Hush

by Sara Marshall-Ball

  That evening, after the boys had been dragged to bed, the four of them sat around the kitchen table, two bottles of wine on the go, leftover cheese and biscuits scattered all around them. Despite the lack of Christmas decorations in the kitchen – Lily had run out halfway through decorating the house – the atmosphere was festive, helped considerably by the wine. But Lily found that she couldn’t quite settle into it. This room, as always, felt uncomfortable.

  It was the windows, she knew: combined with the patio doors, they essentially made for a wall of glass, blackened by the night outside. The result was a feeling of uneasy exposure: the sense that others could see in and you couldn’t see out. Lily kept catching glimpses of her reflection in the glass, flashes of movement out of the corner of her eye. Sometimes the flashes weren’t reflections at all; but she pushed those to the back of her mind, and said nothing about them.

  Richard had been telling them all stories about his bar job, which, Lily realised, in a vague sort of way, he had never told her before. Had she ever asked him about it? She had heard him mention Tim and Rosa, but she had never enquired about the regulars, nor even been into the pub itself. She thought she had been there, once, as a child, but her memory could just as easily be pure imagination. She had vague images of rows of bottles glinting in dim orbs of light, of dark wood tables and deep red patterned carpets.

  ‘Are the carpets red?’ she asked, stopping Richard in mid-sentence, startling them all.

  ‘Can’t say I’ve ever looked, actually. Why?’

  ‘Oh, nothing. Just – something I thought of.’

  Richard smiled, puzzled, but carried on with his story.

  Later, when Nathan was telling them about a work party he’d been to and Connie was preoccupied with listening to him, Richard reached for her hand under the table, searching out reassurance. One long squeeze, and she squeezed his fingers lightly in response, feeling the oddity of his knuckles under the skin. I’m okay. He caught her eye, smiled faintly.

  Behind him, another, smaller Lily clapped her hands over her mouth, and shook her head exaggeratedly from side to side. Don’t tell. But don’t tell what?

  To her right, a larger shape flickered past the glass doors. Lily fixed her eyes on the half-empty wine bottle on the table and said nothing.

  ‘So, anyway, long story short, Bill fell straight through the buffet table, and we were never invited back to the Hilton again.’ Nathan laughed, and they all laughed along with him, though Lily had lost the focus of his words and couldn’t work out where the humour was.

  ‘He actually fell through the table?’ Richard sounded mildly impressed.

  ‘Yeah, well, the table was one of those long ones with lots of separate sections that you join together. They’re pretty badly designed, actually. So he fell into the middle and the whole thing just sort of collapsed in on itself.’ Nathan grinned. ‘I like to think he ended up with a trifle on his head, but I’m pretty sure that’s just wishful thinking.’

  ‘Well, it makes a better story, and, seeing as none of us was there, we might as well go with it,’ Richard said, reaching for the wine bottle and topping up their glasses.

  There was definite movement outside now: not just the flickerings of her imagination, nor the reflections of their movements. Connie noticed her squinting at the window.

  ‘What’s up with you tonight?’ she asked, downing half of her wine in one mouthful. ‘You keep looking at the doors as though someone’s about to burst through them.’

  Lily shrugged. ‘I saw something.’

  ‘Something like a person? Or something like a reflection?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Want me to go and have a look?’ Richard was on his feet without waiting for an answer, and Nathan was a second behind him. Connie rolled her eyes at Lily, but didn’t try to stop them.

  The key hung on a hook next to the fridge. Richard unlocked the door and pulled it open, letting in a blast of cold air as he did so. ‘God, that’s freezing,’ Connie muttered, just a bit too quiet for them to hear.

  Both men stepped out into the garden and vanished from view. The open door was like a hole of pure darkness in the reflected light of the glass. After a moment of glaring at it, Connie got up and slammed it shut behind them, muttering darkly about men being born in barns.

  ‘Should we go out there?’ Lily felt uneasy, the closed door like a barrier.

  ‘Oh, leave them to it. They like nothing better than being manly and protective. And anyway, my coat’s by the front door and I can’t be bothered to get it.’ Connie sat back down and took another long gulp of her wine. ‘What did you think you saw, anyway?’

  Lily shrugged. ‘A person, maybe?’

  ‘Have you seen things out there before? When it’s just been you and Richard?’

  Lily looked at her, weighing up her answer. ‘I don’t come in here much,’ she admitted after a moment.

  ‘Because of what happened?’

  Lily shrugged again. She was toying with the stem of her wine glass, seeing how far she could tilt the glass without it being in danger of tipping over. In her head, it overbalanced, spitting wine across the table in all directions; in reality it stayed upright, resting in a tidy ring of its own dribbled contents.

  ‘How can you stand living here?’ Connie asked, softly, which made Lily look up at her.

  ‘You did.’

  ‘I didn’t have a choice. I was a child. And I left as soon as I could… You can go anywhere you want.’

  Lily thought for a moment. ‘We haven’t got the money.’

  ‘They’re still paying you, aren’t they? I’m sure you could survive for a while on your salary.’

  ‘But Richard doesn’t want to. And he thinks…’ She looked at the door, as if he was going to come bursting through it. ‘He doesn’t know, okay? About Billy. He thinks being here will be good for me. That I’ll get over whatever issues I have with our parents and lay old ghosts to rest, or something.’

  It had been a lifetime since Connie had heard her utter so many words in one go. ‘Why haven’t you told him?’

  Lily shrugged.

  ‘Does he know about the institute? About you not talking at all?’

  Lily nodded, looking back down at the wine glass. A single drop of red wine worked its way down the outside of the glass, and was almost at the bottom when she caught it with the tip of her finger and lifted it to her lips.

  ‘So why does he think you went there?’

  Lily shrugged again. ‘I don’t know. Stuff to do with Mama, maybe.’

  ‘You told him about Mama?’

  Lily nodded.

  ‘I haven’t told Nathan much about it,’ Connie admitted after a minute. ‘He knows about her being ill, obviously, because he knew I went to visit her. But I didn’t go into details.’

  ‘Does he know about Billy?’

  ‘No.’

  They looked at each other, a new awareness springing up between them. This was it, then. Just the two of them.

  The door burst open, bringing in a flurry of cold air and movement. ‘Nothing out there,’ Nathan announced cheerfully, stamping the cold out of his shoes and pulling his coat off. ‘It was probably just our reflections in the glass.’

  Lily nodded, and Connie said, ‘That’s what we were thinking. Thanks for checking, though.’

  Richard and Nathan rejoined the table, the cold from outside clinging to their clothes with the ferocity of cigarette smoke. Richard slipped a hand under the table and found Lily’s fist, clenched in her lap, and enclosed it with his fingers. ‘Feel better?’ he asked, softly.

  She nodded. ‘Thanks.’ She looked up, and for a brief moment her eyes met Connie’s across the table, and she was surprised by what she saw there: no accusation, no judgement; nothing, really, except compassion. Then they both looked away, and Lily kept her gaze fixed on the table for the rest of the night, the eyes in the glass behind her pricking at the hairs on the back of her neck.

  then


  Marcus was shaking as he got into the car. All the good cheer he had been carefully cultivating throughout the day slipped out of his grasp and he was left, raging and impotent, wishing for a life that had taken a different course. The things Anna had said boiled in his brain and fizzed beneath his skin, retorts flashing redundantly in his brain now, far too late. Perhaps he would write them down for use in a later argument. It would be a shame to waste them.

  He slammed the car door and thought fleetingly of Lily, upstairs, hiding out of their way: would she be okay, left with her mother? Was Anna in such a fragile state that she would hurt Lily? He dismissed the thought immediately. She could be a danger to herself, perhaps, but never to her children.

  He felt guilty, though. Leaving on Christmas Day. And when things had been going so well… He would have to make it up to Lily later.

  He started the car and pulled out, too quickly, not concentrating on where he was going. He realised that it wasn’t just blood fizzing in his veins, and took a moment to steady himself. No point getting arrested just because he was angry. It certainly wouldn’t put him in a better mood; in theory they could keep him in the cells overnight if they caught him drink-driving, and he would struggle to hold on to his licence.

  He drove carefully through the residential areas, despite the fact that there was no one around. As soon as he got to the outskirts of town he sped up, and registered the release, the sense of exhausted satisfaction as he floored the accelerator and felt the car rumble beneath him. The needle climbed from thirty to sixty, seventy, eighty. He pulled on to a long, straight stretch of country road and got up to ninety-five before forcing himself to ease up and drop back down to the speed limit.

  There was a certain amount of satisfaction in acting like an idiot. Doing things that he knew Anna would disapprove of. He had spent so much of his married life being the sensible one, making sure he was together for his children, supporting his basket case of a wife. Putting up with her acting however she wanted, whenever she wanted, without sparing a thought for him. He was sick of it. Connie had known: he was sure that was why she’d gone. She’d finally woken up to the fact that her parents were hopeless, her entire family a sham, and had got out the only way she knew how.

  He almost wished she’d taken him with her.

  Thinking of Connie, he felt a pull of regret that was so close to being physical pain as to be indistinguishable. If only he’d done something to help. Something to make her realise that she wasn’t alone, that she could talk to him, that he would support her and let her be whoever she really was. He had never been frank enough with his daughters, he realised. Never let them know that they could tell him about anything, that he would never judge them the way their mother did.

  He’d been too wrapped up in just trying to make sure everyone stayed alive.

  He came to a village, and dropped down to twenty. Felt the drop in speed as if it were his own power falling away, rather than the car’s. Crawled through empty streets, feeling hemmed in by the slowness, longing to push back up to a speed that felt in tune with his mood.

  The wine he’d drunk earlier had exacerbated his rage, and the speed had added to it; now both had faded and he felt drained, dullness seeping in around the edges. He clawed for his anger, wanting it back, but it had been replaced by a numb sense of realisation, a feeling of stuckness. No matter how fast he drove he would not leave behind his reality. He would never be like his daughters, free to escape, to go wherever they chose. He would be forever stuck in a life that he had once viewed as his choice.

  A rabbit darted out in front of his car, and he swerved, too violently, almost slamming himself into a tree. He pulled over immediately, his tiredness obliterated by the adrenaline suddenly coursing through his veins. He forced himself to breathe deeply, evenly. Held his hands out in front of his face, and noted the fact that they were shaking uncontrollably. Close call, he thought, his breath shuddering in his chest.

  He leaned back against the headrest and closed his eyes.

  He must have fallen asleep, because when he opened his eyes again it was dark, and he felt disorientated. The road he was on was just outside a village, and there were no streetlights. The dark on the other side of the windows seemed thick, syrupy, and full of movement. The green numbers on the dashboard flashed the time at him: 17:02. He had missed dinner, then.

  Stiffly, reluctantly, he switched the engine back on, and tried to get himself into a driving frame of mind.

  He flicked the lights on, illuminating the road in front of him and further deepening the darkness of the trees on either side. He was struck by the stupidity of falling asleep in a darkened car at the side of an unlit road: if anyone had come down here without paying close attention they would have careered straight into the side of him, and he would have been crushed. Thankfully there was no traffic on the road, but if it had been any other day he wouldn’t have been so lucky.

  He pulled out into the road, driving cautiously now, as if to counteract his earlier behaviour. He turned around as soon as he could and began heading back home, driving within the speed limit, trying not to let exhaustion get the better of him. In his post-sleep stiffness he felt bone-weary and emptied; his eyes flickered across the road, taking in nothing, while he strained to keep them open.

  It was probably the fact that he was driving slowly that killed him, the coroner said later. At the side of the road, tied to a tree, was what looked like a man in a Father Christmas outfit. It had been hung in such a way that, when the wind blew, it drifted out into the road. Had Marcus been going faster, he would never have noticed it; or at least he wouldn’t have seen it clearly enough to think it was a man.

  It blew outwards, and for the second time that evening, Marcus swerved to avoid something in his path; only this time he forgot to brake, and the front of his car crunched itself around the trunk of a tree on the other side of the road.

  The Father Christmas – a collection of balloons, wrapped in red crêpe paper, and decorated with a Santa hat – floated back towards the other side of the road, undamaged.

  now

  The air was freezing as they stepped outside the house, breath encasing faces in vaporous clouds. Lily and Connie were dressed virtually identically, in blue jeans, black boots, large black coats. Only their hair was different: Lily had pulled hers back into a ponytail, whereas Connie had hers down, flowing around her face. Richard surveyed them while locking up the house, and realised they could almost be twins: only the tiny creases at the corner of Connie’s eyes hinted at the fact that she was older.

  The three of them stomped their way down the lane, their voices unnaturally loud in the Boxing Day stillness. Lily stopped often to admire plants at the side of the road, and every time she did so Connie stood impatiently, pointedly not joining in, wanting to be on her way. ‘You don’t have to look at them all now,’ she said, when Lily stopped for the fourth time. ‘Why can’t you look on the way home?’

  Lily shrugged, and resumed walking, just a beat behind her sister. They grew silent, and their pace slowed, as they approached the church. It was a small, unimpressive building, on the corner of a lane, surrounded by a low brick wall with a domed top. There was no one around – they were too late for morning service, and the little gate which led to the churchyard was locked. Connie pushed at it a couple of times, frustrated, making Lily laugh.

  ‘What?’ Connie asked, indignant. ‘I don’t want to have to come back tomorrow.’

  Lily gave her a mock-scornful look, and leapt over the wall in a single movement, turning to face them from the other side with her arms held out triumphantly. ‘Ta-da!’

  ‘All right,’ Connie muttered, following suit in a less acrobatic manner. ‘Show-off.’

  Richard grinned, and followed them both. Frost-coated leaves crunched on the grass on the other side of the wall, and the ground was uneven, strewn with slanted headstones.

  ‘Do you know where it is?’ Lily’s voice was hushed, as if instinctually not wish
ing to disturb the slumber of the dead.

  ‘You were at her funeral too,’ Connie replied, her voice equally quiet. ‘It was round here somewhere, wasn’t it?’

  They picked their way through the headstones to a less crowded patch of grass, trying not to walk on graves where possible. The headstones here were newer, the marble and limestone gleaming in contrast to the weathered stones nearer the entrance. The lettering was clearly visible, etched deep into the stone: names and dates that meant little to any of them.

  ‘Why didn’t we get her buried next to Dad?’ Lily asked.

  ‘There was no room,’ Connie replied, her voice vague as her eyes skated over the lettering on the headstones.

  ‘But why didn’t she buy a double grave? When he died?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Connie shrugged. ‘I guess she didn’t want to spend eternity sleeping next to him. Hardly surprising, is it?’

  ‘But she never remarried.’ Lily’s voice was puzzled, as if she’d never really thought about it before.

  ‘What’s your point?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  They carried on searching in silence, splitting off in different directions, and after a minute Richard called out to them both. They gathered around a small headstone in a pale, yellowish stone. The lettering was brief and to the point. Anna Emmett, 1943–2010. Rest in peace.