“No. Because if it was, I’d have had to trick you into signing to keep it a surprise and I wasn’t comfortable with that.”
I wasn’t sure how this was any worse than buying the house without telling me. Dan seemed to have entirely rewritten the moral code to justify doing what he wanted. He reached across the table and took my hand, turned it over and ran his finger over my palm. I flinched a little, in case my nerve pain flared up, but it didn’t. “The paperwork for putting your name on the house deed is ready for you to sign,” he said. “We’ll see the solicitor and make it official next week.”
He went to the washroom while I paid the bill. I wondered if he meant the house would then be in our joint names or just mine. I felt wrung out by the shock of it all, bone tired, incapable of processing it properly until I’d had some more rest.
As we walked home, Dan took my hand again and said, “Will you come back to the house in the morning with me? Give it a fair go? Try to imagine us there? That’s all I ask.”
The thought made my anxiety resurface, but Eliza said, “I don’t think you have a choice,” so I said, “Yes.”
She had another question, too: “Ask him how he knew about the house. There was no ‘For Sale’ sign outside, so it probably wasn’t on the open market.”
I asked the question.
“Sasha told me about it,” he said.
Sasha Morell. She and Dan had met at a creative writing course he’d taken at the university. He had talked about her a lot at the time. I remembered he liked her because he felt she understood his “vision.” I’d Googled her. She had a website for her writing. The short story posted there was unpublishable. The photograph was of an exceptionally attractive woman. I also remembered that she and her husband lived on the other side of the bridge.
“Sasha happened to mention the house to me, in the context of how pleased she and James were that the place was on the market because it meant it would be rescued from declining completely, and I just knew it would be perfect for us.”
I hadn’t even known they were still in touch.
“She’ll be one of our neighbors, then?” I asked.
“Absolutely. Which is amazing. Apparently, they’re a tight group because the lane is privately owned and managed by the owners of the houses, so it’ll be nice to have an instant community. We won’t be isolated out there.”
I disagreed. The house might only be a mile or two from the Suspension Bridge, but it was rural; we would no longer have shops or urban life on our doorstep. Dan said some more stuff, but I didn’t listen properly, because all I could do was try to drink in the city sights and sounds that I would soon lose, and all I could hear was her name in my head, repeating in time with the lights flashing in a barbershop window across the street: Sasha, Sasha, Sasha.
III.
You saw the notice advertising the summer solstice celebrations because your outraged neighbor held it up in front of your dad, using his fingertips, as if it was dirty, and said, “We have to put a stop to this.”
You thought it sounded amazing. Summer solstice. A bonfire. Fireworks. Staying up all night. It was an opportunity to do things kids didn’t normally get to do and then there was also the chance that you might see the spirits and become a part of real, actual magic.
You smell the bonfire before you reach the clearing that is on a site where an Iron Age fort once stood. It is deep in the woods, close to the edge of the gorge. The scent of the smoke is both acrid and enticing.
Teddy’s nose wrinkles. “I don’t like it,” he says. He’s flagging now. Just when you want to go faster, to get there as quickly as possible, he’s dragging his feet.
“You will, Ted. Just wait until you see it.”
You’re so close now that you can hear crackling and spitting, feel the heat.
At your first sight of the fire flickering against the tree trunks, you gasp and Teddy’s mouth falls open. A few steps farther and you are both enchanted. It’s a lure you can’t look away from. It paints your faces golden. It’s huge.
You instantly imagine the spirits gathering around it, invisibly, acrobats and dancers, tumbling through the treetops, wild with freedom, drunk on the possibilities of this night. Your mind is in overdrive.
But you approach carefully. There will be adults here. “Bloody pagans,” your neighbor called them, and his tone suggested that there was something wrong with them, so you looked up the word and didn’t think they sounded so bad. Even so, you don’t want them to see you. They are adults, after all, and all the adults you’ve ever known insist on bedtimes and rules.
It’s easy to stay hidden. You and Teddy crouch on the far side of the huge bonfire from the main camp. You are hidden by the height of the pyre, and the flames. In the heart of the fire you recognize the glowing skeletons of pieces of furniture. Domesticity is burning.
You stare and Teddy does, too. The flames reach higher and higher, licking the darkness. Smoke rises in a twisting, fickle column. It seems to have a life of its own. You’re exhilarated by it and by the sense that you have stepped outside of normal life and into a wild night.
There are quite a few people on the other side of the bonfire, but no other children; you are the only ones here. The people seem to exist in a parallel world of their own. The firelight reveals their features to you in fragments. One man has a bare chest, and sways with his arms upraised, facing the fire. A woman wears a crown of foliage and has ivy woven through a plait as thick as your arm. She is singing. Others huddle on the ground in circles.
The people you watch most closely are those who dance with a feral energy that’s startling and infectious. You seize Teddy’s arms and move them in a mimicry of the adults. He beams, his blankie falls to the ground, and together you stomp and turn until you’re both out of breath and then you stand side by side again with heaving chests and through the flames you think you see a face, a painted face, with markings on the cheeks and wild hair, and the face is turned toward you both, watching back, but swiftly it’s gone and you say to Teddy, with wonder, “Did you see the fairy king?” because you believe it was him.
7.
“Lucy,” Dan whispered. We were in bed but in spite of my exhaustion, I couldn’t sleep, my thoughts were racing. Light from the streetlamp outside our bedroom window filtered through the flimsy curtains.
“Yes.”
“When you come back with me to the house, there’s something special I didn’t get to show you. I think it’ll make all the difference.”
“Okay,” I whispered.
The drive there was just as bad for me as it had been the first time. I sat beside Dan with gritted teeth and clammy palms. When he opened the door, the air inside the house felt as suffocating as before.
“Imagine this house is somewhere else,” he said. “Forget the woods. Forget Charlotte Close. Just focus on what you can see.”
I tried. It worked, a little. I noticed more of the original features and I saw beauty in the proportions and charm in the details. I managed a small smile, for show.
“Are you ready to see the really good bit?” he asked.