The Winter House

by Unknown

  It doesn’t matter any more, sweetheart. It really doesn’t matter. All that frenzy and all that sadness, all that bitterness and rage and despair. That’s all finished with and you’re beside me again. Peaceful. The three of us together. Who’d have thought it would come to this at last?

  It’s still snowing outside, isn’t it? I imagine the moon glowing on a white world. Sound muffled. Eerie quiet. If I was out there now, I would lie down in the snow and look up into the sky’s vertiginous fall; it always makes me feel that it is me who is floating upwards into space. I would pick up a handful and crunch it into a solid ball. Perhaps I would pull on my skates and push out onto the ice of the loch, the blades sinking through the few inches of snow and cutting into the ice with a slight hiss. I would hold out my hand and feel the single flake melt on my palm.

  Go outside for me now.

  Do it for me. Do all the things I will never do again.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Marnie looked up. Oliver was fast asleep in his chair, his head tipped forward and his mouth slightly open. He looked older when he slept, and heavier. Ralph’s eyes were also closed; Marnie couldn’t hear him breathing. She stood up and leant over him. His eyelids were blue, his lips almost white. She picked up one hand and with her thumb found his reedy, erratic pulse.

  The television screen was blank, a single white line flickering down it. She turned it off. The fire had nearly gone out but, with Dot’s portable heaters, the air was still warm, and the embers glowed, brightening and fading. The Christmas lights shone above the bed, giving a ghostly appearance to the tableau of the two sleeping men. Marnie picked up the rug she had wrapped round herself earlier and laid it across Oliver, taking care not to wake him; she smoothed the covers on Ralph’s bed, making sure his arms were safely under them – when they lay on top, he looked more than ever like a corpse arranged by an undertaker.

  She was far from sleep. She wasn’t even tired any more; she’d passed through all the stages of weariness and come out the other side, preternaturally alert, ready for whatever might happen, her senses tingling and every sound – the muffled thumps of snow falling from the eaves outside, the barely audible crackle as the embers lit an unburnt twig, the far-off hoot of an owl and the even-more-distant reply of its mate – amplified inside her.

  She picked up the plates and glasses and padded across to the sink to rinse them quietly while she waited for the kettle to boil. Then she made herself a cup of camomile tea, which she took to the window to drink. When she pulled open the curtain, flakes drifted past the window. Although she couldn’t see it from where she stood, she knew that there must be a moon because everything – the soft floor of snow, the dark mass of trees, the rise of the hill beyond – was bathed in a spectral light. She heard the owl call again, closer this time.

  Marnie pulled on her coat and slid her feet into her boots. She slipped her phone into her pocket, wrapped a scarf round her neck and pulled on her gloves. When she opened the door, a dim rectangle of light fell across the hall floor. Outside, it was not as cold as she had been expecting, though her breath curled in the air. The sky had cleared and, yes, the moon was low on the horizon, half swathed in cloud. She pulled the door shut carefully behind her and stood in the windless quiet. Nothing moved. The trees were motionless, etched against the sky. Above her, small icicles hung from the guttering. When she moved forward, out of the shelter of the house, her shadow lay across the blue-white ground; her boots creaked on the snow. The world was mysterious and beautiful.

  Marnie walked a few yards further on and turned back to look at the little house, its downstairs windows illuminated and a thread of smoke curling out of the chimney. Then she set off up the hill, her footprints the only marks in the snow and the owl’s shriek closer. Now she could see the loch, which lay in an oval of perfect whiteness beneath her. She had come up here to make a phone call, but she could hardly bring herself to do so. The real world – at least, the world from which she had come – seemed so very far away, a dream. The past was nearer to her than the present. She stood in this monochrome clarity, imagining Eva, a colourful bird making her untidy nest in Marnie’s flat, her raucous, urban, smoke-filled days and her cluttered, dancing nights, and felt giddy with distance: not just the distance in space, but the distance in experience. There was her stepdaughter – or exstepdaughter – with her Facebook network of virtual friends, her magazines and text messages and iPod of ten thousand songs, her refusal to make plans beyond the next half an hour, her painted nails and painted lips and teetering heels, her instant experiences, her incomprehensible vocabulary, her days streaming past in a clatter of noise and excitement. And there was Marnie, waiting at the bed of her friend with no phone, even, with time slowed down to take in the whole of her past, with the world receding.

  Finally, she pulled her phone out of her coat pocket, took off her gloves and turned it on. It could have been any time – midnight, three, an hour before dawn – but she saw that it was only ten o’clock. There were a couple of text messages from Eva, saying ‘R U OK?’ and ‘Rng l8er’, and some voicemails, but she didn’t want to listen to them just now.

  First, she rang Eva’s mobile, but it asked her to leave a message. Next she rang the flat and, just as she was about to give up, a voice answered. A young woman, but not Eva: she had a gravelly smoker’s voice and a London accent. Marnie asked to speak to Eva, but was told Eva wasn’t there right now, could she take a message? In the background. Marnie could hear several other voices, music playing.

  ‘Who are you?’ she asked.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘I’m Marnie – I own the flat. Who are you?’

  ‘I’m Corrie,’ the voice said warmly. ‘It’s really nice of you to let us all stay here.’

  ‘But I –’

  There was a scream of laughter, and Corrie, whoever she might be, said, ‘Sorry, emergency. Got to go. Whoops!’

  Marnie gazed for a few seconds at the mobile, grimacing. Then she scrolled down the address book until she came to Lucy.

  ‘Hello?’ Lucy’s husband, voice curt as if she had interrupted him in the middle of something.

  ‘Fred? It’s me, Marnie.’

  ‘Marnie!’ His voice took on a note of solemn warmth, so that Marnie could tell he knew where she was and what she was doing. ‘How are you?’

  ‘OK. At least, I think so.’

  ‘You want Lucy. Hang on, I’ll call her. You take care.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Marnie waited. She heard him calling Lucy’s name, and then Lucy was on the phone.

  ‘Marnie – is he…’

  ‘No. He’s still alive. Though I can’t believe it will be much longer.’

  ‘Is he in pain?’

  ‘I don’t think so. He sleeps, mostly.’

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes. I don’t know. I’ve been thinking about everything. The past. All the things I’ve done wrong.’

  ‘You don’t need to –’

  ‘I know it’s a long time ago, but it doesn’t feel it. I just wanted to say sorry.’

  ‘You said sorry at the time. More than once.’

  ‘Well, I’m saying it again.’

  ‘Marnie, listen. I’m happy. Much happier than I would have been if things had worked out differently.’

  ‘You’ve been a good friend to me.’ Marnie listened to the emotion swelling in her voice. She felt that there was an ocean of tears behind her eyes, and if she started crying now, she would never be able to stop. ‘The very best.’

  ‘We’ve come through,’ said Lucy.

  ‘It’s snowing here. And there’s an owl. Lucy, I’m scared.’

  Without knowing that she was going to, she lay down in the snow and gazed up at the flakes that spun towards her. It made her feel giddy, as if it was she who was floating upwards, leaving the earth behind. She stood up again and collected a handful of snow, squeezed it into an icy ball and dropped it. Then, holding out her palm, she let a single flake fall onto it an
d melt.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Ralph simply disappeared. One moment he had been there, oppressively so, knocking on the door, running up the stairs to find her and share his enthusiasms, his face eager and besotted. The next he was gone. At first Marnie assumed he was in a miserable rage and keeping his distance. But that evening, when she plucked up courage to phone his house, his father said, with belligerent drunkenness, that he wasn’t in; the next morning she waited outside his school to catch him as he went in but he never arrived.

  For the first time since David had died, she made her way to the Tinsleys’ house and knocked on the door. It had taken her three attempts: for several minutes she had lurked on the road, trying to summon the courage that seemed to have drained away from her, leaving her knees shaking and her heart hammering with dread. She waited for the door to be opened, and was partly relieved when it looked as though no one was in. Then she heard shuffling footsteps and stood up straighter, arranging her mouth into a cautious smile.

  The door opened a few inches and a small, pinched face was pushed into the gap. Hair dyed to almost the same colour as the skin; faded blue eyes; pouchy cheeks; heavy vertical lines along the upper lip; deep brackets around the mouth. She smelt of cigarettes and Marnie saw that her teeth were stained. She looked decades older than her age. Beyond, the hall was piled with rubbish bags and junk. For a moment, she considered running away – simply belting down the path and leaving this house that stank of misery and neglect and that Ralph had returned to night after night, never really telling her what it was like.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Mrs Tinsley. It’s Marnie Still.’

  ‘I know exactly who you are.’ She did not open the door any wider.

  ‘I’ve come because I’m worried about Ralph.’

  ‘You are, are you?’ The words were like a sneer.

  ‘Have you seen him recently?’

  ‘You’re the one who sees him, not me.’

  ‘Was he here yesterday night?’

  ‘It wasn’t enough for you, pushing my eldest boy to his death, but you have to take my only remaining son away from me.’

  ‘I haven’t,’ said Marnie, helplessly.

  Suddenly Mrs Tinsley pushed the door wide open. She stood there, hands on her hips, and looked at Marnie appraisingly, then curled her lip. ‘I can’t see it myself,’ she said. ‘Can’t see what’s so good about you. Never could.’

  Marnie flushed but held her ground. ‘I just want to make sure he’s all right. He was upset yesterday. I was worried about him.’

  ‘Upset?’ She gave a brittle laugh that cracked in the middle into a rasping cough, painful even to hear. ‘Upset is the way Ralph’s made. It’s his middle name, didn’t you know? What have you done to him?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘I’ll know who to thank if he’s come to any harm.’

  Angry retorts crowded into Marnie’s mind. He’s already come to harm, she wanted to say, and you haven’t lifted a finger to protect him. You’ve stood by while his father beat him. You’ve withheld your affection, your approval, your most basic duty of care. You’ve made him feel low, worthless, loveless, cursed. You’ve blamed him for his brother’s death. You made him believe that he was the one who should have died.

  But she remained silent. Mrs Tinsley reeked of unhappiness: a stale, flat, rancid hopelessness. Her bitterness against Marnie seemed the only spirited thing left to her.

  ‘Have you seen him?’ she asked meekly.

  ‘Since yesterday? No.’

  ‘That’s all I wanted to ask. Thank you.’

  She turned to go but Mrs Tinsley called after her, ‘If you see him, tell him to come home.’

  Emma listened and did not interrupt. Marnie talked without meeting her gaze: she stood at the window, looking out at the grey sea. It was a blustery day and the waves bucked, kicking up spray.

  ‘So you’re worried he might do something stupid?’ Emma asked, when she finished. It was typical of her, thought Marnie, gratefully, that she didn’t make any comment on the rest of the story, but immediately focused on Ralph’s plight. Everything else would come later.

  ‘He’s probably fine, I know that, and I don’t want to make everything worse by turning it into a drama,’ said Marnie. ‘But you know what he’s like. He was –’ She searched for the word, remembering his face as she had last seen it, working with furious distress. ‘I don’t know,’ she finished lamely. ‘It was awful.’

  ‘Hmm. And is Oliver looking for him as well?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She didn’t want to think about Oliver: she felt as though a door had closed on them. ‘Where could Ralph be? If he wasn’t at school, wasn’t at home, isn’t at Ollie’s, hasn’t come here, where else would he go?’

  ‘Have you tried Lucy?’

  ‘Lucy? No, but I don’t think he’d go there.’

  ‘Probably not – but he might turn to her, if he felt let down by you two. She’s very fond of him, isn’t she?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Marnie, miserably. One corner of her mind was noting how much her mother knew about things she had thought secret. ‘She is.’

  ‘Call her, and then I’ll phone the police.’

  ‘The police!’

  ‘Marnie, I’m quite sure they’ll say that he’s seventeen and is overwhelmingly likely to be fine but that they’ll keep an eye open for him.’

  ‘Do you think he’s overwhelmingly likely to be fine?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Emma, firmly. ‘I do.’

  ‘You don’t think he’d –’ She couldn’t finish the sentence.

  ‘No.’

  Later, after Emma had spoken to the police, the two of them went out in her car. Marnie sat hunched forward, gazing anxiously out of the front window as they drove through country lanes and round back-streets. Every so often they would see a figure who might perhaps have been Ralph – although they always knew it wasn’t. They didn’t talk, except to make suggestions about where to try next.

  ‘This is hopeless,’ said Marnie, at last. ‘He could be anywhere.’

  ‘You’re right. Shall we head home?’

  ‘It’s getting dark, and it’s so windy and wet.’

  ‘Don’t torment yourself – it doesn’t help anyone.’

  ‘We can’t just give up. Can we go and look on the beach?’

  Emma hesitated, then said, ‘If you want. Let’s go home first. We can collect a torch and walk down from the house. As long as you understand that he very probably won’t be there.’

  ‘What if we can’t find him? What will we do then?’

  ‘We’ll wait for him to find us, all right?’

  ‘Yes. You’re being very nice to me.’

  ‘How did you expect me to behave?’

  ‘All of this is my fault. Ollie’s right. It’s because of me.’

  ‘Marnie,’ said Emma, glancing at her, ‘once we know that Ralph is safe, we can talk about what happened. I’ll say this, though. The fact he’s disappeared doesn’t mean that what you did was any better or worse than it would have been if he had behaved more calmly. You mustn’t judge yourself by the way he reacted.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Marnie, numbly.

  The torch’s battery was running low so it cast only a dim light, wavering on the path in front of them. The rain was heavy now, slanting in the gusts of winds, stinging their cheeks. The long grass whipped against their legs and the ground squelched beneath their feet. Marnie felt her shoes fill with water. The sky was covered with cloud, so there was no moon.

  ‘Shall we go this way?’ she said, when they reached the sea. ‘That’s where Ralph and I usually go when we come down here.’

  ‘Towards the wrecked boat?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Their shoes crunched over wet shingle; a stone’s throw away, waves crested and broke onto the shore, foam shining in the half-light. Emma swung the beam of the torch in faint arcs around them. ‘There’s the boat,’ she said, as they approached it, ‘but I don�
�t think he’s here.’

  ‘No.’ Marnie stood beside the hulk and stared across the lumpy waters. ‘Ralph!’ she called. Her voice disappeared into the wind and breaking waves. ‘Ralph!’ she tried again, shrill and high with panic. ‘It’s me, Ralph! Where are you? Ralph?’

  ‘Ssh.’ Emma took her hand. ‘He’s not here, which you knew he wouldn’t be anyway, but that doesn’t mean he’s not all right. He’s probably somewhere safe and warm, with no idea that you’re out here in the darkness searching for him.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Her voice trembled. ‘I guess.’

  ‘Stop tormenting yourself.’ She squeezed Marnie’s fingers. ‘It will be all right. Everything seems worse at night.’

  ‘Will he be back by morning?’

  ‘I can’t say that.’

  ‘You promise he’s all right, though?’

  ‘I’m not going to promise anything – but he will be all right.’

  ‘Everything’s such a mess. Why can’t things be simple for once?’

  ‘Oh,’ said Emma, wryly. ‘Well, that’s life, you know.’

  ‘Is it like this for everyone?’

  ‘I don’t know. Everyone’s different.’

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘Me?’ Emma looked out over the sea. ‘I don’t know, Marnie. It’s complicated.’ She paused. ‘I used to come here a lot with your father, you know.’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘Mmm. The boat wasn’t so rotted away then, of course. We’d often walk here before supper. He used to skim stones. In the summer, we’d sometimes strip off and swim from this point – does it still shelve more deeply here than further along?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Marnie.

  ‘He was a good swimmer. Much better than me. I never thought he could drown. It was right here –’ she patted the slimy, decaying wood ‘– that I told him I was pregnant with Seth.’ She gave a soft sigh. ‘He was a very emotional man, your father.’

  ‘I don’t remember him.’

  ‘When you were born, he cried.’

  ‘Did he? Because he was happy?’