“Dad?”
“Ah, there you are, Roe. Grab the other end, would you?”
I took hold of the end of the plank of wood and lifted, holding on fast, feeling my arm muscles shudder at its weight. There was a piece of snail shell on my sleeve still. I could see it hanging by a thread. I went to pick it off, hefting the wood into my other hand, but my knees wobbled under the weight of it and I left the shell dangling where it was.
“Hold tight, Romilly. Please don’t drop it.”
“Dad?”
“Yes,” he said distractedly, trying to maneuver the plank toward the ground and simultaneously pick up a hammer and nails.
“How can you tell if someone’s real and not a ghost?”
Dad lowered the plank to the ground and gently spat a couple of nails onto the grass while he thought. My arms felt like they might fall off. I lowered my own end to the ground too and began to pick out the splinters in my palms, brushing the piece of shell away as I did so.
Dad had spent a lot of the summer erecting a shed in the garden. Small yet grand, it had a crenulated roof and faux marble pillars at the entrance. Above the door was a little cutout of a wooden circus tent, its flaps folded back. If you looked really closely, you could just see an elephant inside balancing on a big red-and-yellow ball. The shed was to be his painting studio. During its construction, he was often to be seen standing back and contemplating it, or else pacing out the space inside, sketching the layout of armchair and drawing board.
Now he sucked on a fragment of leftover nail in his mouth as he contemplated my question.
“Is it if you can’t touch them, is that how you know?” I asked hopefully, poking him gently in the belly to demonstrate he was real.
I thought about what Stacey had said about my mum. I trusted Stacey’s judgment, but Mum couldn’t possibly be a ghost. And yet there was something otherworldly about her, a sort of glassy sadness that made it hard to love her.
There had been a moment—after she saved Monty from the snare—where everything felt exactly right: we were like a proper family all of a sudden, sharing in silly stories and laughing with each other, just like you see on the TV. When she came upstairs that evening to kiss me good-night, she hugged me tight as if she couldn’t quite believe I was real. Each hug she gave me felt better than the last, like she was learning from scratch how to do it.
But then last night, as she leaned in to kiss me good-night, her ruby-red nails pinned the pillow on either side of me, and a long-forgotten memory flitted across my vision—a red-nailed hand swooping sharply toward my cheek, so that I had no time to duck out of the way. As her lips kissed my cheek, I flinched, the memory of the pain so sharp it was as if she had hit me for real.
Mum had paused, frowning. “What’s wrong?” she said.
But how could I put into words the memory, if memory it was? I think she saw the fright in my eyes, because she drew away, saying good-night in a flat voice, before climbing back down the stairs.
I had wanted to jump out of bed and follow her, throwing myself into her arms for a hug the way I did with Dad, but there was something about Mum that stopped me doing anything too spontaneous, as if she might be frightened by the sudden movement and run away, never to be seen again.
Dad was still considering my question. He had picked up the hammer again and was turning it in his hands. “But if you went round prodding people to check they were real,” he said, “you’d end up in prison.”
I loved this about Dad. He always gave my questions some real thought. He was looking at me while I thought about all this, his brow creased.
“Look,” he said, “relationships need give and take, Romilly. Even mother-daughter relationships. Perhaps you need to make the first move with your mum—show her you care. Why don’t you thank her for all the nice things she’s done for you? That would be a good start.”
I racked my brains for things I could thank her for. There wasn’t a huge amount to choose from. And then I remembered my little picture of Mary Mother-Of-God. I had never had the chance to thank her for it when she sent it. I would do that.
“She’s as real as the rest of us, your mum,” Dad said. “I know she might not be what you were expecting, but she’s your mother, and that counts for a lot.”
I shoved my hands in my pockets, feeling guilty.
“I don’t know if there is a way to tell if someone is definitely real or not, Roe. The most real people are sometimes not really real at all, and the most mysterious and otherworldly people are sometimes more real than you or I.”
“I am real, aren’t I?” I asked quietly, pulling my hands out of my pockets and looking at them, and wondering if it were possible to touch one’s own skin to prove your realness.
“You’re as real as I am.” He bent down and dug his finger into the recently excavated mud that surrounded his shed. Straightening up, he lifted his hand and swabbed the mud down my forehead and over my nose and mouth, coming to a stop on my chin. I could smell the mud’s cold tang, and feel its grit on my teeth. I stood still, focusing on a small crumb of wet earth on the end of my nose until my eyes crossed.
“You’re as real as that earth on your skin. And it’s made from millions of leaves and insects, millions of years old. Nothing is more real.” He smiled at me. “Close your eyes. Can you feel it still, even if you can’t see it? Can you smell it?”
I did as I was told, my world shrinking down to the slick of cold wetness on my face. I nodded, feeling not like a human anymore, but a relic, ancient and petrified. I didn’t know if I felt real at all anymore.
In the house, Mum was sitting on the velvet sofa, rolling up a ball of wool that Monty had chased across the carpet. A pale sunbeam slanted across her face, making a slice of her shimmer. I watched her for a moment, trying to pluck up the courage to talk to her.
“Mum?”
She looked up and smiled.
“Thank you for the picture of Mary Mother-Of-God,” I said, kneeling down on the rug by her feet.
“What?”
“The lady with the golden hat? You sent it to me just before the hurricane broke my arm. When I was nine.”
She set the wool on her lap. “You did get in a lot of scrapes before I came along, didn’t you?” she said. “I don’t remember sending you a picture.”
“You did. You said that she would look after me until you could. And she has.” I wanted to convey how comforting the little picture had been, but Mum was frowning.
“I think I’d remember doing something like that. And why would I send you a picture of the Virgin Mary? I’m not religious. You must have got it from somewhere else.”
“I didn’t. You sent it. And you sent me the denim dress, the first one.”
“I admit, I did send that—I remember the nurses helping me order it—but not the picture.” She was looking at me warily. She put a hand to my forehead, and I jumped at the touch. “Are you sure you’re feeling all right?” she said.
I shook my head, pushing her hand away, searching around for a way to explain. “You wrote me a letter,” I said, remembering at last. “I can go and find it...” I started to rise.
“Don’t be so silly, child. I remember the autumn you hurt your arm. I wasn’t in a good place. I could never have written a letter back then, let alone sent things. I wasn’t well enough to get my own breakfast.” She narrowed her eyes. “Is this a trick?”
“No!” I felt like I was in sinking mud, slowly being swallowed up: this conversation had layers that I couldn’t understand. “Mud!” I blurted out, clinging on to Dad’s explanation.
“What?” Mum said, the word coming out in a huff of air.
“Dad says I’m as real as mud.” I sank back down onto the floor and picked up a strand of wool, curling it into a ball to help her. “We were talking about how you can tell if someone is real, and Dad said I’m as real as mud.”
Mum looked as if her patience was wearing thin. She took a breath, her eyebrows rising. “Well, mud is very real.”
“He said I was as real as him, and he’s very real. But mud isn’t very real, is it? It doesn’t breathe.” I was getting confused now, forgetting his explanation that had made perfect sense moments ago. I wrapped a dead daddy longlegs up into the ball of wool, a little surprise for next time Mum did some knitting. I imagined with pleasure a sweater embellished with delicate lacewings, a few long spiny legs here and there for good measure.
“You mean mud isn’t very human,” Mum said, plucking the ball of wool from my hands and picking out the bits of daddy longlegs she could see before giving it back. “It’s definitely real. And it does sort of breathe.”
“Can someone be human and not real?” I picked up a dead fly and tucked it inside the wool.
“Romilly, will you please stop putting dead insects into my wool? It’s disgusting.” She grabbed the ball again and shook the fly out onto the floor. The ball of wool slipped from her hands and unrolled across the rug. “Now look what you’ve made me do,” she said, exasperated.
The dead fly came to a stop near Monty, and I leaned over and flicked it for him. Mum put a hand to my forehead again. Bits of dried mud flaked away and floated down in front of my eyes.
“You’re a bit warm. Do you think you might stay inside now? There’s a chill in the garden.”
“But I want to go and find Stac...” She looked up, eyebrows raised.
“I want to go and play outside,” I finished lamely. Mum didn’t approve of Stacey, which was unfair since she hadn’t even met her yet. Mum didn’t approve of much, it turned out, except manners and early bedtimes. I looked out of the window and sighed. I wanted to go and see if Stacey was all right after the snails outburst.
“Please?” I said. “Please can I go back outside? Just for a little while?”
“I don’t think so, Romilly, not today. You might catch a chill. Your chest’s sounding a little gritty.” She had picked up the ball of wool again.
I tried to focus on my breathing, but it sounded perfectly normal to me. “But I need to check something,” I said, picking at the desiccated pieces of insect on the carpet and wondering when they would turn into mud.
“For goodness sake. No means no!”
“Dad’ll let me,” I said, starting to get up.
She looked at me with ill-concealed anger. “I’m here now, and I say you’re to stay inside. Sit. Down.”
Deep in my chest, a white-hot rage opened up, goading me to talk. “Why did you leave us?” I asked.
She held my gaze for a moment before looking out of the window at the moat, her hands stroking the wool. “You need to ask your father that,” she said, and at her answer, the rage and the injustice and the unfairness of it all bubbled up inside me, and I couldn’t hold the words in anymore.
I looked down at the rug and whispered, “You’re just a ghost.” I let the words pour out into the red-and-black threads, forcing my anger into their pattern, shooting it out like lasers from my eyes.
Mum dropped the ball of wool. “What did you say, young lady?” Her voice was chilling in its composure.
“Nothing,” I said quickly. A little bit of warmth trickled into my pants.
She picked up the wool again, spooling it angrily in her hands, not taking her eyes off me. “How dare you,” she said. “I’ve come here to look after you. I’ve been nothing but nice to you—despite everything that happened—and yet you’re so insolent. So rude.”
With each word she spoke, it was as if she was picking away at our relationship, attacking it in the same way that she attacked the knots in the wool, pulling and stabbing. I was mesmerized by her hands, by the sharp, red nails plunging into the soft wool.
And suddenly those sharp talons were coming toward me, gripping my arm, squeezing into my bare flesh until I thought my skin would break apart.
My pants suddenly felt very warm as a wet torrent of urine was released.
Smack, a sharp pain cascaded across the backs of my legs, and without warning I was lying on the floor.
“Look what you’ve done—soaked the carpet.” A hand grabbed at my wrist, sharp nails digging into the bones of my arm that had so recently healed, and I was being dragged back onto my feet and pulled along. Glimpses of Braër’s hall rushed past me as I half ran behind Mum, and then we were in the kitchen and I was being pushed into the pantry, and the door was shutting, and I was alone.
It was cold in the pantry, and I shivered as I got to my feet, the smell of urine mixing with the years-old dried herbs that sat in jars on the shelves. I could still hear my mother on the other side of the door. I put my eye to the keyhole and I saw her, pacing. She was whispering to herself, her hands on her face, and then her knees buckled from under her and she let out a strange guttural moan, collapsing like a broken marionette onto the floor.
“Mum,” I whispered. “Mummy? Are you all right?”
She lay on the floor, silent now, her hands still over her face as if she couldn’t bear to look at anything. Then she pulled herself up and brushed herself down, and, without looking at the pantry, walked out of the kitchen.
I stood up and looked around me. There was a small square grate at the back of the little space. I reached up on tiptoe and wiggled my fingers through its lattice pattern, hoping someone would see and come and rescue me.
My arm was aching from being so high up and my fingers were growing numb and tingly, when, “Who’s there?” came a familiar voice. Relief flooded through me.
“Stacey?” I whispered.
“Romilly? Why are you sticking your fingers out like that? I thought they were a bunch of worms.”
“Stacey, help me.”
“What are you doing in there?” she said, her voice so close now I could feel her warm breath on my fingers.
“Mum shut me in the pantry,” I whispered. “Can you come and let me out?”
“I don’t think I’m allowed in your house. I don’t think your mum likes me.” She sounded scared.
I tried not to whimper. “Then can you find my dad? He’ll be able to let me out.”
“I’ll try,” she said, and I felt the tips of her fingers briefly clutch at mine. I jumped at her touch.
“Stacey?” I whispered urgently, but she was gone. I sat down on the floor and waited.
A high, breathless child’s voice lingered in my ear, whispering me awake. I lifted my head, my cheek creased from the tiles on the pantry floor. I was shivering with cold.
The voice was still there, a soft caress in the hard, cold room. The pantry was dark, despite the light trickling in from the grate, and I shifted around, trying to get my bearings, looking for the source of the whispering voice.
“Stacey?” I said quietly, cautiously, but there was no answer.
I was alone.
My stomach rumbled. How many meals had I missed? Maybe I would die in here, I thought with a gulp. I remembered that it was important to drink if you wanted to stay alive, and I got up gingerly and started feeling along the shelves, running my hands over the glass bottles and jars. My fingers found a fat brown bottle. I squinted in the gloom at the label, sounding out the letters. The first word was “malt,” like Maltesers, I thought, licking my lips. The second word was longer and alien to me. I wished that Dad had spent more time on my spelling lessons: I couldn’t get past the first three letters, v-i-n. I held the heavy bottle in my hands, trying to decide. Malt was nourishing, Dad said, like the Ovaltine he made me before bed.
I unscrewed the cap. Immediately, its acrid smell hit the back of my nose, making my eyes fill with water. I held the bottle away from me, listening to the world outside the pantry, hoping to be rescued before I needed to drink. I thought I could make out the sound of footsteps far off, then mumbled shouts and a door slamming. Then silence. My mouth was dry. I screwed up my nose and took a deep gulp from the bottle.
An acidic fire hit my stomach, and I choked, the spray of liquid exploding out of my mouth as I simultaneously tried to breathe in. There was a whole family of spiny hedgehogs in my nose, scrambling to get out, and a cactus pulsing in my brain. I shook my head, trying to swallow through the pain, and then footsteps were coming closer, and the pantry latch was lifting, and the door was opening, and Dad’s huge silhouette was standing in the light, scooping me up and hugging me close.
“Romilly,” he roared, “oh, my darling child.” And I could hardly breathe, I was so relieved.
My parents were arguing again. I was in bed, pretending to be asleep. I had fresh pajamas on and Monty was lying in my arms.
Mum’s and Dad’s voices were far away, as if they had shut themselves in a room so I wouldn’t hear. I wondered if they were in the pantry. Then a door downstairs opened and Mum’s voice was clear as a bell.
“...nothing wrong with you. It’s all a lie.”
I could hear her coming up the stairs now, Dad’s heavy footsteps following behind. I pulled the duvet over my head, hoping they weren’t coming up to my room.
“Why would I lie?” Dad’s voice now, booming deeply through the duvet. “I didn’t want you to come, you know. I only wrote to let you know. You’re just here because the books are doing well. Where were you when she was younger, eh?”
“How dare you. You know exactly where I was, not that you ever visited. Not that you ever brought her.”
“What good would it have done her to see you in there?”
“What about me, Tobias? What about the good it would have done me?” Her voice was so high-pitched now it was almost a scream. Suddenly, it dropped. “I can’t do it, Tobias, I can’t look after her. I’ve tried, I really have, but she’s such a strong-willed child.”
“Like her mother, then.”
“And when I look at her, I see...”
“You’re just seeing what you want to see,” Dad interrupted. His voice was quieter now. “And you can’t blame her, Meg. She was four years old.”
“I can’t stay here. It’s so claustrophobic, so isolated. And I can’t be around her, not after...” I strained to listen, but Mum’s voice was becoming quieter too, almost as if she were whispering.
Dad’s voice boomed in response. “No! That won’t happen. She stays here with me. You can stay, or you can go, but Romilly goes nowhere.”
“You want me to leave her to run wild with you? After all you’ve told me? She could get abducted by a pedophile, or hit by a car.” Mum’s voice was high-pitched, like a shriek.
“She’s not destined to die, you know, Meg. Let her dream her dreams and live her life if it makes her happy. She never wet herself before you came, and she damned well won’t do it once you’re gone. Go back to your facility and your five o’clock therapy meetings. We’ll be fine without you.”
Their footsteps drummed back downstairs and I curled up in a ball, relieved they were going farther away.
When I woke, Mum’s voice had disappeared, and Dad was quietly climbing through into my bedroom. Monty stretched and chirruped in welcome. Dad pulled me into a gentle hug.
“I’m sorry I wet myself,” I mumbled.
“Don’t be sorry.”
“Where’s Mum?”
“She’s gone.”
“Gone where?”
“Just gone.”
I plucked at a loose thread on my cotton duvet. It came smoothly out, leaving a long line of nothing behind. “What’s a facility?” I asked.
Dad sighed and rubbed at his beard. “It’s a...a place you go to live when you’re not well.”
“Is it haunted? Do ghosts live there?”
“I don’t think so. Actually, probably.” He snorted quietly under his breath.
“Will she come back?”
Dad paused, drawing circles on the duvet. Finally, he said, “No.”
“Never?”
“I don’t think so.”
I dropped my head and looked hard at the duvet, my eyes swimming.
“I can’t let her come in and out of your life as she pleases, Romilly. It’s not fair on you. You need routine, and she can’t give you that right now.”
“Can I visit her? At her facility?”
“I don’t know. When you’re older, how about that?”
I nodded. It was strange. I had thought that if Mum left, then Dad would become the huge, roaring Dad I knew so well, but instead here he was cowed and shrunken like a little mouse on the end of my bed. I hoped that time would restore him, or else I might find myself shrinking with him, until we slipped between the floorboards of my bedroom, never to be seen again.