The Shadow Year (15 page)

‘Hello,’ she says, stretching out a hand in greeting. ‘I’m Freya, Kat’s sister. You must be Mac?’

Mac shakes his hair from his eyes and reaches for her hand.

‘Oh,’ she exclaims, taking a step backwards.

Kat cranes her neck and sees the smears of blood on Mac’s hands and wrists. Embarrassed, he pulls his hand back again.

‘Well that’s no way to greet a lady,’ smirks Simon. ‘You’ll have to forgive our country boy, he’s not very good with girls.’

‘Sorry,’ Mac mumbles, blushing bright red, ‘I’ve been seeing to the rabbits. I should wash my hands.’

Freya swallows. ‘I didn’t . . . it wasn’t . . .’ She smiles uncertainly. ‘Sorry, it’s nice to meet you.’

Mac nods and moves across to the sink.

Kat still has half an eye on Simon and she watches how his gaze roves over Freya. She can see he is sizing her up, regarding her in that careful way he has, assessing, testing and she feels torn in two. On the one hand she feels protective; she wants to shelter Freya from Simon’s judgemental gaze which she feels sure will be harsh; he will think her too naive, too girlish and fragile for this environment.
Scared of a little rabbit’s blood
, he’ll think. And yet at the same time she desperately wants him to like her sister – and for Freya to like Simon, too. They are the two most important people in her world but as she watches them talk, she realises that she has no idea what they will make of each other.

‘What are you studying?’ asks Simon.

Freya smiles winningly. ‘Fashion and textiles. I’ve been learning about screen-printing techniques, designing my own fabrics. I’d like to get into fashion, one day.’

‘An artist.’ He nods and Kat can tell he approves. ‘We’ve got a writer, a musician, a social worker, an environmentalist and a lawyer . . . but no artists . . . yet.’ His face breaks into a broad grin. ‘Well, I don’t know about the others but I think you should stay. I don’t think we’re in a position to turn down an extra pair of hands at the moment.’

‘Of course,’ says Carla, reaching over to give Freya’s arm a little squeeze. ‘It will be fun having another girl around the place. We’ve been outnumbered by the lads for far too long, haven’t we, Kat?’

Kat lets out a breath she hadn’t even known she was holding and smiles. ‘It’ll be a squash,’ she warns. ‘You’ll have to share my room.’

‘I don’t mind,’ grins Freya. ‘It’ll be fun. Like old times.’

‘Yes,’ she agrees and ruffles Freya’s hair, ‘just like old times.’

‘Damn. This is hard,’ groans Ben, looking up in exasperation from the Rubik’s cube in his hands. ‘Don’t expect any dinner tonight, guys, not until I’ve solved this.’

‘Come on,’ says Kat, ‘why don’t I show you around? You’re going to have to pull your weight, you know. This isn’t a holiday camp.’

Freya’s smile is bright enough to light up the entire kitchen.

Her sister’s arrival is like a breath of fresh air wafting through the cottage. As she shows her around, Kat sees things as if for the first time again and she is surprised to realise just how much they have achieved in a few short weeks. There are freshly laid eggs nestled in a bowl on the table and jars of blackberry jam lined up on the shelf above the range, rows of pale grey mushrooms drying on trays in the larder and clean clothes flapping on the washing line they have strung-up between two trees out the back. Even the sunlight sparkling off the once-grimy windows gives Kat a sense of pride. All around them are signs of progress, signs that they are turning the cottage and its surrounds into a home and as she looks about at it all, she is filled with a deep feeling of satisfaction.

Freya, in turn, proves to be more than happy to muck in. She weeds the garden with Carla, or helps Ben in the kitchen by peeling vegetables, or laying fires or busying herself with washing-up or laundry. She starts a composting system for their scraps and very quickly makes herself indispensable by taking on the least popular jobs.

‘You don’t have to do all this stuff, you know,’ says Kat, coming upon her in the kitchen, up to her elbows in greasy water as she scrubs at a burned pan. ‘You don’t have to play Cinderella.’

Freya shrugs. ‘I like doing it. It feels a bit like playing house, doesn’t it?’

‘I guess,’ says Kat.

‘I can see why you like it here.’

‘Oh yes?’

‘Yeah.’ Freya smiles. ‘You . . . your friends . . . everyone here together . . . it’s kind of like the family we never had, don’t you think?’

Kat nods. ‘I suppose so.’

Freya turns back to the sink. ‘I thought I might try and make some new curtains for the front room,’ she says. ‘Maybe for our bedroom as well? What do you think?’

‘Where will you get the fabric from?’

‘I’ve got an old dress I could use. It’s pretty . . . cream with gorgeous pink roses.’

Kat shrugs. ‘I shouldn’t bother.’ Flowery curtains seems a little frivolous, even to her, and she can’t help wondering what Simon would make of it. ‘It would probably just be a waste of a perfectly good dress.’

‘But the ones here are horrible – just old scraps of grey cloth that are practically disintegrating. It’s such a little thing but it really would really make a difference.’

Kat shakes her head. ‘Don’t waste your time.’

But Freya isn’t to be dissuaded. The following day Kat comes upon her sitting on one of the beanbags in the front room, surrounded by strips of cream fabric covered in cheery blooms of fuchsia-pink roses. She watches as Freya places two pieces back to back and then tacks them together along one edge, noting the neat, darting movements of her sister’s slender hands as she pulls a needle and thread through the fabric. ‘I never could do that,’ says Kat enviously. ‘I’m all fingers and thumbs.’

‘It just takes practice,’ says Freya.

‘No, you’ve always been good at stuff like that. You’ve always been creative. Remember those clothes you used to make for that doll you loved? Painstakingly stitched, every one of them.’

Freya smiles. ‘Well, you’ve always been the more practical one. You used glue and staples for yours and finished in half the time.’

Kat laughs. ‘Just think, if you could take the best bits of both of us we’d virtually be Wonder Woman.’

Freya glances up at her. ‘I already think you
are
Wonder Woman, Kat.’

‘Oh don’t be so ridiculous,’ chides Kat, but she has to turn her face away from her to hide her blushes.

Later that evening, as they sit in front of the fire, sprawled across beanbags, sampling the first glasses of Ben’s pungent homebrew, Kat looks about at Freya’s handiwork. The new curtains have been hung and drawn, a jug of purple thistles placed on the window sill before them. She’s even found a few candles and placed them into the necks of empty glass bottles, dotting them across the mantelpiece. Kat watches as a trail of molten wax drips down the side of one and forms a cloudy puddle on the stone surface. Freya was right, she thinks, it has made a difference. The room has taken on a cosier atmosphere, and she’s not the only one who seems to think so.

‘Something’s different,’ says Ben, looking up from the Rubik’s cube still firmly attached to his hands. ‘What is it?’

Carla rolls her eyes. ‘Ignore him, Freya,’ she says. ‘He wouldn’t notice if you’d knocked through a wall and built a huge extension out the back. It looks great.’

‘It really does,’ says Simon, putting his book down and staring across at the small jug of purple flowers in the window. ‘It’s the little things, isn’t it,’ he says. ‘It’s what we’ve been missing without even knowing it: the touches that really make this place feel like a home.’ He smiles warmly at Freya.

Kat turns to Simon in surprise. She has never taken him for a man to be impressed by flowers and soft furnishings and she shakes her head and throws her sister a little wink of congratulation, pleased that Simon is accepting her sister’s presence while at the same time trying to bury the tiny, irrational flicker of jealousy that has sprung from nowhere. They’ve been here nearly two months and she doesn’t remember Simon ever praising
her
efforts in that way. She takes a sip of Ben’s caustic homebrew and swallows it down with a grimace.

‘So, is he like your leader or something?’ Freya asks later that evening as she and Kat lie side by side on the mattress, staring up at the ceiling.

‘Who?’ asks Kat, already knowing the answer.

‘Simon.’

Kat gazes up into the emptiness above their heads. ‘No. What makes you say that?’

‘I just noticed that you’re all pretty quick to defer to him.’

‘That’s not true.’

‘Yes it is. Whatever Simon says goes.’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Think about it, even me staying on here was his decision in the end.’

Kat considers her sister’s suggestion for a moment then shakes her head. ‘It’s not like that. We decide things as a group. No one person is the boss here. We’re a team.’

The silence stretches in the darkness. ‘You like him though, don’t you?’ Freya says at last. ‘You can tell me. I’m not a kid any more.’

‘I know you’re not.’ Kat thinks about telling Freya. She wonders what it would feel like to say it out loud; to speak her desire for Simon and acknowledge it to someone other than herself for the very first time. The words burn on the tip of her tongue but she can’t release them yet, not even into the darkness of the room, not even to Freya. ‘Go to sleep,’ she says, ‘I’m tired.’

But Freya seems far from sleep. She wants to chat. ‘Ben and Carla are fun, aren’t they?’

‘Mmmm . . .’ agrees Kat.

‘Have they been together long?’

‘For ever. Three years or so.’

‘And what’s Mac like?’

Kat sighs. ‘I don’t know. Nice. He’s quiet though . . . sometimes he can come across as a bit odd. He likes to keep himself to himself, but I think he’s a good guy deep down.’

‘He seems sweet. Maybe he’s just a little shy?’

‘Maybe,’ agrees Kat.

Kat thinks Freya is falling asleep but a moment later she starts up again. ‘It’s OK, me being here, isn’t it? You don’t mind?’

‘No,’ says Kat, ‘I don’t mind.’

‘Because I could always—’

‘Shhh . . .’ says Kat, ‘go to sleep. We’ve got a lot to do tomorrow.’

Freya huffs but she rolls away onto her side and finally goes quiet.

Kat lies there in the dark on her back with her eyes open listening to the distant rumble of Ben’s snores coming from the room next door. She feels the mattress holding her body, the quilt like a warm cocoon wrapped around her; but after a while the pitch black becomes strangely disorienting and she begins to feel that she is no longer lying on a solid floor, but rather floating – a tiny particle drifting through space.

She swallows and closes her eyes and tries to rid herself of the unnerving feeling. What she would really like is to have Simon’s arms wrapped around her, to feel his skin pressed against hers, his breath on her neck. What she would really like is to anchor herself to his warm body. But she knows he won’t come to her – not while Freya is there – so she comforts herself with her memories of him: the taste of warm blackberries on her tongue, hands moving across her skin, lips pressed hard upon hers, fingers tangled in her hair, until gradually she surrenders to the slow pull of sleep.

7

LILA

October

The baby is crying. Lila stirs beneath her woollen blanket as the piercing cries ring out. One more minute, she thinks from deep within her fog of sleep, just one more minute,
please
little one.

Another shrill cry breaks through the night air and then, as suddenly as if a bucket of ice-cold water has been tipped over her, Lila is awake. Her eyes snap open in the darkness. She lies still, hardly daring to breathe.

There is no crying. There is no baby. It’s just a dream.

The empty feeling expands in Lila’s gut, as cold and hard as stone. She wraps her arms around her body and blinks, searching for something to fix upon in the pitch black but it’s too late; the panic is descending. She can feel it pressing down on her, squashing the breath from her lungs, filling her up. Take a breath, she tells herself. Take a breath. Slow it down.

She shifts slightly and the thin strip of canvas of her camp bed creaks beneath her. The sound tells her exactly where she is: upstairs in the musty old cottage beside the lake, lying on an uncomfortable camp bed, swaddled in a sleeping bag with a woollen blanket thrown over her for warmth. She nearly hadn’t bothered with the bed or the extra blanket when it had come to lugging them across the meadow and down over the ridge but she’s glad now that she did. The bed may not be luxurious, but she knows that it’s a damn sight better than the floorboards would be. She tries not to think about Tom, sprawled across their bed at home, illuminated in the neon wash of a street lamp – tries not to think about how very far away from him she is at that moment. Instead, she shifts again on the thin canvas and tries to find a more comfortable position before turning her mind back to her dream.

She’s always been a dreamer, always been one of those people connected to the shadows of her inner-consciousness, that mysterious part of the brain that takes over when sleep comes and the body shuts down. Since losing Milly, however, she’s come to dread that sensation of going under. She lies in bed, teetering on the edge of sleep, then, just as her mind begins to numb and her breathing slows, she jolts awake, the sensation far too reminiscent of her sickening tumble down the stairs.