The Shadow House(20)

Please, please, baby. Please stop crying.

In eight months, I hadn’t slept for more than two or three hours in a row. There was a physical gap in my body where sleep should be – and a dragging, aching sensation, like grief. It dimly occurred to me that it hadn’t been like this with Ollie. It was tough, sure, but never this hard. He’d been a deep sleeper, an enthusiastic eater and my tiny best friend. As old as ten, he would climb onto my lap and ask for a snuggle. But things changed shortly after he turned eleven. He clammed up, got angry, became shifty and secretive. And then suddenly it was like we were speaking entirely different languages. I’d say something and he’d look baffled. Then he’d reply, and it would be my turn to be confused. Being around him became like hosting a foreign exchange student, but without the pleasantries. Or an end date.

Kara’s crying was like nails scraping the marrow from my bones. I got up and pulled the travel cot flush against my bed. I placed Kara inside and lay back down, draping my arm over the side of the mattress to pat her.

I’d drunk way too much. The bed wobbled beneath me like a poorly made raft on a raging ocean. A black wave sucked me up, and I teetered on its spumy crest before freefalling down the other side. Too scared to move, I lay staring at the ceiling, convinced I could hear screams coming from the forest outside.

Kara tugged on my hand. Her little fingernails scratched at my palm and I wrapped my fingers around hers until it was impossible to know who was clinging to who.

I closed my eyes and dreamed of violence.

Of Ollie, standing motionless over Kara’s cot.

Of stick dolls, dead birds and pictures carved on trees. A glowing white house on a steep green hill. And a grey-haired witch, standing in a forest with her arms raised high.





ALEX





8


The next day, Ollie still wasn’t speaking to me. I waved a selection of different olive branches but none of them worked, and by 4.30pm he was still stubbornly refusing to communicate, gluing himself instead to the sofa and the extreme sports channel.

I was changing Kara’s nappy on the floor, quietly seething at the noise level, when there was a knock at the door.

‘Hell-ooo?’ said a voice. ‘Anyone home?’ The door opened and Jenny appeared, wearing another brightly coloured headscarf.

‘Hi,’ I said, fixing Kara’s nappy into place and sitting up. ‘Come in, Jenny, how are you?’

Kara rolled over to see what was happening.

‘I hope I’m not disturbing?’ A sunbeam crossed her face and made her look tired: her cheekbones seemed sharper, her eye sockets even more hollow than when we’d last spoken.

‘Not at all, we were just finishing up.’ A screech of tyres and a loud crash rang out from the TV screen. ‘Ollie, can you turn that down, please?’

Grudgingly, he knocked the volume down one level.

‘I love what you’ve done with the place.’ Jenny stepped further into the unit and gazed around. ‘Very cosy.’

‘Thanks. It’s starting to feel like home, anyway.’ Scooping Kara up and onto my hip, I crossed to the kitchen bench and offered her a chunk of ready-peeled banana. She snatched it out of my hand and began chomping on it like she’d been starved for weeks.

‘My goodness, your girl likes her food, doesn’t she?’

‘Some days yes, some days no. Today is very much a yes day.’ Kara inhaled the banana and reached out for more. ‘Look at her, she’s an animal.’

Jenny smiled. ‘No, she’s adorable. Listen, I’ve had this old TV sitting in my spare room for a while now and it never gets used. I was wondering if you or Ollie might want it?’

‘What?’ said Ollie, jumping off the sofa. ‘A TV? How big is it?’

I gave him a look. ‘That’s very kind of you, Jenny, but—’

‘I’ll take it,’ he said, literally putting his hand up. ‘For my room, Mum. Please?’

I sighed. I was reluctant to add yet another screen into the mix – but on the other hand it would be nice not to have Ollie dominating the lounge all the time. ‘Are you sure you don’t want it?’ I said to Jenny.

‘Like I said, it’s just gathering dust.’

‘Pleeeeaase?’ Ollie begged.

I rolled my eyes. ‘Okay, fine.’

‘Yes!’ Ollie pumped a fist in the air. ‘I’ll go clear some space.’

‘What do you say, Oliver?’ I called as he disappeared into his room.

‘Thanks, Jenny, you’re the best,’ he called back as the door swung shut.

‘Well, that’s settled, then,’ said Jenny, whose smile was so wide it transformed her whole face. ‘Also, Kit asked me to call in on my way to the greenhouse and remind you all about the meet.’

‘The what?’

‘Dinner tonight. Down at the greenhouses? We do it every Thursday. Kit said he mentioned it.’

‘Oh!’ I slapped a hand to my forehead; I’d completely forgotten. ‘Yes, he did but I – he told me to bring a dish and I haven’t made anything, so …’

‘That’s okay,’ said Jenny. ‘No one will mind. Just throw on a pair of shoes and come on down.’

‘Um … okay, well, I’ll have to freshen up a bit. And probably bribe Ollie into coming.’ I smiled wryly. ‘He’s not my biggest fan right now, we had a fight.’