‘My own father gave me these, and now it’s time to pass them to you,’ his father had said. Thomas had taken the cufflinks, and the weary velvet pouch they came in, and shoved them into his pocket in a cavalier move he’d hoped would wound his father. And he could tell it had.
His father never gave him anything again. Nothing.
He quickly peeled off the old jacket and shirt, thankful no one had noticed the slight wear on the cuffs. Now Sandra was coming through the door. He casually tossed the shirt and jacket onto a nearby chair.
‘I didn’t appreciate your contradicting me over bridge,’ she said.
‘I did?’
‘Of course you did. In front of your family and that couple, the shopkeeper and his cleaning woman wife.’
‘It was her mother who cleaned houses,’ Thomas corrected her.
‘There, you see. Can’t you just let me say something without correcting me?’
‘You want to be wrong?’
It was a path worn through their marriage.
‘All right, what did I say?’ he finally asked.
‘You know very well what you said. You said pears went best with melted chocolate.’
‘That’s it? Pears?’
He made it sound stupid but Sandra knew it wasn’t. She knew it was important. Vital.
‘Yes, pears. I said strawberries and you said pears.’
It was actually beginning to sound trivial to her. That wasn’t good.
‘But that’s what I think,’ he said.
‘Come on, you can’t tell me you even have an opinion.’
All this talk of warm chocolate dripping off fresh strawberries, or even pears, was making her collagen-filled mouth water. She looked around for the tiny chocolates hotels put on pillows. Her side of the bed, his side, the pillows, the night table. She ran to the bathroom. Nothing. Staring at the sink, she wondered how many calories there were in toothpaste.
Nothing. Nothing to eat. She looked down at her cuticles, but she was saving those for an emergency. Returning to the room she looked at his frayed cuffs and wondered how they’d frayed. Surely not by repeated touch.
‘You humiliated me in front of everyone,’ she said, transferring her hunger to eat into a hunger to hurt. He didn’t turn round. She knew she should let it go, but it was too late. She’d chewed the insult over, torn it apart and swallowed it. The insult was part of her now.
‘Why do you always do it? And over a pear? Why couldn’t you just agree with me for once?’
She’d eaten twigs and berries and goddamned grasses for two months and lost fifteen pounds for only one reason. So that his family would say how lovely and slim she looked, and then maybe Thomas would notice. Maybe he’d believe it. Maybe he’d touch her. Just touch her. Not even make love. Just touch her.
She was starved for it.
Irene Finney looked into the mirror and lifted her hand. She brought the soapy cloth close, then stopped.
Spot would be there tomorrow. And then they’d all be together. The four children, the four corners of her world.
Irene Finney, like many very elderly people, knew that the world was indeed flat. It had a beginning and an end. And she had come to the edge.
There was only one more thing to do. Tomorrow.
Irene Finney stared at her reflection. She brought the cloth up and scrubbed. In the next room Bert Finney gripped the bed sheets listening to his wife’s stifled sobs as she removed her face.
Armand Gamache awoke to young sun pouring through the still curtains, hitting their squirrelled-up bedding and his perspiring body. The sheets were kicked into a wet ball on the very end of the bed. Beside him Reine-Marie roused.
‘What time is it?’ she asked sleepily.
‘Six thirty.’
‘In the morning?’ She got up on one elbow. He nodded and smiled. ‘And it’s already this hot?’ He nodded again. ‘It’s going to be a killer.’
‘That’s what Pierre said last night. Heat wave.’
‘I finally figured out why they call it a wave,’ said Reine-Marie, tracing a line down his wet arm. ‘I need a shower.’
‘I have a better idea.’
Within minutes they were on the dock, kicking off their sandals and dropping their towels like nests onto the warm wooden surface. Gamache and Reine-Marie looked onto this world of two suns, two skies, of mountains and forests multiplied. The lake wasn’t glass, it was a mirror. A bird gliding across the clear sky appeared on the tranquil water as well. It was a world so perfect it broke into two. Hummingbirds buzzed in the garden and monarch butterflies bobbed from flower to flower. A couple of dragonflies clicked around the dock. Reine-Marie and Gamache were the only people in the world.
‘You first,’ said Reine-Marie. She loved to watch this. So did their kids when they were younger.
He smiled, bent his knees and thrust his body off the solid dock and into mid-air. He seemed to hover there for a moment, his arms outstretched as though he expected to reach the far shore. It seemed more of a launch than a dive. And then, of course, came the inevitable, since Armand Gamache couldn’t in fact fly. He hit the water with a gargantuan splash. It was cool enough to take his breath for that first instant, but by the time he popped up, he was refreshed and alert.
Reine-Marie watched as he flicked his head around to rid his phantom hair of the lake water, as he’d done the first time they’d visited. And for years after that, until there was no longer any need. But still he did it, and still she watched, and still it stopped her heart.
‘Come on in,’ he called, and watched as she dived, graceful, though her legs always parted and she’d never mastered the toe-point, so there was always a fin of bubbles as her feet slapped the water. He waited to see her emerge, face to the sun, hair gleaming.
‘Was there a splash?’ she asked, treading water as the waves headed into the shore.