The Summer of Secrets (27 page)

The worst was the not remembering. All her mother would say was that she’d be better off forgetting about it. It was bad enough knowing she’d been sick in the car, and she couldn’t bring herself to press for more. So she kept it inside, the knowledge that she was crazy, or that she was going to die. One or the other seemed a certainty. The pain had made every day seem the same, the aureole of light on the edges of her vision and the rocking instability forcing her to lie still, but not letting her sleep. Was it four days? Five?

One thing she couldn’t believe was that the Dovers had gone. Was her mother making it up? She said the house had been damaged by the fire, but the bonfire hadn’t been that big. She closed her eyes and tried to remember something, anything, of what had happened after she’d seen Seth and Moira. The vision played out in her head endlessly, sometimes as though she stood there hidden, and sometimes with Moira laughing up at her face. Anything later, however hard she tried to summon it up, slid away. Sometimes she was sure she’d seen the bonfire dying away, but then the certainty would dissolve and she’d be back at the start. Hidden away in a corner of her mind was the feeling she’d done something. Why else would Victoria leave without saying anything? She’d mentioned leaving at the end of the summer more than once, but they were going to stay in touch, visit each other.

She went through to the kitchen and lifted the telephone receiver, listening to the dial tone making its indifferent sound. Her finger went to the first digit of her dad’s number before she put the receiver down. She hadn’t seen him since the fire, either. Sometimes her mother made excuses about him being busy, and sometimes she let slip a comment that showed she was angry with him, but would never explain why. She hadn’t exactly said that Helen couldn’t talk to him, but she hadn’t suggested it either. Helen picked the receiver up again but stopped with it halfway. Was it that he didn’t want to talk to her? Slowly, she carried it on up until it rested against her ear. It was worse not knowing.

There was no answer.

Propped against the row of new and shiny cookbooks was the envelope with her exam results. She had refused to open it, had left the room when her mother read the list aloud. Now it sat there, containing within its square brown corners everything that was wrong: the flat, the town. The dreary and endless clouds, the grey line of sand that went on and on towards a sea that knew better than to come any closer. Grabbing it, she tore at the edges, ripping again and again. Her breath came in sobs and the envelope wasn’t enough. She wanted – no
needed
– more. But the kitchen offered nothing. The edges of the worktops were too smooth, the drawers too efficient. She sank to the floor, her fingers writhing into her hair, catching, pulling, dragging her forehead down against her knees and making it bang into them over and over.

Afterwards, nothing had changed. The apples sat in the bowl on the table, the clock on the cooker made its click as the numbers turned over.

But Helen knew what she could do.

She searched for coins in pockets, drawers, and the jar on the kitchen shelf. There was enough for the bus. She couldn’t find a key, but it didn’t matter. She wasn’t coming back. The door slammed behind her, and she picked up speed as she went down the stairs and out into the road.

The rain was plastering her hair against her cheeks and her neck. She didn’t care. It didn’t seem to be enough, in fact. The cottage was nothing but an empty shell, a black and broken tooth at the end of the row. The roof was gone, the rafters crossing the gap, but themselves eaten away, ready to crumble. And the smell: it had been there even as she got off the bus, a trail of scent that hadn’t seemed real. Coming down the lane, it became stronger, building into a heavy and acrid weight that settled in her throat and scoured the lining of her nose.

The furniture was piled out in the rain: armchairs, a broken-fronted cupboard from the living room, all of them blackened and wet. She picked up a couple of books, scorched from the fire and pulped by the rain. One had half a cover remaining:
War and
… Through the rain and the mud and the smell of the ash, she recalled the sound of the flames and realised she was standing in the blackened circle where the bonfire had been. It was so small, so contained. Something was sticking out of the ground and she crouched down to pick it up. A spout of white china, the inside edges stained with brown, and half of a pink flower visible on the broken end. She could picture the teapot, standing on the top shelf of the sideboard in the kitchen. Her fingers curled around it, and she felt the sharp edge digging into the heel of her hand. This was why they’d had to go, she could understand now. A ball of anger squeezed at her stomach, displacing the suppressed sense of unease. How could her mother not have told her? And obviously Victoria hadn’t been in contact; she’d have so much to do with settling in to a new place. There would be so much to replace as well. She heard Victoria’s voice:
You should learn to travel light, Helen. Who knows when you’ll need to get somewhere fast?
It was only a matter of time. She’d hear from her.

The doors were boarded up, but one side was loose. Helen squeezed through, hearing nothing but the flapping of the plastic, which covered the holes where the windows had been.

There was nothing left of the kitchen. The sink was hanging from the wall and a trellis of lath was visible where the plaster had fallen off. She stepped across to the living room door. There was a pattern of smoke on the walls, but the devastation was less than in the kitchen, although everything was sodden, mould already spreading up the walls. On the wall behind the couch, a pale rectangle marked the position of the painting of Alice. Helen stood and stared at the space, imagining the paint blistering, Alice’s beautiful skin bubbling away from the canvas, running over the frame and sliding away down the wall, and she turned to run, clawing at the plastic sheeting.

How had it happened? Again, she felt certain she’d watched the bonfire dying away. None of it made any sense. The trembling started to rock at the pit of her stomach. If she imagined it hard enough, Victoria would stick her head out of an upstairs window, asking her where she’d been. Pippa would come running around the corner of the house, full of a scheme to turn the garden into a swimming pool or something. She tried harder. Was it only a week ago they’d all been sitting around the bonfire, with music pouring out and Seth’s hand on her arm?

The trembling carried on up the left side of her body and spread over her chest until she couldn’t breathe. She was going to die here, with the cold, dead smell of spent ash swamping her senses. It was everywhere, layered on the walls and the grass, swallowing up the smell of the canal, mocking the pathetic ring of blackened grass where they had sat and watched the docile flames of the party. Why couldn’t she remember? Everything was turning grey. And she was crying, but she didn’t know who for, and the shadow of it all blew up like a mushroom cloud and was going to bury her. With an effort, she forced her feet to lift and fall, and soon she was staggering down the side of the house and back to the canal.

The boat was there, tied to its mooring pins and shifting very gently under the onslaught of the rain. Had it been there when she arrived? She couldn’t remember seeing it, and now it seemed too normal. She peered in through the window, holding her breath for something, she didn’t know what, but there was no one there. A couple of mugs stood on the upturned box, a crate of empty beer bottles sat against the edge. Everyone had gone. She stepped back, keeping one hand against the side of the cabin.

‘Won’t find nobody there, my dear.’

The voice came from behind, making her jump. The boat rocked and she almost lost her balance on the edge of the bank. It was Mrs Tyler, under an umbrella, her head bobbing.

‘Where have they—’ Helen wiped her face with her sleeve, and tried to take a deeper breath. ‘Do you know where they are?’

But Mrs Tyler was already turning away. ‘No good asking me. What do I know?’

She came to a halt and turned again, pointing at Helen with a gnarled, unsteady finger. ‘It was a bad night’s work, a bad night. And now they say I’ve to go as well, not safe, some such rubbish.’ She went back to her shuffle, heading towards her cottage. ‘Fifty years I’ve been here, and they say I have to get out. Terrible business.’ She stopped again, shaking her head but not seeming to know that Helen was there any more. ‘Poor little maid.’

She was being left behind by the last person on the earth. The bus had dropped her by the bridge, but she didn’t need to go back there. She was never going back. Now that she’d seen the cottage, she was going to find her dad. Surely, whatever she had done, he would want to see her. But nobody answered her knocking. There were no lights on in the house, and the curtains were open, everything was quiet. The car was in the drive, though. Was he was in the garage? She would open the door and he would be there, and everything would be all right. Sort of all right.

But the garage door was locked. She banged for a bit before giving up. There was nothing she could do. She slid down the door until she hit the ground. Her legs hurt and she was lost and she didn’t have any money for a bus. She didn’t even have any tears. She had come to the end.

Somehow it was dark. Headlights appeared. For a moment, she thought it was her dad coming back. When the car stopped, though, it was her mother who stepped out, pulling her up, wrapping her in the blanket from the back seat, rocking her backwards and forwards.

Nothing was said the following morning, or the morning after. But it was only a matter of time.

‘You have to understand, I’m only doing what’s best for you.’

Helen wriggled up the bed to the furthest corner. She refused to meet her mother’s gaze.

‘But I want to go back to Dad’s.’ Nervous tension was making her shake; she pushed her spine up against the headboard to steady herself. ‘I don’t know why you keep saying I have to stay here, but it doesn’t matter, I’m going back.’

The silence in the room continued for longer than felt right. She was shaking again, staring out of the window so she wouldn’t have to see her mother’s face.

‘I don’t need to unpack those boxes, because I’m taking everything back.’

She stole a glance sideways. Her mother had her hands folded on her lap. She didn’t seem to be listening to her statements of intent.

‘I hate it here, I want to go home.’ Her voice went up like a child. She hated herself for sounding so pathetic.

Her mother’s voice, when it came, was matter-of-fact, with a hint of sadness.

‘I can understand how you feel, but your father and I have talked about it, and, for the time being, I’m afraid you’ll have to get used to being here.’

‘No.’ Helen rubbed her sleeve quickly across her eyes; she was not going to cry. Her fingernails dug themselves deep into her forearm, and she felt the sting of tears subside. ‘I’m not going to.’

‘Helen, you’re going to have to be grown up about this.’ Helen pulled her legs away so that her mother couldn’t pat them. ‘Your father is not coping well at the moment. If you were there, he would find things too difficult.’

‘Why? What’s the matter?’ She hated it when her mother used that voice. ‘Are you stopping him from coming here? Why isn’t he telling me this?’

‘Of course I’m not. And he will come and see you when he’s feeling better, then he can explain properly.’

They both waited for more, but in the end her mother got up and left the room, and Helen lay there and stared at the wall. The deep emptiness of everything expanded around her until she was nothing but a grain of sand hidden in the corner of a cavern so vast that the sound of her voice would go unnoticed for the whole of eternity. The balloon inside her chest was growing until her lungs could no longer draw breath, and her skin was pulsing with the effort of holding herself together. She pinched at her forearm with her thumb and forefinger, digging in hard with her nails. She wanted to pierce the skin, because once it was breached she could peel herself out, leaving her old self lying on the bed like an empty carapace.

But it wasn’t enough. With painstaking slowness, she pushed herself over and reached under the bed for the wooden box with the hinged lid. The shard of broken china felt cool against her skin, and she let her eyes drop their focus. The soft surface of her arm pillowed against the sharp, delicate edge; she could almost hear the exquisite moment when it gave in to the pressure. With the blood came a clear line of pain that sucked at the morass that was her being. She felt herself grow distant, watching from far away as the space inside pulled at the darkness until it had all of the hurt contained.

The following morning, she woke to find the boxes unpacked. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. Under the concealing length of her sleeve, she felt for the throbbing surface of the cut.

Helen used what felt like her last bit of energy to stand out against going to the sixth form of her old school and, towards the end of September, began her A levels at the town’s technical college. Each day she turned up and went through the motions, her main aim to stay anonymous. She had given up on hearing from Victoria and, most of the time at least, managed not to think about the fire. It wasn’t that it had gone away, more that she was in some sort of soundproofed space where not much was allowed in. The college was all right. She did enough work to stave off attention, and soon got a reputation for surliness that kept the other students at arm’s length. At least no one she knew from her old life went there. Much of the time, she didn’t feel that she existed at all.

The year was drawing close to Halloween, with the dark coming early and damp piles of leaves underfoot. Sometimes, she caught the smell of smoke in the air, perhaps from a chimney or the occasional bonfire, and the reminder made her heart race and her palms sweat. One day, as she was leaving college, she saw her dad waiting at the gates. She slowed to a halt, letting a chattering crowd surge past. Beyond his head she could see the lights of the nursery school across the road. Its windows were covered in paper pumpkins, their wobbly cut-out teeth grinning in anticipation. She counted them all, first one way and then the other, before she went forward to meet him.