‘Here, you sort through this box and I’ll take the photo albums.’ Rosie hands me another shoebox before stacking the albums on top of the bed.
‘This one is photographs too,’ I say, rummaging through the grainy old pictures. ‘Grandad’s about forty here, and he has a beard.’
Rosie leans over my shoulder and frowns. ‘Huh. I thought that was Dad for a minute.’ She snatches the photo out of my hand and examines it. ‘There’s one here that I remember.’ She holds up a picture of us at a theme park. ‘It was the day after Grandad found you sleepwalking in the woods. You were such a weird kid, Hev. You could walk for miles in your sleep without waking up.’
‘I remember coming round in the living room with everyone staring at me, but I’ve never been able to remember being in the woods. I guess the brain shuts it all out when you’re asleep.’
‘Weren’t you dreaming about anything?’ Rosie drops the photograph back into the box. ‘Why did your body want you to walk into the woods?’
‘I don’t know.’ I move away from her and stare out of the window.
‘How old were you then? About fifteen?’
‘Can we talk about something else?’ I say, turning back to face her. ‘That whole sleepwalking in the woods thing creeps me out.’
Rosie shrugs and flips open an album. ‘Okay.’ But after a brief pause, she says, ‘I know you don’t want to talk about it, but I’ll just say that it was weird how you used to sleepwalk all over the house when you were about ten, and then never did it again until you were fifteen. How did Grandad find you anyway? Are you hiding some sort of secret?’
‘Would you shut up about it?’ I let out a hollow laugh. ‘You’re one to talk about secrets.’
Rosie’s jaw tightens. ‘I don’t have half as many as you think I do.’ She stands up and walks over to the wardrobe, dropping to her hands and knees and reaching inside. ‘What’s this?’
When she straightens up, she’s holding a long metal box, which she places on the bed.
Ice-cold needles prick my arms and legs, and my stomach flips over. ‘It’s the cabinet for Dad’s shotgun. It must be empty, though, right?’
‘Do you know where the key is?’ Rosie asks.
I open the top drawer of the bedside table and take out a small key. ‘Wait. Do we really want to find out what’s inside?’
‘Like you said,’ Rosie replies, ‘it can’t be the actual gun.’ She lifts one end. ‘It’s heavy, though.’
My heart beats faster as Rosie puts the key into the lock and turns it. The hinges squeak as she flips open the lid to reveal an object covered in an old pillowcase fastened with an elastic band. She lifts it, slips off the elastic band and pulls back the fabric to reveal the long barrel of a shotgun.
‘Fuck,’ I blurt out, feeling the blood drain from my face. Rosie lets out a gasp, then gently places the gun on the carpet and moves away, covering her mouth with her hand.
‘Is that it?’ she says. ‘Is that what he used?’
‘I don’t understand why Mum would keep it,’ I whisper, light-headed from the shock. ‘What was she thinking?’ I can’t stop staring down at the gun my father used to kill himself. Did she request it back from the police? ‘Is it definitely Dad’s?’ I ask. I’m not sure why Mum would buy a different gun, but I need to know for sure.
Slowly Rosie bends down and picks up the weapon. She rotates it in her hands. ‘Yes, this is Dad’s. I remember it. He never let us touch it, did he? I always wanted him to teach me how to shoot.’ She leans over the box and produces two pieces of paper. ‘Licences. One for Dad. One for Mum.’
I shake my head in disbelief. ‘Mum had a licence?’
Rosie lets out a little laugh, as though not surprised at all. ‘Everyone does in the countryside, don’t they?’
‘I guess she lived alone,’ I mumble, thinking about Ian Dixon’s hostility, and the Murrays’, and the insistence that we should sell the house and leave. Perhaps Mum never felt safe after Dad died. How did I fail to see it?
Rosie swings the barrel around and I duck down.
‘What if it’s loaded?’
‘It won’t be,’ she says. But after a moment of consideration, she adds, ‘Do you know how to check?’
I shake my head.
With a flick of her finger, she pulls a lever and breaks open the gun, revealing the empty barrel.
‘How did you know how to do that?’ I ask.
‘I once went clay-pigeon shooting with some friends on a hen do,’ she says with a shrug. ‘It’s not that difficult to learn.’ She examines the gun, eyes trailing along the length of it. ‘There must have been blood. Who cleaned the blood away? Was it Mum?’
‘I don’t know. Please, Rosie. Put it back. I don’t like seeing it.’
‘Did you believe it when you heard?’ Rosie finally pulls her eyes away from the gun and snaps it back together. I find it difficult to take my eyes from it: the lump of metal and wood that killed my father.
She leans down and picks up the old pillowcase. ‘When Mum called me, I didn’t believe her. Dad would never kill himself. He was too stubborn for that. He’d live to spite us, so that he could continue to make us feel inadequate all our lives.’
‘He wasn’t like that.’
She shoots me a hard stare. ‘Not to you, maybe. But to everyone else he was.’
She positions the elastic band back over the pillowcase, then locks the gun in the metal cabinet and returns it to the wardrobe.
‘He didn’t want us, Hev. Don’t you remember how much he used to work away? All those random building sites in the south of France. It wasn’t for the money, it was to get away from us. You, me, Mum. He left us here with her and Grandad while he went on his jollies for weeks at a time.’
‘He was working.’
‘It was an excuse!’
The sudden rise in her voice and the way she moves towards me as she shouts makes me flinch away from her. There’s that old bit of Rosie fire that I’ve always known. But when she sees the frozen expression of fear on my face, she takes a step away and rakes her fingers through her hair.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ she suggests. ‘Let’s go for a coffee.’
‘I don’t know …’
‘Come on, little sister.’ She reaches down and pulls me to my feet.
I could be twelve years old again, following her wherever she leads.
* * *
‘Do you remember that song we used to sing at school? “Watch your back, it’s Buckthorpe Jack. Count to four, he’s at your door.” And then everyone would run around the playground with an invisible knife, stabbing each other.’
‘I remember.’ I’m on edge as Rosie talks loudly in the café. There’s only one in Buckthorpe, an odd little place decorated with vintage photo frames and tall candles.
‘Poor Jack. Did he ever actually stab someone?’ she says.
‘I don’t know,’ I admit. No one knows.
‘Anyway, all I’m saying is that no wonder Mum kept Dad’s gun, with people like Buckthorpe Jack still living in the village.’
Buckthorpe Jack is a real person, surrounded by his own myths and legends. No one quite knows the truth about him. Some people believe he went to prison years ago for murder but had enough money when he was released to buy a run-down cabin. Since then he’s lived mainly off the land, growing his own vegetables that he sells in the farm shop. I’m not sure anyone has ever had a full conversation with him. He’s just there, in the background, existing but not living, and that makes most people pretty uncomfortable.
His cabin is a mile or so into the woods, near the bluebell field. He has lived there for as long as I can remember. He seemed old when we were kids but, in reality, he was probably only in his forties, just a little more wizened than the average person, especially with his long, straggly beard. He’s still as much of a loner as always. Because he rarely comes into the village, many stories have been told about who he is and where he came from.
‘You used
to have nightmares about him,’ Rosie says. ‘I’d forgotten about that until now. You used to dream that he was going to kidnap you and take you to the woods to be his bride. Were you going to Jack that night, do you think?’
‘What night?’ I run a finger around the rim of my coffee cup. Behind me the coffee machine screeches and hisses.
‘The night you were sleepwalking?’
I fold my arms tightly across my chest. ‘I don’t remember.’
She sighs. ‘You’re lucky that you don’t remember the things you don’t want to remember. There’s a lot I wish I didn’t remember.’
‘Like what?’ I ask, mind sharpened now that the conversation has moved on to her.
‘Mum and Dad yelling at each other. Dad leaving us with Mum when she was being difficult. Grandad shouting at me all the time.’
‘Mum and Dad hardly ever argued,’ I protest. ‘Apart from when Mum went loopy every once in a while.’ There were fights and a few door-slamming occasions, but apart from that, I always considered our parents a normal couple. Both of them were quiet people in general, but maybe once a year Mum would scream at Dad until he’d storm out with promises that he was never coming back.
Rosie shakes her head. ‘You were always on his side, weren’t you? You never saw him for what he was.’
‘Dad?’ My jaw drops. The question has me reeling. ‘What do you mean?’
‘He wasn’t the man you thought he was,’ she says. ‘You remember everything wrong, Heather. You’re so naïve and you always have been.’
‘I’m not naïve!’
‘It must be nice,’ she snaps, ‘to be the favourite. The one everyone likes. Since I came home the entire village has already turned against me, and I’ve only been here a week. Mum dies, and I can’t even grieve because they want me gone.’
‘Can you blame them?’ The words tumble out of my mouth before I can stop them.
Her expression is sharp when her gaze reaches mine. Afternoon sun dances across her chin and cheekbones, narrowing her face. ‘Why? Why can’t I blame them?’ She stands. She has always been tall, and now she looms over me, speaking tightly through her teeth, body pulsating with anger.
‘Nothing.’ I glance back down at my coffee to avoid her icy-blue eyes.
‘Say it,’ she demands.
But I won’t. I can’t say the words and so they remain unspoken, as they have done since the day I put the bracelet back on her cabinet. She strides purposefully out of the café, leaving me there alone.
Twelve
Rosie
Then
When I was fifteen, and Heather had just turned fourteen, Peter started to join in with us during our summer days at the Murrays’ farm. He’d always been too young before, but now he was eleven, and Mr Murray said it was fine as long as Samuel kept a close eye on him. Soon Peter stopped following his brother around all day and started following Heather instead. It used to make me laugh how he’d sneak up on her in the stables when she least expected it. We called him Kitten Paws, because he was so skinny he didn’t make a sound.
‘Can I help you, Hev?’ became his mantra. He called my sister ‘Hev’ as though they were best friends. Only I called her that, and occasionally, Samuel.
I started to tease Heather that Peter had a crush on her, which obviously annoyed her. But she tolerated Peter in a kind way that I never could. It was me who snapped at Peter when he got in the way of my wheelbarrow or startled the ponies when I brought them in from the paddock. I never had the patience for anyone or anything that slowed me down.
One day when Peter was following us around as we worked in the barns, I ended up breaking away to get a moment to myself. I’d had enough of his whiny voice asking Heather hundreds of questions – Do you want to sit with me at lunch at school? Did you know I was adopted? Don’t you think Samuel is annoying? Did I tell you I won the sprint race last sports day?
While Heather bit her tongue and listened patiently as Peter regaled her with tales of his sprinting prowess, I slipped out of the barn and went to the paddock to check on Midnight and Lady. They were both grazing in the sun, occasionally lifting their noses from the grass to shake away flies. I made a mental note to remember their fly masks the next day.
Midnight eventually plodded lazily over to the gate, his tail swishing away horseflies. It was late July and the middle of a cloudy summer that would lead into a freezing winter. He allowed me to stroke his nose while I enjoyed time away from cow dung and boys with too many questions.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Samuel approaching. When he spotted me, he stopped, and I saw him considering walking in the opposite direction. I knew immediately that there was something wrong. He had been stomping rather than walking, and now he wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and sniffed. Then he came over but didn’t speak. He just stroked Midnight’s neck.
‘You all right?’ I asked eventually.
He nodded his head. ‘My dad’s being a dick again, that’s all.’
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘What did he do?’
‘He says he can’t afford to pay you and Heather any more. And he says you won’t come to the farm unless we pay you.’
We didn’t earn much from our work on the farm. There was no formal agreement and we certainly didn’t earn minimum wage. It was a casual thing amongst people who knew each other in a close-knit community.
‘I don’t know about that,’ I said. ‘Heather would never stop coming here.’ Which was true. She lived for it. Every morning during the holidays she woke me up already showered and forced me to get ready for the day. She was the one who saddled Midnight for me while I ate breakfast. If it wasn’t for her, we’d be late every morning. ‘I know you’d miss her if she did stop, but you’ll still see her at school.’
Over the last few years, I’d noticed Heather and Samuel spending more and more time together at school. Samuel’s bullying had calmed since we’d all got a little older and had more homework and GCSEs around the corner. I’d noticed that the two of them usually sat and ate lunch together, or came out of classrooms talking to each other. She used to have a small circle of nerdy girls to hang out with, but she didn’t seem to spend that much time with them any more. It hadn’t concerned me at the time, because I was preoccupied with my own group of friends.
‘It’s not the same, though, is it?’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t get to see her for six weeks of the year.’
My heart sank a little. Of course this was more about Heather than me.
‘I’d miss you too,’ he added sheepishly. ‘You won’t even talk to me at school.’
His inclusion of me was too little too late, but I had to admit he was right about that. I didn’t talk to him at school. I had a reputation to protect; I didn’t want to lose the popularity that had been tough to earn, which meant that I generally ignored both Samuel and Heather. School was more my world than the farm was at this point. But it was then that I realised I’d still come to the farm without being paid, too. Because otherwise I’d never get to talk to Samuel. I had to come.
‘If I talked to you at school, my friends would think I’d lost my mind.’
‘I hate that school,’ he said fiercely. ‘All the girls are bitches.’
‘You’re just annoyed they won’t go out with you.’ I lifted my chin defensively. He was right, but I didn’t want him to be, because I knew I was one of the bitches he was referring to.
‘Yeah, well, I have standards anyway. Not like you, apparently. Who is it this week? Which idiot from the rugby team did I see you getting off with on the tennis courts?’
The elastic band that held my temper in check snapped and I slapped him hard around the face. Samuel gasped, lifted his hand to his cheek and stared at me.
We stood completely still for a moment, both of us silent, and my hands began to tremble. My face burned with heat, and I’m sure it was bright red with anger and shock. I opened my mouth to apologise, but I couldn’t find the words. I’d regretted it immediately, but in a
way, I still felt as though he’d deserved it.
Finally, I mumbled, ‘Sorry.’
Samuel didn’t say another word. He just walked away without looking back.
Thirteen
Heather
Now
What else have I forgotten about my past? My childhood with Rosie tends to blur into feelings and snapshots of the world I knew back then. There’s a before and an after. Sometimes the before comes to me as clear as the sound of a bell. On other days, I think the after was terrible enough to mar everything that came before, twisting my memories.
What Rosie said to me plays on my mind as I walk back from the village. Is she right about everything? Am I truly as naïve and stupid as she makes out? No, I refuse to believe that our childhood was bad. No matter what she or Ian Dixon says, we were happy here. There was the day Dad came home with Lady and Midnight. Or when Rosie’s dangerously fast bicycle raced down the hill from our primary school beating all the boys. The 50p choc ices from the village shop. Samuel showing me around the farm the day Lady spooked at the weird tree. Building forts out of hay bales on the Murrays’ farm. Riding around the fields with the sheep and cows. Feeling that giggly, silly sensation of belonging somewhere, only to have it all ripped away.
Can it ever be mended? Can I ever trust my sister again?
The bushes rustle as I begin my walk home. There are no pavements on the narrow roads between the village and our cottage, making the footpaths through the fields a safer option. Luckily, it hasn’t rained and the ground isn’t too muddy. I hop over a stile and continue along a wider path between two fields, both blocked off by a tangle of weeds, bushes and trees.
I’ve always felt that the woods and the land around our village contain the kind of mysterious quality that makes it easy to believe that someone is watching you. When it’s windy, like it is now, the trees whistle a low, eerie tune. The hair on the back of my neck stands on end, and the line Watch your back, it’s Buckthorpe Jack plays through my mind on a loop.
The Liar's Sister (ARC) Page 9
