The Shadow Year (50 page)

It’s a cry that wakes her. Kat jumps and glances down at the baby in her arms, surprised to see her still nestled there safely, still sound asleep. She grips her close. How irresponsible; she could have dropped her.

The sun has shifted. She can tell straight away that it’s moved on its trajectory for it no longer shines through the window onto her back but slants upon the stone wall opposite. The room has lost its bright yellow glare. From far away she can hear the sound of rapid movement through water. There is more shouting. Simon and Mac must be back.

‘No!’ she hears. It is Mac’s voice. ‘No, no, no.’ There is a terrible desperation to it that turns her blood cold.

She stands quickly and moves to the window, still clutching the dozing baby close, and looks out towards the lake, where she can just make out Mac and Simon wrestling with something heavy in the water, out at the thin line where the pale green shallows end and the water takes on a deeper, darker hue.

The baby shifts in her arms, opens its mouth and lets out a tiny mewl of protest. ‘Shhhh . . .’ says Kat, her eyes flicking back to the boys in the water. What on earth are they doing?

Mac is still fully dressed, even down to his boots and they are dragging something up onto the shoreline, something pale, flowing white. She peers more closely and gasps when she understands what it is. Then she is out the back door and running as fast as she can with the baby in her arms to the lake’s edge.

‘Freya,’ she cries. ‘Freya.’

Her sister lies at the edge of the lake, her face grey and mottled, her eyes open and staring. Her lips are a shocking blue and wet hair snakes down in dark tendrils over her neck and chest. Mac pulls her close, presses her cold body against his warm one, begs her to stir, but Freya doesn’t respond.

He lays her back again and his focus changes. Kat watches as he hooks his fingers inside her mouth, tilts her head then presses his hands together above her heart and begins to pump with his hands. He counts steadily, then leans over and breathes his own warm life into her mouth. Once, twice, then he moves to her chest and begins to press again.

‘Come on,’ he breathes and Kat watches, her heart in her mouth, as he moves over her sister, willing her to live.

Simon stands a little way behind him, his face white and clammy. She moves across and leans into him, buries her face into the warmth of his shoulder, unable to watch any more.

‘Breathe,’ urges Mac. ‘Just breathe.’ Over and over he works on her. He won’t give up. Ten minutes. Fifteen minutes. He is intent and sweating but he won’t give up, not until Simon steps forwards and places one hand on his shoulder and tells him that it’s over.

Mac’s hands go still on her chest. He sits back on his heels and stares up at the fading blue sky. It’s only then that Kat sees the tears streaming down his face. He rises unsteadily and takes a step towards the lake, lifts his hands then rests them on the back of his head and looks to the heavens. ‘No,’ he screams, one terrible word echoing out over the lake and bouncing off the surrounding hills.

‘Mate,’ says Simon, reaching for him, trying to console him but Mac shakes him off, stares at him as if he is a complete stranger.

Kat stands motionless on the bank. She gazes down at her sister, no longer Freya but a stiffer, paler imitation, a fallen marble statue lying on the grass. As the clouds shift overhead, a shard of evening sun falls onto her pale skin and catches the thin silver chain at her neck, its oval pendant shining, for just a moment, as bright as sunshine. Kat stares at Freya, her beautiful, broken sister, and she begins to cry.

At first they don’t know what do with her, so they just leave her body lying there at the shoreline beneath the darkening sky. None of them have any words. Kat fetches a blanket for the baby from her room, swaddles her tightly and they sit slumped around the kitchen table, silenced by shock, as twilight slowly draws its curtains across the valley. Eventually the baby stirs and begins to cry. ‘She’s hungry,’ says Kat. ‘What do we do?’

Mac stares, unseeing.

‘Do we have anything to give her?’ asks Simon, his voice cracking with emotion.

Kat feels a sudden desperation grip at her. What do you give a four-week-old baby that has only ever drunk her mother’s breast milk? She stands, rummages helplessly in the larder, and returns with the near-empty tin of milk powder. She holds it up to the boys as a question but they don’t have an answer so she mixes some with warm water from the pan she boiled earlier and tries to give it to the baby on a teaspoon. The baby gurgles and chokes then spits it out.

‘Come on, little one,’ she wills and tries again but the baby turns her head and begins to wail. Kat runs her hands through her hair in frustration.

‘This is so messed up.’ Simon shakes his head. ‘I can’t think straight.’

‘We should call an ambulance,’ says Mac, his voice flat. ‘The police might need to be involved. I could go to mum’s . . . make some calls.’

Kat throws him a frightened glance. ‘Will we get into trouble?’

‘They’ll need to do an inquest. An autopsy. There will be questions. She was a strong swimmer. It doesn’t make sense that she drowned.’

Kat presses her knuckles to her lips. ‘You mean they’ll cut her open? I can’t bear it.’

Simon shakes his head. The baby is still crying and he reaches for her, takes her from Kat, tries bouncing her a few times. ‘Not yet. We don’t tell anyone yet.’

She sees Mac shake his head in obvious frustration, but there is the more urgent matter of the hungry baby to attend to.

‘Try the milk again.’

Simon does, and this time the baby seems to manage a drip, then another.

‘It can’t be good for her. We need to buy a bottle . . . some proper baby formula.’ Kat begins to cry quietly as the absence of Freya hits home.

‘What we need to do is tell someone,’ says Mac through gritted teeth, ‘at least notify her family.’

Kat shakes her head. ‘But there’s no one to tell.
We’re
her family.’

‘So what do we do?’

The three of them look around at each other, bewildered.

In the end none of them can bear the thought of her lying out there in the dark beside the lake so they carry Freya’s body inside the cottage and lay her on the sofa. The sight of her, cold and lifeless, is horrifying. Kat arranges her nightdress so it covers her once more, fastens the buttons still undone at her chest.

‘Get her something to wear, will you?’ says Mac. ‘I don’t want to leave her in this wet nightie. It doesn’t seem right.’

Kat nods and climbs the creaking staircase. When she returns she is holding one of Freya’s favourite dresses, an aspirin bottle and a ripped sheet of paper in her hand. She can’t stop the tears coursing down her cheeks. ‘I – I found these – on her bed. The aspirin bottle’s . . .’ she chokes back a sob, ‘it’s empty.’ She holds the paper out to them both and lets them read the few, sparse words scrawled upon its white surface in Freya’s hand, a fat ink blot marking the last letter of her hastily scribbled name where the nib of the pen has caught on the paper.

Mac reads the words aloud then slumps down beside the sofa, his head in his hands, trying to hide the tears that pour down his face.

The baby wails and screams for almost three intolerable hours, each of them pacing and rocking and shushing her desperately in turn, but when she has finally exhausted herself and fallen asleep, they sit around the table, the piece of paper lying like an accusation between them.

‘It’s my fault. I should’ve . . . I could’ve . . .’ Kat bites down on her hand, tries to stop the sob that falls from her mouth.

‘None of us knew . . . none of us understood . . .’ Mac swallows. ‘What do we do?’

Simon shakes his head. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know anything any more.’

He looks so undone, so broken, a world away from the poised, confident man she remembers from just a few days ago. Watching him, Kat realises that it falls upon her to take charge. ‘No police,’ she says quietly.

‘Why not? There should be an inquest.’ Mac is staring at her, challenging her.

She straightens her shoulders and meets his gaze. ‘I’m her sister, and I say no police. What good will it do now? Freya chose this. We’ll probably never understand why, but at least we know the truth. What good will calling the police do? What else can they tell us? She was depressed. We should have helped her. We all know we’ve failed her.’

Mac shakes his head. ‘Why would she do it?’ he asks, his voice barely a whisper. ‘I don’t understand. I thought we’d agreed . . .’

Simon’s eyes narrow. ‘Thought you’d agreed
what
?’

Mac clears his throat. ‘She was going to come away with me.’

Simon studies him for a moment. ‘Bullshit.’

Mac lifts his chin a fraction. ‘I was going to help her . . . we were going to find somewhere . . . for her and the baby. She said it was what she wanted. She said she wanted a . . . “a way out”.’ His voice chokes on the last three words and he closes his eyes to stop the tears. When he has composed himself he continues. ‘I didn’t think she meant
this
.’

Kat shudders. ‘We have to do right by Freya,’ she says, ‘but we have to do right by her baby now too. Freya is gone, but Lila is here and she needs us. We need to get her milk . . . proper baby milk. We need formula and bottles. That should be the priority.’

At the mention of Freya’s baby, Mac’s eyes clear. He nods and stands, moves across to the dresser. ‘You’re right,’ he says and he opens the tin. ‘We’ve got twenty quid left.’ He holds it out to them like a question and Kat nods. ‘I’ll be as quick as I can.’

It takes him two hours to find a late-night store selling baby formula and bottles. While he is gone, Kat and Simon sit in the kitchen. Simon barely moves, can hardly speak. Thankfully the baby sleeps on, oblivious to the drama unfolding around her.

‘It’s the end of everything,’ says Simon finally. ‘What are we doing to do?’ He turns to stare at Kat. ‘What am
I
going to do? I can’t manage a baby, not on my own.’ His voice cracks. Kat sees that his hands are trembling, that reality is sinking in.

She studies him for a moment. She has never seen him so lost, so adrift. She moves around the table and puts a comforting arm around his shoulders, then whispers into his ear. ‘You don’t have to do this on your own. You’ve got me. We’ll do it together. I’ll help you.’ Kat shushes him, holds him close while his tears fall. ‘Shhh . . . I’m here and I promise I won’t leave you.’

She rubs his back and holds him tight and watches as his tears fall onto the rose-coloured fabric of her shirt, turning it a deep and violent red.

In the end they do it because they think it’s what Freya would have wanted, a quiet funeral beside the lake, near the alder trees and the clumps of honesty that she loved so much. No authorities, no fuss. Kat dresses Freya in one of her prettiest dresses, brushes her hair, straightens the silver necklace lying in the hollow of her throat. When she is ready, she leans down and kisses her sister on her cool, pale lips. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispers. ‘I’m sorry for all of it.’

Mac stands watching by the door, his face ashen. ‘Ready?’

Kat nods and Mac moves into the room. He stands beside Freya, gazing down at her perfectly still body. He strokes a strand of her fair hair away from her face then reaches out to remove the silver chain from around her neck. ‘For the baby,’ he explains and Kat nods and watches as he slides the necklace into his pocket.

They bury her beside the lake. No one says anything as she is lowered into the muddy grave the boys have dug beneath the boughs of a tall alder tree. Kat holds the baby close, and as the first shovel-loads of soil are thrown, her tears begin to flow. She weeps hot, angry tears for her sister and the mother her niece will never know.

Simon and Mac take it in turns to cover her with earth. When they have finished, all that is left is a mound of bare earth rising up out of the ground. Tears course down Mac’s dirt-streaked face, but Simon just stands there, shivering even though the day is warm.

‘Should we say something?’ asks Mac, but none of them can think of anything to say. They wander aimlessly back to the cottage where Kat tries again with the bottle of formula and finally the baby opens her mouth and sucks. She drains it quickly and falls into an easy sleep in her arms.

‘Poor little duck,’ says Kat, holding her close. She feels heat on her skin and looks up to see Simon watching her.

They pass another day in a fog, the three adults drifting about the house like ghosts, barely seeing, barely speaking, only the unrelenting demands of the baby girl in their care keeping any semblance of a routine going. Later, when they find themselves down beside the fallen tree at the lakeside, the three of them drawn to the spot by some unseen force, pulling them back to the site of the tragedy, they begin to talk about the future.

‘I’ve been thinking,’ says Mac, breaking the silence. ‘I could take her.’

‘Who?’ asks Kat, confused.

‘Lila. I’ll look after her.’

Kat glances down at the baby sleeping in the crook of her arm and shakes her head. ‘That’s good of you, Mac, but—’