by Emlyn Rees
But the further he walked, the more he felt like he was still at sea. The land rose one moment, only to fall the next. It was like riding over waves in the boat. His boots felt so heavy. It would be nice to sit down, he thought, just for a minute, just to give himself a chance to catch his breath. The snow looked soft and welcoming beneath his feet. If he lay down now, it would probably feel just like a bed.
He heard what sounded like a growl.
And again.
‘There.’
He realised it was Kellie.
‘There!’ she shouted a second time. ‘Look! There!’
Her outstretched arm flapped in the wind. He looked to where she was pointing, but saw nothing. She must have been confused, he thought, imagining things where there were none. He saw nothing but snow.
Then he saw it, too: high up above them, a dark vertical shape. Then came a flash of light, just for a second, at the top of the shape. Then it was gone. He watched, confused. Then the light flashed on again.
It hit him what it was.
‘The lighthouse!’ he yelled.
The wind swept away her answer, but he didn’t care. He felt a burst of energy and his drowsiness vanished.
‘Come on!’ He pulled her onwards. Strength rushed through him. ‘That’s the lighthouse. It’s Green Bay harbour. We’ve nearly made it. We’re nearly there.’
Chapter 10
Lunch had been a long, drawn out affair, with the Thorne family and Michael all sitting down together. Outside the wind howled like a wounded beast and the snow fell ceaselessly, but inside, all was still.
Michael, Simon, old Mr Thorne and Taylor and her parents were all in the sitting room. Elliot was reading a newspaper, and Mr Thorne a book, both of them in armchairs in front of the fire. Isabelle was cross-legged on the floor, painting her fingernails with long careful licks of a bright red brush. David could be heard in the kitchen, sharpening knives.
Michael was at the table, leafing desultorily through the pile of newspaper supplements and magazines that Elliot had dumped there fifteen minutes ago for his and Taylor’s benefit. Taylor was sitting opposite him, twisting her hair and humming the tune from The Great Escape over and over again, whilst watching her father out of the corner of her eye.
She’d said nothing for over ten minutes, not even to Michael. She was still annoyed with Stephanie for not caving in to her demands and letting Simon go outside, and she wasn’t going to let Elliot forget it. Chances were she didn’t even want to go outside herself any more. Michael certainly didn’t. It was the principle of the matter than kept her going, he supposed, the principle being that someone had told her no.
Michael felt trapped, oppressed, as if he was in the middle of a double maths lesson at school, looking out across the empty sports fields on a hot summer’s day. He was ready to go home. At least he could play on his computer there. Maybe Taylor would even go with him. And if she did – he let his mind wander and momentarily pictured the two of them there, up in his bedroom, perched on the edge of his bed, at a sudden, awkward loss for words . . .
He sighed. Even thinking of this potentially awesome alternative was torture. They weren’t going anywhere, not until the snow stopped.
‘How about another game of table tennis?’ he suggested, but all Taylor did was yawn loudly. She wasn’t going to let her father off the hook that easily. She started humming again.
Elliot laid his newspaper out on his lap. ‘I don’t think I can take much more of this,’ he said.
Isabelle cleared her throat. ‘I’m going for a bath,’ she announced.
She stood up and stretched, staring out through the window, towards the same line of fir trees beneath which Elliot had earlier attempted to make his phone call. It was growing dark now and even the falling snow was fading from view. Michael thought how pale Isabelle looked, and how tired, but then she shot Elliot a brilliant smile, and the years seemed to fall from her. She went over to him and pulled him up out of his chair, slipping her arms round his waist, and pulling him in tight.
‘Maybe you should have a lie-down, too,’ she said. She trailed her fingers across the back of Elliot’s thigh, before finally setting off towards the door.
‘Why not play a game?’ Elliot suggested to Taylor. ‘Trivial Pursuit?’
‘I hate it.’
‘Scattergories?’
‘That’s pants, as well. All board games are. That’s why they’re called board games,’ she added flatly, ‘because that’s how they make you feel.’
‘So play a different kind of game. I know. How about hide and seek?’
‘How about over my dead body?’ she asked back.
Michael hid his smile behind his hand.
‘Hide and seek is a game for babies,’ she declared.
‘Even I know that,’ Simon agreed. ‘Only the little kids at school play that and nobody else does, because it’s too easy and not much fun, not when you think of all the other games there are and how much better they are, and –’
‘Sardines, then,’ Elliot said.
‘What’s that?’ Simon asked.
‘You remember, don’t you, Taylor? We played it in America a few years ago.’
Michael knew the game, too. The rules were easy. One person went and hid somewhere big enough for other people to hide too. Everyone else went to look for them. The first person to find the person hiding then hid with them. And so on. The loser was the person to find the others last.
‘Six years ago,’ Taylor corrected her father. ‘When I was eight.’
‘My point exactly,’ Elliot said. ‘When you were the same age as Simon is now.’
‘Forget it,’ she said.
Elliot looked to Michael for support, but Michael had already learnt his lesson about siding against Taylor, and this time he looked away.
‘I’ll tell you what,’ Elliot continued. ‘Why don’t I make it worth your while by offering up a fiver for whoever hides the longest?’
‘Make it twenty and you’ve got yourself a deal,’ Taylor said.
Elliot smiled, either pleased to have got his way, or out of respect for his daughter’s decision to negotiate. Michael waited impatiently to hear what Elliot said next. Twenty pounds was a lot of money. Michael’s mother paid him two pounds an hour for washing up and cooking meals in the pub. This was a chance, then, of earning in an instant what would otherwise take him ten hours’ hard work. All Elliot had to do was agree.
Old Mr Thorne stirred in his armchair, and turned round to watch.
‘Fifteen,’ Elliot said, taking a clipped fold of cash from his pocket and licking the tip of his finger, preparing to count the notes off.
‘Seventeen-fifty,’ Taylor said.
Elliot considered this for a moment, then said, ‘Done.’
‘Excellent,’ Simon said, punching his hand in the air. ‘That’s loads. You can buy stacks of stuff with that. Toys and comics and sweets and crisps and you’d still have some money left to save up for something else like a game, or –’
‘Michael?’ Taylor asked him.
‘Count me in,’ he said without hesitating. So what if sardines was a kids’ game? Cash was still cash. It was as simple as that.
They agreed they’d play the game three times in order that they could find a winner. They’d each take turns to hide and the person who hid the longest without the other two people finding them would get the money. They drew straws to decide who went first and Michael got the shortest so Taylor and Simon stayed in the kitchen and Simon began counting to a hundred.
Not wanting to look too uncool, even though he was determined to win the cash, Michael walked slowly out of the kitchen and then padded up the stairs, trying not to make them creak and give away the fact that this was the way he’d chosen to go.
He knew his way round the Thorne house pretty well, he’d been here so much. There were three bedrooms on each of the corridors which led off the landing at the top of the stairs. Another flight led up to the attic. Michael
went down the corridor to the left, passing a gallery of framed black and white photos on the pale yellowed walls.
A part of him had always wanted to live here, even before his dad had left home and Roddy had moved in. There was none of the acrid stink of spilt beer, or the guff of stale smoke that he was used to at home. The hubbub of pub chatter that Michael had grown up with was thankfully absent too. It felt private here, not public like his own home did so much of the time.
Michael stopped at the second bedroom door he came to. If he remembered right, this was where Simon’s parents usually slept, and seeing as they were downstairs (David in the kitchen; Stephanie and Nat in the TV room), he guessed they wouldn’t mind him hiding in here. Away from Taylor and Simon, he felt even more ridiculous creeping around, but he told himself to think of the money, and didn’t look back.
The moment he stepped inside and closed the door behind him, he could tell the room was definitely an adult one. It was spotless. There were no clothes littering the floor, or sound system or games. Michael scanned around for possible hiding places, quickly dismissing under the double bed, inside the antique wardrobe and behind the cream curtains, each of them being too obvious.
There was a second door on the opposite side of the room, which led, he guessed, to an en-suite bathroom. He was about to go in and check it out, when he spotted a pine blanket box pushed up against the flaking whitewashed stone wall. It was three feet deep, three feet wide, and five feet long.
He opened it up and saw it was empty. There wasn’t much room, but enough for two, and that was the most the game would require. Climbing inside – feeling a bit of tit, but not enough to make him forsake the possibility of making some easy cash – he wondered what would happen if Taylor found him first. Would she climb in here beside him? And what then? What would happen if they ended up lying here together in the dark? How much of a kids’ game would it feel like then?
The light faded as he pulled the lid down on top of him, but complete darkness never came. There was a row of small round ventilation holes in the front of the box, just beneath the lip of the lid. Repositioning himself, he propped himself up on his elbow and peered through one of the holes into the empty room.
The scent of lavender filled his nostrils. He could hear his own breathing, and remembered standing in the escape tunnel earlier that day. He shivered. That place gave him the creeps and he hoped Taylor would change her mind about bothering to go back.
Footsteps thudded down the corridor. The bedroom door flew open and smacked hard against the wardrobe.
‘Oh, Miiii-chaellll,’ Simon called in a ghostly voice as he walked into the bedroom. ‘Are you iiiiiinnn here?’
Michael watched through the holes as Simon walked over to the bed and got down on his knees and peered beneath. Then he straightened up and surveyed the room. Then Michael froze, not because Simon had spotted him, but because Michael had spotted something else. Behind Simon, the bathroom door was opening and Isabelle stepped out.
She was wearing a white towel dressing gown, tied off at the waist with a neat bow. Her blonde hair was wet and combed back, and looked darker than before. Steam hung in the bathroom doorway. Oh, shit, Michael thought, I’m in the wrong room. She’s been in there all along, having a bath.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked Simon, taking him by surprise and making him jump.
‘Looking for Michael,’ Simon said, springing to attention.
‘Michael?’
‘We were playing sardines,’ he explained.
‘Well, he’s not in here, honey.’
‘No, Aunty Izzy. Sorry, Aunty Izzy.’ Simon backed towards the door. ‘I’m going to go and check the other rooms. I’ll see you later.’
‘You do that, sweetie,’ she called after him.
She closed the door.
Michael moved to lift the lid up, thinking that the sooner he said he was hiding here, the better. But at that exact moment, Isabelle unfastened the bow at her waist, and let her dressing gown fall to the floor.
She stood there naked.
Shit, he thought. Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit . . .
What the hell was he meant to do now? He tried not to breathe, tried not to panic, but that only made him breathe deeper, that only made him panic more. What if she heard him? What was he going to do? He should do the decent thing and climb out. He should cover his eyes. If she caught him in here now, he’d be dead. He should apologise to her. But he didn’t. He couldn’t. He could hardly even contemplate the embarrassment that he knew would ensue, let alone bring it down on himself.
So instead, he just stared.
He’d never see a naked woman before, not in the flesh, anyway – and Isabelle looked nothing like the photos of the airbrushed strippers he’d accessed on the internet, or the girls from the seventies, with their huge hairy snatches and bouffed-up hair-do’s, who featured in the old copies of Playboy he kept beneath his bed.
There was something almost shocking about Isabelle’s normalness, as if she was almost too real, but there was something beautiful about her too and he hated himself for the way she made him feel, for finding himself now fancying Taylor’s mother as well as her.
He wasn’t the only one who was taking a good hard look, either. He now saw that she was examining herself in the full-length mirror on the wardrobe door. She traced her face with her fingers, touching the faint wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. She then turned side-on to the mirror, unknowingly facing him, and he watched her stomach tense. She cupped her breasts in her hands, pushing them together, so that their cleavage grew deeper and dark. Her skin was still pink from the bath. He stared at the neat, cropped vertical line of dark blonde hair between her legs.
Then came footsteps. The bedroom door opened with a click.
Isabelle reached for her dressing gown, but then relaxed. Michael didn’t; he only felt worse. It wasn’t Simon again, or Taylor, as he’d half-expected. It was Elliot who now entered the bedroom and shut the door behind him.
‘I hoped you’d come up,’ Isabelle said.
‘I thought you were having a bath.’
‘I was, but Simon disturbed me. He was mucking around in here.’
‘Mea culpa. I gave them some money to play. Naughty, I know, but I’d have done anything to stop Taylor from humming that bloody annoying tune.’
‘She’s a determined girl.’
‘Just like her mum, eh?’ Elliot said.
He started round to the other side of the bed, where Michael could see an open bag on the floor, but Isabelle stepped neatly in front of him, blocking his path.
‘Guess what I’m determined to have now?’ she asked.
He stared at her blankly.
She told him, ‘You.’
‘What about the kids?’ Elliot asked. ‘One of them might come in again.’
‘They won’t,’ she said, ‘but if you’re worried about them, why not lock the door?’
Michael couldn’t believe what was happening, let alone deal with what might happen next. If they found him here now, he’d never live it down. He’d never be able to speak to them or Taylor again, or even look them in the face.
Isabelle stepped up close to Elliot and pressed herself against him, but Elliot stepped quickly back.
‘I can’t right now,’ he said. ‘Where’s my jumper? I promised David I’d help him get some wood in from the shed.’
‘But Elliot . . .’
He had already knelt down in front of his bag. He unfurled a faded checked green and white jumper. ‘It’s freezing out there. I’d feel awful if I left him to do it on his own.’
Isabelle picked up her dressing gown from the floor.
‘Well, come up afterwards,’ she said. ‘It won’t take long, will it? I can wait.’
Elliot grimaced. ‘I think Stephanie wants to get dinner going pretty soon, darling.’ He kissed Isabelle on the forehead. ‘I’ll see you downstairs, OK?’
Isabelle nodded and watched him leave. The bedroom d
oor clicked shut. She stood staring after him for so long that Michael actually wondered whether she’d fallen asleep.
When she did move, it was as if she was shaking herself from a trance. She sat down on the bed, lifted the dressing gown to her mouth and bit down into it. Her whole body tensed, and then began to shake.
As she lowered her hands, he saw her face. It was creased with pain and tears streamed down her cheeks. She screwed her eyes up tight, then opened them and walked into the bathroom, closing the door behind her.
Michael’s legs and arms felt cramped, but he had to move. This was his chance. Now. He raised the blanket box lid. He checked the bathroom doorknob and prayed it wouldn’t turn. Then he stepped out of the box and lowered its lid. Softly, slowly, he made his way to the bedroom door. Caution vanished the instant he reached it. In a second, he was out.
No sooner had he shut the door, than Taylor rounded the corner of the corridor. She stopped dead in her tracks, folded her arms and stared.
‘Where the fuck have you been?’ she asked. ‘I’ve been looking for you everywhere.’ She noticed he was still holding the door handle. ‘Is that where you were?’ she asked. ‘In Mum and Dad’s room?’
‘No. I just stuck my head round the door to see if you two were in there but no one was. I thought you might have given up and played a trick and started hiding from me.’
She looked him up and down. ‘Why are you blushing?’ she asked.
‘I’m not. I’m just hot.’
‘Let’s go find Simon,’ she said, ‘there’s still that money to be won.’
She dipped her head towards him as they walked along side by side.
‘You stink of flowers,’ she said. ‘Of lavender, or something. What are you? Some kind of a queer?’
Chapter 11
Kellie slipped inside the door to the Windcheater bar, being careful not to make a sound with the latch. Breathing in, she hid behind the thick velvet curtain, pulling it aside just a fraction so that she could check out what was going on. She couldn’t take any chances. She had to make sure that the coast was clear and that Elliot, or any of his family, had not turned up at the pub. Not that she’d recognise them anyway, it occurred to her, even if they had.
