I woke up very early the next morning after a solid, dreamless sleep and got straight out of bed. I checked the relics. The sun wasn’t quite up yet and in the pale light they looked unreal, the eggshells taking on a pearly glow, the crow’s skull gleaming as if it bore a light of its own.
I was surprised to see that the curtains were already drawn in Mally’s bedroom window and I half expected him to appear, but there was no-one.
I got dressed in a hurry. My t-shirt from the day before, my sole mini skirt that I’d worn that night to the pub, when Janet had flung her arms around my dad and had to be carried home. I thought there was probably something going on between them, but I didn’t really care. Good luck to them, I thought, and where there should have been a pang of shame at my disloyalty to my mother, there was nothing. She was welcome to her fantasies about Petra. I was numb to her.
There was nobody in the kitchen when I went down, and the water bottles weren’t there either. I thought they must be in my dad’s studio. In the darkness of the back hall the temperature was comfortable but I was stunned by the wall of heat that met me when I pushed open the door. The clear plastic roof had been assaulted by the sun all the previous day, and the heat had built up like a furnace.
The bust of my mother stood on the wheel in the middle of the room. The hessian had been removed, and only the plastic remained, a transparent film made semi-opaque by smears of clay and a frosting of condensation. I went to open the window and my arm brushed against the plastic sheet. It floated to the ground, gliding elegantly. My mother’s face looked back at me.
The forehead was high, the hairline arched. My dad had not yet carved out the detail of the eyes, and they remained blank, staring through me. The nose was long and aquiline and the sharp cheekbones gave way to the spaces below them, which were hollow and shadowed. And the mouth was gone. The lips had been removed, brushed away, no doubt by the strength of my dad’s thumbs. Instead there was merely a space where the mouth should have been, a blank area between nose and chin, the clay there flat and smooth.
Outside, the lane sat quiet and empty. Day came slowly to this little corner of the world, and the sun peered over the horizon a little later than it did at home. As a result, it seemed that life was suspended, and that while darkness lay on the village, its heart temporarily stopped beating. The silence was absolute.
The gates at the front of the chapel were padlocked, an admonishment to intruders and outsiders. Like me. Like Mally. I crawled through the hole in the hedge, scrabbling my way up the bank, and into the field next to the chapel. Janet’s field.
I chucked the bottles down next to the well. The plywood was still lying on top, the blue bucket next to it. I wanted to get to the top of the hill, to see the village before the sun came up. Already there was a shimmer of red on the horizon, and a sheen of orange that would soon become a flaming ball of sun. I wanted to see the village while it slept.
It didn’t take me long to get to the top of the hill. I walked backwards part of the way, enjoying how the perspective changed as I got higher. The roofs of the houses became flatter, the windows grew squat and low, and even the fields became smaller, the squares of scorched grass making up what I knew would soon be a yellow and brown and ochre-coloured chessboard, but which in the early morning light looked blue and grey and opalescent.
Walking backwards up the hill meant that I stumbled a couple of times over divots in the baked earth. Finally, I reached the top and I sat, breathing heavily, waiting for the sun to come up. The sky was streaked with red by then, and a few meagre clouds sat above the horizon. I knew they would be gone in an hour, baked off by the sun’s heat.
I didn’t hear him until he was a few feet behind me, the crunch of the dried-out bracken making me turn around. He was wearing his usual tatty jeans, and the picture on the Bowie t-shirt he had on was partly obscured by the camera slung around his neck. I wasn’t surprised to see him, and pleased that he’d come. He stopped walking when I turned around, but he didn’t look at me. He stared at the other side of the valley, and when I turned back I saw that the first glimmer of the sun’s sphere was sparkling over the horizon.
‘It’s magic, isn’t it?’ he said, still not looking at me, but with his eyes fixed straight ahead on the other side of the valley. ‘The way the sun disappears at night and then comes up again the next morning. Every day. Every single day. You can depend on it.’
‘It’s not magic,’ I said. ‘It’s physics. The earth turns as it goes round the sun, the sun disappears from view, the earth keeps turning and the sun reappears again. It’s not like it’s vanished, it’s only moved. It’s always daytime somewhere in the world.’
‘And it’s always night-time somewhere else.’
‘Tell me a secret,’ I said, and he laughed.
‘Another secret? Now that’s a big ask. I don’t think I have any more secrets. Not ones I could tell you, anyway.’
‘Why not? I told you about Petra.’
‘Yeah, but I already knew about that ’cause your dad told my mum. You’d need to tell me something I don’t know already for this to be worth my while.’
‘Like what?’ I said.
‘Like…’ he paused, as if trying to think of what to say, but I could tell he’d already decided on something. He sat down next to me and unhooked the Polaroid camera from around his neck and put it carefully on the ground. ‘Like what do you think about when you’re lying in bed at night, in that little attic room of yours, with no curtains and a nosy neighbour.’
I could feel the heat on my cheeks and looked at my feet. I tugged at my skirt.
‘What do you think about when you wake up in the middle of the night, when the light has gone and the darkness is everywhere?’
The sun was halfway over the horizon now, and a great band of orange drenched the sky around it. I took a deep breath.
‘I think about Petra,’ I said. ‘I think about my little sister and how she drowned that day in the bath when my mother went to answer the phone and left her on her own. And when she came back she started screaming and screaming and I ran in and there Petra was, her body completely still, but the water still moving, still washing over her.’
Before I could think better of it I started speaking again.
‘And I think of how much I hate my mother and how it’s her fault that Petra died. I think about who it was on the phone that was so important that she left Petra in the bath to go and answer it. And I think of how hard my dad’s trying to make things right and that selfish bitch just lies there, off her face on Valium, staring at the wall or crying or screaming or just with that stupid smile on her face. And it’s her fault. She let it happen.’
‘What about the police? Didn’t they get involved?’
‘Yeah, they came round and asked us all a bunch of questions. They asked me if I’d seen anything and what I’d been doing and everything like that. But in the end, they decided it was an accident and they didn’t press charges. They said it wasn’t my mother’s fault for leaving Petra alone in the bath, that she was four by then and could sit up by herself, so they didn’t really know why it happened. They decided it was an accident. My mother still blames herself, though, and so do I.’
‘And the dreams?’ Mally’s voice was low, calm, steady.
‘I can never remember the dreams, but I know there’s water and a phone ringing, so I know it’s something to do with Petra. When I wake up I’m aware that I’ve had one of those dreams. It’s like déjà vu or something. It’s a feeling of…of…inevitability, I suppose. Of something that’s happened that’s important but I can only remember the feeling of it, the outline, and not the detail of it. It’s a shimmer. A shiver.’
‘Like someone walking on your grave?’
‘Something like that.’
‘And Lorry. What about Lorry?’ Mally was sitting forward, his forearms resting on his knees, and he was looking at me intently. ‘Why is Lorry…like he is?’
‘He’s always been that way,’ I said. ‘I suppose it has something to do with what happened when he was born—him and Petra, I mean.’ I looked at Mally, but he was fiddling with his plimsoll.
‘I don’t remember much about when Lorry and Petra were born. My dad’s told me a few things, and Mrs Akhar who lives next door to us, but I’ve kind of pieced it together over the last few years.
‘I think my parents must have been trying for another baby for ages. I don’t know how I knew that, it was just something that was always there, always around. Like, in the room there’d be me, my dad, my mother and this unborn child they wanted, and that was how it always was. I think I must have been about eleven or twelve when I first overheard them talking in the kitchen. They were excited and they were whispering about this baby they were going to have and what they’d call it and how they’d do up the spare room as a nursery. They didn’t actually sit me down and tell me about it for another few months, when my mother got so big they couldn’t hide it anymore.’
I’d never told anyone about this before, and now I’d started talking I couldn’t stop.
‘I remember my mother in the kitchen when she told me. She’d made a cup of tea and sat down opposite me, on the other side of the table. She told me that God had decided that we were going to have a new brother or sister in our lives. That we’d all been patient and had waited and prayed until God had decided that we were ready, and now it was happening. In a few weeks, the baby would be born and I would be a big sister.’
‘Your mum doesn’t look the religious sort,’ Mally said, looking up from his plimsoll.
‘What do you mean?’
‘She doesn’t look like the church-going type, that’s all. I mean, you’ve seen all the people round here who go to the chapel. Your mum’s different.’ He shrugged.
‘She doesn’t go to church anymore,’ I said. ‘She gave all that up when Petra died. She said that if God existed he was a bastard and she took off her crucifix and threw it into the canal. She’s never been back to church since.’
‘What about you? Did you ever go to church?’
‘I used to go sometimes, with my mother. Before the accident. I used to like the peace of the church, sitting there in the cool and the dark and the quiet. It was…soothing, I suppose.’
‘So, were you ever, you know, confirmed?’
‘No. My mother wanted me to be but my dad put his foot down. It’s the only time I’ve ever seen him stand up to her. He said I should wait until I was old enough to make up my own mind and do it then if I still wanted to.’
‘So, your dad’s not religious then?’
‘He never has been. He and my mother have this unspoken agreement that they just get on with things their own way. Some people believe in God, I suppose, and some people believe in nothing.’ I shrugged. ‘And some people believe in something else.’
‘And what do you believe in?’ Mally had pulled off a strip of the rubber from his shoe and was holding it in both hands and stretching it. I thought about telling him about the Creed, how it had found me exactly when I needed it, but I just smiled and shook my head.
‘So God gave your parents a baby, then?’ Mally said and the sarcasm in his voice was clear.
‘I suppose so. Or at least that’s what my mother said at the time. I was pleased, really I was. I was excited about being a big sister and helping my mother with a new baby, and I counted down the weeks and watched as her belly got bigger and bigger until one day her waters broke in the kitchen, this puddle of liquid that just appeared on the floor, and she just stood there, leaning on the worktop and clutching her belly.’ I could picture my mother as she had been then: graceful, excited. Happy.
‘My parents had arranged for me to go next door when this happened, and we stood there in the dark with my dad ringing and ringing the doorbell and there was no answer. It was raining, or sleeting or something like that, and really cold and we got soaked to the bone waiting for Mrs Akhar. In the end, we all had to go to the hospital, my dad, my mother and me.
‘I remember how the car wouldn’t start at first, and my dad had to get out and fiddle under the bonnet. Then it started and we drove to the hospital and I’ve never seen rain like it. The windscreen wipers could hardly keep up, and my dad had to sit forward in his seat so he could see out. It’s funny, but I remember that better than any of the other things that happened.’
The sun was nearly all the way up now, and the sky had taken on the light of a new day.
‘What did happen?’ The piece of rubber Mally was stretching broke in two and snapped back against his fingers. He dropped it.
‘When we got to the hospital I was made to sit on a chair outside the labour ward while my dad and my mother went in. I remember I was given a book—Little Red Riding Hood—by one of the nurses and I was cross because it was too young for me, but still I read it from cover to cover, over and over again, for hours and hours. Sometimes the same nurse would come and give me an orange or a biscuit or a glass of milk.
‘The thing that I remember most about the hospital is the screaming. I’d never heard my mother scream before, and when it started it was the worst sound imaginable. Eventually my dad came out. He was crying—happy tears, I think—and he said that I had a little sister. He hugged me and then he went back in to the ward again. Then lots of stuff started happening all at once. Bells were ringing and more nurses came, walking quickly, not quite running but definitely in a hurry to get somewhere. I remember thinking please make that not be for my mother or my sister, please make them be OK and for all this commotion to be happening for someone else. But it was for them.’
‘What happened?’
‘There was a problem. All this time they’d thought there was only one baby, and so when Petra was born they thought that was it. It was only when my mother carried on bleeding that they examined her properly and they saw that there was another baby.’
‘Lorry?’
I nodded. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d spoken, uninterrupted, for that long, and I felt lighter as a result, but also afraid that by letting the words out into the world I’d never get them back again. Was this how it had felt for my mother, all those times I’d waited for her as she sat in the confessional box with Father Declan?
‘So, what happened?’ Mally was pulling again at the rubber from his plimsoll, stretching it out and letting it snap back into place.
‘They got him out. He was small, a lot smaller than Petra, and the doctor told my dad that he’d probably been getting less of the nutrition, that Petra had been the stronger twin and in a way, had been starving Lorry of food and maybe oxygen. They thought he wouldn’t survive, he was so small. But they kept him in hospital and he managed to pull through. My mother took Petra home and left the nurses to look after Lorry. She said that she thought it best if she gave her attention to one of the twins, and that when Lorry was better then he could come home and she’d look after him as well. I remember thinking that was a bit odd.’
‘What happened after that?’
‘My dad and I would go to visit Lorry in hospital—every day, this tiny bundle of skin and bones lying in the incubator. I remember my dad reaching in a finger and stroking Lorry and the nurse seeing him and telling him off and my dad getting angry with her and saying that was his child in that box and he’d touch him if he wanted to. I think that’s the first time I ever saw my dad get really angry.
‘After a few weeks, Lorry was strong enough to come home. My dad and I went to get him from the hospital, and I remember being really excited, and thinking that now we had a chance of being a proper family, that now I had not only a sister, but a brother too to help my mother look after.
‘When we got back to the house with Lorry that day, my mother didn’t even bother coming to meet us at the door. My dad let us in with his key, and called out to her. We went into the sitting room, and there she was, sitting on the sofa with Petra on her lap. She was feeding her, and singing to her. It was a song, a counting song that she used to sing to me when I was little. I thought she’d get up and come and pick up Lorry, her little boy, be pleased to have him home, but she didn’t. She just said something about how he must be allowed to sleep, and that the car journey would have worn him out.’
I waited for Mally to say something, but he didn’t, so I carried on.
‘I should have known then that she was never really going to love Lorry, that Petra was all she needed. It took me a few months to realise this, and it came to me gradually. It was like when you get a cold and you can feel it building up over a few days and you know that there’s nothing you can do to stop it and that very soon you’re going to feel terrible. That’s what it was like. And that was when I guessed that she’d never loved me either, and that was why she needed God to give her the perfect baby she thought she deserved.’
I couldn’t believe I was telling Mally all this when I’d known him for little more than a week, but there was something about him, something that begged you to put your confidence in him.
The sun was fully over the horizon by then, a flaming ball threatening us with the knowledge of the oppressive heat it would bring later in the day.
‘From then on, my dad looked after Lorry, or we dropped him off with Mrs Akhar from next door when my dad was teaching or had a commission he couldn’t put off. When my dad started to get known a bit more for his sculptures, and things got busy for him, I did more for Lorry. I stopped going to school as much, which was fine as I couldn’t stand it, and I fed Lorry from a bottle and waited for him to grow up.’
Sitting there in the early morning light I felt exhausted. I thought again about the church we used to go to, and sitting in the shadows while my mother asked God to give her a baby, watching as people slipped out of the confessional, having told the priest their sins. I wondered if they felt like I did now, unburdened yet shameful, having put into words the deeds they thought they should keep as mere thoughts.
‘Two crows I see, good luck to me.’ Mally’s voice broke the silence.
‘What?’ I was impatient with him, and I said it sharply, the consonant sound clipped as my tongue clicked against my teeth. I wondered if he’d even been listening to me.
‘It’s a saying from round here. Goes way back, back to when they were superstitious, even more superstitious than they are now.’ He snorted out a laugh and then he pointed at a log a little way off. Two crows were perched there, their heads hunkered down into their necks. Mally lifted the camera and aimed it at the crows. It clicked.
‘The locals think that if you see one crow it’s bad luck. Kind of like a bad omen and it’ll bring terrible things and doom and gloom to you and your family. But if you see two crows together, the second one balances out the bad luck from the first one.’
Despite myself, I was interested.
‘You mean it reverses the bad luck? Stops the bad luck from taking hold if you see another one?’
‘Something like that, yeah.’ He was looking at the front of the camera, waiting for the photo to appear, and he’d lost interest in what I was saying. I persisted.
‘So a bit like, say, if you broke something and it brought bad luck to you but then you broke something else to cancel out the bad luck? A bit like that?’
He was looking at me strangely now. His hand was shielding the sun from his eyes, but he was still frowning.
‘I suppose so. What are you getting at?’
‘So, like, I don’t know, say if someone you really cared about, someone you loved and never wanted to hurt, say if they injured themselves and you knew that the only thing you could do to ward off the bad luck would be to make them hurt themselves again.’ The words were all coming out in a rush now, and I had to pause for breath.
Mally was sitting up straight now. ‘What’s got into you?’ he asked.
‘Come on,’ I said. ‘It’s my turn to show you something.’