14. Lauren

I was eleven or twelve. Mr Lion was having one of those afternoons when he played records in the back room with the doors open onto the back garden and a spliff constantly on the go. He didn’t talk or involve me. I lay on the carpet near where the curtains touched the floor and kicked my legs behind me. Sometimes he put on one of my favourites. Dad came in to smoke with him. They drank beer and made comments about the musicians and the record companies. I didn’t listen to them, only to the music.

This particular afternoon he put on a new record. Mr Lion haunted charity shops, markets and jumble sales, looking for new stuff, so there were often songs I hadn’t heard before. This was something else, though. The moment the needle touched the vinyl I could feel the difference in the garden. The plants were paying attention. It was music I’d heard outside that no one else seemed to notice. It was the sound of a hot day after weeks of hot days, of dried earth and empty stream beds, of dried grass and plants desperate for water. The singer had a longing for rain and sang in the voice of the grass.

‘Who’s this?’ I asked.

‘It’s Tallara Graham,’ said Mr Lion.

‘Do you like it?’ Dad asked, sounding surprised.

‘I love it.’

Mr Lion told me she was from Australia, an orphaned aboriginal girl who was brought up by white farmers. A three-year drought meant they nearly had to sell up, but then she began to sing and things turned around for them. The rain came and the cattle began to thrive. The crops grew and grew. People wanted to buy her music and the family became the most successful farmers in the area. She was wooed by record companies and taken to New York, where she was murdered in an alleyway by a thief with a knife. The white family grieved, but they played her music and the farm continued to thrive.

I listened to the story and something settled in me. I may not have a mother, but here was an aboriginal girl who sang the song of parched grass from across the world, across the span of years, across death itself. I was not the only one who could hear.

Later I crept off to the woods and called for Peter, and when he came I sang him the song of the aboriginal girl.

He said ‘That’s your song. You sing like that all the time.’

I smiled. ‘Let’s go and build a dam in the woods.’

So we did and Peter caught a fish. We built a fire, and cooked the fish on hot slabs and ate it with our fingers, wrapped in ramsons. I took some roots home to plant beneath the hawthorn in my herb garden.

A vase of flowers had appeared on the front windowsill of our old house. In the evening the curtains were closed and the lights on. There was a bag of rubbish at the end of the path on bin day. She wasn’t trying to hide.

I watched Dad. He must have known, there’s no way he couldn’t have, but he didn’t say anything. There might have been a slight edge to him, a brittleness in his voice, a hint of awkwardness in his movements, but it might just have been that I was looking for it.

I had to walk past the house on the way to the bus stop or into town. Some days I took a detour and tried to forget she was there. Other days I went past slowly, looking out for new signs of her presence. Once I saw a figure moving across one of the upstairs rooms and I ran.

She left when I was a small baby and she wasn’t part of my world. I didn’t think I had any feelings for her at all. The force of my anger took me by surprise.

How dare she leave this great empty space in our lives, this empty house full of memories and the hopes of a young family? All these years. Then just come back and take up residence as though nothing had happened, as though it was her right. I knew this was just the beginning. Now she was living in the house, in the town, our lives would never be the same.

Two days later I got home from college and Dad was in the kitchen singing. He was washing up, his arms in the suds, singing some old song along with the radio. There was a pink rose on the table in a glass of water. My dad never sings. I put my bag down on the chair and backed out of the kitchen. He turned just as I closed the door quietly behind me.

‘Lauren?’

But I was running down the road and through the town. I had to find Peter. I could talk to Peter.

He’d been at college that day and I didn’t know if he’d be back yet: he often stayed to do extra work, finish off things they’d not completed in the lesson. I’d go to the woods, to our stone, and wait for him. He’d turn up sooner or later.

Peter’s mum lives in Greece. When Peter was born she married his dad and came to live with them here in Hawden, but she couldn’t cope with the cold. She was like a hothouse flower put out in the winter’s frost. She wilted and blackened at the edges. She was ill all the time and refused point blank to leave the house while the hours of daylight were fewer than ten. She stayed inside with the heating on full blast, her baby sweating in layer upon layer of blankets.

His dad had never lived in a house before. He bought it for her as a wedding present, and now he struggled to stay inside its four walls. He would go out late at night when the dry heat felt like it was slowly cooking his muscles into meat and he couldn’t stand it any longer. In his hideout in the hills, the cold air in his nostrils and the warmth of animal skin to protect against its bite, he would lie down and sleep, only to awaken in the morning to loneliness.

It went on for about a year I think. It was then that it became obvious which of his parents Peter took after. The soft down on his baby legs grew thicker and he kicked hard at his blankets, crawled towards any door that opened to the outside air. Everyone knew it couldn’t go on.

One day she packed her bags and left. Peter and his dad went with her to the airport and they hugged and kissed and promised undying love. She went back to her homeland where she lives in a white house with the doors and windows open and sweet warm air wafting down from the mountains. He sold the house in town and moved back into the hills with baby Peter. But they visit Greece all the time, his dad even more than Peter. His parents are still in love.

I thought about my dad singing at the sink and wondered what it was like to have two parents who both loved you, even if they had to live in different worlds.

I hoped Peter would come soon. I wanted to ask him how you spoke to a mother who wasn’t there for you, who never tied your shoelaces or kissed the top of your head in the school playground or made you cheese on toast after school. How did Peter deal with resentment? Did he even have any? He never spoke about his mother with anything but affection.

The day after the party by the canal I’d been for a walk with Richard. We were looking for a girl he’d met because we’d learned some information she might like to know.

At Jimmy and Suky’s that night, Smith and Jeannie had got quite talkative. They were looking for this girl called Ali. I hadn’t seen her, nor had Jimmy and Suky, and Richard said he hadn’t either. She’d stolen some money from them.

‘It was Jeannie’s fault,’ Smith said. ‘If she hadn’t taken Ali’s ring we wouldn’t be in this mess.’

Jeannie grinned. ‘It was an impulse.’

‘Yeah, and your impulse got us into this situation.’ He turned back to us. ‘The police raided our place, but Ali was nothing to do with that. She just crashed there, and she ran when we all did. That would have been it if madam here hadn’t taken fancy to something shiny as she ran past.’

‘Silly bitch shouldn’t a left it there. I dint take it on purpose. I didn’t think.’

‘That’s your problem, you never think.’

I looked up to catch Jimmy’s eye. I knew he’d be loving this story. But he had his arms around Suky and wasn’t looking my way. It was Richard that grinned at me.

‘So what happened?’ he asked.

Smith continued. ‘It turned out that Ali was very attached to this ring, and she got the police onto us. I don’t blame her. She’s got no reason to be loyal, and she wanted her property back. She put up a proper fight, didn’t she Jeannie?’

Jeannie pulled the neck of her top aside and there were some ugly red marks, like burns.

‘Almost garotted me in the process, the cow. It hurt like hell.’

‘It’s your own fault,’ Smith said, but he put out his hand and touched her lightly on the back of her neck and she smiled at him as though he’d given her a compliment.

‘Anyhow, I legged it out the window in just me kecks and the police were all after me, except the ones that stayed to arrest Jeannie. Ali decided to go through me stuff. I’d have done the same. She was mad at us and she didn’t take everything she found either. Just some money.’

‘Is that why you’re after her, to get the money back?’ I asked. ‘Was it a lot?’

Smith shrugged. ‘No, not that much. About two grand.’

I opened my eyes a bit wider. It seemed a lot to me.

‘It’s not the cash. It’s a pisser to lose it, but not the end of the world. It’s just that there’s something written on one of the notes.’

‘What sort of thing?’ Richard asked. We were all sitting forward, listening. ‘A message?’

‘No, a code. It’s a deal I was doing – that’s why the police were after me in the first place. They think I’ve hidden the stuff, but actually I haven’t picked it up yet. I need this code and it’s written on one of those notes. That’s why I need to find her, the stuff’s worth a hell of a lot more than two grand.’

‘So if you got the code, you’d let her keep the money?’ Richard asked.

‘Why, d’ya know where she is?’ Jeannie asked staring at him.

He shook his head. ‘I just wondered.’

‘I want the code,’ Smith said.

‘I want to slap her fucking face,’ said Jeannie.

They told us they’d followed her this far, but lost her when they got to Hawden.

‘She left a trail as wide as an aeroplane. But she’s gone to ground here.’

We asked them lots of questions, and they told us what they knew about Ali, which was not much really, except that she was ‘a nice kid’. They wouldn’t tell us what it was they needed the code for, but I supposed it was drugs. Eventually we exhausted the subject, and by then the MDMA had kicked in and we lost interest in talking quite so much.

It was getting light when I went home. Richard walked with me.

‘I know where Ali is,’ he said

‘Who?’

‘The girl those two were talking about. She was at the party last night, but she saw them and ran away. I talked to her. I know where she’s staying.’

‘You’re joking!’

‘No. It’s true. I’ll walk up tomorrow and tell her about the code. Do you want to come?’

So the next day I met Richard in the square and we walked along the canal, then headed up through the valley.

‘There’s a house up here called Old Barn,’ I said to Richard. ‘It’s where my mum grew up.’

‘That’s where we’re going,’ said Richard.

He walked on a few steps before he realised I’d stopped.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘I can’t go to Old Barn. My aunt lives there and she hates me.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know. She’s never met me really. She hates my dad too, and my mum. Most likely Mr Lion as well. I think she hates most people, but especially us.’

‘Maybe it’s time to make up.’

‘I don’t think so. She’s crazy.’

But he took my arm and tugged gently, and grudgingly my feet shuffled along the loose stones on the path.

‘She might not even be there.’ I didn’t know if he meant the girl or my aunt.

We didn’t see either of them. We knocked on the front door at Old Barn and waited. I was about to suggest we went round the back as nobody uses their front doors round here, when it was opened by a man. He was a big man, fat and tall, but he stood right back in the gloom of the hall holding on to the door. We had to peer to see him.

‘What do you want?’ he said, and his voice was deep but thin.

Richard took a step forward and the man backed further away.

‘We’re looking for Ali, is she here?’

‘She’s gone.’

‘Do you know when she’ll be back?’

‘She’s taken her things and gone. You won’t find her here.’

He started to close the door, but Richard leaned forward into the gloom.

‘Where has she gone?’

‘I’ve no idea.’ This time he succeeded in closing the door in our faces.

‘Who was that?’ asked Richard. I could see myself reflected in his sunglasses.

‘I haven’t got a fucking clue.’

At school, in history, we learned about white witches who knew the lore of plants and the doctrine of signatures. I thought about the witches as children playing in the woods. How when they hurt themselves they heard the wild comfrey offering its leaves as a bandage. How they knew which berries were safe to eat and which herbs would kill a cat. Which was the poisonous part of a yew tree and how much you needed to make the teacher sick.

I knew that marigolds and nasturtiums didn’t really get on, and delphiniums found lupins irritating. I liked to listen to the plants in my garden. The roses whispered, wishing the others would all be quiet. The vegetables sang songs of soup and frittatas. The onions told dirty jokes which made the cauliflowers laugh. The roses blushed and the runner beans tutted and turned away. But my favourite was the herb garden with its secrets of light and dark.

I grew plants for the pot and plants for healing. Most of them could be dangerous in the wrong amounts. Some would give you the runs, a rash, or hallucinations. Some could kill a person. I knew them all, they talked to me. They told me their powers.

Someone was coming up the path, but it wasn’t Peter. As he came nearer I recognised the footfall and the soft sound of Richard’s boots on the hard ground. I shrank back behind the stone so I was hidden from sight. The brambles hissed in my ears. I didn’t want to give away this place, didn’t want to share it with anyone except Peter.

I thought about Richard’s mother, Meg, with her Porsche. She wasn’t a run-of-the-mill school playground sort of mum. I bet she never took him to a toddler group. And where was his father? His home life wasn’t very ordinary either.

I waited until he was almost out of sight, then I slipped out onto the path and ran after him.

He heard me as I approached and stood back to let me pass, leaning into a rowan tree which shivered its branches.

‘I was running to catch you up,’ I said, ignoring the rowan.

‘I was taking the short cut up to Heath.’

‘Do you mind if I walk with you?’

‘I would be delighted.’

I looked at him, but I didn’t think he was taking the piss. It was hard to tell when you couldn’t see his eyes. Sometimes his language was just a bit odd, a bit old for him. I supposed it was because he’d lived in different places.