The Woods, page 26
That’s why I came over here. Because it struck me that Greg is the only other person involved in this who’s as left out as me.
He drains his glass and stares out of the window at the dark garden. “I think it’s a mistake,” he says.
I think he means me coming here and hover awkwardly, drink in my hand, wondering if I should go.
He turns to smile at me. “The wedding, I mean. She never wanted to be married, to be a wife. She’s too much of a free spirit. Julia’s never going to be happy with Leo—he’s too quiet and ordinary.”
Quiet and ordinary like me. I take the insult to both of us and swallow it down. I don’t actually think he’s right—I’ve seen Dad and Julia together. Maybe she just didn’t want to be Greg’s wife.
I have an urge to show him I’m anything but quiet and ordinary and when he reaches for my glass to refill it, I lean in and kiss him.
He jerks his head away and I burn up with humiliation, feel it filling me like hot, molten lava.
“Christ, Tess…I think maybe you should go home. I’m sorry I gave you a drink. I didn’t…we’ll blame that. Come on, go home, we’ll forget this ever happened.”
“It’s my sister, isn’t it?” The words burst out of me. “I saw you with her—you invited her into the house. You never invited me inside until tonight.”
“Because you’re usually covered in mud from the garden. Bella came once to tell me about the wedding, that’s all.” He shakes his head. “Don’t try to be one of those girls, Tess. It’s not you.”
“Those girls? What girls?”
“Your sister and her friends—acting and looking so much older than they are, flirting, outrageous. You’re a good girl, Tess, I’ve seen that. Don’t try to be like them.”
There’s disgust and anger in his voice as he talks about Bella and her friends and I think of Nicole, the biggest flirt of them all and I think of the secret boyfriend I overheard Mr. Wallace talking to Dad about. I never…I knew Nicole was seeing Jack, so I thought…And he sees Bella that way too?
“So—what? You’d have kissed me back if I was one of those bad girls? Even though I’m only sixteen? Have you kissed many of those bad girls? What about Bella?” I pause, swallow. “What about Nicole?”
He has a wary look on his face. “You can’t go around saying these things. You can’t tell anyone about this, or spread stories about me and your sister. I have sons your age.”
A surge of satisfaction dilutes the hurt. He’s right. I have the power here.
“No, it doesn’t look good, does it? You spending all this time with a sixteen-year-old girl, just the two of us. Especially considering two teenage girls were murdered last year and they’re still looking for the killer.”
He takes a step toward me and I feel a lurch of fear. Why did I even come here tonight? What was I thinking? Does he see it on my face? He stops anyway, runs both his hands through his hair.
“You need to go,” he says. “I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to come back.”
The following night I wake up, disturbed by the door opening. It’s dark, middle-of-the-night dark. I’m sweating, my nightshirt clinging to me, my hair damp on my head. Bella comes in and, silhouetted in the light from the landing, I can see she’s disheveled, hair tangled, her feet bare. She climbs into bed next to me and I can smell damp earth, dead leaves. She must have been in the woods; I know the smell. Her arm is cold against mine and she’s shaking.
“What’s wrong?” I whisper.
She doesn’t answer, curled away from me, cold and shaking.
“Where have you been?”
“I went to see…” Her voice drifts off and her shoulder stiffens when I touch it. Her T-shirt is torn.
“Doesn’t matter, Tess,” she whispers, barely audible. “I just want to sleep in here with you tonight.”
“Okay,” I say. I close my eyes as my sister trembles next to me, but I’m no longer sleepy.
I can feel there’s something wrong, something awful. There’s a wrongness in the room with us. “Bella?” I whisper. “Please…tell me what’s wrong.”
She’s so tense next to me. “Do you ever wish they’d never moved here? Julia, Greg, all of them? Do you ever wish…?”
I bite my lip. “All the time.”
She sighs, a deep, shuddery sigh. “Go to sleep now, Tess. It’s fine. It’ll all be fine. Just go to sleep.”
NOW
Chapter 31
Jack is in my room when I get back to the house, looking at the books on the shelf. I stand in the doorway, shoulders tense.
“What are you doing in here?”
He glances back at me and smiles. “I was bored—looking for something to read, but the choice is a bit limited.” He pulls the book of fairy tales off the shelf and holds it up. “Seriously? You kept this? How old were you when you moved out again?”
I march over and snatch it off him. Of all the books on the shelf, why did he pick up that one? He’s watching me, waiting for a reaction, and I work hard to keep my face blank. “My mother gave it to me,” I say, putting it back on the shelf.
“Your mother. How sweet. And weren’t you lucky to end up with a second mother in the end?”
I need a shower. I need to sleep. I do not need Jack and his games.
“You need to stop punishing Julia,” I say, and he laughs.
“You’re telling me what to do?”
“She doesn’t have much time left. You’ll regret it if you keep this anger up until the end.”
He puts his hand on my arm and I step away, bumping into the bed.
“Feeling jumpy, Tess? How come? Where were you, anyway?” He looks out of the window at the darkening sky. “Looking for the rest of the bodies you buried?”
“Fuck off, Jack.”
He laughs again. “You haven’t grown up much in the last ten years, have you?”
It’s this place, being back here with Jack and his brother, Max, Dad, and Julia. I swear I feel myself regressing by the day.
“I’ve grown up more than you,” I say. “I’m not some silly girl in the woods anymore, scared of the big bad wolf. At least I’m not still bearing a grudge from more than a decade ago.”
“Aren’t you? Aren’t you still carrying around all the baggage from ten years ago? Isn’t that why your drawer is full of sleeping pills and you still have fairy tales on your bookshelf and morbid reminders of your sister everywhere you look?”
“Go and talk to her,” I say, pushing him toward the door. “Go and talk to your mother while you still have the chance.”
I slam the door behind him and collapse onto the bed. Damn him. How long was he in my room? I look around and see my bedside drawer half-open. I still have the unopened box of sleeping pills the doctor prescribed. I get them out of the drawer and read the label. Will she come back? Will I dream of Bella again if I take these pills? Or will a medicated sleep push her away? Tears burn my eyes. It feels like I’m killing her, like she’s going to die all over again if I take a pill and sleep properly. I know it’s not real, I know I need to get well, but I don’t want to say goodbye to her again.
I lie down, curled on my side, the pill box clutched in my hand, and I feel her curl up behind me, like she used to do sometimes when she couldn’t sleep. Her hand touches my hair and I close my eyes.
“Tess? Tess.”
Someone’s shaking me, grabbing my arm, pulling me out of the house, but I’ll have to go back through the woods then, oh please don’t make me go through the woods…
“Wake up, come on. It’s time to wake up.”
I sit up with a gasp and bump heads with someone who falls back, swearing. Sean’s sitting on my bed, bare-chested, rubbing his forehead. It’s dark, night outside.
“What? Why…”
“You were having a bad dream,” he says. “I heard you shouting.”
My heart is racing, my back is wet with sweat. “What time is it?” I whisper.
“Just after three.”
I’ve slept. Properly slept, for hours, longer than I’ve slept in weeks. I look down but I’m no longer holding the box of sleeping pills. My fists are clenched tight but empty. I lean over the side of the bed—nothing.
“What are you looking for?”
“I had some sleeping pills, from the doctor. I don’t know what I’ve done with them.” I was holding them when I fell asleep, wasn’t I?
He picks up my hand, still curled tight into a fist. “What were you dreaming about?”
“The house. The woods. Bella. Same things I always dream about.”
He’s stroking my wrist with his thumb and I shiver. I swallow, my throat dry. He’s staring straight ahead. I don’t think he even realizes he’s doing it, but I’m hyperaware he’s on my bed, half-dressed, in the middle of the night and all I keep thinking is I kissed you. It was you I kissed and it feels like I’m sixteen again and I’m tired and awake and hurting and sad and I want…I just want.
He turns to look at me and I almost do it, almost lean in again, kiss him again, but I don’t have to because he leans in this time. It’s the briefest brush of his lips and then he’s gone, up and out of the room and I’m left again wondering if he and the kiss were a dream.
I get up to turn the light on and look for the sleeping pills. I won’t take one tonight, it’s too late, but maybe tomorrow. Maybe tomorrow it’ll be time to start getting better. I pull the quilt aside but they’re not there. Frowning, I crouch to check under the bed again. Then I open the drawer of the bedside cabinet in case I put them away without remembering. But they’re not anywhere—not on the windowsill or in my bag or any of the drawers or wardrobe. There are still red lines on my palm, the imprint of the edges of the box like a fossil on my skin, so I know I was still clutching the box when I went to sleep.
Did Sean take it? Is that what he was there for, not to wake me from a nightmare but to take the pills away? But why would he? Why would anyone not want me to sleep? I go to my half-open door and peer out. There are no lights on in any of the other rooms and the house is silent. But the hairs have risen up on my arms and they won’t go down.
When I wake again after an hour or two of broken sleep, the first thing I see is the wardrobe door open when it was definitely shut before. It creeps me out, the thought of someone in here going through my things when I was asleep. I get up and open the door wider. The camera—Bella’s camera—is gone. It has to be Sean who took it. I close my eyes and picture him leaning toward me, his skin against mine. I thought I wanted…I don’t know what I wanted. I thought I wanted Max, but when I close my eyes and think of him, all I see is him and Bella in the woods. Sean must have taken the camera to give it to the police, but I’ve already dropped the film off at the post office. No one-day service here, it’s been posted off and I have to wait five long days to find out what’s on Bella’s last photographs.
I massage my temples, trying to ease the throbbing headache that’s settled in like an unwelcome visitor. It’s been weeks now since I slept through the night. The world has taken on an edge both sharp and blurry, I have to be careful when I stand or turn because dizziness strikes. Voices seem too loud and I keep drifting, finding time has passed and I have no recollection of it. It’s not the weird missing hours I’ve experienced—these moments are smaller, more frequent; I step out of my room and then I’m in the kitchen, I’m in the shower, then back in my room dressed. It’s like someone is cutting moments out of my life, cutting out the in-between bits so everything is on fast-forward. But fast-forward to what? The nights, though, the nights without sleep pass more slowly than ever.
Jack is coming out of Julia’s room as I step onto the landing. It doesn’t make me happy to see that he’s finally talking to his mother. It makes the anxious knot in my stomach bigger, a knot that gnaws and nags and aches. I push past him and go into Julia’s room. She’s awake and I can see she’s been crying. He’s told her, I think. Told her about Greg and his twisted conviction that me or Dad or Bella had something to do with his death.
“What did he do?” I say, sitting next to the bed. I touch her hand and she smiles at me.
“Nothing. It’s okay, Tess. I’m upset because…he won’t listen. He won’t talk to me. I can’t get through to him like I have to Sean and it makes me sad. I hoped, when they came here, I hoped I’d have time to make things right with them. But I won’t, not with Jack, I won’t have time, I’ll never have enough time.”
“Did he say something? To upset you?”
She shakes her head. “It’s the not saying anything that upsets me. He doesn’t talk about me leaving and he doesn’t talk about anything that happened afterward. He refuses to even hear Ellie’s name when I try to explain.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, reaching down to kiss her forehead.
“I wish he would just tell…” Her voice trails off.
“Tell what?”
Her face twists. “Nothing. I shouldn’t have said that.”
There’s something there, in her eyes. Something she wants me to see without her telling. The back of my neck prickles and I turn to look at the open door. Nobody there. But when I look back down at Julia, there’s fear on her face and I know someone was there. I go over and close the door.
“What are you hiding?” I whisper to Julia. “Is it about Greg? Greg and…and Bella?” I turn my face away, afraid of her answer.
“What? No…no. But don’t, Tess. Don’t ask me.” She pauses, takes in a deep breath that makes her wince. “And don’t ask Jack. I don’t want him to think I’m telling tales.”
Telling tales about what?
I go straight to Jack’s room after Julia falls asleep and find him staring out of the window, a bottle of whisky in his hand.
“Why can’t you let it go?” I say. “She’s dying. Can’t you even pretend?”
“Did she tell you a sob story about our poor baby dead sister and that’s why she left? Or did she tell you some other story?”
There’s an edge to his voice. He keeps his tone light but that edge tells me he’s wary of what Julia might have told me.
“She didn’t say anything other than wishing you would forgive her.”
“Really? No other deathbed confessions? No morphine-fueled lies?”
“What are you afraid of?”
His face shuts down. “I’m not afraid of anything Julia has to say.”
“Doesn’t seem like it.” I shouldn’t provoke him. I don’t want to push him into anger. “She left because she was grieving. She knows it was wrong to leave you. Can’t you forgive her? Now, after all this time? Can’t you understand and forgive?”
“It’s not me who won’t forgive.”
“What?”
He walks out of the room, over to the bathroom, the bottle still in his hand. There are only a couple of inches left in the bottom and I think he’s going to drink it, but he upends it instead, letting the liquid pour down the sink. “Doesn’t matter. Forget I said anything. But stop thinking it’s me who’s stayed away, who can’t bloody forgive. Ask yourself why she used to refuse to see me when I was fucked up and a grieving mess. Ask yourself why I’ve ended up carrying around so much ugliness that my wife tells me to stay away so my own kid doesn’t grow up like me.”
“What are you talking about?” His questions have settled like rotten seeds in my belly, spreading roots of nastiness, whispering questions I don’t want to hear. Why did she leave her sons behind? After her daughter had died, why wouldn’t she then cling harder to her remaining children, like Dad did to me after Bella died?
Jack leans in close to whisper in my ear, booze-scented breath filling my nose. “Made you think, didn’t I? Made you wonder?”
Dad is in the kitchen when I go down at seven, staring out at the woods. He looks dazed.
“Are you…is Julia okay?”
“She had a bad night. The doctor…the doctor doesn’t think it will be long now. He’s adjusted her morphine doses, put a syringe driver up so she’s not in any pain, but it makes her…it’s like I’ve already lost her.”
I go over and wrap my arms around him.
“She didn’t want this,” he says. “This long, drawn-out end. She wanted to be at home and she wanted to say her goodbyes and she wanted it to be peaceful. And easy. I see her in pain and struggling, or doped up on morphine with no idea where she is and I want to…I want to…”
His voice breaks and I hold him tighter as he cries.
He pulls away and wipes his eyes. “I sat with Julia and realized how many of your mum’s and Bella’s things are still here, how we’ve lived surrounded by death and memories for so long.”
He shakes his head. “I wonder sometimes if I should have gotten rid of their things. I could never bear to. But it means they’re always here. I’ve never stopped to think how hard that must have been for Julia.”
I shiver. Bella’s here now, her breath warm on my neck.
“Julia never pushed me. She never asked me to clear away their things. But Bella’s things, your mother’s…It can’t have been easy for her living in a house of…”
Dead women. Living in a house of dead women. And now Julia’s going to join them. Will her things join Mum’s and Bella’s? Will her ghost join theirs, following Dad round the house when it’s empty, apart from him and me? It makes me want to run as fast as I can, back to my safe box in the city, surrounded by all those other boxes full of strangers, no trees tapping at the window, no ticking clocks, no ghosts.
But I can’t leave. After Julia dies, I can’t leave him to that.
