A Place of Hiding

Deborah turned back the covers on the bed and fluffed up the pillows. She realised that she’d seldom felt quite so useless. There was China sitting in a prison cell on Guernsey and here was she bustling round the spare room, drawing curtains and fluffing up pillows— for God’s sake—because she didn’t know what else to do. Part of her wanted to take the next plane to the Channel Islands. Part of her wanted to dive into Cherokee’s heart and do something to calm his anxiety. Part of her wanted to draw up lists, devise plans, give instructions, and take an immediate action that would allow both Rivers to know they were not alone in the world. And part of her wanted someone else to do all of this because she didn’t feel equal to any of it. So she uselessly fluffed pillows and turned down the bed. Then, because she wanted to say something to China’s brother, she turned to him where he stood awkwardly by the chest of drawers. “If you need anything in the night, we’re just on the floor below.”



Cherokee nodded. He looked dismal and very alone. “She didn’t do it,” he said. “Can you see China hurting a fly?”

“Absolutely not.”

“We’re talking about someone who used to get me to carry spiders from her bedroom when we were kids. She’d be up on the bed yelling because she’d seen one on the wall and I’d come in to get rid of it and then she’d start yelling, ‘Don’t hurt him! Don’t hurt him!’ ”

“She was like that with me, as well.”

“God, if I’d only let it be, not asked her to come. I’ve got to do something and I don’t know what.”

His fingers twisted the tie of Simon’s dressing gown. Deborah was reminded of how China had always seemed like the older sibling of the two. Cherokee, what am I going to do with you, she’d ask him. When are you ever growing up?

Right now, Deborah thought. With circumstances demanding a kind of adulthood that she wasn’t sure Cherokee even possessed.

She said to him because it was the only thing she could say, “You sleep now. We’ll know better what to do in the morning,” and she left him. She was heavy at heart. China River had been the closest of friends to her during the most difficult moments of her life. She owed her much but had repaid her little. That China would now be in trouble and that she would be in that trouble alone...Deborah only too well understood Cherokee’s anxiety about his sister.

She found Simon in their bedroom, sitting on the straight-backed chair that he used when he removed his leg brace at night. He was in the midst of tearing back the brace’s Velcro strips, his trousers puddling down round his ankles and his crutches on the floor next to his chair. He looked childlike, as he generally looked in this vulnerable posture, and it had always taken all the discipline she could muster for Deborah not to go to his assistance when she came upon her husband like this. His disability was, for her, the great leveling force between them. She hated it for his sake because she knew he hated it, but she’d long ago accepted the fact that the accident that had crippled him in his twenties had also made him available to her. Had it not occurred, he’d have married while she was a mere adolescent, leaving her far behind. His time in hospital and then convalescing and then the black years of depression that followed had put paid to that. He didn’t like to be seen in his awkwardness, though. So she went straight to the chest of drawers, where she made a pretence of removing what few pieces of jewellery she wore while she waited for the sound of the leg brace clunking to the floor. When she heard it, followed by the grunt he gave as he rose, she turned. He had his crutches snapped round his wrists, and he was watching her fondly.

“Thank you,” he said.

“Sorry. Have I always been so obvious?”

“No. You’ve always been so kind. But I don’t think I’ve ever thanked you properly. That’s what comes from a marriage too happy for its own good: taking the beloved for granted.”

“Do you take me for granted, then?”

“Not intentionally.” He cocked his head to one side and observed her.

“Frankly, you don’t give me the chance.” He made his way across the room to her, and she put her arms round his waist. He kissed her gently and then kissed her long, one arm holding her to him, till she felt the wanting that stirred in them both.

She looked up at him then. “I’m glad you can still do that to me. But I’m gladder I can do it to you.”

He touched her cheek. “Hmm. Yes. Yet all things considered, it’s probably not the time...”

“For what?”

“For exploring some interesting variations of this ‘it’ you were speaking of.”

“Ah.” She smiled. “That. Well, perhaps it is the time, Simon. Perhaps what we learn every day is how quickly life changes. Everything that’s important can be gone in an instant. So it is the time.”

“To explore...?”