‘It wasn’t your fault.’ I love you, I thought.
‘I need to thank your dad’s pal. For getting me in to see a doctor.’ He rubbed a tooth ruefully with his free hand. ‘And a dentist.’
When anyone mentioned Wilfred all I could think of was what he said to Dad that day as he gripped his arms, shaking him to calm him down. You’ll get it back, Gabriel. You will get it back. Wilf had muttered the words quickly in the empty echoing alleyway, as if afraid the church building itself would overhear. He won’t leave you forever. I know He won’t.
Even in the hot sun, I shivered at the memory. Ming’s arm tightened around me.
‘I don’t think we’ve heard the end of it,’ I said. ‘Cause of Rose. That’s my fault.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry.’
‘Uh-huh.’ I love you.
‘It’ll be okay,’ he lied. He smiled slightly. ‘This makes up for your birthday.’
‘Mm?’
‘We didn’t get to swim on your birthday. Because of the floods.’
‘Oh. That’s right, we didn’t.’ We always swam here on my birthday, every year. It was always just warm enough by the middle of May, or it was if you were a Pirate Queen with something to prove to your brother and your male best friend about female equality.
‘Remember last year?’ Ming’s eyes were shut but he was grinning. ‘Damn, that was cold. And the time before that? You were turning blue but you wouldn’t come out ’cause Griff had hidden your clothes.’
‘Yeah! The pig!’ I love you.
‘D’you remember when you were eleven? And Griff found that frog and...’
‘No,’ I said. My eyes flickered open and my smile faded. I frowned. ‘No, I don’t remember that.’
He stared up into the pine branches. As they shifted against the dazzle of light, they made shadow patterns across his eyes so that I couldn’t quite read them. ‘Maybe it wasn’t that year.’
‘I don’t remember the frog. At all.’
‘Right.’ His arm tightened again, his fingers squeezed my arm and his mouth twisted into a half-smile. ‘I wouldn’t remember it, if I was you. Wipe the whole thing. Oh, the trauma!’
I giggled. ‘Okay. Take your word for it.’
He was silent for a while. At last he said drowsily, ‘You been sleeping?’
‘No,’ I murmured.
‘Me either. Go to sleep now, then.’
I do love you. I snuggled closer into his naked body, letting his warmth seep into me along with the sunlight. ‘Too chivalrous, you.’
‘M-hm.’ His eyelids drooped heavily. ‘Not superhuman, though. Go to sleep.’
He didn’t have to tell me three times. I went to sleep.
• • •
We woke shivering, clutched tightly against each other in an unconscious search for shared warmth. No time to revel in it, though. Pushing me away, Ming grabbed up his watch and peered at it, and swore; I leaped to my feet and started snatching his clothes from the branches and tossing them to him, then seized my own. We dressed without looking at each other, our backs decorously turned, which would have struck me as funny if I hadn’t been in a blue panic.
The sun had disappeared, and there was a grey chill to the breeze. Big droplets of rain spattered onto our skin.
That’s the end.
The thought came to me out of nowhere, and made me shudder. The end of what? Summer, innocence, my childhood? Not me and Ming. Please God, not me and Ming.
‘Come on.’ He took my hand, and I could feel the warmth of his blood. He gave me a knowing grin. ‘If you promise to try and run, I promise I’ll take the spiders.’
10: It Runs in the Family
I’d expected Mum to confront me in the hall, because I’d missed supper by hours and she took that extremely seriously (What do you kids think, I cook this stuff for myself?), but there was no sign of her or anyone else. My clothes were drenched again, but with rain, not sweat. Ming needn’t have bothered waiting till his were dry; when he left me he was already soaked through, and he had another couple of miles to walk.
I was glad he had waited, though. I think he was, too.
In the house, the ominous silence was almost tangible, so that the only sound finally filtering through to my ears was like something rubbing and squeaking against the silence itself. It took me a moment to realise it was someone wielding a J-cloth in the downstairs bathroom. Well, that explained the unfamiliarity. Mum hated cleaning the bath.
The sound stopped, and it didn’t restart. I pushed open the door. Mum was kneeling on the floor beside the tub, her back to me, but she stiffened and straightened slightly as she felt my presence. The bathroom reeked of cleaner, lemony and chemical, as if she’d used a whole bottle of the stuff. She drew a hand down her face, then stared at her rubber glove as if its texture on her skin was a shock, as if she’d just remembered where she was and what she was doing.
‘Cass,’ she said, without looking round. ‘Where have you been?’
‘A walk,’ I mumbled.
‘I was worried.’ It sounded automatic. Mum didn’t sound all that worried, just distracted, and despite chafing at all her recent fussing, I could almost feel offended. Now that I thought about it, there was no smell of cooking in the place. What, hadn’t I even missed supper, then?
Even when I edged to her side, she only stared into the bath. I glanced over her shoulder. Oh, okay. A big black spider, squatting at the bottom of the tub just where it curved upwards. She’d cleaned all around it, though she’d given it a wide berth: I could see the streaks. Lying close to the spider was a plastic tumbler, right where Mum had dropped it, presumably having failed to catch the brute first time.
Amazing, isn’t it? The things that run in families.
‘Can you not just kill it?’ I said.
Mum didn’t dismiss the suggestion out of hand. Briefly she glanced up at me, her eyes troubled, then watched the monster, which didn’t look remotely nervous. Sometimes they did, like they knew what was coming, but not this one. It was glaring at us with eyes that were out on stalks, and if it could have put its hands on its eight little hips it would have. Mum’s fingers trembled as she snatched up the tumbler. Holding it on its side, she let it hover briefly over the spider, but shut her eyes as she slammed it down. Hopeless. Missed by a mile, but at least the thing had now scuttled into the middle of the bath, and was a decent target.
Feeling sorry for Mum, and not remotely sorry for the spider, I picked up Dad’s paperback that was sitting beside the loo, and dropped it from a height. The invertebrate crunch was a minuscule echo of Rose Parsons’s jaw. Bullseye.
We both watched the book for an edgy minute, as if eight tiny arms were going to prise it off and chuck it back at us, like a cartoon spider. At last I took the cover between thumb and forefinger and picked it up, turning it so we could see. Splat. For the first time I noticed what Dad had been reading: James Patterson, Along Came A Spider. I couldn’t help giggling.
‘What could be more appropriate?’ I said.
‘Charlotte’s Web?’ Mum laughed too, a little breathily.
I was just relieved to see her smile. ‘I was never keen on that book.’
‘I wonder why?’ Mum tilted an ironic eyebrow at me. ‘Where were you, Cass?’
‘I told you. A walk.’
She paused for a heartbeat. ‘Did you see Ming?’
I hesitated too. But I didn’t want to lie to her. I scuffed the bathmat with my toe. ‘Yeah.’
She didn’t react like I thought she would. All she said, dully, was, ‘Be careful, love.’ Then she leaned on the bath, rested her folded arms on the edge of it and pressed her forehead to her arms with a sigh that made her whole body sag.
‘Mum,’ I whispered. ‘What’s wrong?’
She turned her head sideways but she didn’t have the energy to get it off her arms. Her eyes met mine, and I thought for a scary moment there were tears in them.
‘They found a body, Cass.’
&nb
sp; • • •
About five light years later, I found my voice.
‘They can’t have!’ I yelled.
I suppose Mum had every reason to be stunned. She lifted her head from her arms and stared at me. ‘What?’
‘They can’t have,’ I moaned. ‘No. They didn’t have time!’
Mum got to her feet, stooping because she was still holding the edge of the bath. My Mum, my beautiful laughing relatively-young Mum, looked for a terrible two seconds like a broken old woman. Then she stood up properly.
‘What are you talking about?’ There was bewilderment in her face, and a dawning suspicion. Mum was getting her composure back, along with whatever else had deserted her this afternoon. ‘What’s the matter with you, Cassandra?’
Ah. Clearly this required the fastest regrouping I’ve ever achieved in my big-mouthed life. Wide-eyed, I stared back at her, and tried not to eat my entire lower lip.
‘Angels and Martyrs. Isn’t that what you’re on about? Did they find Theresa’s body under the patio?’ I swallowed hard, wondering if I was pulling this off. It didn’t feel like it, so I gave a hearty little laugh to reinforce my act. ‘Muum! I didn’t know you were a daytime TV junkie!’
She did not look convinced, but clearly there was too much on her mind already.
‘It’s not that, Cass.’ She twisted her J-cloth between her fists, her eyes red and glistening.
‘What, then?’
‘It’s Holy Joe. Holy Joe.’
‘What?’
She’d lost me. For a bewildered instant I didn’t even know who she meant: it was so outrageously out of context, and he belonged in lurid bargain paperbacks in tourist shops, and the old psycho was before my time anyway. I shook myself, sighed in exasperation. He was gone, he hadn’t killed anyone in twenty years, they couldn’t have found another body, and even if they had they’d never admit it, they’d cover it up and sneak him back into whatever lunatic asylum he’d escaped from. What did Holy Joe have to do with anything, besides a tenuous, delicious family connection that used to get me all kinds of oohs and aahs in the playground?
The J-cloth ripped in two pieces, one in each of Mum’s hands. Now she was entirely immobile. The house was so silent you could have cut the air with a blunt knife, but I couldn’t hear her breathing. After dragging seconds, she broke the stillness with a desperate little gasp.
‘They found Holy Joe, Cass. Aunt Abby’s been arrested.’
And then my mother burst into tears.
11: Surfacing
What with Dad having been at the police station all day with Wilfred, trying futilely to get some kind of access to Abby, I thought the house was empty apart from me and Mum. Outside, the relentless wetting drizzle had turned into a rainstorm, battering against the window panes and hissing and dripping eerily down the unlit chimneys. I suppose that’s why I didn’t hear the sound effects of Griff’s PlayStation, but I did smell the cigarette smoke as I passed his room.
Hesitantly, I knocked. No reply, not even an injunction to piss off. I took his reticence as an invitation. My shock was beginning to turn into comforting anger, even at Mum, who couldn’t explain herself coherently, and who had finally shut herself into the bathroom and me out of it. I shoved open Griff’s door with my foot.
He knew I was there, but he didn’t say a word, his thumbs prodding manically at his console. The atmosphere of stale smoke and bitterness made me faintly nauseous. Griff’s window was open and rain gusted in, steadily dampening the magazines and papers on his desk, but he wasn’t taking any notice, and it was having no effect on the tarry miasma. Just beside his right hand a cigarette smouldered in an ashtray, but God knew when he last took a drag on it, because there were two inches of frail ash still attached to the filter. His bony shoulders were hunched and as I stood behind him I had an impulse to put my hands on them and squeeze them, comfortingly. That was one impulse I resisted.
His screen flashed a message at both of us. QUIT GAME?
‘Griff, what’s happening?’
He shifted in his seat and began again.
‘All I want,’ I said, ‘is somebody to tell me what’s going on.’ I added bitterly, ‘For once.’
His shoulders moved. It might have been a shrug. We stood in silence till he got killed again, and it didn’t take long. He was rubbish at these things. QUIT GAME?
‘What’s going on?’ I said.
RESUME.
‘Why’s Abby been arrested?’
A plastic-faced CGI priest turned his crucifix on Griff.
QUIT GAME?
‘Griff – ’
He spun his chair and screamed at me. ‘I don’t know! Can’t you see I sometimes don’t know any more than you do?’
‘Sometimes,’ I echoed dully.
‘Yeah! Sometimes! I don’t know what’s going on, okay? I’m in the dark here! You think Mum’s snapped out of her funk long enough to tell me? They’re coming to question her later, did you know that? The bloody police are going to know the story long before we do.’
I took a step back, horrified. Tears were burning at the corners of his eyes and now one leaked down his cheek. Griff rubbed his hands fiercely across his face. ‘This is Todd’s fault, that’s all I know. None of this would have happened if it hadn’t been for him. We’d be normal. Well, he’s dead and I’m glad.’
Silence fell, except for a howling gust of rain against the window. Griff blinked, glanced at it, then turned and slammed the sash down, shutting out rain and wind and the outside world. The room seemed even more oppressive now. I wanted to say, How do you know he’s dead? But where would that take us? What would be the point?
‘He must be dead,’ Griff mumbled. ‘He’d have come back by now.’
The screen behind him blinked insistently. QUIT GAME? He must have caught sight of it, or its reflection, because with an air of unbearable irritation he turned and yanked out the lead, and the screen went blank.
‘That’s not good for it,’ I said, stupidly.
‘I know, I know.’
I took a deep breath that sounded like a gasp. ‘So do I,’ I blurted.
His forehead creased with confusion. ‘What?’ he said. ‘What d’you know? About Abby?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Not Abby. Todd. I know about Bishop Todd.’
I stared at Griff’s feet. Guilt churned in my stomach, but this was my business, it was. I’d been in the vestry that day. I’d seen what happened. I needed to tug the memory out of the jumble in my head and take a good look at it, though I didn’t want to. I’d seen it once and I didn’t want to see it again. What would I do if I saw such a thing?
Griff had said absolutely nothing. When I looked up the tips of his ears had gone red.
‘You don’t know anything,’ he said at last.
‘I do.’
‘No. No, you don’t.’ There was horror in his face.
‘I don’t mean about him disappearing. It’s not that I...’ I hesitated, my eyes narrowing. ‘Do you know anything about that?’
There, I’d asked, and I felt like a small piece of river scum, possibly scum from a rotting corpse. Griff didn’t take his eyes off me but he shook his head slowly.
It wasn’t the most convincing denial I’d ever seen but for me, it would do. ‘Right.’
He licked his lips nervously. ‘What d’you think you know?’
Another deep breath. ‘You and Todd. That’s what I know. What happened between you and Todd.’
He gave a small gasping laugh. ‘You don’t know anything,’ he repeated, and laughed again. This time I could hear its desperate edge.
‘I saw it,’ I said. ‘I saw what he did!’
‘No. Cass. No, no, no.’
‘You don’t have to lie to me!’ I screamed, enraged beyond tact. ‘Everybody else does but you don’t have to!’ I wanted to hit him, and I must have tried, because suddenly his arm came up, and with shock in his eyes he deflected my fist and caught hold of my wrist. ‘I know what he did, so don
’t keep shutting me out. It wasn’t your fault!’
If Griff was not entirely white, he was certainly Hint of Magnolia. Lordy, even his ears had paled.
‘Why are you ashamed, Griff? There’s nothing to be ashamed of!’ I knew I was going too far now but I was terrified of what he was going to say when I finally shut up, so I had to keep babbling on. ‘It was his fault! He’s the one who did wrong. He abused you!’
Oh, shit.
We just stood there. My wrist was still in Griff’s hand, my knuckles white from being clenched so tightly, but suddenly he let it go as if I’d burned his fingers. For a horrible moment I thought he was going to hit me back. Then I saw it: Secret Identity Griff looking out through Dark Griff’s eyes. And now I was scared. Now I really was.
‘What did I do?’ I shouted.
‘You didn’t... you didn’t...’
‘I know what he did to you, Griff. What have I done to him?’
Griff touched my cheek with his fingertips. ‘Cassie,’ he said in a shaky voice.
He was going to tell me then, I knew it. So I jerked away from him and ran out, slamming the door so hard it shook in its frame. I’d thought I wanted to know; now I was terrified he might tell me. I ran till I’d put as much distance between me and my brother as my small part of Planet Earth would afford.
12: Waking
I wandered in a daze. I knew where I was going but I didn’t care how long I took to get there, because my mind needed some filing work. The shaken-Coke-can feeling in my head hadn’t left with my DNA revelation. I needed to defragment my brain.
Griff was upset. That wasn’t entirely my fault, I told myself, sick with remorse. I couldn’t have been any clumsier, the way I’d spilt his horrible secret, but it wasn’t just that. His misery was about Abby, too. Griff adored Abby. But he could hardly blame Todd for her arrest, not if it was something to do with Holy Joe. Bishop Todd had nothing to do with some bogeyman from the Dark Ages.
So what did Abby have to do with him, then?
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