The Double Life of Cassiel Roadnight

by Jenny Valentine

  I thought it was going quite well, but Edie seemed disappointed.

  “Where is everyone?” she said. “What time is it?”

  “Twelve thirty.”

  “We should have come in later,” she said. “If I’d thought about it, we could have come in after school, when all your mates are about. I bet you’re dying to see them.”

  I wasn’t. I was happy with just her. Mates had never been my strong point. Groups of kids were never my thing. Suddenly I felt very unsafe. I was walking on a tightrope, losing my balance. I felt the ground sway beneath me.

  I couldn’t see people that knew him like that, not yet. I wouldn’t know how to act around them. I didn’t know how you behaved with friends. I wanted to be back in the cottage, tucked beside the hill, hidden. I stood up. My coffee cup rattled in its saucer when I moved. My chair squawked against the polished floor.

  “Can we go now?” I said.

  “Don’t you want to hang around?”

  “No.”

  Edie looked up at me in surprise. I was abrupt and rude. Maybe I was being more like the real Cassiel. I remember that’s what I thought.

  I felt sure that something bad was going to happen if we didn’t leave. I put Frank’s hat on. I pulled it down over my eyes.

  “Why don’t you want to see them?” she said.

  “I do,” I said. “But not now. I’m bored.”

  “I suppose a two-hour wait in this place might’ve killed us,” she said.

  It wasn’t the waiting I was worried about.

  “Let’s go. Come on.”

  “All right, all right,” she said.

  I left the cafe before Edie did. The bell on the door rang once when I opened it and once when it closed behind me while she was paying the bill. I got to the car before her. I got in.

  “You still hate it here then,” Edie said, catching up and getting in without looking at me, putting the key in the ignition.

  “Yep,” I said.

  The engine started. In the wing mirror I could see part of a castle that towered over the car park. I wondered when its now ruined battlements and crumbling walls guarded something other than a pay and display machine, something more than a collection of old books.

  Edie said, “One day I’ll get out too.”

  “Where?” I said while she backed slowly out of the parking space, turned the car into the road.

  “Maybe next year I’ll go to college.”

  “What would you do?”

  “Art, I guess. You knew that.”

  “Course. Sorry.”

  “Most of my friends have gone,” she said. “They come back at Christmas, and maybe a couple of times a year.” She smiled. “Trailing life behind them.”

  “Why aren’t you at college already then?” I said.

  “I didn’t want to go.”

  “Why not?”

  “I told you. I wanted to be here when you got back.” So it was Cassiel’s fault.

  “Sorry,” I said, for him.

  “Don’t be.”

  But I was.

  I wondered how long she would have waited. I wondered if she would have stayed here forever, putting herself on hold, waiting for Cassiel. Was he ever planning to come back? Did he know that when he left? Did he think about it? Did he care?

  Edie waved at a woman with a baby, a balding man, at an old lady with a shopping bag.

  “That’ll do it,” she said, nodding at the old lady. “If you only told her, everyone would know you were back by tomorrow.”

  I didn’t want that. The more people that knew, the more likely I was to slip up and get caught out.

  It was a mistake to have come into town with her. It was stupid, showing off like that. It was careless. I’d just wanted to be with Edie. And being with Edie was making me incautious, was going to get me noticed.

  I didn’t want to get caught out. I didn’t want to leave like she did. I didn’t hate it at all.

  I looked at Edie. I watched her and she didn’t know it. Maybe now I was here she’d do something more than just waiting. Maybe she would go to college. Now I was back, she could go.

  Maybe she’d leave me, just when I’d found her.

  I wanted to know how long I could be her brother for. I wanted to know if I could do it forever.

  “The freak show is leaving town,” she said, and I waved with her, even though I didn’t know who any of them were, just to do the same thing she did.

  TWELVE

  When we got back to the house, Frank’s car was there. I didn’t need anyone to tell me it was his. The number plate said FR4NK. I felt the ball of tension grow in my chest, rise up in my throat, pull and tighten all the muscles in my body.

  “Flash git,” Edie said, grinning at me, bringing her grubby silver Peugeot to a stop next to his gleaming, monstrous 4x4, a little too close for him to open his own door.

  “Accident,” she said, shrugging. “What can I say? Woman driver.”

  The front door was locked. She banged on it three times, hard. “He locks everything,” she said. “He’s obsessive.”

  I didn’t say anything. I shut my eyes. I swallowed. I could hear my heart beating in my ears. I could feel it shake me.

  What if he knew I was me? What if he looked at me and just said, “No”?

  Edie opened the letterbox, put her mouth to the gap. “Frank!”

  “There’s no hurry, is there?” I said.

  “It’s freezing out here,” she said. “I don’t like being locked out of my own house.”

  I heard him coming down the stairs. I pictured him coming through the kitchen to the door. I felt him just on the other side, taking up all the space, ready to condemn me.

  “Let’s get a look at him,” he said, turning the lock, switching the bolt. “Is he there? Cass! Are you there?”

  “Yes.” My voice sounded lost and far away.

  The door opened and he stood there, dark like Cassiel and smarter, more handsome, his hair short and neat, his face healthy and tanned. I saw money when I looked at Frank. I saw wealth and comfort and things I’d never dared to start wanting. He put one hand up in a still wave and stared. I did the same.

  There was a strange lull while nothing happened. I counted to three in my head as he looked at me and I looked back and I tried to be ready for whatever happened next. At first, Frank’s eyes seemed dark and unsmiling. I got the sensation of something lurking there, of something leaving, but not before I’d glimpsed it out of the corner of my eye.

  I felt it in my bones, the fear that he could see I wasn’t Cassiel.

  Edie hung back.

  I waited.

  The strong lines of Frank’s face lifted into a smile, the smile cracked into a laugh. His teeth were white and straight and even. His mouth danced. He held his hands out to me. I was in.

  “Cass,” he said. “Little brother.”

  Relief coursed through me, a sudden warmth in my veins. I smiled back, my own cracked and crooked smile meeting his perfect one.

  “Hello, Frank,” I said.

  He shook my hand, clapped me on the back, hugged me. “Let me look at you,” he said. “Not so little any more. God.”

  He was taller than me. He held me by the shoulders and studied my face, every inch of it. He took my chin in his right hand and moved my face from side to side. For a moment I felt like a painting of Cassiel, a sculpture, like I was a thing and Frank was buying me.

  He put his arms around me and held on tight, his voice rich and warm in my ear. “Very good,” was all I heard. I didn’t hear him right.

  “What?”

  “Have you any idea how good it is to see you?”

  I tried to nod. He was holding on to me so hard, I couldn’t move.

  I tried to say, “I think so,” but my mouth just came up against the wool of his jumper, coarse and perfumed and hot.

  He kissed me once on the side of the face, a kiss loud with joy and relief. “Where did you come from?” he said.

 
I shrugged. It was all I could do.

  “I don’t care,” he said. “I don’t need to know. Let’s go in.”

  He put his arm around my shoulders, drew me across the kitchen. Edie followed us in and shut the door. Helen stood in the corner, her hands clasped together. Frank’s skin was smooth and poreless, clean-shaven. His smile was like a light, making safe the dark corners of the room. I couldn’t take my eyes off him. My new big brother.

  It wasn’t like meeting Edie. It wasn’t like having a sister I wanted to look after. With Frank, I felt like someone else was going to look after me. I hadn’t felt like that in way too long. I was almost weak with the relief of it.

  He held me again at arm’s length and looked at me. “Where have you been?” he said. “Has anyone asked you that yet? Where the hell have you been?”

  I didn’t answer.

  He said, “Where’d you pick up those scars?”

  I felt myself flush. I knew the dog bite would show up pale against my reddening skin, I knew the diamond cut would get darker. Would the marks from a dog and a boy called Rigg give me away?

  “I’m all right,” I said. “They’re nothing.”

  He looked me in the eyes and then away and around the room. “He’s really back,” he said to Helen and Edie, as if saying it out loud made it true. It felt like that to me. “He’s really here.”

  He turned to me again then, his light fell on me. “Back from the dead,” he said. “Our own Lazarus.”

  “Oh!” Helen said, clutching her cardigan about her. “Don’t say that.”

  “Where’s the champagne?” Frank said. “Did I leave it in the car?”

  He went out, left the front door open, his city clothes instantly wind-flattened against his frame.

  “You OK, Mum?” Edie said.

  “Of course,” Helen smiled. “I couldn’t be better.” The sound of her was all joy but her eyes were hardly there, I could see that.

  “I’ll make some coffee,” Edie said.

  “No, champagne!” Frank said, striding back in, pushing the door shut with his foot. “Get some glasses, Edie.”

  “I don’t think Mum needs one.” Edie’s voice was low.

  “You want one, don’t you, Mum?” he said.

  “Of course,” Helen said.

  Frank eased the cork out of the bottle smoothly, expertly, with a sigh instead of a pop. The champagne rushed to leave the bottle, like sea foam. He poured four glasses, passed them out.

  “A toast,” he said.

  “Oh yes,” Helen said.

  “To you,” Frank said, looking me in the eyes with warmth and confidence. “To Cassiel. To all of us together again.”

  Edie raised her glass. “However long that lasts,” she said.

  Frank ignored her. “Welcome back, Cassiel,” he said.

  “Thanks,” I said, and I meant every word. I looked at him when I said it. I looked at each of them in turn, Edie and Helen and Frank. I wanted to remember this moment for as long as I could. I wanted to hold it still and keep it.

  “Thank God you came back,” he said.

  I told the truth. “It’s good to be home.”

  “I bet it is,” he said.

  The champagne tasted light and sweet and sharp and acid. Frank topped up my glass. “Do you like the new house?” he said.

  I thought about everything before I said it. It needed it to be just right. My mind felt lightning-quick. It danced, one step ahead. That’s how it felt. I couldn’t go wrong.

  “It’s great. A dream come true, right, Mum?”

  Helen smiled and nodded, sipped her champagne.

  “They found you in London, did they?” Frank said. He pulled a chair out from the table and sat down. He was the owner of this house. Everything about the way he moved and spoke in here said he was.

  “Yes. In Hackney.”

  “Have you been in London all this time?”

  Had I? Had he? “Yes,” I said.

  “Did you go straight there, when you left?”

  “I got the train,” I said. “Yes.”

  “Strange,” he said, picking up the bottle again, pouring himself another glass.

  “What is?” Edie said, so I didn’t have to. I thought for a moment that I’d said something wrong, that Frank knew something different. I thought for a second that this was going to unravel.

  “Strange that we’ve been in the same city, all this time, you and I.”

  “It’s a big place,” I said. “A lot of people are there at the same time.”

  He nodded, slowly, thoughtfully. “Seven million,” he said, “and counting. But still, two of them were you…”

  Frank pointed, and I thought he’d finished. I thought he knew there were two Cassiel Roadnights. I felt hot. I burned under the spotlight. Then he turned his finger on himself and said, “… and me.”

  “I like that,” Helen said. “It’s as if you’ve been together.”

  “Hardly,” said Edie.

  Frank said, “It gives you comfort though, doesn’t it? Cassiel and I have been close by all along.”

  “Just like old times,” Edie muttered, and there was something in her voice, something bitter about the way she said it.

  He smiled and raised his glass to me. I tried to smile back. I was rigid with the fear of being uncovered. My face didn’t want to move.

  “Like your room?” he said.

  “My room’s great.”

  Edie said, “He wants to know what you did with all his stuff.”

  Helen lit a cigarette.

  “Did you lose something?” Frank said. “Are there things missing?”

  “Bits and pieces,” I said.

  “Nothing specific?”

  “It just feels a bit light in there,” I said. “A bit empty.”

  Frank leaned back and put his feet up on the table, one ankle over the other. His shoes were black and highly polished. Expensive leather brogues. The soles were scratched and discoloured from use, soft cream turned to pavement.

  “We searched it, Cass,” he said. “We did, and the police did. We had to. You don’t mind.”

  “We were looking for you,” Helen said.

  “Did you find much?” I said. I don’t know why I asked. I was being over-confident. It was reckless of me to turn the questions on him. I saw myself wading out into dark water, not knowing the way back.

  “No.”

  “And then you moved,” I said. “I suppose things get thrown out when that happens.”

  “Exactly.”

  “What about my computer?” I asked. “Did you wipe that clean? Did the police do that?”

  Frank frowned. “No,” he said, putting his feet back down, moving one long leg and then the other, sitting forward with his elbows on the table. “You did that, didn’t you, Cass? I thought you did that.”

  “Oh,” I said, my winning streak dropping out from underneath me. What a mistake to make. “Oh, yeah.”

  “We thought you did it so we couldn’t find you,” Frank said. “That’s what the police said. Were they wrong?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  Frank looked at Edie, “What did they say, Edie? You remember, don’t you?”

  Edie looked at Frank and then at me. “They said it was an indication that you had planned to leave. They said we should take it as proof that you hadn’t met with an accident or something, that it was a pre-meditated act.”

  I counted to ten. It was Cassiel’s turn to speak, I knew that. It was up to him to say something.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry I let you all down.”

  The lights from a car swept the front of the house and went out. I hadn’t realised it was starting to get dark until then. I hadn’t had any idea of time passing.

  “Who’s that?” Edie said.

  My face tightened. I was suddenly aware of the skin on my arms and my neck.

  “I don’t know,” Helen said. “Are we expecting anybody?”

  Frank got up. “
No,” he said, looking at me, smiling. “We’re all here, remember?”

  I didn’t like the way he said it. I felt the edge of the tightrope I was walking. I felt the sway of the ground far below.

  Edie went over to the window, put her face to the glass. She used her hands to block out the reflection of us on the inside. Frank opened the door. The light and warmth of the kitchen were so different to the blue-grey cold of outside. It was like another world out there.

  I tried to think who would drive here now, to this house in the middle of nowhere. I tried not to think they’d be coming for me.

  “It’s two men, I think,” Edie said. “I don’t know who they are.”

  “God,” I said, before I could take it back.

  “What?” Helen said.

  I clenched my fists. How had they found me? What traces of myself had I left behind?

  “That was quick,” Frank said.

  I looked over at him. What did that mean? Did he know? Had he expected them to catch me?

  “Who is it, Frank?” Helen said.

  He didn’t answer her. He left the house. He went to meet them on the porch. I felt my chest seize up, my lungs contract so I couldn’t get enough air, so I was fighting to breathe.

  “What’s the matter, Cass?” Edie said from across the room. She looked at me. Helen and Edie both looked at me.

  I didn’t answer them. Everything I had was focused on the door, on who was about to come through it. Social services. The child-catcher. The police.

  I held my breath and when Frank walked back in, he held my gaze. He smiled.

  I wondered what he saw when he looked at me. He couldn’t miss the terror on my face.

  One of the men was young, with a big digital camera and gelled hair and a cheap suit. The second was older, grey and overweight. He wore a jacket that smelled of wax and wet dog.

  “Hello,” they said, a little awkward, a little shy.

  The older one said they were sorry to intrude. They looked around the room and their looking stopped at me.

  My head pounded. My palms were wet. I rubbed them against my trousers. I tried to wet my lips with a dry tongue. I didn’t say anything. I didn’t smile, I didn’t move. I waited.

  Frank’s eyes were on me too, but when he spoke, he spoke to us all.

  “Mum, Edie, Cassiel, I hope you don’t mind. These gentlemen are from the local paper.”