by Polly Crosby
How long can a person survive without water? I remembered the bottle of vinegar I had drunk from, all those years ago. When you’re desperate, everything looks like water. I imagined Stacey, tentatively unscrewing the cap, holding her nose and closing her eyes. I shivered.
I got up and turned the key to the kitchen door. I put my hand on the round brass handle, comforted by its familiar dents and scratches. With a deep breath, I pushed the door open.
Sunlight bathed the kitchen. Next to the sink, a china cup half filled with tea stood as if someone had recently left it. The room was quiet and peaceful, and for a moment it felt like nothing terrible could possibly have happened. The pantry door stood, firmly closed, across the room.
The walk across the kitchen was slow and syrupy, as if in a dream. I reached up to the bolt and slid it across. The sound it made as it ricocheted back was deafening, and I waited, half hoping to hear her stir behind the door, but there was only silence.
Slowly, I lifted the latch and pulled. The door creaked open.
Stacey wasn’t inside.
The glass jam jars and bottles were neatly lined up in rows on the shelves, the floor clear of broken glass. I stepped inside and lifted the bottle of vinegar, its top neatly screwed on. My face in the glass stared back at me, eyes dark and deep like Stacey’s, reflecting back my own emerging realisation.
She had never been there at all.
I sank down onto a chair, staring into the dark corners of the pantry, as if she could be hiding in there still, small and quiet as a mouse. The kitchen felt darker now, and all around me I could see encroaching shadows, as if the clouds had obscured the sun.
I kept the pantry door closed, glancing at it every time I went into the kitchen. Upstairs, I found my carved box on the floor where I had thrown it. I went to pick it up, noticing a new door had opened in its base. What remained of the salt cellar from Romilly and the Picnic nestled in glass shards on the floor next to the box.
I missed Stacey desperately. I began to unpick all of my memories, the good and the bad. I thought of the donkey and the snails and the dying dove. Was this violence, this obsession with death not really Stacey’s at all, but my own?
Over the next few days, I slowly ran out of food and stopped eating altogether, taking little sips of cold water straight from the tap to fortify me instead. I plaited my long hair and stroked the concave hull of my belly, feeling hollow within, like those thousand-year-old bog bodies you see preserved with only a handful of grains in their stomach. I relished the feeling of power that starvation had on me, surging through my body, an energy more visceral than anything food could provide.
Being truly alone had a calming effect on me, a feeling of control. I had always been alone, really, this was just one step further. I spent my evenings stroking Monty, sitting close to the fire, trying to understand what had happened. I thought of all the times Dad had talked to Stacey, all the times he had set her a place at the table, referred to us as ‘the girls’. Had he been humouring me, playing along? Or was it his dementia, simply forgetting that he no longer had two daughters?
Questions flew through my mind, back and forth, back and forth, but I had no answers because the only place I would find them was with Stacey, and Stacey was gone. I had made her disappear, I knew that now, and with a craving in my gut, I knew that I must go after her, to conjure her to me one last time.
I unplaited my hair, lank and greasy, and brushed it out, ignoring the snow-like scurf that fell around me. Pouring a basinful of water, I stripped and splashed it over my body, taking vicious pleasure from the sting of the ablutions to my skin. I secured Dad’s forget-me-not necklace around my neck and re-plaited my hair.
Pulling on a thin nightdress, I belted an old coat over the top. There was no need to wear warmer clothes; I hadn’t felt the cold in days. Monty wove round my ankles, and I crouched down and dropped a kiss onto his soft head. He was looking skinny too. The kitchen floor was littered with the last tins of tuna, opened and licked clean.
‘Go catch a mouse,’ I said, pushing him away and straightening up.
The back door was frozen shut. It took all my energy and a kettleful of boiling water to ease it open.
As I walked out into the silence, the cold took my breath away, and for a moment the brightness bloomed so white it had a song of its own. I wavered on the doorstep, swaying to its celestial ringing, then with a huge effort, I picked up my foot and took a step forward.
Thirty-Nine
The world had changed since last I stepped outside. I couldn’t get my bearings, and I stood at the front of Braër House, lost. But then a distant line of poplars came into focus, like a tiny pencil sketch on a piece of pristine white paper, and I started forward.
I had made this pilgrimage before, but never at this time of year. The going was slow, the snow so deep that at times my wellies sank into drifts, filling with flowers of snow that wilted against my skin.
A thin, leafless sapling was growing out of the snow ahead. I focused on it as I trudged across the ground. A shimmer of snowflakes flew from its branches, forming something like a swan’s wing in the air before disappearing.
Feathers appear when angels are near.
Did Stacey have wings? I wondered. Was she a terrible angel, sent to watch over me?
Or perhaps everyone had got it wrong, and I was the imaginary one – not the little nine-year-old version of me, trapped in Dad’s colourful treasure hunt, but the Romilly Kemp of now, imprisoned in the pages of a black-and-white story, the words crisp and cold as winter.
‘It’s not all about you, you know.’ Her voice was so close that I jumped. I turned, expecting to see her next to me, but she wasn’t there.
‘I know it’s not,’ I said, feeling lightheaded. Her voice had an echoing quality to it. She sounded, for the first time, unreal. I began to walk again.
I could make out the familiar circle of trees in the distance now. I remembered the time I had walked there without Stacey. She had been there, waiting for me, haunting me. As I reached the poplars, I pushed through carefully, unsure what I would see on the other side.
The lake was invisible under a covering of snow. No footprints scarred the little glade, and for a moment it was as if I was looking at a different circle, a different glade: one with an ancient fountain and a small metal fawn bending to drink at the edge of a giant leaf. I shook my head, trying to banish the image, my memories merging, my thoughts confused.
‘Stacey, where are you?’ I called. A cluster of crows took off from the tops of the trees, and she was there, standing at the centre of the lake.
‘I knew you’d come,’ she said, and she opened her arms to me. Desperate to reach her, I ran forwards. The ice crackled beneath the snow.
As I reached her; as she pulled me into a hug, for a moment I glimpsed her face, and it was like looking into a mirror.
‘You’re so cold,’ she said, ‘and so thin. When did you get so thin?’
‘I’m all right,’ I said between chattering teeth. She rubbed my arms, trying to force some warmth into them.
And then the ice began to groan.
I pulled away from her, unsteady on my feet.
‘We need to get off here,’ she said, panic in her voice, ‘it’s not safe.’ She took my hand and pulled.
‘No,’ I said, the decision making itself as the word left my mouth. I planted my feet deep in the snow.
‘What do you mean? Come on, Romilly! It’s cracking!’
I looked around at the little glade, everything soaked in snow. It was beautiful. ‘I’m staying here,’ I said, my legs suddenly unable to hold me, and I dropped down onto my knees, the snow burning my skin.
‘Romilly,’ Stacey pleaded, ‘remember our first summer here? We swam in the water, with the bees buzzing in our ears and potion on our wrists. This is our glade, our lake. There’ll be more summers just like that. Please.’ She was pulling at my arm, begging me to get up.
‘No there won’t,’ I
said, ‘you’re not real, Stacey. You never were.’
The groan of ice beneath us was loud now. I could see terror in her eyes, but, it doesn’t matter, I told myself, I’m home now.
‘Lie down,’ she shouted urgently above the whip-roar in my ears, ‘it won’t break if you lie across it. Here.’
Slowly, carefully, she pulled me down until I was lying on the snow, the ice juddering beneath us. The floor shifted, then stilled. Far below us came a moaning, as if the ice was impatient to move.
‘We just need time,’ she said, as if to reassure herself, ‘it just needs to settle, that’s all.’ She was sitting next to me, her knees drawn up to her chest. She reminded me of the tomboy I had met when I was eight years old.
‘I’m so cold,’ I said, though the words came out in shuddering gasps. Stacey rubbed at my shoulder, and I realised I couldn’t feel her touch.
Time and silence drifted together like snow.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she said at last, ‘I didn’t mean for this to happen.’ All around us, the poplars seemed to be leaning in, listening to her confession.
‘Will it hurt?’ My breath was coming in little gasps now. My body kept making involuntary movements.
‘It’s just like falling asleep,’ she said, stroking my cheek. Little puffs of snow-haze were billowing from her into the air as she spoke, so that I wasn’t sure if she was there at all, not really.
‘Will you stay with me?’ I said. ‘To the end?’
She nodded, tucking my hair behind my ear, stroking my cheek with gloveless hands.
And the ice began to sing.
It was a haunting sound, an electrified murmur, its song reaching inside me, winding its way round my bones. As my eyes became drowsy, Stacey’s face began to shift in front of me, becoming younger: there were smudges of dirt across her cheeks, pale brown marks that could be freckles. Her hair was short and messy. I drank her in longingly; her upturned nose, her unusual eyes.
‘Were you ever real?’ I asked, but I wasn’t sure if I said it out loud.
Her face changed again, blending with my own until we had merged into one person. Before my eyes she began to evolve, to grow up, as if I were seeing each day of our life, flitting from the child I had known to the adult we would never become.
‘I thought perhaps you were an angel,’ I whispered. ‘What will happen to you, if I go?’
The figure that had been Stacey shrugged, the gesture so reminiscent of the girl I knew that I laughed. Her face was indistinct now. Part ice and part air, but there was still something of the girl I had loved in the form of snowflakes before me.
‘I’ll miss you,’ I said, the words pale and insubstantial. I was squinting against the sun now, hardly able to make her out in its brightness.
She reached out a fog-soft hand to me, and I lifted mine, needing to feel her touch one last time. But as our hands clung to one another, and desperately I tried to hold onto the tiny crystals of ice, she vanished.
I dropped my head, tears melting into the snow, and I realised I could no longer feel my body. I was becoming part of the lake, part of Stacey, and I cried openly now, knowing what it meant. I closed my eyes and waited.
‘Romilly.’
I was sitting by the fire in the snug, a Christmas tree strung with tinsel nearby. Monty was chasing a bauble, and Dad was standing at the mantelpiece, hanging up stockings.
‘Romilly,’ he said. His beard was bushy and almost black. He had streaks of green and gold paint across his cheek, and he was peeling a tangerine and dropping the rind into the fire. The smell of citrus and woodsmoke and pine was all-consuming.
‘Romilly, this is not how it ends,’ he said, straightening up and looking me in the eyes. His voice was buoyant, amused even, as if he knew I was only jesting with him.
He took down a bulging stocking and handed it to me. ‘For you,’ he said.
I took it and peeped inside. There were five objects in there, one on top of the other. I recognised them as I pulled them out one by one: the bell was small and bright and attached to a brand-new collar. The salt cellar was no longer a pile of glass, but whole and filled to the brim with salt. As I pulled the feather out, its soft strands rustled, thick and luscious, the deepest of candyfloss pinks.
‘Keep going,’ Dad said, humming in excitement.
The forget-me-not necklace came next, the colour that had leached out of it restored. Lastly, I pulled the bauble from the stocking’s toe, smooth and shining, reflecting my sister’s treasured face back at me.
‘Look at them all, Romilly,’ he said with satisfaction. ‘Each one was given to you by someone who cares deeply for you. Think of the love that comes with such gifts.’
I cradled the treasures, and finally I understood.
‘You are loved, daughter-mine,’ Dad said, ‘both you and Feena are loved. All of these people hold memories of you and your sister. They have been a part of this treasure hunt, because, in some ways, they are the treasure. They are the link to your life ahead, and the link back to your sister. Let them in, Romilly, and you will never truly be alone.’
I thought about what he was saying, my fingers touching the objects one by one, naming the people they stood for, and I knew he was right: I would never forget my twin because she had always been a part of me, and so a part of every person that I had ever loved.
‘It’s time to go, Romilly,’ Dad said, popping a piece of tangerine into his mouth and chewing thoughtfully, the juice frothing at his beard, ‘you can’t stay here forever.’
‘But I like it here,’ I said, stretching in the warmth.
‘Get up, Romilly. Get up. There is still treasure to be found, and this is not where it is hidden.’
Nearby, Monty mewed, but the mew sounded strange, like the cawing of a rook…
‘Romilly…’
I awoke, unsure how long I had been lying there. I was shivering violently. The snow clouds had broken and I could feel the sun warming my back. I tried to remember what had woken me.
‘Romilly,’ someone whispered in my ear.
‘Dad?’ I said drowsily. I tried to open my eyes, but my eyelashes were knitted shut. I lifted my head, and my cheek parted painfully with the ice.
I squeezed my eyelids together and pulled them open, looking around. I was alone in the glade.
I pulled myself up slowly, my coat crackling with frost, my body numb from the cold. Without Stacey I was lighter somehow, and I crawled across the lake’s surface, the ice so silent I wasn’t sure if it had ever really cracked.
I pushed through the tangle of trees, marvelling at the whiteness all around, and began the tentative journey home.
Forty
As soon as I stepped across the threshold, I felt a peace within Braër that I couldn’t name. It was a comforting peace, and it spoke to me in hushed tones as I climbed, exhausted, into my bed, my mind wandering before sleep. It was a nourishing peace: when I woke, it directed me to the pantry, a place that no longer looked dark and dangerous, and showed me countless jars of homemade jam. It gave me the strength to wrest off the lids and scoop handfuls of sweetness into my starving mouth.
When I was sated, Braër’s peace gently nudged me, touching my hand to my forget-me-not locket, and bringing to mind my dad, reminding me that my journey was not yet done.
My father was sleeping quietly, slumped in the chair of his tiny nursing-home room. His bony head rested against one plastic wing, two clear prongs fitted neatly into his nostrils. A pretty walnut bureau that I remembered from home stood next to him, supporting an oxygen canister. There were no pictures or photos.
I stood in the doorway, rubbing at the numb tingle in my burnt hand, knowing it meant it was healing. I watched my father as he slept, a ray of sunlight shrouding him like a thin blanket. His eyelids flickered and a pulse twitched in his cheek. His hair was thinner than last time I saw him, with more scalp shining through, and his eyebrows had lost their bushiness. His slightness, his paleness seemed to glimmer in the r
oom, and the longer I stood there, the more it felt as if he belonged to another world, as if he were crossing some unseen border, turning from solid flesh and blood and beating heart to something I couldn’t touch.
With a small snort he woke up, going so quickly from asleep to awake that before I knew it he was blinking at me, alert and interested. I smiled.
‘Hi, Dad,’ I said, sinking down to crouch by his chair. He smiled back, his thin mouth stretching into an echo of the grin I used to know.
‘I wanted to tell you…’ I tried to form the right words, but I didn’t know where to start. What did I want to tell him? That I had been on a treasure hunt of my own? That Stacey had only been gone for a few days but already I struggled to recall her face?
‘I wanted to tell you… that everything’s all right,’ I finished, taking his hand in mine. He jumped at the touch, then bent his large head to look at me. Lifting his free hand, he touched it to my face, sweeping back my fringe and placing his cool palm on my forehead, just like he used to.
‘I’ll keep visiting you, I promise, as often as I can. And I’m going to visit Mum soon too: on my birthday – because of course it’s Feena’s birthday too – I think she’d like that.’ Dad didn’t seem to understand my words, but he smiled, and that was enough.
We sat in the shaft of sunlight, Dad drifting in and out of sleep, our hands entwined as his head gently lolled, meaningless murmurs drifting from his lips.
My rucksack slithered off my shoulder, spilling the Romilly books all over the floor, and Dad awoke with a start. I bent down to gather them up, but my father’s hands were already there, long-fingered and yellow. He was clasping at them, drawing them slowly towards him. The movement reminded me of something; a gorilla I had once seen at the zoo. Dad was reaching out shyly, his hand flashing out daringly, fleetingly, only to withdraw to his side as soon as he saw me looking.
‘It’s all right, Dad,’ I said, placing the books on his lap and opening up Romilly and the Circus. He pulled the book towards him, stroking the glossy paper. The hairs on his hands were white now.