So perhaps it was nothing, then. Perhaps she had dreamed it in amongst her habitual nightmares.
She collapsed back on her bed, setting off a squeaking of bedsprings that could have come straight from the soundtrack of a dirty movie. Somewhere up the hill behind the house, a horse whinnied.
‘New York, New York. It’s a helluva town,’ she sang.
She hadn’t really believed her mother when she had said they wouldn’t be within sight of skyscrapers. For some reason – probably connected to her recently completed GCSEs and subsequent celebrations – she hadn’t bothered to look at a map, to see what she realised now must be the immense size and rural expanse of New York State.
Feeling the itch to explore her new surroundings, she got up again and found her washbag in her suitcase. As she crossed the room she made resolutions. Here, away from her peers, away from what everyone knew about her, she would begin to be the reborn Bella, the real Bella. She would put the past behind her, cross the line from teenager to adult and return happier, wiser and ready for a new start at college in the autumn. And she was going to put together a great portfolio of photographs of her time here.
She found the bathroom across the landing from her own room, and once inside was annoyed to find it had two doors: the one she had just come through and another opening on to her parents’ bedroom. Neither had a lock. As the only young woman in the family, she supposed she would have to devise and announce a system to make sure no one burst in on her. She peered through to her parents’ bedroom and saw her father, splayed out on his back, snoring, the tangle of greying red hair on his chest like some sort of crouching cat. She was grateful the sole sheet on his bed covered his middle section, because underneath he was clearly naked. Her mum wasn’t there, nor was Jack. She pulled the door tight shut then wedged an old chair from beside the bath up against the door to the hallway.
The bath looked filthy. It was old, roll-topped and small, with a rusty water-ring. The taps had dripped brown trails down the greying enamel. She would use the chipped showerhead for now, but she was going to have a word with her mum about the bath – no way was she forgoing her daily soak for a whole summer. But equally she was not going to lie down in that tub in its current state.
As she used the feeble shower, soaping herself with the special tea tree gel she had packed for her own personal use, she tried not to meet her reflection in the warped mirror propped on the wall opposite her.
The handle of the hallway door rattled.
‘Bella, you in there?’
It was bloody Olly.
‘What?’ she asked, eyes closed, shower overhead, shampoo – matching tea tree also – streaming down her face.
‘I need a crap.’
‘I’ll be ten minutes.’
‘Can’t wait.’
‘Shit.’ Bella quickly rinsed off and threw a towel around herself.
She barged out of the door, knocking into her brother.
‘Sor-ry,’ he sang as he rushed in.
She pulled on shorts and a vest – her specially purchased smart New York wardrobe wasn’t going to get much of a showing in Trout Island, she feared – combed her hair out, slipped on her silver flip-flops and went downstairs to see if she could find her mother. Instead she found the note on the kitchen table.
Great, Bella thought. Abandoned.
Seeing the cereals and milk on the worktop, she remembered she felt hungry, so she helped herself to breakfast. Shortly, she heard the toilet flush and Olly loped down the stairs to join her. He stuck his hand into the cereal packet.
‘Whoah, peanut butter cereals!’ he said, through a mouthful of Reese’s Puffs. ‘Wanna go out and explore?’
‘All right,’ she said. ‘What do we do about keys?’
‘There aren’t any. Mum asked last night. Jimmy boy said no one locks their doors around here.’
‘But this is America. Isn’t it meant to be dangerous?’
‘I know.’ Olly shrugged.
They wandered along Main Street, in the direction of the theatre. It was gone midday and the heat seeped through their bodies, slowing them down. They stuck to the shade of the large trees on either side of the road.
‘Man, it’s so old school here,’ Olly said, as Bella took a photograph of him in front of a tree bound by a faded yellow ribbon. ‘Not like I imagined.’
‘And where are all the people?’ Bella said, screwing her lens cap back on. Then she remembered. ‘Did you hear that air-raid alarm?’
‘Yeah. Woke me up.’
‘What’s that about?’
‘I reckon it’s just a practice. I read about it somewhere. All towns have them since nine eleven. In case of a terrorist attack.’
‘For real?’ Bella was never sure if Olly was bullshitting her or not.
‘Sure,’ Olly said, looking around.
‘So paranoid.’
They went past what they supposed was the village school, a wide, porticoed building opposite the theatre building. The grass at the front was overlong and in need of a mow. A forlorn collection of graffitied twisted slides and rubber swings stood to the side of the school, as deserted as the rest of the place. Bella wheeled around, taking pictures: click, click, click.
They sat on a couple of swings and dangled their feet, squeaking backwards and forwards in the heat.
‘And are they really suggesting we stay the whole fucking summer here?’ Olly said after a while.
‘I think it’s gone beyond a suggestion,’ Bella said.
‘And where are all the kids?’ He gestured at the deserted playground.
‘Away, I suppose,’ Bella said. ‘Or all slaughtered in some Satanic ritual. Oh my God, what’s that?’ She jumped off her swing and moved over to the edge of the playground, where dark oaks loomed up into the hazy sky, and thick, rank undergrowth crowded out the dusty earth. Olly came up behind her.
‘Yerk,’ he said as Bella leaned forward and pulled aside some foliage to reveal a gravestone.
‘There’s loads, look,’ she said, pointing out a second and a third,
‘A graveyard. By the playground,’ Olly said. ‘That’s not right.’
‘They’re really old, look.’ Bella read out the dates that hadn’t worn right away: ‘1876, 1899, 1840.’
They traced the graveyard round to their left until they reached a steep ridge overlooking a vast playing field. The dusty tracks worn into the baseball pitch made the place look even more forlorn.
‘Perhaps it’ll get better when the theatre starts up,’ Bella murmured, shielding her eyes from the glaring sun.
‘From what I’ve seen, I don’t think so,’ Olly said.
‘Or perhaps we’ll meet some people, make some American friends. There’s got to be some kids who live around here.’
‘That’s our only hope,’ Olly said. ‘Shall we move on? This place creeps me out.’
They wandered along Back Street, taking a turning along a street called River Road. Soon they found they were on a dirt track.
‘Ah, look, sweet,’ Olly said as they passed a dilapidated building whose front lawn was almost entirely covered in sunbathing kittens. Bella squatted to take a photograph as he went over to them.
‘Careful. That’s someone’s house,’ Bella said.
‘Nah, no one lives here. Look at it.’ Olly gestured at the broken fly screens, the litter on the porch and the general air of abandonment.
‘What’s that about, then?’ Bella said, pointing to a washing line full of grey vests and nappies. ‘I’ll bet they have a gun in there, too.’
Olly hopped back on to the path and they kept going. The houses petered out and they found themselves on a small sandy beach by a fast-flowing river.
‘Fancy a dip?’ Bella said.
‘Don’t they have alligators and water snakes here?’ Olly said.
‘I don’t think so.’
‘And they have catfish, and they bite really badly.’
‘Oh.’
They sat on the bank and looked at the river, inspecting it for critters. The movement of the light on the water and the sun beating down on her bare head sent Bella into a daze. She reached up and stretched like a cat, trying to work herself back to earth. Olly shifted and she stopped in mid-reach, feeling his gaze on her.
‘What?’ she said, turning to meet his look. ‘What?’
‘Jonny gave me this to give to you.’ He fished in his jeans pocket and brought out a crumpled, sealed envelope.
She sighed, and left the letter in his hand. ‘Don’t even try, Olly. It doesn’t do you any favours.’
‘What do you mean?’ He narrowed his eyes at her.
‘Stop it,’ she said. ‘Just fucking stop it. It’s over. I’ve finished with him. I know and you know he’s just your little puppet.’
‘That’s not true,’ Olly said, his cheeks flushing.
‘It is. He’d do anything for you. It’s
you
he wants, you know. Not me.’
‘That’s fucking disgusting.’
‘And you trying to control me through your gay little “best mate” isn’t?’ Bella was on her feet now, slapping the dust from her bare legs. ‘If there was ever anything between me and Jonny – and there wasn’t, not really – it’s over, Olly. And you’ve just got to get used to it.’
‘Bella.’ Olly grasped at her leg.
‘Don’t you fucking touch me!’ she shouted, jerking away from him. Then she ripped the letter from his hand, tore it unopened into two pieces and flung it into the river, which carried it away like the paper boats the two of them had made as children.
Olly jumped to his feet and grabbed her by the arms. ‘What did you do that for?’
‘Leave me,’ she said, fighting her way free from him. ‘You can’t do this, not any more. I’m my own person now.’
‘You think so?’ he said. ‘You think so? Well let me tell you, Bella. I’ve got my eye on you.’
‘And what’s that supposed to mean? You’re not my keeper.’
‘Just watch me.’ He took a deep breath, lowered his shoulders and said it again. ‘Just watch me.’
‘For fucksake.’ Bella had had enough. She snatched up her camera and headed off up the lane towards the village. But she knew he was behind her, and she could feel those eyes boring into her, all the way back to the house.
JAMES’S DIRECTIONS HAD ONCE AGAIN PROVED TO BE COMPLETELY
useless. In the end, Lara had to stop and ask the way of a Goth kid leaning against a buckled crash barrier on a bend in the middle of nowhere. By the time she got over the mountain to town, it was early afternoon.
Once she hit the town, Lara found Green’s pretty quickly. It was a massive structure with its name spelled loud and proud on its roof in Hollywood-style letters. Lara swung into a parking place near the front of the building. Like Trout Island and the road she had just travelled, the vast car park seemed to be practically empty. For a second she entertained a fantasy that the end of the world had arrived and she and Jack were the only survivors.
She opened the car door, almost having to push against the heat waves coming from the baking tarmac. Not only was it hot outside the chilled car, but the clouds had come down on this side of the mountain and the air hung damp and steamy as a Turkish bath.
‘Phew,’ Jack said, as she got him out.
She found a trolley and put him in the child seat. As they went through the automatic glass doors into the building, a blast of icy air struck them and Lara shivered with relief. Inside, the shop was vaster even than the colossal exterior suggested. But Lara was pleased to see actual people. Mothers with small children glided up and down acres of brightly lit aisles, filling their trolleys with packets and boxes and loud foil sacks. Muffled muzak added a surreal, trance-like quality to the place, reminding her of the gas station back in Trout Island. She steered her trolley into the first aisle and began to work methodically up and down to get her bearings, so she knew what lived where and how much things cost.
Her little boy was in Jack heaven, reaching out with want whenever he saw something that took his fancy: a shiny advertising balloon, a brightly coloured packet of biscuits. There was so much stuff in this store – so many different varieties of coffee and breakfast cereals, so many different types of juice. Lara’s brain tried to take in a whole hundred-yard wall of various blends: from sugar-free and made-from-concentrate, to not-made-from-concentrate, protein added, fibre added, organic, gluten free …
In the end, she settled for the things that looked familiar. She had enough on her plate without having to worry about her children turning their noses up at the unusual. So she piled the trolley with pasta, tinned tomatoes, dried beans and a delicious looking Italian sausage that could pass for a luxury British banger. She was pleased to find organic milk, having read horror stories about the amount of hormones forced down the throats of intensively farmed American cows. She didn’t want her boys growing breasts.
She put two six-packs of beer into the trolley. But when she asked one of the many uniformed employees on the shop floor where they kept the wine, he told her they didn’t sell it in supermarkets and she would have to visit the liquor store at the far end of the plaza. Her informant spoke slowly, as if she were somehow backward for not knowing this.
She stood for a while debating with herself whether she should buy a small but hideously expensive jar of Marmite. In the end she slid it into the trolley. Marcus wouldn’t last the summer without it.
Six weeks was a long, long time. A long time for making things right, and a long time to keep a young boy amused. She cruised the toy aisle and added a sketchbook and a colouring book, cheap watercolour paints, felt-tip pens and child-friendly scissors and glue. She didn’t want Jack getting bored, because that led to guilt on her part, and they had only been allowed one suitcase each on the flight, so she had brought just a couple of his essential toys with them. She also grabbed a ball, a hoop and something called a ‘whiffle ball set’ to the trolley.
Jack reached for the ball. She let him hold it.
‘Excuse me.’ A small, dark-haired woman with a tiny baby in a wire cage on the top of her trolley needed to reach the shelf behind Lara.
Lara moved along a little way and the woman reached up a toned, freckled arm to lift down a plastic tub of formula milk.
The baby slept, its wrinkled face closed like that of a dead little old man. Lara’s knees gave way slightly; she wavered as her insides contracted.