Free The River House by Margaret Leroy

feel a quick
     ache of rejection when he takes away his hand. I hate these people. I would like to stay here forever on this pavement, his
     gaze on me, feeling his warmth on my skin.
    He shrugs a little.
    “We’ll speak,” he says, and turns and walks away.

C HAPTER 11
    T HURSDAY IS MY AFTERNOON OFF . I decide I shall clean out Molly’s room so Greg can sleep there.
    Greg is working at home today, in his study under the eaves. Before I start on the bedroom I take him a mug of coffee. He’s
     intent on his work; he doesn’t hear me come in. In the angled light from his desk lamp, the bones and lines of his face are
     etched in shadow; he looks older, more severe. The room feels cloistered, apart; up here you’re scarcely conscious of the
     bustle of the street. You can see across the trees in people’s gardens and down to the river, on this dull, wet day a sullen,
     dark surge.
    He’s checking through the editing of his latest book, an anthology of medieval Irish prose and poetry aimed at a general readership.
     I glance at the page over his shoulder. There’s a little poem called “The Coming of Winter”: It tells how the bracken is red
     and the wind high and cold, the wild goose crying, cold seizing the wings of the birds.
    “I like that,” I say. “It makes me feel cold just to read it.”
    He smiles a little. This pleases him.
    “We’re calling the book ‘Our Celtic Heritage,’” he says. “Fenella reckons that anything Celtic sells.”
    “It’s a good title,” I tell him.
    “D’you think so? I’m really not sure,” he says. “I thought I’d have a word with Mother about it.”
    Greg’s mother is a highly energetic woman, who likes to wear elegant layers of gray linen, and volunteers with the Citizens
     Advice Bureau, work to which she seems admirably well suited. I don’t doubt she’d have an opinion.
    I put the coffee mug down on the desk beside him.
    “Not there,” he says.
    I put it on the floor.
    Molly’s room has purple walls and fairy lights and a feather boa draped across the mantelpiece. She used to say smugly, No
     one would think it’s a lad’s room, would they, Mum? But today her room smells troublingly of vinegar, and everything is covered
     with a velvet bloom of dust. I fling the curtains wide. This hasn’t been done for months; she lived a subterranean life, never
     let the day in. There are cobwebs where I’ve pushed back the curtains; I swipe at them with a duster and they break up, but
     the rags of web have an unnerving stickiness, lacy gray fragments clinging to my fingers. I feel a vague surge of guilt. There
     are certain feminine skills I’ve never really mastered—ironing, making your home gleam, straightening your hair. When the
     girls were small and I picked them up from school, there were women I used to notice at the gate, who clearly understood these
     things, who knew what it means to be female: who were different from me, sleek and ironed and certain. I bet those women never
     find such cobwebs in their homes.
    Molly is a hoarder. Her desk is littered with things she has no use for but can’t quite throw away—earrings speckled with
     tarnish, dog-eared essays, Karma bracelets. I come upon a handmade birthday card from Else, her German pen friend. It’s decorated
     with spangly stickers, and inside Else has written, in carefully looped handwriting, “To your eighteenth birthday. I wish
     you health, good luck, and a lot of effect in your life!”
    I penetrate under the bed, where I find a muddle of magazines and an apple core and an open bag of crisps—the source of the
     vinegar smell. I scoop up all the glittery chaos from her desk into boxes, and dust and polish everywhere. The room comes
     into focus, as though its lines and edges are clearer, sharper, than before.
    And as I do these things there’s part of me that’s somewhere else entirely—as though I’m living another life in parallel to
     this one. A life in which I’m with Will