The reporter’s foot remained on the doormat, effectively stopping Mum from closing the door.
‘Right! I warned you.’
Click!
Flash! Snap! Flash!
‘Oww!’ The reporter yelped and jumped back as the heel of Lydia’s mum’s shoe found his instep. She slammed the door shut so hard that the glass in the door rattled violently.
‘He’s lucky your dad wasn’t at home,’ said Mum after a lot of muttering under her breath.
‘Mum, will Lydia’s picture be in the papers?’ Danny’s voice was scared.
‘Of course not!’ Mum snapped. ‘As soon as Frankie comes round, she’ll tell everyone it was an accident and that will be that.’
‘What happens if she doesn’t come round?’ Lydia whispered.
Mum didn’t reply. Lydia ran to the window in the front room. She watched the reporter and the photographer – a slight woman with short cropped hair – walk slowly away from the house. The photographer took a few more photos of the house before shaking her head and saying something inaudible to the reporter. Lydia continued to watch them as they got into their car and drove away.
Lydia went back out into the hall. ‘Mum, I know you only tried half an hour ago but . . .’
‘I was just about to,’ Mum smiled. She went over to the phone and started dialling. ‘Hello? . . . Yes, I’m phoning about a girl called Frances Weldon. She was knocked down and taken to your hospital? . . . Yes, that’s right. I just wondered how she was doing?’ There was a long pause. Lydia hardly dared to breathe. ‘No, I’m not family,’ Mum admitted reluctantly. ‘But my daughter . . . Oh, I see. Well, could you just tell me if Frances has regained consciousness yet . . . ? Right . . . OK. Thank you. ’Bye.’
‘Mum?’ Lydia whispered.
‘Frances is still unconscious,’ Mum replied.
‘Is she going to die?’
Lydia’s heart lurched violently at Danny’s question, leaving her with a dizzy, nauseous feeling. She didn’t wait for Mum’s answer, but turned away and walked back into the front room. She sat down and curled her legs under her.
‘No, Danny, leave her be. Lydia wants to be alone for a while,’ Mum said softly.
Danny ran upstairs to his bedroom, while Mum disappeared into the kitchen to start a late lunch. Lydia heard pots and pans being banged and bashed and clattered and kitchen cupboard doors being slammed shut. Upstairs, Danny started playing his radio at a volume that soon had Mum hollering up the stairs for Danny to turn it DOWN!
Lydia closed her eyes. There was Frankie losing her balance, her arms spinning frantically. Then they spun more and more slowly until Frankie was moving in slow motion;
falling
in slow motion. And through it all was the high-pitched screech of brakes, a sound so unbearable that Lydia put her hands over her ears but still it wouldn’t go away. Lydia opened her eyes and shook her head as if to shake the image right out of her mind. It didn’t work.
The long empty minutes dragged by as Lydia sat statue still in her armchair, watching the empty road.
Please let Frankie be all right. Please let her wake up. Please . . .
The words played over in Lydia’s head like an iPod track on repeat.
Unexpectedly, the phone in the hall rang, making Lydia jump. Danny came charging down the stairs.
‘I’ve got it, Danny.’ Mum beat Danny to it. ‘You can go and turn that music down so I can hear myself think.’
Mumbling under his breath, Danny charged back up the stairs.
‘Hello? . . . Hang on a minute. DANNY, TURN THE VOLUME DOWN OR I’LL TURN IT OFF!’
The noise from Danny’s music was instantly reduced to a distant hum.
‘That’s better!’ Mum muttered. ‘Hello? Sorry about that. Hello?’
Lydia didn’t pay much attention to Mum’s conversation until she heard Mum say in a shocked whisper, ‘Who
is
this?’
Lydia went out into the hall.
‘Who are you? You’ve no right to say such things. You’re sick!’ Mum was livid. She was clenching the phone’s handset so tightly that Lydia wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d snapped it in two. ‘You’re a sick scumbag who needs help. I suggest you phone your doctor but don’t phone here again.’
Mum slammed the phone down so hard that the telephone table rocked for a good few seconds.
‘Who was that, Mum?’ Lydia asked.
‘No one,’ Mum said, tight-lipped.
Danny started down the stairs.
‘Danny, go back to your room – now,’ Mum ordered.
For once, Danny didn’t argue. Mum’s tone made it clear that now wasn’t a good time to whine at her. The phone rang again. Mum snatched it up.
‘Hello?’ Her voice was granite-hard. Mum listened for a few seconds, then slammed the phone down without saying a word. Time stood still as she and Lydia regarded each other. Lydia didn’t know who’d phoned but she could guess what they’d said. It had to be really bad to make Mum see red like that.
A key turned in the front door. Dad stepped into the house. His expression was something to see. Lydia had never seen him so blazing angry.
‘Have you seen the car?’ he asked without preamble.
Without a word, Mum stepped out of the house after Dad. Lydia followed them, a few steps behind. She got to the gate and gasped, horrified. Thick white paint had been thrown all over the bodywork of Mum’s and Dad’s gleaming new midnight-blue car. It covered the bonnet, the windscreen, the roof; it was everywhere. Lydia watched as drops of white fell past the mudguards onto the road. The drops seemed to beat time –
drip, drip, drip
. . .
Lydia looked around. Net curtains fluttered back into place.
‘Thank you all so much for making us feel so welcome,’ Dad called out bitterly. ‘Welcome to Tarwich!’
And Mum burst into tears.
‘Come on, Roxanne. It’s all right. Don’t let them get to you. They’re not worth it.’ Dad led Mum back into the house, his arms around her as Mum leaned against his shoulder. Lydia stepped aside as Dad and Mum walked back into the house. It was as if she wasn’t there – as if she didn’t exist. Dad didn’t even look at her. Lydia trailed behind them, lost in misery.
Look at all the chaos she was causing. All the unhappiness and destruction. Everyone would be better off without her. If she went away, everyone would be glad. No one would even miss her.
What am I going to do? Lydia wondered desperately.
What am I going to do?
And as she watched Dad take Mum into the living room, it came to her. The clearest, calmest thought she’d had in a long, long time.
Go, Lydia. Just leave. Get away.
Within moments, she had on her winter jacket and was out the door without saying a word to anyone. Raindrops began to spatter on her face, but Lydia didn’t care. She needed to get away – more than ever. Within seconds the rain was pelting down.
Lydia walked along, not going anywhere in particular. The rain beat at her, forcing her to turn up her jacket collar and clutch it tightly around her neck. She passed a bus-stop, just as a bus drew up beside it. Lydia glanced up at it. After a quick look around she jumped onto it, flashing her bus pass.
‘Where’s this bus going?’ Lydia asked.
The bus driver raised her eyes heavenwards. ‘Tarwich Moors West. It says so on the front of the bus. Can’t you read?’
Lydia walked to the first empty seat and sat down. She turned her head to stare out of the window. She was glad it was raining. She wanted it to rain. She wanted it to pour.
The clouds above were almost charcoal-grey now, yet bathed with a strange yellow light. Huge droplets slapped against the window. They danced into each other as they ran down the grimy windowpane. Lydia squeezed her eyelids tight shut, trying to stop her cheeks from getting any wetter. It didn’t do much good.
Lydia had never felt so tired. So tired and alone and lonely. She opened her eyes and leaned her head against the cool windowpane. The bus meandered through the Tarwich streets on its way to the moors. It chugged to a halt by a bus-stop outside a baker’s shop.
I hate you
. . . Lydia directed the thought at the shop. And I hate that bus-stop and I hate this bus and I hate everything in Tarwich. And I’ll get back at all of you, the whole town. All the people and everything in this rotten place – you just see if I don’t.
The rain pelted down harder as if goading her on.
The bus continued on its journey until there were the moors, stretching out as far as the eye could see. The rain was teeming down now. Lydia rang the bell and sprang up. She moved to the exit.
‘Are you sure it’s here you want, love?’ the bus driver asked with concern. ‘There won’t be another bus along for at least half an hour.’
‘This is my stop,’ Lydia replied.
The bus driver opened her mouth to argue only to snap it shut again. With a sigh, she stopped the bus and with a hiss the doors flew open. Lydia stepped down and watched the bus move off until it was out of sight. In seconds her whole face was wet from the relentless rain. Lydia sighed. Now that she was here, she wasn’t quite sure what she wanted to do next. With another deep sigh, she decided to walk over the moors for a while. She wouldn’t go too far by herself – she’d been warned about how easy it would be to get lost on the moors – but she wanted to get off the road. The thought of meeting anyone . . .
‘Please, God, please let Frankie be all right,’ Lydia begged.
It
had
been an accident. Lydia hadn’t wanted anything to happen to Frankie. But now everyone thought she’d been responsible for Frankie getting knocked over. Gossip and innuendo travelled around the small town of Tarwich quicker than summer lightning. And when Frankie woke up she’d probably say the same thing as Anne. Lydia burned with hatred for everyone and everything around her. She gulped back a sob when she remembered all that paint on Mum’s and Dad’s car . . . and the phone calls . . . and the net curtains fluttering . . .
Everyone in Tarwich was so nasty – cruel and nasty.
If only she could just stop the world for a moment, just long enough to catch her breath and think. If only . . . But what good did ‘if only’ do?
The ground beneath Lydia’s feet grew softer and stickier as she left the road and started out over the vast moors. The rain lashed at her face and the wind howled like a banshee. Lydia was bent almost double as she struggled against the wind. And still she walked on, letting her feet choose her path as she tried to figure out what she should do next.
Please let Frankie be OK
. . .
Please let her say it wasn’t me
. . .
Would that reporter really put pictures of her and her house in the
Tarwich Mercury
? Maybe Mum and Dad would lose their jobs because of her? Maybe Mr Simmers would believe that she really had wanted to hurt Frankie – or worse still,
kill
her . . . Maybe . . . Lydia bit down on her bottom lip – hard. She’d had enough of maybes and if onlys.
She rubbed a weary hand over the back of her neck. A sudden flash of lightning made her jump. It was almost immediately followed by a deafening boom of thunder. Lydia looked up at the sky. The charcoal clouds made the sky almost as dark as twilight. It couldn’t be that late already. Surely she hadn’t been walking for that long? Rain-water ran into her eyes and over her lips into her mouth.
Lydia straightened up to get her bearings. She gasped. The strange, swirling colours she’d seen in the car-park were back . . . They filled the sky ahead, moving ever closer towards her. But directly above her the sky was still dark grey. The rain-water running into her eyes made everything around her swim and blur. Lydia blinked heavily and turned to try and spy the road. What was that in the distance? It had to be the bus-stop. She thought she saw it, way over to her left. She couldn’t have walked so far away from it – could she? Lydia headed towards it, keeping her eyes on it. She didn’t even want to look at those strange colours in the sky any more. Ahead, it was getting darker. With each step she sank up to her ankles in mud. The rain battered at her, making her face tingle, almost hurting her skin.
Then came a thudding sound, so faint at first that Lydia could hardly distinguish it from the rain. The sound came out of nowhere. Closer and closer it came. Closer and closer. The thudding changed to a pounding. Lydia looked in the direction of the noise. Through the dark sheet of rain she saw something making for her at great speed. Lydia opened her mouth to scream. The next moment a moor pony crashed into her as it galloped by in a panic. The force of the collision spun Lydia violently around and the ground came up rapidly to meet her. Lydia felt herself falling. She felt a sudden, sharp pain as her head hit the ground, but the falling didn’t stop. Round and round Lydia spun like an autumn leaf dancing with the wind. And then she was falling through all the colours in the sky. Lydia’s last thought before darkness closed over her mind was that the strange, swirling storm had trapped her. Would it ever let her go?
Chapter Ten