The Shadow Year

by Hannah Richell

A little later the rain stops. Freya ventures downstairs – still in her nightdress – and curls into a ball on the sofa by the window, as if trying to make herself as small as possible. Soon after that Simon and Mac return with a vigorous stamping of boots and flapping of raincoats outside the door. They all turn in anticipation, waiting. Simon bursts in first, his cheeks ruddy from the cold and a devilish grin across his face. Kat has been hoping for groceries – perhaps fresh vegetables, some meat, or even an illicit bar of chocolate – but there aren’t any shopping bags. What she sees instead, displayed proudly in Simon’s outstretched hands, makes her suddenly and inexplicably afraid.

  ‘The hunters return,’ he crows.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Kat sees Freya recoil, turning her face to the window.

  ‘Where on earth did you get that?’ croaks Ben.

  ‘Oh, hello, mate. You’re up. How are you feeling? Better?’ Simon gives Carla a knowing wink but she just throws him a filthy look in return.

  ‘Awful. What is that?’

  ‘Mac and I went to see a man. About a gun.’ He waves the rifle around the room like a trophy. ‘It’s a .22. Isn’t she a beauty?’

  ‘Careful,’ says Carla, flinching. ‘Is it loaded?’

  ‘It’s OK,’ says Mac, stepping out from Simon’s shadow, ‘the safety’s on.’

  Ben is fumbling with a roll-up and reaching for a lighter when Carla turns on him. ‘Don’t you dare,’ she says, pulling the dangling cigarette from his lips. ‘Honestly, you’ve got a chest infection. Smoking is the worst thing you could do right now.’ She sighs and shakes her head. ‘You boys . . . you’re no better than little kids.’ She spins back to Simon. ‘So where did you get the money from?’

  ‘The savings.’ Simon’s voice carries an airy nonchalance but Kat notices how he can’t quite make eye contact with Carla.

  ‘Nice,’ says Carla. ‘So we’ve got enough money for guns and cigarettes, but not for medicine? I didn’t realise that’s the kind of place this was.’ Simon just shrugs but Carla won’t let it lie. ‘It looks expensive. Shouldn’t we have voted on it or something?’

  Simon shrugs again. ‘I was right about the doctor, wasn’t I? He’s up and about.’ He turns to Ben. ‘You’re feeling better, aren’t you, mate?’ Ben gives an obliging nod, followed by a hacking great cough. ‘Besides, this little beauty,’ he shakes the gun again, ‘will pay for itself.’

  ‘And just how do you figure that?’

  ‘We’ve been struggling to bring in enough food. Now we can hunt our own meat. Deer. Pheasant. Ducks. They’re all out there; we just haven’t been able to catch them – until now. We’ll have food . . . a better diet. It will stop the rest of us getting sick. Prevention is better than cure.’

  Kat thinks of her conversation with Mac about the swan and wonders if this was his idea but somehow she can tell from his face that it wasn’t.

  Simon beams around at them all. ‘God, I thought you’d all be pleased.’

  No one says anything. ‘Suit yourselves. Mope around in here if you want but I’m going outside to get some shooting practice in. Feel free to join me.’ When the door slams shut, it sounds like a bullet being fired out across the lake.

  In the end, the lure of something new and different is too much for them to resist. All of them, bar Freya, traipse out into the faltering light and watch as Simon, Mac and Ben take it in turns to aim at random targets. An old wooden crate. A moss-covered stump at the end of the jetty. A discarded beer bottle now filled with rainwater. They miss every time and no one seems to worry about the whip-crack noise of the shots echoing out around the valley. Carla rolls her eyes at Kat. ‘Boys and their toys.’ Kat nods and, sensing her chance, slips back inside the house.

  Freya is still sitting by the window. She turns to Kat as she enters the room and it’s there in her face, an I-told-you-so look that makes Kat’s blood boil. ‘We have to feed ourselves,’ she says, but she quickens her pace into the kitchen anyway and notices the slight tremble of her hands as she reaches for the tin. There is a nagging worry at the back of her mind and it won’t go until she has checked the kitty.

  She can see instantly that there isn’t enough but she still counts it out anyway, her hands trembling as she handles the notes. Twenty. Thirty. Forty. Fifty Just over fifty pounds left after Simon’s latest shopping spree. It’s hardly enough to get them through the last few weeks of winter, let alone to offer Freya an escape.

  Another shot rings out, this time followed almost immediately by the sound of splintering glass. Everyone cheers.

  Kat shakes her head. Fifty pounds. Surely no way near enough to get Freya safely away from the cottage and set up somewhere else? She stands and stares at the money, willing it to magically multiply before her eyes, to offer her a solution. She is so tired. She is so fed up with worrying about her sister, with trying to solve her problems. With a sigh, she neatly folds the remaining notes back into a wad and returns them to the tin, placing it carefully back into the dusty imprint marking its place on the shelf.

  When she turns around she is startled to see Simon standing at the back door, the rifle resting in the crook of his arm. Dusk hangs over the hills behind him, and the muted light throws his shadow into the room, pointing like a finger of accusation towards her. ‘What are you doing?’ he asks, his eyes glittering just a little too brightly in the dim light.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Checking up?’

  ‘No.’ She blushes. ‘I – I was just interested to know how much you’d spent on the gun. Is that a problem?’

  Simon shakes his head. ‘The money belongs to all of us, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Yes, it does.’

  They face off against each other for a moment and Kat sees the stubborn, little-boy tilt of his chin, the way his hair – now long and shaggy – curls beyond the nape of his neck.

  ‘Carla’s still got the hump,’ he says at last, breaking the silence.

  ‘She’s just worried about Ben.’

  ‘And Freya? She’s in a foul mood too.’

  Kat shrugs her shoulders but she can’t meet his gaze.

  They stand there in silence for a moment longer until, finally, he opens his arms to her. ‘Come here,’ he says and she can’t help it. She moves across the room, into his embrace, the cold metal of the gun pressing against her shoulder blade. He smooths her hair with his free hand then kisses the top of her head. ‘My Kat,’ he says. ‘My reliable Kat. Everyone else is so damn emotional, so unpredictable. You know you’re the only one I can count on, don’t you?’

  For just a moment she leans into his embrace, breathes his warm scent, allows him to support her. Then gently, he spins her around, so that her back is against his chest, his arms still around her as he lifts the rifle and wraps one of her hands around the butt, the other around the trigger. ‘Here,’ he shows her, ‘like this,’ and he places his hands over hers. Together they lift the gun and settle its sights on an old saucepan hanging on a hook on the stone chimney breast. Kat closes her eyes and enjoys the sensation of his body pressed against hers, the strength of his shoulders, the taut muscles of his arms. She feels it more clearly than she ever has before: home. He is her home now and she won’t lose this, she thinks, not for anything.

  ‘Pow!’ he says, jolting her out of her reverie, mimicking the ricochet of a bullet, rocking her back into the curve of his body. ‘See,’ he says, ‘you and me together. There’s no way we can lose.’

  15

  LILA

  February

  Lila is growing experienced in the art of distraction: which cotton to use for tacking hems onto a pair of curtains; the careful dip of a brush into a paint pot; the rhythmic rasp of sandpaper scraping across a blistered window frame; the tap-tap-tap of a nail sinking into wood. They are all small jobs and yet each one serves its purpose: while her hands are busy, her mind doesn’t seem to churn so much and the anxiety remains at bay. Besides, every day that she stays put, she can see the cottage
improve in some small way and she takes a glimmer of satisfaction from that too. Even though Tom is angry with her for leaving again, there is no doubt in Lila’s mind that she had been right to return.

  The cottage still echoes emptily all around her, but she must be getting used to it because she doesn’t have that eerie sensation of being watched quite so often and she’s learning other strategies to cope with the loneliness too. She walks every day now, rain or shine. At a certain point each day she downs tools, pulls on her coat and boots and stomps out across the moors or down through the forest ringing the lake, breathing in lungfuls of frosty air, enjoying the sensation of the blood moving around her body.

  The days are short and bitterly cold but the faintest promise of spring hangs like a whisper over the countryside. Lila notices catkins growing high up in the thin canopy of the alder trees and thick clumps of snowdrops springing up almost overnight across the woodland floor. Out on the lake she sees a flock of wild geese take flight and once she even stumbles upon an old, grey heron, standing as still as a garden ornament among the reeds. As she walks through the landscape, the pale sun at her back, she notices the subtle changes occurring all around her. Winter is still very much in residence but she can’t help hoping she has weathered its worst.

  She is dragging a huge shard of wood out of the trees, puffing and panting with exertion but determined to claim it as her own, when she hears the excited barks of a dog. Surprised, she spins to see William clumping his way down the ridge with Rosie bounding at his heels. ‘You’re back,’ he says, raising a gloved hand at her in greeting.

  ‘Yes,’ she says, dropping the piece of wood, pushing her hair out of her eyes. ‘Hello. Happy New Year.’ She bends to pat Rosie, tweaking the dog’s ears. ‘I was going to come by . . .’

  He nods. ‘That’s OK. We thought we’d come and check on the place for you, just in case.’

  ‘Thank you . . . and thank you for the track . . . and the firewood. I assume that was you, putting the sleepers in and topping up my woodpile?’

  William nods sheepishly. ‘I know you said not to, but I couldn’t see how you would get your car back up here, if you returned.’

  She’d had the exact same thought halfway up the motorway just a few weeks ago. Taking off on the spur of the moment, she’d only remembered the muddy track and how her car would struggle when it had been too late to turn back; but she needn’t have worried. Jolting and bouncing her way up the steep trail in her car, it had been clear that William had been busy in her absence. Old railway sleepers were buried at intervals up the route and when she’d arrived at the back door of the cottage she’d seen her dwindling supply of firewood had been generously replenished. As she’d let herself in through the door she’d offered up a silent prayer of thanks for his kindness. ‘I wish I could say you shouldn’t have, but it really has made a big difference. I hope it wasn’t too much work?’

  William shrugs. ‘No trouble.’

  They stare at each other. Lila can see he hasn’t shaved in a few days. The stubble on his chin gleams the same silver colour as his eyes. ‘How’s this place coming along?’ he asks.

  ‘I’ve been busy,’ she says. ‘Want to take a look around?’

  ‘Sure.’ William whistles for Rosie and the dog comes racing.

  ‘Come on then,’ she says, ‘you can help me with my treasure.’ She points to the large piece of wood lying at her feet.

  ‘What’s this for?’

  ‘A coffee table.’

  William shakes his head and smiles, lifts the wood easily at one end and drags it back to the cottage with Lila and Rosie following close behind.

  They step out of their muddy boots and slide into the kitchen. ‘Goodness,’ says William, looking around, ‘you weren’t kidding. It’s transformed.’

  She smiles. ‘So you like it?’ It has taken her nearly two weeks of solid work, but she has washed down the walls and painted them a soft white, sanded all the wooden cupboards and painted them a duck-egg blue. The old cast iron range has been polished until it shines and she’s replaced the rusting pots and pans with a new set of gleaming copper ones that hang on the hooks upon the chimney breast. She’s scrubbed the kitchen table, mended the wobbly benches and added cheery curtains to the windows. The thing she is most pleased with, however, is the seat she has built into the bay of the window, where her two ikat cushions, purchased in London, now sit amongst a scattering of other colourful vintage cushions requisitioned from junk shops. On the table is a tin jug bursting with snowdrops, while several of the less chipped blue patterned plates from the cupboard, the ones that were salvageable, now hang along the wall facing the range. It’s a simple but highly effective transformation.

  ‘It looks great – very cheerful,’ he adds.

  ‘It is, isn’t it?’ Seeing it through his eyes, she can appreciate at last how much she’s achieved. She bends to stoke the smouldering range and adds another log to the flames. ‘Would you and Rosie like to stay for dinner? I was going to make pancakes. It is Shrove Tuesday, after all.’

  ‘Is it?’ William scratches his head. ‘I had no idea.’

  ‘Stay,’ she urges. ‘I’d like the company.’

  He hesitates.

  ‘Please.’

  He gives her a nod. ‘OK.’

  She mixes the batter and heats butter in the frying pan, all the while stealing sideways glances at William where he sits in the new window seat looking out across the tangled garden. He isn’t exactly handsome, at least not in an obvious way, but there is something undeniably attractive about him. His face is solid and kind-looking, weathered by a life lived on the land, and his frame strong and muscular from physical labour. When she first met him he’d seemed shifty and awkward but today he exudes a different air – a sort of quiet, calm confidence, like a man who knows that he is exactly where he is supposed to be. Rosie lies at his feet, blissed-out, craning her neck as he scratches beneath her chin, and as Lila cooks they talk about her work at the cottage and William’s hopes for the upcoming lambing season. ‘Here we go,’ she says, laying a plate stacked with pancakes onto the table between them. ‘I made extra for Rosie.’

  ‘She shouldn’t,’ he says, ‘she’s getting fat,’ but as they tuck into the pancakes, drizzled with lemon juice and sugar, William feeds Rosie pieces from his fingers under the table. ‘I thought you’d stay down south a little longer,’ he says after a while, ‘you know, wait for it to warm up a bit before you braved this place again.’

  ‘No.’ She hesitates. ‘I wanted to come back.’

  ‘Getting under your skin, is it?’

  She tilts her head at him.

  ‘This place, the lake, the land. It’s got to you, hasn’t it?’

  She nods. ‘It’s peaceful . . . and it feels like a refuge.’ He throws her a curious glance and she sighs. ‘Things haven’t been easy between Tom and me recently.’

  William looks down at his plate and doesn’t ask for further explanation, but for some reason Lila finds herself offering it. ‘We . . . we lost a baby . . . last summer.’

  He swallows. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Thanks.’ She hesitates then surprises herself by continuing. ‘It was my fault. I was supposed to be going shopping for baby things with Mum. I was rushing to get ready and I took a really bad fall down the stairs. I don’t remember how it happened . . . but I fell all the way. I was twenty-seven weeks pregnant.’

  William winces.

  ‘Mum arrived at the house to pick me up and when I didn’t answer the doorbell she peered through the letter box . . . saw me lying there at the bottom of the stairs, unconscious . . . blood everywhere, apparently.’

  ‘God,’ murmurs William, ‘that must have been awful . . . for all of you.’

  Lila nods. ‘Mum called the ambulance and I was rushed to hospital.’

  William nods carefully but doesn’t interrupt, as if sensing Lila’s need to keep talking.

  ‘When I came round they told me the trauma of the fall h
ad meant the placenta had separated. There was no time to wait. There was no other choice. I had to give birth to her there and then.’ She swallows. ‘It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, knowing she was coming – too early – knowing it was my fault.’ Lila falls silent, staring at the empty plate before her. ‘She was born on the twenty-third of June and she lived for five days. She fought hard, our little girl. She clung on.’ A tear rolls down Lila’s cheek and drips onto the scrubbed surface of the table. She smooths it away with the tip of her finger. ‘I held her hand through the hole in the incubator. I willed her to be strong, to make it, but it wasn’t enough. I couldn’t save her.’

  ‘What was her name?’ William asks, not quite meeting her eye.

  ‘We called her Milly. It means “brave” – because that’s what she was.’

  He smiles. ‘Milly. That’s lovely.’

  Lila’s not sure if it’s a trick of the light but it seems as though William is fighting tears too. She swallows and takes a breath, but still the words come. ‘It’s been so hard. Ever since, I’ve been so sad . . . and angry too. All I wanted to do was wake up from the nightmare, to return to the life we had been living just a few days before, when everything stretched before us, a future of possibility. I just wanted to rewind, to go back to the hospital and scoop my baby up and take her home and be a mother to her. I wanted to keep her safe, but I couldn’t do it.’

  William nods.

  ‘Now every day I wake up and the first thing I think is that she isn’t with us.’ She sighs. ‘I wish I could go could back to that one day. I wish I could live it again. I wouldn’t rush; I wouldn’t worry over the stupid things . . . which top to wear, which shoes look right. I’d take things slow, appreciate the pregnancy, the life growing inside me.’ She wipes at her eyes. ‘I ask myself over and over, how could I fall? I should have been more careful, should have fought harder. I should have found a way to save her, to keep her with me.’

  She sees the shake of William’s head from the corner of her eye. He clears his throat. ‘Some things – precious things – escape you, no matter how much you might want to keep them close.’