25 AUGUST

Abandonment

25

The road which brought the police cars and ambulances was called Ashes Road. Its name made Agnes think of fires – coal which was once trees and its embers, sometimes called clinker. The word clinker was in her head as she came home from the woods on the morning they were told to leave Blackthorn Ashes. It had been a long time coming but in the end everything happened swiftly, after the storm and the coroner coming to Maythorn to take the children’s bodies away.

The morning after the storm, she rose early, while the rest of the house was sleeping. Alone in the kitchen, she made a sandwich of peanut butter, wrapping it in foil. She took an apple from the fruit bowl and a bottle of water from the fridge, packing these provisions in a small rucksack. She wore a long-sleeved shirt and jeans, hiking boots for those parts of the wood flooded by the storm. She left her family sleeping, curtains drawn at all the windows.

The sun was rising pale behind the trees, a quiver of cold in the air. The houses watched her as she walked, each locked in its own silence. She could taste a cliff edge, raw and white. The deaths in Maythorn were unspeakable but there was no sense of a full stop. Only of a hurtling, unchecked, to whatever was waiting ahead of them.

In the woods, she felt insulated; the hurtling would have to take down all the trees before it reached her. She wished she had a tent so she could live out here until it was over. It couldn’t be long now, surely. No one would want to stay, with the children gone. It was an effort just to move from room to room, or up and down the stairs. They were poisoned but they still didn’t know it. Only Trevor had any energy, fizzing as he came to the house to call Christie away, ‘Tour of duty,’ as if Blackthorn Ashes was a war zone, just as Iris had said at the street party. It looked even more like a war zone in the wake of the storm, with cables trailing and gardens tumbled, white faces at the windows, hands raised to draw down blinds.

The woods were cool, smelling of pine needles and tunnelled earth. Rain had put potholes into the paths, the trails spongy under her feet as she walked into the heart of the woods where the trees were too closely crowded for rain to reach. She found a stone ledge and sat, eating the apple and listening to birds – disturbed by her arrival – returning to their nests. She was thinking of Dad, the questions he’d be made to answer in the light of the deaths. She had no idea how the children had died but she knew it was the houses, that death had been waiting for them here from the very start, from the first brick laid with her brother’s name written on it. She knew there would have to be a scapegoat, a scalp. Trevor wouldn’t take the blame, not even a part of it. No dirt ever stuck to him.

She finished the apple, dropping the core into the pine needles at her feet. An ant found it, crawling into the grooves left by her teeth. Above her, a crop of abandoned nests built too low for safety clung to the branches. Instinct drove every living thing to make a home for itself. She thought of tiny vests and muslin squares, and of fresh starts in wild places poised between land and sea. Something moved through the undergrowth, dragging teeth and claws. She shivered and stood, dusting the legs of her jeans. She should get back. This day was not like the others. Today was going to be different.

By the time she returned, Blackthorn Ashes was shiny with cars. Everyone was up, and busy. She counted four police vehicles. She didn’t stop to ask what was happening, making her way home to find the front door open, the garage door too. Dad was packing boxes into the boot of Ruth’s car.

‘Go inside.’ He didn’t look at her. ‘Find your mother.’

Ruth was upstairs, emptying the bathroom shelves into a carrier bag. She thrust the bag at Agnes, ‘Finish this,’ heading in the direction of the bedrooms.

‘What is it?’ Agnes called after her but Ruth didn’t answer.

She did as she was told, filling the carrier bag with aspirin, indigestion remedies, her meds. For good measure, she added plasters and antiseptic cream, toiletries from the shelves above the bath. When the bag was full, she went looking for her mother, finding her in Christie’s bedroom, crouched beside the cupboard Dad built. When she saw Agnes, Ruth straightened, shutting the cupboard door and locking it, tucking the key into her pocket. She had a second carrier bag filled with whatever she’d taken from the cupboard, its neck wrung tight in her fist.

‘Get what you need from your room. Essentials only. You have three minutes.’

‘What’s happened?’

‘If you’d been here, you’d know.’

Ruth swung past her, out of the room. She was wearing yesterday’s clothes, her hair wet from a shower, dripping in a dark vee down her back.

Agnes went after her. ‘Tell me.’

‘We’re being evacuated.’ Ruth stopped at the top of the stairs, her hand gripping the banister. ‘They say the houses are unsafe. We need to leave.’

‘Unsafe how?’

‘Carbon monoxide. It’s what killed the children, and the Prentisses.’

‘The Prentisses are dead?’ Agnes felt a scrabbling in her chest.

Her mother blinked once, then pointed a finger. ‘Hurry up.’

‘Where’s Christie?’

‘With your dad, packing the car.’

‘He’s not. I was just there.’

‘Then find him. I have to pack my work papers.’

Ruth was gone, back into her bedroom.

In her own room, Agnes shoved clothes into the purple suitcase, along with her phone charger and passport, the box file with her birth certificate and other paperwork. She worked fast, trying to separate out her feelings of relief and dismay. Three minutes, Mum had said.

She carried the case to the car, asking Dad if he’d seen Christie.

‘He’s with Trevor.’ Dad looked as if all his energy was going into staying upright. ‘They went across the road.’

‘To Silverthorn?’ She slid the purple case into a gap in the boot. ‘Luke’s in hospital, isn’t he?’

‘Not the Dearmans . . .’ Dad was looking around the garage, distracted. ‘I’m not sure where they went to be honest. Where’s your mum?’

‘Upstairs getting her work papers. She told me to find Christie.’

‘You’d better do that, then.’ He pressed the ends of his fingers to his eyes. ‘Quickly.’

Christie’s basketball was in the corner of the garage, at Dad’s feet. Loss hit her out of nowhere, so hard she couldn’t breathe, the magnitude of what this had meant to her brother and her parents. Their fresh start. Dad’s pride in being their saviour, the prize this house had been. Glittering, yes, but needful too. Because it was bound up in what it meant to be a family, to be back together again.

‘It’ll be okay,’ she said. ‘Dad?’

‘It won’t.’ He raised a haggard face to hers. ‘It can’t be.’

It was the last meaningful thing he said in a long time.

Outside, police were gathered between Hawthorn and Silverthorn, their faces grim and steady. She heard one of them say, ‘It’s a blood bath,’ and she turned away, feeling sick.

Christie and Trevor were coming up the road from the building site, Christie running to keep up with Trevor’s long stride. Trevor’s face was a woodcut, dark and unforgiving. The police moved down the road from the other direction, overseeing the evacuation, knocking on doors to check everyone was out or getting out.

Christie was saying, ‘. . . batteries?’

Trevor cut him short. ‘Your sister’s turned up, anyway.’

Christie’s head swung towards her, his chin retracting. His face was bunched around his eyes. Blaming her, even now.

‘Mum’s looking for you,’ she said.

Christie peeled away from Trevor at the last second so that when he was gone she was standing near enough to hear Trevor’s heart knocking in his chest.

He said, ‘You got what you wanted, then.’

‘Did I?’

‘This place’s finished. Dead. You’ll never have to come here again.’

‘And that’s what I wanted?’

‘Isn’t it?’ He looked down at her. The sun was in his eyes, wiping them out. ‘To get away and never come back. That’s your MO.’

‘Because I wanted to get away from you, you mean.’

He laughed, cutting it short. ‘I was thinking about before that. What you were running away from when you found me.’ He glanced to where Ruth was coming out of Blackthorn, carrying an overnight bag. ‘What you’re still running from.’

They drove to the hospital first. For check-ups, blood tests, charts. Agnes caught sight of Barry and Janis Mason in the hospital, ashen-faced, Barry clutching a baby blanket, Janis hugging her empty arms to her chest. It’s a blood bath . . .

She saw a young man in running gear talking urgently to a nurse, and wondered if he was related to Val and Tim Prentiss. She’d hardly known them, she realized, as if they’d been dead long before it happened. Guilt buzzed in her skull.

After the blood tests and checks, they were free to go. Not back to Blackthorn Ashes, which the police were treating like a fire or flood, as if the houses had been burnt to the ground or half washed out to sea. Safety investigators warned they’d have questions for Adrian Gale and Trevor Kyte, and everyone else responsible for the planning and construction, and the sales since these’d been rushed. Adrian, in particular, had to stay close to the investigation. Agnes wasn’t sure why so much of the spotlight shone on her father but she suspected Trevor steered them in that direction. Her phone was buzzing.

‘You can come here,’ Errol said. ‘Bette’s found you a caravan.’

By the time they found their way to Indigo Park, it was growing dark. After Blackthorn Ashes, the caravan park looked crude and carnival-like, neon firing from the big trailers.

Inside, the caravan smelt of some other family gone away for the summer.

Dad headed for the sofa and sat down, looking stunned. Christie called top bunk in the room he’d be sharing with Agnes.

Ruth was the only one operating on anything like full power. She unpacked the suitcases and carrier bags, putting pyjamas on everyone’s beds, arranging meds along the shallow shelf in the bathroom, cracking open windows to let the stale air escape.

‘We’ll get fish and chips,’ she decided, forcing a bright note from her voice, as fake as the diamonds left behind in the show house.

Dad said nothing, leaning into the sofa and shutting his eyes. Christie kicked his heel at the bunk, busy on his phone. At least there was a signal here.

‘Agnes, you’ll come and help me carry everything?’ Her mother framed it like a question but it was a command.

Agnes wanted to run. Out of the caravan into the gathering darkness, away from her fractured family. Heat raced through her, leaving her cold at the core. She wanted to find Trevor wherever he was holed up. A place far better than this, she was certain. She wanted to find him and hit him and keep hitting him, not just for the past but for everything that was out of her control, all this mess pressing in on every side, stealing her father and drumming her brother’s heel on the bed, turning her mother’s eyes to chips of dark glass.

Ruth drove them to the coastal town, not speaking until she reached a fork in the road where she took a narrow lane to a car park at the head of the cliffs. The car park was deserted. Agnes didn’t ask why they were taking this detour. She’d known her mother wanted more than fish and chips, that she’d brought her here for a reason.

Ruth faced the car seaward, where the last of the sunset clung to the horizon. She switched off the engine, easing her hands from the wheel. She was vibrating with tension.

Agnes sat waiting for her to say whatever it was she needed Agnes to hear. A pep talk possibly, seasoned with recrimination for the part Agnes played in unpicking their paradise. ‘You need to do better,’ how many times had she heard that? She slipped her hands under the seat belt, waiting for Ruth to begin.

Below them, the sea ran smoothly into the rocks, with hardly a sound. There was a complicated edge to their silence, staticky.

‘The police are going to come, tomorrow or the next day.’

Ruth kept her eyes on the oil tankers on the horizon, lit by pinpricks of light.

‘They’re going to ask questions about what happened back there. Everything that happened.’ She paused. ‘Do you understand?’

‘They’ll want to know what’s wrong with the houses—’

‘No,’ Ruth cut her off. ‘Not that.’

Their breath was starting to cloud the windows. She could smell her mother’s stress. The sea swept at the rocks, a shushing sound. Agnes focused on that. Hush.

‘Something happened in Silverthorn.’

Ruth’s voice was steady, the one she used when Agnes was spiralling out of control; a voice to hold her down, keep her quiet.

‘With Emma and Luke.’

‘Luke’s in hospital, isn’t he?’

‘Yes.’

‘And Emma went with him?’

‘No.’ Her mother reached a hand to clear a circle in the mist on the windscreen. ‘She didn’t.’

‘Then . . . the police will have evacuated her. This morning, with all the others.’

Ruth wiped the wetness from her fingers onto the skirt of her dress.

Again she said, ‘No.’

Agnes wished she were far away, up in the sky where clouds shredded the darkness, miles from her mother’s awful stillness.

‘Tell me.’

‘She’s dead. I asked one of the police officers, the one who found Val and Tim. He said we were the only ones who made it out of there. Barry and Janis, and us.’

Only us. All that’s left.

‘Does Luke know?’

‘I imagine so. By now, if not before.’

‘What happened? You said something happened in Silverthorn?’

‘You don’t know?’

Ruth shot her a look, so sudden it landed like a slap on her skin.

‘No . . .’ She recoiled, her fingers flinching under the stiffness of the seat belt.

‘Are you sure?’ Her mother’s face was razored with suspicion.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

But a flood of shame ripened in her belly, flushing her cheeks, the sensation so familiar she almost leant into it. ‘Tell me,’ she said again, hearing a whine in her voice. It made her want to bite her own tongue, spit the taste from her mouth.

‘I thought you knew . . .’ Her mother let out her breath, very slowly. ‘You used to be so close when you were living at home. You and Christie.’

Agnes should have gone then. Ripped the seat belt from her body, shoved open the door and run. Down to the rocks and the sea, or back to the road to flag down a passing car, beg a lift to the police station. Or else she should have made her way deep into the woods to hide. Anywhere but in the car with Ruth and her half-secret.

Lights winked on the oil tankers, blurred by their breath on the glass. Wind pressed into them, the seat belt chafing Agnes’s hands. The only sound was the insect-ticking of the engine as it grew cold. She tried to concentrate on these things, to stay grounded.

‘What does this have to do with Christie?’

‘He was in the house,’ her mother said. ‘In Silverthorn, with Trevor.’

Her voice splintered on Trevor’s name, as if she’d taken a hammer to it.

‘Fixing the batteries, in the alarms.’ She rubbed her index finger at the steering wheel. ‘That was his excuse.’

‘Christie’s? Excuse for what?’

‘Stealing. I assumed you knew.’ Ruth drew a breath. ‘It’s why he had to leave his last school, why this fresh start was so important. He was stealing and . . . lying about it.’

Wind rocked the car, whistling against the windows. Agnes saw her brother jogging to keep up with Trevor, his pale face bunched, blaming her. He was just a boy, she wanted to say. She wanted to shout it: He’s just a boy!

Emma Dearman was dead. The word hurt, the touch of her tongue against the back of her teeth: dead.

Somewhere a lorry brayed, rocking around the bend in the road as it headed into the town. Ruth turned in her seat to face Agnes.

‘Look at me.’ She waited until Agnes did as she was told. When she spoke again, her voice was threaded with steel. ‘It was carbon monoxide. It is in all the houses. That is why we were evacuated. Because Blackthorn Ashes is toxic. No one was safe there.’

‘But you’re saying that’s not—’

‘Blackthorn Ashes was toxic. You know that. You were the first to know it.’

Every part of Agnes was cringing, at bay. Her mother seemed not to notice, or noticed and didn’t care. Because Agnes was always like this, because Have you taken your meds?

‘You came back,’ Ruth said. ‘To us. You came back home.’

From London, she meant, and Laura. A crash of colour across her mind – plates, smashing. Shards of china like daggers, the sting of it in her hands. Demolition. She’d confessed what she’d done, the night she came home, wailing into Ruth’s lap, ‘I didn’t mean it,’ while her mother stroked her hair, ‘Of course you didn’t, of course not.’ She knew everything, how Agnes fell apart after losing her job, how she’d fought with Laura and lost her. In the car, she clenched her hands around the stiffness of the seat belt.

‘What matters now is that we stay together,’ Ruth was saying. ‘You and me, Dad and Christie. It’s going to be hard and I’m going to need you here. Properly here. Do you understand? Not going off to the beach or into the woods or lying in bed all day because you feel like it or it’s too much. It can’t work like that, not now. I’m going to have to try and find work. The money’s worse than we thought. My job was tied to Blackthorn Ashes just like your father’s. There won’t be any cash coming in and there are debts. I don’t know how bad it is yet, we’re still finding out, but it’s bad. Your father isn’t going to be—’

She bit off the rest of the sentence but Agnes knew: Dad wasn’t going to be much use for a while.

‘This is going to fall on us. You and me. I need to find work and you need to look after your brother. We need you. Do you understand?’

Did she? Understand? Six people were dead and her mother wanted to talk about money, about debts and work and babysitting her brother. They were about to buy fish and chips as if they were on holiday, taking the food back to the caravan where they would sleep within a few short feet of one another, a plastic wall separating her head from Ruth’s, and Ruth’s from Christie’s.

‘I can’t—’

‘Yes, you can. Agnes, look at me. You can.’

The car was thick with their breath now, like drowning. Air staggered in her chest, her skull filling blackly with London, with Laura picking pieces of broken plate from the floor, filling the palm of her hand with the daggers Agnes had thrown.

‘It will be all right,’ Ruth said. ‘We’re going to be all right. This is temporary, while they’re conducting the investigation into the gas boilers and flues. They’ll find all the answers you wanted us to look for weeks ago. You were right, something was wrong.’ Her voice slipped sideways into the old sing-song that had swayed Agnes to sleep when she was small and settled her when she was older. ‘You were right. The first of us to see the houses weren’t safe. No one was safe there. We were lucky we got out when we did.’

Cotton wool was taped to the inside of Agnes’s elbow where the needle had gone in for the blood tests at the hospital. Ruth’s elbow had the same small puncture wound. After breathing carbon monoxide, the nurse told them, it enters your bloodstream and mixes with haemoglobin to form carboxyhaemoglobin. If this happens, your blood can no longer carry oxygen and your body’s cells and tissue will fail and die. Neither Dad nor Ruth, nor Agnes nor Christie had breathed enough carbon monoxide to need emergency oxygen therapy. The nurse had told them to go home and rest. Their bloods were in transit to a laboratory.

Agnes thought of those phials now, each sealed with a rubber cork, travelling together through the darkness. In another world at some other time, the technicians who ran the tests might have been able to work out what went wrong between her and Ruth. By spotting their blood onto glass slides, putting the slides side by side under a microscope to reveal the truth in tiny red cells, round fragmented platelets.

‘We were lucky,’ Ruth said. ‘We got out. Now we need to stay together.’