Sophie by Guy Burt Page A

when it was discovered that I had written my name in ink pen on the inside of my desk lid, and another when Chloe Webster stabbed herself with a pair of scissors, but Mrs. Jeffries appeared unwilling to make too much of a fuss. The school playground was bubbling with parents after final assembly. The oldest children—those leaving—clumped into small groups, the boys shouting jokes at each other, boasting and trying to exceed one another’s eloquent swearing, while the girls huddled in tearful clusters, hugging people they’d never liked and would probably see around the village the next day. Elements of carnival combined with grand farewells until the school appeared as if in the throes of an extravagant wake. Teachers, brittle smiles wedged on their faces, shunted children aside as they made for their cars.
    Sophie and I slipped away discreetly in the confusion. We’d finished early, of course, and the sun was bright and thick in the air, so we walked slowly down the lane towards our house. The trees on the hill, surrounding the quarry, were a dark and cool-looking green, and the hedgerows had exploded into masses of weeds and grasses. The summer holidays stretched out in front of us like a journey, and the thought of them was sweet and happy.
    We saw less and less of my mother. In the summer she retired in any case, preserved until the onset of autumn by the musty air of the drawing room, like something in formalin. But this summer it was even more noticeable. As her belly grew, the more she receded into the house, out of sight. The tightness of her dresses must have been uncomfortable. She seemed to be trying to compress the baby, squash it back into herself, reabsorb it before it became too insuperable an obstacle.
    Sometimes, at night, Sophie and I would sit by the window in my bedroom and look out over the landscape, the hill, the trees against the sky. We told stories and waited for the stars and the moon to come out. The moon, Sophie told me once, was a place like the world, but without seas or rivers or trees or people, where all the ground was white and there was no air to breathe. In the stories, the moon was made of cheese. One man thought he had caught the moon in a pool, but it turned out to be only a reflection. Entranced, I would sit beside her and listen for what seemed like hours, until Sophie decided that it was bedtime. Once or twice, if she was in a good mood, we would have midnight feasts of biscuits and orange squash by torchlight.

    He says, “How are you feeling?”
    The question comes as a complete surprise. He sounds sincere, even concerned. “I’m—OK,” I reply. I keep my voice even.
    “Good. I’m just going to—” He takes a candle from the windowsill, lights it from the flame of the stub burning in the centre of the floor, drips a little wax, and sets it in place. The light in the room is augmented, and the shadows recede, until he blows the first candle out. “I don’t like to let them burn all the way down,” he says, almost to himself, and then laughs a little. “It seems unlucky, somehow.” I don’t know what he means. His tone of voice strikes me as strange, as though the action of replacing the candle has confused him, dragged him out of the past temporarily.
    “You’re comfortable?” he asks.
    “I’m OK,” I say again. The boards over the windows clatter briefly as the storm tugs at them, and the fresh flame streams, dips and trembles.
    He shakes his head, as if brushing away something clinging, and settles himself on the floor opposite me.
    “I wanted so much to be like you,” he says quietly. A draught from under the door catches me, and I shiver.

    In the second week of the holiday, my father came home to us again. The lunch table was laid ready to receive him, and he appeared as if summoned by this ritual at about half past eleven. He was as tall and handsome and clean-smelling as ever, and just as forgettable. He brought Sophie and me small gifts, which we