Hush

by Sara Marshall-Ball

  Billy and his father had been around a lot. She could remember them all spending time together in the garden, having barbecues, playing games. Could hear snatches of shouted conversations. See Connie’s face, ducking behind trees. Billy’s chin, resting on his elbows as they lay next to each other on the grass. Her mother’s face, laughing: different.

  The garden had been the most peaceful place in the world, then.

  She watched her neighbours playing and thought that maybe nothing had really changed.

  She spent a couple of hours steadily working, only occasionally distracted by noises from outside. It was easier up here in her old room; the noises were further away and she didn’t feel obliged to pay attention to them. Her childhood desk had proved too small and she was sitting on her floor, back to the window, facing the door, which was slightly ajar; she could see the hallway, dim because all the other doors were closed and no sunlight touched it. Shadows flickered there occasionally, but they were harmless and she tried not to notice them.

  She had arranged her paperwork around her, in her preferred fashion – books to the left, then stacks of notes on her own ideas, then stacks of notes on other people’s ideas. She had been sifting through, trying to bring herself up to date with what she had been working on a few weeks ago. Marianna had forwarded her some photocopies of recent journal articles – things that she’d noticed and thought would fit in with Lily’s research – and Lily had been scanning them, picking out the ones that seemed useful, putting the others aside for future reference. She had found herself wondering for the first time who was teaching her classes, how the students were getting on in her absence. The undergraduates would be fine, of course, but she felt guilty about the PhD students. She was supposed to be looking after them. She wondered whether she should email them, let them know she was still around, if they needed her. Though of course she wasn’t, not really. And was she allowed to be in touch, if she’d been removed from the university? Wouldn’t they all have found new supervisors, ones who weren’t liable to collapse at a moment’s notice?

  She couldn’t help feeling that being cut off from the academic world was causing more problems than it was solving. Though it was nice to have the space to get some work done. Some real work, without all the lecturing and marking getting in the way.

  The phone rang downstairs. She could hear it, but it sounded distant, other-worldly. Maybe it was next door’s phone? But no, it was definitely the sound that their phone made – the same one that had been there when she was a child, with its round dial and clumsy handset. A shrill, impatient ring, quite unlike any modern phone. It was a sign of how little contact her mother had had with the outside world that she’d never bothered to update it.

  She considered getting up to answer it. But then the ringing subsided, and she inwardly shrugged, and settled herself back on to the floor. She couldn’t think of anyone she would want to talk to anyway. People who knew her would ring her on her mobile.

  Someone was shouting outside. It was the neighbours again, now having some sort of argument. Lily could hear the child crying, the mother scolding her. Amazing how quickly games could turn sour.

  She resisted the urge to go and watch them from the window. Picked up another journal article, scanning the opening paragraph for hints that it might be useful to her. She could only pick out a couple of words before the shouting distracted her. She put down the article, got up and went to the window, irritated with herself for being unable to resist her curiosity.

  The daughter was kneeling on the ground in tears. Her mother stood over her, fist raised. For a moment Lily was worried, and then she realised the fist was clutching a worm; the daughter’s kneeling was pleading, rather than afraid. ‘Don’t hurt Wormy,’ she screamed, screwing up her face until her bright red cheeks looked as though they might burst.

  The mother’s response was quieter, and Lily couldn’t hear it from so far away. Nevertheless she pushed herself forward, pressing her nose to the glass, trying to hear what they were saying.

  And saw a flicker in her own garden, just out of her range of vision.

  She flinched, drew back instinctively; then gathered herself, leaned forward. The flicker had been over to the far right, on the patio, near the doors. If she pressed the left side of her face right to the glass she could see the whole patio, but there was nothing there, just a pool of weak sunlight blinking through the trees.

  The phone rang again and she pulled herself away from the window, the cries of the child outside dying away as she stepped out of her room and into the hallway. She felt more than saw her way down the stairs, edging through the gloom towards the phone. The sound stopped when she was two steps into the kitchen, leaving a thumping silence in its wake.

  The room was so still she could hear the dust move.

  And then ghost-Connie was at her feet, as if she’d been there all along.

  She looked different this time: less of a flicker, more like a real child. She was still pale and ethereal, but there was a solidity to her centre, just blurring at the edges when she moved. Lily crouched down, to look at her more closely, expecting her to vanish. Instead she giggled, and moved nearer to the patio doors.

  Lily stood up and followed, tentatively, inching forward step by step. A flicker on the other side of the glass made her flinch, but it was just ghost-Lily, come to join her sister. The two girls stood for a moment on opposite sides of the glass, hands pressed together through the panes. Then Lily opened the door and ghost-Connie went bounding out onto the lawn, her younger shadow just a blur in her wake.

  Lily took a step outside, trying to shake her sense of unease. The quiet conviction that she had seen something more substantial than the shiverings of her own mind.

  Took another step, and another, confidence growing as the ghost-children beckoned her forwards.

  And then another flicker, to her right: too tall to be a child.

  Bit back a scream, seeing the man striding towards her across the lawn.

  then

  It was dark where Lily was.

  She’d lost track of how much time had passed. At first she’d been concentrating on keeping as quiet as possible – they’d told her she had to stay quiet, otherwise they’d come back and shut her up for good. They were bluffing, of course. But that didn’t mean they weren’t capable of hurting her.

  After a while the noises outside had faded, and she’d deduced that most of the people in the building had gone home. She’d tried banging on the door and calling out a few times, thinking that maybe there would be cleaners around. But there had been no answering noise. No squeak of rubber shoes on plastic floors. Everyone was gone.

  Just her, for miles.

  The darkness was absolute. She held a hand out in front of her face, experimentally. Nothing. Not even shadow superimposed on shadow. All she could see were odd white flashes if she closed her eyes, and then of course she wasn’t really seeing, because her eyes were shut.

  At least if she couldn’t see then neither could anything else.

  She pushed herself further into the corner she’d chosen as her area of refuge, and pulled her knees up to her chest. She knew there was nothing in here, at least. She’d seen it when they pushed her in, for a start. And also she’d had a quick grope around, once she’d had a minute to get her bearings. She was in a cupboard of shelves, in the space between the floor and the lowest shelf. If she sat up straight her head rested against wood. There wasn’t enough space for anything to be in there with her – if she stretched out her legs she could touch the opposite wall.

  It was just a cupboard.

  It probably wasn’t even locked, but, because the shelves went right up to the door, and the door handle was higher than the bottom shelf, she couldn’t get to it to let herself out. Badly designed, really.

  The silence was scaring her. She could sense the emptiness of the whole building, settling around her. Three floors above, at least one below. Corridors stretching out in every direction. S
leeping classrooms. Curtainless windows, looking at nothingness, both inside and out.

  The figments of her imagination, unfurling to fill the empty space.

  She had been in the maths department when they’d found her. She often stayed behind for a few minutes after class – Ms Beecham liked to recommend exercises for her to do at home. She already referred to Lily as her ‘star pupil’, though not in front of other people.

  The department had been quiet when Lily left the classroom, so they hadn’t had difficulty cornering her. One girl in front, hand clamped over Lily’s mouth. One girl behind, arm around her waist, pinning her hands to her side. Pulling her by the hair with the other hand. Lily, too disoriented to even try to scream, had weakly followed.

  They’d pushed her into the cupboard, kicking her to make sure she didn’t try to escape. By chance they’d got her face; she could still feel the ache in her jaw. Invisible bruises blooming in the dark.

  Then they had slammed the door shut and left her.

  She wondered if she’d still be here in the morning. She was hungry, and she needed the toilet. She didn’t know how much longer she could sit here, expecting someone to turn up any second. It was clear there was no one nearby. She would have been able to hear them.

  It got harder to breathe the more she thought about it. The closeness of the space. If she stretched out her hands and feet she could touch all four walls without difficulty. Sitting up straight only reminded her that there was no room overhead.

  There was an agitation in her limbs. As if her bones were itching. Her muscles made cramping protests. She wriggled, raising her feet higher on the wall, until she could almost stretch her legs out properly. But it wasn’t enough. She could still touch the walls. It was as though the darkness was the walls. Or as though the two had combined to become one solid, suffocating blanket.

  She wanted out.

  Reluctantly, humiliatingly, she succumbed to the fact that no one was coming to find her. Felt the damp warmth spread beneath her, and wondered where on earth Connie was.

  ‘Tell us again.’

  ‘Mama, there’s nothing else to tell. I think we should look for her. Or call the police.’

  ‘I’ll do that.’ Marcus stood up, uncurling himself in a movement which appeared to take all his energy. ‘Tell your mother again what happened.’

  ‘Dad, I’m not going to sit here all night waiting for the police to show up.’

  ‘You’re not going out there again by yourself.’

  ‘Well, bloody hurry up and come with me, then.’

  ‘Connie –’

  ‘Marcus, she’s right.’ Anna’s voice was quiet, but strong. ‘Lily could be seriously hurt. Those girls knocked Connie unconscious; God knows what state Lily’s in. I want to go and find her.’

  Across the table, Connie’s eyes met her mother’s. For the first time in years, she felt something pass between them. The realisation that she was indeed her mother’s daughter.

  ‘We should call the police too, though. It can’t hurt to have more people looking.’

  ‘Quick, then.’

  Marcus left the room. Anna stood up, walked to the sink. Opened the cupboard underneath and pulled out a clean cloth. She ran it under the tap, wrung it out until it no longer dripped. Then crossed the room to crouch down next to her daughter and gently wipe the blood from her face, as if she were a six-year-old. ‘How long has this been going on?’ she asked, the steel in her voice in sharp contrast to the gentleness of her movements.

  ‘Forever.’ Connie winced, and tried not to flinch away from her mother’s touch. ‘You must have known.’

  ‘It may have escaped your notice, but I’ve not been the most attendant of mothers.’

  ‘Even you couldn’t have paid that little attention. We’re still your children.’

  Anna said nothing for a moment. She pushed Connie’s hair away from her face and tucked it behind her ears, stroked her cheek. But Connie turned her head away.

  ‘I didn’t stop loving you.’ Anna’s voice was sad, but not pleading.

  ‘Right. So you – what, just couldn’t summon the energy to look after us?’

  ‘Something like that, yes. You might understand one day.’

  ‘I fucking hope I never do.’ Connie stood up so fast her chair fell over, but she made no move to pick it up. She was shaking, though whether from rage or exhaustion she wasn’t really sure.

  ‘You’re being childish.’

  ‘Yes. I’m still a child, in fact. You haven’t been absent for that long. Yet.’

  ‘You’re fifteen.’

  ‘Oh, you kept count?’

  ‘Don’t make this out to be my fault –’

  ‘You were all about the apologies a minute ago. Now nothing’s your fault again? You’re a fucking joke.’

  ‘You’ve got a mouth like a sewer.’

  ‘And whose fucking fault do you think that is?’ Connie couldn’t remember ever having been so angry. Tears burned at the corners of her eyes, her lip trembled, her jaw ached from clenching it so tightly. White-knuckled, with half-moon cuts on her palms.

  And her father in the doorway, his disappointment dousing the room like cold water.

  ‘Is this really the time?’ he asked, his voice quiet but carrying like a stage whisper.

  Connie looked from one of them to the other, and walked out of the kitchen. Stormed out of the house, slamming the front door so hard that she heard one of the tiny glass panes fall from its frame and splinter on the concrete below. She didn’t turn around.

  now

  Connie had assumed that things would be simpler, with Lily living further away. In some ways they were: she didn’t feel a constant obligation to pick up the phone and check how her sister was getting on. She wasn’t arranging clandestine meetings with Richard to sort things out. Although her concern for Lily was a constant prickling in the back of her mind, it was no longer her responsibility. There was nothing she could do, and she just had to accept that.

  But, if she wasn’t focused on Lily, then there was nothing to focus on but herself.

  Life, it seemed, operated around her, virtually without her input. She’d never noticed it before. She was a good mother, of course: she participated, she picked the boys up from school, she played with them, she helped with their homework. She arranged activities and cooked nutritious dinners. But it was as if she just slotted into a prearranged set-up, without really having to think about it, all the important decisions having been made earlier, at a point when she had been in some way useful.

  She couldn’t put her finger on what it was that made her feel this way. Nathan earned all the money, yes, but he always had. He paid the bills; he kept their lives running, essentially. The logistics of their life went on behind her back, out of sight, and that made her feel in some way childlike. But it had to be more than that. More than just a lack of control over her financial situation.

  Perhaps it was the fact that he got the boys up in the morning. That, if she chose – and these days, it seemed, she often did – she could lie in bed all day and no one would notice, as long as a certain amount of washing was done and food for dinner had been purchased. The fact that dust was gathering like clouds before a storm and she hadn’t hoovered for six weeks and the plants hadn’t been watered seemed immaterial to the running of the household.

  Connie, in fact, seemed immaterial to the running of the household.

  The only times she felt as though she truly mattered were weekends. When there wasn’t a set schedule; when she could do something with the boys that wasn’t just picking them up from school or dropping them off at whatever activity they were supposed to attend that night. The rest of the time she merely existed, floating from room to room, trying to find some place for herself in a life which seemed to regard her as largely useless.

  She didn’t know whether it was the sudden removal of responsibility for her mother, or for Lily, or whether it was the distance between her and Nathan – the feelin
g that he was operating in a space that was separate from hers. It could even just be that the boys were growing up. But, whatever it was, she couldn’t continue like this forever, barely existing.

  She needed a purpose.

  She was wandering half-aimlessly through Sainsbury’s – she knew that she needed to buy something for dinner, but not what she wanted or which aisle she might find it in – when her mobile began to ring. The number was unknown, but that didn’t mean much – most of her phone calls came from school, or Nathan’s work, or random businesses trying to sell her things; the numbers were almost always blocked.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Yes, hello. Is that Constance Emmett?’

  ‘Not for a few years,’ she laughed, ‘but yes, that was me. Who am I speaking to?’

  ‘My name’s Lewis and I work at Farnworth Manor Hospital. We have your sister here with us?’

  Connie felt her blood turn to ice, at the same moment that she wondered why on earth he was posing the sentence as a question. ‘Lily?’

  ‘Yes. We have two contacts here, you and a, er, Richard Hargrove?’

  ‘That’s right, yes. What’s happened to her?’

  ‘Well, we’ve been trying to contact Mr Hargrove, but we can’t seem to get through to him –’

  ‘I’ll contact Richard,’ Connie said, firmly, her voice considerably calmer than her hands, which had begun to tremble. ‘What’s wrong with Lily?’