The Poison Garden (2019 Sphere Edition)

by Alex Marwood

  ‘Thank you,’ says Sarah.

  They’re standing out on the drive, by the woman’s car, and she’s fiddling with her car keys and her briefcase full of sandwiches and folders, clearly keen to get back on the road. It’s a long drive back to Dolgellau. Sarah’s glad that she at least won’t have to make that again.

  ‘They’re nice kids,’ the case worker says, optimistically. ‘Polite.’

  ‘Yes,’ says Sarah. ‘They seem it.’

  ‘Anyway,’ says the case worker, eyeing Sarah’s generous dwelling and obviously drawing conclusions about her income, ‘I must get on the road. Long trip back. Oh, and—’ She delves in her pocket, produces a piece of folded A4. ‘I meant to give you this.’

  Sarah unfolds it. It’s an address, somewhere in the TW postcodes. 136b Bath Road. Where is that? Twickenham? Hampton? Somewhere around Heathrow?

  ‘It’s the half-sister. I thought you should have it. There are reasons why we can’t give yours to her, as the kids are minors and she’s an adult and we don’t really know all that much about her. And she’s been in rehab until very recently. You’d need to bear that in mind. Maybe assess her a bit before you plunge in. But maybe you could sound them out? See if they’re wanting to be in touch? If they want to be, it would be no bad thing, I’d have thought.’

  ‘Thank you,’ says Sarah. ‘I don’t suppose there’s a phone number, is there?’

  ‘Not as far as I know.’

  ‘Okay.’ Sarah folds up the paper. She’ll put it in her wallet while she thinks, so she doesn’t lose it.

  Ilo is staring at portraits of his ancestors. They’ve taken themselves as far as the dining room, at least. Some signs of curiosity.

  ‘Who are these?’ he asks.

  ‘Your forebears,’ she says, ‘on your mother’s side. They all lived here before us. This one—’ she points to her great-grandfather ‘—built this house.’

  ‘They don’t look very happy.’

  ‘Oh, I think they were happy enough. There’s a type of person who finds being miserable more satisfying than just about anything.’

  Ilo turns and looks at her. Studies her face for a moment, then nods. ‘I understand,’ he says, and smiles.

  At the table, Eden has settled into the chair at the head, the one Sarah thinks of as her father’s chair. Sarah feels oddly uncomfortable about it. She’s never sat there herself, even though she has been head of the household for some time. It just doesn’t feel right.

  Eden has taken two wooden boxes from the bags and lain them on the surface in front of her. She sits quietly and watches her brother, as though she’s waiting for him to join her before she opens them.

  ‘What are those?’ asks Sarah.

  ‘Our boxes,’ says Eden, as though the answer were self-evident. They’re beautiful boxes. Very plain and simple, but sanded to silken smoothness, the grain of the wood – walnut for one, what looks like cherry for the other – fed and polished until they shine.

  ‘They’re beautiful,’ says Sarah. ‘Did someone make them for you?’

  Eden looks surprised. ‘No. We made them.’

  ‘Yourselves?’ she comes closer and runs her fingers over the polished wood of the cherrywood box, the one into whose lid the name ILO has been painstakingly etched with a childish hand. Brass hinges, a tiny hook and eye holding it closed. Beautiful. Who would have thought a child could make something with such skill and attention to detail?

  ‘We all have one,’ says Ilo, coming up beside her and taking his box in his hands. He hugs it upright against his chest, as though the very feel of it comforts him. ‘Had,’ he corrects.

  She wonders what’s in them, decides it’s probably wrong to ask. Let them have some secrecy, some private places. If they want me to know, they will tell me in time.

  ‘Cup of tea,’ she says. The solution to all awkwardness.

  ‘Thank you,’ says Eden. ‘We haven’t really drunk tea before.’

  ‘In the Home, we did,’ Ilo reminds her. ‘We had it at breakfast.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she says. ‘Would it be possible to have a glass of water instead?’

  ‘Of course,’ says Sarah, suppressing a smile. ‘I’ll show you where everything lives.’ This is it, she thinks. This is my life now. And it’s theirs, too. She clears her throat. ‘I want you to feel at home here,’ she tells them. ‘This is your home.’

  ‘Thank you,’ they say, in unison, like little robots.

  ‘I hope you’ll be happy here,’ she says. ‘I don’t expect it to happen overnight, but I hope you’ll be happy with me.’

  Eden smiles. ‘We were happy at Plas Golau.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ says Ilo. ‘We were happy there.’

  She doesn’t know what to say to that. Plas Golau, from what she’s read of it, seems to her like very hell on earth. But it’s where they’ve come from. I mustn’t sweat it, she thinks. It’s inevitable that they’ll have brought a bit of it with them, the way they’ve brought those boxes.

  ‘Well, I’ll do my best to make it okay for you here. If there’s anything you need,’ she says, ‘just say. We’ll have to go shopping over the next couple of days. Get you kitted out for school.’

  She catches them glancing at each other. ‘Thank you,’ they say again.

  ‘No, seriously, don’t be shy. It’s a lot to take in all at once, I know. A big change. You’ve had a hell of a lot to adjust to. At least I guess you’ve got a bit of time to settle in before you go to school. I’m sorry we couldn’t get things organised so you could join at the beginning of the year. You need to be ready to be a bit conspicuous, I’m afraid. But if there’s anything you need, if you think of anything … ’

  ‘It looks like you’ve already got everything in the world,’ says Ilo.

  Sarah looks around her home and feels sad. All those blond-wood, sleek Scandinavian dreams she shared with Liam reduced to a few sticks of Ikea furniture stored in the garage because they looked so out of place in here. She’d intended to have it all cleared out by now.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘It’s grim, I know. It’s hard, deciding what to keep when you’ve inherited it. I promise I’ll get to it. We’ll pick the stuff we want to keep and get other stuff that suits us better.’

  They side-eye each other again. ‘No, no,’ says Ilo. ‘That’s not what I meant. We’re just … not used to so much stuff.’

  ‘It wasn’t our way, at home,’ says Eden.

  ‘Well,’ she says, hopefully, ‘I guess communal living is different. You must have been pressed for space.’

  Eden shrugs. ‘Yes. And possessions won’t mean much, after the Great Disaster.’

  ‘They get in the way,’ says Ilo. ‘They weigh you down.’

  ‘That’s all,’ says Eden. ‘We’re not, you know … judging you. But presumably you have a plan.’

  ‘A plan?’

  ‘For what you’d take if you had to run? And where you’d go?’

  ‘I … ’

  Not even lunchtime, and already she’s flummoxed.

  ‘Not really,’ she says, ‘but … maybe we can work on one together.’ Good lord, they still believe all that stuff. Just as my parents believed that Jesus really was a bloke who wanted a nice suburban house to live in, or Momentum members believe in Magic Grandpa. You never totally get it, do you, till it slaps you in the face?

  ‘Bedrooms,’ she says. ‘Let me show you your bedrooms.’

  Their eyes meet. ‘Bedrooms? One each?’ asks Ilo.

  ‘Yes. Of course.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘We’ve got plenty.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ says Ilo, and she’s flummoxed again. Even identical twins long for their own space when they’re teenagers, surely? ‘I just … it seems so … ’

  It’s going to be so tricky, finding ways of showing them how the normal world lives without seeming to criticise the one they’ve come from. But the overcrowding at Plas Golau must have been practically slumlike. No wonder they never had any belon
gings.

  ‘Thing is, I don’t think Social Services like the idea of siblings of different genders sharing rooms,’ she says. ‘So we’re going to have to do what they expect, at least until they’re not watching us any more.’ By which time, hopefully, you’ll have got used to it. ‘Come on,’ she says, and leads them upstairs.

  From the landing, four bedrooms. First, her parents’, with her father’s reading glasses and tumbler – water long since evaporated – still in place on his bedside table. Two smaller rooms in the middle, which were once her own and Alison’s, Alison’s stripped and turned into a sewing room within a week of her leaving. And the Bishop’s Room: what in any normal house would be called the spare room. Smaller than her parents’, but twice the size of the little ones. She’s almost embarrassed to admit it, but she herself moved straight back into her childhood bedroom. Doesn’t want to take over her parents’ room and can’t face clearing it out. All those clothes. The shoes unworn for two years, the strange lizardy feel of anything they’ve touched. It wasn’t meant to be forever. But time slips away when you’re lonely. Loneliness saps your energy. You can stare at the same cobweb for years on end, watching it blacken, and still not think to find a duster to remove it.

  She opens the door to the spare room. ‘I thought you could be in here,’ she says to Ilo. ‘It’s bigger, but I’m afraid the window just looks out on next door. And this one’s your mother’s old room.’ She throws open the door to Eden’s.

  Eden stays in the hallway, says nothing, but her eyes blaze.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ asks Sarah.

  ‘Nothing,’ says Eden.

  ‘It has its own basin, look.’ She points to the pearlised pink pedestal sink on the far wall. ‘It was your mother’s room, when she was your age,’ she repeats, hopefully.

  ‘It’s okay, Eden,’ says Ilo. ‘I’ll take it. It’s fine.’

  ‘I thought,’ Sarah says, finds herself stammering, ‘it would be nicer. You’ve got a lovely outlook, and a decent wardrobe.’

  Eden’s eyes flash at her.

  ‘She should have the bigger room,’ says Ilo, and walks into Alison’s. Lays his box down on the desk, sits on the bed. Eden says nothing, but walks into the other and closes the door.

  It will get better, Sarah. It’s day one. It will get better.

  17 | Sarah

  They’re fascinated by the footbridge. But then, they’re fascinated by everything, with very little distinction, like a toddler spotting a pigeon in a zoo. A puzzled look crosses one or other of their faces five times an hour, because they literally know nothing. It’s lucky, really, that the school couldn’t take them till half-term, as their goggling astonishment at everything they saw – piercings, cats’ eyes in the road, post boxes, trains, washing machines, blue hair, Marmite, the sea, pugs – would have marked them out for bullying in an instant. She took a couple of weeks’ unpaid leave before the half-term holiday to get to know them, and in the hope that she could introduce them to enough of the world that they don’t attract too much attention when they have to navigate it without her.

  It’s only partly worked. Merely crossing a bridge is something special to them. Though the bridge is, in its way, a special experience. Looking down onto the windy chasm of the motorway is a strange sort of time-travel experience. It makes you feel, as juggernauts blast past beneath your feet, like a Stone Age hunter finding yourself in the land of dragons. Ilo stops and leans on the railing for so long that she almost tells him to hurry up. But then his curiosity sparks a curiosity in her. I’ve never actually done that, she thinks, and climbs onto the ledge that supports the railings beside him.

  It’s a unique sensation, she discovers: the puffs of air that hit the face when even a small car whizzes beneath them, the fact that that sort of speed is so unnatural, so beyond anything one would experience in nature, that when you watch you can actually feel your brain adjusting to fit the phenomenon in with the surrounding reality. Eden climbs up on the other side of her and she has to fight a strong urge to put out an arm to stop her tipping over, as though she were a toddler.

  ‘How fast are they going?’ Ilo asks.

  ‘Oh, I’d think somewhere between seventy and eighty.’

  ‘Miles an hour?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He doesn’t seem particularly impressed. ‘An asteroid enters the earth’s atmosphere at 45,000 miles an hour,’ he says.

  ‘Apophis,’ says Eden.

  ‘You what?’

  ‘It’ll pass inside the orbit of our communication satellites in 2029,’ she says.

  ‘Yes,’ says Ilo. ‘And that might alter its orbit enough that it hits us the next time round.’

  ‘Goodness!’ she says. ‘And when will that be?’

  ‘2036,’ they both say complacently.

  ‘But obviously most of humanity will be long gone by then,’ says Eden.

  ‘Yes, but it’ll be a long winter,’ says Ilo.

  ‘Come on,’ Sarah says. She’s getting used to this habit they have of spotting the links between things they see and world-crushing phenomena. It doesn’t mean anything, really. It’s just a reflex, like crossing yourself when you see a magpie. ‘We don’t want to be late on your first day.’ And he climbs down obediently, though he casts a look of regret over his shoulder.

  She looks at them. Funny creatures. Is there more going on beneath the surface, or are they really this calm? Helen says to be patient. ‘It’s early days,’ she says. ‘They need to trust you first.’ Maybe the daily counselling they’ve got arranged with her will help; teach them, at least, to open up. She finds it hard to know what to do when most of the time they treat her like a pleasant stranger, not the friend she’d imagined she would be. She would have a better idea of how to be around them if they treated her the way all the kids at the school do – like the enemy.

  And talk of the devil: they turn the corner and run smack into Marie Spence, and Lindsay, her morning bodyguard. It’s not that surprising. She lives on the Canaan Estate, in one of the houses the Congregation sold off in the Noughties, her parents’ matching red Jags in the driveway and a swimming pool where the rhododendrons used to be, so she’ll inevitably take the same route to school if she’s walking. But Sarah wishes that today had been one of the days her father decided to give her a lift; that the children’s first experience of their schoolmates didn’t have to be her.

  She’s Abi Knowles all over again, thinks Sarah, remembering her own nemesis, her own adolescent misery. They’re part of every ecosystem, and God, I wish they weren’t.

  ‘Morning, miss,’ Marie says pertly. She is wearing rattling silver bangles – lots of them, layered – and big hoop earrings that dance against her cheeks. Her feet, for the journey from house to school, are clad in spike heels so high that to Sarah her arch looks vertical. More drag queen than teenager. But still she’s confident that Marie won’t look back at teenage photos and feel as bad as Sarah does when she looks at the pudding-basin haircut and the apron-pinafore combinations that feature in her own.

  ‘Who’s this, miss?’ asks Marie. She has no fear of adults, and no respect, either. She probably doesn’t even know Sarah’s name. It’s not as though lowly office drones figure much in her world.

  ‘This is Eden Blake, Marie,’ she says. It’s bound to get out that the children are related to the staff eventually, but no point in cursing them with that by actually announcing their relationship on their first day. ‘She’s starting in your class today. And this is her brother, Ilo. Eden, Ilo, this is Marie, and Lindsay. Eden’s going to be in your year. I’m sure you’ll be making her welcome, won’t you?’ she adds, and the bright tone she attempts sounds a lot like pleading.

  Marie’s eyes scan up and down Eden, then Ilo, then Eden’s clean-scrubbed face and knee-length uniform skirt again, and her upper lip curls. Whatever the disappointments of her adult life, Sarah is grateful every day that she never has to be a teenager again.

  ‘Yeah,’ says Marie to Eden’s
unbranded trainers. A hand comes up and flicks the shiny red extensions.

  ‘Who was that?’ asks Eden, as they turn the next corner. She sounds neither impressed nor apprehensive.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry about them,’ says Sarah, more confidently than she feels. ‘There’s a Marie in every school.’

  ‘How does she walk in those shoes?’ she asks.

  ‘God knows,’ says Sarah. ‘She’ll have to change out of them when she gets to the gates.’

  ‘Ah,’ says Ilo, ‘that’s why she has such a big bag.’

  Well, it sure as hell doesn’t have any books in it. ‘I know. You wouldn’t have thought it was worth the effort, would you?’

  ‘She has very long eyelashes,’ says Eden. ‘They’re not real,’ says Sarah. ‘She gets them glued on once a month. By the end of the month they’re shedding down her cheeks like spider’s legs.’

  Helen is waiting on the steps as they arrive, dressed in her full soft-jersey-waterfall-cardigan professional counsellor gear, lots of pockets for Kleenex and large round breasts for weeping on. ‘Hi, guys,’ she says. ‘Ready for the fray?’

  They go inside and Sarah is glad that she’s spent so much effort and money on acclimatising them to crowded places in the past few weeks, for without it they would probably be frozen to the spot right now. The pre-registration cacophony is enough to make a healthy adult quail. The air is rich with that particular heady smell that comes off a body old enough to be using deodorant but not old enough to have discovered independent washing, and the air reverberates with shouts and screams. They hover just inside the doorway to let themselves adjust, and she feels Eden’s speedy breathing.

  ‘It’ll be okay.’ She attempts to sound reassuring. ‘You’ll get used to it, I promise.’

  They set off through the surging bodies to the corridor that leads to the principal’s office.

  Before the End

  2008–2010

  18 | Romy

  2009

  Boys become men at thirteen. For girls, it’s more of a moveable feast. Romy gets almost a year longer in the Pigshed than Eilidh does. Their low-protein, low-fat diet tends to delay puberty for the girls of the Ark in comparison with their contemporaries among the Dead. But she’s fourteen, and she has finally become a woman. She secretly finds it a bit icky that so many people should be so interested in her bodily functions, but everyone seems so excited, so pleased for her, that she keeps the thought to herself. Besides, she’s been bored, locked up in the Pigshed, waiting, and she’s wild to find out what she will become.