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I wanted to find out where we were going. I wanted to ask how long it would take, but I couldn’t. I was supposed to know.
“What are you thinking about?” she said.
I hate that question. If you’re thinking about it, it’s private. If you wanted someone else to know, you’d speak.
“Home,” I said.
She straightened in her seat, looped a strand of hair behind her ear. “I have to tell you something,” she said.
“What?”
“You’re not going to like it.”
“OK.”
She looked over at me. She spoke too fast. “Please don’t be cross. Please don’t mind. Frank bought us a house. We moved.”
It took me a minute to work a few things out.
I didn’t mind. For me this was good news. For me it was a gift.
Edie was holding herself away from me, waiting for a reaction. I couldn’t tell if it was me that made her nervous, or her brother; the person she didn’t know or the one she did.
Cassiel was missing. Weren’t his family supposed to wait for him? Weren’t his loved ones supposed to be right there when he made it home? I pictured him making the journey, knocking on the door to a houseful of strangers, doubly abandoned. Cassiel would mind.
“That’s harsh,” I said. I shook my head.
“It wasn’t up to me,” she said, not looking at me, keeping her eyes on her mirrors, keeping her face towards the road.
“Whose idea was it?”
I listened to myself sounding bothered. I marvelled at my own hypocrisy.
Edie spoke too fast. “Frank found it,” she said. “He thought it was the best thing for Mum, you know. Give her something else to think about.”
“Right.”
“It was her dream house. Remember the one we always used to walk past on our way up to the common? It was up for sale and Frank’s been doing really well and…”
“That was nice of him,” I said.
Who the hell was Frank? A rich uncle? Their dad? Their mum’s boyfriend?
“Yes,” Edie said, smiling. “It was.”
She put her hand on mine and we drove along like that for a while, with me looking at our hands and her looking at the road.
“I thought you’d be angry,” she said.
“Do you want me to be?”
“No,” she said. “God, no. I just thought you would be, that’s all. You’ve every right.”
It made me smile, the idea that I was entitled to anything.
“It’s done,” I said. “I don’t see the point.”
I shut my eyes again and for a while I slept for real. I was looking at my face in the mirror. I was wondering how the hell I’d ended up looking like I did.
It was the killing of the engine that woke me again, the lack of sound, and then the slam of Edie’s door. I opened my eyes, alone on a dirt track surrounded by nothing but green. It was getting dark. It was unreal, like waking from one dream into another. I’d never been in that much space before. The wind blew across the land and straight at me like now I was there it had something to aim for. I could hear it singing through and over and under the car. For less than a second I wondered if Edie had left me here, if she’d worked it out and abandoned me. And then I heard the creak of a gate and she was back, striding through the sheer emptiness, opening and closing the door, bringing a little piece of the gale and the smell of cold grass in with her.
“Welcome home, Cass,” she said.
The car stumbled through the open gate, slicing through wet mud and tractor marks. Edie got out to shut it again behind us. The green plain narrowed into a tree-lined path, and then there it was. Cassiel’s mother’s dream house. There was a light on downstairs and it spilled out warm and yellow into the air. Edie beeped the horn twice and the front door flung open. It wasn’t until the porch light snapped on that I saw her properly, thin and dark and windblown, an older version of Edie, just as fragile-looking, just as small. She put her hands to her mouth the same as Edie did when she first saw me. Then she was jumping and waving, her shouts vanishing into the wind. She ran at the car. I watched her close in on us like a tornado, like water. There was no escaping her.
Edie stared at me. “What’s wrong?” she said. “You look like you’re going to be sick.”
“Nothing.”
“You’re scared. What are you scared of?”
I didn’t have time to answer. Cassiel’s mother was on us, on me. She wrenched open the door with both hands. The wind grabbed my hair and filled my ears, and she tried to pull me straight out by my arms and throw herself on me at the same time.
I heard Edie get out of the car on the other side, free and unnoticed, like she was invisible, like she wasn’t there. I saw myself suddenly from the outside, in this wind-racked, mud-filled place, pretending to be this woman’s son. I couldn’t breathe.
Wouldn’t she know? Wouldn’t she know as soon as she touched me?
Cassiel’s mother had bangles that clanked and rang, and her nails were bitten so hard, so far down I couldn’t look at them. I tried to get out of the car with her still clinging to me. I tried to stand up.
“My boy,” she said, and then she pulled me into the crook of her neck, my forehead on her shoulder, my back bent over like a scythe. Her clothes smelled of the warm inside, of dog and log fires and cooking, of cigarette smoke. I felt her breathing, thin and weak, like she was worn out from years of doing the same. She laughed into my hair and tightened her thin arms across my back. Her breath smelled of flowers and ash.
I stored it in a quiet and empty place in my mind. So this was what a mum felt like.
Cassiel’s mother drew back to look at me. Her eyes were wild and triumphant, and at the dark centre of them there was something like fear. I tried not to let her see how scared I was. I listened to the countdown in my head that ended with her disappointed scream.
It didn’t come. I got to zero and she hadn’t let go.
“I never thought I’d see you again,” she said, shaking her head, the threat of tears drowning her voice. “I never thought I’d see you.”
She grabbed my shirt, my mended charity-shop shirt, like she thought her hand might go straight through it. “You’re real.” She whispered it.
“Yes.”
“You came back.”
“Yes.”
I don’t know how long we stood there for, in that wet, freezing air. She rocked, like she was holding a baby, but it was me holding her up, I think. Edie had gone in. A dog came out on to the porch, sniffed the air, stretched its back legs and went in again. My car door was still open and the light was on inside. I worried briefly about the battery. The trees thrashed wildly at the house, like they knew there was something to be angry about, like they knew what wrong was being committed there. I glared at them and they thrashed wildly at me too.
When the phone rang inside the house, Cassiel’s mother jumped, like she’d been sleeping, like she’d been miles away.
“That’ll be Frank,” she said, and she wiped her eyes and smoothed her hair back, like whoever Frank was he’d be able to see her. “Let’s go in,” she said. “Let’s talk to Frank.”
She took my hand to walk with me, but when I pulled back to get my bag and shut the car door, she didn’t wait. She let go and went ahead to the house, and left me there for a moment in the wind and the dark alone.
Inside the house was warm and smelled of cinnamon and onions and wood smoke. Underneath the wood smoke there was something cloying and rotten, like dustbins, like decay.
It was horribly bright. I felt the light fall on each line and hollow of my face that was different to Cassiel’s. I felt my face change, looming and hideous in its strangeness. I saw my reflection in the mirror. I was me, not him. Wasn’t it obvious?
Edie and her mother weren’t looking, not really. They can’t have been. But they might at any moment. I stood still and waited for that moment to come.
I looked around me at the kitchen, dark and low-ceilinged with a black slate floor and blood-red cupboards, an old range pumping out heat, a long, scrubbed table down the middle. There was a sofa against the wall, torn and scruffy, with old velvet cushions that for a sharp second made me think of Grandad.
The dog was in his basket in the corner. He didn’t get up. He lifted his eyes, wagged his tail at us lazily, thump-thump-thump on the floor. He was a wiry mongrel of a thing, old and coarse and greying. I scratched his neck, read the name Sergeant on his collar. He rolled over and exposed the bald pink of his tummy, the upside-down spread of his smile.
Cassiel’s mother was flushed from the cold air, her knuckles bone-white where she gripped the phone.
“Is that Frank?” I said.
Edie nodded. “He just got our messages.”
Cassiel’s mother held the phone out to me. “Cass,” she said. “Come and speak to Frank. Let your big brother hear your voice.”
I took the phone out of her hand and she stroked the side of my face. I looked her in the eye. I waited for her to notice.
“Hello, Frank,” I said, and I stood still and obedient while she stroked me.
Frank was smoking. I could hear the wet suck of him pulling on a cigarette, the thickened taking in of breath. He laughed, and in my mind I saw his mouth and all the smoke pouring from it.
“Cass,” he said. “You’re home.” His voice was low and warm.
“Yes,” I said.
He sounded calm and confident. I liked the sound of him. “I can’t wait to see you,” he said.
“Me too.”
“I’m coming straight home.”
“When. Tonight?”
“In the morning.”
“OK. Good. Thanks.”
Would it be him that saw it? Would he look at his brother and see the liar underneath?
“It’s a miracle, Cass,” Frank said, his mouth close to the phone, his lips brushing against the mouthpiece as he spoke so the sound of him grazed my ears.
“Not really,” I said.
“No, believe me,” Frank was saying. “You are a miracle.”
Cassiel’s mother was holding her hand out for the phone. “Mum wants you,” I said.
“No. Tell Helen I’ve got to go,” he said. “Tell her I’ll see her tomorrow.”
“OK.”
“And Cass,” he said.
“Yes?”
“Welcome home.”
He put the phone down. I listened for a moment to the empty line.
I had a big brother now too.
Helen. Cassiel’s mum’s name was Helen. Was that what Cassiel called her? Or did he call her Mum? She was standing so close to me. She could have counted my eyelashes from where she was standing. She didn’t seem to notice my scars, the old holes in my ears, the thousand other differences there must be. Didn’t she see me?
“He’s gone,” I said.
The focus of her eyes slipped a little, but she kept them on me. I watched them go. I watched them loosen and fade and come back, her pupils lost in clouded, muddied blue, her gaze slack. Cassiel’s mother was high. She didn’t see me at all.
Edie was watching me. I wondered if she saw the shock on my face. I wondered if I was supposed to know.
Helen sat down at the table, smiled at nothing, started rolling a cigarette.
Edie picked my bag up and opened the door on to a dark hallway. “Are you coming?” she asked me.
“Where?” Helen said.
“I was going to give him a tour. He doesn’t know where anything is.”
They spoke about Cassiel, even though I was standing right in front of them. I supposed that’s just what they were used to, Cassiel getting talked about, Cassiel not being there. I supposed it was fitting, in a way.
Edie looked at me. “Do you want to?”
“Yes,” I said. “Yes, I do.”
In the dark hallway she opened a door on to the stairs. She held my bag in her hand, low by the strap, and dropped it on the bottom step. The banisters were wood, painted a pale bluish grey. The steps were dusty, dancing with fluff and crumbs, dots of paper and scraps of tobacco.
“Did you like the kitchen?” she said.
“It’s nice,” I said. “Pretty.”
She smiled. Her teeth and the whites of her eyes were like stone in the dark. “Not words I’m used to hearing you say.”
