The Shadow Year (28 page)

‘You’ve been to the pub?’

Ben nods. ‘Yeah, is that a problem?’

Simon eyes him. ‘Hope you didn’t spend
all
our money?’

Freya moves across to the grocery bags and starts to unpack things. ‘No, look, we got lots.’ She holds up a bag of oranges, a box of cherry Bakewells, peanuts, dates, potatoes, carrots, Brussels sprouts and three bottles of cheap-looking wine.

‘What on earth is that?’ asks Simon, poking the last item to emerge from the shopping bags . . . a long plastic-wrapped object. He peers down at it. ‘Turkey roll? What the hell? I’ve never seen a turkey that shape before.’

‘It was cheap,’ says Freya. ‘We were
trying
to save money.’

‘And that’s why you went to the pub is it? Money-saving?’

They at least have the decency to look a little ashamed. Kat studies the results of the shopping trip and knows their haul won’t last them long, no more than a few days at best. She sighs and sidles across to Simon. ‘Well you’re back now,’ she smooths, trying to banish the atmosphere from the room. ‘Who wants to help decorate the tree?’

In the end, it doesn’t matter about the meagre Christmas supplies or the covert pub trip or even the revolting-looking turkey roll. In the end they get something much better. It’s waiting for them on the doorstep, early on Christmas Day morning. Ben discovers it as soon as he steps outside and his yelp of joy rings out across the valley, bringing the others racing downstairs. ‘So it looks as though Santa found us last night,’ he says, holding a giant, plucked turkey aloft in his hands.

‘What the hell . . . where did
that
come from?’ asks Carla.

‘It was right here, on the doorstep. Look.’ He points to the large wicker basket laden with fresh vegetables, homemade mince pies, a bottle of brandy, a small urn of cream and a white ceramic bowl wrapped in a cheery checked cloth which Kat knows can only be Christmas pudding. ‘Someone has delivered us a feast.’

Simon steps outside in his bare feet and glances around. ‘Who is it from? Is there a note?’

Ben shakes his head. ‘Who knows? Who cares? Whoever they are, they obviously like us.’ He throws back his shaggy head and howls, ‘Thank you,’ to the sky.

Carla beams and hugs Mac. Freya is on her hands and knees, rummaging through the goodies. She holds up a box of chocolate Matchsticks, the smile spreading across her face. ‘Yum.’

Only Kat and Simon seem worried by the anonymous donation. Its arrival at their doorstep means that someone knows they are there. No, not only knows they are there, but has crept up to their back door and left it for them to discover on Christmas morning. It’s hardly the most sinister of gestures, but it makes Kat nervous, all the same. Who knows they are here? She thinks of the woman on the ridge, the one she saw all those weeks ago. Could she have returned with this gift for them? It seems unlikely after all this time, but what’s the alternative? That someone out there is watching them?

‘Come on,’ says Ben, scooping up the basket, ‘let’s not stand here getting cold. We’ve got a Christmas meal to prepare.’

Kat looks out across the horizon, her eyes searching the ridge and peering into the line of trees for evidence of anyone watching from the shadows. When she turns back to the cottage she sees Simon’s equally worried look. She can tell he doesn’t like it either, but it’s also clear that none of them are prepared to turn down a free meal, not on Christmas Day.

It’s something akin to a Christmas miracle: all the sniping and the grumbling and the bitching forgotten in just a few hours. How simple, thinks Kat, how easy to turn their spirits around; all it takes is one basket of food and they are all smiles and joviality and efficiency. Carla and Kat peel the vegetables while Ben stands at the kitchen sink wrangling with the turkey. Simon and Mac fetch the wood and pile it up by the range before Simon takes up Ben’s guitar and serenades them all with Christmas carols from the bench nearest the window. Ben and Carla break into a boisterous duet of ‘While Shepherds Washed Their Socks By Night’ and, as they sing, Kat thinks about how it suddenly feels as it did at the beginning, when they first moved to the cottage and were filled with the thrill of freedom and possibility. Only Freya seems to set herself apart from the group. She busies herself out in the garden, feeding the chickens and then wandering the grassy slopes behind the cottage while the pig trots loyally at her heels.

‘What’s she doing?’ asks Carla, glancing out the window as she scrubs the dirt off a creamy-white potato.

Kat shrugs. ‘Beats me.’

Carla pauses to watch her for a moment. ‘She looks like a Christmas angel out there with all that long blond hair streaming behind her in the breeze.’

Kat thinks of her own shaggy haircut, now growing out over her ears and swallows back the jealous lump in her throat. ‘She must be cold in that nightie and cardigan. Silly girl.’

Carla smiles. ‘Sometimes you sound more like her mum than her sister.’

Kat frowns. ‘She can be so dreamy . . . so childish . . . someone has to look out for her.’

‘Isn’t it funny how that pig follows her around like that? They’re quite the pair, aren’t they?’ Carla continues. ‘You’re lucky too, you know, having a sister. I always wanted one.’

‘Yes,’ says Kat drily, ‘I’m lucky.’ She wonders whether she should tell Carla about Freya’s plan to leave, but Carla has already moved away to watch Ben wrestle with the turkey giblets so Kat stays at the window, scrubbing the potatoes, watching Freya as she drifts about the garden.

Simon is singing again, softly crooning the lyrics to one of her favourite Christmas carols.

Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow, in the bleak midwinter, long ago
.

Kat hums along as she watches Freya. She does look like an angel, so pale and waiflike. Her face is almost the same milk colour as her nightdress but there are high spots of colour on the apples of her cheeks and her hair shines a lustrous gold in the pale light. Kat sees the scissors in her sister’s hand and watches as she reaches out to one of the shrubs. She cuts a stem of red berries from a bush while a disgruntled redwing hops from bough to bough in the tree above, upset to see his winter store depleted. Then she bends and pulls something else from the ground: shimmering seed heads of honesty, no longer green but transformed to opaque-white tracing paper, as round and pale as tiny moons.

Angels and archangels may have gathered there, cherubim and seraphim thronged the air
.

As Simon’s words wrap themselves around her, another gust of wind shivers its way across the garden and rattles the window frames of the cottage. Kat looks out to see Freya pull her cardigan tight across her body.

But his mother only, in her maiden bliss, worshipped the beloved with a kiss
.

‘This bird’s going to need a good few hours in the oven,’ Ben says from somewhere behind her, but Kat isn’t listening any more, not even to Simon’s low crooning. Instead, she is transfixed by the sight of Freya, the strange shape of her; the gentle slope of her belly now visible beneath the taut fabric of her cardigan. Kat peers through the glass and wonders if she is seeing things. It’s not possible, surely? Her sister is rake thin, her arms and legs pale and skinny like the spindly silver birch branches outside. She shakes her head and looks again; but there it is, the rounding of her stomach, a slight swelling which she knows for certain wasn’t there a couple of months ago and has no right to be there now. None of them have put on any weight since they arrived at the cottage – the exact opposite, in fact. Dread grips her.

Kat watches as Freya makes her way down through the garden. She appears at the back door moments later with sprays of berries and the shimmering honesty lying across her arms in a delicate bouquet.

‘Brrrr,’ she says, stamping her feet, ‘it’s freezing out there. Look what I found. I thought they would make nice decorations. The honesty can go in our bedroom. The berries are for the living room.’

‘Very festive,’ says Carla, but Kat can’t find any words.

‘What?’ asks Freya. ‘What’s wrong? You look awful.’

But Kat just shakes her head and turns on her heel.

Kat still doesn’t have an appetite by the time it comes to sit down and eat but she chews carefully on her roast dinner and joins in with the clinking of glasses as they toast the chef and their mysterious benefactor with the first bottle of sloe gin, opened with ceremony by a proud Mac. The afternoon shadows have drawn in around them and Freya has lit candles, the flickering light catching on their glass tumblers and making their eyes shine like the lush berries now hanging over the mantelpiece.

‘Told you it was good, didn’t I?’ says Mac with a wide, sloe-stained grin.

They drink the syrupy gin and Kat watches as Freya joins in, knocking back a glass of the stuff, laughing at something Ben says. She tries to concentrate on the meal and the conversation but she can’t help herself; every so often she steals sideways glances at Freya across the table, wondering if she could have got it wrong – if her eyes had in fact deceived her. But she knows she is right. She knows what she saw.

After dinner, half drunk and full of good cheer, they retreat to the living room for a game of charades. Kat tries to join in but after weeks of such a plain diet the rich food is too much. Making her excuses she leaves the others to their game and moves into the kitchen where she props open the back door, allowing a draught of cold air to wash over her. She takes a few deep breaths and tries to rid herself of the churning feeling in her belly. It is pitch black outside but as her eyes adjust to the night she notices pale shapes falling from the sky and settling in a delicate grey blanket where the light spills from the open doorway across the ground.

‘It’s snowing,’ says Freya quietly.

Kat hasn’t heard her enter the room. She glances round at her sister then returns to gaze to the darkness outside.

‘Isn’t it beautiful?’

Kat swallows back her anger but Freya, oblivious to Kat’s inner turmoil, reaches for her hand.

She sighs softly. ‘So lovely . . . a white Christmas,’ and she raises her glass to her lips and drinks deeply.

Kat can’t help herself. She snatches her hand away and turns to Freya with eyes blazing. ‘Do you really think you should be doing that?’

‘Doing what?’ asks Freya, startled by the tone of her sister’s voice.

‘Drinking.’

‘What’s wrong? It’s Christmas, isn’t it? Since when were you so square?’ She puts her hand to her mouth. ‘Oh, sorry . . . if you’re thinking about Mum . . . about her drinking and stuff, you don’t—’

‘No,’ says Kat, ‘this isn’t about
Mum
. . . it’s about
you
. I would have thought . . . in your condition . . .’ Kat stares meaningfully at Freya’s belly then raises her eyes in defiance. Freya can pretend all she likes but Kat won’t stand there and be lied to.

‘What do you mean, “in my condition”?’ Freya stares at Kat in confusion, and then, like sand trickling through a timer, Kat watches as confusion shifts to self-doubt, and doubt shifts once more, her sister’s eyes widening now with a growing and terrifying understanding. Freya’s hands dart to her belly, her mouth opens in a small ‘o’ and suddenly Kat realises something else, something astounding.
Freya didn’t know
. She had no idea that she is pregnant.

Poor, dumb Freya, thinks Kat. She would laugh if it didn’t hurt so much.

13

LILA

January

The Christmas tree is still up. It leans like a tired drunk against the bay window, spilling pine needles all over the cream carpet. The sight of its sad, brown-tinged branches and drooping decorations is immensely depressing and yet Lila still can’t summon the energy to take it down. She knows it’s bad luck to leave it there but the thought of packing away all those baubles, the tinsel, unthreading the ribbons of tangled lights and dragging the tree out into the garden all just feels too much. Even so, as she stands at the mirror over the fireplace applying her make-up, she feels its reproachful gaze out of the corner of her eye. Tomorrow, she thinks, brushing mascara onto her lashes, she’ll take it down tomorrow. Today there are other things to face.

Lila takes a step back and studies her reflection. It’s strange seeing herself in make-up again. She’s still pale from her bout of flu and it doesn’t sit quite right on her skin – too obvious, too artificial. She squints through critical eyes then rubs the blusher and lipstick off with a tissue. No need to make the war paint quite so obvious. She reaches for her pills and swallows two down quickly. Just for luck.

It was her mother’s idea to meet for lunch. She’d pitched it as a
girls’ day out
– a chance for a little mother–daughter bonding before she returned to France, but Lila knows all too well that it’s another clumsy attempt for her to check up on her daughter and after sharing such a gloomy Christmas day with her, she hadn’t felt able to say no.

For once, the public transport system seems to be on her side. A bus driver spots her racing down the pavement and waits at the stop. ‘Thank you,’ she gasps, swiping her card. The man gives her a wink and closes the doors behind her. Lila stumbles to the back of the bus and slides into an empty seat, her lungs burning with the effort of her run. She rests her handbag on her lap – the new one her mother has given her for Christmas – and turns to the window, watching the bustle of the city pass outside.