Lies Like Love

SEPTEMBER: AUDREY

Audrey

It was getting late when we pulled off the country lane and on to the drive, and the first thing I saw was the water. It circled the house, the Grange, our new home, and as we drove over the little bridge I grabbed the door handle – holding tight. Mum didn’t notice. Peter was still crying and I reached into the back with my other hand.

‘We’re here, Pete, ’s’OK,’ I said, wiping away fresh tears. He’d been sick twice in the last hour when the roads had got so windy, and wet his pants ages ago, on the great stretch of motorway that had brought us here. I’d done what I could with the last of the wipes and an old towel that Mum kept in the boot of the car but my brother needed a bath and cleaning up. That’s what I was thinking, that and how we’d driven off the last road to nowhere, and how instead of being glad we were here, I wished we were back at our old house, even though it was small and grotty and all burnt out. The Grange was a monster, waiting to swallow us up.

Mum pulled over and I jumped out of the car, running back down the drive just to see, to check and make sure – I had to be wrong. But no. From the bridge I stared down into the water that ran like a moat the whole way round the house and I knew it was bad.

‘What d’you reckon, Aud?’ Mum stood beside me, her hand on my back, and I looked at our reflections, broken and shifting in the murk, and wondered what was hiding down there.

‘Pretty nice here, isn’t it?’ she said. We stood on the edge. Teetered. I felt the slide of mud and the pull of the water and wanted to run. Instead I turned and stared up at the house.

It was such a big place. So tall, towering nearly as high as the trees, twisted over with vines and crawling with moss. A moat belongs with a castle. But this wasn’t a castle at all. It was a 1960s rectangle – a prison or a hospital, not a home. I don’t know what I’d been expecting. But I’d thought it might be beautiful, like an old country house where Peter [WS1] and I could play at being Old Fashioned. But the hard angles and the empty windows made me think of boxes closed and taped tight, life packed away, dusty and dying. At least the garden was lovely, September green and gold. And the sky was blue, stretching forever. Peter tumbled out of the car on to the gravel and I ran back and scooped him up and on to his feet. He’d turned five in the summer, but five is little, if you ask me, five is still a baby.

‘We’re going to live here?’ I asked Mum. She nodded and stretched her arms wide, yawning.

‘Yes, what d’you think? Great, isn’t it? I never thought we’d make it though [WS2] [L3] – did you, Aud? God, the traffic. Bloody terrible. But worth it, don’t you reckon?’

Mum was tired, gasping for a cuppa, she said, and Peter needed cleaning up, so Mum grabbed a bag from the boot and forged ahead. I helped Peter scoop his toys, his soft old rabbit and collection of stones, back into his bag and we followed her, scurrying to keep up. Thick grey walls, blank windows, flat roof. I smiled at my brother, tried to look excited and he looked back at me, his face hopeful, scared. No one in their right mind would live here, I thought, as Mum swept us towards the door of the house, and it opened before she even turned the key, like a yawning mouth, toothless, greedy. I listened, waiting in the hall, staring up into the dark stairwell, and then straight ahead into long corridors. Was it here? Lurking? The Thing we’d run from? But the only sound was the thud of Mum’s shoes as she climbed the stairs, speeding up as she ran the last bit, turning corners too fast, then skidding and fumbling with the keys for our flat. I pulled my T-shirt over my nose. The hallway stank of mice and mould. Gross. Mum had said the Grange was posh, renovated, all new, and she’d been excited the whole drive down – holding the wheel so tight her knuckles almost glowed, singing along to the songs on Radio Two, golden oldies, she called them, but posh wasn’t the word I’d use. No.

I found the bathroom, leant [WS4] down and put in the plug and ran the bath. Water sputtered and then gushed but at least it was warm.

‘Come on, mate. Let’s clean you up,’ I said to Peter, pulling off his shirt and his socks and shoes, damp trousers, stained vest.

‘Sorry I was sick, Aud,’ he said as I plopped him into the water and splashed it over him.

‘Don’t be daft – you’re OK now, aren’t you? Good as new.’ But I wished we had bubble bath, rubber ducks, fluffy warm towels. Instead I sang a silly song, something from a children’s programme on the telly about scrubbing and washing and getting nice and clean, and Peter joined in and laughed.

Rummaging in Mum’s bags, I found her shampoo and washed Peter’s hair, careful not to let the suds run in his eyes, and when he was all done we found his pyjamas and made up his bed with sheets and a blanket.

‘We’ll get some new stuff, Pete, don’t worry – a nice cosy duvet and some pillows. We’ll get it all set up for you, OK?’ Peter nodded and started to rearrange his stones. They were pebbles he’d found in a service station en route, picked out of a tub of flowers. Now they had names. Mr Briggs and Rupert. Bad Hat and Jim. Jim had been his friend back home, the boy next door, with a jam-smeared chin and freckles like patches of gold. Sometimes Jim let Peter share his bike. The others, I didn’t know.

‘It’s not nice here though, is it, Aud?’ Peter began to make a tower with the stones then scattered them with his hand, but I shook my head and retrieved them.

‘It is nice. It’s lovely, and you and me we can paint your room and decorate everything how you want it. And get you some new toys.’

‘What about my old room?’ he said, and I squeezed him tight and said maybe we’d go back one day, even though that was a lie.

I walked over to the window, rubbed the glass clean with my sleeve and rested my forehead there. The ring of dark water was calling. It was singing and waiting as if it had always known a girl like me would arrive here one day. The best thing to do was not to look. I walked into the living room and pasted on a smile.

‘All right, love?’ Mum asked.

‘Yeah, I’m OK.’

I didn’t tell Mum that I still felt sick. She’d given me pills for the journey but they hadn’t worked, had made it worse, and I was always queasy, anyway, my stomach churning fear. The easy part was hiding it from Peter. The hard part was hiding it from Mum. She always knew.

‘Well, I’m going to get dinner. You tidy up a bit here, Aud.’ She looked at the room, but didn’t say anything about the tatty furniture, the bare plaster walls, the carpet that already looked old, and I wondered what I was supposed to do about it.

‘Fish and chips? All right?’

‘Great. Thanks,’ I said, but when she came back an hour later with fat parcels of greasy, lukewarm food I couldn’t force any down and Mum finished it all, even the scraps.

Later that night I crept out. Peter was in bed, fast asleep already, but Mum sat staring at her phone, waiting. I hoped her friends, the people she said she knew here, would ring soon; that we’d all have friends soon. We’d always been so impermanent, spindly and frail, ready to topple in the slightest gust of wind, but Peter needed roots; we both did. I left the flat and walked downstairs, letting the heavy front door slam behind me, then trod towards the water – stepping lightly so as not to feel the pain of sharp stones underfoot. There’s a way, if you think really hard, to make it stop hurting. Anything. But I shouldn’t be afraid, Dad always said that – no worries, whistling and swinging my arm when he walked me to school all those years ago, and I looked up at him and he was a hero, the safest thing; no worries, be happy, Aud, he said, and I was warm for a moment, remembering.