It was my fifth summer at my father’s house, six years after my parents divorced, three years after my mother remarried, the summer of ’79, the summer I was twelve, the summer the world almost stopped spinning round. Henry’s mother picked me up at the airport. “Hello! Hello!” she called from the far end of the terminal, waving her arms through air, as if simultaneously fanning herself and guiding me in for landing. “Oh, you look tall,” she said, trying to wrestle away my carry-on bag. “Your father was busy; he asked me to come. So, that’s why I’m here.” She stopped for a minute, combed the hair out of my face with her fingernails. “We’re so glad you’ve arrived; we’re going to have a fine summer.” For that moment, while her pink frosted nails were tickling my skull, I believed her. Luggage spun on a wide stainless-steel rack; suitcases slid up, down, sideways, crashing into each other with the painless thud of bumper cars. We stood watching until everything had come and gone, until there was nothing left except a couple of old bags that probably belonged to someone who’d died in a plane crash, who’d left their luggage forever going round and round.
