The Day Between

Clara was washing a cup when the memory fell out of time.

It arrived without warning, complete as weather: she was seven years old, standing in a field beneath a violet sky. The grass rose to her knees and shone along its edges, though there was no sun. Its stillness had the concentration of listening.

Her mother stood several yards away in a white dress with one blue button at the throat, calling Clara’s name.

Her mother was younger than Clara had ever known her. Seventeen, perhaps. Barefoot. Thin as a match flame. A girl yet to meet Clara’s father or become anyone’s mother.

Still, Clara knew her.

Beneath the grass, something enormous moved.

It did not bend a blade. It did not lift or furrow the earth. The motion passed under the field like a shadow beneath skin, a vast displacement without disturbance. Clara felt it through the soles of her shoes: a slow muscular turning, as if the world were dreaming of rolling over.

The girl who would become her mother raised one hand.

Then the memory stopped.

The cup slipped from Clara’s fingers and shattered in the sink.

Clara called her mother, who was eighty-two and lived in a care home outside Norwich. Lately the recent past had begun to loosen around her: breakfast, the nurses’ names, whether Clara had visited the day before. The distant past remained lit in odd patches.

Clara described the field, the violet sky, the white dress with its single blue button.

For a long time, her mother said nothing.

When she spoke, her voice was small, bewildered, suddenly young.

“You were standing behind me.”

“No,” Clara said. “You were behind me.”

Her mother began to cry. “Did you know me?”

“I knew your name.”

“You hadn’t named me yet.”

“No.”

“How?”

Her mother breathed against the receiver. “Come tomorrow.”

The next morning, Clara drove to Norwich. Her mother sat beside a rain-streaked window with a blanket over her knees, smaller than she had sounded on the telephone.

She did not remember asking Clara to come.

But when Clara said violet, her fingers tightened in the wool.

“What were you like at seventeen?” Clara asked.

Her mother looked toward the window. “Evelyn,” she said. “Mostly.”

Clara almost smiled.

“I wanted to go to France. I had thirty-two pounds hidden in a biscuit tin. Your grandmother found it. And I hated that dress.”

“The white one?”

“All white except the button. Your grandmother ran out.”

“Had you seen the field before?”

“Once.”

“When?”

“Before you were born. For years I thought it was a dream.”

“Did you know me?”

Her mother considered this. “I knew I was waiting for someone.”

“But you knew my name.”

Her mother looked down at her hands. “That was the part that frightened me.”

“What happened next?”

Her mother closed her eyes. “That’s where it ends.”

By the time Clara left, she was asleep. Clara stood in the doorway until the next breath came.

On the drive home, Clara kept seeing a girl count thirty-two pounds into a biscuit tin.

By evening, Clara’s husband remembered the field.

He stood on the far side beside a stone wall, unable to tell whether he was a child or an old man. He remembered Clara and her mother as pale figures in the distance. Something moved beneath the grass. If it surfaced, he knew, the hour itself would break.

“What was my mother doing?” Clara asked.

He closed his eyes. “Waiting.”

Clara did not tell him Evelyn had used the same word.

On Friday, the local radio station took calls about the field. A woman from Ipswich described the blue button. A man who had never been to Norwich remembered the stone wall, though he insisted it was on the other side. The presenter asked whether anyone could say what happened next.

Clara sat in the parked car with the engine running. She had the station’s number on her phone. She wanted to ask whether anyone had spoken to the girl.

A caller began explaining what the white dress meant. Clara switched off the radio.

That evening she called the care home. Her mother had had a difficult afternoon and was sleeping. Clara asked them to tell Evelyn she would come on Saturday.

Then the memory began leaving traces.

Pollen appeared on pillows. Dark soil dried in the treads of shoes that had not been worn outdoors.

The following Tuesday, calendars acquired an extra space between Tuesday the twenty-first and Wednesday the twenty-second, undated and narrow as a breath.

Appointments dragged into it vanished. By afternoon, the blank had appeared in paper planners, school timetables, medication charts. Ink placed there bled backward into Tuesday or forward into Wednesday.

Some called it Violetday, Midweek, the Field.

Clara opened the calendar her mother had given her for Christmas. Between Tuesday the twenty-first and Wednesday the twenty-second lay the same pale rectangle. She ran a finger down the paper, feeling for a join.

Her mother had died three days earlier, on Saturday night. Clara had been with her that afternoon. They had talked about the rain.

Clara had meant to ask where in France.

Since Saturday, Clara had chosen a hymn, signed forms, and carried home a paper bag containing a cardigan, two library books, and a jar of hand cream. There had been no white dress among her things.

At eleven fifty that Tuesday night, Clara’s husband went into the garden and stood beside the low stone wall, the nearest thing they had to the one he remembered.

Clara put on her shoes. It felt absurd, so she laced them carefully. She washed a cup, set it upside down beside the sink, and opened the back door.

At midnight, the clock stopped between one second and the next.

The refrigerator’s hum ceased. The traffic beyond the houses fell silent.

Outside, the garden lengthened.

The hedge withdrew into violet distance, carrying the stone wall and Clara’s husband with it.

The kitchen remained at Clara’s back, every cup and ordinary light. The field began at the threshold, as though the afternoon were a country and the doorway its border.

Other people stood in the field, too far apart to speak to one another. A woman near the hedge had one hand raised to her ear, holding a telephone that was no longer there.

Her husband waited on the far side beside the stone wall.

Her mother waited in the white dress, one blue button at her throat, seventeen forever.

Clara had forgotten how young seventeen was.

Below them, the enormous thing turned again. Clara gripped the doorframe. In the memory, this was where she had stood still.

The girl raised one hand.

“Evelyn,” Clara called.

Her mother lowered her hand. She looked surprised.

Clara left the door open behind her and stepped across.

For the first time, the grass bent beneath Clara’s shoes.