Page 45 of The Blue Hour

I am lost, still, unable to work. I move aimlessly, without purpose.

I try to void my mind and let my hands lead me, let the paint lead me, or the clay, but I cannot seem to let go of thought, and soon enough I find myself frozen, at once adrift and trapped.

Grace is ever-present. She is careful, solicitous. I cannot breathe when she is in the room. Her attention is smothering, she cannot know how I suffer. She is incapable of a certain depth of feeling. She does not know what it is to experience the sort of sexual love I had for Julian. I know it is not her fault, I know it is just the way she is made, and yet her lack of understanding infuriates me.

I love her, I pity her, too. And I wish she would not cling to me. I imagine her gone. I imagine the freedom and the fear of life without her.

I know you are upset with me for missing your Bristol show, I know I haven’t been the best friend to you this past couple of years, I have been even more self-absorbed than usual.

Please forgive me. I miss you so.

Could I come and see you? If only I could just get away from this place for a while, I think I would start to feel more myself.

Love,

Vanessa

Frances never replied. Vanessa was deeply hurt, and even when – a year or so later – they talked and Frances explained that she’d never received the letter, their friendship did not recover, not fully.

Grace’s vision blurs, she blinks away her tears. Even now, all these years later, Vanessa’s words cut deep. She is notincapable of a certain depth of feeling! If anything, she feels too much, she feels disproportionately.

And sometimes, she acts accordingly.

The reason Frances never replied to Vanessa’s letter was because Frances never received it. Grace, on one of her periodic checks of Vanessa’s state of mind in the weeks and months following Julian’s disappearance, opened the letter she had promised to run across to the post box in the village. Wounded by Vanessa’s words, she enacted a cruelty of her own: she held the letter back and allowed Vanessa to imagine that her oldest friend had forsaken her.

All is fair in love and war, and friendship is love, too, isn’t it? And a kind of war sometimes, as well.

30

When he walks into the hospital ward and sees them – Helena in the bed and Sebastian at her side, holding one of her hands in his – Becker feels as though he has travelled to an alternative dimension. In this new reality, everything is just as it should be: beautiful, blue-blooded Helena Fitzgerald is married to rich, handsome and aristocratic Sebastian Lennox; she spends her days and nights in the splendour of Fairburn House, not shacked up with the help in the cramped confines of the Gamekeeper’s Lodge. In this new reality, James Becker has not insinuated himself into a world in which he does not belong; he has not taken Helena from the life she deserved and broken Sebastian’s heart into the bargain. He is alone and unloved, watching from the outside, nose pressed to the glass.

Just as he should be.

Becker feels cold, his insides contorted; it’s as though a chasm has opened up beneath him into which he is tumbling. And it’s his fault. For not being there when she needed him. For entertaining, even for a fraction of a second, the idea that he might choose Vanessa over Helena. It’s his fault for not listening to that voice in his head, that wordless, soundless voice, the one that’s been telling him something bad is going to happen.

Just as he is thinking this, Helena turns her head towards him and her eyes meet his. ‘Beck!’ she calls out, voice breaking, taking her hand from Sebastian’s and reaching out to Becker. He’s at her side in a second, kissing her. ‘Thank God you’re here,’ she says. ‘I thought you’d never get here.’ He pulls her tighter to him as a sob builds in his chest. ‘Don’t cry, you big girl,’ Helena whispers into his hair, ‘I’m OK.We’reOK. We’re fine.’

When finally they break apart, Becker realizes that they’re alone. Sebastian has gone. And everything is fine. Helena is fine, the baby is fine. It was just normal bleeding. All right, a bit more than normal, but nothing is wrong. They can’t find anything wrong.

‘Which is it?’ Becker snarls at the doctor. ‘Nothing’s wrong or you can’tfindanything wrong?’

‘Leave him alone, Beck,’ Helena says. ‘I’mfine.’ She looks fine: a little pale, though, and a little pained, with spots of colour high in her cheeks, her eyes dark and wet and her lips bitten. She clings to Becker’s hand so tightly that his fingers begin to ache.

Five days have passed since Becker left Eris, and Helena has been back home for three. Becker has taken the week off work and the pair of them have retreated into their very own lockdown: they have barely ventured from the house except for short, leisurely walks; they have lit fires and read books, watched television, made lovecarefully. They have eaten well, eschewed alcohol. Becker has not had a cigarette in seventy-two hours.

And he is climbing the walls.

This morning, a technician at a private laboratory in London broke open the glass case ofDivisionIIand detached the bone from the gold filament holding it in place. Becker was not there to see it. He chose to stay at Fairburn with his wife, and so has had to wait, pacing the narrow hallway between sitting room and kitchen, until the technician rings to say that, yes, a visualinspection confirmed the bone is human and that they will now extract a small sample to send for testing. They will be able to determine roughly how old the bone is as well as the sex and age of the person it came from. They expect to have answers within a week, two at the most.

By mid-afternoon, when Becker has finished speaking to the technician, Sebastian and the curator at Tate Modern, Helena – who has spent much of the day on the sofa, trying to read – has had enough.

‘For the love of Christ, Beck, please go and watch them setting things on fire, you’re driving meinsane.’ It’s the fifth of November, Bonfire Night, there’s a party at the main house for the neighbours and the estate workers and their kids.

‘Are you sure you’ll be all right?’

Helena grimaces. ‘I’ll be fine, but I can’t vouch for your wellbeing if you keep bloody fidgeting and pacing and hovering over me. Go!’

He goes.

---