The Shadow Year (24 page)

‘Kat, didn’t you hear me calling you?’ Freya stands in the doorway to their bedroom with her hands on her hips.

‘What?’

‘Are you coming? We’re waiting for you.’ Freya eyes her. ‘What are you doing, anyway?’

Kat edges the paper deeper beneath the bed covers. ‘Nothing. Just having a lie-in. Is that OK?’

Her sister shrugs. ‘Of course. It’s just we thought you wanted to collect chestnuts with us. You said last night—’

‘Who else is going?’

‘Carla, Ben . . . and Simon.’ The faintest blush spreads across Freya’s pale cheeks.

‘I’ll come,’ says Kat quickly. ‘Just let me get dressed.’

‘OK.’ Freya hesitates a moment.

‘What? What is it?’

Freya doesn’t move.

‘Are you just going to stand there?’

Freya swallows. ‘I’ll leave you to it.’

Kat watches as her sister turns and leaves, listens to the sound of her footsteps retreating down the stairs, before falling back onto her pillow with a sigh. The notepad crackles beneath her. It’s not much, but it feels good to release some of her anger, to scratch out those ugly, bitter words onto a sheet of paper, to see them there in stark black ink. It’s a release, of sorts, a salve on the hot furnace of anger that burns inside her.

Ever since that stupid night when they took the mushrooms Kat has felt it gaining strength. She can’t help it. In the cold light of day she knows it was madness, all of them tripping, off their heads, but she just can’t get that image of Simon and Freya out of her mind. She’s tried and tried to banish it but every time she thinks it’s gone, it explodes like a firework, hotter, fiercer, brighter than before.

It wouldn’t be so bad if Simon was acting normally, but there is a distinct shift in their relationship now. She doesn’t know if it’s her – her anger driving a wedge between them – or if it’s him pulling away, acting more distantly towards her. It’s hard to gauge and she feels as if she’s second-guessing his every move, his every word, until she is crazy with suspicion and desperation. She just wants life to feel easy again.

But nothing is easy any more. It’s cold. She’s sick of eating pasta and rice and root vegetables. She wants to lie in a warm bath or eat buttered toast popped straight from a toaster, not half-burned offerings she has had to watch and turn on the smoking hearth. She wants to drink hot chocolate from an unchipped mug and snuggle up in front of an old movie on the television. She wants to flush a toilet, not sit shivering on that rough wooden seat in the earth closet, her eyes darting around in the gloom for spiders and beetles. She’s tired and she’s irritable and she wishes things would return to how they were just a few short days ago. Or better still, she wishes they could leave, that Simon would declare their little experiment over and announce that it’s time to go.

More than once now, Kat has fantasised about that woman returning – the one she saw last month standing up on the ridge with her dog. She’s imagined her coming over the hill with a cluster of angry villagers in tow. There would be shotguns and angry words and Kat and the others would throw up their hands, pack their belongings and drive away from the cottage, back to their old lives. Mac could drop them all in the city. They would shrug, say they’d had a good stab at it and then move on – her and Simon – to somewhere new, somewhere different. Just the two of them.

But even thoughts of abandoning their project fill her with anger. Whenever she finds herself thinking of it she gets mad; it should be Freya who leaves. Freya is the interloper, the uninvited guest. She should be the one to go; but Freya hasn’t yet given voice to her plans to leave and the others seem happy enough that she is there.

‘Kat!’ It is Simon’s voice now, loud and impatient, rising up the staircase. ‘Two minutes then we’re going without you.’

‘Coming,’ she yells and throws back the bedclothes, dressing quickly. She pauses before the mirror and grimaces. Her hair is still desperately short and sticks up at alarming angles from her head. She smooths it down as best she can then turns to leave and is almost out the door when she remembers the incriminating piece of paper still hidden beneath her sheets. She hurries back to the bed and pulls the notepad out, studies it for a moment wondering where on earth she can stash the sheet of paper where no one will find it. She should destroy it really, burn it so that no one can ever read her words – but there is no time so she rips the top sheet from the pad then moves across to the empty hearth and casts about desperately. There must be somewhere she can hide it? Not in her clothes. She and Freya are always rummaging through each other’s belongings, borrowing things. But then she sees it, a darker shadow around one of the worn stone bricks next to the fireplace. She tugs at it and sure enough the entire stone comes away in her hand, leaving behind it a perfect, dusty hole set into the wall. She folds the paper hurriedly into a tiny square and presses it into the space, then places the stone back into place. Perfect, she thinks. It looks almost exactly as it had before. No one will ever find it. She’ll come back to it tonight and burn it on the fire when the others are distracted.

‘Kat!’ Simon bellows.

She steps out of the bedroom and glides down the stairs, arranging her face into a picture of calm.

‘There you are,’ says Simon, turning to glare at her. ‘You took your time.’

‘Sorry,’ she says, fixing him with her brightest smile. ‘Shall we go?’

As they head out the door and down the grassy bank she falls carefully into step beside Simon, pleased to note Freya keeping her distance from them all, trailing behind with her gaze fixed upon the ground.

It had been Simon’s suggestion to forage once more for sweet chestnuts but Mac had warned them that they would struggle. ‘The squirrels will have had them all by now,’ he’d said, ‘and any left on the ground will be too damp. We got the best of them last month.’

‘What’s a little damp?’ Simon had asked, clearly annoyed that Mac wasn’t impressed by his plan. ‘We can dry them out.
Chestnuts roasting on an open fire
,’ he’d crooned in a bad Bing Crosby impression.

The others had laughed but Mac just shook his head. ‘They go mouldy. Fine for Wilbur but no good for us.’

They’d only half believed him but as they make their way through the woods it is all too clear that Mac had been right. They wander aimlessly among the twisted trunks of towering trees and the few chestnuts they do find hidden among the wet leaf litter bear the telltale signs of deterioration. After three hours they admit defeat and return cold, hungry and empty-handed, bar a cluster of grub-infested nuts, which the piglet hoovers up hungrily from the flats of their palms. Kat’s stomach twists at the sight; she is more hungry than she knew.

Unfortunately, it’s becoming a common occurrence. Gone are the heady days of plucking velvety blackberries from brambles or scooping fish out of the lake. The hens’ laying has grown erratic and even Mac is struggling; more often than not he returns empty-handed, no longer the lifeless body of a rabbit or a pheasant swinging over his shoulder. The countryside is pulling down its shutters for winter.

‘There’s only one thing for it,’ Ben says, spooning out the remains of their rice later that night. ‘We’re going to have to start eating less, ration our supplies to get us through the winter. I think it’s time to tighten our belts.’

‘I’ve already tightened my belt two notches,’ says Carla, lifting up her sweatshirt to show them her pale, flat stomach. ‘This is the best diet ever; I’ve never been so slim.’ Kat glances at Carla and notes the hollows of her once plump cheeks. She’s right, she’s losing her curves; she supposes they all are.

Simon nods. ‘Ben’s right. It’ll be a long, cold winter otherwise . . . and Wilbur will be in for the chop a little sooner than we thought,’ he adds, jerking his head in the direction of the pig sitting in Freya’s lap.

‘No, you can’t,’ she says, horrified.

‘We’ve still got some savings, haven’t we?’ asks Kat.

‘Yes, but we can’t keep dipping into them. We need to hold some back for emergencies.’

Ben looks worried. ‘But we need more milk powder and sugar. We’re getting low on salt and flour too.’

Simon holds his hands up. ‘I’m not saying we can’t buy essentials. Next year we’ll be far more prepared. We started too late this year.’

There are murmurs around the table.

‘Look,’ Simon continues, ‘I know it’s getting hard. I know we miss our home comforts. Personally, I would kill for a pint and a packet of salt and vinegar crisps. But let’s not give up, just because it’s getting a little harder. We always knew these next few months were going to be the toughest. But we’ve come so far. We’ve been here four months already. No one has kicked us out yet. Let’s see it through into the new year. Come on,’ he says, looking at each of them in turn, ‘I’m up for it, aren’t you?’

Kat glances across at Freya. Her head is bowed; she isn’t looking at any of them. Maybe she will leave, thinks Kat. Maybe she’s had enough too. As if sensing her gaze, Freya raises her head and meets her eye. The two sisters stare at each other for a moment.

‘So who’s going to make the next trip to the shop with Mac?’ Simon asks, looking around at them all.

‘I’ll go,’ says Freya, and there is the slightest tilt of her chin as she says it.

‘Good. Tomorrow, then.’

Kat turns away from Freya. She can’t help it; part of her hopes she will go and just not come back.

Unfortunately she does come back. She bursts through the back door with Mac, her eyes glittering with excitement, her pale cheeks a rosy pink from the cold winter air. ‘You’ll never guess what we found,’ she says, placing two shopping bags filled with groceries onto the kitchen floor.

‘What?’ asks Carla, drying her hands on a tea towel.

‘This.’ Mac steps forwards and holds up a plump bird with reddish brown plumage and a stumpy tail.

‘A red grouse,’ says Simon. ‘A big one too. How on earth did you catch it?’

‘We didn’t. It was just lying there at the side of the road,’ says Mac. ‘Must have been hit by a car. Freya saw it as we were driving along.’ Mac throws Freya a smile. ‘I reversed up the road and she jumped out and grabbed it, didn’t even hesitate.’

‘Yuck,’ says Kat, irritated by the boys’ admiring glances. ‘We can’t eat that. It’s road kill.’

Mac shrugs. ‘What does that matter? Look, it’s fresh, you can tell from the colour of the blood here . . . and its eyes are still bright too. Can’t have been dead more than an hour or so.’

‘Well done,’ says Simon to Freya, low and quiet, but Kat still hears and bristles.

‘What do we do with it?’ asks Carla.

‘We eat it, you fools,’ cries Ben. ‘Haven’t any of you ever tried grouse before?’

The girls shake their heads.

‘Well you haven’t lived.’ He throws his hands out in a wide, theatrical gesture. ‘Tonight we feast like kings.’

Kat slinks away, leaving Ben and Carla to the unenviable job of plucking and gutting the bird. She wants to be alone – to think and scribble in her notepad – but no sooner is she lying on her bed when she hears the creaking approach of someone ascending the staircase. She hopes it might be Simon and feels a spiralling disappointment when Freya pokes her head round the door. ‘Sorry,’ she says, ‘did you want to be alone?’

Kat nods but Freya shuffles into the room and just stands there in her floaty silk dress and a pair of ridiculous red velvet slippers. ‘I think we should talk,’ she says.

Kat shrugs but she doesn’t say anything. Fine, if she wants to talk, let her talk.

‘I know you’re angry with me. Is it – is it about the other night?’

Kat doesn’t move; she hardly breathes.

‘I know you like Simon. You won’t say it but it’s obvious – to me, to everyone.’

Kat feels her cheeks colour but still she doesn’t speak.

‘I just want you to know,’ continues Freya, ‘that whole night was crazy. I don’t think you understand how . . . well . . .’ She struggles with her words. ‘How Simon and me . . . it wasn’t something—’

‘Just don’t, Freya.’ Hearing her speak his name is enough to enrage her. She holds up her hand. ‘You’ve said enough. You’ve just admitted you knew how I felt and yet you still did it, didn’t you?’

‘But—’

Kat laughs. ‘But
what
? You didn’t sleep with him? Nice try, Freya. I was
right there
in the room with you. I saw you. So don’t try to tell me that you didn’t. OK?’

Freya’s face flushes crimson. Kat can see tears welling in her eyes. ‘It wasn’t like that,’ she implores.

But Kat is too angry for excuses. ‘I don’t want to hear it, Freya. It’s time you grew up. Don’t be like Mum. Don’t ride roughshod over other people’s lives, never taking responsibility for your actions. Don’t go down that road.’

Freya stares at her, tears streaming down her face.

Kat sighs. ‘Just go, will you? Leave me alone.’ She turns back to her notepad and tries to ignore her sister’s sobs.

‘I don’t want it to be like this,’ says Freya, so quietly that she almost doesn’t hear. ‘It’s not as if I can undo what happened . . . no matter how much I wish it, I can’t.’

‘No.’

‘So can’t we just go back to how things were?’

Kat shrugs. She just wants her gone.

‘I’m sorry, OK? I never meant to hurt you.’

Kat lowers her gaze and is relieved when she hears the creak of Freya’s footsteps leaving the room. She leans back against her pillow and sighs. From somewhere downstairs drifts the smell of frying onions. The scent makes her stomach twist. She puts her hands on her belly and registers the dull cramping sensation that has been building there all day. Her period: well that puts paid to
that
little fantasy for another month, she thinks with a grim smile.

A few hours later they all gather round the kitchen table. Ben ladles the rich game stew into their bowls and, as they sit down to eat, Simon raises his glass. ‘I propose a toast – to Freya – for finding the grouse and bringing it to our table.’

‘Hear, hear,’ join in the others, ‘to Freya.’

Kat is silent. The overpowering scent of the stew is doing strange things to her empty belly. She would dive straight in but it seems Simon has more to say. ‘This just goes to prove my point,’ he continues, ‘that if we have faith in the land, the land will provide. This is nature’s way of telling us we are in the right place. This is where we are meant to be. Who wants to go home now, hey?’