Hush (2 page)

Throughout the four years that Richard and Lily had been together, Richard had met Connie for dinner around once a month. Originally it had just been an exercise in getting to know each other; it was hard to speak freely when Lily was around, almost as if her awkwardness with words spread outwards into everyone in the room, making them all curiously muted. Over the years it had developed into a strange kind of companionship, almost a parental relationship: Richard sometimes felt that they were united by their shared interest in Lily.

There were unspoken rules to their conversation, subjects that were permissible and things that were left noticeably unbroached. Richard never asked questions about Lily that she would not have answered herself; it would have felt like a betrayal, delving into her past without her explicit permission, and, besides, he had no interest in hearing details of her personal life from anyone except her. But Connie could be useful in the sense that she seemed almost to be able to read her sister’s mind at times, and could advise Richard on changes in Lily’s mood that he sometimes missed.

Now, though – a month after her mother had died, less than a week after they’d visited her house – Richard needed no help to translate Lily’s silences.

‘She’s okay, I think,’ he said, spearing a piece of steak on his fork and lifting it halfway to his mouth before changing his mind and replacing it on the plate. ‘I mean, she’s certainly
not showing any signs of being actually upset. But she’s even quieter than she was before, and I’m not sure whether I should be doing something about it or not.’

Connie watched him from across the table. They were in the same restaurant they always came to – a small place halfway between both of their houses, which was cosy without being overly intimate, and was one of the few local places capable of cooking steak to both of their tastes. ‘She hadn’t seen Mama for years,’ she said, the tone of her voice carefully even.

‘Yeah, I know. But it’s got to have an effect, hasn’t it? She was still your mother.’ Richard stopped abruptly, realising how insensitive he was being. ‘I’m sorry. Are
you
okay about it? I haven’t even asked.’

Connie laughed. ‘It’s fine. I, at least, am capable of telling you when I’m not okay. And, besides, I’m not your responsibility.’

‘That doesn’t mean I don’t care.’

‘I know.’ She smiled, kindly. ‘I’m not so bad. I don’t miss her or anything – I hadn’t seen her for months either. I’m just – I don’t know. Sad that she had such a miserable existence, I suppose.’

He nodded. They ate in silence for a while, letting the murmur of the other diners wash over them.

‘Have you decided what you’re going to do about the house yet?’

‘No. I need to talk to Lily about it.’ Connie laughed dryly. ‘That’ll be a fun conversation.’

‘It might be a bit one-sided,’ Richard said, with a smile.

‘I suppose we should probably sell it, really. I can’t imagine either of us wanting to live there. It’s not like we have many happy memories of the place.’

‘There must have been some good times, though?’

Connie took a sip of her wine, and shrugged.

‘None that springs to mind. Oh, it wasn’t all completely awful,’ she added, seeing the look on his face. ‘But we were both glad to move on.’

‘Hmm. Well, it’s a nice place. Shouldn’t be too hard to find a buyer.’

‘That’s what I’m hoping. The thought of actually selling it, though… It just seems like so much effort.’

‘If you find a decent estate agent it shouldn’t be too hard.’

‘True.’ She nodded, chewing slowly. ‘I suppose I should talk to Lily about it sooner rather than later.’

‘Might be an idea. Maybe we could all have dinner at some point. It’s been a while, hasn’t it?’

‘Yeah. That would be nice.’

Richard poured them both some more wine. ‘Would you not think of moving back to the house? Bringing the kids up somewhere quieter?’

Connie made a face. ‘No. Drayfield is too weird, too insular. I want them to grow up somewhere with a bit more life to it.’

‘And Nathan? Does he feel the same?’

‘I don’t know. He’s got this idealised view of living in the countryside, I think. Knowing everyone by name and keeping horses and so on. But he’s never said anything about moving.’

They ate and drank slowly, their conversation skimming over subjects that held no controversy: Richard’s job, what the boys had been up to, Connie’s latest forays into the world of socialising with the mothers at school. They lingered over the wine, and Connie described the relief of having her mother buried at last, after long years of worrying about her as she went in and out of hospital, and trying to arrange her care.

‘I can’t miss her, because there was nothing left to miss,’ she said, her voice blunt and uncharacteristically harsh. ‘All the goodness, the personality that she might have once had disappeared years ago. All that was left was bitterness and self-pity.’

‘But you didn’t see her much, did you? Do you think she was different when you weren’t there?’

Connie shrugged. ‘I doubt it. She’d been that way for years. Since we were kids, really.’

‘Do you think there was a reason for it?’

Connie looked away. ‘Probably lots of reasons. But she’d had plenty of time to get over them.’

Richard looked at her curiously, but she didn’t say anything else, and he didn’t press her. Connie might find conversation easier than her sister, but there were still some subjects on which silence was resolutely upheld.

There was a documentary on the TV. Something about the Great Depression, though Lily had stopped watching it fifteen minutes ago, flicking the sound off so it wouldn’t interfere with her thoughts. She was in the kitchen, a good six feet from the battered old fourteen-inch TV that had seen her through her days at university, and she could only just see the shapes as they flickered across the screen. Richard kept suggesting they buy something bigger, more modern, but neither of them could bring themselves to spend money on upgrading something they only ever used as background noise.

The whole flat was a mishmash of things that they should probably have updated or thrown out long before now. It was something Connie commented on every time she came over, though Lily had never asked for her opinion.

Lily was trying to remember how it felt to sit on the red plastic bar stools in her mother’s house. She’d been walking backwards and forwards between the living room and the kitchen, trying to work out when she’d last sat on one. She couldn’t possibly have been older than twelve, and therefore the seat would have been huge in comparison to her legs; the whole length of her thighs would have been pressed
against the plastic, with just her shins dangling over the edge. And yet. She could so clearly remember the feeling of being perched on the edge of a stool, with the tips of her toes brushing the coolness of the kitchen floor, as they would be now. As if she’d been sitting on one just last week.

She knew she was just superimposing memories of later times. False memories were a fact of life. But it was picking, gnawing at the edge of her brain. Making her restless, so that she walked to the kettle, got stuck at the sink, left the tap running for minutes before she shut it off, went back to the sofa, back to the kitchen, back. Paused at the kitchen window, which looked down over a glimpse of street, always empty, lit with its own, personal, grimy-England-orange glow. If she pressed her nose against the glass she could make tiny, clear holes in the fog on the pane. She could feel the conversation between the heat of her skin and the coolness of the condensation.

She loved this flat. Loved everything about it. When Richard was out she spent hours wandering from room to room, picking up objects, looking at bookshelves and picture frames and ornaments from different viewpoints. She tried to imagine how other people saw it. Spread out on the bed, or the sofa, or the floor, she would focus on individual freeze-frames of her flat and imagine what they said about her. About her-and-Richard.

When Richard was around everything was bustling, busy. The radio was on, or the TV, whichever, it didn’t matter as long as there was inane chatter going on somewhere in the background. When he was there the phone rang all the time and people came to the door and Lily’s contact with the outside world was real, tangible, there for everyone to see. She was a genuine, real-life person.

When he went out, which he did often, and left her alone, she retreated back into herself. She became just Lily.

She didn’t mind. In some ways she liked it best when she had breathing space. Thinking space. Imagining space.

But she was always glad when Richard came back.

The flat was dark when he got home. He let himself in quietly, placing his keys on the table by the door, slipping off his shoes and nudging them with his toes, into line with Lily’s battered once-white trainers. The front door opened directly on to the living room, the familiar furniture and debris of their life together lit only by the silvery-orange glow of the moonlight and the street-lamps outside.

He padded through to the kitchen to get a glass of water, automatically registering the objects that had moved since he was in here last, subconsciously taking note of the clues which were his daily insight into Lily’s state of mind. It was tidier than when he’d left, indicating restlessness, dissatisfaction. His unopened mail, neglected that morning owing to an early meeting, was piled neatly in the middle of the table. She’d been thinking of him, then. It wasn’t all bad news.

He took the water through to the bedroom, opening the door as quietly as possible. The hinges always creaked slightly, but if he opened it slowly enough then the creaking didn’t reach the pitch required to wake Lily up; rather, it was a low groan, unobtrusive. She slept sprawled across the bed, wearing a T-shirt and knickers. Her dark blonde hair was loose, tangled around her face. Her mouth was set in a stubborn line, and she breathed out tiny huffs of air, as if exhaling her discontent with the world.

He placed his glass of water on the bedside table and stood for a moment, watching her sleep. It wasn’t the only time she was peaceful. But it was the only time he ever had a chance of being able to guess what she was thinking.

Lily had been at her grandparents’ for two months before Connie’s parents broached the subject of taking her to visit. Connie had begun to get used to being an only child: the silence Lily had left behind her now seemed almost normal. She was okay with her parents arguing, with being the sole focus of attention. She didn’t like it, but she no longer hated it.

She wasn’t sure how she would feel about going to her grandparents’ house, a place they had always visited together, and finding Lily there by herself. Her grandparents would presumably now be much closer to Lily than they were to her. Perhaps she and Lily would no longer feel like sisters, but like friends, or strangers even: people who were separated by the differences in their daily lives.

In the end, though, they didn’t go to the house. They met halfway between the two houses, a two-hour drive for each, in a pub with a playground in the garden. The weather was cold but sunny, and Connie took Lily outside while the adults chatted and waited for food to arrive.

‘You want to play on the swings?’ Connie offered. Lily nodded, and climbed on to a swing, clutching the chain tightly on each side with her hands. Connie pushed her, making sure she didn’t go too high. She remembered the last time they’d done this: maybe six months ago? Connie had been less cautious then. Pushing her sister carelessly, wanting her to fly, without sparing a thought for what would happen
if she did. Now Connie realised she thought of her as fragile; something to be protected.

She wasn’t sure she liked it much.

After the swings they played on the slide, Connie going down first, Lily following with a wordless swish and a smile. They landed side by side in the dirt.

‘How about we go down together?’ Connie suggested. Lily nodded, so they climbed up together, fitting their feet into the ridges in the wood. The slide wasn’t wide enough for them to sit alongside each other, so Lily sat between Connie’s legs, Connie holding on to her waist. When they landed at the bottom they heard a cheer; Marcus had been watching them from the doorway.

‘Do it again,’ he urged, so they did. By the end of the third time Connie found the back of her jeans was covered in mud.

‘No more, Dad, please,’ she said, when he seemed about to ask.

He laughed. ‘Okay, then. I was only supposed to be coming to tell you the food has arrived, anyway.’

They trooped back inside, their mother clucking disapprovingly over the state of their hands as soon as they sat down, ordering them to go and wash them. They obeyed, Connie muttering under her breath about selective parenting.

Over dinner the main topic of conversation was the inquest, which had taken place the day before. Lily stared at her plate and gave no indication that she heard anything that was said around her. Connie glared at her mother, who spoke in hushed tones, as if that would somehow soften the blow of her words.

‘We thought we’d better go,’ she said. ‘I mean, the police had already told us what they were going to say, and they didn’t need us as witnesses, but I really think it’s better to know what’s being said. I wanted to be on hand, in case they mentioned the girls.’

‘And did they?’ Her grandmother’s question, but it was Connie who held her breath, awaiting the answer.

‘They mentioned that they were there, obviously. Quoted Connie’s statement, explained that Lily couldn’t talk about it. They recorded a verdict of accidental death.’

‘So they’re not holding anyone responsible?’

‘Officially, no. Basically they don’t really have any idea how it happened, but there were no definite signs of foul play, so they just have to assume that it was an accident.’

There was no response to this. Connie tried to chew the food in her mouth, but it was suddenly tasteless, with the texture of damp paper. Lily was completely motionless, staring silently at her plate.

‘Anyway,’ Marcus said, his voice full of false cheer, ‘the main thing is, it’s over now, isn’t it? So we can all go back to normal.’

The conversation moved back to less painful subjects, and, if anyone noticed that Connie and Lily didn’t eat another bite, they chose not to mention it.

‘As I said yesterday, there are lots of different types of energy. We’ve looked at electrical energy, chemical energy and thermal energy. Does anyone know of any more?’

Connie didn’t look up, in case the teacher caught her eye. The lack of response wasn’t quite a silence; there were low mutterings, the odd giggle. The students weren’t not communicating, just steadfastly refusing to communicate with the teacher.

‘Anyone?’

In among the quiet murmurs she could pick out individual voices. The odd sentence here and there.

I heard she killed someone.

‘Okay, well, today we’re going to be looking at
kinetic
energy.’

Connie looked up, following the squeaking strokes of the whiteboard marker as it traced words across the board: ‘kinetic energy’. Except that the ‘r’ and the ‘g’ weren’t clear, had melded together to form an uncertain squiggle. If Connie squinted slightly, she could see the word ‘enemy’, emblazoned on the board for all to see.

I heard it was her sister that killed him and that she got sent away so they couldn’t put her in jail.

Connie closed her eyes. Tried to tune in to the teacher’s voice, while the whispers behind her seemed to scratch at the back of her mind.

‘Kinetic energy is motion energy. All moving things have kinetic energy, even tiny ones, like atoms, and huge ones, like planets. Today we’re going to do an exercise to look at the way kinetic energy is transferred, and why it might be of importance to us.’

There was a general shuffling as the teacher started writing instructions on the board. People turned to their partners, started talking more loudly. Connie leaned forward on her desk and switched on the gas tap for the Bunsen burners. Released a tiny cloud of gas into the air, with a minute hiss that only she could hear. She flipped it off again.

I thought her sister went crazy and they sent her to a mental institution.

She had a Walkman at home. Maybe she could bring it in. The teacher probably wouldn’t notice, so long as she looked as if she was paying attention. It would use a lot of batteries, though. Her parents would notice if she kept taking all their batteries.

‘Okay, so if you want to divide into pairs…’

Connie didn’t bother to look around for a partner. It had been nearly three months since she’d started secondary school, and every lesson had been the same. She would sit here until the teacher assigned her to a pair. A different one
every time; it wouldn’t be fair for anyone to have to put up with her for more than one lesson.

Look at her. I think the whole family’s crazy.

‘Connie, could you make a three with Natalie and Emma, please?’

She gathered up her books, awkwardly levered herself down from the wooden stool. Taller than the plastic bar stools at home. And the noise the metal legs made, screeching across the linoleum. Grating her eardrums.

Natalie and Emma were two tables away. Far enough that she couldn’t hear the whispers of the girls behind. They didn’t talk to her, but there were no snide comments as there were with some of the others. This was fine.

She could get used to this.

Connie came in through the patio doors, hoping to avoid her parents. No such luck. They were sitting at the breakfast bar, a pot of coffee untouched in the space between their hands. They both looked up as she walked in.

‘Good day?’

‘Mmm.’

‘That’s hardly an answer, is it?’

Connie took a deep breath. Allowed the traces of bitterness left in the air by Anna’s tone to dissipate before she responded. ‘It was okay.’

‘What lessons did you have?’

Her father had evidently been training himself in asking questions that required direct responses. Can’t have two silent daughters. Keep this one talking.

‘English. Maths.’ She paused. Tried to pluck something out of the day that would be worth mentioning. ‘We’re learning about energy in science.’

‘What kind of energy?’

‘All kinds. I’ve got lots of homework.’

‘Okay. You’d best get on with it, then.’

Connie went upstairs, closed her bedroom door behind her, dropped her bag on the floor next to her bed. Went to the mirror that hung above her dresser. She looked the same as she had that morning. More tired, perhaps. She leaned close, examined the dark circles beneath her eyes. Some of the other girls wore make-up that gave their faces a powdery orange tint. Maybe she would get some.

She could sense her parents downstairs, talking about her. Talking about Lily. Or maybe they weren’t talking at all. Communicating via silent thought-transmissions.

It seemed that silence was its own mode of communication, these days.

She went to her bed, knelt down, and reached a hand underneath, fingers tracing the dust on the floorboards until she found what she was looking for. Her hand closed around hard plastic casing. The radio that her parents had given her for Christmas two years ago. That she had barely used since her father had finally relented and bought a television a year later.

She switched it on. A muted buzz whispered its way through the air. She twisted the dial, and found a voice. A man’s voice, joined a moment later by a woman’s. They laughed.
Oh, Jim, you know me so well.

She turned the volume down low enough that she could hear the voices without being able to make out the words, and placed the radio on her windowsill.

She hadn’t been lying about the homework, but she couldn’t be bothered to do anything about it. Her parents wouldn’t check. The teachers wouldn’t comment. She was in limbo, outside the normal rules of society, temporarily. Temporally.

Lily had never been able to say
temporarily
.

Connie lay down on her bed and stretched out as much as she could without touching the wall. Not much leeway with a single bed. Sometimes, when her parents were out, she spread out on their bed like a starfish, trying to touch every corner. It was supposed to be a secret, but she could never make the bed as neatly as they could and they always knew. Her father didn’t mind. It was only Anna who complained.

She liked their room. It didn’t have the sense of emptiness that hers did, regardless of whether or not they were in it. Perhaps it was the fact that it was shared space, the lives of two people combined in one area. It gave a sense of conversation in the room, even when there was no communication between its living occupants.

Downstairs she could hear their voices begin to rise. She pulled a pillow around her ears to muffle the sound. Not that she could ever hear the words. But she could make out the vibrations in her mother’s tone that would indicate when she was near tears.

Through the open window she could hear the birds as they bade farewell to the fading day. The sound mingled with the murmurings from the radio, the low growl of voices from the kitchen. And Lily’s voice in her mind, stumbling over syllables she could not pronounce.
Tempery. Temporally. Tempo-rarity.

Connie closed her eyes and wished: for silence or for graspable sound, she could not quite decide.

The following day she decided to go into town after school. Set off on the same route she took every day. The buses from Farnworth back to Drayfield went every hour, with one leaving straight after school. She usually took a later bus. Avoiding people she knew. And it was better to be out of the house.

She headed down the alley next to the school. Kept to the left, clear of the garages where older kids went to smoke. Concentrated on stepping around the cat shit which was liberally scattered among the gravel.

Didn’t notice the people emerging from the garages, walking behind her.

The first blow caught her on the ear and knocked her sideways, into the wall. She stumbled, dizzy, and someone grabbed her hair, pulling her to the floor. Face-first, so that the gravel bit into her cheeks and split her lip. She closed her eyes and tried to curl into a ball.

‘Coward. Weren’t so cowardly when you were killing that guy, were you?’

She didn’t know how many there were. At least three, she guessed. They kicked her repeatedly, until she lost count of how many blows landed on her body, and she could no longer feel the individual impact. Just the juddering of her whole body as shoe collided with skin.

‘We thought we’d give you a lesson in the transference of kinetic energy,’ said one voice. A hiss, venomous, but also amused. It was the amusement that made Connie feel genuinely afraid.

It didn’t last long. Maybe a minute before they spat in her hair and left her on the ground. She heard laughter as they retreated, and the lighting of cigarettes.

She lay there for just a few moments too long; when she got to the bus station the early bus was leaving, its brake lights waving cheerfully as they disappeared around the corner. She could think of nowhere else to go, and so she sat at the bus station for an hour, until the next bus arrived. The bus driver looked at her when he pulled up – dirt-smudged, gravel-grazed – but he made no comment, and she sat down without a word.