Flynn Berry - Under the Harrow

“Why did she move here?” I ask.

Lewis doesn’t answer. He already has, in a way. “What do you hate about London?” he asks.

“The noise.”

“The noise is the best part,” he says.

We walk past the Miller’s Arms. In this light its awning is the color of paper.

“Not in Kilburn.”

“You can wear headphones. Do you know what you can’t do anything about? The rain,” he says, so the word turns long and threatening.

• • •

After Lewis returns to the station, I walk through the village again. I miss Snaith. The Vikings and the bakery. The Norman church, especially in winter, with snow falling over it and the poplars in its yard.

I can’t believe I never noticed before. I walk around the common but I see the common in Snaith. The towns are like twins.

I walk past the Chinese restaurant where Lewis and I ate two weeks ago. There was one in Snaith too, though it was called, embarrassingly, Oriental Chop Suey, and this one is the Emerald Gate.

I don’t know anyone else who moved to a small town. Rachel said she wanted to be close to the hospital, but Oxford would have been closer. It’s as if she never left our village. I stand on the station platform and see the station in Snaith. I don’t know if they have updated the trains on the Leeds line. When we lived there the seats were made of blue carpet and you could open the windows.

I BICYCLE DOWN the Bristol Road, past the white cross marking the site of Callum’s accident, toward the service station. Ahead of me, the red Esso globe rises above the flat countryside.

Louise is still working at the café. She wears the same clothes as last time, a navy shirt and black canvas skirt under an apron. “Hello again,” she says. “Is that your bike?”

“Sort of.” I don’t think anyone will miss it. I found it in the shed behind the inn. Its gears are rusted and both its tires needed air.

“Do you want to bring it around back so it doesn’t get wet?”

The rain has stopped but the clouds are low and ragged. Louise leads me outside and I wheel the bike around the building to a covered parking bay. You can’t see the white cross from here, which is probably good. Rachel showed it to me a few weeks ago. We were on our way to Didcot, and she pointed and said, “That’s where Callum’s car spun off.” I remember thinking it was strange, since there weren’t any turns or obstacles. It was a straightaway. He must have thought he saw something in the road, a fox maybe.

The lorry bay smells of stone. I lower the kickstand and follow Louise around the building. Cars rumble down the Bristol Road. “Thanks,” I say.

“Not a problem,” she says.

“He beat her,” said Rachel.

Louise swings open the door and holds it for me. I pass so close I can smell that she wears scent with some vetiver in it.

“How did you know her injuries came from him?”

“She told me,” said Rachel.

Louise finds a breakfast menu and follows me to a table.

“Do you live around here?”

“Kidlington,” she says. I wait for her to add more. I expect she is moving soon. I watch her cross the restaurant and picture a room with a friend in Camden. For some reason my image is about forty years out of date. They have a gas ring and a record player, and they go to the trattoria on the corner for a liter of red wine and bucatini.

You should move to Camden, I want to tell her. You should move to Camden in about 1973.

I wish we could talk. I want to ask her about Callum, and the accident. I can’t see a way to do this without bringing Rachel into it, though I wouldn’t mind that. I’d like to know what their encounter was like. But it would also mean revealing a violation of patient rights. Rachel should never have told me about Louise’s injuries, or how she got them.

• • •

I finish the ebelskiver, a sort of pancake filled with jam, and pay the bill.

“Do you want to wait it out?” asks Louise. Heavy rain falls on the countryside, and we both watch as the wind blows an opaque curve of water across the road.

“It’s not far. I’m staying at the Hunters in Marlow.”

“Still,” she says, but she doesn’t ask what I am doing in Marlow. I don’t think she knows I’m Rachel’s sister.

I want to tell her about the moment between opening the door of the house and understanding what had happened, when what I felt was wonder. It was an incredible feeling, golden and drugged. I would like to know if she experienced that, when the car first jerked, maybe. I wouldn’t mind living my whole life in that gap, when I knew the rules had somehow been upturned, but not how.

I pedal down the Bristol Road. I don’t think I will see Louise again. I want to ask her why she hasn’t quit already. She must find it difficult to drive past the accident site twice a day. Maybe she forces herself, as a reminder of something.

• • •

In Marlow, people have started hanging wreaths on their doors. Square and round wreaths of bay leaves and holly.

There are trees for sale at the repair garage. Last year Rachel took the tree down on Twelfth Night. “You don’t want to anger the Holly Man,” she said.

• • •

A bouquet of white roses has been propped in front of my door. I bend down and carry them into my room, and the soft, creamy petals fill the air with scent. I’ve never been given white roses before, or bought them for myself, and in the dim room they look rare and precious. I fill a glass with water for them. Someone sending condolences. Martha’s family, maybe. The card is from a florist’s shop in Oxford.

It says, Nice to meet you again. Paul.

• • •

I sit on my heels in bed holding the carving knife. My body is stiff with fear. The manager sleeps in a set of rooms on the floor below mine, and I don’t know if sounds can reach her from here. It’s only the pipes, the building settling. It’s nothing, I imagine Rachel saying to herself on Friday, there’s no one there.

MORETTI CALLS THE NEXT morning to say that officers will be returning to her house to conduct another search of the property. He won’t tell me why exactly, but I assume for the murder weapon. They still haven’t found the knife.

“Are you sure Stephen was in Dorset that day?”

“Why? Did Rachel ever say she was frightened of him?”

“No.”

“Was he ever violent toward her?”

“No.”

“Stephen was at work until seven on the day of the murder. He placed calls from the restaurant, and he’s on the security film.”

“After her funeral, he said if she’d married him she would still be alive.”

“And you think he was confessing?”

“No. It just seems like a strange thing to say.”

I struggle not to tell him about the roses. The card was written in cursive, as though dictated, and the florist’s shop confirmed that he placed the order and a courier delivered them. But he still knows where I am, and to find me in Marlow, he had to know Rachel’s name. Mine doesn’t appear in any of the articles about her. I think he assumed I would be at the Hunters because it’s the only inn in town, though he may have learned some other way. Maybe he followed me.

I can’t ask Moretti for advice. Instead, I say, “Do you have brothers or sisters?”

“One brother.”

“Are you close?”

“No.” He probably makes the trip to Glasgow out of duty exactly once a year, and hates every moment of it. He must be able to use his work to get out of family occasions. I can so clearly see him taking a phone call, in a house in Dalmarnock or Royston, and saying, “Sorry, I’ve got to go.” His family must know better than to ask. It could be important.