Crooked Daylight

by Helen Slavin

  “What if he’s not here at all? What if tonight he went back to Havoc?”

  “Emz has got a point, he’s seen her naked as well, plus Seren doesn’t have her mates with her. She’s more…”

  “Vulnerable.” Anna completed the thought.

  It was a short drive to the turn off at Old Castle Hill and as Charlie sped through the trees they could see that there were lights on. Charlie parked up and it was Emz who knocked on the door.

  “What do you want?” Seren Lake spoke through the letterbox. She was not about to let them in.

  “Oh… er…” Anna stalled, and Charlie stepped forward.

  “We just need to check the boiler. It’ll take ten seconds.” Charlie’s voice was firm and determined. “Thanks.”

  There was a moment of silence before the bolt slid back, the key turned, and the door opened. Charlie headed in first and made for the kitchen. Anna moved with Seren into the main room as Emz headed off towards the bathroom.

  “I am sorry about this. Charlie’s usually hot to trot on the maintenance side… she thought there might be…”

  “Are there fish in there?” Seren asked, her voice matter of fact. Anna was thrown. In the bathroom she could hear Emz turning the shower on and off again.

  “In the bathroom?”

  Seren glared at her and her gaze moved to the lake “No. There, in Pike Lake.”

  “Yes.” Anna was certain there were fish, a monster pike had been the centrepiece of the taboo on swimming. Grandma had told them time and again about the ancient pike that lived at the bottom. “Look, here’s where he took a snack out of me…” Anna had a vivid memory of Grandma Hettie wiggling what was left of the little finger on her left hand, the pink stump of it hardened over the years.

  “And monsters of course…” Seren was not asking this time, she expressed this as a fact and then turned to Anna. “Or are all the monsters on dry land?” She gave a sad smile. “Sorry… I’ve been a bit too much in my own head this evening. I need to get out.”

  “The Farmer’s Market is on in town tomorrow if you’re interested. It’s a good one. Lots of local stuff.”

  Seren nodded and smiled again, this time the sadness lifted slightly. “Okay, yes. Thanks.”

  “If you walk up this side of the lake you’ll come to a cut in the trees, there’s an old lightning-shot oak there and a lot of bracken and undergrowth. If you walk straight through you come to the road. There’s a gate in the fence, the key’s on the fob, the little brassy Yale one.”

  Seren reached for the keys on the table and Anna picked out the one. “It saves you having to drive into town and park. It’s a good walk though, forty minutes probably, if you’d like…” Anna felt remiss that she hadn’t told her this before. The monster truck car had sent a wrong message and, when Anna thought about it, she was reluctant to tell all of Cob Cottage’s secrets. The path was their grandmother’s chosen route to town because she had never learnt to drive.

  Back outside Charlie took in a deep breath.

  “Well… we didn’t look like total idiots there but anyway… she seemed okay and he won’t be able to see in, she’s got the blinds down everywhere.”

  “Want to take a look round the woods anyway?” Emz said what they had all been thinking and once again they quickly divided and moved with speed and energy up and through and around the trees, Anna tracing a path by the lake, but they found nothing.

  * * *

  The Ways had trailed back to their mother’s house to find it, as always, empty. Ostensibly they were here to drop Emz off but neither Charlie nor Anna had anywhere else they wanted to go and so they had pitched a sort of camp in the living room, Charlie falling asleep on the L-shaped sofa and Anna as always, trying to fit her tired frame into the leather angles of the psychiatrist’s couch.

  “I don’t know why mum moved out of Way Towers… do you?” Charlie asked. They were sitting in the darkness once more because none of them had yet unravelled the programming mysteries of their mother’s digital lighting system. The most any of them had managed was to click on a table lamp in the hallway. Now, the moon glowed in from the big fold-back doors, making the room look as if snow had recently fallen.

  “Nope.” Anna thought of their old home and was struck by a thought. She glanced around at the furniture, such as it was and realised that there was nothing remaining of their old home. Not one chair. As she thought it her eyes met Charlie’s. Charlie sat up from the sofa and stretched.

  “Actually… I might check in at Drawbridge…”

  “You’re leaving?” Anna knew the answer and she noticed that Charlie had not in fact taken off her boots.

  “I’ve got stuff to brew,” was Charlie’s farewell.

  Brewing was what Anna’s mind began to do. She had allowed herself those little sneaking thoughts of Way Towers and she realised that she’d been banishing those too because walking through that particular little green door and thinking about hanging your coat on the overloaded hooks meant that other memories stuttered and flashed alongside.

  Mentally, she took her coat off the hook and attempted to step back through the little green door, to safety. It didn’t work. The memories were flickering steadily now, 24 frames a second, and she knew where she was heading.

  * * *

  It was raining, the memory was shiny with it, and sharp with how much she needed to get out of No. 3 Keep Rows. She needed to open the door and run away, and the second she shut the gate behind her, her feet moved under their own volition, heading right towards Old Castle Road.

  The more effort it required to walk up the hill the better Anna felt. The rain was driving at her now, but she felt refreshed, as if it was washing off the arguments. She turned in at the lane, her feet soaked because, in her hurry to leave, she’d not pulled on the right shoes at all. Water was sluicing over the tops of her little slip-ons as she made her way along the tarmac road. The rain pounded harder, running off in little rivulets along the tarmac and now dribbling down through the gravel, burbling and rushing like a miniature white-water river before it washed over the dirt track and Anna could see where it was all rolling forwards, heading to Pike Lake.

  Grandma Hettie was not at the door to greet her, but the door was opened ready and the kettle was on the hob and already beginning to whistle. Anna reached for the teapot and the leaves. She was soaked to the skin, but she didn’t care.

  “Here…” Grandma Hettie was coming from the little side utility room that the girls had helped her build last summer “…get yourself dry…” she handed Anna a towel and put down a folded pile of Anna’s clothes, jeans and a sweatshirt.

  The words poured out of her like the rainwater, rattling around the walls of Cob Cottage and Grandma Hettie listened to each of them with no comment at all.

  She had not expected to be pregnant. At least. Not this soon.

  “It was on our To Do list but just… but not…” she reasoned. Grandma Hettie said nothing as Anna continued.

  Now that she talked about it within Cob Cottage it was as though she could listen to the words in a better translation, she could see Calum’s face more clearly when she had broken the news.

  His expression had not been joy. She had wanted joy, reassurance, but she also saw her own fear at the huge step and now that she looked back she could see that there was fear in his face, not simply anger.

  “I’ve applied for the Head of Humanities,” had been his comment. Not “I love you”, not “we’re having a baby”, not “that’s wonderful”, “amazing”, “tick”, any of the usual congrats.

  “I’ve applied for the job. You know that. This is not good timing.” He had seemed cross.

  He taught History and the History department had been amalgamated into Humanities. There had already been a small cull of staff and all the remaining teachers in the various departments were having to apply for their own jobs or take a chance on a few offered promotions. It was uncertain.

  “It’s been like a military coup sin
ce the new Head arrived.” Calum had looked pinched. This was not perfect timing.

  Anna stopped talking for several moments. The front doors of Cob Cottage were open, and she could hear the lake beyond, some mournful bird that seemed to be singing to her.

  “And what about you, Anna?” Grandma Hettie asked, her voice level and quiet, her left eyebrow raised.

  It took a few more moments, the thoughts sifting and arranging themselves, then a soft hug from Grandma Hettie before Anna made her way home.

  He was waiting for her, the front door open, so that she walked in to be folded into his arms.

  “Do you love me?” he whispered into her ear.

  “Course,” she whispered back.

  “Then that’s all that matters.”

  * * *

  The following week, after the interview, he returned home with flowers, an exotic and wild looking collection of blooms and foliage from Mimosa.

  “Did you get the job?” Anna joked.

  “The job. The wife. The child.” Calum smoothed his hand over her slightly bumped belly, folded her into himself, his suit smelling of school polish and exam papers. “I… my darling dearest Anna… have everything.”

  The memory juddered, Anna’s mind looping that moment, over and over and over, his arms around her, his face close to hers, his breath on her cheek.

  15

  Deeper Water

  To Seren’s skin, the lake water had a different texture in the morning. The last couple of days she had come straight from sleep, peeling off her clothes as she went, down to the shoreline and into the water. It felt silkier somehow in the morning and the light was angled through it more sharply. If she held her hand up and let the droplets fall, they fell like a shower of stars.

  Last night, she had been readying herself to go to the water when they had come, the women, and interrupted her. She’d waited after their departure, for the right moment to be reached, but it didn’t happen. Instead of hearing the water call to her she heard nothing but the traffic from the road. She’d relaxed and let herself be cut off from things and now that reality was scratching at her.

  She had fallen asleep in the chair by the window and so the dawn woke her. The sun etched the sky with an intense bronze glow that was reflected perfectly on the surface of the water and Seren opened the doors, slipped out of her clothes and moved to meet the light. This morning she waded out farther than before, was up to her waist, letting her hands push and pull like paddles as she stepped. She felt the stones beneath her feet, soft and, it seemed to her now, giving off a cold vitality. She did not stumble in her bare feet. She was sure. She was about to move deeper when a heron lifted from the reeds beside her. The water was disturbed, she looked back towards Cob Cottage, it seemed far away, and the surface of the water seemed to stretch infinitely as if she might never reach land. Her heart started to flutter then, and she strode back, her body leaving a wake like a silvered arrowhead.

  She sat on the large flat stone to dry off in the crisp air. She had always been the one to turn the thermostat up or tug on another jumper but since coming to the cottage she had revelled in the cold. It seemed that there was no finer feeling than the heat that her body generated after it had been clasped by the cold waters of Pike Lake. The wild burning that coursed through her powered her day. She’d eaten almost nothing recently but this morning she felt hungry once more and she thought of the Farmer’s Market.

  * * *

  She stood looking in the estate agency window, her reflection munching at the almond croissant she’d just purchased from the bakery stall. Her bag was stuffed with goodies, the cottage loaves had appealed with their rounded tops, looking exactly like the bread you might buy in a fairy-tale. And it was a fairy-tale, this place, this Woodcastle nowhere town. Behind her she could see the castle rising out of the hill, and the stone wall crocodiling its way towards the river, embracing the town, keeping it from harm.

  Something had brought her here. She had thought that the moment she had seen the online advert for the cottage. And it had not been the cottage itself that had attracted, it had been the location. If the Way sisters had been renting out a shipping container, Seren Lake would have taken it simply for the location. Now she was looking at the properties for sale and for rent. She didn’t know the town, she needed a map really so that she could pinpoint which were nearest to the water.

  Or what if the Way sisters would sell her some portion of Havoc Wood? She could build herself something, she’d watched enough programmes on television, it wasn’t impossible, and she’d have a sense of achievement afterwards. I built this. I made this. This is mine.

  Nothing had been hers. They had said they would buy a new house, something that they would choose together when they got married. Only the idea of getting married stayed as an idea, something for a future date being put back because other things got in the way or took priority. It was, she saw, a kind of bait, keeping her hanging there. If she was good enough she would be rewarded, but she was never good enough, there was always something.

  They lived in his house, with his things. When she had wanted to buy things, there had always been reasons why not to, waiting for special offers or better bargains to be had elsewhere and so she lived in his house like a visitor.

  She looked at the Woodcastle houses and was panicked at the thought of how little she could afford. There had to be a way of stepping forward, of making a new life. She would need a job too. She ought to look for a seamstress job, find a bridal boutique. Or if that wasn’t possible she could perhaps work at the castle.

  She walked up the hill to the castle gates. She had the bread in her bag along with some cheese she’d bought and some tomatoes, she was looking forward to making herself a picnic. Bread and cheese, just like the woodcutter in a fairy-tale.

  She paid her entrance fee and sat on a bench by the far wall. A school party was coming down from the three towers and joining to make a group on the greensward in front of her as she ate her bread and cheese. The stones behind her were warmed by the sun and, as she felt their heat radiating out she was reminded of the lake once more, of the stones beneath her feet and she felt more like herself than ever before. Woodcastle had been a good place to find. Home, it felt like home.

  She walked up the flight of stone steps to the solar and was reading the information board when the man spoke to her. She was startled, turned to see a slim-built man in a charcoal suit standing in the middle of the room. Light coming in through the arrowslit windows marked him out against the darkness.

  “You were intent,” he said and smiled as if he was a friend. Seren looked away instantly and walked towards the door.

  She was swift down the stairs, the spiral of them making her head spin but just when she thought she had left him behind he stepped out of the next tower and was walking towards her.

  “You’re not local, are you?” He was smiling again except this time it was more smirking. Seren looked around, they were alone in the castle, the school group already disappearing back over the drawbridge entrance and heading down towards the car park. Seren began to head the same way. In order to do so, she would have to pass him.

  “Do you know where you are standing?” He leaned in, conspiratorial. “Can I tell you the significance of…?” Seren rushed by him, the man staggering back with a shout.

  Seren had broken into a run, racing faster down towards the cool stone shadow of the gate and guard house. As she pushed out through the little wooden gate the woman who had taken her money waved,

  “Thank you for coming… do visit ag—”

  As she spoke, Seren fell headlong, her shoe skidding on the worn through gravel. She was down, hard, her hands grazing with grit and blood, her knee scuffing as she slid along a few steps. Before the woman could head out of the kiosk to help her Seren was back on her feet and through the castle gates.

  Inside the castle bounds Charlie Way was sitting on a bench with her packed lunch and was only half aware that there was anyo
ne else there with her. She’d vaguely noticed a couple, a woman heading into the tower and a man following. She had not recognised Seren Lake at all until she came rushing out of the tower and across the grass. Then she had been aware too of the man who was, there was no doubt, heading Seren Lake off. Charlie blocked his way, the man almost falling on top of her. She shoved him backwards and he bore the full brunt of her wrath.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she asked, grabbing at his arm as he made to go after Seren Lake.

  “What?” His face was stony. Beneath his jacket Charlie could feel sinewy arms, realised how tight she was gripping him and released a little. Only a little.

  “I saw you harassing that woman…” Charlie pushed onwards. “What do you think you were you doing?”

  The man was outraged, and he was wriggling in her grip.

  “I have never been so… good heavens above. She dropped this…” The man held out a small bakery bag. Charlie saw at once that he was red and embarrassed and let go of him.

  “You can’t just leave litter, this is a historical monument…” He spoke with outraged confidence. Charlie snatched the bag from him. He was about to speak but Barbara, from the ticket office, had puffed up the slight incline towards them.

  “You.” The woman pointed at the well-dressed man. “What have I said to you Graeme about coming in here and annoying people? You’re not an official volunteer and you haven’t even paid… AGAIN.”

  As Charlie left, she saw the suited man was pinned into the tiny kiosk and Barbara was taking her opportunity to show him all the Friends Of and Membership leaflets at her disposal.

  Outside, Charlie was in time to see Seren Lake almost run into the path of an incoming car at the car park entrance before racing out onto the road in the direction of Cob Cottage in a chorus of beeping horns and screeching brakes. Somehow, knowing that Seren was headed back there made Charlie relax. She would be fine once she reached the lake, arrived in the soft comfort of the cottage.