Billy pushes the wheelchair through the gate and across the meadow grass where it jams on tussocks, careers into dips. After a few blustery minutes, we pause on a plateau, not venturing as far as the stones in case Sybil’s wheelchair gets truly stuck, a permanent addition to their circle. The others wait solemnly as Dot and I walk over to the grassy crater and lay the posy of flowers for Moll. When we return, Sybil’s eyes are shut.
“Asleep,” mouths Pam unnecessarily.
“Look. The buttercups are out, Sybil!” I yell into her hearing aid.
Sybil’s milky eyes open slowly, taking in, probably for the last time, the blur of windswept meadow that Audrey so loved, that meeting of grass and a sky filled with swallows returning for another summer.
My sisters and I edge closer together, just touching. Squinting into the sunshine, I can still see us exactly as we were, unknowingly lovely and lithe-limbed, shedding our summer dresses, our English modesty, whooping, running barefoot into the moon-cut river, that wild night, the rest of our lives, unaware of the moment’s preciousness, its glittering fragility. And I am overwhelmed by tenderness for us all. So too, I think, is Pam, who wriggles out of her warm coat and slides it over Flora’s shoulders.
“Where’s the little girl gone, Margot?” Sybil says suddenly.
We look down to see our aunt, peaceful a moment ago but now agitated, glancing around as if she’s misplaced something important. “My little girl was here, I’m quite sure of it.”
I exchange alarmed glances with my sisters. Don’t let Sybil muddle Audrey with the little blond Tucker girl. Not today.
“I want to see her again.” Sybil’s eyes start to swim with tears.
“Oh, Sybil, you will,” Flora says kindly, smoothing the blanket over our aunt’s lollipop-stick legs. But it is no good.
“Where’s she gone, Margot?” Sybil sobs through the claw of her hand. “Where’s my little girl gone?”
“Help,” I whisper to Billy, starting to panic.
Billy—the person Sybil trusts most in the world, who battled the dreaded black spot on her beloved roses—bends down and mutters something to Sybil, which we cannot catch. Sybil stills. Dot squeezes my hand. We hold our breath.
Billy runs back to the house and, a few minutes later, reappears at the meadow gate with the young family, their pup. I start to get an inkling of his idea. But Romy is reluctant, belting an arm around Bella’s leg. Her parents can’t seem to persuade her. I feel time ticking by, Sybil’s distress, the afternoon falling apart. It is Bella who saves it, taking Romy’s hand and leading her out to us. Pam bends down—knees cracking—and offers the balloons. Romy hesitates.
“Go on,” Bella whispers. And I see it pipe silently between them, that secret language of sisters. Not taking her eyes off Bella, Romy slowly lifts her right hand and closes it around the tangle of strings.
Sybil watches all this intently, the little girl centered in her shadow-edged circular field of vision as if through a monocle. I’m not sure whether she sees Audrey or Romy now. Only that it doesn’t matter anymore.
At a nod from Bella, Romy starts to run, wind on her back, a streak of blue dress, surging red balloons. A girl, unvanished. Like she just might fly. In the center of the stone circle, she spins—once, twice—then opens her hand, laughing, setting us free.