The wheels made a horrible noise when we went back up the little hill, with rocks flying everywhere and the tyres skidding like in an action film. Once we got away I wanted to shout and scream. I stood up while we were driving along, holding on to the frame and screaming with my head sticking out of the top so my hair blew about and I got brain freeze. I was louder than my Alarm Girl, louder than Beth on a rollercoaster and I didn’t stop. I wanted Zami to shout too but he wouldn’t. He was laughing at me. I love the sound of his laugh.
HER MOTHER ASKED if she wanted to say goodbye to the home where she’d grown up. Karen didn’t feel the need but it seemed important to her parents. On the train journey she read the guidebook that Ian had annotated. He had scribbled ‘sounds good!’ in green biro next to descriptions of sites of interest and ‘don’t mind if we do’ next to hostels where they might stay. It felt like a conversation, as if he was sitting on the train next to her. One of the pages contained a photograph of a hilltop Nepalese temple, against which he had written ‘wow’.
The places described in the book felt remote from the town where her parents lived – more distant even than the actual number of miles separating them – so as the train sped out of the city and towards the suburbs this dialogue of theirs was a comfort. She leaned her forehead against the window and dreamed of their escape while urban sprawl, with its playgrounds and industrial estates, gave way to wasteland and then fields. Farm buildings flashed past, then a small town, then fields once more.
She saw no one on the walk from the train station to her old house. In India the streets would be thronging, the streets crammed with cars and motorbikes hooting their horns. A solitary vehicle passed by, its driver looking straight ahead, ignoring her lone figure, tyres hissing on the wet road. Everyone else was indoors, behind lighted windows with curtains drawn. She passed a house where she could see into the front room. A woman was serving up dinner to young children. Karen shuddered.
Even with the distraction and business of the house move, her mother interrogated her about her plans, just as Karen had known she would.
‘Where will you stay?’ she asked as they stood in the middle of the empty bedroom that had once been hers. Karen’s father dismantled a wardrobe, laying its pieces in a neat pile under the window.
‘We’re taking a tent,’ Karen said, but she couldn’t resist adding, ‘but it will be hot enough to sleep out if we want. Some people just sleep on the beach.’
She knew she was being cruel.
‘Under the stars! Romantic!’ her father said.
He could be cruel too.
‘How safe is it to visit these countries?’ her mother asked.
‘I’ll be fine, Mum, everyone does it.’
She inserted the toe of her boot in a dent in the carpet where her bed had stood.
‘Remember the first time you stayed in the tent instead of in the caravan with us?’ her father said. ‘What was that girl’s name?’
‘What girl?’ her mother asked.
‘Kaz brought a friend with her that year we went to Devon.’
‘Did I?’
‘Yes! Nicola something.’ He gathered up the pieces of wardrobe and edged out of the door.
‘Mind how you go,’ her mother said as he headed down the stairs.
‘Angela, not Nicola. Angela Knight!’ Karen called after him.
‘Now what about this little lot?’ Her mother gestured at a pile of random objects gathered in the middle of the floor. A jewellery box, a painted pebble, a broken hairdryer.
‘It’s only bits and pieces, Mum.’
She picked up a doll from the pile. It wore French regional costume and had watched her from the windowsill for years with its badly painted eyes.
‘We’ve got a lorry full of bits and pieces! I need you to take what’s yours.’
Sunlight had bleached its red cape and, during boring stints of homework, Karen had chewed its plastic feet into frayed, shapeless stumps. She was seized by nostalgia and the surge felt dangerous – vertiginous, almost. Something about the pathetic pile and her mother’s concern overtook her, and it was something, too, about being back in this house. Maybe it was haunted. She shuddered again, as she had when she’d first arrived, with a sense of something or someone at her shoulder, breathing hot breath in her ear. She could almost smell it.
‘I don’t know what to do with any of this,’ she said, tossing the doll back on to the pile. It lay face-up, staring at her with blobs for eyes. ‘Don’t ask me to throw it away.’
‘No one’s saying it has to be thrown away,’ her mother said. ‘Why must you be so dramatic?’
‘This is our life,’ she said, feeling panicky.
‘Did I tell you we got thirty pounds for the sofa?’ her mother asked.
‘I can’t bear to think about someone else sitting on our sofa!’
‘It was a horrid old thing.’
She felt her mother’s eyes on her.
‘You’re going with this Ian, are you?’ she asked.
‘What do you mean, “this Ian”? You said you liked him.’
‘You’ve got a nice little job… Are you sure you want to give that up?’
‘It’s not a “nice little job”, Mum – I was only ever doing it to save up money to go travelling.’
‘How about buying somewhere?’ Her mother followed her on to the landing.
‘A semi on the south coast, d’you mean? I’d end up killing myself.’
She regretted her words as soon as they were out of her mouth, and couldn’t help glancing into the bathroom, where the mat had been removed, revealing a stain on the pale carpet. ‘What are we doing empty-handed?’ her mother said quickly, returning to the bedroom. Karen heard her gather up clothes-hangers with a clatter.
It was safer downstairs, but her mother kept picking at her plans. ‘You think you’ll travel well together, do you? Ian knows you, does he?’
‘He knows me as well as anyone knows anyone else, Mum. Do you and Dad know everything there is to know about each other?’
‘I should hope so, after nearly forty-five years of marriage!’ her father said.
It was getting dark. She helped load their car under the yellow light cast by the lamps either side of the driveway.
‘It’s best to be certain, though, isn’t it?’ her mother persisted. ‘You hear about these couples who go away on trips and they only last a few weeks before they can’t stand the sight of one another.’
‘That won’t happen to us,’ Karen said.
‘Have you told him?’ her mother asked in a low voice.
‘Told him what?’ She would make her say it.
‘About that time. Hospital… and what… took you there.’
‘There’s no need. That was ages ago.’
They returned to the house.
‘And you’re happy, Karen? Would you say you’re happy?’
‘I’m happy, Mum, yes. You don’t need to worry.’
For a brief moment she felt a tenderness towards her parents, and was sorry for what she had put them through. ‘How about you and Dad?’ she asked. ‘How are you about moving and stuff?’
‘Oh, we’re alright,’ her mother replied. ‘On with the new, don’t look back.’
They ate a Chinese takeaway in the empty kitchen and by evening they were gone. Countryside flashed past the train windows in the dark and Karen wondered what Angela Knight was doing now. On the last day of their Devon holiday, her parents helped them take their tent down. It tugged in the wind as they released its guy ropes, billowing and flapping at first, then floating softly down when the poles were removed. When they removed the groundsheet, a patch of yellow grass marked where they had been.
IT TOOK AGES to get back to the house. All the lights made it look like a bright city. Lindisizwe and Zami had a long talk in their foreign language. When I asked Zami what they were saying he just shrugged. I said Now I know how to drive and where to go for spotting lions the next thing you can teach me is African
swear words. While we were waiting for the gates to open, I asked him if we really broke down back where the lions were. He looked at me with his sorrowful eyes. Nan says I have got a ferocious stare that is too serious for a young girl but she should see Zami’s. He is a boy, though, so maybe she wouldn’t mind it so much. While he was looking at me I thought he could be tricking me about breaking down. Not nice, I said, and I smacked him. He said Hitting is what is not nice and he rubbed his arm, even though my smack was only a joke one, not hard. How about driving into a load of lions and pretending to have no petrol, I said, that’s not nice, but he stayed serious and said again that hitting wasn’t nice for a young girl. When he said girl he pronounced it gel. I made him say it again. It’s girl, not gel, I said. He said Okay, girl, and he was smiling.
We drove into the yard and Tonyhog came trotting round from behind the house. He looked so cute, like he thought he was really important, with his tail straight up in the air. I said Go away, Tony, it’s way past your bedtime. Jack ran out of his kennel and started barking. He pulled his chain tight and wouldn’t stop barking. Then there was a man in front of us. It was the stick man and he had a stick. He was wearing Zami’s Manchester City shirt. He grabbed Zami and pulled him out of the Jeep. He was speaking in his foreign language and his face was shiny in the night. He was angry and hissing, kind of, and he was hitting and dragging Zami. I shouted at him and when he looked at me he was like a demon not a man. His eyes seemed like they would pop out of his head and he was shaking Zami so I pulled out the pin of my alarm. The girl’s screams pierced my ears. Dad came out of the house shouting my name and the man looked round. I’m armed, Dad said, and he waved his stun gun in the air. Zami was on the ground trying not to get hit and Jack was going mad barking. Alarm Girl was screaming. The Jeep engine was still going so I got in the driving seat and pressed the pedal. The Jeep jerked forward and the man had to let go of Zami and jump out of my way. Zami ran out of the gate. Dad shouted at me but I knew what to do. I put the gearstick into reverse and stamped on the pedal. There was a loud bump and a screeching noise so I shoved the gearstick again and drove forward but this time I crashed into the garage wall. A sheet of metal slid off the roof and clanged on the ground. There was a horrible screeching but even when I put the pin back in my alarm it didn’t stop. Someone else ran out of the house. It was Grandad, running quite fast. I could see Robin and Nan pressed up against the window watching from inside. Dad got me out of the Jeep. My legs were shaking so much I couldn’t walk, he had to make me. Don’t turn around, he said, but I didn’t know what he was talking about so I looked back and I saw Grandad was holding Tonyhog. Tony’s legs were jerking. It was him screaming. His screams ripped the night apart. I pushed Dad away, even though he tried to keep hold of me. Grandad said Get her away from here, Ian, but I fought Dad when he tried to make me. Don’t look then, he said, and he put his gun next to Tony’s head and shot him. The screaming stopped. He’s only stunned, Dad said, and he walked over and picked up one of the painted white rocks around the tree. He hit Tony on the head with it, and then he did it again. Three hits and then we knew Tony was dead. Now it was me screaming but Grandad just stood still. Dad said It had to be done, Indy. I knew I was next. I ran around the front of the Jeep to get away from him. Kill me then if you’re going to, I said. Kill me like you killed Tony and you killed Mum! Robin had come out of the house by then and he shouted Leave Dad alone. We were all in the yard apart from Nan who was the only one still in the house. The rest of us were all in the yard with me and Robin shouting and Tonyhog dead on the ground.
KAREN SAT AT THE TABLE in the basement kitchen, wrapping presents. The room was quiet. The gift-wrap had a repeating pattern of squirrels and other woodland animals. She folded it around books and DVDs she had chosen, around a T-shirt with a kitten print, size 9–10 years. Ian would be back from the gym soon. He would bring the main present, a bicycle.
She paused in her task for a moment, lifting her nose to sniff the night air. It smelled like summer but it wasn’t even spring yet. She placed both her hands on the table top and looked carefully around the room. It felt to her as if someone else had arranged its contents and yet she knew it was she who had wound fairy-lights around the window frame. The room felt touched by something outside of herself, though, while she, estranged, sat in the middle of it.
She scraped her chair abruptly away from the table and got up to open the back door. A blackbird flew out of the tree next door, trilling shrilly as it went. A smell of greenness and newness filled her nostrils and she leaned against the house for support. The night was like a well. She took several deep breaths, feeling she might drown.
A door banged, seemingly far away. She heard her husband’s tread on the stairs as he came into the room where the presents lay wrapped.
‘Karen?’ He found her. ‘What are you doing?’
She kept her face turned away as she answered him. ‘It’s an amazing evening.’
He waited for something further while she wondered if he could feel what she could feel – a presence clinging thickly to objects and surfaces. He went to the sink to get himself a glass of water.
‘Where d’you want the bike?’ he said, above the rush of water from the tap. ‘Shall we put it down here with the rest?’
‘Okay.’
Oblivious to the effort it took her to utter two syllables, he emptied the glass and crashed it noisily on to the draining board. He bounded back up the stairs and went to fetch the bicycle.
She pushed off the wall, like a swimmer away from the edge of a pool, and stepped gingerly back indoors. The digital display on the microwave read 21:54. She got down on her knees.
‘What are you doing?’
He was back already. She looked up at him from her kneeling position, feeling the harsh fibres of the back doormat prickle through the denim of her jeans.
‘Nine years ago I was giving birth,’ she said. ‘At exactly this time, in this position.’
Her words sounded strange to her and she wasn’t surprised that he gave her a peculiar look. He wheeled the bike across the room to lean it against the table.
‘Are you going to the supermarket? I’ll park the car if not.’
She got to her feet. ‘I’m going, yes.’
He held out the car keys and she took them. Lifting her handbag off a chair as she went, she clicked the front door shut behind her.
He had left the car headlights on. Their beam was sinister, like a border control searchlight, challenging fugitives to enter its glare. A fox emerged from bins at the end of the road. It held her stare for a moment before trotting quickly away. She looked up and down the street. Her neighbours’ houses stared back with blank faces. The public front of her own house seemed like a different country compared with the intimacy of its back patio, invaded only by the visiting blackbird. Her senses were tingling but she couldn’t tell if she was excited or nervous, or something else entirely. She was afraid of the uncertainty of the feeling. It was a kind of animal instinct, like the fox’s or the blackbird’s, alerting her to the approach of whatever it was that she could feel beginning to move in on her.
She got inside the car and locked the driver’s door. Resting her hands on the steering wheel for a moment, she checked the back seat, testing to make sure she was alone, so strong was the feeling that she was in company. It was her child’s birthday tomorrow, she told herself. She said it out loud. ‘I have wrapped the presents and now I will buy food.’ Her voice sounded strange, with just herself to hear it.
She spoke calmly and firmly, as if she was at the scene of a disaster or an emergency, but the sensation that she was not alone would not leave her. There was something crouching in the passenger seat, writhing silently and vigorously around her feet. It insinuated itself next to her, cloaked itself around her, and now, as she turned the key in the ignition, it was coming shopping with her.
DAD SAID WHAT WERE you doing out here but I only wanted to know where Zami was. Dad said Were yo
u with him? Where have you been? They didn’t even know I had gone. All the time I was at the lions they thought I was in bed. When I said Me and Zami went out in the Jeep Dad shouted What did he do to you? I shouted back Nothing! Get away from me! He said he was going to phone the police. Grandad said for everyone to stay calm and get back inside the house but I didn’t want to leave Tony. His human eyes were open but his head was lying on one side in a weird way and blood was coming out from under his body. Dad couldn’t shut the gate because he forgot the code. He had to go indoors where it was written down. Lindisizwe was gone, so was Zami and so was the stick man. Grandad wanted me and Robin to go indoors but I wouldn’t leave Tonyhog. Grandad said There’s nothing we can do for the poor fellow and he covered his body up with the Jeep blanket.
Dad was already on the phone to the police when we came inside. My whole body was shivering and I couldn’t stop my teeth from chattering. Nan gave me my hoody but every bit of me couldn’t stop shaking. When Robin heard Dad say to the police he had no idea who the intruder was he looked at me and said Was that Zami’s sister’s husband? I didn’t know. Robin told Dad how we had been to Zami’s sister’s house. Dad said You went on the bus by yourselves? I said No, we were with Zami. Nan said she felt sick. The police will be here any minute, Dad said to Robin, you need to tell them everything you’ve just told me. As for you, young lady, you’ve got some explaining to do. You can either tell me now or when the police get here. I said You’re the one the police will be interested in and he said What do you mean, Indy and he made his voice go all gentle like when we were little. His gentle voice made tears gush out of my eyes and the words came tumbling after. I said How about you? You’re the one with explaining to do. How could you do it? How could you do it? Dad said Do what, Indy? I don’t know what you’re talking about. He wanted to hold my hand and Grandad wanted to get near me too but I wouldn’t let them, I just stood in the middle of all of them like I was on my own and they were the world. There was a confused look on all the grown-ups’ faces, like on the sacrificed chicken’s and like on poor Tony’s. The thought of Tony made me cry even more and once I started I couldn’t stop. It all came out: how I killed Tony and Dad killed you. The words came out of my mouth as fast as the tears out of my eyes. I said Nan, why didn’t you tell us? How can you keep something like that a secret? You know it, Grandad knows it – why did you make us come to South Africa to live with a murderer? Robin said What are you talking about so I shouted at him Don’t pretend you don’t know but he just looked at me and his face was all twisted up.
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