She touched him, more than once, brief nudges and shoves which were never supposed to mean any more than oh stop it now, or go on then, or, occasionally, are you okay? No more than friendly, playful gestures. But he felt the soft pressure of those touches for hours afterwards, like pale bruises, and he started to want to feel them again.
It was nobody's fault. It was just something that happened.
She asked him how Eleanor was, still, and these conversations seemed to restore the innocence to the time they spent together. They made it okay; they were having the conversations good friends would have. He could say it was good for a long time after Kate was born but now she's started at school I think Eleanor doesn't know what to do with herself, I think she's just exhausted, and Anna could say oh David I'm sure she'll be better soon, as any friend would do. It was only talking, what they were doing. He could even say well I'm sleeping on the sofa now you know, just for the moment, she says she can't sleep when I'm there, she seems to flinch whenever I go near her, she's so withdrawn, and Anna could say oh it must be hard for you David, and this could be okay as well.
It was nothing. There was nothing going on. He told himself this, many times. He asked himself what she would see in him anyway, and there was nothing he could think of, and this proved to him that there was nothing going on at all.
But she told him once, outright. She said, I like you David, you know that, don't you? She said you're so, I don't know, dependable, reliable, no, that sounds wrong, solid, I mean like strong in your own way, oh listen to me, sorry, I don't even know what I'm trying to say. Saying all this while he stood looking at her, motionless, astonished, his breath caught in a fist-like knot in his throat. And she tried again: I like it when you're around, that's all, okay? Laying her hands on his shoulders when she said this, looking straight into his eyes, and only moving away when they both heard footsteps out in the corridor.
He was putting dinner on the table one Friday night when Eleanor said someone phoned for you today, I forgot to tell you. She gazed down at her plate as she spoke, her hands flat on the table in front of her. She was still wearing her dressing gown, and her hair was hanging down around the sides of her face. Kate
looked up at him, holding her knife and fork in her small fists, waiting to be told she could start. He sat down, the oven gloves still flung over his shoulder, and nodded at her.
Oh? he said, to Eleanor, only half interested, watching Kate scoop her peas into a crater of mashed potato.
Her name was Anna. She wanted to speak to you but I told her you weren't in, Eleanor said. Her voice wasn't quiet, but it sounded distant somehow, as if she was calling from another room and not sitting next to him at all.
Oh, right, he said. Something about work probably. I'll speak to her on Monday, I'm sure it can wait. He looked over at Kate, who was sticking two halves of fish finger together with a mashed potato cement, her mouth full, watching her mother curiously.
Did you have a good day at school? he asked. She thought about it for a moment.
Yes! she said. But Robin got in trouble, for breaking my pencil, because he did it when I was on the sand table, she said.
Did Mrs Ellson give you a new one? he asked. She nodded.
He glanced across at Eleanor again. She was eating very slowly, pushing small forkfuls of food around her plate as if checking to see that they were safe. But she was eating. He wanted to push her hair away from her face and be able to look her in the eye. He wanted to be able to ask how her day had been.
Kate put down her knife and fork and asked if she could go and play. He told her she could. Eleanor looked up.
Who's Anna? she said. He tried to explain.
Anna from work, he said, you know. The Assistant Curator, she does transport, young woman, dark hair. She started in '73 but she'd been doing placements before that, remember? You met her at the Christmas party the year before last, Anna Richards, you know. Speaking lightly, cutting his fish fingers into small squares as he spoke, heaping his peas up on to his fork, Speaking as though it wasn't at all important and he couldn't quite remember.
No, she said. I don't know.
Dark curly hair, he said, down to here, quite slim. She looked at him very briefly, her head held low.
No, Eleanor said, I don't know her. She got up from the table and turned the television on, sitting at the end of the sofa and resting a cushion on her lap, pulling her dressing gown across her knees. Kate stood up from the floor with a doll still in her hand and went to sit next to her, shuffling across to rest her head against her mother's arm. Eleanor edged away for a second before lifting her arm and wrapping it around her daughter's back.
Half a year later, with Christmas and New Year and winter behind them, with Kate at his mother's house and Eleanor still hiding in bed, he phoned Anna. He thought they should discuss the themes for the next foyer display, he said. As if it couldn't have waited until the next day. As if it was perfectly usual to speak about work like that on a Sunday afternoon. As if he hadn't known that Chris was going to be working away all weekend.
They talked about the foyer for a minute or two, no more, and fell silent. And he lowered his voice as he said, so, shall I come round?
She was quiet at first, and he wasn't sure if she'd heard him. He could hear a lawnmower somewhere nearby, and music. It sounded as if she had the back door open, and he imagined her sitting there with a warm breeze blowing through the house. Sorry? she said.
He looked up at the ceiling, squeezing the back of his neck.
I was just wondering, he said. If you're not doing anything. If you've not got anything to do, maybe I should come round. I'm not doing anything, he added. She hesitated for only a moment.
Okay, she said. Yes. Okay. He held the phone away from his face, looking at it, wondering what he was doing.
Okay, he said.
43 Small fragment of metal, unidentified, 1983
For a long time, he thought about it every day. That strange expectant atmosphere. The feeling of needing to leave but being unable to. The shock of that first touch, the dizzying force of it. Later, he found himself able to not think about it for days at a time, weeks even, caught out only by some passing reminder - birdsong, summer evening sunlight, rubble overgrown with birch trees and wildflowers. He would see these things, hear them, and he would remember.
But eventually even these things failed to bring it to mind, and he was able to go for months without remembering what had happened that day. And by the time he and Eleanor were driving to Liverpool to catch the Belfast ferry, almost twenty years later, it took something as direct as her stroking the bare warm skin of his belly and catching her finger on the old faded scar to bring it suddenly back.