YOU
by
PHIL WHITAKER
SYNOPSIS
Big Issue in the North Summer Reading Recommendation
A man boards a train, hoping to see the daughter he has heard nothing from for seven years. As he travels towards his destination, he restlessly revisits the events that blew apart their seemingly perfect world.
With acute insight, sparkling imagination, and vividly arresting prose, Phil Whitaker explores the very best and worst that families can do, and asks: what are the forces that shape us; and, against powerful traumas reverberating down the generations, can true love prevail?
PRAISE FOR THIS BOOK
‘A propulsive, cathartic tour-de-force – Whitaker’s finest work to date.’ —Xan Brooks
REVIEWS OF THIS BOOK
‘Brilliant, innovative, gripping, hellish, unbelievable truth. You is driven by honesty, humanity, compassion and love. A guaranteed page-turner. A story of supernatural hope over terrible experience, of understanding and even forgiveness. I won’t say any more. To unpack the magic of this art would spoil You for you.’ —Nick Child, The Alienation Experience
‘You, by Phil Whitaker, tells the story of a father whose teenage daughter cut him out of her life after he left her mother. Told in flashbacks as he makes his way across the country to meet her for the first time in seven years, unsure if she will turn up at the rendezvous, it is a tale of inherited hurts and modern manipulation. The premise may sound familiar but its execution soars above similar tales, offering the reader an incisive portrayal of family breakdown and the damage caused by a vindictive parent from a father’s point of view.’ —Jackie Law, neverimitate
‘The “you” of Whitaker’s emotionally charged novel is the narrator’s daughter. Stevie Buchanan, fiftysomething art therapist, is a victim of “parental alienation”, a severing of relations between parents and children as a result of marriage or relationship breakdown. In urgently, insistently addressing his daughter, a 21-year-old student, Stevie does the very thing he is prevented from doing in person, as he has been estranged from her for seven years. His desperation fuels flights of imagination in which, together, the pair revisit scenes of family history going back generations to examine the domino effect of traumas that repeat themselves with devastating effect.’ —Jane Housham, The Guardian
‘You can be appreciated on a number of levels. Firstly the language and the writing which is of the highest quality. Whitaker seems to put his prose together effortlessly creating word pictures and word thoughts that stay with you for several pages. Secondly his ability to characterise again seems to be effortless. I’m sure it isn’t! But for the reader it’s the end result that resonates and the characters here, especially Stevie, are real and substantially drawn. Thirdly, and arguably most importantly the theme of this book, parental alienation. If it’s not a term you’re familiar with, take heart. Neither was I. But I am now and how!’ —Gill Chedgey, Nudge Book Magazine
PRAISE FOR PREVIOUS WORK
‘Whitaker is so genuinely inventive.’ —The Spectator
‘Whitaker is clearly a writer to watch’ —Daily Telegraph
‘Whitaker is an intelligent, sympathetic and eloquent writer.’ —Sunday Telegraph
‘Phil Whitaker has gone where no novelist has dared to go before.’ —Marcus Chown
‘Funny, engaging, insightful, and even moving. Masterful.’ —Phil Hammond
‘A wonderful story. if literary thriller means anything it means The Face. Buy at once.’ —Time Out
‘Heart-stopping. The Face is a thriller unlike any I’ve ever read.’ —Literary Review
‘A clever, beautifully judged piece of writing.’ —Financial Times
‘This novel about two sisters addresses the permanent themes of relationships, loyalty and trust. As one sister, Bridie, leaves her secular Catholic life to become a nun in Africa, and her sister Elodie sets out to look for her when she goes missing, the reader learns of Elodie’s own journey of self-discovery. As she concludes on her return flight: ‘Down there, somewhere, were human beings doing things out of hatred; many others down things out of love. And most, like Bridie and her, contending with the mess and muddle that lies between.’’ —Catholic Herald
‘While maintaining the fast-paced missing-person investigation, Whitaker also manages to weave in a separate timeline of Elodie’s memories of her sister. There are snapshots of their parents’ abusive marriage, an awkward 18th-birthday disco and euphoric experiences watching the electronic dance act Faithless. In these scenes from past lives, the complexities of sisterly strife are presented on a vividly human scale.’ —New Statesman
You
phil whitaker won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, Betty Trask Award, and was shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel Award for his debut, Eclipse of the Sun (1997) after graduating from the UEA creative writing MA. He went on to win the Encore Award with his second novel, Triangulation (1999), and has published three other novels, The Face (2002), Freak of Nature (2007) and Sister Sebastian’s Library (2016). You is his sixth novel.
ALSO BY PHIL WHITAKER
Eclipse of the Sun (1997)
Triangulation (1999)
The Face (2002)
Freak of Nature (2007)
Sister Sebastian’s Library (2016)
Published by Salt Publishing Ltd
12 Norwich Road, Cromer, Norfolk NR27 0AX
All rights reserved
Copyright © Phil Whitaker, 2018
The right of Phil Whitaker to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Salt Publishing.
Salt Publishing 2018
Created by Salt Publishing Ltd
This book is sold subject to the conditions that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
ISBN 978-1-78463-145-1 electronic
For PA and RG
It’s not black, it’s not white,
it’s not dark, it’s not light
Secrets are the stones that sink the boat.
Take them out, look at them,
throw them out and float.
Something Dark
LEMN SISSAY
PROLOGUE
Rendezvous
The road through the village is closed. They’re digging up the drains – some problem with the sewage backing up or something, Christ knows. Red and white plastic barriers, portable but implacable, linked in a line from pavement to pavement, blocking the way. A rectangular yellow sign, leaning back on its spindly metal legs, black arrow and stencilled lettering redirecting traffic up the Farleigh Road. It’ll be a way round the impasse, sure, but the sat navs won’t like it, and the route will be clogged by the abnormal volume of cars. Some drivers – frustrated by the delay, feeling thwarted in their plans – will try doing their own thing. They’ll hang a right down some narrow lane, embarking on some tortuous circumnavigation along the ancient droves that thread between the hedgerows hereabouts. Do-it-yourself detours from which some, perhaps, may never return.
I think: a car could smash through it all, crushing the lightweight barrier, sending bits flying like a skittles strike. What would th
e ground workers do then, gathered round the shallow shit-filled trench they’ve excavated? Look up, alarmed? Hold out puny hands, thinking they might halt the oncoming threat? Dive to safety once they realise it’s futile?
But we don’t, do we, we users of the road? Such violence would be unacceptable. We obey the imposition, accept our fate. We turn around and try to find our way, some other way, any way we can.
The High Street has never been so quiet. Everyone who lives there loves it, I’ll bet. A break from the late-running commuters, defying the speed limit. A lull in the lorries rumbling through, their deep vibrations rattling family photos on the mantelpieces, and heirloom china on the shelves.
I phoned a couple of days back. The stop is the other side of the closure but I wanted to be sure. I’m making a journey on Thursday, I said, I have to catch a train. I shouldn’t have fallen for it, the youth on the other end yabbering through an endless list of road names I’ve never heard of, telling me this was the diversion that would bring the bus round. I couldn’t follow what he was saying. So I said to him: Look, fella, can you just tell me, is the bus going to stop here or not? Oh, yes, he said, the bus is definitely running as normal. You will definitely make your train.
Half an hour in the autumn chill, the FirstBus sign jutting from ten foot up the telegraph pole; the timetable mounted in its weatherproof frame below, making its empty promises. Me, interrogating every engine note as vehicles approach either side of the crossroads.
I should have ordered a taxi.
In the end a guy in a Toyota pulls up, passenger window winding down. He leans across, one hand on the steering wheel, peering up at me.
‘You’re in for a long wait.’ He gives me a rueful smile, like he’s been caught out before and knows how I must be feeling. ‘Would you like a lift? You can pick it up at Hinton.’
He’s called Sree, he tells me, as we pull away. He’s about my age, I guess, around fifty, but his face has barely any lines. How come Asian skin weathers so well? I’m surprised, meeting him; there are so few ethnic minorities out here. I figure he must be a recent arrival but, when I ask, he says he’s been in the village twenty years, ever since he and his partner left London. His other half is called André, which snags my attention; he sounds French, artistic. It sets me wondering about them: their history, how they met, what they do.
Sree chats on, checking his rear-view mirror, working up through the gears, warming to the opportunity to reminisce. They didn’t intend to live here, he says, not when they first made plans. They were thinking of Bath. But the village was so much quieter then. And when they came to see the house on the High Street, with its views over Churchmead, the tower of the fourteenth-century church standing sentinel against the backdrop of the hills rising westward towards Falkland . . . well, they fell in love.
He has a friendly, cultured voice. I’ve got him down as an architect, or a doctor or something – a professional not a businessman, at any rate – but I don’t ask. It only invites enquiries in return. I like him, though; I have a sense we could get on. He feels it, too, I’m sure. I’m chastened it should have taken this – this non-running of a bus – for us to have come across each other. I’ve been here three years already. I keep myself too much to myself.
‘So where are you off to?’ he asks, glancing at my hold-all, crammed in the footwell, and the curious canvas roll bag clasped upright between my knees.
I think about it. I could just tell him, be completely straight, but it would lay me open to questions – the well-meaning, life-affirming sort of questions we use to make connections. There would come a point when I would regret having said anything, where I would have to slap a layer of gloss on things, just to make them acceptable. Even with all the time in the world, it is hard for anyone to comprehend. Unless they’ve been here, too. Then they understand only too well. That’s what these past seven years have taught me – that people make assumptions, interpret things according to their own lights. When superficial appearances make such perfect sense, it’s the devil’s own job to persuade someone otherwise. On the surface: a river sliding naturally – peaceably, even – downstream. But beneath the sky-tree-light-reflecting sheen? All manner of currents swirl, and limbless creatures prowl. It’s something only I know. Me, and those of my clan.
The pause has become a silence. I’m seeming rude, to someone who has been only kind.
I tell him: ‘Oxford.’
I listen to the word hovering in the air. My tone has the hint of a warning: that is all I am going to say. But I might have left the door ajar. I look across – his face in profile, his aquiline nose, the frank brownness of his eye. He’s not that interested. He’s just making conversation.
I turn my attention back to the road. We flash past signs welcoming careful drivers to Hinton Charterhouse. There’s the FirstBus sign up ahead on the left, where in a moment Sree will drop me and I will wait a while longer to pick up the next hourly service.
‘Yeah,’ I say, as though talking to myself. ‘I’m going to Oxford.’
❦
I am on my way to see you.
I am on my way to seeing you.
Two sentences, virtually identical. Those three little letters, that innocuous i-n-g, spelling a whole world of difference. I’m no writer; I couldn’t tell you the grammar. All I know is, one sentence is definite, concerned with something that is going to happen. The other is contingent, provisional, a work-in-progress, with no end in sight.
All I know is: I am on my way to see you, but it’ll doubtless be one more wave from this distant shore. That’s what Prof calls it: waving from a distant shore. Seven years I’ve been on my way to seeing you. And I have to carry on, stranded here on this stony beach, the pebbles painful under the balls of my feet, so far away you can scarcely make me out. My arm is achingly tired, but I will keep describing these arcs of love. The sea breeze cuts cold across the impassive channel; there is salt on my tongue. Gulls cry overhead. I have to keep calling, my voice hoarse from not being heard, the sounds I make too puny to cross even a fraction of the gulf between us, even were they not to be whipped away on the wind the second they leave my lips.
Who are you? Your childhood was happy, your family loving and warm, I know that much. You skipped through those early years, your skirts dancing round your knees as you made your way. You have a sister, two years younger, and she was your only bane. Sometimes you were inseparable, playing together, exploring and adventuring. Other times you felt overpowering antipathy, and you would take it out on her in a thousand subtle ways – excluding her from your games, letting her know she wasn’t wanted, wounding her with words when no one else was around.
Then when you were twelve, an earthquake: buildings, their foundations, every structure rent and brought down. Your father announced he was leaving, leaving the home, the family. You. Your sister. Mummy – devastating her, shattering her heart. Wonderful Mummy. The times you would find her, hunched over her knees, crying and inconsolable, no matter how hard you tried to console. You felt so desperate, so powerless to help.
To think, you once stood in that kitchen and pleaded with him not to do it. Daddy, is there any hope? Your vulnerable young body sheathed in a pretty floral print dress. Your hands entwined tight together in front of you. Your eyes imploring.
To think. Back then you believed it was him deciding to go. Bit by bit, over the months, over the next couple of years, the truth dripped out. How the man you once loved as your Daddy was a tyrant, a bully. How he had controlled Mummy, repressed her, rendered her daily life a misery. How he had forced her to go out to work, keeping her from spending the time she craved with her young children. How he belittled her, monitored every penny she spent, humiliated her in front of others for a pastime.
To start with, in this post-separation world, you spent every other weekend with him in the modern box he was renting, and a couple of nights each week after school. B
ut the more you learned of him, the more you began to see his true character in how he treated you, too: his rigidity, the way he kept over-riding your feelings.
Gradually, you learned about his drinking, his fecklessness, his domineering ways; how Mummy had, for years, kept the family together, putting up with virtual slavery for your and your sister’s sake.
Every time you were due to stay with him you would see the pain in Mummy’s eyes, you could tell how anxious she was about your well-being, how searingly she was going to miss you while you were gone. To go felt like a betrayal, and the guilt of it skewered you.
You wanted less and less to do with him, you could hardly stand to go there anymore. Still Mummy would take you, holding you tightly before you left the car. Your hands, encircling her body in that last heart-rending hug, could sense in her tremulousness things that you couldn’t name. You would insist you didn’t want to go. She would say: you have to, we have no choice, the court ordered it. And it’s important to see your father. Her voice would shrink and crumple under those last words, like paper on a fire. She would check in with you constantly while you were there – Skype, instant messaging, calls on the mobile – ensuring you were all right, letting you know she could come and fetch you at any point if it proved too much to bear.
The final straw, just after you turned fourteen. Your daddy wanted to take you – you and your sister – to Italy the following summer, to go round the galleries in Florence, and see the Siena Palio. Two whole weeks away from Mummy, fourteen days of unbearable pain for you and for her. You felt ripped apart even contemplating it; you thought you might be physically sick. And the prospect of it forced Mummy to tell you that from which she had so long hoped to shield you. How in the months before he left the home, your father had begun to spend more and more time alone with you in your room, the door firmly shut. How Mummy would come in and interrupt, to find him sprawled across your bed, a chilling grin on his face, with you sitting innocently beside him, focused on your homework, oblivious to the danger. With you in Italy, she would be a thousand miles away. She could no longer hope to protect you.
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