Pale. Maybe you should skip college.
Nope.
Lily took the tissue and slapped it on to her cheek.
Im off.
She strolled out.
Connie inspected her small gold ring. Sara poured some washing liquid on to the pillowcase and began rubbing at it.
Connie drank her coffee and tried to stop herself from yawning. She hadnt slept well. Her brain had been buzzing. She rubbed her eyes and debated what to do next. What could she do?
I want to show you something, Sara had wrung out the pillowcase and was standing by the back door, outside.
Connie stood up. She was wearing a short cotton nightdress. Can I come like this?
Uhhere Sara took a mackintosh from a hook and tossed it to her, then threw her a pair of large Wellingtons. Connie yanked them both on. They went out and Sara walked over to the washing line with Connie clumping along behind her. Sara pointed.
I gave this a rinse through before you got up.
Connie stared at Jims towel. It was a grey, breezy day. Quite nippy. She wrapped the mac closer around her. Well, thank you.
No, look, Sara was smiling. She pointed. See?
Connie peered more intently. Prison issue, she read, out loud.
Sara hung up the pillowcase. The blood stain was still evident.
Ruined, she muttered grimly, and then turned resolutely back towards the house.
When Connie came downstairs again, properly dressed in some old jeans and a grey woollen sweater, she found Sara sitting at the kitchen table fiddling with Lukes camera. Her hair was unbrushed and she wore no make-up. Her cheeks and chin and nose all had the soft, dull shine of tan-coloured freshly laid eggs.
Connie pulled out a chair. So will you give it back?
The camera? Eventually. Im trying to work out the timer.
Pass it over. Connie took the camera and inspected it. Okay
She explained how she imagined it would work. Sara listened carefully. Then she took the camera back again.
Im going to take some pictures, she said, do you want to watch?
Connie checked the time. It was still early.
I Her cheek was leaking when she found him. On the beach, naturally.
Ronny.
He glanced up. Lily.
So she looked at the shell piles, will you be making another uh she couldnt remember the word hed used previously.
No, Ronny continued sorting, today Im constructing something for Jim. Its a new project.
Right. Lilys voice was plainly laced with a fine jealous thread.
Jims grief, Ronny said, Im making it solid.
Jims grief?
Lily didnt understand.
Well, anyway, she added, almost roughly, I have something for you.
She pulled the letter from her school bag. It has your name on it. When I saw it I just knew that it was yours.
She offered the letter to Ronny. He put out his left hand and took it. Thank you.
He glanced at the handwriting. Horrible, jagged. He stuffed it into his pocket.
Wont you read it?
Whats it about?
Insects, blood and a cave. Somewhere foreign. A bat cave.
Wont you read it?
Whats it about?
Insects, blood and a cave. Somewhere foreign. A bat cave.
The bat cave. Ronny nodded.
Dont you want to know how I found it?
Yes.
Ronny clearly did not want to know.
Connie. The woman I was with yesterday. She had a whole pile of them. I tried to get hold of the rest but she hit me. See?
Lily showed Ronny her cheek but he was not looking. She put her finger to the moist lip of the cut and felt tiny granules of sand nestling inside it.
So she dawdled and then tightened her resolve, I suppose Ive got a bus to catch.
Then I hope its not a fast one. Lily frowned, smiled, then took off.
Her half-empty coffee cup. The washing line. The hen coop. A boar. Beetroots under tarpaulin. Her wedding ring. Her toothbrush. A paperback romance shed been reading. A kitchen scale.
Connie watched mutely as Sara photographed all of these things. Each image took a long while to encapsulate in the lens, in the black box before it could be finally recorded.
The banisters, the toilet seat (down), her pillow still featuring the indentation of her head her favourite shoes, her hairbrush.
They were in Saras bedroom. At long last she broke the silence between them.
You look tired.
Connie blinked. Do I?
Yes. Wasnt your bed comfortable?
It was fine. I havent been sleeping well. Not since my dad. I got some tablets prescribed for it but I havent taken them. I dont like forcing things.
Its unhealthy not to sleep.
Connie shrugged.
Actually Sara was concentrating on the cameras flash mechanism, would you mind doing something for me?
Connie nodded. Anything.
Go downstairs, grab a kitchen stool and bring it back up here.
Connie went and did as she was asked. Sara took the stool and stood it close to the foot of her bed, then placed the camera on top and peered through its lens. She adjusted the stool and looked once more.
Climb on to the bed, will you?
Connie climbed on to the bed. Sara stared through the lens at her.
Right, she said, thats all. You can go now.
Connie clambered off the bed and tried not to feel pique at being personally excluded from Saras burgeoning photographic montage.
Im just a shadow, she thought wryly, yawning, heading downstairs again, feeling the banister smooth and cool and suddenly significant beneath her hand.
Do you know how it was that I made my money?
Luke was staring out to sea. Hed wandered down on to the beach to thank Ronny for what hed believed at the time was saving his life. Now, of course, he knew that Ronny had not saved his life. His life had remained perfectly intact. Ronny had witnessed his pain, that was all.
Even so, hed fully intended to thank him, but ended up staring out to sea instead and talking about something altogether different.
I didnt realize that you had any money, Ronny said, I never actually considered it.
Ronny had three giant piles of shells around him, each of which he was now laboriously placing into three black dustbin liners.
Dot-to-dot, Luke said boldly.
Ronny scratched his nose. Whats that?
Dot-to-dot books. Thats how I made my money. Dirty ones. A photograph, only partially revealed, with the rest of the page numbered and dotted so that you can take a pen and fill in the pornographic segment yourself.
Really? Ronny was vaguely incredulous. Hed never heard of such a thing.
Yes. It wasnt entirely my idea. I just did the photos. Before that Id done straight glamour work. Calendars, postcards, but Id always found it frustrating. My tastes were generally moreeclectic.
Eclectic, Ronny nodded.
So I made some money on the dot-to-dots. Ive done three books altogether. All quite successful. But what I couldnt help noticing I mean at the time was that I was basically taking pictures that no one would really get to see. So much of the picture was obscured. It was as though the pictures onlyinterest, strength, was in what was actually missing.
I like that.
At last Ronny was fully engaged.
What?
That the thing you are most interested in is the thing no one gets to see.
Really? Lukes voice was cool. Its chilly.
He rubbed his arms and decided that Ronny was either thoroughly insensitive, purposefully facetious or intensely, no, incredibly stupid.
Connie had worked out that all roads in this part of Sheppey were basically one road, and on this premiss, when her path divided into the route shed taken the previous afternoon with Lily, to her right, and a rough walkway into what looked like a nature reserve to her left, she took the left-hand path and bargained that ultimately shed end up exactly where she wanted.
In her arms she held the towel Jim had given her. When shed taken it down from the line shed sniffed at it, expecting to discover something. But the towel felt rough and smelled only of synthetic soap. Shed folded it and then kissed it. She often kissed inanimate objects and attached no significance to this practice. It was merely a foible.
In the reserve she saw a heron and a lark a little brown bird which called so shrilly and then rose and rose up into the sky until it was almost invisible before diving down, dropping, plummeting, like a disappointed heart, a stone, a bullet.
She passed by the hides. She did not venture inside any of them. It was a bare day; huge and flat and empty and blowy and cheek-reddeningly cold. Her nose tingled.
Then she saw it. By chance. The rabbit. Far to her left, on a bushy little hillock. Running, no, chasing. Another rabbit. A brown one. But the first rabbit was jet black. An ink-spot. A small, tight pupil inside the pale green eye of the landscape.
It was so damn obvious! This sable bunny. This oddity. It was its own worst enemy. It was its own bellringer; a walking announcement. A misfit. She stopped and watched as it zipped along the horizon, like the tip of an etch-a-sketch, a nib, a shaving, a harsh jut of dark lead.
How did it survive? She laughed out loud. She didnt know why. How did it survive? Then she walked on, jauntily, fully secure that she merged in her blue jeans and her grey jumper, with her pale hair, her pale skin, confident, adapted, invisible, disguised.
On the beach Connie saw Ronny and Luke, deep in conversation. She skittered across the highest of the dunes, over and along, until she reached the prefabs. She raised her knuckles and knocked on Jims door but the door was not shut, just pulled to, and it swung open under the weight of her fist.
Oh. Sorry
She stood in the doorway. The room was grey, the curtains closed. She saw the tip of Jims smooth head protruding over the arm of the sofa. Then it jerked. A hiccup.
Hello, she said, very quietly.
Jim sat up. He corkscrewed around. He rubbed at his eyes and then stared at her over the back of the sofa. What do you want?
I brought your towel back.
He said nothing. Then he hiccupped.
When was the last time you saw a white horse?
What?
A white horse.
Jim hiccupped again.
My dad used to say it. Its one of those things you always try when someone has the hiccups.
Right.
To distract them. If they think about something else then they forget that they have the hiccups and so get rid of them.
Jim shook his head. That wouldnt work for me.
Why not?
Its not psychological. Its a physical thing. My stomach goes into spasms. I can have them for whole days at a time.
You should visit a doctor.
Yes I should.
Jims voice was brutally dismissive. He hiccupped.