‘I know.’
Silence, silence. I hated these vacuums of sound.
‘You’ve been avoiding me, Gabriel. You don’t want to have this conversation.’
‘No, Brenna, I don’t.’ Dad slammed a pan down hard onto the steel drainer, making my phone buzz. ‘I’m sorry.’ He took an audible breath. ‘I’ll try.’
Mum said, ‘Griff’s never got over it, you know.’
With my phone pressed hard to my ear, I swung one leg over the low wall and then, more awkwardly, the other. Glancing up at the neighbours’ windows, I could see no movement, no lights, and their car wasn’t in its drive. Wouldn’t be the first time I’d taken a shortcut through their garden, anyway, since Griff and I were always forgetting our front door keys. The phone at my ear crackled with tension, and holding my breath I pressed myself through the overgrown laurel arch and down the slabbed path past the plank fence that bordered our garden. Where the fence ended, an overgrown laburnum drooped across the slabs. Ducking beneath its poisonous yellow fronds, I peered down our own garden and through the kitchen window, just ten metres away. This was serious eavesdropping, I thought. I shouldn’t do this. I should hang up now.
‘I’m worried for Griffin, I really am. You need to talk to him, Gabriel.’
I could see them through the kitchen window. Their eyes weren’t connecting like they always did; they were actively avoiding one another’s gaze and touch. It was like looking at impostors. Alien bodysnatchers.
‘Brenna,’ said Dad. ‘I’ve tried to talk to him. He’s practically a man. He’s dealt with it in his own way. I can’t make him open up to me.’
‘He wasn’t a man when it happened.’ Mum’s voice had a break in it but her pitch had risen. I could hear her fine. ‘I don’t care how old he is. He’s not over it.’
‘You know why he’s not over it,’ said Dad. ‘Because of us. We let a sick little abuser get off scot-free. We let Griff down. Of course he despises us, we’re cowards. Especially me.’
‘You’re a realist,’ she snapped.
‘Oh, hardly,’ said Dad. There was terrible bitter cynicism in his voice. I couldn’t see his eyes properly but I knew they wouldn’t be dancing. My stomach tightened and flipped.
‘More than you let on,’ said Mum.
‘And that’s one you’re never to repeat in public.’
Mum was drying the lasagne dish over and over again, turning it and turning it. ‘He’d have got away with it anyway. He’d have got away with it and we’d have been vilified, our whole family dragged through the mud, and you out of a job at the end of it. Me too, probably. We’d be in the gutter. You know how long Todd’s reach is!’
My head was so light I was afraid I was going to fall face-first into the nettles under the laburnum. I nearly did when Dad said, ‘Where’s Cass? Keep your voice down.’
‘It’s okay, she went out.’
‘Does she know? Do you think she knows?’
‘No. Let’s keep it that way.’ Mum massaged her temples with her thumb and forefinger.
Dad rubbed his soapy fist hard across his forehead. It was a gesture echoing hers, and that was reassuring in a small way, as if they couldn’t help being reflections of each other, as if that was one thing that couldn’t change.
‘I hate this. I hate all these damn secrets. What’s best for your children is not to know, never to know, never to be told. How is that right?’
‘It’s not right. It’s necessary. What your children don’t know about you, they can’t let slip.’ Mum said in a low voice, so I could only just make it out, ‘You told me what he said.’
‘Oh, sure.’ Dad’s voice was unbelievably bitter. ‘I’m a much-loved holy man, Gabriel. Who knows you, besides whores and drunks and atheists? Mother Baxter is my friend, she depends on me. She’ll never let anything happen to me. Who’ll protect you, Gabriel? Word for word, Brenna. I remember it word for word. You don’t have to shove it down my throat.’
‘That’s why I should never have to remind you! Okay? We’ll paper over the cracks, Gabriel. We’ve done it for four years, we can go on doing it. I know it’s not ideal...’
‘It’s a bloody sin, Brenna!’
‘It’s the best we can do for our family. All right?’
‘Yeah.’ Dad drew his soapy hand down his face. ‘Yeah, I know.’
Mum flicked a bit of lather off his nose. ‘I know you know. You’re a good man, Gabriel. You’re doing your best.’
‘I’m not, Brenna.’ He gave a laugh that was awfully like a sob. ‘I wish I was more like your sister. She’s got a bit of spirit.’
‘Spirit? Abby’s lucky she doesn’t get stoned in the street, the way she goes on.’
They exchanged a fond look and a dry awkward giggle, and I thought it was over. My thumb was hovering over the disconnect button, my pulse beating so hard in my throat it was almost choking me, when Dad spoke again.
‘What if,’ he said, and paused to swallow. ‘What if Todd isn’t coming back?’
‘What?’
Dad draped a wet cloth over the tap, gripping the ends of it and leaning on it like it was holding him up. ‘Maybe Todd isn’t coming back, Brenna. Maybe he’s in the river.’
‘Don’t get your hopes up.’
If it was a joke, neither of them laughed. Mum had stopped drying; she just stood there twisting the towel in her fingers. The gardens were on a slope and I was looking down over a raised drystone-walled bed into the kitchen, so I could see that the draining rack was empty.
‘Gabriel?’ Mum’s voice was shaky and low. ‘Do you know something about this?’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ But Dad had turned and was looking into her eyes.
‘I...’ Mum averted her gaze from his cool steady one. ‘Nothing. I worry, that’s all.’
‘Well, don’t worry,’ said Dad. ‘Don’t waste so much of your life worrying. I’ll even stand up there tonight and pray for Todd. Okay? I might even mean it. Because maybe he is in that river, Brenna. And if he is, there really is a God.’
Dad’s voice was expressionless. But his hands were back in the bowl and he was scrubbing at them, lathering the backs of them and rubbing Fairy Liquid under his fingernails. He kept doing it as I backed out of the laburnum branches, and ducked behind the fence, my heart slamming so hard against my ribs I was afraid they’d hear it.
It was pure bad luck that I had Macbeth in my fanciful head, because that was what it made me think of straight away, Lady Macbeth going Out Damned Spot! And if I hadn’t, if I hadn’t been so prone to wild speculation, I might not have done what I did.
You see, Dad says I have an overactive imagination. Dad says my mind takes me off on irrational tangents and leads me to deductions with no basis in reality. My father says a lot of things about me that I think are pretty rich coming from him, since I’m not the one who believes in a guy in the sky marking us all for Merit, Effort and General Comprehension.
I’m telling you this so you’ll understand why I moved the Bishop’s body.
3: Fugue
Cass doesn’t know. Cass doesn’t know.
But I ought to know. Perhaps I did know. If something so terrible had happened to Griff, I couldn’t not know. Trouble was, I had a notion that none of this was a big surprise, that somewhere in my head I’d always known this dreadful thing.
But if it was in my head, it must be lost. Things got lost in my head very easily.
This was something to do with the fractured skull, I suppose, and I can tell you it’s a very good reason for looking where you’re going and not playing the fool around fast-moving traffic. My brain was absolutely fine most of the time, but at other times my inner chaos would catch up with me, and I’d have to stand very still and blank out the world for a bit. When my head was confused, I had to wait quietly till things came together and I understood where and who I was. It drove my teachers mad, but they could hardly tell me off, and it never lasted too long. If I blanked everything, the clamour in my
head would eventually settle and subside. I could tuck it up beneath the covers, soothe it to sleep and forget about it, and I’d be just fine again, till the next time. Till the images and voices built to an incomprehensible jumble once more, and I’d have to calm them down all over again.
Voices in your head: that’s not good. It’s never good. I knew this, and I knew I had to keep them quiet. And if I couldn’t keep them quiet, I must at least keep quiet about them.
So maybe that’s where Griff’s tragedy was, lost in that niggling cacophony, but I was too tired and afraid to filter it out and listen properly.
4: Flotsam
The first corpse I met that day was the rabbit. It was a real Disney character, its eyes almost bigger than its head, but the back half wasn’t so cute, splayed flat and useless by the roadside a mile out of town. I suppose a car broke its spine.
I was on my way to meet Ming. I recoiled from the idea of standing him up, and besides, I’d lost the taste for Macbeth altogether. To hell with Cruella, I decided: I’ll take the detention.
As I walked past the rabbit, I noticed its eyes weren’t dead yet, but I tried to pretend they were, because I didn’t want to deal with this. It was looking at me warily, as if to say it was fine, thanks very much, and perfectly happy with the situation. It might have got away with it if its velvet ear hadn’t twitched.
Rocks are like policemen: only around when you don’t need one. It took me forever to find a big enough stick, which was rough on the rabbit, because it knew perfectly well what I was up to. I hesitated, because it was adorable, but half-shut my eyes and hit it twice on the neck, then once more for luck. I opened my eyes, feeling a complete heel, and saw its hind leg jerk skywards, then sink gracefully back to the ground. When I poked it with the stick its head lolled loose on its fragile neck. There was blood trickling from its ear that was a simply beautiful colour: jewel-red, sparkling so vividly against the tarmac you’d think the rabbit’s life had drained out of its eyes onto the road. I touched its unblinking eyeball with the tip of a finger, then snatched it away; it was dead now, all right. I shivered, and found myself walking faster after that, taking the forest track that led deep into the damp spidery pinewood.
I was still a bit shaken when I found Ming, who was sitting on a log reading a primer on Macbeth. He didn’t look up, but thrust the book at me with a sigh.
‘Cass, I don’t know why I bother,’ he said. ‘I won’t be back in time for the exams. Anyway, this guy talks rubbish.’
Typical Ming. Always thought he knew better than the experts, which was probably one reason he’d been suspended from school. The irritating thing was, he usually did know better. He read a lot, did Ming, probably because he was suspended so often. It wasn’t entirely his fault: it was just that he was always sticking up for his mad secularist parents and getting into fights with the alpha-male thugs in the Scripture Corps (who never got suspended).
My hip ached from the long walk, so I sat down on the log beside him. This was our favourite log, deep in the ghost wood. The alleged haunting was only part of the reason nobody ever came here – well, nobody but me and Griff and Ming. The wood was overgrown and gloomy, the ground steep and treacherous, and we loved it. There was privacy here, secrecy even, and that was more precious than ever these days. And while my mother wasn’t our biggest worry, it helped that she was unlikely to spot us here. Mum didn’t disapprove of Ming, exactly, but she was a little bit Jane Austen about unsuitable matches that might spoil my life chances.
She needn’t have worried. Ming had great bone structure behind his spots and his overlong dark blond hair, and one day he was going to be stunning, but not yet. That didn’t stop him believing he was God’s gift to me.
‘So, hi gorgeous,’ he said, with a killer smile.
I gave him what I hoped was a withering look. ‘I’ll get back to you when I’m desperate.’
‘Did you hear about the Mad Mullah?’
‘Ming,’ I said, and then I laughed. ‘Yeah. Griff reckons it’s a publicity stunt.’
‘Yeah?’ Ming looked at me quite intently, his greenish eyes shiveringly bright.
‘Uh-huh. Me, I think he’s in the river.’
‘I think you’re probably right.’ He stood up and dusted off the seat of his jeans. He had a new cut below his left eye, scabbed over but nasty-looking, and scratches on his cheek. The bruise from his jaw to his temple was ugly and swollen.
‘You’ve been fighting again,’ I said.
‘Jeremiah Maclaren, the big pussy. He’s sorry now. And they can’t suspend me twice.’
I frowned. ‘Are you okay?’
‘More okay than him,’ said Ming smugly.
I watched him watching me. There were times I was really afraid for Ming. It wasn’t as if he was starting from pole position in life, being an infidel and everything. He’d tried to be very politically correct when his parents’ land was confiscated and given to crofters of the Faithful, he’d been quite supportive, but that changed when the poor stunned crofters were declared economic failures, their government loan called in, and the land handed over to Ma Baxter’s stepbrother’s second cousin.
None of that ancient history ought to make him look quite so depressed right this minute. I hated to see him sad, so I gave him my best smile.
‘So, gorgeous,’ I said. ‘Want to go look at the river?’
• • •
Arachnophobia is a misnomer. There is nothing irrational about a fear of spiders, any more than a fear of snakes or scorpions. Some spiders can kill you. So there.
Not these ones, admittedly, but it was always Ming’s job to walk in front. That way, if he walked between two booby-trapped trees, he hit the webs first, and the surprised spiders ended up on his face and not mine. They were a pretty yellow and brown and they just hung there, and I didn’t mind them as much as the leggy black household brutes, but I didn’t want them on my face. Fortunately Ming had never minded being my fall guy.
In the space between two pines, he brushed his palm across his face and flicked his fingers. ‘So how’s that brother of yours?’
I dodged the spider’s trajectory, and took a second to think. ‘Fine.’
I doubted that now, but anyway, how would I know how my brother was? I didn’t get much more from Griff these days than the odd contemptuous stare. Till now I’d reckoned it was one of those growing-up-and-apart things, that his old self must be in there still, like some secret identity. That one day he’d get over being Dark Griff and go back to just being Griffin.
‘You’d know better than me,’ I added. ‘You see more of him than I do.’
‘He wants to watch himself,’ said Ming. ‘The Scripture Corps have got it in for him.’
‘Look who’s talking. You just watch yourself too.’
Ming was scrambling down a flat mossy rock, but though it was a tricky manoeuvre he turned and gave me a dazzling smile. It made my insides clench, which did nothing but make me irrationally cross. Distracted, I slipped and banged my hip hard on the boulder. Ming grabbed first one hand and then the other, and held me until I finished sliding down on my rear end.
I stood up and shook him off. My hip hurt like billy-oh, being the one that took most of the impact of the car, so I rubbed it hard with the palm of my hand while I tried not to cry. I’m not the crying type but really, it hurt that much. So there I was, sore and humiliated, and I was getting angrier with Ming by the second. I hated that look he was giving me as he bit his lip, concerned and affectionate and a little penitent too.
‘Are you okay? Sorry, Cass, that was my fault.’
‘Don’t be so flaming vain,’ I snapped. ‘How would it be your fault?’
He put up his hands, palms outwards, and took a step back. ‘Whoo!’ He was grinning.
A blush stung my cheeks. I was always overreacting around Ming, then feeling stupid about it, but I didn’t want to fall out with him. ‘Okay.’ I grinned back. ‘Sorry.’
‘So you won’t slap me if I
hold your hand, then?’
I gave him a look. ‘Why would you want to?’
‘Jeez.’ He rolled his eyes and took my hand anyway. ‘To stop you falling on your backside? There’s a steep bit coming up.’
In fact I quite liked the feeling of my hand in his. It gave me a safer feeling as we slip-slid together down the muddy rabbit-path, Ming grabbing for branches when he nearly fell himself. I was strangely reluctant to let go of him and hold onto branches myself, which must have made it even more precarious for him, but he didn’t let go either, not even when we were safely on the track. He just turned to me and smiled like he’d made it through a dreaded exam.
He lifted my hand and looked at it. ‘Ever ask yourself why you’re so touchy?’
I snatched it away. ‘I’m not touchy. I just don’t like being pawed.’
His anger flared. ‘Who’s pawing you?’
‘I didn’t say you were. Oh, sorry. Sorry.’ I raised my eyes heavenwards. ‘Who’s touchy now? I didn’t mean it, okay?’
‘Yeah? Prove it.’ He stepped way too close and put his palm against my face like he was holding it still, except his touch was tentative. And then he kissed me right on the mouth.
My hand was splayed against his chest like I was shoving him away, except that to my surprise I wasn’t shoving. From limited experience I could say he was a good kisser; at least, he wasn’t asking for a jab in the solar plexus like the only other boy who’d ever got to me past the Scripture Corps Morality Patrol (Motto: ‘Save Yourself: Save Your Soul’).
If I had a soul, it had pretty much had it at that point. No question of shoving yet, that was for sure. Instead I could feel my fingers curling round a fistful of Ming’s shirt as if I was actually trying to reel him in a bit closer. Then he ran his hand down the small of my back onto my backside and pulled me gently against him.
I swear, I was so shocked I nearly bit his tongue off. I yelped and he pulled back straight away, but he wasn’t in the least bit fazed. He kept hold of my hand and turned away to look coolly over the lip of the slope that fell away from the track. ‘Look at that,’ he said, with nothing but mild interest.
Bad Faith Page 3