15

Spring came, and we pulled the blankets from under windows and doors, shaking out the dust; our fingers unfurled from hot mugs. We wrapped our jumpers around our waists and went barefoot. Ellen and Pet made scrubs of salt and porridge oats, and sat in the gardens, massaging it into their dry legs.

The bleed came just as the cold thawed, and I wrapped a rag around my knickers and went to the kitchen like it was a normal day. I told Freya, and she made me tea full of honey, used the very tips of the mint leaves, the freshest, sweetest parts.

Toby and I never talked about the yellow room, but I still used it alone — sometimes standing in early morning light, before Blue and the others were awake. All the rest of that winter, when I couldn’t sleep, and restlessness ran over my skin like an itch, I’d taken a candle to look at night. I touched myself afterwards, lying on Libby’s abandoned mattress, before I went back to our attic bed. I always felt wrong then, lying in the thick dark, feeling the Bad twitch and circle inside me. Blue slept heavily and I watched her, feeling guilty for abandoning her for this new strange game. I knew we would never tell her about the yellow room mirror. The hand-held glass from the cluttered room lay next to her Cancer box, and I left it to her.

Toby’s downy top lip and tall frame couldn’t be ignored any more, and at Meeting he’d been declared one of the grown. There was no more playing with us in the gardens or out on the moor; he had to make a contribution. He helped with the practical side of things, like mixing paints and resins, or measuring and cutting canvas. He’d taken to looking after the goats more and more, and so, in the way of Foxlowe, it became his role.

He worried about it while he brushed the goats down and checked their underbellies for ticks. I perched on the edge of the goat stall, a kid nosing my lap, steaming mugs at my feet. Some of the dogs were scratching around the straw, sniffing after a rat. I liked the sound of Toby brushing the animals, a satisfying scratch, and felt the rush of blood as though it were my own skin.

—You could do sculpture, I said. —That’s just making stuff.

—But it’s all supposed to mean something, he said, waving his arms and making his voice high and floaty in such a good imitation of Ellen that I burst out laughing.

—If I can’t make anything I’ll have to leave, he shrugged.

I drew my sleeves down over my arms, chilled. —But I don’t do anything. I don’t even help them, really. Neither does Blue.

—You’re younger, he said. —It will start to matter.

—You’re only one or two Solstices more than me.

I could see his back stretched under the goat, and his hand put down to steady him as he smoothed the other over her stomach.

—Maybe, I said, stroking the kid’s nose, —you could do the pottery. Richard’s, I mean the Leaver Founder’s, stuff is all still there, and it doesn’t look like he’ll come back now. You’re good at that, you can use the wheel, and … or something else. We’ll think of something.

Toby came to perch next to me. He smelled of the warm straw and, under that, a mix of sweet goat’s milk and acrid manure.

—Kai already tried to help us, he said. —We should start again, see if we can find a way to learn, to get ready.

—Kai’s gone, I said. —He’s here but he’s gone.

—I know, not Kai. Someone else.

—I can’t, I said.

—She can’t stop you, Toby said, but his voice was empty, and we knew Freya could do anything, now Richard and Libby were gone. I didn’t need to tell him that, so I just said again, —I can’t.

Toby went quiet and turned his back to me, and I knew he was angry but I’d only told him the truth. I left the shed, went back into the house, and followed Freya’s voice cackling from the ballroom. There were other sounds: Egg, Pet and Dylan, swearing, laughing too. I put my eye to the slats of the ballroom door. They were dragging furniture, Freya with a notepad and pencil, wiping laughter tears away with her free hand. Egg held his foot, hopping. We were going to sell some of the old things, it had been decided at Meeting. A flash as something caught the sun: the yellow room mirror.

I went back for him, still with the goats’ brush in his hand, and he began to speak, to say sorry perhaps, or explain, but I got in first. —Let’s climb the Cloud, I said.

—Can’t, he said, but smiling. —I’ve got to—

—Come on, I said. —Please.

We left Foxlowe, flicking at the algae on the fountain as we passed. A storm cloud on the horizon was sucking all the air up to itself. We glanced back to watch Foxlowe glint in the light, until it sank behind the ridge and we passed the Standing Stones, and carried on along the moor path.

The moor path wasn’t really a path, more like a track we’d made over seasons of tramping on it. In the summer it grew over with nettles, but you could always spot our way; the grass was lighter, newer, the ground itself had been sunk into the earth. There were times when we had to go by the thin roads or on the walking routes, to keep the peace, but after a while we’d always go back to our way. The path took us past horses grazing next to stone walls and through fields of grasses that came to our waist, down steep drops of sharp rock.

On the horizon, tiny cars flashed like jewel beetles.

—Is that where you go, on the shop run? I said.

Toby shielded his eyes and looked at the road. —Yeah, he said. —It’s not far.

I looked away from the moving ribbon on the horizon so all I could see was green.

The Cloud hides itself as you get closer, the rocky outcrops hidden by trees growing on the lower slopes. Huge slabs of moorland stone mark the path upwards, some smooth and pooling rainwater in the grooves, others broken, split into sharpness, making natural steps. Beside the path, tiny white blossoms of self-heal, flashes of purple foxglove, carpets of green fern amongst the trees. I picked self-heal, knotted it into a crown as we walked, ringed it around my hair, hoping it looked like Libby’s used to. Ahead of me, Toby stopped to rub dock leaves on his nettle stings. As we climbed higher the sky widened again, the trees falling away to show the moor rolling away on every side, and the rocks grew into huge crags, dangling over the drop. Pink heather lay in clumps; higher still, it reddened, a sunset in bloom.

We went to the very peak, a flat moorland giant that lay looking over to the horizon, and sat with our legs swinging into the emptiness. Below us, patchwork fields and the villages, and far in the distance, the blue hills of the impossibly far outside, another country. We sat in full sun, watching rain ghost to the ground far in the distance, and fields split into light and dark by moving clouds.

—We should do rituals up here, I said.

—Freya decides those.

—I know, I said. —I didn’t mean it. You’ll have to do it in secret, the reading, if you start it again. Freya won’t like it.

Toby fell back onto the rock, letting his body bend in two, and I fought the urge to hold on to his legs, in case he fell.

—I hate Freya, Toby said.

—I love her, I said, over his words.

—She doesn’t love you, Toby said, not nastily.

Toby couldn’t know about my and Freya’s secret things: her plaiting my hair, and cutting out the knots, the safety of sleeping against her back, and her stories, just for me. I watched the steel men straddling the moor, sharing wires like skipping ropes. Far away, they seemed in motion, thin giants loping across the world. Toby raised a hand, as though he would say sorry by touch, hovered around my cheek, then dropped it.

—Why d’you keep going in the yellow room? Toby asked.

He pulled at a sprig of heather as he said it, and sprinkled it over the grey rock. I guessed he’d been wanting to ask for a long time.

—You do too, I said. —I can tell, you always move the mirror so it’s slanted differently.

In the purpling light his blush looked almost black.

—They’re taking the mirror away, I said. —I just saw them.

—Oh.

Behind us, shouts from outside people, the walkers. They didn’t like us sitting on the edge.

—It’s okay, Toby said. —When I’m a Leaver—

—Stop it!

Toby rolled onto his side and watched me with his face cupped on his hand. A blade of damp heather stuck to his skin and I wanted to peel it off. Somehow it made me thirsty.

—It’s okay to just think it, he said. —Like a story.

—What’s it like? I said.

—Just so many people, he said. —But it’s the places. Think of all the places we don’t know. Look, that place, he said, and pointed to one of the grey patches moulding on the moor.

—It’s just a town, I said.

—But you’ve never seen one.

I shrugged. —Just like the villages but bigger.

—Bet there you don’t have to run around to feel the strain in your legs just so you don’t hit a wall you’re so bored, Toby said.

—Bet you can’t, I said. —No space, is there. Freya says it’s all boxes, people live in little boxes.

—What would you do? Toby said.

—What?

But I knew what he meant.

—Come on, he said. —How would you do it?

The heather between my fingers soft, like hair. I should say, We shouldn’t talk about this. I should say, Freya wouldn’t like it.

—I’d go at night, I said. —I wouldn’t tell anyone, so Freya couldn’t try to stop me, and after a party so everyone was really deeply asleep. And I’d take the blue jumper from Jumble, the warm one with the high neck.

—Where would you go? he asked.

—I’d walk to the big town, to Leek, then … I’d work it out.

—You can’t walk from Foxlowe, he said.

I laughed. —So? It’s just a story. Anyway, I bet I could walk it.

Toby tucked his hands behind his head and we watched the dark clouds sink.

—I always thought I’d go on a Meeting day, he said. —Announce it at Meeting, have a meal with everyone. But I like your idea. It would be good to go at night. That’s what Valentina did.

—And Libby, I said.

It felt safe to say her name, all the way up here.

—We could find them, he said. —And find a new house, a smaller one, that isn’t so cold.

—And with no fleas, I said, picking at a bite on his wrist, and he laughed.

—But we don’t know how it is outside, I said. —When’s anyone said it’s good? It’s always, Here is better. This is better. I rolled back so I lay next to Toby, and the sky was endless above me. —It’s perfect here, I said.

—Let’s say it anyway, he said. —Let’s tell it like a story.

After that me and Toby spoke about Leaving whenever we were alone. We’d go to the goats’ shed after breakfast or in the long empty hours of the afternoon, tell the story to each other, adding detail each time: the smell of the inside of the car (I’d go on a shop run, just with Pet, and tell him while we were in town), the layered clothes (Toby would go in winter, in the busy week leading up to Solstice, so he’d need warm jumpers). My stories always ended at the end of the road leading out of home, because I didn’t really know how things would be after that, and I focused on the goodbyes, and which things I would take, how I would tell or not tell Freya. Toby’s were different. He liked to talk about the moment of walking away, but then he’d talk about what he’d do afterwards: into town, and he’d describe the things there, shops and places to eat, and how there was a station with metal tracks going all over the country. He’d go, he said, to London, the biggest city, where he’d come from. Valentina had told him that’s where he used to live, and that’s where she must be now, along with the rest of his outside family.

After a while, our stories got tangled together. Then it was, We’d do this. And later still, We’ll do this. Sometimes Toby brought Blue into the tale, but I never did. If I thought of her, I had to stop. I told Toby it was hard to imagine Blue in the outside, exposed like the soft belly of a puppy. To myself I told the truthful version: I liked the story of just me and Toby. I liked to pretend, just for stolen guilty minutes, that Blue did not exist.