Hush (13 page)

In the end, Marcus went on his own to pick Lily up from the institute, dropping Connie and Anna at home on the way. It was mid-afternoon by the time he arrived, and Lily was waiting for him on the front steps, her bag packed, a nurse keeping watch from the doorway.

Lily stood up when the car pulled up in front of her, but she didn’t step forward until Marcus got out of the car.

‘Hey, stranger. How long have you been sitting there?’

Lily just stared at him. It was the nurse who answered, her voice flat and businesslike. ‘It’s been a couple of hours. Once she was packed she wouldn’t go back inside.’

‘I’m so sorry. I got here as quick as I could, but we were on holiday –’

‘Yes, I heard.’ Dismissive. ‘Would you mind coming inside? There’s some paperwork to sign. Won’t take long.’

‘Sure.’ He crouched down next to Lily. ‘Do you want to wait in the car? I won’t be a minute.’

She nodded, and he opened the back door for her, letting her scramble on to the seat before closing and locking it behind her.

The inside of the building was cool and airy, and there was no one around. Marcus’s footsteps echoed in the empty corridor. The nurse was waiting for him, perched at the reception desk, a pile of paper in front of her.

‘If you could just sign here,’ she said, pushing a pen into his hand.

‘Would you mind giving me a bit more detail? About what happened?’ He scanned what he was reading as he signed, only half-concentrating.

‘It was as I said on the phone. Lily’s friend attempted suicide. Lily was the one who found her. She was – very shaken up, understandably.’

‘Don’t you have people watching out for that kind of thing? Why was the girl not being watched?’

‘There’ll be an investigation,’ the nurse said smoothly.

‘Right.’ Marcus handed her back the pen. ‘Well, I wouldn’t mind knowing the outcome of the investigation. If it’s not too much trouble.’

‘I’m sure that can be arranged.’

‘And I’ll be ringing Dr Hadley next week to discuss Lily’s requirements going forward.’

‘I’ll let him know.’

Her voice was textureless, her face bland to a fault. He watched her for a moment, to see if her expression would flicker, but she remained frozen in place. He spun on his heel and went back out to the car.

Lily was sitting in the chair behind the driver’s seat, facing straight forward, her seatbelt done up. Her rucksack was on the seat next to her. She didn’t move when he got in.

‘Sorry to keep you waiting for so long,’ Marcus said. He turned in his chair to face her, but she didn’t meet his eye. ‘It must have been a long day.’

Nothing.

He turned back to face the windscreen, and turned the key in the ignition.

‘I’m going to take you back to Grandma and Grandpa, as it’s closer,’ he said. The roaring of the engine half-obscured his words, but he wasn’t sure she was listening anyway. ‘And then tomorrow we’re going to make a decision about what to do next. Okay?’

He looked at her in the mirror, but she was still staring straight ahead, her face motionless.

He talked to himself as he eased the car out of the driveway. He wasn’t sure if she was listening or not, but he found it comforting, hearing the sound of his own voice. After a while he realised she was asleep; her eyes were closed, head tilted to one side, mouth drooping slightly.

He smiled, and continued talking to himself for the rest of the journey.

‘What does Anna say about it all?’

Marcus sat at the dining table, his parents seated opposite him like an interview panel. Lily was upstairs; she’d gone straight up to her room when they’d got home, closing the door behind her. He’d considered going in anyway, exercising his rights as a parent. But in the end he decided she deserved some time to herself, and retreated back down the stairs to where his parents waited for him, carefully non-accusatory.

‘She says nothing, most of the time,’ Marcus admitted, running his fingers through his hair until it stood on end, sticking out at odd angles from his face. ‘She acts as though she feels I’ve made all these decisions without her, so I might as well carry on making them.’

‘Does she want Lily to come home?’

‘Who knows? She’s barely at home herself.’ He stopped, realising he was being unfair. ‘That’s not true, actually. She’s been a bit better the last couple of months. But she spends most of her time in the garden. Barely speaks to me, or to Connie.’

‘Where was she before? If she wasn’t at home?’ His mother’s voice was careful, but Marcus knew what she was asking.

‘I could hazard a guess,’ he said. ‘But I’d rather not go there.’

‘Fair enough. Well, the way I see it, you’ve got two options.’

‘Which are?’

His mother was all practicality. ‘Leave her here, or take her home.’

‘I can’t keep leaving her here with you,’ Marcus said, his voice tired. ‘I feel like I’m failing her as a parent. Connie said something to me today, about shipping her off and expecting someone else to make her all better. And you know what – she’s right, isn’t she? That’s exactly what I’m doing. Waiting until she’s fixed before bringing her home.’

‘Son, you’re being too hard on yourself.’ His father’s voice was stern, commanding. ‘Keeping the balance in a family is always hard. And, after everything your family has been through, it was the right thing to do: giving Lily some space, taking her away from that house.’

‘I want to move,’ Marcus admitted. ‘But I don’t think Anna will agree.’

‘Why not?’

He didn’t reply, and his parents didn’t push it.

‘Do you think Lily would be able to cope with going home?’ his mother asked, her voice gentle.

‘How should I know? She’s not likely to give me a straight answer, is she?’

‘She might. When was the last time you tried asking her?’

Half an hour later he climbed the stairs to Lily’s room, which had once been his room. He knocked gently, and pushed open the door without waiting for a response. She was sitting cross-legged on her bed, a collection of pieces of paper spread out in front of her, and she didn’t look up when he came in.

‘Hey, Lils,’ he said softly, not really expecting a response. She was focused on the paper in front of her. He looked over her shoulder, and was unsurprised to see it was a collection
of photocopied pages from a maths textbook. He scanned the page, seeing if there was anything he recognised, but it was a blur of meaningless equations.

He pulled the chair out from under the desk and sat down in front of her, so he would be directly in her line of sight, if she ever looked up.

‘I’ve been talking to your grandparents. Trying to figure out what you might like to do now. And it occurred to me that no one had asked you.’

He paused, waiting. No response.

‘I know you’re not going to want to talk to me. But if you could just let me know, somehow, whether you’d rather be here or at home. I don’t want to keep making decisions without your input.’

She stared stubbornly at the piece of paper, and said nothing. He leaned back in his chair, watching her face. She had turned ten last month. Her face was becoming more like Connie’s, and even Anna’s; mouth pursed, blue eyes narrowed, she looked more adult by the day.

It struck him, suddenly, that he was missing her entire childhood. It wasn’t enough to see her every other weekend. She was growing up and he hadn’t even noticed, still framing her in his mind as an eight-year-old shadow of her sister. When was the last time Anna had seen her? How long would it be before she ceased to be recognisable as the child she’d once been?

‘I want to take you home,’ Marcus said. His voice was quiet, but she looked up at that.

‘Do you want to come back with me? Live with us again? You’d have to go back to school, there’d be no grandma to teach you, but you could be with Connie again. Be with all of us. What do you think?’

She looked at him for a long time. Her eyes were unreadable, but he felt like she was trying to communicate
something
. ‘Please,’ he said eventually. ‘Please just tell me. Do you want to come home?’

Her voice, when she spoke, was less than a whisper: it was the hollow outline of a word, no substance at the centre.

‘No,’ she said.

‘We should move away from here. At least move Connie to a different school.’ Connie, standing behind the kitchen door, heard the pleading note in her father’s voice.

‘Fighting and bullying are a way of life in secondary school. That’s not going to stop just because we move her somewhere else.’

‘But maybe if they didn’t know the history… She’s not such a weird kid, is she?’

Connie noted the implications in the silence from her mother, and wasn’t at all surprised.

‘Things could be different,’ her father implored. ‘At least if we get away from this
house
–’

‘I love this house.’

‘Really? Because you never seem to spend any time here.’ There was a pause, and then Marcus’s voice, softer. ‘Think of Connie. And Lily will be coming home soon.’

Connie froze, as if the words had paralysed her. Was it true? Or was her father just being his usual optimistic self, blindly assuming that some day Lily would come home and everything would return to normal?

It had been nine months since they’d removed Lily from the institute, taken her back to their grandparents’ house. It should have become normal by now, but sometimes Connie still felt as if she was standing still, just waiting for Lily to return so her life could pick up where it had left off.

‘Where would we go?’

‘I don’t know. We don’t have to go far. A couple of villages away, even.’ His voice became low, coaxing. ‘Lily’s getting better, Anna. I know you don’t want to believe it, but it’s true. What if coming back here undoes all that good work?’

‘Why wouldn’t I want to believe it? You think I want my daughter to be stuck like that forever?’

There was a long pause, and then, ‘That’s not what I meant.’

‘Well,
what
, then?’ Connie noted the hysterical note in her mother’s voice.

‘I just meant that you don’t believe it. Because you – I don’t know. Maybe you’re scared to believe it. But it is true. I promise you.’

There was a long pause, and Connie held her breath, waiting. It went on for so long that she thought maybe they’d stepped out of the back door without making any noise. And then her mother’s voice. ‘Well, she’s still never said a fucking word to me.’

The slam of the patio door reverberated in the silence she left behind her.

Connie waited five minutes, listening for her father’s movement and hearing nothing, and then pushed the door open, to find him still sitting at the kitchen table, head in his hands. He lifted his head as she approached; turned, tried to smile. All he really managed was a curious deepening of the creases in his skin.

‘You been home long?’

‘Just got back. I went for a walk after school.’

‘How was school?’

‘The usual.’

Her father nodded and said nothing. She liked the fact that she didn’t have to lie to him. Her mother was fragile; you had to protect her from the truth. Her father might bend under the weight of his responsibility, but he wouldn’t break.

‘Is Lily really going to come home soon?’

Marcus looked up in surprise. ‘Yes.’ He must have seen the disbelief etched on her face, because he took her hands in his. ‘Really. I mean it. She’s almost back to her old self.’

‘But it’s been so long. How will she remember who her old self is?’

‘Do
you
remember?’

It had been nearly three years. In some ways Connie had become used to being an only child, had forgotten what it felt like to share her day-to-day life with someone else. But, when she did think of her, what did she see? Photographs, snapshots, mismatched snatches of conversation. An eight-year-old who worshipped the ground Connie walked on and cried every time she was mean to her.

But it wasn’t just that. The secrets they’d shared. Using Morse code to tap out messages on the wall between their beds when they were supposed to be asleep. Passing notes between their bedroom windows.

She didn’t remember ever feeling lonely before Lily had gone.

‘Sort of.’

‘How about you come and visit her with me this weekend?’

Connie had been less willing to visit recently. The last time had been, what, three weeks ago? Her mother only went once a month, after all, and Connie had started to think that maybe she’d have a better chance of making friends at home if she wasn’t spending most of her weekends visiting her sister.

Her
mental sister,
as the people at school never failed to remind her.

‘I don’t know,’ she said, hedging. ‘Will Mama be coming?’

‘I hope so.’

‘She hates it, doesn’t she?’

Marcus sighed, and stood up, gathering the mugs that were dotted around the kitchen table. ‘It’s complicated,’ he admitted. ‘But yeah, she doesn’t like it much.’

‘Does she want Lily to come home?’

‘Of course.’ He lied so smoothly that Connie wasn’t even sure he was aware it was a lie. ‘We all want her home, don’t we?’

Connie, studying a sticky ring-shaped shadow left behind by a mug on the table, didn’t reply.

Lily came home two weeks later. They tiptoed around each other, like two cats that weren’t quite sure whether they were friends or enemies, fighting for the same share of the food. Estranged people, who had once shared something that had not quite disappeared. Connie felt she existed simultaneously in the present and the past, with this creature who had not been part of her life for nearly three years, but who had always been part of her life, in the background; perhaps the most important part.

At home silence reigned: even the conversations were just interrupted silence. The family took their cues from Lily. The girls spent much of their time in their respective bedrooms, with the doors closed. Their parents still fought, but quietly, on the edges of their awareness. Mostly they were in separate rooms, doing separate things, existing on separate planes.

Connie wasn’t sure what was worse: the anxiety that things might change when Lily returned, or the slowly dawning realisation that they hadn’t.