Whistle in the Dark

by Emma Healey

  Then she’d close the lid or turn the screen so the impartial home page of the BBC was visible and note the way Hugh would relax, returning to his gardening, and how Lana would sink back into her sunbathing.

  This went on for a long time. It stopped being amusing and became tiresome. Jen closed her eyes for a while, trying to think, trying not to think, and when she opened them again she saw her husband and daughter, crouching among the summer greenery, half hidden by the monster-growth of a global-warmed garden. They were whispering. They were working together, conspiring. Perhaps they had been from the beginning. There was a special closeness between them that she hadn’t noticed before, though the signs had been there. Lana had known that Hugh had a favourite mug.

  Jen dipped the yarrow stem into her glass of water and kept it on the table beside her for the rest of the morning, crushing the leaves between her fingers every time she was about to type theatrically into the computer, every time she wanted to make Hugh and Lana focus on her again. The medicinal scent of the leaves lingered on the keyboard for days afterwards.

  Holy cow

  If there was some sort of relay monitoring going on, then Jen’s mother was in on it. Hugh had barely left for his afternoon at work when Lily phoned.

  ‘Anything wrong, Mum?’ Jen asked, squinting in the relative dark of the sitting room after her hours in the bright garden.

  ‘No. Does something have to be wrong? I just wanted to catch up. Shoot the breeze, as Americans would say.’

  ‘I’m not sure they really say that.’

  ‘Don’t they? That’s disappointing. Anyway, what have you been up to today?’

  ‘That’s a funny question.’ Jen sat down on the sofa. The house smelled of dust and faintly of the salmon they’d cooked two nights ago.

  ‘It’s not especially funny. How was your crystals-and-whatnots fair?’

  ‘All right. Actually, Mum, I had a stone with me that I found in Lana’s room and this man identified it. He said it was a sort of fossil that’s found in caves. So it’s made me think, or it’s made me wonder, where Lana got it.’

  ‘Oh, well, caves are interesting,’ Lily said, not sounding particularly interested. ‘Lots of religious connotations. And Lana does seem to be curious about religion all of a sudden, doesn’t she?’

  ‘Does she?’

  ‘Haven’t you noticed? She asked me about my beliefs when I spoke to her last week. Rather a personal question, I thought. And, it’s funny, really, because Peggy’s been making me go to church with her. I think she’s trying to boost the earnings from the congregation, not that I ever put in huge sums. But it’s all come at the same time so I feel I’m being rather battered by the Bible from every side. Perhaps that’s what’s made me think of it.’

  ‘Think of what, Mum?’

  ‘The parallels, darling. Between Lana and Jesus. A spell in the wilderness – well, you could call that depression – and then being presumed gone for a few days before reappearing, and now the idea that she was in a cave at some point, though presumably not one with a boulder rolled over the entrance.’

  ‘What are you trying to say? That Lana’s the Second Coming?’

  ‘No, of course not.’

  ‘And, I mean, she’s not exactly the soul of kindness.’

  ‘Well, Jesus wasn’t that kind to his own mother, was he? What’s that bit? Woman, what have I to do with thee? Though I suppose she was harassing him about wine for a party, so you can understand his frustration.’

  ‘I haven’t been harassing Lana about wine.’

  ‘I wasn’t suggesting you had been.’

  ‘Good. Sometimes, Mum, I think you’re deliberately trying to wind me up.’

  Skylight

  Hugh came home that evening with a box of chocolates. ‘Thought you deserved a treat,’ he said, before going upstairs to ask Lana what she wanted for dinner. He had stayed in her room for a long while and Lana hadn’t come downstairs since.

  ‘What do you think she’s doing up there?’ Jen said, letting another chocolate wrapper drop to the floor.

  Hugh glanced at the lean-to’s skylight, through which the yellow-lit window of Lana’s room could be seen. ‘Reading?’ he suggested.

  ‘Reading what?’

  ‘A book?’ He went back to the book he had been reading with a slight smile.

  ‘Sorry for disturbing you,’ Jen said.

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘I just happen to be worried about our daughter.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘But you aren’t worried?’

  He sighed and tucked a bookmark between two pages. ‘Would I like to know what happened? Would I like a better idea of what’s going on in her head, day to day? Yes. Do I think we will find out eventually? Quite possibly. Do I think we will find out sooner by pestering her? Certainly not.’

  ‘What if when we do find out we find out too late?’

  They stared at each other for a couple of seconds, Jen waiting, the remains of the chocolates rough on her teeth, Hugh seemingly unpicking her last sentence. He looked up at the window again and this time spent a while studying it. This was encouraging. She’d finally got him interested, she could feel it; his gaze was focused, he was thinking about something.

  ‘What is it, Hugh?’

  ‘Do you think the wood on the right side of the window is slightly warped?’ he asked, not moving his eyes from the skylight. ‘It looks warped from this angle. But do you think it’s just the light? We did have all that heavy rain at the beginning of the year. That could have damaged it.’

  Jen waited for him to bring his gaze back to her before she got up. She heard him calling after her as she mounted the stairs, where she found a tiny sliver of glass nestled in the carpet. It disturbed her that she immediately blamed Lana, thought of it as an act of hostility. Especially when it might just as easily be a tiny shard from one of the glasses she broke two months ago. Sharp fragments always managed to travel across the house and hide from the Hoover or dustpan and brush. It was a worry that had kept her awake when the girls were small, that a smashed glass in March could lead to a sliced toe in June.

  Lana opened the bedroom door before Jen could knock and, for a moment, Jen couldn’t help but imagine Hugh had sent some sign to her through that skylight, a warning, an alarm. Your mother’s on her way! Watch out. Achtung! She had heard the noise of the curtains being pushed back yet again; Lana had been at the window.

  ‘I was just coming downstairs,’ Lana said.

  ‘Can you see your father from here?’ Jen asked, slipping in past her daughter. The room smelled of floral deodorant and worn tights and the rotting banana skins which had piled up on the desk. Above the desk, the oblongs of press cuttings curled away from the corkboard and Jen tried not to look at the dozen or so smudgy replicas of Lana’s face.

  ‘I just wondered, because he’s probably asleep in his chair.’ She made a noise which she thought might pass for a laugh and raised a hand to cover her mouth, as if she couldn’t stop a smile.

  Lana didn’t move. Her lip curled slightly.

  ‘I’ll just look quickly,’ Jen said, still attempting a jokey sort of attitude, hunching her shoulders in a way she imagined was mirthful. Peeking around the curtain, she found she could see Hugh’s chair, but Hugh wasn’t in it. She let the curtain fall heavily back into place and turned, grinning, to her daughter.

  ‘Well?’ Lana said.

  Jen shrugged. ‘Well,’ she repeated.

  ‘You’re being weird.’

  ‘Oh, weird, weird. Children are always calling their parents weird. You’ll have to do better than that.’

  ‘Have to do better?’

  ‘Come on, think of something. What might send me scurrying away?’

  ‘Mum, really…’

  ‘Surely you must have something up your sleeve. You’ve managed not to talk so far, you’re not going to let me get close now. An insult wouldn’t be too much; if you hurt me enough, I might leave you alone for good.
’

  ‘I don’t want to hurt you,’ Lana said, looking bewildered.

  ‘So you say.’ Jen sat down on the bed and slid her hands over her face, only to discover she was crying.

  ‘Shit, Mum,’ Lana said, moving about in front of her. ‘Don’t cry.’

  Jen felt a hand brush over her hair, then four kisses were placed quickly on her head. She looked up and dried her eyes, feeling they’d been soothed. ‘With kisses four,’ she said aloud, not remembering where the line came from.

  ‘Are you okay now?’

  Jen shook her head, making Lana sigh.

  ‘What is it, then?’ There was a hint of impatience.

  ‘It’s just, why have you pinned up those newspaper clippings? How can you want them there?’ She stopped herself. ‘Unless it’s some kind of joke to you.’

  ‘It’s not a joke, Mum,’ Lana said, her teeth gritting. ‘Look, you really want to know why I keep them? Okay.’ She went over to the board and leaned in.

  ‘…a bright and popular student,’ she read, ‘well liked by teachers and classmates…a caring, loving daughter and granddaughter…the sort of girl who lights up a room…she means everything to us…That last quote is you.’ Lana walked to the curtain and carefully pulled it back so she could look out at the dark. ‘It’s nice to know what people think of me. It’s nice to know, to be reminded, what you think of me. I understand people have to be nice when they think you’re dead, but I still like reading the descriptions – your descriptions – of me.’

  ‘Oh, sweetheart. Do you really need an article in a newspaper to know you mean everything to me?’

  ‘Sometimes,’ Lana said, and then she turned. ‘Dad is asleep in his chair. Look. Mouth wide open and everything. I never realized you could see him from here. I should take a photo. He looks hilarious.’

  ‘Oh, your poor dad.’ Jen was breathless with relief, with love, with the headiness of this unexpected conspiracy. Hugh did look unfortunate in that position, vulnerable and older. She felt tender towards him and stopped Lana taking a picture. ‘I’ll go and wake him for Newsnight,’ she said.

  ‘Okay. I’ll definitely come down if there are still some chocolates left.’

  Jen didn’t answer, tasting the last of the chocolate in the crevices of her mouth.

  ‘Oh, and Mum,’ Lana said, ‘I think the wood around the skylight might be a bit warped. You should probably tell Dad about that.’

  Private conversation

  She was getting really paranoid. Seeing conspiracy everywhere: the neighbours were having extra-marital affairs, her husband and daughter were communicating in code, Lana was harbouring something evil. She had even suggested to Hugh that the imaginary cat might be some sort of familiar.

  ‘And who’s the witch in this scenario?’ he’d asked, exasperated.

  There was a murmuring from the hallway now.

  ‘What did you say?’ Jen called, muting the television.

  ‘I was talking to myself,’ he said, ‘if you don’t mind.’

  ‘Oh, sorry to intrude. Secret, was it?’ She didn’t wait for his answer but put the sound up on the TV. Then she muted it again so she could think.

  Hadn’t there been other times, recently, when he’d seemed to be having internal conversations, as if some part of him were talking to another part? And weren’t they visible, these dialogues, apparent on his face somehow, in the twitch of a cheek muscle, the narrowing of an eye? Was he…could he be hearing voices? Jen thought of Lana and her unplugged earphones.

  ‘Tea?’ he said, putting his head around the door.

  ‘Is that addressed to me? Or should I pretend I haven’t heard?’

  ‘Do you want a tea or not?’

  ‘Not.’

  ‘Fine.’

  His head disappeared from view again, and she could hear him filling the kettle and unloading the dishwasher, innocuous enough sounds. And yet, was there a whispering just detectable beneath the domestic clinking and rumbling? She tried to breathe quietly, to eliminate all rasp in her mouth and lungs, to angle one ear and then the other, making the space into a kind of sievable entity, a liquid she could pan for golden noise.

  ‘Practising your lip-reading?’ he asked, as he came back in with his mug.

  ‘What are you getting at?’

  ‘The sound’s off.’

  ‘Oh, yes, sorry.’ She pressed the volume button on the remote but, although she was aware of the voices of the on-screen comedians, she couldn’t quite grasp what they were saying; their words didn’t fit the shapes their mouths made. She felt they were hostile, especially the six men on the panel show, and at moments the one woman seemed in danger, wedged between them, harangued on both sides and penned in by the long desk. Hugh laughed intermittently, the noise jerking from him, though each chuckle extended a little more each time, as if he were making a point of laughing, a way of proving his affinity to these men. Proving he was alien, malicious, proving he was an enemy.

  ‘I don’t blame you for not finding it funny,’ he said, startling her. ‘It’s got very childish, this programme. Shall we turn over?’

  ‘I thought you were enjoying it.’

  ‘Not really. You can guess the punch-lines by now, can’t you, and so I suppose I was just laughing at my own cleverness in guessing right.’

  He took a big slurp of tea.

  ‘What were you saying to yourself?’ she asked. ‘Just now, in the hall?’

  ‘Oh,’ he looked sheepish. ‘I was just checking my phone. You’re not going to like it. Mum’s joined Instagram, or someone’s joined it for her. Some meddler at the library, I imagine. I thought you might have seen already?’

  ‘Seen what?’

  ‘She’s been commenting on Lana’s posts.’

  Jen opened the laptop. Under a picture of Lana pouting next to Bethany, Carolyn had written: Don’t forget to smile in photos, dear. You have a beautiful smile. You don’t want to end up squinting at the camera like your mother always does. And under a photo of a stacked sandwich from a local café: I suppose your mother’s too busy to make a home-cooked meal. Jen shut the laptop.

  ‘For Christ’s sake,’ she said, allowing herself to breathe loudly again.

  ‘Lana’s already called to ask her to delete the comments and told her not to say anything about you. And she’s said, if there are any more comments like that, she’ll block her.’

  ‘Has she?’ Jen was unable to stop a grin. ‘Lana’s told her grandmother she’ll block her? Really?’

  ‘She’s promised to.’

  ‘How did your mother take that?’

  ‘Not well,’ Hugh said.

  Social media never sleeps

  Overnight, as if to test her power, Lana had posted a new photo on Instagram, a tropical island with a quote over it. The quote was from Keats (Lily still refused to be impressed):

  ‘…the cave is secreter

  Than the isle of Delos. Echo hence shall stir

  No sighs but sigh-warm kisses…’

  She wondered who Lana was hoping would give her sigh-warm kisses, but was relieved (and perhaps just a little triumphant) to see that the only comments beneath the picture were from other teenagers. They waited all day, but there was no sign of Carolyn.

  Storytelling

  She lay in the dark and remembered a night about a year before, when the family had attempted a mass gathering in Norfolk. It had been a disaster: Hugh had been away for work so his calming presence was missing, Graham and David had argued fiercely about whether to skin the tomatoes for the pasta sauce, and Lily had gone and eaten the whole ball of mozzarella while they were distracted (just to infuriate them, Jen suspected). On top of that, the cottage, which David’s wife had booked, didn’t have enough rooms for them all, so Jen and Meg and Lana had had to share a chilly attic room full of narrow single beds. Though, in a way, that had offered them a refuge. Up at the top of the house, they could hide away from the drama. The only problem was filling the time, as there was no TV, no WiFi a
nd very little light.

  ‘We could tell ghost stories,’ Lana had suggested.

  ‘I don’t think I know any ghost stories,’ Jen said, turning over to find a better location for her stiff limbs amid the bumps and wrinkles of the mattress and sheets.

  ‘Well, any kinds of stories, then.’

  ‘Okay. I’ve got a story.’

  ‘Oh, wait. Is it about a little girl whose shoes pinch?’

  ‘Oh, God, yeah,’ Meg said. ‘And her mother has sent her out for a pint of milk with their last bit of money?’

  ‘And she sees some new shoes in the window of a shop and wants to buy them?’

  ‘But they’re so poor that buying the shoes means they’ll go hungry?’

  ‘But she buys the shoes anyway?’

  ‘Because if it’s that story, then we’ve heard it.’

  ‘Like, a billion times.’

  ‘Good to know she recycled the same material for you,’ Meg said.

  ‘Recycled? It was a straight-up hand-me-down,’ Lana said.

  ‘Fine, then.’ Jen was annoyed, because she had been about to tell the story about the girl whose shoes pinched. ‘Do you want to tell us a story?’

  There was quiet for a minute or so. The door rattled slightly in the wind and an animalish rustling started in the eaves. A worn-socks smell had expanded in the dark, making the room both stuffy and familiar at once. It felt like their space. It felt safe.

  ‘Okay. Once there was…’ Lana paused.

  She paused for so long that Jen began to drift, gratefully, off to sleep, but Meg laughed.

  ‘I can see you were really burning to tell that.’

  ‘Fuck you,’ Lana said.

  ‘Lana,’ Jen said, feeling herself pulled awake, the sensation sickening and irritating.

  ‘Well, I got nervous, and she’s not helping.’

  ‘Don’t be nervous. And Meg, don’t be mean. Right, Lana, tell your story or go to sleep. Decide now.’