Hush (24 page)

There was a shifting in the distance, a sound Lily could hear but not quite get a grasp on. She stood in a garden of uncut grass, which she saw growing surreptitiously out of the corners of her eyes, clawing its way towards her knees. The garden was a perfect square, the edges fenced off by pure blackness; you could drop off the edge and fall into nothingness. Lily wanted to go and look, to see what was beyond the edge, but when she tried to move there was a resistance similar to pulling a rooted plant from the ground; as if her feet were not resting on the grass but were part of the undergrowth itself. She looked down, but she couldn’t distinguish her feet in amongst the greenery.

‘One, two, three,’ a voice counted, solemnly, sounding unaware of her presence. Lily pulled at her feet until she stood on tiptoes, but she couldn’t see where the voice was coming from. ‘Four, five, six, seven –’

Lily spun her head from side to side, but she couldn’t see who was making the noise. ‘Who’s there?’ she asked. Her voice was hoarse and scratchy, not her voice at all. It felt as though she was exhaling words directly from her throat, rather than letting them seek out their consonants in the grooves of her tongue.

‘Who’s there?’ she asked again, and her voice worked a bit better this time.

‘You made me lose count,’ the voice reproached, but still she couldn’t see where it came from. It was male, childlike.

‘I’m sorry. I can’t see you.’

‘But I’m right here.’ The child was on the floor in front of her feet, and she knew he had always been there. ‘You made me lose count.’

‘What are you counting?’

He laughed, curling one hand into a fist and shoving it into his mouth in an attempt to control his mirth. ‘You know what I’m counting,’ he said, rocking slightly on the ground. He looked familiar, but she couldn’t place his face. The voice was all wrong. Or maybe the voice was right and the face was wrong?

‘What are you counting?’ she asked again. It was very important, she knew. Everything hinged on this.

‘You’re silly,’ he said, shaking his head, but he showed her anyway. He lifted up his hands, revealing a pile of dead insects. And, on the ground, the glass dome he had caught them in.

The one he had used to drown them.

‘Bugs went swimming in the Bug Jug,’ he said, laughing again, and abruptly the blackness around them started to shift, to ripple and swirl in a way that made Lily feel dizzy. She could see colours in the dark – foggy impressions of colours, like pictures of deep space with its swirls of orange and blue – which gave a sense of depth to something that had previously seemed like an ending. If she stepped off the edge, she knew, she would fall forever.

‘You need to wake up now,’ the boy said, his laughter gone as quickly as it had come.

‘No, I don’t. There are still things I need to know. Things I need to see.’

‘You can see them when you’re awake, if you look hard enough.’ The childlike voice was diminishing, being replaced by its adult counterpart. ‘Lily. Please. You need to wake up.’

‘I don’t want to,’ she said, steeling herself against it, already feeling her dream-self slipping away.

‘But I need you to,’ adult Richard said, and suddenly he was there in front of her, the child vanished as quickly as he had appeared.

Lily was lucid but disorientated when Connie arrived, about an hour after she received Richard’s phone call, having broken half a dozen traffic laws in her haste to be back at her sister’s side. She was breathless, frantic, and Lily laughed at her, sleepily. ‘You didn’t need to rush,’ she mumbled. ‘I’ll still be here in a day’s time, I’m sure.’

‘I wanted to be here when you woke up,’ Connie said, aware even as she said it that she sounded childish, petulant. As if she’d been denied the ice cream flavour that she’d asked for.

‘I know.’ Lily’s voice was soft, soothing, and Connie felt calmer.

‘I’m sorry,’ Richard said, reaching out quickly to take her hand. They were all connected in a line then, with Richard in the middle, holding both their hands. It felt wrong. Connie dropped his hand without trying to be obvious about it, and moved around the bed to touch Lily’s shoulder. ‘I should have called sooner,’ Richard continued. ‘But I didn’t want to get you here unnecessarily, and she woke up so quickly… I am sorry.’

‘It’s okay,’ Connie said, not looking at him. ‘How are you feeling, Lils? What happened, for Christ’s sake?’

Lily shrugged. ‘I don’t remember.’

‘You must remember something. Were you with anyone? The ambulance crew said they found you outside. What were you doing outside at this time of year? Or at all? That garden…’

‘It’s fine.’ Lily’s voice was abrupt, dismissive. ‘The garden’s fine.’

‘You can’t possibly mean that.’

‘It’s just a garden. There’s no reason to be afraid of it.’

‘Lily, you know as well as I do that it’s not “just” a garden, not to you –’ Connie realised Richard was watching their exchange with interest, and stopped talking abruptly.

‘I don’t know what happened,’ Lily repeated, her voice unusually firm. ‘So there’s no point asking me.’

The three of them fell silent. Connie lifted a hand to stroke Lily’s hair, but Lily shifted away, wincing.

‘Sorry,’ Connie said. ‘I just – I was really worried about you.’

‘I know.’ Lily let go of Richard and reached out towards her sister.

‘You were unconscious for two days, did Richard tell you that?’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s not normal, Lils.’

‘It’s a head injury. I expect they’re usually unpredictable.’

Connie nodded. Squeezed Lily’s hand. And, meeting Richard’s eyes over the top of Lily’s head, found her own expression of disbelieving concern mirrored back at her.

The kids were on their way to bed by the time Connie arrived home. Pyjama-clad and clutching novelty hot water bottles (Tom had Spider-Man, Luke an unbranded blue teddy which he would probably abandon as not suitably cool in a year’s time), they rushed to greet their mother, with Nathan protesting in the background that they were supposed to be going to brush their teeth.

‘How’s Auntie Lily?’ Tom asked, his voice very serious. When Luke joined in – ‘Auntie Lily, where’s Auntie Lily,
where?’ – Tom shushed him, and said sternly, ‘She’s in hospital and Mummy’s very worried about her.’

‘She’s fine,’ Connie replied, trying not to smile or, worse, cry. Resisting the urge to gather her children into her arms and never let them go. ‘She’s awake now and she’s doing very well. The doctors say she may be able to go home soon.’

‘Can we visit her before she goes home?’ Luke asked hopefully. Weirdly, he loved hospitals; when Tom had had his appendix out a year ago, Luke had been thrilled by the machines, the very hungry caterpillar that crawled its way down the wall of the main corridor in the children’s ward, the nurses who showered attention upon him and made him promise to look after his big brother. He was always disappointed to hear that someone had been in hospital and he hadn’t been able to go and visit them.

‘I don’t know, darling. It depends how she’s feeling.’

‘So we’ll wait and see?’ Luke said, making both Connie and Nathan laugh. It was one of their most oft-used expressions.

‘Yes, we’ll wait and see. Now, boys,’ Connie said, standing up and guiding them gently back towards the stairs. ‘I believe Daddy was in the middle of putting you to bed?’

They disappeared up the stairs, chattering about which story they were going to have. Nathan followed them, dismissing several story ideas on the basis that they were too long or too lively for this time of night. ‘There’s no such thing as too
lively
, Dad,’ Tom said dismissively. ‘They’re only
stories
.’

Connie smiled to herself and wandered through to the kitchen, shedding outer layers as she went: shoes kicked off in the hallway, coat draped over the sofa, bag dumped on the dining table. She flicked the kettle on, felt reassured by its answering roar of activity. Pulled two mugs out of the cupboard – matching, unpersonalised, sensible mugs – and
went about making tea automatically. Her thoughts, such as they were, seemed to scrabble over themselves and couldn’t quite get a handle on anything solid. She worried for Lily, for herself, for Richard. For her children who thought that stories were only stories.

By the time Nathan came back downstairs she was on the sofa, mugs on the table in front of her, television mutedly displaying scenes of today’s horror from around the world. The headlines tripped across the bottom of the screen, the usual selection of war, protest, political entanglements. She let it wash over her, barely seeing it. Her sense of disconnection from the rest of the world seemed to grow by the day.

‘So how was Lily really?’ Nathan asked, sitting down next to her, gently linking one arm through hers. She let it stay there, though it felt odd: as if they were forcing a contact which was not quite natural.

‘She’s okay. She doesn’t remember what happened, so we’re still none the wiser on that front. For all we know, someone bashed her over the head when she wasn’t looking and we’re all just carrying on as if she’s mental and brought this on herself.’

‘Do you really think that’s how you’re carrying on?’

‘Well, you know what I mean. She’s got a history of collapsing, so we’re assuming it’s just another collapse with much worse consequences. But what if it’s not that? What if someone actually wants to hurt her?’

‘Why would anyone want to hurt her?’ Nathan’s voice, even and reasonable, grated on her already raw nerves.

‘How should I know? She doesn’t bloody speak to me about anything.’

‘Connie –’

‘Don’t, okay. Just leave it.’

‘I think you should examine the reasons why you think Lily might have been attacked.’

Connie turned to face him, baffled. ‘She was unconscious in hospital for two days with a sprained wrist and a head injury. What the hell else am I supposed to think?’

‘But she has a history of collapsing, you said so yourself.’

‘But not like
this
–’

‘Not the point, Connie. There’s nothing to indicate this is more sinister than anything that’s happened in the past. So I think you should focus on
why
you think Lily might have been attacked.’

‘For fuck’s sake, Nathan, I really can’t see what you’re driving at.’

‘Fine. I think you’re using Lily’s problems as a way of avoiding your own, and I think you should get counselling.’ He didn’t look at her as he said it, but watched the TV screen, his face as expressionless as his voice.

‘I’m worried about my sister, so you think I should get counselling?’

‘No, that’s not the reason, but yes, I think you should get counselling.’

Connie was quiet for a moment, trying to swallow the angry retorts which threatened to burst past her lips. Finally: ‘Are you having an affair?’

Nathan looked at her for a moment. Then he unlinked his arm from hers, and walked in measured paces to the front door. She heard the rustle in the hallway as he gathered his coat, checked he had his keys, slipped his shoes on. He was careful not to slam the door on the way out.

The house was generally quiet when Lily got home from school. Her mother had barely left her room since Connie had run away; the garden had been abandoned, weeds springing up all over the place. Marcus, who had once seemed to have an endless amount of patience, seemed to have run out of it in recent weeks: he avoided being at home, working longer and longer hours, sometimes not arriving back until Lily was thinking about going to bed. The evenings were consumed by silence and loneliness, and Lily spent more and more time working on the advanced maths problems her teacher had been giving her, and reading books on mathematical theory.

It was three weeks since Connie had left, and they hadn’t heard a word from her.

Lily sometimes wondered, half-heartedly, what her classmates did when they got home in the evenings. Or what she would be doing if Connie were around. Instead, she was making dinner every night and taking it in to her mother on a tray, trying not to feel horrified at Anna’s appearance, at the smell of her room. She missed Connie most at these moments, wishing she had someone to share them with, to lessen the horror of the experience.

She stepped through the front door into stillness, picking up the envelopes on the floor as she did so; Anna never bothered to look at the post these days. She closed the front door quietly, and stood for a moment, letting her eyes readjust to the dim light. It was bright outside; spring was
working its way optimistically towards summer, and the days were gradually lengthening, extending orangey fingers into the dark evenings. Inside all was dark and quiet, as usual. Only the kitchen was bright as she walked in, the wall of south-facing windows flooding the room with light.

Lily put the post on the table and paused, listening for movement upstairs. There was none. It had been a week since Lily had seen her mother out of bed for more than a few minutes.

She poured herself some juice from the fridge, and checked the cupboards for food. There were basic supplies – enough for spaghetti bolognese, or something similar. She would have to go shopping tomorrow.

She took her bag through to the living room and ploughed through her homework. They were doing
Romeo and Juliet
in English, a play she found herself utterly unable to connect with. She’d started to become concerned, that other girls in her class seemed so focused on the idea of boyfriends, love, marriage. She’d felt the odd flicker of interest, but she couldn’t imagine spending that much time with one person. Couldn’t even begin to imagine the intricacies of a physical relationship. She’d searched the play for clues as to what she should be feeling, but there was nothing there. The idea of someone touching her didn’t just fill her with fear, it left her utterly perplexed.

Nevertheless, she wrote two hundred words on Romeo’s passion for Juliet. Then she wrote up the notes on a science experiment they’d done that day. The only sounds were her breathing, and the scribble of pen on paper.

When she’d finished, she put her books away and went into the kitchen to make dinner. It was just starting to get dark outside so she flicked on the lights, and the reflection of the bulbs bounced back at her in the windows, making the room over-bright and harsh. The windows had wooden
blinds, and the patio doors had thick curtains which she pulled across, shutting out the darkness of the garden. She flicked on the radio, and listened to the chattering of the DJs as she made dinner.

She took Anna her dinner on a tray, knocking as she entered the room. Anna was propped up in bed, and the lights were on: an improvement on the last few days. She smiled wearily as Lily entered the room, and put aside the photo album that she’d been looking at. ‘Hey, sweetheart. How was your day?’

‘It was okay.’ Lily handed her the tray, making sure she wasn’t going to be able to spill it. Anna was wearing a white T-shirt which was spotted liberally with food stains. Lily longed, for a moment, to rip it off of her and throw it away.

‘Are you learning anything interesting?’

Lily shrugged. She found it harder to talk to Anna than most people, perhaps because she found her vocalised parental interest so at odds with her behaviour.

‘Bet you have lots of homework, right?’

Lily nodded and, taking this as permission to leave, went back downstairs, closing the door behind her as she went.

She ate dinner at the kitchen table, sitting with her back to the patio doors. As she ate she sifted through the post, and was surprised to see her name, stamped across one of the letters in a semi-familiar scrawl:
Miss L. Emmett
. She opened the envelope carefully, and unfolded a single sheet of cream notepaper.