The girls accepted Michael into their domestic orbit quickly. Rachel, at seven years old, was beginning to aspire to a maturity beyond her reach. For her, having Michael around meant an opportunity to experiment with projections of her older self, to practice expressions of speech and face, postures and poses, with an adult who was neither her family nor her teacher. A serious girl, Rachel had a tendency to want to take Michael aside to talk with him. Approaching him with a frown, she’d lead him silently into the conservatory or pull a stool up close beside him so he had to turn and talk to her and her alone. When she did this, Rachel often conducted herself as if her affairs — her drawings, her books, her tales of school — were of an importance far beyond the trivialities of family life or her peers. There was no pretence, and Michael never doubted her sincerity. She would, he thought, most likely maintain a similar course as a teenager, until hormones or a boy proved to her otherwise. But until that happened Michael could imagine her as an earnest academic or a campaigner, a powerfully strident woman, quietly confident that the world would, eventually, bend to her way.
In contrast to her sister’s desire to escape the limits of her age, Lucy revelled in the licence of hers. At four years old, her toddler’s solipsism had recently been grafted with a nascent awareness of the privileges of being a child. To her, Michael was someone for whom she could perform, and with whom she pushed the limits of what she could get away with, without fear of parental retribution. When they walked on the Heath she often insisted on being carried on his shoulders, his height thrilling her with an adult’s perspective and a safe breed of danger. Samantha would tell her to leave Michael alone, and Rachel looked on with an expression of wise disapproval. But Lucy remained impervious to either her mother’s requests or Rachel’s judgement. She inevitably got her way, and when she did she rode Michael’s shoulders with unbridled glee, one hand clasped around his forehead, the other reaching for the lower branches of the trees.
For Michael, it was impossible to spend time with the girls without a low, settling sadness gathering below his throat. In time he barely noticed it, associating its resonance with the climate of their company. But there were other occasions, when Caroline was present in his thoughts, or an object or song brought a memory to the surface, when it became more discernible. At these times Michael was reminded of the conversations they’d had about having a child of their own. Michael had felt more ready than Caroline. For her part, she’d said, although she’d wanted a child intellectually, instinctively the thought scared her. Not the child itself, but her possible failure as a mother. Her life had been independent, self-centred. Which is why she’d asked him for more time. To allow her to grow that part of herself that might accommodate an infant, to learn, again, to see her hours and minutes as no longer hers, but theirs as well. Had Caroline returned from Pakistan, they would have begun trying that summer. This is what they’d hoped. A spring baby to come into the world with the early blossom, when the trees across the valley were coming into leaf.
―
In the other corner of the bath, opposite Lucy’s toys, a collection of bottles, three deep, vied for space. Many of them were hotel samples — shampoos, conditioners, bath gels — collected, Michael guessed, from Josh’s business travels, family holidays, or Samantha’s spa weekends with Martha. As he stood in the doorway, it was these bottles that drew Michael’s attention. His unconscious must have detected the scent long before his sensory mind, for it was only now, as he walked towards the bath and this crowd of sample-sized containers, that Michael could smell it for sure. A fragrance of amber, a smell and a memory in one. A subtle genie held in one of the bottles of bath oil, the same as Caroline had used that night she’d waited for him in Hammersmith. The night he’d found her up there, her knees to her chest, the undulations of her spine melting into the nape of her neck. She must have brought it with her to his flat that night. A hotel bottle, packed into her bag in any number of the countries in which she’d worked.
As Michael neared the bath, he closed in on that memory again, until, without any disturbance of translation, he was no longer alone and Caroline was there too, naked in the bath, looking up at him. And he was looking down at her, into her brown-and-gold eyes and her fine-featured face breaking, as he watched, into a smile full of promises.
He tried to breathe, but the air had been pressed out of him. The room was dimming, fading to a set of tea lights guttering in the steam. He reached out, for her, but also to find the bottle. The one among those many that had summoned her like this. He had to know which one it was.
He leant forward, his hand outstretched. But as he did Caroline began to haze. She was fading, leaving him already. It was like a second death, watching her go. He heard himself say “no,” like a condemned man against the certainty of his sentence. But it was no use. There was no change in her expression, her smile holding as she left him, as if he, not she, had been the ghost.
Michael dropped to his knees, reaching to touch her disappearing shoulder. But it was more than the vision could carry, and as his hand fell through empty air, so the room returned to him: the sunlight through the window, the enamel tub, the miniature bottles, and beyond the door at his back, a noise.
At first Michael thought the sound was part of the apparition. But when all trace of Caroline had gone, he heard it again. A movement, something brushing against carpet. He froze, still on his knees beside the bath, straining to listen. A knock against wood. A floorboard giving under weight.
The air came rushing back to his lungs, and with it a sudden clarity. He was on his knees in his neighbours’ bathroom, sweat prickling his neck, between his shoulder blades, on his brow. It had all been so quick. Time, with that scent and with her, had evaporated. It had ceased to mean anything. But now, he knew, it meant everything. He was not alone. He must leave.
Leaning his arms against the edge of the bath, he pushed himself up and rose to his feet. He listened again. There was nothing. Perhaps he’d been wrong. Perhaps it was the wind, blowing through an open window. But there was no wind. The day was becalmed. Had someone broken in before him after all? Or what if it wasn’t an intruder, and Josh was still in the house? Whichever, he should take his chance while he could. He could be out of the bathroom, down the stairs, and through the kitchen in seconds. Within half a minute he could be in his garden. Within a few more in his flat. But he would have to go now, quickly and quietly. Otherwise it would be too late.
In two strides Michael was out of the bathroom door and onto the landing. Which is when he saw Lucy, standing at the head of the stairs, looking back at him.
She was wearing her pyjamas: pink bottoms with a pink-and-white striped top, a boat in full sail across her stomach. Her hair was flattened on one side, like hay under wind, her one cheek still scored by the creases of her pillow. For a split second her eyes were heavy with sleep. But now, starting at the sight of him, they were instantly alert, alive with panic at the cross-wiring of seeing Michael, his face wet with tears and his hands muddied, bursting from the bathroom where only her parents should be.
Her whole body flinched with the shock. At the same moment she stepped back, one bare foot reaching for purchase behind her where none was to be found. Michael lunged towards her, but it was too late. She was already falling, so suddenly her hands remained by her sides as she tipped backwards, her eyes still on Michael as once again he grabbed at nothing but air.