Girl A(89)

‘Living the dream.’

‘Then they’re close to home. They come to a small, strange town. More like a village.’

‘Is it called Hollowfield?’ Evie asked. ‘By any chance?’

‘It’s called Hollowfield.’

‘OK.’

‘It’s a day’s travel back to their house by the beach, but they’re tired. They need to stop. They check into a room. They have a bad feeling about the place, as if they shouldn’t be there. As if they’re not welcome. Or – perhaps – as if they’ve been there before.’

‘And what then?’

‘Nothing. They sit at the window, uneasy. Trying to put their fingers on it. The next day, they pack up and go on their way.’

‘Do they know how lucky they are?’

‘No. I don’t think so.’

‘I wish I could tell them.’

‘No. Let them be.’

‘I’m so tired, Lex.’

‘That’s OK. We don’t have to talk any more.’

When I looked at her, she seemed to have regressed; she looked twelve, or thirteen.

The sound of the storm came first, the edge of the rainfall advancing along the high street. I closed the window and lifted Evie to the bed, and sat vigilant against the headboard, watching the room become dark.

In the night, Mother. She sat hunched at the end of my bed. She held her head in her hands, the fingers swollen apart and encased with old dirt.

Before I spoke, I listened for Evie’s breath. The room cold enough to see it. The white of emaciated arms stretched above her head.

‘Mum,’ I said.

‘Oh, Lex.’

‘Mum,’ I said. ‘We need to do something.’

I had started to cry. I prided myself on how little I cried, just like all of my favourite characters. But it was harder than they made out. You couldn’t even indulge the thought of tears, and this time, I had left it too late.

‘Please,’ I said.

‘Temporary,’ she said. ‘Just a temporary thing.’

‘Evie’s starving,’ I said. ‘She has this cough—’

‘I don’t know if there’s anything – anything that I—’

‘There are things that you could do,’ I said. ‘There are.’

‘What? What could I do?’

‘You’re out shopping,’ I said. ‘Maybe tomorrow. Maybe the day after. You can build up to it. You go up to someone – to anyone. Just start talking. You can tell them about Father. You can just – you can explain. You can explain that it got out of hand. How he started to change. You can tell them that you’re frightened. You can tell them – about Daniel.’

A sob shredded from my throat. I swallowed it.

‘Please,’ I said.

She was shaking her head.

‘But how could they understand?’ she said.

‘It just got out of hand. That’s all.’

‘Yes. It wasn’t meant to end up like this, Lex. You understand that. We were trying to protect you. That was all that we wanted. There was no other way—’

‘Yes. I understand that. Father had his ideas – his dreams. And when they didn’t go right—’

‘It was longer ago, Lex. It was so much longer ago than that.’

‘You can tell them everything,’ I said. ‘But soon. It has to be soon.’

She touched my shoulder and then my face, left the chill of her handprint in the space between my chin and jaw.

‘Maybe I could,’ she said. ‘Maybe I could.’

She didn’t, of course.

Ethan in our room, unchained, with pink material in his arms.

‘You’re to wear these,’ he said. ‘And clean yourselves up.’

He had the key to the cuffs, and when he leant over me, I clutched at his hand. He shook his head. ‘If you try anything,’ he said, ‘he’s going to kill us both. Not today, Lex.’

‘When, then?’

‘I don’t know.’

I sat on the bed and stretched out my body. Muscles shifted and grumbled. As soon as Evie was free, she dashed across the Territory and onto my lap, and locked her arms around my neck, like a sloth on a limb.

‘It’s a temporary thing,’ Ethan said. ‘I wouldn’t get too excited.’

He was wearing old, odd clothes. A double-breasted black suit with dusty shoulders, and a clip-on bow tie. It was the kind of outfit you would find during an exhumation.

‘One of you should get in the bathroom,’ he said. ‘One at a time.’

After locking Evie in the room behind us, he held my elbow along the landing. I assumed that he was supporting me, but when my legs started to work, I felt the pinch of his grip and understood that wasn’t the case. At the bathroom, he wedged a brogue against the door, and waited.

‘I can’t just leave you,’ he said. ‘You know that.’

I stepped onto the tiles, and peered into the bath. Tepid water, long-run, and grey with the dirt of other bodies. I turned back to him, and before he could look away, I pulled my T-shirt over my head.

‘Can’t you?’ I said.

I sat in the bath with my knees to my chest, and rolled a wizened bar of soap along my limbs. I was whiter than the tub. When my teeth started to chatter, I climbed out, and dried myself with a vile towel left in the sink. Ethan handed me the pink material, his back still turned, and I held up a dress, high at the neck and long to the shins.