by Fiona Harper
Heather frowns. She’s getting that churny feeling in her stomach again.
‘We’ve got to go to where this photograph was taken,’ Faith says, sounding much more like her old dictatorial self. ‘We’re going back to Hawksbury Road.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
NOW
Matthew comes to wave Faith and Heather off, the kids climbing all over him as he watches them drive away. Heather is grateful he’s been so understanding. As they head north back to Bromley, Faith peppers her sister with questions, which Heather does her best to answer, and then Faith falls silent again, chewing the information over. A few moments later a new enquiry pops out of her mouth. They’ve covered Hastings and Hawksbury Road, and speculated about the year the photo might have been taken and who the woman might have been, when Faith finds a new avenue for interrogation.
‘You know when you were talking about seeing the woman in Hastings?’ Faith says as she glances in the mirror then pulls out to overtake a lorry.
‘Mm-hmm.’
‘You said “we”.’ Heather doesn’t reply. ‘You said, “We chased her.” You weren’t on your own, then?’
Heather waits until they’ve passed the lorry and Faith eases back into the left-hand lane. ‘I was with my neighbour. Like I explained earlier, I was having car troubles, so he gave me a lift. That’s all.’ She keeps looking straight ahead, hoping Faith hasn’t noticed the wobble in her voice.
‘Neighbour. Hmm.’
‘Young? Old?’ Faith’s got the bit between her teeth now.
‘Older than me, but I suppose you’d call him young.’
She glances across and Faith has a smug grin on her face. ‘Has this “youngish” guy got a name?’
Heather swallows. ‘Jason.’ She’s looking back at the road again but she can still feel Faith’s smile.
‘Jason,’ Faith repeats as if the key to some great mystery has been handed to her. ‘And is he cute?’ Heat begins to creep up Heather’s neck. Of course, Faith spots it immediately. ‘He is!’ she says. ‘He’s cute and you like him!’
‘Stop!’ Heather says, but for some reason she’s smiling too. ‘I do not. He just gave me a lift to Hastings on his motorbike, that’s all. He was just being a good friend.’
‘You went on a motorbike!’
Heather nods. She’s quite proud of that.
‘You spent an hour pressed up against a man dressed head to toe in leather – there and back! – and you’re telling me you’re just good friends?’
‘Uh-huh.’ Heather can feel the heat spreading now. It’s reached her cheeks and is climbing steadily.
Faith chuckles. ‘A likely story!’
‘Oh, shut up!’ Heather says, but she’s laughing too as she says it. Part of her doesn’t mind this teasing. It makes her and Faith seem like real sisters. The atmosphere stays jolly until they pull into the outskirts of Bromley, but when they turn down past Bickley station, only a few minutes away from their destination, they both go quiet.
‘I never come this way any more,’ Faith says, looking with grim determination at the leafy suburban road full of well-spaced houses. ‘Not if I can help it.’
‘Me neither.’
They turn down Hawksbury Road and Faith parks opposite their old house. They’ve begun work on the driveway, Heather notices. When Faith cuts the engine all they can hear is birdsong. They look at each other and open their respective doors, climb out and stand side by side, away from the car so they have a clear view.
‘Wow,’ Faith says, looking relieved. ‘It’s changed.’
‘Yes.’
Faith pulls the photo from her handbag. Heather had almost forgotten about it. They study it and decide that the woman in the red coat must have been standing in front of the fence between their old house and the house to the right. Faith crosses the road, indicating that Heather should follow, and then makes Heather stand in the same spot as the woman in the photo, so she can estimate where the photographer must have been when it was taken. Faith ends up outside where their front gate had been before the sweeping cobbled drive had been installed. Somehow that seems significant.
They stare at each other for a long time, taking it all in, and then Faith puts the photograph back in her bag. ‘Come on,’ she says and heads up the driveway.
Heather trots nervously after her. ‘W-what are you doing?’
‘Taking a look around.’ Faith marches up to the curtainless windows and peers inside.
‘But you… but we…’
‘No one’s here. That’s what you said on the drive up, didn’t you?’
Heather nods. ‘Yes, but…’
‘It’s 10.30 on a Sunday morning, hardly the neighbourhood rush hour. And in this road, two dog walkers and a jogger would constitute gridlock.’
‘I don’t think…’ Heather stops moving. She’s giving her sister permission by following her.
Faith stops too, and Heather spots yet another chink in her ever-confident armour. She wonders if those holes were always there and she just couldn’t see them before or whether this whole messy situation is causing her sister to crack and change. ‘Please, Heather,’ she says. ‘I need to see the house and garden neat and tidy – rescued. I need to know there’s a clean slate.’
Heather’s chest deflates. She nods and follows Faith as she sets off again to explore the side of the house. It isn’t long before they’ve opened the gate and are standing in the middle of the newly landscaped back garden.
Faith smiles. ‘Do you remember this tree?’ she asks, wandering towards the large horse chestnut near the boundary. It’s the only familiar landmark left. ‘I used to love collecting the conkers and keeping them in a pile on my windowsill. At least, I did until I couldn’t bear to see one more “collection” in the house. Once I turned nine I never did it again. That’s sad, isn’t it?’
Heather nods. She stares up at the tree. The flowers that stand tall from the end of the branches are gone, having bloomed earlier in the summer, and it’s too early to see the spiky pale-green pods that hold the tree’s bounty, but as she stares at the twisted bark there’s a roaring in her ears. She starts to feel weird again, like she did at the end of the pier, and then the flickering starts in her memory – now, then, now, then – so clear she almost believes she’s seeing it with her eyes.
A face smiles at her from above the fence and she steps back, almost stumbling, and covers her mouth with her hand.
‘What is it?’ Faith comes walking swiftly towards her, turning her head every second or so to see what Heather is looking at. ‘What can you see?’
Nothing, Heather thinks. Nothing that makes sense in this time and place, anyway. Her hand is still over her mouth and she removes it. ‘I think… I think I remembered something,’ she tells Faith and is suddenly very glad her sister is here. She wouldn’t like to be doing this on her own. Somehow, having Faith here makes her reactions valid, less… crazy.
‘What?’ Faith looks concerned now, the way she does when she checks the kids’ temperatures if they’ve got a fever.
‘Her. Staring over the fence at me. Smiling.’
Faith stares at Heather. Heather can see her brain working hard, dredging through her own memories of that time, evidenced by micro-expressions of confusion, disbelief, and finally shock. ‘But that’s impossible unless…’
‘Unless she lived there,’ Heather finishes for her, feeling strangely breathless.
Both sisters race across the back garden of their former home, through the gate and back out onto street. They turn left in unison and run along the pavement, stopping when the fence and shrubs no longer obscure their view.
Once again, in Heather’s mind, there are two conflicting versions of reality: a 1930s bungalow with a pretty rose garden, and what stands there now, a sympathetic new-build of much grander proportions. She’s not surprised the old house is gone. It always looked out of place nestled amongst the much larger Victorian and Edwardian houses. Her only guess is that the owners
of the three-storey, mock-Tudor affair two doors down had at some point in the Fifties sold off a piece of their massive garden to a developer.
Even though the bungalow is gone, she can picture it so clearly: a concrete path that led up to the front door, edged with petunias, pansies and marigolds. Inside the fully glazed front door with the sunburst design, there was a hallway with floral wallpaper and pistachio-coloured carpet that led to a yellow kitchen. She’d always loved the interior of the house. The pastel colours had reminded her of ice cream. It had seemed so bright and cheerful compared to the dirty browns and greys of her own home.
Ice cream.
A memory hits Heather so hard she almost sits down where she is on the pavement.
Mint-choc-chip ice cream. That’s what the lady had always given her after she’d skipped up the flowery path and into the yellow kitchen.
Heather gasps, and Faith rushes to her but is unsure of how to help, of what’s going on, so she just lays a hand on her sister’s shoulder as Heather presses both her palms to the centre of her chest and tries to remember the mechanics of breathing.
Lydia!
‘Lydia,’ she says out loud, and instantly knows the name is right. She looks at Faith. ‘Patricia is Lydia, and Lydia is Patricia. She was our next-door neighbour!’
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
TOILET DOOR
Despite this being a ‘nice’ school, a trip to the girls’ loos will confirm that people are people, no matter how much privilege they have. Don’t kid yourself that there’s any Tennyson or Shakespeare on the back of these toilet doors – it’s the same stuff as anywhere else carved into the wood or scrawled across the peeling varnish with permanent marker. There are ten stalls and I know that behind doors number two, five, and nine (it sounds like a game show, doesn’t it?) there are comments directed specifically at me. One even has a cartoon. I don’t think I’ve ever read anything so vicious and scathing, but I suppose that’s what a grammar-school education will get you these days.
THEN
Heather watches the second hand clunk round the large clock at the front of the class. The bell is going to ring in five minutes. It’s now or never. She puts her hand up.
‘Yes, what is it?’ Mr Salter, her rather fractious history teacher, asks.
‘Can I go to the toilet, please, Sir?’
His shoulders slump and he practically rolls his eyes. ‘Can’t you wait until the end of the lesson, Lucas?’
She shakes her head. ‘I really, really need to go.’
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake. What are you? Three? You can wait.’
Heather blanches. She’s going to have to say this. It’s the only way. ‘But I’m on my period, Sir.’
She’s rewarded with a titter from at least half the class. It stings, but she brushes it aside, because it’s the lesser of two evils.
Mr Salter sighs. ‘If you must…’
Heather doesn’t need to be told twice. She scoops up her bag, clutches it to her chest, and scurries from the room without looking back. Just in case someone checks, she heads for the girls’ loos down the corridor, and stands just inside the door. She doesn’t go into a cubicle. Mostly because she just told Mr Salter a big, fat lie – her period isn’t due for another week.
When she thinks it’s safe she pokes her head around the door. The corridor is empty. Perfect. She turns in the opposite direction from her classroom and starts to run, out of the door into the playground then, taking a route that means she can’t be seen from the modern block full of windows, she weaves in and out of various school buildings until she reaches the sports field, where she dashes across an open piece of grass, praying no one spots her, and dives behind the pavilion.
Heart beating hard, she crouches down, letting her bum sink onto the damp grass as her back presses against the painted bricks. Phew. Made it. All she has to do now is wait.
As she sits, panting, she recalls Tia Paine’s face in German that afternoon. She kept staring over, eyes narrowed, lips twisted into a smirk, and Heather just knew that this was going to be one of those days where whispering behind her back in class or passing notes around for everyone else to laugh at wasn’t going to be enough.
She doesn’t know how Tia learned her old nickname, but she has, and now Tia’s made it her personal mission to wipe the name of Heather Lucas from the student body’s collective memory, so she can replace it with the snappy shortened version she’s come up with: Hobo.
Tia is into blood sports, bullying being the chief one, and ever since the skip incident four long years ago, Heather has been her favourite quarry. She doesn’t know quite what drives the other girl’s merciless pursuit of her. It’s certainly not jealousy. She has a suspicion it’s because she almost fooled Tia, was on the verge of infiltrating her inner circle when she was found out. Whatever the reason, it’s relentless.
So when Heather saw that joyously evil glimmer in Tia’s eyes across the classroom this afternoon, she knew she needed to do something drastic. Tia and the backing singers, even Claudie, are probably waiting for her at the school gates right now. There is no way she’s turning up. She just can’t face dealing with a ripped blazer again, or having the contents of her school bag dumped in the dustbin (where trash like her belongs, apparently).
Just as Heather’s breath is starting to come normally, she hears footsteps. Instantly she’s on her feet, ready to run.
But it isn’t a gang of girls that rounds the corner of the pavilion; it’s a boy. And not just any boy. Ryan Fellowes, star of the drama club and the hottest boy in Year Ten. If he’s surprised at finding Heather there, he doesn’t show it. She hugs her school bag to her chest, eyes wide, as he leans nonchalantly back against the wall, pulls a packet of cigarettes out of his blazer pocket, and lights up.
‘You don’t mind, do you?’ he says. Heather is fairly confident he wouldn’t stub it out even if she did say she minded, so she shakes her head. He holds the pack out to her. ‘Want one?’ She shakes her head again. ‘You’re Heather Lucas, aren’t you?’
She stares back at him, too shocked to even nod. Ryan Fellowes knows her name.
He laughs. ‘Can you actually talk, or is Tia Paine right and you’re a deaf-mute?’
Heather swallows. ‘I can talk.’ Not fancy, not witty, but it gets her point across.
‘She’s a total bitch, that one,’ Ryan says and takes a long drag on his cigarette. Normally Heather thinks that smoking is disgusting, but it almost looks cool on him. She’s fascinated now. How can it be that the two of them are the only ones in the whole year who can see Tia’s true colours? Everyone else loves her, and it’s got even worse since her uncle got killed off when part of the hospital collapsed on Casualty, because then he got a part as one of the minor teachers in the upcoming Harry Potter film. The rest of the school treats her like fricking royalty.
Ryan smokes the rest of his cigarette in silence, then stubs it out against the bricks, and puts the butt into a tin that used to contain mints, explaining that he’s too clever to leave any evidence behind. He pushes himself away from the wall and prepares to go.
‘I’m going to be here again tomorrow,’ he says. ‘Are you?’
On automatic, Heather almost shakes her head again, but she manages to turn the gesture into a shrug.
One side of his mouth hitches up in a smile. Heather loses sensation in her knees.
‘Cool. Well, maybe I’ll see you…’ And he saunters off, saving her from having to produce an answer.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
NOW
Faith and Heather stand on the side of the road, digging up memories for more than half an hour, until a few curious faces appear at windows and an elderly man, who looks as if he might have once been in the military, gives them a pointed look as he marches past. They don’t belong here. Not any more. But it’s weird because now Heather feels a sense of connection, of ownership, to that blasted house in a way she never has before.
When they get back in the car Fai
th says she’ll take Heather home again, but Heather asks her to drop her off in Bromley town centre instead.
She’s not ready to go back to her flat just yet. There are too many things inside her head, things she is afraid she will spill out if given the slightest invitation, and she’s not so sure that’s wise. She needs to get things right in her own mind before she sees Jason again. It’s different with Faith. She was there. For most of the time, anyway. She knows.
But going into town is a mistake. Heather tries to avoid the High Street, keeping to the air-conditioned safety of The Glades instead. But somehow – possibly because she made the mistake of browsing in Marks & Spencer, which has exits to both the shopping centre and the street – she finds herself standing outside Mothercare.
I’ll just go in and have a look, she tells herself. It’s Barney’s birthday in a couple of weeks, so she needs to find something appropriate for him, and now the Early Learning Centre has relocated inside here, it’s the obvious place. She won’t look at the clothes and baby stuff. She’ll walk right through to the back and stay in the toy area. That should be safe.
She goes to the bit with the realistic-looking plastic animals. She’s not convinced they’re an exciting present, but Barney loves them with a passion and Faith has given her approval. Heather decides to get five or six – they’re not very expensive – and Barney will have enough to open a veritable zoo when he’s added them to his collection.
Choosing them actually turns out to be fun. She debates with herself the merits of getting an assorted bunch, lots of different animals, or a family group – like mummy, daddy and baby tigers – and decides she can manage to do both. She picks up two large snow tigers, one prowling, one lying down, and a cute-looking cub with a tiny red tongue sticking out. And then she looks for a few more to make up the assortment. No lions. Barney has plenty of those: a whole pride, practically. But a killer whale would probably go down well, with its stubby plastic teeth and solid mass. She adds a dolphin, just because it seems to be smiling at her, and then hunts for her final choice.
