A Cold Season (7 page)

Cass looked at the clock again, wishing her son would come home. The night grew darker, the snow kept falling, and still Sally didn’t call. Cass sat back on the sofa and closed her eyes, letting the picture fall to her side.

When Cass stirred and looked out of the window it was no longer dark. Mist had swallowed the hills and the sky and now it was shining back the moonlight, making it bright as morning. When she checked the clock, though, she found it was late – after nine o’clock – and Sally still hadn’t called. She must have fallen asleep; now her head ached. She walked from window to telephone, wondering if it had rung after all and she had been too deeply asleep to hear it. She bunched her hands, fidgeted. How could Sally be so late? Why hadn’t she been in touch? Tears surprised her, stinging her eyes. She could try to recover the last caller’s number from her telephone and ring her. Failing that, she could walk to Sally’s house, but what if Sally took the riverside path, or some other route? She could miss them.

There were voices in the hall.

Cass rushed to the door and pulled it open and found herself staring into an empty space. She looked up and
down the hall, wondering if this was some game they were playing.

She heard the sound again. This time it came from behind her.

It was the voice of a child – it sounded like a little girl.

She waited, reluctant to turn round, then she heard the deeper tones of a man. She felt her grasp on the door slip and it banged shut in front of her.

A new sound began, low at first, then gathering in volume, a ratcheting and banging of wood on wood, wood on metal. It grew louder, became deafening.

Cass slowly turned round, half expecting to see a space full of machinery, but there was only her own hall, all the doors closed except the one dead ahead.

Cass went to it, outwardly calm but her heart hammering. She looked into the lounge and saw only a familiar room, its darkened windows reflecting back the vaulted ceiling. It was silent. The sound had stopped.

—but it had ceased only for a moment; as though called back by her thoughts it started up again, the rhythmic pulse of running machinery, reverberations echoing from the walls. The floor beneath her was full of the sound, vibrating under her feet. The noise came from the room below her own, Apartment 6.

Cass couldn’t move. She couldn’t breathe. She saw again the abandoned dolls, the empty windows, cold air snaking inside.

Then she heard a bang on her front door and everything fell silent.

Cass looked around at the floor, her jaws clenched. The
bang came again and she made a sound in the back of her throat.

Another bang. It was the sound of someone knocking.

Cass found she could breathe again, roused herself, hurried to answer. She yanked the door open, and saw Ben standing on the threshold, his arm outstretched in readiness to knock once more. He jumped back, his smile fading.

‘Goodness,’ said Sally, ‘is everything all right? You look awful.’

Cass didn’t turn away from Ben’s face. He had looked so happy when she’d pulled the door open; now there was a trace of sadness in his eyes. It was her; she had called it back again.

‘I’m sorry we’re late,’ said Sally chattily. ‘We lost track of time, didn’t we, boys? I tried to call, but the lines must be down. It always happens this weather. I should have known. And these two – you wouldn’t believe how long it took them to walk down here. The snowballs I’ve been fighting off, you wouldn’t believe—’

‘Did you hear something?’

‘What like? Has something happened?’

Cass looked at her. Sally’s face was full of confusion, and something else – annoyance perhaps. It occurred to Cass that she didn’t look sorry for being late at all. There was no sense of urgency about her. ‘It’s quite all right,’ she said stiffly. ‘He’s back now, aren’t you, Ben?’

Ben’s eyes were fixed on his mother. He shrugged, and somehow this made Cass angry, really deeply angry, but she swallowed it down. She couldn’t turn Sally straight
back out onto the street after they’d walked all this way, and that look on Ben’s face – he had been enjoying himself, at least until he got home.

She noticed Damon standing behind his mother. The boy glared up at her through his black fringe.

‘Hi, Damon,’ she said pointedly. ‘Have you had a good night?’

It was as though she hadn’t spoken.

Sally answered for him. ‘We’ve had a lovely time. They played for hours on the computer. I swear my hands would be claws if I did that.’

‘It was
Street Skirmish
, Mum!’ Ben’s smile had returned. ‘I was the baddie, and then Damon was, and we had a tournament, and he won, but I got loads of rounds, didn’t I, Day?’

Damon swung his head round to look at Ben and he grinned, his eyes clear and smiling.

Cass shook her head. What was she thinking? ‘Thank you for having him, Sally,’ she said. ‘Will you have a drink before you go? Something to warm you up?’

They bustled in, and as they took off their wet coats, discarded gloves and scarves and boots, something Sally had said finally registered. ‘Sally,’ said Cass, ‘did you say the phone lines are down?’ Her voice was sharp and Sally looked up with surprise.

‘I did. It often happens with the snow. It’ll take a few days to fix, I shouldn’t wonder.’

But Cass was already striding into the lounge, snatching up the telephone. There was no buzzing on the line, nothing but a faint silvery noise like snowfall.

‘They’ll be back up before long. I’m sure people will realise. Was there someone you wanted to call?’

‘Not really.’ Cass slowly replaced the phone. ‘Just some files I should have sent off for work.’
It’ll be done for tomorrow morning
, she’d said. Now she’d have no email, and she couldn’t even ring her client to tell them the job would be late. She couldn’t get a signal on her mobile either. Why hadn’t she done the work today? She could have finished it this afternoon, sent it off at once. But surely the telephones would be fixed tomorrow. Maybe everything would be: the road cleared, the car running smoothly, everything working the way it should. She glanced at the window. She could just make out the steep hillside, mocking in its beauty.

‘Oh dear,’ said Sally. ‘Well, they’ll understand, won’t they? It’s not as if it’s your fault, after all.’

We launch in a week.

Cass bit her lip. She had a week – no, not so long. They would want it all in place before that.

Sally’s right, they’ll fix the phones tomorrow
, she told herself. It’ll be fine. Even Mr Remick had said so. That hand on her arm. Those eyes.
It’ll all be fine.

Ben and Damon sat on the floor, drinking hot chocolate. Damon had asked for Coke, but Cass didn’t have any and Damon had looked his contempt at her. Ben didn’t seem to notice the older boy’s surliness. He showed Damon his games, chattering away about each one, and they both groaned when Sally declared it was time to go. She clapped
her hands and Damon scowled as he dragged himself to his feet.

‘Say thank you.’

‘What for?’

‘Don’t be rude. Say thank you for the drink and hurry up.’

Damon turned those eyes on Cass. The irises were dark, almost as dark as his pupils, and they held a pale gleam. ‘Thank you for the
chocolate
,’ he said.

Cass chose to ignore the emphasis in his words. ‘You’re very welcome.’ She took the cup from his outstretched hand and saw an ugly mark crossing his palm. ‘Oh, what happened? Are you all right?’

She felt Sally’s gaze on her, but she bent and took Damon’s hand anyway, turning it so she could see the wound. It wasn’t fresh, nor was it as livid as she’d thought. He’d cut it some time in the past, and the skin was a deeper pink where it had healed. Damon left his hand in hers for a second, a cold, limp thing, then whipped it away.

Cass expected his mother to say something, tell him off again, maybe, but she did not. When Cass looked round she saw that Sally’s mouth was pressed into a thin line. They said their goodbyes and Cass closed the door on them, leaning her head on it in relief.

Then she thought of the entryphone. Sally hadn’t used it either; she’d come straight up the stairs to the apartment door. So either she knew the code too or the main entrance hadn’t been locked. Cass didn’t think that Ben had memorised the code yet – he hadn’t come in alone before, had never needed to.

She turned to Ben. ‘How did you get in? Did Mrs Spencer have the code?

He shrugged and turned back to his games, stacking them in a neat pile, lining up the edges.

‘Ben, I asked you a question.’

He looked up, shrugged again, stuck out his bottom lip.

Cass sighed. ‘I’m popping downstairs for a minute,’ she said. ‘Be ready to let me in, okay? I might ring the entry-phone. You know where it is, right?’

He nodded without looking up.

Cass slipped out of the door and down the stairs, wall lights flickering on in response to her movement. The newspapers outside Number 10 hadn’t moved. They looked forlorn, abandoned.

The mill grew cooler as she went down the empty staircase to the front door. She turned the inside handle a few times, listening to the clicks, trying to work out if it was locking. Then she pulled the door open and stepped outside.

She began shivering at once. There was a single light outside the mill, a wrought-iron lamp designed to look like an old-fashioned streetlight. Snow flurried around it as though attracted by its brightness. Everything else was dark. When Cass looked up, pale flakes danced out of the blackness and into her face.

She looked about and let the door shut behind her. When she turned back she found herself face to face with that nasty knife-work in the door. She had forgotten the cross. What must Mr Remick have thought? He’d not
mentioned it. She put her hand to the cold brass handle and tried turning it, but it wouldn’t budge; the lock was obviously working.

Cass flicked snow from her hair, brushed more from the keypad. She began to tap in the entry code, then cancelled it and put in the apartment number instead. The entryphone was an internal system, so it shouldn’t be affected by the snow. She could hear it ringing: three, four, five.
Come on, Ben.

The ringing stopped and Cass put her face to the grille. ‘Ben, it’s me.’

There was only the almost imperceptible sound of snow settling around her. She tapped in the apartment number again and waited. Maybe it was wired wrongly and wasn’t connecting with Number 12 at all. She imagined the phone ringing in an empty apartment – the one on the ground floor maybe. She had a sudden image of someone in there, a dark shape turning and hearing the sound. Rising to its feet and going to answer.

Cass cut it off. She punched in the entry code instead, the metal slick and cold against her fingers, and heard the buzz as the lock disengaged. She stepped inside and slammed the door behind her, hurried up the stairs and rapped at the apartment door for Ben.

She waited. After a while she knocked again.

No response. She couldn’t hear any sound from inside. ‘Ben, do you hear me?’ she called out. She knocked again, louder this time. Stared at the brass 12 screwed into the wood. ‘Ben!’

He didn’t answer. Cass waited, then banged louder,
angling her fist to make it resonate on the wood. She felt the pain in her knuckles as a distant thing. ‘Ben!’ She tried again, knocking seven, eight, nine times. Then she opened her hand and slapped it against the door. At last she subsided, leaning against it.

She glanced down the silent hall, and for a second she imagined neighbours, lots of them, opening their doors and leaning out to stare. She squeezed her eyes shut and turned back to her own door. Her breath came heavily, as though she’d been running up the stairs and up and down the hallways, all over the mill, in search of her son. But he wasn’t lost; Ben was safe at home; it was she, Cass, who was stuck outside.

She knocked again, harder, so that her knuckles sang out, and when she put them to her lips she saw they were red. ‘Ben, please! Let me in.’

She tried to steady her breathing. What if he wasn’t inside at all? What if he’d already gone?
Already?
Why had she thought that? It wasn’t going to happen, would never happen. They would always be together; she would look after him—

That’s why you’re out here yelling yourself hoarse.

Cass slid down the door and rested her back against it. Then she turned, rising to her knees as though pleading with the door to open. She reached up and caught the handle, twisted it, rattling the door on its hinges. ‘Ben, it’s me. Let me in, now!’

She got to her feet and pressed her ear to the wood, but there was no sound, not even the burble of the TV or the flush of a toilet to explain why he hadn’t let her in.

‘Oh God,’ she whispered, ‘Ben,
please
.’ She banged again, then pushed at the door with her whole body, and she felt it give a fraction before it met the jamb.

‘Ben—’ She wailed, not a mother’s voice, a capable in-control voice, but a little-girl-lost voice, the same voice that had been threatening and pushing at her insides ever since Pete had left and they said he wasn’t coming back, not this time, not ever again.
Her
voice.

She knocked. This time, when she took her hand away, there was blood on the knuckles. She sank back onto the floor and closed her eyes. There was no sound from inside, and none from the rest of the mill. Cass thought again of that apartment downstairs, the one with the empty windows. They would be like black eyes now, the snow swirling in and covering the floor, the dust, those dolls.

If anyone got inside she would be trapped in the hallways with them. Cass’ throat went dry.

Ben might be ill – he could have collapsed in there, might need help.

Cass looked down the hall to Number 10. The newspapers were still there. She pushed herself up and went to the door. She hesitated before she tried it, but even so she knew there would be no answer. She had been banging so loudly, there was no way anyone inside wouldn’t have heard her.

The door of Number 12 opened and Ben stuck his head out. His hair was tousled, in need of a cut, and he had brushed it down over his eyes like Damon’s. He looked up and down and saw her. ‘Are you coming?’ he asked and closed the door.