Maloney's Law by Anne Brooke Page B

run, through weeds and thistles that snatch and tear at me, though they don’t slow her down, and the distance between us remains the same. All I can do is keep her in sight; I can’t gain on her, not unless she lets me. She runs like someone whose body is water, flowing over and through any obstacle it faces. I am nothing but flesh; I cannot catch her.
    Still I keep trying, trying in a way I don’t think I’ve done before, in a dream I know will lead nowhere. This time it might be different, please God, this time. The girl and I keep running, and behind us the crashing noise of the adults grows quieter, drifting away at last into memory. When I try to wake, it’s impossible. I must keep dreaming, keep running.
    After a time I can’t count, there’s the sound of water, torrential, unforgiving, to our left. The sky darkens again, my heart pounds harder, and the girl swerves towards the river.
    ‘No.’ My silent voice echoes only in my head, and she doesn’t hear me. The sound of water beats faster, louder, as if it could break from its thin banks and overwhelm both of us. ‘Please.’
    Above me the trees vanish, and I’m left standing on wet grass facing a silver river. Somehow the girl has already crossed the racing flood, I don’t know how. She stands, still as a cat, on the other side, sunlight glistening in her hair, and her dress is as bright as roses. For a long moment she remains there, arms stretched high above her head as if in blessing or a curse. Before I can shout a warning, or try to move to help, her slim, white body has plunged into the water, a faint glimmer of yellow, red, green, a swirl of dark hair, and then she’s gone.
    ‘Teresa!’
    When I wake, I’m crying.

    The place is the same as it always is. A wide courtyard leading to a large Victorian house glowing with the colours of earth. I park the car on the gravel, making sure my exit is clear, and when I get out, the smell of grass and clean air almost overwhelms me. For the price of my conscience, I would slip back into my dirty grey Vauxhall and take the road north and home, but if I did that there would be no way back. Something in me still wants that path to be open.
    Because here is somewhere I have never invited Jade. I have never found anyone who could take that journey, not even Dominic. My fault. It’s something I never told him at the beginning, though I wanted to, and then the moment for it passed.
    Before I can knock on the freshly-painted blue front door, it is opened and a tall woman, early sixties, white hair, hazel eyes, gazes at me.
    ‘Hello,’ she says. ‘It’s good to see you.’
    Always the same greeting, the two times a year I make this visit, once now on August bank holiday and once just before Christmas. Not Christmas itself, as that would entail too much compromise. Christmas, for me, is a time to be alone.
    I smile and wonder if my smile reaches my eyes, as hers almost does.
    We drink sherry in a room painted in white and silver. Outside, the lawn is striped as far as the eye can see, and the taste of the sherry is nutmeg on my tongue.
    ‘How is work going?’ she asks, putting down her glass and folding both hands onto her lap as if covering secrets.
    ‘Oh, you know. How is everything here?’
    ‘The same as always.’
    Always the same. Days of brightness and boredom, the long drift of the countryside, how Surrey is. Similar in some ways to the life Jade’s parents live, but very different, too. Different by means of the parties, the entertaining, the focus on position and appearance, the sense of responsibility and of things being more complex when you dig deeper. I am what I’ve always been to them: an enigma, an embarrassment.
    ‘And are you okay?’ I ask.
    ‘We tick along. How is London?’
    ‘Dark and dreary. Have you been up at all? For a show or anything?’
    ‘No, not recently. I think Jonathan may be planning something soon, perhaps for Christmas? Of course he has his work