Kira groans. ‘Seriously?’ She lets her head droop. ‘Has today not been enough?’
Apparently not. The footprints are all she has to go on, and it’s a close-to-vertical trudge. Gulping frozen air, she grips her knees and resigns herself. This is the last time she acts on impulse. At least at home, the worst thing she’ll hit is the beach.
At the final snowdrift, the door opens. Light spills around a silhouette, so similar to her father’s. If this ends in shouting, too, she’ll sleep for a year. She’ll—
‘Are you the English girl?’ a woman asks. Straight up, no preamble, as if she already knows the answer. She plants her shadow on the threshold like an uptight butler.
Heaving up to level ground, Kira bends over, exhausted. ‘Yes.’ She gasps. Hand on her chest, thudding up a storm. She really should exercise. ‘I came to see Callum. I was told he lived—’
Stepping back into the house, the woman slams the door.
‘Here.’ Kira straightens up. ‘What?’
Too late. The house is closed. The woman has gone. ‘Rude,’ Kira mutters. Hovering just in case, she frowns at the silent, motionless door. Nothing. No explanation; no apology. Just a wooden rectangle hung with a wreath.
After thirty seconds, she gives it the finger. Callum might not be in there; there could be nightlife lurking somewhere, or a girlfriend. What did he say about drunks in a barn?
Not enough, or she’d be joining them. The garden resembles a ski slope she’d never plunge down. Beyond it, there’s nowhere to go. Hole up in the hotel bar? Weasel out of Hazal that green liqueur, until today is a ringing in her ears?
That’s not her. That’s—
The chalet echoes with a barrage of noise. Stairs thundering, exclamations, and the door behind her flies open.
It crashes off the wall. A hand seizes hers. Kira spins so fast her head wavers. ‘Wh—’
‘Sorry.’ Callum lets her go. ‘I didn’t want you to have left already. Bloody women. All they do is gossip, and now she thinks you’re Satan.’ He shakes his head in bewilderment. ‘Come in. It’s freezing.’ He rubs his bare arms, sidestepping to free up the doorway. ‘I’ll handle Mum.’
But Kira’s mind is prickling as much as his skin, and although Callum offers her a welcome bow, she holds back. ‘What do you mean, she thinks I’m Satan?’ she asks, wary. Suddenly, the night and the cold seem inviting. ‘People have been gossiping about me?’
Callum flashes his eyebrows. A quick motion, up and down, as if he knows something crucial that she doesn’t. ‘From what I’ve heard.’ He rubs his arms again. In the pooling light, his goose bumps are brazen. ‘Which is only snippets. But if you’re coming in, I’m sure we’re about to find out. Speaking of which.’ He shivers, a full-body shudder. ‘I didn’t think my rescue mission through.’
One angry stranger, or two angry parents? Kira considers Callum. The steep, shining garden. The chalet, seeping warmth. The hotel roof, visible over the hedge. Callum again, edging meaningfully toward heat and light. It’s a rock or a hard place, and bracing herself, she follows him inside.
They land in a cluttered lounge. Heavy, mismatched curtains shut out the night, bulging where they drape over piles of books and bedding. A chequered armchair nestles beside a log fire, a black cat basking in its heat. Three boys, controllers clutched so fiercely that their knucklebones strain, stare avidly at a flashing TV, a painting of a red elephant ruling the wall above their heads. A gargantuan, sleeping dog sprawls across the red cloth sofa.
Despite herself, Kira smiles. A mess of brown-black fur, its shaggy sides spill to the floor, and she’s about to beg Callum if she can please, please, please hug as much of it as possible when his round-faced mother reappears.
‘I said no, Callum.’ Dangerous and Scottish, she emerges from a door between the elephant and the curtains. Picking her stony way toward them, she is shoulder-length brown hair and glasses, leggings and woollen slippers. Kira takes an awkward step back. Maybe she should have chosen her parents. Or the bar. ‘I won’t have her here, especially with the boys. Oh, Nibbles.’
Her displeasure is marred by a second cat, weaving through her legs. Callum steps neatly into the distraction.
‘Give me ten seconds.’ He watches his mother scoop Nibbles into her arms. ‘Five, even. There’s no reason Kira can’t be here.’
Depositing the cat on the sofa-back, his mother sidesteps the oblivious, enraptured boys. ‘That’s not for you to decide.’ She opens the chalet door. The cold marches in. ‘I’m sorry if it sounds harsh, but for once, no means no. Everyone knows what she did, and I don’t want her in my house. Quite frankly’—she regards Callum with something like disillusion—‘after seeing it for yourself, I can’t believe you let her in.’
Callum’s eyebrows fly.
‘Yes, I know you were at the hotel.’ His mother waves a hand. ‘Even if Hazal hadn’t told me, it’s all over the village.’
Enough.
‘What’s all over the village?’ Kira’s voice is biting enough, defensive enough, for one of the boys to look round. It’s a surprise to her, too, but this day never ends. ‘Do tell me. I appear to have forgotten.’
She plants one hand on her hip. The woman’s mouth whitens to an affronted line, but Kira ignores her. What is any of this? Why is she being victimised, over and over? She’s the only one with any sense. ‘You can talk to me as well as about me,’ she says pointedly. ‘What exactly is “the village” saying?’
‘That you’re mad.’ Bookended by two less interested parties, a mini-Callum has stopped playing to grin. ‘You broke your own hand and attacked people. What?’ His voice pitches with innocence, shrugging at his mother’s startled Jay! ‘That’s what you and Estela were saying.’
He returns to Rocket League, unfazed by the fact she might be dangerous. With an inward slump, Kira’s lightbulb moment hits.
‘There are two of us.’ She can’t hold out on her exasperation. ‘Two English girls. My sister—’ She swallows. ‘My sister did break her own hand, but she only attacked me. Well.’ She frowns. The memory is a blur of movement. ‘She might have pushed someone out of the way, but that was only to get to me. Again. Look.’
She holds back her hair. To her chagrin when she saw them earlier, the fading cuts are still stark. ‘I’m not the one everyone’s talking about.’ She drops her hand. ‘I guess they left me out.’
‘And exhibit B.’ Callum lifts her other hand. ‘All fingers functional. Can we call off the inquisition?’
The dog grunts in its sleep. The boys crow as one, the television playing a victory jingle.
‘Okay.’ Slowly, the woman looks between them. Millimetre by atom, she shuts the door. ‘I’m sorry. Apparently, I wasn’t given the whole story.’ She lifts her eyebrows, a mirror of Callum’s earlier gesture. ‘Cup of tea? Beer?’
She moves past them to a door at the foot of the rickety stairs. A little gruff, but reconciliatory. ‘Either of you?’
Callum looks to Kira. ‘Which one?’
Kira blinks. ‘Um.’
Callum considers her. ‘One for each hand, please.’ Giving her a half-smile, he motions for her coat. ‘Sorry about that.’ Hanging it up, he shakes his head, the way her mum does when she says men. ‘Have you ever lived in a village? The people are vultures. They really hate losing their scraps.’
It’s a daze. Another world. Surreal. Kira smiles back, small but there. ‘I know exactly what that’s like.’ She slips off her boots, adding them to the endless line running along the wall. ‘Not quite a village, but I’ve lived in a small town all my life. Picture this.’ She arranges her fingers into a frame. ‘It’s early on a Sunday. People are out, either because it’s summer or because they’re going to church. A stranger is seen leaving a woman’s house, and by the afternoon, it’s spread that she’s cheating on her husband.’
Callum cocks his head.
‘Some people’—Kira smiles properly, mischievously—‘say she’s sleeping with the gardener. Some
think he’s a high school sweetheart, and some whisper that he’s a plumber, fixing more than her pipes.’ She drops the frame. ‘Turns out he’s her brother, leaving for church. So as much as I wish I—Romy—wasn’t the current piece of meat.’ She scrapes her hair back from her face. With the front door shut, the fire is a furnace. ‘I get it.’
Callum lets out a laughing snort. ‘Good, I suppose.’ He starts toward the roaring bubble of the kettle. Waking with a grunt, the dog shuffles after them, but as much as she previously wanted to hug it, Kira barely notices. If the lounge is a riot of colour, the kitchen is just a riot.
It’s hard not to gawp. Pots and pans litter both floor and surfaces, one box of cutlery and many of food spilling beside a line of animal bowls. A menagerie of cleaning products, tins, and dog treats recline by the back door, unhappily bowed clothes horses ringing a table and chairs. On the wall lists a small, bony sketch of a tree, stripped of its branches in winter.
‘The sink leaks, the dryer’s broken, and we have an ant infestation.’ Callum’s mother sweeps her eyes over the dripping laundry, the open, empty cupboards. ‘I didn’t know it was possible to have an ant infestation in winter, but here we are. Everything comes in threes. Fours, actually. Callum, you do the beer.’
Callum moves to the fridge. It rattles and clanks. ‘Do you want one?’
‘No, thanks.’ The woman’s eyes stray to the countertop. ‘But I will have a small whiskey.’
She helps herself to the bottle of Bell’s, nestled among a liquor stash that would fill Hazal with pride. Awkward and lemon-like, Kira tries not to fiddle. With their familial normality, she feels like a thumb, or an embarrassing third wheel.
‘Our beer stocks are low.’ Knees popping, Callum straightens. ‘Corona, or…’—he squints at the green label, patterned with herbs—‘whatever the hell this is. Our stocks really are low.’
‘That’s because you keep drinking them.’
Kira huffs. Callum’s mother meets her eyes, crystal whiskey glass at her lips. Behind it, there’s almost a smile, and faintly, Kira matches it. The guard’s still up, but at least the woman appears to have downgraded her from the devil. What’s slightly less than devil? Siren? Succubus?
She’d rather be Satan.
‘I’ll have the whatever-the-hell-this-is.’ Kira nods at the greenish beer. ‘Fits with the day we’ve had. Also, you look like you’d rather burn it than drink it.’
Callum snorts. ‘Only if it tastes how it looks.’ Twisting off the caps, he hands her the bottle. ‘Cheers.’
They clink. His mother lifts her glinting glass. ‘Cheers. Do you take sugar?’
Kira blinks. ‘No?’
The woman finishes the tea. ‘Then they’re ready. Boys! Bedtime!’
Clapping her hands, she leaves the kitchen. Callum sets the tea on the table. ‘See?’ He looks between them and the beer. ‘One for each hand. Best way to be.’
‘Thank you.’ Kira cradles the mug gratefully, warming her hands. ‘I think. What’s the fourth thing?’
Callum arches an eyebrow over his mug. A happy reproduction of Eeyore, it conceals most of his face. ‘Your mum said things come in fours.’ Kira perches on the edge of a chair, cautious of the occupying pasta tower. ‘Is there a fourth thing?’
Callum glances back through the kitchen door. The three musketeers are piling upstairs, the beaded curtain at the top of the steps clacking in alarm. ‘Them, I think.’ He takes a swig of beer. ‘They’ve been here the past few days, but I keep forgetting to ask why. Only one of them’s ours.’
‘They’re Valerie’s.’ His mother sweeps back in, collects her drinks, and departs.
Callum watches her follow the boys upstairs. ‘Well, that answers that. I don’t know a Valerie.’ He nods at her greenish beer. Everything the Swiss seem to serve is green. ‘What’s that like?’
Kira sips it. It’s the weaker, lighter version of Hazal’s burning shot. ‘It tastes like’—she sips again—‘freshly mown grass. And herbal tea. And a little bit like that.’
She points to the Corona. Callum screws up his face. ‘It sounds horrid. Do you want to move?’ He nods at the vacated living room. ‘I feel like you’re becoming one with the pasta, and it doesn’t look very fun.’
Kira steps after him over the dog, a sleeping mound in the doorway. ‘Has something happened?’ Callum asks, sinking into the sofa with a contented exhalation. His tea is so close to slopping that Kira’s mind flinches. ‘To bring you here.’ He sets the beer on the floor with a smirk. ‘To find out where I live.’
Kira sets her drinks on a side table, sinking down beside him. Awkwardness wriggles through her, warming in her chest. What to say? Where to start? Her phone buzzes, and she pulls it out, hoping for a springboard. She doesn’t have a specific reason for being here, other than everything, and coupled with the pathetic “my parents were fighting,” it’s not a lot to go on.
As all good employees do, her phone delivers at once. She stills. ‘What?’ Callum asks. ‘Is everything okay?’
Kira types a quick reply. It wasn’t the distraction she wanted, but it gives her something to say. ‘Dad wants to know if Mum’s with me.’ Looking up blankly, she puts the phone away. ‘That’s all it says. She was at the hotel when I left, but they were arguing, so maybe she stormed off.’ She sips her oddbod beer. ‘I don’t know. It’s not like them at all, but they can sort themselves out.’ She reaches up to scratch the reclining Nibbles. ‘I don’t really want to help her right now.’
Callum lowers Eeyore to his lap. ‘Why not?’
He cricks his neck back to see the staircase. It’s empty, the clacking curtain silent. ‘Actually, before you say anything, I want to apologise. For how we left things earlier. I just…’
He waves at the air. Kira shakes her head.
‘It’s okay.’ She smiles across at him. Nibbles grumbles at the movement, nosing the back of her head. ‘I didn’t deal with what happened any better. I went back to the hotel, curled up in a ball, and recited Edgar Allen Poe until my Dad arrived. Over and over and over, just so I’d stop thinking.’
Callum’s eyes drift off to the side. ‘“All we see and all we seem is but a dream within a dream.”’ He settles into the corner of the couch, cocking his head. ‘Did I get it right?’
Kira wiggles her hand. ‘Ish. A-star for trying. Is this weird?’ Seeing him lounging, the thought strikes her in a rush. An awkward, wriggling, hot-cheeked rush. His house, his life, his family. They only met this morning. ‘Me, I mean. Finding out where you live, as you said, and showing up here like a stalker.’ She grimaces. ‘I’ve kind of wreaked havoc for you, so I can…’
She trails off. Callum has fixed her with a derision that clearly says, don’t be stupid. ‘Why don’t you want to help your mother?’ He taps the arm of the settee. ‘All I did after the forest was work and nap.’ One finger, two fingers, three, all four. ‘I take it your day was stellar.’
It doesn’t take long to tell him everything.
‘Do you think it’s insane?’ She tugs an owl-patterned cushion to her chest. Callum stares through the fire, gnawing the inside of his lip. The silence is full. Her toes curl. She poured out a waterfall, offloaded an avalanche. Maybe she should have kept some to herself. ‘All of it? Any of it?’
The fire spits. Overhead, there’s a thump and a giggle. Kira swallows the last of her beer. ‘Alternatively, I can leave.’
‘No.’ Callum taps his knee, shakes his head, blows out, heavy and long. ‘You don’t have to do that. I think it’s insane’—he looks up at her frankly—‘but I don’t think you’re insane. I don’t know what I think.’
Reaching over the arm of the sofa, he produces a log from a wicker basket and tosses it onto the fire. The sparks jump, flying with the flames. They spit out at the black cat, lying spread-eagled and dead to the world. ‘I will say, though,’ he continues, scratching his mop of hair, ‘that I don’t think your mother’s lying. What good would it do her? What good would it do anyone? Som
etimes, people just sound shifty.’ He moves his tapping to her elbow. ‘Do you ever feel guilty when you’re not?’
All the time. ‘I guess.’ Kira buries her chin in the owl. ‘But if that was the case, why would she and Dad be arguing? That’s why they were fighting when I left.’ She pouts, pensive. ‘Unless they’re both lying, and were arguing about telling me.’
Callum smirks. ‘So now it’s a conspiracy?’
‘No, but…’
‘But what?’ He prods the fire with a poker. ‘Do you believe what Romy said about the forest?’
Kira executes a several-second fish impression. ‘Whiteland?’ she says, forcing it to stop. Callum nods. ‘Um. I don’t know. I believe what we saw, because we saw the same things, but it’s hard to even consider there being a different land.’
Something nudges her toes, and she glances down. A puffed-up tabby cat has wandered over, its wet mouth dribbling onto her sock. She recalls her legs to the sofa in distaste. ‘It goes against science, against logic, and everything we’ve grown up knowing. If we believe it, where would we—’ Holding up a hand, she brings herself to a stop. ‘You know what? I don’t want to think about it. Any of it. It’s like a dream that’s bending my brain.’
She rubs her eyes. Through her knuckles, Callum nods. ‘An impossible dream, no less.’
Kira huffs. ‘Right. An impossible dream, when all I want is to go home, focus on my exams, and forget it ever happened.’
Callum sticks the poker back in the cinders. ‘You can, can’t you?’ He shrugs, matter-of-fact. ‘Once Romy’s well enough to travel, you’ll leave. What she said, and what we saw, might follow you home, but nothing else will.’
‘Won’t it?’ Kira stifles a yawn. Nibbles wriggles out from under her head, and she burrows deep into the cushions. ‘What happened to us earlier, Callum?’ She locks her arms around her curled-up legs. The heat of the fire, the stress of the day. They settle on her like quilts. ‘Where did we go?’
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