The Poison Garden

by Alex Marwood

  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.�
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  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, though 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.

  A tap on the door, and the person outside waits until we invite them in. What a world. It’s my aunt, in a long flowered skirt that makes her look a bit like a dinner table. Now that I’m not taken by surprise, now I’m feeling better, I can tell that Eden is right. There’s something about her that’s just nice. A strange, warm contrast to this sad and featureless room. She has a nice smile – real and immediate, not like ours. It’s the smile that reminds me most of Somer, I think, though the way she was frowning on my doorstep yesterday, all uncertainty, was what made me know her instantly. I must practise. It would help us fit in.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ she asks. ‘I thought I’d leave it to these two to wake you up.’

  ‘I’m ...’ I think about it. ‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘I think I’m better.’

  Actually, I am. I don’t think I was as not-ill as I thought, even if I did ham it up to get here. That was some beating that man gave me. Still. I gave him more.

  ‘Those are some nasty bruises,’ she says. ‘I had a fair amount of trouble persuading the doctor to leave you here.’

  ‘For a few bruises?’

  ‘You can get a sort of jaundice when the blood reabsorbs,’ she says. Then blushes, rather sweetly, as though she thinks she’s showing off. ‘Or something like that.’

  ‘We don’t do stuff like jaundice,’ I tell her, and see that mystified look Melanie wore a lot. ‘It’s fine. I’m fine.’

  ‘Anyway,’ she says, ‘you stay in bed. Don’t get up. You need to rest. There’ll always be someone about if you need us. We’re all going to have to go in to work tomorrow, but you’re welcome to stay and rest up, and I’ll just be at the other end of the phone.’

  I look at Eden, startled. ‘You work? I didn’t think you were allowed.’

  Sarah laughs, nervously. ‘No, no, sorry. I work at the school where Eden and Ilo go. I work in the office.’

  ‘Oh, right.’

  ‘How do you feel? Up to some breakfast?’

  ‘I would sell Ilo for some breakfast,’ I say. Charm. I am all charm. I learned a lot from Lucien.

  She laughs. ‘I’m not sure how much he’d fetch. But you can make her something, can’t you, Ilo? There’s eggs, and bread for toast, and some orange juice,’ and at the thought of all that I am practically weeping.

  ‘Thank you,’ I say, and I mean it.

  ‘Eden and I are going to the supermarket. Is that okay? You’ll be okay with Ilo?’

  My little brother. Five months lost. ‘Of course,’ I say.

  31 | Romy

  When they close the door, he hurls himself on me like a sheepdog looking for bacon.

  ‘Ow!’ I croak, and hug him so hard I think I’ll squeeze his innards out. ‘Fuck’s sake, Ilo, that hurts.’

  I’ve missed him, I’ve missed him so much. He smells of chemical flowers and his skin is six shades paler than it should be. But he’s still Ilo. I can feel those wiry muscles under the layer of softness he’s put on. I can have him back.

  ‘I thought you were dead,’ he says. ‘I did. When we went to the Infirmary. When I saw you. I thought you were dead.’

  ‘Well, I’m not. I’m like the cockroaches. When the world ends, I’ll still be here and you can eat me.’ And we both laugh, because Uri once tried to start a rule that we all had to eat insects once a week, and cockroaches featured high on his list, termites being in short supply in north Wales. Even the force of Uri’s will wasn’t enough to make people co-operate with that one.

  ‘What the fuck happened to Eden’s medallion?’ I ask.

  He colours. ‘I’m sorry. It’s this stupid girl at school. She snatched it off her neck on Friday, and she’s got these friends, and when I tried to take it back they were all, like, throwing it over my head, and then one of the teachers came along and chased us off and her father turned up in his big car, and ...’

  ‘We need it, Ilo. She’s worth absolutely nothing without that medallion.’

  ‘Yes, she is! She’s still Eden! Come on!’

  No, you’re right, Ilo. She’s worth nothing to me without it. Or I’m worth nothing to Uri. Without it, she could be just anyone.

  ‘Who is this girl?’ I ask.

  ‘She’s a ... she’s stupid. She’s called Marie. Her hair’s made of plastic and so are her fingernails, and she swanks around the place like she’s the One, and they’re all so ignorant, they follow her around like sheepdogs. And she hates Eden because she won’t bow down to her. It’s horrible. I don’t like school.
Romy, can we go? Can you take us away?’

  ‘It’s not as easy as that. I can’t just kidnap you.’

  ‘But you’re our sister.’

  ‘And now Aunt Sarah’s your legal guardian. I can’t just take you away.’

  ‘I thought that was only because they couldn’t find you,’ he says. ‘You’re back now!’

  ‘No. They knew where I was. But I don’t count as a responsible adult, apparently. There are laws.’

  ‘We’re not subject to their laws,’ he says, confidently.

  ‘We are now. They’d come after us.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘And anyway, she seems kind.’

  ‘I think she is. But she hasn’t got the first idea. She’s made no preparations. Literally none. We’ve tried telling her and it’s like talking to a brick wall. How are we going to survive?’

  ‘I’m working on it.’

  ‘And you’re pregnant. Like a football.’

  ‘Good observational skills. I taught you those.’

  ‘What would Somer have thought?’

  ‘She knew. I told her.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘She wasn’t thrilled.’

  ‘Oh,’ he says again, then, ‘bit hypocritical.’

  I shrug.

  ‘I won’t hold it against you, though.’

  Too right, you literal little bastard. You’re the last person in the world who should. ‘Thank you,’ I say.

  ‘Whose is it?’

  I shake my head. ‘It doesn’t matter. He’s dead.’

  ‘Aren’t you scared, R? I mean, it doesn’t matter how nice Aunt Sarah is, does it? I’m literally scared all the time. Do you watch the news? She puts on the television at six o’clock every night, and it’s nothing but people screaming at each other and people getting blown up and volcanoes and burning buildings. And she doesn’t seem to see it at all. She watches it like it’s some sort of entertainment. They’re all going to be turning on each other soon. How can she not see it? Imagine when they all come pouring out of London ...’