And I feel so unbelievably stupid, so foolishly deluded that I have to bite down hard on my silver fork to stop my eyes filling with tears. After the boat trip, the kingfisher, the hand on my arm, I stupidly allowed myself to imagine it might be me whom Harry liked a little. But, of course, it’s not me. It’s never me.
Pam is cock-a-hoop: it’s only a matter of time before Tom will be hers, now that the annoying distraction of Flora has been removed. But Tom is more sullen and reserved than ever in the days following that first kiss and stares after Flora with a look of such tortured yearning that it is hard not to feel sorry for him. Pam, refusing to be beaten, flirts harder. Pam will make him love her, I know that. She will not be left behind with the hopeless cases of me and Dot: “I absolutely refuse to get to the end of the summer with my innocence intact.”
It seems unlikely Flora will, either. The romance between her and Harry develops rapidly, frenziedly, after that kiss, climbing like a fever. We are all sucked up in it, the long, private river swims, Dot made to be the lookout on the bank; the rendezvous in the shed that mist up the small window, Pam patrolling outside, then sniffing inside the shed afterward, once Harry’s slunk away, diagnosing the atmosphere as “salty, sweet, a bit animal”; Flora, sneaking out after dark under the cover of a clumsy alibi—“taking some air,” “just stretching my legs”—not questioned by Sybil, not if the excuse comes from me. Because of this, to my chagrin, I become the logistical facilitator of those heady evening meetings, and am so successful at it that Flora starts to move about Applecote with a slow languid siren’s grace, trailing her hands over the long grass, as if each tip sends shivers of pleasure down her arm. I watch her and ache. I want to feel what she is feeling. I think of us both, me locked away with Sybil, Flora with Harry, our lives dividing.
One afternoon Harry invites Flora to Cornton Hall: Pam is actually struck mute for three and a half hours by the swinging left hook of her own jealousy. Flora finally returns, disheveled, glowing, breathlessly describing the stuffed grizzly bear, the carved crest above the fireplace, the suits of armor hanging off the wall, the sweeping gardens like a London park. “And at that moment she felt that to be mistress of Pemberley might be something!” mocks Pam.
The worst thing of all is that I still dream of Harry, more intensely than ever, and wake in a twist of sheets, the dreams so vivid it is hard to imagine he is not dreaming them, too. I know it’s wrong. I’ve tried to strip Harry of glamour, imagine him with greasy hair ambling down a grimy London street, past old bomb sites and dirty pecking pigeons. But it is as if Harry can exist only in the Cotswold hills, among rivers and meadows, in this stifling summer, shirtless, sun-freckled, his substance all desire and dreams. In the city he’d dissolve into the drizzle.
A dip in my mattress. A hand stroking the hair from my forehead, carrying the faint scent of Pond’s cold cream. Brain blurred by sleep, I’m sure Ma is beside me, that I’m back under Chelsea’s porridge-gray skies, sharing a bedroom with Dot, my elder sisters chattering amiably next door, Betty scrubbing the doorstep, tube trains rumbling, and happiness flows through me like the morning’s first mouthful of piping hot tea. “Ma?”
“I’m here,” a voice whispers.
My eyes spring open.
Sybil’s face is inches from mine, emerging from a puff of cream blouse, a lace doily of a collar. “Good morning, my darling girl. It’s quite all right. You’re in the right bed, exactly the right bed.”
And that’s when I feel it, the springy wicker headboard pressing into my shoulder, the luxurious give of the goose-down pillows. As I lie there in a daze, blinking up at Sybil, the previous night slides back to me, how I spasmed awake in the early hours, my head full of Harry, my body not my own, my thighs twitching like a horse’s flank. I snapped on the bedside lamp with clumsy fingers. There was a moth, its wings woven gold, the color of Harry’s eyes. Fearing such traitorous longing, the ache that pulsed somewhere near my abdomen, a bit of my body I have no name for, that I don’t understand, I stumbled down the corridor, trying to escape the confusion of sensation, searching for the childhood peace of Audrey’s room.
How could I have been so utterly stupid as to fall asleep in her bed?
“You and I are both such early birds, aren’t we? Flying while the world sleeps,” Sybil whispers. Her eyes are oddly bright, lambent with love. A shaft of dawn light pours through the long ochre curtains, rinsing Sybil’s hair russet so it looks a little as it did when she was younger, and time seems to have reversed, rolling backward slowly, that I am somehow stuck in it, that the bad thing that happened hasn’t happened yet, that it is all to come, not to Audrey but to me.
Sybil brushes a lock of hair off my face. “I will run you a bath, and then you can slip into your favorite blue dress, the one that brings out your eyes, hmm?”
I pull the sheet up to my chest protectively. It has gone too far. It is wrong, all of it. “No, I—”
“But I’ll bring you up some toast first,” Sybil says quickly, stealing my protestation away. “Raspberry jam. You love Moll’s raspberry jam. That was always your favorite.”
“I must get back to my room.” I swing one foot out of the bed. “My sisters will come looking,” I add, although I know they won’t. We go down to breakfast separately now, no longer in a pack like before.
“Your cousins are all conked out.” She smiles.
Nothing about Sybil’s expression suggests she realizes she’s just called my sisters my cousins, or sees anything wrong with this. I open my mouth to correct her, but she continues to talk, a low, maternal murmur. “Let me plump the pillow. There. Leg back in. That’s it. I’ll open the window. Fresh air. Can you smell the roses? They’re at their best just after dawn.”
I can smell them, too, their queasy sweetness.
She hesitates, reading my unease, unsure whether to leave me. “You will stay here, won’t you?”
I nod obediently: there is something in the intensity of Sybil right now, the determination of her delusion, that makes me wonder what she might be capable of if I refuse to play along. She walks to the door, glancing over her shoulder twice to check I haven’t moved. The door shuts with a soft click. I wait a couple of minutes, maybe five, to be sure she’s gone, then scramble up, just as the bedroom door opens again.
My heart leaps out of my chest: it’s Moll, shuffling in, washing basket on the hunk of her hip. She doesn’t see me straightaway, and I stand very still, like a girl who believes in invisible cloaks.
She claps a hand to her mouth. A sharp intake of breath.