This did feel weird.
It didn’t take me long to get bored, having nothing to play with, no gaming, no TV or comics. It meant it was pretty much schoolwork or that book I was meant to have read in English. Elsie would have told me to read the book, would have forced me onto the sofa with the weird newt cushion, brought me pear squash on a tray and made me read a chapter. I wandered the house for a while, bouncing a tennis ball I’d picked up on the way back from school against the wall of my room, the marks it made adding to all the other scuffs on the dirty wall.
I had about six hours of this.
Reaching for the mobile I had hidden under the mattress, I tapped out a message, a smile on my face as the ping returned.
A few messages back and forward and it was agreed.
I knew where I was headed.
For the first time in days I was going to see someone who actually liked me. Slipping the house key, the mobile and the fiver into my pocket, I shut the front door, a tiny tug of concern that Mum might find out. But she wouldn’t be back for hours: I could be there and back before she returned.
All my guilt was forgotten on feeling the relief of walking up to the pillars of the big house, Tilly practically dragging me to the front door.
‘Oh my God, come on! Rory keeps trying to make me play with Grandad’s trainset and I am sooooo bored. And it’s so sunny so we should totally go to this place I know. It’s awesome.’
I could barely get a word in edgeways but I felt the relief of someone loud and bright and happy leading the way, being swept up in her crazy enthusiasm.
‘Alright, alright!’ I laughed, feeling lighter than I had done in days. The posh outside of the house was a million miles from the bleak, lonely place I’d left behind and my worry about Mum soon melted away as I followed Tilly through the front door, the hallway smelling of lavender and furniture polish. For a moment I thought of Elsie.
‘We’ll grab some stuff from the kitchen first, sneak past Rory and hope he doesn’t hear us. I told Gran you were coming but she had this meeting about the village fete next week because she’s the chairperson on the committee…’
I thought back to the woman I had met with her string of pearls and her smart shirt and wasn’t surprised to hear she was the type of person to be on a committee. She definitely made her own jam.
‘Anyway, she’s back later and promised me I’d get you to stay for high tea, which literally no one calls it, but it will be good because I think she’ll make scones, we always have scones if there are visitors. She’s been a bit funny, though, asking me questions about that blanket…’
We were in the kitchen now, an enormous farmhouse kitchen with an island in the middle and a bottle-green Aga with shiny saucepans hanging from the wall behind. There were photos everywhere: pinned to corkboards, stuck around the walls, framed. Loads of smiling photos of people clustered into the shot, cheeks pressed together, at barbecues, beaches, horse trials, fairgrounds; happy people, enjoying themselves. It made my head swim, all those people, all these busy lives, and somehow Mrs Maple, the old lady who lived entirely on her own, was connected to them.
Maybe I shouldn’t have come. What was the great secret?
‘I’m so pleased you found it…’
Why had Elsie been so cross? I batted away the feeling that she would be angry I was back here. What was I expected to do though? Tilly was about the first person in the county to seem pleased I was here and I couldn’t give that up. I thought then of the school trip away coming up and felt my mood dip, barely hearing Tilly’s chatter as I thought of another long school week ahead of me.
‘OK, so I made us sandwiches but they’re a bit crap.’
Looking up, I could see the countertop covered in crumbs, a plastic bag filled with stuff. Tilly was adding two golden Crunchie bars and there were already Kit Kats inside.
I followed Tilly through the house, stepping over a thick, soft pink carpet in a living room lined with bookshelves and expensive-looking oil paintings, out through fancy French doors and down onto the manicured lawn. Skirting the tennis court, the long grass tickled my calves as we ran, plunging into the cool of the small wood behind the house, the smell of the damp soil following us as we moved deeper into the trees. Tilly seemed to know where she was headed, swinging the plastic bag of food and keeping up a steady stream of talk.
‘Rory doesn’t like it here because I told him there were wolves and he’s soooo gullible, he totally believed me.’
Hearing a crack to my right, I hoped Tilly was correct. I didn’t know much about wolves and had definitely never seen one. The most dangerous animal I’d ever seen was a fox that used to skulk by the communal bins at the bottom of our apartment block in London. But this was the country and creepy woods could definitely have wolves.
‘But I used to make dens and a wigwam and there’s this cool place… Well, you’ll see…’ she said, ducking under spiky tendrils and pushing back branches that pinged back in my face.
‘Hey!’
‘Sorry!’ she chimed, laughing.
The trees cleared and Tilly was sat along a fallen trunk, waiting for me to join her. In front of her was a large oval shape that, on first sight, I might have mistaken for bright green grass. Then I noticed the lily pads and the still surface being disturbed by a large winged insect.
‘It’s a lake!’ I realised, eyes widening.
‘Well, a pond. But I like to imagine it’s like the one where the sword comes out of the centre. It looks super strange, doesn’t it?’
I nodded. ‘It’s cool.’
‘I knew you’d like it.’ She slapped the trunk either side of her and grinned at me, and the way she said it made my heart soar. ‘So,’ she said, opening the plastic bag, ‘what do you want to eat first?’
I went straight for the Kit Kats and she beamed.
We played stupid games next to the pond, endless rounds of Paper, Scissors, Stone and telling each other various stories.
‘You know,’ she said, standing up to walk along the trunk, arms stuck out for balance, ‘I still don’t get how you found this house on a map. Why was it on there?’
I shrugged, not really able to answer. ‘I thought it was a treasure map maybe,’ I started, feeling a bit silly now I’d said it out loud. Tilly seemed a bit too old to believe in stuff like that but she didn’t laugh at me, just jumped from the trunk and sat down again. ‘But I really don’t know. Elsie, the lady whose mum drew it, she’s a bit weird about it, like she’s sort of frightened of it.’ I hadn’t really thought about it like that until the words came out. ‘Yeah, frightened.’
Tilly laughed. ‘It’s not exactly scary. A tin with a photo of a baby in. Maybe Grandma is the baby or maybe the house has a special meaning or something. It’s cool, nothing exciting ever happens here.’
She sat back for a while, probably wondering about the map and what it all meant. I didn’t tell her what her grandma had said to me because of how Elsie had gone mental. That thought made me realise I should probably get home soon.
‘Will your mum want to know where we are?’ I asked, knowing Mum wouldn’t love me being in a strange wood, miles from anywhere.
‘She’s OK, she’s working in the house. She has another fair coming up, she sells prints of hunts and things.’
‘Right,’ I replied, not completely sure what that meant. ‘What does your dad do?’ I asked, wondering why I hadn’t seen him.
Tilly twisted the handle of the plastic bag. ‘He works in property.’
‘Cool! Round here?’
‘No, he lives in London now.’
I hadn’t picked up the change in her voice. ‘Oh… does he get back at weekends then?’
Tilly fell quiet. ‘He left a few years ago,’ she said, her voice different. ‘That’s why we came to live with Grandma. Grandad had died so it sort of fitted because she was alone. I see him for holidays and things though. He got married last year,’ she added, the plastic bag twisted tightly round her fist, turning
her knuckles white.
Her face was sad and I didn’t know what to say. This was the first time things had been awkward between us and I started to panic she might not want to talk to me any more.
‘How about your dad?’ she asked, looking up at me.
‘Oh, he’s a builder, sort of part-time,’ I said, a bit embarrassed she might say it was a rubbish job, or ask how often he was out of work. I thought of all the days when I’d get back from school and he hadn’t moved from the same spot, sat on the sofa with a can of beer. I thought of what Daniel would say about it and knew it would be another thing to tease me about.
‘That’s cool,’ Tilly said, picking at the bark on the trunk we were sat on, ‘my dad can’t put up a shelf.’
I felt myself grow a little taller.
She threw a piece of bark into the water in front of us and we watched as it was swallowed by the strange, bright green layer. ‘So how come he doesn’t live with you?’
I probably would have lied if she hadn’t told me about her own dad and I didn’t want to mess things up with the only friend I had made in months. But it still felt strange to say it out loud.
‘Mum left him.’
Saying it for the first time made me realise, in that moment, the words were absolutely true: Mum had left him. For good. She had taken me with her, in the middle of the night, and left him.
‘How come?’ Tilly asked, twisting to face me, curiosity in her voice. ‘Was he having an affair?’
‘No,’ I replied, realising I was sure that wasn’t it. ‘I think…’ I said slowly, trying to put into words my suspicions, feeling nausea swirl in my stomach. Tilly was waiting, fiddling with this pink bead on a sort of leather necklace she was wearing.
Maybe that’s what made me suddenly think of it. One evening, when I was meant to be in bed, Mum had let me stay up watching TV and she’d been working on one of her beaded things and all the pots were out on the table and Dad came back early from the pub. He didn’t see me laid out on the sofa and he’d said something to Mum. He didn’t like her reply and had swept the pots onto the floor so they rolled in every direction and I’d lain there really scared but then he went to their bedroom and fell asleep. I found loads of small silver beads under the coffee table the next day and just put them back in the right pot for Mum.
I never lingered on these thoughts. I felt sweat prickle in my hairline, felt my throat sandpaper dry as I swallowed. Still, Tilly was looking at me, head tipped to one side, ready to hear, and I didn’t want to fob her off.
‘He wasn’t always very nice,’ I said with a small cough, reaching for the water bottle she had brought. Was that it, the whole truth, I thought as I swigged at it.
Tilly didn’t reply, her expression shifting into something I couldn’t pinpoint. I coughed again and picked at the bark too. A large piece came away in my hand and I turned it over in my lap.
Unable to stop some of the bad memories I closed my eyes briefly, wanting them to vanish. The whispered row in the middle of the night and Mum crying the next day. Her face when Dad walked into the kitchen, all white and panicky. A smile which didn’t show her teeth as she put some toast and marmalade in front of him. An anniversary dinner that had ended early, Mum locking him out, screaming through the door that she’d call the police. Him banging and banging and then her finally, after so much racket, letting him in. The shower going on in the bathroom… Horrible, horrible sounds I didn’t want to remember.
The bark was breaking apart in my hands. I didn’t want to think these things. I hadn’t seen anything. Nothing concrete. What was it really? A memory of some unusual mornings, Mum quiet, a funny atmosphere I couldn’t work out, knowing to keep my head down, not wanting to make him angry at me.
Mum had just left. People did it all the time. I hadn’t seen anything.
Tilly was talking to me and I blinked, the bright green blurring in front of me.
‘So, your mum ran away with you?’ she asked, unable to hide her surprise.
‘Yeah, kind of,’ I said, throwing the bark into the water, ripples there and then disappearing.
‘Woah!’ Tilly replied, breaking the sudden tension.
‘Yeah.’ I laughed, wanting to pop the strange bubble I had created, my laugh not quite right.
We shared a look, I bit my lip, waited and then, at the same moment, we burst into relieved laughter.
‘This got deep,’ she said.
‘Yeah.’
‘You’re OK though,’ she added, throwing a piece of bark at me.
‘You too.’
She shrugged, smiled and handed me a Crunchie. It felt nice, natural. If I’d ever had a sister I think I would have liked one like Tilly. Tilly and Billy, I thought with a grin.
Her grandma was home by the time we got back to the house. Tilly was right, she had made scones, and we sat round the big brown table that had dents and marks and water rings on it and felt like the table of a large family who drank and ate and debated and laughed. I traced a mark with my finger.
‘It’s so weird, isn’t it, Grandma, that Billy found us on a map?’ She nicked another scone from the big plate in the middle of the table.
‘Very,’ Tilly’s grandma said. Then she looked at me, a strange expression on her face. ‘And do you think Elsie might want to visit too?’ she asked, as if she couldn’t say what she was thinking.
I swallowed, knowing this was probably her way of asking whether I’d passed her message on, telling Elsie to come to the house. ‘Maybe,’ I said, not wanting to meet her eyes, not wanting to tell her how Elsie had reacted.
Fortunately, at that moment Tilly’s mum appeared, rubbing her eyes and distracting us all with a story about some man who wanted to buy fourteen prints and how it made up for the bad fair she’d had at the weekend. ‘He was on the phone for nearly an hour,’ she said, moving across to the table with a mug.
Tilly’s grandma moved quietly away.
I said goodbye, lying to them about Mum meeting me in the village, and walked back to the station on my own. The trouble was when I got there the board above told me the trains were cancelled. The next one was over an hour’s wait. An hour. The longest a train was delayed in London was about eight minutes and everyone complained.
Biting my lip, I stood on the empty platform, wondering what the hell to do. I had no idea how to walk back and wasn’t sure it would be shorter than if I waited for the next train. I could call Mum at work but then she’d know I was out and that I had a mobile and she would be furious and take it too.
I could go back to Tilly’s and persuade them to drive me home but then I’d have to admit I lied to them too. Hitching a lift was impossible because I’d seen all of about two cars since getting here and they might kidnap me or something and that would be even worse than Mum being angry.
I waited on the platform, trains a loud blur as they passed, blowing back my hair, the noise all around me as they sped straight through. Finally, after sitting on my hands for an hour, goosebumps on my arms as the sun disappeared behind clouds, the slow train huffed and stopped in front of me and I got on, praying I wouldn’t also bump into a ticket inspector and have to waste the five pounds.
Nervously, I half-jogged through the village, not worrying who saw me, just needing to get home in the hope I could beat Mum there. Sometimes her boss made her stay on and do an extra job and even though he never paid her for the time and she knew it was unfair, she was too frightened not to do it because he might stop giving her the shifts that she needed so badly. I hoped Dick had done just that today and I could be sat in the living room, looking sympathetic as Mum raged about him.
But she was there as I stepped inside the house. Stood in the middle of the front room, her back to me. I swallowed as I moved inside. She turned, her face pale and tear-stained.
‘Oh my God, Billy!’ she cried, rushing towards me and squeezing me tightly, her body smelling of sweat and pizza dough. The surprise of it made me freeze. She seemed frantic, her arms so tigh
t, mine were clamped by my sides. Then she drew back, her face quickly moving to anger. ‘Where the hell have you been?’
Licking my lips, I began the lie I’d rehearsed when sat on the empty platform, ‘I needed a walk and I just…’
‘You promised me you’d stay here,’ she cut off, ‘you promised… I thought your da— I thought…’ She started crying again and I bit my lip, not knowing what to do.
‘You’re grounded,’ she said, through sobs.
‘But I only went…’
‘I don’t care. You promised you’d stay here.’
What if I really had just popped out for a quick walk to get some fresh air? This was a massive overreaction.
I felt my skin pulse as I straightened. ‘So, I should have just stayed inside all day doing what? It’s like prison!’ I shouted.
Mum looked as if I’d slapped her, stepping backwards, her expression desperate and hurt.
‘I’m fed up with being on my own,’ I carried on, the guilt at lying to her making me sound angrier than I was. ‘You don’t even care. Have you noticed that I literally have no friends here?’
‘I…’ She started and then stopped, mouth closing, tears lining her eyes again.
‘You’ve dragged me to the actual middle of nowhere,’ I said, one arm flinging around to show up the room. Our plates left over from the pizza dinner we had on our laps the night before that wasn’t even a TV dinner because we didn’t have a TV. ‘And then you’re making me stay inside all day.’
‘But, Billy, I…’ Mum wasn’t angry any more, fresh tears spilling down her cheeks. ‘I just want to keep you safe.’
‘Whatever,’ I replied, starting for the stairs to my room, wanting to get up there away from her face that made me feel a million times worse. Why couldn’t I stop shouting? ‘You haven’t even told me how long we’re staying here for,’ I said, turning at the doorway. ‘And you won’t let me talk to Dad on the phone, or even tell me why I can’t. It’s not like he can do anything on the phone. It’s not fair!’
She nodded sadly, head dipping onto her chest. ‘It’s difficult. I don’t want you to think…’ She bit her lip. ‘Just give me a bit more time, Billy. Please.’
The Garden of Lost Memories Page 17