Eleanor reversed slowly away from her parents’ half-open bedroom door and ran downstairs, not stopping until she was back by the shed where her father had taken her and Kat to choose gardening tools that morning.
All she had been able to see was her mother’s arms and legs, sticking out from under the bulk of her father as he lay on top of her. The arms and legs had looked small and oddly floppy, as if she might almost have been asleep. But her father had been moving – rocking – saying her mother’s name and holding her as if he never meant to let go. He had all his clothes on, but his trousers were loose, halfway down his pants, the belt undone.
Her mother was sick, Eleanor reminded herself, slowing to a walk when she reached the path from the shed to the patch where she and Kat had been digging. She was sick and needed special looking after, as their father had lately grown so fond of telling them. It was why he had recently made Connie throw all the cigarettes he had found onto the fire and why she wasn’t to drive the car again, he explained, not until she had got her strength back.
The ants’ nest which had scared Kat and made her run for help was still spewing its angry red inhabitants. Like a miniature volcano, Eleanor decided, crouching down to poke at the mound with her trowel, watching, mesmerised, as the larva of insects glowed brighter.
The thickness of the silence crept up on her slowly. Where was Kat?
She straightened, looking about her properly. ‘Kat?’ she called crossly, thinking how typical that her sister should create a stir and then be fine. ‘Are you hiding? Come out if you are.’ It was only then that she noticed the gate into Mr Watson’s field hanging half open on its big rusty hinge.
Eleanor ran through into the impenetrable jungle of thick green stalks that had recently burst into being. Too high to see over, they shimmied and swayed in the morning sun, as if riffled by giant invisible fingers. She stumbled through them, calling Kat’s name, fighting her way to the stile that led into the next field, the one she and Kat had been forbidden from exploring because of its proximity to the railway line.
Her wellingtons made it hard work; clods of mud glued themselves to the soles, weighing her down and making her feet slide off balance. Within minutes, her socks had rucked into uncomfortable tight rolls round her toes, leaving the thin bare skin on her heels at the mercy of the boots’ rough lining. At every moment, she hoped to see Kat, squatting over some object of fascination, or maybe even lying on her back as she did in the garden sometimes, claiming to be watching for when the door to heaven opened, granting her a peek – she said – of an angel. But Kat liked running even more than lying on her back, Eleanor reflected unhappily. She had been famously speedy since toddlerhood – nippy and up to mischief – as their parents had often observed fondly; not a clodhopper like her big sister.
At the stile, Eleanor clambered onto the top plank, looking out rather than down, which she knew would make her dizzy. Using her hand as a visor, she peered back the way she had come, half fearing, half hoping that one or both parents would come into view. But the only sign of movement was a flash of ginger as Titch scooted out of the tall green shoots and into the hedge, on one of his urgent private missions.
The wood of the stile was damp and Eleanor slipped getting down it, grazing her arm. She lumbered on, heading towards the section of fence that overlooked the railway line, the panic swelling inside her. As she ran, she pictured what she would find: Kat at the bottom of the embankment in a bloodied mess, limbs twisted, a ghost of recrimination in her open, glassy, lifeless blue eyes. She had a vivid imagination, that was her trouble. It had already been remarked on by Miss Zaphron, her new English teacher. ‘Your mind takes off,’ she had declared in front of the whole class, before going on to demonstrate the fact by reading out one of Eleanor’s compositions, publicly awarding Eleanor a top mark for it and putting the seal on her already manifest lack of popularity.
Reaching the railway fence at last, it was with a sort of curiosity that she wriggled underneath. What would Kat look like dead and mashed to pieces?
Eleanor peered over the edge of the siding. Her little sister came into view at once, not bloodied or dead, but crouched awkwardly on the slant, her skirt bunched up, having a pee. ‘Kat, what are you doing?’ she yelled. ‘People will see.’
‘Only if there’s a train,’ Kat shouted back, tugging unevenly and inexpertly at her pants, which had got hooked over her wellingtons. ‘And there isn’t.’
‘Get back up here,’ Eleanor shrieked, the bubble of worry bursting into anger.
‘No, Bossyboots.’ Kat stuck her tongue out, but then started to climb back up the bank anyway.
‘You should never just run off,’ Eleanor scolded, grabbing Kat’s arm and giving it a shake. ‘We’re not allowed here, Dummy. Remember what happened last time? Which means we have got to run back home, fast as we can.’ She burrowed back under the fence and Kat followed, but then stayed lying on her belly.
‘I’m tired.’ She plucked disconsolately at the sparse grass.
Eleanor stared down at her sister in disbelief. The sting of the hairbrush was still vivid, a memory of humiliation as much as pain; being commanded by her father to roll onto her stomach and pull her pyjamas down, baring her bottom. Her innards went liquid just thinking about it. ‘We’ll get told off again,’ she reminded Kat with queasy urgency. ‘Punished. You don’t want that, do you? We’ve got to hurry.’
‘It didn’t hurt.’
‘Of course it hurt.’
‘Did not. It didn’t touch.’
‘What? Get up, come on.’ Eleanor yanked Kat onto her feet and then set off back towards the stile at as brisk a pace as she could manage, dragging her along behind. ‘What do mean didn’t touch anyway?’
‘The brush.’
‘The brush didn’t touch you?’ She stopped, dropping Kat’s hand.
Kat shook her head importantly. ‘Daddy did pretend hitting.’ She darted on ahead suddenly, reaching the stile first and riding it piggyback until Eleanor caught up with her. ‘I’ll say you looked after me, Ellie,’ she offered, perhaps reading some new heaviness in her sister’s step. ‘If we get told off. Okay?’
‘Okay.’
‘Don’t be cross, Ellie. I don’t like it.’
‘If Dad asks, just say we walked as far as the stile, okay? Here.’ Eleanor thumped the top plank. ‘To the stile. Nothing more.’ Her voice was a croak. She felt hollowed out.
‘Nothing. More. Nothing. More.’ Kat cawed the words, flapping her arms as she leapt off the stile into the lake of shimmering green, ploughing through it like a small, rogue wave.
By the time they reached the garden, Vincent was back, digging at the overgrown beds with his hefty fork, whistling. Eleanor braced herself. Kat was too young to be trusted with a lie, too young to know about consequences. But when her father looked up, he was grinning.
‘Bad girls, playing in Mr Watson’s fields.’ He winked, resting on the fork to wag a chastising finger. His eyes looked shinier than usual, Eleanor noticed, and the bit of his face above the edges of his beard was bright pink, like when he was sunburnt.
‘Is Mummy still in bed?’ Eleanor plucked at a tall grass stem, pretending to study it closely. The glimpse through her parents’ open bedroom door slid back into her mind. She thought of how crushed her mother had looked under her father, how tightly he had been hugging her and wondered how that could really help with getting her strength back.
‘Yes. She’s especially poorly today, as I’ve already told you. So you have to be extra good and grown-up.’
‘Gardening, you mean?’ Eleanor ventured more brightly, retrieving her trowel, the relief at not being told off starting to take hold. Days with her father at the helm were always smoother; no sofa-lying or false-start expeditions to swimming pools; no false promises.
‘Gardening, yes, and shopping. We shall go to the supermarket and stock up the fridge, so poor Mum doesn’t need to leave the house this week. And we’ll buy the paint for your new room, get cracking on that.’
Eleanor glanced at Kat, busy now trying to entice Titch down from the gate post. Her own room. It felt odd to want something and not want it all at the same time. ‘Could it be blue?’
‘Blue? Of course it can be blue. It can be anything you want. You can choose. But first to our labours here, eh?’ He swung the fork at the ground, ramming it up to its hilt under a cluster of tall thistles, making their purple bell heads shake in protest. ‘We plough the fields and scatter,’ he sang in his shouty voice, ‘…but it is fed and watered by God’s almighty hand.’
Eleanor crouched down to dig more gingerly at a patch of nettles. She was sorry her mother was still so sick, but it did feel much better having her father back, working alongside them.