Hidden Among Us (8 page)

Your time’s up?
What was that supposed to mean? It sounded like a threat.

He really did know my name.

“A dream,” I said aloud. “It was definitely just a dream.”

And, then, I heard a noise in the house. Downstairs. A great bright smashing noise – breaking glass. It hadn’t been a dream. He was still here. I wanted to scream but I couldn’t, I couldn’t make a sound; it was so horrible wanting to shriek and nothing coming out but a weak gasp. I waited a moment, expecting to hear movement down the corridor, where Mum and Nick’s room was. They were the adults. They should have been responsible for making sure everything was all right. But I waited and waited and no sound came until I heard the soft squeak of bedsprings coming from the room right next door to me.

Where Joe was sleeping. Not sleeping but moving: he was getting out of bed. Did he hear the boy, then, as well? Did he know?

I heard the floorboards creak slightly, footfalls one after the other. No hesitation.

Is he brave,
I wondered,
or just completely unimaginative?
I suppressed a wave of pure irritation. Boring Joe, getting in the way again. Obviously his fifteen minutes of glory weren’t enough. Now he was playing heroes again.

I heard the latch click as Joe turned his bedroom door handle, listened as he stepped out into the corridor. The stairs creaked one by one. Downstairs, right beneath my bed, it seemed, a chair shrieked across the kitchen floor. Still Joe kept on going.

The boy had come here because of me. I remembered his flashing gunmetal eyes. I remembered the strength in his cold hands as we danced. It was nothing to do with Joe. I followed out of fear rather than courage, knowing how awful it would be if something bad happened to Nick’s son and it was my fault. And there was Connie. The boy had got into my room. What was to stop him getting into hers?

I swung my legs out of bed, ran to the door and across the landing, cold in my stripey leggings and t-shirt. Joe had put the light on, thank God. I snatched a folded blanket from a chair on the landing, wrapping it around my shoulders as I went down the stairs.

I paused outside the kitchen, watching my own hand reach for the speckled brass door handle. I opened it, went in. It was empty, dark. The other door was slightly ajar, letting in a chink of light. I stepped into the corridor. The heavy back door was still firmly shut, but there was another door slightly open, glass panelled, much newer.

Joe stood alone in a shabby lean-to leading off the kitchen, wearing a pair of faded tracksuit bottoms and brown desert boots. His pale shoulder blades stood out like wings and he had terrible bed-head. Holding a plastic broom, he turned to face me, hair standing up in crazy spikes. I met his eyes, determined not to look embarrassed by the fact he wasn’t wearing a t-shirt. There was a lingering smell of cigarettes.

“Are you all right?” Joe said, very calm. He had more of a Yorkshire accent than Nick; it was a shock, I hadn’t noticed it much the evening before but between the two of us alone in the night, his words fell like hard stones, blunt and strange.

I tried not to think about my dream, the red-headed boy sitting on the end of my bed. How could I explain that to someone I’d only just met? Joe would think I was crazy and maybe he’d be right.

“I – I heard something.”

The door behind Joe was missing a pane of glass. I looked down and saw broken shards swept into a pile.

“My dad locked up: someone’s broken in,” he said. “They must’ve smashed the glass in the outside door and reached through to turn the handle.”

He didn’t look scared but he must have been.

“My mum’s stepbrother? Miles?”

Joe shook his head. “Wouldn’t he have keys?”

I stepped around the table to get a closer look and Joe said, quietly, “Wait. There might still be some on the floor. Listen, I had a look out the front. There’s another car on the drive. Is it your brother’s?”

I just turned and walked back into the kitchen, following that faint reek of tobacco. Joe came after me. The door to the sitting room was still ajar. I pushed it open and there he was, sprawling on one of the battered red sofas like a fallen angel. Asleep.

Rafe.

Not the boy, but just my brother. Making an entrance, as usual. “Yes,” I said. “Yes, that’s him.”

Joe frowned. “Nice of him to clear up. Your sister could have trodden in that.”

I turned, looking at Joe properly for the first time. “Rafe never clears up.”

“What an idiot,” Joe said, as if talking to himself. He reached past the sofa, took a newspaper off the pile on the coffee table to wrap the glass in, and went back to the kitchen. I didn’t know what to say; I’d never heard anyone call Rafe an idiot before.

I didn’t follow, just went back upstairs to bed. I sat there, leaning against the pillows as I’d done hours before, waiting to fall asleep. I shivered, imagining the boy walking through the kitchen in the dark, opening the landing door, climbing the stairs up to my room. Waiting till I woke. But that didn’t make sense. Nick had locked the house.

If Rafe had needed to break a pane of glass to get in, I wondered, how did the boy reach my room?

It was a dream,
I told myself again.
It didn’t really happen. This just proves it
.

But in the back of my mind, I saw the boy walking across the dark shadowy garden outside. Pausing in the rain. Waiting just a tiny second, then leaping high, high into the air with big bright animal strength, like a leopard, landing in a crouch on my bedroom windowsill.

No, no, no,
I told myself furiously.
Don’t be so ridiculous. He didn’t come. You dreamed it
.

I remembered the feel of his breath on my face, the faint scent of it, sweet and exciting.
Can you dream something like that?

16

By eight o’clock, I had dragged myself out of bed. Every scrap of my body ached and my head felt fuzzy, the room cold and gloomy. I grabbed the clothes I’d washed the day before, now tumbled-dried and left in a neat pile by my bag. Mum’s way of trying to make peace: old jeans, a polka-dot top, my favourite grey jumper with holes in the cuffs. I hooked my thumbs through the holes, trying not to think about him.

We watched in awe as they multiplied and spread across the earth—
What was that supposed to mean?

I was hoping to be first down. I couldn’t do much about the shattered window, but if Connie stepped on broken glass Mum would go over the edge. Connie’s never been one of those children who gets up super early, and anyway, I reasoned, she’d had a temperature; I’d go up to her room with my coffee and we could sit together. She still loved being read to, and I knew she’d have a huge bag of books with her, largely featuring princesses, dragons and, more recently, the occasional vampire. The worst thing about school was missing Connie. But when I reached the kitchen Joe was already there, standing awkwardly by the radiator. He was wearing jeans now and thankfully a t-shirt as well. I glanced at the table. The bottle of Calpol from Connie’s room sat next to a half-drunk cup of coffee, and one of Mum’s silk scarves had been left on the worktop near the cooker like seaweed washed up on a beach.

Something was wrong.

“What’s going on?” I said.

Joe opened his mouth to answer but Rafe came in, still in last night’s clothes. Looking at my brother when you haven’t really seen him for a while is like being hit in the stomach with a football. Shining hair, bright as honey, golden skin, eyes like melted chocolate.
I want to eat him
, I once overheard Alice’s mother saying to one of her friends.

He never gets up before twelve in the holidays.

“Where’s Mum?” I asked. “What’s happened?”

Rafe looked me up and down. I instantly felt very stupid. What had I done now?
Don’t
, I told myself.
Don’t let him make you feel bad
.

“Just tell me,” I said.

“Mum did try and wake you, Lissy.” Rafe looked at me with faint disgust as if I’d done something unforgivable. Something else. “Didn’t you hear the ambulance?”

An ambulance. Cold panic shot through me. “It’s Connie, isn’t it? What’s wrong?” Connie had gone to hospital and I’d slept through the whole thing. I could have gone with them. I should have been there.

“How weird you didn’t wake up,” Rafe said, quietly. “They think it’s meningitis. There was a rash. It means she’s got blood poisoning. That’s what they’re really worried about.”

I didn’t know much about meningitis other than that you could die from it. Especially children.

“Connie—” I started to cry. “Is she going to be all right?”

Rafe just turned and went out of the room, leaving me with Joe, who I’d met precisely ten hours earlier. For a moment, we just stood staring at each other, unable to speak.

“Don’t worry,” Joe said at last. “She’ll be OK.”

“You don’t know that!” I snapped, and ran out of the kitchen, letting the broken door slam behind me.

Stepping into my mud-caked boots and grabbing Mum’s waterproof from the back of a chair, I ran out into the yard, calling her on my phone. Nothing. No network coverage. Even if she’d tried to text me, I wouldn’t know.

“Why don’t you just work, you stupid thing!” Like an idiot, I threw my mobile across the yard, watching it skid across the moss-covered cobblestones.

I couldn’t stay near that place a moment longer. It wasn’t safe. Houses are meant to keep things out, not allow them in when all the doors and windows are shut. But bad dreams and sickness move like smoke, seeping through tiny cracks. Getting in and breaking loose. You can’t hide from them.

Now Connie was gone.

I walked along the lane, head down against the rain. My boots were still wet from the night before so my feet were freezing, as if summer had given up and died.
It’s going to be OK
, I told myself again and again.
She’s gone to hospital. Doctors know what they’re doing. She’ll be fine. They’ll look after her
. I thought of Mum rushing into my room, shaking me, trying to wake me, but I’d stayed awake so late I was too deeply asleep. What if Connie had wanted me to come with them?

What if I never see her again?

A shiver slid down my back.

“Look, you should just watch out.”

I turned around and Joe was standing there, wearing a cagoule that had been repaired with black shiny tape. His hair was already soaking wet. Rain dripped into his eyes. He’d followed me. Not Rafe. Even now Rafe was going to make me suffer, more than a year later. I would never be forgiven.

“What do you want?” I shouted at Joe. Couldn’t he see I just wanted to be on my own?

“Running away in the rain – that’s not exactly going to help anyone, is it, you daft cow,” Joe snapped.

I turned away, facing the hedge, not wanting him to see me crying. The rain hammered down, dripping off the hood of my waterproof.

“Listen,” Joe said. “I found a mobile outside the house.”

I took it without looking at him, embarrassed. Had he heard me shouting, seen me throw it across the yard?

“We’ve run out of milk,” he went on. “I’m going to the village.”

I didn’t answer, just carried on walking, and he walked behind me. Neither of us said a word; what was there to say? I didn’t know the first thing about him. The lane was dark, even at eight thirty in the morning. Trees met overhead in a great green arch, keeping out what little daylight there was. Rain splashed through the leaves. After a while we passed a pub. The lights weren’t on inside, but behind the leaded windows I could just see people moving about: silent, ghostly. I shivered, unable to shake the feeling they were watching us.

Where was Connie now? I pictured her lying small and pale on a hospital trolley, being rushed down a corridor. What did they do when you had meningitis, anyway? Would she have to have injections, a drip: needles stabbed into the back of her hand? Connie hates needles.

All I could do was keep on walking. If I stood still, I wanted to scream.

Hopesay Edge was nothing more than a few rain-battered stone cottages, a war memorial, and, weirdly, a butcher’s shop with skinned red carcasses already hanging up in the window. The lights were on inside, even though a sign on the door said it was closed. I couldn’t see any other shops at all. Finally, as we were crossing a sodden village green, Joe suddenly peeled to the left and started walking towards the church.

Oh, no
. A mixture of panic and outrage bubbled up in my belly.
What on earth is he doing in there?
If he had some kind of religion obsession, this wasn’t the time or place to indulge it.

Joe stepped into the porch and hauled open the big door. Finally, I noticed an advertising board standing just outside. On one side a news headline read LOCAL MAN WINS PIG, which would have made me laugh at any other time. On the other side, there was a fluorescent orange sign with “Village Shop” written in black marker. So I followed Joe inside. Even the porch had that churchy smell – slightly damp, old books. At first, everything inside looked normal – dark wooden pews and an altar, a noticeboard with pictures of disciples scribbled all over by Sunday School children. But just by the great stone font, there were tables with groceries laid out for sale: jars of jam and honey, loaves of bread in a basket, tins of tomatoes, packets of toothpaste, stacks of loo roll, kitchen sponges, bottles of shower gel, tea bags, coffee.

Joe was crouching down by a small fridge plugged in next to the tables – a long grey extension lead snaked off into a stack of plastic chairs. I checked my phone again. It was still working and there was one tiny bar of signal. I could phone Mum. At last.

I called her, holding the phone hard against my ear as rain dripped off the hood of my waterproof. Straight to voicemail. And just as I was leaving a message, the phone beeped. A text. I read it, not daring to breathe.
Boo in intensive care, ward C3. Try not to worry. Best people looking after her. Will try call soon, bad reception
. I scrolled down. It had only come half an hour earlier. Why hadn’t I tried to call Mum from the landline at the Reach instead of storming out like an idiot?