Girl A(93)

The landing came into view, doorway by doorway.

I stopped at the threshold of Gabriel and Delilah’s room. Behind the sound of the water was another noise, the gurgling. The house leaking its old secrets. The first miserable little bedroom, the corners of it dark enough to evade the torchlight. Flaps of paint hung from the walls. The wind moved through the house, and the door shifted, but I caught it before it could shut.

There was a noise behind me, at the other end of the landing. My heart beat in my skull and hands and stomach, and I held the door and turned across the hallway.

‘Evie?’

The door to our bedroom was closed.

I crossed the landing, thinking of nothing, sure that any memory might conjure the thing itself out of the night.

I reached out a hand, bright white in the torchlight, and parted the bedroom door.

I knew then that there was something in the room. The beds had been removed as evidence, many years before, leaving white relics on the wall. The Territory was a wasteland. The carpets and the walls had eroded, exposing the flesh of the house, the white plaster and the floorboards bony underfoot. The terrible shape was huddled in the corner, where Evie’s bed had been. Something small and still. When the torch beam reached it, it twitched. I wasn’t frightened any more. Here she was, waiting for me.

‘Evie,’ I said.

‘Oh, Lex,’ she said. ‘Do you really think I ever left this room?’





7


All of Us


I LEFT ENGLAND IN the autumn. In early October, I crossed Soho, collar-up, and collected my belongings from the Romilly Townhouse, where they had been packed from my room and stored since my visit to Hollowfield. ‘How was your stay?’ the receptionist asked, and I opened my mouth, then closed it again. She looked at me, knowingly. There were few secrets to be kept in a hotel. ‘It was eventful,’ I said.

‘And what now?’

‘Now,’ I said. ‘A wedding.’

By the morning, I was propped up on pillows in a hospital bed, surrounded by the chatter of nurses and machines. It wasn’t the same hospital we had been taken to after the escape, but in the first strange minutes, I was sure that it was. It had the same sweet, chemical smell, which still made me feel relieved. I watched my hand reach to the ceiling, testing its freedom, and Dr K nodded, watching too.

She had been waiting for me to wake up. She looked pale and old. She wore a beautiful cream dress which hung haplessly from her body and exposed the sinews of her neck. I couldn’t reconcile her with the woman who had sat by my hospital bed when I was a child. She was like a world leader at the end of her term. We met eyes and she smiled, without much conviction.

‘Lex,’ she said.

‘Are we still in Hollowfield?’

‘Not far from there.’

‘Where did they find me?’

‘Between the town and the old house. A factory worker had just finished the night shift. Not far from where you were rescued the first time, I suppose. You were disorientated – exhausted.’

‘Lucky again, I guess.’

‘The hospital called me at five. It would appear that I’m still your emergency contact.’

‘Don’t read much into it,’ I said. ‘Other than a lack of viable alternatives.’

I understood that it was still my turn to speak, but not what I was supposed to say.

‘I didn’t want to worry anyone,’ I said. ‘I was just there to see the house. You’ll have heard about Mother. She made me executor. We have these plans for Moor Woods Road. I was there to sort things out. Being there – I must have been overwhelmed.’

She rested her elbow on her knee and her chin on her fist. I hadn’t said what she was hoping to hear.

‘My parents,’ I said. ‘Are they here?’

‘Yes,’ Dr K said. ‘Greg and Alice.’

‘I’d like to see them.’

‘In a moment,’ said Dr K. ‘I think that we should speak first. The man who found you – you told him that you were looking for your sister.’

‘I did?’

‘Yes.’ She started to say one thing, then stopped, and said something else. ‘I’ve been trying to reach you since you landed,’ she said. ‘But I could never get through. I was concerned – as soon as I heard about your mother – that something might happen.’

I turned my head away from her. ‘I don’t think I was ready,’ I said, ‘to take your call.’

‘That,’ she said, ‘I understand. We should see that as a positive thing. Don’t you think? I believe – I believe you knew what I would have to say.’

A lump clotted in my throat.

‘I appreciate how my methods may seem, Lex,’ she said. ‘Many years later. It was different, at the time. In those first few months following the escape. It helped you. I thought that by the time I told you everything – all of it – you would be in the right state of mind to process it. To recover.’

‘You lied to me,’ I said. ‘Isn’t that what you mean?’

‘Yes. For a short period of time. And since then, I’ve spent a long time asking you to accept the truth.’

She drew herself up in the chair and looked through me.

‘Tell me,’ Dr K said. ‘Tell me what happened to Evie, Lex.’