Page 86 of The Light Between Worlds

“I didn’t know you did that,” I say. Jamie takes a last drag on his cigarette and stubs it out against the wall.

“I don’t, at least not anymore. I gave it up after St. Joe’s. This is a special occasion.”

“Aren’t we full of secrets?”

It’s not exactly dark yet, but everything’s growing dim. Though I can’t see the expression on Jamie’s face, there’s an uncharacteristically bitter edge to his voice.

“I’m an open book compared to you and Ev. Mum and Dad are sitting up front—they said you’re not living at home anymore.”

“No.”

“You might have told me.”

I stay silent, because Jamie ought not to throw stones. He’s always been the one who had the luxury of distancing himself from Ev and her troubles, of finding his own way, forging his own path.

“How bad was it with her, Phil?” he asks.

“Pretty bad,” I say. I want to go home. I want to sit next to Jack on the couch in his tiny flat, drinking tea and reading mysteries that all end in a satisfying, tidy way. I never should have come here, to this place where sorrow and regret and something larger are tugging at my bones. “Sometimes I thought I’d lose her. It was all I could do to hold her together.”

A match flares in the dusk as Jamie lights another cigarette. “I can’t believe you never said anything.”

“I’m sorry. That I didn’t, and that I left. Are things ever going to be alright again, do you think?”

Jamie doesn’t answer. A battered lorry pulls into the quad, and a familiar family climbs out. There are five of them, and they form a hedge of protection around a gangly boy with freckles, who’s pale-faced but decidedly less unhappy-looking than when I last saw him.

“That’s Tom Harper,” Jamie tells me, though of course I know. “I’d better go in with him. It’s my fault he got caught up in this, after all.”

“It’s not your fault,” I chide gently. “He didn’t have to stand by Ev. He had a choice we never did.”

Jamie laughs, a short brittle sound. “No one’s ever had a choice around you and Ev. The two of you are like gravity. It’s impossible to get free once you’re caught.”

He walks off across the quad, and shakes hands with Tom. Iwatch them go in, but I can’t follow. I can’t lay her to rest, can’t speak final words about her I don’t know to be true, and there’s something bewitching in the way the wind has risen up in the nearby trees. It sighs in their leafy branches and I can’t resist that call. So I take off my pumps and walk barefoot through the meadow, to the back gate with its rusted hinges, where I slip out into the darkening forest.

63

THE NIGHTTIME WOOD STRIPS ME BARE, PEELS AWAYthe Philippas I’ve been and leaves me only myself, a lost girl wandering in the dark. I’m not frightened or grief-stricken, just quiet and empty.

I follow a familiar track through the forest that Evelyn once haunted. There were many nights that I drifted along behind her, an invisible guardian watching as she made her way through the trees. I’m still following in her footsteps, walking where she walked, trying to get far enough down the road to see where she ended up.

When the white birch ring gleams ahead of me in the dark, I slow my pace, hesitant to enter. They told me her trail ended at the river, but she spent so much time here that surely a little of her has been left behind.

A musky, wild smell hangs on the air, redolent of forest earth and decaying wood and hidden wildflowers. There’s a moon near to full sailing between gaps in the clouds, and when I finally stepout into the ring, it illuminates the clearing with brilliant silver light. It shines on the pale trees, their fine leaves, the dew-wet grass.

All this loveliness holds nothing of my sister. I find as little of her here as I did in the Gallery’s paintings, or in her carefully copied lines of poetry. The clearing is muggy with tension, and the trees tremble as they wait.

Reluctantly, I cross the greensward to where a narrow track weaves darkly through the undergrowth. The birches dusk and shiver, and I reach out to run one hand against smooth white bark. Above me, the tree’s branches shudder. Barefoot and soundless, I start down the river path.

Phantom shapes flit through the woods. They might be shadows, or memories, or milk-white hinds grazing in the moonlight. Leaves gust along the winding trail, tugging at my skirt, blustering past my ankles like skittish cats. The charge in the air builds and builds until rain begins to fall in cold and scattered drops. I pull my sweater tight and carry on.

Briars snag my nylons, branches catch at my hair. Out-of-place sounds drift through the wood, little rills of music like bells or chimes. A leaf brushes against my face, feather-light and gentle as a kiss.

Once asleep, the wood is waking.

I walk along the river path, and I’m not sure I could stop if I tried. Fear is a cold, round pebble in my throat, making it hard to swallow, hard to breathe, but still I press forward, through the whispers, the rain, the woodland ghosts. I should be to the river bynow, to the place where the Went runs deep and dangerous among the trees.

The leaves surround me like a cloud, a cloak, an honor guard, and bear me on. Pale light glints ahead of us.

A last few stumbling steps and here I am.