Tammy had changed her hair from long and dark to short and strawberry blond. A mistake, I thought.
Lance and Tammy were talking excitedly to each other in peculiar accents, shrugging their shoulders and jutting out their chins.
“They’re trying to talk like Baltimore drug dealers,” explained Kate when she saw I’d woken up. “They’ve discovered they’re both obsessed with The Wire. Some weekends Lance talks like that for an entire day. Can you imagine? I mean, fine, if he actually did sound like a drug dealer, that might be quite sexy.”
“Tammy?” I said.
“Saskia, honey!” She stood up and leaned over to kiss me on the cheek. She must have still been using the same fragrance as she had three years ago, because I was immediately taken back to a different time and place.
“It’s so good to see you!” she said. “But you’re meant to be sitting next to me in a bar, not lying in a hospital bed. Lance and Kate said you were sleepwalking and fell down some stairs? That’s terrible! How long have you been sleepwalking for?”
“Since I last saw you,” I said mysteriously—the sort of profound comment that Ellen would appreciate—but Tammy took it at face value.
“Really? Is there a cure? You know, I was thinking on the way here about the last time I saw you. You’d just had your heart broken by some guy. That surveyor? What was his name? Pete? Patrick? It’s been so long you probably don’t even remember the guy.”
Oh, how I laughed.
“El-len!”
It was Patrick, shouting from the second floor.
“Goodness, is he all right?” said Ellen’s mother, startled.
“I expect he needs your help working things out with Jack,” said Maureen to Ellen. “A woman’s touch, you know.” She gave Anne a “You know what I mean” smile, which was totally lost on Anne.
Ellen dried her hands briskly on a tea towel, bustling a little for Anne’s benefit, because she knew it would bug her to see her behaving so housewifely, and hurried upstairs to Jack’s room. Patrick and Jack were sitting on the floor, their backs up against Jack’s single bed with its Ben 10 bedspread, their hands dangling between their propped-up knees, not looking at each other.
“Can you explain to this stubborn kid why Saskia can’t break into our house in the middle of the night,” said Patrick to Ellen when he saw her standing at the doorway. He mouthed silently, Help!
“I’m not stupid, Dad,” said Jack hotly. “I know she shouldn’t have done that.”
“Right, good then, so what’s the problem?” said Patrick. “Why are you so mad with me?”
Ellen went and sat on the floor next to them. She looked at Jack’s skinny, vulnerable little legs in tracksuit pants stuck out in front of him.
She said, “How did you feel when your dad and Saskia broke up, Jack?”
Jack and Patrick both went very still, as if she’d brought up something deeply shameful. For heaven’s sake, thought Ellen. She felt filled with feistiness. Everything might as well be out in the open now! There would be no more pu**yfooting around the subject of Saskia.
“Well, that’s not—” began Patrick.
“I’d like to know,” said Ellen. You asked for my help, buddy.
“I don’t really remember,” said Jack. “I was really little, like, five.” He gazed ahead, looking back over the vast expanse of time that separated five from eight.
“That’s right, you were very little.” Patrick gave Ellen a triumphant look. “So, the point is—”
“Oh yeah, I remember one thing,” interrupted Jack. “I thought it had to do with her lucky marble.”
Patrick’s face changed. “What?”
Jack banged his knuckles against the cast on his arm.
“Her lucky marble?” asked Ellen.
Patrick answered her, his eyes on Jack as he spoke. “She had this big, colorful marble that belonged to her father, and she held it in the palm of her hand whenever she was nervous about something. She gave it to Jack when he started school.” He paused and cleared his throat. “She said to carry it in his pocket, and the marble would give him magic powers.”
“It wasn’t a weapon,” clarified Jack. He looked up at Ellen. “It didn’t transform into a laser gun or anything like that. It didn’t really do anything at all, actually.”
“I took Saskia’s lucky marble with me when I saw my first ever Scott Surveys client,” said Patrick. “I held it while I waited in reception.”
He’d never before referred to a nice memory involving Saskia. It was Ellen’s first glimpse of the other side of their story.
“I lost the marble at school,” said Jack. “I looked and looked, and a teacher tried to help me, but we couldn’t find it. I didn’t want to tell Saskia because I knew she’d be sad, and then the next day she was gone. So I thought, Uh-oh, she found out I lost it.”
Patrick’s eyes met Ellen’s over the top of Jack’s head.
“You thought it was your fault,” said Ellen to Jack.
“I thought she must have been so mad at me,” said Jack. “And I thought Dad was mad at me for making her go, and that’s why we couldn’t talk about her.”
“Oh, mate.” Patrick pressed two fingers to his forehead. “You didn’t.”
“Yeah, I did,” said Jack cheerfully.
“But it was absolutely nothing to do with you!” Patrick’s eyes were glistening. He went to put his arm around Jack’s shoulders. “Mate, Saskia loved you! She would have done anything for you! She—”
Jack shrugged his father’s arm away. “Take a chill pill, Dad. I know it wasn’t my fault. You and Saskia broke up, like Ethan’s parents did. I was telling you what I thought when I was a dumb little kid.” He yawned. “Anyway, I might go look at my Guinness World Records book again.”
“We haven’t finished talking!” protested Patrick.
Jack rolled his eyes. “Whatever.”
“I just want to make sure you understand—”
“You don’t have to be so mean about her.” Jack went to fold his arms and then realized he couldn’t because of his cast. “That’s all I want to say. You act like she’s an actual murderer of actual people! She didn’t break my arm on purpose. It was an accident.”