No Going Back (4 page)

T
RAPPED

“
Y
ou're quiet,” Mum said at suppertime. “Hmm,” I replied, toying with the chives sprinkled over my new potatoes.

“Aren't you hungry?”

I shook my head. “Not very.”

It had seemed strange walking back from Liberty's house and trying to think of the farm as ‘home'. All my positive intentions had disappeared. I just felt fed up and sad, especially as I'd texted Abi and found out that my London friends were all meeting up for a pizza and going to the movies. The last thing I felt like doing was sitting down with Mum and Gran in a kitchen more than a hundred miles away from where I should be.

“That's a waste of good food,” Gran said. “In my day—”

“Well it's not your day any more,” I said, pushing my chair back and banging it against the front of the
dresser, the blue willow-pattern plates tinkling together like a xylophone.

“Laura!” Mum half scolded as I scraped my meal into the bin and clattered the plate into the dishwasher. “What's the matter?”

“It's nothing,” I said, brushing past her so fast she didn't have time to put out a hand and catch hold of my arm.

She leaped up. “Wait! It's not nothing. Apologise to your grandmother.”

I hesitated, wanted just to ignore her. But it wouldn't be worth the hassle later.

“Sorry,” I mumbled, gracelessly throwing the words behind me.

“That's not a proper apology,” Mum said, her voice louder and higher pitched.

I bit my bottom lip, took a deep breath and summoned all the self-control I had, ready to apologise again. But just as I turned around and opened my mouth, Gran butted in.

“It's all right, Liz. Let's leave it. It's not worth getting het up about.”

Wow! That was a surprise. Mum looked pretty
stunned too as she sank back onto her chair and shot me a look that conveyed in no uncertain terms that I hadn't heard the end of it. But for now, thanks to Gran, I could make my escape.

I was in bed by nine. I turned my light out so Mum wouldn't come in and give me a lecture about everyone making an effort to adjust and the importance of good manners. I heard her come upstairs at about ten-thirty and hesitate outside my door, but she didn't come in. This time as the house made all those weird creaking, groaning noises I didn't feel so bothered. My door was opened wide to allow light from the lamp at the top of the stairs to filter through and Mum knew not to turn it off. It's strange how comforting a little light can be.

I was on the cusp of sleep when something disturbed me. I jolted awake, not sure what had frayed every nerve ending in my body. All I could hear was my heart pounding. My hands gripped the edge of the duvet as my eyes were instinctively drawn towards the door. Every muscle seemed to contract as I saw the silhouette against the landing wall. It was definitely the man again, and he looked taller,
broader, stronger than the night before. Slowly he edged into my room and I watched, virtually paralysed, as the door closed behind him. When that last smidgeon of light was snatched away I thought that I might die from fright. My lungs felt completely solid. I could barely breathe in or out. For a few seconds I couldn't see the man at all while my eyes struggled to adjust. But I knew that he was there, shifting the particles of darkness, moving stealthily towards me.

I pulled the duvet up under my chin. It was a warmish night but I felt cold, so cold. My joints were locked. I'd never be able to move fast enough to get away from him and there was no point crying out. Mum and Gran were too far away. No one would hear. The man could smother me before a feeble sound had barely left my mouth. He was getting closer and closer. I was trapped.

S
URPRISE

C
RASH!
Something smashed on the floorboards. “Damn! Sorry about that.”

His voice was deep and vaguely familiar. Now my entire being was like a quivering mass of badly set crème caramel. And people say the countryside is safe, I thought. Only my second night here and I'm about to be murdered in my bed.

“Laura, can you switch the light on? I can't see where I'm going.”

Oh my God! He knew my name. How petrifying was that? What was it I'd read about the majority of crimes being committed by someone known to the victim? Was it a person from the village or one of the men who worked for Uncle Pete on the farm?

“W-what do you want?” How I managed those words I had no idea.

“I want to talk to you.”

Yeah right! I thought. That's why people break into fourteen-year-old girls' bedrooms in the middle of the night, just to talk.

“Please, Laura,” he repeated, “switch the blessed light on. I'm meant to be able to see in the dark but this is all a bit new to me and quite frankly everything's a bit of a blur.”

He certainly didn't sound like your average homicidal maniac. In fact, I was beginning to think that he sounded a bit nervous, which was unexpected. After all, he had the upper hand. I bit my lip hard and reached for the lamp. As the light lit up the room I blinked, shielding my eyes for a second. I didn't see him straight away. The first thing I saw as I scanned the room was my china goose, a present from Liberty, smashed to smithereens on the floorboards.

“I hope it wasn't too precious. I don't think it can be glued.”

I looked in the direction of the voice and there he was, standing in front of the dressing table.

“Surprise!” he said, throwing his arms up and out to the side and nearly sending a little blue
vase flying through the air. Then, “Oops!” as he cupped his hands around it in the nick of time.

I actually rubbed my eyes. They do that in films and I always thought it was over the top, but I realised that when you've got something so unexpected, so unbelievable in front of you, it's a natural reaction.

He moved towards me. I recoiled.

“Uh oh,” he sighed. “You're upset. I thought this might happen. I did wonder if I should have made a more gradual entrance, taken a few weeks rather than a few hours, but at the end of the day, that's not really my style. I'm too impatient for that softly, softly approach. I did try to break you in gently with a semi-appearance last night but it obviously didn't work. You look petrified, which is not what I wanted at all.”

I couldn't answer him, couldn't get my head around what was happening to me. The man took a couple of steps closer, the hint of a frown crossing his face.

“Laura, you
do
know who I am, don't you?”

I managed a tiny tip of my head. Yes, of course I knew who he was. All those years of wondering if Mum was right when she said that he was watching over me. All those years of wondering if he would
ever come back to see me. All those years of wondering if the thoughts that went around and around in my head made me a bit of a mental case. And yet, impossible as it seemed, there he was, standing in my bedroom, dressed in jeans and a blue and white checked shirt and looking almost human. My dad.

“Oh dear! Can you speak? I haven't caused you to lose your voice? Shock can do that sometimes, can't it?” He peered at me in a worried way.

“No, it's okay.”

Was that raspy sound coming from my mouth really my voice?

“I'm okay.”

I didn't mean it. I was about as far from okay as I'd ever been.

He clasped his hands to his chest and sighed. “Excellent! I knew you wouldn't be a wimp.” Another frown. His whole face rippled when he did that. “You don't look very pleased to see me though.”

I shook my head. “I-I just can't believe it, that's all,” I stammered. “Are you real? Am I imagining
you? Is this all a dream?”

“Don't I look real?” he asked, a bit indignantly. “I'm as real as you are!”

He touched his hands to his shoulders and wafted them down his front. As he did so his whole form rippled apart like lots of little trails through soapy water, before melding back together again.

“Hmm!” he murmured. “Maybe you're right. I can see this body issue might be a bit of a problem for you to take on board. Have you done the molecule thing at school?”

He didn't wait for me to respond.

“Well, you know that protons, electrons and neutrons combine to form atoms, which are the building blocks of molecules?”

“Sort of,” I mumbled.

“Then the molecules combine to form chemicals, which are what the cells of the body are made of. Following that, the cells combine to form tissues and the tissues combine to form organs, and so on and so on, blah, blah, blah, and hey presto you have a human.”

My head was spinning now. What was this? Some nightmare of a physics lesson? Or just simply
a nightmare?

“Yes, I know all of that,” I replied, “but you're
not
human, are you? You're not solid matter and you're sort of glowing around the edge.”

He looked down at himself and grinned. “So I am. I don't know how that's happened. Cool though, isn't it? Anyway, to answer your previous questions – no, you are not imagining me, and I am most definitely not a dream
or
a nightmare. At least I hope you don't think it's a nightmare because here I am, large as life.” He paused. “Well not that large. I do try to keep trim and the life thing's a bit inaccurate, but you get what I mean.”

“So,” I said, slowly, “you're a ghost?”

He threw his arms upwards and a waft of air lifted all of my clothes off the big, squashy chair underneath the window and deposited them in a heap in the middle of the floor.

“I do hate that word,” Dad said. “It has such negative connotations.”

“How
would
you describe yourself then?” I asked.

He stood up tall, squared his shoulders.

“I'm not that different to you,” he said proudly.
“I am a cloud of molecules.”

“Oh!” I replied. “I see. That explains everything.”

“I knew that you'd understand,” he said. “I told everyone on The Other Side that my Laura's as clever as anything.”

Actually I'm not clever at all, well, not nearly as clever as Liberty, and I couldn't get my head around the molecule thing, but it seemed cruel to dash his hopes of fathering a child genius at this early stage in the renewal of our relationship.

“What I don't understand,” I said, beginning to relax and hugging my knees underneath the duvet, “is why you are here. Why now, after all this time?”

“You sounded upset,” he replied. “And between you and me…” he looked around conspiratorially, dropped his voice to a whisper, “… I'd be pretty distraught too, having to move in with the old battleaxe. What your mother is thinking of, I really don't know.”

He puffed out his chest and carefully raised both hands, palms facing outwards.

“So I came to see if I could help.”

He probably wanted some sort of thanks but
I was too shell-shocked to remember my manners. “You
were
listening to me, when I talked to you?” I gasped.

“Of course, all the time. I know everything about you.”

That was a bit disconcerting.

“Everything?”

His grin broadened. “Pretty much.”

A little flare of anger kindled in my chest. “Then why didn't you let me know before that you were there?”

His face fell. The glowing light around his edge shivered, as if he was upset. “I wanted to.” His voice was so low I had to lean forwards to hear him. “I wanted to come back and say sorry for making such a mess of things.”

He sank onto the dressing table stool, bent forwards and covered his face with his hands for a moment, the ends of his long, pale fingers resting in his hair. Hair that was just like mine.

“But I wasn't sure whether you would want to see me. I didn't want to make things worse.”

“How could you have made things any
worse?” I snapped back, unable to help myself. “If you were
really
listening to me then you'd know how much I longed for some sign. I wanted that more than anything. I've been looking for you, listening for you everywhere, almost every single day since you… left.”

He bit his lip and put one hand to his chest.

“I was listening, Laura. I promise. But sometimes we think we want something and then, when we get it, it's not what we wanted at all.”

He was talking in complete riddles. I blinked. Sudden tears clung to my eyelashes. My vision went all blurry.

“No, you're wrong,” I said. “You
were
wrong to think that. If I could have seen you or heard you, if I could have known that you
were
still there watching over me, I'd have felt…”

What would I have felt? Protected? More complete? Happier? Probably all of those things. How could he have denied me that? How could he not have known what a difference it would make?

“I'm sorry,” he said. “I didn't want to complicate things. You seemed to be doing okay. I just wanted
what was best for you.”

I wiped tears from my cheeks with the back of my hand.

“But I wanted to be better than okay,” I muttered. “Whatever I did, however much I tried, there's always been this piece of me that's missing.”

“And that's my fault,” he said. “I know that.”

He looked as if he was about to cry too.

“The accident wasn't your fault,” I sniffed.

“I don't blame you for that. I just wish you'd come back sooner.”

“Well I'm here now, my princess.”

I wanted him to hug me but he stayed sitting on the stool. “And now we can make up for all of that lost time. We can get to know each other properly, can't we?”

My eyes widened. “You mean you're staying?”

“Oh yes, most definitely,” he said, a grin flashing across his face. “Now that I'm here, I'm not leaving you.”