Chapters (49)
That afternoon Bethany saw she had several missed calls. The phone signal is terrible at The Pines. Because she works in TV, there’s no such thing as a weekend. The producers, the researchers, her agent all call her any time of the day or night. I thought it was an affectation back then. Bethany was working on a high-profile TV programme called The Show. Very meta. It was prime time, BBC1, but a new co-presenter had just been brought in, who was younger, bouncier, bubblier and mixed-race with a Scottish accent – the BBC was trying to up its diversity quota. Tiffany McKenzie. I thought Bethany was being an insufferable diva and didn’t want to share the spotlight; I didn’t realize what she was going through.
Sometimes, in the early mornings, it’s as if there’s a film projected against my eyelids: Ruby-May is a blonde blur, streaking through the orchard, her long hair stretched out behind her; the grass is preternaturally green, sun sparks off the red Katy apples and a cloud of rooks is flung across the sky.
Bethany woke our father and deposited Ruby-May on his lap. She told him to look after his granddaughter for half an hour while she went inside and made some calls on the landline.
It was more like an hour by the time she’d finished talking to her agent, the director of the shoot, the producer, the executive producer and then her agent again, to complain about what the director, the producer and the executive producer had said, and no doubt she also had to coordinate with her personal make-up artist, because The Show had axed hair and make-up during the latest round of cost-cutting.
The garden was unusually quiet when she went back out, blinking at the harshness of the sun after being cosseted by the dim light filtering through the mullioned windows into our dining room. She walked round the house to the herb garden and saw that Dad was still there, slumped in the sun-lounger, fast asleep.
There was no sign of Ruby-May.