Hush (36 page)

Lily could feel the reverberations of Connie’s words as if they were ripples in the air around her. There was a sense of something suddenly falling into place, but that place was obscured, shrouded in darkness.

‘An affair?’ she repeated, but they didn’t hear her.

‘I don’t understand,’ Richard was saying. He was looking back and forth between Ed and Connie, as if not sure which one of them he should be demanding answers from. He turned on Ed. ‘You knew who I was when you first approached me?’

‘Yes.’ Ed looked as if he was going to say more, but stopped.

‘And your reason for approaching me was… What, exactly?’

Ed shrugged. His eyes were fixed on Lily. ‘You look so like her,’ he said wistfully. ‘Like your mother.’

Lily looked at him more closely, tuning out the conversation around her. His face was only faintly familiar, a blur of features she remembered from childhood mixed with shadows from the recent past. ‘You’re Billy’s dad,’ she said abruptly.

‘Yes, of course.’ His voice was pained.

‘And it was you that I saw in the garden when I collapsed.’

That got Richard’s attention. ‘What the hell? What are you talking about?’

Ed tensed and took a step back, but Lily ignored them both, turning to Connie.

‘An affair?’ she said.

Connie looked pale in the moonlight, shadows making odd hollows in her face, so that Lily couldn’t read her expression. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I shouldn’t have said anything.’

‘Surely the point is that you
should
have said something?’ Lily felt confused, wrong-footed. She couldn’t quite understand what was happening. ‘When were they having an affair? Why did you know about it when I didn’t?’

Connie looked at the ground. ‘I didn’t want to tell you.’

‘But
why
?’

‘I was trying to protect you –’

‘Protect me from
what
?’

Lily’s voice rose to a pitch it hadn’t reached for years. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt that feeling: the tightness in her throat, the straining of her vocal cords, and the release that came with the vibrations of sound.

She felt Richard grasping at her hand, striving to calm her, but she shook him off. Eyes firmly fixed on her sister, who refused to meet her gaze. And Connie’s voice, when it came, so small it was almost lost in the darkness.

‘I was only trying to help.’

Figures emerging from the dark, clawing at their own clothes, reassembling themselves as they slipped out of the shadows. Two figures splayed out on the floor, two standing in the trees: and Lily crouched between, listening to her sister’s quiet sobs.

Billy face-first in the dirt, neck twisted, unnatural. Dark pool underneath his head. Arms spreadeagled: no life in dead hands. And the voices of the tree-shadows reached her, slow in their approach, as if swimming through treacle.

– What’s going on why are you crying that’s my son –

And then Mama’s arms around her waist, lifting her off
the ground: legs suspended briefly in mid-air, flying. Same for Connie: both of them standing side by side in the darkness, moon flitting through trees, and Mama hurrying them back to the house, a muttered stream of desperate words receding behind them.

– He saw us he saw us he saw us –

Billy left in the dirt with his father: and, later, the distant whine of sirens, heard from the safety of her bed.

‘He saw them,’ Lily said, her voice slow, as the pieces of the puzzle pushed themselves together. ‘Billy saw them together. That’s why he fell?’

Connie hesitated, then nodded.

‘And you
knew
? You knew what happened and you didn’t tell me.’

‘I – it’s difficult, Lils. They sent you away – and you were only eight, you wouldn’t have understood – I didn’t understand myself, not then. I saw him running away from something, and I saw him fall, but it wasn’t until later that I put it together, realised what he’d seen.’ She swallowed. ‘What
I’d
seen.’

‘But you didn’t say anything.’ Lily’s voice, hard, stubborn. ‘You could have told me, when you realised, but you never did.’

‘I told you it wasn’t our fault, when I got back. I thought that was what mattered. How could it have helped, to know the rest? You weren’t even living with Mama any more; you had nothing to do with her…’

Lily waved a hand, brushing her protestations off. ‘
When
did you put it together?’

‘I saw them together. Just before I ran away.’

Lily was dimly aware of Richard and Ed behind her, listening avidly; of the lurking backdrop of the trees, and
of the darkness stretching out for miles beyond them. But her attention was focused on Connie, and on trying to piece together the implications of what she was saying. The subtle shift of all the things she’d thought she’d known, merging into the pieces that had always been missing.

‘How long did it go on?’

‘Forever.’ Connie was close to tears now, her voice trembling. ‘It never stopped, did it?’

She looked up at Ed for confirmation, but his head was bowed and Lily wasn’t interested in his response. ‘Did Dad know?’

‘I don’t know. We never talked about it.’

‘But that’s why they fought all the time, yes?’

Lily was shaking now. She felt Richard’s hands on her shoulders, steadying her. Tried to keep her breathing even, but the realisations were coming too fast, the pieces connecting with a solidity that choked the air in her throat.

‘That’s it, isn’t it?’ she said, when Connie didn’t reply. ‘They fought because Mama was having an affair. Billy
died
because he saw them. And Dad – ’ Her voice caught, but she shook her head, forcing the words out. ‘Dad died because they fought about it. He was miserable, and then he died, all because of this. And you never told me.’

‘Please, Lils, please don’t turn this on me. It’s him, he’s the one in the wrong – ’ Connie waved a hand in Ed’s direction, but Lily shook her head again.

‘No. He was just a stupid man having an affair. You’re the one who lied to me.’

‘But I was trying to keep you safe. You were never okay, never strong enough…’

‘
And why do you think that was?
’ Lily’s voice rose to a shout, and she felt the stretching in her vocal cords: the feeling of shouting after so many years, of releasing
noise
after years of encasing herself in silence, was like stepping back into the
skin of a person she used to be. ‘I
knew
there was something missing. Something I needed to remember. You must have known as well, surely? You can’t have been that wrapped up in yourself, that you never realised?’

She saw Connie take a step back, cowering from the sound of a voice she barely remembered. ‘But you never said what the matter was, Lily, not really. I thought – I thought it was just because of
everything
.’ Her voice was raw now, her lips trembling. ‘I thought it would be easier for everyone if we just tried to forget about it.’

‘But you never asked. You just
assumed
. Made my choices for me, as always.’

‘For God’s sake, Lils, it wasn’t just about you, okay? I was there too. Billy was
my
friend. What makes you think it would have been so easy for me to talk about it?’

For a moment Lily stood glowering, torn, wanting to say more; then, without another word, she turned and walked back to the house. She heard the three of them behind her: Richard questioning Connie, Connie demanding answers from Ed, Ed protesting his innocence. The voices merged together, three separate strands of outrage and confusion blending together as one.

She closed the door on them, and released herself into the silence of the house.

She must have fallen asleep. She awoke on the sofa, with Richard sat at her feet like an oversized guard dog. At some point he’d draped a blanket over her, placed a glass of water on the table next to her head. His hand was absent-mindedly holding on to one of her calves, though he was staring in the opposite direction and his mind was clearly elsewhere.

‘Morning,’ she whispered, and he whipped his head round. ‘Is everyone else gone?’

‘Yeah. Connie said she’s going to come over later, if you don’t mind. She wants to talk to you properly, once the shock’s passed a bit.’

Lily nodded. She wasn’t sure if she was ready to talk about it yet: didn’t want to shelve her feelings, bestow forgiveness, as she knew she would have to do if they were going to move on.

But then, if it was a choice between that and no forgiveness, she would do what needed to be done. A future without Connie was unthinkable, barely a future at all.

‘What about Ed?’

‘What about him?’

Lily shrugged. ‘Did he explain what he was doing here?’

‘Sort of. He said he’s been coming over for a while, trying to get the garden nice for you. Said he used to do it when your mother lived here and he found it hard to break the habit. He kept talking about your hair and your eyes, how you looked like her – you and Connie, but especially you.

Lily nodded. ‘People have said that before.’

‘Well, I think he was hanging around trying to get a glimpse of you. Seems a bit obsessed, if you ask me, but I think he’s harmless enough.’

‘Let’s hope so. He was always a bit weird, after his wife left him. And after Billy died…’ She closed her eyes, trying to remember. ‘I know there were rumours, about him going crazy, prowling around the woods at night looking for Billy’s ghost.’

‘When actually he was probably just looking for your mother.’

‘Guess so.’ Lily stretched and pushed herself upright. ‘I think I need a shower.’

‘Want me to make some coffee?’

‘Sounds great. Thanks.’

She showered slowly, watching the water pool briefly at her feet before swirling away down the plughole. She felt as
though the shift in her perspective had stretched outwards from the mere fact of past events, touching everything. She tried to pinpoint the change: it wasn’t just the clarity of knowing more than she had done before.

It took almost a minute for her to realise that she was no longer afraid.

When she went back downstairs Richard was sitting at the table sifting through the post, a pot of coffee in front of him. He poured her a cup, wordlessly, and she sat down opposite him and lifted the cup to her face without drinking. Thick tendrils of scent wound their way through the air and into her senses. The doors in front of her, demanding her attention.

‘I want to go outside,’ she said.

Richard grabbed their coats and they stepped outside into the freezing morning air, their coffee forgotten on the table inside. Lily walked steadily down the garden, feeling the gentle slope of the lawn beneath her. Richard was half a step behind – with her, but letting her lead.

A path of paving stones led through the lavender borders. Last time Lily walked this path the stones had been like slabs, the lavender level with her head: it had been like plunging through a gateway into another world. Now it was just a path, just a few plants; and, ahead, the looming darkness of the trees: just trees.

The woods were smaller than she remembered. Still big enough to get lost in, but Lily could see the edges, feel the borders of the neighbouring fields. When they had been children it had stretched on forever.

She only had a vague memory of where she was going, but it wasn’t hard to find. Richard trailed her footsteps; she could hear the crunching of twigs behind her. After a few minutes of walking the mouth of the den opened up in front of them, half-covered by the brambles that had grown around it.

‘Was this where your mother and Ed…?’ Richard trailed off, as if he was struggling to find a delicate way to word it.

‘Yeah. We used to come here too, though, when we were little. It was our hideout.’ Lily turned around, pointed through the trees to where a clearing was just visible. ‘That’s where Billy fell.’

‘So you think he was running away and – what? Tripped over a tree root or something?’

‘Guess so.’ Lily tried not to flinch, the image unnecessarily vivid even in the daylight. Turned back to the secret place, contemplating the entrance.

It was a low cave, not even really a cave; just a hollow in the earth, like an oversized burrow. She stepped forward, feeling it close around her. The ceiling was low enough that she had to duck to enter, and, once you got a few steps in, it dropped to crawling height. It was smaller than she remembered; looking at it now, she was surprised that it could have held three children so comfortably.

Or two adults.

Richard crouched down at the entrance, seemingly unwilling to step over the threshold. ‘What’s in there?’ he asked, squinting to look closer.

Lily got down on her hands and knees and edged forward. Debris was scattered between the tree roots; old newspapers, unidentifiable rags, a few bottles. Nothing familiar. Lily lifted a few things for Richard’s inspection, and he grimaced.

‘I didn’t realise there was a homeless shelter at the bottom of our garden.’

‘More likely to be kids than homeless people, round here,’ Lily replied, but her voice was distracted. She lifted a few of the newspapers, squinting in the hope of uncovering something significant, a date that resonated. But, despite the fact that they were crisp and yellowing with age, the dates were unsatisfyingly recent.

She became uncomfortably aware that Richard was motionless, watching her. ‘Want to come in?’ she asked.

He crawled in next to her. The space was just big enough for them to sit side by side, Richard facing outwards, Lily on all fours, still sifting through the rubbish on the ground.

‘How often did you come here?’ Richard asked.

‘I don’t know. Connie and Billy played here most days, I suppose. I used to follow them, but I could never find it on my own.’ She sat upright, her leg muscles starting to cramp beneath her.

‘Is there anything there?’ He gestured towards the ground.

‘No. Just rubbish.’

He lifted a random newspaper, inspected it briefly, cast it aside. ‘This place must hold a lot of stories.’