blue crayon—“is Dolly.”
“Well, hello,” Michael said. “Good to meet you. But what happened to Dolly’s face?”
“Well,” Lucy said, as if Michael had asked her opinion on the conversation behind him, “it started yesterday, you see. Molly was very cross with Dolly.”
With an ease that seemed foreign to the child he’d met earlier, Lucy began explaining the root of the dolls’ disagreement. As she talked she frowned down at them, both naked, one blonde, one brunette, absorbed in their story. Occasionally she raised her eyebrows, too, dramatically but with sincerity, as if trying out the expression for the first time.
Michael listened, grateful for the length of her explanation and happy to let her talk. He didn’t want to disengage from the party, but the truth was Lucy’s story, the solipsism of her age, had come as a relief to him. Earlier Josh, guiding him with his hand on his back again, had introduced him to a group of other guests. “This is Michael, our new neighbour,” he’d said, before moving on to greet others arriving in the hallway. Michael had shaken hands with them, and appeared to talk easily enough. But beneath the conversation his mind was double-tracking all the time, trying to keep one step ahead so as to steer it away from any question that might force him to mention Caroline or her death.
In the end he needn’t have worried. None of the other guests had seemed perturbed by his reticence, or anxious to question him in return. Ben, a colleague from Josh’s bank, owned a holiday cottage in Cornwall not far from where Michael had been brought up. Within minutes he’d been able to navigate them towards swapping recommendations on restaurants and galleries, coastal walks between shingle coves, hidden pubs. The one woman in the group, a young lawyer who’d introduced herself as “Janera, but call me Jan,” had been eager to tell him about a play she’d just seen. She’d gone on her own and it had made her cry. She couldn’t remember the playwright’s name, but she’d been at college with one of the actors. He’d had a full head of hair back then, but now he was completely bald and it was this, more than the play itself, about which she appeared most excited. The third guest was an older man in a blazer whose name Michael didn’t catch. He asked whether Michael’s flat had a view of the ponds on the Heath? When Michael said it did, the man, whose cheeks were rosy with capillaries, told him how he’d once swum in them on a Christmas Day in the sixties. He’d done it to impress a girl, whose name he’d forgotten now. There’d been a skin of ice at the water’s edge. She’d waited for him on one of the benches, wrapped in both their scarves, laughing.
As Michael listened and talked, nodded and smiled, he felt as if he’d stepped through a looking glass and was observing a world he’d left behind, a more simple, childish world, untutored by death. He knew it wasn’t true, of course. That every adult in the room would have lost. That each of them carried their own grief, however subdued, and that a fear of their own ends haunted them, too, whenever they allowed their thoughts to linger above that darkness. But none of that showed, and why should it? All of it was covered by the talk, the desire, the manners. And so Michael was left feeling adrift, the only seeing witness in a room of the chattering blind.
At their first interview for The Man Who Broke the Mirror, Oliver Blackwood had told Michael a man wasn’t born until he’d had children. At the time Michael said he couldn’t know, not having had any himself, but that he certainly agreed with the French when they said you became an adult only when you lost your parents. He’d spoken from experience. His own father had died while he was in New York. His mother, too, was seriously ill at the time. A year after that interview, she’d also died. Michael, an only child, missed them both terribly. In the months
“Well, hello,” Michael said. “Good to meet you. But what happened to Dolly’s face?”
“Well,” Lucy said, as if Michael had asked her opinion on the conversation behind him, “it started yesterday, you see. Molly was very cross with Dolly.”
With an ease that seemed foreign to the child he’d met earlier, Lucy began explaining the root of the dolls’ disagreement. As she talked she frowned down at them, both naked, one blonde, one brunette, absorbed in their story. Occasionally she raised her eyebrows, too, dramatically but with sincerity, as if trying out the expression for the first time.
Michael listened, grateful for the length of her explanation and happy to let her talk. He didn’t want to disengage from the party, but the truth was Lucy’s story, the solipsism of her age, had come as a relief to him. Earlier Josh, guiding him with his hand on his back again, had introduced him to a group of other guests. “This is Michael, our new neighbour,” he’d said, before moving on to greet others arriving in the hallway. Michael had shaken hands with them, and appeared to talk easily enough. But beneath the conversation his mind was double-tracking all the time, trying to keep one step ahead so as to steer it away from any question that might force him to mention Caroline or her death.
In the end he needn’t have worried. None of the other guests had seemed perturbed by his reticence, or anxious to question him in return. Ben, a colleague from Josh’s bank, owned a holiday cottage in Cornwall not far from where Michael had been brought up. Within minutes he’d been able to navigate them towards swapping recommendations on restaurants and galleries, coastal walks between shingle coves, hidden pubs. The one woman in the group, a young lawyer who’d introduced herself as “Janera, but call me Jan,” had been eager to tell him about a play she’d just seen. She’d gone on her own and it had made her cry. She couldn’t remember the playwright’s name, but she’d been at college with one of the actors. He’d had a full head of hair back then, but now he was completely bald and it was this, more than the play itself, about which she appeared most excited. The third guest was an older man in a blazer whose name Michael didn’t catch. He asked whether Michael’s flat had a view of the ponds on the Heath? When Michael said it did, the man, whose cheeks were rosy with capillaries, told him how he’d once swum in them on a Christmas Day in the sixties. He’d done it to impress a girl, whose name he’d forgotten now. There’d been a skin of ice at the water’s edge. She’d waited for him on one of the benches, wrapped in both their scarves, laughing.
As Michael listened and talked, nodded and smiled, he felt as if he’d stepped through a looking glass and was observing a world he’d left behind, a more simple, childish world, untutored by death. He knew it wasn’t true, of course. That every adult in the room would have lost. That each of them carried their own grief, however subdued, and that a fear of their own ends haunted them, too, whenever they allowed their thoughts to linger above that darkness. But none of that showed, and why should it? All of it was covered by the talk, the desire, the manners. And so Michael was left feeling adrift, the only seeing witness in a room of the chattering blind.
At their first interview for The Man Who Broke the Mirror, Oliver Blackwood had told Michael a man wasn’t born until he’d had children. At the time Michael said he couldn’t know, not having had any himself, but that he certainly agreed with the French when they said you became an adult only when you lost your parents. He’d spoken from experience. His own father had died while he was in New York. His mother, too, was seriously ill at the time. A year after that interview, she’d also died. Michael, an only child, missed them both terribly. In the months
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