The Summer of Secrets

by Sarah Jasmon

  ‘And you’re sure you want this on your ceiling?’ She spoke to Victoria’s back. ‘It’d give me nightmares.’

  Victoria was gathering armfuls of clothes from the floor and piling them on to the bed.

  ‘It’s brilliant.’ She didn’t look round, but nodded towards a plastic washing up bowl. ‘Can you fill that with water?’

  A louder crack of thunder sounded. Helen turned, but was too late to see the lightning flash.

  ‘It’s going to rain any minute. Do you want to close the window?’

  ‘Not really.’ Victoria dragged a bedspread over the pile she had made and waved a hand towards the bowl. ‘Water!’

  Helen bent to pick it up as the next roll of thunder came. This time she was quick enough to see the forks of light stand out behind the network of trees on the far bank. She felt the air holding itself ready for the rain, but none came.

  ‘Hello! I need it over here!’ Victoria’s voice was sharp, but still Helen lingered by the window. The sky beyond the trees was a smooth metal plate, reflecting darkness with menace. ‘Helen!’

  She jumped at the tone, and dragged herself away.

  The flour-and-water glue turned out to be less sticky on the ceiling than it felt on their hands and arms. As Victoria pushed one end of the wallpaper against the corner of the wall, Helen pressed with her hands along its length. By the time she reached the end, though, the middle section was bellying off. She saw Victoria take a step forward and, in that instant, the far end fell away.

  ‘Quick, it’s coming down, behind you, behind you!’ She let go of her own piece to pat ineffectually further along, but her hand went straight through.

  ‘It’s got me!’ Victoria’s voice rose up in a shriek as her head and shoulders disappeared under the collapsing paper.

  Laughing, Helen forgot to keep an eye on her own end. Seconds later, it came down as well. There were acres of it, the clinging sodden folds wrapping themselves around her. It felt soft, but she couldn’t break through. Slime filled her mouth as another bolt of thunder cracked. Her breath was coming in gasps, and she couldn’t inhale. Just as panic was about to win, she felt the paper being pulled away. Victoria’s head, covered in wallpaper with holes torn for eyes and mouth, loomed over her.

  ‘Whooo!’ She was waving her arms, and laughing so hard that her ghost noise trembled and ran out. Her expression changed as Helen rolled to one side and began to cough. ‘Are you all right?’

  Helen peeled more paper away from her head and let out a shaky giggle.

  ‘I think so’ The remembered sense of cloying dark brushed through her mind again and was gone. It didn’t seem so bad now. Something cool landed on her cheek. Rain, coming down in huge slanting drops and bouncing over the sill. ‘You might want to close the window.’

  Victoria glanced over her shoulder, then shrugged.

  ‘Let it rain.’ She peeled a long strip away from her hair. ‘It might work better if we put the paste straight on to the ceiling.’

  ‘You want to carry on?’ Helen spat glue out as she stared up with what she hoped looked like dismay.

  ‘Well, we’re already covered in it. No point in cleaning up before the job’s done.’ She held out a hand. ‘Come on.’

  The second method worked better, although they had to use drawing pins to hold the paper in place. The rain stopped as abruptly as it had come, tailing off into a slow continuous mizzle. The bedroom felt humid and sticky, but Victoria looked around with a satisfied expression.

  ‘OK, now I need to wash it out of my hair.’ She stepped over the piles of discarded wallpaper, pausing when she reached the door. ‘Are you coming?’

  Helen poked at the chaos on the floor with one foot.

  ‘Don’t you want to clear this away first?’

  ‘We can bung it on the landing for now. Come on.’

  Helen followed, only wondering once she was in the bathroom why Victoria wanted her there. She stood in the doorway, watching the bath fill with water and feeling more uncomfortable by the second.

  ‘I’ll wait in your room.’

  Victoria had already stepped out of her jeans and was leaning into the mirror examining the clumps of paste drying in her hair.

  ‘What for? You can sit and talk to me.’ She crossed to the bath and dipped a hand in before shaking salts under the stream of water. A delicate scent of lavender drifted up with the heat. ‘The water’s nice and hot, anyway. Shut the door.’ She was pulling her shirt off now. At least she’d turned away. Helen slid down to the floor, keeping her back to the bath. Water sloshed as Victoria got in. She was still talking. ‘Last week the boiler stopped working but I didn’t realise until I got in. It was freezing. And this bath takes forever to fill.’

  It was huge, with taps bellying out beneath the handles like fat barrels instead of coming out at an angle. Helen could feel the heat through the side of the tub. The walls were tiled with an odd pattern in sage-green, the lines reminding her of tree bark. If she half-closed her eyes, they shimmied, stretching and contracting in an odd optical quirk. Victoria’s voice echoed from the inside of the bath.

  ‘Why do you never have friends round? Were you at boarding school or something?’

  Helen turned involuntarily before remembering where Victoria was, but it was OK. She could only see her head.

  ‘No, I was at the high school.’

  ‘Oh.’ Victoria slid down under the water. It was strange to hear it lapping from the outside. Then her head appeared over the side, hair slicked back like paint. ‘So go on, why nobody coming round?’

  ‘Well …’ Helen hesitated. Abruptly, she was back there with the smell of the corridors sharp in her nose. They were always cold, even in the summer term, but she’d taken to walking them, slowly, to avoid being outside. Everyone else was sitting in knots on the playing field, lounging in the aftermath of exam tension. Sometimes a teacher would chase her out. It was amazing how many hidden spaces there were if you were desperate enough to search them out. Anything was better than sitting alone. ‘No-one lives that close.’ She wasn’t about to admit the truth.

  ‘What I hate at school is when everyone stops talking to you.’ Victoria stood up, sending water ricocheting around inside the bath. ‘Pass me the towel.’

  Helen reached out for it, forgetting to turn away.

  ‘Did it happen to you as well?’ She realised she was staring and dropped her eyes in confusion. The relief in her chest was making her feel breathless. ‘I don’t even know what I did, but one day everyone was laughing at me in registration, as if I’d got my skirt caught up in my knickers.’

  ‘I found a Tampax in my pencil case.’ Victoria pulled a clean, oversized T-shirt over her head. ‘They’d coloured it in with red felt-tip.’

  ‘No! What did you do?’

  Victoria’s voice was muffled as she rubbed at her hair with the towel.

  ‘Went and shoved it down this girl’s shirt. Bitch. She was the worst one. They left me alone after that.’ She gave her head a last shake, and dropped the towel on the floor. ‘Are you getting in?’

  ‘Well, I—’ Helen stopped. The glue had started to go hard in her hair, and she could feel it tightening on the skin of her arms. ‘Yeah, I guess so.’ She rolled on to her knees and leaned across to the tap end of the bath, reaching for the plug chain.

  ‘There won’t be enough hot water.’ Victoria stopped at the door. ‘That’s why I left it in.’

  ‘OK.’ Helen stayed where she was. What was she supposed to do? Getting into someone else’s bathwater felt wrong, like touching their skin or … She made her mind stop. She could wait until Victoria had gone, and rinse her hair in the sink. Unless Victoria was planning to stay and talk while she got in the bath. Helen felt her fingers grip on to the smooth edge of the tub. She couldn’t do it.

  ‘I’ll go and find you something to wear.’ Victoria spoke over her shoulder as she went out to the landing.

  Helen dipped the ends of her fingers into the water. It was wa
rm enough, and the bath salts left an oily smoothness on her skin. And she didn’t want to come across as snotty … Before she could think about it anymore, she stripped off her clothes and got in. The water closed over her skin like a gossamer tickle and she felt herself shiver. She let her head sink under the surface. She always used the shower at home, and had forgotten how luxurious a bath could feel. And, after all, this was no different to being in a swimming pool where other people had been. She let the water burble against her ears. The air was cool where her skin was exposed, and she shifted herself to make the water ripple across. She couldn’t let herself enjoy it too much, though. There was no lock on the door, anyone could come in. The thought made her plunge into hasty washing, and she was already wrapped in the towel when Victoria’s head appeared around the door.

  ‘The paper’s staying up,’ she reported, thrusting an arm in to drop clothes on to the floor. ‘I’m putting the kettle on. You’d better hurry up before the twins eat all those cakes.’

  ‘You’ve got to save one …’ Helen began, but Victoria was gone. ‘For Seth,’ she finished.

  Chapter Seven

  The thunderstorm ended the run of fine weather. Almost immediately, it was as if the heat wave had never happened, and the overcast skies and drizzle might as well have been there for ever. Mick’s mood went down with the barometer. He stopped scouring the paper for auctions or making trips for boat parts, instead spending hours in the gloom of the garage, contemplating the bare structure of the hull. His mood permeated the house. Helen started to wait until he’d gone out before coming down for breakfast. In the evenings, she’d stop in the hallway when she came back from the cottage, gauging his frame of mind from the volume of the television, the number of beer bottles lined up by the sofa. He was often asleep. One evening, she stood and watched him, head back against the chair, his mouth open as he snored. If it hadn’t been for Victoria, she thought, this would be her only entertainment. So with relief, she’d slip out every morning, calling behind to let him know she’d be back later, and ignoring the confused sense of abandonment she felt towards him.

  Even though the cooler weather showed no signs of ending, she was happier than she’d ever been in the world they created in the confines of Victoria’s bedroom. By the time the two of them had got bored of lying around swapping daft stories and making elaborate travel plans for the future, Victoria had resurrected the book list.

  ‘All that, and she follows him to Siberia!’ Victoria didn’t look up as Helen came into her room, but stared at the book in her hand, her face wrinkled in disgust.

  ‘All what?’ Helen flopped down on to the bed, flipping open her own book where she’d folded down the corner of the page, and immediately closing it. She was having trouble keeping the characters straight in her head, and she knew she’d lose track if Victoria was talking.

  ‘This book.’ Victoria waved it in front of Helen’s nose, but too fast for her to read the title. ‘First of all it’s like reading … treacle.’ She threw the book in the air, hitting it with the palm of her hand so it flew across the bedroom, landing face down and open on the floor. ‘And her dad drinks all the money away, her mum makes her be a prostitute, and this nutter who axed someone and thinks way too much is in love with her and she follows him to prison. In Siberia.’ She wandered across to the window. ‘How are you getting on?’

  ‘OK, actually.’ In fact, Helen hadn’t been able to sleep the night before until she’d found out whether Natasha had broken off her engagement. ‘But I’m skipping the battles.’

  ‘If what you’re reading is actually And Peace.’ Victoria pulled herself up on the sill. ‘You can only get half points. No prizes for missing bits out.’

  ‘Not fair!’ Helen protested. ‘It’s at least twice as long as yours.’

  ‘Rules of the game.’ Victoria pulled up her knees and picked at a loose thread on her jeans. ‘And I get extra because everyone in mine was so incredibly miserable.’ She grinned at Helen, daring her to disagree.

  Helen joined her at the window. The rain somehow made everything the same: tree-green merging into grass-green before the dimpled surface of the canal absorbed all of the differing shades in subtle, swaying streaks.

  ‘My dad and me used to play a game with the raindrops,’ she said, following one down the glass with a light fingertip chase. ‘We used to choose one each and race them down.’

  ‘Nice story, Grandma.’

  Victoria’s tone was cutting, and Helen felt her face heat up. She went back to the bed and picked up her book, but she’d lost the thread, and the names floated, faceless, on the page. A corner of wallpaper hanging down from the ceiling caught her eye. The twins must be up in the attic, jumping off boxes again if the noise was anything to go by. The hanging paper gave a surprised jerk every time one of them landed.

  Victoria added big feet to the figure she had drawn in the condensation on the window before sweeping a palm across it and pressing her face to the glass.

  ‘I’m so bored.’

  ‘You could start the next book?’

  Victoria groaned and mooched across to the bed. ‘No, anything but that! I don’t ever want to read anything ever again.’ She started to flick at Helen’s hand, trying to dislodge her book. ‘Do something, amuse me!’

  An extra loud crash from above made them both look up, waiting for shrieks. Instead there was a brief silence, followed by the sound of something heavy scraping across the floor.

  Victoria flopped over, letting herself slide off the bed, and crawled on her hands and knees to a pile of boxes stacked in one corner.

  ‘We always used to make up plays. We could put on a Russian drama.’

  Helen let her book fall to her knees as she watched her rummage.

  ‘Dressing-up stuff!’ Victoria pulled one of the boxes out, making the rest wobble. ‘Come and see.’

  Helen went and knelt on the floor next to her. The box held a motley collection. She could see a moulting fox-fur stole tied up with some old dresses, a handful of tangled beads, a pair of satin shoes with pin-thin heels and long pointed toes. It all smelled old and, what was the word her mother used? Fousty. Fusty. Helen fingered a brightly patterned shift, breathing through her mouth to keep out the waft of mothball.

  ‘Where do you get all this stuff from?’

  ‘What, isn’t it good enough for you?’

  Helen was taken aback by her tone. She hadn’t meant to be rude, and opened her mouth to explain but Victoria had already turned away and was digging into the box. She scrambled to retrieve the situation.

  ‘I only meant, well …’ She struggled to come up with a better way of saying it. ‘I mean, it’s all really cool, but you have all these boxes of clothes and stuff you have to take with you when you go somewhere new, but you don’t have things like, I don’t know, knives and forks.’

  Victoria shrugged.

  ‘There’s always that sort of stuff in wherever we end up. It’s not important.’

  ‘Don’t you mind? Having to keep on packing up and starting again?’

  There was silence, and Helen held her breath. When she spoke, Victoria’s voice was remote.

  ‘As long as you can take the important things with you, it doesn’t matter where you are.’ She bent forward, sweeping a hand through a litter of scarves. ‘And are you happy with where you are, even with all your knives and forks?’

  Helen let the dress drop. She visualized her home, with its beige walls and blank spaces. Even in her absence, her mother’s sense of order hovered, keeping items in their proper place. At least they always knew where the cutlery was.

  ‘I suppose I can’t imagine living anywhere else.’

  ‘Not being able to imagine something doesn’t make it impossible.’ Victoria was ramming the clothes back into the box now. ‘We go where people offer to let us stay, or Piet finds us somewhere. It’s like the universe gives it to us.’ She turned to look at Helen. ‘And we’ve been in some fab places as well, they’re not all
like this.’ She waved a hand around the room.

  ‘No, I didn’t mean …’ Helen tried to find the right words. ‘It’s lovely here, it’s the best house I’ve ever been in.’

  Victoria gave a wicked grin, and the atmosphere cleared.

  ‘It’s a shithole, and you know it. It’s only for the summer, though. We won’t be around any longer than that.’

  The words, thudding like rocks into sand, brought Helen to a halt. She split in two, one Helen sitting on the floor being part of Victoria’s world, the other floating above them, knowing she could never truly belong. The summer would end, the Dovers would go, and the new Helen would slide back into her grey life where nothing ever happened. Victoria wasn’t even showing any signs of regret. Helen would be one of those ghosts from the past, a vague recollection half recalled: ‘Do you remember that girl who never went anywhere?’ She was nothing but an episode. Somehow, that felt worse than anything. Victoria was staring at her now, but it was all too difficult to explain.

  ‘Where’s the best place you’ve ever lived?’ Her voice caught in the back of her throat, as if that was where the tears had piled up, taking up all the space.

  Victoria pushed on her hands to swing her legs into a squat. That was one of Seth’s tricks, and Helen remembered him doing it in the garden the first day she met him. Victoria’s voice recalled her back to the room. ‘I’ll show you.’

  She pulled another box across, this one jammed full of snaps of all sizes. A lot were small black-and-white prints, curling at the corners, although Helen spotted studio portraits of a baby and a serious-faced toddler. Victoria started sorting through a stack of colour ones, each a square with a thick white border. Helen glimpsed pictures of a small Seth standing on an immense pile of sand; Victoria wearing a buttoned coat with a velvet collar, clinging to a hand as a giraffe’s head came down at her over a fence at the zoo. She picked up a few herself, stopping at one showing Seth and Victoria together, older now, standing on a hillside. The sea was ridiculously blue in the background and square white houses were dotted up the slopes. Both of them had sun-bleached blond hair, the strands blowing across brown faces.