The Woods, page 9
Not big, formal parties. Impulsive get-togethers. Max, Lena, and their parents on their infrequent trips back to the UK, Dad, Julia, me, and Bella. A few neighbors sometimes, regulars from the pub. Bring a bottle and tuck in.
“So why are you here?” I ask again.
“Max. He made me come. He’d have killed me if I’d refused.” She shakes her head and kicks the wall. “I’m out of here as soon as possible on Sunday, though. I’ve said all the goodbyes I need to. I don’t need to stay and watch her die.”
“What about Max—will he stay?”
She shrugs. “He has to work, so I don’t know.” She glances at me. “Still got that crush, Tess?”
“Don’t be daft. I was just asking.”
“I never got why you used to follow Max around with those big, puppy-dog eyes when Jack and Sean were around. God, those boys—were any boys ever so brooding and beautiful?”
They terrified me as a teenager. Not like Max, so steady and kind. Jack and Sean weren’t storybook brooding; they were bitter, too much rage too close to the surface, so much worse after Julia left them for us. And all of it aimed at Bella and me: the usurpers, the thieves of their mother’s love. It wasn’t thrilling, being with them, it was frightening.
Lena grabs my arm. “There he is,” she says, pointing at a shadow in one of the windows.
“Right,” I say, walking toward the gate. “I’m going in—I’m going to make him come and see Julia.” I glance back at her. “Are you coming?”
She shakes her head and pulls a face. “Second thoughts, too many ghosts for me in there. Not all of them dead. Sorry, Tess.”
I’m at the gate when her voice stops me.
“Do you ever wonder where we’d all be if Bella hadn’t died?”
I look back.
“Would we all still be friends?”
“I don’t know.”
“I never had a friend like her—not before, not since. It felt like we were the sisters sometimes.”
The old jealousy stirs. “It’s been ten years, Lena.”
“And my life has been pretty much shit ever since she died.” She looks lost and it dampens the embers of jealousy.
She wipes a hand across her face. Was she crying? Lena? Impossible to tell under the sunglasses. But then she smiles. “Ignore me,” she says. “My hangover’s making me sentimental. Go on then—go catch yourself a Lewis boy.”
I look back once more as I get to the front door. She’s still there, but she’s looking away from the house, toward the woods. I wonder if she sees it too, every time she comes here, Bella and me, half-buried under leaves and mud. I bet she’s thinking what they all must have been thinking back then. Why did Bella have to be the one who died?
He comes to the door after my third knock: Sean Lewis, still stupidly handsome. More so, I think. Age suits him. Ten years has added muscle and character. The intensity that was so odd at seventeen is sexy at twenty-seven. You would always give this man a second look if you saw him out. But then you’d see it, the simmering anger and something else lurking, and maybe then you’d go back to your boyfriend and feel safer and a bit happier. But he also looks tired and so much like his father, it makes the words I came to say stick in my throat. My dad, the man Julia left them for, is inches shorter, thinner, plainer. A quiet man, so bloody ordinary. But no one would feel uneasy looking at my dad. He was a man to feel safe with and I know Julia did. Greg—he never looked like someone’s father, he never looked safe.
I have another flash of memory—sharp and bright and loud. Me and Sean, dancing at the wedding, but not out on the lawn with everyone else, swaying instead in the trees at the edge of the wood that bordered our garden. Is that real?
Sean looks at me and shock is replaced by a half-smile. He reaches out like he’s going to hug me and I recoil. My instinct is to run, just like it was back then, and my reaction stalls him. His face floods with color and the smile disappears, replaced by the more familiar blankness I was never able to read.
“Tess? God—you were not who I expected to find on my doorstep.”
After the wedding, after Bella died, Jack and Sean disappeared again. Jack had already moved out of Dean House by then and Sean never came back to visit. Neither of them ever came back to stay. Has Julia even seen them since?
“I’m here for Julia,” I say. I came over here planning to unleash all my anger, to drag him back kicking and screaming to see his dying mother. But he has shadows under his eyes and I wonder if he sleeps, if he’s been lying awake remembering the last time he was here, if he lies awake thinking of all the years he never got to spend with his mother and it twists me up inside because I know that pain. God, it almost killed me when my own mother died, all the grief for everything we weren’t going to be able to do together. She would never meet my boyfriends and give me advice, never watch me get married, never get to hold any children I might have in the future. The pain of it is still there, muted but sharp enough to hurt.
Sean is looking at me and I think he must be able to see it all on my face. My heart races and a long-ago voice whispers in my head. He’s dangerous. Who said that? Was it Bella? Or Lena or Max? I don’t remember. It was the night we all got drunk and things got hazy, a few days before Bella died.
Run, Jack’s voice whispers in my memory.
Run.
“You’d better come in,” Sean says, stepping aside to let me in the house. The hallway behind him is dark and I can see a coating of dust and cobwebs over everything. As Sean steps aside, I’m hit with a tang of mildew and rot and dust that coats my throat and makes me cough. The house smells rotten and I take an involuntary step back.
“No thanks,” I say. “I don’t want to come in.”
As I take another step away, Sean stands there, looking lost. I notice a rolled-up sleeping bag propped against the wall.
“Are you staying here?” I ask.
He nods. “I figured it was easier than going back and forth from a B and B in the village.”
“But…” I look beyond him at the dust and the decay. “You can’t stay here—there’s no light, no heating. For God’s sake”—it’s out of my mouth before I’ve thought it through—“come and stay with us.”
“It’s not like you to be so concerned for my welfare. From what I remember, you used to be all about getting me out of your house, not into it.”
“And from what I remember, you used to be Mr. Hostile, all snotty arrogance and scowls.”
He smiles, a big warm smile. “Ugh—yeah. The scowly teenage years. What little shits we were.”
A returning smile tugs at the corners of my own mouth and the disorienting feeling I got with Lena, that I’m sixteen again, fades. But there’s still something nagging at me. Why is Sean being so nice? Christ knows, he has no reason to. Why is he even here, if not for Julia? I grit my teeth.
“So what’s going on—why are you skulking around here instead of spending time with your mother? Your dying mother?”
“I am going to see her.”
It wrong-foots me. I came in expecting to have to fight to get him over to see Julia.
“I wasn’t going to. I told Leo and Max I wouldn’t. I was going to come back to the house, do what I had to do, and leave without visiting. I thought…” He pauses and shakes his head. “I thought I’d have more time, you know? When Leo rang to tell me about the cancer—God, it was only six months ago. I thought she’d fight it, get through it. I put off calling and visiting, but I always thought I’d have time. Then Leo told me she was dying and my instinct was still to stay away, but it’s my last chance, isn’t it? Last chance to…”
His voice trails off and I hope the missed words are last chance to say goodbye and not last chance to scream accusations.
“So why are you here?” I say again, spreading my arms to indicate the abandoned house, the darkness, the dust. “Are you hiding?”
He kicks a cardboard box next to him. “We’ve sold the house.”
“Sold it? That’s a bit sudden…” I stop and laugh. “Sorry. What a stupid thing to say.”
“Yeah—not sure you could call ten years of the house being empty a sudden sale.”
There’s a silence that should be awkward, but somehow it isn’t. One thing about Sean, he’s good at being quiet. “Maybe the new owners will finish what your dad started—make this place fabulous.” I think of the gardens with a pang.
He smiles and shrugs. “Doubt it. We’ve sold it to a construction company. They’re going to build a whole load of new houses on the site. Initial work starts Monday—they’ll be clearing the grounds, emptying the house before pulling it down.” He looks at the box. “I told Jack I’d come here and pack up anything we wanted to keep, but…I don’t know what to take.” He picks up a pottery ornament from the box, blows the dust off. “I don’t know…was any of it really Dad’s? It’s just stuff, isn’t it? None of it important. If it was important, he’d have taken it with him.”
“Has he…” I stop to clear my throat. “Has he ever been back?”
“Look at this place—it’s not been touched in all the time he’s been gone.” He laughs, a bitter edge to the sound. “At least Mum didn’t run far.”
Greg went missing a few days before the wedding. Already having to deal with the fact that their mother had broken up the family and was marrying another man, the boys—because they were still boys then, Jack not yet twenty, Sean almost eighteen—had to then deal with their father running off. What must that have done to them? I lost my mother and my sister, but they didn’t leave me voluntarily—they were taken. But Julia and Greg…how could they?
“Look, I get that you and Julia have all sorts of unresolved stuff going on, but she doesn’t have much time. She wants to see you now,” I say. “Seriously, if I had the same opportunity—to see my mum or sister again…”
“I’ve already said I’m going to see her.” He shakes his head and kicks the box away from him. “Fuck it—I don’t want any of this stuff.”
“Will you come now?” I ask. “Please. You can’t stay here—you’ll get ill, the state of the place.”
He stares at me for a long time and I wonder what he’s looking for in my face. Is he seeing what Max saw—the ghost of Bella?
He nods once. “Okay. I’ll come.”
I turn away, planning to wait out on the lane, wanting to be farther away from the house, when Sean calls me back. “I found something I wanted to give you.” His voice trails off as he holds out another box. “I thought it was Dad’s.”
I open the box and hold my breath at what’s inside. It’s Bella’s camera, the one Greg gave her, and a book.
“It’s Dad’s book,” Sean says as I take it out. “He’s written on the inside.”
I open the book. To Arabella, who sees the world in a special way. Love Greg.
“She was friends with him,” I say, stroking the cover of the book, not looking at him. “He gave her the camera.”
“So why was it back in Dean House?”
“I don’t know. Maybe she gave it back to him. She stopped using it.” I stop and blink. Wasn’t Bella carrying the camera the night before the wedding? That strange night she brought me here?
“There’s still film in it,” Sean says, and we stare at each other.
It stops my breath, the realization that on this film are the last photos Bella took. Could I still develop it after all this time? I clutch the box to my chest. I can try. I can get the film developed, see if…see if there’s some memory of my sister trapped on there, some precious moment I can get back.
Do I hear a whisper or is it just the rustling of trees? For a moment, it sounds like my sister whispering, yes yes yes.
Chapter 11
I go out onto the lane and text Dad while I wait for Sean, so he can warn Julia. The grass at the back of Dean House stretches out and down to the border of the woods. A mist has settled and the trees are half-hidden, truncated. Instead of trees, they’re a regiment of brown-suited soldiers, silent and still, watching me.
There’s a pheasant on the grass, picking for worms with the smaller birds. It’s a scene that should be idyllic, but it’s not my house, not my view, and at the end of it all, always at the end of it all, the woods, the woods.
My head is full—of Julia, of Sean and Jack, the summer of death when everyone in the village lived in the grip of fear. I don’t want to be here. I want to be back in my flat, listening to city noises, smelling wet pavement and car fumes, the greasy breakfasts frying in the café on the corner. Two-for-one cocktails with Sophie, picking up city boys. Familiar comforts of a life I’ve adopted, the Tess I’ve become since leaving here. God, I even want to be back in the school corridors among all that noise and commotion, being mocked by Rebecca Martin.
“You ready?” Sean appears next to me.
I nod. “I’d forgotten how beautiful it was here.”
The pheasant takes flight and he smiles. “It is, isn’t it? I haven’t been back in so long. I might take some time while I’m here, explore the coast, take some walks.”
I stare at him, frowning as we walk out into the lane. “You’ve changed so much.”
“Have I?”
“You were always so…” I spread my hands out.
“So what?” He’s smiling again.
“Grumpy. Hostile. Always lurking and scowling and, well, scaring the shit out of me.”
His smile turns to laughter. “Was I really? That’s not how I remember it. You think I was hostile? It used to come off you in waves.”
A smile tugs unwillingly at the corners of my mouth. God, I wouldn’t be a teenager again if someone offered me a million dollars. Sean’s portrayal of us as truculent little jerks makes me think of Rebecca Martin again.
“There’s this girl I teach, she’s like that. So abrasive. Challenging me with every look and word. I guess…it’s all an act, isn’t it? It was with me.”
Sean nods. “Do you like it? Teaching?”
If I squint into the morning mist, I can almost see Bella, the day she told me she didn’t want to be a photographer anymore, that she was going to do a teaching course instead. Did I ever question her about it? It was such an odd and abrupt change—she’d wanted to be a photographer since she was twelve.
“It’s something I’ve been asking myself recently.” I cringe inside as I remember the time Rebecca Martin had annoyed me so much that I scrawled a D across her Shakespeare essay when it was worth at least a B, if not an A. “I don’t think I’m a very good teacher. I think I’d make a better landscape gardener. That’s what I wanted to do when I was a kid.”
He smiles again. “You know that’s what I do, right? Gardening? I work in the gardens of a National Trust house across the river in Gloucestershire.”
“Really?”
“And Jack went into construction. With Max as an architect, we could build ourselves a whole town.”
The front door opens as we approach the house and Dad and Julia step out together. It makes my chest hurt to see the effort Julia has made—she’s dressed, hair brushed and soft around her face, radiant smile at the ready for her son. I step away from Sean.
“You go on,” I say. “I’ll give you some time with your mum. But, Sean?”
He glances back at me.
“Don’t…don’t upset her, okay?”
He gives me a look I can’t interpret and I have an urge to grab him and pull him away, but it’s too late, Julia is there, touching his arm, touching his cheek, tears in her eyes as he bends to murmur something in her ear.
I turn away.
It’s much later in the afternoon when I open the front door and hear raised voices coming from the kitchen. “You have got to be fucking kidding me,” I mutter, clenching my fists. I’ll bloody kill Sean if he’s come in and upset Dad or Julia.
The kitchen door opens and Sean comes storming out, slamming it behind him. He’s scowling but stops short when he sees me in the doorway.
“What have you done?” I say. “What have you said to Julia? She’s dying—you can’t bring all your baggage into my house and upset her in her last days. You—”
“Oh right, of course you’d assume that, wouldn’t you? Mum’s gone up for a rest, actually, before you get on your high horse. And it wasn’t me shouting, it was Max and Lena.”
“What?” I glance toward the stairs and Julia’s closed door. “Come outside a minute.
“Why were Max and Lena shouting at you?” I continue when we’re far enough away from the house not to disturb Julia’s rest.
He sighs and runs a hand through his hair. “I told them about the house being sold and they went off on one.”
“Why?”
He shakes his head. “I don’t even think it’s the house…Mum wanted it sold. When she got ill, she wrote me and Jack a letter. The house belonged jointly to Mum and Dad—they never got around to changing that before Dad ran off. It meant…Mum had to have Dad declared legally dead so she could sell it. I think that’s what rattled Max and Lena.”
“You think Greg is dead?”
Sean hesitates, then shakes his head. “No, of course not. But I don’t think he’s ever coming back. The house is falling apart—it’s been falling apart for years and it’s not like any of us are going to live there again, is it? Mum wants…she wants it done before she dies and me and Jack end up tangled in probate.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I heard shouting and I just thought…”
“I’m glad I came over,” Sean says. “Glad I came to see her.”
“Did you manage to clear the air?”
He smiles faintly. “Clear the air? That’s a diplomatic way of putting it.” He shrugs. “It was fine, Tess. Awkward on both sides, but we managed to have a conversation.”
I wonder if they did, or if they were both so careful to step around the bigger issues that the conversation was nothing but small talk. Not my business, though, unless it hurt Dad in any way. I had to leave them to sort it out.
