The Shadow Year (2 page)

‘Bloody hell,’ exclaims Tom, one hand to his chest, ‘for a second . . . I thought . . .’ He shakes his head then stares at her. ‘What are you
doing
?’

‘What does it look like? I’m taking a bath.’

Tom runs his hands through his hair. ‘Sorry, you scared me, that’s all.’ He takes a deep breath, loosens the knot of his tie then tries again in a steadier voice. ‘How was your day?’

‘Fine.’ She reaches for the flannel. ‘Yours?’

‘Fine.’ He hesitates. ‘Did you get out?’

‘Yes, I went to the park. It was nice.’ She can’t quite meet his eyes and busies herself instead with scrubbing her face.

‘Good.’ He smiles. ‘Did you talk to Suzie about work?’

Lila nods.

‘And?’

‘It’s pretty quiet at the moment.’ The water is cooling. Lila sits up and wraps her arms around her knees, rests her chin on top of them. ‘Most of our clients are cutting their budgets . . . she says I should take as long as I need.’

‘That’s good.’ Tom looks about the bathroom, his eyes landing on the key on the sink ledge. ‘What’s this?’ he asks, reaching for it and testing its weight in his hand.

‘It came today.’

‘What’s it for?’ He takes up the envelope and papers beside it.

‘I don’t know.’ Lila tries not to feel annoyed that he’s reading her private letter without asking permission.

‘Who are Messrs Gordon & Boyd?’

‘A solicitors firm, I think.’

He looks up from the typed sheet of paper. ‘Is it something to do with your father’s will?’

‘I don’t know,’ she says, trying to keep her voice even. ‘I don’t think so. It’s a different firm.’

Tom stares at her, the exact way she’s seen him stare at a stranger, trying to size them up, figure out if they’re friendly or hostile. He shrugs and places the key back on the edge of the sink where he found it. ‘OK. I’ll see you downstairs?’

‘Sure,’ she says, and she watches him go, waits for the door to close behind him before she twists the hot tap on again and slides once more beneath the surface of the water.

They eat dinner together in the kitchen, Lila in her pyjamas, her hair damp from the bath, Tom hunched over his plate, still wearing his crumpled work shirt and trousers. ‘Did you see anyone today?’ he asks at last, breaking the silence.

‘No.’

‘Make any plans for tomorrow?’

She shakes her head.

‘Mum says she’s going to give you a call. She’s wondering if you fancy meeting her in town later this week?’

She eyes him carefully. ‘I don’t need you making arrangements for me, Tom.’

‘It’s not like that. She wants to see you.’

Lila raises an eyebrow before returning to the food on her plate. She’s not hungry but she pushes the chicken around, tries to make it disappear by cutting it into smaller pieces.

He sighs. ‘Lila, I get it. First your dad’s heart attack . . . then . . .’ He can’t say it and she can’t meet his eye. Tom clears his throat and tries again. ‘I just don’t think it’s healthy for you to shut yourself away all day. You’re grieving, yes, but you might feel better if you got out and about, if you saw a few friends.’

She shakes her head. ‘I’m fine. I told you, I went to the park.’

‘Yes, but just drifting around on your own isn’t—’

‘Tom,’ she warns, ‘stop trying to organise my life. Stop trying to
fix
me.’

He throws up his hands and they both turn back to their plates, nothing but the occasional scrape of cutlery to break the silence.

‘So what are you going to do about that letter?’ he asks eventually. ‘Seems very odd, if you ask me.’

Lila nods. ‘I know. Why would someone leave me a piece of land?’

‘It could be part of the settlement of your dad’s estate?’

She shakes her head. ‘I don’t think so. That was all wrapped up a few weeks ago. I received some money but there was no mention of any land. Besides, the letter says this is an
anonymous
gift.’

Tom frowns. ‘Did you look at the map? It’s a sizeable plot. Do you know the area?’

‘No. It looks very remote . . . up on the edge of the Peak District. I’ve never even been to the Peak District before and I certainly don’t know anyone from around there.’

The furrows in Tom’s brow deepen. ‘You should call the solicitors’ office tomorrow – try to find out a bit more. They must be able to tell you
something
.’

‘Yes.’ She scrapes the remains of her uneaten dinner to the side of her plate then lays her cutlery carefully in the centre. ‘I suppose if that fails I could just head up there and take a look for myself.’

Tom’s hands fall still, his knife and fork hovering over his plate.

‘Why do you look so surprised? I’ve got the map and that key. What would be the harm?’

Tom purses his lips. ‘It all just seems a bit odd.’

‘We could go together,’ she tries. ‘This weekend . . . or the next. It would be good to get away, even for just a little while.’

Tom hesitates. She can see that he is surprised by her sudden desire to
do
something and knows it must seem strange when she has spent the last couple of weeks holed-up at home, doing very little of anything besides sleeping and crying and wandering aimlessly around the house. But somewhere new and remote . . . somewhere no one knows them . . . somewhere where no one knows what’s happened is strangely appealing.

But he shakes his head. ‘I can’t go anywhere – not until I’ve had my latest design passed.’

‘Well,’ she says, dropping her gaze to the table, ‘I can always go on my own.’

‘No,’ says Tom quickly. ‘I’d like to come. Give me a week or two and I’ll come with you.’ He pushes his plate away and smiles at her. ‘You’re right, it might be fun. A complete change of scene . . . an adventure.’

‘OK,’ agrees Lila. ‘I’ll wait. A week or two.’ She reaches across for his plate, stacks it on top of her own and then carries them over to the bin where she dumps the remains of their uneaten dinner into the rubbish. Neither of them, it seems, is terribly hungry.

Later, in bed, Tom reaches for her and tries to pull her close. His fingers connect with the bruises on her ribs and she inhales sharply. ‘Sorry,’ he says, ‘does it still hurt?’

‘Yes.’ She rolls away from him and stares into the darkness. Of course it still hurts. She is afraid it will always hurt, that the pain lodged in her chest is never going to go away.

‘Sorry,’ he murmurs again.

She can feel him shift on the mattress and knows that he is lying on his back staring up at the ceiling. They are only inches apart, but somehow the distance between them feels immense. There is still so much they haven’t talked about – so much they haven’t faced. Words and scenes arrive unwanted in her head. She pushes them away and tries to focus instead on the gradual slowing of Tom’s breath.

She knows she won’t sleep. Her body is wired, her limbs restless, her mind galloping, but there is fear too – fear of sleep; fear of that sensation of tipping over the edge into darkness; fear of falling into oblivion. She waits until Tom is snoring gently, then slides silently out from between the sheets and tiptoes into the bathroom.

The bottle of pills is half full. The doctor has been generous with her prescription; she’d suggested she might stop taking them after a week or so, when the anxiety had begun to ease, but Lila’s growing accustomed to that slow softening sensation that creeps up and dulls the pain, that blurs the sharp edges of her mind, and so she twists the lid off the bottle and swallows another two pills with water gulped straight from the tap.

Downstairs, the letter from earlier still lies on the dining table, the key glinting beside it in the glow of a street lamp. As she waits for the drugs to do their work she pulls out a chair and reaches for the key, holding it carefully in the centre of her palm. Sounds of the city echo around her – a distant siren, high heels clicking quickly down pavement, the faraway bark of a dog – and as the darkest shadows inside her head begin to soften and fade, she finds herself wondering about the mysterious key – and about the lock it will fit into – and about what might lie behind the door it opens.

2

JULY

1980

They appear in the kitchen one by one, seduced by the sound of clinking bottles and the heady scent of marijuana, until all five of them are slumped around the lopsided wooden table, swigging beer and passing spliffs. Someone hits play on the squeaky tape deck and the opening chords to ‘Going Underground’ start up, blaring out into the hot, still night. A lighter flares in the darkness. An ashtray is passed. A bottle is opened. Hanging in the smoke haze above their heads is an air of waiting: waiting for a breeze, waiting to move out, waiting for
real
life to begin.

‘So I guess summer’s arrived,’ says Kat, swirling the remaining beer round and round at the bottom of her bottle. Her bare feet are propped on the edge of the table and she reaches up and lifts her damp, chestnut-coloured hair off the back of her neck, twisting it up into a knot before letting it fall heavily to her shoulders once more. ‘It’s
so
hot tonight.’

‘I saw some kids frying an egg on the bonnet of a car earlier,’ says Ben, sprinkling tobacco from a pouch along the length of a cigarette paper. ‘It looked pretty good. I’d have eaten it.’

‘Why am I not surprised?’ asks Carla, rolling her eyes.

A candle flickers on the table between them, refracting off the empty beer bottles strewn around and casting them all in a strange, weaving light. Kat plays with the loose threads on her denim cut-offs. ‘I suppose we should be grateful. It’ll probably be pouring rain again next week.’ She shakes her head in frustration. ‘We should be celebrating . . . doing something . . . not just sitting here watching eggs fry.’

Simon gives a low laugh from the head of the table and spins the lid of his beer bottle before him like a top. ‘You mean a last hurrah before we all head home to join the queues at the local job centre?’

‘Look at us,’ says Ben, licking the length of the cigarette paper and folding it with well-practised precision. ‘Illustrious graduates, class of 1980. Three years in this place and all of us qualified to do little more than roll a mean joint and hold our liquor.’ He twists the end of the joint then tears a small piece of cardboard from the cigarette paper packet, coiling it into a roach.

‘Speak for yourself,’ says Kat. She’s spent the last few weeks filling in job applications and received nothing but the curtest of rejections so far, but she’s still hopeful.

‘Besides, I’m still not sure Mac here can hold his drink.’ Simon nods across to where Mac sits slumped in the corner, his dark hair falling like a curtain across his face.

Ben laughs and snaps open his Zippo, puts the flame to the end of the joint and burns off the paper twist. Satisfied with his handiwork, he lifts the spliff to his lips and draws deeply, twice, until the cherry glows red. He takes another drag and then passes it on to Simon. Kat watches Simon inhale, the movement hollowing his face and exaggerating the high angle of his cheekbones. He tips his chin to the ceiling and exhales smoke in one long, steady stream above his head. He takes another drag and then passes it on to Carla. Kat is still watching him when he turns back to the table and catches her eye. He grins at her through the darkness.

The tape ends with a click. Kat stands to flip it over and when she returns to her seat, she notices how the candlelight has cast the five of them inside a golden bubble, the half-light masking some of the more unsavoury details of their student digs. Hidden out on the edges of the room are the lopsided electric cooker with its crusty hob, the ugly green damp patches blooming on the walls and the grimy cupboards with their ill-fitting doors hanging loose from hinges. Ben’s tatty poster of a leotard-clad Kate Bush has begun to peel away from the wall at one corner while somewhere near the open back door is the overflowing rubbish bin spilling empty crisp packets and beer bottles onto the sticky linoleum. Behind her teeters a stack of dirty pots and pans that they long ago lost the energy to fight about. Kat knows eventually that someone will cave in and that from experience it will probably be her or Carla. Beyond the candlelight all the detritus and decay of their scruffy student house lurks, but for now it’s just her and her friends and the music and the smoke haze hanging above their heads. Kat looks about at her odd, makeshift student-family and smiles. A golden bubble: she supposes that’s what they’ve been living inside these last few years at university.

‘Is he asleep?’ Carla asks, nodding her head in the direction of Mac.

‘Dunno. Mac!’ Simon leans across and pokes him in the ribs. ‘Mac, wake up.’

‘What?’ says Mac, flicking his hair out of his face and rubbing his eyes. ‘I’m awake.’

‘Sure you are.’

‘Don’t sleep,’ urges Carla. ‘It’s one of our last nights together. Let’s not waste it.’

One of their last nights together
. ‘Yes,’ agrees Kat quickly, ‘let’s not waste a minute. Let’s
do
something.’ She peels a long strip from the label of her beer bottle. ‘I mean, you’re all complete pains in the arse to live with and everything, but even I can admit I’m going to miss this.’