The Summer We All Ran Away

by Cassandra Parkin

  “How do you know what I brought?”

  “I went through your bag, soft lad, to check you didn’t have a gun.”

  “Why would I have a gun?”

  “You might have brought one with you.”

  “Yes, but why a g-g-g - ”

  “You might have come to kill us.”

  Davey was beginning to find Priss irritating.

  “Well, you went through my stuff while I was asleep. You might have been planning to kill me.”

  “It’s not much of an MO, though, is it? Waiting in a house in the middle of nowhere for people to turn up so you can do ’em over? That’s the problem with haunted-house horrors, isn’t it? You’re relying on the victims to show up. If you were, like, deeply compelled to kill, you wouldn’t just sit inside hoping someone’s car’ll break down nearby. You’d go out and find someone. Fuckin’ Hollywood, sacrificing credibility for a great set.” She seemed to have forgotten her original point, if she’d even had one. “Like, I love Psycho, but how realistic is it that you could just get rid of your mother and no-one would notice she’d gone, while still running a fully functioning motel?”

  “Didn’t he dress up as his mother?” Davey offered tentatively.

  “Yeah, I suppose. But that wasn’t my point, okay? My point is, logically speaking it’s much more likely you’re going to hurt us than we’re going to hurt you.” She sighed, and scribbled on the edge of the table.

  “Kate told you not to do that,” said Davey, seeing a chance to attack.

  “No, she didn’t. She told me to draw something pretty.” Priss invested the word with a profound scorn.

  “Are you going to?” asked Davey, fascinated by the notion of a household where drawing on the furniture was allowed.

  “No I am fucking not. I don’t believe in pretty. What a pointless goal to focus on. Pretty’s the biggest fuckin’ waste of time ever invented. Actually, no it’s not, the biggest waste of time is love. But pretty’s a close second.” Davey watched as she restlessly sketched a stick-man dangling from a noose. After a minute, she added a woman poking him with a stick. “See, most houses have knives and hammers and stuff. If you were in the mood to kill someone, I mean. But if you had a gun, chances are it’d be the only gun in the house. So if I had it and you didn’t, I’d have the advantage.”

  “Look, I promise I’m not a murderer, okay?” said Davey desperately.

  “If you say so.” She smiled at him as if they’d been exchanging small talk in a queue at a café, and picked up her notebook again. “That’s quite disappointing, actually. I’ve never met a murderer.” She considered this for a moment. “Well. I don’t think I have. S’pose you never know.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said again, unable to stop himself.

  “Sorry ’cos you haven’t done someone? Is there anything about your existence you’re not sorry for?” She took the bowl of porridge out of his hands. “You’re too much of a fuckin’ drip to be a murderer. Right. I’ll show you around. This is the maddest house you’ll ever see.”

  He wanted to finish his breakfast and drink his coffee and rest his head against the wall and try and put together what was happening, but Priss was like a cat that wants something. Suddenly she was all over him, taking the cup from his hands, moving his bowl away, steering him towards the door, her hair in his face and her jewellery snagging on his t-shirt. It was easier to give in, so he did.

  “Have you lived here long?” he asked, struggling up the stairs and down the long corridor of bedrooms.

  “Kate’s room,” said Priss, tapping on one of the doors in the upstairs corridor. “Tom’s room. This one’s empty. This one’s empty. This one’s empty and it’s got wallpaper that’ll send you off your nut. This one’s empty but it’s got a massive black and red bath with gold taps, it’s fabulous but knock first in case I’m in it. This one’s mine, don’t ever go in it without my permission or I’ll have you. Empty. Your room. Empty.”

  Across a landing, a door loomed open to a dusty corridor with bare floorboards.

  “What’s through there?” asked Davey.

  “The Dark Side. Only half the place has been renovated.” She clattered ahead of him back down the stairs. “Don’t go in on your own, the floorboards are dodgy.”

  “So how long have you all - ”

  “None of your fuckin’ business.” Back downstairs in the hall, she opened a door. “This is the office.” The door disclosed a room of angles and functional steel, with black swivel chairs and a sharp grey desk that looked naked, or perhaps robbed. “What’s wrong with this picture?”

  “No computer,” Davey said triumphantly.

  “Forget that. Check out the ceiling.”

  Davey looked up. The ceiling was pierced with huge metal hooks.

  “Game parlour,” said Priss, waving an airy hand. “They’d hang the birds until the maggots dropped out. And then eat them. The birds, I mean, not the maggots. What?”

  “Could we not talk about maggots?”

  She was away and opening another door, as if this was beneath her consideration.

  “Library.”

  A terracotta stove relaxed in a sunken pit scattered with cushions. Sleek leather sofas were surrounded by walls and walls of books. They began with names he knew only from being told he should read them: Symposium, Lysistrata, Metamorphoses, The Odyssey, The Birds. Then suddenly some familiar titles: The Canterbury Tales, The Jew of Malta, The Revenger’s Tragedy, and an entire shelf of Shakespeare, collected works and single plays, including seventeen editions of Hamlet. He moved on through time, passing The Life of Johnson, Evelina, Ivanhoe, Persuasion, Middlemarch, old friends to remind him he had not tumbled entirely out of the world. Finally, two shelves of books he had only seen in charity shops. Peyton Place. Valley of the Dolls. Tropic of Capricorn. Jaws. Princess Daisy. Firestarter. The collection ended abruptly with half a case still empty.

  “This is great,” said Davey reverently. He took down a copy of Kidnapped and blew the dust off the top. Priss took it away and put it back.

  “Later. Come on.”

  Davey wanted to linger, but Priss dragged him onward, into another hallway with an endless amount of doors. Davey began counting, then lost track when Priss tugged impatiently on his arm.

  “Okay,” she said, “now we’re going to play a game.”

  “Do we have to?” begged Davey. His head was throbbing and his legs felt weak. He longed to go back to the library and collapse into a sleek leather sofa.

  “What do you think?” said Priss over her shoulder. “It’s called, Guess what the fuck anyone ever needed all these rooms for anyway. Ready?” She flung open the first door. “Big room with a lot of couches.”

  Davey trailed in behind her. On a wall of beige hessian, a stone chimneypiece poured in an unpleasant grey torrent from the ceiling and pooled into a hearth. Four sofas, square-backed but with extravagant round arms upholstered in vivid magenta velvet, filled the room. Purple curtains with contrasting green circles made his eyes ache.

  “Drawing room?” suggested Davey wearily.

  “You posh twat,” said Priss.

  “Sorry?” Her smile was so dazzling he almost failed to register the insult.

  “Normal people call it a living room. Or maybe a lounge. And you get nul points and all, ’cos it’s missing several key features.”

  “Like what? There’s plenty of places to sit.” Davey looked longingly at the nearest sofa. The colour boiled ominously in the pit of his stomach, but he could close his eyes.

  “And then what?”

  And then I’d go to sleep, he thought.

  “I don’t know, maybe, um, watch television.”

  “There isn’t one.”

  “Alright, um, you could drink some coffee.”

  “No coffee tables.”

  “You could put the mug on the floor.”

  Priss looked at him scornfully. He glanced down and realised his feet were sunk deep in cream floor-covering so thick
the word carpet seemed an insult.

  “You could read.”

  “There’s a library.”

  “You might want some privacy.”

  “And the light’s shite an’ all, you’d never pick this room to read in. So basically, this is a room where people do nothing at all but sit. Except those sofas are crap for sitting on.”

  “Really?” Davey sat experimentally, and found his knees were around his ears. He lay down instead, his head resting blissfully on the pillowy arm, and closed his eyes in ecstatic exhaustion.

  Priss squeezed herself onto the edge and flicked his nose hard with her finger.

  “Don’t go to sleep when I’m talking to you. What do you reckon?”

  “I don’t know,” murmured Davey, with his eyes shut. Priss flicked his nose again. Drifting, he imagined an unknown party of fellow sleepers, each marooned on their own magenta island. “A psychiatrist’s office, maybe.”

  Priss laughed. “That’s not bad, actually. I thought a drugden. But I like yours better. D’you reckon the headshrinker sat in the middle on a big black leather chair and made them all talk about their sex-lives?”

  “Maybe.” Davey was nearly asleep. Priss flicked him on the nose again, then pulled his hair.

  “Stay awake, or I’ll make you tell me about your sex life,” she threatened. “There’s lots more to see yet.”

  The house unfolded around him like a half-finished puzzle-box. He was Theseus in the labyrinth, following an uncouth and dazzling Ariadne. A pair of huge double doors opened reluctantly onto a vast, echoing room with a battered grand piano, a double-height ceiling and no windows. Ornate stone coving surrounded blank alcoves containing a skim of bare plaster. At the far end of the room, the entire fourth wall was missing. A spindly nettle grew between the floorboards. “I reckon they had a fight about whether it was going to be a ballroom or a swimming pool,” said Priss. “Can you imagine? I could get my whole house in here. Don’t do that, soft lad, you’ll go through the floor.” She yanked Davey backwards, just as his foot pushed through dry, powdery wood into the cool damp below.

  Wondering how she’d known, he followed her onto the next puzzle; a large room on the undecorated side of the house, containing a teak dining table with twenty-four chairs. This seemed reasonable, if unusually opulent – even his stepfather had drawn the line at twelve places – until Priss sighed and told him that they were as far as it was possible to be from the kitchen. “Are we?” he asked in bewilderment, and Priss snorted in disgust and dragged him onwards. In a room with an upright piano, a nice view of the grounds and faded wallpaper patterned with peacock feathers, she pulled aside a moth-eaten velvet curtain to uncover a space barely larger than a pantry containing an ancient record player, a lot of boxes filled with vinyl records, an old-fashioned school-desk, and a hard, uncomfortable chair. Lost from the beginning, Davey wondered if he would ever see his room, or the kitchen, or the library, or Tom and Kate, or anything he recognised, ever again.

  “And this leads back to the hall,” said Priss, opening another door.

  To Davey’s astonishment, they were indeed back where they’d started. There was the front door, and there were the stairs, looking different when approached from a different angle. He peered at them, suspecting them of having subtly transformed themselves during his absence. At the end of the kitchen, French windows opened out to a wide veranda. A surprisingly well-kept lawn led to a towering wall of shrubs where faint traces of long-buried paths summoned the brave into their green depths.

  “Round two,” said Priss. “Outside.”

  Davey’s toes cringed at the feel of the cold wet grass beneath them, but he didn’t dare ask Priss to let him go back and get his shoes. The trail – he couldn’t call it a path – wound thinly between the massive, towering trees, making him think of forests in fairy tales. Several times he had to stop and pick holly leaves out of the soles of his feet. Priss strode ahead, talking at him over her shoulder.

  “So what do you think to the library? Bet that was your favourite.”

  For as long as he could remember, Davey had fantasised about having his own library. His stepfather said books were untidy.

  “It’s great,” he offered. Priss sniffed, and picked up the pace. Davey struggled to keep up with her. His head was throbbing and his eyes felt hot and sore. His forehead was drenched with a clammy sweat.

  “Are you alright?” asked Priss unexpectedly.

  “Fine,” he gasped.

  She stopped anyway, and he leaned gratefully against a tree and tried to catch his breath. Priss took her notebook out and scribbled in it. He had known plenty of people who carried notebooks as theatrical props, but Priss didn’t seem to be doing it for his benefit. He found he liked watching her when she didn’t know he was looking.

  “Are you going to be an artist?” he asked at last, for something to say.

  “Writer.” She put the notebook away and set off through the shrubs again. They were climbing now, a small steep hill thrusting disconcertingly out of nowhere.

  “What sort of thing do you want to write?”

  “I don’t want to write, I do write. That’s what writers are. People who write.”

  “Sorry.”

  “You would be. I wrote a graphic novel with a friend last year. It’s a superhero story for modern audiences.”

  “Really?” Davey had read Watchmen once, and found it bewildering. “What’s it called?”

  Her stare was as blank and innocent as an angel’s.

  “It’s called Crip-Boy and Enabler-Girl.”

  Davey blinked, convinced he must have misheard.

  “Sorry, it’s called what?”

  “Crip-Boy and Enabler-Girl. The hero’s a guy in a wheelchair. Enabler-Girl’s his carer, and also his girlfriend.”

  “Oh my God!” Davey was horrified. “You can’t write that!”

  “Why the fuck not?”

  “Because - ” His disgust was so huge he couldn’t find the words to express it. “Because it’s awful!”

  She was walking backwards so she could hold him with her stare.

  “How do you know it’s awful?”

  “You can’t call someone in a wheelchair Crip-Boy!”

  “’Course we can. It’s a deliberately provocative title, it’s meant to make you feel uncomfortable. It’s playing with assumptions about disabled people, like, reclaiming the insult.”

  “But you’re not disabled!”

  “So?”

  “But do you even know any disabled people?”

  “Do you?”

  As it happened, he didn’t.

  “And,” she said triumphantly, “you haven’t even read it! You’re making all these assumptions without even reading it! You’ve got a problem with graphic novels, haven’t you? You fuckin’ intellectual snob.”

  “I am not an intellectual snob!”

  “Then tell me what’s wrong with that library.” She jabbed a thumb in the direction of the house.

  “How can there be anything wrong with a library?”

  “It’s lopsided. No Moore, no Miller, no Morrison, no Gaiman, and nothing after nineteen eighty.” Her accent was becoming stronger. “I wasn’t even born in nineteen eighty.”

  Her arrogance took his breath away.

  “So? There’s at least - ” he did a quick calculation in his head “ - at least three thousand years of literature in there! That should be enough for anybody. Even - ” He stopped and bit his lip.

  She laughed in triumph.

  “Even a thick little Scally wid no fuckin’ clue about anyt’ in’?”

  “I didn’t mean that, I just - ”

  “I bet you went to an all-boys school, didn’t you? And it cost thousands of pounds a term? And about, like, eighty-five per cent of youse go to Oxford or Cambridge? Am I, like, the first poor person you’ve ever met?”

  “That’s c-c-c-c-completely unfair, I d-d-d - ”

  “Despise people like me? Don’t want to admit I�
��ve gorra point? Didn’t know poor people could read? Did me mam round the back of the chip shop?” She laughed. “Do you always stammer when you feel guilty?”

  His tongue finally unlocked and sprang free.

  “Just fuck off, Priss!” he roared, then stopped, appalled at himself.

  As if he’d given her a present, she beamed at him and took him by the hand.

  “That’s more like it. You’re not so bad, you know. For a posh lad who’s soft in the head.” She dragged him up to the brow of the hill. “Now, look at that, and tell me it’s not the most fucked-up thing you’ve ever seen in your entire life.”

  Together, they stared down into the hollowed-out concrete-lined lair. The iron gate had rusted half-open across the entrance.

  Dear Mum,

  How are you? I’m really well, I’ve found somewhere to live and

  So, I thought it might be a good idea if I moved out on my own for a while

  I couldn’t stay any longer, I’m sorry, but I just couldn’t

  I just wanted to let you know I’m alright

  Oh God. I can’t do this. I’m sorry.

  Love Davey.

  chapter four (then)

  From the edge of the lawn, Jack and Mathilda watched Alan get rid of the party. His pink shirt blazed out like a beacon as he snarled at the retreating waves of guests. Jack watched in fascination. He’d had no idea that so many people had come in the first place.

  “Do you know all these people?” asked Mathilda.

  “Some of them. What’s so funny?”

  “Don’t you think it’s strange to invite people you don’t know?”

  “Hey, no business like show business. Actually, I think it’s ridiculous. I moved out here to get away from all that crap.”

  Jeff and Jane were pointing at the stars and laughing like maniacs. Alan shoved Jeff crossly into the back of his car, climbed into the driver’s seat, and drove off into the night.