The Slaughter Man

by Parkin, Cassandra;

  Are they going away without her? She and Laurel had been negotiating for a trip without their parents next summer after their exams, but that was on the strict understanding that her parents stay at home, where they belonged, anxiously waiting for their chicks to return to the nest.

  “Somewhere hot, if you like,” her mother continues. “Or maybe something adventurous, Iceland maybe, we could go whale watching and see the Northern Lights.”

  Is there a but coming? Might this be some sort of bribe for good behaviour? But we can only do it if you try this therapy, make this amount of progress, go back to college next term, get these grades in your mocks. Will this only happen if she starts speaking again?

  “This isn’t a bribe, by the way,” her mother says, and Willow wishes, for what must be the millionth time in her life, that her mother was less intuitive. How could anyone get in a decent teenage strop with a mother who was so insightful? “We thought it might be nice. Because…”

  Yes?

  But nothing comes after because.

  “Oh, sweetie.” Her mother’s sigh is so sweet she imagines she can feel the warmth against her ear. “I wish you were here instead of there. It would be so much easier to talk to you.”

  That’s not true. Willow, knowing she can’t be seen, lets herself frown and shake her head. Communicating this way is a thousand times easier. A golden thirty minutes at a set time each day, and all the distance she could ever want in between. She finds it so satisfying that she’s wondered if they could replicate it once her time in her uncle’s house comes to an end. Could she call her mother once a day from her bedroom?

  “We were thinking of doing some redecorating,” her mother says. “Not your room, we wouldn’t dream of doing anything in your room without you choosing, and not Laurel’s room. But the spare room could do with a bit of love. Don’t you think?”

  Willow has absolutely no opinion about the spare room, but she’s happy to hear her mother talking lightly about things that don’t matter.

  “When we bought the house, we had this mad idea we needed a guest room,” her mother says, with a laugh in her voice now. “I mean, can you imagine? When have we ever had guests? And I never liked that sofa bed either. I think we bought it because it was on sale. But it’s hideous. And unused. If it’s still got its labels on, I’m giving it to charity. And if not, it’s going in a skip.”

  When she was about thirteen, Willow had gone through a phase of creeping into the spare room and closing the door. She’d liked being somewhere unfamiliar in her own home, the sensation of exploring somewhere forbidden. Then she’d grown up a little bit more and lost interest. She’d never asked Laurel if she’d done the same thing.

  “And we can get it furnished nicely,” her mother continues, and that quiver is back in her voice again – what does it mean? Is she excited? Confused? Frightened? – “and make it properly welcoming.”

  Welcoming for who? Willow wonders wildly if this is meant for her. Perhaps they’re thinking that if she moved rooms, got away from the space where she was always one of a pair, she might be able to speak again.

  “And for the holiday,” her mother says, as if this is a perfectly logical connection, “we could do something properly grown-up if you wanted. I mean, we could go somewhere cultural like Rome, or somewhere with great shopping and nightlife, maybe Barcelona, that might be great in the spring. Or if we were quick we could maybe fit it in before Christmas. But we thought maybe not at Christmas. Or, I don’t know, we might do something else at Christmas, if you wanted to I mean, but not the holiday. I think what I’m saying is, let’s play Christmas by ear and see how we’re all feeling.”

  What’s wrong with her mother? She’s almost babbling now, talking and talking in a way Willow recognises because she used to do it herself. When there was something she desperately wanted to say or to ask for, instead of asking directly, she would talk all around the subject, until eventually one of her parents (usually her mother, sometimes her dad) would ask the right question: Willow, are you trying to tell us you want to go out and get pizza for lunch? Would you like a microscope for your birthday by any chance? Do you want flashing lights in your trainers like Amy? But she stopped that years ago. Her mother’s a grown woman. Why would she be doing this? And what can the right question possibly be?

  “I’m babbling, aren’t I,” her mother says. “Sorry. I don’t know what came over me. Shall I read to you again? I really enjoyed reading to you the other night. Um. Sorry. Maybe if you don’t want me to read to you, just, I don’t know, press one or something.”

  This is the mother she needs, the one who can make jokes even though there’s nothing really to laugh about. There’s a faint rustle of paper, the hollow swooshing sound as her mother re-adjusts the handset, and her mother’s voice pours out like a recording. She’s a superb reader, never stumbling or hesitating, turning the pages without breaking the flow, and thank God, not attempting special voices for the characters. If she’s not careful, she’ll be asleep again. She keeps herself awake by picking at the places on her toes where her nail polish has grown out like a tideline. The polish is astoundingly durable. When did she last paint them?

  (“You know what I’ve noticed?” Laurel sits on Willow’s bed, her toes splayed out by pink foam toe separators. “It’s harder to polish your own fingers, but it’s easier to do your own toes, because your feet are more ticklish… Want to try this red?”)

  Willow’s hand falls to her side. She forces herself to breathe slowly and quietly.

  “Willow?” Her mother, anxious and tender. “Sweetie? Are you all right?”

  She’s not all right. She’s burning up with rage. This isn’t fair. She should be past all these stupid reminders.

  “Willow? Willow? I can hear there’s something wrong. Darling, can you please give the phone to Joe so I can talk to him?”

  She doesn’t want to move, but she knows she has to, or her mother will become more and more panicked. She slumps out of the chair and goes to the kitchen, handing the phone to Joe. She will not let this conquer her. She will get herself back to a place where she can’t be caught out. She will be strong.

  “Hey there. Sorry, I didn’t realise it was time… Oh, right. No, no, nothing to worry about, I think she’s fine. Willow, are you fine?” She nods. “She’s fine, she’s nodding. Yeah, a bit, but you know what she’s like, she can’t stand a fuss… Um, so does that mean you… oh. Okay… No, I didn’t mean that, God, what would I know?… No, not a thing…”

  Willow has the volume of her phone turned up loud so that if she lays it down on the arm of her chair to get more comfortable, she can still hear her mother’s voice. It also means that if she concentrates hard, she can listen in to what her mother’s saying to Joe. She ought to do that now, because there’s a puzzle here that she hasn’t yet got to the bottom of. But the kitten’s bouncing around her feet, begging to be picked up, and it’s easier to go upstairs and lie on her bed and let him bite at her hair and snuggle against her ear, while she stares at the line of polish on her toes and lets the guilt gnaw at her insides, for daring to live while the girl who once sat beside her and painted her toenails in a colour called Dragon’s Blood is gone.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  When Willow wakes, she’s aware that something’s missing, and its absence feels good. She fumbles for a minute, then finds it. For the first time since it happened, she’s woken without the terror that she’ll have forgotten, somehow, that Laurel is dead.

  She hadn’t been aware until now of the fierce guard she set over herself, continually reminding her what she’d lost (Laurel’s gone okay she’s gone make sure you remember, she’s gone and she’s never coming back), to avoid the deeper pain of waking up forgetful, and having to walk into the fire of new remembrance. And now, without her realising it, the watcher has been stood down. Her sleeping self was unguarded, vulnerable to forgetting. It feels like a loss rather than a gain.

  How did this happen? Is this the f
irst step towards forgetting Laurel? She wants to get better, but she doesn’t want to lose her sister. She stares at the ceiling and sorts carefully through her feelings, trying to rediscover her fear, but it’s no good, there’s nothing there, only the sense of relaxation, as if she’s beginning to recover from a long illness.

  Her phone tells her it’s just after five in the morning, and when she pulls her curtains back the sky is blue and starry, but her body feels bright and eager to begin. She tiptoes into the bathroom, relieved that there’s no mirror, relieved that today she won’t have to wash her sheets. It’s too early to start the day, but she gets dressed anyway, kisses the kitten’s head as he stirs and stretches on her quilt, then opens the door to the outside staircase and gulps down the newness waiting outside.

  It’s too early to get up, too early to go for a walk, but nonetheless that’s what she’s doing. Her feet know the path past the empty chicken coop, the immaculate pig-pen where no one lives. There’s something eerie about these places where animals ought to be, but are not. Someone should do something about it. She broke Joe’s mirror, but maybe she can make up for it. She climbs over the fence and into the forest, enjoying the crunch of the beech-casts beneath her trainers.

  In their shelter in the field, the goats stir as she passes, blinking yellow eyes toward her and considering whether it’s time to leave their warm straw bedding and venture onto the cool damp ground. Are the bottoms of their feet more like bare feet, or shoes? She’s seen the underneath, with their long bifurcated shape that makes her think of a hawk’s talons, but she doesn’t know how sensitive they are.

  It’s all right, she thinks to herself, as the billy leaps up and mounts a straw bale, his head raised in challenge. I won’t hurt you. Her instinct is to hold his gaze, but she makes herself look down and away, turning her body soft and casual so he’ll understand she isn’t trying to threaten him. After a minute, he climbs back off his bale and folds himself back into the neat goat-loaf shape he was in when she arrived. And now she can go closer, to where the strong young kids – startlingly large now, and full of themselves – are already awake and ready to play, butting into each other and bleating.

  Come here, she thinks, and rummages in her pocket where she has a packet of mints. The smaller kid tosses her head and leaps away, but the little billy prances forward, dips his head and nibbles the mint from her palm. His lips are clever and muscly. His lower jaw makes small neat circular movements as he crunches the mint between his teeth. Then he launches himself vertically into the air, all four feet extended, and tears off across the field, bounding over his little sister in a single strong leap.

  Shit? Have I poisoned him? The little goat seems overwhelmed with his minty experience, leaping from side to side and tossing his head. What if he keels over and dies? Will Katherine know it was me? The little kid’s squaring up to the billy goat, who doesn’t even bother to get up, but simply turns his massive head in his son’s direction and lowers his horns for a moment. Never mind Katherine, what if he dies and the other goats know it was me?

  It’s all right. It’s not drugs. It’s a sweet. Stop that now. Willow thinks this thought as hard as she can, willing the little goat to calm down and act more normally. You’re going to be fine. The little goat lowers his head and paws at the ground. No, don’t do that, you’ll get murdered. The billy closes his eyes and turns his head away.

  The little goat takes one more huge vertical leap, then trots back towards Willow and shoves his nose back into her palm, butting and nuzzling as if this will make another mint appear there. From the shelter, the kid’s mother is watching attentively.

  There, Willow thinks, feeling limp with relief. It’s all fine, see? Nothing wrong with him at all. He’s asking for another one. No need to worry. I haven’t hurt your baby.

  Either goats are telepathic or the mother goat is too lazy to get up, because she does nothing to stop Willow making her next move, which is to begin luring the kid across the field. He’s clever enough to work out there are more mints in her pocket than the single one in her palm, and she has to work hard not to let him stuff his busy little muzzle in there. But with some coaxing and the occasional hard shove, she eventually gets them both over to the fence.

  Now for the difficult part. Her instinct is to grab, but a sudden lurch will startle the goat, who is quicker and more nimble than she is. She placates him with another mint, then begins to scratch at the spot between his horn-buds. Now he’s used to the sudden burst of heat from his snack, he seems happy to stand still and savour the experience. Still scratching at his head, she works her other arm slowly along his neck, down his flank, and then with a swift movement, scoops her arm behind his front legs. While he dangles over her arm, startled but accepting, she lifts his back end with her other arm. He’s warm and comforting to hold, and much heavier than she remembers.

  We’re going on an adventure. Would he enjoy it if she could whisper these words into the long twitch of his ear? Perhaps he finds silence more reassuring. He’s never heard her voice, after all. She heaves him over the fence somehow, sweating with fear that she’ll drop him and hurt him, then follows as fast as she can. What will she do if he takes off into the trees? But he seems content to stay by her side, gazing back at his field on the other side of the fence with his yellow eyes wide with wonder.

  We’re going to my house now. You’re going to have a new home. She tells him this not with words but with further offers of mints, walking a few feet down the path and holding out her palm until he joins her. As the field recedes, he becomes less interested in mints and more interested in the new foliage, darting from her side to pluck mouthfuls of bramble and cow parsley. But he’s always watching her from the edges of his vision, making sure she doesn’t leave him alone in this strange place. When she turns away to walk further down the path, he pings after her as if there’s a piece of elastic stretched between them. Sometimes he trots neatly by her side like a dog. Sometimes he butts his head against the back of her knees.

  Her original plan had been to shut the little goat in the pig-pen, but he leans so confidingly against her, and looks so small and alone, that she can’t make herself do it. She could take him up to her bedroom, but she doesn’t especially want a goat in her bedroom. Has Joe left the back door unlocked? Yes, he has, and the small sofa in the kitchen window seems the perfect place for a small goat who’s taken the longest walk of his life to fold himself up for a rest. She leaves the back door open so he can get out into the yard if he wants to, settles him down with the rest of the Polo mints, and goes back to her room with the satisfied feeling of a job well done.

  She’s drifting somewhere warm and hazy between sleep and wakefulness when she hears Joe’s steps on the stairs. She sits up and tickles the kitten behind his ears, her smile big and unstoppable. The kitchen door scrapes. She hears footsteps, the spurt of a tap, the click of the kettle, and then a sudden shout and a skitter of feet.

  “Willow.” Her uncle’s voice comes to her as clearly as if he was standing in her doorway. “Would you know anything about this baby goat—” a little pause and another exclamation – “about this oddly minty baby goat that’s standing in the kitchen?”

  The joy is splitting her face in two. She jumps off her bed and pads downstairs, trying to arrange her face into a shape that doesn’t instantly give away her complicity. In the kitchen, Joe and the goat stare at each other from opposite sides of the kitchen. When the goat sees her, it dashes to her side as if only she can save him from this sudden monster.

  “He’s very sweet,” Joe says, sounding as if he really does think the goat is very sweet. “Is he one of Katherine’s?” Willow scratches at the spot between the goat’s ears. “Um, why is he here?”

  How can she explain? He’s a present. He’s to say thank you. Katherine’s got too many goats anyway, she won’t mind. He’s to celebrate, because this is the first morning since it happened that I’ve woken up and not wanted to die. She shrugs.

  �
��So did he walk all the way? No wonder he was asleep when I came in. Oh, now, come on, fella, that’s not playing the game.” The goat spreads his back legs and pees, a startlingly huge and pungent puddle that splashes out across the tiles. Willow cringes and looks apprehensively at Joe, afraid he’s going to yell at her, but her uncle’s laughing, a deep low rumbling chuckle that makes everything all right and more than all right, and the goat pops his feet up on the table to steal an apple from the fruit bowl, and Joe, still laughing, opens the back door and shoos the goat out into the yard, where he crunches his apple and watches the two people inside mopping the floor as if it has nothing at all to do with him.

  Willow spends the morning turning the pig-pen into a palace. There’s no straw, but she improvises with a blanket, making a soft place for him to lie down. She fills a bucket with water from the tap, then wonders if he’ll be put off by the chlorine, pours it out again, and refills it from the water butt. She raids the fridge and finds three carrots, a head of lettuce and a red pepper, which she mixes with an assortment of dandelion leaves to make a luxurious salad. The goat eats the salad, ignores the blanket, cries when she shuts the door on him and follows her around the yard like a dog.

  In the utility room, she finds an actual dog bed, stuffed behind the drying rack and apparently forgotten about, which she carries triumphantly out to make the goat’s blanket nest more welcoming. He climbs into it for a minute, pees, then hops back out and settles down next to her to go to sleep. Looking after him is more work than she’d imagined, but presumably it gets easier with time. After a few minutes, Joe arrives, armed with two plates of thick fluffy pancakes that ooze syrup and drip cream.

  “Breakfast,” he explains as he folds himself up beside her. “Well, brunch. Don’t give any to the goat or he’ll be sick.”

  Willow isn’t sure how she’s supposed to stop the goat from eating food that’s right there in his face, but he seems exhausted by his busy day, and is obliviously asleep with his head in her lap. When he breathes in, his whole body inflates like a balloon. Trying not to drip cream on his head, she slices through her pancakes with her fork.