Chapters (40)
- Cover
- About the Author
- PENGUIN BOOKS
- Dedication
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-one
- Twenty-two
- Twenty-three
- Twenty-four
- Twenty-five
- Twenty-six
- Twenty-seven
- Twenty-eight
- Twenty-nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-one
- Thirty-two
- Thirty-three
- Thirty-four
- Thirty-five
- THE BEGINNING
They found a small restaurant on the canal’s edge. Katherine ate half her chips and one mouthful of steak haché, then fell asleep with her head in Lorrie’s lap. Irene sat between Mickey and Luke. The wine and the heat made her head swim. The memory of Luke looking at her and Mickey was like a dull, throbbing toothache. She tried to focus on what Mickey was saying. Something about a kind of potato you could get around here that grew by the sea and so was naturally salted. Luke was very silent. She couldn’t think of anything to say to him. Halfway through the meal, she excused herself and went to the pay phone by the door, slotted in her euros and called her answering machine. She listened to her voice saying that no one was at home right now and then pressed the code for messages. Even after she had found out that Adrian hadn’t called, she loitered outside the restaurant. Through the open door she could see that Neil and Mickey were laughing together, and Lorrie was saying something to Luke, leaning forward and talking earnestly. She could only see the back of his head and his shoulders. She noticed that he sat up quite straight in his chair, and that once or twice he touched Katherine’s forehead with the tips of his fingers, wiping away damp locks of hair.
It was so windlessly hot she could barely breathe.
In the night, there was a storm. Irene lay in bed and listened to the sound over her head. It was like being in a tent, except now she could hear the clatter of rain in the canal as well as the pounding of raindrops on the deck. There was a flash of lightning across her window and a few seconds later the rumble of thunder. She heard Katherine squeal, Lorrie talk reassuringly to her. She imagined the little girl crawling into the bed between her parents and being held by them, and for a moment was gripped by the old terror, steel fingers round her neck. Missing a child is physical. It throbs in the belly and the chest and blocks the throat and stings in the eyes. Like a conquering army, it invades every space of the body. Irene sat up in bed, trying to breathe normally, and waited. The rain streamed down from the tilted open window; she could hear it streaming down the deck’s runnels.