by Amanda Mason
‘She gave you a fright, though.’
‘Yeah, well. There’s no harm done.’
‘I could still come over,’ says Dan. He and his wife have retired to the south of France and his two daughters live and work in Paris. He last visited five, six years ago.
‘There’s no need,’ she says. ‘I can manage.’
‘Really?’
‘Really. I’ll stay over tonight, take her out for lunch tomorrow then catch an afternoon train home. I’ll try to get back up again next month.’
‘And you’ll ring me if, if you need me, if you change your mind?’
She tries to ignore the relief she can hear in his voice. ‘Yes,’ she says.
The rest of the conversation is brief; he asks about her work, about the current exhibition, and promises to get over to the gallery with the girls next summer.
‘Well, thanks, Loo, for all of it, for ringing, for being there with her.’ He sounds brighter now Lucy has reassured him that Cathy is fine.
‘Yeah, well.’
What else did he expect her to do?
‘Dan?’
‘Yes?’
‘Has she rung you recently?’
‘Cathy? God, no, not since Julie’s birthday. Why?’
‘No reason – just something she said.’
Cathy hardly ever rang. Birthdays and Christmas, but that was it.
‘Could you do me a favour and let everyone know?’ Lucy says. ‘That she’s OK? I just can’t quite face it. You know, telling the same story over and over.’
‘Poor old Loo,’ he says, and she can feel him smiling. ‘No problem, I’ll do that for you.’
When she gets back to her mother, Sarah has tidied away the tea things and Cathy is still sitting by the window, her open laptop on her knees. ‘Are you and Jean all done?’ she asks.
‘Pretty much.’ Lucy takes the seat opposite her mother. ‘I said I’d talk to you.’
‘Really? What about?’
‘Mum.’
‘I’m sorry, Lucia.’
‘You need to take care of yourself, you need to – I don’t know what you were thinking.’
‘It was a mistake,’ says Cathy. ‘It won’t happen again.’
Lucy leans forward and tries to soften her voice. She hasn’t had much time to think this through, but if she doesn’t try now who knows when she and her mother will next have the chance to speak, face to face? ‘Is there anything else, well – bothering you?’
Cathy looks down at the computer screen and begins to type.
‘Only – three phone calls, Mum. In a week.’
‘I know. I should have left a message.’ Her hands moving carefully across the keyboard. ‘But I wasn’t sure how to tell you. I kept putting it off.’
‘About the girl in the garden? But I thought—’
‘No. Not her. That was – I told you, I made a mistake.’ Cathy looks up. ‘Maybe I shouldn’t—’
‘Shouldn’t what?’
But Cathy doesn’t answer.
‘Come on, Mum. What is it?’
‘I’m sorry, Lucia,’ says Cathy, ‘to bring you all this way. Here.’ She lifts the laptop and, not without effort, hands it to Lucy.
She has logged into her email account. There isn’t much in the inbox: newsletters from a couple of arts organisations, a bank statement, some emails from Dan, the most recent having arrived a month ago, nothing from any of the others. One from someone called N. L. Marshall, dated the previous Friday, with the subject line Re: Field investigation, is pinned to the top of the list.
‘What’s this?’ Lucy asks, trying to ignore it, the growing sensation she has that something is wrong. The phone call and the fall, they were bad enough, but this is – wrong.
‘The top one,’ says Cathy, ‘read that.’
Dear Mrs Corvino,
I’m writing to let you know that the field trip to Iron Sike Farm I mentioned will be going ahead tonight. I’m so sorry you feel you won’t be able to accompany us, but I do look forward to being able to share our findings with you. As you can imagine, the whole team is delighted to have been granted access.
I was wondering if you’d given any further thought to forwarding our correspondence to your children. I would very much like to be able to interview them, particularly Lucia. But perhaps we can discuss on Monday? We are all so looking forward to meeting you – hopefully, we’ll have some interesting material to share!
Kind regards
‘Who’s Nina Marshall?’ Lucy asks.
‘A researcher.’
‘A paranormal researcher?’
‘Oh, they call it something else these days, something much more respectable. There’s a folder, marked “Farm”.’
Lucy clicks on the icon and the history of their correspondence is laid out in front of her. The first email has some photos attached.
‘Lucia?’
Lucy flicks through the images – recent colour photographs. ‘She’s been there,’ she says, looking up from the screen.
‘Yes.’ Her mother’s expression is unreadable.
‘And she wants you to go back.’
‘Yes.’
‘Jesus.’
‘Lucia.’ The rebuke is mild. Automatic after all these years.
Nina Marshall hasn’t been inside; all the shots are exteriors featuring peeling paintwork and cracked and grimy windows. The buildings in the pictures are obviously abandoned and the garden, never properly tended in their time, is completely overgrown now. Lucy’s head aches, she can’t focus. ‘You should have said. You should have told me.’
‘It’s too quick,’ Cathy says, ‘that’s the trouble. You press a button and you can’t call it back, you get – caught up. I’m sorry, Lucia.’
‘And what’s this about a meeting?’ Lucy looks down at the screen once more; she can’t believe Cathy would get mixed up with these people, whoever they are.
‘They want to talk to me,’ says Cathy. ‘And I want to talk to them.’
3
Then
Loo was always awake before Bee. At first, she used to get up, but no matter how hard she tried to be quiet she’d bump into something, the end of the bed, the chair by the window, and Bee would rise up in a towering fury, yelling and throwing anything to hand, pillows, clothes, even books, at her sister.
So now she’d got into the habit of retrieving one of her own books from under her bed, and reading for an hour or so. It was always light enough, despite the drawn curtains; in the winter she’d have to think again. They had used up half a dozen bulbs in this room the first week they’d moved in, until Cathy decided she’d had enough and told Joe he needed to sort out the wiring upstairs. He hadn’t got around to it yet though. They used candles in the evenings, sticking them onto cracked and chipped saucers and placing them on the window ledge and the dressing table, but that would be no good if she wanted to stay in bed and read. Maybe she should buy a torch.
Bee had the top bunk, Loo the bottom. It was just like having a four-poster bed, she’d told Bee – only that wasn’t strictly true. She didn’t like the way the mattress above her sagged underneath her sister’s weight. The way Bee would make the cheap wooden frame shake when she rolled over. The way she was always there, pressing down.
Above her, Bee snored softly, lying on her side, no doubt, her nose to the wall and her back to the room, protesting, even in her sleep, against the unfairness of having to share. Loo heard her father get up first, then Dan. She closed her book and concentrated for a while on the comforting rumble of their voices in the kitchen until the slamming of the back door indicated they’d both had the sense to get out of the way. Then the house fell silent again and she read a little more.
When they’d first got here, their mother had said they were going to live in tune with nature, but really, if anything, what they lived in tune with was the baby, and another half hour passed before the familiar yowling issued from the big bedroom overlooking the front garden, prompting Bee to swear
and roll over, and marking the start of another day.
Despite Loo being the first out of bed, Bee had beaten her to breakfast again.
‘There’s no bread left,’ said Cathy, wrestling the baby, Anto, into a scratched and faded high chair. Florian, the child between Loo and Anto, six years old and only half dressed, was sitting in front of the cold Aga playing with two of his cars while at the table Bee was spreading a generous helping of cherry jam onto a thick piece of toast.
‘Florian, leave that be and come and eat your breakfast,’ said Cathy.
‘Bee’s got bread,’ said Loo.
‘Bianca got out of bed first.’
No she hadn’t, she just never bothered to brush her teeth or wash her face.
‘What is there, then?’
‘Can I have Frosties?’ asked Flor.
‘No. No more Frosties, Florian, we agreed,’ Cathy said. ‘There’s porridge.’
‘Mmm. Porridge. Yum,’ said Bee, grinning obscenely, her mouth speckled with gobbets of brown bread and scarlet jam.
‘Mum. Tell her.’
‘Bianca.’
‘Sorry,’ said Bee, swinging her chair onto its back legs. Behind her, on top of the gas stove, the oven they actually cooked with, there was a small pan of porridge. From the smell of it, it was starting to catch.
‘Florian, come and eat.’ Their mother had settled the baby in the chair and was trying to tempt her with a spoonful of something grey and milky.
‘I don’t want to.’ Flor hadn’t quite got over not being the youngest any more.
Fetching a bowl from the sink, Loo wondered if a bit of cherry jam would improve her mother’s porridge. Since they had moved to the farm all ready-made foods had been banned. As well as no more Frosties there were no more biscuits, no more sweets and no more chocolate. They had all got into the habit of stealing the occasional spoonful of jam or honey from the kitchen, but this had only prompted Cathy to find increasingly devious hiding places for the jars; if you wanted to sweeten your food, you had to ask for permission. Loo took her porridge to the table, but as she sat down, Cathy whisked the jam away.
‘Lessons this morning,’ she said as she came back in to the kitchen. Bee’s chair hit the kitchen floor with a thump.
‘I don’t feel well,’ she said. ‘I feel … wheezy.’ The doctor in Leeds had diagnosed asthma, and two inhalers, one blue and one brown, lay abandoned on the dressing table upstairs.
‘You look well enough to me.’
‘Dan doesn’t have lessons,’ said Bee.
‘Your brother Dante,’ said their mother, insisting as she always did on her children’s full names, ‘is old enough to leave school. He’s excused lessons.’
Actually, Dan was fifteen, and only just fifteen at that.
‘It’s not fair.’
‘Dante has chores.’
‘So do we,’ said Loo.
‘And have you done them? Either of you?’
‘We haven’t had time,’ said Bee, pushing her chair back and standing. ‘We’ll go and do them now.’
Her mother put Anto’s spoon and bowl down again and turned to face her oldest daughter.
‘Bianca,’ she said.
Bee lifted up her chin. ‘Cathy.’
Loo always hated this bit, the bit where it was just Cathy and Bee, each one determined to win. The silence was broken by Anto making a grab for the bowl and knocking it to the floor. Bee waited until Cathy was at the sink wringing out a cloth, her back turned.
‘Let’s go for a walk, Loo,’ she said.
It was warm outside. The farmhouse, unlovely red brick, ugly and awkward, might have been gloomy, but at least it was cool. The thick air wrapped itself round the girls on this, the first properly hot day of the summer. Bee set off towards the field at the back of the house, Loo trailing behind her. She could feel it coming off Bee in waves, not anger exactly, although she was definitely cross, but something more like electricity, something unreliable, dangerous. She thought it might be to do with Cathy and Joe, with raised voices late at night, and the farm and the heat.
‘Fuck!’ Halfway up Bee turned and looked out over the valley, stopping so abruptly, Loo almost bumped into her.
‘What?’
And then just like that, the fire seemed to go out of her and she dropped into a heap on the dry grass.
‘It’s so dull here. Look at it. So fucking empty.’
Loo winced. Cathy had promised to wash their mouths out with soap if she ever caught them swearing.
‘It’s not that bad.’
‘There’s nothing here, Loo. Nothing.’ Bee threw herself back on the ground, almost as if she were Anto’s age, ready to throw a tantrum. ‘I fucking hate it.’
‘Bee—’
‘Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.’ Her voice rose up into the air and floated across the valley. Loo sat down beside her sister and tentatively reached for her hand. Usually, Bee discouraged physical contact – ‘Get off, don’t be such a bloody baby’ – but today she clutched so fiercely at her sister’s fingers it almost hurt.
‘I can’t stand it, Loo. I can’t breathe.’
Loo sat still for a moment, looking back at the farmhouse and the old barn. Joe’s studio. They weren’t supposed to bother him, and if they did dare to they were never quite sure how he would react, throwing down his brush to join in a lunatic chasing game, swinging them in turn over his shoulder and spinning them round, provoking both girls into hysterical shrieking, or swearing at them in the sort of language Cathy had banned in the house, telling them to sod off, and worse. Not that either of them cared; Joe’s smile and his attention – however fleeting – were always worth the risk. ‘Shall we play a game?’ Loo said.
The barn had come with the house. It was pretty much empty; the remains of an ancient tractor were covered by a tarpaulin and a few rusting tools – a saw, a scythe, a mallet – lay abandoned in a corner. Someone had knocked the animal stalls apart at one time or another, trying to clear space for some long-forgotten project. There was a hayloft too, although the ladder was unsteady. Joe suspected woodworm, and the kids had already been banned from going up there. In fact, the kids were banned from the barn, full stop. This was his studio.
Joe had cleared himself a decent enough workspace, Cathy had been right about that, at least, and now in the summer with the double doors propped open, there was light enough to work by. They were running low on money though and he’d have to start looking about for some paid work soon, something to tide them over. He had no idea about farming, and he’d never pick up anything in the village; he’d need to see if there was anything going back in Leeds, something temporary, casual.
The farm had been Cathy’s idea. She didn’t like the city, she’d said the last house was damp, it was unhealthy – why else did he think Bee had got asthma? – and she’d spent months going on at him about the move. She’d got her way in the end, and here they were in their new home. He and Cath and – Christ – five kids.
Joe didn’t feel old enough to be a dad, not old enough to be married at all to tell the truth, and yet here they were, still together after sixteen years.
When it came to the kids, Cath had the final say on most things, bedtimes and bathtimes and what they should eat. She managed the house and the money too. So when she’d said let’s be done with it all and move to the country and home-school them, well, he’d thought, in the end, why not? Moving might be the answer, it might make it go away, the itch he felt, the restlessness, the sense that time was slipping away from him.
He wasn’t so sure now, though. It was all right in the summer, this place, but he couldn’t imagine passing the winter here. He’d need to fix up some sort of heating system for one thing, and for another …
It was proving hard to focus, to stay focused.
He couldn’t say why.
He got up early, most days, and fixed himself his breakfast. Then he made a cup of tea, strong and sweet, and took it across to the barn, rolled a cigarette and sat d
own in the studio. Just sat, looking at whatever it was he was working on, feeling his way back in. The trouble was, it seemed to take longer every day, and nothing he finished ever seemed – enough.
No kids. I don’t want them anywhere near, he’d told Cathy, right at the start, and if I want something I’ll come and get it. Just leave me be. And Cathy, her own artistic ambitions fulfilled these days by baking bread and changing nappies, went along with it. So off he went to the barn, the studio, every day and tried, tried to make it all come together.
He had been working for a couple of hours or so when he first noticed it.
A scratching, low down somewhere.
Rats.
He was working on a big canvas, sky, mainly – a dull heavy sky rolling up over the valley – coming along quite nicely, for a change, making him think that he might settle here after all and then …
Not scratching.
Tapping.
A tree branch, then. Except of course there were no trees.
Tap tap tap.
Silence.
Then a slithering sound.
He used to listen to music when he worked, not for pleasure, more to shut the world out. But that was back in Leeds and the batteries in the radio had long since packed up. He’d asked Cathy to get some more but she kept forgetting.
Tap tap tap.
Behind him.
Tap tap tap.
To the left now.
He put his brush down, wiped his hands on his jeans.
‘Who’s there?’
Silence.
Outside, down the hill, a car swept past the farm.
‘Cath?’
Tap tap tap to his left.
Tap tap tap to the right.
Silence.
Then a scrabbling sound, something treading on dried earth and pebbles.
Moving around the side of the building towards him.
‘Is there anybody there?’ said the traveller. ‘One knock for yes. Two knocks for no.’
His voice bounced off the walls, swirled around the rafters.
Silence.
Tap. Tap.
No.
Right.
‘Is that you, Bee? ’Cos if it is, you should piss off now. Piss right off or I’ll come out there and when I catch hold of you, you’ll feel the back of my hand.’
