The Summer We All Ran Away

by Cassandra Parkin

  He chased her joyously up the stairs and down the corridor, catching up with her by the concealed doorway.

  He woke again at nightfall. Truth, that unlikeable hag, sat heavily across his chest.

  He wanted to pretend it was for her and for Isaac, these four days he’d wrung out of her. He wanted to pretend she needed time to get over losing the part which had meant so much to her. He wanted to pretend she needed his protection. But he knew in his heart she was as tough as old boots, far stronger than he was.

  He wished he had a cigarette, but he’d forced himself to quit that drug too. So instead, he tore the cover of a spiral bound notebook into meticulous shreds, and forced himself to be honest.

  He was relieved the production had fallen through. He would do whatever he could, whatever he could get away with, to keep her here with him. He couldn’t bear to part with her. He wanted her here with him, now, tomorrow, always.

  chapter nine (now)

  He stood in the doorway and stared into the room like a criminal.

  The house had the special silence that falls when only one person remains in it. Tom had, as he’d promised, taken the ferry to the mainland. Kate had gone with him. Priss was, as she put it, ‘not at home to visitors’, a state which apparently required her to have exclusive use of the library with no interruptions. He had not seen Isaac since breakfast, but he had never seen Isaac venture upstairs.

  He was alone, he reminded himself. The house was old, its joints creaked. He would hear anyone coming in plenty of time. All he had to do was cross the threshold.

  He couldn’t make his knees bend. He told his feet to shuffle forward, but they weren’t listening.

  Late last night, he’d lain beneath his billowy crimson bed canopy, wandering through the border-country that led to sleep, when he heard Kate and Tom talking on the landing.

  “She’s so ridiculously beautiful,” Kate said. “When she’s asleep she looks about nine.”

  “She’d kill you if she heard you said that,” Tom replied. “She told me beauty’s a waste of time.”

  “No, she didn’t.”

  “Yes, she did.”

  “No, she didn’t. She said, Beauty’s the biggest fuckin’ con on this entire fuckin’ planet apart from fuckin’ falling in love.”

  “Actually, that’s exactly what she said. How did you know?”

  “She said it to me too. How does anyone get to be so cynical before they’re twenty? Or is that just modern youth?”

  “Davey’s not cynical. He’s as sweet as they come.”

  Lying in the dark, Davey blushed.

  “It’s lovely having them both here, isn’t it?” Kate said then. “Like having a family of your own, only not.”

  “I suppose it must be.”

  “Do you? Have a family, I mean?”

  “No.”

  “Not anyone? Not even nieces or nephews?”

  “No. Do you?”

  “Just me.”

  “Did you ever want, you know, children?”

  There was a pause while Kate considered this. Davey wished he could see her face.

  “Maybe,” she said at last. “But somehow - and then, of course, I was too old.” He heard the door of her room open. “Goodnight, Tom.”

  Priss had insisted from the start that Kate and Tom were strangers to each other, but until now he hadn’t really believed it. How had she known?

  And if she was right about that -

  Go on, he willed his feet. Go into her room. Just do it.

  Once he was over the threshold, it became easier. There was a terrible secret pleasure in being in Kate’s room when she wasn’t. He had no idea how women lived behind the closed doors of their private spaces. His mother’s room had been off-limits since he was five. Because he could, he opened a drawer, and discovered a mound of cloud-soft garments in soft neutral colours that conjured the mysterious word twinset. The drawer below contained more practical things; cotton t-shirts, heavy sweaters. Had she brought all these clothes with her, or were they borrowed? They certainly seemed to fit her, but then the clothes in ‘his’ room fitted him too. He opened the smallest drawer at the top, glanced in, glimpsed a sensual nest of silk and lace and closed it hastily.

  Uncorked, the flask of perfume whispered Kate’s presence. The sensation made him feel guilty, and he replaced the top and moved on. On the bedside table, the only reading matter was the newspaper he remembered picking up from the floor of the tube. The sight made him swallow reflexively and look away. A pair of reading glasses rested on the top. He’d never seen her wear them, but of course almost everyone her age needed glasses for something, didn’t they? Beneath the mirror by the window, Kate’s cosmetics seemed oddly simple; a gold-cased lipstick, a bottle of cleansing milk, a box of loose powder with an ancient-looking powder puff. Maybe she kept the rest of them in the bathroom.

  The avocado bath suite looked almost pretty against the clean white tiles. He could see why, many years ago before everyone knew better, it could have seemed like a good idea. The soap reposing in the dish was Imperial Leather, its black and red label still clean and new-looking. In the cabinet, a bottle of paracetamol sat disapprovingly on the shelf next to a box of brown hair dye.

  The hair dye, like the glasses, seemed almost unbearably intimate, a reminder of the small vanities of humanity. He turned away, opened the drawer in the pine table in the corner. On top of the long box of disposable contact lenses (so that was how she managed during the day!) was a small plastic case. He opened the case and found himself staring at a strange plastic contraption, like a miniscule skullcap made from pliable beige plastic.

  “Don’t you dare touch that, you mucky bastard,” said Priss in his ear, and Davey nearly swallowed his tongue.

  “Jesus!” he hissed furiously, as soon as he could speak again.

  Priss took the case out of his hand and snapped it shut. “Trust me, when you realise what it is you’ll thank me. What are you looking for? No, I can guess.” She laughed, far too loudly. “And I thought you didn’t believe me! Didn’t think you had it in you.”

  “I don’t want to believe you, I just thought while everyone was out I’d - ”

  “Did you find anything?”

  “No, not a thing. We must be wrong.”

  “Absence of proof isn’t proof of absence. Did you look in Tom’s room?”

  “Not - no. Look, I don’t think we should be - ”

  Priss was already out of the door.

  “Well, at least it’s clean,” she said dubiously, peering into Tom’s room. “Come on, what are you waiting for?”

  Looking through Tom’s meagre belongings felt even more dreadful. Kate’s possessions had a certain softness, a whisper of luxury and feminine grace, that lent the search a dreamlike, sensual quality. But there was nothing glamorous about Tom’s four ancient sweatshirts, over-washed and immaculately clean, or the single pair of jeans with the bottoms carefully taken up and the crotch neatly patched, or the six pairs of thinning cotton underpants with only the ghost of the name Marks & Spencer still visible on the label. In the bathroom, a cheap plastic razor was lined neatly up beside a bar of soap.

  “I feel awful,” said Priss at last. “What the fuck are we doing this for, Davey? Let’s go outside.”

  As he walked out through the veranda windows, Davey found he was haunted by the thought of Tom walking through another, more forbidding door. Could he have been let go? Surely someone would have been assigned to supervise him. But then, people disappeared from the system all the time.

  “I tell you what,” said Priss. “I’m glad they’ve gone out for the day. I feel weird being around them.”

  “Really?” said Davey crossly. “Why could that be, then? Do you think that might be because you’ve got it into your head that one of them’s a m-m-m-m - ”

  “Maverick. Manticore. Mermaid. Man-eating tiger. Market gardener. Manufacturer of lemon-scented - ”

  “Stop it!”

  “Hey, you’
ve got your fuckin’ irritating verbal tic, and I’ve got mine. Come on.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Birmingham.”

  “Sorry?”

  “Come on, soft lad. Use your fuckin’ loaf. Where do you think we’re going?”

  Davey glanced at Isaac’s tent, which he was inexplicably sleeping in despite the abundance of spare bedrooms.

  “Not as thick as you look, are you? Might as well do the lot while we’re at it.” She looked thoughtfully at the tent. “Maybe we’d be safer sleeping out here too.”

  “You’d freeze.”

  “I wouldn’t.”

  “Have you ever slept in a tent?”

  “No. Have you ever slept in a house with no central heating and no meter money and no chimney so you can’t even burn stuff to keep warm?”

  Davey looked at her in horror. “Have you?”

  “I might have,” said Priss, staring at the house and frowning. “Or I might just be messing with you, using the power of class prejudice and stereotypes about poor people. Your choice. Which is my room?”

  “Sorry?”

  “That row of windows. Which is mine? I know it’s one of them ’cos I can see the garden from it.”

  “How would I know?”

  “It’s a funny thing. I can never quite work out the layout of this place. There’s always bits that don’t quite match up.”

  “Are there? I hadn’t noticed.”

  “That’s ’cos you only ever see what you want to see. Christ, this tent is ancient, it doesn’t even have a groundsheet. Have a look.”

  Against his better judgement, Davey peered in. A bedroll rested on a stand made from four forked sticks wedged in the ground, with two branches balanced in the forks. A folding tray-table with a scratched reproduction of Van Gogh’s Sunflowers held a stack of paper, and a giant Smartie tube filled with pens. The only extravagance was a downy quilt made of exquisite embroidered silk patches.

  “I knew he’d been nicking my pens,” said Priss. “Right, I’m having that one back. And that one. And that one.”

  “How do you n-n-n-know they’re yours?”

  Priss ignored him. She was flicking through the pile of sketches. “He’s really good, isn’t he?”

  “I don’t think you should be looking at them.”

  “Well, I don’t think you should wear those jeans with that t-shirt, but you don’t hear me complaining.” She held out a sheet of paper. “Look at this one.”

  Davey looked. It was a pen-and-ink drawing of him asleep on the sofa in the library.

  “I d-d-didn’t know he’d done that,” he said in surprise.

  “He gets everywhere,” said Priss. She replaced the drawing in the pile. “D’you know where he’s gone?”

  “Why would I know where he’s gone?”

  “I don’t actually think you know, daft lad, I’m just setting you up so I can tell you what I know. He’s gone to post a letter.”

  “So what?”

  “So it’s got no address and it’s just a blank sheet of paper. I had a look at it while he was in the kitchen. What d’you think he’s really doing?”

  “Is this another question I’m not supposed to know the answer to?”

  “You’re more fun when you fight back. You should do it more often.” Priss put the sketches down and backed out of the tent. “Come on, we’re going down to that weird cage thing.”

  “Why can’t we just sit still for five minutes?” Davey begged. “Why do we always have to be c-c-c-climbing trees and looking at c-c-c-c-c – argh! – at cages, and g-g-going into people’s rooms and - ”

  “If you stand still too long you put down roots. Come on.” “Let’s talk about Isaac,” said Priss.

  Davey was enjoying the feeling of the sunshine dappling his face as they sat up in the tree’s branches once again. He closed his eyes and admired the pattern of the blood vessels on the backs of his eyelids. With his eyes closed like this, he couldn’t see the slight swelling of the ground beneath the beech tree. If Isaac had been back here, he had left no flowers to mark his visit. Now he thought about it, surely Isaac’s willingness to stay here at all must be proof that both Tom and Kate were innocent. Priss jabbed him hard in the leg with a finger that felt like a bony twig.

  “Ow!”

  “Then bloody listen. What’s up with you now?” Davey was staring at Priss’ fingers. “I’m just checking they’re not made of c-c-c-c-cast iron.”

  “Brilliant. You should be on the telly. Isaac. Discuss.”

  “I think he’s very nice.”

  “So that’s what wilful blindness looks like! Wish I’d got a camera.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You do this look,” said Priss. “You did it that day Kate told us to stay away from the Dark Side. You did it the other night when Tom was holding court on the ethics of murder. And you do it all the time when you’re around Isaac.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He would not look at the ground beneath the beech tree. Whatever was there was private, secret, best left sleeping. He absolutely would not look -

  “What are you staring at now? Oh, shit and corruption, what the fuchin’ hell’s that?”

  “What’s what? Oh my God, is that - ”

  Priss slapped a hand over Davey’s mouth and shook her head warningly. They stared, bug-eyed and breathless, as the panther shouldered its way nonchalantly through the buddleias, and padded silently into the clearing.

  Priss put her mouth cautiously against Davey’s ear. “Do you think it knows we’re here?” she murmured.

  “I don’t know. It might be able to s-s-smell us.”

  The panther was poking around in the undergrowth with a massive velvet paw. Its mouth was half-open. They could hear it sniffing and see its rose-pink tongue.

  “How the fuch did it get here?”

  “There’s stories about big cats on Dartmoor, aren’t there? Didn’t people keep them as pets?”

  The panther had scraped together a pile of twigs and bark fragments. It turned its back towards the pile, and sprayed it vigorously with urine. Priss wrinkled her nose in disgust as the smell reached them and put her sleeve over her face. Davey was afraid she would cough.

  “It’s not, like, tame, is it?” she whispered through the thin cotton. “I mean, even if it was a pet once, it could eat us?” Davey swallowed hard, and nodded. “What do we do?”

  “Wait for it to go?”

  “What if it’s waiting in the woods?”

  The panther padded past the half-closed gate and lay down. It began to lick and nibble at its right front paw, tugging at a fragment lodged between the claws.

  “I wonder how high it can jump.” Davey whispered to Priss, then wished he hadn’t.

  “Well, not this high, soft lad.”

  “You can’t possibly know that, stop sounding so smug - ”

  “Yeah, I can. Nobody builds a cage for a wild animal it can get out of by jumping. This is its territory, soft lad. It must have lived here before.”

  “Before what?”

  She shrugged. “Before somebody let it out.”

  Davey stared down at the powerful muscles beneath the sleek black hide. “They m-m-m-must have been insane.”

  “Maybe they didn’t want it to starve.”

  “Why would it starve?”

  “If you’re living in a fucking prison,” Priss murmured, “you’ve got to be sure someone’s going to keep feeding you.”

  Thirty feet below, the panther yawned and stretched. Then it rolled onto its back, writhing from side to side in ecstasy as grit scratched deliciously up and down its spine.

  Priss and Davey watched in fascinated terror.

  Time passed. For hour after hour, the panther dozed contentedly in the sunlight, occasionally moving to follow the path of the sun. Priss slid her hand into Davey’s and held tightly to his fingers. They gazed and gazed, hypnotised.

  Davey’s legs were cramped. He e
ased his left leg out from beneath him, then his right. Priss glanced down. The panther appeared to be asleep, and she followed his example. The panther’s ears twitched, but it did not wake.

  “We should go,” Priss whispered. “While it’s sleeping.”

  “What if it wakes up and comes after us?”

  “What if we stay here till it gets dark and it comes after us?”

  “It might go away again.”

  “Would you rather walk through those woods knowing where it is? Or would you rather wait till we’ve got no fucking idea?”

  “But - ”

  “You scared?”

  “Of course I’m bloody scared!”

  “Yeah, me too. Come on, then.” She stood cautiously, her eyes fixed on the panther. “Ready? Three. Two. One. Go!”

  Together they raced down the path. A pigeon flew out of the bushes in front of them, its wings clapping, and Davey was mortified to hear himself give a half-choked scream. Priss gasped, “Jesus Christ and all the little angels dressed in fuckin’ frilly nighties,” and stumbled into him. Even in his terror, he was aware of the soft warmth of her through her clothes. Then they were running again, tearing through brambles and shrubs, sweat cold on their backs, bursting out into slanting sunshine and what felt deceptively like safety as they dashed across the lawn, in through the veranda windows and back into the kitchen.

  “Fuch me,” said Priss, when she could speak again. “I really thought - ” her breath came in deep shudders. “I thought - ”

  Davey wrestled with the veranda doors. They were warped and reluctant to close. He jammed a chair beneath the handles, wondering if that would do any good. Priss looked very small and fragile. He felt a surge of protectiveness. Maybe he should kneel beside her and put an arm around her shoulders. He could hold her against his chest, maybe even kiss her. He felt the sweat break out on his palms. The taunts of the boys at school – D-d-d-Davey, never had a g-g-g-girlfriend – it was time to act, this was ridiculous, he just needed to man up, as they said, and kiss her and get it over with.

  “Are we interrupting something?” Kate sounded amused. Davey jumped half a foot, and wished he could stop himself from blushing. Priss’ face was radiant with relief.

  “Thank fuchin’ Christ you’re alright,” she said.