The Summer We All Ran Away (14 page)

“Before what?”

She shrugged. “Before somebody let it out.”

Davey stared down at the powerful muscles beneath the sleek black hide. “They m-m-m-must have been insane.”

“Maybe they didn't want it to starve.”

“Why would it starve?”

“If you're living in a fucking prison,” Priss murmured, “you've got to be sure someone's going to keep feeding you.”

Thirty feet below, the panther yawned and stretched. Then it rolled onto its back, writhing from side to side in ecstasy as grit scratched deliciously up and down its spine.

Priss and Davey watched in fascinated terror.

Time passed. For hour after hour, the panther dozed contentedly in the sunlight, occasionally moving to follow the path of the sun. Priss slid her hand into Davey's and held tightly to his fingers. They gazed and gazed, hypnotised.

Davey's legs were cramped. He eased his left leg out from beneath him, then his right. Priss glanced down. The panther appeared to be asleep, and she followed his example. The panther's ears twitched, but it did not wake.

“We should go,” Priss whispered. “While it's sleeping.”

“What if it wakes up and comes after us?”

“What if we stay here till it gets dark and it comes after us?”

“It might go away again.”

“Would you rather walk through those woods knowing where it is? Or would you rather wait till we've got no fucking idea?”

“But - ”

“You scared?”

“Of course I'm bloody scared!”

“Yeah, me too. Come on, then.” She stood cautiously, her eyes fixed on the panther. “Ready? Three. Two. One. Go!”

Together they raced down the path. A pigeon flew out of the bushes in front of them, its wings clapping, and Davey was mortified to hear himself give a half-choked scream. Priss gasped, “Jesus Christ and all the little angels dressed in fuckin' frilly
nighties,”
and stumbled into him. Even in his terror, he was aware of the soft warmth of her through her clothes. Then they were running again, tearing through brambles and shrubs, sweat cold on their backs, bursting out into slanting sunshine and what felt deceptively like safety as they dashed across the lawn, in through the veranda windows
and back into the kitchen.

“Fuch me,” said Priss, when she could speak again. “I really thought - ” her breath came in deep shudders. “I thought - ”

Davey wrestled with the veranda doors. They were warped and reluctant to close. He jammed a chair beneath the handles, wondering if that would do any good. Priss looked very small and fragile. He felt a surge of protectiveness. Maybe he should kneel beside her and put an arm around her shoulders. He could hold her against his chest, maybe even kiss her. He felt the sweat break out on his palms. The taunts of the boys at school –
D-d-d-Davey, never had a g-g-g-girlfriend
– it was time to act, this was ridiculous, he just needed to man up, as they said, and kiss her and get it over with.

“Are we interrupting something?” Kate sounded amused. Davey jumped half a foot, and wished he could stop himself from blushing. Priss' face was radiant with relief.

“Thank fuchin' Christ you're alright,” she said.

Kate looked at her blankly. “Why on earth wouldn't we be? We saved you some dinner, did you want some? And is there a reason you're barricading us inside?”

“We, um - ” Davey had no idea how to begin.

“Don't shut Tom and Isaac out, though, will you? Oh, there you are. Priss and Davey are sealing off the exits. I almost don't want to ask what's going on. It's bound to be a disappointment.”

“We n-n-n-n-need to tell you something,” said Davey.

“What's the matter?”

“We, we saw a, a p-p-p - ” Davey hit the table in frustration. “Sorry, sorry we saw a p-p-p - ”

“It's okay,” said Kate, warm and reassuring. “Deep breath.”

“Oh, for fuch's sake,” said Priss wearily. “He's trying to tell you we saw a panther in the woods.”

Davey was appalled by Kate's reaction. The colour drained out of her face, turning it milky white, then grey. She swayed on her feet and put out a helpless hand into space. Tom led her to a chair. She smiled gratefully at him, but her eyes were
wild with shock.

“Oh, no,” she whispered. “No, no, no, it
can't
be. Isaac, it can't be, can it?”

Isaac came to sit opposite her at the table. After a minute, he took her hand and held it.

“It must be a mistake,” she whispered. “It can't be. How long do they live, anyway?” she shivered. “And what is there for a panther to eat?”

“Well, there's us, for a start,” said Priss. Tom frowned and shook his head. “What? I'm just
saying.”

Davey remembered the sheep's skull he had found. The animal he had seen in the enclosure was sleek and well-fed, gleaming like polished jet. It could roam for miles across the open moors; it could easily take a sheep, perhaps even a cow. The omnipresent rabbits as a little
amuse-bouche
, perhaps? The occasional unwary walker, dreamy or drunk or both, stumbling across the grass.

“Are you sure that's what it was?” Kate asked. “Oh, Priss, I'm sorry, but - there's no way it could have been a cat, or something?”

Priss snorted. “If I ever meet a cat that size,” she said with feeling, “I'll give up cursing and join a fuchin' nunnery.”

Kate buried her face in her hands.

Evening melted into night. Rainclouds came scudding in across the moors and drenched the garden in dampness. By unspoken consent, they huddled gratefully in the library. Priss chewed furiously on the end of a pen. As Davey watched her, she bit right through the end and spilled ink out onto her tongue. She spat into her hand and swore, then wiped it on her jeans. Kate grimaced, reached into her sleeve and passed her a tissue. Unexpectedly, Davey felt his heart contract with longing for his mother. He really ought to write, properly this time. Let her know he was alright, tell her he was sorry.

The rain rattled against the window, and he felt the cold deep in his bones. The light that morning had begun to take
on that slanted, smoky quality he associated with autumn and bonfires.

What would this house be like in the winter?

Tom, Kate and Isaac were conducting a low, eloquent argument that grew gradually louder. Priss scooched herself along the steps and leant against him.

“I'm freezing,” she told him. She picked up his arm and draped it across her shoulders, then snuggled into his armpit. “That's better. Why are men always warmer than women?”

Every inch of Davey's skin tingled. He didn't dare move. “It's going to be really cold here in winter,” he said, and swallowed. His voice sounded unnaturally loud. Was it okay to kiss someone with other people in the room? Was it
expected?
What if he did it wrong? Please God don't let him start sweating, she was right under his arm -

“It'll be fuckin' awful,” said Priss gloomily. “If we're both still here we should bunk up together.”

Davey's palms were damp. He was older than her, she'd expect him to be experienced.
D-d-d-Davey, never had a g-g-g-girlfriend -

“Hey, no need to panic, soft lad.” Priss sounded amused. “I wasn't asking you to shag me. Just keep me warm.”

“Um - ”

On the other side of the hearth, the argument was growing louder and angrier.

“I'm not letting you,” said Kate. She was standing up now, her brown eyes flashing in the firelight. “Do you hear me, Isaac? We've got to think of - well, of everyone.”

Isaac was on his feet too, inches away from Kate. His back was to Davey and Priss, but they could see his anger in his shoulders and fists. Davey wondered if Isaac was going to hit Kate, but she didn't seem intimidated.

“This isn't helping,” said Tom. He wasn't shouting, but his voice drowned out every other sound in the room, and brought Kate to a stuttering halt. “Isaac, Kate's sorry.”

“Don't you dare try and speak for me.”

“I know we're all angry,” said Tom, although he sounded almost unnaturally calm, “but that's because we're scared. Well, that's reasonable. But we can't start tearing into each other. We can't afford that. Okay? None of us can.”

Kate and Isaac were glaring at Tom. He looked back at them, totally unafraid. After a minute, they nodded wearily and sat back down.

“Is he going to make them do a group hug, do you think?” Priss whispered.

“Okay.” Tom sighed. “Priss, Davey, come over here, you need to be part of this too. What are we going to do? Are there any guns here, do you know?”

“You're going to
shoot
it?” Davey was appalled.

“We can't leave it hanging around,” said Tom.

“But - do you, um, know how to use a gun?”

Isaac cleared his throat, and passed Tom a small slip of paper. It showed a stick-man standing beneath a tree. On the branch above, a panther lay waiting to pounce.

“He's got a point,” said Kate. “You can't go yomping off into the woods like Davey Crockett, Tom. You'd be, oh God, you'd be on its territory. It'd know you were there long before you saw it.”

They stared at each other in gloomy silence.

“Maybe it's just passing through,” said Tom.

Priss looked sceptical. “It was poking around that enclosure like it was right at home.” She was watching Kate as she spoke. “You know, like maybe it had lived here before or something.”

“You said.” Kate stroked Priss' hair. “You must have both been terrified.”

“Do you think it might have lived here before?” asked Priss. She wasn't resisting Kate's caress, but she wasn't relaxing into it either.

“I'm not sure that matters, Priss,” said Tom. “The point is, what are we going to do?”

We could call someone
. The words hovered on the end of
Davey's tongue. Normal people would close the doors, alert the neighbours and phone the police. If they were brave, or possibly stupid, they would creep out to try and get photos, maybe even a video clip. Perhaps they would leave a joint of meat on the lawn to entice the creature closer. Perhaps they might call the press and wait for the junior reporter, eager and cynical, trailing a soundman and camera operator. In no sane, normal universe would the occupants of this house huddle inside and wonder whether they had access to firearms, and if they had a realistic chance of creeping up on a large predator and shooting it dead before it dropped down from a branch and broke their neck with its powerful jaws.

Davey knew how desperately he himself wanted to stay hidden. It simply hadn't occurred to him until now how desperate everyone else was to stay hidden too.

“Have we even got any guns?” asked Priss.

“What?” Kate looked at her blankly.

“Have we got any?”

“No, I don't think so.” Even by the kindly firelight, Kate looked tired. Davey could see the deep lines around her eyes, the beginnings of tiny vertical pleats around her mouth. This was how she would look when she was old and papery.

“So can we, like, build a trap or something?”

“And then what?”

“I don't know.” Priss was prowling around the floor. “Drop a rock on its head.”

“Were you always this violent?” asked Kate, with a faint smile.

“Someone's got to be.”

“Could we take it somewhere and release it?” suggested Davey.

Priss snorted. “In what? We haven't got a truck, soft lad. Besides, it probably weighs, like, half a fuckin' ton.
And
it'll be awake.
And
it'll just come straight back. My uncle took a cat twenty miles once, and three days later it was back on his doorstep like nothing ever happened.”

“Why did he take it?” asked Tom.

“It was his girlfriend's cat and it hated him. It used to piss in his shoes and jump off the wardrobe. If we catch it, we'll have to kill it.”

Davey winced. “I don't think I c-c-c-could. It's so beautiful. How could you hurt something so beautiful?”

“It's a man-eater!”

“You don't know that, it m-m-might not - ”

“So why the fuck were you running?”

“It's a hunter, that's what it's meant to do. We're supposed to be civilised.”

“You want to take the moral high ground with a big cat?”

“I just don't think it's alright to kill something just because it might want to kill you!”

“You're a waste of carbon,” said Priss.

“Look, we can't build a trap,” said Tom, cutting across the squabble. “No, really, Priss, we can't. Even if we managed to catch it we've got no idea what we'd do with it afterwards. I know you think you could kill it, but we're not taking the chance. Okay? Okay.”

“Sorry,” muttered Priss, looking ashamed.

Tom smiled. “That's alright. We're used to you. But thank you.”

“So what are we going to do?” asked Kate. She stood up cautiously, as if her bones ached.

“Shall I make a cup of tea?” suggested Davey.

“Oh, that'll fix everything,” said Priss. “Okay, I'm
sorry
, I'm just wound up - ”

“That sounds lovely,” said Kate, and took Davey's hand as he passed her. Her fingers felt very cold. He held her hand tightly for a minute to try and warm it up. When he turned away to go to the kitchen, he found Isaac was watching him.

chapter ten (then)

Davey had always been aware of the dramatic fissure in his mother's life. Photos of her in her early twenties showed a complete stranger. The woman in the photographs had long hair, changed jobs every six months, laughed, smoked, got stoned, drank herself stupid then danced herself sober. His mother wore her hair short and sleek, ate healthily, drank moderately, kept a lovely home, thought before she spoke. Loved her son fiercely. He knew she loved him. It was this knowledge that made everything else so difficult.

Most people presumed Davey's birth had triggered her transformation. “Having Davey was the making of Helen,” her parents told their friends, still defiantly proud of their daughter and her love-child even though almost everyone who knew them presumed Davey was James' son. Davey was possibly the only person in the world who knew that it was James who had carefully, patiently, tenderly groomed a struggling single mother into the beautiful wife he had always wanted.

He had a few vague impressions of the three years before James entered their lives (playing with saucepans on a dirty floor; staying with his grandparents; a new bedroom with a strip of peeling wallpaper that cast a frightening shadow), but his first coherent memory was the day they met.

They were in a café, having lunch and waiting for someone to arrive. Helen had explained they were going to meet someone special, but Davey was far more interested in
his sausage roll. He was picking the pastry off it to get to the tender pink meat inside. Flakes of pastry littered the floor around him.

“Davey,” said Helen, patting his shoulder. “This is James. Mummy's friend. Put that down and say hello, please.”

Davey put down the sausage roll and looked at the man. He wore a pink and white striped shirt beneath a dark grey suit. When he hung the jacket on the back of the chair, he revealed red braces, which Davey admired.

“Hi,” said the man. “I'm James.” He held out a hand. Davey looked, but there was no sweet in it.

“Hello,” he said, and went back to peeling his sausage roll.

“Doesn't he know how to introduce himself?” James demanded.

“He's only three,” said Helen.

“Time he learned,” said James.

Davey didn't like the threat in his voice. He didn't want to learn anything from this man.

“Put that sausage roll down,” said James.

Davey stuck his lip out mutinously, and continued to peel it.

“Stop it. You're making a mess. Someone's got to pick that up later.”

“Davey,” said Helen warningly.

Davey looked at her in surprise. This was how he always ate sausage rolls. What was the problem? “Do as he says,” she said.

Davey looked at the long, half-peeled column of pink meat clutched in his hand. He knew he should let go, but he couldn't make his hand obey. James' hands were coming across the table. The fingers of his left hand engulfed Davey's wrist. The fingers of the right made a flat paddle shape. They went up into the air. Then they came down in a sharp smack on the back of Davey's hand.

“Put it
down,”
said James.

Davey stared at James in hurt and disbelief. A grown-up
had hit him. Hitting was wrong. His mother said it, his grandmother said it, Mrs Milligan at playgroup said it. Hitting was wrong. As he remembered this, his disbelief dissolved into a slow triumph. Now his mother would tell the man off. He waited expectantly.

“You should have put it down when he told you to,” she said, her voice crisp and severe.

Davey felt dizzy.

“And pick up those bits off the floor as well,” said James, pressing home his advantage. “Go on. Get down.”

Davey glanced at his mother, certain that this time, she would defend him.

“Do as you're told,” she said.

And when Davey began to protest, his voice high and panicked, tears spilling over his cheeks, James took him by the arm, lifted him off the chair and dropped him on the floor.

“Do what your mother told you,” he said.

Davey glanced wildly around the café. The few grown-ups watching were nodding approvingly, telling James that he was doing the right thing, making the little boy clean up the mess he'd made, teaching him some manners.

Sobbing, Davey picked up shards of pastry and piled them onto his plate.

“Now sit down and eat the rest like a civilised person,” said James.

His voice was cold and reasonable, but for a moment they made eye contact, and Davey understood that this man –
James
– was enjoying this, that he was taking a great and horrible pleasure in forcing Davey to do his will. He was too young to know the word
bully
, but when he was older, he would look back on this incident and understand. He'd been hungry when he arrived at the café, but now he felt sick. He noticed that James and his mother were holding hands.

He spent the rest of the meal ingeniously peeling off minute quantities of the sausage-meat and concealing them in the paper napkin, praying his mother would come to her
senses and never, ever see this man again.

“I've got something exciting to tell you,” his mother said a few weeks later. She took him onto her lap and put her left hand on his knee. She was wearing a new ring, a blue-black stone flanked by two more stones like chunks of glass. Her hair had changed too. It used to be fair and wavy, long enough for him to twirl around his finger at bedtime. Now it was coppery brown and hung in a tidy, polished bell-shape just below her ears. He put his finger on the ring. It felt hard and sharp.

“James and I are getting married,” she told him.

James had been his mother's boss. This, like Davey's illegitimacy, was another inconvenient fact that his grandparents continued to take out of the closet long after its relevance had passed away. James himself liked to joke that he'd first seen Helen crawling out from beneath his desk, where she'd frantically been mopping up the coffee she'd just spilled. “I came back from a meeting,” he said, “gasping for a coffee, and instead I found this daft wench with a handful of paper towels and my favourite mug in two pieces.” A pause. “Fortunately she was a gorgeous daft wench.”

James was seventeen years older than Helen, something Davey didn't realise until he was much older. All grownups looked roughly the same age to him, and besides, James kept himself in shape, working hard at the gym and choosing clothes designed for young, sharp-dressing men. James was also unable to have children of his own. This was something he'd never officially been told, but had slowly absorbed over years of overheard fragments of conversations.

More than once, people said how fortunate it was that Helen already had a child when she and James met. “He's adopted him as his own,” his grandmother told a friend. “And there's not many men would do
that.”
The friend made approving noises. “And he's paying for Davey to be privately educated.” This said with a strange, pursed-lipped expression,
the words escaping around the edges.

“Well,” said the friend. “That's a very generous gesture.”

“James likes to spend money on the best.” Her tone conveyed both admiration and disapproval.

Davey resisted school with all the force in his seven year old soul. How could anyone not come home at night and sleep in their own bed, in their own house, with their own family? But apparently it was not only possible, but desirable, to spend four nights out of seven in a strange building with only other boys and teachers for company.

He begged his mother not to send him away. She insisted it was for the best. He told her he would die without her. She told him not to be ridiculous; he was a big boy and would have a lovely time. He cried and cried, provoking James to exasperation and finally fury.

The blow had seemed to come literally from nowhere, knocking him across the room and against the wall without any visible sign that James had delivered it. Davey, dazed and bleeding from a hard landing against an antique desk, thought for a moment he'd been the victim of an earthquake. He could only reconstruct the event from its aftermath, from his own injuries, and the bruises on James' knuckles. The sight of his stepson's blood on the carpet provoked an even greater rage. Davey was called an ungrateful little shit and banished to his room, before James did something he regretted. His mother came a few minutes later, bringing water and plasters.

“You need to understand what he's doing for you, sweetie,” she said.

Davey was transfixed by the sight of his blood, twirling in thin little strands in the water.

“It's one of the best schools in the country. Going there will give you opportunities.”

“I d-d-d-don't want opportunities. I want to s-s-s-stay here with you.”

“Well, you can't.”

“Why not?”

“Because I'm not letting you miss out on this!” Her voice made his head ache. “Because of James we're really well-off, he can do things for you I'd never be able to. My God, Davey, look at everything we've got now. Don't you remember what it was like? I had to borrow against my wages all the time, just to buy your nappies!”

This was an argument he could never win, because he couldn't remember what it was like to live without luxuries, without, sometimes, even the necessities.

“I don't want to go,” he repeated stubbornly.

“This is an amazing thing he's doing for you,” she said, and stroked his head. “When you're older, you'll thank him.”

How could she sit there and mop the blood from his head and still say this man was a force for good in their lives? He knew it was wrong for James to hit him. Why couldn't she see it too?

“He's a good man,” Helen said, and kissed Davey on the forehead. “He's not perfect, but he's good. And he's your father.”

“S-s-s - ” He paused and took the breath his speech therapist was forever reminding him to take. “Stepfather.”

“He wants to give you everything he never had. He doesn't want you to struggle the way he did. He's not perfect, but he's doing his best.” Her eyes begged him to understand. “Do you see that?”

“But - ”

“Just try not to provoke him,” she said. “Because you do provoke him, Davey. You act like you don't like him, and that hurts his feelings.”

That's because I
don't
like him
, Davey thought mutinously. But even at seven, he knew better than to say this aloud.

“And it hurts my feelings too,” she said softly. “Because I love you both so much, and I want you to love each other. It's so hard, feeling as if you both want me to take your sides. I want us to be happy
together
. All on the same side.”

That pierced him, because she was right. He did want his mother to be on his side.

“So is that settled, then?” she asked him, smiling. “You'll go to school like a good boy? And come home every weekend, and we'll have loads of fun?”

How could it possibly be settled? Had James hitting him somehow been the winning move? Was that really how their lives worked now? He opened his mouth to say
no, I'm not going, I'll never, ever go
, but then he thought again about his mother, stuck in the middle of him and James.

What if she didn't choose him? What if she sent him anyway? Would James carry him, kicking and screaming, in over the threshold?

“Yes,” said Davey, in defeat, and buried his face in his arms.

His life fragmented into four discrete territories, all terrible. When he was fifteen he discovered Dante's
Purgatorio
with its seven terraces of torment, and recognised it. There were the days at school, the lack of privacy, the constant tormenting presence of the boys who hated him and who he hated, the claustrophobic knowledge that you could never get away from each other, but would sit on the same table at dinner time and clean your teeth in the same bathroom the next morning. The nights at school, lying miserably awake in a room filled with the sounds and smells of other boys. The nights in his own bed, the passionate relief at being away from school ruined by the knowledge that respite was only temporary, the pressure mounting as the clock ticked inexorably round to 7:15 on Monday morning, the farewell at the doorway, the silent journey to the school gates. Finally, the never-ending tension and occasional explosion of those two dreadful days, the Saturdays and Sundays supposedly dedicated to ‘family time'.

“I heard about this new place from Alistair,” James said over his paper one Saturday morning when Davey was nine.
“Indoor rock climbing. I'll take Davey next weekend. Just the two of us. Give you some time to yourself. Buy something new, I'll take you for dinner.”

She has all week to herself
, Davey thought.
Why would she want the weekend alone as well?
He'd said this aloud once, and been slapped viciously around the head and banished to his room for ‘disrespecting your mother and not appreciating how hard she works looking after both of us'.

“That sounds nice,” said Helen.

Davey looked at her carefully. Did she really think it sounded nice? Was she genuinely pleased at the prospect of getting rid of her husband and son for the afternoon? Did she think they would have a nice time, or even a tolerable one? Or was she just being nice to James for trying, the way she was always kind about the models he made her in pottery? It was impossible to tell.

“Davey?” said James. “What do you think?”

He was always torn between the coward's desire to please, and the boy-child's urge to rebel against the man standing between him and his mother.

“Sounds g-g-g-good,” he said, trying to keep his voice neutral.

“You don't sound very keen,” said James.

“James,” said Helen warningly. Davey felt a quiver of mean pleasure that she was taking his side.

“A bit of enthusiasm would be nice. That's all. When I was your age I'd have loved anything like that. It costs a lot of money, if you're not going to enjoy it then maybe we'll not bother.”