The Shadow Year (30 page)

Her mother sighs. ‘You’re young, Lila. Life doesn’t always go the way you plan it. You work hard, you fight for what you want – what you think is important – but sometimes the life you hoped for can still escape you.’

Lila stares at her mother, confused. Who is her mother talking about – herself? Her father? Lila? Because she’s wrong; she understands better than most about having hope snatched away.

The words from her dream come back to her in a rush:
just like her
. Lila looks across at her mother, hunched over her wine, twirling the stem of the glass back and forth. She sees then that she is probably more like her mother than even she knows, both of them united and paralysed in their grief. Is that what her dreams are trying to tell her? She reaches across the shiny chrome bar and takes her mother’s cool hand in her own, tries not to watch as her mother’s tears splash down onto the silver surface between them, then hands her a tissue and waits for them to pass.

When her mother has regained her composure, Lila looks around the room, searching for distraction. Her eyes fall upon the grey-haired man dining alone in the corner once more. ‘He’s still staring at you,’ she whispers, trying to lighten the sombre mood that has swept over them both. ‘Do you want me to go and give him your phone number?’

Her mother manages a half laugh, half sob. ‘Why would you do that?’ she asks.

‘Because you’re still young, Mum . . . still attractive. You don’t have to be on your own.’

Her mother shakes her head. ‘No one will ever replace your father, Lila.’ She twists her glass again between her fingers. ‘He was one of a kind.’

Lila takes a large swig of her vodka. ‘Well he certainly was that.’

They eat lunch in a small French bistro nearby. It is quiet and the waiter is too attentive, his hovering presence preventing them from returning to the emotional subjects raised earlier and by the time the bill has arrived Lila has already decided that she will claim a headache and cry-off from their shopping trip. ‘You don’t mind, do you? We can meet again another time. When you’re next over?’

‘Of course I don’t mind,’ says her mother lightly, turning her cheek for Lila to kiss. ‘You must look after yourself. You’re still so pale.’

Lila nods. ‘Bye, Mum.’

She leaves her at the tube station and wanders down through the crush of shoppers swarming along Oxford Street, elbows and bags filled with January sale bargains jostling her on her way. She submits herself to the flow like a leaf caught in the current of a fast-moving stream, until eventually she spills out onto Tottenham Court Road where the crowds thin slightly. The LED display at the bus stop says she still has eleven minutes to wait so she distracts herself with a nearby shop window crammed with home wares. There are large Moroccan bowls painted in bright clashing colours, patterned rugs and a scattering of colourful cushions. Two indigo cushions in a striking ikat fabric catch her eye; she imagines them nestled on a white-painted window seat up at the cottage and in a moment of sheer impulse dashes into the store to buy them.

She holds the cushions on her lap all the way home on the bus. Just thinking of them propped in the window of the cottage brings the valley and the lake back to mind. She’s promised Tom that she won’t return to the Peak District until things are better between them, but she feels the pull of the place now; it’s there inside her, as if an invisible cord stretches all the way out to connect her to it. Even though she knows it will be cold and desolate, that the warmth and colour of spring is still a long way off and that the place echoes with the shadows of its former inhabitants, she yearns to be back in the valley, working on the cottage or walking out across the emptiness of the moors, the huge sky swallowing her up until she is nothing more than an insignificant dot on the barren landscape.

Lila sighs and shifts in her seat. She gazes out at a boarded-up shop . . . a car being towed . . . a little girl in a pink bobble hat pedalling furiously on a tricycle . . . and as the bus wends its way through the creeping traffic, Lila knows that she won’t be able to keep her promise to Tom.

14

JANUARY

1981

Kat and Mac sit huddled inside the beached rowing boat beneath a heap of old blankets. A thin layer of ice lies like glass upon the shallows. Further out the water rests as flat and still as a pond and the same pale grey colour as the sky overhead. It is cold. Kat is wrapped in an old coat with a scarf wound all the way up to her ears, while Mac wears a hat pulled down so low all that’s visible between the brim and the blanket he shivers beneath is the thin gleam of his eyes and the occasional puff of his breath. Kat’s eyes are fixed on the centre of the lake where two Whooper swans skim slowly across the water. As she watches them her stomach gives a low growl. ‘What do you think they would taste like?’ she asks, her eyes never leaving the lake.

Mac follows her gaze out to the birds. ‘I don’t know . . . chicken?’

‘Or maybe duck?’ She thinks for a moment. ‘There’s got to be a fair bit of meat on them. How do you think we’d catch one?’

‘Are you serious?’ Mac looks at her in astonishment.

‘We’d have to wait for one to come closer to the shore,’ she continues. ‘Then we could grab it.’ Kat watches the birds as they drift across the grey lake. She imagines her hands around a long white neck, squeezing and twisting, the ruffling of feathers and the sharp crack of bones snapping beneath her fingers.

‘They can be very aggressive. I wouldn’t want to get too close.’

‘Yes,’ she says, ‘a gun would be better.’

Mac pushes his hat up slightly with a wry smile. ‘You do know it’s against the law to kill a swan, don’t you? They’re protected. They belong to the Queen . . . or something.’

‘Fuck the law. Fuck the Queen,’ says Kat.

Mac stares at Kat, his face half concern and half amusement. ‘Are you OK?’

‘No, I’m not OK. I’m bloody starving.’

Mac thinks for a moment. ‘We could kill one of the chickens.’

‘No. They might start laying again soon and we’ll need the eggs. They’re our only reliable source of protein.’ Kat cups her hands around her mouth and breathes into them. She thinks for a moment. ‘There’s always Wilbur. He’s bigger now.’

‘Do
you
want to have that conversation with Freya?’

Kat shrugs. ‘I doubt Freya will be here much longer.’

‘What?’

She feels Mac’s head snap up to look at her again but she doesn’t return his stare, she just keeps her eyes fixed on the lake. ‘Yeah, she says she wants to go back to London.’

Mac continues to stare. ‘Oh,’ is all he says, eventually. It’s just one flat syllable but she can hear the confusion and disappointment in his voice, like a child opening the wrong gift at Christmas.

‘Christ, not you too?’

‘What?’

Kat shakes her head. ‘You like her.’

Mac swallows. ‘Course I like her. We all do.’ He turns to stare out over the water.

‘No,’ says Kat, ‘you
really
like her.’

He doesn’t say anything for a long time and as they sit in silence on the shingle Kat wonders whether to tell him about the baby. A spiteful part of her would like to burst his romantic bubble. In the end though, it’s Mac who speaks. ‘Do
you
want her to go?’

She keeps her gaze fixed on the lake. ‘I think Freya should do what she’s got to do.’

Mac sighs and shakes his head. ‘Why leave now though? Spring isn’t so far away. She hasn’t seen this place at its best.’

Kat shrugs but doesn’t say anything.

‘You should be nicer to her, you know,’ he says quietly. ‘It’s not her fault.’

‘What’s not her fault?’ She eyes him carefully now but Mac can’t hold her gaze.

‘You know,’ he mumbles. ‘Simon. The way he acts.’

The way he acts
. So Mac has noticed it too; Simon’s gaze following Freya around the cottage, the too-familiar way he brushes his hand against hers or squeezes a shoulder as she passes by. Kat turns back to the lake to hide the blood rising in her cheeks.

‘You could stick up for her more,’ he continues, then shakes his head, clenches his fists. ‘No, you know what,
we
should stand up to
him
more.’

The swans are drifting away now, their elegant forms vanishing behind a thin veil of mist, nothing but a trace of silver wake fanning out behind them on the lake. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Kat says and watches as the ripples flatten and fade on the surface of the water.

They wander back up to the cottage, Mac holding out his hand to help Kat across the slippery mud of the bank, before they both grab a couple of logs from the woodpile by the back door and enter the warmth of the kitchen. They are greeted by the sound of a terrible, hacking cough. It spirals down the staircase and echoes around the cottage. Kat catches Carla’s worried glance. ‘No better?’

Carla shakes her head.

‘Did you talk to Simon?’

‘Not yet.’

Kat sees the anxiety written all over her face. ‘Let’s do it together, now.’

‘Really?’ Carla looks relieved.

‘Yes. How long’s he been like this?’

‘Over a week.’

Kat nods. ‘Come on.’

She leads her through the kitchen into the other room where a fire crackles in the hearth. Simon lounges before it, his long legs stretched out so that his socks almost touch the warm grate. He is whittling thin branches of saplings into sharp spikes with a penknife, a smouldering cigarette balanced in the ashtray beside him, a long column of ash wilting precariously. Kat looks around and is relieved to see he is alone. ‘Ben’s really sick,’ she says.

‘I know. I can hear, poor bugger.’

‘We think he needs to see a doctor.’ She looks across to Carla who nods. ‘He might need antibiotics.’

‘It sounds like the cough has moved to his chest,’ Carla chips in.

‘Who says we need a doctor?’ says Simon with a small smile. ‘You both seem very capable with your medical diagnoses.’

‘But we’ll need a prescription,’ continues Kat calmly.

Simon sighs and stretches his arms up to the ceiling, rolling his shoulders. ‘We’ve got aspirin and those rosehips are full of vitamin C. We have honey too. Have you tried making a herbal tea?’

Carla wrings her hands. ‘Yes. And steam inhalations too but nothing seems to help.’

Simon shrugs and slices another piece of bark off the stick in his hand. ‘Ben’s a big boy. I’m sure he can fight it. Our matron at school used to tell us we relied on antibiotics too readily. If you can get rid of the infection on your own, your immune system will be that much stronger the next time. Cold baths and fresh air, that’s what she used to prescribe us . . . and we’ve got both of those in abundance here.’

Carla refuses to be put off. ‘But listen to him, Simon. He sounds terrible. I’m worried. He’s really sick. He hasn’t eaten anything for a couple of days now, and he’s barely drinking.’ She shakes her head. ‘He could get dehydrated . . . pneumonia. I really think he should see a doctor.’

Simon’s hands fall still, the blade of the knife held against a thin curl of bark hanging from the stick. ‘So what would you have us do, Carla? Drive him to the local GP? Register his name and address with them?’

Carla shrinks at Simon’s tone, but she holds her ground. ‘I think you’re being a little paranoid. A local doctor isn’t going to care where he’s living. Besides, we could make something up, pretend we’re just passing through.’

‘Sure we could, but I’m afraid it’s not that simple. We have to think about the cost too. Our money is a finite resource now. We need to keep it back for emergencies.’

‘But it’s just a prescription . . . a few pills. It would hardly cost anything.’ She looks at him, amazed.

‘Come on,’ cajoles Kat, trying to talk him round, ‘Ben’s really ill. This might be one of those emergencies.’

Simon shakes his head. ‘Ben’s a big boy. He’ll be OK. He’ll be up on his feet, strumming his guitar and annoying us with his lame Jimi Hendrix renditions before you know it.’

Carla eyes him. ‘So if I used a little money . . . if I took him on my own . . . would you stop me?’

Kat sees a steely glint enter Simon’s eyes, hard and cold like flint. She remembers Mac’s words down at the water’s edge:
We should stand up to him more
.

‘Would it really hurt if we just—’ she tries to intervene but Simon holds up his hand to cut her off, the blade of the knife glittering like a flame in the light cast by the fire.

‘Enough,’ he says. ‘I’ve given you both my answer. Let’s wait another twenty-four hours and see if he can pull through by himself.’

Carla stares from Simon to Kat then turns on her heel and stalks from the room.

‘Simon,’ Kat begins, ‘I really think—’

‘Not now,’ says Simon with a world-weary sigh. ‘Why don’t you go and calm her down?’ He throws her a conciliatory look. ‘You know, make her see sense. You’re good at that.’

Kat wants to argue with him but the words won’t come.

‘Have you seen Freya?’ he continues, casually.

‘No.’ She can’t quite meet his eye. Always bloody Freya.