Hush

by Sara Marshall-Ball

  If someone was wasting your space, wasn’t it your own fault for having that space available in the first place?

  ‘Do you have any idea where Connie might be?’ Dr Mervyn’s voice intruded on her thoughts again. She considered the question.

  ‘No. She sends me letters, but she doesn’t say where she is.’

  ‘Do your parents know that she’s safe?’

  Lily nodded. ‘I showed them the first letter.’ A pause. ‘Not the others.’

  ‘And do you know why she left?’

  Lily looked at him. Measuring. She had not discussed Connie’s departure with her parents, except to let them know she wasn’t dead. They had never asked, given that she’d been locked up at the time Connie left, and she’d never mentioned the conversation they’d had in the playpark. She wondered now whether it mattered, and decided it probably didn’t: either way, Connie was gone, and Lily didn’t know where she was.

  ‘She told me before that she wanted to run away,’ she said eventually. That day, how many months ago? Barely two. Not even sixty days had passed since they’d shared a cigarette and talked about the distant future when Connie would abandon her here.

  She had never imagined it would be like this.

  Dr Mervyn’s face had an alertness to it now, though he was careful not to change the pitch of his voice. ‘Did she? When was that?’

  ‘A while ago. I don’t know.’

  ‘Did she say why?’

  Lily didn’t reply, and Dr Mervyn stopped asking questions. He knew that Lily didn’t respond well to anything she perceived as pressure. As if she would only talk when she thought people weren’t interested in the response.

  They passed the rest of the hour in silence, and when the time was up Lily packed away her things and thanked Dr Mervyn for his time. He in return thanked her for hers, and they concluded the session in the usual way.

  With her hand on the doorknob, Lily turned back, to see him engrossed in his notes, oblivious to her now their time was up.

  ‘She wouldn’t have just gone like that, if nothing was wrong,’ she said quietly. ‘Something must have happened. Otherwise she would have said goodbye.’

  By the time Dr Mervyn had begun to formulate a response, Lily was out of the door and halfway down the corridor.

  She didn’t return to class after their session. She felt too unsettled, her thoughts skipping from one subject to the next, unable to make connections between them all. Her parents – Connie – the cupboard – Connie’s classmates – her parents’ sadness. All jumbled, blurring into one another, one thing refusing to stand out above the rest. Connie had been her protective layer, sheltering her from the outside world. She didn’t need to think when Connie was around, she merely did; Connie steered her in the right direction while she acted in whatever way felt right at the time.

  Now that was gone, and the world was crashing in from all directions. She craved the silence that had once been so easy to find.

  She walked across the fields, idly thinking she might find someone with a cigarette, try smoking again. Maybe she could grow to love the acridity in her mouth. Connie had enjoyed it, after all. Or maybe she could take up drinking. Make friends with older kids. Sneak out in the middle of the night, smash wing mirrors and graffiti the walls of the playground. She didn’t know what, but something needed to be done.

  Now Connie was gone, she was in danger of spending the rest of her life alone, listening to the walls of their house crumble to dust in the silence.

  now

  Richard had carried Lily up to bed at midnight, and placed her as carefully as he could on the bed beside him, folding the sheets around her for protection. She awoke five hours later to darkness, and the faint sound of his snores. She was disorientated, and it took almost a minute to figure out where she was and how she had come to be there.

  The glow of the moon outside the bedroom window cast odd, silvery shadows across the room. She was almost never awake when Richard wasn’t, and the house felt strange, the noises unsettlingly loud and unfamiliar. Her head ached fiercely, her wrist slightly less so. She wondered if there were painkillers in the house.

  He didn’t stir as she rolled out of bed and tiptoed across the room. Shadows darted around her feet, but she looked straight ahead, refused to acknowledge them. Reflections and distortions of light and mind, and nothing more. Ahead of her, more solid ghosts led the way.

  – You know I don’t like the dark I don’t want to go out there shut up okay you said you wanted to come you can’t change your mind now –

  Ghost-Connie held out her hand, insistent, and her pale sibling slipped down the stairs in her wake.

  Lily kept her eyes straight ahead, unwilling to watch them as they disappeared through the kitchen and out of the back door. What had happened had happened. Going over and over it wasn’t going to change a thing.

  She could almost feel Connie’s reproachful gaze, and she turned her back on their past selves, refused to engage with them. She tried to argue with her in her head. It’s worse at night, you see. They’re too real and I don’t know what they’ll try and make me do. Can’t you understand that? Tomorrow it will be different.

  Connie stood in silent and distant judgement, and refused to answer.

  Lily found what she was looking for on the kitchen table. Hospital-related paraphernalia: her discharge papers, aftercare instructions, and a small pharmacy’s worth of painkillers and sedatives and God-knows-what-else. She found the least intimidating-looking painkillers, and took two with a glass of ice-cold tap water. She wondered vaguely if the painkillers were strong enough to make hallucinations worse, but found she didn’t care enough to check the leaflet inside. It was unlikely she’d be trusted with anything that strong, even with Richard at home to watch over her. Too risky, my dear. You’re not exactly someone we can trust, are you?

  The voice sounded vaguely familiar. Perhaps one of the nurses from the hospital? The patronising tone definitely sounded nurse-ish.

  Ghost-Connie was back at the patio doors, watching her, like a cat waiting to be let in. Her shadowy sister was nowhere to be seen. Lily turned away, trying to reason with herself. She wasn’t really there. She was just an instrument of memory, trying to help Lily figure out what had happened. It was Lily’s fault she was there. Lily, who stubbornly refused to remember anything by herself. Was it any wonder her brain had to conjure ghosts to nudge her in the right direction?

  Behind ghost-Connie, the ever-shifting landscape of the garden was spread out in the moonlight. Something about it seemed wrong. Everything was tidier, the weeds sparser, the borders more organised. Richard keeping himself busy while she’d been in hospital, perhaps? But hadn’t he been at her side the whole time? Hadn’t the state of the house when she came home been testament to that?

  She walked through to the living room, leaving her ghosts behind, hovering outside. She knew where they wanted to lead her, but there had to be another way. Something else that would trigger her memory, something that didn’t involve going back.

  It was about time she found it.

  For the first time in weeks she felt motivated. It just wasn’t tolerable to spend so much time being stalked by a past you couldn’t remember. It was one thing to have a few ghosts, the odd memory-blank, but to let them affect your health? To collapse over and over again under the weight of what was hidden from view? She was no longer shielding herself from the past, but residing permanently within it.

  There were memories enough in this house, without having to go into the woods. In the hallway between the kitchen and the living room was the door to the cellar. Lily had barely looked at it since they’d first moved in; they had hidden everything down there and then locked it away. Out of sight. Out of her mind.

  Not any more.

  She pulled the door open carefully, remembering its slow creak, careful not to wake Richard. The light-switch was to her right, dusty and covered in cobwebs. She flicked it on, and the bare bulb above her head shiver
ed into dim, orangey illumination. Another, at the bottom of the stairs, created a circle of light on the concrete floor. The staircase between the two, with its ladder-like wooden stairs that left ankles vulnerable to grabbing from below, flickered with shadows.

  Ridiculous, her inner voice said firmly, shoving her downwards. The cellar was no more of a danger now than it had been when she was five years old, regardless of how scary it might appear.

  Ghost-Connie watched her from the top of the stairs, saying nothing.

  The boxes were lined up against the far wall, just as they had left them when they’d tidied them away. Her mother’s belongings on one side; her father’s, the little that remained, on the other. And Connie and Lily in the middle, wedged between the two. Much of their stuff had already been down here, thrust out of sight by their mother years ago.

  Lily selected a box at random. Connie’s things had been all jumbled together with her own, and neither she nor Richard had felt inclined to try to separate them. Their individual histories, like their current lives, wouldn’t exist without the other to give them perspective.

  She wanted to take the box upstairs, but her wrist was still aching, and it was too awkward to try and move it one-handed. The cellar was cold and empty in the greyish predawn half-light, and the floor was scattered with dirt. She could feel the shadows around her, as if they were tangible, as if they breathed her exhalations; but she was being ridiculous, of course. There was nothing more sinister in this room than twenty years’ worth of dirt. She forced herself to sit down on the floor, pressing her back against the wall so that nothing could sneak up behind her.

  The box was a seemingly random collection of the half-remembered and the completely unknown. Lily picked out the first object that came to hand: a blue bear, fur half-gone on one side, one eye coming loose and giving it a slightly demented expression. She recognised it as Connie’s, though Lily felt it was probably she who was responsible for the damage to the eye. She couldn’t remember if it had a name.

  She placed it to one side, picked out the next item. A pink plastic digital watch, the battery long since dead, displaying nothing but the blank grey of unaccountable time. She tossed it to one side. She remembered the last time she’d worn this.

  She pulled out object after object, some striking flickering, half-heard chords in her memory, others confusing in their unfamiliarity. Even back when they were kids, there had been parts of Connie’s life she hadn’t known. White tennis shoes, size eleven. When had she ever had those shoes? And why had her mother kept them?

  Of course, they could have been from afterwards. Lily often had to remind herself that there was a large chunk of their childhood that had not been shared.

  As she pulled out objects, examined them, held them, discarded them, two pairs of eyes watched unblinking from the top of the stairs. Ghost-eyes, empty, and yet, they seemed to know. Knew what she was looking for, even though she didn’t. Would know when she’d found it, even though she probably wouldn’t.

  And behind them, another pair of eyes, supposed to be sleeping: instead, searching for just a glimpse of sense in silent, unfathomable behaviour.

  Richard called Connie from work later that day, not wanting to be overheard by Lily. The pub was deserted, and likely to stay that way, for an hour or so at least. Rosa had disappeared into town with Ella, and Tim had been out every day that Richard had worked there. On the phone Connie sounded distracted, but there was enough concern in her voice for Richard to continue the conversation without feeling guilty about the questions he wasn’t asking.

  ‘What sort of things was she looking at?’

  ‘I don’t know. I didn’t look too closely, and she put it all back as soon as she realised I was up. It looked like toys and things.’

  ‘I didn’t think Mama had kept any of that stuff.’

  ‘Really? Don’t all mothers?’ Richard was baffled, but Connie laughed.

  ‘I know Lily doesn’t talk much, but she must have given you some idea of what our mother was like? She didn’t exactly cherish the memories of our childhood.’

  ‘Maybe she did, and was too shy to show it.’

  ‘More likely she shoved everything in a box after Dad died and just couldn’t be bothered to chuck it away.’

  Richard could hear her clattering in the background, as if she was tidying. ‘Are you sure now’s a good time to talk?’

  ‘Yeah, it’s fine. I’m just getting everything sorted for Christmas.’ There was a pause, and Richard, lost in thought, didn’t realise a response was expected. ‘We are still doing Christmas, right?’

  ‘Of course. Absolutely. Lily can’t wait.’

  ‘You mean you can’t wait.’

  ‘Connie, don’t. She really does love you. And the boys. It’s going to be great to have a proper family Christmas for once.’

  ‘If Lily can get through the day without collapsing and Nathan can manage to stay in the house for more than ten minutes at a time.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Connie sighed, a loud crackle in Richard’s ear. ‘It’s just that he keeps having to go and see patients. Or so he says. I know it’s that time of year, and lots of home visits are required and all that, but he’s supposed to have booked this week off work. Surely even if you’re a doctor you’re allowed to have holiday?’

  ‘Don’t, Connie.’

  ‘Don’t what?’

  ‘Don’t jump to the conclusions you’re jumping to. He’s always had a strong work ethic. And he’s never booked time off over Christmas before. This is probably why.’

  ‘But if he has holiday during the summer he never has to go into work.’

  ‘Maybe he’s volunteering to do more than he would normally, because it’s Christmas and because he doesn’t want to stay at home when things between you two are so hard. But that doesn’t automatically mean what you think it means.’

  ‘I asked him, you know. He didn’t even reply. And he hasn’t spoken to me since.’

  The front door to the pub opened, and Ed walked in, looking unnaturally large in the low doorway. He lifted a hand in greeting, and made his way to the far end of the bar, not quite out of earshot.

  ‘He might have just been shocked,’ Richard said, trying to be reasonable. ‘Anyway, Connie, I’ve got to run. I’ve got a customer.’

  ‘Okay. But Richard, can I ask you a favour?’

  Only a slight hesitation. ‘Sure.’

  ‘If you get a chance, can you speak to Nathan? See if you can get anything out of him? Christmas will be miserable otherwise.’

  ‘I don’t know if it’s really my place.’

  ‘He knows we talk; he knows I will have told you what’s going on. It would be weird, wouldn’t it, if you didn’t want to get his version of events?’

  ‘Connie, it’s one thing getting his version of things. It’s quite another getting his version and then reporting back to you. What if he tells me that you’re right? Am I then supposed to keep his secret, or tell you what he said?’

  ‘You’re supposed to be a friend.’

  ‘Yes, but to both of you. I’m sorry, Connie, but I can’t take sides on this one. I already feel like I’m betraying Nathan half the time, because I spend so much time talking to you these days. You understand that, don’t you?’

  There was a pause. Richard could hear Connie shuffling things in the background, thinking it over. He gestured an apology to Ed, who brushed it away with a wave of his hand.

  ‘I do understand,’ she said, finally, reluctantly.

  ‘Thank you. I will talk to him, though, and tell him how worried you are. How’s that?’

  ‘Okay. Thank you.’

  ‘No problem. I’ve got to go. Speak to you soon.’

  ‘Yup. Bye.’

  The pub rang with the old-fashioned ding of the receiver as Richard replaced it in its cradle. ‘Sorry about that. How are you today?’

  ‘Not bad, thanks. Everything okay?’ Ed gestured unnecessarily in the direction of the ph
one.

  ‘Yeah, it’s fine. Just family stuff.’

  ‘Is Lily okay? I heard about the fall.’

  Richard had never lived in a village before, and still found it unsettling, the way news travelled among people he probably wouldn’t give the time of day to in the street. ‘She’s recovering. I brought her home yesterday.’

  ‘That’s good news,’ Ed said, nodding.

  ‘Yeah, it could have been much worse. Anyway, I’m being a terrible barman today. Can I get you a drink?’

  ‘Just a half, please. I’ve got to drive into town in a bit. Is Rosa about?’

  ‘She’s gone out with Ella.’ Richard leaned down, groping under the bar for the half-pint glasses. His fingers brushed the shelf underneath the glasses, and came away covered in sticky residue. ‘Urgh. Sometimes I wonder why Rosa doesn’t make me give this place a thorough cleaning, rather than just standing around doing nothing all day.’

  ‘I think she’s worried that if she makes her staff do anything then they won’t be willing to work for peanuts any more,’ Ed replied, laughing. ‘Is the place that bad?’

  ‘I’ve worked in worse.’ Richard examined the glass closely, then rinsed it in the sink for good measure. ‘It could do with some general maintenance, though.’ He pulled half a pint of the ale Ed had had last time, hoping he wouldn’t object to the presumption. It was the kind of pub where people expected not to have to be too specific about what they were ordering, if they were in frequently enough to be recognised by the staff, and Richard didn’t want to stick out as the new man by constantly asking people what they wanted.

  ‘Well, I’m sure Rosa wouldn’t object to you giving it a good going-over when you’re not busy. I imagine the flat and the cellar could benefit from it, as well.’

  ‘You’re probably right there.’ Richard placed Ed’s drink in front of him. ‘So what brings you in here, anyway? Were you after Rosa for anything in particular?’