The Sleeping and the Dead

Later Hannah saw her first meeting with Michael as a turning point. After that she was seen differently within the school. She could face them all without embarrassment. It was possible that her memory played tricks – that there were unpleasant comments about her father, days when she wanted to stay at home. It was possible that her re-creation of her friendship with Michael was as great a fiction as the story he told about himself. But his arrival did make a difference. Some incidents remained clear and vivid. These, she was convinced, were true.

There was the day he first invited her to the Brices, for example. Hannah remembered that as soon as she started talking to the detectives. Michael was placed in the same English group as her, and on the day of his arrival he chose the seat next to her, at one of the old-fashioned desks with the lift-up lids that you never see now. Despite her disdain, her sense that he was too cocky by half, there was a rush of excitement when she turned and saw him there. Through habit they kept the same seats all term. They were reading Middle-march. The rest of the group hated it. They found it tedious and Hannah suspected that most of them didn’t make it to the end. She loved it and so did Michael. There’d been this guy in the old place who’d been passionate about it, he said. Who’d done it as part of his Ph.D. and passed on his enthusiasm. Hannah presumed then that the ‘guy’ was a teacher, the ‘old place’ a school. Later she was to presume nothing. Michael said he had some notes at home. Perhaps she’d like to borrow them to help with an essay they’d been set? If she wasn’t in a hurry she could go back with him, have a cup of tea. The old folks would be thrilled to bits.

Recreating the scene in her head, Hannah thought it had been the beginning of December. She could remember the cold. He must have been in the town for three months but still she had no idea that his family was different from anyone else’s. They hadn’t talked about it. She hadn’t told him about the drama with her father, though it was possible that the others had been whispering behind her back. At that age families weren’t as important as friends.

‘Old folks?’ she said. It seemed an odd way to talk about parents.

‘Sylvie and Steve. You’ll see.’

‘You call your mum and dad by their first names?’

‘No. They’re not my parents. My mother’s dead. My father…’ He seemed thrown for a moment. ‘Well, I don’t get to see much of him.’

They walked slowly up the school drive to the house. It was almost dark by the time they arrived at the house, one of a small row, flat faced. As the light went the temperature plummeted. They stood for a moment on the pavement, looking in. There was a street lamp and they could see their breath as a white mist. The lights were on inside but the curtains had not been drawn. There was a fire in the grate and an elderly man sat on a leather armchair, with a cat on his knee, reading.

‘That’s Steve,’ Michael said with enormous affection. He took out a Yale key and let himself in.

Inside there was a smell of fruit and spice. A small kitchen led straight from the hall and she’d seen Sylvie, red faced, turning a cake on to a wire tray. She looked slightly flustered. Her hair had come loose from her comb. Michael put his arm around her.

‘This is Hannah,’ he said. ‘She’s a George Eliot fan too. I’ve brought her home for tea. You don’t mind?’

‘Of course we don’t mind.’ She smiled at Hannah. ‘We haven’t met any of his friends before. I think he’s ashamed of us.’

‘How could I be?’ he said.

Hannah didn’t know what to make of the relationship between Michael and the Brices. Usually she was jealous of other people’s home lives. Her own was so bleak. Her mother struggled on to keep the house as she wanted it. They hadn’t been forced to sell, though at one time that had been a possibility. There was even less money than there had been before and Audrey hated the forced economies. She pretended not to mind the gossip and in fact seldom went out to hear it. Television had become her consolation. Hannah was grateful because it provided a safe topic of conversation. Without it they would have had little to say to each other. Later she thought that her mother had been depressed and had been brave to keep things as normal as she did. Then she longed to be a part of a different sort of family. That’s why she spent so much time with Sally. Her dream family would have been quite like Sally’s, but the parents would have been younger, interested perhaps in different things. There would be a brother as well as a sister and they would have shared meals together discussing ideas about books and plays. There would have been noise and laughter. At the time she didn’t consider Michael’s situation as ideal. It was too different from her dream. Everything was so quiet. There was discussion but it was calm and measured.