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They were all so little when she moved them here from London six years ago. Jasmine was ten. Kai was eight. And Romaine, the baby, was just four months old.
Ever since she got here Alice has played the role of the enigmatic, slightly scary loner, though that is not at all what she is. In London she had friends coming out of her ears. More friends than she knew what to do with. She was a party girl, a come-over-later-with-a-bottle-of-vodka-we’ll-put-the-world-to-rights girl. She’d been the kind of mum to stand at the school gates after drop-off and say, come on then, who’s up for a coffee? And she’d be there at the heart of them all, laughing the loudest, talking the most. Until she pushed it too far and blew her life open.
“His passport is fake, Mrs. Monrose. There is no Carl John Robert Monrose.”
But now Kirsty was fifteen, Gray was seventeen, and Rabbit Cottage was virtually the last place on earth either of them wanted to be.
The resemblance between them was startling enough, he hoped, for it to be obvious that the gawky, scruffy girl in a damp waterproof jacket, patterned nylon sweater, and faded baggy jeans walking alongside him was not romantically connected to him in any way.
A barley-twist pole, a pastel-colored horse, a girl with brown hair; she goes up, she goes down, she’s smiling and waving and then she’s gone.
It is like onions. People reveal themselves to you a layer at a time. That is why you should wait. Wait until you get to the layers near the bottom. Usually where the worst stuff is. And then, if the worst stuff is not so bad, then you marry.”
But even in the fog of their fading faculties, they are holding hands. There are their hands, clutched together between them. They don’t know who the prime minister is, they don’t know what day of the week, what month, or even what year it is. They can’t quite remember their daughters’ names and they certainly can’t remember if they had lunch today or what the plan is for supper tonight. They know nothing of any significance whatsoever. But they do know they love each other.
