Dad sat on the sofa for the rest of the day with a strange, far-away look on his face, like he had seen a ghost. Mum and I, meanwhile, baked gingerbread, then used up the rest of the mincemeat to make a batch of six mince pies, then, finally, moved on to an apple crumble with a fresh load of cooking apples Amanda had bought.
‘That smells delicious,’ Father Tobias said, watching us cook from a seat at the table, regularly sampling bits that we gave him.
Mum seemed to have completely forgotten the hysteria she had caused that morning. She hadn’t said a word to Dad and he hadn’t spoken to her. Amanda sat next to him for most of the day, occasionally rubbing his arm or bringing him some tea. He refused lunch, and later in the afternoon, when it started to get dark, he left the lounge suddenly. Seconds later, the sound of the door slamming reverberated through the house.
Father Tobias poked his head round the doorway of the kitchen into the lounge. Amanda looked up at him and said, ‘I think he’s just gone for a drive. Clear his head.’
He nodded and came back into the kitchen. ‘Is it apple crumble time?’ he said, sitting back down at the table. ‘Can I have a sample?’
‘Of course!’ Mum said, sounding completely delighted, as if Father Tobias’s interest in our cooking was something new and interesting. I watched him reach his chubby fingers towards the bowl being brought to him. Flecks of crumble dropped down onto his dog collar as he took a large, greedy spoonful.
‘Divine,’ he said thickly, through his munching.
Amanda wandered in, wrapping her cardigan around her, as if she were cold.
‘There are a lot of calories in that,’ she nodded to the bowl of appley, crumbly mush.
He waved aside her words with a flap of his hand. ‘Tosh. Come and sit down. Marjory’s cooking is going from strength to strength.’
‘Mum’s always been good at cooking,’ I said. I felt as if I needed to be on her side, to defend her. To let them know that what happened this morning wasn’t the real Mum. That we shouldn’t let it upset anything for ever. But I got the feeling the reason Amanda and Father Tobias were sticking so close by was to watch her. To keep an eye on her in case she did anything like that again. In case, maybe, she did anything to me.
I didn’t know how long passed until Dad got back, but all of a sudden I heard the sound of the door, then a creak. Dad came into view holding a bag of chips.
‘Goodness, you must have driven for miles to get those,’ Amanda remarked.
‘I’ve got some for everyone.’ He jostled two wrapped parcels under his arm.
‘Crumble and chips! What a splendid tea,’ remarked Father Tobias.
‘How nourishing,’ Amanda said, sounding a little disapproving. I thought about reminding her of the endless toast she’d been munching since we arrived, but thought it might get the meal off to a bad start.
Dad set the chips down on the table while Amanda fetched a bowl. Together they scooped as many as they could into it, then found a second because the first couldn’t hold them all. Vinegar and salt were hunted for and found and then we were all sitting down, looking at the chips, waiting for Mum, who was preparing some cupcake batter at the kitchen counter.
‘Marjory, do you fancy some chips?’ Father Tobias said, matching the happy tone he’d kept up all day. ‘Or some of your delightful crumble?’
‘What?’ she said, turning around. ‘Chips? Where did these come from?’
There were a few seconds of silence before Father Tobias chirped up again. ‘Why, your dear husband went out to get them for us. Come and have some while they’re still hot and fresh.’
Mum looked puzzled and I saw a flicker of something cross her face. Irritation? Annoyance that her crumble was being pushed out by this impostor?
‘Chips. Righty-ho then.’ She dusted off her apron and sat down. She looked at the heaped bowls, hard and stern, as if they were strangers at the feast, and we watched her watching the chips. Eventually, Amanda reached out for the large spoon she’d put on the table, scooped up a portion and deposited them onto her plate. She offered the spoon to Dad and he followed her lead, and then I and Father Tobias did, all the way until Mum. She ignored the offer of the spoon from Father Tobias and gave a little shake of her head. She was no longer smiling. He put the spoon back down and I noticed his eyes flicking towards Amanda. She looked at him too, then back down at her plate, which she started to pick at with a fork.
‘Isn’t this lovely?’ Amanda said, sounding fake-happy.
Nobody replied.
‘Kitty,’ she continued, ‘why don’t you tell us about your little friend? She must be missing you – you’ve been cooped up inside the house for the past few days.’
I let out my breath slowly. It probably sounded like a sigh, but it wasn’t really – I was just creating some more time before I had to answer. I thought of Adah, probably wandering around the forest, puzzled about why her new friend hadn’t come out to find her, and I was surprised how sad it made me feel. I’d been so caught up in Mum’s change for the better (and then for the worse), that I’d not spared her much of a thought.
‘Adah,’ I said. ‘Her name is Adah. And she isn’t my only friend.’
Amanda arranged her face into something she probably thought looked like encouraging interest, but I thought it just made her look a bit stupid. ‘Oh really? Who else have you befriended in the woods? Are we talking about a human friendship, or have you found one of your nice animal friends to—’
‘I don’t have any nice animal friends.’ I cut across her, folding my arms, showing I was not pleased with the direction the conversation was going. ‘I don’t think Dad likes me keeping them as pets, so what’s the point in trying to—’
‘OK, Kitty,’ Dad said, warningly, which surprised me a bit, as he’d been entirely silent since he’d walked in with the chips. It was almost like he was back to his normal-weird self, rather than the strange new-weird person he’d become where he looked like someone who had just woken from a nightmare.
‘Anyway,’ I continued, ‘my new friend is called Levi.’ I said this more firmly than I felt it, since I hadn’t really considered Levi a friend up until this point. I’d tried not to think much about the last time I saw him. ‘He lives on an estate, apparently,’ I added.
Amanda nodded. ‘Yes, there is a rather destitute estate on the edge of town. But most of the kids from there make do with their scraggly little common. They have swings and benches covered in graffiti. They don’t often venture into the woods.’
‘Why not?’ Dad asked, reaching for the salt and spreading way too much of it over his mound of chips.
‘Well, there’s … there’s quite a bit of chatter about the forest not being … I rather think people in the nearby towns are a bit afraid of it. Local superstition, you know. I think it harks back to centuries-old rumours about witches and what-not—’
Father Tobias made a throat-clearing sound and I saw Amanda look at him. His eyes moved over to Mum, who had now helped herself to some chips and was busy arranging them into two neat stacks on her plate. Amanda’s face went slightly red, and she too made a throat-clearing noise. ‘Anyway, Kitty, carry on about your other new friend. What is her name?’
I rolled my eyes, ‘He. I said he. His name is Levi. He’s got a little cabin.’
‘Really?’ Amanda said, picking up a chip and popping it into her mouth. ‘All of his own?’
‘Well, I think he’s sort of … taken it.’
‘Commandeered it, has he?’ Father Tobias said cheerfully. ‘Well, you know what they say, possession is nine tenths and all that.’
I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about, so I just carried on. ‘He has things in there, books and magazines.’
‘And where is this cabin?’ Dad asked.
‘It’s just down along the stream. You get to a little bridge, then over the bridge there’s a pathway deeper into the woods, although it curves round a bit back towards the river, and then a little walk up from the water there’s his cabin.’
‘Sounds rather idyllic,’ said Amanda.
‘What sorts of books and magazines has he got in there?’ Father Tobias asked, looking interested, but I saw something in his eyes that I didn’t like.
‘Are you thinking of taking them like you took mine?’ I said it to him quietly, but Dad looked up as if I’d screamed in his face.
‘Kitty, that’s very bad manners,’ he said in his you’d-better-watch-it voice.
‘No, no, no,’ Father Tobias said, doing his waving hand again to make Dad settle down. ‘I’m just curious, that’s all.’
I had started to feel a bit cross, and a little part of me wanted to push against Father Tobias’s wavy hand and ‘only being curious’ nonsense. I did not like him. And I didn’t like Amanda much, either. And I certainly didn’t like what had been happening to Mum since they got here.
‘Oh, they’re just nothing,’ I said, reaching for more chips. ‘Just magazines of naked ladies doing things with their bits. And Levi looks at them while playing with his thingy.’
I was after some kind of display of shock and outrage as a result of this, and I certainly got it. Amanda let her fork clatter down; Father Tobias’s eyes widened so much I thought they were going to pop out of his head.
‘You’ve … you’ve … you’ve seen this? Actually seen him do this?’ he said in a hoarse, slightly shaky voice.
Dad turned properly round to face me. ‘Kitty, when was this?’
I just shrugged, rather enjoying how silly they all looked. ‘I don’t know. A few days ago, I suppose.’
‘And he showed you his … he exposed himself to you?’
I didn’t know whether to mention that Adah and I had only seen Levi do this because we’d spied on him through the cracks in the cabin’s walls, and that actually he had only read us a storybook. But I decided this would ruin everything I’d done up until now, so I just said: ‘We saw his thingy and then stuff came out of it. It went onto the wall.’
I heard Father Tobias take in a big gasp, as if he’d never heard anything like this before, and then he started making a coughing sound and went red as if he were choking.
Then several things happened at once. Both Dad and Amanda got up to help him; Dad patted him on the back while Amanda tried to loosen his collar. ‘He needs some water!’ Amanda shouted, and Dad rushed to the sink and filled up a chipped mug and brought it to him. Father Tobias let out three big, larger-than-life coughs, stood up as if stretching his legs, then sat back down, taking the glass of water from Dad’s hands and raising it to his lips.
‘Oh … oh my word,’ he said, croakily, taking a few more sips of water, along with a few more little coughs. ‘Thank you … I’m sorry. So sorry.’
‘Are you all right?’ Amanda asked, rubbing his back as he drank some more of the water.
He nodded, looking worried and smaller than he had before.
‘We need to talk about what you’ve told us, Kitty,’ Dad said, looking back to me. ‘It is very serious.’
I said nothing. I just watched them all looking worried and serious, then I looked over at Mum. Only I couldn’t. Because Mum wasn’t there.
‘Dad,’ I said, looking up at his face. He’d already turned back to Father Tobias, so I called him again.
‘What, Kitty?’ he snapped.
I pointed at Mum’s empty seat.
Panic flickered through his face as if it were lighting him up from inside. ‘Where is she?’ he shouted. Amanda ran to the doorway into the lounge and peered through. ‘She’s not in there,’ she said.
‘Marjory!’ Dad yelled, marching round the table and out into the hallway. I heard him running up the stairs, banging open doors, then running back down again. ‘She’s not up there,’ he said.
Amanda came back into the kitchen. She froze still when she got near the counter.
‘The door is open. Hurry, the front door is open!’ Dad shouted from the hallway.
‘Come back in here,’ Amanda said loudly in response.
‘I said the front door is—’
‘I know,’ she called back. ‘But I need you to come back in here right now.’
Father Tobias, who had stood up when Dad had started shouting, walked round the table over to where Amanda was standing. ‘What is it?’ he said, at almost exactly the same moment as Dad.
Amanda pointed, just as I had pointed to Mum’s empty chair moments ago. But she was pointing to the drying rack, where there were now stacks of our baking bowls, washed up and ready to be put away.
‘A knife is missing.’
Father Tobias looked baffled. ‘What?’
Dad moved quickly. He rattled the drying rack, disturbing the bowls so that they clinked and clattered. He looked back at Amanda. ‘How do you know?’
‘Because I saw it there when I got the plates and stuff for the chips. It was just there, resting up against the bowls. And now it’s gone.’