Summer began to fade into autumn. The thing between Milly and Nipper drifted on.
‘I’m so pleased I’ve got him,’ Milly was always saying of her hulking great boyfriend, as if trying to convince herself. If Milly was pleased, that was fine with Belle, even though she personally thought that Nipper was a knuckle-dragging moron.
Meanwhile, Harlan wanted to be Belle’s boyfriend, but that door remained firmly closed.
‘He’s a creep,’ said Belle to anyone who would listen, including Milly.
The two girls were often sitting out on the lawn behind the gatehouse together, Sony Walkmans on, whispering, giggling, listening to Irene Cara singing ‘Fame’ and Survivor doing ‘Eye of the Tiger’. Their lovely ‘Uncle’ Beezer drove them into town, bought them sweets, made them laugh at his dumb jokes. They both adored him.
‘Yeah, Harlan is a creep,’ agreed Milly, arranging her legs so that the fat between her thighs didn’t stick together quite so painfully. The two of them were eating Twisters and discussing everything.
Milly frowned, as she always did when their chat turned toward Harlan. She hadn’t mentioned it to anyone, but she couldn’t forget what she’d found in Harlan’s bedroom. That had triggered other things in her brain – like the crazy things Mum had said to her, before yet another admission to the mental institution. That Uncle Beezer had seen Harlan going into Jake’s nursery on the morning he’d died, and Harlan had always hated little Jake because he’d taken Harlan’s place in Charlie’s affections. Then Mum, falling down the stairs, her feet slipping on Harlan’s skateboard.
She could have been killed.
And ever after, Nula had reacted to Harlan with fear – whenever she was at home, which wasn’t often. The death of her baby and the weirdness of her adopted son had screwed with her brain big time. Poor Mum, no wonder she was crazy.
‘You really like Nipper,’ said Belle. ‘Don’t you.’
Milly thought that maybe ‘like’ was too strong a word. She knew she wasn’t aiming high, having him for a boyfriend, and she wasn’t keen on all the sex stuff, but it seemed to make him happy, so she did it. She was pleased to be a ‘normal’ girl, like any other. She lived in terror of missing her bleeds, but he was careful, and – well – that was a woman’s life for you, she’d figured that much out.
She wished she had a proper mother to talk to, but there was no way that any of this shit could be discussed with Nula. The slightest stress, and she went totally off her tree. But Milly was literally dying to share her secrets with somebody. She didn’t want to even think about the dinner she’d sat through last night, with Dad and that oily little Colombian Javier Matias with his greased-back hair and his paunchy stomach. The guy was her dad’s age, and yet he’d – ugh, disgusting or what? – seemed to be flirting with her through most of the meal. And Dad had sat there smiling throughout, as if this was perfectly OK with him.
Milly wasn’t happy about all this; she liked things the way they were. Dad was comfortably loaded because of his furniture business, and up to now that had meant that nothing was ever expected of her. She didn’t have to get involved in the outside world, and she liked that fine. She didn’t want to be pushed toward this business contact of her dad’s; Javier repulsed her.
Belle was closer to her than anyone else right now. Her best friend in all the world. Belle had always been good to her, tried to include her in things, even coming to her defence when Amanda and Gillian, that snobby pair from the stables, had bullied her, grabbing her school bag and emptying it into a ditch, and then nicking the hard hat Nula’d bought her in the hope she’d get into riding like Belle, which of course she hadn’t.
Milly would never forget Belle giving those two the walloping they deserved and ordering them to hand back the hat. Faced with an infuriated Belle instead of soft quiet Milly, they’d backed off and never bothered either of them again.
‘It must be nice,’ said Milly, sprawling out lazily on the grass and staring at Belle’s face, turned up to the sun, ‘to be pretty.’
Belle looked at Milly. ‘You’re pretty,’ she objected.
Milly gave a small sad smile. ‘No I’m not. I’m a dog.’
‘That’s not true,’ said Belle, turning toward her, hitting Milly with the full wattage of that beautiful face of hers. ‘You’ve got lovely eyes.’
Damned with faint praise, thought Milly.
‘Oh don’t bullshit me. They’re like piss-holes in the snow. I don’t actually know what Nipper sees in me.’ But really she did know. Nipper liked sex; and Milly put out.
‘He sees a lovely person,’ said Belle. She was staring off into the distance, licking the last of her lolly from the stick, then tossing it aside and sighing. ‘None of the boys I fancy will approach me, whereas the ones I can’t stand seem determined to have a go, if only to prove that they’re not the losers everyone thinks they are.’
Milly had to smile at that. ‘You’re so full of crap,’ she said, flopping back onto the grass and staring up at the clouds scudding across the sky. ‘I thought you and Nige Pope were getting it on these days?’
Nige Pope was tall, gangly, red-haired and sweet. He was the brainiest boy in the school and destined, everyone thought, for great things.
Belle frowned. ‘What, Einstein? We were. He’s lovely. But most of the time he’s too busy with his textbooks to bother about me.’
‘You’ll meet someone nice, one of these days,’ said Milly, rubbing Belle’s arm consolingly.
Belle gave a smile. ‘Yeah, maybe.’ But she wondered where? Who did she ever meet, out here in the sticks? Sometimes, she felt so restless. So confined.
‘So who comes on to you that you don’t want to, then?’ asked Milly after a pause.
‘Oh, you know.’ Belle frowned. ‘People.’
‘Who, though? Come on.’
Belle flopped back too. For a while she lay there, looking at the sky in silence. Milly didn’t push, she just waited.
‘Harlan,’ said Belle at last.
Milly sent her a sideways look, holding one arm up over her eyes to shield them from the sun. She’d suspected this. She’d seen how Harlan was too touchy-feely with Belle, how Belle always flinched away from him. ‘Is he a pest?’
‘He’s a pain in the arse,’ said Belle. ‘Never seems to take no for an answer, the prat.’
Milly was silent for a moment. Wondered whether she should say anything. Then she said it anyway. ‘I found something, you know. In Harlan’s room.’
Belle propped herself up on one elbow. ‘Oh? What?’
‘Something weird,’ said Milly.
‘Well come on. Tell me. Something to do with those things he keeps down in that reptile house of his, I suppose.’
‘No, nothing like that. I shouldn’t have looked in his room, I do know that.’
‘What’s in there that’s so shocking? I know he keeps lizards up there in a tank. He asked me to go up there once and see them. Which I did not. They’re cold-blooded, aren’t they. Like him. I can see why he likes them so much. So come on, what was it? What did you see in there?’
‘It was a tape recorder. And . . .’ Milly hesitated. Would Belle blab about this to anyone? She wasn’t sure. But she had to say it now, or choke on it. ‘I played a cassette tape that was on it.’
‘And?’ prompted Belle.
‘It was a tape recording of the baby. Of Jake. Crying.’
Belle was very still.
‘Do you remember how my mum used to say she could hear the baby, crying? And they thought she was imagining it, didn’t they? Before she was committed that first time.’
Belle sat up sharply. ‘You’re fucking joking.’
‘I wish I was. Mum told me that Uncle Beezer saw Harlan at four in the morning after Jake’s christening party, going into Jake’s nursery.’
Belle was suddenly pale. ‘Then they found Jake dead.’
Milly nodded.
Belle dragged her hands through her hair. ‘Hold on. Wait. Maybe it wasn’t Jake crying. Maybe it was some other kid, and Harlan recorded it to freak your mum out. He’d think that was funny.’
Milly shuddered and hugged her knees. ‘No. It was Jake. I’d know Jake’s cry anywhere. I could never forget it. Never.’
‘Yeah, but . . . they didn’t find anything wrong with Jake’s death, did they. They said it was cot death. Awful, but it does happen.’
‘Belle – what if Harlan smothered him?’ shot out of Milly’s mouth. She’d been thinking it for weeks, and it made sense. She thought of the agony of sitting through Jake’s funeral, the pitifully small coffin up there at the front of the church. It haunted her. Her little brother, gone, never to return. ‘What if Harlan killed the baby? And what if he left that skateboard on the stairs deliberately, knowing Mum was always first down in the mornings? What if he’s been playing that tape to make her go crazy?’
Belle turned her head and looked at Milly.
‘We got to tell someone about this,’ she said.
‘Yeah, but who? Dad would go mental if I said any of this to him. Mum was always on at him about Harlan. It upset him. He couldn’t take it, not after losing Jake like that. You know what boys are like. Well, men. He’d flip if I started doing the same as she did, saying these things. He’d think I was going crazy too.’
‘She’s not crazy. Is she? Just sort of depressed.’
‘Yeah. I shouldn’t say that. It’s rotten.’ Milly picked irritably at a hangnail. ‘But I keep hoping, you know?’ She gave Belle a desperate, trembling smile that didn’t reach her eyes. ‘Sometimes she’s all right for months, then something hits her, some stress or worry or something – anything will do it, it seems to me – and then she goes into this nosedive, and then it’s off to the clinic to get treatment, and then she’s OK for a while. Until the next time. And every time I hope it’s the last, and . . .’ Milly bit her lip and stopped talking. There were tears in her eyes. She shook her head. ‘But it never is. And . . . in the end . . . I start to feel sort of depressed too. Like there is no hope. That it’s just wishful thinking that one day she’ll be well, be the person she used to be. They’re not even a couple any more, you know. I think it’s worn Dad out, all the worry of her being like she is. They sleep in separate rooms. They live separate lives.’
Belle reached out and rubbed Milly’s soft rounded shoulder.
‘I’m sorry, Mills. I didn’t know it was so bad. You know – maybe that’s it.’
‘What?’ Milly swiped at her eyes.
‘Maybe the person we should be talking to about all this is your mother.’
‘We can’t talk to her. She’s too fragile.’
‘I think we have to.’
Milly pondered this, frowning. ‘She’s coming home in time for Christmas,’ said Milly. ‘They say she’s a bit better now. That’s what they say.’
‘Then we’ll speak to her,’ said Belle, and they lay back down on the grass and soaked up the last of the sun. ‘Gently, mind. When you think she’s strong enough.’