The jeep drew to a sickeningly abrupt halt, right in the middle of the abandoned country lane. I heard the crunch as he pulled up the handbrake, pulled it hard right up to the top like he always did as if he feared if might make off of its own volition if he left anything to chance. Like us?
He switched the engine off. Folded his arms.
‘You’d better tell me everything.’
‘What do you mean?’ I took one look at his face and my worst fears were confirmed; he knew. At the very least, he suspected, or we wouldn’t be sitting here right now, would we?
‘You know exactly what I mean.’
I think I shook my head. I don’t remember. I couldn’t tell you if the day outside was rainy or blue. I couldn’t tell you if it were winter or autumn or spring. All that got stuck in my mind from that moment was the smell of his aftershave; the bitter spicy smell of that got up somehow with the taste of terror in my mouth, the sudden splitting pain in my head. He knew about our plans. Somehow, without us leaving the slightest, faintest clue, he knew.
Why do you say that? I kept repeating, over and over in my mind. I wanted to speak the words out loud but they wouldn’t come out. No denial would come out, either.
‘You want to see that dog of yours again, right?’
I nodded my head, watching in fascinated horror as he flicked at his macabre skeleton keyring with his thumb. It was still hanging off the ignition. Every time it swung back towards him he’d flick it away with his thumb again, the ugly thing jiggling and shivering its bones with every pass. He was always amused by that thing, said it had been carved out of a real man’s bones, it still had traces of blood on it. I believed him. Right now he looked like he was going to smash it to pieces.
‘Where is it,’ he said, his voice deliberately slow, ‘that you were planning on going?’
I shook my head. We didn’t have anywhere to go. We were just planning on making a run for it. I told her; don’t make any reservations, don’t pay for any tickets with cards that can be traced, don’t make any phone calls, don’t speak to anyone about anything. The day we leave, we’ll just leave, take the money we put aside and go wherever the wind blows us.
‘Nowhere,’ I got out. ‘We weren’t planning on going anywhere.’
‘Who’s we?’ My father’s eyebrows shot up. ‘I asked where
you
were planning on going.’
‘It’s just me,’ I say quickly. ‘Nobody else is involved.’ Too late, I saw he’d trapped me. He saw it too.
‘Did you think you would get away from me, son? Planning on taking your ma and brother too?’ He hit the dashboard with extreme force, then. Hit it so hard I was surprised it didn’t splinter into a thousand shards of plastic. ‘Well. You’re the real big man now aren’t you? Aren’t you, you pathetic, worthless excuse for a son of mine ...?’
How would I ever have dared to answer him? I didn’t. I didn’t utter a word. His face was going the strangest shade of mottled pink. I thought it was possible he might be about to strangle me, right there, right then. He had the largest hands, my
d
ad, hands that I’d seen wield a meat cleaver many a time when he slaughtered the pigs.
It flashed through my mind then,
what might be the quickest way to die
but I had defied him and it wasn’t going to be that easy. He hadn’t finished with me yet.
‘Understand this. You’re never getting away. Not you. Not her. Not him. None of you, ever. Because I’ll hunt you to the ends of the earth, that’s why. I’ll hunt you to hell and back because you’re all mine, all of you and in the end I have to win. Even if it means finishing the lot of you that’s how it’ll be but, I’ll win … ‘He leaned over me then in one sudden movement and I shrank back but all he did was open the car door on my side. ‘Now. Get out.’
‘Pilgrim didn’t know anything about it, Dad …’ He was twelve. Only twelve, my little brother for Pete’s sake.
Before I’d even properly got out he’d already turned on the ignition again, slammed the car into reverse and was backing off down the narrow lane. I picked myself up, from where the sudden movement had thrown me off balance. He’d left me intact, but - where was he going in such a hurry? I dusted myself down, still shaking; to see where Mum was, no doubt. And Pilgrim.
But why had he even brought me here? Why here?
My dog must be here, somewhere. The realisation hit me suddenly. He’d got to be. Dad was bringing me here to taunt me with it, use that as a carrot to get the info he wanted out of me and then I’d get Kahn back. I had an uncomfortable feeling he’d just got more information than he’d bargained for. He hadn’t suspected that Mum might be involved too, had he? Was he going back to see to her, now?
He might have been, but I knew that by the time he got back she’d most likely already have gone out. She liked to visit church on Sundays. She’d be safe, for now. I had to find Kahn.
I didn’t have to look for too long. A few hundred metres along the lane petered out onto the back of an overgrown field surrounded - like the rest of my dad’s property - with periodically-broken barbed wire. Something attracted me towards a clump of trees at the far end. Dead
M
en’s Copse, the locals called it. I didn’t go there much. Why would anyone want to? But on this particular day, something drew me towards it. It must have been very hot when I think back now, due a storm; I remember the thunder bugs that appeared out of nowhere, small black things crawling all over my t-shirt, hovering around my head. I kept calling out his name, again and again, but there was nothing. As I entered the cooler shaded area of the copse I imagined I could feel Kahn, though. I knew he was there, even if he was making no sound.
I kept walking. My heart was aching like crazy all the time because I couldn’t stop thinking; all week I’ve been at work instead of being out looking for him, getting him back. I should have come looking much sooner. Yeah, I kept on walking and as I came to the final tree there he was, my dear old fella, my true friend. He’d been tethered by his neck to the trunk with the shortest rope; so short he wouldn’t have been able to reach his nose to the ground, that’s how short, no chance left that he’d have been able to turn back on himself and chew right through it; by the weals on his neck he’d clearly tried.
In death, he looked no more fierce than a new-born pup. I think I fell to my knees. I must have put my arms around his neck, stroking back his fur away from his beautiful proud face, those lifeless eyes. When I touched his fur, the body underneath didn’t even feel all that cold. He might have been dead a few short hours, no more.
If I had only come before, if I had got up earlier, if only I had come looking yesterday … A hundred thousand ‘if’s’ flew up out of my soul, cut off from ever becoming possibilities like some treacherous path you run up that only leads to a dangling cliff-top, nowhere to go, because all those ‘if’s’ - they all belonged to yesterday. Yesterday, when he might still have been alive, when it might still have been possible to keep him that way.
My only friend. You were coming with me. I promised you that much, I told you, you were coming with me, dear God …
But I’d let my father get hold of him, taken my eye off the ball. I’d been so taken up with my new-found work at the breeders, my plans to get out of here, that I hadn’t paid attention to my dearest friend.
I stayed with him for a long, long time, stroking his fur, brushing away the burrs and the dust that had gathered on his coat in those cruel hours while he must have been waiting for me to come for him. I cleaned his paws with the edge of my T-shirt. I untied the rope and freed him, my brave heart. Then I used my bare hands to dig him a grave. Right there, at the tree where he died. I had to do it because I couldn’t carry him back all that way and I wouldn’t leave him so I dug him a resting place, pulling out clumps of soft wet earth and bits of flint and rock with my bare hands till my fingernails were caked with soil and my palms were bleeding, my face all streaked with mud and tears.
When I pulled him at last into the shallow grave, what hurt the most was that he was so much lighter than he should have been; I could feel his skin and bones beneath his fur and I knew that all that he was, everything I’d loved, had shrunk away to nothing, his life had been stolen from him, from me. And I knew this was my father’s version of a warning shot, of telling the family that we’d have to keep enduring whatever he wanted to dish out to us for as long as we lived because we were never going to be allowed to get away from him.
And then I realised that it wouldn’t matter if Mum had gone to church or even if she’d walked on her bare knees all the way to heaven, he’d still have found some way to drag her out and make her pay for ever daring to think that we could be free.
No. I knew there was only one way now that was ever going to happen.
‘I’m sorry about before,’ I say to Rose’s stiff back at last. As the evening outside has grown darker, the stillness in the chapel between us has become almost unbearable. She’s carefully avoided any direct contact with me for the last hour or so and I don’t know what to say, what to do, to make it better. I was careless with her feelings, I see that now. I was focused on my task, thinking about Jaffna and all the people I left behind there.
I push the plate with her supper on it near to her head so she will see it, smell it. I know she must be hungry. It will make her mouth water.
‘I’m tired,’ she says in a small voice. ‘I’m not feeling well.’ But she doesn’t push the plate away. She’s lying face down on the
canvas
sacking and now that I am near to her I see that she’s been taking care to cry very quietly, her face turned away from me so I wouldn’t know she was doing it. I want to reach out and touch her; say,
it’s okay, please don’t cry, don’t cry, Rose
but I know that will only fuel the longing that she’s still feeling inside.
She wants me, and I ... I am a man, not something made of wood. She is a beautiful girl. I thought it the first time I saw her. I think she has no real idea how beautiful she is. I think maybe she has never really had anyone there to tell her. And she is sensitive, clever and funny. And daring. And brave. When I’ve caught her looking at me a few times, the look I’ve seen in her eyes has threatened to draw me in, make me involved in her life, bind me to her in the most intimate way that a man and a woman can be bound.
She wants this. I am not immune but - I am not the right man for her. I told her this. I told her everything I dared to.
Why won’t she just believe me?
When I wake suddenly at 2 am it seems to me I can again hear the sound of footsteps outside; soft, like someone is treading carefully, but footsteps no less. I open my eyes and lie there for a long time, listening, staring into the darkness in the apse by the chapel door. Once I am fully awake, alert to what might come next, the noise stops. Should I get up and go and have a look outside? I don’t want to. It is cold. Besides, if there is anything out there it won’t be that man on the run, I tell myself. It will be some animal moving around. I push my head right down under the sleeping bag and
will
myself to go back to sleep, because I find I don’t like being awake in this place in the dead of night. It gives me a raw and uncomfortable feeling in my stomach.
But I can’t go back to sleep. It is too dark, it is too quiet and I can’t stop thinking about things I really don’t want to think about, recalling things that I would rather forget
.
For a while, no more sounds come from outside. Did I dream it? Did I dream the whole thing? When I turn to make sure Lawrence is there, still asleep just beside me, his face is turned away. I stare at his back for a few minutes, trying to work out if he is really asleep or if he is listening to the noises like me. He lies there very still. So still that there is no way I can even tell if he is breathing or not. The thought sends a small shot of irrational panic through my chest.
It reminds me that soon he will not be in my life anymore, and how that is going to hurt. I wasn’t very fair to him yesterday, was I? I sulked a good part of the evening after he came off the phone and I regret that now. It’s not his fault my life’s in the mess it is. It’s not his fault my Mum died when she did and Dad got injured with all of the devastating consequences that’s had for me. None of that is Lawrence’s fault. I wanted to get a chance to talk to him but I ran out of time. We had our meagre suppers early because we were both so hungry and I know for a while he was trying to coax me to talk to him but my pride got in the way. My hurt feelings. Even though I knew that was stupid because … why should I feel this boy owed me anything at all? Okay, so we’d been playing in the snow and his phone call came through. He didn’t chase after me; I got hold of the wrong end of the stick and I ended up so
disappointed
.
He won’t know the real reason why. He doesn’t have a clue. What he means to me. How I am going to miss having him around; having someone there to say
it’s going to be okay, you’ll get through this, you’ll make it; you just don’t have to be afraid
. How I’m going to miss the way he makes me feel every time he at looks me; as if he sees the person that I am inside. The me that nobody else ever gets to see.
The me that feels that it is all too much to cope with, sometimes. The me who worries about all the things out there that I don’t understand. The me who worries - still worries - about all the things Mum used to do in that room of hers downstairs, when Dad and I were in the other room watching the TV. Oh, she never did anyone harm, I know that, that was her mantra -
Harm no one
; she might have been Marie Curie, working away with all that deadly and powerful radiation, in an effort to help other people but there was always the worry that some of it - whatever it really was,
magic
- might seep out under the door and affect us.
All those energies she was always summoning, working with, she was always telling me how
powerful
they were, wasn’t she? Emphasising how they mustn’t be toyed with …
I wonder if she ever knew?
I turn my face away from Lawrence now, disconsolate, recognising that it’s a pattern with me. That I can’t have what I want. I feel a deep heaviness in my throat and chest at the thought; that I will never,
can never
, have what I want. Is that my fault? Is it because of what I did? I press my hands into my chest, not wanting to think like that, not wanting to have these thoughts but they won’t go away. I don’t want to be alone right now, not here, in the dead hours in this chapel but I won’t wake him. I lie still for ages, listening to the hiss and splutter of the water-drops that drip down from the crack along the ceiling into the fire. It’s only a small sound but it is amplified a hundred-fold by the acoustics in the chapel, by the fact that everything else is so completely and utterly still. And every time a drop hits the fire it’s like a thought hitting a nerve in the most sensitive part of my mind.
She warned me didn’t she?
She warned me not to meddle.
Oh, God! I feel so alone. I feel so
cold
. When I push my nose out from under the cover, the fire is burning low again. I should go over and shove another piece of wood into the middle of the brazier. The minutes tick by. The damp wood crackles and spits. The water drips down unceasingly from the ceiling, trying to put our fire out. Now that I’m wide awake, I think, trying to chivvy myself, I could put some ice in the pan to melt for water, I could make some tea. But the truth is I don’t want any tea. I don’t want any anything, other than some comfort, some company.
But I cannot have what I want. That thought goes round and round in my head, like a serpent chomping on its own tail. Is it because of what I did?
I remember a time once before that was like this time. When it felt as if the very fabric of my life had been rent asunder. Mum was sick. We were waiting for her to die, there’s no other way to put it. She was going to go and we were desperate for her not to, but until she did, everything went into a strange sort of limbo. Minutes, hours, whole days, all merged into one and there was no rhythm or order to it, nothing I could do that would let me escape from it. I remember hovering by her bedside, wanting her to tell me that it was okay, that everything was all right. I needed her to speak, God, how I needed her to, but she never said a word.
It wasn’t just that she was dying and leaving us. It wasn’t just that. I wanted her to say she forgave me; that she understood why I did what I did, but the words that could have come to my rescue, been the healing salve between us, they somehow never got spoken
.
My eyes close now, heavy suddenly. I turn around and pull Lawrence’s sleeping bag right up to my nose but the emptiness of the dark night is like a vacuum, sucking up all the discarded thoughts and memories from the dusty corners of my mind, bringing them right back up to the surface.
‘Will she get what she wants now?’
‘She should.’
How old would I have been the day I saw how it could be done? Eight, nine, maybe? I didn’t often go in to look at Mum working but Dad must have been out that day and Shona and I had argued - I hadn’t seen my best friend for a week - so Mum had invited me to come in. Her friend Beth’s cat had been missing for days and she’d asked Mum to do a recalling spell. We were in Mum’s downstairs room, I remember. She was clearing away the paraphernalia of her spell-making; the candles and the incense, opening up the heavy curtains onto a sparkling day outside.
I’d picked up the photo of Beth’s cat. The one who Mum had now - somehow - presumably recalled, wondering at it all. How it could work, this magic of hers? I already knew it did. Wondering too if I dared ask her the question that was burning on the tip of my tongue?
‘If you can make Beth’s cat come home... then, does that mean you could make humans do the things you wanted, as well?’ Could she make Shona stop sulking and come and play with me, I was thinking?
‘Can you control people?’
‘Never!’ There was an edge of warning to Mum’s normally soft voice that startled me, a sharpness I didn’t associate with her and I’d looked up in alarm. ‘We never, ever, try to force another’s will by using Wicca. Do you understand? Never.’
‘You could, though?’ I’d persisted. She scared me when she was like this, but a contrary part of me still wanted to know.
‘It might be done.’ She’d frowned, her dark eyebrows looking fierce, angry even. ‘But it would be very wrong. A person’s free will is their birth-right Rose, understand this. It is sacred and to interfere with it would - I fear - not go unpunished.’
It’s four-fifteen am before the noise comes again. This time I sit up, alert. Quietly, so as not to disturb Lawrence, I pull on my coat and then my gloves which are crispy-dry in some places and uncomfortably cold and wet in others where the fingers weren’t pulled out flat.
Away from the immediate light of the fire, the chapel is very dark, almost pitch black. I have to grope my way inch by inch to the door, not wanting to take a lighted brand from the fire because that might disturb him, but once outside, under the rays of a cold
white
moon, it is brighter. It’s also colder - it hits my chest the minute I walk out so I have to stifle a gasp as I open the door. It’s not just the noise I want to investigate. I need to know if it’s snowed anymore. Could it even have rained, maybe? I need to know if anything’s changed because today I mean to go home, don’t I? That’s what I told him.
Once I go home, I won’t see Lawrence again. I’ll have to learn to stop wanting to.
The sight that greets me outside the door is beyond my wildest imagination. It has snowed again. A billion, trillion tonnes of snow h
ave
fallen in the night. In a slightly different direction this time, or I couldn’t have pushed open the door, but there’s no mistaking I’ll be in an even worse position to try and make a move out of here today than I was yesterday. Crap! Wasn’t it supposed to have rained?
Why couldn’t it have just rained
?
I feel a crushing sense of disappointment in my chest at a hope that I didn’t even know I’d been harbouring. If only it had rained, I could have coped with it all. The adventure here would have been at an end. I would have been on my way home. But being forced to stay on in this place with him, it’s going to be unbearable. Every time I look at him, he will surely start to see all the things I don’t want him to see. He’ll see that I still want him. He’ll see how much he matters.
‘Rosie. What are you doing out here?’ He’s shuffled on his still-damp coat and got up out of his canvas sacking to come after me.
I thought I’d been so careful to be quiet
.
‘You okay, Rose?’
I turn my face away from him, so he won’t see my relief that he’s awake again. I indicate the blotted-out valley below.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says, and his voice is full of sleep. I l
ove
his voice, I think mournfully. I wish I could wake up to hear that voice every day of my life for the rest of my life. But I won’t. ‘I know you were hoping to get back to your family today. I know you wanted to, but …’
‘But I should just stop wanting, right?’ The words come out jagged and shaky, not how I mean them to, at all. I can feel his surprise, but I keep on going. ‘It’s the best cure for disappointment, I hear. Stop wanting. If you don’t want anything, if you don’t hope for anything … you’ll never be disappointed.’ I bite my lip, horrified that my feelings have somehow worked their way so perilously close to the surface.
‘Don’t stop wanting.’ He’s at my elbow now. Not touching me, but close enough to. Close enough that I can feel him, every inch of him, behind me and I long to turn round, to be as close to him as we nearly were yesterday but a stubborn streak - a self-protective streak? - won’t let me.