With no-one talking back. I know. Poor Grunnie Meggie.

Why poor?

Well, I think she was probably used to me not talking back. Not talking at all. You know what it’s like when you’re that age.

Avril watches Laura picking at the label of a bottle of apple juice, shredding long curls of transparent paper.

I adored her when I was a child. I was closer to her than I was to my mother.

What happened?

Nothing, really. Nothing happened. But somewhere along the way I stopped noticing her. God, it’s unbelievable. How cavalier we are about love.

Avril sees the sea-sky in Laura’s face. She would have known you loved her. Don’t you think?

Yes, and she would have forgiven me, too. But I’m ashamed, all the same. Love shouldn’t be passive. You should be required to, you know, GIVE it. She was just there, always there, and it was like I forgot to love her.

Avril pulls her feet under her, cross-legged on the grass. The second book—is it as dark as the first?

The tide moves across Laura’s eyes. Oh god, yes. The things that happened … And wait till you read about the gutting. Incredible, really. But it’s not all dark …

Avril sees light cast upon the breaking waves. Laura looks almost transcendent. What?

There’s a love story.

19

Laura

A sudden shower, and the windscreen wipers do their best to slap away the rain as Laura drives home along the highway, trying not to think about Cooper’s next round of tests. She adds new wiper blades to a mental list of things that never get done, and by the time she reaches the turnoff she’s thinking again of her grandmother and a grandfather she never knew. He is real to her only as a black-and-white image, one of those remote, colourless men who gaze stolidly from old photographs as though their duty to endure marriage, children, life, is a wearying thing. The Magnus Tulloch of Meggie’s story is nothing like that. And to have had the kind of love when you don’t just see the other but recognise them, know them to be that person, as her grandmother had put it. And to be recognised in return? Imagine that, she breathes, shaking her head. It must be why Grunnie never married again.

She slams the car door, and her boots crunch across wet gravel to the shed. A slight hum reassures her that the heater and humidifier are working, it’s warm enough. She won’t open the door, let the cold night in.