A Place of Hiding

“One breeze in hell.” He jerked his head in the direction of the bedrooms. “So she won’t come out. You can talk to her if you have a mind to. But she’s got the door locked from the inside now and she’s been wailing like a cat when you drown its kittens. Bloody little fool.” He slammed down the lid of the washing machine, pushed a few buttons, and set it to its business.

Valerie went to her niece’s bedroom door. She tapped on it and said her name, adding, “It’s Auntie Val, darling. Will you open the door?” but Cynthia was utterly silent within. At this, Valerie thought about the worst. She cried, “Cynthia? Cynthia! I’d like to speak to you. Open the door please.” Again, silence was the only reply. Deathly silence. Inhuman silence. There seemed to Valerie to be only one way that a seventeen-yearold girl went from wailing like a cat to perfect stillness. She hurried back to her brother.

“We need to get into that bedroom,” she said. “She may have harmed—”

“Rubbish. She’ll come out when she’s ready.” He barked a bitter laugh. “Maybe she’s grown to like it in there.”

“Henry, you can’t just let her—”

“Don’t tell me what I can and can’t!” he shouted. “Don’t you sodding ever tell me one bloody thing more. You’ve told me enough. You’ve done your part. I’ll cope with the rest the way I want to.”

This was her biggest fear: her brother’s coping. Because what he was coping with was something far larger than a daughter’s sexual activity. Had it been some boy from town, from the college, Henry might have warned Cynthia of the dangers, might have seen to it that every precaution was taken to safeguard her from the fallout of sex that was casual but nonetheless highly charged because it was all so new to her. But this had been more than the budding of a daughter’s sexual awareness. This had been a seduction and a betrayal so profound that when Valerie had first revealed it to her brother, he had not believed her. He could not bring himself to believe her. He’d retreated from the information like an animal stunned by a blow to the head. She’d said, “Listen to me, Henry. It’s the truth, and if you don’t do something, God only knows what will happen to the girl.”

Those were the fateful words: if you don’t do something. The affair was now over, and she was desperate to know what that something had been. Henry looked at her long after he had spoken, with the way I want to ringing between them like the bells of St. Martin’s Church. Valerie raised her hand to her lips and pressed them back against her teeth as if this gesture could stop her from saying what she was thinking, what she most feared.

Henry read her as easily as he’d always done. He gave her a look from head to toe. He said, “Got the guilts, Val? Not to worry, girl.”

Her relieved, “Oh Harry, thank God, because I—” was cut short when her brother completed his confession.

“You weren’t the only one to tell me about them.”





Chapter 22


Ruth entered her brother’s bedroom for the first time since his death. The moment had come, she decided, to sort through his clothes. Not so much because anything made this an immediate necessity, but because sorting through his clothes afforded her employment, which was what she wanted. She wanted to do something related to Guy, something that would put her close enough to feel his comforting presence but at the same time keep her distant enough to prevent her from learning anything more about the many ways in which he’d deceived her. She went to the wardrobe and removed his favourite tweed jacket from its hanger. Taking a moment to absorb the familiar scent of his shaving lotion, she slid her hand into each pocket in turn, emptying them of a handkerchief, a roll of breath mints, a biro, and a piece of paper torn from a small spiral notebook, its ragged edges still intact. This last was folded into a tiny square, which Ruth unfolded. C + G = n 4ever! had been written upon it in an unmistakably adolescent hand. Ruth hastily crumpled the paper in her fist and found herself looking left and right as if someone might have been watching her, some avenging angel seeking the sort of proof she herself had just stumbled upon.