No Going Back (3 page)

L
EAVING

T
hat last night at home I couldn't sleep. I lay awake for hours, sifting through the memories: precious moments with Dad in this house, sitting beside me on the bed, reading a story, his warm impulsive kisses in the middle of my forehead as we snuggled on the sofa together watching
101 Dalmatians
; or all those hours spent in the back garden as he tried to teach me how to balance on my bike without stabilisers. I wasn't sure whether some of them were real memories or things I had made up from stories Mum had told me or mental images from photographs I had seen. But it didn't matter. All that mattered was that Dad had been here with me, in this house, being the perfect father.

“I don't want to leave you, Dad,” I whispered into the darkness. “I wish I could take you with me. They
do it in films. They have an urn on the mantelpiece containing the ashes of their loved one. Mum could have done that, put you in an urn instead of burying you in the ground – then we could have taken you with us, wherever we went.”

I listened hard in case he was trying to answer me. There was nothing. So I held Teddy tightly, pulled my duvet up over my head and tried to block out the future. All I wanted to do was to keep everything I knew and loved close to me, to feel safe. Was that too much to ask?

By the morning I was snappy and clumsy. We'd taken some stuff up to Derbyshire already but there was still quite a lot of stuff to pack up. Twice I nearly dropped a box of precious things on the way to the car. Mum exploded as I caught my flip-flop on the edge of the step and the cardboard box crashed against the door frame. Everything inside made a worrying tinkling noise.

“If you can't be more careful, Laura, then you'd be better off doing something else.”

“It's all fine,” I said, in a voice that sounded
more reassured than I felt.

“At least put some proper shoes on,” she called after me.

“I've packed them all,” I called back.

We had the only postman in the world who bothered to close the gate behind him, so I had to balance the box on the brick pillar while I negotiated with the catch. I don't know how it happened but the box toppled over, scraped its way down my shin and landed on my foot with a horrible crash. I didn't have to look inside to know that something, if not everything, must be broken. Mum tore out of the front door.

“For goodness' sake,” she yelled. “I told you to be careful.”

“I'm sorry.” My foot was throbbing and a huge sob gathered momentum in my chest. “It's the gate, I couldn't…”

“Stop! I don't want to hear any excuses.”

She looked so hard all of a sudden. Where had my lovely, kind mum gone over these last few months? The box was still resting on my foot, rooting me to the spot.

“The trouble is,” I shouted back, “you just don't want to hear anything at the moment, do you?”

I yanked my foot out, intending to make a dramatic exit – except my flip-flop was still stuck. “I'm going for a walk,” I said. “You'll be better off without me anyway.”

I yanked open the gate and marched out, sharp pieces of gravel embedding themselves in my sole.

“Laura! Come back here!”

I ignored her and carried on walking.

“Laura!” This time it was loud enough to make the neighbours' curtains twitch. “Don't be silly.”

I limped on. She caught up with me just before I turned the corner.

“Leave me alone.”

My foot was beginning to feel really sore.

“I just thought that you might want this.” She thrust the flip-flop in front of my face. “Where are you going?”

“I don't know.”

But of course I did and she knew too.

She brushed a strand of hair back from my face. “I'm sorry I shouted.”

Tears began to stream down my cheeks. “I'm sorry I dropped the box. Everything will be broken.”

She pulled me close. “They're only things, Laura. They're not important.”

She clasped me to her. I breathed in her scent: citrus fruit, sunshine, elegance.

“All I want,” she murmured, “is for you to be happy.”

She pushed me away slightly but held on to the tops of my arms, tilting her head so she could look right into my eyes. “Off you go – don't be too long.”

“Don't you want to come?”

She stroked my cheek. “Not this time,” she said.

“This is it,” I said, crouching by the grave, “time to say goodbye. Can't put it off any longer.”

I fingered the frilly petals of some lemon carnations I'd put on the grave the day before.

“I'll come back loads and loads. I won't let your grave become all mossy and neglected like some of them. I'm going to get in touch with Penny to make sure she carries on coming and putting those pretty little posies on your grave. If Mum won't give me her
number this time I'll find it somehow. She must have it written down in her diary or something.”

The air was so still. Not a leaf moved on the old oak tree. It was the weirdest sensation but it felt as if the whole of the world had stopped for a second. Even my breath seemed to have got stuck in my lungs.

“I really, really don't want to go and live with Gran,” I gasped. “If you were around we wouldn't be doing this – not that I want to make you feel guilty or anything like that. It's not your fault you're dead, is it?”

Again I couldn't stop the tears. This time I didn't want to. My fingers splayed against the cool slate headstone, instinctively tracing along the grooves that made up his name:

GARETH JAMES COOPER

BELOVED HUSBAND AND FATHER

VII
^TH
J
ULY
MCMLXXIII – XVIII
^TH
A
UGUST
MMIV

LOVE IS ETERNAL

I threw my head back; the sky was a blur;
saltiness washed back down my throat. “I wish you'd give me some sign,” I choked, “let me know that you're here, watching over me, like Mum says.”

I held my breath, listened for the slightest clue: the rustle of a leaf, the creak of a branch, the chirp of a bird. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I shook my head, stood up and shrugged.

“Okay, have it your way, but I promise that I'll be back soon.”

And then I left, weaving my way around the graves towards the path. As I passed under the dark, stained lych gate I had the strangest sensation, as if X-ray eyes were boring into my back. I stopped and glanced over my shoulder. The cemetery was deserted.

“You're a bag of nerves, Laura,” I said to myself, “or getting ‘overwrought' as Gran would say.” So I gave myself a little shake and set off for home. Several times I turned to look behind me but there was nothing different to see, no one acting suspiciously. All the same, I couldn't get rid of the feeling that I was being followed.

D
ERBYSHIRE

T
hat first night at Chestnut Farm I went to bed late. I'd been sitting up in the kitchen, scanning a magazine about some celebs who were living on what seemed to be another planet, rather than in the city I had left only a few hours before.

“Come on, Laura,” Mum said, as I tried to make my cocoa last as long as possible. “It's been a long day.”

Why didn't I want to go up to that room? There wasn't anything wrong with it. It was Mum's old room, with the same pink rug that had been there when she was growing up but new, bright and breezy Cath Kidston curtains. From the big sash window there was a nice view over the back garden and beyond that, rolling fields dotted with slate-blue dry-stone walls. In the middle of the lawn there was an old well with a little tiled roof. Every summer
Gran would hide the pine cover with pots of bright red and pink geraniums but that July it was bare. To the right of the well stood an old apple tree with a swing attached to one of its gnarled branches. The tree didn't have the strength to produce much of a crop of apples any more but ever since Grandad's father bought the farm in the 1930s there had always been a swing on that tree.

“Laura!”

Mum bolted the back door and gestured to the stairs.

I sighed, unable to put the moment off any longer.

“I'm exhausted,” Mum said, stopping on the landing to give me a kiss. “Sleep tight.”

“You too,” I replied with a little wave as she stepped into her bedroom, out of sight. Suddenly, I felt completely alone, as if everything was absolutely new and strange, which was ridiculous.

Normally, the fact that Gran's bed had moved downstairs to the snug and Mum being at the other end of the corridor wouldn't have bothered me at all, but on that night my breath seemed to snag in my chest and all my senses were on red alert. In my
bedroom Mum had set out a few of my bits and pieces to make it feel more like home. It didn't work. They just looked forlorn and displaced and made me feel worse.

It was nearly midnight when I turned out the light and so, so dark. A little owl screeched right outside the window and the stairs creaked as if someone were treading on them. It's just the timbers contracting, I said to myself, just the house settling down for the night. All the same… I couldn't help wondering. Was there someone out there? Had some fugitive hidden in one of the barns and slipped into the house unnoticed? I wanted to get up, to open my door and switch on the landing light for comfort but I daren't. Instead I shuffled down the bed, pulled the covers up high and eventually I think I slept – but not for long and not very deeply.

I awoke with a horrible start. My heart felt as if it wanted to leap out of my chest. My mouth was dry and scratchy. The darkness pressed down on me. I longed for the comfort of street lights filtering through the gap in the curtains or even a faint
laser of moonlight. It was quiet, deathly quiet. I was leaning over, trying to find the switch on my bedside lamp, when I heard the noise: the tiniest crackle of metal on metal. I froze. Looked around the room. My eyes were adjusting to the gloom and in the bluish haze I saw my bedroom door opening, very slowly. I tried to reason with myself, to hear sane words rising above the sound of blood pumping through my veins. It was no good. However hard I tried to convince my brain that the door had opened on its own, that the minuscule air current filtering through my slightly open window had tugged at it, it didn't work. Every cell in my body was telling me something different. There was someone there. Someone standing just out of view. Waiting.

“Mum? Is that you?”

I could hardly speak. Silence.

“Gran?”

Stupid to say that. She'd never have made it up the stairs and certainly not without clunking her stick on the steps. The door opened a little more, its hinges making more of that grating sound which I hadn't been able to identify at first.

It was then that I saw him, the shape of a man, standing just inside my room.

I'd sometimes wondered what it would be like to be really terrified, how I'd react. Would I scream and run about, or would I be stuck to the spot? Now I knew. I couldn't move, could barely breathe. It's a cliché, but time really did seem to stop. The man stood completely still. He was tall with broad shoulders but it was too dark to see what he was wearing or make out from his face whether he was someone I knew. It was like a stand-off. Neither of us moved. I was the first to break.

“W-what do you want?”

My voice was little more than a whisper. I could hardly hear it myself. He didn't reply. Shakily, I reached for the light switch again. This time I found it. I swear that I never took my eyes off the man, didn't even blink when light flooded the room. But in an instant he had gone.

L
IBERTY

I
spent half the night awake, braced in case the man reappeared. Only when dawn broke did I pluck up the courage to get out of bed and scour the house. Everything looked normal. There were no missing pieces of silver or prised open windows so I went back to bed and dropped off to sleep to the sound of birds singing and the clink of bottles in the milk float as it rumbled down the street.

At Gran's everything stops for coffee at eleven o'clock on the dot. I could smell the aroma of freshly ground beans as I trudged down the stairs, preparing myself for an evil look and a tart comment for not surfacing several hours earlier.

“Sleep well?” Mum asked as I entered the kitchen.

“Of course she slept well,” Gran butted in. “That's why she's not come down until nearly lunchtime. It's the country air that does it, and the quietness.
None of that constant traffic to keep you awake.”

“I like the sound of traffic,” I answered back, my resolve not to be annoyed gone in an instant. “Actually I didn't sleep well. I had this really horrible dream. At least I think that's what it was.”

“That'll be all those biscuits of mine that you ate after supper,” Gran snapped. “Didn't I tell you that no good would come of it?”

Mum shot me a wry smile over the top of Gran's head. “What sort of a dream, sweetheart?”

I half turned away from Gran and directed my answer at Mum. “I thought there was someone in my room. I was positive there was, but when I switched on the light no one was there. I got out of bed later and looked along the landing just to make sure. It was horrible. I was so scared.”

Mum came over and put her arm around my shoulders.

“There aren't any ghosts here that no one's told me about, are there?” I asked. “This house isn't haunted?”

Gran snorted into her coffee.

“You are
so
dramatic, Laura – just like your father.
You know that there are no such things as ghosts.”

I glared at her. I had no idea what Gran had against my dad but, even after all these years, she grabbed every chance to have a dig at him. It wasn't always what she said. Sometimes it was more what she didn't say. It was the way she raised her eyebrows in an expression of disapproval if his name was mentioned or the fact that she put Mum and Dad's wedding photograph away in a drawer less than a year after he died and never brought it out again. She hated me visiting the grave too.

“It's not healthy,” Gran had said, on one of her infrequent visits to London. “And think of all the money you're spending,” she'd added, as Mum handed over a five pound note in exchange for a bunch of yellow roses.

I was sure that Gran had been going to say ‘wasting' instead of ‘spending' but she stopped herself just in time. If she was trying to persuade me that Dad wasn't worth the effort it didn't work. In fact it had just the opposite effect. The more she made her snide remarks the more I took Dad's side.

“There are some things you just know,” I said to
Liberty one day when everyone was round at her house and Gran had been having a dig about the way Dad drove too fast. “You don't have to be told them. It's as if they are already inside of you at birth and I know that my dad was the best father in the whole of the universe.”

I didn't pick up on the fact that Liberty didn't say much. Besides, I didn't expect her to agree with me. She couldn't remember as much as I could about when we were small and she was bound to think that Uncle Pete was the best dad in the world but I did think she could have said that my dad was second best, just to be nice.

That first morning at Chestnut Farm I helped Mum with a few chores and got out of the house straight after lunch. The sun went behind a cloud as I hurried down Main Street to Liberty's cottage. I shivered and wished I'd picked up my hoodie as I left. A tractor rumbled up the road and Uncle Pete leaned out of the cab and waved. I waved back but could only manage half a smile. Once or twice I thought that I heard steps behind me. I stopped, took off my flip-flops and pretended to dust some
grit from the bottom of my feet while quickly glancing back. There were just a couple of elderly ladies chatting in the distance. Nothing to get uptight about.

“It's lack of sleep,” I said to myself. “You're imagining things.”

All the same I walked to Liberty's as fast as I could without risking looking stupid by breaking into a run.

“Save me!” I shrieked, flinging my arms around her as soon as she opened the front door.

She staggered backwards. Her hair smelled of coconut and was like a ribbon of flaxen silk against my cheek. How I longed for hair like that instead of my tangle of mouse-brown curls.

“Gran's already having a go at me. I need a sanctuary.”

She stiffened slightly, not laughing as I expected.

“Uh, okay,” she said, not sounding entirely welcoming as she extricated herself from my hug. “So have you totally had enough already then?”

“There's no point whingeing,” I replied. “We're here now. Besides, I'm working on my positive thinking…”

I paused, waited for her to groan and say,
“Not again.” But she didn't. Instead she just stood there looking stony.

“Are you okay, Lib?” I asked.

“Fine. You didn't text to let me know you were coming.”

“Sorry, are you going out?”

“No. I can't. I'm babysitting the boys
again
. I thought that now you were here Mum wouldn't be so tied up and I'd get a bit of time to myself.” She sounded really put out and she wasn't looking at me, just using her hair as a shield.

I was a bit thrown for a moment. “I can come back later if you like. I was going to help my mum sort things out but Gran was being a bit awkward and…” I shrugged. “Well, as I said, I can come back later.”

Liberty turned on her heel and strode down the dark, quarry-tiled hall.

“You're here now, aren't you?” She called over her shoulder.

I hesitated on the doorstep, wondering whether to follow her or to leave her to stew. Before I could make my mind up a gust of wind hit me hard
between the shoulder blades, propelling me straight over the doormat. I crashed into the umbrella stand and was still getting my breath back when the front door slammed closed behind me. Liberty's heart-shaped face appeared around the door frame to the kitchen.

“We've only just had that painted. Mum'll go berserk if it's chipped.”

“Sorry,” I said. “It was the wind.”

“What wind?”

I followed her into the kitchen and looked out of the window. The leaves on the trees were completely still.

“Dunno,” I said. “There was this gust. It came from nowhere. It was weird.”

Liberty plonked herself down on the sofa and picked up a pot of electric-blue polish from the coffee table. She stroked a slick of blue onto her thumbnail.

“Welcome to Derbyshire,” she said. “The weather's different up here. It can be bright sunshine one minute and pouring with rain five minutes later.”

“I do know that,” I said, laughing. “I have been here before, duh!”

It was an attempt to lighten the atmosphere, which
was still as chilly as those snowbound days they get in the Peak District in winter.

“I suppose you're going to find loads of things are different from now on,” she said. There was an edge to her voice that I'd never heard before.

I felt something in my chest, like a trickle of iced water running down behind my breastbone. “What do you mean?”

She didn't look up, just concentrated on covering those long, slender nails with colour. She must have heard the anxiety in my voice. I could hear it as clearly as the church bells that wake me up every Sunday morning in Derbyshire, even after all these years. Liberty flicked her eyelids upwards. It was the briefest of glances, not nearly long enough for me to look into her eyes and try to work out what she was really thinking.

“I just mean that Marshington's really boring compared to London.”

“I'm sure I'll cope,” I replied. “I'll just have to, won't I? You never know, living here may turn out to be better than I think. At least that's what I'm telling myself.”

I waited for her to tell me I was right. She didn't. I've got this really stubborn streak. Gran says that I get it from Dad and she obviously doesn't see it as a quality to be cultivated. Actually I think stubbornness gets a bad name. Sometimes it can be useful. This was one of those times. I didn't want Liberty to make me feel worse and the fact that she was being so negative made me determined to do my best to prove her wrong. I wasn't sure that I'd ever had a light bulb moment before but suddenly my choice was before me, as clear as those crystal decanters on Gran's sideboard. I could spend the next few months or years of my life eaten up with resentment or I could accept the move and make the best of it. If resentment won then I would have let others take control of my life, of my future.

‘Sometimes these things happen for the best.' That was one of the things Gran used to say and when I thought that she was referring to Dad it made me really angry, but maybe in this respect she
could
be proved right, I thought. People, especially my old teachers, were always telling me these were meant to be the best years of my life. I didn't want to go through them holding myself back, closing myself down, did
I? It wouldn't be easy, starting at a new school, making new friends, but at least I had Liberty to help. Maybe, just maybe, if I threw myself into everything, this move might not be the third worst thing that had ever happened to me in my entire life after losing Dad and Grandad.

“Besides,” I said to Liberty, faking a determination that was still germinating inside of me, “I'm luckier than lots of people, aren't I?”

She raised an eyebrow and twisted her glossed lips, signalling disbelief. I carried on regardless.

“I've got you to help me with things like school. You can introduce me to people and help me to settle in. Loads of people don't have that.”

She was very still for a moment, as if weighing up her options.

“No, they don't,” she said at last, balancing the bottle of nail polish on the arm of the sofa and holding up one hand for admiration. “We might not be in the same class though.”

I perched on the opposite arm.

“Lib, what's wrong? Have I done something to upset you? I thought you'd be pleased that
we can spend more time together.”

She looked up then, straight at me. I thought she might be about to cry.

“Of course I'm pleased.”

The ‘but' hung in the air like a giant hoverfly.

“It's just…” she shrugged, “… things have been a bit tense here. My mum and yours haven't exactly been getting on well lately.”

“That'll sort itself out,” I said. “Besides, just because Mum and Aunt Jane aren't best friends at the moment doesn't mean we have to fall out, does it? It's not a question of taking sides, is it?”

She uncurled, shuffled across the sofa and draped her arms around my neck.

“No, of course not. You're right. You're always right, Laura. I wish I was as sensible as you.”

I laughed, felt my spine soften with the relief that she seemed more like herself.

“Yeah right, sensible Laura who was imagining she saw a ghost last night.”

“No, really?”

I nodded. Liberty pulled away.

“That's awesome. What did it look like?”

“Scary,” I said. “But it was just my brain playing tricks. Some psychologist would say that it's all to do with the move and feeling strange and uprooted.”

“Maybe it was Grandad,” Liberty said.

“No, it wasn't. Definitely not.”

She opened her eyes wide. Questioning.

“I'd have known if it was Grandad. I'd have felt it. Anyway, he wouldn't have wanted to scare me, would he?”

“Of course not,” she replied, stroking my arm. “Why are we even talking about this? There are no such things as ghosts. Mind you,” she added, “Gran's house is a bit creaky and spooky sometimes.”

“Thanks,” I said with a wry laugh. “You've made me feel a lot better.”

“That's what I'm here for,” she replied, looking suddenly serious. “I don't want anything to ever come between us, Laura.”

“Then it won't,” I said determinedly, and I reached over and screwed the top tightly on the bottle of nail polish, just in case she knocked it over.