by Lucy Wood
‘We’re stuck out here forever,’ Pepper said. She wound the washing line tighter. ‘Maybe they’re in that car. That man’s car.’ Then she went back to winding herself up tighter and tighter, pretending that she had stopped breathing.
The bus had dropped them off in a gravelly lay-by – the closest place it stopped – and they had been picked up by Luke, who had insisted on taking them to the house. ‘Am I late?’ he said. He turned the car heater up to a loud whirr. ‘A tree’s come down across the road further back. Had to take the long way round.’ He looked over his shoulder at Pepper. ‘You probably thought I wasn’t coming.’
Ada shifted in her seat. She was sitting on an old blanket, scratchy wool with bits of yellow grass sticking out. A green and blue check pattern – the kind everyone around here kept in their cars for emergencies.
Pepper stared at Luke and didn’t say anything. Her hand came up and picked at her lips. She had never been good around people, never made friends, even as a baby had yelped whenever she was picked up. A furious little face the midwife had said. Grey wrinkly skin, pedalling the air like she was trying to escape.
‘There’s something of Pearl in her,’ Luke said. The rain was a weak patter. He pulled the car away and the wheels spun on the wet road. The heater filled the car with singed dust.
‘Who?’ Pepper said. ‘Who’s in me?’ She kicked the back seat until Ada made her stop.
‘I appreciate it,’ Ada said. ‘The lift.’ But it would only be this once; she hated having to rely on anyone, especially her mother’s old friend. Her only friend. The one who’d found her and sat with her while he waited for the ambulance to come. His pale blue eyes were fixed on the road. Waxy hair pushed behind his ears. His suit jacket sleeves had been mended with small stitches and his hands were ridged with turquoise veins. A gold ring on his thumb, the inky edge of a tattoo creeping up the top of his neck. He had a dented nose from when a cow had kicked him in the face. He’d just got straight back up again, pushed his nose into place and said something about how come the grass didn’t smell any more? After that, he couldn’t smell or taste anything – not bread, not garlic, not anything.
‘You’ll be wanting to use Pearl’s car,’ he said.
A cold feeling gripped her. ‘We won’t be here long,’ she said.
‘Can’t get far without one around here of course. I checked it over a while ago, when I knew you were coming.’ He spoke gently, slowed round a sharp bend, where the road narrowed so only one car could get past. A branch scraped against the door.
Ada nodded slowly. But she hadn’t driven a car in years. And the roads around here were the worst to drive on, what with the wet and the bends and tractors hurtling along in the middle of the road. And the ice and the hail. Dips. Potholes as big as bathtubs.
‘It’s still got some life in it,’ Luke said. ‘The brakes are stiff buggers, since no one’s been using them. But I threw some brake fluid in.’
‘She wasn’t using it?’
Luke glanced at her. ‘Pearl hadn’t driven in a long time,’ he said. He shook his head, started to say something else and then stopped. After a moment he said, ‘You’ll find some tiles off. If you need a hand I can always.’
She thanked him, but said she would be doing it herself. ‘We won’t be here long,’ she said again. There wouldn’t be much to do. Her mother had always kept up with repairs, battling the damp, the cracks, the wind-thieved tiles. An expert in anything practical, although couldn’t cook to save her life. Would use a griddle pan as a hammer.
In the back, Pepper shifted and stretched. Her eyes closed and her cheeks flushed from the heater. Wispy hair all mussed up. One hand in a fist, murmuring: ‘I won’t do it. Three more potatoes but none for you.’
Down the hill and into the valley. It was an isolated place: trees thickening into woods, the sun barely reaching in. Gales funnelling through. The moor rose up in the distance, humped and stark as something marooned. There were farms spread out for miles: sloping fields, derelict stores, barns. Cows bunching together and shifting their weight slowly from leg to leg. Steaming out of their noses like kettles. There was no centre to speak of – most of the houses were scattered by themselves, a few huddles of newer bungalows, a shop, the church and the school two miles in the other direction. A pub down an overgrown lane, a whitewashed café by the main road that long-distance drivers stopped at, filled up with petrol from the pump outside, hunched over strong coffee, and then left without looking back. And the river. The river winding through it all.
Luke hummed the same strange tunes he’d always hummed. ‘It might take more time than you think,’ he said. ‘Sort out the whole place.’ He leaned forward over the wheel. Same squinting eyes, same chapped skin, but he looked old. She had never thought of her mother getting older in all the years since she had last seen her. She pushed the thought away, then shivered and Luke turned the heater up. ‘Must have been eight years since you were last here Ada,’ he said.
Ada nodded. Although it had been thirteen. Apart from coming down briefly a few weeks ago, but all that was hazy – hearing about her mother, rushing down for the funeral. She hadn’t been to the house. Endless meetings with solicitors about what to do with it. Taxes. Bills. Needed sorting out, doing up. Selling. Costs of labour. Her current landlord talking about raising the rent. In between jobs again. Nobody else she could call on – how was there no one else she could call on? And now she saw herself as if from above, on her way back to the place. Her mother’s place. Nowhere else to go.
‘I remember you riding that scooter around the lanes,’ Luke said. ‘Like it was yesterday. Beeping the horn, wearing those long skirts.’
‘That wasn’t me,’ Ada told him.
‘I waved to you each time,’ he said. ‘When you went past.’
‘That wasn’t me,’ she said. But her voice was suddenly childish, doubtful.
‘There’s the Trewins’ house,’ Luke said. ‘Reckoned they won the lottery a month ago but lost the ticket. They haven’t got over it yet.’
Ada looked at where Luke was pointing, imagined what he would say about her to people – that she was the same, different? She hardly knew herself. ‘I would never wear long skirts,’ she said.
They passed a house with no lights on, the gate swinging in the wind. Their headlights passed through thin curtains, showing up, for a second, the shape of a body in the room behind them. Her hands clenched and she leaned back in the seat.
‘It’s just down there,’ Luke said, pointing as if she might have forgotten.
The wind heaved everything to one side and then the other. Could she have left the keys in Luke’s car? No signal to make any phone calls out here. She thought for a second of the landline and felt relieved, then remembered the landline was in the house and they couldn’t get into the house. Dappy mare – something her mother would have said. She ran her hand across her cheek and leaned against the door. It was dark. No neighbours, only a tiny light from a house in the distance.
‘What’s that noise?’ Pepper said. She leaned out of the porch to listen. The washing line now slumped and forgotten on the steps.
‘The wind,’ Ada said.
‘The other thing. Is it the river?’
Ada looked in the bag and found a torch. ‘I need to go back and look for the keys,’ she said.
‘I’m coming,’ Pepper said.
‘Wait here. Stay by the door, OK?’ She took the torch and went back down the steps. Over the gravel and then back onto the wet grass. She shone the torch on the ground in wide arcs. Everything glinted and looked like keys. She looked back at the house and thought again about breaking a window. How did people do that? Tie something round your fist and smash it? Or hurl a brick? All those hours at school struggling with algebra when these were the things she needed to know. She took a step forward, stopped, then stepped back. Scanned the grass, scanned it again, then remembered that there used to be a spare key hidden somewhere in the garden, lodged in the wall, or u
nder a stone by the steps. She ran back and found Pepper in the driveway.
‘I told you to stay by the door,’ she said. When would Pepper stop wandering off? Ada had lost her in a car park once and found her, ten terrified minutes later, underneath a van cooing to a pigeon she’d been following.
‘I saw something,’ Pepper said.
‘There’s a spare key somewhere here,’ Ada said. ‘Look in the wall for me. Any loose stones.’
‘How do you know?’ Pepper asked.
‘You’re good at finding things,’ Ada told her.
They turned over stone after stone with nothing but mud and worms underneath. Pepper picking stones up and throwing them down hard. ‘I can’t find it,’ she said. ‘I can’t find it.’ Her cheeks mottling. She picked up a stone and threw it at the wall of the house.
Ada closed her eyes for a moment. Wished she could throw one herself. She lifted up another stone and the key was under it. The lock was stiff and swollen and the key went in slowly and almost didn’t turn. The door heaved open. Damp and mouldy smells rushed out. Cold, stale air. But they were in. Ada shoved their bags into the hallway and closed the door. The house was very dark. She pressed her back to the door, suddenly expecting to hear her mother clomping, clearing her throat, her terrible sneeze that would startle cows in the next field. There were Pearl’s shoes, her long coats. The crushed waterproof hat.
The house creaked and griped, while they waited in the doorway like nervous guests.
‘What does it say?’ Pepper asked. She was looking at the wooden box. Running her finger over the side.
‘It’s just flowers,’ Ada told her.
‘It says something,’ Pepper said. She squinted at the box and turned it upside down.
‘Let me have a look.’ It was probably just the date or something. Ada held the box up and tried to see in the dim hall. A Beloved Pet. She read it again. Her mother had been tiny – probably tinier at the end. But a pet box. She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. So did neither.
Chapter 4
The first cloud of dust hit Pepper and she sneezed, then her mother sneezed too, loud and sharp like she always did, so that it rang out twice in the empty hallway. Once, she had sneezed so loudly it had made a woman in a shop drop a bottle of milk. By the door, there were boots and umbrellas and a lot of knotty sticks. A long coat hanging down, like a person standing there waiting. Further up, sheets of wallpaper were peeling off and bending backwards in big arcs. A bony leaf rattled around their feet.
‘Hellooooo,’ Pepper said. To show she wasn’t scared.
‘The light switch is behind you,’ her mother said. ‘Can you see it?’
Pepper felt along the wall by the coats. Her fingers brushed against cobwebs. She looked for the spider but couldn’t see one. She found the switch and clicked it but no lights came on. She tried it again, click, click, click, until her mother told her to stop. Then she said something about staying by the door, don’t go anywhere, looked like there might be loose boards, the ceiling could be about to cave in. She opened the door, wind rushed in and billowed the wallpaper, and then the door shut and she was gone.
The house creaked in the wind. At first, all Pepper could see was the pale wall up ahead, but then it was easier to see other things: an open door further down the hall, a lampshade rocking in the draught. There were rows of photographs in frames along the wall and she stood on tiptoe to look at them. They were all birds and their small eyes were dark and bright as oil. Some of the pictures were brown, like tea had spilled on them, some were black and white, some were faded blues and greens. She followed them down the hall – there was a small bird on a branch, a blurred shape between trees, and then there was a tink tink sound, and on the floor a saucepan catching water dripping from the ceiling. Reminding her of her own full bladder.
She turned and went through the open door and found herself in the kitchen. Tried the light switch but no light came on. The floor was brown and sticky. There was a table with a chair pulled out as if someone had just got up and left. Speckled grey tiles, dirty mugs and plates in the sink. The sink was full of brown water with leaves floating in it and a greasy sheen. Pepper put her finger in the water and the plates bobbed and looked like lonely faces that had been left behind. Everything had been left behind and it was like intruding. She jabbed the plates so that they clacked together.
There was a rustling noise and she turned, expecting to see her mother, but there was no one there. The kitchen was quiet except for a clock ticking and the wind pressing against the window. There were notes stuck to the fridge. She squinted at the one closest to her. Blue with orange, blue with orange. What did it say? She knew it started with a ‘b’ at least. But words were devious; they twisted and played tricks so that you ended up writing, ‘I have brown hare’ and everyone laughing. What you had to do was look at them out of the corner of your eye until they turned blurry and almost disappeared, and then you didn’t have to worry about them any more. It was the same with cracks in pavements and clocks with heavy, swinging pendulums.
The noise started up again, a sort of rustling somewhere in the house. She followed it past a closed door, past the stairs, making sure she stood on the carpet’s big flowers rather than the gaps in between them. The hall curved and at the end of it there were stone steps going down to another room. Inside, there were thick orange curtains and shelves full of books and boxes. A row of glass birds. A toolbox with the lid open: a hammer and screwdrivers and broken watches inside. Jars and jars of silver pins on the desk. More photographs on the walls. One of the windows had swung open and rain was blowing in. She crossed the room to close it, then heard the scrabbling right behind her. She turned round. The window banged. Nothing for a long minute. Then the noise again. Her legs tingled. She needed to pee, urgently. The sound came again and she licked her tooth. The window rattled, banged shut, then creaked open. Something moved behind the chair. She stayed very still. Then a grey shape hurtled past her legs, skidded and ran out of the door. Hoarse grunts and a faint hiss. Its tail bent at an angle. A squashed, startled face.
Pepper ran after it; back down the hall where the cat had scrabbled under the kitchen table. ‘Hey,’ she said. ‘Come here.’
The cat turned to look at her. There was a bit missing out of one ear. Ribs showing above a droopy belly. Big paws. Matted grey fur like a threadbare carpet. It hissed again. Pepper stepped backwards and the cat galloped past her, back down into the low room and jumped out of the window.
It was too dark to see where it went. Something roared and thumped. The river. It sounded like it was in the room. She closed the window, then knelt on the deep ledge and looked out. Dark humps of grass, the mass of all those trees. One tiny light in the distance. Her breath steamed on the cold glass. There was a quivering wail from outside. Was that what an owl sounded like? She had never heard one before. A shape moved down by the river – her mother. But then the lights clicked on and she heard her mother close the front door, take off her coat and stamp her shoes, saying: Where are you? The lights are working now.
In the kitchen, her mother opened cupboards and drawers. ‘There’s got to be something we can eat,’ she said.
Pepper sat at the table wrapped in a blanket, which smelled like someone else’s soap and biscuits. Outside, the sky was very dark and there was a single star among all the murky clouds, like a peephole that looked out into space. If she tipped back and concentrated on the star, it felt like she was getting sucked right out there. She tipped further and further. ‘What doesn’t make sense,’ she said, ‘is how space is supposed to go on for ever and ever,’ and her voice sounded higher and different to usual.
The fan heater they’d found rattled loudly. The fridge was back on and there was a sour smell coming from it. Her mother didn’t go near it. She didn’t look over when it shuddered, stopped, then started up again. She didn’t look at anything; not the papers, or the bits of plastic and wires, or the notes stuck all over the walls. She kept her c
oat on and stared into the cupboard.
Usually they would have unpacked by now. Her mother would be running the bath, the bathroom filling with steam and lavender. She would be saying things like: this is exactly right, I’ve got a feeling about this place, I think it’s going to work out. Pepper would have laid out her precious things in the room she was going to sleep in.
Her mother crouched down and opened a drawer. ‘Nothing but bags of bird seed in here,’ she said.
‘I saw a cat,’ Pepper said. There was still rain in her mother’s hair, which made it look very dark.
‘There must be about seven bags,’ her mother said.
‘In a room with thousands of books and pictures.’
Her mother stood up, then reached into the highest cupboard. She brought down a tin and a lot of dust. ‘Don’t go in that room at the moment, OK?’
‘Why?’
‘God knows how old these things are,’ her mother said. She found the tin opener and opened the tin and poured it into a pan, then clicked something and a bright blue flame roared up. The kettle shook as it boiled.
‘Why can’t I?’ Pepper said. Then tipped back again in her chair. Who cared anyway, they wouldn’t be here very long.
Her mother spooned coffee into a mug and it came out in fat lumps. She drank two huge gulps while it was still steaming. She made Pepper a cup, weak and with lots of sugar. It tasted dusty and of burnt meat but it warmed her insides. The windows fogged up. Pepper leaned her head against the table and when she woke up the kitchen smelled of familiar cooking smells and there were butter beans in tomato sauce, soft biscuits to dip in and a bowl of tinned peaches. Her mother could make a feast out of anything. When she cracked eggs there were sometimes two yolks inside.
‘Finish these,’ her mother said, pushing her bowl over.