‘Well, I’m here if you need me,’ I mutter. I feel close to Louis. We share a secret, even if he doesn’t know it yet. I can feel the paper burning into my skin through my jeans pocket. ‘Let’s talk later,’ I say to him as we go down to breakfast. He doesn’t even acknowledge me, and as we sit at our table he takes a seat at the end by himself and eats robotically.
Clara looks pale and when Eleanor sees Will isn’t there she bursts into tears. Everyone is looking at us. I feel like they’re looking directly through me. It’s horrible. I feel sick. I feel a million miles from the cave but I try and fix on Will’s expression of wonder as he drank the hot chocolate. The rest will never know it but what me and Clara did was a good thing. I cling to that, a small piece of driftwood in the darkness. Only a week more, I think. One week and then we’ll be free. Even with everything else going on, that gives me a quiet sense of relief. Me and Clara on an adventure. A warm beach. Carefree and laughing. I glance at Louis as guilt stabs me. This is like Jonesy and the party. Do I take him with us or not? My eyes are gritty with tiredness. I’ll think about it later. Talk to him when he’s feeling better.
It’s not long before Ashley has posters up declaring there’ll be a memorial service for Will that evening. I don’t know why he bothers with the notices. It would be just as easy to go round and tell everyone. It all feels so self-important and I wonder what Will would make of it. I can’t remember if Will got as annoyed by the church as I do. I don’t think he gave it much thought. I realise there’s so much about Will I’ll never know.
Clara is off somewhere looking after Eleanor but I don’t mind. I need some time to myself as the house settles back into shape and papers over the Will-shaped hole. As I wander through the house it feels a little like the first days, although now I find I’m storing things to memory even though I don’t really want to remember any of it when we leave. It’s strange, this home-but-not-home, this place of lost things.
Louis is in the art room with Harriet. He’s got a large sheet of yellow paper in front of him and his tongue almost touches his nose as he carefully sketches out letters in pencil. Beside him is a tub of thick-tipped coloured pens. He’s doing something for the wall in Ashley’s room. Another gravestone. I want to tell him to paint a wash of green and pink across it like the night sky but I can’t. In the end I hide from it all and head back to the dorm to sleep until lunchtime.
In the afternoon, we watch the new teachers and nurses arriving from the dorm window. Even Louis, although he doesn’t speak and just stares. We’re all subdued. They look stern and efficient and don’t speak to each other as they carry their small suitcases up the stairs, their feet crunching on the dying snow. There’s no sea of crisp white now, just dirty grey lumps clinging to the gravel. In the garden the grass is showing through again. The snowmen look lost and I want to go and kick them to pieces rather than watch them melt slowly into nothing, forgotten and abandoned. They don’t look soft and friendly any more, but icy and misshapen as if they hate us for bringing them to life and then leaving them behind. We adjusted to the snow too quickly. It couldn’t hold our attention for long. We’ve learned to accept bigger things than unusual weather.
Clara and I are together in her dorm after tea when we hear feet going quietly past. Eleanor pokes her head through the doorway. ‘Are you coming?’ she asks. ‘Will’s service? Lots of us are going. And Tom and Louis. Joe, too.’
‘Maybe,’ Clara says. ‘In a minute.’ Eleanor nods and vanishes.
‘Tom and Louis don’t even believe in God,’ I say. I sound more bitter than I mean to. Tom hates the church. Why would he go? What do they think Ashley is capable of? Making them all better again? We might be lepers but he’s not Jesus, and all that stuff is shit anyway.
‘It’s not about God,’ Clara says, playing with my fingers. ‘It’s about Will. Saying goodbye.’
‘We already did that.’
‘Maybe we should go anyway,’ she says. ‘For the others.’
I look into her eyes and imagine how the warm ocean will match their colour. ‘They’ll have to get used to us not being around sometime. Only a week to go.’
She smiles then. Her first proper smile of the day, all white teeth against her freckled skin. ‘I can’t wait.’
‘We have to take our pills tonight,’ I say. ‘And tomorrow. Just in case.’ We left the hot-chocolate flask with Will so if they test it they’ll think maybe he hadn’t been taking his pills and then when he got sick took them all at once, but they’ll want to make sure no one else is up at night. They might test all of us, so we need the pills in our systems. I don’t trust Matron. I think of the letter in my pocket and wish the boat was coming sooner. I don’t know when she might act against me or Louis like she did against the nurse, but I know she will. This is why she got rid of our nurse. Then again, she doesn’t have to hurry with us. We’re not going anywhere. Not as far as she knows, anyway. I need to talk to Clara about taking Louis with us. I know I do.
Clara nods. ‘I’ll miss our nights.’ She leans forward and kisses me. ‘But soon we’ll have them all to ourselves without needing to creep around.’ She cuddles into me then and it’s the best feeling in the world. We lie there for a while and then the saxophone cuts through the air, the soulful sound drifting along the corridors and filling the stairwells. It’s as if the house itself is singing – old blues from the warm southern states so far away. It’s coming from the church, I know it is. Even Albi’s there. I wish Will could have known.
Clara sits up and looks at me and she doesn’t have to say anything. We should be there. Of all people, we should be there. To say goodbye to Will and to the house.
‘Okay. Let’s go.’
We see the glow of the candles warming the gloomy chill before we reach the door. The shadows sway to the music. Clara leads the way and I follow nervously inside. I’m surprised by the number of people, but I don’t see Jake. I’m weirdly pleased about that. Jake is many things but he calls bullshit when he sees it. I suspect I’ve broken some kind of trust by being here, but at the same time I feel like the whole room is full of Will. As if he’s in the air around us already. Ashley, at the front of the semicircles of chairs, looks over at us and smiles. I can’t decide if it’s friendly or victorious and decide to ignore it. This isn’t about Ashley.
In the corner, Albi finishes the long, last note of his piece, and as it fades over us, Ashley nods towards Louis. ‘You wanted to say something?’
Louis is small in the gathering but his eyes burn as he stares at me. ‘Not with them here. I don’t want them here.’
My throat tightens. Clara looks from me to Louis, confused. I can see the panic in her face. He can’t know. He can’t.
‘Everyone’s welcome here,’ Ashley says. I want to punch him for his smugness. I’m not welcome here, even though only Louis knows it. I’m a cuckoo in this nest and so is Louis.
‘Not them. They can fuck off.’ He spits the words out. I have never seen him like this.
‘We’ll go,’ Clara says, awkward.
It’s too late.
‘You’ve spoiled it now. You stay. I’ll fuck off. I don’t need this place anyway.’ Louis throws down the small piece of paper he’s holding, sweaty where it’s been folded in his hand, and storms out past us, bashing into me as he goes. His face is a ball of unrecognisable rage, every muscle tight, contracting against his skull.
‘I’ll go after him,’ I whisper. ‘You stay.’ Clara’s bottom lip is trembling but she nods. Ashley is saying something about singing a hymn. He’s feeling the crackling electricity of the broken calm as much as I am. My stomach churns as I leave them and follow the echo of stomping feet on the stairs.
I find him in the bathroom – the same one we washed Will’s blood-streaked legs down in. For a moment I see Will sitting there, a shadow of himself, and then I sit rebelliously upon him. He vanishes, of course. He’s not really the
re. He’s nothing now. He no longer exists.
I look at Louis. He’s sitting on the toilet seat and looks up at me with such dread that I want to throw up. What does he think I’m going to do to him?
‘He told me,’ he says. His whole body is shaking with fear and anger and dry, red-eyed upset, and it’s all my fault. ‘Did you think he wouldn’t tell me? I was his best friend.’
‘What did he say?’
‘An adventure.’ He’s so bitter I can feel the sharp edges on every word. ‘You and Clara told him not to take his vitamins and then you were going to have an adventure.’
‘They’re not vitamins.’ I’m so tired. I can’t fight him.
‘I know. I’ve known for ages.’ He looks at me as if I’m an idiot. ‘I just don’t want to be awake. Why would you want to have more time to think?’
I say nothing. I remember how big his brain is and what a burden that must be. Of course he’d want the peace of sleep. After a while, the anger slips off him and he sobs – hot, wet tears dredged up from his soul. ‘You killed him, Toby. You took him out in the night and killed him. How could you do that?’
‘I didn’t want him to be scared.’ I can barely hear my own words. They’re wisps of breath I don’t want to say aloud. ‘I didn’t want him to go to the sanatorium.’
‘He trusted you. I trusted you. I thought you’d bring him back. I watched from the window when you put him up against the tree. Even then I didn’t get it. I was so stupid.’
‘He wasn’t afraid. He was happy.’ I think of Jake and the gentle way he stroked Georgie’s feathers and then broke his neck. ‘We were . . .’ I stumble over the words. Everything feels shaky. What were we doing? ‘We were trying to be kind. I didn’t want him to be scared.’ The second time I say it, it sounds even lamer. My face is flushed and my palms sweat. ‘We wanted to give him an amazing night. Something brilliant. Something to make it better. We didn’t want him to go to the sanatorium.’ The words are coming in a rush of confession, as if by telling it, all the weight of Will’s dead body will ease from my chest.
‘I get that.’ He sighs. ‘I’m not stupid.’
It comes like a curveball and I frown. I don’t understand. He looks at me like you’d look at a thick kid who keeps missing the obvious answer. His eyes fill with tears again and his shoulders shake.
‘I should have been there. You should have taken me, too.’ His words are a hurt-puppy whine but they carve up my guts like blades.
‘I didn’t think . . . I . . .’ I don’t know what to say. I didn’t trust you? I thought you’d tell? Neither of those were true. We just didn’t think. Not beyond our own bubble of worrying about Will. We didn’t consider what it would do to Louis. I want to turn back the clock. I want to make it better.
‘I didn’t get to say goodbye.’ Snot hangs from his nose but he doesn’t wipe it away. ‘I had to go to the stupid church to say goodbye and now that’s ruined, too. I should have been there. I was his best friend, Toby.’ He stares at me with such intensity I wonder if time actually will start rolling backwards so I can make it better. ‘Not you. Not Clara. Me.’
‘I’m sorry.’ It’s all I’ve got and it’s as lame as it sounds. ‘I’m so sorry.’
Finally he pulls off a couple of sheets of the thin cheap toilet paper beside him and loudly blows his nose. ‘Yeah. Yeah, I bet you are. But that doesn’t count for shit.’ He stands up, composing himself. ‘I never want you to speak to me again. I’m never going to speak to you again. You got it?’
‘But I need to talk to you about something,’ I start. ‘I have to. It’s important.’
‘Oh, fuck off, Toby,’ he says, opening the door. ‘Just fuck off and die.’
I sit there for a while after he leaves, perching on the side of the bath like Will did, and I cry like a baby. I cry for all of us. I cry because I don’t know how to feel any more. I cry because I feel too much. I try to cry it all out, but I can’t. It’s a lead weight inside me.
I wait until I’m done and then I wait a few minutes longer. I don’t want anyone to know I’ve been crying. I wash my face in cold water. The red around my eyes from where I’ve been crying disguises the last embers of my bruise. I let the shivers cool my overheated body. Louis will calm down. I know him. He will. I hope he will. I have to be able to trust him if I’m going to share mine and Clara’s plans with him. And I can’t leave without telling him. I wonder if he’ll tell Matron out of spite. I can’t imagine it, but then nor could I imagine Louis ever telling me to fuck off and die before. No one says that here. Fuck off and die. It carries too much weight. Bad karma.
Jake is walking up the stairs with Daniel when I come out. I hope my face is back to normal. Jake is one thing, but the idea of a little snide fat fuck like Daniel knowing I’d been upset would finish me off. We nod at each other, awkward. We’re still in the post-Will weird. The bed and possessions have gone but until Ashley stops with his stupid memorial service nothing is going to settle. And even when they do for the others, I’ll still have Louis to contend with and my own guilt. Maybe if I can make it better with Louis then one day my guilt will eventually fade. I don’t want to have the ghost of Will with me for ever. I don’t think I could live like that. I want to leave him behind. I have to leave him behind.
‘Does he know?’ Clara asks me, scared, after the memorial is finally done. I nod. ‘Is he going to tell?’
‘I don’t think so.’ She looks so worried. She’s thinking about the boat, too. We’re so close to getting away. ‘We should have taken him with us,’ I say softly. ‘He should have been there. That’s what’s upset him.’
She looks relieved after that and I realise she’s feeling guilty, too. We may have done a necessary thing but it was also a terrible one and I can’t decide which side weighs heaviest. But if Louis wanted to be there and Louis is a genius then surely it was right? I remember the awful slump in Will’s body as he died. That will never leave me. I try to think of his face as he stared up at the lights in wonder. The weight of him was so earthy but his expression in those last minutes was so ethereal. Dark and light. Horror and beauty. Everything is extremes. I just want to sleep and get this day over with.
‘So, what’s up with you two, then?’ Tom asks when Louis goes to brush his teeth.
‘Nothing.’ I shrug.
‘Doesn’t look like nothing.’
‘He’s just upset.’
‘Yeah, but why is he upset with you?’
‘He’ll get over it.’ I don’t answer the question, instead turning away and getting into bed. When the nurse brings our pills round I swallow mine quite happily. I think Louis does, too. Neither of us wants to be alone with our thoughts.
Twenty
Over the next few days life does settle down. The snow finally melts away and the sun returns with its familiar warmth. After breakfast we go for lessons with our new teachers, who are uniformly dour and dull which makes me wonder if maybe the last lot had to leave because Matron disapproved of their smoking and drinking and whatever else they got up to in their wing of the house, and it wasn’t really a half-term at all. I wade diligently through the comprehension books and sums but I have half an eye on the brightness outside, and despite my inability to shake Will’s ghost away, my stomach fizzes with excitement at the prospect of being far away from here.
I imagine Clara running along a beach in cut-off denim shorts, laughing and pushing me into the sea. In my head she’s as wild and free as she was born to be. I think of how uncomfortable and awkward I was before. How I behaved around Julie McKendrick. Clara’s changed me. The house has changed me, too, but Clara mainly. I wouldn’t have gone over the wall without her. I’d still be moping around in the gloom full of dread and lost hope. I wouldn’t have come up with a plan to leave. I wouldn’t have thought about the boat. It’s all Clara. Without Clara I would never have found the report on Matron’s desk.
/> I’ve read the paper I copied so many times now that I’ve slowly started to believe it. It fills my head more than even Will does. It excites me and scares me. Matron did what she did to the nurse in the night because of it. I try not to think the word murder because that in turn makes me think of Will – Thanks for this, Toby – and that makes my heart and stomach hurt. I wonder if Matron is waiting to see if there’s any fallout from that before she comes for me and Louis. The paper, and what is printed so factually there, is dangerous. This much I know.
Louis continues to withdraw into himself. He doesn’t look at me or talk to me. If he needs something passed to him at the table, he asks someone else. In lessons his head is down and he appears focused but I don’t believe he’s really concentrating as he scribbles out his answers. Louis doesn’t need to. His brain works so fast he can think about a hundred things at once. In the afternoons he plays chess against himself or goes and sits on the swings. He mutters quietly to no one in particular.
Occasionally I think I should go and speak to him, but every time I chicken out. I put it off. I know I have to tell him what’s on the paper but I’m scared of what he might do. He’s not himself. I want him to be Louis again but I’m not sure I know who Louis is without Will. He’s never talked much about friends before the house, or if he has, he only told Will about them and Will is gone.
Clara and I withdraw in our own way, too. We don’t hang out with the others any more and they stop asking us to. We go to the library and look at atlases and encyclopaedias and think about ways to sneak onto trade ships to start our adventures. We only have to get to France and after that it should all be easy, or at least Clara makes it sound that way.
After three nights we stop taking the pills again. Clara says she doesn’t like missing out on the time and although I’m wary I go along with her. She winks and laughs and tells me I’m her serious side and she’s my crazy. Her mood has lifted since Will. There’s a nervous energy around her as the boat night draws closer.
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