“I called the hospital about your book,” Nan said. “I spoke to someone in A&E and they put me through to the ward, and then I talked to someone in charge of ambulances and they suggested I call the lost property office. But when I rang again the woman on the switchboard said they didn’t have a lost property office. No book, I’m afraid.”
“Perhaps it got left on the beach,” Flora said. She looked at Gil, whose eyes were watering. He blinked and the tears were sucked back in.
“I’ll check with Viv,” Nan said. “Maybe someone handed it in at the bookshop. But you’ve got plenty to be going on with here, haven’t you?” Her voice had taken on that singsong tone again of patronising encouragement.
“If I don’t go soon, this house will be more paper than wood.”
“Daddy.” Flora said, “Don’t say that.”
“What?”
“About going soon.” She put her knife and fork on top of her pastry—a child’s trick of hiding the food she didn’t want to eat.
“In fact,” Gil said, glancing between Nan and Flora, “there’s something I’ve been talking to Richard about.”
Richard shuffled on his seat, looked down.
“I’ve asked him to burn the books.”
Nan’s head jerked, a mouthful of food in her cheek.
“After I’m dead,” Gil said. “Whenever that may be.” He smiled at Flora.
Nan swallowed. “Which books? What do you mean?”
“All the books in the house,” Gil said.
“And you’ve agreed?” Flora said to Richard accusingly. He didn’t answer.
“You girls aren’t interested in them,” Gil said. “The collection has got out of hand. I know it’s something your mother would have wanted.”
“Mum! How do you know what Mum wants?” Flora kneeled up on the bed, her plate tipping, the quiche crust sliding off.
“But I thought you loved them,” Nan said.
“Why don’t you sell them back to Viv?” Flora shifted on the bed, unaware that her knee was resting on the pastry. “Or give them to her? Viv would take them, wouldn’t she, Nan?”
Gil put his hand on Flora’s arm and she sat.
“You’re sure?” Nan said.
“Absolutely fucking sure.” Gil put his fork on top of his uneaten dinner.
Chapter 24
THE SWIMMING PAVILION, 13TH JUNE 1992, 3:32 AM
Dear Gil,
Jonathan warned me not to go into your writing room because I might find things I wouldn’t like. When I raised my eyebrows, he said, “You know, scrappy bits of paper with bad words written on them, screwed-up pages with everything crossed out, first drafts. Apparently first drafts are always ugly.” We laughed. We were walking over the heath that first summer, the gorse flowers fading to a paper-yellow, the smell of coconut disappearing on the wind that blew in from the sea. Jonathan said you needed to keep your room separate from the house and the people who visited. It was a place for serious writing and thinking.
Once, when I was newly pregnant with Nan, I woke in the night without you beside me. I went outside and looked through the window in the door of your room and saw you resting your head on top of your typewriter. I tapped on the pane but you didn’t move. I wasn’t sure if you were asleep. In the morning you were back beside me, and you pulled me to you and made me promise that if you were ever missing from our bed I mustn’t come to find you. I laughed and you said, “I’m deadly serious, Ingrid. Everyone needs a place to escape to, even if it’s only inside their head.”
“I’ll promise,” I said, “if you promise me the same.”
We were lying face-to-face, separated only by the paisley curl of our baby inside me. Awkwardly, you held out your right hand and we shook on it. Do you remember?
And there was the time, years later—in the middle of the argument where the teapot got smashed—when you shouted that I wasn’t allowed in your room because I was too fucking nosy and asked too many fucking questions. “How’s it going? How many words today? Thought of a title yet?” And you accused me of reading your pages when you were out, of snooping and checking up on you, of dripping my wet hair onto your words when they were still spooling out from your typewriter. It was fucking inhibiting, you said, and the reason you stayed in your writing room was no longer to write but because you needed to fucking protect your intellectual property.
But the reason I wasn’t allowed in there wasn’t any of these, was it, Gil?