The Girl at the Window

by Rowan Coleman

  ‘Because, once upon a time, everything used to happen in one room: cooking, working, eating, sleeping … It was a way to be private.’

  ‘Yuck.’ Will wrinkles his nose at the thought.

  ‘Do you remember how I told you that Ponden is full of stories?’ I ask him, brushing his long curls from his forehead. In the morning light his eyes are the purest green, deep as moss.

  ‘Yes,’ he replies. ‘But I don’t see how houses can be stories. Houses are buildings, not words.’

  ‘Think of it as a bit like the Hubble telescope,’ I say, falling back onto the mattress. After a moment Will stretches out by my side. ‘This house is like a lens, or a perfectly polished mirror in a telescope. It sees very far back in time – and maybe even into the future. There are so many stories to be made up here, and adventures to be had. Some that happened years ago, and some that haven’t happened yet, all of them just waiting for you.’

  Will says nothing, his gaze tracking the roll of the clouds.

  ‘This is a lot for you to deal with,’ I tell him. ‘Don’t think I don’t know that. Thank you for sticking with me.’

  ‘I feel better, actually,’ Will says, turning to look at me.

  ‘Do you?’ I ask cautiously. ‘How so?’

  ‘Because I think Daddy will find us here. It’s a shiny place.’ He seems so certain that I feel it too, just for a moment. The beat of Abe’s heart, the sound of his voice, the broad strength of his presence at my side. Everything sensible about me should disagree, of course, but it’s still there, that tug at my heart that brought me home.

  ‘Come on,’ I say, kissing his warm skin as he squirms away. ‘Let’s get you wrapped up warm and find some breakfast, shall we?’

  ‘Mummy …?’ Will rolls into my arms and I hold him close, my son, my heartbeat.

  ‘Yes, little boy?’ I say.

  ‘You said you’d tell me the story of you and Daddy; you said you’d tell me about how you met here.’

  ‘I did,’ I say, releasing him to clamber out of the bed. ‘It’s a long story, Will.’

  ‘Well,’ he says, as I carry him out of the room and feel the door pushing itself shut under my hands, ‘this seems like a house with more than the usual amount of time.’

  Funny how he’s only been here a few hours and he already understands this place exactly. It seems Ma was right: he’s a true Heaton after all.

  Tru and Abe

  ‘I like the way you smile.’

  Those were the first words Abe said to me. Not my smile, but the way I smiled.

  I’d been watching him out the corner of my eye for the whole evening, me on one side of the bar, where I was only supposed to be collecting glasses, but serving pints anyway, him on the other, drinking them at a steady rate. His wasn’t the loudest laugh, nor was he the funniest or best-looking of his friends. He was the only one who had this stillness, this sense of calm and a kind of unconscious choreography in every moment. I’d made up at least eleven stories about him – who he was, and what he did – before I ever spoke to him, and had settled at last on a mountaineer, a free climber who had once summited Everest. He had those kinds of hands, the kind that look elegant enough, and strong enough, to defy gravity and turn the world underneath them.

  ‘Students,’ Mick the landlord had murmured, blowing my story with one word that carried enough expression to relay exactly what he thought of such creatures, which wasn’t very much all.

  We didn’t often see students out here on the edges of the moors, though there were two university towns just a few miles away. However, we got more than our fair share of travellers from all over the globe. Any typical evening we might have a Japanese group just come down from Top Withens, the most likely location for Wuthering Heights, or twin-anoraked couples, or any number of local people who treated the pub like an extension of their living rooms. Some might think a small country pub in the middle of nowhere would fall silent when a group of medical students entered, but not us. All human life passed through those doors at one time or another.

  Although Mick never turned down money, he wasn’t so fond of students, especially their shouts of laughter, for reasons that weren’t exactly clear. Still, they kept spending, so he kept serving, and so did I.

  ‘I like the way you smile,’ Abe’d said, a little unsteady on his feet. High cheekbones, tall and a little thin, his smile had listed to one side, just like him.

  ‘The way I smile?’ I’d questioned him, leaning in close because his mates were singing at the top of their voices and he was slurring his words a bit.

  ‘Yeah, sort of wonky and lots of teeth.’

  I’d laughed, and he’d laughed – and then swayed, before finally tottering onto a barstool and settling like a leggy puppy.

  ‘My head is spinning; I don’t usually drink,’ Abe had told me. ‘We’re supposed to be hiking for a charity thing. No one said anything about drinking. But suddenly, it’s like “if you don’t drink you aren’t one of the lads”.’

  ‘Aren’t you a bit old for peer pressure?’ I’d laughed, pouring him a glass of water from the tap. ‘Here, get this down you and I’ll make you a coffee.’

  ‘I’m studying medicine, you see,’ he’d said, swaying perilously backwards on the stool and collapsing forward again, just in time. ‘My name is Abraham. Abe, most people call me. I’m going to be a doctor.’

  ‘Congratulations,’ I’d said. ‘I’m Trudy, Tru for short.’

  ‘Doesn’t that make you fancy me? The doctor thing?’ he’d asked, gesturing at his mates who were whispering and giggling like kids. ‘They said it would.’

  ‘Takes a bit more than potential earning power,’ I’d told him.

  ‘Like what?’ he’d asked.

  ‘Like who’s your favourite poet? Which work of art makes you cry, have you ever stood on the top of the moors and screamed at the sky, what do you think of Wuthering Heights, can you write music, do you believe in ghosts, do you dream about travelling to Mars, do you think you might have lived on this earth before?’

  Abe had blinked at me and rested his forehead on the bar for a moment before focusing on me once again.

  ‘You’re one of those girls,’ he’d said, after a moment. ‘One of those thinking girls.’

  ‘I’m not sure I know of any other kind,’ I’d replied, which would have been more meaningful if I’d had a lot of friends at school, except I never did, because I’d made books and long-dead writers my friends.

  ‘Why are you only working in a pub?’ he’d asked, belligerent. ‘You seem clever.’

  ‘We can’t all be doctors,’ I’d said. ‘And anyway, I’m still doing my A levels.’

  ‘Oh.’ He’d closed one eye. ‘Want to come outside with me?’

  ‘No,’ I’d said. ‘It’s bloody freezing out there and I’m pretty sure you are going to throw up.’

  ‘But still good-looking, right?’ Abe had grinned at me then fallen off the stool.

  ‘I think it’s time you lot went home,’ Mick had said then, easing his considerable girth out from behind the bar. ‘Come on, lads, you don’t want sore heads in the morning. I’m closing up now, anyway.’

  There’d been protests and swearing and many more songs, but all in good cheer. I’d watched Abe as he’d stumbled out of the door, turning to look at me just as he was about to leave. ‘I’m coming back tomorrow,’ he’d promised. ‘Not drunk … To tell you I’ve fallen in love with you at first sight.’

  ‘You do that,’ I’d said, rolling my eyes at Mick.

  Later, I’d walked home, even though Mick had offered me a lift, because I liked the quiet, the cold and the smell in the air after rain, earthy and rich, flavoured with red-tasting iron. That night as I’d walked by the reservoir, the moon was so bright it left a halo of light in its trail as it set behind the hills. The dark had been full of magic and promise, the kind of night where love at first sight could happen to someone, even if it wasn’t me. I’d listened to the din of the insects singing in t
he dark and heard the hidden creatures moving in the undergrowth. Barn owls and bats had swooped and called overhead, and I was part of it, another wild creature under the stars.

  And when I’d thought about what the student doctor had said to me in the pub, I’d felt like maybe life didn’t have to be so lonely after all.

  Then the next day there was a knock on the door. It was Mick.

  ‘I’m not working, am I?’ I said, reaching for my coat.

  ‘No, but you don’t have a bloody phone either,’ he puffed, even though he’d driven his Land Rover right up to the door. ‘There’s a bloody idiot in the car who won’t leave until he sees you, and I wasn’t just about to tell him where you live so …’

  He gestured at the car, and Abe was sitting inside, looking distinctly sheepish. He offered me a half-hearted wave.

  I looked at Mick. ‘So you drove him round to murder me instead?’

  ‘Oh, bollocks.’ Mick took his cap off, and ruffled what was left of his hair. ‘Anyway, talk to him, will you? I’ll hang about here, knock him on head if he seems like he might be a wrong ’un.’

  ‘Who’s there?’ Ma called out from the kitchen.

  ‘No one, Ma,’ I call back. ‘Just Mick about extra shifts. He says get a phone!’

  ‘Don’t set her on me,’ Mick said, and he wasn’t joking. Ma’s tongue had been a local legend even then.

  ‘I reckon you can go.’ I looked at Abe. ‘He looks harmless.’

  ‘Murderers always do,’ Mick said. ‘Plus he told me he’s training to be a surgeon and they’re the worst kind for chopping up bodies and such.’

  ‘If he tries anything, I’ll shout for Ma.’

  ‘But how will he get back?’ Mick asked me.

  ‘He’s on a hiking trip, Mick. Reckon he’ll find the way.’

  ‘If you don’t make your shift tonight because you’re dead in a ditch, I’m going to be right peeved,’ Mick told me very seriously. ‘Pub’s downwind: if you scream loud enough in the right direction we might hear you.’

  Abe got out of the car and smiled, but before he could say a word I dragged him a few hundred yards up the hill, out of sight of the house, and kept walking. It soon became apparent that the hiking trip must have had a lot more to do with drinking than walking.

  ‘Where are we going?’ he asked, out of breath, struggling to keep up with me.

  ‘My ma’s nosey,’ I said. ‘Trust me, you aren’t ready to meet her.’

  ‘That is true.’ Abe followed me up the track, like a great lolloping nerd.

  ‘So, what do you want?’ I stopped dead in the path, as soon as I thought we were as far enough away from the house to be out of the reach of Ma’s radar.

  He collected himself, and took a deep breath. ‘I said I’d come back …’

  ‘You did,’ I said.

  ‘To tell you I’m in love with you.’

  ‘That’s bollocks,’ I said.

  ‘Maybe.’ He grinned and shrugged. ‘But I do like the way you smile, all lopsided and toothy, and your hair is all wild and tangled up and I like your blue eyes. Look, I’m sober now and I really fancy you and I’d like to see you again. A lot. I’m studying in Leeds, but it’s easy to get over here, or you could get over to the city and …’

  I must have looked sceptical, because he hesitated, looking up at the storm that was gathering in the sky, ripples of grey spreading outwards with the slow menace of sudden heavy rain.

  ‘OK, I know you’re still at school, and I’m twenty-one. But that’s cool, I’m not going to, you know, be weird.’

  ‘You kind of already are,’ I said.

  ‘OK.’ Abe immediately put his hands in his pockets, and studied the toes of his barely worn hiking boots. ‘But would you write me a letter, then?’ Abe asked me. ‘You could just write to me.’

  ‘Write to you? Like letters?’ I thought of Charlotte Brontë’s letters, of the hope, and joy and pain she’d poured into each one, and thought how wonderful it would be to have a living human being to write letters to. ‘Really?’

  ‘I was thinking emails, but sure, letters, why not? We can get to know each other and, if you like me, then maybe you’ll let me come and see you again.’

  ‘I’m strange,’ I told him. ‘I’m the loner at school. I like Victorian novels and being by myself.’

  ‘Cool,’ Abe said. ‘I dissect dead people.’

  ‘I like you more already.’

  I was standing slightly higher than him on the incline, looking down at him, and every last bit of what was left of the sun lit up his face. I saw amber and gold in his brown eyes, copper and oak in his skin, and such sweetness and hope in the angle of his head and the fall of his hands that I found I wanted to hold him and kiss him right then.

  ‘I can’t write to you if I don’t know your address, can I?’ I said, because it didn’t seem sensible to declare my feelings right then and there, not when I’d been doing such a good job of playing it cool.

  ‘Oh shit, yeah.’ He tapped his pockets. ‘I don’t …’

  ‘You write to me first. It’s easy to remember: Trudy Heaton, Ponden Hall.’

  ‘Really? OK, then. Yes, I will. I definitely will, Trudy Heaton of Ponden Hall.’

  Then I kissed him, hard. Flung my arms around his neck, sending him staggering back a few steps and inhaled him, like he was the wind and the sky and all the sustenance I’d ever need, and he kissed me back in exactly the same way. Sunbeams refracted behind my eyelids, red and green, lights going off, and I tasted the scent of his skin on the tip of my tongue, soap and salt. Before that moment my entire kissing history had been teeth, saliva and tongues. This was something so much greater than that: it felt like the curve of the earth to me. When I let him go, he blinked and shook his head as he looked at me.

  ‘Sod it,’ he said. ‘I meant it when I said I was in love with you. I don’t know why or how, but I am, and I don’t even care if that freaks you out, I just have to say it.’

  We’d stood there a moment longer, just looking. Just knowing that this was the beginning of something that would last forever, and even though I was just seventeen years old I wasn’t afraid, or daunted. I was just sure.

  ‘Don’t go the way you came,’ I told him, setting him on the footpath across the moor to Haworth. ‘This way is longer but it doesn’t go past the house. I don’t want my ma knowing my business.’

  ‘I’ll write,’ he said, walking past me backwards, up the path.

  ‘I know,’ I said.

  The first letter came two days later.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ‘So why were you so sure that new Granny Mariah wouldn’t like Daddy?’ Will asks as I finish telling him that story, while he spoons porridge into his mouth. As I’d talked, I’d filtered my words through my own memory in real time, crafting them into something fit for an eight-year-old.

  The sight of him sitting at the kitchen table, bundled up in his duvet against the biting morning cold, his bobble hat pulled down so the brim sits just above his eyes, makes my heart smile. There is still no power, despite the promises of the electricity company, which means a walk up the hill to where there might be some signal to phone them later. And yet I still don’t regret my decision to come home, despite the cold and discomfort. Sitting at this table that is as familiar as my own palm – with my son and bright morning sun flowing in through the two large kitchen windows, fighting its way through the vines of ivy that make rather picturesque picture frames – is enough of a salve to make it all worthwhile.

  ‘Granny …’ I try to come up a reason that would make sense to Will. ‘Granny has always been the sort of person to tell everyone to mind their own business, while at exactly the same time sticking her nose in yours. At the beginning, I suppose, I just wanted to keep your daddy to myself for a while, because I’d never been in love before, or ever again, except that I am madly and crazily in love with you, of course.’

  Will pulls a face. ‘Yuck! That’s so gross. But then what did Granny do
to make you not talk to her until now?’

  ‘That,’ I said, ‘is another story, Will. One I’ll tell you in about ten years.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Now then.’ Ma comes into the kitchen, and even just woken she is all hard edges, her thick silver-blonde hair brushed smooth, dressing gown tight-knotted. Her skin has that particular ceramic glow you only get from washing your face in freezing water. Sensing me looking, she pulls her dressing gown a little tighter around herself, turning away from me as she lights the gas hob with a match, setting the kettle atop the flames.

  ‘What happened in the night?’ she asks, as if that is perfectly exchangeable with, ‘did you sleep OK?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I say, avoiding her gaze. ‘Just a bit strange for Will, waking up in a new place, I suppose. Why are you sleeping in a chair, Ma? Even if the roof upstairs is shot, you could put a bed in Dad’s old study, or any of the other downstairs rooms.’

  ‘No.’ Ma shook her head. ‘I like the chair, I like the fire. I like Mab on my feet, I like the sound of the John Heaton clock. Do you know, Will, that the motto on the clock face translates to “Remember to Die”? Besides …’ she smiles at Will ‘… your grandad’s old office is where they used to lay out the dead, you know.’

  ‘Cool.’ Will’s eyes widen with the ghoulish delight that only young children can truly know.

  ‘I never once saw a ghost in there my whole life,’ I say to Will.

  ‘That just means you never saw ’em, not that they weren’t there, girl,’ Ma tells me. ‘Anyway, I’ve got used to my ways. For a while, when you live alone, you go on living like you did for other people, and then one day you think, what the heck for? So I do as I please and it serves me well enough; bus into the village once a week to do my shop and that’s me done. Besides, I don’t go upstairs any more.’

  ‘Why not?’ I ask her.

  ‘I just don’t go upstairs any more,’ she says again, in that way that has always meant the subject is closed.