No Going Back

by ALEX GUTTERIDGE

  Jealousy has such tenacity. It hangs on by its fingertips waiting for its moment. I’d never noticed it in Liberty’s face before, never felt it in her hug, heard it curling out of her lips in snakelike words. She could be sharp, of course. She got that from Gran. But I’d never detected the years of suppressed resentment until that day when I tried to put things right.

  It had been going quite well. Liberty even seemed pleased to see me. She was lying in the hammock strung between two apple trees when I got to her house. She lifted her head, swung her feet out into a sitting position and gave me a brief hug. Things were looking up until she mentioned some friend of hers whose dad was talking about test-driving a Ferrari. She began to moan about Uncle Pete and his fifteen-year-old estate car and then she started on her lifestyle and all of the things she couldn’t have. So that’s when I made the mistake.

  “Life’s not about how much money you’ve got, Liberty.”

  “Easy for you to say.”

  The words shot out faster than if she’d been using Luke’s catapult. I should have backed away then but I didn’t. I just allowed myself to be all hot-headed and defensive.

  “I don’t know what you mean. Mum’s worked hard for everything we have. She’s never had any help from anyone. You’re the one in the family who gets Gran to buy you presents or give you extra pocket money.”

  Liberty’s eyes glittered dangerously behind an extravagant application of purple mascara. “Well my dad says that if Gran goes gaga, you and your mum could get your hands on everything now you’re living there.”

  I gasped. “Don’t be stupid. We don’t want Gran’s money. That’s not why we’re here. Anyway you’re talking as if she’s completely senile and she’s not.”

  The “Huh,” that emerged from her mouth was like projectile vomit splattering me with rancid disbelief. I felt so stupid, standing there looking into her face full of fury. For years I’d wanted to be just like her, to have her cool blond looks and crisp self-esteem. I’d thought that I knew her as well as I knew myself. “You think they had the perfect marriage, don’t you?”

  “What are you talking about now?”

  “Your parents. You think they were so happy.”

  I couldn’t answer. I was still trying to get my head around the previous topic. I didn’t know what I had done to deserve this. Dad had been following my strict instructions and keeping his distance but suddenly he was sprinting across the lawn to be by my side, like my knight in shining armour. Except he wasn’t going to fight my corner. He just wanted to drag me away.

  “My goodness, is that the time,” he whispered in my ear. “We really ought to be going.”

  I ignored him.

  “That’s what you’ve been told,” Liberty carried on. “It’s a story which has been spun like some sugar-coated fairy tale. But it’s not true. It’s a web of lies that your mum has woven around her past.”

  Tears welled up. Don’t cry, I said to myself as a horrible dry scraping feeling in my throat made me want to gag.

  “I don’t know what you mean.” I half choked on the words. “Mum and I don’t have any secrets.”

  She laughed out loud. “Everyone has secrets, Laura, especially adults. How can you be so naive?”

  “What are they then?”

  Dad was beside himself now.

  “Are you sure you want to know – to have the fairy tale shattered?” she continued.

  “Yes,” I shouted, “just tell me.”

  “No!” Dad’s word whistled into my head so hard I’m surprised it didn’t perforate my ear drum. “You don’t want to listen to this, Laura. She doesn’t know anything. Whatever she says will be lies and will just upset you.”

  It was his fault that it happened. He was in a panic, spinning around me, floating up in front of my face. I could feel his coldness, his fear rippling over me. I flailed my arms, trying to brush him away.

  If Liberty had still been lying down in the hammock it would have been all right. I wouldn’t have hit her square across the face. I saw her tilting backwards, tried to grab one of her outstretched arms, but I couldn’t. Maybe Dad could have prevented her tipping over. Maybe he could have blown a huge gust of wind at her back, but he didn’t. He let her fall. I heard her head thud against the ground, saw it jolt forwards and then back again. She just lay there. Eyes closed. Face completely white.

  And me? For a second I was paralysed. I literally could not move, could not breathe. I honestly thought she was dead. And I had killed her.

  TRUTH

  I ran over and knelt down on the hard ground scraped of grass from where people had constantly climbed in and out of the hammock.

  “Oh my God, Liberty. I didn’t mean to do that.”

  She lifted her hand to the top of her head.

  She was alive. I started to cry.

  “I’m so sorry,” I sobbed. “Are you all right?”

  She opened her eyes. “Do I look all right?” she mumbled.

  “No. Don’t move. I’ll go and get your mum.”

  But when I turned around Aunt Jane was already running across the grass.

  “What on earth happened?” she shrieked.

  I waited for Liberty to say that I pushed her off the hammock. She looked at me but I couldn’t work out what her eyes were saying. Maybe she was concussed, I thought. Maybe they weren’t saying anything.

  “Liberty, speak to me!” Aunt Jane obviously thought the same thing.

  “I fell,” she said at last.

  I should have owned up, said it was all my fault. But I didn’t. Things were difficult between Mum and Aunt Jane as it was. I couldn’t bear to make it any worse.

  “Does it hurt?” Aunt Jane asked.

  “Yeah!” Liberty replied a bit sarcastically.

  “Perhaps we should call an ambulance,” I said.

  Liberty sat up slowly with Aunt Jane supporting her back.

  “No, it’s not that bad,” she said. “It sounded worse than it was.”

  “I’m so, so sorry,” I mouthed as Aunt Jane supported her down the path and back inside the house.

  I wanted to stay but Aunt Jane said Liberty needed to sit quietly for a while. “I’ll ring later,” I said, my hand on her arm.

  “Fine,” she said so quietly I almost couldn’t hear it. Then, as I moved away, “Laura…”

  “Yes?”

  “What I said back there, about your mum and dad, just forget it. Please?”

  I nodded. I’d have agreed to anything at that moment in return for an assurance that she was going to be okay.

  “Don’t worry about it, Lib. We all say things we don’t mean.”

  “That was your fault,” I said to Dad, as we walked back to the farm. “If you hadn’t been flapping around, getting in my way, I wouldn’t have lashed out.”

  He didn’t say anything. In fact ever since Liberty fell flat on her back he’d been extremely quiet.

  “Anyway,” I said, shooting him a searching glance, “what was all that about you and Mum not being happy?”

  Silence. Why did I get the feeling there was something he wanted to tell me?

  “Dad?”

  “I don’t know why she said that.”

  “So it’s not true?”

  He stopped walking. So did I.

  “Laura, I loved your mother. We had our moments like all couples but I really loved her.”

  He paused and looked down at the pavement. “I don’t know where Liberty’s got her information from. Maybe your gran’s been talking to her. I got the feeling that she was always hoping we wouldn’t be happy so she could say, ‘I told you so.’”

  It was a plausible answer. All the same I got the feeling that it wasn’t the whole truth. People can make up their own truth, can’t they?

  When I was six years old someone in my class had a fancy dress party. I was desperate to go to that party. I had my costume all ready. I was going to be Princess Jasmine from Aladdin and it was going to be such fun. Then I was ill. The ni
ght before I threw up and although the following morning I felt better, Mum wouldn’t let me go to the party. I lay on the sofa and cried and cried, my princess dress and tiara thrown in a petulant heap onto my bedroom floor. Back at school everyone talked about that party for days and eventually I almost began to imagine that I’d been there. Years later I actually had to ask Mum whether I’d gone or not, whether it was not being allowed to go that I’d made up.

  If you are deliberately hiding something, though, you have to be very clever not to slip up eventually. I suppose, thinking about it, there had always been this feeling of secrecy in the family, the slightest of pauses, the tiniest of offbeat expressions when the past, our past, was mentioned. I hadn’t wanted to pick up on it because I didn’t want to disbelieve what Mum had told me and it would have meant that Gran might be bitter and vindictive towards Dad for a reason. I don’t know why Liberty falling out of that hammock made me think differently but it was as if her bang on the head had affected me too. Suddenly I felt suspicious, as if everyone knew something that I didn’t.

  That night I lay in bed and looked at Dad asleep on my chair. I wanted to ask him to tell me the truth, the real truth, but the longer I lay there the more certain I was that he wouldn’t. I began to wonder if anyone would. The following afternoon Mum asked me if I wanted to take a walk across the fields with her while Gran was resting. I did want to go and for us to spend some time together but there was something else preying on my mind. Something else that I wanted to do and for that I needed Mum and Dad out of the house.

  So I was the one who insisted that someone should stay around in case Gran woke up and I managed to persuade Dad to go with Mum, making him promise that he wouldn’t do anything weird that might freak her out. I watched from my bedroom window as they climbed over the fence. Even though Mum had no idea he was there, it was good to see them together.

  As soon as I was sure that Mum wasn’t going to turn around and come back to fetch something like a hat or her sunglasses or a bottle of water, I headed for her room. I didn’t have long. I knew that it would only be a short walk. For a few moments I stood in the doorway, looking around. I felt really bad. I’m not a sneaky person and I respect other’s people’s privacy because I value my own but somewhere in Mum’s bedroom I thought I might find a clue to what it was that everyone was hiding from me. Shame almost stopped me crossing the threshold but in the end I forced myself and started opening all the drawers and cupboards. My ribs felt all constricted. Breath came in snatches. What if Mum came back and found me?

  There was a shelf at the top of the wardrobe and my eyes settled on a dark wooden box that I didn’t remember seeing before. I lifted it down and put it on the patchwork quilt covering the double bed. The top of the box was inlaid with an oval piece of mother of pearl and as I lifted the lid my heart beat a little faster. Inside were cards of condolence and beautiful handwritten letters, all going back to Dad’s death. A car pulled into the yard and I leaped up to look out of the window, closing my eyes in relief as a man in overalls shouted to Uncle Pete. They wandered off towards the cowsheds and I scurried back to my task. Scanning the first few letters I felt my throat tighten, tears burn behind my eyes, so I sifted quickly through the rest, without reading them, and almost at the bottom I found something which made my hand pause in midair. Maybe this was what I was looking for – a note from cousin Penny. Slowly I picked it up and began to read:

  Dear Liz,

  I’m so sorry for everything that’s happened. I feel partly responsible and if there’s any way that I can make it up to you please do not hesitate to let me know. You probably don’t feel like talking to me right now but if in the future you or Laura need help, you know where I am.

  Take care of yourself, Liz.

  With love,

  Penny

  I didn’t understand what she was saying. It didn’t make sense. I read the letter several times, trying to work out what was behind the words. But of course I couldn’t. The good news was that the letter had been written on headed paper and Penny’s address was printed in navy block capitals at the top right hand of the page. The date was a couple of weeks after Dad died and, according to Mum, Penny had moved house since then. All the same I scribbled the name of the road and the postcode down on the little pad of paper Mum kept next to her bed, tore off the piece of paper, folded it up into a tight little parcel and pushed it into my shorts pocket. I had no idea what I was going to do with this information but it seemed better than leaving the room with nothing to go on. Maybe one day, if I could track her down, Penny would set everything straight.

  * * *

  It was a few days later when Liberty turned up in my room. She breezed in at ten o’clock on the dot and flung back my curtains. I was still asleep and not best pleased. In fact, I thought it was Dad messing about.

  “Dad!” I groaned. “Give me a break, will you.”

  “Woo, spooky!” someone said. “You must be dreaming if you think I’m your dad.”

  I opened my eyes and blinked, glancing around the room for Dad. He wasn’t there. Slowly I let out my breath and smiled. She smiled back, her eyes crinkling at the corners, her teeth stupendously straight and white. It was the first time I’d seen her since she fell out of the hammock, although I’d been texting every day to check she was all right and begging for forgiveness. I was so grateful that she hadn’t snitched on me and I hadn’t had to contend with Aunt Jane or Uncle Pete ranting and raging. Even though we hadn’t met up, Lib kept texting back and assuring me that she was absolutely fine and as I propped myself up on one elbow, I could see she hadn’t been lying. She was her usual glowing self.

  “Lib, what are you doing here?”

  She waved two little wicker baskets in front of my face, so close they almost touched my cheek.

  “I thought you might like to go and collect the eggs together,” she said, “like we used to.”

  “Yes,” I said. “I’d like that.”

  “Great,” she replied, chucking me a pair of shorts and a top. “You get dressed while I go and tell Gran what colour wool I want for the scarf she’s promised to knit me.”

  And she went out leaving a sprinkling of happiness behind.

  The orchard is right next to the vegetable patch and it was a Tuesday. Slowly, reluctantly, it began to dawn on me that maybe Liberty had an ulterior motive, that maybe her appearance was about more than collecting eggs. You really are getting suspicious of everyone, I said to myself.

  But Liberty did flounce backwards and forwards a lot, and to me she seemed to laugh a bit too loudly every time she found an egg. Sam was working on the far side of the vegetable garden and the first time Liberty squealed as she stumbled into one of the hens’ dustbowls he did look up, but apart from a brief wave he kept his head down. In the end she couldn’t resist winging the odd flirtatious comment over to him. I cringed but although he was pretty quiet he didn’t seem put off. Sometimes when boys really like you they get all tongue-tied and I reckoned that’s why he was a bit shy with Liberty, either that or he was playing it cool.

  Eventually I dragged her inside and we started to make fairy cakes with some of the eggs we’d collected, but she wasn’t concentrating properly and had one eye looking out of the window all of the time. When Sam came inside to look through some seed catalogues with Gran I wondered if it was because he wanted to be close to Liberty. While he and Gran discussed the various types of vegetables to plant for the following year, Liberty giggled and shrieked as she got flour everywhere and cake mixture on the end of her nose. I just did my best to smile but I began to wish I hadn’t suggested the baking at all.

  “So,” Sam said to Gran, “that’s agreed then. We’ll have the Meteor broad beans again because they’ve been good this year and I’ll sow some more lettuce to see you through the autumn.”

  “If I’m spared,” Gran said, in overly dramatic tones.

  “Of course you will be, Mrs G,” Sam said. “You’re needed here for a long while yet.
”

  Gran liked that reply. I could tell. He just seemed to know all of the right things to say to her and having him around seemed to put Gran in a better mood.

  Sam wasn’t inside for that long and Liberty had to go home at twelve o’clock. Part of me wanted her to stay longer while I plucked up the courage to ask her what she’d meant when she’d talked about secrets and said that Mum and Dad weren’t happy. But she had to go to the dentist and I was scared to bring things out into the open, scared that she’d get all angry again and I’d find out things I’d be better off not knowing. After she’d gone I slumped at the table, annoyed with myself for not tackling her. Gran let out an exaggerated sigh the minute Liberty shut the door behind her.

  “Phew!” she said. “That young lady can be a bit over the top sometimes, can’t she?”

  I shrugged.

  Gran looked out of the window.

  “It looks very hot out there, Laura. Do you think you could take Sam a glass of water? I don’t want him dehydrating.”

  “He’s probably got a bottle with him,” I replied.

  “He might have drunk all of that,” Gran persisted. “It’ll only take you a couple of minutes.”

  “Yes, okay then,” I sighed, “but I’m sure if he was thirsty he’d come and get his own water.”

  I waited for Gran to give me that disapproving look or bark out a rebuke for answering back. Instead she just picked up her knitting and clickety-clacked the needles together while I went and ran the tap.

  He was bending over, picking some weeds out from between the lettuces. His checked shirt had come untucked and I could see the top of his turquoise boxer shorts. He turned around and I quickly looked up, my arm jerking as I held out the glass, water slopping over onto my hand.

  “Gran thought you might want this.”

  He took it from me and downed the water in one go. A bit trickled down his chin and he wiped it with his sleeve. He smiled at me.

  “Thanks. I needed that.”

  I swivelled on the spot, ready to make my escape. I felt annoyed with him and I didn’t know why.