When the child woke that Sunday morning, the thing was simply there, beside the window, as if it had always been. It had arrived during the night without sound, without fanfare. It had crept quietly between the rocking horse with its red saddle that Grandad had carved from hickory, and yesterday’s clothes, discarded in a pile, the wet clay from the wooded hills outside the house now caked hard along the seams.
It slithered slowly past the small shelf unit, with its rows of children’s books, the snow dome of a penguin, the cuckoo clock Aunt Nelly brought back from Austria, jagged and full of threat.
The child blinked hard.
Please. Not again.
Perhaps it was just a shadow, thrown by the flat morning light seeping under the drawn bedroom curtains?
A trick of the light?
A piece of jumper or a trouser leg, twisted freakishly?
Two blinks, three blinks—please God—and open . . .
No. It was real. Bigger than last time. Angrier, even, with a gaping mouth. A slice of light across the eiderdown from a gap in the curtains pointed straight at it like a dagger. The air in the bedroom felt chill.
Gripping the eiderdown, the child looked around. The clock said 6:34
A.M.
Nobody would be up yet. There was time, at least, to think.
The child emerged slowly from the warm sheets, slipped onto the ground, and stayed low, as if the thing were about to attack.
It seemed to grow as the child edged nearer. Until it was right there, face-to-face, spitting out its cool poison.
The child inhaled heavily. It was so much bigger than last time. It jaws gaped, revealing a tiny white spot within its depths. Where the poison came from.
That was new. The tiny white spot.
Without planning to, the child simply didn’t exhale again. It seemed to help for a moment, to hold the breath inside, as if controlling time. If there was no breath, no seconds counted away, time would stop, wouldn’t it?
Nothing would happen.
Mother would not see it.
The clock ticked into the silence of the room. Out here on the hill, a mile from the nearest road, there was nothing else to hear.
Ten, eleven, twelve, thirt—
It was no use. The child’s lungs protested. It was difficult to hold your breath when your lungs were screaming for extra oxygen to help you escape.
Bursting out the breath again in a panic, the child ran quickly to the half-open bedroom door, and poked one eye around the door frame.
The hall was still. The light along it receded until the kitchen door at the far end was just a blurred shadow. Three doors down, Mother’s door was firmly shut. A gentle snoring from the small room next door to it confirmed Father was not in there with her.
The child desperately looked ahead out of the picture window that ran the breadth of the long, one-story house. Father had said the window was there because people thought the view of the peaks beyond was pretty. That people would envy their family this incredible view.
They didn’t have to live here.
The urge to run out the front door to a safe place in the woods on the hill was tempered only by the fear of the woods themselves. The dark hollows and weaves of branches that liked to suck you in, and spin you around until you didn’t know where you were anymore.
Moving back slowly into the bedroom, the child shut the door gently.
There had to be something. Anything.
On the floor lay yesterday’s dressing gown.
On an impulse, the child bent down and flung it, as if it was burning hot, over the rocking horse. By tweaking the corners, you could cover most of it. You could trap its chilly poison behind a curtain of flannel.
What choice was there?
Otherwise, today would be like yesterday, but much worse.
Chapter 1
It was one of those days when you didn’t know what was going on. Just that something unexpected had happened. You could tell by the maverick puff of gray smoke that hung above the M40 motorway, the kaleidoscope jam of cars glinting under an otherwise blue sky; by the way the adults craned their necks out of windows to see what was up ahead.
Jack kicked his soccer shoes together in the backseat, feeling carsick.
“Where are we?”
“Nearly there. Oh, will you get out of the bloody way! What is wrong with these . . . ?”
He glanced up to see his mother glaring in the rearview mirror. Behind them in the slow lane, a truck jutted up the back of their car, its engine growling.
“Him?”
Kate shook her head crossly. “He’s right up my back,” she spat, clicking on her turn signal, and looking for an empty space in the adjacent lane.
Jack rubbed his face, which was still rubbery and red from running around the soccer field. The late May afternoon hot air that blew in the window was mucky with exhaust pipes as three thick rows of traffic tried in vain to force their way slowly toward Oxford.
“I can’t even see his lights now . . .”
A sharp spasm gripped Jack’s stomach. It made the nausea worse. He dropped his eyes back to his computer game. “Mum. Chill out. They probably have sensors or something to tell them when they’re going to hit something.”
“Do they?” She waved to a tiny hatchback in the middle lane that was flashing her to move in. “What, even the older ones?”
“Hmm?” he replied, pressing a button.
“Jack? Even old lorries, like that?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I mean, they don’t WANT to hit you, Mum. They don’t WANT to go to jail.”
Without looking up, he knew she was shaking her head again.
“Yeah, well, it’s the one who’s NOT thinking, that you’ve got to worry about, Jack. Last year, this British couple got killed by a French lorry doing the same thing—he was texting someone in a traffic jam and ran right over them. He didn’t even know he’d done it, they were so squashed.”
“You told me,” Jack muttered. He flicked the little man back and forward, trying to get to the next level, trying to take his mind off his stomach.
“Oh God—I’m going to be late,” his mother murmured, glancing at the car clock.
“What for?”
She hesitated. “Oh, just this thing at six.”
“What, the doctor’s?”
“No. A work thing.”
He glanced at her. Her voice did that thing again, like when she told him the reason she went to London last week on the train. It went flat and calm, as if she were forcing it to stay still. There were no ups and downs in it. And her eyes slid a tiny bit off to the right, as if she were looking at him but not.
A flicker of white caught Jack’s attention in the side mirror. He glanced up and saw the offending truck indicating to move in behind their car again.
He watched his mother, waiting for her to see it. His stomach cramped even worse. Perhaps it was the cramp that pushed the words out of his mouth.
“Mum . . .”
“What?”
He saw her glance at the truck’s flashing indicator in the mirror, and her mouth drop open angrily.
“Oh Jesus—not again . . . What the . . . ?”
Jack banged his soccer shoes together again, watching dried mud sprinkle onto the newspaper she’d put down in the back.
“Mum?”
“WHAT?”
When his voice came out it was so quiet, he could barely hear it himself over all the straining car engines.
“I could have come back in the minibus. You could have picked me up at school like everyone else.”
He saw her shoulders jar.
“It’s fine. I wanted to see you play,” she said, the shrillness entering her voice again.
“What, am I an embarrassing mum?”
“I didn’t say that,” he murmured into his computer game.
“Maybe next time I’ll come wearing my underpants on my head.”
She made a silly face at him in the mirror. He smiled, even though he knew that the silly face wasn’t hers. It was stolen property. He’d seen her studying Ben’s mum when she did it. Ben’s mum did it a lot, and it made them laugh. When Jack’s mum did it, it was as if the corners of her lips were pulled up by clothes pegs. Then two minutes later, they’d slip out of the clothes pegs, back to their normal position, where half of her bottom lip was permanently tucked under the top one, chewed by her teeth; her face set in a grimace that suggested she was concentrating hard on something private.
“It was nice to see Ben today,” she said. “Why don’t you ask him round soon?”
Jack kept his eyes on his game. After what she’d done to their house this week, he’d never be able to ask anyone around again.
“Maybe,” he muttered.
“Oh . . . there it is . . . Can you see?”
He leaned over and looked out the passenger side of the car and saw a flashing blue light around the bend to the left.
“Police,” he murmured, straining his head forward. “And . . . a fire engine.”
“Really?”
Her voice sounded like splintering glass. He sighed quietly and put down his game.
“Oh Mum . . . I’ve got something really good to tell you.”
“Uh-huh?”
“Mr. Dixon wants me to play reserve for this team he runs after school.”
“Does he?” She glanced at him. “That’s brilliant, Jack . . .”
“But I’ll have to train on Wednesdays after school, as well, so perhaps I can go to . . .”
In the mirror, he saw her eyes darted wildly back and forth between the blue light, and the truck now crossing lanes to sit behind them again.
His stomach was starting to feel as if it were strung tightly across the middle, like when he tuned the electric guitar Aunt Sass bought him for Christmas too high to see what would happen.
“MUM?”
Her eyes darted to him, bewildered.
“WHAT?”
“Why don’t you move into the fast lane? Lorries aren’t allowed in there.”
And she’d be farther away from the burnt-out car that was currently coming into view around the bend on the hard shoulder.
His mother stared at him for a second. Finally, her eyes focused back. Then the clothes-peg smile returned.
“Good idea, Captain,” she said brightly. “But we’re fine here. Don’t worry about it, Jack.”
He saw her force her eyes to crinkle at the sides, just like Ben’s mum’s did. Except Ben’s mum’s eyes were warm and blue, and set in burrows of laughter lines and friendly freckles. Jack’s mum’s eyes were still, like amber-colored glass; they sat in skin as white and smooth as Nana’s china, smudged underneath by dark shadows.
He knew his mum’s extra-crinkly smile was supposed to
reassure him that there was nothing to worry about. He was only ten-and-three-quarters old, it said. She was the grownup. She was in charge, and everything was fine.
Jack rubbed his stomach, and watched the truck with a careful eye in the side mirror.
* * *
Oh God. She was so late. She couldn’t miss this appointment. Now the motorway traffic had concertinaed into the city, and jammed that up, too.
Kate turned off the packed ring road, and sped down Cowley Road, through the backstreets of East Oxford, taking routes the summer tourists wouldn’t know. Bouncing over speed bumps, she dodged around shoals of cyclists and badly parked rental vans evacuating ramshackle student houses for the summer. Where there was only room for one vehicle down streets so narrow cars parked on the pavement, she forced her way through, waving with a smile at oncoming queues of drivers, averting her eyes from their mouthed insults.
“They’re here!” Jack shouted, as she made the last turn into the welcoming width of Hubert Street.
Shit. He was right.
Richard’s black 4x4 was parked in its usual gentlemanly way outside her house, leaving the graveled driveway free for her. A box of pink tissues on the dashboard announced Helen’s presence. Of course they were here. They would have been here at the dot of five. Desperate to get their hands on him.
“Certainly are,” she muttered, turning into the drive and braking abruptly in front of her side gate. She pulled on the hand brake harder than she meant to. “Right—run. I’m late.”
They spilled out of the car, hands full of plastic bags of
Jack’s school clothes, the empty wrappers of post-soccer snacks, and his homework folder for the weekend.
“Hi!” Jack called out, waving. Helen was mouthing “hello” from between Kate’s sitting room curtains, her indented two front teeth giving her a strangely girlish smile for a woman in her sixties.
Kate growled inwardly. Why hadn’t they waited in their car? That house key was for when they were looking after Jack. Not for letting themselves in when she was late.
Mentally, she tried to visualize what the house had looked like when she left this morning. What state were the toilets in? Had she tidied away her bras off the radiators?
Then, with the recoil of a trigger, she remembered what was upstairs.
Oh no.
Her cheeks burned. Dropping her eyes to the ground, she slammed the car door and locked it. She was supposed to tell them, before they saw it. Explain.
Keeping her head down, she marched after Jack to the front porch.
“Hello! Have you grown again, young man?” Helen called, flinging open the door.
“Not since last week, I don’t think, Helen,” Kate said. Why did she do that? They all knew he was small. Pretending he wasn’t was doing Jack no favors.
“Gosh, you’re going to be tall like your dad,” Helen laughed, ignoring her. She placed her arm round Jack, and led him through the hall to the kitchen.
“Everything OK, Kate?” she called back. “Traffic?”
“Yup. Sorry.”
Kate couldn’t help it. She gritted her teeth, as she turned to close the door behind her. “Let me take those.”
Rapidly, she ungritted them, and turned to see Richard striding toward her, his hands outstretched, without any apparent awkwardness at having let himself into his daughter-in-law’s house. His imposing frame filled the hallway. “How did you get on? Traffic?”