by Emily Barr
‘Good God.’ He went and sat down on a step of the ladder. Arty sat on the floor and crossed her legs. It took Grandad a long time to start talking, but then he said more than Arty had ever heard him say before.
‘Your mother and I used to use this basement,’ he said. ‘It was our project. It used to be a survival place. Vicky and I equipped it together. We were doing it just in case. In case there was a nuclear war – it sounds insane, doesn’t it? But there was a very real possibility of it back in the nineteen eighties. Vicky used to say we would hide here from the zombies. She liked the idea of a sanctuary. I suppose that’s what she was doing in India in a way. Making a different hideout.’
‘Yes,’ Arty said, ‘I suppose it was. What happened?’
‘And then. Well. You know about Matthew, don’t you? You know about the drugs?’ Arty nodded. ‘But I don’t think anyone who hasn’t lived through it with someone close can understand it. He was obsessed. He was a monster. A real monster. Our perfect little boy tried some heroin and that was it. He would steal from us all the time as a matter of routine – anything that he thought might bring him a few pounds, as well as money. He stole your grandmother’s wedding ring when she’d taken it off to do the dishes. He sold the neighbour’s cat. We had the police at the door an uncountable number of times. All he cared about was the next hit. It’s horrible to relive it; I’d not wish it on my worst enemy. We’d send him to rehab and he’d come out and go straight to a dealer. We thought we’d lost him. Vicky thought she’d lost him too.’
Arty nodded. Her heart was beating very fast. This was the true Matthew story. She knew it.
‘And this place,’ he said, ‘well, this was your grandmother’s doing because I didn’t have the strength for it, but she did. When I was ready to wash my hands of him for good, to kick him out on the street and disown him – basically to let him die – Jane said no. She said we had a secure room in the house. She said we should lock him up in it until he was clean because we and he had nothing more to lose. Just nothing. We were running on empty, all of us.’ He sighed and looked at the ceiling.
‘And she did it,’ he said. ‘I helped her take out all the tinned food and the gas canisters and all the bits and pieces your mother and I had assembled in here, and then she told him she’d left her purse down here and asked him to go and fetch it for her.
‘That got him down the stairs. She locked both doors and that was it. She did it all herself. Went in twice a day with food. And some drugs. She had to get them illegally, but she did it. Methadone. He attacked her with something sharp he’d managed to make out of something. Pushed it in her eye. She nearly lost it – there’s still a scar there if you look. She’s an amazing woman, you know, Arty. Her strength was in your mother and it’s in you too. You talk about matriarchs. Well, she’s one. She kept him locked up, and it was meant to last until he had every bad thing out of his system, but it didn’t. He managed to set the place on fire and get himself rescued.’
Arty heard herself gasp. ‘He set the place on fire? He did this?’
‘He did. Addicts are resourceful when they need to be. But before he did that Vicky had found it so distressing that she’d left. There was something he’d done to her that particularly upset her, though she never told me what it was. Oh God, we missed her. She and I used to sit upstairs hanging on to each other while Jane went down with his food. Jane was the only one who could do it. I couldn’t bear to see him like that, and Vicky said that she couldn’t go near him because she knew that she’d let him out the moment he asked, in spite of everything. And she couldn’t handle it, and took off for India. I almost went with her.’
‘Did you?’
‘Not really. I couldn’t have left your grandmother. And Vicky was very confused. She was hostile to us for doing something so cruel, but she knew why we had to.’
‘Oh my God,’ Arty said. She tried to think about it but she couldn’t make it make sense. ‘So what about the fire?’
Grandad shrugged. ‘He did it. He did it well. He prepared for a while and stole one of those oven-lighting things that your grandmother uses out of her apron pocket. God knows how he even started a fire with it, but he did. By the time we realized, it was almost too late. Fire engines screeched up at the door, and they dashed down and pulled him out.’
Arty could hardly breathe. ‘And then?’
All the tension seemed to go out of Grandad. ‘That did it, it turned out. He was all right. The fire was his turning point. He did it. He stayed clean. He’s been doing good works ever since to make some kind of amends for it all, but he’s never come near us, really. I don’t know if he doesn’t trust us, or doesn’t trust himself, but he comes to see us from time to time and then hurries away as soon as he can. He’s a complicated man, your uncle.’
‘And he never saw my mum again.’
‘He went to India,’ said Grandad. ‘Years later. He said it was for work but we thought it was to look for her. But he never found her. We desperately hoped he would.’
Arty looked up at the blackened walls.
He saw her looking. ‘It’s been empty for a long time, Artemis,’ he said, and he put his head in his hands. ‘But now you’re here,’ he said to his knees. ‘You’re a breath of fresh air. I know I don’t show it very well, but you’ve transformed my life. And Jane’s. I couldn’t bear to come down these stairs before. But now I can. I want to make this into a room for you, and for your friends when you start college. A happy place. Your uncle, I’m sure, will never set foot in here again, but you can. Your generation can do it all better.’
He blinked. He sniffed. Arty stood up and went over to him. She pulled him into a tight hug, whether he wanted one or not, and he sobbed into her shoulder.
June
I stood in the hospital car park and looked around. My legs trembled so hard that I sat down quickly on the tarmac. Everything about being here felt miraculous. The sky was heavy with clouds. I was not used to the air, but I pulled it into my lungs and pushed it out. My body could do that. My heart could push my blood around my body. Physically I was intact.
I knew exactly where to go for the thing I was still craving, even after four weeks of hell. I could imagine the way it would feel, the relief of it. It called to me, the momentary salvation.
But then I would die. I knew I would. If I went back to it after everything my mother had done to keep me away from it, then it would kill me. I felt the first drops of rain falling on my face.
And I remembered the thing I had tried to do to Vicky, and I knew she had gone away to India, and I thought that the only chance I had of ever seeing my twin again was if I proved to her that I could be different.
I held on to the cuddly bear. In the light of day it couldn’t walk or talk or fly. It was just a toy. Somehow, though, it meant the world to me.
There was no heroin in my system. There hadn’t been for a long time. I could go to rehab and capitalize on this. I was nineteen years old and I could have a future. I took a deep breath, pushed every demon in the world aside, and chose life.
23
My dear Arty,
Well, that will teach me to be smug about giving up social media. You terrible girl! Oh, you poor thing. My heart broke for you. I cannot tell you. It’s difficult to compose myself enough to write this, but here is what happened to me, and how it all became clear.
I set off on the train (blissfully unaware, might I add, of the fact that a certain young lady had never had any intention of going to ask the police for help, and was planning to check into hotels as Margaret Armitage – you are most welcome, by the way). But the strangest thing happened. I didn’t want to go to Dharamsala. I was too besotted with everything you had said about your clearing, and it pulled me so strongly that when I was meant to change trains at Borivali I just got the next train back in the direction I’d come from and headed to Lonavala instead. I wanted to find your mother, and the rest of your people, and ask if I could hang out with them for a bit.
I talked to people and started to piece it together. There was no chance of getting through that gate, but I still didn’t quite get what had happened, so I walked around for a long time, and found a spot about two miles up the road where I could squeeze under the fence, so I did.
Can you even picture me lost in the forest? I could have done with your skills there, darling, I can tell you. Long story short – I ended up stumbling into your clearing a day and a night later, hungry and thirsty and so tired I thought I was hallucinating.
I’m so sorry, darling. I found it. I saw what had happened because of the tape round it and the things that were left and the silence.
It is a beautiful place you came from. I saw the pit, the treehouses, the shack – everything exactly as you had described it. The police were still around, and when they found me I was in Serious Trouble, but I followed your lead on that and just went with it until they let me go.
I wish you’d told me, darling. I would never have left you alone in Mumbai. I would have taken care of you so much more than I did. Tell me that you’re safe. Tell me that you’re happy.
Your friend,
Cherry xxx
________
Artemis Jones!
Tania Roswell of Prince’s in London? Leave it with me.
Your devoted AMK
________
Dear Artemis,
Thank you for contacting us. We were very pleased to hear from you.
We were heartbroken when you left but don’t worry. We have been foster parents for many years, and we have had far, far worse happen to us than Artemis Jones coming and leaving. Both Gita and I are delighted to know that you are safe and living with your family.
We were, of course, terrified by your flight, but we are now impressed with your resourcefulness. And you are studying economics! How about that?
We very much enjoyed your brief stay with us. You and Zeus will always be with us. Please, if you come back to the area, come to say hello.
With our warmest wishes,
Vikram and Gita
________
Dear Cherry,
Thank you for writing to me! I’m sorry about everything. But I’m glad that you were the woman who got to the clearing. I knew someone had and the fact that it was you makes everything better. I’m glad you’ve seen where I came from. That means a lot to me.
What are you going to do now? How is Barney? Come to England to visit me!!!
It’s a bit boring here. I miss India and I miss you.
I wish you could have met Venus. She would have loved you. I want you to be a matriarch somewhere. I want you to rule the world actually.
Love from Arty xxx
August
I lived, in some ways, the most straightforward of lives. I slept on a firm mattress on a single bed, sharing a room with Phil, who was much older than me and who had, most bizarrely, once been Mr Donnelly, my woodwork teacher. I remembered him leaving, but none of us had ever known why. He had only taught me for half a term six years ago, but I remembered him.
Now he had a hollowed-out face and the same desperation in his eyes that I knew he saw in mine. He wanted it to work as much as I did. We kept our room tidy. We went to meetings. We did housework together. We did not break the rules. I felt safe. With each day that passed, though, I struggled more and more with the remorse.
I went to meetings several times a day. It had taken me eleven days of this before I first told my story. Now I said it often, making sense of it as I went.
‘My dad had a basement that he kept ready for a nuclear attack, or similar,’ I said. ‘It started as a joke but he actually meant it. He thinks there’s going to be an apocalypse when the millennium changes.’
‘Oh, the Y2K bug,’ said someone, and there was a bit of a murmur around the room, which mainly seemed to be people either saying that they had, or that they hadn’t, heard of that.
‘So I made their lives hell. I can’t even say the things I did now. The worst was a thing I did to my sister. I can’t say it now. But I can say this: my mum saved my life. My sister wasn’t talking to me, my dad had nothing left to give, and my mum locked me in the basement. She brought me food, and told me she loved me. She kept me there for weeks, and I don’t blame her.’
There was a gasp around the room.
‘Did she know how dangerous that was?’
‘She didn’t have any other options. Yes, I could have died, but, no, I didn’t. And it worked. It kind of worked. I mean, I think I’d still be in there now if I hadn’t set fire to the place.’
I looked around. No one was shocked by that last part.
I was doing all right so far. I had been clean and sober for fifty-two days, but more than half of them had been in the basement. I wanted to have more time outside than inside, and then I thought I would begin to believe that I could do it.
24
Arty was trying to work. She was sitting at her desk in the basement studying Marxist economic theory, but actually it was taking all her energy not to cry. She knew she had to do this: she had to do the work so she could go to school in September and meet people of her own age. She wanted to do the work, and she tentatively wanted to go to school too, although the idea of going into yet another new world of which she knew nothing, and somehow finding her way, was daunting.
And Grandad had been so pleased to give her the basement as a work room. He had finished the painting, and had put a desk and chair in there for her. There was a rug on the floor, and a little bookshelf. Her library bear was down here with her, but she kept it hidden when Grandma came in, as for some reason Grandma really, really hated it. She kept looking as if she wanted to say something when she saw it, but then she never quite did.
However, Arty could not work in this room in the way they wanted her to. She sat back in her chair and looked around. The walls were bright white and the room still had that paint smell that made her head hurt, but she knew too much about what had happened here. She didn’t know any details about any of it but the bare facts were too much for her.
Matthew had been addicted to heroin.
He had done something so bad that his twin sister had gone away to India and never come back.
His mother had been in such despair that she had locked him down here until the drugs were out of his system.
He had been so desperate to get out that he had stabbed his mother in the eye and set fire to the house.
It was the place that had fractured lives and sent people spinning away from each other. The basement haunted her nightmares as it had before, but with different details.
I can’t stay here, she whispered. I can’t do it. She looked at the window high in the wall, and knew that the rectangle of grey sky had once been Matthew’s view too. She sipped her black tea and told herself to be strong. Her grandparents had been through hell with both of their children, and they needed Arty. She was their redemption. They both said it to her in their different ways all the time.
But her grandmother had locked a human being into a basement and kept him prisoner until he had set fire to the place. She had a core of steel. Arty knew she had done it because she had to, but it scared her.
‘What did we do,’ Grandma had mused that morning, ‘before we had you, Artemis? You’ve given us something to live for. We were just waiting to die now that I look back on it.’ And Arty had smiled and tried to say the right things, but she felt differently now. She respected her because she had done an amazing thing, but she was worried too. She didn’t want to be locked in the basement.
Grandad w
as more low-key but just as heartfelt. ‘Good to have you brightening the place up,’ he would mutter, and she knew exactly what he meant.
She pushed the economics notes aside and logged into her emails.
Then she jumped up and gasped. She sat down, and stood up again. She did some deep breathing, then sat down and read the message properly.
Dear Arty,
OK. You beat me.
A delegation of Bollywood dancers doing a flash mob in my office. A huge delivery of flowers, every hour for the whole day. A barrage of phone calls from a superstar in Mumbai. Every one of them with the message ‘Speak to Arty Jones’? Yes, you win. Here I am. Please call it all off. I give in.
And, before I say anything else, I am so sorry and horrified about everything that’s happened to you. It’s unforgivable of me, I know, to have ignored you. I can’t believe what happened out there.
The truth is I was very nervous for all kinds of reasons that I’d rather tell you in person than commit to paper. Please don’t put any of this on social media, but, yes, I have a gap in my CV (I could explain what I mean by that when we meet, perhaps) where I say I was working as a nanny, but the only child I looked after was you. Yes, I did know you when you were a baby. In fact, I helped deliver you. (Kali did the professional part of that, as you can imagine.)
I’m sorry to have ignored your overtures. Yes, I’ll see you, but please, please, please let’s keep it quiet. And let’s do it face to face. Can you come to London? And could you tell the persuasive Mr AMK that I’ve got in touch?