Clopwyck River - revised version

Chapter Twenty-seven

The house is still, in contrast to my restless mind. I don't have Ciara's phone number and I have no idea where she lives so I sent her a couple of messages online, but she hasn't replied. I roll over in my wrinkled clothes, and look at my phone for the millionth time, this one that I promised Andrew wouldn't end up in the river. It illuminates my face, mocking me with the time as it ticks closer towards midnight, suggesting that Ciara is never going to appear.
​Did I hear a tap on the window or was it just hope, tapping its finger in my mind? I sit up with a jolt, my ears searching out for the sound. It comes again, this time three taps and I leap out of my bed and run to the window. I throw back the curtains, and there's Ciara on the grass, like a blonde quarterback sneaking around under a head cheerleader's bedroom window.
​I point to the front door, Ciara nods and steps out of my sight. I tiptoe out of my room, pausing outside Daria's room, listening to hers and Andrew's faint snores for a few satisfying seconds before I tread down the stairs, taking care to avoid the giveaway squeaky floorboards.
​I reach the front door, take one more look up the stairs, then click open the locks, biting my lip with each clunk and wave Ciara in. She's dressed head to toe in black. I should have guessed she probably has a stealth wardrobe just for this sort of occasion.
​"In here." I whisper and beckon her towards the living room, but she shakes her head and creeps down the hallway. "Ciara! Where are you going?!"
​She gestures towards the door to the cellar, and I shake my head, frowning as she turns the doorknob and disappears onto the first step. I stand like a statue, thinking I should be the one leading the way, when the cellar light blinks on and Ciara's blonde hair pops around the doorway again.
​"Come on," she whispers, "we don't have all night."
​My mouth tries to form some kind of protest, or a question maybe, but I decide it's best to just follow her. I step onto the wooden stairs and begin to follow her, but she stops, and points behind me.
​"Close the door then."
​I close the door with a soft thud, then follow her down the rickety steps, the smell of sawdust and oil floating up my nostrils. I've never actually been in Andrew's workshop before, and glance around the immense space under the house, taking in Andrew's crushed leather sofa, a L.A. traffic sign, and other man cave decorations. A huge workbench sits on a washed out rug in the middle of the room, tools and papers strewn over the top in organised chaos. There's a stripy rug in the corner of the room, a couple of yellow bean bags, a play kitchen, and all sorts of toys cluttered on top of it; a space just for Elliot.
​I reach the bottom step and follow Ciara to the middle of the room. She turns around and leans against Andrew's workbench, folding her arms and looks me up and down.
​"Stop looking so freaked out, this is your house, remember? I'm not going to, like, do anything to you down here."
​I shake my head and wipe my hands down my face, a lack of sleep and confusion making my brain wobbly. "I know that. I just...how on earth....have you..."
​"Been here before?" I nod, glad she can put a sentence together even if I can't. "Look, sorry I'm late. I didn't want to race off after you in case Dan suspected anything, so I stayed at the hospital for as long as I could, then he insisted on giving me a lift home. And then I couldn't decide what to wear."
​"What to....?" I put my hands up and Ciara raises her eyebrows at me. "Okay, back up. I don't care about your wardrobe or why it took you so long to get here. Will you please just tell me what's going on? What were you going to tell me at the hospital? How did you know this was down here?"
​Ciara pulls herself up from the workbench then walks over, shaking her head as she stands in front of me. "I thought you would have figured that out by now." She pauses but I look at her blankly and she carries on. "So your sister, or your mother or whoever the hell she is told you that you used to live here right?"
​"Right." I nod. "Wait. How'd you know she's my mother?"
​She squints her blue eyes and looks at me, her eyes moving across my face like she's reading a book. She takes a step closer. "You don't remember me at all do you?"
​"Remember you?"
​"You have no idea who I am. Demi, we were friends when we were little. You and me. We were best friends."
​I clap my hand over my mouth to keep from laughing and she frowns at me. "You're joking, right? I mean, sorry, no, I don't remember you."
​She struts to the leather sofa, dropping herself into it and crossing her long legs. "I'm glad you think this is joke. Do you know how hard it's been for me, since you arrived? Since you left, even?"
​"Sorry, I-"
​She puts a hand up, and slumps back into the sofa. "Whatever. That day we saw you, by the bus stop, I knew who you were straight away, but you just looked right through me, and I knew you didn't remember me. Then Ben...just...he just spiralled. He started babbling on about the truth, about how you couldn't be back here, and I was....I knew he was going to have an episode, and I had to bury how I was feeling and focus on him."
​I blink a few times, unnerved by Ciara's soft features, and I join her on the couch.
​"Feelings? What are you talking about, Ciara?"
​Her head snaps round. "What do you think I'm talking about? Do you have any idea what it's like to be skipping around the playground with your best friend, joined at the hip one minute, then all of a sudden to have her snatched away the next, with nobody to give you an explanation, any clue about where you'd gone, or why you'd gone?"
​I shake my head.
​"No, I didn't think so, because you can't remember any of what happened." She looks at me, her blue eyes gentle. "You really don't remember me? We did everything together, Demi."
​I shake my head. "I'm sorry."
​She looks at her hands, then her head jerks up, her eyes wide. "I used to have red hair."
​"Really?" I screw my eyes up, trying to conjure up a red-headed Ciara. I gasp as memory crawls from the depths of my mind and taps me on the shoulder.
​"Demi?"
​I rub my temples, and fall back into the sofa. "I think...I think I remember something, when I first got here. Your hair, it changed colour, but I just thought.....I didn't know what it was. I thought I was seeing things."
​Everything hits me at once. Ciara's hair appearing red, the way the hallway changed its appearance when I first arrived, being pulled away from Leo at the party, then shunted forward again.
​"Swings."
​It's Ciara's turn to look confused. "What?"
​"Sorry." I smile, the realisation that my messed up mind was trying to tell me something and not drive me crazy too much to keep inside. "Swings. I, I thought I kept having dizzy spells but I think maybe they were memories? One was with Leo, and I think it was a memory of sitting on swings with him. Is there a park here?"
​Ciara nods her head. "We used to go to the park all the time, all four of us. It was just around the corner from my house."
​"And you. I do remember....I mean, I remember your hair, when I first got here. I saw your red hair."
​Ciara swallows and looks at her hands.
​"Ciara?"
​"I'm fine." She wipes her eyes, then sits up straight, smoothing her hair down and tucking it behind her ears.
​I watch her, a girl I was so close to in a previous life, a person who could share more than I could ever remember about my time here. She looks around the cellar, her distraction a pretence that she has real human feelings, denying that she let her ice princess façade slip for a moment. I bury this truth with the others, for now, and get back to where we were.
​"So were you there too, when Ben was attacked?"
​She shakes her head. "He told me what happened though, years later. Well, he told me a version of what happened."
​I knew it. "So there's more."
​She nods her head. "I only know what you know, but I've always had a feeling Ben was holding something back."
​I deflate, back to square one, with no more information than I had a few days ago.
​"So you can't tell me what really happened."
​"All I know is, that story, about Ben getting attacked by the babysitter, is bull. I know it is. I've asked Ben about it, and he always gets defensive, telling me I didn't need to know, that someone wouldn't be happy if I knew. And...."
​She looks at the floor, and I wait for her to go on. A faint drip in the cellar ticks off each passing moment but she doesn't make a sound.
​"Ciara? And what?"
​"And that I wouldn't be safe if I knew the truth."
​A shiver trickles down my back, and I wish we weren't hidden away in this claustrophobic cellar, secrets pressing down on us.
​"What do you mean?"
​She grabs my hand and pulls me up, not letting go as she drags me to the far side of the cellar. "That's why we're here. Ben keeps a journal; one of his therapists suggested it as part of his treatment. He gets jumpy whenever I catch him writing in it, and well, I found it once and he went mad when he caught me reading it. I've had enough of all of this, the lies, Ben's condition, losing him to his grey fog for days when he was conscious. I just want to know what happened, and I know you do too, so you're going to help me. The truth is inside his diary, I know it is."
​We're standing in front of a bookshelf, each of its shelves bulging with yellowing paperbacks and chewed picture books. Ciara has her hands on her hips and stares at me, waiting for me to do something, but I don't know what.
​"How am I going to do that?!" I look around, my hands upturned before I slap them down to my sides. "Why are we down here, Ciara?"
​She rolls her eyes at me, and I make a note to stop doing that myself because it's seriously annoying. ​
​"When we were little, we spent every minute together. Literally, you were either at my house, or I was here." She gestures around the cellar. "This used to be a play-room. Your Mum, I mean, not Daria, made it so cool down here with loads of bean bags, a giant dolls house. We had a fort, like, permanently set up over there." She points to the sofa. "It was magic down here."
​I look around, trying to conjure up the same images that are making Ciara's eyes twinkle. "Really? Down here?"
​"Really. It was always me and you, and when it wasn't, it was me, you, Ben, and Leo."
​"Leo?"
​"Yes, Leo. Oh dear." She pauses, dramatically pouting her bottom lip. "Trouble in paradise?"
​"No. There is no paradise, I mean, there's no me and Leo."
​She rolls her eyes again. "Whatever. So, we spent a lot of time down here, alone in our own little fantasy adventure, and then one day..."
​She turns to the bookcase and teases out a couple of dusty books, dropping them to the ground, then grabs another handful, tipping them to the floor. She empties one shelf and moves to another, and another, books piling up around our feet until the entire bookcase is empty.
​She grips the sides of the shelves, then looks at me, her eyes wide and nods. "Help me, then."
​I look the bookcase up and down. "Help you what?"
​"Help me move this bookcase, genius."
​I shake my head but grab the other side of the bookcase when Ciara nods at me. The shelves have no back, just a filthy floral bedsheet pinned in place between the wall and the shelves. I strain at their weight, sure I'm bearing most of the work as Ciara is hardly breaking a sweat on her end. The bookcase creaks as it starts to inch across the floor, the musty sheet fluttering to the ground.
​"There." Ciara wipes her hands together.
​I stare at the bookshelf. "There what?"
​"Oh my God, I don't remember you being this slow. Look, there, behind the bookcase."
​I frown at her, then peer into the space we've just created. Only it's not a space.
​It's a door.