Chapter 2 — THE STONES

The patio behind our house is bluestone. Big slabs, a hundred and forty of them, laid by somebody in 1998 and never touched since.

Bluestone at forty-one degrees of air temperature is not forty-one degrees. Stone holds the night. I know this the way plumbers know pipes.

Sophia was on her side on the third slab from the doors.

She was in the pink fleece pyjamas she had worn to bed the night before and had not been changed out of, and she was wet from the collar down, and her hair was stuck flat to her cheek, and her feet were bare and grey-looking at the toes.

She was facing the doors. Not away. Facing them, with one hand up near the glass, at about the height a five-year-old's hand reaches when she is lying down and still trying.

Sophia: Daddy.

Her voice came out with no air behind it.

Sophia: Daddy. Aunt Sarah said I can't come inside.

I want to describe what I did next honestly and it does not reflect well on me.

I did not pick her up first.

I tried the door.

That is the truth. My daughter was lying on freezing stone in wet clothes and my first action was to grab the handle of the French door and pull, twice, hard, because some part of my head had decided the door was the problem and the door could be solved.

It did not move. It is a good door. I know, because I am the one who made it a good door.

Then I got down on the stones and got both hands under her and lifted her, and she was so cold through the wet fleece that my forearms went numb where she touched them, and she made a sound against my neck like something small being stepped on.

That was when the light came on above us.