The Shadow Year (32 page)

Kat shakes her head. ‘Just for once in your life, Freya, would you not play the victim?’

‘But I
am
the victim. He took advantage of me that night. I came round and there he was—’ Freya bites her lip. ‘It was horrible.’

‘Is that right?’ Kat shakes her head. ‘Well excuse me if I just can’t quite believe you when you seem so happy to stay here . . . to spend your time with someone so forceful, so manipulative.’ She gives a low, bitter laugh. ‘You with your flirting and your fawning over him.’

‘Is that what you see?’ Freya shakes her head. ‘God, Kat, open your eyes. Why do you think I leave the room or move away, whenever he comes near? Why do you think I spend so much time out of the cottage now? I can’t stand it. He’s always watching me, touching and pawing at me.’ Freya lowers her voice to a low whisper. ‘He’s not a nice man. I really think – I think he could be dangerous.’

Kat bursts out laughing, a high-pitched sound that makes her clap her hand over her mouth as soon as it is released into the room. Dangerous? Simon? No. Freya is just lashing out. She’s in denial, can’t face the truth of the situation she has got herself into. ‘Why don’t you leave then? If it’s so awful here, just go. Take the money I’m offering you. There’s your way out.’

Freya glances about the room. ‘There is – there is another complication.’

Kat raises an eyebrow.

‘Mac.’

‘What about him?’

‘I can’t be sure . . . it was such a strange night . . . I don’t think we, you know. But everything is so mixed up in my head.’ She turns to Kat, spots of colour burning on her cheeks. ‘It might have been him. The baby could be his.’

‘Well there you go then,’ says Kat with relief. ‘Of course you can’t be sure. That’s exactly what I was saying. We were all out of it. You slept with Mac. You slept with Simon. You don’t even know who the father is.’ Kat can’t hide the disgust in her voice. ‘Freya, trust me, just take the money. Go. Get an abortion. Get on with your life. It’s your best option.’

‘But I need you to believe me.’ Freya looks close to tears. ‘I need you to know that I wouldn’t do that to you, Kat.’

Kat studies her sister’s face. She can’t believe her. She won’t, because if Freya wouldn’t do that to her, it means her story about Simon is true, and she knows in her heart he would never do that. Not to Freya. Not to her sister. Kat turns to study the vacant space above their heads. The silence that hangs over them is her answer.

‘OK,’ says Freya, finally. ‘I’ll go. Get me the money and I’ll leave. Right away.’

Kat nods. ‘Fine.’

They lie there beside each other a moment longer, but the camaraderie of earlier has dissipated. There is no sisterly feeling any more, just the cold light of day creeping through the curtains and a bitter taste burning at the back of Kat’s throat. Rape? She won’t believe it of Simon. She just won’t.

Kat is agitated for most of the morning. Rain splatters on the windows and everyone is stuck inside the house, bored and fidgety. Freya stays huddled upstairs on her bed and the biggest excitement of the morning comes when Ben croaks hoarsely down the stairs that the roof has started leaking, sending Kat and Simon scurrying upstairs with an array of plastic bags and saucepans in a vain attempt to stem the flow. It really is the worst kind of day.

After another measly lunch, Simon and Mac sit together on beanbags, playing chess while Carla flits about the house, up and down the stairs, carrying hot drinks and blankets to Ben. They can all hear his coughing but it sounds different, somehow looser, easier. Simon, more than once, throws Kat an
I-told-you-so
look. For Kat, though, the day is torture. She sits curled by the window re-reading a well-thumbed copy of
Pride and Prejudice
, her eyes glazing over the same few paragraphs, her attention drifting frequently to the kitchen doorway. She thinks of the money in the tin and of Freya’s whispered promise to leave if she steals it for her, and knows she will have to pick her moment carefully.

‘Checkmate,’ says Simon at last, breaking the silence of the room. He topples Mac’s king over and it falls onto the chequerboard with a loud clunk.

Mac gives a small nod. ‘You win . . . again.’

‘Come on,’ Simon says, stretching like a cat. ‘I’ve had enough of this.’

‘You want to go out in this weather?’ Mac asks, incredulous.

‘What’s the problem? Scared of a little rain?’

‘No . . . it’s just . . . well, where are we going?’

‘Get your coat. I’ll tell you on the way.’

Mac raises an eyebrow at Kat but she just shakes her head; she doesn’t know what Simon’s up to, but she watches with relief as they gather their boots and coats and minutes later step out into the blustery day. It will be easier now, with them gone.

She waits for a minute or two, wanting to be certain they have gone, watching the rain streak across the windows and obscure the lake completely from view, until eventually Carla appears on the stairs with an empty tray in her hands. ‘Is Freya OK?’ she asks. ‘She’s been in bed all day.’

‘Yep, I think so,’ says Kat, turning from the window. ‘Probably just got her period.’

Carla looks worried. ‘I hope she’s not coming down with Ben’s bug.’

‘Mmmm,’ murmurs Kat. ‘He sounds a bit better.’

‘Yes,’ agrees Carla, but she won’t meet her eye and Kat knows she’s still angry with her for taking Simon’s side.

Carla heads for the kitchen. Kat hears her clattering around, then the slam of the back door as she heads outside to use the toilet. She thinks of the money and seizes her chance.

It’s quiet in the kitchen. As she tiptoes across to the shelves she justifies what she’s doing. With Freya gone things can carry on as before, as if she’d never even been there in the first place. They’ll find other ways to raise money. They could sell eggs, or vegetables in the spring, when things begin to grow again. Yes, she thinks, get rid of Freya and everything will return to how it was before.

She is just reaching for the tin when the sound of footsteps behind her makes her start. ‘Oh!’ she exclaims, jumping around, one hand to her heart, to see Ben standing in the doorway in his bobble hat and pyjamas with a blanket draped across his shoulders, his face pale beneath his wild, ginger beard. ‘You made me jump.’

‘I can see that,’ he says, shuffling into the kitchen. ‘Are you OK?’

‘Yes,’ says Kat, flustered, ‘although shouldn’t I be asking
you
that? What are you doing out of bed?’

‘Water,’ he says, shaking his empty glass at her.

‘Here, give it to me.’ She takes the glass from his outstretched hand, fills it and returns it to him, watching him down the contents in several large gulps.

‘Steady on,’ she says and waits, hoping he will take himself back upstairs but instead he pulls out a chair and slumps at the kitchen table.

‘I’m so sick of lying up there staring at the ceiling. There’s only so many times you can count the cobwebs or read back issues of
Melody Maker
. I wish we had a few more books. Or some music. Anything.’

She smiles and waits, thinking of the tin on the shelf behind her. ‘Want some aspirin?’

‘No thanks, Carla has been force-feeding them to me. I swear if you shook me I’d rattle.’ He runs his hands across his straggly beard. ‘I feel like a piece of crap.’

‘You don’t look much better,’ admits Kat.

‘Probably don’t smell too good either,’ he grins.

‘Want a cup of tea?’ she relents, and when he nods she knows the money will have to wait a little longer.

‘None of that rosehip shit though. Just give me a proper brew.’

Kat nods. ‘Coming right up.’

A little later the rain stops. Freya ventures downstairs – still in her nightdress – and curls into a ball on the sofa by the window, as if trying to make herself as small as possible. Soon after that Simon and Mac return with a vigorous stamping of boots and flapping of raincoats outside the door. They all turn in anticipation, waiting. Simon bursts in first, his cheeks ruddy from the cold and a devilish grin across his face. Kat has been hoping for groceries – perhaps fresh vegetables, some meat, or even an illicit bar of chocolate – but there aren’t any shopping bags. What she sees instead, displayed proudly in Simon’s outstretched hands, makes her suddenly and inexplicably afraid.

‘The hunters return,’ he crows.

Out of the corner of her eye, Kat sees Freya recoil, turning her face to the window.

‘Where on earth did you get that?’ croaks Ben.

‘Oh, hello, mate. You’re up. How are you feeling? Better?’ Simon gives Carla a knowing wink but she just throws him a filthy look in return.

‘Awful. What is that?’

‘Mac and I went to see a man. About a gun.’ He waves the rifle around the room like a trophy. ‘It’s a .22. Isn’t she a beauty?’

‘Careful,’ says Carla, flinching. ‘Is it loaded?’

‘It’s OK,’ says Mac, stepping out from Simon’s shadow, ‘the safety’s on.’

Ben is fumbling with a roll-up and reaching for a lighter when Carla turns on him. ‘Don’t you dare,’ she says, pulling the dangling cigarette from his lips. ‘Honestly, you’ve got a chest infection. Smoking is the worst thing you could do right now.’ She sighs and shakes her head. ‘You boys . . . you’re no better than little kids.’ She spins back to Simon. ‘So where did you get the money from?’

‘The savings.’ Simon’s voice carries an airy nonchalance but Kat notices how he can’t quite make eye contact with Carla.

‘Nice,’ says Carla. ‘So we’ve got enough money for guns and cigarettes, but not for medicine? I didn’t realise that’s the kind of place this was.’ Simon just shrugs but Carla won’t let it lie. ‘It looks expensive. Shouldn’t we have voted on it or something?’

Simon shrugs again. ‘I was right about the doctor, wasn’t I? He’s up and about.’ He turns to Ben. ‘You’re feeling better, aren’t you, mate?’ Ben gives an obliging nod, followed by a hacking great cough. ‘Besides, this little beauty,’ he shakes the gun again, ‘will pay for itself.’

‘And just how do you figure that?’

‘We’ve been struggling to bring in enough food. Now we can hunt our own meat. Deer. Pheasant. Ducks. They’re all out there; we just haven’t been able to catch them – until now. We’ll have food . . . a better diet. It will stop the rest of us getting sick. Prevention is better than cure.’

Kat thinks of her conversation with Mac about the swan and wonders if this was his idea but somehow she can tell from his face that it wasn’t.

Simon beams around at them all. ‘God, I thought you’d all be pleased.’

No one says anything. ‘Suit yourselves. Mope around in here if you want but I’m going outside to get some shooting practice in. Feel free to join me.’ When the door slams shut, it sounds like a bullet being fired out across the lake.

In the end, the lure of something new and different is too much for them to resist. All of them, bar Freya, traipse out into the faltering light and watch as Simon, Mac and Ben take it in turns to aim at random targets. An old wooden crate. A moss-covered stump at the end of the jetty. A discarded beer bottle now filled with rainwater. They miss every time and no one seems to worry about the whip-crack noise of the shots echoing out around the valley. Carla rolls her eyes at Kat. ‘Boys and their toys.’ Kat nods and, sensing her chance, slips back inside the house.

Freya is still sitting by the window. She turns to Kat as she enters the room and it’s there in her face, an
I-told-you-so
look that makes Kat’s blood boil. ‘We have to feed ourselves,’ she says, but she quickens her pace into the kitchen anyway and notices the slight tremble of her hands as she reaches for the tin. There is a nagging worry at the back of her mind and it won’t go until she has checked the kitty.

She can see instantly that there isn’t enough but she still counts it out anyway, her hands trembling as she handles the notes. Twenty. Thirty. Forty. Fifty Just over fifty pounds left after Simon’s latest shopping spree. It’s hardly enough to get them through the last few weeks of winter, let alone to offer Freya an escape.

Another shot rings out, this time followed almost immediately by the sound of splintering glass. Everyone cheers.

Kat shakes her head. Fifty pounds. Surely no way near enough to get Freya safely away from the cottage and set up somewhere else? She stands and stares at the money, willing it to magically multiply before her eyes, to offer her a solution. She is so tired. She is so fed up with worrying about her sister, with trying to solve her problems. With a sigh, she neatly folds the remaining notes back into a wad and returns them to the tin, placing it carefully back into the dusty imprint marking its place on the shelf.

When she turns around she is startled to see Simon standing at the back door, the rifle resting in the crook of his arm. Dusk hangs over the hills behind him, and the muted light throws his shadow into the room, pointing like a finger of accusation towards her. ‘What are you doing?’ he asks, his eyes glittering just a little too brightly in the dim light.

‘Nothing.’

‘Checking up?’

‘No.’ She blushes. ‘I – I was just interested to know how much you’d spent on the gun. Is that a problem?’

Simon shakes his head. ‘The money belongs to all of us, doesn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Yes, it does.’

They face off against each other for a moment and Kat sees the stubborn, little-boy tilt of his chin, the way his hair – now long and shaggy – curls beyond the nape of his neck.

‘Carla’s still got the hump,’ he says at last, breaking the silence.

‘She’s just worried about Ben.’

‘And Freya? She’s in a foul mood too.’

Kat shrugs her shoulders but she can’t meet his gaze.

They stand there in silence for a moment longer until, finally, he opens his arms to her. ‘Come here,’ he says and she can’t help it. She moves across the room, into his embrace, the cold metal of the gun pressing against her shoulder blade. He smooths her hair with his free hand then kisses the top of her head. ‘My Kat,’ he says. ‘My reliable Kat. Everyone else is so damn emotional, so unpredictable. You know you’re the only one I can count on, don’t you?’

For just a moment she leans into his embrace, breathes his warm scent, allows him to support her. Then gently, he spins her around, so that her back is against his chest, his arms still around her as he lifts the rifle and wraps one of her hands around the butt, the other around the trigger. ‘Here,’ he shows her, ‘like this,’ and he places his hands over hers. Together they lift the gun and settle its sights on an old saucepan hanging on a hook on the stone chimney breast. Kat closes her eyes and enjoys the sensation of his body pressed against hers, the strength of his shoulders, the taut muscles of his arms. She feels it more clearly than she ever has before: home.
He
is her home now and she won’t lose this, she thinks, not for anything.