Hidden Among Us (3 page)

“You’re not Rafe. Not her boy.” His nostrils widened like he was sniffing the air, and I couldn’t help thinking of Grandad’s cocker, Meg, when she got on a scent. OK on a dog, a creepy look on a
person
.

I shook my head. “No.” Hadn’t Miriam explained
anything
? Talk about bloody awkward.

He took another draw on his fag, obviously losing interest. “Stay out of here. It’s dangerous. The Reach isn’t a safe place. She shouldn’t have brought you here.” He gave me a long, searching look, then turned and took an old shotgun from the cabinet, not even seeming to notice that I’d shut the door, turned that rusty key in the lock. It should’ve had a proper combination, a padlock. Shouldering the gun, he turned and went out the garden door, letting it slam shut. I stood watching rain hammer against the window, thinking about the empty fridge. It was like he never went to the shops, but just lived on scrawny old birds from the woods.

I don’t mind admitting I wanted to go home. That I was even a bit scared.

5

I was the only one left in the carriage; the train pushed slowly westwards after the fourth and last change, no more waiting at platforms. I leaned against the window, hugging my arms around my knees, feet up on a seat peppered with the shiny slate-coloured remains of other people’s chewing gum. Outside, shadowy hillsides climbed up and up. It was well past eight o’clock; the sky had turned grey, streaked with a crazy fluorescent pink.

I watched the sunset fade over rising hills, wondering what Mum would say when I called from a station more than a hundred miles away from where I was meant to meet her, hours ago. I didn’t have a sensible explanation. I’ve been a prisoner all my life. I had to escape at some point. It was surprisingly easy. Most of the girls on our Year Nine Shakespeare field trip were being coached back to school ready to get picked up by their parents in the usual end-of-term madness. A few, like Alice and me, were waiting to be collected from the railway station in Stratford-Upon-Avon.

“Cover for me,” I’d whispered to Alice when Mrs Venables’ back was turned. “Please.”

It was so easy. I went into the station, crossed over to the west-bound platform, and climbed onto a waiting train. I texted Mum, telling her I was OK, what time I’d get into Hopesay Edge station, and asking her to please pick me up – as if all this was completely normal, not my biggest ever act of rebellion.

I replied to a frantic message from Alice, reassuring her that I hadn’t gone mad, then switched off my phone with a glorious sense of freedom. I had committed an unforgivable act of disobedience and stupidity. Mum and Connie must have been almost at Stratford in the car by the time I texted. They’d made a completely pointless detour there on the way from our house in Oxfordshire to Hopesay Edge, hours and hours long, only to find me gone. Yes, there would be consequences, big ones, but I didn’t have to face them yet. When the inspector came, I bought a ticket heading west, knowing that would take me in the right direction. He told me when and where to change trains. I was doing OK.

I could look after myself.

I was alone. Safe, even if only for a few hours.

Alone, I can be myself without attracting the wrong kind of attention. I can read
Anna Karenina
, untranslated, and no one will know or care that I’ve never been taught Russian. No one will touch my hand or arm and give me that
look
, saying,
Oh, my God
,
Lissy, you’re
so
cold
.

It was good to be free for a few hours, not pretending to be like everyone else.

I had to show Mum I could do this or I would be a prisoner for ever.

I stared out of the window as the train slowed down again; I was so tired and my head felt foggy. I never sleep well after the dream, and last night the dream had returned, but I couldn’t think about that now because it was my stop, time to move. I pushed away the memory of falling, got up, grabbed my bag, ran along the carriage to the doors, thinking,
That was close; I nearly didn’t notice
. But I’d done it, I’d come all the way here on my own without messing up. Like an adult. For the first time ever, I was coming back to the place I was born. I literally did make my entrance at Hopesay Reach on the kitchen floor. It only took half an hour, and the ambulance arrived just in time to get Mum to hospital, who was bleeding so badly she nearly died. Which is probably one of the reasons why she wants to ruin my life.

Maybe now I’ll find out why we never visit Hopesay, why Mum never sees her stepbrother,
I thought.
Maybe she’ll finally tell us what the big secret is
.

I’ve invented so many different explanations over the years, I’m convinced the real one couldn’t possibly surprise me:
Uncle Miles is deformed and refuses to see anyone. Uncle Miles has got leprosy and his face has gone rotten
. That bright idea came when we were doing Medieval England in Year Five.
Uncle Miles has gone mad like Mr Rochester’s wife in
Jane Eyre. Or – a more recent notion –
Uncle Miles was Mum’s secret boyfriend and Dad found out
. It was Alice who thought of that one. All these years to puzzle over this mystery and my best friend came up with the likeliest story.

Isn’t that a bit gross, though?
Alice had screwed up her nose as if she could smell something bad.
Brother and sister together? Eugh!

Uncle Miles isn’t Mum’s real brother,
I’d explained for the tenth time.
He’s her stepbrother. It’s not the same
.

Alice could be very stupid sometimes.

The train didn’t stop.

It just crept on through the station, slow but still going. Frantic, I pressed the black rubber button by the doors but they stayed stubbornly shut. The train picked up speed again. I’d missed the station. I gripped the handle of my bag, trying to ignore the horrible burning prickling at the backs of my eyes.

I’d made a huge mistake.

Don’t cry,
I told myself, fiercely.
Don’t be such an idiot. It’s fine. All I have to do is get off at the next station and phone Mum. It’ll only be a few miles. It’s not my fault the train didn’t stop. She’s going to be furious anyway
.

But when I took my phone out of my pocket, there was no signal. I had to push away the panicky feeling that the train was going to keep moving till it got to the Welsh sea. At last the train did stop. I leapt off onto the platform, bag banging into my legs as I stumbled. The station was in almost complete darkness; there was just a circle of orangey light spread by the lamp standing next to a bench. Somebody was sitting there. Waiting. A man or a boy, hooded.

I could hear my heart beating now, blood pounding. It was stupid of me to be so ridiculously terrified of a man on a bench. I glanced down at my phone again. Still no signal. Hardly any at the house. What kind of place was this? Like going on holiday to another century. I ran into the station building – just a silent ticket office and a bare‑bricked waiting room with a few plastic seats. No lights on anywhere at all. Nobody there; no phone. OK. It would be OK. I’d just have to walk down into the town, or village – wherever it was. I could get help. But outside the ticket office there was nothing except a dark, tree-lined country road, shadowy houses just visible in the distance. Not even a single streetlight. I stopped, glancing back at the station. I was kidding myself, trying to put off the moment where I’d have to start walking, ask a stranger for help, which would all somehow make this more serious, even more proof that I wasn’t capable of doing anything for myself.

What have you done, you idiot?
I thought.

And then, from out of the shadows, somebody spoke.

“You seem afraid. Are you all right?” A smooth, light voice.

My heart raced off again. I could smell this person, I realized. Musty. Clothes left in the washing machine too long. Dry hot dust, too, and the faint mouldy scent of last autumn’s dried leaves. There was something else, as well: sweet and cloying. I just hugged my bag to my chest. Children are always told not to speak to strangers, but I wasn’t a child. I was fourteen. Seven and seven again: a fairy tale age, magic. In the near distance, I could hear a car. I was all right. Completely safe.

He stepped forwards so I could see him. And then there was nothing I could do but stare.

He was beautiful: high, arching cheekbones like a model, a wide hood shadowing his face. What was he wearing? It looked like a
cloak
, fastened at the neck with a gold brooch which seemed to shift and change even as I watched; first just a dry leaf caught in the folds of heavy woollen fabric, now glinting gold. Black eyebrows like flicks of ink, a ragged coil of red hair escaping from the hood: weird colouring. He was very tall, looking down at me. I hadn’t noticed that while he was sitting on the bench. It must have been his clothes that smelt, I thought. Woolly and ragged, kind of hippy-ish.

I couldn’t stop staring. He looked so incredibly strange, yet there it was: a quick hot spark of recognition. I felt sure I’d seen him somewhere before. Known him.

“Well?” said the boy. “Can I be of help?”

Of course, my face immediately went idiot red, burning. That car was coming closer, closer. It shot past and then, a few yards further on, it stopped and the driver started to turn, inching slowly around in the narrow road.

Now I was really scared.

“I – I missed my stop,” I said, and regretted it instantly. What a stupid thing to do, telling this stranger that I was lost and alone in some one-horse town in the middle of nowhere. But somehow the words had just slipped out, as if he’d pulled them from between my lips like fish on a line.

“Hopesay Edge?” he said, watching with polite disinterest as the car finished turning and inched back along the lane towards us. “A request stop only, I collect.” He smiled, so utterly gorgeous that I was shocked by it, almost insulted, like someone had just slapped me in the face. No one has the right to be that beautiful. It wasn’t fair. “You have to really
want
to go to Hopesay, Lissy,” he said, quietly, almost whispering. “Do you?”

I just stood there, frozen. I looked up the lane after the car.

And when I turned back, the stranger had gone.

He knew my name
.

6

Trees hung over the lane; it was like being in a tunnel, down some kind of pit. It started to rain and Dad flicked on the windscreen wipers. Connie had gone up to bed with a temperature in the end, and we’d been sent out to collect the AWOL elder daughter. The official reason was that Connie might wake up and want her mam. Unofficially, I could tell Dad thought Miriam was too wired to drive properly.

It sounds stupid but I went cold thinking about that lass in the yard. Wondering if I should’ve told Dad or even Miriam about her, white hair against the black of her cloak. But what harm could she have done? It’s not like I’d seen some bloke hanging around with a wrecking bar and a ladder. She was just a girl. Miriam was on edge anyway. Her hand had been shaking when she’d poured the tea earlier. Dad had taken the pot from her, put an arm round her shoulder.

“Don’t worry, love,” he’d said. “Lissy’s going to be here soon. She’s a clever girl – she can manage a train journey, and it’s not really that surprising she’s switched off her phone. You’ll sort it out between you.”

Excuse me while I puke. And now we were lost – great.

I peered at the unfamiliar name on the sign post ahead. “We must’ve missed the turn-off for the station.” I glanced at the map. “This isn’t Hopesay Edge – it’s the next village on.”

“What was
that
?” Dad slowed the car right down.

“Dad, why are you stopping?” I glanced down at the road atlas on my lap again: on the way out here, our
SATNAV
had given up on the tangle of tiny lanes not long after passing the last major town, sending us round in circles till Dad had chucked it in the boot. We were on our own. “We’re nowhere near.”

“I know.” Dad eased the car into a crawl, reversing carefully round the corner, craning his neck to get a look out of the back window. “But I’m pretty sure that was Connie’s sister I saw by the road back there. She must’ve got off at the wrong stop—” He wound down his window, leaning out. “Lissy?” he said. “Are you all right?”

And there was this incredibly tall girl at the side of the road, red hair lit up by our headlights like she was burning. She turned to look at Dad, mouthing his name.

I saw it straight away. In her eyes. Something beyond the reach of school and homework and normal boring life. She didn’t care about any of it and you could tell.

She looked terrified and I wanted to help her.

I wanted to tell her that everything was going to be all right.

I don’t know what I was thinking. Looking at her
did
something to me, made me feel crazy and reckless, like I’d do anything to help her.

I didn’t like it.

7

The stranger had just
disappeared
. Had Nick even seen him?

My heart was still thundering like I’d run a hundred miles.
He knew my name—

“Lissy?” Nick said, again. He turned, and I realized there was a boy in the front passenger seat, eyes fixed down at a road atlas open on his lap. Nick’s son. Mum had told me about him when she’d first written about Nick.
Other news, darling, is that I’ve met someone nice
. “This isn’t Hopesay, is it, Joe?”

The boy glanced up, looking at me as if I were the biggest loser on earth. I just had time to notice shortish, ragged hair, a worn-out jacket. Boring.

“No, Dad,” he said, turning back to the road atlas. “Definitely not.”

“It was a request stop,” I said, heart still thundering. “I didn’t realize I had to tell them to stop the train.”
You imagined it,
I told myself fiercely.
That boy didn’t really say your name
.

Nick got out of the car, came round to my side and opened the back door to let me in. My hands were actually starting to sweat.
Calm down,
I told myself.
Jesus
. It was starting to rain, a silver mist of tiny drops spreading across the car window. Nick turned to look at me, releasing the handbrake, ready to drive off. “Are you OK, Lissy?” he said, gently. “Your mam’s been pretty worried. So have your teachers.”