Hold Your Breath

‘Are we going to a hospital?’ I thought hazarding a guess might make Dad want to share some more details on where we were actually going.

‘Why would you ask that, Kitty?’ He was sprinkling a lot of salt onto his food – something I’d learned at school wasn’t a healthy thing to do.

‘Because that’s what Miss Reid said about Mum, after that time she came running into the playground to take me home before the devil could take me. She said “Christ, she needs to be in hospital.” So I thought that might be where—’

Dad, whose eyes had flared at the word ‘devil’, cut me off with another slam of his fist on the table. ‘We’re not going to a hospital. Nobody is going to any place like that.’ He glanced at Mum, who had flinched at the fist-slam, but she carried on moving her food around her plate nonetheless.

‘Why not? Miss Reid is a very sensible teacher, you know. If she said it would be a good idea, I think it probably would be.’

‘I won’t tell you again, Kitty,’ Dad said back, still hissing in a whispery voice. ‘People don’t come back from places like that. Unless you want your mum to end up like your grandmother—’

He stopped himself mid-sentence, as if he’d realised what he was about to say, then changed his mind. ‘Anyway,’ he said in a calmer voice, ‘hospitals like that won’t be around much longer. I heard them say so on the radio.’

Dad mentioning Granny had made me confused, since he couldn’t have been talking about Mum’s mum, since she had died in a car accident when I was younger. I could only really remember her a tiny bit. He must have been talking about his mother, my other Granny who I never met and neither him nor Mum spoke about much. I thought about asking more about her, but decided this might make his mood worse.

After the food, I asked to use the toilet. The moody Janice woman pointed to the back of the café without saying anything, so I found them by myself and peed in peace and quiet, until a little boy who looked around five wandered through the door.

‘Hello,’ I said. ‘Could you go away and close the door?’ Then Janice burst in and shouted, ‘Tyler, you nasty little pervert, get out,’ and he scurried away, giggling. ‘Sorry, it’s his dad’s fault,’ she said. ‘He lets him get away with murder.’ She said all this to me without looking at me. She was tired – I could tell from the dark rings around her eyes. And there was a purple bruise on her cheek that she’d tried and failed to cover with make-up. ‘How did you do that?’ I asked, pointing at her face. She looked at me as if I was something vile. ‘Piss off,’ she said, then slammed the toilet door.

I got myself together and washed my hands, then went out to find my parents. Dad was trying to stop Mum from making a scene. She’d become quite an expert at ‘scenes’ in the past few months. When she’d first started to get bad, a couple of years ago, she used to do it quietly, finding a corner to cry in or waiting until she got home. Then she stopped seeming to care where she was or who was around to see it. She had caused quite a few major scenes in Debenhams, at the swimming pool, in the park, at the newsagents run by the little man with no teeth, and at the theatre when Dad took us as a treat to see Grease on Ice. In each of these situations, Dad had shoved us all into the car and said, ‘I’m flaming mortified.’ He hadn’t said it yet, but we hadn’t made it to the car either, so there was time for it to come.

‘She fucking mental or something?’ Janice with the bruised face was saying to my dad.

‘No, she’s not fucking mental,’ he snapped at her, starting to sound stressed. ‘Can you just give us a minute?’

Mum was standing on her chair, staring at the floor and jabbing her finger at random areas of the stained tiles: ‘There! There! There!’ Shouts. Tears. Shrieking.

It was in moments like these I used to try to think of my perfect happy place. A nice little desk with lots of sheets of paper; colouring pens all in a rainbow line, which I could use to draw creatures; a tidy bedroom filled with lots of clean, folded things that would be slightly warm to the touch if you were to rest your cheek on them. I think I must have lived in a place like that once, when I was very small. Before Mum became … Mum.

‘There’s nothing there,’ my dad said. He sounded tired.

‘I swear it. I swear it upon … upon my sweet baby daughter’s life.’

It was as if I wasn’t there. She didn’t look at me. Just kept on with her pointing.

‘She thinks she’s seen a spider,’ my dad said.

I wasn’t properly listening. ‘A what?’

‘A spider!’ he snapped.

‘Where? Have you seen it?’ My mum shrieked.

‘There’s no bloody spider,’ he shouted at her.

‘They are the devil’s spies.’

‘They are harmless insects that are more afraid of you than you are of them!’

‘I’m not sure they are insects,’ I chipped in, but my dad sent me one of his looks and I sat back down at the table.

‘They listen and watch and tell their masters all our secrets.’ With this, she clasped her hands together, like she was praying, and began muttering something under her breath. ‘He’s coming. I can hear it. He’s rising. He’s rising. He’s rising.’

‘If she don’t come down from that chair and stop with this shouting,’ Janice with the bruised face said, ‘I’m calling the fucking police.’

‘Don’t call the police,’ he said. ‘We’re leaving. Marjory, come down, please. I promise you, you’ll be fine.’

My mother stared at him like he’d suddenly told her it was her birthday. ‘Nathan? Have you come to rescue me?’

‘Yes,’ he said, instantly. ‘Here we go, rescue in progress.’ Before she had time to argue, he’d taken her arm and helped her step down off the chair.

‘I was tested, just then, Nathan. And I resisted. He didn’t rise.’

‘I’m glad,’ he said, then turned to Janice. ‘Show’s over. How much do we owe you?’

She murmured something about how she should bloody charge extra for the stress, then totted up the bill and my dad gave her a banknote.

We didn’t talk as we left the restaurant, nor when we started driving. Only after we’d been travelling for half an hour did I ask again. ‘Dad. Where are we going?’

Chapter 4

Dad ignored me seven times. When he drew in a long, deep breath I thought I’d finally worn him down, but he didn’t say anything.

After a while, I said: ‘If it’s somewhere horrible – like Epping – I won’t be happy.’ We went on a camping trip to Epping Forest once. It rained. We were forced to either stay in our tent or go to a café near the service station filled with big bald men who drove lorries. I wasn’t able to go searching for little creatures once during the whole weekend.

‘It isn’t Epping,’ he said, shortly.

I was encouraged that he at least reacted to my statement, but then he went back to saying nothing again.

‘The Shepherd will soon be tempted to leave his flock and give in to his darkest temptations.’ My mother said this whilst staring out of the window, pressing her forehead to the glass.

‘That’s the spirit,’ Dad muttered. ‘We’ll be there soon, now.’

Dad didn’t seem to quite understand the meaning of the word ‘soon’. It took hours more, through the afternoon and into the night. We passed woodland, towns, and big signs saying ‘The North’ and ‘Newcastle’ and ‘Northumbria’. We stopped for tea at an old pub with growling dogs. Instead of making a scene at this one, Mum managed to go to the car to have her ‘moment’. After a while, though, she started to use the horn to attract our attention and Dad went out to calm her down. I stayed in my seat, picking at the chicken in a basket he’d bought me, but eventually I got unnerved by all the old men at the bar pointing to me, a child on her own in a pub, so I went out to the car too.

‘I need to tell you, Kitty,’ my dad said when we went back in to the pub to finish our food. ‘This holiday may not be like other holidays.’

I stared back at him, unsure of what he meant. ‘But we don’t really go on holidays. Not any more.’ I was tempted to add that even when we did go away, we didn’t usually take so much stuff or let people stay in our house, but I decided too many words might annoy him.

He nodded, thinking about what I’d said. ‘That’s true. But if we did, this wouldn’t be like them.’

I dipped one of my chips into the little pot of mayonnaise the waiter had brought. ‘Why is that?’ I asked.

He didn’t answer, just got up to go and pay at the bar. I looked out of the window and watched Mum talking to the steering wheel.

We travelled for an hour more. I know this because I watched the clock on the dashboard of the car turn from 20.00 to 21.00, which means nine o’clock, apparently. We journeyed deep into the thick countryside, through dark trees. They bent and twisted around us, as if they were inviting us into their strange world – though once we were admitted, I did wonder if we’d ever be let out. Mum seemed to have the same idea, because she kept up a steady wailing sound, like a radio signal going in and out, and murmured things like, ‘Oh no … not into the darkness … oh no … please.’ But she didn’t fully ‘kick off’, so things couldn’t have been that bad. I tried to ignore her and nestled my head on the pillow I was clutching. I’d been stealing them from other parts of the car along the journey and now I had a little nest of comfort in the back. It had almost caused a bit of an avalanche earlier, with some of the books Dad had allowed us to bring slipping from their bag, but he didn’t notice. He was too busy trying to navigate, glancing at a map in the gloom whilst driving with the other hand.

Finally, a little bit after nine, Dad announced, ‘We’ve arrived.’ He looked over at Mum. ‘Marjory. We’ve arrived. Remember. Our little holiday?’

She just nodded and looked at her hands. He sighed and got out of the car. I was sleepy – I’d been dozing on and off since the pub. ‘How far have we travelled?’ I asked.

‘Far,’ Dad said. He sounded tired and annoyed. The window to my left was completely dark. I tried to look past all the stuff into the front of the car, but I couldn’t see anything out there either.

‘We’ve fallen. And I don’t think we’ll be able to climb back out again.’ I heard Mum speaking in a flat voice, then saw the shape of my father move to the right and open the car door.

‘I’ll come round and get you out, Kitty,’ he said before he closed the door.

He did as he promised, half lifting me out of my little nest in the back, more gently than I expected. ‘I realise this might all be a bit strange. And it might get stranger. But it’s all for the best.’ He nodded as he spoke and didn’t look me right in the eyes. Just off over my shoulder, into the darkness.

‘Where are we?’ I said. I looked around, making out the outlines of trees. They surrounded us. I gasped. I couldn’t help it. We were in the woods. In the middle of the woods. I didn’t know what woods, or forest, it was, but we’d been driving for a whole day and a bit, so we could be anywhere. Then I looked directly ahead and saw a building type of thing. A house type of thing. It was like a cottage, only a little bit larger. You could tell it had an upstairs because of the windows.

‘Come on,’ Dad said. ‘Let’s go and wake the place up.’

‘Waking the place up’ wasn’t as nice as it sounded. The house, which had strange-looking plants crawling up its walls outside, and strange-looking wallpaper crawling up its walls inside, was like something in the old picture books I used to get out of the library. Ones that involved little children getting lost in woods. At least I had my dad with me. And my mum. Although, with each day that passed, she was becoming more of a child than I was.

‘There are spiders,’ I said as I looked eagerly around the living room.

‘The devil’s creatures!’ my mother shrieked.

Dad sent me one of his sharp looks and put his arm around Mum. ‘Don’t worry. We’ll get rid of them. Won’t we, Kitty?’

I frowned at him. ‘So long as I can keep them and make a spider colony.’

He huffed and puffed a bit and settled my mum on the sofa while he and I began to bring some of the boxes and bedding in from the car.

‘Prioritise the stuff we’ll need for tonight and the morning,’ he said. ‘Then we’ll bring the rest in tomorrow.’

I thought about telling him that it was hard to ‘prioritise’ stuff like that when we couldn’t really see what was in the bags unless we unpacked them, but I decided not to. He’d given me too many sharp looks already today. One more could be the final straw for the both of us. I did as I was told, even though I didn’t want to, and tried my best to bring in just the things I needed. Sometimes I got it wrong (‘Kitty, why the hell would we need our wellington boots for either bed or breakfast?’) but it all had to come in eventually, I said, so I didn’t know why he bothered complaining. While I did this, he took the majority of the bedding upstairs. I heard him rifling around up there, then a loud creaking noise. He must be moving the furniture, I thought. In the end, bored with bringing things in, I went up to have a look. The stairway groaned as I trod on it and I imagined how many wonderful animals must be living underneath it. Rats and mice with razor-sharp teeth and spiders the size of dogs.

There were three rooms upstairs. A big one, which Dad was in now, a smaller one and a bathroom. I thought about Ebenezer Scrooge, going about his house after seeing the face of Jacob Marley in his door knocker, and wondered if I too would see any apparitions. Part of me hoped I would. It was one of those things that seemed to only happen to people who wouldn’t enjoy it. They just screamed and spent the rest of their lives boring everyone with how they ran away instantly and would never go back in the room or house or hotel or museum or wherever they’d been ever again. I would try to talk to a ghost. I think I’d have a lot to say. Like whether all this was worth it, just to reach the other side, and if they had food in the afterlife. Mum and I played ghosts once on Halloween. My classmates at school were having a party, but I’d had flu that week and was still feeling tired and worn out by little things. So Mum made our own party: we had sheets with holes in and watched Casper cartoons on the TV. Later on in the evening, I said something that spoilt things a little. I said to Mum I’d like to have a little ghost as a pet, like Casper. He’d float around when I’d want him to, then when I didn’t he would be invisible and sit on my shoulder, so nobody else would know I had a little friend, but I could still talk to him and he could speak to me, like a voice inside my head. She’d gone quiet when I said this. Then she took off her ghost sheet and said she needed to have a lie down.

The sound of her crying lasted for most of the next three cartoons. After that, I started to understand Mum probably did have a little ghost on her shoulder, or inside her head. But it didn’t say nice things.

‘Kitty, come in here and take the other end of this sheet.’

I went into the room Dad was in and watched as he struggled with a large bed sheet, trying to wrap it over an ancient-looking mattress, only to have the ends ping off each time he tried to secure them. I held it still for him and he finally got it all secured. ‘There, that’s done.’ Without speaking, he picked up all the pillows and duvets from the floor and tried to make them look tidy on the bed. ‘Right, now for your bed, Kitty.’

We went back downstairs to get the remaining bedding stuff, but Dad froze statue-still as soon as we got to the lounge. ‘Where’s your mother?’ he said, loudly and angrily.

‘I don’t know,’ I said. I tried to sound defiant and not worried, but I was scared. It wasn’t too much of a worry when she went off wandering when we were at home. This was a rather recent thing, and I got the feeling Dad wasn’t quite sure how to deal with it. I don’t think he wanted to lock her up or force her to stay in the house all day while he was at work, and mostly she just kept to the lounge or the kitchen. But sometimes she wandered, usually to the local shops, just to try on some clothes. She never bought anything, but the staff now knew her by name and were very nice to her. They would allow her to sit down in one of the changing room cubicles for a bit if she got upset, then telephone for my dad to walk down the street to get her and help her home. But we weren’t at home now. And Mum couldn’t have gone to Debenhams. We were alone, in the middle of the woods in a fairy tale house, and it was dark and strange. And worst of all, I think it was me who had left the front door wide open.

Chapter 5

‘Holy fucking Christ,’ my father said. He turned to me. ‘Was she down here just now, before you came upstairs?’

I nodded.

‘Stay here,’ he said. ‘She can’t have gone far.’

I sat on the sofa Mum had recently left. There was still an indentation in the middle from where she had been sitting. I stared around at the odd place in front of me. There was a television, smaller than ours at home and with a thick layer of dust on top of it. There was also a fireplace, with a rusty metal thing around it. I looked forward to watching logs burning on it.

I was about to go and put some wood in it from the little pile by its side, hoping Dad would see it and be inspired to build a fire, but then I heard noises from outside: Dad shouting my mum’s name, then another shout from her, then her voice, loud and clear. It sounded like she was walking around the side of the house. ‘I need to check to see if they’re listening,’ she said to my dad, speaking as if she thought he was stupid, while at the same time annoyed he was bothering her.

‘There isn’t anybody out there to listen to anything. Even if there was anything they’d want to listen to! Marjory, please, come back inside.’

‘He has thousands of spies, Nathan. Thousands. Do you want to know how many I see every night in my dreams?’ She shouted these words, coming closer still. I twisted round on the sofa and leaned over the back so I could see out of the dirty, green-tinged window. I could just about make them out. She was standing out there, clutching something – I thought it was a stick. And Dad had his hands out, trying to take it from her. ‘I see their eyes. Their EYES. You know what that means, don’t you? You know what they tell me to do.’ Then she burst into tears. Loud tears with serious sobs and lots of words I couldn’t properly hear.

Dad walked over to her. For a second, I thought she was going to run him through with the stick, but he just put his hands round it and took it from her. She let him. She was too busy crying.

At first, when I started to see Mum cry more and more, I wanted to cry too. I didn’t really know what was happening, or why she got so upset, but I used to think there must be something really serious to worry about if a grown-up was crying. Because crying was something children did. Adults only cried when something was really bad, I thought. But when I started to see my mum cry about four times a week, I stopped finding it as upsetting as I once did.

‘It’s OK, Marjory. Why don’t we just go back inside? We need to make this place a home.’ Dad was doing his best to be kind, now. And, finally, she let him, and wrapped her arms around his shoulders, her sobs turned into silent crying. I turned around and sat back on the sofa properly to watch them as they came in.

‘Hello Kitty Cat,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry about my little moment.’ She sniffed and dabbed at her eyes with the back of her hands, as if she was trying not to disturb the make-up she wasn’t wearing. ‘I just got so upset at the thought of someone listening.’ She sat down and Dad murmured something about a glass of water as he left the room. ‘Do you know what I mean by listening?’ she said. Her eyes were going wide again. I thought about calling Dad, but before I could he was back and giving her a drink.

‘Have some of this,’ he said, and Mum did as he said and took a sip of the water.

‘Better?’ he said.

‘It’s not from the stream is it?’ she whispered, urgently.

Dad looked confused. ‘No, it’s from the tap.’

‘Are you really, really sure?’ She gripped his hand, stopping him moving away, staring at him as if desperate for him to reassure her.

‘Yes, I’m very sure. I haven’t seen a stream.’

‘We passed one on the way,’ she said, sipping at the water and flicking little looks at me that I found more disturbing than the crying.

‘No we didn’t,’ Dad said with a sigh. ‘And it was dark. Even if we did I don’t think you’d have seen it.’

Mum muttered about ‘all-seeing eyes’ and then went quiet, concentrating on her drinking.

‘Why don’t you go up to bed, Kitty?’ my dad suggested. ‘We’ll carry on with the unpacking in the morning.’

I nodded and got up. ‘Goodnight Mum,’ I said. I went to give her a kiss, but she didn’t look up. She was staring into the water in the glass as if it were the most interesting thing in the world. ‘Night, Dad,’ I said, walking past him. I didn’t offer him a kiss, as he’d made me cross too many times today.

‘Goodnight,’ he said.

I went up the creaking stairs and made sure I pressed hard on the loosest ones, hoping some dust or wood flakes would snow down on any creatures inside. Perhaps they’d come out and play during the night.

My duvet and things were all on my bed. I didn’t know where my toothbrush was – probably in one of the hundreds of bags and boxes either downstairs or in the car – so I just used the stiff tap in the bathroom to wash my mouth out (five spits, one gargle) and then went back to get into bed. On the landing I could hear my dad saying something to my mum about sleeping downstairs if she ‘promises not to go walkabout’. She replied straight away, ‘Oh dearest, why on earth would I want to go walking about in the woods at night? Anything could be out there.’

Once in my room, I spent a good few minutes trying to put the bed sheets on myself. I eventually succeeded, feeling a little proud at how good I was starting to get at doing things like this without help. I then got under the covers and tried to sleep straight away, but it didn’t work, so I just started counting the drips of water I could hear falling outside the window. Then the drips became rain and the rain became a downpour. I burrowed into my bedding and pretended I was a little mouse, caught in the fields in a storm, in need of a large leaf or a den to shelter under and stay dry and warm. I need to stay safe and sheltered, I thought to myself as I finally drifted off to sleep. After all, Mum was probably right. Anything could be out there.

Chapter 6

January 2020

The police station is a drab, seventies build – the sort of thing that might have looked edgy and modern once, but now looks depressing in a harsh, Brutalist way. Part of me had expected a row of uniformed officers holding sub-machine guns to be waiting for me at the doors, the type you see patrolling London underground stations or key tourist attractions. But of course, they don’t bother with the likes of me. I’m not an immediate threat. It’s the past that matters now. Not the present, or the future.

The woman on the desk looks at me with all the emotion of a robot. I explain who I am and who I’ve been asked to see. She glances at a screen that’s turned away from me, then at a tablet device on the desk in front of her, then tells me to take a seat. I do as I’m told, sitting next to a young man who cracks the knuckles on each hand, as if to warn me not to even think about messing with him. One of his hands, I notice, is badly bruised and cut, like he’s punched a wall. Or a face.

‘What you fuckin’ looking at?’ he asks me in a thick Newcastle accent, then, without waiting for an answer, he asks, ‘Want a smoke?’ and brings out a packet of cigarettes. I look down at them, noticing the box is stained with something dark and sticky-looking, perhaps spilt beer, then jump when a voice above me says, ‘No smoking in here. It’s illegal.’ A short, burly police officer rounds on us both, as if we’re two naughty school kids. I object to being grouped in with the unsavoury-looking man next to me and start stammering about how I hadn’t intended to take one, but another voice cuts me off.