The Shadow Year (11 page)

Something about the sweet taste of the berry, the warm sunshine falling through the open door, the loud drone of insects outside makes her feel peculiar, almost drunk; embarrassed, she turns away from him and returns to the half-scrubbed floor. It’s only when she finds the courage to glance back towards the doorway that she sees he has gone.

For twenty-four hours she tells herself she has imagined it, that the look in his eyes in the cottage, the way he raised his blackberry-stained finger to his lips, was nothing but her own overactive imagination. She has fantasised about such moments far too many times to convince herself it was real. But later, out by the lake, under the stars, with the remains of Carla’s birthday dinner still spread before them and Ben strumming quietly on his guitar, she feels Simon’s gaze fall on her once more. His eyes blaze in the darkness, and his face, lit by the occasional flare of a cigarette, remains tilted in her direction. The thought of his eyes on her makes her dizzy. She tries to focus on the flickering stars overhead and remembers something Simon once told her, about how the lights glimmering up there in the sky are probably nothing more than the residual flare of stars burned out many millions of years before, beamed at them from light years away. She gazes up at them and wonders how something so lovely can be nothing but a lie – an illusion – a dark deceit. The thought doesn’t help with her giddiness.

‘So what
did
you tell them?’ she hears Ben ask as she tunes back into the conversation around her.

‘I told them I was taking a year off,’ says Simon. ‘I told them I wanted to experience a little of the world before I settled down to complete my legal training.’

‘Did you tell them about this place?’

‘God no.’ Simon shakes his head. ‘You think I’m crazy? The fewer people that know about this place the better – I thought we’d all agreed that?’

Ben nods.

‘Besides,’ Simon continues, ‘I don’t think squatting in a derelict cottage up north really fits with my parents’ ideals of success and personal achievement.’ He grins in the darkness. ‘For all they know I’m halfway to Africa.’

Ben chuckles but Carla gives a low groan from where she lies propped against his leg. ‘Don’t jiggle like that,’ she moans, ‘you’re making me feel sick.’

‘Sorry, my love,’ says Ben, putting his guitar down and stroking her hair.

Kat watches Ben’s hand moving across Carla’s curls, sees his fingers stroke the round curve of her cheek and sighs quietly. They are always together, always entwined.

‘How did
your
dad take it?’ Simon asks Ben.

‘Oh you know,’ says Ben, ‘sat me down, asked me where my
drive
was, my sense of responsibility; told me I’d flushed his school fees and several perfectly good years at university down the toilet . . . threatened to cut me off. I thought it went rather well, considering.’

Simon gives a low laugh and Kat lets the soft sound of it wrap itself around her like a cloak. She gazes up at the sky and watches as dark clouds steal across the pale orb of the moon. Far out on the lake a fish jumps with a splash. Other than the light from the campfire and the occasional flare of a lighter or burning cigarette it grows increasingly black. She lies on the ground and gazes up at the emptiness.

The boys’ talk of family stirs Kat’s mind. Something about their conversation brings a memory floating up to the membrane of her consciousness. There she is, hunched inside a stale-smelling wardrobe with her little sister trembling in her arms while outside the flimsy chipboard door the shouts and thumps of her parents’ terrifying fight rage on.

‘I’m scared,’ Freya whispers.

‘Shhh,’ she murmurs, holding her sister close. ‘It will all be over soon.’

Their father roars. They hear the sharp sound of splintering wood followed by the soft whimpering of their mother. They wait until the front door slams, then creep out into the kitchen. Her sister accepts the milk and biscuits she offers her, but her blue eyes are still wide with fear.

‘Do you want anything, Mum?’ she asks at the open door to her parents’ room.

‘You’re a good girl, Kat,’ her mother slurs, sprawled like a discarded rag across the bed. ‘Always looking out for your sister. You’re a good girl.’

Kat shivers in the darkness. She’d thought perhaps she was alone in wanting to free herself from the weight of family responsibility, but as she lies on the damp grass listening to the chatter of her friends, it becomes clear to her that no matter what experiences they’ve grown up with – whether privilege or affection or neglect – they are each trying to escape the constraints of their history in some way. Perhaps that’s one of the attractions of their life at the lake, she thinks; the freedom it offers them to explore who they are . . . and who they
want
to be . . . without the baggage of the past weighing them down.

‘So who wants to go?’ asks Simon.

‘Go where?’ asks Kat, rejoining the flow of the conversation.

‘To the shop tomorrow.’

Carla offers up another groan from the darkness.

‘Carla’s going to be too hung-over to go
anywhere
,’ says Ben cheerily.

‘I’ll go,’ offers Kat, ‘if no one else wants to.’

‘Good’ says Simon. ‘Mac can drive you.’

‘Actually, I was planning to—’

‘No,’ says Simon cutting Mac off, ‘you’ll drive Kat.’

‘I can probably manage by myself,’ says Kat lightly, not wanting to be the cause of discord, but Simon isn’t having it.

‘Mac, you’ll drive Kat. End of discussion. Whatever
Swiss Family Robinson
plans you had will have to wait.’

Mac shifts uncomfortably and they all see the colour rise in his face, even though it is dark. Kat shoots him an apologetic look. Far out on the horizon above the hills a flash of late summer lightning zigzags across the sky. ‘There’s a storm coming,’ she murmurs, but no one moves, not for ages, not until the first drops of rain begin to fall from the sky, sizzling and spitting onto the glowing embers of their campfire.

Upstairs, sprawled on her mattress, Kat can’t sleep. It’s not just the lightning strobing across the room or the thunder rumbling across the valley, it’s fragments of the evening’s conversation still niggling at the back of her mind. All their talk of family and responsibility has brought a wave of guilt crashing down on her.

Freya: she hasn’t told her sister where she is. She’s tried to justify her disappearance by telling herself that Freya will be caught up in her own life in London – busy with her own friends and her course; and she understands Simon’s desire to keep their whereabouts secret, she really does . . . but Freya is her little sister and no matter how intoxicating it feels for Kat to be free of her past and free of any sense of duty or responsibility, she has
never
not been there for her. It doesn’t feel right.

With a sigh, she slips out of bed, relights the oil lamp and rummages through her belongings until she finds her notebook and a chewed biro. She looks at the blank page before her and then writes in a careful hand:
Dear Freya
. She stares at the words, the biro poised at her lips, before she lowers the pen and continues to write. When she has finished, she reads the letter through then tucks the piece of paper beneath her pillow and turns off the oil lamp. She will slip it into the postbox when she goes to the shop. No one need know. Besides, she hasn’t given an address, just a few sketchy details and reassurances that she is all right, that she’ll be in touch again soon. It’s enough to make her feel a little better as she slides back beneath the covers and turns off the light.

The storm is closer now. White lightning explodes again in the darkness and Kat squeezes her eyes shut and counts . . . waiting for the accompanying thunder, trying to calculate just how close the storm is:
one Mississippi . . . two Mississippi
. . . when the drumroll comes it seems almost to be upon the cottage. Kat wriggles down deeper beneath the covers. She thinks of Carla and Ben curled up together in the room next door, Mac and Simon slumped about the living room downstairs and feels very much alone. She wills sleep to come but moments later there is another bright flash, a white pulse of light. She opens her eyes and gasps. In the split second of the illumination she sees the outline of him in the doorway; then the room falls black again. Her breath catches at the back of her throat. Did she imagine him there? She peers into the darkness but it’s no good; her eyes remain blinded momentarily by the flare as another loud rumble shakes the valley.

There is the unmistakable squeak of a floorboard, then the sound of footsteps moving across the room to where she lies. Her ears strain and she just makes out the soft
whoosh
of a T-shirt being dropped to the floor, the rasp of a zipper, the creak of another floorboard then the mattress shifting beneath a new weight. Kat closes her eyes, tries to breathe, her body tingling in the darkness. For a moment there is nothing and then she feels his hand on her hip bone, his fingers grazing the strip of bare skin just above the waistband of her pyjama bottoms.

‘I know you’re awake,’ he says, his words warm against her neck. ‘I can tell by your breathing.’

She doesn’t move; she doesn’t say a thing, but she drinks in the scent of him: beer, cigarettes, and the faintest trace of lake water still lingering on his skin. His hand moves and Kat has to force herself to breathe.

‘You do want this, don’t you?’ he asks, one finger tracing the curve of her breast. ‘You do want me?’

Kat wonders if she is in fact dreaming. Three years at university and not once did Simon make a move on her. Three years and never
once
did he indicate that she was anything more than a friend to him. Three years of longing and waiting and watching and now she can’t find the words, so she turns and searches for his eyes in the darkness, trying to read him in the pitch black. He moves closer still, until they are chest to chest, breathing each other’s hot breath and finally he presses his lips against hers. She can’t help it; a sound escapes her lips, half whimper, half moan, and then she is kissing him back as the lightning flares and the thunder crashes once more.

He reaches for her T-shirt, pulls it up over her head then pushes her pyjama bottoms down until they are lost in the tangle of bedclothes. He threads his hands through her hair, pulls her head back so that he can kiss her neck. The room strobes white again then returns to darkness.

‘What if the others . . . ?’ she whispers.

‘Shhh . . .’ he says. Her eyes have adjusted now. She can see his face, the contour of his cheekbones, his eyes shining in the darkness. ‘Not another word,’ he says. ‘Just this.’

Kat understands what he is saying: be here and nowhere else. Be here with him now. She rises up to meet him and loses herself in his touch.

5

LILA

September

Lila is lingering with a half-filled shopping trolley beside the deli counter when the woman’s voice floats across the aisle towards her. ‘Lila?’ She feels a hand on her arm. ‘Lila, I
thought
that was you.’

She turns away from the tubs of stuffed olives and sees a short, round woman with blond hair and clear blue eyes smiling up at her. Lila arranges her face into a greeting while trying to conjure a name from the soup of her brain. ‘Hi . . .’

‘It’s me,’ says the woman putting a hand to her chest, ‘Marissa, from high school, remember?’ She smiles encouragingly as Lila’s brain slowly connects a series of faded memories: the flash of goose-pimpled legs and netball skirts, the musty smell of a school bus, giggling and passing notes at the back of an English class.

‘Oh hi,’ says Lila. ‘Sorry, I was in another world.’

Marissa laughs. ‘Don’t worry, I do look a little different these days,’ she pats at her waist, ‘especially since this chap came along.’ She gestures over to her trolley and for the first time Lila sees the chubby-faced infant strapped into the baby seat. ‘This is Jack,’ says Marissa proudly. ‘Say hello, Jack.’

Jack gazes up at her, a thin trickle of drool spilling down his chin onto the plastic giraffe clutched tightly in his fist. Lila sees chubby, flushed cheeks, angelic blue eyes and a full head of curly blond hair, just like his mum’s.

‘He’s teething,’ Marissa says, somewhat apologetically. ‘Hey,’ she adds, with a broad smile, ‘I bumped into Jen a few months ago. She told me that you were expecting too. Congratulations. And where is your little bundle of joy today? Don’t tell me you’ve managed to escape for a few hours?’

Lila hesitates. A tight knot of dread forms in her belly. ‘Yes,’ she says quietly, ‘I escaped.’

Marissa smiles. ‘Lucky you. Love ’em to bits but it’s nice to get a bit of time on your own, isn’t it?’

Lila nods and tries to swallow.

‘Boy or a girl?’

‘A . . . a girl.’

‘Ahh . . . lovely. Bet you’re over the moon.’

Lila nods and looks around in panic.

‘Her name?’

‘Milly.’

‘Lovely. Hope she’s a good sleeper.’ Marissa eyes her carefully. ‘I’ve never been so tired in my life but these bags under the eyes are like a badge of honour, right? Just like those damn stretch marks.’ Marissa grins and Lila swallows. ‘We should get them together for a play date sometime. What do you think?’