The Shadow Year (36 page)

‘I’m fine,’ she says. It’s rare for them to be on their own and she wants to enjoy this time with him for just a few more moments, before the spectre of Freya rises up between them again.

The sky is a grey sheet hanging over them as they snap and pull at the smaller branches of the tree, gradually working their way into the centre of the canopy where they hack at the thicker stems with the axe and a small handsaw. As the pile of firewood begins to grow, Kat’s muscles warm with the exertion. She feels sweat bloom on her skin and slips off her sweater, the cold air making her bare arms tingle. It feels good to do something physical and for a while she loses herself in the rhythm of the task. ‘Let’s take a break,’ Simon suggests finally, and he hands her a cold flask of water. She drinks deeply then hands it back to him and watches as he tips it back and swallows, his Adam’s apple sliding up and down in his throat. ‘So are you going to tell me what’s bothering you?’ he asks, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. ‘You’ve hardly said a word all morning.’

Don’t make me do this, she wills. Don’t make me ruin this. But she knows she must. With a sigh, she pats the tree trunk and indicates for him to sit. ‘There’s something I need to talk to you about and I don’t think you’re going to like it.’

Simon eyes her evenly. ‘Out with it then.’

‘It’s Freya.’

‘Go on.’

He really doesn’t have a clue, she thinks. She takes a breath. ‘She’s pregnant.’

Simon’s eyes visibly widen. ‘Pregnant?’

‘Yes.’

‘As in . . .’

‘. . . going to have a baby? Yes.’ Kat is annoyed to find that she is the one blushing. Does she really have to spell it out to him? ‘It was that night,’ she continues, ‘you know, when we took the mushrooms, when everything went a bit crazy.’ She tries to smile, tries to show him that she understands, that she forgives him. Simon stares at her then has the decency to drop his gaze as embarrassment flares on his cheeks. She takes a small kernel of satisfaction from witnessing his shame.

‘Oh,’ he says.

‘Yes. Oh.’

Simon raises his head and shakes his hair out of his eyes. ‘Kat, I don’t know what . . .’

Kat shakes her head. ‘It happened.’

Simon eyes her. ‘You’re not . . . cross?’

She holds his gaze. Cross? She’s not cross? Is he serious? Of course she’s cross. She’s livid. She’s destroyed. Her heart is no longer a warm, beating thing of heat and beauty but fragments of broken glass scattered across her ribcage. He will never know what he has done to her, but she won’t tell him. She won’t show herself to be weak or needy. She knows how he operates. Instead, she shakes her head. ‘No,’ she says lightly, ‘I’m not cross. It was just one stupid night, right?’

Simon lets out a slow breath. ‘Shit . . . she must be what . . . four . . . nearly five months along?’

Kat nods.

He shakes his head and they sit together in silence on the log for a while until Kat can’t stand it any longer. ‘She wants to have an abortion . . . but she’s got no money and nowhere to go afterwards. That’s why I was checking the tin the other day.’

‘Oh.’

‘We need money, quickly . . . so that she can go to a clinic, you know, I was thinking somewhere private . . . somewhere nice. And she’ll need to find somewhere to stay for a while, until she can get back on her feet and return to college.’ She is talking quickly, almost tripping over the words.

Simon shakes his head. ‘An abortion?’

‘Yes,’ says Kat. ‘I really don’t see she has a choice.’

Simon rubs his hand across his stubbly chin. ‘How much?’

‘I don’t know exactly. I was thinking a couple of hundred pounds, maybe a bit more, enough for the procedure and a month or two of rent.’

‘We don’t have that kind of money. You know as well as I do how much is left in the tin.’

‘I know.’ She hesitates. ‘I thought – I thought perhaps you could talk to your parents.’

Simon’s laugh surprises her. ‘My parents? Oh they’d love that. The prodigal son turning up out of the blue and asking for a handout to abort his bastard child and set his floozy up in some love shack.’ He shakes his head. ‘I don’t think so.’

She eyes him for a moment. ‘Freya is hardly your
floozy
. Besides, if it’s the abortion they’d disapprove of you could always lie about what the money was for.’

Simon’s eyes narrow and when he speaks next his words shock Kat to the core. ‘Why can’t she keep it?’

‘Because . . . because she – she just can’t,’ Kat blusters. She shakes her head. ‘Of course she can’t. She’s only twenty.’

‘What does age have to do with it?’

‘Everything.’ Kat gapes at him. ‘She’s too young. She wants to go to back to college.’

He gives a thin smile. ‘We can’t always do exactly as we please in life, can we? Maybe she has different responsibilities now.’

‘So she’d raise the baby on her own, a single mother with no money and no home?’ Kat gives a bitter laugh. ‘I don’t think so, do you?’

‘But she’s not on her own, is she? She’s got us and
this
is her home.’

Kat tastes acid at the back of her throat. She swallows it down and tries to focus her thoughts into one logical argument. ‘OK,’ she tries calmly, ‘so say she has this baby; what about doctors, hospitals, regular check-ups?’

Simon shakes his head and smiles again. ‘You’re so conditioned, Kat, so ready to accept what society dictates to you. Hasn’t our time here taught you anything? Having a baby should be the most natural thing in the world. And isn’t that what this place is all about . . . putting our trust in nature, accepting the outcome and making the best of what we’re given? Freya will have you and Carla to help her, women who love and support her.’

‘But we’re hardly professional midwives.’ Kat can’t believe what she’s hearing. ‘Anyway, what about nappies, baby food and clothes? We’re not set up for any of that here. How would we afford it? It’s impossible.’

‘What do you think women did years ago? Race off to Mothercare and fill a shopping trolley with disposable nappies and baby lotion? If you think about it, the most important things that the baby will need are already here: milk, shelter and more than enough adults to nurture and care for it.’

‘But a baby?’ She is incredulous. ‘We can’t raise a baby
here
’

Simon rubs his chin again. ‘I think you’re coming at this all wrong, Kat. Maybe this isn’t the problem you’re perceiving it to be.’ He is visibly warming to his idea; she can see a faint gleam of excitement in his eyes. ‘Maybe this is an opportunity. It’s new life, Kat. It should be embraced. It was meant for us, as part of our challenge here at the cottage. This baby might be the best thing that happens to Freya, to you, to me. We can raise the child in a new kind of family. We’ll learn from our parents’ mistakes and do things differently.’ He smiles and puts a hand out to touch her arm. ‘We’ll do it together.’

Together? Is he dreaming? Kat wants to shake him. ‘You won’t help us?’

Simon looks out across the still waters of the lake. ‘Of course I’ll help . . . but not with money for an abortion.’

Kat’s cheeks flare an angry red. ‘It should be Freya’s decision. It’s her body.’

‘Yes, but what decision can she make if she is already more than four months along and there is no money?’ He jumps down off the log and offers a hand to Kat. She doesn’t want to accept it but he holds it there and in the end she takes it, unsure whether he even notices the tremble of her own hand. He is rocking backwards and forwards on his feet with impatience. ‘Let’s get back to it. There isn’t too much more to do. Then I’ll talk to Freya.’

Kat turns crestfallen to a branch as white and brittle as bone. She snaps it from a larger limb and hurls it onto the growing pile of kindling. She is filled with fury. She can’t believe Simon’s reaction. She looks across at him wrestling with a huge branch and sees that he is visibly buoyed by the news, his chest puffed up like a cockerel. Every so often he glances up at the house, shakes his head and smiles. As she watches him she realises with a creeping horror that keeping the baby – something she hasn’t even considered until now – is the worst possible thing that can happen. A living, growing baby will be a physical connection that will exist between Simon and Freya, for ever. Something she will never be able to break. As she wrestles with the tangled branches she feels the seed of bitterness lodged in her core take root; it grows and spreads, hidden inside her like the sleeping vegetation all around, just waiting to spring into life and roam across the landscape. She eyes the huge trunk sprawled before her. Maybe it would have been better if it hadn’t missed her after all.

Kat removes her boots to enter the kitchen and finds Freya at the range, filling a pan with water. Simon enters the room behind her then moves on to Freya, reaching out to squeeze her shoulder. ‘Good girl,’ he says, eyeing the bread and jam lying on the plate beside the sink, ‘you’ve got to keep your strength up now, haven’t you?’

Freya spins, her panic-stricken gaze darting from Simon to Kat. In her sister’s eyes Kat sees one shocked question:
He knows?

Kat nods slowly and with a heavy heart, she turns and leaves the room. You win, she thinks. You have him. I can’t do this any more.

17

LILA

March

Lila has just reached the end of another back-breaking day in the cottage when she decides enough is enough. She can’t let this thing between her and Tom fester a moment longer.

The morning after Valentine’s Day, when she’d sat up until dawn turning the shocking, new detail of her fall over and over in her head, she’d been incapable of anything but complete withdrawal from him. He’d tried to pull close, tried to gather her up into his arms after their night together but she’d remained cold and distant and had ushered him out of the cottage just as soon as she’d been able to. She’d seen his look of confusion and he’d asked her what was wrong, but she’d had no reassurances for him and frankly she’d been glad to see him go, terrified that if he didn’t, she’d blurt out the fears running riot in her head.

But it doesn’t seem to matter; whether he is there at the cottage with her or not, the fear remains. She has to know the truth about the fall. She has to know the part he played. Grabbing her phone, she stomps out over the ridge and across the meadow towards her car.

The evening is drawing in as she hurtles down the track and drives the twisting country lanes, searching for a spot where her mobile phone has reception. She is halfway to Little Ramsdale when a couple of bars spring to life on the screen. She hits the hazard lights and pulls onto the verge, scrolling for Tom’s number.

It rings and rings and she is about to give up when his voice floods through the receiver. ‘Hello,’ he shouts. ‘Lila?’

‘Yes, it’s me.’ She can hear raucous laughter, music blaring and the clinking of glasses in the background.

‘Is everything OK?’

‘Where are you?’ she asks.

‘In the pub.’

‘Oh.’

‘What’s up? Are you OK?’

‘Yes, I just thought . . . I wanted . . .’ She takes a deep breath. ‘I don’t know.’ She is suddenly unsure. She hadn’t imagined the conversation playing out like this.

‘Hang on,’ shouts Tom, so loudly she has to hold the phone away from her ear, ‘I can’t hear you. I’m going outside.’

Lila hears Tom’s muffled words followed by the teasing reply of one of his friends and gradually the background noises fade away until there is nothing but the low thrum of London traffic.

‘Are you still there?’ he asks. ‘Sorry, the football’s on and it’s bloody noisy in there.’

‘I’m here.’

‘Everything OK?’

She swallows and stares out through the windscreen into the darkness. How does she say it? How does she ask if it was
him
? If he was there with her on the day she fell? If he was the one she remembers chasing after her, his hands at her back, tripping her up and sending her toppling down the stairs? How does she say it out loud?

‘Lila?’

‘I’m still here.’

‘What’s wrong?’

The faraway roar of a crowd erupting at a goal filters through the phone. The sound makes her feel not just a couple of hundred miles away but a million. Here she is agonising about the worst thing that’s ever happened to her and there he is enjoying a lads’ night out in the pub. ‘Nothing,’ she says, ‘I was just phoning to say hi.’ She curses her cowardice.

‘Oh.’ He sounds surprised. ‘Right.’ Silence hangs between them. ‘I thought maybe you were calling to say you were coming home.’

She shakes her head. ‘No, not yet.’

‘I see.’

Lila takes a breath. ‘And you’re OK?’

‘Yep.’ He sounds so brusque – suddenly not a bit like the Tom she knows. There is another pause and then Tom is speaking again, his words coming in a rush. ‘Look, I wasn’t planning on saying this tonight but as you’ve called . . . I think you should know that I’ve decided to stay away. It’s clear from the way things were left after Valentine’s Day that you don’t want me there so I’m not going to keep racing up there and bothering you. The way we said goodbye that last time . . . well, it hurt, Lila. I can’t keep doing this. You know where I am, when you’re ready . . .’