Chapter 14

Cassie was too stunned to speak. Byron wanted to leave.

‘Why?’ She felt like one of the rabbits that scurried over the mountain at dusk when a hawk swooped over. She was all thumping heart and frozen limbs.

‘You don’t know what it’s like. To have Dad thinking you’re a waste of space. To have him looking at you like that. You haven’t got a clue, Cassie. He’s not disappointed in you. I hear him sometimes, you know, when I’m up in my room and they’re just below in the living room. The ceiling is thin as paper. I hear him wishing I’d chosen better subjects, wishing I’d done better in my mocks, wishing I was just a bit more like him.’

Cassie reached for him, wanted to touch his arm and tell him it was OK, but he thrashed his arm clear of her. He turned to face the valley and let the wind whip through his hair. ‘It wasn’t so bad when Taid was around. But now... It’s just so lonely, Cassie.’

‘But I’m right here,’ she said.

‘You’re just a little kid.’

Somewhere, in the distance, she could hear the sound of a plane, the bleat of one of the stupid sheep that must have wandered from its flock. She could hear the sound of her own pulse thumping in her throat.

Byron lurched away, heading back towards the footpath. ‘We shouldn’t even be here. You should be in school where you belong.’

‘And where do you belong?’ she yelled at his back.

He gave no reply. She was forced to break into a trot to catch up with him. ‘What did she do to you?’ Cassie demanded.

‘Stop it,’ he snapped. ‘Stop messing in things you don’t understand.’

If one more person said that to her, she was liable to punch them, hard. But there was no arguing, Byron had shut down and closed off in the way that drove everyone spare. Nagging would only make it worse.

The school was quiet when they reached it. The yard empty in the cold sunshine. Cassie was going to have to sign the late register and get buzzed into class. But she was too cross to care. Byron left without saying goodbye.

The school day passed in a blur. Cassie could hardly drag her attention to the project on the Romans that Mrs Khaleed was so excited about. So what if there used to be a Roman fort in Chester? Who cared if there was once a Roman villa in Wrexham? That was all a million years ago and nothing to do with the trouble Byron was in.

So, Cassie was glad to find Siân waiting for her after school. She stood with the parents at the gates, all bundled up in her furry winter coat, with a pink and brown bobble hat balanced on her head.

‘What’s up with you?’ Siân asked. ‘You’ve a face like a wet Wednesday.’

Cassie hoiked her book bag up onto her shoulder and fell into step with her cousin as they walked towards home. ‘I talked to Byron this morning. He prefers Gwenhidw to us.’

‘He’s an idiot.’

Cassie smiled despite herself. ‘He is an idiot.’

‘It’s lucky for him that he’s got us around.’ Siân slipped her hand through the crook of Cassie’s elbow and leaned into her. They turned onto the estate. Cassie stepped out of the way of a tired-looking woman with a pram and a toddler riding on the buggy board.

‘He said he was lonely.’

‘Oh, poor Byron,’ Siân said.

‘I know.’

They’d reached Cassie’s road. She could see Tilda out in front of her house, lifting shopping from her Fiat 500. The fat ginger cat from three doors down was watching her do it. Cassie knew that if she made little puss-puss-puss noises at the cat it would trot close and wind itself around her ankles and purr like the car’s engine. This was a friendly street – why couldn’t Byron see that?

‘Do you know what I did today?’ Siân asked.

‘No.’

‘I read Taid’s book, the one about the black ships.’

‘What, all day?’

‘Most of it, I am on holiday. It’s good. It’s about a war that goes on for ages and ages and to make it finally stop Odysseus tells his men to build a giant wooden horse. They all climb inside and then their enemy drags the horse into their city—’

‘Why?’

‘It’s a bit of a plot hole, I agree. But they just do. And then Odysseus sneaks out of the horse at night and burns down the city.’

Cassie turned the handle on her front door and swung it open. ‘I don’t think I like Odysseus very much,’ she said.

‘That’s Greek heroes for you,’ Siân replied.

That evening, Byron wouldn’t let Cassie anywhere near him to ask what Gwen might do. He kept his bedroom door shut tight and growled at Cassie and Siân whenever they went near. Worse was, Mam was defending him.

‘Leave him be, girls. He’s not well. He came home from school early. He doesn’t need you two hanging off him like ivy.’

‘We weren’t—’ Cassie tried.

But: ‘I mean it. Stay away from his room. In fact, I’m sorry, Siân, but it might be better if you go back to Nain’s for now, my love.’

So, Siân tramped back up the hill.

Mam decided she’d take Byron’s tea up on a tray.

‘What’s up with the lad?’ Dad asked as he watched her arrange a knife and fork around his nuggets, peas and chips.

‘He’s got a bit of a temperature,’ Mam said. ‘It will just be a cold.’

‘He shouldn’t have stayed out all night if he didn’t want to get ill,’ Dad said.

But Cassie couldn’t help but feel frightened. What if this was Gwen’s doing? Or worse, what if it was hers? She’d forced the rowan bracelet onto his wrist, even though he’d struggled. Had she hurt him?

She sat with Dad for the rest of the evening, watching a programme he’d chosen about explorers crossing Antarctica on a science channel. Normally, she’d moan about it until he changed it, but tonight, she was just glad to have him next to her, even if they didn’t speak.

Byron woke her in the night. He woke them all. Yelling. Screaming. Thrashing in his bed as though wolves were chasing him across ice. Dad was the first one to run into Byron’s room, in the T-shirt and boxers he slept in, not even pulling his slippers onto his feet.

Cassie saw from her own doorway.

In the darkness of the room, Dad leaned over Byron’s bed. Cassie heard soft whispers.

The shrieking stopped, not abruptly, but as though Dad was slowly lowering the volume.

‘You’re all right, son,’ Dad said. ‘You’re all right.’

Dad stood over the bed. He grasped both hands behind his back. He wasn’t going to hug Byron, Cassie realised.

Hug him. Hug him.

Mam hovered on the landing. She flicked on the big light and Cassie was dazzled, momentarily, by the glare.

‘Oh, everyone’s up,’ Dad said. ‘It’s like King’s Cross Station.’ He stepped out of Byron’s room onto the landing.

‘Is he sick?’ Mam asked.

‘Nightmare. You go into him.’ Dad rubbed at his face. Somehow the sags and shadows were deeper than they were in daytime. ‘This is all we need.’

Mam gave Cassie a quick, too-worried smile. ‘You go back to sleep, cariad. There’s nothing you can do.’

The infuriating thing, Cassie realised, was that that was true.

It didn’t stop her wanting to do something though. Before she got ready for school, Cassie tried one last time to get Byron to tell her what was making him sick.

She crept into his room when Mam and Dad were downstairs, so she wouldn’t be told off.

‘What?’ Byron groaned, from bed.

‘How are you feeling?’

‘Leave me alone.’

He had his duvet pulled right up to his face. His hair hung lank against his forehead. It was bound to give him spots.

She advanced on him, getting closer to the bed, until she sat down heavily on the grey duvet. He smelled sour, like stale vinegar drying on chip wrappers.

He pulled the duvet higher and seemed to sink further into his pillows. She could just see an untidy mop of hair now.

‘Byron...’

‘I said leave me alone.’

‘No!’ She tugged at his duvet, trying to pull it off his face, they wrestled for a while, but, in the end, he was too weak, and she pulled it clear.

His skin really did look awful. Pale and patchy, as though it might slide off.

‘You look like milk on the turn,’ she said.

‘Thanks.’ He sighed heavily, the air coming right from the bottom of his lungs. ‘I feel awful,’ he admitted.

‘What would make it better? Do you want to try Nain’s bracelet?’

‘Don’t even think about it.’ His hand went to his wrist, almost without thinking. He cupped the scratches, which were nearly healed.

‘What, then?’

‘The only thing I want is...’ he trailed off.

‘What?’ she demanded.

He shook his head. Something awful occurred to Cassie. ‘You want to go back there? Why, Byron? Why? What’s so great about it?’

He closed his eyes. Paused. ‘You didn’t see what I saw. Feel what I felt.’

‘What was it?’

‘You can see things down there, things that you can’t up here...’

‘Like the beach? She showed us a beach. You can see one of those anytime, you just have to catch the bus to Barmouth.’

When he opened his eyes and looked at her again, they were filled with sadness. ‘She showed me Dad. And Taid. I was there with them, down by the river in Tyˆ Mawr, you know where it’s shallow enough to go in, but deep enough to swim.’

Cassie knew exactly where he meant. It was just a little further along the valley floor, where the river made a lazy loop. She pressed her hand against the doorframe, holding herself up.

‘Taid was splashing about in the water,’ Byron said quietly. ‘He’d taken his shoes off and left them on the bank. I ran right in when I saw him, in my trainers and everything. Taid and Dad laughed about it. You should’ve seen it, Cassie.’

‘It was just a glimmer, Byron. That’s what she called it. It wasn’t real!’

‘It felt real.’

Byron rolled over, pulled the duvet up close and buried himself down into it.

He was shutting her out completely.