Hush (21 page)

So straightforwardly, easily happy.

And their mother off-camera, framing their childhood from behind the lens.

‘Do you remember this?’ Connie said, holding different photos under Lily’s nose. ‘What about this? And this?’

And each time, Lily nodded.
Yes. Yes, I remember that.

Somehow, when it was Connie holding out the photos, it didn’t seem to hurt nearly as much.

It was just after twelve, and the coffee shop was almost deserted – just one elderly man in the corner, propped up behind a newspaper, and a youngish guy with long hair and glasses that were too big for his face, stirring sugar into his coffee so violently that drops of coffee were flicking over the table in all directions. Nathan chose a table near the back of the room, with a clear view of the door. He was five minutes late, but obviously not quite late enough to be fashionable.

The waitress ambled over, took his order without much interest. Nathan sat back and watched the people walk past outside. The street, which would have been bristling with people an hour ago, was now virtually deserted. A mother with her toddler stopped outside the window, peering at the menu, but walked on a moment later, obviously not finding what she was looking for. Two teenage girls in school uniform came in and took a table in the corner, looking furtively around them, making sure there was no one there who might recognise them. The waitress deposited Nathan’s coffee in front of him and then went to greet the teenagers; Nathan guessed from the way she spoke to them that they were regulars.

Andrea appeared a minute later. She was talking on her phone, visibly harassed, but still uncomfortably beautiful. Nathan tried not to notice the way her hair seemed to glow in the light from the window.

She finished her conversation as she sat down opposite him, muttering, ‘Uh-huh, yep, I’ll call you back, okay? Bye, then.’ She
snapped the phone shut, and placed it on the table in front of her. ‘Sorry,’ she said, smiling at him. He wondered when Connie had last smiled at him like that: as if she were actually happy to see him. Then dismissed the thought as childish.

‘No problem,’ he said easily. ‘Coffee?’

‘I’ll have a tea, actually, if you don’t mind.’ The waitress appeared and took Andrea’s order, and then disappeared, leaving silence in her wake. Nathan took a sip of his coffee; it was too hot, scalding his tongue and making him wince.

‘So,’ Andrea said eventually. ‘You rang?’

‘Well, you suggested meeting for coffee,’ he replied, grinning half-heartedly.

‘Forgive me for saying it, but I got the impression this might be more than just a casual get-together.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘Well, for a start, you asked me to meet you on a day when we’re both supposed to be at work.’ She looked at him shrewdly. ‘I guess you’re supposed to be doing house calls?’

‘Mrs Mitchell’s very ill,’ he said gravely. ‘She needed my immediate attention.’

‘You should probably go and see her, then.’

‘She also has Alzheimer’s. She won’t remember that she called, so I’ve got at least an hour, I’d say.’

Andrea shook her head, smiling despite herself. ‘You’re terrible.’

‘Not really. I’ll drop round on my way back. She calls about once a fortnight, and she’s always surprised when I turn up.’

‘Does she have any family?’

He shook his head. The waitress appeared, set Andrea’s tea down in front of her, and vanished again.

‘So what’s so urgent, then?’

Nathan shrugged. Now that he was here he felt faintly ridiculous. ‘I suppose I just wanted to talk.’

‘To someone who’s not your wife?’

He shrugged again. Nodded. ‘Yeah, that’s pretty much it.’

Andrea looked at him steadily, sizing him up. ‘Do you want to have an affair?’

He laughed. ‘God, you really are blunt, aren’t you?’

‘I don’t see the point in beating around the bush. If that’s what you’re here for, I’d like to know sooner rather than later. Also, I’m not a marriage counselling service.’

‘Do you think that’s what I want from you?’

‘Well, it’s an odd time of day for an affair.’ She smirked. ‘Unless you were planning on blowing off Mrs Mitchell altogether, of course.’

‘I don’t think I want an affair. I also don’t think I want marriage counselling.’

‘Well, then, I’m at a bit of a loss as to what I’m doing here.’

‘Hmm.’ He leaned forward slightly, resting his elbows on the table, cradling his coffee between the palms of his hands. ‘To be honest, I think I just wanted a friend.’

‘Am I not a bit of an odd choice for a friend? I mean, you can’t exactly go home and tell your wife,
Hey, I made this awesome new friend today
, can you?’

He laughed. ‘That’s kind of the point, I suppose. I don’t want to have to tell Connie about you.’

‘So you want to have an affair without actually having an affair?’

‘Can you stop making me sound so sordid?’ He was annoyed, and it made her laugh.

‘Sorry. But isn’t it kind of like you just want to have a secret? Something that makes you feel better when you’re fighting with her?’

‘It’s not just that.’ He sat back from the table, irritated. ‘I also like you.’

She softened slightly. ‘I know. But that doesn’t mean we can be friends.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because. Because I’m single and female and you find me attractive. Or at least, you have done at some point. What if she found out about me – what would you say?
Oh yeah, that’s my friend, I met her when I went back to hers after a party one night?’

‘That’s not – it’s not like that.’

‘It’s like that a bit.’

‘Stop being difficult.’ He glared at her for a moment, and then they both laughed. ‘See, I like you because you make me laugh. Because you don’t – I don’t know, scowl at me every time I walk into the room. Is it really that wrong of me, to want to spend some time with someone who treats me like a human being?’

‘No, I suppose not.’ She sipped her tea, thoughtful. ‘Are things really that bad?’

He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. We just don’t seem to communicate at the moment. I have no idea what she’s thinking any more. But you probably don’t want to hear about it.’

‘Not particularly,’ she admitted. ‘But it sounds like you need to talk about it.’

‘Can we have dinner one night this week?’

She laughed. ‘Will you tell your wife where you’re going?’

‘Sure. Dinner with a colleague. That’s what we are, aren’t we?’

She laughed again and shook her head. Stood up, leaving her tea on the table, half-drunk. Dropped a kiss on his forehead, and left without another word.

He sank back into his chair and watched her go.

‘Sir, Cassie’s away.’ Eleanor’s voice carried across the gymnasium.

‘I’d noticed.’ Mr Bentham, busy digging out enough footballs for all the boys to have something to dribble with, was monumentally unconcerned with how many girls might be bunking off PE to spend time with their boyfriends and/or smoking behind the bike sheds.

‘That means we’ve only got one midfielder.’

‘Isn’t there anyone else who can step in?’

‘The only other girl is Connie.’

Eleanor, eyes wide, the picture of innocence, her dark ponytail bobbing childishly with every movement of her head. And yet, there was something distinctly un-childish in the cling of her hockey shirt, the way her skirt flounced when she walked.

Connie had claimed an overwhelming love of football early on in the term, the instant she’d realised that playing hockey would mean being out on the field with twenty-one girls hell-bent on hurting her and no adult supervision. Mr Bentham, keen to demonstrate his lack of sexism, had positively welcomed her into the fold. Fortunately she had proven to be relatively skilled and had therefore been allowed to carry on playing football with the boys.

This was different, though. Boys couldn’t be made to play hockey when there was a girl available to step in.

‘Connie!’

She had been watching the exchange from twenty feet away, and knew it was pointless to argue. If Mr Bentham got wind of the fact that she didn’t want to join in with the other girls, he would more than likely force her to do it every week to teach her the value of teamwork. ‘Yes, sir.’

‘There’s a space on the hockey team that needs to be filled.’

‘Yes, sir.’

She followed Eleanor’s ponytail as it bounced its way on to the playing fields.

Connie pulled on her bib, and joined the ranks of reluctant players. There were perhaps six of them – Eleanor, of course, and her closest allies – who actually enjoyed spending their time in this way. Everyone else did it under duress, though there were the odd one or two who actually might have enjoyed the game, in more cheerful circumstances.

Eleanor, as team captain, called the shots. Connie obeyed the sound of her whistle, breaking into a light jog where necessary, trying not to involve herself in any actual running. The air was freezing, making the back of her throat ache. What had been a light drizzle for most of the afternoon became heavier spots of rain – not enough of a downpour to call them inside, but enough to cause damp clothing to cling uncomfortably. Wherever sticks hit the grass there were showers of cold mud; some, inevitably, were deliberately aimed in Connie’s direction. Within five minutes she was soaked, and counting down the seconds until the end of the lesson.

Across the fields, the windows of the school buildings glowed invitingly: people learning lessons more valuable than how to keep yourself upright when the world was conspiring to make you fall over. Somewhere in there, Lily was in a classroom, surrounded by people who were mostly indifferent towards her, and teachers who would step in to protect her. Connie felt searing jealousy, tinged with a certain relief.

‘Connie! Get back in formation!’ The shrill of the whistle punctuated Eleanor’s words, and Connie pulled herself back to the game. Tried to find the ball in the semi-darkness, but all she could see were indeterminate shapes, with curved stick appendages. She jogged in the direction of the others, trying to give the impression of purposefulness.

The rain grew heavier, until it was a steady downpour, the clouds thickening into darkness. More lights flickered on across the field; teachers giving up any pretence that it was still daylight outside. Connie tried to stay attached to the game, but she seemed to float alongside it, unable to find a purchase. She could follow the movement but not the purpose, as if she’d forgotten how to play.

‘That’s it, ladies!’

The voice of Mr Bentham carried easily across the field, though he was barely visible in the distance, a mere shadow against the looming background of the school buildings. Eleanor blew her whistle – always had to have the last word – and, in one movement, twenty-two sticks dropped loosely to the side, and the girls began trudging back towards the school. Connie fell behind, not wanting to be too close. Not realising that Eleanor was behind her.

The first blow was so hard and so sudden she didn’t even manage to formulate a cry in response, just a shuddered gasp as she dropped to her knees. The second caught her on the nose, releasing a torrent of blood on to the wet mud beneath. She fell to all fours, choking on shock.

The third blow was an explosion of stars. They pulled her roughly on to her side, to ensure she didn’t choke on her own blood; then left her unconscious in the darkness.

By the time she came to, the moon was high in the sky, and the school buildings were locked, so she couldn’t retrieve her
belongings. She walked home in a daze, covered in blood and mud, her face already uncomfortably swollen. She concocted elaborate stories as she walked; stories which didn’t involve other people.

As it turned out, she didn’t need them. Her parents were waiting in the kitchen when she got home, impatient, anxious – a parental unit such as she wasn’t sure she’d ever seen before. It threw her off guard. And confused her: how late was she, for them to look so worried?

She understood a moment later. In the split second between the time it took for them to register her face, exhibit their shock and swallow it: and for them to look behind her, for the younger sister who also hadn’t returned home when she should have done.

Richard was at work, and Lily was in her childhood bedroom, which she had transformed into an office over the course of the morning. It didn’t look very different from how it had done when they’d first arrived – still the same undersized furniture, the same crawling green wallpaper – but she had rearranged the furniture, clearing a space on the floor big enough to spread out all her notes. She had never been able to work with traditional filing systems, preferring to spread everything out around her so it was easily accessible, but sharing an office had made that a less than viable option, and Richard wouldn’t have appreciated her doing it in the flat. For the first time since they’d arrived, she could see that there might be some benefit to living here; could imagine learning to work in this space.

If she stood at the window she could see the garden, with the woods stretching out behind it, but she found she didn’t mind so much from up here. She could also see into the neighbouring garden, and it was a comfort to see people pottering around – a young couple, probably the same age as her and Richard, and their toddler. She had never spoken to them. She wondered whether Richard had.

They were out there now, or at least the mother and the toddler were. The mother hung out washing while the toddler dug around in the flowerbed. Every now and then she would pull out something which was unmistakably a worm, and bring it to her mother, her face proud and excited. Her
mother’s cry of ‘
No
, Miriam, you
mustn’t,
’ carried clearly through Lily’s open window and made her smile.

She could feel fragments of less unpleasant childhood memories creeping up on her. Things that usually got suppressed along with everything else, because they all blurred into one, became interchangeable. But there were good things, she knew. Like the swing she and Connie had built for one of the trees – just a plank of wood and some rope, long since rotted away, but still. It had kept them occupied for an afternoon. She remembered finding the wood, their father helping them tie it to a branch. Billy had been there, and his father. Lily could remember swinging out over them all as they sat in the garden, the swooping in her stomach as she reached the top of the swing’s upward curve, and everything ahead of her just feet and sky.

Billy and his father had been around a lot. She could remember them all spending time together in the garden, having barbecues, playing games. Could hear snatches of shouted conversations. See Connie’s face, ducking behind trees. Billy’s chin, resting on his elbows as they lay next to each other on the grass. Her mother’s face, laughing: different.

The garden had been the most peaceful place in the world, then.

She watched her neighbours playing and thought that maybe nothing had really changed.

She spent a couple of hours steadily working, only occasionally distracted by noises from outside. It was easier up here in her old room; the noises were further away and she didn’t feel obliged to pay attention to them. Her childhood desk had proved too small and she was sitting on her floor, back to the window, facing the door, which was slightly ajar; she could see the hallway, dim because all the other doors were closed and no sunlight touched it. Shadows flickered
there occasionally, but they were harmless and she tried not to notice them.

She had arranged her paperwork around her, in her preferred fashion – books to the left, then stacks of notes on her own ideas, then stacks of notes on other people’s ideas. She had been sifting through, trying to bring herself up to date with what she had been working on a few weeks ago. Marianna had forwarded her some photocopies of recent journal articles – things that she’d noticed and thought would fit in with Lily’s research – and Lily had been scanning them, picking out the ones that seemed useful, putting the others aside for future reference. She had found herself wondering for the first time who was teaching her classes, how the students were getting on in her absence. The undergraduates would be fine, of course, but she felt guilty about the PhD students. She was supposed to be looking after them. She wondered whether she should email them, let them know she was still around, if they needed her. Though of course she wasn’t, not really. And was she allowed to be in touch, if she’d been removed from the university? Wouldn’t they all have found new supervisors, ones who weren’t liable to collapse at a moment’s notice?

She couldn’t help feeling that being cut off from the academic world was causing more problems than it was solving. Though it was nice to have the space to get some work done. Some real work, without all the lecturing and marking getting in the way.

The phone rang downstairs. She could hear it, but it sounded distant, other-worldly. Maybe it was next door’s phone? But no, it was definitely the sound that their phone made – the same one that had been there when she was a child, with its round dial and clumsy handset. A shrill, impatient ring, quite unlike any modern phone. It was a sign of how little contact her mother had had with the outside world that she’d never bothered to update it.

She considered getting up to answer it. But then the ringing subsided, and she inwardly shrugged, and settled herself back on to the floor. She couldn’t think of anyone she would want to talk to anyway. People who knew her would ring her on her mobile.

Someone was shouting outside. It was the neighbours again, now having some sort of argument. Lily could hear the child crying, the mother scolding her. Amazing how quickly games could turn sour.

She resisted the urge to go and watch them from the window. Picked up another journal article, scanning the opening paragraph for hints that it might be useful to her. She could only pick out a couple of words before the shouting distracted her. She put down the article, got up and went to the window, irritated with herself for being unable to resist her curiosity.

The daughter was kneeling on the ground in tears. Her mother stood over her, fist raised. For a moment Lily was worried, and then she realised the fist was clutching a worm; the daughter’s kneeling was pleading, rather than afraid. ‘Don’t hurt Wormy,’ she screamed, screwing up her face until her bright red cheeks looked as though they might burst.

The mother’s response was quieter, and Lily couldn’t hear it from so far away. Nevertheless she pushed herself forward, pressing her nose to the glass, trying to hear what they were saying.

And saw a flicker in her own garden, just out of her range of vision.

She flinched, drew back instinctively; then gathered herself, leaned forward. The flicker had been over to the far right, on the patio, near the doors. If she pressed the left side of her face right to the glass she could see the whole patio, but there was nothing there, just a pool of weak sunlight blinking through the trees.

The phone rang again and she pulled herself away from the window, the cries of the child outside dying away as she stepped out of her room and into the hallway. She felt more than saw her way down the stairs, edging through the gloom towards the phone. The sound stopped when she was two steps into the kitchen, leaving a thumping silence in its wake.

The room was so still she could hear the dust move.

And then ghost-Connie was at her feet, as if she’d been there all along.

She looked different this time: less of a flicker, more like a real child. She was still pale and ethereal, but there was a solidity to her centre, just blurring at the edges when she moved. Lily crouched down, to look at her more closely, expecting her to vanish. Instead she giggled, and moved nearer to the patio doors.

Lily stood up and followed, tentatively, inching forward step by step. A flicker on the other side of the glass made her flinch, but it was just ghost-Lily, come to join her sister. The two girls stood for a moment on opposite sides of the glass, hands pressed together through the panes. Then Lily opened the door and ghost-Connie went bounding out onto the lawn, her younger shadow just a blur in her wake.

Lily took a step outside, trying to shake her sense of unease. The quiet conviction that she had seen something more substantial than the shiverings of her own mind.

Took another step, and another, confidence growing as the ghost-children beckoned her forwards.

And then another flicker, to her right: too tall to be a child.

Bit back a scream, seeing the man striding towards her across the lawn.