Hush

by Sara Marshall-Ball

  ‘Yeah.’ Connie blinked, clearing the tears from her eyes, disengaging herself from the embrace as delicately as she could. ‘So where’s Grandpa, then?’

  ‘He and Lily have just gone for a walk up the lane. They shouldn’t be more than half an hour or so, and then dinner will be ready. Did you want to wash first?’

  Connie went up to the room that she and Lily had shared as children, the one that Lily had taken over when she’d moved in properly. Once it had had twin beds, and the only personal items had belonged to her grandparents: a picture of them together in their twenties, framed by a trellis of roses; a dish full of delicately elaborate brooches. It was unmistakably Lily’s room now: the second bed had been removed, and there were her books, her school things. A small cluster of make-up on the dresser, half of which had obviously come free with magazines. And a photograph of their father in an ornate silver frame. He was in his late thirties, perched on top of a cluster of rocks, giving a wide smile and a thumbs-up to whoever was holding the camera. She wondered who it was: probably her mother, but had they really ever been that happy?

  A camp bed had been set up for Connie, with towels laid out on it, and she dropped her bag on the floor and started to undress. It was a relief to peel off her dirty clothes, to brush out her hair. Most of the places she had stayed had been nice enough, but they hadn’t felt homely. The familiarity here might be disarming, but at least it was there.

  She had a shower, taking her time, filling the bathroom with steam. The hot water was invigorating, pounding the muscles in her shoulders and soothing the tension that had gathered there. She felt as though she was washing off at least a week’s worth of dirt, as opposed to a couple of days’ worth; her hair was thick with the scent of other people’s unwashed bodies.

  Drying off, she rubbed a hole in the steam on the mirror and peered at her reflection. Her skin looked pale and blotchy, her cheeks hollowed out by a year of work and half a day of grief, but her eyes retained some of their brightness. She looked older than her sixteen years, but not so old that people would miss her youth completely.

  When she got back to the bedroom, swathed in towels, with damp still clinging to her skin, she found Lily sitting on the bed, staring out of the window. She looked up as Connie entered, and her eyes were dark, a faint accusation hanging in the air between them.

  Connie closed the door behind her and sat down on the bed, awkwardly trying to wrap an arm around Lily while still keeping her towel wrapped around her, the cold in the air biting at her bare skin. ‘Hey, sis,’ she said softly, kissing the top of her head. Lily leaned into her shoulder, closing her eyes.

  ‘You came,’ she said, her voice barely a whisper.

  ‘Yeah. I’m sorry it took me so long.’

  They sat for a while, arms wrapped around each other, breathing as one.

  ‘I heard –’ Lily stopped, and moved forwards out of Connie’s arms, twisting her head round to look her in the eyes. ‘I heard you saw Mama.’

  ‘Yeah. She told me about Dad.’

  Lily blinked at her, wordless. Her eyes weren’t accusing, but Connie found the lack of accusation even more painful, somehow, than the presence of it would have been. ‘Lils, I’m so sorry I wasn’t there.’

  ‘He died on Christmas Day.’

  Connie chewed her lip to stop herself from crying. ‘I know.’

  Lily stood up and walked to the window. She stood for a while, looking at things that Connie couldn’t see. Connie watched the back of her neck, visible beneath the wisps of hair that had escaped from her ponytail. She realised how grown-up Lily looked: almost a teenager now. She’d always looked younger than she was, childish and delicate and fragile. She was still young, but the fragility had morphed, somehow. She’d developed a sort of quiet strength since Connie had last seen her: you might still want to protect her, but she no longer looked as though she needed it so much.

  ‘I really wanted to come home, Lils. You have no idea. How it felt, when she said…’ Connie trailed off. Lily hadn’t so much as twitched in response.

  After a minute, Lily turned around and headed towards the door. ‘You’d better get dressed,’ she said. ‘For dinner.’ She closed the door quietly behind her, leaving Connie alone.

  Conversation over dinner was stilted. Lily didn’t speak at all, and their grandfather sat like a shadow beside her, hollowed out and wordless. Connie answered the questions put to her by her grandmother, but neither of them was really in the mood, and eventually they both gave up. Silence crept in like the darkness, slipping underneath the curtains and lurking in the corners of the room.

  After dinner, they all went upstairs to their respective rooms.

  There was a tiny TV set up in the corner of Lily’s room, and the two girls changed into their pyjamas and watched Blind Date without really seeing it. Connie couldn’t help thinking of their childhood visits to this house, when they would have stayed up talking into the early hours, listening to the low murmur of conversation and the faint scent of cigarette smoke drifting up from the living room. She could clearly remember the shadows the hallway light had cast upon the room: the way Lily had looked, glowing faintly in the darkness, as they swapped ghost stories and talked about what they would do the next day. Now, they barely looked at each other, and the silence from the rest of the house felt like a gaping wound.

  Connie tried to imagine what it had felt like, for Lily, coming to live here full time. To leave their old life behind entirely, but to still be in someone’s care: no freedom, and no parents either. In some ways, having spent so much of her childhood here, it must have been more like coming home. But, if Connie had been around, would things have been different? Would they have stayed with their mother, rebuilt some sort of family out of what remained?

  At eleven Lily flicked the TV off without asking Connie whether she was still watching it, and rolled over to face the wall. There was a gap at the top of the curtains, and from the glow of the street-lamp outside the window Connie could just about see her sister’s back, solid and hard and accusatory.

  ‘I had to go,’ she said, her voice feeling unnaturally loud in the darkness. No response. ‘I know it must have seemed selfish, but I had a fight with Mama, and I saw some stuff, and I just couldn’t stick around any more.’

  There was a long pause before Lily spoke. ‘But you planned it. You told me.’

  ‘I know I said that. But I didn’t mean – I wouldn’t have left then. Not like that.’ Connie sighed, twisting the duvet cover between her thumb and her forefinger, trying to find the words. ‘I would have said goodbye, if I’d really planned it like that.’

  ‘You never called.’

  ‘No,’ Connie admitted.

  ‘Dad died.’ Lily’s voice was a ferocious whisper.

  ‘And if I’d have thought for ten seconds that something like that might happen then I wouldn’t have gone, alright? But I couldn’t be in a house with Mama any more. I just couldn’t.’ A beat. ‘I still can’t.’

  ‘You went back to see her, though.’

  ‘I thought you’d be there.’

  Lily turned over to face Connie. The bed wasn’t much higher than the camp bed, and there was a three-foot gap between the two, so they could look into each other’s eyes easily enough. ‘So what made you leave, then?’

  ‘I – saw something.’

  ‘What? What did you see that was so awful?’

  Connie groped for the words to explain it. ‘I saw – Mama doing something. And it – it made me think.’ A pause. ‘I think it made me remember.’

  Lily’s eyes widened, almost imperceptibly. Connie could feel the tension radiating from her, from both of them, as they waited for Lily to ask the question.

  One thousand, two thousand, three –

  ‘Was it our fault?

  – thousand, four thousand, five thousand, six –

  ‘No.’

  Exhale. And: hush.

  now

  When Lily stepped into the garden, she co
uld see Richard straight ahead in front of her, but nothing beyond: all was darkness and shadow, and she couldn’t make out what he was shouting at. She wanted to say his name, alert him to her presence, but fear stuck her throat and made it impossible. She reached out a hand instead, finding his shoulder in the dark. He spun around instantly.

  ‘What are you – ?’ He stopped when he saw her, and his voice softened. ‘Sorry, Lils. You scared me. Where have you been?’

  ‘She was with me,’ Connie said, stepping into the garden behind them. ‘What’s going on? Why are you out here?’

  Richard looked momentarily as though he wanted to reprimand her for keeping Lily out without asking permission first, and then he remembered where he was, and spun back around. ‘I saw some – arsehole running around out here. Trying to scare me, most likely. Or steal something.’

  ‘What would they steal? Weeds?’

  ‘How should I know?’ Richard sounded annoyed. ‘Maybe they were trying to break in. Don’t suppose Nate’s with you?’

  ‘What, you need manly back-up?’

  Richard shrugged. ‘Couldn’t hurt.’

  They carried on talking, but Lily tuned them out, staring past Richard into the darkness. Her eyes were adjusting now, and she could see movement; a faint flickering in the trees as shadows skittered past. She shuddered involuntarily, took a step back. ‘Hey, let’s get you back inside,’ Richard said, putting a hand on her shoulder, but she shook her head. Could feel the pull of the woods, as if something was demanding her attention.

  Ghost-Connie, stepping out of the shadows; beckoning her with a hand.

  ‘Lils.’ Connie’s voice behind her, tentative: and then more forceful. ‘Lily.’

  Lily, already stepping forward, didn’t hear her.

  – You have to be quiet in the house or Mama will hear us –

  Lily’s footsteps, sock-slippered, tiptoeing two steps behind Connie’s. Skipping the creaking step by instinct. And Connie’s hair a blur in front of her face: a torch for her to follow in the darkness.

  – But it’s dark and I’m scared of the dark and didn’t you say Billy was meeting us –

  Connie’s coldwater scorn, scathing even in the pitch black.

  Outside was a slap of cold air. Moonlight trickling through blanket fog and Lily’s watch, blue numerals flashing in the dark. Shadows, moving.

  And, beyond the shadows, other things.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  Connie was at her side, hand on her shoulder, but she felt far away and Lily couldn’t tear her eyes away from the woods. The someonethere. In a moment a clear beam of moonlight would illuminate them and then –

  And then what?

  ‘Lils, please, can you just say something? You’re scaring me.’

  Lily felt fixed, immovable. Couldn’t wrench her eyes from the distance, even though she knew it was important. Connie’s voice filtered as if through layers of pondwater, years-distant and otherwhere.

  That feeling, so familiar: as if her throat was closing up.

  The words, if she had ever had them, were not there now.

  Trapped in the shadows, perhaps, with whatever else lurked out there.

  ‘Lily.’

  And then: Richard at her side, forcibly unclenching her fist. Slipping his fingers between hers. Speaking in a language she could still use. Okay?

  Yes.

  And a face, looming out of the shadows: becoming clearer the longer she looked.

  Shadows rippling across the grass. And they had silk-slipped into the woods, plunged into the trees. Branches catching at hair and trailing skeletal fingers across cheekbones and Lily had cringed away, becoming smaller in the darkness.

  Connie’s whisper-voice, carrying across the years:

  – You need to keep up Billy’s going to be waiting for us at the secret place –

  The woods had seemed to go on forever. Crunch of twigs under toes, glimpses of moonlight through the canopy of trees above. Lily’s voice, a hesitant shadow next to Connie’s:

  – Do you know where we’re going? Are you sure?

  And still they had plunged ahead, forest bed rustling underfoot.

  ‘Maybe we should get her inside.’ Connie’s voice was low, troubled. ‘This isn’t a good place for her, Richard – you don’t understand –’

  Lily’s hand in his, two sharp bursts of pressure.

  ‘She says no,’ he said, his voice blunt.

  ‘How do you…?’ Connie looked from her sister to Richard, but both of them stared straight ahead, and they didn’t reply. Connie followed their gaze.

  And the shapes in the trees solidified into something recognisable.

  ‘You,’ Connie said, and her voice was barely a whisper: a memory stretching out across her entire life. And at the same moment, Richard, bewildered, stepping forward and dropping Lily’s hand: ‘Ed?’

  Darkness had closed in on them. And the silence, blanketing them, shroud-like. So that the snapping of twigs echoed a hundredfold in the night and even the tiniest whisper felt like it echoed through the trees.

  – Where are we are we there yet where’s the secret place –

  Shhhhh, no words here, just the hiss of whispered footsteps.

  Mouth of the den loomed up. Rocks taking the form of teeth in the night, and Connie slipping ahead, to be swallowed by the dark. Lily, unobtrusive ghost-morsel behind her.

  There was moaning in the dark.

  – What’s that noise there’s something in here I don’t like it shut up stop being such a baby it’s only Billy playing tricks –

  A step forward, and then: stop.

  One shape in the distance, or maybe two: writhing in the dark.

  Not Billy.

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  Richard’s voice sounded half-guarded, half-bewildered. Lily could almost see him grasping for a logical explanation. Ed stood caged in front of them all, face like a trapped animal. He opened and closed his mouth, but no words came.

  ‘You know him?’ Connie’s voice, confused, floated out of the darkness from behind Lily.

  ‘You know him?’ Richard, equally confused.

  ‘Yes, yes, everyone knows me,’ Ed said. The swiftness with which he regained his composure made Lily wonder if she’d imagined the anxiety in his expression a moment before.

  ‘How? How do you know him?’ Connie stepped forward, into Lily’s line of vision.

  ‘He was the one who suggested the bar job to me.’ Richard’s voice was hard, unreadable. ‘How do you know him?’

  Lily could feel Connie’s eyes on her. Felt the suggestion of something in the air: words that she wasn’t going to like. An image of past and present, merging together: familiar face from childhood blurring with a spectre glimpsed through adult eyes.

  And the hesitation in Connie’s breath before she spoke.

  ‘He was having an affair with our mother.’

  Shapes unclear, half-seen. Connie stumbled back, too fast, dragging Lily with her before she could see. Only two images, from deep within the den, disconnected and yet not: a flash of blonde hair in the dark, and a low moan nearby.

  – Come on we’ve got to get out of here we’ve got to but where’s Billy –

  No time for questions.

  Running and not running – feet dragging in the dark and stumbling on buried roots – Lily understanding and not understanding – and behind them, those moans, eerie and animal-like, swelling in the darkness.

  Connie’s voice a rush of whispered instructions:

  – Not far now we’ll be home soon Billy must have already gone home –

  And then she vanished, empty air where her voice had been. A fall, a cry: Connie splayed face-first in the dirt, and Lily standing over her.

  Only it wasn’t just Connie.

  A sudden flash of light as the moon emerged from behind the clouds.

  And then a scream, as Connie realised what she’d tripped over.

  then

  Connie had left her
grandparents’ house after a few days. It had been nice to see them, and to check up on Lily, but there had been no real reason to stay. She couldn’t return to school. She couldn’t live there, sharing a room with Lily, pretending she was still a normal teenager. And she couldn’t stand the reminder of her father’s death which inhabited every moment she spent in that house.

  She went to a nearby town and got a job in a café. She told her grandparents where she was going, and she found a room in a shared house, with people not much older than her, mostly university students. Her grandparents helped her with rent until she had built up enough to be able to pay it herself. She was used to living on nothing, and the rent was cheap due to the house being run-down and draughty, so it didn’t take long.

  On her first free weekend, about six weeks after she’d moved, she took a trip back to Drayfield to see her mother. It was a four-hour train journey, and she spent most of it staring out of the window. She tried to read, but it was a struggle to concentrate. She felt sick with nerves, and she wasn’t sure why.

  She got a taxi from the train station, as she had done the last time she’d been to visit. It was light this time, and there was no rain, but the sky was overcast and the streets were still deserted.

  She knocked on the door this time; she didn’t want any surprises.

  There was no answer. She waited for five minutes, knocking several times, and then gave up and used her key. The house was silent when she stepped in, and she could feel that no one was home. More than that: there was a different sort of absence. The house felt cold, unheated. Inhabited by stillness.

  She went out into the garden. It was overgrown and tangled, a wild haze of lavender springing up between the lawn and the woods. She walked towards the woods, experimentally, but she stopped about two feet away and wouldn’t go any closer. They were just woods, but inside there was darkness and she didn’t want to see it.