I try a smile of my own. It’s probably as convincing.
‘I didn’t …’ He clears his throat. ‘Cat. I want you to know that when I kissed you back it wasn’t because I thought … it wasn’t because you reminded me of El, or, you know, because I was imagining that you were El.’ He looks at me. ‘I don’t want you to think that.’
‘I don’t,’ I say. Because that, I have to allow him. Ross always saw us as separate. As different. He was one of the very few who ever did. That should make me feel better, but it doesn’t.
We return to the house. And as soon as we reach the entrance hall, that oppressive weight drops back down onto our shoulders, goading us, cowing us, pushing us apart.
When I pick the envelope up, turn the CATRIONA away to open it, Ross leans against a crimson-red wall, a muscle working inside his cheek.
‘What does it say?’
I look down at the HE WILL HURT YOU TOO in vivid red. Look up at the raw bruised skin around Ross’s eyes.
I close the card, close the hallway door. ‘Just more of the same.’
‘Yeah,’ he says, turning away from me and towards the darkness of the hallway.
And I think of my nineteenth birthday. When El’s fixed plans for the future – our future – were already supposed to have been well underway. And instead, I spent it inside a grubby dull waiting room with grubbier sofas and a plastic-framed seascape of rocks and sand and waves. And I said goodbye to it inside the stark white bright of a hospital side room. Looking at El looking at me. Swaddled in too-tight sheets, that bloodstained bandage pulling at the cannula in the back of her hand. Smiling that smile I’ve never been able to forget: tired and trembling, but filled with so much joy. So much hate. The croak of her voice, the laughter in it.
I win.
CHAPTER 11
10 April 2018 at 15:36
Inbox
john.smith120594@gmail.com
Re: HE KNOWS
To: Me
CLUE 5. WHERE THE CLOWNS HIDE
Sent from my iPhone
I get down on my knees on the Clown Café floor and lift up the bed’s valance, wait for my eyes to adjust to the dark. I can see only one thing. Square and black. A terrible suspicion has me lunging for it, pulling it out into the light. I hear Mum’s voice – high and furious – turning the rucksack upside down, scattering powder packs, tins of food, and a plastic bottle onto the bedroom floor. These are off! This is empty! For God’s sake, Catriona, why are you so useless? This is important! Will you never just do as you’re bloody told, you stupid girl? But it’s not a black canvas rucksack. It’s a lantern. Foggy windows of glass and sharp metal edges. An old candle burned to the bottom of its wick. A rusty hook. It’s almost exactly the same as the lantern that hung from the stern of the Satisfaction. That still hangs from the stern of the Satisfaction. A lantern that three days ago made me shudder hard enough to make my bones crack. Taped to this one’s metal frame is another diary page.
February 16th, 2004
Cat doesn’t get it. She doesn’t even try to get it. It’s like she doesn’t want to. She’s an idiot. She thinks if she pretends something hasn’t happened then it hasn’t happened. But if you forget something, you might forget Everything. And that’s just dumb. That’s what makes you an idiot. Sometimes I hate her for it. Sometimes I wish I didn’t have a sister at all. Sometimes I wish she would just disappear.
I don’t want to think about the El in the Rosemount any more. I don’t want to think about El any more. I hate that I can hear her voice: her snide and mocking scorn. I hate that she can still reach me, hurt me. Make me feel shame so big it’s as if I’m the one disappearing.
I shove both the page and the lantern back under the bed, and begin tearing around the Clown Café like a woman possessed, opening drawers and cupboards, looking under ornaments and books. There are only so many rooms in this house, and El’s treasure hunts were endless: often, there could be three or more clues hidden in every room. She always hated it when I did this – when I found clues out of sequence – but I am sick of blindly dancing to her tune. I pull hard on the dress-up cupboard door. When it won’t budge, I pull harder. It opens with a sticky protest. There are no face paints, wigs, or jumpsuits. It’s completely empty apart from the small square of paper on its only shelf.
I feel suddenly afraid. The hair on the back of my neck stands up stiff, like a long bony hand is inches away from falling heavy onto my shoulder.
August 10th, 1998
Something’s coming. Something’s nearly here.
Sometimes I’m so scared I forget how to breathe. I forget that I can.
The bells scare me all the time. It’s what comes after the bells really I know but it’s the bells I think about the most. Sometimes I think I hear them when I don’t. Sometimes I dream them and wake up with my hand on the door handle to run. Or shaking Cat hard enough to make her teeth chatter. Sometimes I wake up downstairs and those times scare me the most. What if one night the DEADLIGHTS find me before I wake up? Once I woke up on the main deck of the Satisfaction. The wind was too loud and the port tacking sails were flapping like sheets hanging out to dry in the garden. And I know it was because I was trying to look for Dad. Because why does he never come back when HE always does? When ALL the bad ones always do? More often now. All the time.
I drop the page, slam the door shut, run to the bed, and pick up my laptop.
What do you want??? Please, El, just tell me what’s going on.
The reply is immediate. I’M NOT EL. EL IS DEAD.
And still I can’t resist. Even though I know – I know – that resisting is the only sane response left to me.
Then who the fuck are you?
This time, she makes me wait for maybe a minute.
I’M MOUSE.
‘Let’s go out,’ Ross says. ‘I’m sick to death of staring at these four walls.’
And I can’t say no, because I don’t want to. I want to go just about anywhere as long as it’s not here.
I take a long time getting ready. Too long. I put on one of my few expensive dresses, short and black, trimmed with blue silk thread. I pin up my hair, loose and high. I paint my nails the same red as my lips. And when I look in the mirror, I see El before I see me. And then convince myself I don’t.
At the top of the stairs, I’m suddenly paralysed by an awful sense of foreboding. It makes me want to run back to the Clown Café and stay there. Fingers push against my spine, my shoulder blades. Stop being afraid of falling. Or you’ll always be too afraid to fly.
‘You ready?’ Ross calls from the kitchen. And I grip hold of the bannister, heart thundering, until the vertigo, that old terrible urge to let go, to fall, vanishes to the same dark place as Mum’s furious voice.
The restaurant is along a narrow close off Leith Street, its cobbles lit only by old Victorian lanterns. Ross puts his hand on the small of my back as he opens the door. Inside, it’s busy without being noisy; low-beamed and cosy, with red-and-white chequered tablecloths and chocolate-dark walls.
A fat bearded man waves, makes his way over to us.
‘Ross!’ he says. ‘It’s awfy good to see ye, my friend.’