‘I thought you didn’t want to talk about it.’ Callum’s voice is drier than the logs on the fire.
Kira pushes out her lips. ‘I don’t. But if we’re using dream metaphors’—she rolls her head along the couch toward him—‘it’s recurring.’
Callum smiles then. Not a smirk, not teasing, not smug. A smile. It does something strange to her sleepy chest, and all she can do is return it.
‘In answer to your question then, I don’t know.’ He shifts his gaze to the dribbling cat, gunning for his feet. ‘I don’t know where we went. I don’t know how it happened, when I know this mountain back to front.’ He meets her eyes. The smile falters. ‘But unless you leave for home tonight, I reckon we’re going to find out.’
Eight-forty-seven brings curtain-filtered sunlight, hammering knuckles on the wooden door, and her phone buzzing in her pocket. Two cats erupt in hissing shock, but Kira is slower to wake. Groggy. The noise is a haze of confusion.
I don’t have cats is her first thought. Then I am where? is the second.
Lifting her head, she squints through the daylight. Callum’s arm lies loose across her feet. Her legs are curled over his knees, his body slack with sleep. They haven’t moved all night.
Oh, dear. Sitting up, she fumbles for her phone. How did they fall asleep propped this awkwardly? She rubs her face awake, grateful for the thousandth time that makeup is a strain. Why is her phone so hard to reach? It vibrates something dreadful, painful on her hipbone. Nearly…nearly…
There. Prepped for the apocalypse, she screws up her face and answers to her father. ‘Dad?’
‘Kira!’
‘I’m coming!’ Callum’s mother hurries down the stairs, securing her dressing gown at the waist. Spotting the occupied sofa, she slows. Her throat works. Her cheeks pull taut. Stiffly, she opens the door.
Guilt twists cold and curdling. A twinge for her, and a twinge for Mathew, speaking fast in her ear.
‘Have you heard?’ A flowered dress, heavy overcoat, and snow boots stride into the chalet, propelled by a gust of wind. Plonking herself on a squashed red armchair, the woman crosses her legs. ‘Hazal’s had more trouble.’
Kira’s attention flits. Mathew. Women. Too much information for her early morning brain.
Dad. ‘…Don’t know what to do, where are…’
Woman. ‘…Fighting last night, and she ran off. Said she was going to take a shower, but when she didn’t come back…’
Dad. ‘…Come back, so we can figure this…’
Woman. ‘…Found the water running, but nobody there.’
Kira snaps herself into focus. ‘Okay.’ She rubs her eyes and tries to breathe. ‘Dad, I’m coming now.’
The woman’s eyes flick to the sofa. Ending the call, Kira tracks her gaze. Callum stretches like a yawning cat, looking in sleepy bewilderment between the women. ‘Mum.’ He furrows his bleary brow. ‘Lena.’
‘She still hasn’t come back.’ Glancing at his mother, the woman cuts him off. ‘I’ve just been round there. The husband’s going crazy, asking every guest that comes in if they’ve seen his wife and his…’
Her gaze flicks to Kira.
‘Daughter. Yeah.’ Manoeuvring her mannequin limbs off the couch, she lets her sarcasm spill. ‘And I’d love to stay and fuel your gossip, but unfortunately, I can’t. I have to go create more gossip. Have a wonderful day.’
‘Wait.’ Callum heaves himself up as she retrieves her boots, scanning the room for her coat. ‘If you want, I’ll come with you.’
‘It’s fine.’ Coat over her arms, Kira yanks the door open. ‘I really have to go. Now. Sorry,’ she directs toward Callum’s mother. Arms crossed, she has a face like a garrison. ‘I am. Really. Your fire was warm, and we fell asleep. Don’t kill Callum over it. Thank you for the beer, and the tea.’
It’s inadequate. Again. Guilt does more than twinge, but she’s out of the door with the words afloat, carelessly wading down the garden and through the frosted arch. She can’t think about guilt. Can’t think it, can’t feel it, because Mum… She chews on her cheek, worrying it raw, stumbling, shivering, blinded. The morning is bright.
And her mother is gone.
Gone, with no note, no warning. A lie after last night’s argument, slamming away for a shower. Kira missed some of what her father said, but she caught this: Anna’s phone lies abandoned, and her winter-wear is missing. The car hasn’t moved. No one’s seen her. She’s gone.
Gone.
At the hotel gate, Kira stops short. The flowery woman. The heavy-coated woman. She’d hardly looked at her, but dammit, she should have. Everything about her suddenly knits.
Her dress. Her accent. Her spiked, black hair, no longer wet with sweat. She’s the woman from the hospital.
Later. Frustration spikes, but Kira keeps moving. The woman is around, known to Callum, known to Hazal, but Anna has gone. She needs to get back to her father.
Mathew is waiting on the reindeer-blanket couch. ‘I’m sorry,’ Kira says, the moment the door chimes announce her arrival.
‘Kira.’ He stands like a guard on watch. His face sags. His eyes widen, everything taut and relieved.
She links her arms around his stomach. ‘I’m so, so sorry. You have no idea how sorry I am. I fell asleep. I was with Callum, and we were sat on his sofa, and we just…’ She pulls free, gesturing emptily. With everything that’s happened, it sounds selfish. Unthinking, inadequate. Again. ‘We fell asleep where we sat. I’m so sorry.’
Tugging her close again, Mathew rests his chin on her head. ‘I’m glad you’re okay.’ He reels her in tighter. ‘At least I could assume you hadn’t moved since you messaged. I’d have liked an update, or for you to actually come back, but at least I had an idea.’
His chest empties, refilling, full and deliberate. ‘Like I said, I’m glad you’re okay.’ He rubs her back, up, down, dropping the words into her hair. ‘Right now, it’s enough that you haven’t gone crazy or disappeared completely. We can have the staying-over-with-strange-boys talk later, alongside the one where you don’t send your dad mad with worry.’
Those words are definitely going to haunt her, hunt her, and skulk through her mind for a long time to come. Pulling free again, Kira casts her eyes around the restaurant, as if Anna might be hiding beneath a table, in the jacuzzi, behind the Christmas tree in the corner. More guilt right now will cripple her. ‘You really don’t know where Mum is?’
Mathew shakes his head. It seems to weigh too much for his body. The bravado has gone without a trace; never, even at the hospital, has she seen him so undone. So close to crying, or maybe collapse.
‘I tried, Kira.’ He scratches his cheek. Bloodshot eyes, unshaved chin, a hint of sweat. He never smells of sweat. ‘I searched the village, I spoke to the neighbours, I spoke to the hotel guests. I even went to the hospital after she’d been gone most of the night and drove around town when they told me I couldn’t just wander in and look around. Now she’s still not back, and I don’t know what to do. I can’t help feeling I’m to blame.’
Kira wilts. ‘Dad.’ She blinks, hard. ‘It wasn’t just you that was arguing, Dad.’
‘Not just this.’ He pinches the bridge of his nose, fighting down a yawn. ‘Everything. I don’t know. Could you check your room, see if there’s anything that says where she might have gone? I’ve turned ours upside down, and had a quick look in yours, but if you could…?’
Wretched and hopeful, rumpled and crumpled in yesterday’s clothes. Kira has to blink again. Again. Swallow down the painful air that rushes up inside her. He’s barely a parent, more of a friend, desperate and in need of her help.
‘I’ll check again.’ She struggles for a limp smile.
He smiles limply back. ‘Thank you.’ He nudges her in the direction of the stairs. ‘If you could do it now?’
Halfway up, Kira looks back. Blowing out his cheeks, he sinks heavily into the sofa, reaching for a half-empty brandy glass. Tired and parched with the sun barely up, like
an old alcoholic or a weathered cowboy in the shade of his porch. It’s only a day since things went wrong. It’s only a night since Anna’s been gone.
The painful air rushes up again. Pushing into her bedroom, Kira carelessly sheds coat and boots and tips face-first toward her blankets. Drinking early, drinking alone, and not changing his clothes. She horse-kicks the door shut, crawls farther onto the bed, and smothers her face with the pillows. She’ll check her room in a while; right now, she needs ten minutes to mope.
After considerably longer than ten minutes, plus a shower, plus a search that throws up nothing and leads to a long ten minutes more, a knock comes on the door. Kira grunts but doesn’t move. The door creaks open, the bed depresses, and she doesn’t move. Having built a pillow fort and layered herself in blankets, she’s forced a serenity that any shift might rock. There hasn’t been this peace in a long time, even prior to yesterday; she’s warm, ignoring the world, and content to bob on the thoughts of her uninteresting—deliciously uninteresting—home.
The sea. The gulls. The bright little houses crammed on the hillside. The wind, the rain driving down three days out of five, the parties by the colourful beach huts; even the uneventful days where she and Romy would go to college, return from college, eat fish and chips, and lead uneventful, separate, yet companionable evenings. The days she’d previously counted off with vigour, in anticipation of leaving. The days she never thought she’d—
‘Are you all right?’
Kira jerks upright. Her body heats from the stomach up. She hadn’t, in a month—no, a year—of Sundays, expected him to be the one to come in, catching her curled in an unflattering position, butt-first, with an ocean of pillows for protection. Sweeping her hair from her face, she clears her throat and tries for normalcy.
‘Sorry.’ Callum’s smirk doesn’t look sorry at all. ‘I didn’t mean to scare you. I like your fort.’ He nods at the rudimentary structure. Kira’s flush seeps into her jeans, down to her thighs and calves and toes. ‘Genuinely. Best episode of Community was when it all happened in a pillow fort. Or a blanket fort.’ He shrugs. ‘Whatever.’
Averting her face, hot from shame and pillows and contemplating the shame and pillows, Kira hastily dismantles her stronghold. ‘That episode was embarrassing.’
‘No, no.’ He wags a finger at her. ‘That’s an irreconcilable difference right there.’ Gathering her rejected pillows, he tugs them toward him. ‘Anyway, I think showing up in your bedroom trumps showing up at my house, so that’s one thing you don’t have to feel weird about. I meant to come with you earlier.’ One on top of the other, he starts to build a tower. ‘I’d got my shoes, coat, everything, but before I could actually leave, the kraken was released. I had to listen to a speech about how bad it looks that a girl I don’t know, and especially one with a feral sister, slept with me on the couch.’
The tower falls down. Eyeing it disapprovingly, he misses Kira’s grimace, the spark of fire at the word feral. ‘Mum was livid, and Lena spent the whole time with her angry, beady eyes boring into my skull. I don’t think she’s ever not angry. Even her gossip is angry. Anyway.’ He taps on the biggest pillow, woven with a chalet and a boy on skis. ‘The upshot was that it’s a bad influence for the boys, and I may be an adult, but it’s still her house. Oh.’
His face creases, his nonchalance sliding into shame. ‘Sorry. Ah.’ He scratches the back of his head. ‘Sorry. I shouldn’t have said feral. Romy’s not feral, but that’s the word they both kept using.’ He closes his eyes, his chin knocking his chest. ‘Goddammit. That makes it worse. I should probably stop talking.’
‘Don’t.’ Putting the fort-tower back in its place, Kira tosses the remains onto Romy’s bed. ‘It’s all right.’ She props herself up against the headboard. Callum lifts both eyebrows. Its truth is as much of a surprise to her; the spark of fire has sputtered out. ‘I know.’ She smiles fleetingly, almost sheepish. ‘You’d expect me to get righteous and offended, all puffed up in the chest.’
A pause. ‘Like a cartoon character,’ she adds. ‘Before you take that the wrong way.’
Callum nods, a tad too deliberately. The burning body heat threatens to return. He’s a man; of course he’ll take it the wrong way.
But all he says, despite his eyes lingering on hers, is, ‘And you’re not going to?’
‘It’s not like it’ll stop people saying it.’ Dropping his gaze, Kira crosses her legs, neatly tucking in her ankles. The gnarled headboard hits every knob of her spine, and she’s still too close to a flush. ‘And she was actually quite feral.’
She huffs a wry laugh, twisting her checked shirt between her fingers. Callum deflects his gaze to the window. A smile tugs at his lips, and watching him, one tugs at her own. He’s trying to batten down its hatches.
‘You’re allowed to agree,’ she says dryly. ‘I happen to not be feral. And I’m sorry that your mother’s upset.’ She pulls her mouth to one side. ‘I get it. I shouldn’t have stayed. After persuading her I’m not the devil, I became a different devil. I can apologise to her properly, if you think it would help.’
Slipping off his coat, Callum drops it beside Kira’s. ‘I don’t know that it would.’ He moves more comfortably onto the bed. ‘It’s no more your fault than mine. But if you really want to, let her calm down first. Maybe for a few hours, by which time she and Lena will have taken so many turns shouting about it, along with everything else today that they perceive to be wrong, that she’ll be worn out and almost pleasant.’
He sticks his hands behind his head, reclining against the newly arranged pillows.
Kira’s smile tugs again. ‘Make yourself at home.’
Callum grins. ‘Cheers.’ Tugging off his sweatshirt, he drops it on top of his coat. ‘And it’s fine.’ He replaces his hands behind his head. ‘You really don’t have to apologise. I told Mum you were upset, and being the advantage-taking fellow that I am, I persuaded you to stay the night so I could “comfort” you.’ He quotes with his fingers, rolls with his eyes. ‘Now she just thinks I’m a dick. Ow.’ He frowns. Wriggles his back. ‘Ow.’
‘Ow?’ Kira shifts aside. He wriggles again. ‘Ow, what?’
Callum rolls over, colliding with her legs. ‘Ow, there’s something sharp in the bed.’ He lifts up the blankets, angling his neck in a three-point-turn to peek inside.
‘What are you, the princess and the pea?’ Kira tilts her head. Callum is rooting around, grey T-shirt riding up and away from his jeans. ‘I think I’d know if there was something in my bed.’
‘Not all of us are princess material.’ He pulls back the sheet to reveal the mattress. ‘Aha!’ Producing a creased slip of paper, he holds it out with a satisfied grin. ‘Looks like you’ve got mail.’
‘What?’ Kira snatches it. The half-light is hard to see through, but her mother’s writing is clear.
I know you know. Going there is the best I can do.
‘What is it?’ Callum sits up to read over her shoulder. The hotel clocks cuckoo, ticking out of time. Downstairs, laughter bursts. The paper smells like her mother. ‘What does it mean?’
Kira holds the flimsy note up to the light. It reveals nothing: not another hidden sheet, not a lemon juice postscript. Aunty Nat taught her that as a child. ‘It’s Mum’s writing.’ She swallows. The words came out hoarse. ‘But I don’t know what it means. Something to do with Romy?’ Her heart starts up a flutter in her chest. An idea is forming, but if she looks at it head-on… ‘She knows I know she was hiding something?’
Slowly, Callum nods. ‘But where’s she had to go?’
Kira looks at him, and a look is enough. It’s in the uncertainty of her eyes, the growing, reluctant line of her mouth.
‘You think she’s in the forest.’ It’s smooth and not a question. He forces his voice even. ‘You know it’s just trees, right? Not some phantom fairyland your sister made up?’
Kira looks away. ‘The forest is linked to what happened to Romy,’ she murmurs and falls silent. Patient on the
outside, Callum looks out of the window. A bleak buzzard weaving through damp, low cloud, yellow sunlight weak through the wisps. ‘And it’s all I can think of.’
Kira keeps her gaze down. Long hair falls in front of her face, damp and tangled and mussed from her fort. His ex, Ivet, the girl Jay not-so-affectionately nicknamed “The Poodle,” would have started preening the second he arrived, shooing him out until she was perfect.
Perfection is subjective.
‘Mum knew something about all of this.’ Kira rubs her eyes. Callum drags his mind down. ‘And from her note, it sounds like she’s left as a result. She didn’t take the car, and the trains had already stopped when she left, so where else does that leave?’
‘Walking.’
‘Callum.’ Kira levels him a blank, tired look. ‘One of her daughters nearly died because of walking, at night, in the snow. Do you really think she’d risk the same?’
‘She’s risking the same if she’s gone to the forest.’
Kira scrapes a hand through her hair. It catches in the tangles. ‘That’s not what I meant.’
‘I know what you meant.’ Callum slumps back into the pillows. ‘But it’s just a forest, and not even a big one. Other than more trees and more mountains, the most your mum would find is the next ski resort.’
He pauses. Is he overstepping a line?
Probably.
‘Kira…’ He lifts the edge of the note. It seems almost alive, a frail thing with a fluttering chest. ‘Kira, Romy got maybe three hundred metres into the forest. She curled up and went to sleep in that clearing; you saw the tree for yourself. Why would your mum fight with your dad, leave you a note, and disappear if she was going to poke around the edge of the trees? And how do you know’—he shifts his head to look at her, fiddling with the hem of her shirt—‘that Romy wasn’t making up what she said? You’re basing the entirety of your thinking on the words of a mad girl, who claims we went adventuring in fairyland. Believing her means you believe in this land, and that your mum also—’
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