by Polly Crosby
She chuckled. ‘You’re so easy to scare, Romilly.’
She stood and went over to my dressing table where I kept all my candles. Choosing one at random, she took it to the fire and lit the wick in the flames, then she set the candle down on the hearth.
‘Come here,’ she said.
‘Why?’ A thrill of fear passed through me. I looked at the candle, flickering in the ashes.
‘Just do it.’ Her voice was commanding, and I went over and knelt next to her.
‘Give me your hand.’
‘Stacey, please,’ I said, feeling a familiar swooping sensation in my bladder not borne since childhood.
‘We’re best friends, aren’t we?’ she said. ‘And best friends seal their friendship with something that will last forever. Look, I’ll do it first.’ She placed her hand over the flame.
The thought of the flame touching her skin sickened me, and I lifted my gaze to her face, searching her expression for any sign of pain, but it remained impassive. Seconds ticked by and still she held her hand over the candle.
And then, a smell began to rise from her hand, accompanied by a wisp of twisting smoke. It was the unmistakable stench of burning meat. There were pinpricks of red on Stacey’s cheeks now. She was holding her breath, fighting the pain, her eyes glassy as the smell enveloped the room.
‘Stacey, stop it,’ I whispered, mesmerised, unable to move.
Finally she pulled her hand away, exhaling in a gasp and shaking her hand in the air to quell the pain.
‘Your turn,’ she said, and she reached out her unhurt hand to me.
‘Stacey, I…’
‘I did it,’ she said softly.
And as if I was hypnotised, I held out my hand.
She took it, lovingly caressing the lines of my palm. Then she turned it over, stroking the back where the fine hairs had risen in panic.
Gently, she pulled it over the flame, and trustingly, I let her.
At first it felt warm, like holding a cup of tea, but then the flickering flame found the centre of my hand, and stayed there, pulsing violently upwards, forcing its heat through my skin.
‘Stacey,’ I said.
The pain was hot and sweet, as if it were worming its way through me, bypassing bone and muscle, finding only soft fat and flesh to dissolve. I was vaguely aware of Stacey holding it in place, squeezing my fingers.
‘Stacey, it’s hurting, please.’ I tried to pull my hand away, twisting my body this way and that, but she held on, her own hands shaking now.
The room was flashing, great white-hot bursts obscuring everything but the guttering candle in front of us. I realised that she had let go of my hand. I pulled it towards me, cupping it gently in the crook of my elbow. My palm was red and raw. Already, liquid was pooling in a blister at the centre. Fire was spreading up my arm, pulsing through my body like a heartbeat.
I collapsed onto the floor, my cheek hitting the hearth, a puff of ash erupting around me.
Stacey was kneeling by my side, the vase of roses between us. She held the sharp stems, and trickled the water onto my upturned palm.
In the eaves, deathwatch beetles tapped, and starlings chattered, unaware of the violence unfolding within.
Thirty-Six
The fire flickered on the drawing room walls, and Monty purred on my lap, my bandaged hand catching on his bony spine as I stroked him. Romilly and the Kitten was open on the velvet sofa next to me, and I gazed into the eyes of my namesake, rubbing the cat’s fur between my fingers reflexively like a comfort blanket.
A day had passed since Stacey held my hand over the candle, but still the pain pounded ferociously like a heartbeat along my arm. I stared at the book, concentrating on the paintings, trying to blank it out.
I cupped Monty’s neck in my hand, feeling for the purr in his throat. It vibrated against my finger. I pressed harder. Monty’s head twitched, as if he were trying to shake me off, but he stayed put, trust in his eyes.
The cat’s throat felt delicate beneath my fingers, as if I could push deep into it, breaking the skin apart like paper. I pressed again, the thrill of danger mounting as my finger found the tiny bones and cartilage beneath. His throat made a gagging sound, and he struggled, trying to escape. Horrified with myself, my heart pounding, I let go, then grabbed him and held him close to me, kissing his head and whispering to him, closing my eyes to the images in the book, my fingers far, far away from his silent, bruised neck.
Far away at the other end of the house, there was a knock at the door. I heard Stacey’s feet running down the hall before I saw her. She came to the threshold and stopped.
‘It’s someone official. She has one of those ID cards round her neck.’
‘What do you think she wants?’ I had jumped up as soon as I heard the door. ‘What if she wants to take me into care?’ We were whispering.
‘We can pretend your mum’s just gone out for a walk. Isn’t that who the doctor thinks you’re with?’
I nodded.
‘Go and let her in. I’ll get the kitchen set up.’
But as I turned to walk to the door, her hand shot out, gripping my arm. ‘We don’t need any help,’ she said, ‘we agree on that, don’t we?’
I balked at the blackness of her eyes.
Her grip tightened on my skin. ‘We need to stay together, Romilly, that’s the only way we’ll survive.’
I nodded.
‘Go!’ she wafted her hands at me, and I broke into a run, pausing as I reached the back door to tuck my hair behind my ears and check my face in the mirror for smudges.
The woman knocked again. I could see the top of her head through the frosted glass, trying to stand on tiptoe to look through. I opened the door.
‘Oh hello. You kept me waiting! You must be Romilly.’
I nodded.
‘My name’s Barbara. I’m from social services.’
We stood opposite each other, taking each other in. I held the door half closed. I could feel my heart pounding in my chest.
‘Do you think I could come in? Perhaps have a glass of water?’
‘Of course.’ I fixed a smile on my face and pulled the door open.
‘What an interesting house,’ she said as she pulled the heel of her shoe out of a rotten plank and stepped inside. ‘Is your mother at home?’
‘No. She’s gone out for a walk.’
‘Will she be long?’
‘I don’t know. Probably.’
I steered the woman towards the kitchen. Stacey had laid out two teacups.
‘We were having tea, and she likes to go out after a cuppa,’ I said, nodding at the tea-set on the table. Stacey had managed to print a lipstick mark onto one of the cups. I was impressed. I saw the woman glance at it as I poured her a glass of water.
‘Shall we go and sit in the drawing room? That’s where my mum always takes the guests.’
We trooped along the hallway. I couldn’t see Stacey. I thought I could hear quiet sniggering coming from upstairs: she was probably hiding on the landing, listening hard.
A fresh log had been added to the fire and a vase of pink roses had appeared on the coffee table. They smelt cloyingly sweet as we entered the room, mingling with the woodsmoke, a sour edge to them as if they were just beginning to turn. A pale petal had got stuck to the curve of the glass. Sunlight shone through it, shooting a lick of pink across the table towards me.
The social worker sat down on the sofa and I put her glass on the table and sat opposite her on an old wooden chair that Stacey must have put there for that purpose. It was so hard I could feel a pulse flick nervously across my buttocks and up my spine.
‘I’m just here to check everything’s OK with your mum and you after your father went into the care home. It must have been hard for you both.’ She leant forward and took a sip of the water, leaving a lipstick mark on the glass.
‘Your lipstick’s similar to my mum’s,’ I said.
‘Oh! Yes. It’s a nice colour. This one’s a bit cheap tho
ugh, you have to keep reapplying it, it comes off on everything.’ She laughed, a tinkling giggle that sounded a little nervous. ‘Does your mum find the same?’
I nodded, adding, ‘I don’t know when she’ll be back. She loves going for walks, especially in autumn. It’s the leaves, she loves the colours of the leaves. She could be gone for hours.’ I closed my mouth.
‘That’s fine. It means we can have a good natter.’ She smiled. There was lipstick on her teeth. I licked my own teeth automatically.
‘Is there anything you’d like to begin with?’ she said, pulling out a clipboard.
She looked so normal and nice. The burn on my hand pulsed painfully, and I thought of all the things I could tell her: I thought about the candle flame eating into my skin, the possessive gleam in Stacey’s eyes. I thought about how cold and hungry I always was. Last night I had looked at myself in the mirror when I got undressed. My ribs were so close to the surface now that I could dig my fingers underneath them. If I pressed hard enough, I wondered, would they snap, one by one, sending me falling to the floor like a puppet with its strings cut?
Just one word from me, and everything could change. Hot meals. Warm baths, kind people. Someone to hold me as I cried. Fresh sheets on a fresh bed. Care and warmth and the satisfaction of feeling full.
The social worker stayed silent. She was practised at this. I opened my mouth and looked up.
Stacey was standing in the hall by the door, out of sight of the social worker. She was staring at me, no trace of a smile on her face.
The fire crackled behind me, giving out little warmth.
‘How did you hurt your hand?’ the social worker said suddenly.
I glanced down at the bandage. ‘I burnt myself on the oven.’
‘Sometimes we do things to help relieve the pain we feel inside. Sometimes by feeling pain on the outside, we forget about the pain inside. Do you think it was that kind of burn?’
‘I burnt myself on the oven.’
‘OK.’
I stared at the flowers. The edges of the petals were crisp as if they were beginning to die before my eyes.
‘It must have been hard, seeing your father go into a home. And it must be strange, just you and your mum on your own now. How are you coping with the treasure seekers? I’ve heard a lot about them. Do they still come?’
‘They don’t bother us much,’ I said. ‘Not since they realised there isn’t any treasure. They hung around for a bit before Dad went into care and the story was leaked about the attack, but they left as soon as they realised they weren’t going to get anything new.’
‘It must be hard, having to deal with that on top of everything else.’
I shrugged, picking at the edge of the table. I thought of the reeds that Dad had dropped on our last walk, leaving a trail behind us, and I wanted all of a sudden to retrace that trail, follow it back to before the books began, before everything started to go wrong.
The pink reflection of the petal had moved. It was stretching towards me on the table. I leant forward and placed my finger at its tip, noticing how long my fingernails were now. I had a feeling the social worker was watching me, examining me, trying to penetrate inside my skull with her stare.
‘You’re doing a grand job, Romilly,’ she said at last.
‘Am I?’
‘What I see before me is a young woman who has suffered terrible losses in her life, and has had to live them out in the public eye. But on the whole you look like you’re coping admirably.’ She smiled at me. ‘I will need to speak with your mother. Can you get her to give me a call, and we can arrange another time to meet?’ She ripped a piece of paper from her clipboard and handed it to me.
At the door she turned to me, giving me the same searching look.
‘Try to eat a bit more,’ she said. ‘I’m a great fan of your books. But you look a lot skinnier in real life.’
When she had gone, I shut the door firmly and waited for Stacey to appear. As soon as we heard her car start up and drive away, she dissolved into giggles.
I smiled. ‘That was scary,’ I said, clutching my chest.
‘You’re a good actress, you could make a career out of it.’
‘The lipstick was genius. Where did you get it?’
‘In the bathroom cabinet. Maybe it really did belong to your mum.’
‘And the flowers were good too.’
‘Weren’t they? I took them from your bedroom, I hope you don’t mind. They’re at that perfect point between life and death, just as if your dear darling mother had bought them for you to cheer you up a few days ago.’
I stopped laughing abruptly, thinking of the roses I had given my mum when she came to stay all that time ago; the way she had dumped them unceremoniously on the compost heap.
‘And then there were two!’ Stacey was singing, looking in the mirror and applying lipstick with inexpert precision. ‘Hello, dear Romilly, I’m your long-lost mummy. Give us a kiss!’ She planted her lips on my cheek, smearing the make-up over my skin.
‘Get off.’ I pushed her away and walked down the hallway.
‘Where are you going?’
But I didn’t answer. Rubbing at the lipstick on my cheek, I pulled the back door open, and slammed it behind me, wanting to be anywhere that Stacey was not.
I walked on my own far from home, over the steps, across the bridge and onto the marsh. Pulling the bandage off my hand, I let the chill autumn air get to the wound, examining the blister as I went. It was yellow and bulbous, like a strange, round pebble. It seemed separate to my hand, as if I had placed it in my palm and could drop it any time I wanted. I prodded it gently and winced.
I thought of the social worker, and what she might be doing now. Probably writing up a report on how well the famous Romilly Kemp had turned out despite such trying circumstances.
I looked up. A skylark had risen nearby, and was singing high above me, a tiny dot in the blue. Far across the water meadows, a white van pulled up haphazardly, and two people got out. I stopped walking, feeling vulnerable on the flat stretch of land, the tiny bird hovering above me like a sentry. One of the people was scanning the marshland through a pair of binoculars. As I looked, she lifted her hand and pointed at me. At the same time, the other person raised something long and black, lifting it to his shoulder.
It was a rifle.
I dropped to the ground, my heart racing, a clump of sedge jabbing me in the face. The skylark continued to sing, oblivious.
Who were they? I lay as still as possible, hidden in the tall grass, my nose inches from the ground. I could hear their voices now, far off, drifting towards me across the grassland.
And then I sensed it rather than saw it, behind me, dark and looming, padding across the marshy grass.
The panther.
I turned my head a fraction. He was huge, his lithe body well-muscled from living in the wild for so long. Close up, his coat was threadbare like worn velvet, white hairs sprouting here and there, pocking its surface.
He was ambling through the marsh, dipping his huge head to sniff calmly at the ground.
He hadn’t seen me.
One of his ears was torn, flapping gently as he walked. I stayed as still as I could, holding my breath. I could see the luminous blue-grey of his eyes now. He blinked sleepily. And then his head shot up, his ears swivelling, looking in the direction of the two people across the marsh.
A shot rang out, the crack of sound reverberating across the field. The panther lurched sideways, his ears flat to his head. And then he sprang up and suddenly he was rushing blindly at me, running at full pelt, his jaws gaping as he roared in pain. Desperately, I tried to scramble out of the way, but my limbs were frozen as if time had slowed. Bunching his muscles together, he leaped, soaring over my head. For a moment his black belly stretched above me, so close I could have reached up and touched it, and then he was gone.
I collapsed back into the sedge, gathering myself, trying to quieten my breathing, and then I peered ov
er the grass.
The panther had not got far. He was a little way away, weaving drunkenly in a way that reminded me of my beloved three-legged Monty. I could see something sticking out of his thigh, and I understood: he had been tranquilised.
I stood up and crept forward. The people were in the distance, crossing the field too. When they saw me, they stopped and shouted, waving their arms at me, but I strode on.
The panther had stopped walking now. He was panting, his head and tail low to the ground. I crept forward slowly. As I reached him, his back legs gave way, and he sank down, collapsing onto the ground, a plaintive roar echoing from deep inside his chest. He looked so out of place, lying in the middle of an English water meadow, and I swallowed back a gulp of surprised laughter.
I crouched by his head and tentatively reached out a hand, my breath catching in my throat as my fingers came into contact with his fur. I stroked him gingerly, aware of the huge teeth below the peeled back lips. I could feel the hardness of his broad skull beneath the fur. His skin felt so fragile, so old.
‘It’s OK,’ I whispered, my voice catching in my throat, ‘it’s OK.’
He was so still, so watchful. His eye stared up at me. Close up it was a clear, liquid blue, full of a familiar intelligence, as if I had known him forever.
But, of course, I had known him, I thought. Hadn’t he been there in some form, whenever I was in need? Hadn’t he kept me company in my darkest moments, while I waited for help to come?
The people came skidding to a stop, breathless from running.
‘What on earth are you doing?’ the man said, laying the tranquiliser gun down and quickly securing the panther’s legs together.
‘You… you can see him?’
‘Of course we can see him, he’s a bloody huge panther.’ The man looked at me strangely as he tied the cat’s paws jerkily, pulling at them roughly to check they were secure.
‘Be careful with him,’ I said, ‘he’s so old.’
The panther’s eyes were unseeing now, his mouth slack as if he were mid roar. He looked so sad. I cradled his soft, grand head, dropping a kiss on his torn ear.
‘It’s OK,’ the woman said, crouching next to me. ‘He’ll be all right. We know what we’re doing, I promise.’ She gently prised my hands from him, and the man pulled a muzzle over his head, pulling it tight so that the straps bit into his skin. It was the final insult: he looked so dejected, trussed up and still.