamond patterns cut into it. She also offered May a plate of very good chocolate fudge brownies. May took two, telling herself it would not be polite to insist that she was on a diet.
‘Who’s Doone?’ May finally asked again.
Elizabeth was looking out to sea. The island was a solid shape in the middle distance, its beach fringed with a rim of silver. ‘Perhaps I shouldn’t have mentioned it. Her parents own your house.’
‘The Bennisons.’
‘Yes. Doone was their daughter. She died in a boating accident last summer. She drowned.’
May looked at her glass. There was a sweat of condensation on the smooth rim and a greasy mark where she had put it to her mouth.
‘I reminded you of her?’
‘Just because of your age. And your size and build are similar. Actually you are nothing like her at all.’
May thought again. ‘Which was her bedroom?’
‘The one on this side of the house, looking over the sea.’
‘It’s mine too,’ May said. And in case her new friend should be concerned, or think that she might be unnerved by this idea, she added firmly, ‘I like it. It’s a good room. And I’m sorry about Doone, I just didn’t know.’
Her words seemed to echo in her own ears, as if she were listening to someone else uttering them.
May sprawled on the bed in Ivy’s room where her sister was getting ready for dinner at the Beams’ house. Ivy had already changed her clothes twice and May was still in the baggy shorts she had worn all day. ‘Ive, did you know about the kid?’
Ivy snapped the cap off a lipstick and coloured her mouth. She lifted one eyebrow at May in the mirror. ‘What kid? What’re you talking about?’
‘The daughter of the people who own this house.’
A shrug. ‘Nope.’
‘She drowned. Last year. Elizabeth told me. She was out sailing by herself and she fell in. She was the same age as me.’
Ivy lowered the lipstick for a second. ‘No. I didn’t know. That’s really sad.’
The shadow falling on Ivy’s face made her beautiful by dimming her china prettiness. May noticed it and for all the jealousy that clogged her veins and weighted her feet, she knew that she loved her sister. She gnawed viciously at the corner of her chapped mouth, not knowing how to deal with the realisation. She complained, ‘Why do you think Dad hasn’t told us about her? I’m only sleeping in her bedroom. He never says anything, does he?’
‘Perhaps he thought it would spook you.’
‘I’m not spooked,’ May insisted. ‘I’m not a baby.’
Ivy shrugged, losing interest. ‘Well, ask him, if you want to know. How do I look?’
‘Nice.’
Ivy had finally settled for a halter top and a tiny skirt. They left uncovered a slice of smooth flat belly. Her legs and shoulders were already turning a pale gold. ‘Nice? Don’t go crazy, will you?’
‘What d’you want me to say? How about hot? You look like you put out big-time, as it happens.’
‘Little bitch,’ Ivy retorted, not without amusement. She was in a good mood. ‘Are you going in those clothes?’
‘Does it matter?’ May jumped off the bed, needing to hide the fact that it mattered too much. ‘Anyway, what about Steve?’ Steve was Ivy’s steady boyfriend back in the city.
‘What do you care about Steve?’
‘I don’t. I thought you did, that’s all.’
Ivy had spent weeks protesting that it was because of Steve that she didn’t want to be dragged away from Brooklyn Heights and made to spend half the precious summer in some Godforsaken seaside town like a kid being sent to camp. ‘I’m here and he’s there. Besides, Lucas is okay.’ Ivy combed out her glossy hair. ‘I saw you checking him out.’
‘I didn’t. I wouldn’t.’
Ivy only grinned. ‘No? One of the kid brothers would do for you. Whatshisname, Kevin. He’s cute.’
‘Shut the fuck up, will you?’
May stared in fury. That’s how it was between them. They veered from being almost friends to raw-skinned irritation, and back again, without any episodes of moderation. Sometimes May wondered if their mother had been around whether she might have been the mediator, smoothing over the spikes of anger and making their attempts to like each other seem less clumsy. John didn’t do anything of the kind. He and Ivy seemed to occupy a different territory, adulthood maybe, which left May stranded somewhere apart. It intensified her loneliness and made her angrier still with both of them. Yet sometimes only Ivy would do: only Ivy understood anything.
She slammed back into her own bedroom. She had spent the whole day in here while Ivy lay sunbathing. The cracks in the paper and the vertical shadows that ran like thin ribs in the grooves of the panelling had already become familiar. May imagined Doone Bennison sitting reading in this same armchair, or lying on her back making figures out of the spidery lines that traced the ceiling. Perhaps she had swung her legs off the bed like this and ducked down the stairs, and then gone out to sail the boat across the bay for the last time.
What was it like to drown?
May pressed the back of her hand to her mouth, experimentally stopping the air. Her heart fluttered against her ribs and she found herself gasping for breath.
Ivy banged on the door as she passed. ‘You coming?’
It was too late now for May to do anything about the way she looked. She could have fixed her hair, at least, or chosen a looser top to hide her fat.
She vented some of the pressure of dissatisfaction with herself by kicking the skirting beside the base of the bookshelf. A neat section of it immediately fell forward and lay on the worn carpet with the unpainted splintery back exposed. There was a rectangular black space behind it.
May knelt down and peered into