The Shadow Year

by Hannah Richell

  ‘What is that?’ Kat asks, settling the pig beside the fire before perching opposite Simon on the edge of the sofa.

  ‘Walden. Written by Henry David Thoreau in the 1850s. Now there was a man ahead of his time.’

  She nods and picks at the threads of stuffing bursting from the armrest. ‘So you’re saying it’s OK we’re all hungry because we’re living a life of sincerity and truth?’

  Simon shakes his head, visibly irritated. ‘That’s not what I’m saying, it’s what this guy’s saying. Thoreau.’ He shakes the book. ‘But you have to admit, it strikes a chord, no?’

  Kat nods and turns her head towards the kitchen from where another round of angry shouts explodes. ‘Do you think we should intervene?’ she asks, watching the piglet stretch out its trotters and then close its eyes to sleep.

  Simon shakes his head. ‘Let them have it out. It’s been brewing between them for days. Probably do them good to let off a bit of steam.’

  ‘It sounds like we’ve got more food issues,’ she says. ‘Apples this time.’ She studies his face looking for traces of concern.

  ‘Oh yeah?’ he says but his attention is back in his book.

  ‘Yeah,’ says Kat. She doesn’t need to mention the potatoes or the sack of flour that have already spoiled. They are all aware of their dwindling supplies. She hesitates then decides she has nothing to lose. ‘I’m worried, Simon. I think everyone’s sick of living off nuts and rice. Morale’s pretty low, don’t you think?’

  Simon sighs and puts the book down onto the floor beside him. ‘You worry too much, Kat, you know that?’

  ‘But everyone’s so hungry.’ It comes out like a whine and Kat sees the irritation flash across his face.

  ‘What would you have me do, Kat? Magic up a fat goose and an enormous trifle for your consumption? I didn’t force anyone to come and live here. Everyone understood the reality. If we’re struggling now it’s because we didn’t work hard enough a few months ago. We’ll learn. There’s nothing more motivating than the ache of hunger in your belly, is there? Anyway,’ he adds, ‘it’s not as if I’m keeping anyone here. Go and join the rest of the world in their “lives of quiet desperation”. Hell, go and stuff your faces with TV dinners and takeaways for all I care.’

  Kat blushes. She has never heard Simon speak so harshly towards her and instantly regrets being the one to raise the problem with him.

  ‘WELL IT’S A BIT LATE FOR THAT NOW, DON’T YOU THINK?’ yells Ben, his words echoing around the cottage.

  Kat sighs. Simon can deny it all he likes, but morale is low. In the last few days everyone’s tempers have frayed and the hunger isn’t helping. Last night they barely uttered a word as they sat at the kitchen table chasing baked beans around their plates and with Christmas just a couple of weeks away she knows their thoughts will have turned towards the home comforts and family traditions they are missing out on.

  The volume in the kitchen drops. Kat hears conciliatory murmurs followed by the sound of quiet sobbing. Simon gives her a knowing look. ‘See,’ he says, ‘told you they just needed to have it out with each other.’

  He must have been listening to her though, because it is Simon who suggests another store-run to the group later that evening. ‘Go,’ he says, ‘get a change of scene, why not. We can stock up for Christmas.’

  The five of them gape at him. ‘What?’ he asks, all innocence. ‘We are going to celebrate, aren’t we?’

  Carla smiles. ‘Will you come, Kat? There’s room in the car for one more.’ but Kat shakes her head. She would like to go; she would like to wander around the aisles of a supermarket, to run her hands across the myriad packets of food and marvel at the vast extravagance of it all, but if Simon doesn’t want to go then she won’t either. As much as she would like to re-enter the outside world, she knows she would rather spend the time with him, alone.

  They leave the next morning and Kat watches them go, four loping silhouettes heading up over the ridge and out towards the trees. Carla and Ben seem to have forgotten their row; Ben’s arm is slung across Carla’s shoulders, her hand jammed into the back pocket of his jeans. The sight of them, connected at the shoulders and hips, reminds Kat of the paper chain dolls she used to make when she was a kid. Mac and Freya follow slightly behind. She sees Mac say something to Freya and her sister toss her long blond hair and laugh up into the sky. Mac watches her for a moment then grins, his pale face transformed by the smile. It surprises her. Mac isn’t usually one for jokes.

  As soon as they have disappeared from view, she turns back to Simon. ‘I have an idea,’ she says.

  ‘Oh yes?’

  ‘Fancy a walk?’

  He nods. ‘OK, but where?’

  ‘I’ll show you. Come on. We’ll need the axe.’

  She leads him out of the cottage and down to the wooded area beside the lake. As they enter the dusky glade she summons her courage and takes him by the hand; it feels warm and solid in her own and she squeezes it tightly and is glad when he doesn’t pull away. They thread their way through the spindly trunks of alders and silver birch trees until eventually they arrive at her intended destination. ‘Look, there,’ she says, pointing into the dense undergrowth.

  Simon doesn’t see it at first, but when he does he smiles. ‘A Christmas tree?’

  Kat nods and smiles. It is a solitary pine, standing at least six feet high with its generous branches tapering to a tall point. ‘Is it too big? Do you think we could get it back to the cottage?’

  Simon nods. ‘Easy.’ He turns to look at her then. ‘Well if this doesn’t cheer them up I don’t know what will.’

  She smiles and it feels like the most natural thing in the world to take a step towards him and press her lips against his. She tries not to think about Freya, tries not to think about the two of them together. She banishes the image by pressing the length of her body against his, chest-to-chest, hip-to-hip, showing him her full desire. He takes it and reciprocates with his own body before seizing her hands and moving her backwards, one step then another until she can feel the rough bark of a thick tree trunk at her back. He lowers his head and kisses the bare skin at her neck, runs his hands down her body and undoes the buttons on her jeans. Kat closes her eyes and lets the sensation of him overwhelm all other thought or feeling.

  When Simon eventually pulls away he pushes his hair out of his face and smiles down at her, his gaze not quite meeting her eyes. ‘I suppose we should get cracking if we’re going to get this tree back in time to surprise the others.’ He turns away and buttons his fly and she nods and tries not to feel disappointed that it is all over so quickly. It happened, after all. In some small way she feels as if she has reclaimed him, made him hers and it’s a relief to know that he still wants her.

  Simon retrieves the axe from where they’ve left it lying on the forest floor and begins to hack at the trunk of the pine tree. Kat watches, admiring his strength, the easy way he swings the blade through the air and takes the full impact as it connects with the wood, bark chips flying like sparks around him. Within minutes the tree comes crashing down and they pull it back through the undergrowth and into the cottage where it fills the space before the front window, its spiny apex bending slightly where it grazes the ceiling. Kat breathes in its fresh, pine scent and feels a surge of happiness. ‘They’re going to love it,’ she says, seeing it standing there just as she’d imagined.

  The others don’t arrive back until late, long after the sun has slunk below the hills and the cottage is wrapped in a cloak of darkness. ‘It’s the most awful thing,’ exclaims Carla, bursting through the door first, her cheeks flushed and her eyes red-rimmed as though she’s been crying. ‘John Lennon’s been shot.’

  Kat gapes at her. ‘Is he . . . is he dead?’

  Freya, standing behind Carla in the doorway, nods.

  ‘I just can’t believe it,’ says Carla.

  ‘That’s . . . God . . . that’s awful.’ Kat swallows and then Carla does start to cry, tears streaming down he
r face. Kat moves across the room to hug her and is enveloped in a heady haze of alcohol.

  ‘I just . . . it doesn’t . . .’ She turns her face up to Kat’s. ‘Why would someone do that?’ Carla moans.

  ‘It was some lunatic,’ says Ben. ‘It’s in all the papers and they’re playing “Imagine” over and over on the radio.’ He shakes his head. ‘I still can’t believe we didn’t know.’

  ‘One of the blessings of being so removed, I guess,’ says Simon. He sinks onto the arm of the sofa. ‘Man, the modern world is so fucked up.’

  Mac arrives through the door and places several shopping bags down on the floor. ‘Nice tree,’ he says, eyeing the pine standing in the corner of the room.

  Kat nods. ‘We found it in the woods. I thought we could all decorate it, you know, make it feel a little more festive around here.’ She shrugs. There is nothing festive about the atmosphere at that moment, just sadness and a strange, lingering tension.

  Simon turns to Mac. ‘You’ve been gone ages. What took you so long?’

  But Mac doesn’t answer. Ben does and Kat gets the sense it has already been decided he will tackle the thorny question. ‘The girls were pretty upset. You know . . . it’s been a real shock. We thought a stiff drink was in order.’ He tilts his chin slightly and holds Simon’s gaze.

  ‘You’ve been to the pub?’

  Ben nods. ‘Yeah, is that a problem?’

  Simon eyes him. ‘Hope you didn’t spend all our money?’

  Freya moves across to the grocery bags and starts to unpack things. ‘No, look, we got lots.’ She holds up a bag of oranges, a box of cherry Bakewells, peanuts, dates, potatoes, carrots, Brussels sprouts and three bottles of cheap-looking wine.

  ‘What on earth is that?’ asks Simon, poking the last item to emerge from the shopping bags . . . a long plastic-wrapped object. He peers down at it. ‘Turkey roll? What the hell? I’ve never seen a turkey that shape before.’

  ‘It was cheap,’ says Freya. ‘We were trying to save money.’

  ‘And that’s why you went to the pub is it? Money-saving?’

  They at least have the decency to look a little ashamed. Kat studies the results of the shopping trip and knows their haul won’t last them long, no more than a few days at best. She sighs and sidles across to Simon. ‘Well you’re back now,’ she smooths, trying to banish the atmosphere from the room. ‘Who wants to help decorate the tree?’

  In the end, it doesn’t matter about the meagre Christmas supplies or the covert pub trip or even the revolting-looking turkey roll. In the end they get something much better. It’s waiting for them on the doorstep, early on Christmas Day morning. Ben discovers it as soon as he steps outside and his yelp of joy rings out across the valley, bringing the others racing downstairs. ‘So it looks as though Santa found us last night,’ he says, holding a giant, plucked turkey aloft in his hands.

  ‘What the hell . . . where did that come from?’ asks Carla.

  ‘It was right here, on the doorstep. Look.’ He points to the large wicker basket laden with fresh vegetables, homemade mince pies, a bottle of brandy, a small urn of cream and a white ceramic bowl wrapped in a cheery checked cloth which Kat knows can only be Christmas pudding. ‘Someone has delivered us a feast.’

  Simon steps outside in his bare feet and glances around. ‘Who is it from? Is there a note?’

  Ben shakes his head. ‘Who knows? Who cares? Whoever they are, they obviously like us.’ He throws back his shaggy head and howls, ‘Thank you,’ to the sky.

  Carla beams and hugs Mac. Freya is on her hands and knees, rummaging through the goodies. She holds up a box of chocolate Matchsticks, the smile spreading across her face. ‘Yum.’

  Only Kat and Simon seem worried by the anonymous donation. Its arrival at their doorstep means that someone knows they are there. No, not only knows they are there, but has crept up to their back door and left it for them to discover on Christmas morning. It’s hardly the most sinister of gestures, but it makes Kat nervous, all the same. Who knows they are here? She thinks of the woman on the ridge, the one she saw all those weeks ago. Could she have returned with this gift for them? It seems unlikely after all this time, but what’s the alternative? That someone out there is watching them?

  ‘Come on,’ says Ben, scooping up the basket, ‘let’s not stand here getting cold. We’ve got a Christmas meal to prepare.’

  Kat looks out across the horizon, her eyes searching the ridge and peering into the line of trees for evidence of anyone watching from the shadows. When she turns back to the cottage she sees Simon’s equally worried look. She can tell he doesn’t like it either, but it’s also clear that none of them are prepared to turn down a free meal, not on Christmas Day.

  It’s something akin to a Christmas miracle: all the sniping and the grumbling and the bitching forgotten in just a few hours. How simple, thinks Kat, how easy to turn their spirits around; all it takes is one basket of food and they are all smiles and joviality and efficiency. Carla and Kat peel the vegetables while Ben stands at the kitchen sink wrangling with the turkey. Simon and Mac fetch the wood and pile it up by the range before Simon takes up Ben’s guitar and serenades them all with Christmas carols from the bench nearest the window. Ben and Carla break into a boisterous duet of ‘While Shepherds Washed Their Socks By Night’ and, as they sing, Kat thinks about how it suddenly feels as it did at the beginning, when they first moved to the cottage and were filled with the thrill of freedom and possibility. Only Freya seems to set herself apart from the group. She busies herself out in the garden, feeding the chickens and then wandering the grassy slopes behind the cottage while the pig trots loyally at her heels.

  ‘What’s she doing?’ asks Carla, glancing out the window as she scrubs the dirt off a creamy-white potato.

  Kat shrugs. ‘Beats me.’

  Carla pauses to watch her for a moment. ‘She looks like a Christmas angel out there with all that long blond hair streaming behind her in the breeze.’

  Kat thinks of her own shaggy haircut, now growing out over her ears and swallows back the jealous lump in her throat. ‘She must be cold in that nightie and cardigan. Silly girl.’

  Carla smiles. ‘Sometimes you sound more like her mum than her sister.’

  Kat frowns. ‘She can be so dreamy . . . so childish . . . someone has to look out for her.’

  ‘Isn’t it funny how that pig follows her around like that? They’re quite the pair, aren’t they?’ Carla continues. ‘You’re lucky too, you know, having a sister. I always wanted one.’

  ‘Yes,’ says Kat drily, ‘I’m lucky.’ She wonders whether she should tell Carla about Freya’s plan to leave, but Carla has already moved away to watch Ben wrestle with the turkey giblets so Kat stays at the window, scrubbing the potatoes, watching Freya as she drifts about the garden.

  Simon is singing again, softly crooning the lyrics to one of her favourite Christmas carols.

  Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow, in the bleak midwinter, long ago.

  Kat hums along as she watches Freya. She does look like an angel, so pale and waiflike. Her face is almost the same milk colour as her nightdress but there are high spots of colour on the apples of her cheeks and her hair shines a lustrous gold in the pale light. Kat sees the scissors in her sister’s hand and watches as she reaches out to one of the shrubs. She cuts a stem of red berries from a bush while a disgruntled redwing hops from bough to bough in the tree above, upset to see his winter store depleted. Then she bends and pulls something else from the ground: shimmering seed heads of honesty, no longer green but transformed to opaque-white tracing paper, as round and pale as tiny moons.

  Angels and archangels may have gathered there, cherubim and seraphim thronged the air.

  As Simon’s words wrap themselves around her, another gust of wind shivers its way across the garden and rattles the window frames of the cottage. Kat looks out to see Freya pull her cardigan tight across her body.

  But his mother only, in her maiden
bliss, worshipped the beloved with a kiss.

  ‘This bird’s going to need a good few hours in the oven,’ Ben says from somewhere behind her, but Kat isn’t listening any more, not even to Simon’s low crooning. Instead, she is transfixed by the sight of Freya, the strange shape of her; the gentle slope of her belly now visible beneath the taut fabric of her cardigan. Kat peers through the glass and wonders if she is seeing things. It’s not possible, surely? Her sister is rake thin, her arms and legs pale and skinny like the spindly silver birch branches outside. She shakes her head and looks again; but there it is, the rounding of her stomach, a slight swelling which she knows for certain wasn’t there a couple of months ago and has no right to be there now. None of them have put on any weight since they arrived at the cottage – the exact opposite, in fact. Dread grips her.

  Kat watches as Freya makes her way down through the garden. She appears at the back door moments later with sprays of berries and the shimmering honesty lying across her arms in a delicate bouquet.

  ‘Brrrr,’ she says, stamping her feet, ‘it’s freezing out there. Look what I found. I thought they would make nice decorations. The honesty can go in our bedroom. The berries are for the living room.’

  ‘Very festive,’ says Carla, but Kat can’t find any words.

  ‘What?’ asks Freya. ‘What’s wrong? You look awful.’

  But Kat just shakes her head and turns on her heel.

  Kat still doesn’t have an appetite by the time it comes to sit down and eat but she chews carefully on her roast dinner and joins in with the clinking of glasses as they toast the chef and their mysterious benefactor with the first bottle of sloe gin, opened with ceremony by a proud Mac. The afternoon shadows have drawn in around them and Freya has lit candles, the flickering light catching on their glass tumblers and making their eyes shine like the lush berries now hanging over the mantelpiece.

  ‘Told you it was good, didn’t I?’ says Mac with a wide, sloe-stained grin.

  They drink the syrupy gin and Kat watches as Freya joins in, knocking back a glass of the stuff, laughing at something Ben says. She tries to concentrate on the meal and the conversation but she can’t help herself; every so often she steals sideways glances at Freya across the table, wondering if she could have got it wrong – if her eyes had in fact deceived her. But she knows she is right. She knows what she saw.