But Cathy did not seem to feel it or else she did not care. She never wore a leather armband around her forearm and always kept her arm as straight as she could, so as to keep her aim, and so inevitably, because of her supple, almost convex arms, she would pull the string back to its full extension and when it was released it would slap with a loud crack against her soft, pale skin. It went on like that, with Cathy holding the bow with her arm turned towards the string and loosing her arrows so that that she was struck hard, again and again. Her forearm became red raw and so bruised that the grey and yellow blood that settled there almost made a complete bracelet that seeped all the way around, like her skin was stained with gold.
Still, she did not alter her method. Daddy became angry with her every time he saw it. At least, he was angry in the manner that feeling is expressed when it is mixed with love. Like sadness but with the energy for intervention. He would go over to her and take the bow gently away and sit down with it some way off. He would wait for Cathy to calm down, to stop breathing so deeply with the exhaustion of it all, and for her to go and join him on the ground, amongst the leaf litter. I would go over too and Daddy would pull out some crackers and a block of hard cheese and we would sit and eat them together, and then go back to the house.
Chapter Four
There was a woman who lived down the way. Her house was maybe a mile and a half away but there was only one turning between our road and hers so that made her a neighbour. She lived alone in a white house that had a window on either side of the front door and in the summer months sweet peas grew on trellises along the side of the house. There was a garden to the front and at the back. She parked her dark blue car on one side and on the other side a farmer’s field began where there were rows of dark cabbages followed by lines of beets.
Cathy and I were unsure of how she knew Daddy. We never understood why he knew anyone other than us, but they seemed reasonably acquainted, even though we were far from Granny Morley’s home now and I thought everyone would be a stranger.
That first winter came early, and quickly too. One morning in November when it was so cold that crispy ice strangled the drainpipes and windowsills, Daddy got us up just after dawn, and we walked out towards Vivien’s house, down the hill to our little lane and then along hers. I was wrapped up in two tartan scarves and a dark green fleece that I had zipped up to the top, and I held it tight against my chin to keep the warmth locked inside. Cathy had pulled thick purple walking socks up over the ankles of her jeans to shield her legs from the biting breeze and Daddy wore his usual coat with a woollen jumper underneath, and motorcycle gloves.
The walk down the hill was slippery as the frost on the soft tussocks melted beneath our feet, and we slid a few inches with each step. The morning smelt of wood and little else. The summer scents had been bottled by the cold. It was a clear day, though, particularly now when the sun was low, and bright rays cut raw across the grass. When we got to the path the trees cast long, precise shadows. The stones on the ground were not smooth but the kind chucked up by heavy machinery, and, little though they were, they sliced the light more precisely still.
We walked quickly to keep warm and I jogged on every few steps to keep up the pace. Cathy had been quiet since the previous evening but seemed to lighten as we lengthened our strides.
‘How do we know her?’ she asked Daddy.
‘Through your mother.’
We could say nothing after he mentioned our mother. We almost never spoke of her and his mentioning her was so rare that we did not know whether to take it as an invitation or as a warning. I could not detect either mode in his tone nor read his expression. He walked on impassively, while I looked up at him then down again at the path in front of us then up again at him, like our eager dogs who trotted at our feet and turned their faces up to their masters on every other step. The dogs looked at me and Cathy. We looked at Daddy.
Becky, who never ran too far from me, slashed her tail against my shins as she hopped in front of my feet. I kept kicking her, accidentally, then stumbling on myself so as not to hurt her.
Vivien’s garden had a neatness about it but looked natural. At first sight the ground was uneven and the rose bushes were strangled at the roots by shallow weeds but I saw that there were no fallen petals or dried leaves. Those had been cleared away. The grass stopped suddenly at the patio, trimmed severely at the edges to keep a clean line, parallel to a set of French windows.
Daddy knocked and Vivien opened the door and stared at us. She was tall like Daddy, but slim. Her hair was a thick russet and her skin so pale that you could almost see the blood behind it, the redness at her cheeks and the blueness at her eyes. It was honest skin. It was the kind of skin that could not hide a mark or a blemish or a sickness that lay within. She looked tired, either a tiredness from the early morning or a tiredness from a long life. She was perhaps forty, but seemed both older and younger, with irises that were both a bright green and a dull yellow, and an uncertain stoop that you see in both old ladies and adolescent girls. In the moment she stared at us, she inhaled deeply and exhaled quickly, as if she were conjuring a beginning or marking an ending.
‘I didn’t expect you this early,’ she said to Daddy, although her eyes still jumped between my sister and me. She turned to him now and smiled, and pulled the door wider to see us all better, and then to let us in.
Cathy took the invitation and stepped over the threshold, standing in front of the woman as she placed a long hand on each of Cathy’s upper arms.
‘You must be Catherine,’ she said. ‘I met you when you were a toddler and your brother was a baby.’
Vivien ushered Cathy through into the house and I took the step up into the hall.
She looked at me and took me as she had taken Cathy, firmly and with both hands. ‘Daniel. Come in.’