Flynn Berry - Under the Harrow

The morning of the party was “a scorcher,” according to Radio Humberside. “Be careful out there,” the announcer said, which I thought was stretching it. The toast popped up, the electric kettle whistled. I wedged open the sliding door with my foot and ate my breakfast with my back against the glass.

My feet were stretched on the patio stones, and our dad was at work on a building site in Sunderland, the driveway empty of his AMC Gremlin, the world’s smallest and ugliest car. Rachel said we were “latchkey children,” though technically we weren’t since the door was never locked. When I said that, she said, “Stop being stupid.”

Rachel was still asleep when I left for the pool. The blind in her room was snagged in one corner and light glowed on her pale arm and dark hair. I closed her door and clattered down the stairs. My dad once asked if I walked down the stairs that way on purpose, to make the maximum possible noise. The screen door slammed behind me and I turned onto the hot, empty street. Half of the houses had been repossessed, and I ambled along the center of the road, brushing the hair back from my face.

After my shift at the pool, I went to Alice’s. Rachel met me at the door and I watched her figure take shape beyond the screen.

“How was work, Nora?” asked Alice.

“No drownings.”

We left for the party at nine. Rachel walked in front, and Alice and I followed with our arms linked. My sister wore denim shorts and a loose navy shirt. She had sandals that tied at the ankle and a rope bracelet around her wrist, her hair loose down her back. We had poured vodka into a Coke can and walked sipping from it, and all the alcohol floated to the top so by the time we reached the house we were drunk.

When we arrived at the party, everyone began hugging everyone else, including some of the people who had already been there together when we arrived. Rafe pulled me under his arm into the kitchen and I drank another vodka Coke, then another.

I lost Rachel. We played Nevers but no one could remember the rules, and then Rachel came in from the kitchen and squeezed beside me on the sofa. I tipped my head against her shoulder and smelled that she had just smoked a cigarette. I lifted her hair and held it across my nose, breathing through it like a screen.

It gets fuzzy after that.

I remember emptying an ice tray into a cup, then knocking it to the floor, and being on my knees, one hand scrabbling under the fridge.

More people coming.

Another vodka Coke.

Rachel in the kitchen, her hair tied up in a high knot, drinking a glass of water and talking with Rafe. Her knobby cheekbones, her pink lips.

I was swampy with tiredness, and knocking into things. I climbed the stairs, which was interesting because I couldn’t see below my knees.

I closed my eyes. And then someone was leaning over me in the earliest light of morning, when it’s uncanny, almost neon. I was in a single bed, sleeping on my side next to Alice.

“Nora, I’m going to walk home. Do you want to come with me or stay?” Rachel’s hand on my arm.

“Stay.” And I nestled against Alice’s shoulder and fell back asleep.

The thing was — that morning — I hadn’t even turned over to look at her. I imagined it afterward, over and over. Pushing back on my shoulder, twisting around to see her. Her face would be pale in the neon blue light from outside, her hair swinging forward in two long sheets.

“Never mind. I’ll come with you.”

THE NEXT MORNING, I head down Cale Street to the aqueduct. The path is thirteen miles long, and my plan is to walk for long enough to clear my head. Last night, at the Emerald Gate, I asked Lewis, “Are you going to look for him?”

“Yes,” he said. He might already be in Snaith. I can’t imagine how the search will work now, after fifteen years. It was difficult enough in the weeks immediately after the attack.

I duck under a gap in the hedge and emerge onto the aqueduct, at the part of the trail where people bring their dogs after work and at the weekend. My heart skips. Three weeks ago Rachel and I came here with Fenno. We took turns throwing the tennis ball for him, wiping our hands on our jeans. When a Portuguese water dog arrived off Cale Street, Rachel folded in half laughing at Fenno’s reaction.

As he bowled over to greet the other dog, Rachel wiped tears from her eyes, her mouth pulled down into a crescent. “He’s literally quivering with happiness,” I said. “I know,” she said, “I know.”

Rachel chose the dog for protection. She bought him five years ago, soon after she moved here. Lewis thinks she felt unsafe living alone in the countryside, more exposed than in London. Maybe she thought he would find her.

I walk down the aqueduct away from town. The fuel that’s always in my stomach now catches and I am sheeted in flames. I can’t hear anything, which I don’t notice until I am far past the village and realize my shoes must have been making that sound on the path since I started walking.

I stalk between the farms, the flames rippling over me. The rage doesn’t go away. After two or three miles I stop and weep into my hands. I drop to my knees. Even with my legs pressed to the frozen ground, I still burn, the fire bristling off my spine.

On my way back, I come through a copse of hazels and around a bend, and there is a figure on the path in front of me.

As I draw closer, I see that it is a man in a long coat. He has a Staffordshire bull terrier on a lead, which is strange. Most people let their dogs run on the aqueduct. When we are close, the dog trots over to greet me, tugging him nearer. The man smiles. He is bald, with a strong chin and a flattened nose, like a boxer.

He says, “This is Brandy.” I hold my hand out for the dog to sniff. She presses her wet nose to it and pain sluices through me. I scratch behind her ears, and her eyes crease and her tail swings back and forth. Even though it’s cold, she has been sweating. I can see her pink skin through the damp raked lines of her coat.

The stranger isn’t wearing gloves, and his hand on the lead is red and chapped. The slight swell of his stomach presses against his coat.

“Sweet girl,” I say to the dog. Her eyes fasten on mine with the attention specific to bull terriers, and I wonder if he attacked me if she would lunge for me or him.

A crow calls from the field, and when he turns toward it, I flip the dog’s tag over. Denton. They live on Bray Lane, near the common. I can’t tell if he caught me reading it.

“Does she run away?” I ask, and point at the lead.

“No,” he says. “A friend of mine let his Staffie off lead and his neighbor shot her.”

The dog sniffs my wrist, her eyes wide and a little crossed. “They used to be nanny dogs,” I say.

“I know. My friend told that to the police. Nothing happened to the shooter. He wasn’t even cautioned.”

I recognize the grain reaper in the field next to us and realize how far we still are from town. A mile, at least.

“Are you Nora?” he asks. We’ve never met before. He has gray stubble and a few deep lines across his forehead.

“Yes.”

“We used to see Rachel out here,” he says. “I can’t believe it.”

The dog snaps to attention. I turn to look behind me, but the path is empty.

“I saw her just that morning,” he says.

My mouth goes dry. His coat sleeve has a small rip at its hem, did my sister do that?

“Where?”

“At her house. The bath sprang a leak. It had been going for a few days before she noticed. There’s a crack halfway across the ceiling.”

I straighten. We are alone, between drab, stippled fields. I watch his red hand twist the lead. “And she called you?”