Perfectly Preventable Deaths

31 Hazel

I smush my face into the soft, soft pillow and ignore the beeping of my phone. They will be fine without me, I think. Yesterday, no one had even noticed I was missing, except Brian. He said he didn’t want to worry Mam, that he felt really guilty that I’d gotten lost. He’d known about the door, but it hadn’t been in use since his father’s time.

He caught me in the hallway of the castle, pulled me into a very gangly hug.

‘I told her you’d gone for a walk,’ he said. ‘I don’t know why. I panicked, and all of a sudden, there I was, lying to my wife about her child.’ Guilt doesn’t suit Brian. His face looked gaunt. Shadows underneath his eyes, and what else is he hiding?

Doors inside the walls and blood on stone.

Mam swoops into the room like a raven and grips me by the shoulders. I try to burrow away, like a mole, but a girl can only be a mole for so long when her mother is removing blankets and making statements like, ‘We need to talk.’

Of course she wants to know about the Catlin thing. Brian told her all about it. Mam can’t bring herself to say the name Helen Groarke – she calls her ‘that girl’ or ‘that poor girl’. The horror on her face. The weight of that. I should have told them sooner. Which is of course another thing she tells me. And I agree. Lon’s big white hands. The dark bruise on Catlin’s neck. Mam looks at me, her eyes reflecting my worry.

‘Why did you go to Brian and not to me?’ she asks, the furrows digging sideways in her brow. Two-thirds of a triangle. I don’t want to have hurt her feelings. I’m just so tired.

‘He’s family now, Mam. And he’s from here. I didn’t want to worry you with nothing.’ The heat is heavy, clinging to my skin. I poke a foot from under the duvet and flip my pillow. Cooler now, I shut my eyes, but only for a second.

‘This Lon,’ Mam asks, ‘how long have they been …?’

‘It happened really quickly after we moved here,’ I say. ‘She’s properly in love.’

Mam scoffs at this. ‘She’s sixteen years of age.’

‘So am I. That doesn’t mean our feelings aren’t real. Catlin thinks he’s her soulmate or something,’ I say. ‘I tried to tell her what I thought before. It didn’t help.’

‘She always was headstrong,’ Mam says, and not like it’s the good thing it once was.

She grips my hand. ‘The two of you are the most important things in my life,’ she says. ‘It’s hard to think that there’s this whole side to you I don’t know about. I mean, you lived in here.’ She cradles her abdomen beneath her dress.

‘Don’t make me go back there,’ I say, pretending to be frightened, and she laughs.

‘I couldn’t if I tried,’ she says. ‘And sometimes I think that’s almost a pity.’ She narrows her eyes. ‘So. What’s the fecker like?’ Her voice is heavy, trying to be light.

‘He’s got this stupid, handsome face.’

‘That could be anyone she’s gone out with before,’ Mam says.

I snort.

‘He calls her Catalina. And he talks over her all the time.’

‘What a prick,’ she says.

‘I know. He’s terrible, but she doesn’t seem to notice. She wants to tell him that she loves him, like.’ I gesture helplessly.

‘Urgh,’ says Mam. ‘If only that were all. What can we do?’

‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘She’s properly smitten.’

‘And this peacock’s the one doing the smiting.’ Mam is angry. She fixes her dress like she is angry with it, eroding creases out with both her hands.

‘Peacock’s a good word for him,’ I say. ‘He loves himself.’

‘It is OK to love yourself, Madeline,’ Mam tells me.

‘Not the way he does it.’

There is a pause. So many things unsaid. I close my eyes. I open them again.

And I betray her.

‘I think,’ I say, ‘he put his hands on her. She has these bruises.’

I feel the weight of worry and of guilt press down, press down.

She will never forgive me if I ruin this love for her. But can you even ruin a dangerous thing?

Mam sighs. She puts her two hands over her face for a second. Like she’s playing peekaboo. I see her struggle to relax her shoulders. To calm herself.

‘Brian guessed as much,’ she said, ‘when you approached him. And I just think, How dare he! The cheek of him. I can’t …’ Her voice is hoarse with fear, or rage, or maybe both. ‘We’ll handle it, love. He won’t hurt her any more,’ she says, grasping my hand a little too tightly. I see cogs turning in her tidy-woman brain. Colour-coding strategies to take. Prioritising. She wants to make a list she can check off. To turn the threat into a series of small tasks. Tickable goals. But I’m not sure that Lon is even fixable. I think of his big, perfect shark smile. His shiny, even teeth. His superior chin. I’d love to slap him. Hard.

‘We’ll take her phone away,’ Mam tells me. ‘Brian can get Liam Donoghue to change his rota for a week or two, keep him away from her, he says. He knows the family.’

‘Wow,’ I say. Maybe this is why they all respect Brian, with his hidden talents and deep pockets.

‘My husband is very protective,’ Mam says, like it’s a point of pride.

‘It’s a shame that Catlin needs protecting though,’ I tell her.

‘I know,’ she says. ‘I’m scared. And I’m honestly not sure what the best course of action is, to keep her safe.’

I nod, picturing a photograph of her and Dad together, in the back garden. They aren’t smiling, but they are both kind of shining with each other. I wonder what our lives would have been like. There wouldn’t have been Lon in them, for one thing. I wonder how Mam stops those kinds of thoughts from coming all the time, whenever something happens.

‘Madeline?’ she says, and her voice is kind and serious and low.

‘Mmmm?’

‘Don’t do that stuff with salt and things any more. Please.’ She looks at me. ‘I know we’ve had this conversation before, but I don’t want to have it again. Not with all of this Catlin stuff about to boil over. When I see that kind of thing in your room, it makes me worry. You know?’

A bubble pops. I don’t say anything.

‘I know the move hasn’t been easy on ye. But it hasn’t been easy on me either. I’m lonely here, and I need a bit of support right now. You have to try.’

There is so much that I could say to her. I feel the anger welling up inside me, the urge to yell that maybe I can’t help it, and maybe if she had left the salt under Catlin’s bed, maybe she would have been a little less obsessed. That I’ve been trying my best to be as normal as I can. I’ve turned down ACTUAL magic. Which exists. I can’t put any more on Mam today though. I nod.

‘I’ll do my best,’ I say. To hide it, I mean. You cannot stop the tide. This lives in me. All that I can do is work around it. But I will try my best to keep it quiet. I get a horrid feeling in my stomach. A sort of swell. I am the broken twin. The one that’s not as good. The other daughter. My face is wet before the door clicks shut.

The foxes screaming, screaming outside.

Mourning for their friend.

The Ask.

Me and Catlin walking in the forest.

A fox is very small, somewhere between cat and dog.

So much blood in such a little case.

And on my boots.

And on the passage walls.

There is something that I cannot read. I need to see it.

I don’t want this.

I don’t want any of it.

None at all.