Undertow (18 page)

Afterwards they lie silently in the dark, their arms still holding the other, legs entwined; like a strange two-headed creature, she thinks
.

“I love you,” he whispers into her hair
.

And Het smiles, not just because of these three small words, but because, instead of emptiness, her heart is full, full to bursting
.

BILLIE

I COME
downstairs the next morning to find Mum eating cornflakes out of the packet like crisps. And I know that I can’t tell her about Will yet. About the folder. Or about Danny. The way I feel about him. The way he makes me feel. I know that I’m going to have to bury more secrets like beating tell-tale hearts.

But I have to tell her something. I have to do something to keep us here. Me here, with Danny. So I send Finn up to change his Batman pyjamas that he’s been in for two days. Tell him to shower, to clean his teeth.

“You’re not my mum,” he says. But even he knows that, right now, that’s exactly who I am.

So I sit down and do what I think a mum should do. I take her hand in mine and I tell her something. The only bit she needs to know right now. That we can’t afford to live here. That we have to sell it. Find somewhere smaller. Cheaper. With windows that keep the rain out and the heat in.

And I wait for her to shoot back. To tell me I’m talking rubbish. That we’re millionaires. That we can live on cornflakes and shortbread. But instead, she just squeezes my hand weakly, then pulls her own away.

“I’ll ask the estate agent to come, then,” I say. “To value it, I mean. I can go on the way to work.”

I look at her. At her face, pale and taut across her cheekbones, the skin grey. Her fingers shaking as she reaches inside the cellophane for another mouthful of cereal. And I know it’s not just an estate agent I need.

“I’ll call the doctor, too.”

That’s when she shoots. Her hand cracking on the table like a single gunshot. And a single word. “No.”

“Bu—”

“I’m fine,” she says. “I’m tired, that’s all. Tired. Not a bloody loony tune. Christ, Billie. See the estate agent, OK? Just do it.”

She stands and slams the cereal on the counter. Grabs the kettle and fills it noisily, the tap on too hard so the water ricochets off and soaks the tiles and her dress. She jumps back and drops the kettle in the sink. “Shit.”

“Mum?”

She raises one hand to her face, grasps the elbow with her other. And she starts shaking, her head bobbing up and down unevenly, gasps of breath sounding in time with the clock. It’s not until she turns to me that I see that the gasps aren’t tears, that the shaking isn’t her all racked with sorrow. It’s laughter. She is laughing.

“I’m sorry,” she pants.

“What happened?” Finn is back. Unshowered, but in clean clothes at least.

“Nothing, baby,” Mum says quickly. “I just had a little accident.”

“Ugh,” he says, looking at the darkening stain on her dress.

“Oh. God. No!” she says. “Not that. The tap. I was just—” But she’s off again. Laughing. Finn with her. Then she turns the tap on and they’ve got glasses and they’re throwing water over each other, over the table, the floor.

But not over me. I leave them to it and walk down the hill to town.

I expected the estate agent to be some fat cat in a pinstripe suit. Like the wide boys in Peckham, driving X5s and stinking of Versace, their blakeys tapping along the high street. But he’s not. He’s this thin, mousy, middle-aged man in a beige shirt and brown tie. Like he wants to disappear into the studded walls behind him.

“I need proof of ownership,” he says, like I knew he would. Because how often do sixteen-year-olds tell you they want to sell the family estate. So I hand him the title deeds and the letter. The one I got that day back at the flat, wrapped around the magic key. Not so magic now.

Except for Danny.

“Are you looking to move within the area?” he says.

“I…” I realize I haven’t asked Mum. Or told her. What if she wants to go back? Or needs to go back? If the ghosts are what’s killing her? But I can’t. I have to find a way. “I think so,” I say. “Yes. Yes I am— We are.”

“Well, here.” He hands me a wodge of papers; details of terraces and bungalows. Ones like Eva’s. Tight rows, opening out on to the street. No long gardens, no gates, no drawbridges. No more castles. That fairy tale is over.

“Thanks,” I say. “I’ll give them to my mum.”

But I won’t. I push them inside the ripped pocket of the Burberry. With twenty pence and a half-chewed piece of juicy fruit wrapped up in silver foil. And later I’ll put them under my bed, or in a drawer. Where she can’t find them. Not yet.

“So, just some twenty-four-hour thing was it?”

I nod.

Debs is outside the Laurels, a ciggie hanging on her lower lip while she talks, the smoke curling past the creases of her lips, up into the bleach of her hair. I wonder how old she is. Maybe the same as Mum. But she looks a decade more.

“You’re not supposed to be back for two days,” she says. “Case you give it to ’em in there.” She gestures behind her.

“But I—”

“Oh, it’s all right. I don’t give a monkey’s. As long as no one’s puking tomorrow. ’Cause if they are, it’ll be you clearing it up.”

I’m not sure if she’s joking, so I don’t say anything. Just turn and walk up the steps, push open the double doors, feel the blast of hot air and the smell of Irish stew.

The thing is, I want to work. Need to work. For the money, and the monotony. I need to do something. Or I’ll think about Will. And Mum. Be consumed by it. The awfulness and waste of it all.

I scrub tiles until my nails break the thin pink rubber of the Marigolds, until I can feel the Dettol-rich water soak into my fingertips, trickle up my arm. I vacuum invisible crumbs and cotton threads. And I lose myself in it, and in him.

I’m in Alex’s room, cleaning the toilet, when I hear his voice behind me.

“I never said I was sorry.”

I jump. Look up from the cracked porcelain of the toilet bowl I’ve been wiping to see him standing in the doorway.

“God, I—” I stand awkwardly. “Pardon? What did you say?”

“I’m sorry. About Will.”

I remember now. The locket. I clutch it automatically.

“It was a terrible business,” he says. “Terrible.”

“He drowned,” I say. “I know. I found out.”

“Both of them,” he adds. “Him and that other boy.”

He’s pulling on the bottom button of his cardigan, a wooden toggle, like on a kid’s duffel coat.

I feel cold creep down my spine like the legs of a spider. “What other one?” I say. Not Jonty. Because he rang. He is alive.

“Found him two weeks later. Two weeks in the water, can you imagine?”

I feel the butterflies coming to life. “Who was in the water?” I ask slowly. “What was his name?”

“His name?” he mutters to himself. And then he bangs the flat of his hand on his forehead. “Can’t remember,” he repeats. “Can’t.” He is pulling the toggle harder and harder, and I think the wool tying it is about to snap. But something else does.

“Who was he?” I plead, the butterflies frantic now. “Who died?”

He lets go of the toggle and looks at me, shock spreading across the creased map of his face.

“Your daddy, Billie. Your daddy, of course.”

JONTY

IT IS
dark when Jonty wakes. Pitch-black. The lights from the fair long extinguished. It takes him four breaths to work out where he is, longer to stand, his brain dulled by alcohol, his legs aching with cold
.

He holds on to the railing, keeping himself upright against the wind and his own stomach and head, which will him back down with every second. But he mustn’t listen. Because he remembers now. Remembers what happened
.

Remembers the Gypsy boy, Het’s boy, shouting. Remembers Will’s hands slamming into his shoulders. Pushing him. Then the water. The water. He remembers Will, his head going under, then back up, his mouth gaping like a fish. Then he is gone. He stares down into the inky depths. There is nothing there. Just the vastness of the sea. Miles wide and fathoms deep. Did he come out? It is all too blurred, fuzzy at the edges
.

His stomach contracts violently and he pukes into the darkness below. Then wipes his mouth, turns and lurches home
.

In the morning he tells the police what happened. Says the Gyppo pushed Will into the water. Says he had it in for them. Had done for weeks. Says it was over Het. And the baby. That he wanted her to run off with him. Join some Travellers’ thing. Will begged him not to. But the Gyppo wasn’t having any of it
.

He says he saw it all. Says the Gyppo hit him too, knocked him out against the railing. Shows them the bruise on the side of his face
.

“Looks to be harder than a fist done that,” one officer says
.

“He knew what he was doing,” says Jonty. “They’re all fighters, that sort.”

Carol lets out a sob, and Eleanor, who wishes – hopes – her own boy escaped with just a bruise, lays a shaking hand on her shoulder
.

“And you’d stand up in court?” says the other officer. The taller one. “Tell them exactly what happened?”

Jonty nods. Cross my heart and hope to die. Stick a needle in my eye
.

“You have to be sure,” says Eleanor
.

“He is,” her husband snaps. “For God’s sake, woman. He saw it.”

But two weeks later they find him: the Gypsy. Tom. And the morning after, Jonty wakes in a sweat. He has had a dream. A terrible dream, where Tom’s hand isn’t a fist raised in anger; it is an open palm reaching to help. Where Will isn’t pushed; he falls. Where Tom doesn’t fall; he jumps. Jumps in to save Will
.

But it isn’t a dream. It isn’t a dream at all
.

He goes to his father’s study, closes the door, and, with his eyes to the ground, his words faltering, stomach turning, he tells him what he has remembered
.

At the grim end, he looks up and waits. Waits for the rage and the fury, for the call to the police, for the sorry confession, and the punishment
.

But instead his father says, “It will do no good.”

“Pardon?” Jonty feels that in his shaken state he must have misheard. That he is conjuring up what he has willed like a rabbit out of a hat
.

But it is no cheap trick
.

“They’re both dead,” he explains. “There will be no prosecution. The truth cannot save the boy. Let Roger and Eleanor believe the best of William. Let it rest.”

And he tries. He puts the thought away, buries it under his A levels and medical school and his job at the hospital. He stitches new life into people, trying to make up for the two lost ones, trying to hide the truth
.

But when he closes his eyes it pushes its way to the surface, grabs hold of him and pulls him back. To the pier. To that night. And it eats away at him like the blackened cancer he cuts out
.

BILLIE

I LEAVE
the Laurels with no explanation. No apology. Still in my overall I walk, through metres and metres, hope after hope, dream after dream. Through every “What could have been”, every face in the crowd that I imagined was him. She must have known, I think. Must have known he was dead. And all these years I’ve wasted my time imagining, waiting to meet this man who is no more than a body. A corpse.

And inside I feel the insects batter. But not in fear now. In rage.

I leave the door open behind me, feet trailing mud and leaves and dog shit along the carpet.

She’s in the drawing room. In some black ballgown, a glass of wine in her hand. Red, like blood.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I say slowly.

“What?” she turns, spilling wine down her dress, drops staining the carpet, oblivious.

“Why didn’t you tell me about my dad?” My words are measured. Cold.

“What?” She tries to laugh it off. “What are you talking about?”

The hollow laughter pokes me, stings me, and I stare angrily at her, breath coming hard now, blood singing in my ears. “All these years… You said he was gone. Gone away. And now I’ve found out that he’s dead. That my dad’s dead.”

Her face is ashen now. “Oh Billie.” The glass tumbles from her hands and hits the carpet as she reaches out to hold me.

And then I know it’s true. I slap her arms away. “What happened?” I yell. “I need to know. I need the truth.”

Mum shakes her head. “I can’t.”

“You have to,” I bawl. “All these years you’ve been lying. Now you have to tell me the truth. Tell me the truth,” I demand. “Tell me…”

And I repeat it, banging out the words like a rhythm on a drum, until she puts her hands over her ears and screams out, “He killed him.”

The words plunge into me, a blade. I gasp. “What?”

She claps a hand over her mouth and stares at me in shock. But it’s too late. The secret is out.

I grab her arms, shake her like a rag doll. “What do you mean? Who did he kill? What happened?”