“And here, drumroll…” Josh says, drawing another house with a door and two windows, “is where you were in the foster home with Phil and Sue. And me. Where’s your current school?” He hands me the pen. “And anywhere else you were in a foster home.”
I add more letters.
Dad’s talks are circling the area.
“Ever go on a holiday? Memorable day trips?” asks Josh.
I add some ‘H’s to places in South Devon and the Welsh coast. All have red dots already from Dad’s talks.
“Your mum’s family?”
“Her parents died when I was just a baby. I don’t remember them at all.”
“Where did they live? If you were going to go back to see their old house, their graves – where would you go?”
“It was in South Wales, near the sea. Somewhere beginning with a double L. That’s all I can remember. I know that doesn’t narrow it down much in Wales.”
“By the magic of red dots, I’m betting it was here.” Josh taps at a lone red mark. “Kind of a small place for your dad to bother with.”
Josh’s enthusiasm at what he’s revealing is giving way to my slow sense of dread.
“All we have to do is join the dots, so to speak,” he says. “Is he just visiting places where he knows he’ll have an audience?”
“No,” I say quietly. “You’re right. He’s systematically going to places I have a connection with.” The red dots leap out at me from the map. “He’s trying to flush me out.”
“OK. You win. Your dad is a psycho,” says Josh. “Though some people could see it as a loving father leaving no stone unturned to find his estranged daughter.”
“There are places on there he didn’t know about. My current school, Phil and Sue’s…”
Josh shrugs. “Maybe he’s just lucky with those happening to be in the area you’ve already been associated with.”
“He knows now that I was under Somerset Social Services. He sent them a letter. Mum had always been deliberately vague about his details when she spoke to them.”
“Mind you,” says Josh. “Why did he add in the talk we went to? Was your only visit to Northumberland that trip when you were twelve?”
“Yes. So that country pub Mum and I went to can’t be too far from the location of that talk and Mo’s house. And Dad went from there to Centurion House on his day trip.”
“Your dad is thorough. Doing a talk up here because of a short trip, five years ago.”
“Obsessive, not thorough.”
“And he knows there are interested preppers up here,” he says. “We saw them there, selling the kits, signing people up for info.”
“This means going to Centurion House could be riskier than I thought,” I say. “We’d have to be really careful approaching it. Check no one is there.”
I haven’t told Josh that it’s not just about the cash and a bug-out place to use. If there’s the slightest chance that Dad’s records – minutely detailed stupid, stupid records – are there, it’s worth it. It could be a way, the only way, to get him out of my life forever. That footage could be my insurance policy.
I nudge Josh. “So are you still coming to help me find my needle in a haystack?”
Josh sighs again and takes down the map. “Lucky for you, terrible life choices are another of my specialities. Anyway, we might see a red squirrel up there in the forests. They’re protected. I need to come to stop you turning one into a kebab.”
When he moved us to the farm, Dad could do so much more than he had at our old conventional house. He could go all-out survivalist. We called it a farm, but it was really a tin-pot smallholding, too remote and ugly for the average hobby farmer who wanted to keep alpacas. The nearest shop was fifteen long miles away, and it was rubbish. Even I could see this was not prime agricultural land, going by the weeds poking out from the stony fields. It was bleak, plagued by miserable weather. The whole area was only fit for grazing sheep.
But Dad wanted a place where we could dig in and be self-sufficient. Somewhere we could survive after any emergency for months or even years. Hide and thrive. It had to be off the beaten track, well above sea level, away from centres of population that might make demands on it. Away from the collective that he was rapidly falling out with, thanks to people getting hacked off with his self-appointed dictatorship.
Dad got another pile of money from Grandma. Maybe she thought he’d use it to visit her. Spend it on her granddaughter’s education. Or well-being.
Or maybe she hoped it would keep him away.
The landlord was happy to leave us alone and do everything off the books. He was obviously delighted to get some value out of an unwanted place that no other family would pick. He pocketed the rent Dad handed over before we could change our minds. He sped off in an ancient Land Rover, kicking up dirt on the track, with my idiot father thinking that he’d got the better deal. Dad dusted off the broken wooden sign that said: ‘EDEN FARM’ and fixed it up.
Eden! Dad took it as a sign that we’d come to the right place to build a new way of living. Paradise. Mum took it as a sign that she couldn’t cope with anything any longer. I took it as a sign that the universe was having a good laugh at my expense.
Eden Farm wasn’t the preppers’ paradise Dad had billed it as. It was back-breaking work to plant crops in the ripped polytunnel. We were too late in the season. It was too dry. The seeds wouldn’t germinate. The soil was poor. The sloping field faced the wrong way. We had no experience of farming. There were only two of us to work. Mum had let us down. There were a hundred different things for him to rant about and blame.
We set up the usual supplies store, unpacking our previous one from his flatbed van. Rule: Everything has its place. Cans and jars should face forwards and be exactly one centimetre apart. The outbuilding he’d earmarked was full of leaks and rats. I added washing off rat wee and droppings from jars and cans with nibbled labels to my daily list. I hated those rats.
Without the help of the collective, we didn’t have the same access to resources and discounts and shared provisions. Grandma’s money was quickly evaporating even though we had nothing of any use to show for it.
Even the local wildlife knew we were amateurs. A fox took half our chickens in broad daylight. Dad fired his shotgun but by the time he’d gone and got it, the damage was done. He caught the fox on its back leg as it fled, leaving a disgusting trail of blood, guts and feathers behind.
One day he announced that we’d grow peaches.
“I like a fresh peach for breakfast, baby girl.”
We had tinned peaches lined up, one centimetre apart, facing forwards, already in the store. We were on the hillside, the Welsh hillside, average July temperature sixteen degrees.
“Aren’t they for hot countries. Can you even grow them here? Are they trees or bushes?”
“Trees!” he snapped. “We’ll plant a mini-orchard of peach trees.”
That sounded expensive, long-term and futile. The perfect project for Dad. Like so many things in my life, this wasn’t about peaches. It was about obedience, the Rules. It was him telling me I’d still be here next harvest, picking at dead fruit trees.
Something about the stupid peaches made me cry. I knew it was a stupid idea. He knew it was a stupid idea, deep down.
And yet, he said it.
Another test where I must give the right answer, repeat the correct lines from the script, be obedient, compliant.
Believe in something stupid.
So I nodded. I added peach trees to the list of pointless, impossible tasks and muttered, “Great idea, Dad,” while he smiled at me and I tried to be accepting and to believe, for an easier life.
On the outside at least.
Inside was another matter.
By one of those strange laws of the cosmos, just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse… Surprise! They did. Dad and I were foraging for mushrooms one day, working in the steep woods towards the edge of our land. We stumbled across an entrance to a
cave, overgrown and entangled with brambles. We must have walked past it hundreds of times before. He ignored the broken ‘Danger! Keep Out!’ sign swinging on one screw from the iron gate, and the stink of fox poo and dank earth, and forced his way in. I waited outside but he was soon back for me, flushed and excited, pulling me in to explore, using his torch as we went deeper.
The cave was a disused store. Bricks and timbers had been used to reinforce the three rooms or chambers that grew darker and smaller as you got further from the entrance. There had been gold mines not too far away in Roman times; maybe someone had tried their luck here, or hollowed out a limestone cave to quarry the rock. A heap of ashes and scorched walls showed someone had used it in the last few years – maybe kids from the farm long ago. Though I couldn’t imagine a worse place to hang out.
Damp, dark, enclosed.
That place was all my worst nightmares rolled into one.
“It’s perfect,” said Dad. “Perfect.”
That was his new project. Worse than the peaches. He didn’t want our new find as another storeroom. He wanted it as a bunker. A bunker in the bowels of the earth that we could retreat to if the shit hit the fan.
“We’ve found our own secure escape spot. Just waiting for us here. Like a sign. From the universe.”
I was sick of signs, wherever they were from.
His eyes gleamed and he immediately set about sorting it and preparing, making detailed plans in his spidery writing. Sketching out how it would work. He dragged out the rusted set of gates, which he could paint, rehang and padlock.
He just needed a trusted workforce to clean it up.
That turned out to be me.
He made me swear never to tell another living soul about it. Not even Mum.
That was easy to promise because I didn’t even know where she was. She’d been gone for weeks.
I promised.
He handed me his knife.
It was a blood oath. As usual, only my blood was spilt.
The advent calendar’s getting tatty from so many moves. But nowhere feels like home until I’ve set it up, finding a shelf or windowsill to rest it on. It puts our mark on a room. This may be a bed-and-breakfast twin room smelling of dusty potpourri and decorated to within a frilly inch of its life, but for one night, at the special out-of-season offer of twenty-five pounds, it’s ours.
Last night we went wild and made ourselves cups of tea from the ‘hospitality tray’, poured UHT milk from tiny pots, and took shortcake biscuits from their plastic wrappers for dunking. After a long bath full of lavender bubbles like in a magazine, I wrapped myself in the fluffy purple dressing gown and fell asleep in front of trash TV.
“Morning,” says Josh, coming out of the bathroom. He’s wearing the matching purple dressing gown, his giant hobbit feet rammed into the tiny spa slippers. He takes the calendar off me and beats me to opening the next door. “Mulled wine. Things are looking up at last.”
“On a kids’ card?”
“Who says it’s a kids’ card?”
“Duh. The glitter. The polar bears. In knitted scarves.”
“Modern kids don’t have the patience for this. They can’t do delayed gratification like we can. And they want more than plain pictures of a snowman. They want moving images, chocolates, make-up treats.”
“If you say so, Grandad.”
“Bet you a glass of mulled wine. Budge up.”
He flops down on my bed, next to me, rattling the flimsy headboard. “This is the life. Funny how a couple of nights in a cowshed gives you a whole new appreciation for the finer things.” He flicks off the slippers dangling from his toes. “Do we have to go today?”
“Yes! Don’t be lured by the tiny soaps to stay forever.”
“Like that Lotus Casino in the Percy Jackson books. Living out our days dining on room service and wrapped in purple towelling. Sounds good to me.” He stretches his arms above his head and sighs deeply. “But seriously, Amber. You don’t have to go at all. You can stay with me. My busking can pay for this kind of pad. I reckon we could get that cheap rate again tonight. We’re getting by, aren’t we?”
I push myself up on one elbow and look down at him. “You just want me to stay with you, doing what you want to do, eating lotus flowers for eternity.”
“No, I don’t. Ginger biscuits maybe.”
“Stop with the jokes.”
I lie back down and stare up at the ceiling and the dusty lampshade. Could I stay with Josh, living on the edges, killing time? Pretending that what happened didn’t happen?
“This is going to end at some point, Josh,” I say. “Normal life will be resumed. I’ll have what I want from the bug-out house, and you’ll go back to whatever it is that you do on a daily basis.”
“Oh yes. I forgot that we’re all going to live happily ever after.” He frowns and sits up. “I’m going to go and enjoy my breakfast. You can do what you like.” He gets dressed in the bathroom and leaves, without waiting for me.
I flick on the TV while I get dressed because it’s better than being in my own head right now. All these conventional lives going on out there. People getting excited about seeing family at Christmas, and what to wear for parties. The smiling morning hosts on the sofas are discussing the best ways to wrap presents. “But not everyone is going to be having a fantastic festive season, are they, Chris?” says the woman with the impossibly perfect teeth.
“No, that’s right, Zara,” he agrees, putting on his serious face. “Continuing our annual series helping to reunite missing people with their families…” As I go to switch it off, I freeze, my finger poised on the remote control. There’s a picture of me in my Beechwood uniform from when I joined in Year 12.
“…we’re asking for help to trace missing schoolgirl Amber Fitzpatrick. Last seen in the North of England but originally from Somerset, concerns are growing for the seventeen-year-old. There’s a number on the screen to call. If you’re out there, Amber, please call and let everyone know you’re safe.”
“And brrr, it’s going to be cold out there, Chris.”
“Yes, Zara. Let’s go over to the weather centre and see if we should all be putting on our bobble hats.”
I turn it off and sink down on the bed. If I’m on that TV feature, I’ll be on social media. I’ll be on missing-person sites. My face getting shared again and again.
I could call Julie. Get her to call off the search party. The pull of home is strong.
Home. I said it. Not a home with parents and all living in a house with a garden and a car on the drive. But somewhere I’ve felt OK about myself, that supports me to get on, to become somebody different. Somebody better.
Dad gets in the way of all that.
I join Josh for breakfast, chewing slowly through cheap cornflakes from a plastic box while I try to think what I should do.
He packs his bag slowly like I’m making him leave a suite at the Ritz hotel against his will. He keeps commenting on the weather and how bad it is and wouldn’t it be better to wait another day. But I’m in a loop of never changing anything if I stay with Josh. He drags it out until check-out time but I finally get him out and walking down the road in the rain towards the tiny town centre.
Josh won’t stop talking, he’s even worse than usual. He’s doing my head in and I can’t think properly with all this noise. Eventually, he pulls me out of the rain into a shop doorway. “So, in summary, it’s stupid going when the weather’s this bad and we’ve got to do so much on foot and you don’t even know exactly where you’re going.”
Even Josh the loser thinks I’m useless at this, out of my depth. What does he know about anything? I flip.
“Shut up! You’re the one slowing me down, Josh,” I say, shaking off his hand from my arm. “I had a plan. I should never have let you tag along. Your bright ideas led to all the problems we’ve had – Mo and Lola’s place, slave labour at the hostel, my money getting nicked, those lads, bus roulette. Anyone would think you were trying to stop me from g
etting up there.”
“All those nights I was finding us somewhere safe to sleep, you mean? Shit happens sometimes. I’m not your babysitter. Your option was a bloody cowshed. In this weather. No wonder you got sick. And this mess you’re in – it’s not down to me.”
“The one thing you were right about though is that all this is just hiding from my dad,” I say. “Whether it’s hiding at school or The Haven or in a field, or, or last night’s B&B. I can’t do it forever. I can’t, Josh. If I do, he’s won. I am more kickass than that.”
He breathes out deeply. “If you really want to go today, we’ll go. Family sticks together.”
“We’re not family, Josh. You know that, right? Stop pretending we are. You don’t have a family, Josh. You’ve got no one.”
He looks crushed but I just can’t help myself. I keep on going, pressing all the buttons to hurt him some more. “Your family is a stepdad who liked to beat the stuffing out of you and an alky mother who stood by and let him. Go play Happy Families with them, not me.”
I can’t bear to see his eyes welling up with tears. He takes a deep breath and pulls his bag over his shoulder.
“Good luck, Amber,” he says, so quietly, and heads down the street back the way we came, getting soaked in that stupid green parka with the hood down, never looking back.
As he turns the corner out of sight, I whisper, “Honestly, Josh. I think you’re better off without me.”
I take shelter from the weather and my mood in a quiet outdoors shop and café, looking aimlessly at the overpriced camping gear. I tell myself not to care about the row with Josh, half hoping that a big green parka will come through the door any minute now, still moaning. I buy a drink, thinking it’ll give him more time to come and find me. I’ll explain to Josh that I was in a foul mood because of the TV appeal, that I’m thinking of chucking it in and calling Julie to stop the search party. I’ll tell him that I’m fed up and weary of it all. Weary of being me. Julie said that sometimes asking for help is the strongest, bravest thing to do. Is that true – or is it her usual crap?
The Rules Page 12