Page 43 of The Blue Hour

She did everything right.

The thing that stayed with her, afterwards, was not so much the shock of the abandonment, or the hurt or the rejection, it was the excruciating shame of it all. The humiliation that came with realizing that there were rules she did not understand, that no matter how she tried, she never managed to feel the right things in the right way.

She moved away from London as soon as she could, up north to Edinburgh and from there out west. Small towns, rural places would be more forgiving, she thought; she’d be able to try again, to do good, to get things right, she’d escape herwrongness.

Only it followed her, it kept following her, all the way to Eris.

28

Down on the causeway, in the limbo between island and mainland, you can imagine yourself in another world; it feels uncharted, the seabed, never the same twice. Grace rarely crosses over on foot, as it always makes her feel a little afraid, even on days like today when the tide is low and the sun is warm on her face, oystercatchers piping and gulls calling, the sky reassuringly blue.

By the time she reaches the ramp at the end of the causeway, she is slightly out of breath. She slogs up the hill and, reaching the harbour car park, spies Marguerite, on her knees in front of her cottage, deadheading roses. Marguerite is singing to herself, softly and with perfect pitch. As Grace approaches, she starts. Getting quickly to her feet, she raises her hand to shield her eyes against the sun and then she smiles. ‘Ah!Madame le médecin!You are bringing my pills?’

More and more, as Marguerite’s grip on the present loosens, she understands people in the context in which she first met them. So Grace is her doctor, Grace gives her medication.

‘No pills today,’ Grace says. ‘I just thought I’d come and say hello.’

Marguerite nods. ‘Come, come,’ she says, taking Grace’s hand in her own. Her fingers are freezing, as cold as the earth. ‘You will have tea?’

Grace follows her through the front door to the kitchen at the rear of the house. While Marguerite fills the kettle, Grace fetches cups from the cupboard. They have been put away dirty, and are now host to a flourishing green mould. ‘I’ll just give these a quick rinse, shall I?’ Grace asks. Marguerite nods, smiling shyly. When she reaches up to take the tea caddy from a shelf, Grace notices a bruise, its dark purple centre bleeding away to greenish edges, on the underside of her forearm.

‘Ouch,’ Grace says, wincing, indicating the arm. ‘That looks painful.’

‘Ouch,oui.’ Marguerite’s expression is grave. ‘I fall, you see? Is not a lie. Really, really,c’est vrai.’

This comes from the past, too, from the days when Marguerite would come to see Grace with an injury and a story to go with it – she slipped on a patch of ice, she banged her head on a cupboard door. And when Grace probed, gently, for the truth, Marguerite would dig her heels in, insistent.Is not a lie, c’est vrai.Now, though, it almost certainlyistrue. Grace believes her, she says so. Marguerite beams like a praised child.

But by the time they have moved from the kitchen to the living room, she has become agitated, bustling to the window every couple of minutes to look out over the car park towards the road. ‘I think he comes back soon,’ she says, clasping and unclasping her bony hands, misshapen by time and repeated breaks.

‘No, Marguerite, you don’t have to worry,’ Grace says firmly. ‘He’s not coming back.’

‘No?’ Marguerite smiles warily, hopefully: she wants to believe her.

‘Come and sit down,’ Grace instructs her. ‘Sit down and drink your tea. Tell me, how did you hurt your arm? You fell here? In the house? Or outside?’

Marguerite thinks about this for a moment and then shakesher head slowly. She puts a crooked forefinger to her lips. ‘You do something for me, I do something for you,’ she says.

‘All right,’ Grace says, though she is not surewhatconversation they are having now. ‘What do you want me to do for you?’ Marguerite claps her hands, giggling, and Grace glimpses the girl she must have been once, lively and coquettish. She was working as a chambermaid in a shabby hotel in Lille when she met Stuart, a giant truck driver with enormous hands and an irresistible grin; he persuaded her to pack it in and start a new life with him across the English Channel. Worst decision she ever made.

She arrived in Eris in 1992; Grace met her the following year, the year of the storms. The same year that Nick Riley turned up, surprising Grace at work. Not surprising, no. Surprisedoesn’t begin to cover what she felt when Nick turned up unannounced, out of the blue. Shocked, yes, staggered. Floored.

Still, Grace has always reproached herself for the fact that her attention was elsewhere that first time Marguerite came to see her at the surgery. She wanted something for the pain, she said. She’d had an accident, fallen off her bicycle. With hindsight, Grace knew she should have done more for her. Should have asked more questions, should have pushed harder, shouldn’t have allowed Marguerite to persuade her that there was nothing amiss, no need to get anyone else involved. Why would there be, when she’d only had a fall?C’est vrai, it’s not a lie.

Grace was distracted; she went along with Marguerite’s story, all the while acknowledging to herself that a fall might account for a cracked rib, possibly even the fractured cheekbone and the knocked-out tooth, but it did not explain the livid, fingerprint-shaped bruises on Marguerite’s neck and arms and thighs.

Now, Marguerite is on her feet again, looking out the window, across the water. ‘L’île ne se souvient pas,’ she says, turning to face Grace, who shrugs, shaking her head.I don’t understand.‘Theisland does not remember.’ Grace presses her lips together, suppressing a sigh. Her patience for this sort of meandering, riddling conversation is limited. Marguerite is looking at her expectantly, but Grace shakes her head again, and so Marguerite turns away. ‘I think he comes again soon,’ she says softly to herself.

The sad thing, Grace thinks, thecruelthing, is that while Marguerite remembers Stuart, she appears to have forgotten the other man, the one she fell in love with after her husband went to prison. He is dead now, but they shared years of happiness. But instead of reminiscing fondly about her mild and gentlemanly farmer, she stands at the window, anguished and fearful, eternally expecting the brute.

When Grace leaves, Marguerite follows her to the door, taking hold of her hand as she steps out into the sunlight. ‘Where did your friend go?’ she asks, her eyes searching Grace’s face. ‘What happened?’

‘Nothing’s happened, Marguerite,’ Grace replies, gently extricating herself. ‘There’s nothing to worry about. Everything is all right.’

The sun is bright and pale and low. Grace walks with one arm raised to shield her eyes from the glare. A headache is building at the back of her skull, she feels a tightness there as though someone has pulled her hair. Her tread is leaden, she is dog-tired, feeling the effects of last night’s wine.

She told Marguerite that everything was all right, which is evidently not true. The old woman is becoming too ill to live alone, she isn’t coping. She could have a serious fall, she could leave the gas on, burn the house down, give herself food poisoning eating off filthy plates. Grace ought to phone the surgery on Monday, get them to send a social worker out to see her. Would that be the right thing to do? It wouldn’t be the kind thing. They’d turf her out of her little cottage, take her to some awful institution.No.Grace would prefer to keep her there, on the harbour, where she can keep an eye on her.

Back down on the causeway in the lee of the island, the air is cold and damp. Over to her right, out on the sand, something moves and Grace starts, her heart rate spiking, but when she looks again, there’s nothing there, just the flat light making beasts of shadows. She quickens her pace, looking up at the house as she does. From this angle, you can see only the narrower, kitchen end of the building. It looks small and undefended, as though a high tide or a fierce storm might carry it away.

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