The Hiding Place(80)

“What’s to know? It was an accident. My sister and father died.”

“Where were you going that night?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Convenient.”

“The truth.”

“The papers speculated that something must have happened, that your father was driving to the hospital. Not long before the crash someone tried to call 999 from your house.”

I wonder how he knows this, or perhaps, more important, why he has made it his business to know.

“Why don’t you just get to the point?”

“Your father didn’t crash your car that night by accident.”

“You’re wrong. There was evidence he tried to brake. Tried to prevent the crash.”

“Oh, I’m not saying it wasn’t an accident. But your father didn’t cause it.”

He smiles and I feel my house of cards—my so-close-to-winning hand—fold and flutter to the ground.

“You did, Joe. You were the one driving.”





34





The past isn’t real. It is simply a story we tell ourselves.

And sometimes, we lie.

I loved my little sister. So much. But the sister I loved was gone. I saw her walking around the house in the strange lurching way she had now—like her body was the wrong fit—but I didn’t see Annie. I saw something that looked like Annie, sounded like Annie. But it was a fake. A bad copy.

Sometimes I wanted to scream at my parents: Can’t you see? It’s not Annie. Something happened and she’s gone. There was a mistake. A terrible mistake, and this thing got sent back in her place. A thing that is wearing her skin and looking through her eyes but, when you look back, it’s not Annie inside.

But I didn’t. Because that would have sounded crazy. And I knew it was the last thing my parents needed to deal with. I didn’t want to be the straw that finally broke our family into pieces. I needed to sort this out. To put it right. So one day, before school, I picked up the phone in a trembling hand and called the doctor’s. I put on my best voice and said I was Mr. Thorne and wanted to make an appointment for my daughter. The receptionist, who was brisk and efficient, but obviously not very perceptive, barked that she could fit us in at four-thirty that afternoon. I thanked her and said that was perfect.

When I got back from school I told Dad I had just remembered that Mum said she’d made an appointment for Annie at the doctor’s. Fortunately, he was only on his second can. He complained, but I said that was okay, he could tell Mum he had decided to cancel it. That did the trick. Dad didn’t want to risk going against Mum, making her mad. He stuck his jacket on and yelled for Annie to come downstairs. I said I’d go along too. On the way, I bought some mints from the shop. I offered Dad one. He took two.


—



The doctor was an overweight man with a nose full of red veins and a thin scraping of dry hair over his shiny head. He was friendly enough, but he looked tired and I noticed that the case by his feet was already packed, ready to go home.

He examined Annie, shone things in her eyes, tapped her knee. Annie sat in the chair, as stiff as a ventriloquist’s dummy. After performing his tests, the doctor patiently explained that he couldn’t find anything physically wrong with Annie. However, she had suffered a trauma. Missing for two days. Lost, maybe trapped somewhere. Who knew what had happened to her? The bed-wetting, the nightmares, the strange behavior were all to be expected. We just had to be patient. Give her time. If there was no improvement, he could refer us to a therapist. He smiled. It probably wouldn’t come to that. Annie was young. The young are incredibly resilient. She would be back to her old self in no time, he was sure.

Dad thanked him and shook his hand. His own hand was shaking quite a bit. I was glad I had bought the mints. We walked home again. Annie wet herself on the way.

Trauma. Give her time. He was sure.

I wasn’t. I thought it was a load of bullshit and, for some reason, I felt like we were running out of time.


—



On top of this, I was dealing with Chris’s death. Or rather, I wasn’t. There had been a funeral, at the crematorium. It didn’t feel real. I kept expecting to turn around and find Chris standing beside me, blond hair sticking up like always, pointing out that the temperature of the furnace was between 1400 and 1800 degrees Fahrenheit, the body was consumed in two and a half hours and the crematorium burnt around fifty bodies a week.

Chris’s mum sat at the front. He didn’t have any other family. His dad had left when he was little and his older brother had died of cancer before Chris was born.

His mum had the same wild white hair as Chris. She wore a shapeless black dress and clutched a pile of tissues. But she didn’t cry. She just kept staring straight ahead. Occasionally, she mumbled something and smiled. Somehow, it was more awful than if she’d been bawling her eyes out.

I saw her a few times afterward. She was still wearing the same clothes. I felt like I should say something, but I didn’t know what. Whenever I walked by Chris’s house the curtains were pulled. A couple of weeks later a “For Sale” sign went up.

I found myself wandering the village aimlessly after school, always ending up beneath the Block, staring up, wondering how it felt to fall so far, so fast. People left flowers and tributes. There was even one from Hurst. The temptation to take it, rip it to shreds and stamp it into the ground was almost too much.