"I don't care. I want to dance."
The flat was too small. "Come on," Cassie said. "Take your shoes off," and she grabbed the remote control and turned the music up to eleven and climbed out the window, down the fire escape to the roof of the extension below.
I'm no dancer, but she taught me the basic moves again and again, her feet skipping nimbly away from my missteps, until suddenly they clicked into place and we were dancing, spinning and swaying to the sassy, expert syncopations, recklessly close to the edges of the flat roof. Cassie's hands in mine were gymnast-strong and flexible. "You can too dance!" she called breathlessly, eyes shining, over the music.
"What?" I shouted, and tripped over my feet. Laughter, unrolling like streamers over the dark gardens below.
A window slammed up below us and a quavery Anglo-Irish voice screeched, "If you don't turn that down at once, I shall call the police!"
"We
We lay side by side on the extension roof, hands behind our heads, elbows just touching. My head was still spinning a little, not unpleasantly, from the dancing and the wine. The breeze was warm across my face, and even through the city lights I could see constellations: the Big Dipper, Orion's Belt. The pine tree at the bottom of the garden rustled like the sea, ceaselessly. For a moment I felt as if the universe had turned upside down and we were falling softly into an enormous black bowl of stars and nocturne, and I knew, beyond any doubt, that everything was going to be all right.
I saved the wood for Saturday night, hugging the thought to myself like a child saving a huge Easter egg with some mysterious prize inside. Sam was down in Galway for the weekend, for a niece's christening-he had the kind of extended family that holds full-scale gatherings almost on a weekly basis, someone was always getting christened or married or buried-and Cassie was going out with some of her girl friends, and Heather was going speed dating in some hotel somewhere. Nobody would even notice I had gone.
I got to Knocknaree around seven and parked on the shoulder. I had brought a sleeping bag and a torch, a thermos of well-spiked coffee and a couple of sandwiches-packing them had made me feel faintly ridiculous, like one of those earnest hikers in technologically advanced fleeces, or a kid running away from home-but nothing to light a fire with. The people in the estate were still on edge and would have been on to the cops like a shot if they saw a mysterious light, which would have been embarrassing all round, and besides I am not the Boy Scout type; I would probably have burned down what was left of the wood.
It was a still, clear evening, long slants of light turning the stone of the tower rose-gold and giving even the trenches and heaps of earth a sad, ragged magic. There was a lamb bleating, far off in the fields, and the air smelled rich and tranquil: hay, cows, some heady flower I couldn't name. Sprays of birds were practicing their V-shapes over the crest of the hill. Outside the cottage, the sheepdog sat up and huffed a warning half-bark, stared at me for a moment, then decided I was no threat and settled down again. I followed the archaeologists' bumpy trails, just wide enough for a wheelbarrow, across the site-I was wearing old runners this time, and ratty jeans and a thick sweater-to the wood.
If you, like me, are essentially a city person, then the chances are that when you imagine a wood you picture a simple thing: matching green trees in even rows, a soft carpet of dead leaves or pine needles, orderly as a child's drawing. Possibly those earnestly efficient man-made woods are in fact like that; I wouldn't know. Knocknaree wood was the real thing, and it was more intricate and more secretive than I had remembered. It had its own order, its own fierce battles and alliances. I was an intruder here, now, and I had a deep prickling sense that my presence had instantly been marked and that the wood was watching me, with an equivocal collective gaze, not yet accepting or rejecting; reserving judgment.
Mark's clearing had fresh ash in the fire-spot and a few new rollie butts scattered on the bare earth around it; he had been here again, since Katy died. I hoped devoutly that he wouldn't pick tonight to reconnect with his heritage. I took the sandwiches and the thermos and the torch out of my pockets, spread out my sleeping bag on the compact patch of flattened grass where Mark had spread his. Then I walked through the wood, slowly, taking my time.
