by Alex Marwood
Crikey. Defensive or what? ‘I – no, I haven’t,’ she says.
Liam has two children now. Probably thinks that the little girlfriend’s fecundity is just more proof of her own emotional coldness.
‘Best keep yours to yourself, then,’ Romy says, and Sarah shrinks into the couch.
The kettle boils. Romy pours water into the mugs and stirs vigorously. ‘Do you have sugar in it?’ she asks. ‘I know some people drink tea with sugar.’
‘Sure,’ says Sarah. ‘One, if that’s okay?’
Romy opens a drawer and produces a sachet of sugar from a café. Rips it open and dumps the full contents into one of the mugs, then adds the best part of a quarter-pint of milk to each. Brings them over. ‘Do you need something to eat? I have apples.’
Sarah suppresses a smile. ‘No.’ She sips gingerly from her lukewarm milky drink and fights to hold back a grimace. ‘This is lovely, thanks.’
‘Okay,’ says Romy, and lowers herself slowly down beside her. Something’s hurting, thinks Sarah. She’s off balance because of the baby, but it’s more than that. She’s moving like an eighty-year-old.
She sees Sarah notice, shakes her head. ‘It’s not as bad as it looks,’ she says, and winces as she leans forward to pick up her tea. Turns to face her. ‘So why are you here?’
‘I’m sorry,’ says Sarah. ‘I would have given you some warning if I could. But I only had your address and I didn’t know how else to contact you.’
Romy nods. ‘Do you know where my brother and sister are?’
‘Yes. They’re with me. That’s why I wanted to find you.’
She blinks.
‘Oh, no, I’m sorry.’ The words rush out. ‘I mean, that’s not the only reason I’m here. But I didn’t know. About what happened. Not till a couple of months ago. I didn’t know you were there.’
Romy looks away. ‘Never mind,’ she says, and sips her tea. Pulls a face and puts it back down on the table.
‘Well, I’m sorry anyway,’ says Sarah. ‘You’ve had a lot to deal with all alone and I should have thought of that. And, for what it’s worth, I’m sorry I never tried to find you before. You and your mum. I know I was a kid when you were born, but I’ve been an adult a long time now.’
Another blink. Her big eyes are such a vivid green and the lashes so thick and dark that she looks for a moment like one of those animatronic dolls that sad men buy for pleasure.
‘Yes, well. I had a family.’
Had.
‘I’m so sorry,’ says Sarah. ‘About your mum. About your … friends.’
‘Family,’ she corrects, with an edge of defiance. That eye looks really painful. It’s swollen half-closed. If that’s two days old, she must have been close to death. She’s really ill, thinks Sarah. They’re made of tough stuff, my sister’s children, but I don’t think I’ve come at a good time. Or maybe I have. I should think she could do with some support, however prickly she is.
Romy coughs. ‘So tell me about Eden and Ilo,’ she says.
‘They’re fine. Well, as fine as you could expect – I don’t know. I have no idea what you would be expecting. I’m sorry. I’m making a hash of this.’
‘Yes, well.’ She coughs again. She really doesn’t look well. ‘I don’t suppose this is a commonplace experience for either of us.’
Sarah smiles. ‘No,’ she says. ‘I’m glad you understand.’
A superstorm of suppressed emotions passes across her niece’s face. Then she pulls herself together and goes blank again. ‘I’m not sure how much there is to understand. It is what it is. Thank you for taking them in. Where do you live?’
‘Finbrough,’ she tells her. ‘It’s a little town a bit of the way up the—’
‘I know where Finbrough is,’ she snaps. ‘Are you telling me you’ve been there all along?’
‘I – well, I left for a bit, when I was married. I lived in Reading, but – oh, you mean with the children. Yes. Well, not all along. But once Social Services released them to me, yes. Have you been looking?’
She looks miserable, as though she’s being crushed by an unseen hand from above. ‘Yes.’
‘Presumably you tried the church?’
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘But I couldn’t get through. There’s a website, and I called the number there, but nobody answered.’
‘I’m sorry. It’s been closed for a couple of years, since your grandfather died.’
‘So I gathered. About the church. I didn’t know he was dead though.’
‘And you didn’t know where the house was? Your mother didn’t tell you?’
‘Well she told me about it,’ says Romy. ‘But she didn’t exactly give me an address and directions, no.’
‘No. I suppose she wouldn’t.’ She thinks of those letters and feels a surge of rage. ‘I don’t suppose Alison wanted you to have anything to do with them.’
‘Somer,’ Romy corrects.
She checks herself. ‘Yes, I’m sorry. I’ve just been thinking of her as Alison all these years, and it’s hard for me to shift. Bear with me.’
Another of those thunderous looks.
‘Anyway,’ she continues, trying to act as though she hasn’t noticed, ‘they’re well. But they miss you.’
The look goes from thunderous to thunderstruck. ‘They said that?’
‘In so many words. They talk about you.’
A flicker of the eyebrow. God, these people are so hard to read. Blank walls with hairline cracks in the plaster. ‘And I think,’ she continues, ‘that I might need your help.’
‘My help?’
‘Yes. If you … I know I have no right to ask you for anything … ’
‘No, you’re right. But I’m listening.’ She puts her hand on the sofa arm and bends backwards, as though she’s trying to clunk something out in her spine.
‘I … look, I’m glad to meet you, and honestly, if there’s anything I can do … but I need your help. You’re the only person who … well, you know. Knows. Knows them. Knows what they’ve been through. Knows about the way they grew up … ’
‘And me,’ says Romy. ‘It was the way I grew up, too.’
‘Yes. I get that. That’s why I thought maybe you … I just … they’re having trouble fitting in. I can see it. And I wondered if maybe you … ’
‘You think I know?’
She’s brought up short. ‘I … gosh. I don’t know. I’m sorry if that was offensive.’
She shakes her head. ‘Not offensive. Just a bit stupid.’
‘You’re older,’ she says. ‘When they’re not at school they’re at home all the time, with no friends. I mean, I only moved back to Finbrough quite recently—’ she’s embarrassed to admit that it’s been three years and she’s still a virtual recluse ‘—so I’ve not really got much of a circle myself, and anyway, people my age, you know, they’re mostly just starting out having babies. It’s rare for someone my age to have a fifteen-year-old … and I don’t see how they’re ever going to learn to fit in like that. And they need to fit in. They’re out in the real world now and they need to learn how to negotiate it.’
Another flicker of the eyebrow. Probably didn’t like that ‘real world’ thing, but at least she’s not clammed up the way they did.
‘I thought we were getting on okay,’ she says, ‘but I don’t … I’ve realised that I don’t know how to talk to them. And I think they might be having trouble with some of the kids at school, but they won’t confide in me … I don’t know how to ask the right questions. Help them open up.’
‘No, I can see that,’ says Romy. ‘So you want me to?’
‘It’s … or advise me. I don’t know. I’m so surprised, sometimes, by the things that matter to them. And the things they don’t trust me about.’
‘Such as?’
‘I don’t know. Like, Eden lost her necklace the other day, and … ’
Romy jolts. Literally jolts. Looks at her with dark, suspicious eyes. ‘Necklace? Metal thing, like a medallion?’
>
‘Yes. Ilo says it’s important to her, but they seem to be dead set against me putting out an alert for it in the school, and I don’t know … I don’t know who else to ask.’
‘And you want me to … what? Get it back?’ she asks.
‘I … no, it’s not that. It’s that – you know – their lives have been so different from mine. From anybody’s, really. And there’s this disconnect because there’s stuff they take for granted that I just don’t even know about, and probably quite a lot of vice versa, too. I thought maybe if they could see someone who’s … who knows all the stuff I don’t … someone who’s had the same experiences but is a bit older … ’
‘I see.’ Romy’s nose wrinkles. ‘I’m not sure I’d be that much help. If you want me to explain how the world works. I can’t even make tea properly.’
Sarah can’t stop herself smiling. ‘I’ll teach you that, if you like.’
‘I’ll think about it.’
She risks pushing further. ‘It’s not so much here I need explaining to them, Romy. It’s there I need explaining to me. I’ve tried to ask them, but … I realise I don’t really have the first idea what you believed – believe – sorry … I know I’m getting this all wrong. But that’s it. That’s the problem. I just feel I’m constantly putting my foot in it, making wrong assumptions, but it’s as though we speak a different language or something. I feel as though I need someone to translate.’
Romy looks surprised. ‘Oh,’ she says. ‘You’re the first person who’s not assumed it was something lacking in us. Okay, then. When do you want me to come and talk to them? Now?’
Sarah panics. No. No, no, no, I should have thought this through better. I can’t just have her tip up covered in bruises with a baby hanging off her. ‘I … ’ She hunts her brain for a way to backtrack without being rude. ‘They’re at school now,’ she says, ‘and I haven’t talked to them about you. I would think it would be a bit of a shock if you were just there when they came home.’
‘Oh,’ says Romy.
‘Have you got a phone? Can I take your number, maybe? If we could maybe talk a bit more, when you’re feeling better, and I can get to know you a bit … ?’
‘Yes,’ she says, ‘but I don’t know what it is.’
‘Okay. If I tell you my number, you can send me a text. Then we can both store each other’s. Then we can talk more.’
‘Oh, okay,’ says Romy, ‘yes.’ She pulls herself up from the sofa. Takes two steps towards her bag on the countertop, and her knees buckle under her. She drops to the ground like a chainsawed ash.
30 | Romy
They come and sit nearby, sometimes together, sometimes alone, but I pretend not to see them. I’ve got myself here now, and, now that I’m in this comfortable bed in this quiet road with curtains that block out all the light, I realise that I am, in fact, dog-tired and hurting, and a couple of days’ sleep and recuperation is just the ticket. She brought a doctor with grey hair and spectacles, who took my temperature and listened to my chest with a stethoscope and decided that I wasn’t in imminent danger of death, and prescribed delicious painkillers and large amounts of water ‘whether she wants to or not – flush those contusions through her kidneys and liver’. And I certainly look the part. I crept into the bathroom and had a look in the mirror when they were all asleep. I look like chopped aubergine.
No wonder she believed I’d collapsed for real.
My aunt feeds me neon-orange soup from a plain white bowl – oh, the sheer deliciousness of little strips of buttered toast; she makes me drink a glass of water every hour I’m awake, puts a funny little bell by my bedside, chases the children out when they’ve been there silently staring at me as I pretend to sleep, for too long. And I spend more time than I would have thought possible unconscious in the clammy dark, as though a few bruises might actually have made me sick.
My dreams are chaos. A swirling vortex of chaos, punctuated by screams of rage. Have been all my life. It’s mostly just darkness and movement and a sense of being followed.
But in a dream in this bed I go back to Plas Golau, and the man is lying at my feet halfway up the hill road in the woods. He’s grinning that open-mouthed grin and his hands are claws. But he’s dead. I’ve made sure of that. There’s a pool of blood beneath him. I roll him with my toes until he hits the slope and disappears into the undergrowth. He won’t be bothering me again. I’m done with him now. And I walk on, up the hill, back to my home.
I cross the orchard. Laundry flutters like carnival banners in the breeze. I remember what it was really like – the drooping grey, the drizzle that filled the air – but this is another day, a day before the people came. No one is here but me.
A lark sings, somewhere in the blue, and the approach, through this beautiful countryside I know so well, makes me feel so full I could explode. We made a place of beauty, up here in the hills, Cader Idris soaring above us, its colours changing with every passing moment. It’s the thing the Dead will never understand. That life was hard at Plas Golau, but what we made was beautiful.
And then I turn through the gates and see that the Great Disaster has arrived.
A sharp pain in my ribs snatches my breath away, throws me from sleep. A cramp. I must have been panting, and set it off. I don’t know which way to go to stretch it out. Either way the agony will be worse before it gets better. Eventually, I stretch. Hiss as the muscles ripple red-hot between my ribs and the spasm goes all the way to my spine.
‘Oh,’ I say, ‘oh,’ and then I look up and see that Eden and Ilo are sitting at the end of the bed, looking alarmed. ‘Aaaaah, sorry,’ I say, pushing myself into a sitting position against the pillows. ‘Cramp.’
Ilo gets up and walks to my end of the bed. ‘Where?’ he asks. I point. Bottom of the ribcage, left-hand side. He bends his elbow and digs it into the ball of molten metal under my skin and it shrieks, fights back, relaxes.
I exhale with relief. ‘Thanks.’
‘That’s okay,’ he says, and walks back to sit by my sister.
‘Where have you been?’ Eden asks.
‘Weston-super-Mare,’ I say, ‘and Hounslow.’
‘Where’s Hounslow?’
‘East of here. Near London.’
‘You’re meant to look after me,’ she says.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘I was looking. But I was ill. For a long time. And you had Ilo.’
‘What if I’d died?’ she asks. ‘Where would we be then?’
And I look at her and look at her, and I remember how she was when she was a little kid, and I’m glad you’ll never grow up like Lucien’s children, baby. Knowing you’re special is a long way different from being special.
‘How are you feeling?’ asks Ilo.
‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘Like I’ve been run over.’
‘Aunt Sarah said you’d been robbed.’
‘Yes.’
He frowns. ‘That doesn’t sound like you.’
‘They caught me off-guard. And I’m not … as fit as I was. What day is it?’
‘Sunday.’
‘What time?’
‘Half-past ten,’ says Eden. ‘You look a lot better. When are you going to get up?’
‘I probably stink,’ I say.
‘There are three bathrooms here,’ says Ilo. ‘There’s actually one through that door over there, look, for this room alone. You’ve been peeing in it, but you probably don’t remember. You’ve been delirious.’
‘On sweet,’ I say, looking at the door. They look blank. ‘That’s what it’s called,’ I say. ‘An On Sweet.’
They both look doubtful.
‘She said to call her when you woke up,’ says Eden, ‘so she can make you some breakfast.’
‘She?’
‘Aunt Sarah.’
‘Oh, yes. Of course.’
Eden nods. ‘Apparently you collapsed.’ She doesn’t sound very impressed. ‘This is our grandparents’ room,’ she adds.
I pretend to look around, t
hough I’ve had plenty of time to familiarise myself with the taupe walls and the beige carpet and the two hard-backed armchairs, all of it looking like no one ever stopped living here. ‘Is it?’ I ask. ‘In Finbrough?’
‘You’ve been looking for us, then?’ asks Eden.
‘I told you. Where were you?’
‘A place called Barmouth. Quite close to home. Then she brought us here. We go to school now.’
‘How’s that?’
‘Weird. Boring. They’re all interested in stupid things and don’t know about anything useful. I like you with hair, by the way. It suits you.’
‘You too,’ I reply. I look at them both. Grown some, and she’s pretty with her mop of curls. He’s looking thinner, softer than he was when I left him. Life on the Outside weakens you. Well, it has me.
‘I should go and get her,’ Eden says. ‘We’re going to go up to the supermarket when it opens. Did you know? They buy a whole week’s food in one go, most of them. Can you imagine?’
‘Have you tried jerk chicken?’ I ask. I know. Shallow talk. But food was a lot of what we talked about. We thought about it, all of us, all the time. There never, despite all our work, seemed to ever be quite enough.
‘No,’ she says. ‘Have you tried Indian food?’
‘No.’
‘There’s a restaurant on the High Street. Near our grandparents’ church.’
‘You can buy jerk chicken from a man literally opposite there,’ I say, then think, shit, that’s probably more information than I wanted to give. I know I said I’d been looking, but I don’t necessarily want Aunt Sarah knowing how close I came. But they don’t seem to notice.
‘She gives us ten pounds a week, each, you know,’ says Ilo.
‘Wow,’ I say. That’s a lot of jerk chicken.
‘Aunt Sarah smokes,’ he confides. ‘I smell it sometimes after we’ve gone to bed. She goes out into the garden.’
‘Mm. I suppose you don’t worry too much about that sort of thing when you’re already Dead,’ I say.
‘I guess,’ says Eden. ‘It’s a shame, though. I like her, even if she is. We’re going to save her, if we can.’
‘Don’t hold out too much hope, E,’ I tell her.