The Shadow Year (35 page)

Lila shivers and wraps the blanket more tightly around her shoulders. Over and over she turns the details in her head, until dawn’s pale fingers have crept over the surrounding hills and reached out to her with a cold embrace.

16

FEBRUARY

1981

Menacing grey storm clouds form above the valley over the course of a day and when night arrives it comes armed for violence. The gale has fixed them in its sights. It buffets the cottage, howls through cracks in the windows and slams any door left ajar. Everyone gravitates downstairs, drawn to the smouldering fire and the unspoken comfort of being together in number. Kat surveys the dwindling fire and directs a kick at the near-empty log basket. ‘Whose turn was it to fill this up?’ she asks.

‘I did it this morning,’ says Ben.

Simon and Mac just shrug so Kat turns her glare to Freya who sits hunched at the far end of the sofa, her face turned to the window. ‘Freya?’

She looks round, startled. ‘Yes?’

‘Were you supposed to fill the log basket?’

‘The what? The basket?’ She looks distracted.

‘Yes, was it your turn to fill it?’

‘I – I don’t know. Maybe.’

Kat sighs. ‘Oh forget it. I’ll do it myself.’

She stomps into the kitchen, past Carla who stands with her arms in a sink of washing up. ‘You’re not going out there, are you?’ she asks, eyeing Kat as she pulls on Simon’s heavy coat.

‘Someone’s got to. We need wood.’

‘Aren’t we supposed to be rationing what’s left?’

Kat nods. They’d all thought they’d chopped enough wood to see them through to spring but winter has been harsh and their stocks have depleted rapidly. What’s left on the ground is too damp to make a satisfactory fire – it smokes and spits and fails to catch. Kat isn’t quite sure what will happen when the last of the logs have been burned – no one seems to want to talk about that – but she gazes at Carla and raises an eyebrow. ‘You want to spend tonight of all nights without a fire?’

Carla turns back to the sink. ‘Fair point.’

The wind snatches the back door out of her hand, nearly blowing it off its hinges. She shuts it firmly behind her then heads across to the dwindling woodpile stacked beneath the eaves of the house where she fills the basket quickly, heaping up enough logs to see them through the night before dragging it back to the house. She finds Wilbur snuffling and snorting at the door and opens it a crack to let him into the kitchen, then pulls it shut again and turns her face into the wind. There’s something in the air – a crackle of electricity – the scent of violence – that speaks to her. Kat decides she wants to experience the full power of the storm, just for a minute.

Leaving the basket, she steps out from the shelter of the house and battles her way down towards the lake, where the wind whips across the surface of the water, billowing the reeds and bending them flat against the shore. She keeps walking, leaning into the gale with her arms outstretched until she is in the marginal shelter of the trees. Closing her eyes, she stands for a moment and listens to the storm roar like a jet engine across the lake. The cold air stings her cheeks and burrows deep into her marrow. All along the bank the trees creak and groan, branches crashing together like warring swords. She throws her arms wide again and howls into the night, filling her lungs with its icy breath, her cry instantly tossed away like a tumbling paper bag. In the face of such power she feels tiny and insignificant, but she feels alive.

A memory comes to her from somewhere, as if blown on the violent storm. ‘I’m just popping out, Kat. You be a good girl. Look after your sister . . . I’ll be back soon.’

‘Yes, Mummy,’ she says and tries not to cry as her mother shuts the door behind her, turning the key with a
click
in the lock.

For two days and two nights they roam the flat, filthy, hungry and abandoned. There’s the remains of a packet of biscuits and a box of cornflakes in the lowest cupboard with a handful of crushed cereal dust at the bottom of the polythene bag. Kat tips it out and they eat the crumbs straight from the floor. They are thirsty too, but Freya’s milk bottle is soon empty and they can’t reach the taps at the sink. Her sister’s nappy begins to smell bad. She takes it off and tries to clean her, but the mess goes everywhere. She wipes her as best she can with an old blanket and they huddle in their parents’ bed, cold and hungry. ‘Don’t worry,’ she says. ‘Mummy will be back soon.’ All that’s left to do is sleep.

The banging and shouting sounds like a gale when they come, a terrifying rattling at the doors and windows. ‘Open up, Mrs Thomas. We have a warrant.’ When she opens her eyes there are two strange, suited men standing in her parents’ room, staring down at them from the end of the bed. She snaps her eyes shut again in fear. ‘Shit, Mark,’ she hears one of them say, ‘the stupid cow’s only gone and left her kids.’

One of the men comes closer. She squeezes her eyes shut more tightly. ‘Are you OK, little one?’ he asks. ‘What’s your name?’

She doesn’t tell him, she knows better than that; she just screws up her eyes and wishes Mummy would come back, but when the cup of water is held out to her she can’t resist and she drinks it down quickly as the man smiles his encouragement.

‘You’re a brave little mite, looking after your sister like that. You’re a survivor, you are.’

There is an ambulance ride and clean white beds in a shiny hospital that smells of the cream she remembers once rubbing onto her sister’s grazed knees. When the nurse with the freckles comes back Kat asks, ‘Is Mummy in trouble?’

‘Ach,’ the nurse says, ‘don’t you worry about her. She’ll be just fine. We have to get you and your sister well first.’

As the wind tears at her skin and clothes, Kat remembers it all. She closes her eyes and another huge gust nearly knocks her off her feet. She staggers backwards a couple of steps, struggling to keep herself upright. From somewhere to her right she hears a loud splintering sound, as if a ship’s hull has ploughed across the lake and beached itself among the trees. Kat looks up and sees one of the tallest alders lean out of the gloom towards her. It is a giant pointing finger, teetering and groaning. She takes another step backwards and then watches in horrified fascination as the tree begins its long descent towards the ground, until it crashes at her feet like a huge white ghost conquered in battle.

Kat stares at the fallen tree. Just a few feet more and she would have been caught beneath its branches. She stares at it for a moment and then, exhilarated by fear and by the sheer extraordinary violence of the storm, she lifts her chin to the wind and laughs into the night sky. The man had been right; she
is
a survivor.

‘I was just beginning to get worried about you,’ says Carla as Kat enters through the back door, dragging the log basket behind her. ‘Survived out there then?’

‘Yes,’ says Kat with a slight smile. She’s already decided to let them discover the tree for themselves in the morning.

‘Did you find Wilbur?’

‘Yes. I let him in earlier.’

Carla nods. ‘Good. He’s probably stretched out in front of the fire with Freya, the lazy little pig.’

‘Let’s hope he doesn’t get too close. He’ll be crispy bacon if the boys have anything to do with it.’

‘Not if Freya is there.’

Kat nods. ‘Freya always did like a waif or a stray. She used to collect baby birds in shoeboxes and expect us to perform miracles on them. She didn’t understand that once they’d fallen out of the nest it was too late; better to leave them for the cats.’

Carla studies her. ‘You’re one tough cookie, did you know that?’

Kat shrugs. ‘It’s just nature, isn’t it? Survival of the fittest. That’s the way the world works.’

Carla reaches for a tea towel and dries her hands. ‘Kat, do you think Freya is OK?’

‘Sure.’ She waits a beat, her heart in her mouth, wondering if Carla has guessed.

‘She just seems so . . . so down. She’s like a different person to the one who arrived a few months ago. Have you noticed?’

Kat isn’t sure what to say. ‘She’s always had a tendency to be a little moody.’ The lie feels like a betrayal but she knows she has no choice.

‘Oh.’ Carla hangs the tea towel on a spare hook. ‘I guess I don’t know her as well as you. I suppose if she weren’t happy here she could always leave. No one’s forcing her to stay.’

‘No,’ says Kat and swallows down the lump in her throat. ‘So,’ she asks, trying to move the subject on, ‘if it’s not crispy bacon, what
is
for dinner tonight?’

‘Beans.’

Kat groans.

‘I know. It’s that or rice.’

Kat thinks for a moment. ‘Have we got any sugar or powdered milk left?’

‘A little of both.’

‘Jam?’

‘We’re down to the last two pots.’

‘How about we make rice pudding?’

Carla breaks into a smile. ‘You’re on.’

The wind snarls and claws at the house all night. Kat lies awake upstairs, tossing and turning, mulling Freya’s predicament over and over in her head. The more she thinks on it, the more she is eaten up by a creeping panic. They have left it too long. Carla already seems suspicious and soon Freya’s growing bump will be obvious to everyone. It doesn’t matter how many billowing nighties or floaty dresses she drapes herself in, soon there will be no hiding the pregnancy – not from Carla, not from anyone. Most importantly, Freya must be nearing the cusp of being able to have an abortion.

Kat has been wracking her brain trying to think of other ways to find the money to get Freya away from the cottage. Even if she can get an abortion for free she’ll need money for food and lodgings somewhere, at least until she’s back on her feet. But short of robbing a bank nothing has come to her. She’s sick of worrying about it; sick of trying to come up with a plan. Part of her wishes she would wake up one morning and find her sister gone but Kat knows that isn’t going to happen because Freya has nowhere to go. Meanwhile, time marches on and the baby inside Freya grows bigger by the day. Kat is terrified of them noticing – of Simon noticing – but she just doesn’t know what to do.

Bloody Simon and that
bloody
gun. If only he knew how one stupid decision might have jeopardised their entire future at the cottage. As she gazes up into the darkness she thinks of Simon and about how he might react when Freya’s secret is revealed. He will see more clearly than anyone how a baby will ruin everything. A crying, crawling, wailing, real-life baby – it will be nothing short of a disaster and the very thing that will fracture their life at the cottage. They will go their separate ways, back to the city, back to jobs and family. Simon will leave her without a backwards glance, heading to the safety of his affluent family with their big house and their fancy cars and Kat will be left with nothing; no job, no home, no Simon.

It’s as she turns it all over that the idea explodes in her mind. Simon. His family. She has been so afraid of him finding out, but why? What if he did know? What if he could help? If he borrowed the money from his parents, Freya could leave and the rest of them would be able to continue as before at the cottage, unimpeded. She plays the conversation out, over and over in her head and although she knows he won’t like it, she thinks she can convince him that it’s the only way for them to keep the cottage. Surely he owes them that much after the part he’s played? She can’t carry this on her own any more. She needs his help.

Kat listens to the raging wind and rehearses her argument over and over in her mind, sleep only coming to her as the ailing wind lowers its snarls to a low, faltering moan.

It is Ben who discovers the tree. His crow of delight wakes Freya, who shuffles to the window, still wrapped in her bedding. ‘Come and look at this,’ she says from the window sill.

Kat is groggy from lack of sleep but she joins her sister at the window and looks out across the vista to see Ben standing with one foot resting on the massive trunk, his hands clasped above his head in the victorious stance of a hunter claiming his kill. The tree looks even more impressive in the cold light of day. She shivers and turns to face Freya. ‘How are you feeling?’

Freya blushes and reaches down to finger one of the white stems of honesty in the jug on the sill. They never openly talk about the pregnancy but she seems to understand what Kat is asking. ‘I don’t feel sick any more.’

Kat swallows. The morning sickness has passed which must mean the pregnancy is progressing. They are running out of time. She knows she must talk to Simon – today.

‘Shame we don’t have a chainsaw,’ says Simon. ‘We’ll never get a handsaw through this trunk, but at least there are all these dead branches we can remove. There must be enough wood here to see us through to summer.’

Kat stands beside him and eyes the tree. She can still hear the echo of its deafening descent. She circles it slowly and notices the gnarled knot halfway up the huge trunk where the bark has puckered into an unusual oval shape, with another darker whorl inside, reminiscent of the iris of an eye. Hanging from one corner is a dark teardrop stain marking the bark. She traces the imperfection in the wood with her fingers, marvelling at how closely it resembles a weeping eye. She would point it out to Simon but he is still talking. ‘If we move as much of it inside as possible it will dry out pretty quickly,’ he adds. Kat nods and he turns to her. ‘Are you OK? You’re very quiet. One of the others can help instead if you’re not feeling up to it.’