‘You did.’ Elsie’s voice was a whisper, and it slipped into the sound of the sea and disappeared.
‘I can’t remember any more,’ I said. ‘You must have got into his car whilst I was out looking for her. You must have been the one who hammered on the car window and persuaded Ronnie to let you inside, thinking you’d find Beryl more quickly if you got Ronnie to take you.’
Elsie creased her eyes against the salt and the wind.
‘He would have had a drink, wouldn’t he?’ I said. ‘Careless, angry. Fast. Casual hands resting too lightly on the wheel. Eyes on the argument instead of the road. You would have said, “Watch what you’re doing, you’ll get us both killed,” but he’d have been too busy spitting out hate to take any notice. When you looked up and saw Beryl standing in the road, you’d have reached for the steering wheel. I know you’d have tried to swerve the car, because Ronnie hadn’t even seen her. I know you tried to save her, Elsie. I know you did.’
The words made me shake and I didn’t really know why.
‘The noise,’ I said. ‘It was the noise you couldn’t forget. I remember you telling me.’
‘You do?’ she said.
‘Afterwards,’ I said. ‘All of us in your kitchen. You, me and Ronnie, building the story between us, piece by piece. We were at the table, trying to work out what to do.’ I looked at her. ‘The scarf was there too, sitting in the middle. I could see where Gwen had dropped a stitch and rescued it again. Row after row of flawless work. You could only spot the mistakes if you knew where to look, but once you knew, it felt as though you would never be able to see anything else.’
‘You don’t have to remember, Florence. Some things are better left still.’
‘Oh, but I do.’ The memories were tumbling around, and I tried to catch them, before they all disappeared again. ‘You told me Ronnie stopped the car further up the road, he ran back to where Beryl lay on the verge. You stayed in the car. You couldn’t face it. It was fine, though, to stay in the car. It doesn’t make you any less of a person, does it?’
‘No, Florence. No it doesn’t,’ Elsie said.
‘The road was straight and measured. When you looked back, Ronnie was in the distance, caught in a smear of light from a winter moon. She’s gone. She’s definitely gone. That’s what Ronnie said, when he got back in the car. You would have found a phone box, otherwise. You would never have let her down if there was still a chance. You would have called an ambulance. The police.’
‘Ronnie never would have allowed that,’ Elsie said.
‘And when Ronnie got back to the car, the lights of another vehicle stopped in the distance. Beryl had been found, and you both watched from the back window as someone crouched by the side of the road.
‘And Ronnie took off the handbrake and moved away. He didn’t switch on the engine. He didn’t turn on the lights.
‘I knew then,’ I said. ‘I knew he had no intention of telling anyone. No matter what we did.’
‘You fought him, Florence. You put up a good fight.’
‘How do you know?’
Elsie watched me across the sand. ‘Because I can still see the battle on your face,’ she said.
‘It wasn’t too late. Even then, when we sat in your kitchen, we could have told the police. Explained to them. They would have understood it was the shock. No one did anything because of the shock.’
‘And that’s when Ronnie threatened us. He said he’d make sure my mother was locked away forever.’ Elsie turned away and watched the ocean. ‘I remember looking at the ceiling when he said it. My mother was fixated on the idea that people were listening to her through the walls, that there were microphones and cameras hidden all around the house, and she had pulled away at the plaster with her bare hands to try and prove it to us. Do you remember?’
I nodded.
‘How easy it would have been to let her go and be free again. How very simple it would have been to walk through the door Ronnie had just opened. It was so obvious, so easy, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it.’
‘No,’ I said.
We looked at each other, and I knew it was exactly the same way we’d looked at each other before, sixty years earlier. As if the person you thought you were had fallen away right in front of your eyes. We’d agreed then, never to talk of it. To tissue-paper it away in the past and never take it out. Yet here they were, exactly the same words, waiting in the air for sixty years, waiting for the chance to be spoken again.
The sun had fallen towards the horizon as we talked, and the day disappeared from the sky, and was out of reach. The light was so frail, so weak, I could barely see Elsie’s face as I spoke.
‘You mustn’t blame yourself,’ I said. ‘It wasn’t your fault. You did what you thought was right.’
‘You forgive me?’ she said.
‘Of course I do. I will always forgive you.’
She reached out her hand, and I reached back, and it felt as though we’d been carrying around a piece of the past for all this time, and we’d finally found a place to put it.
‘I just wish I could find the rest of the memories,’ I said. ‘It still feels as though things are missing.’
‘If you ever do …’ Elsie hesitated. ‘Just remember you forgave me.’ Her voice knitted into the wind. ‘Remember you said I wasn’t to blame.’
‘What do you mean?’
She waited before she spoke, and when she finally did, I could barely hear her. ‘If you ever open a drawer, Florence. If you ever open a drawer and find something there you weren’t expecting, just remember there is so very much more to us than the worst thing we have ever done. Remember that, Florence. Please remember, even when I’m not here to remind you.’
We stood together in the silence, and all I could hear was my breathing. It seemed an age. A lifetime. An eternity before we began to walk back, hand in hand. Our hands were older now. The skin was livered and loosened, and the bones pressed into our flesh, but her hand still fitted into mine, just like it always did. I could feel its strength, and I squeezed, to make sure that she could feel it too.
‘You’ll be fine,’ Elsie said. ‘You’ll be just fine.’
HANDY SIMON
Handy Simon looked up at the glitter ball. It was quite hypnotic once you started staring at it. Soothing, almost. As if looking at the world through all its little mirrors made everything seem small and less important.
‘Are you going to watch that all evening?’
Miss Ambrose had returned from her nap and was marching between the kitchens and the buffet table with a wide selection of finger food. She had marks on her cheek where the pillow had pressed itself into her thoughts.
‘And if you wouldn’t mind troubling yourself, there’s a Black Forest thawing out on the side.’
Simon went through to the kitchen. Gail with an i was standing by a stainless-steel surface with a face like thunder.
‘I’m not used to all this to-ing and fro-ing,’ she said. ‘I hope your hands are clean – we don’t want environmental health back again.’
‘Again?’ said Simon.
‘We’re all trying to move on,’ said Gail. ‘And watch what you’re doing with that cake slice.’
Simon wiped his hands on the front of his trousers. When he got back to the ballroom, the entertainment had arrived. His name was Lionel, and his shirt had its own set of ruffles, which ran from the knot in his velvet bow tie all the way down in parallel lines, until they disappeared themselves into his cummerbund.
‘Welcome, welcome,’ said Lionel.
Simon balanced the gateau on a trestle table. ‘Oh no,’ he said. ‘I’m only staff.’
‘No one is “only” anything, young man.’ Lionel’s eyes opened very wide. ‘Do you not dance?’
‘No. I don’t think so. I don’t know.’ Simon looked up at the tiny mirrors in the glitter ball.
‘Everyone can dance. Everyone. You just need to find the right song.’ Lionel waved a little baton through the air in a figure of eight.
Simon watched the baton. ‘Is there an orchestra?’
‘Cassettes, young man, cassettes.’ Lionel made the word sound interesting and Italian.