by Julia Crouch
The phone, sitting on an Arthur Miller side table, suddenly rang, breaking the silence. Lara ran to get it before it woke everyone up.
‘Hi hon.’ It was James, who offered no apology for calling so early. ‘Just checking on my star, his dame and the pretty chickens. Everything OK? Isn’t the house divine? Do you have all you need?’
‘More or less,’ Lara said, wishing she had the guts to tell him what she really thought. But she did manage to mention the windows and the gas, and James promised to get someone round to sort it out ‘A-sap’. She also got directions to the nearest town, where, he told her, she would find a marvellous independent supermarket called Green’s.
‘And hey, hon, Betty’s breaking out the fire pit for the first-night party tomorrow. You have to come. It’s compulsory. We’ve got a little surprise for you, too.’
‘Really?’
‘Can’t tell you though. My lips are sealed.’
‘I’m intrigued.’
‘Oh, you should be, darling. You should be. Now then,’ he said, changing the subject. ‘You’re all set?’
‘Well, I was just wondering if you’d managed to get the internet access sorted?’
This was the one thing she had asked to be in place for their arrival – she had a couple of small jobs to do for the council while she was here, and Olly and Bella would die without Facebook. She also didn’t know how she and Jack would get through the days without any CBeebies. He had always gone to her workplace nursery and being together all day every day was going to be a test for both of them.
‘Well, is the router there yet?’
‘The what?’
‘The router. You know, the box thing.’ He pronounced it ‘rowter’.
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Damn them. They said it’d be there for you. I’ll chase it up,’ he said, in a way that managed to convey he had quite enough on his plate with the musical opening the following night without having to worry about the concerns of actors’ wives.
‘Oh, and thank you for the roses,’ Lara said, not wishing to appear ungrateful.
‘Roses?’
‘The roses in the kitchen?’
‘Oh. Oh, Not me, I’m afraid. That sounds like a Betty touch. She does love her blooms,’ James said.
Lara hung up and looked at her watch. She wondered how she was going to last the day.
‘Let’s go to the shops, Mummy!’
Smeared and temporarily enlivened by his chocolate chip cookie, Jack had jumped out of his buggy, grabbed Lara’s bag and was holding it up for her to take. He had heard Lara mention a supermarket during the phone call, and he was one of those rare small boys who viewed a shopping trip as an outing to get excited about.
Lara smiled at him. She loved the way children could help you find your momentum when everything ground to a halt. She scribbled a quick note to the others, and picked up the car keys from where she had left them the night before. She folded the buggy and checked her purse for her credit card. Then she and Jack set off in the giant car, following the directions she had taken down from James, over Trout Mountain to the nearest town, ‘just’ twelve miles away.
Four
THE SIREN BUILT AND BUILT UNTIL BELLA THOUGHT SHE COULDN’T bear it any longer. Then, as slowly as it had started, it faded down and away, and she was sitting bolt upright in her soft, sweaty bed, hyperventilating.
What the fuck was that?
She rubbed her eyes. Overnight, the dust in her room had crept all over her face and up into her nose. Her body, unwashed since England, gave off a sour smell.
She jumped out of bed and, grabbing her camera from her hand luggage, darted towards the window, scuffing her feet along the worn linoleum floor. Drawing back the sheet tacked on to the frame as a sort of curtain, she peered outside. What was that siren about?
The street outside was deserted. No one was running for shelter, or shouting for help. The only movement was the leaves of the big trees that lined the road dancing in the breeze, the only sound that of insects, chattering and buzzing from somewhere unseen. In the distance, a dog’s bark echoed against the hills. Then, from further along the road than she could see, she heard the rumble of a truck. Her heart picked up its beat.
This is an invasion, she thought. The Axis of Evil – a phrase she had heard on the TV throughout her childhood, without ever fully understanding it – has finally invaded the USA. And it had to happen on her first morning here. She unhooked the fly screen, leaned out of the window and focused her lens on the vanishing point of the long, straight road. The rumble grew louder and a large truck finally hove into view. Slowly, it transformed from a shimmering pinprick in the hazy tarmac to a full dusty red presence. Bella clicked the shutter as the vehicle thundered towards the house, revealing itself to be a great tanker with GOT MILK? written on its side in fading letters. Far from being an invading menace, the driver didn’t seem to be concerned with anything other than the sandwich he was cramming into his mouth. Bella zoomed in and caught him, open-mouthed, in the act of biting.
So perhaps it was nothing, then. Perhaps she had dreamed it in amongst her habitual nightmares.
She collapsed back on her bed, setting off a squeaking of bedsprings that could have come straight from the soundtrack of a dirty movie. Somewhere up the hill behind the house, a horse whinnied.
‘New York, New York. It’s a helluva town,’ she sang.
She hadn’t really believed her mother when she had said they wouldn’t be within sight of skyscrapers. For some reason – probably connected to her recently completed GCSEs and subsequent celebrations – she hadn’t bothered to look at a map, to see what she realised now must be the immense size and rural expanse of New York State.
Feeling the itch to explore her new surroundings, she got up again and found her washbag in her suitcase. As she crossed the room she made resolutions. Here, away from her peers, away from what everyone knew about her, she would begin to be the reborn Bella, the real Bella. She would put the past behind her, cross the line from teenager to adult and return happier, wiser and ready for a new start at college in the autumn. And she was going to put together a great portfolio of photographs of her time here.
She found the bathroom across the landing from her own room, and once inside was annoyed to find it had two doors: the one she had just come through and another opening on to her parents’ bedroom. Neither had a lock. As the only young woman in the family, she supposed she would have to devise and announce a system to make sure no one burst in on her. She peered through to her parents’ bedroom and saw her father, splayed out on his back, snoring, the tangle of greying red hair on his chest like some sort of crouching cat. She was grateful the sole sheet on his bed covered his middle section, because underneath he was clearly naked. Her mum wasn’t there, nor was Jack. She pulled the door tight shut then wedged an old chair from beside the bath up against the door to the hallway.
The bath looked filthy. It was old, roll-topped and small, with a rusty water-ring. The taps had dripped brown trails down the greying enamel. She would use the chipped showerhead for now, but she was going to have a word with her mum about the bath – no way was she forgoing her daily soak for a whole summer. But equally she was not going to lie down in that tub in its current state.
As she used the feeble shower, soaping herself with the special tea tree gel she had packed for her own personal use, she tried not to meet her reflection in the warped mirror propped on the wall opposite her.
The handle of the hallway door rattled.
‘Bella, you in there?’
It was bloody Olly.
‘What?’ she asked, eyes closed, shower overhead, shampoo – matching tea tree also – streaming down her face.
‘I need a crap.’
‘I’ll be ten minutes.’
‘Can’t wait.’
‘Shit.’ Bella quickly rinsed off and threw a towel around herself.
She barged out of the door, knocking into her brother.
‘Sor-ry,’ he sang as he rushed in.
She pulled on shorts and a vest – her specially purchased smart New York wardrobe wasn’t going to get much of a showing in Trout Island, she feared – combed her hair out, slipped on her silver flip-flops and went downstairs to see if she could find her mother. Instead she found the note on the kitchen table.
Great, Bella thought. Abandoned.
Seeing the cereals and milk on the worktop, she remembered she felt hungry, so she helped herself to breakfast. Shortly, she heard the toilet flush and Olly loped down the stairs to join her. He stuck his hand into the cereal packet.
‘Whoah, peanut butter cereals!’ he said, through a mouthful of Reese’s Puffs. ‘Wanna go out and explore?’
‘All right,’ she said. ‘What do we do about keys?’
‘There aren’t any. Mum asked last night. Jimmy boy said no one locks their doors around here.’
‘But this is America. Isn’t it meant to be dangerous?’
‘I know.’ Olly shrugged.
They wandered along Main Street, in the direction of the theatre. It was gone midday and the heat seeped through their bodies, slowing them down. They stuck to the shade of the large trees on either side of the road.
‘Man, it’s so old school here,’ Olly said, as Bella took a photograph of him in front of a tree bound by a faded yellow ribbon. ‘Not like I imagined.’
‘And where are all the people?’ Bella said, screwing her lens cap back on. Then she remembered. ‘Did you hear that air-raid alarm?’
‘Yeah. Woke me up.’
‘What’s that about?’
‘I reckon it’s just a practice. I read about it somewhere. All towns have them since nine eleven. In case of a terrorist attack.’
‘For real?’ Bella was never sure if Olly was bullshitting her or not.
‘Sure,’ Olly said, looking around.
‘So paranoid.’
They went past what they supposed was the village school, a wide, porticoed building opposite the theatre building. The grass at the front was overlong and in need of a mow. A forlorn collection of graffitied twisted slides and rubber swings stood to the side of the school, as deserted as the rest of the place. Bella wheeled around, taking pictures: click, click, click.
They sat on a couple of swings and dangled their feet, squeaking backwards and forwards in the heat.
‘And are they really suggesting we stay the whole fucking summer here?’ Olly said after a while.
‘I think it’s gone beyond a suggestion,’ Bella said.
‘And where are all the kids?’ He gestured at the deserted playground.
‘Away, I suppose,’ Bella said. ‘Or all slaughtered in some Satanic ritual. Oh my God, what’s that?’ She jumped off her swing and moved over to the edge of the playground, where dark oaks loomed up into the hazy sky, and thick, rank undergrowth crowded out the dusty earth. Olly came up behind her.
‘Yerk,’ he said as Bella leaned forward and pulled aside some foliage to reveal a gravestone.
‘There’s loads, look,’ she said, pointing out a second and a third,
‘A graveyard. By the playground,’ Olly said. ‘That’s not right.’
‘They’re really old, look.’ Bella read out the dates that hadn’t worn right away: ‘1876, 1899, 1840.’
They traced the graveyard round to their left until they reached a steep ridge overlooking a vast playing field. The dusty tracks worn into the baseball pitch made the place look even more forlorn.
‘Perhaps it’ll get better when the theatre starts up,’ Bella murmured, shielding her eyes from the glaring sun.
‘From what I’ve seen, I don’t think so,’ Olly said.
‘Or perhaps we’ll meet some people, make some American friends. There’s got to be some kids who live around here.’
‘That’s our only hope,’ Olly said. ‘Shall we move on? This place creeps me out.’
They wandered along Back Street, taking a turning along a street called River Road. Soon they found they were on a dirt track.
‘Ah, look, sweet,’ Olly said as they passed a dilapidated building whose front lawn was almost entirely covered in sunbathing kittens. Bella squatted to take a photograph as he went over to them.
‘Careful. That’s someone’s house,’ Bella said.
‘Nah, no one lives here. Look at it.’ Olly gestured at the broken fly screens, the litter on the porch and the general air of abandonment.
‘What’s that about, then?’ Bella said, pointing to a washing line full of grey vests and nappies. ‘I’ll bet they have a gun in there, too.’
Olly hopped back on to the path and they kept going. The houses petered out and they found themselves on a small sandy beach by a fast-flowing river.
‘Fancy a dip?’ Bella said.
‘Don’t they have alligators and water snakes here?’ Olly said.
‘I don’t think so.’
‘And they have catfish, and they bite really badly.’
‘Oh.’
They sat on the bank and looked at the river, inspecting it for critters. The movement of the light on the water and the sun beating down on her bare head sent Bella into a daze. She reached up and stretched like a cat, trying to work herself back to earth. Olly shifted and she stopped in mid-reach, feeling his gaze on her.
‘What?’ she said, turning to meet his look. ‘What?’
‘Jonny gave me this to give to you.’ He fished in his jeans pocket and brought out a crumpled, sealed envelope.
She sighed, and left the letter in his hand. ‘Don’t even try, Olly. It doesn’t do you any favours.’
‘What do you mean?’ He narrowed his eyes at her.
‘Stop it,’ she said. ‘Just fucking stop it. It’s over. I’ve finished with him. I know and you know he’s just your little puppet.’
‘That’s not true,’ Olly said, his cheeks flushing.
‘It is. He’d do anything for you. It’s you he wants, you know. Not me.’
‘That’s fucking disgusting.’
‘And you trying to control me through your gay little “best mate” isn’t?’ Bella was on her feet now, slapping the dust from her bare legs. ‘If there was ever anything between me and Jonny – and there wasn’t, not really – it’s over, Olly. And you’ve just got to get used to it.’
‘Bella.’ Olly grasped at her leg.
‘Don’t you fucking touch me!’ she shouted, jerking away from him. Then she ripped the letter from his hand, tore it unopened into two pieces and flung it into the river, which carried it away like the paper boats the two of them had made as children.
Olly jumped to his feet and grabbed her by the arms. ‘What did you do that for?’
‘Leave me,’ she said, fighting her way free from him. ‘You can’t do this, not any more. I’m my own person now.’
‘You think so?’ he said. ‘You think so? Well let me tell you, Bella. I’ve got my eye on you.’
‘And what’s that supposed to mean? You’re not my keeper.’
‘Just watch me.’ He took a deep breath, lowered his shoulders and said it again. ‘Just watch me.’
‘For fucksake.’ Bella had had enough. She snatched up her camera and headed off up the lane towards the village. But she knew he was behind her, and she could feel those eyes boring into her, all the way back to the house.
Five
JAMES’S DIRECTIONS HAD ONCE AGAIN PROVED TO BE COMPLETELY useless. In the end, Lara had to stop and ask the way of a Goth kid leaning against a buckled crash barrier on a bend in the middle of nowhere. By the time she got over the mountain to town, it was early afternoon.
Once she hit the town, Lara found Green’s pretty quickly. It was a massive structure with its name spelled loud and proud on its roof in Hollywood-style letters. Lara swung into a parking place near the front of the building. Like Trout Island and the road she had just travelled, the vast car park seemed to be practically empty. For a second she entertained a fantasy that the end of
the world had arrived and she and Jack were the only survivors.
She opened the car door, almost having to push against the heat waves coming from the baking tarmac. Not only was it hot outside the chilled car, but the clouds had come down on this side of the mountain and the air hung damp and steamy as a Turkish bath.
‘Phew,’ Jack said, as she got him out.
She found a trolley and put him in the child seat. As they went through the automatic glass doors into the building, a blast of icy air struck them and Lara shivered with relief. Inside, the shop was vaster even than the colossal exterior suggested. But Lara was pleased to see actual people. Mothers with small children glided up and down acres of brightly lit aisles, filling their trolleys with packets and boxes and loud foil sacks. Muffled muzak added a surreal, trance-like quality to the place, reminding her of the gas station back in Trout Island. She steered her trolley into the first aisle and began to work methodically up and down to get her bearings, so she knew what lived where and how much things cost.
Her little boy was in Jack heaven, reaching out with want whenever he saw something that took his fancy: a shiny advertising balloon, a brightly coloured packet of biscuits. There was so much stuff in this store – so many different varieties of coffee and breakfast cereals, so many different types of juice. Lara’s brain tried to take in a whole hundred-yard wall of various blends: from sugar-free and made-from-concentrate, to not-made-from-concentrate, protein added, fibre added, organic, gluten free …
In the end, she settled for the things that looked familiar. She had enough on her plate without having to worry about her children turning their noses up at the unusual. So she piled the trolley with pasta, tinned tomatoes, dried beans and a delicious looking Italian sausage that could pass for a luxury British banger. She was pleased to find organic milk, having read horror stories about the amount of hormones forced down the throats of intensively farmed American cows. She didn’t want her boys growing breasts.
She put two six-packs of beer into the trolley. But when she asked one of the many uniformed employees on the shop floor where they kept the wine, he told her they didn’t sell it in supermarkets and she would have to visit the liquor store at the far end of the plaza. Her informant spoke slowly, as if she were somehow backward for not knowing this.