Hush (4 page)

‘Maybe we could go and have a drink, Anna?’ she suggested. ‘I’ve got some wine I’ve been meaning to open.’

Anna, looking torn between shame and anger, nodded. She didn’t meet Connie’s eye as they disappeared into the kitchen.

‘I guess that’s dinner done with, then,’ Connie muttered. ‘You could have just left her at home. She’d have been much happier.’

‘We’re a
family
, Connie.’ Marcus’s voice was sharp, but there was an undertone of weariness, and he pushed away his plate with a sigh. ‘How about we go and sit in the living room? We could play a game.’

The four of them went and sat on the living room floor. Marcus and Grandpa leaned their backs against the sofas and spread their legs out in front, their feet almost meeting in the middle. Lily lay on her stomach in the middle of the floor, while Connie sat cross-legged opposite her. Grandpa found a deck of cards and they played a few rounds of Sevens in ponderous silence. From the kitchen Connie could hear the low murmuring of her mother and grandmother talking, but the words were too faint to catch.

‘I hope they’re getting things sorted,’ Marcus said, to no one in particular.

‘They’ll be fine,’ Grandpa said, his voice firm and reassuring. He leaned forward so he could lay the jack of clubs on the nearest pile. ‘You know what your mother’s like. She can sort out anything.’

‘Hmm.’ Marcus looked doubtful. ‘Anna’s been pretty difficult lately. And she’s been so negative about this whole situation; it’s like she thinks someone’s trying to steal her
children away…’ He trailed off, looking around the room, as if he’d just noticed that both his daughters were within earshot. ‘I just don’t want you or Mum to think we’re ungrateful,’ he said finally.

Lily, focused on laying down a card, didn’t give any indication that she’d heard. Connie studied her own cards, so she wouldn’t say what she was thinking: that maybe they didn’t need to be stolen. Maybe their mother had given her children away.

‘We know it’s a difficult situation,’ Grandpa said, his voice light. ‘You just focus on worrying about yourselves. Your mother and I are old enough to let you know if something’s upsetting us.’

Marcus nodded, and the conversation moved on. After a while Connie put down her cards, mumbling something about needing the toilet, and slipped into the dining room, pushing the door closed behind her.

The room was empty, and strangely dim with the door closed: the sky was steadily darkening outside, as the rain grew heavier and the day crept towards the night. The dishes from lunch were still scattered across the table, casting strange shadows, and the door to the kitchen was open a crack, a shaft of light throwing itself carelessly across the carpet. Connie could hear the low voices of her mother and her grandmother from the other side of the door.

‘I know it sounds petulant,’ Anna was saying, ‘but I feel as if Marcus is punishing me because I wasn’t there to help them. It’s as if he’s gone,
Well, you weren’t around to help then, so I’m not going to let you help now.
What other reason can there be for him sending Lily away, other than that he thinks I’m incompetent?’

‘Anna, you need to talk to him about this. He doesn’t think you’re incompetent. He thinks you’re stressed and he’s trying to avoid putting any more pressure on you.’

‘By taking my daughter away? How is that relieving the pressure?’

‘She’s hard work, Anna. You know that – you can see what it’s like. Looking after someone who won’t communicate is a full-time job, and it can be pretty hurtful, knowing that despite your best efforts they still don’t want to talk to you. Especially if it’s your own child. I think Marcus just wants to protect you.’

Connie waited for the response, barely breathing in her attempt to not make any noise.

‘Well, he hasn’t protected me,’ Anna said, her voice blunt and full of hurt. ‘He’s just made things worse. He’s probably ruined my relationship with my daughters, and he’s made me lose all respect for him. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to forgive him for that.’

The door swung open so suddenly that Connie didn’t have time to move; light filled the room, and Anna appeared in the doorway, her features contorted almost unrecognisably. Connie froze, terrified that she’d be seen, but she needn’t have worried – Anna made straight for the stairs, and never once looked in her direction.

‘I invited Lily and Richard round for dinner tomorrow.’

Connie was stretched out on the sofa, her feet resting in Nathan’s lap. He was painting her toenails, his eyes inches away from her left foot, concentration blurring his features. Blood red. Blood Dread. She preferred more quirky shades – blue, green – but Nathan could rarely be diverted from the red.

‘Did you speak to Lily? Or Richard?’

‘Lily.’ She paused, stretched. ‘At Richard’s suggestion. He thinks I should talk to her.’

‘He’s right.’ Nathan and Richard talked on the phone on a semi-regular basis. Their primary topic of conversation was the insanity of their partners, which they spoke of with admirable fondness.

‘Are you done yet?’

‘Nearly. Stop wriggling. Did Lily definitely say they would come? I don’t want you to go to all that effort and have them not show up again.’

‘It’s not any effort; I’m only going to cook what I usually would for you and the boys. But yes, she said she would definitely come.’

‘Want me to ring Richard and mention it tomorrow morning?’

A beat, and then, ‘Yes, okay, then.’

The stereo murmured in the corner, classical music that Connie couldn’t place. She preferred the stuff that was on
the radio: loud, upbeat, popular. The only CDs she owned were the ones Nathan had bought her when they’d first got together, when he’d still presumed she could develop an interest in music just because he had one. She didn’t know band names, or genres. But she knew the lyrics to half the songs on Radio One. The ones that didn’t sound like dance music being played on a car stereo two streets away.

‘Do you think Richard’s spoken to Lily about the house?’

‘No.’ Connie followed her husband’s delicate brushstrokes with her eyes. ‘I think he’s waiting for me to do it.’

‘Well, that’s fair enough, I suppose.’

‘Is it, though? I don’t see why I got landed with all this responsibility.’

Nathan finished, screwed the lid back on the nail varnish, and gently negotiated his way past her feet until he was sitting close enough to kiss her. ‘It’s because you’re responsible.’

‘I’m not really, though.’

‘More responsible than Lily, then.’

‘That doesn’t take much.’

‘Connie – ’

‘Yes, I know.’ She shifted position until her head was resting on Nathan’s shoulder. ‘I do love you, you know.’

‘I know. I love you, too.’

Connie smiled, closed her eyes. Together, they sat in silence, and the music gently filled the space between them.

‘So the job’s going well?’

‘Yeah, not so bad.’ Richard speared a piece of chicken with his fork and pushed it back and forth through the sauce of Connie’s home-made cauliflower cheese. ‘I think it’ll take me a while to get to the point I’m aiming for.’

‘And what exactly
are
you aiming for?’

Connie and Nathan sat on one side of the table, alternating questions, as if they were an interview panel. Lily sat next to Richard, her eyes on her plate. It was impossible to tell whether she was following the conversation.

‘Well, obviously editor-in-chief would be nice, some day.’ They laughed as Richard chewed. ‘I don’t know. For now I’d just like to get put on some more interesting stories.’

‘What was the last story you did?’

‘You read it, silly.’ Connie nudged Nathan with her elbow. ‘I showed it to you.’

‘The one about the Hallowe’en celebrations?’

‘Hmm. Investigative journalism at its greatest.’ Richard took a sip of his wine with his left hand, slipping his right one under the table to find Lily’s. One long squeeze.
Okay?
Short squeeze in response.
Yes
. He let the tip of his thumb run the length of hers, then returned his hand to the table. ‘What about you, Nate? Any interesting patients lately?’

‘Actually, I did have one guy the other day…’

As Nathan recounted the story of a patient who had eaten nothing but doughnuts for a month in an attempt to gain weight, Richard let himself tune out somewhat, turning half of his attention to Lily. She had been eating the food earlier, but now she was pushing it around her plate. She stared downwards with the expression of someone who was seeing straight through the table to the plushly carpeted floor beneath.

‘Sometimes I can hardly believe these people exist,’ Connie said, laughing loudly.

‘Maybe they don’t,’ Richard said, not really thinking about what he was saying. ‘Maybe they’re an invention of the world, put there solely for your entertainment.’

Connie hesitated in her laughter, her smile flickering. ‘But… they’d still exist, even if they were an invention of
the world, wouldn’t they?’ Her eyes were narrowed, as if she was trying to work out whether or not Richard was laughing at her.

‘Of course,’ he said quickly. ‘Of course they would.’

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the ghostly presence of a smile on Lily’s face, in place for just enough time for him to recognise it for what it was. Then: gone.

She’d had more wine than she usually would, though not enough to feel drunk. Just pleasantly hazy round the edges. Connie was drunk, or getting there, her cheeks flushed as if someone had injected her skin with food colouring. Nathan wasn’t. He never drank much. Richard, who was driving, had only had one glass of wine, then on to the water. As a result he was constantly getting up to go to the toilet. Every time he left, Lily could feel his absence, a gap almost as tangible as his presence.

Lily could see Connie building up the courage to talk about it. The house. Exhausted just thinking about it. Would happily give it away. Except…

Always an objection, prickling away at the back of her mind. How would she ever remember, if the focus of her memories was gone?

‘Do you ever think about it – I mean,
really
think about it? Do you ever try to internalise what it means?’

‘What are you talking about?’ Lily was confused, had lost the thread of the conversation. Connie’s expression, so intense. Eyes glittering with tears, or malice. Never easy to tell the difference. But no, she wasn’t malicious. Just unintentionally mean.

Mean
: petty. Or average. Or perhaps – Richard would be proud of her for this one – to mean, to connote. Connie, connote. Connite. Connive.

It was the wine, going to her head.

‘Being an orphan. Have you thought about it? The fact that you’re an orphan now?’

‘No.’ Her voice no more than a whisper, but it made no difference.

‘They’re gone. That’s it. No more childhood, no more falling back on Mama and Daddy when something goes wrong. We’re adrift.’

At sea. I see.

‘Dad’s been dead for years. And it’s not like Mama was someone you could rely on.’

‘Well, yes, of course – ’

‘Is this about the house?’ Richard, intervening on her behalf. There was really no need, though Lily was not unappreciative. Connie was far more intimidated by silence than by words.

‘No, it’s not about the bloody house. It’s about the whole
meaning
of our
lives
– ’

‘Excuse me.’

Lily stood up so abruptly that her chair wobbled, but it didn’t fall over. As she walked up the stairs, marvelling as she always did at the softness of the carpet beneath her socked feet – so plush, so
springy
– she heard Richard lecturing Connie. She couldn’t understand the words, but she knew the tone of voice, felt its comforting presence wrap itself around her. Even when his voice faded from her hearing, she carried it with her still, a cocoon that seemed to find its home in her very skin.

He waited half an hour before going looking for her. He found her in Luke’s room, in Luke’s bed, her adult body curved protectively around his child’s frame. They were both sound asleep.

As gently as he could, he lifted her up, managing to do so without waking her nephew. He carried her to the car, and drove her home through the city, the glow of the street-lamps illuminating her face in regular intervals all the way home.

She didn’t stir; not once.

Marcus awoke on the morning of his second daughter’s ninth birthday to blazing sunshine and an otherwise empty bed. It took him a moment to register that Anna wasn’t there; it was unusual for her to rise before him, and the sheets were still imprinted with her sleeping shape. Usually when he got up to go to work she was still unconscious, buried under a mound of blankets, only her eyelashes and her tousled blonde hair poking out over the top, and he would think how alike she and her daughters looked, especially Lily, whose hair was exactly the same shade of wheat-gold.

He threw the covers off and rose from the bed in one fluid movement. There were clothes scattered all over the floor – his and Anna’s discarded outer layers, mingled together in unidentifiable dark clumps on the carpet – and he dug through them until he found yesterday’s jeans. He pulled a clean T-shirt out of the wardrobe, and then fussed for a moment in front of the mirror on the inside of the wardrobe door, trying to get his hair to lie flat. Always a losing battle, but he found he didn’t mind so much this morning; in casual clothes, with messy hair and a five o’clock shadow, he looked about five years younger than he did when he was on his way to work.

When he opened the door he was hit by the sound of voices. He checked his watch, surprised; it was even more unusual for Connie to get up early than it was for Anna. He found them standing side by side in the kitchen, packing
cupcakes into tins. It was so unlike any family scene that he’d come across in the last ten months that he actually stopped and stared, and it was only when Connie looked up and started laughing at the expression on his face that he realised he was frozen in place.

‘You’re looking like you’ve never seen us bake before,’ Connie said.

‘Well, to be fair, it’s been quite a while.’ Marcus took a few steps forward and leaned over to inspect the cakes. ‘Can I have one?’

‘Nope,’ Anna said briskly. She looked considerably less good-humoured than Connie, though she did give him a wan smile when he raised an eyebrow at her. ‘We’ve made exactly the right amount. We’re going to ice them when we get there, and lay them out so they say
Happy birthday Lily.’

‘Nice.’ Marcus nodded approvingly. ‘And when did you decide to do this?’

‘I woke up at five and couldn’t get back to sleep, so I thought I might as well do something useful. Connie joined me about an hour ago.’

Marcus made coffee while they finished packing the cupcakes away. The radio chattered softly in the background, competing with the sound of the birds in the back garden and the distant hammering of one of their neighbours.

‘What time were you thinking of leaving?’ Anna asked.

‘Whenever we’re ready. I said we’d be there for lunch, so I guess we should aim to be on the road for about nine? How does that sound to you?’

‘Yeah, fine. In that case I think I’ll go and have a shower.’ She slipped upstairs without looking him in the eye, leaving the coffee he’d made her on the counter. He wondered if he should be worried; she was always odd when they all went to visit Lily, and he supposed it made sense that she might behave more strangely on an occasion like Lily’s birthday.

‘Has she seemed okay to you this morning?’ he asked Connie.

She shrugged. ‘Same as usual. She didn’t say much when I came downstairs, but I figured that was probably because it was half-six in the morning.’

‘Not the most talkative of times.’

‘Nope.’

Connie was concentrating on shaking out Frosties into a bowl, pouring at least twice as many as she could reasonably eat and making Marcus wince.

‘I don’t understand how you can eat that stuff.’

‘What’s wrong with it? It’s just cereal.’

‘Underneath about an inch of sugar.’

She grinned. ‘The sugar is what makes it taste nice. Plus, it gives me energy.’

‘For about half an hour. And then you’ll have a massive sugar crash and probably spend the whole car journey whingeing like a five-year-old – ’

‘Chill out – I eat this every day.’ She poured milk right to the brim of the bowl, and then leaned down to slurp some of the excess away so she could carry it without spilling milk everywhere.

‘That explains a lot.’

‘Ha, ha.’ She carried the bowl to the table and started leafing through a magazine, flicking droplets of milk on to it every time she lifted her spoon.

Marcus watched her while he sipped his coffee. She’d changed in the ten months since Lily had gone away. She looked thinner; she had dark circles under her eyes; she looked older. She rarely smiled. She seemed distant, and he sometimes felt as if he was watching her from a long way off.

‘Do you have much homework to do?’ he asked.

She looked up, surprised. ‘Not too much. I’ll do it when we get back tomorrow.’

‘Okay. But remember we won’t be back until late.’

‘Yeah, yeah. Stop worrying.’ She waved a hand carelessly in the air – dismissing him, he thought with a smile – and turned back to the magazine.

He took his coffee and went upstairs. He could hear the sound of running water from the bathroom. Anna had been in their room before she got into the shower; all Lily’s birthday presents were laid out on the bed, neatly wrapped. He picked up the nearest one, trying to guess what it was. He’d wanted to go shopping, but Anna had insisted on going alone, and she had refused to show him what she’d bought. ‘Buy your own, if you’re that bothered,’ she’d said, but he’d worried about getting duplicates and ended up with nothing.

The space between them had expanded in the past few months. Things had seemed as if they were getting better, briefly; when they’d come back from his parents’ house after the New Year he’d felt as if Anna had been making an effort. But it had only taken a few weeks for them to slip back into the habits of the previous months, and most days now he found she would barely speak to him.

He often wondered what life would be like if Lily came home. Tried to imagine them all slipping back into the easy family roles they had once played. But when he really thought about it he couldn’t see a way back; they were not, after all, the people they’d been before.

He lay down on the bed, curling his legs awkwardly to avoid lying on Lily’s presents. Anna came in a few minutes later, wrapped in a towel, tiny rivers of water running down her arms and her neck. She barely glanced at him as she walked to the wardrobe. ‘You’re going to make us late,’ she said.

He considered responding, and decided against it; it seemed unlikely he would be able to find any response that
wouldn’t provoke an argument. He got up and went to the bathroom, leaving her there alone, dripping on the carpet.

They arrived an hour later than they should have done, and found lunch already laid out, birthday banners hung around the table. Lily was lying on the grass in the back garden, reading a book, and she turned around when she heard the door open. ‘What have you got?’ Marcus asked, crouching down, and she held out the book for his inspection: a title he didn’t know, but the front cover indicated it was sci-fi. ‘From Grandpa?’ he guessed, thinking back to the presents he’d received from his father as a child.

Lily grinned, and nodded.

‘Well, come inside in a minute,’ he said, standing up again. ‘We’ve got lots more presents for you.’

Lily opened her presents at the table, the food temporarily forgotten in favour of unwrapping. Anna hovered to one side, taking photos, the flash intruding on the scene at regular intervals. ‘Can’t you switch that off?’ Marcus asked after a few minutes. ‘It’s daylight; there must be enough light in here.’

‘There’s never enough light inside,’ Anna replied dismissively. Marcus grimaced at her, but said nothing.

Connie, next to her sister, inspected each present in turn, making exclamations of approval where necessary. ‘Oh, look, we can play this later,’ she said as Lily unwrapped a board game Marcus had never seen before. Lily nodded, placing it carefully to one side and reaching for the next one. ‘Oh,
wow
,’ Connie said, as Lily ripped off silver foiled paper to reveal a camera.

‘It’s not a fancy one,’ Anna said as Lily examined it. ‘Just one to get you started. So you can see if you like it.’

Lily nodded again, and placed the camera on top of the board game.

After they’d eaten lunch Anna disappeared into the kitchen while the rest of them retired to the living room. They played the board game, which seemed to involve solving puzzles, though Marcus wasn’t entirely clear on the rules. After a while he gave up and left the rest of them to it, and went to find his wife.

He found her hunched over a cupcake with a bag of icing, tears running down her face as she tried to keep her hands steady. ‘What on earth’s the matter?’ he asked.

She flinched, but didn’t turn round. ‘It’s nothing,’ she muttered.

‘It can’t be nothing. Anna, you’re – you’re crying.’ He wondered for a moment how long it was since he’d seen her cry, and realised he couldn’t remember. ‘Let me help you.’ He reached out a hand to put it on her shoulder, but she shook him off before he’d even really touched her.

‘I don’t need your help,’ she said, her voice low and controlled. ‘It’s just – the icing didn’t turn out the way I wanted. But it’s fine. I don’t need any help.’

Marcus stood behind her, watching the back of her head as she picked up the icing bag and carried on with the cake she was working on.

‘It looks good,’ he said, hesitant.
HAPPY BIRTHD
was laid out in the line on the counter. He couldn’t see anything about the icing that would have reduced her to tears.

‘No, it doesn’t,’ she said bluntly.

‘Honestly, Anna, it’s – ’

‘Can you stop it?’ She put down the icing bag and spun around to face him, her blonde ponytail flicking sharply as she moved. ‘I don’t need babying. I’m a mother, okay, not some kind of invalid.’

‘You’re my wife.’

‘I’m not just your
wife
.’ Her voice was venomous, and it surprised him. ‘I’m Lily’s mother. I’m going to do something
nice for her, because it’s her birthday, and I’m perfectly capable of doing it, and I don’t need your help. Okay? Is that okay with you?’

He took a step back, unsettled by the expression on her face. ‘Yes, of course it is. But I don’t understand why you think I would be taking something away from you if I helped you.’

She turned back around without answering him, and carried on icing the cake in front of her, a large pink A taking shape beneath the piping bag. After a while he realised she was never going to answer him, and he went back to the living room.

His parents had gone elsewhere while he’d been in the kitchen, and he found his daughters sitting with their backs to him, crouched over something he couldn’t see. ‘You can’t just take pictures for the sake of it,’ Connie was saying, and Marcus realised it was the camera they were looking at. ‘Film is expensive, so you have to only take pictures of things you really want to remember. Okay?’

Lily looked up at her, solemn, and nodded.

‘As it’s your birthday, though, today is special, and you’re allowed to take pictures of anything. Also, it’s the first day of owning the camera, so you can practise a bit before the pictures start having to be special. Do you understand?’

Lily nodded again.

‘Good. Shall we go outside and find things to take photos of?’

They didn’t seem surprised to find him in the doorway when they turned around. ‘We’re going outside,’ Connie said, taking her sister’s hand, and Marcus followed them as they made their way into the back garden. He sat on the back steps and watched as they walked down the lawn, Connie pointing out photo opportunities as they went.

A rose.

Snap.

A bird.

Snap.

A garden gnome, peeping out from behind a bush.

Snap.

Every time Connie pointed, Lily lifted the camera, snapping obediently. Capturing Connie’s gaze on film rather than her own. Marcus watched them for half an hour, smiling to himself, until a useless clicking indicated that the film had run out, and his mother appeared in the doorway to tell them to come and eat cake.