The Double Life of Cassiel Roadnight

by Jenny Valentine

  “And then you ran. You ran off in the direction of the Wicker Man. And that was it. And I didn’t see you again until this morning.”

  He smiled at me, a grave and humourless smile. No wonder he’d been so shocked to see Cassiel. No wonder he’d asked him face to face if he was dead.

  I sat up a bit. It was hard to ask the right questions, to get what I needed to know and still sound like Cassiel. I knew I was inches from the sheer drop of giving myself away. Floyd was running out of patience. Why did I need to ask him all this stuff when I had been there, when it was me who’d said it?

  “Did you see Frank?” I asked.

  “Not that night, no. I didn’t see anyone. I looked for you for a bit but I couldn’t find you. Then I went home. You kind of killed the night for me. You kind of did my head in.”

  Where did Cassiel go? What happened to him?

  “Frank was there that night though, people saw him. He was out the next morning, clearing up. And he was out with everyone else the next night,” Floyd said. “I saw him then. He was searching, like the rest of us. He was kind of in charge.”

  “Sounds like Frank,” I said.

  Floyd nodded. “I kept out of his way.”

  I let my head drop back against the mud. I tried to put things in order. So Cassiel went to Floyd, afraid for his life, afraid of his brother. Why would Floyd make that up? What would he gain from it?

  “What did you do with the bag?” I said.

  “I hid it and I waited.”

  “And then?”

  “And after a few days, when you didn’t show up, I gave it to the police.”

  “God, did you?”

  “Yes. I told them what you said.”

  “What happened?”

  “They searched it. They said it didn’t amount to anything.”

  “What about the stuff I left?”

  “They said there was ‘nothing of consequence’ in there.”

  Floyd picked at his ragged cuffs, kicked his stick away on the ground. “They didn’t believe me. Nobody believed me.”

  “Why did they say that?” I asked him.

  Floyd messed up his hair with his hands, scratched his nose. “Why are you asking me that?” he said. “You’re here. You’re not dead. Frank didn’t kill you. What are you up to, Cass?”

  “I’m not up to anything,” I said.

  “Well you’re not making any sense.”

  “I’ve been gone for two years,” I said. “I want to know what happened after I left, that’s all.”

  “You lied,” Floyd said. “You lied and you left. Typical Cass. And I believed you because I’m an idiot. It didn’t matter because nobody ever liked me anyway. Good enough?”

  “What did the police do with my bag?” I said. “Did they give it back to you?”

  “No. Of course not.”

  Maybe if I got my hands on Cassiel’s stuff, I could find an answer.

  “Where is it?”

  “Frank’s got it.”

  “What? Why?”

  “He went to the police station,” Floyd said. “He was there for about two hours. I thought they must be questioning him but then he just left with all your stuff. They questioned me for longer than that. I think I was more of a suspect than Frank was.”

  “Did you have any idea what I was talking about?” I said. “At Hay on Fire.”

  Floyd groaned. “Of course I didn’t. Why would I? Do you?”

  I wondered what Frank had to hide. I wondered if Cassiel had found out about it.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know anything.”

  Floyd said, “Frank told them I invented the whole thing and they believed him. He got rid of the bag, I’m sure. I would if I was him. The whole town thinks I’m some sicko who should be locked up, thanks to you and Frank.”

  I looked up at the trees, black against the pale sky, moving and grabbing at the breeze. “God, Floyd,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  “So, what then?” he said. “Come on. Frank didn’t kill you, obviously. You’re acting like you don’t even remember saying all that to me that night, like you weren’t even there.”

  I swallowed. I looked at him and away again.

  “So tell me the truth,” Floyd said. “I think I’ve earned it.”

  There was a crash then, the sound of my bike falling or something falling on my bike.

  “What was that?” I said, almost glad of the distraction, and then Edie was standing above us.

  Floyd got to his feet.

  “Hey, Edie,” I said.

  She didn’t answer. She just stared at Floyd like she was trying to make him burst into flames or disappear underground, like she wished with all her heart that he’d shrivel up and die. It must have hurt. It’s hard, somebody like Edie hating you like that.

  Floyd cleared his throat. “I should go,” he said.

  I nodded. I didn’t argue. “OK.”

  Edie’s sudden appearance had saved me. She’d bought me some time and I was grateful for it. I nodded. “See you around,” I said.

  Is that it? his face said. Is that all I get?

  I owed him. Cassiel owed him.

  “I’ll call you,” I said.

  “For Christ’s sake, Cassiel!” Edie said.

  “What?”

  She looked at Floyd. “Come on,” she said to me. “Now.”

  She went ahead, grabbed her bike and wrestled it through the branches like it was their fault, like the bike and the trees were to blame.

  I turned to Floyd. “I will call you,” I said.

  “No you won’t,” he said.

  “I will. I promise.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  He was about to say something else. He looked like he’d just thought of it. I waited.

  “How’s Mr Artemis?” he said.

  “What?” I said.

  “You didn’t mention Mr Artemis,” Floyd said. “Doesn’t matter. Just ask Frank how he’s doing. Let me know what he says.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ve got to go.”

  He tipped his hat at me and I left him there in a hollow of mud in the woods, cheated and friendless and still hopelessly in the dark.

  “You’re such a liar!” Edie snapped at me as we walked back across the common.

  “I know,” I said.

  “I was so stupid to think you had changed,” she said. “I can’t believe I kidded myself that you’d grown up while you were gone, that you might even be a good person.”

  “What?”

  “Stay away from that boy, do you get it?” she said, her lips white with anger, pulled back against her teeth. “Think of your family, just this once. Think of what we’ve been through.”

  But I couldn’t think about them without thinking of Floyd as well and of what he’d told me.

  I believed him, that’s the thing, even if nobody else did. I believed him because I knew something they didn’t. I knew Cassiel wasn’t back.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “You’re right. I won’t see him again. I’m sorry.”

  I lied. Of course I did. I was starting to get good at it by now.

  SEVENTEEN

  I got good at lying when I was ten. Before I was ten, I don’t think I told a lie. Not one. After that, I had no choice.

  I was ten when Grandad had the accident. I didn’t know that’s what it was right then. I didn’t know until later. At the time, all I knew was that he left at eleven in the morning to get more whisky, and that he didn’t come back. I didn’t see him for four years.

  It had been snowing. We’d had the coldest winter for twenty years or something. We looked out of the window that week at the sleeping, unspoilt icing on the park. We whispered so we didn’t wake it. Grandad said he couldn’t remember it ever being so thick and brilliant and spotless.

  It was a great week. I spent most of it on an old enamel tea tray, bombing down Kite Hill. My arms and legs burned with the cold. My hands and feet nearly died. Grandad put them in a b
ucket of cold water when I got home and I snatched them out. I thought it was scalding. He said he watched me out of the window. He said I went the fastest. He said, “You beat everyone with their fancy sledges and their waterproof gear, hands down.”

  I couldn’t get warm that week. I couldn’t get warm and I couldn’t stop smiling.

  When the thaw came, everything was suddenly so dark and soiled and sludgy. Everything was ruined and dripping and black. The plants were black and withered from the cold. The ice was black.

  That’s what Grandad fell on. Black ice.

  He fell and he broke both hips. Just like that. One, two, three, snap.

  He fell and he broke everything. Everything got broken.

  I was out with my tea tray in search of snow in higher places. I couldn’t believe it was gone. I couldn’t believe something so good could be there one day and gone the next.

  I soon learned.

  I should have gone with him. It wasn’t at his usual whisky shop. He didn’t fall there. I asked them. When I got home that night at six o’clock and he wasn’t there, I went straight round and asked. They didn’t have his whisky, that’s what happened. They’d sold out and he went somewhere else to get it.

  Funny, the distant little roots of big and life-changing things, their humble beginnings. The phone call that causes a car crash, the delayed train that kicks off an affair, the whisky shortage that turned me into nobody.

  “Where did he go?” I said. “Why isn’t he back yet?”

  They shook their heads and shrugged their shoulders and stuck their bottom lips out. “We don’t know,” they said. Go away now. We don’t care.

  It was the first night I spent on my own. It was the first of many.

  I should have gone to all the hospitals. I should have phoned them. I might have found him that night. It might have been all right. But I didn’t. I was ten. I was scared. I thought he’d left me. I didn’t know what to do.

  I was on my own in Grandad’s house for over three weeks. Every day I thought he might change his mind and come home. But he didn’t.

  He lay in a hospital bed. I found this out later. Unconscious at first. In constant pain. Withdrawing from alcohol. Not allowed a drink. He must have suffered. He must have raged and ranted and seen things crawling up the walls, crawling all over him. He must have forgotten about me.

  But when he was calmer, when he woke up and realised where he was and what had happened, he knew I was there at home, ten years old and penniless and waiting for him to come back. He was the only one that knew.

  And he didn’t tell anyone. Because I was his dark shadow. I was his terrible secret.

  How could I forgive him for that?

  And the whole time I was waiting, when people came to the door, when the neighbours poked their noses into my business and asked questions, I lied.

  I said, “He’s just popped out to the shops.”

  I said, “He’s having a nap just now.”

  I said, “It’s school holidays.”

  “My teacher’s not well.”

  “The school burned down.”

  I lied so much and so often that even when I tried to tell them the truth, they didn’t believe me. Even when the police and social services arrived, and I said this was my Grandad’s house and I lived there and they mustn’t take me away because I needed to be here when he got back, they didn’t believe me.

  They didn’t believe a word I said.

  I didn’t think about why Edie was so angry with me. I didn’t think about it until later, when it was all I could think about.

  She gave me the bike when we got to her car. She almost threw it at me. “You rode it down,” she said. “You can ride it back up. It won’t fit in my car.”

  “OK,” I said. “Fine.”

  “And go home,” she said. “Don’t you dare go anywhere else.”

  “Edie,” I said. “I’m not a prisoner.”

  “No,” she said. “You’re a liar. That’s what you are.”

  On the way back up the hill I tried to sort everything out and make sense of it. I pushed myself up and along the lane and across the ridge of the fields. I breathed hard, in and out through my mouth, and the cold air bit at my throat. I kept my eyes on the mountains. They had been here through all of this, watching. They had seen everything. I wished that they would just tell me.

  I believed Floyd. At least I thought I did. Floyd must be telling the truth because the truth hadn’t done him any good. Why make up a lie that did that? And Floyd thought Cassiel had lied. He thought there was a joke somewhere and he was the butt of it. He thought he’d been used. You could tell that.

  I didn’t know much about Cassiel Roadnight, but I was beginning to think I wouldn’t have liked him. Had he lied to Floyd? What for? To cover his tracks. To fake his own death and lay the blame on his brother. Why would he do that? And what was he running from? Were the dark places in the Roadnight family so well hidden I hadn’t seen even a glimpse of them? Was I that bad at looking?

  I thought about Frank. If Cassiel was telling the truth, that made Frank a brilliant liar. A cold, calculating, flawless liar. But could he really be a murderer? Could he really kill his own brother? I couldn’t believe I was asking myself these questions.

  Who was lying? Frank or Floyd or Cassiel?

  Was Cassiel alive or dead?

  And if he was dead, was I living with his killer?

  When I stole Cassiel’s life, I thought it would be better than mine. I thought he was happier and healthier and more wholesome than me. I thought he had a loving, stable family. I wanted what he had. Now I had no idea what that was. I had no idea who any of them were.

  When I only knew for sure that I was lying, how could I trust anybody else?

  Edie was home way ahead of me. The three of them were sitting close together at the kitchen table. It was dark in there, and sombre. I thought I knew what they’d been talking about, what was so important that they forgot to put the lights on while the dark closed in around them.

  I was uneasy. I felt sick with it.

  “Hello,” I said, breaking the silence. “Everything all right?”

  Frank got up and put the lamp on. He didn’t look at me and I was glad. I wasn’t ready.

  I was pretty muddy from the woods. The ride home had made things worse. My clothes were a mess.

  Helen’s eyes took a moment to focus on me. “Look at the state of you!” she said.

  Edie glanced up. She barely registered me, she barely cared.

  “I won’t get anything dirty,” I said. “I’ll go now and have a bath.”

  “Yes, you do that,” Helen said.

  It felt like they were trying to get rid of me so they could carry on talking. I couldn’t be with them either. I was supposed to be home and I had nowhere to go.

  “What are you going to wear?” Helen said.

  “I don’t have anything else,” I said. “These are Frank’s.”

  I’d stolen all this and I still didn’t have my own clothes. I still had to wear somebody else’s.

  Frank smiled. “I thought I recognised them,” he said. “I’ve got plenty more you can borrow.”

  Edie groaned. She smiled at something in front of her, and then briefly at me, a peace offering maybe, but I didn’t smile back.

  “Let’s go and find you something,” Frank said. “Come up with me.”

  We took the stairs together. It occurred to me I hadn’t been alone with Frank, not until now. I wondered if it was accidental, or if we had both avoided it. He put his arm around me, pulled me in. It didn’t feel comforting any more. It didn’t make me feel welcome. I wished I didn’t know what Floyd had told me if it was going to turn every one of Frank’s kindnesses into a threat.

  “After you,” he said at the top. He walked behind me to his room. I felt him watching me. I felt watched.

  “When did you do that to your ears?” he said.

  “Pierce them?” I said. “Oh, a while ago.”

/>   “They look—”

  “Like pincushions. I know.”

  Frank went straight to his chest of drawers. I looked at the back of his head, smart and neatly cut, the collar of his shirt, his expensive cashmere jumper. I could see his face in the mirror in front of him, smooth and sleek and handsome.

  I thought about Floyd, odd and scruffy and cast out. I thought about what he’d said.

  “How’s Mr Artemis?” I said.

  Frank stopped moving. His hands stopped, he held his breath. It lasted for less than a second, but I was watching so I noticed. His face in the mirror was dead like stone, but his eyes screamed and burned inside that dead face, his eyes shone with horror and cruelty and fear.

  He didn’t answer my question. I watched his eyes flick shut like a camera shutter and the torture in them was suddenly gone. They were nothing but blank. He turned slowly to me, his face composed. The drawer was still open.

  He looked at me while time stretched out between us. He looked at me for a few seconds, but it could have been hours. I was aware of this pulse in the air, this febrile, beating tension, and even though he acted like it wasn’t there, I knew he could feel it too.

  “Help yourself to whatever you want,” he said. “I’ll leave you to it.”

  I wondered if he could see the damp, cold terror that crawled through me right then. I wondered if I looked as shocked and clammy as I felt.

  Frank left the room with slow, measured steps. He couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

  I watched him go, and it was only after he left that I could move again. I went over to the drawer, grabbed some clothes without even seeing them.

  What had just happened?

  I wanted to go to Floyd. I wanted to tell him how Frank had reacted to what I’d said. I wanted to ask him what it meant.

  But I couldn’t go now because they’d want to know where I was going. And I didn’t know where Floyd lived. I couldn’t even call him because I didn’t have a phone. I felt endangered. I felt at risk. Frank’s reaction had totally thrown me.

  I was alone and I was trapped.

  I went across to the bathroom, locked myself in and ran a bath. Steam blossomed in the room and quickly turned to water on the cold walls.

  What was going on?

  Who was Mr Artemis, and why had the mention of his name changed Frank for that instant into something unrecognisable, something petrified and savage and in pain?