Tyme's End (4 page)

‘Oh dear.' Eddie coughs. ‘I can see why he wouldn't want everyone in the village to know that –'

I pick up my mug with both hands and take a sip, but it doesn't taste of anything. I put it carefully back down on the counter. ‘Sorry, Ed. Sorry, Leila.' My voice doesn't sound like mine.

Leila says, ‘Honey, are you –'

But by then I'm out of the door.

I can't go to Tyme's End, and I don't know where else to go. So I go home.

.

.

III

.

.

I get in through the front door and Mum and Dad are talking about me.

I don't realise at first. I go through to the kitchen, because I'm hungry all of a sudden. There are some leftover sausages sitting on top of the fridge and I eat one of them in two greasy, salty bites. It makes me feel queasy, but I take the other one and eat that too. I sit down at the table and put my head on my arms. I feel like crap.

Dad's voice comes through the doorway. I didn't know they were there, so it's not like I'm eavesdropping, and anyway he's talking so quietly I only catch one word in three. ‘It's only . . . no friends in the village and . . . holidays . . .'

Mum says, ‘I know . . . summer job . . . but . . . miserable . . . don't know what to
do
. . .'

‘Teenager, Meg . . . but guests . . . can't let her . . .'

Mum raises her voice. ‘We don't know that's why he's leaving.'

‘Oh, come on. She didn't exactly make him welcome. Jesus, Meg, it's like she's going out of her way to sabotage everything.'

‘Maybe she needs more attention.'

‘She already gets more than Sam, and
he's
– oh, Christ, Meg, I'm not saying she's –'

I raise my head and look at the wall in front of me. I say loudly, ‘Not saying she's
what
?'

There's a pause. In the corner of my eye I see a blurry shape come and stand in the doorway, but I keep staring at the wall.

Mum says, ‘I suppose you were listening to all of that?'

‘I was having breakfast. What was I supposed to do? Put my fingers in my ears?'

Dad says, ‘Our guest has decided to leave.'

‘So?'

‘So,' Mum says, ‘we were trying to arrive at an understanding of what might have influenced his decision.'

‘You mean you think I drove him away.'

‘No, of course not, darling.' Her voice is soft and careful. ‘He said himself that it wasn't anything to do with you.'

‘Right.'

‘But the fact remains,' Dad says, ‘that he paid for four nights in advance. And then this morning he came and told us, very politely, that he'd changed his plans.'

‘So he changed his plans. People do, you know.' I sound too aggressive, but I can't help it. They're right, and I hate them. Of course it's my fault. After what happened last night, and just now with Eddie and Leila, who
wouldn't
cut and run? ‘Sorry you've lost all that money. Why don't you feed me on bread and water for the next week, to make up for it?'

‘Don't be so stupid, Bibi –'

‘He wouldn't take a refund,' Mum says. ‘He said that as we'd reserved the room for him –'

‘Great. What a perfect bloody gentleman.'

Dad hisses through his teeth and swaps a look with Mum. ‘Bibi, we're trying very hard to be reasonable. The B&B pays your school fees, you know. If –'

‘And Sam's. And his are more than mine.'

‘Yes, but Sam –'

‘Isn't adopted.' I spit the word at him.

‘Oh, for crying out loud! Sam isn't being a
complete bloody pain in the arse
.'

‘Having to spend your own money on someone else's kid,' I say. ‘Sorry, that's rough. I can see why you're so miserly. I expect you're wishing you'd never agreed to take me in –'

‘Bibi,' Mum says, ‘this is not the issue. Stop trying to use it as a weapon. You know we love you just as much as –'

‘Or would do,' Dad says, ‘if you weren't being so obnoxious. I am so
tired
of all this. Actually, sometimes I
do
wish I'd never –'

‘Chris! Don't be so –' Mum says; but it's too late.

I look up at them both and the silence grows. I can still taste the sausages. I feel sick.

Dad takes a deep breath. ‘Come on, Bibs, you know what I mean. If Sam were behaving like this, I'd wish I'd never had
him
.'

I stand up and walk to the door. Neither of them tries to stop me.

I say, ‘I'm sorry if I made Oliver go away. I didn't mean to.' Then I turn round and walk down the hall and out of the house. I shut the front door with a cool, distant click. I make my way carefully down the street, as if it's in danger of collapsing under my feet at any moment. The sky is a high, cloudless blue. The sun blazes into my face. I tilt my head back and wrap my arms round myself, squeezing until my shoulders start to ache. But I still feel cold.

.

At least if Oliver has gone, it means I can go back to Tyme's End.

The High Street is full of tourists, even more than yesterday, because Saturdays are always the worst. There are already a couple of people sitting outside the Cloven Hoof with pints of real ale and OS maps. But I'm not really here; I walk steadily, slowly, and somehow everyone gets out of my way. Eddie's shop is doing good business. I see someone come out, already getting his copy of the new H. J. Martin biography out of the bag, turning it over in his hands so that the cover reflects the sun. I keep walking and he glances up and stumbles out of my path just in time.

I go past the gates to Tyme's End and round the corner. I'm still treading lightly, gliding, as if I'm trying not to touch the ground. I don't want anyone to see me, or hear me, or touch me. I pretend I don't exist.

I stand in front of the cracked wall, and for a moment it occurs to me that I could go somewhere else. I could even go home.

It isn't
home
, though. If anywhere is home, it's Tyme's End.

It's like someone else puts my hands on the top of the wall. I don't particularly try to move, but I find myself scrambling up and over the way I always do. I catch my finger on something and it starts to bleed, but it doesn't hurt.

I walk through the long grass and the sun beats down and I'm still cold. The strange, muffled, numb feeling stays with me all the way through the darkness of the sitting room and the corridor, up the stairs, and then I'm sitting on the groundsheet on the bed, bathed in sunlight from the window, and I pick up the corners of the groundsheet and wrap myself up like a parcel, because I'm freezing. I wonder about the whisky and Coke and whether this is an emergency, but the thought of it makes the stale taste of sausage flood on to the back of my tongue. I sit very still, as if I'm inside a blister of calm that might rupture at any moment.

It isn't that Mum and Dad are angry with me.
I
'd be angry with me if I were them. I
am
angry with me. It's not that we fight. All my school friends fight with their parents. It's not that. It's just –

I don't belong here. I don't belong with Mum and Dad and Sam. And no matter how much they love me, they can't change that. Leila's right – I'm a foreigner. I always will be. But I don't belong anywhere else, either. None of this is
mine
.

That's why I like Tyme's End so much. It's shipwrecked, like me.

I take deep breaths. I don't want to cry, even now that I'm on my own. I'm scared of how miserable I might be, if I let myself think about it. I say aloud, ‘Don't be so self-indulgent. Don't be so self-dramatising. For God's sake, Bibi, don't be so
stupid
!'

It almost works. I sit up a bit straighter and put on Sam's don't-you-know-there's-a-war-on? voice. ‘Gosh, Bibi, I think you're being jolly ungrateful. If it were me, I should simply
jump
at the chance to be English. Just because you were born somewhere else doesn't mean you can't be almost as English as the rest of us. You're here now, so why don't you buck up? I agree, it's a bit unfortunate, but if you try to put the past behind you, we'll agree to say no more about it.'

If Sam had said it, it would have been funny. But somehow, when I'm on my own, it sounds flat and empty and echoes in the room like it wasn't a joke.

I try to laugh, and then I'm crying, instead.

.

I don't know how long I cry for. I put my head down on the groundsheet and sob into the plastic. After a while I have to move because there's a little puddle of tears and snot and spit collecting in the dent underneath my face. I wipe my face with my arms and sit up and take deep breaths but then the tears well up again. I tell myself it's because I didn't sleep properly and I didn't have a proper breakfast, but that doesn't make me feel any better. I think of Mum and Dad's faces, and Oliver when he told me to go away, and the way I ran off without answering when Leila asked me if I was OK, and in the end I stop trying to be sensible and let myself cry. The last tiny bit of my brain is glad I'm here, not at home, and I can make as much noise as I want.

I curl up and put my hands over my face. I can feel the bedsprings quiver underneath me when I move. The frame of the bed squeaks, and the plastic makes a sticky kind of crackling noise. I can't breathe smoothly; when I inhale it's like my lungs have to keep changing gears.

In the end I quieten down. I lie and stare out of the window at the tops of the trees. They glow a bright, unlikely green. The sky is still completely blue. When I blink the world blurs and wavers. Then the water rolls out of my eyes and it's clear again. It's almost restful, letting things go from soft-focus to real and back again.

I don't know how I know I'm being watched. The feeling grows gradually, like a seed. At first I don't move, but it gets stronger and stronger. I'm not scared, but I stay still, like I'm playing dead. But in the end I have to look.

It's Oliver. Of course. He's standing in the doorway, leaning against the frame as if he's been there for a long time.

I sit up and wipe my nose and say, ‘All right, all
right
– I'm going –'

‘It's OK,' he says.

‘I'm
going
, I just came to – I thought you'd . . . What?'

He shrugs and scrapes at the ground with his toe. For a split second he looks about fifteen. ‘I – you were crying. I couldn't help hearing. Sorry.'

There's nothing sensible to say to that, so I don't answer.

‘Listen, I –' He puts his hands in his pockets, without looking up. ‘I came to get your book for you. I thought it wasn't fair of me to make you leave it here, so . . .'

My book? I want to laugh. I say, ‘Oh. Right. Thanks.'

‘I was here anyway, I mean, but I thought – but obviously you came to get it yourself, so . . .' He tails off. ‘I was going to apologise for being rude to you.'

‘Were you? Why?'

He opens his mouth. Then, suddenly, he looks straight at me and grins. ‘I have no idea. Good point.'

I grin back at him; I can't help it. Then I realise what I must look like and wipe my face on my sleeve. When I can see again he's sitting against the wall, fumbling in his pocket. He sees me looking and says, ‘Cigarette?'

‘I don't smoke.'

‘Me neither.' He takes the cellophane off the packet and taps a cigarette out into his hand, then lights it. He's got a heavy silver lighter that throws a reflection into the corner of the room. ‘This is my first for ten years.'

‘So why –?'

‘Bloody England. I can't handle it. No, not England, just this bit of it. I can't –' He stops all of a sudden, as if he's said too much. ‘Never mind. Don't start. It's a horrible habit.'

‘Yeah, I know.'

The corner of his mouth twitches, and he glances at me through the smoke.

I think he's going to say something – ask me what the matter is, or say something meaningless and comforting, or talk about something irrelevant like the weather – but he doesn't. He just sits there and smokes, so there's no sound but his breathing and my sniffles. He's staring at the floor, and he turns his head every time the house creaks. But the pause doesn't feel awkward. I let it go on until I can't imagine either of us speaking, ever. The sunlight from the window creeps further into the room, and the smoke wavers and spreads out.

Eventually he stubs the cigarette out on his shoe, looks round for an ashtray, and finally puts the dog-end back into the packet.

I say, ‘Were you really going to apologise to me?'

‘Yes. Well, I was going to leave your book with the people at the bookshop, and if you'd been there, I might have. Apologised.'

‘Oh.'

This time the silence does make me uncomfortable, even though he's not looking at me. I say, ‘You were only rude because – I mean – sorry. About following you, and telling Eddie that you owned Tyme's End. I was – it was a bit –'