Hush (15 page)

Connie arrived home from school first. She’d got off the bus without waiting for Lily for the third time that week, walking away fast so she couldn’t catch her up. She tried to convince herself it was an attempt to get Lily to break free, start making friends with other people. What was it they called it – ‘tough love’? It didn’t automatically equate to being a bad sister.

Lily hadn’t yet complained. And it wasn’t as though she was completely incapable of talking, these days. If she had a complaint, she could raise it like anyone else.

The house was quiet. Her father would be out at work, she knew. Her mother was out in the garden: Connie could see her from the kitchen window, crouched in the flowerbeds, her headscarf blowing in the wind. It was almost dark, but Connie knew that was unlikely to stop her; she rarely came inside before it was pitch-black these days, and when she did she went straight to her room and didn’t come downstairs all evening.

Connie knew that it was unnatural for a mother to spend so much time avoiding her family, but she found that it wasn’t something she could bring herself to care about. Tried to explain it away, as though maybe if she started caring then she would care too much and she wouldn’t be able to stop.

Not just: she didn’t care. Was incapable of caring. Had lost that part of her brain, somewhere.

Behind the sofa, never to be seen again.

She made herself a sandwich and ate it at the kitchen table. The kitchen was dim in the fading light; it had been grey all day, never properly brightening, in that way that felt close and uncomfortable, as if the edges of the world had shifted that few million miles closer. As if all that existed was what could be seen out of the window. And even that was dampened, shrouded in mist.

Lily came through the door just as Connie was washing up her plate. Stood at the counter, eyes accusing, but didn’t say anything. Just stood there.

‘What? Speak, if you want something.’

‘Why?’

‘Why what? Why speak?’

Lily shook her head, impatiently. ‘Why leave me?’

‘Because you need to learn. I told you, I can’t baby you forever. You need to make friends.’

Lily considered this. Tilted her head to one side, a demonstration of thought. She had got used to acting things out, so that people waited for her. ‘Friends like yours?’

Connie had no answer to this, and turned to walk away.

‘Were they mean to you?’

Connie stopped in her tracks. Looked down at her little sister, so much younger than her in age, but so much the image of what she herself had once been. ‘Are they mean to
you
?’ she asked.

‘Yes.’

Connie reached out a hand. Found it suspended in midair, didn’t really know what to do with it, and placed it on Lily’s shoulder as gently as she could.

‘They were mean to me. They are mean to me. But you get used to it.’

Lily nodded. She moved away, started making her own sandwich, and Connie understood the conversation to be
closed. It was the longest conversation they’d had in three years.

‘Do you ever think about what it would be like to live in a place like this?’

They were doing the rounds of local National Trust properties, at Marcus’s insistence, and Lily had been standing at the first-floor window, nose pressed against the glass. Connie’s voice beside her made her jump, echoing her thoughts exactly, and Lily nodded. The imperfections in the glass added a hazy sheen to the scene in front of her, as if it were swimming in sea mist.

‘You’d be a princess. Or friends with royalty, anyway,’ Connie continued.

Connie was wearing a short skirt and knee-high black boots with high heels, and looked out of place in the stately home with its period furniture and wooden floors. Lily had been envying the boots in the car – she’d not seen them before. Marcus had scowled when Connie had left the house wearing them, but he hadn’t said anything.

An elderly couple came to stand next to them, and in wordless agreement Connie and Lily moved on into the next room, which was long and empty, nothing but a hallway full of pictures. A volunteer stood in the corner, a man of about sixty, who looked as though he was about to say something to them and then thought better of it. They came to stand in front of the biggest portrait in the room, of a young girl who looked sad and overdressed.

‘You never see them smiling,’ Connie muttered, almost to herself. And then, ‘She looks a bit like you, actually. Don’t you think?’

Lily shrugged. She didn’t see the resemblance, but she didn’t want to contradict Connie.

‘I heard somewhere that every human is related to every other human. Or almost everyone, anyway. So maybe this girl was our great-great-great-grandmother, or something.’

Lily looked at the girl’s face, which looked the same as all the other faces on the walls: oily Victorian features, marred with old-fashioned seriousness. ‘Maybe,’ she said eventually, her voice a whisper. Connie looked as if she was about to continue talking, and then their parents came into the room, and she fell silent.

Marcus was keeping up a constant stream of conversation while Anna trailed slightly behind him, like a disgruntled child. Neither of them noticed their daughters at the other end of the room, and Marcus’s words carried across the empty space, echoing uncomfortably among the hushed whispers in the rest of the house. ‘Lily’s been doing pretty well at school, but we keep getting letters about Connie – she’s bunking off all the time, never does her homework –’

‘Why are you telling me this as if it’s new to me?’ Anna asked wearily. ‘I’ve read the letters too, you know.’

‘Well, I wasn’t sure. You’ve seemed pretty – distracted, recently.’

‘Distracted, hmm? How tactful of you.’

‘Well, you know, by the garden, and –’

‘Yes, I know what you meant.’ Her voice was harsh. ‘What do you propose to do, then? About Connie?’

‘I don’t know. We could at least try having a word with her. See if there’s any reason she doesn’t want to go to school.’

Lily looked up at Connie. Her mouth was set, and she stared directly at their parents, as if challenging them to notice she was there. They carried on talking, oblivious.

‘She’s always hated secondary school,’ Anna said, her voice dismissive.

‘I think the other kids have been picking on her. Maybe we should talk to the school, get them to intervene –’

‘I don’t think us storming in there telling everyone to be friends with her is going to help matters, do you?’

‘Well, it’s better than doing
nothing
–’

Marcus stopped talking abruptly. The clicking of Connie’s heels as she stormed out of the room had alerted him to her presence.

‘Oh, brilliant.’ He sighed, and looked over at Lily, still frozen to the spot. ‘Did she hear everything?’

Lily shrugged. She caught her mother’s eye, but Anna looked away immediately.

‘Guess that’s something else I’ll have to apologise for later,’ Anna muttered, to no one in particular.

‘Oh, were you planning on making apologies, then?’

Lily flinched. Her father’s voice was more venomous than she had ever heard it before.

‘Well, you obviously think I need to. What should I apologise for? Attempting to make the best of a bad situation? Trying to be a family even though you’ve made it abundantly clear that you don’t want me to be part of it?’

‘I’d
love
you to be a part of it. Unfortunately, you never seem to be around for me to include you.’

‘Never around? I’ve been here the whole time.’

‘In the garden. Or walking in the woods. Or hiding upstairs in our bedroom, refusing to talk to anyone.’

Lily realised they’d forgotten she was there again. Or maybe they just didn’t care any more. She clenched her fists and watched the blood drain out of her knuckles, but not the gaps between them. No matter how hard she clenched, she couldn’t make the white patches spread any further. She could feel the half-moon imprints of her fingernails in the soft flesh of her palms.

‘I don’t
refuse
–’ Anna began, but Marcus cut her off.

‘Don’t try and deny it. You’re never around, you never spend any time with them – or with me, for that matter; no
one has any idea what’s going on in your head and no one can get close to you. In what way are you here, really?’

There was a pause, in which Lily stood very still, watching her parents breathe.

‘Fine,’ Anna said eventually. ‘What do you want me to do, then? Should I talk to Connie?’

‘I don’t really see what you could say that would make any difference, given that it’s you she’s angry with.’

‘Has she said as much? She seemed pretty pissed off with both of us just now.’

‘Yes, alright, she’s angry with me too. But that’s different.’

‘Oh, right, I see. Different.’

‘Anna, please.’

‘I’d just like to know how it’s different, that’s all.’

Lily moved closer to the windows, edging forward slowly so as not to draw attention to herself.

‘She thinks you don’t care about her.’

‘I’m her mother. How could I possibly not care?’

‘Well, in case it slipped your notice, Anna, refusing to spend time with the people around you tends to make them think that you don’t care.’

Lily closed her eyes and started counting.
If I count to
one hundred and they’re still arguing, I’m just going to leave.

‘I’m having a hard time, okay, I don’t know what to do. I know it’s stupid but it’s not fair to punish me when I’m trying my hardest –’

‘What do you mean,
punish
you? I haven’t punished you at all. In case you hadn’t noticed, I’ve been pretty damn forgiving.’

‘You mean you’ve acted that way so you can take the fucking moral high ground.’

Sixteen. Seventeen. Eighteen.

Lily wondered if she could slip out without them noticing.

‘It’s got nothing to do with any moral high ground! I’m just trying to keep our family together. I’ve got a wife who
spends her life hiding in the garden, one daughter who won’t speak to me and another who only speaks to me to tell me to fuck off. Explain to me what I’m supposed to do to make this situation more bearable,
please
.’

Twenty-seven. Twenty-eight. Twenty-nine.

‘Maybe, instead of sitting there feeling sorry for yourself, you should take a look at the underlying problems. Maybe there’s a reason why all of this is happening to you. And I don’t just mean that you’re unlucky, or, or, I don’t know –’

‘That my children have got your bad genes?’

‘Oh for fuck’s sake, Marcus, why does everything have to be my fault? It’s not like you’re Mr fucking Perfect, is it?’

The last thing Lily remembered thinking was
forty-nine,
before she slumped to the floor, the room darkening around her.

An hour later, Lily sat in the waiting room at the emergency doctor’s office, next to her father, who chewed on his knuckles and darted his eyes nervously around the corners of the room. There was only one other person present, an elderly man who looked as if he was struggling to breathe. He closed his eyes every time he inhaled, as if the effort involved in making his chest move consumed all of his available energy, with none to spare for trivia such as sight.

Lily had been unconscious for less than a minute. She’d woken up to find her parents on either side of her, her mother’s fingers clutching desperately at her shoulder. She didn’t remember fainting, but she remembered waking up and feeling trapped, pinned to the floor by her parents’ anxiety.

‘Not long now,’ her father said, his eyes on the clock above the door. She looked at him, then looked away when he didn’t meet her gaze. She wondered how he knew.

She had been here before, once, when she was five or six.
It hadn’t changed. It wasn’t like the usual doctor’s office; there were no toys and no windows, and only one receptionist, who looked bored and sullen. She had eyed them without interest as they’d explained why they were there, and waved them towards the hard plastic chairs that lined the room before returning her attention to the radio in the corner.

Eventually a doctor appeared in the doorway and called them through.

His office was almost the same size as the waiting room, and felt much more welcoming, with posters on the walls and the afternoon light streaming through the window. He gestured them into chairs with a smile, and then sat down opposite them, his gaze fixed on Lily. ‘What seems to be the problem?’

Lily stared back him, wide-eyed and solemn.

‘She doesn’t speak much,’ Marcus offered.

‘Okay. We’ll let Dad do the talking, then, shall we?’ The doctor turned his gaze to Marcus.

‘Lily collapsed. I suppose she just fainted, but, well, she’s never done it before and – I – I think it might be stress-related.’

‘Really?’ The doctor had an expression of carefully measured patience on his face. ‘What makes you think that?’

‘There have been some family issues. Lily’s been – well, check her records: she’s had problems with not talking and –’

‘Yes, I can see that from her notes. She’s been at Dr Hadley’s institute?’

‘Yes, just for a while –’

‘And he wasn’t able to help?’

‘No, he did help, but she had to leave before she was ready. They – there was an incident.’

The doctor eyed him, his expression sceptical. ‘I have to say, if the problem is mental, you’d be better off discussing further treatment options with Dr Hadley.’

‘He was treating her until recently, but he didn’t seem to think she needed anything further.’

‘Well, then, maybe it’s worth looking into possible physical causes. I can schedule some tests. If you like.’ The doctor’s voice was sceptical, but Marcus nodded.

‘If you think that would be helpful.’

‘Well, it’s good to explore different options, I suppose. I can give you some leaflets as well, about psychiatric services in the area.’

Lily tuned the conversation out. She watched people walking past the windows, and realised the glass was half-mirrored, so that people looked like shadows as they walked in front of it, grey and not quite fully formed. She wondered what it looked like from the other side.