I imagined turning back to him and saying, My name’s Andrea! I like working and have no hobbies whatsoever. Bet you can’t guess what’s in the carrier bag. And him drawing down his finger across my face. Left or right?

But after he got off, and for the last leg of the journey home, I took my phone out and quickly found myself doing exactly the same. Looking at the potentials in their sports kit and on beaches, holding puppies, or leaping out of planes. Swipe left. Swipe left. Swipe left.

Because there were so many faces, but none of them—it appeared—ever the face I was looking for.

CHAPTER 11

ENCHANTED PALACE II

We played on through August. The animating spirit that kept the game alive, kept us circling the manor’s grounds, kept up its whisper. Under my feet grass, stone, wood. The birds at dusk. The air so thin, so endless. The light draining, the dew falling. The moon hung over the cornfields and the clouds ran in herds over her face.

David standing beside me on the steps, the shadow of the house cutting across them like a saw blade. Summer was teetering at its height, poised to fall.

Come September I’d work for Darren full-time, do bookkeeping and computer classes in the evenings. Marcus would be Darren’s right hand. Em would do her art foundation. In October, Peter would go to Oxford. David would write the letter, get off the hook. I asked him what he’d do then.

“Why don’t you look at me when you’re talking to me, Andy?”

I repeated the question. “Re-takes then Uni? Travel? A job? Must have lots of chances. Dads of kids you went to posh school with.”

“And you? Going to stay here and become a child bride? Look at me.”

I looked at him. Tiny flecks of amber ringed his pupils. In the right light, scowling, Marcus looked like a Levi’s model, but David, his bones were just right. I liked his skull, and teeth, and hair. His skin. He moved just so. I begrudged him all of it.

“Peter talks a lot of shit sometimes, doesn’t he?” David looked uncertain. He was being serious. “I mean, a pinch of salt. After we took the pills, after you’d gone, he was coming out with all kinds of stuff.”

“What’s he been saying?”

David was good with words, but he didn’t have the right ones now.