by Sue Wallman
Evan traces his finger up the inside of my arm and, although it tickles, it’s also the best sensation ever. “Can’t you stay a bit longer?” he asks.
I look at the clock display on the oven. “Five minutes?”
He tugs my hand. “I want to show you the workshop. Come with me.”
Lily shoots me an amused look. “An invitation to the workshop! Watch out.”
“Oi!” says Evan, and he swipes at her head as we go past, but she ducks in time. “The workshop’s in the garage. There’s a door through here. Put on those ugly clog things of Mum’s; there might be bits on the floor.”
I notice he doesn’t bother to put on shoes himself.
The garage is fitted out like a proper workshop. There are three workbenches, a shelving unit, and stacks of wood, huge pieces, down to small logs.
“I want to show you something,” says Evan. He picks his way over the floor, avoiding occasional curls of shaved wood. He indicates that I should sit on a chair.
I sit on it then stand up again to take a closer look. “Did you make this?” It looks like something you’d see in a posh, bespoke furniture shop: smaller than your average chair, the back made up of two upwards struts and three curved sections going across.
“Yep, my first chair. That’s not what I want to show you, but you might not want to sit down on it too hard.”
“Er… OK.” I lower myself down in a controlled squat sort of a way.
He takes a piece of paper from a shelf and passes it to me. “I printed this off the internet when I got back from Margery’s.” It’s a photo of a blue-painted birdhouse with a black roof and a bar for birds to perch on. “I liked the design. I thought I could paint a rose on the side. Attach it somewhere close to where Rose was buried.”
“That would be perfect,” I say. “I love it. Your dad couldn’t object to a birdhouse.” I hand the piece of paper back to him. “How long will it take to make?”
“Not long. I’ll ping a photo over to you when it’s finished.”
I won’t see it properly, though – or Evan – until next New Year. It’s a sad thought. I stand up. Ivy and Tatum will wonder where I’ve got to.
“I’ll walk you back to Roeshot House,” says Evan.
Back to the strange atmosphere of Jakob being gone, Auntie Gabs hiding herself away, Ivy obsessing over Poppy, and Tatum… “I hope you don’t think I’m being weird,” I say, as I layer up with my hoodie in the hall and he puts on his trainers, “but what d’you think of Tatum?”
He raises his eyebrows. “Er … she seems OK. Why?”
“She makes me feel uncomfortable. She doesn’t care what she says or does. I think she might have somehow made Jakob fall downstairs.”
“It wasn’t the carpet, then?” He takes a jacket from a hook and puts it on.
“Yes, but… I don’t know,” I admit. “But I know she craves the drama. She wants it for her documentary. She threw up when she saw Baz, but she was a little bit excited too.”
“Ew. She’s your aunt’s friend’s daughter, right?” confirms Evan. “Not a complete stranger?”
I shake my head as I bend down to lace my running shoes. “But Ivy didn’t know her, and my Auntie Gabs can be flaky. I don’t know why I’m telling you… Just, if anything else strange happens, I’ve told someone.”
I look up. He’s making an over-the-top alarmed face. “That sounds dramatic!”
“Sorry. She’s winding me up, that’s what it is.” I bounce up. “I’m ready.”
After he pulls the front door behind us, I take his hand and place it in the fleece-lined pocket of my hoodie.
We walk fast to keep warm, but when Roeshot House is visible, we slow. “I’ll say goodbye here,” I say when we reach the driveway. “It’s easier.”
“All right,” says Evan, but he doesn’t remove his hand. Our breath, visible in the cold, mingles as we talk.
“This has been so nice,” I say.
Evan smiles. He finally takes his hand away and encircles me with his arms, and we kiss. I plant smaller kisses over his face. He touches my cold-numb cheek with the tips of his fingers and they come alive. I should go. I know I should go.
“Bye, then,” I say and don’t move.
“Bye, then,” he says. “I’ll come by tomorrow before you go,” and he kisses me one last lingering time before I force myself to pull away.
TWENTY-FIVE
“Someone was lying about going running!” says Tatum when I walk into the kitchen.
“You and Evan were going for it out there,” says Ivy, amazed.
My heart jumps, as if I’ve been caught doing something bad. “You were watching?”
“I looked out of the window and there you were,” says Tatum. “In full view. You obviously wanted us to see, so don’t pretend to get defensive.”
I’m an idiot, and Tatum has good eyesight.
“Did you arrange to meet Evan?” asks Ivy. She looks hurt.
“I … told him I might go for a run this afternoon,” I say.
“Riiiiight,” says Tatum.
“I’m sorry,” I say to Ivy. “I felt awkward about it.”
“First kiss!” sings Tatum. “Big moment!”
Ivy says she understands, but that makes me feel worse. If Tatum weren’t here Ivy’d be asking me everything about Evan, and I’d be telling her. If Jakob were here, he’d be beside himself with excitement.
Jakob. I hate not knowing how he is. I hate him not being here.
Ivy opens the cupboard next to the oven, where the baking trays and tins are kept. She takes out two trays. “Poppy’s asked to make cookies. We brought the ingredients with us, and some funky cutters. You want to help?” She nods towards various packets. Coconut sugar. Non-dairy butter.
“Of course,” I say.
“Evan’s cute,” says Ivy. “It’s a shame you’re leaving tomorrow and live so far away.”
Tatum says, “Have you noticed he smells of bonfires?”
“No he doesn’t. But anyway, I like the smell of bonfires,” I say.
Tatum raises an eyebrow.
I was going to tell her the gossip about Rose’s injuries, but after what Tatum said about Evan, she doesn’t deserve to know. I take off my scarf and hat, and wonder if I’ll ever be happy sitting in the attic again, knowing it’s probably where Rose fell from.
“Have you accepted you’re the unlucky-in-love person yet?” asks Tatum “I’m just looking out for you: you need to see this for what it is. As soon as you’ve gone, Evan will hook up with the next available girl who flirts with him. You’ll come back next year and it’ll be hideously embarrassing. He’ll avoid you, and you’ll wonder what you ever saw in him.”
“Leah will be going out with someone else by then,” says Ivy loyally – I think.
Tatum smiles. “Who knows?”
“I’m not interested in what you think,” I say, less calmly than I’d have liked.
“You’re so naïve, Leah.”
“And you’re…” I search for the right words. “You’re just jealous because you liked Evan. Stop talking about the predictions. You weren’t even there when we made them. You’re taking them out of context and making everything weird for your precious documentary. You’re pathetic.”
“Everything was already weird, Leah,” says Tatum. “That’s what you haven’t quite grasped yet.” She goes out to the corridor and slams the kitchen door.
Ivy and I look at each other.
“She better not be here next year,” I say. “Or Steve.”
“You were right about her being jealous of Evan,” says Ivy. She lifts a wooden spoon out of the utensil pot on the kitchen counter. “She seemed kind of upset when she first saw you two through the window. So maybe don’t go on about him in front of her. It winds her up.”
“I promise I didn’t think anyone could see us there.”
“I know, but be careful.”
“What d’you mean, ‘Be careful’?” I ask.
Ivy l
ooks round. The door to the lounge and the door to the corridor are both closed.
“What’s Tatum said?”
“Thing is, I’m pretty sure she came here intent on stirring things up. She wanted to do a documentary and she needs it to be as stand-out as possible. For film school.”
“What d’you mean?”
“When I went upstairs to check on Mum she asked how we were getting on. Obviously I told her we were all fine. Then she said something about Tatum’s mum telling her Tatum had a big project to be getting on with, so at least she has that to keep her busy. That must be the documentary. Tatum’s not been doing any school stuff since she’s been here, has she?”
“Nope.” I’ve not seen a book in Tatum’s hand apart from the Roeshot garden one. “But maybe she told her mum about everything that’s been going on?”
“No, my mum said her mum told her that before we got here.”
I stare at her, my heart thumping. Tatum seriously lucked out with us. A dead body in the garden. Predictions.
“I didn’t want to say this, but I think she somehow knocked into me when I got to the stair with the loose carpet, which meant I had to step back into Jakob,” says Ivy.
“That’s what I thought too,” I say. “She might have killed him.” My brain is making connections. “That metal bar. D’you think she had anything to do with that? Should we … say something?”
“To her?”
“No, to Auntie Gabs,” I say.
“We don’t have any proof, so it’s just going to make more drama. Mum’s not up to that right now.”
The door from the lounge opens and we jump apart. It’s Poppy. I wonder how much she heard.
“I thought you said we were going to make cookies,” she says.
Ivy pins on a smile. “We are, Popster. Look, Leah and I’ve been getting everything ready.”
Poppy weighs the ingredients but we have to help her mix the dough as it needs more strength than she’s got. She rolls it out and the three of us cut out shapes, making scenes on the baking trays, with palm trees, boats, fish and monsters.
I wonder what Tatum is doing. Reviewing her footage, no doubt, and dreaming up the next part of her film. Maybe the focus of it isn’t on Alice and Rose at all, but on hysteria, or gullibility, or something.
We eat little scraps of leftover dough. It tastes as if it needs more sugar, but I’m not going to say that. I make a show of saying how much I love it, and Ivy smiles gratefully at me.
While we wait for the biscuits to cool, Poppy has a milkshake and Ivy and I make the different-coloured icings. Poppy describes a film she’s heard of but can’t remember the title. I try to guess. Ivy doesn’t join in. She carefully works in tiny drops of food colouring to the little bowls of white icing I’ve made. I wonder how much she gets to go out and have fun when she’s home, and how many things she has to cancel if Auntie Gabs has “one of her days”.
Poppy spends ages decorating the cookies while Ivy and I prepare a salad for later to go with some leftover lasagne from the fridge, because she says Auntie Gabs won’t be in a cooking mood. We talk about Jakob, wondering how he’s doing, and our mood is subdued. Outside the light turns pale and expectant, as if it might snow. I go to the window to close the blinds, thinking about Tatum seeing me kiss Evan. I have a flutter of anxiety in my chest and wish Evan were here now.
“Come up to the attic with me, Ivy,” I say, turning away from the curtains. “Please? Just for five minutes.”
She gives me an odd look but she tells Poppy we’ll be right back. We run up there, not treading on the stair Jakob tripped on, even though Clive has nailed the carpet carefully back into place. We creep past my room, where Tatum must be behind the closed door, and up into the attic.
I walk to the window and tell Ivy that it’s possible Rose jumped from the ledge, and she steps back, then forward to imagine Rose, like I did, standing there before she fell. How long did she wait? Could someone have saved her?
Ivy sits on the window seat and says softly, “Have you ever thought of jumping?”
I scan her face. She’s serious. “No,” I say. “Not that sort of a jump.” I’m scared to ask her, but I do. “You?”
She nods. “Only once. But looking after Poppy and Mum is hard.”
The prediction about something of great value being lost comes into my mind, and it occurs to me that perhaps it’s not a concrete thing like binoculars, but something like hope, or trust.
And I think about Poppy’s prediction.
“You do an amazing job,” I say. I wish I knew what else to say. I bet Jakob would find the right words if he was here, but he’s not, so I hug her and say, “I’m so sorry.”
Gabs gets out of bed for dinner. She apologizes for being out of it, blaming it on a new medication. She’s wearing the same dress that she wore for New Year’s Eve, with the impractical sleeves, except now it’s creased and has a stain down the front. It’s pretty clear that she’s in bad shape, much worse than last year. I doubt Mum would have left me here, if she’d known about this. She walks slowly to the end of the drive with her phone, and returns saying that Elaine and Marc are staying the night in a Premier Inn near the hospital, and won’t be back until Jakob’s had his second operation.
Ivy has laid the table and made everything look nice with the decorated cookies as a centrepiece, but it feels dismal without Jakob. Tatum is sulking, and Poppy colours her nails with black Sharpie. She says her mouth and stomach are on fire, so Ivy crushes ice-cubes for her to suck.
“Our last night,” says Auntie Gabs. “We usually have a big board games marathon,” she says to Tatum, “but perhaps we’re not in the mood.” She presses her forehead. “Elaine is good at organizing that, and my head isn’t up to it.”
“It’s fine, Mum,” says Ivy. “We don’t want to play board games.”
“Too freaking right,” mutters Tatum.
Ivy collects the plates and I stand to help her.
“It’s been a very tiring few days, hasn’t it?” says Auntie Gabs.
“Jakob had an idea, Auntie Gabs,” I say. “He thought Poppy could stay with his family for a change of scene. When he’s better. That might be a while, I guess.” I don’t mention the doctor part, and I don’t say anything about giving her and Ivy a break because Poppy is sitting right there. I should have picked a better time to do this. “Mum and I would love to have her come and stay too sometime.”
Through a mouthful of ice, Poppy says, “Yes, please.”
“You’d have to write out the food things, but we’d manage,” I say to Auntie Gabs.
“What a nice idea, thank you,” Auntie Gabs says. “We could have a think about that, couldn’t we, Pops?”
Ivy ruffles the top of Poppy’s head, and I see Ivy’s right: Poppy’s hair has become much thinner. “I guess it’s doable if we plan it far enough ahead.”
Poppy reaches for my hand and colours my thumbnail black. “I’d like to be with Leah,” she whispers, and the evening doesn’t feel like quite such a disaster.
TWENTY-SIX
My phone says 3:14 a.m. I don’t know what’s woken me, but there’s a squawking outside, so it might have been that. The bird’s call is insistent. When I look over at Tatum, I can make out her body rising and falling in time with her breathing.
We hardly spoke to each other when we went to bed. She was looking yet again at the footage she’d shot, with earphones in, and I watched her eyes dart back and forth. That documentary is everything to her, like an addictive game.
I try to conjure up the floaty feeling I had with Evan, but I’m cold and lonely. Thoughts intrude about Mum and Steve coming back with An Announcement. Knowing there are only five of us sleeping in Roeshot House tonight makes me nervous, especially when the only adult isn’t fully functioning. Ironically, it’s what we Amigos always longed for: a house with zero adult interference. I picture Jakob in a hospital bed, recovering from one operation, facing another. I wonder if he’s awake too.
Do I smell roses? My stomach churns. I do. I’m sure I do. Or is it my imagination?
I mustn’t think about it. I’ll think about next New Year, which will be better. Tatum won’t be with us, and we won’t be so obsessed with Alice and Rose. The doctors will have found a way to treat Poppy, Jakob will be OK, and Ivy will be fun again and less stressed about Poppy. Evan will still fancy me one year on. I lean down for the bed socks I discarded earlier and put them on again. I pull the duvet tight around me, trapping a layer of warm air.
I drift off to sleep, but I lurch awake, slicked with sweat, as if I have a high temperature.
Rose. I dreamt she was screaming for help. I heard a scuffle, but I didn’t know where she was. I ran into different rooms in Roeshot House, but they were empty.
Somehow I knew a baby was going to die and I couldn’t do anything about it. I climbed the stairs to the attic and I squeezed through the window on to a ledge. I took another step and fell.
I reach for my phone: 5:38 a.m. A car roars along the road at the end of the drive, the sound out of place. It makes me think of Baz. The only way to stop myself thinking about him – and the person who ran him over – is to get up. By the time I’ve gone to the toilet, I’m wide awake. What would it be like to go running now? I go to the window and yank the curtain aside.
What is that? Who is that? Beyond the car, standing by the burial site, is a figure with long white-silver hair, in a shapeless white garment. A ghost.
Poppy’s ghost.
My ribs press inwards and stop me breathing. I am completely, painfully aware of every part of my body reacting to the fear: there’s a strange noise in my ears like the swishing of blood, and my heart is bouncing out of control.
I blink and the ghost is still there. I don’t understand what I’m seeing. Although I can’t see her face, she looks real, but her dress is thin and her feet are bare and she appears unaware of the cold. Her skin is whitish-blue, her limbs fragile.