I strapped myself into the driver’s seat. I thought of the mechanics of the engine and the condition of the roads. I didn’t think of how I would face my parents, what Gretchen would do, whether police would be involved. I was grateful that the battery of Lesley’s mobile phone had expired en route from Pristina, preventing me from responsibly phoning home. There would be this privacy, this fantasy, for at least a while longer.

She pulled a map from a pocket behind the passenger seat, and showed me the route home. I objected to taking the M11 and insisted on village roads; they’re skinnier and windier, but much less likely to have other cars on at that time of night. I didn’t think I could face competition or confrontation. Bury Lane, Church Road, Crawley End… The names of the streets washed over me. Across the A505, then through Newton, Harston, and Haslingfield. Polly and Liv popped into my thoughts, and the way those street and town names would sound so English to them. Then I put the girls out of my mind. I wanted to stay in Lesley’s world as long as I could. Church Street, Brook Road, streets called after their towns, and then yet another Church Street. They all sounded familiar. Village streets tend to share the same names.

Lesley patiently explained the gears; I could manage the clutch if I squeezed my teeth together while my foot pressed down. I made the windscreen wipers whoosh and flashed the headlamps. I felt giddy like I had when visiting the war museum at Duxford with school, and had been allowed into the cockpit of a World War II T-6 Harvard Warbird.

“It’s going to feel different when it moves,” I said aloud, when I had only meant to think it. Somehow this too was a kind of double entendre. Everything was.

“Take me to Cambridge,” she said, like it was an outing. She’d always made me feel like a grown man.

I used the bright headlamps, because no other cars were out.

I dismissed the thatched cottages and fields as we passed them to concentrate on the road itself, but, really, I’ve always ignored them. My blindness to the picturesque had driven Liv crazy.

I braked to cross the A505, and, when I tried to start again, the engine made horrible screechings. I pushed down the clutch, winced, and changed gears, though apparently to a worse gear, which I quickly corrected. “You should take over,” I said.

“If you really want to switch with me you can pull in at the pub in Fowlmere. It’s not far.” She sounded tired, and her willingness to accept my surrender made me change my mind.

Driving was all right. I said it to myself over and over: It was all right. It all hummed along, between occasional dire gear changes. I even enjoyed it. We were almost to Newton, which sounded familiar, but most of them do. The road here was unusually long and straight. I looked over at Lesley, proud to be managing the car, to have accomplished something in this mess I’d made. She was fast asleep.

This is where things went wrong.

All along the way I’d been reassured by the signs pointing the direction toward nearby towns. I meant to be heading toward Harston. A sign in Newton assured me I was. Then a sign in Harston assured me I was heading for Haslingfield. This was all good. It was where I was supposed to be.

On the Haslingfield High Street, a sign for Harston pointed me up New Road. I couldn’t remember if I’d been through Harston yet. All the place names had become a jumble. Was New Road somewhere I’d meant to go? It was too common a name for its familiarity to warrant confidence.

I took it anyway, and then a singular name stood out to me in the light of New Road ’s yellow streetlamps: Cantelupe Road. Like cantaloupes. Surely this street must be part of the route we’d sketched out. Why else would I remember it?

I turned. It was unlit, single track, and unpromising as a route to the distant ambient glow that was Cambridge. There wasn’t room to turn around. I had no idea how to reverse without stalling the car.

Still moving forward, I reached for the map in Lesley’s lap.

I never saw it, not even in the headlamps. I must have been looking at the map at just that moment. There was just a horrible thud and then a bump-bump, a lump in the road under the left side of the car. Both left wheels went over it, and the car tilted to the right. It almost went over; I felt like it was going to; I pulled the wheel far to the left to compensate. We ended up sideways to the road, across the middle of it. The headlamps faced directly onto a house, Tudor-looking, very English, with a sign instead of a number: Rose Cottage. Our headlamps shone rudely into the front windows, but I dared not turn them off. We had to see. I wanted to move the car, but I’d become disoriented. I didn’t want to run over whatever it was again.

“A dog?” Lesley asked. She was awake, already exiting the car, taking things in hand. She grabbed a torch from the glovebox and swept its beam over the road. I scrambled out myself, following the torch beam with my eyes.

It was a person. The mid-body had been crushed. The limbs were stretched apart at surprising angles like they were running away from each other. Lesley swept the beam over to the face.

I jumped backwards. I pointed. Lesley turned the beam onto me. I gibbered at her.

The face was Gretchen’s. She’d been pushed almost in two by the weight of my driving over her abdomen.

I did something terrible: Instead of wishing for it to not be real, I wished that I wasn’t crazy. I wanted Lesley to see her too. I didn’t want to be losing my mind.

Part 3. Morris

CHAPTER 6

I had two opportunities to shove Richard into the river, and didn’t act on even one.

Do you see the kind of restraint I put on around our family?

The first chance to push him was as everyone boarded their punts. It was darkish already, and the boats were lit by candles in glass lanterns. Thank goodness the driving rains of the past week had stopped.

This time of year, Scudamore’s doesn’t do daily business, so there isn’t any crowding. We were our own crowd, though, around the weir of the Mill Pond. The women had high heels on, and narrow or short dresses, so boarding was a comedy. I got Gwen and Dora in, and then leapt up to Alice ’s other side. Gwen and Dora are my responsibility, and Alice is Richard’s, but this was their day, so I helped. They’d just been married at a church in the city centre. Richard was in his only suit. How did my brother get to forty-two with only one suit? And a casual scarf that must have come from Alice, or from our mother. And a coat because it was bloody cold.

As Alice stepped in, dozens of cameras clicked like popcorn.

Richard leaned over, to hand champagne bottles into the punts, to pass out hot water bottles for guests’ laps, to tuck a blue plaid blanket up over Alice ’s skirt. I could have turned around to hand him something and knocked him off the end of the dock into the water. He would have been fine. There would have been shrieks, then everyone would have laughed. He would have changed into something unsuitable, which would have ended up being funny. Ruining the groom’s clothes is nothing like ruining the bride’s.

Of course I didn’t do it. I didn’t do it in the middle of the river either, when we were trading places. That was my second missed opportunity. We had chauffeurs, but everyone goaded Richard to punt, and me too. I stood at the back, pushing us through the water, and then it was his turn. For half a minute we both stood at the end together, and the front of the boat sat up and begged like a dog. I had to get the pole into his hands and get myself back crouched into the body of the punt again. And it all went without a wobble because I don’t take out petty frustrations by bullying my brother.