‘No. No.’ Because, of course, that makes no sense. No sense at all. My head is pounding, my mind is racing as fast as my heart. Faster.
I try to push past him, and my light jumps drunkenly across the boundary wall on the opposite side of the alleyway. I see an X drawn in black marker on a brick half a foot from the ground, and sink to my knees, press my fingers against it. I think of El’s letter: X MARKS THE SPOT. It was here. El’s life-size painting of the pirate Captain Henry Morgan, The Island’s blues and yellows and greens behind him. It was here.
Mum knew that there was a bolted door in the alleyway of next door’s house – Ross’s house – a door with no lock that led to a front garden with no gate. She knew, too, that I could no more climb up a ladder to the skylight than climb back down over the washhouse’s roof and the boundary wall. She’d never been able to cure my terror of heights, of falling – neither through kindness nor cruelty. And El and I had to escape together – because we would not leave each other. Never so long as we lived. But what Mum knew the most – what Mirrorland had shown her, had shown us – was that there was always another way. A way through. A way out. And in the end, that way out was this snecked-rubble boundary wall between two alleyways.
Andy Dufresne took twenty-seven years to tunnel out of Shawshank Prison. Mum said we had only weeks, but could afford to be no less careful, no less meticulous. We never questioned her. Never complained. El took to THE PLAN like a duck to water, if only to follow in the footsteps of her hero. And I did what I have always done. I followed her.
We didn’t use a rock hammer, but a heavy claw hammer that made our shoulders ring and ache. Sometimes, when we stopped and leaned heavily against the cool stone of Mirrorland, we could hear Mum’s calm and steady voice filtering down from the pantry above as she pretended to read to us, to teach us what we’d already learned.
We hid the growing hole in the garden wall behind Captain Henry’s painting, and we hid our excavations in cardboard boxes and the umbrella bases on the Satisfaction. When they became too full, Mum sewed cloth bags inside the legs of our prison-gear clothes. Andy Dufresne had called them cheaters: long, narrow sacks that could be opened by pulling on lengths of string in his pockets, scattering the evidence of his excavations all over the Shawshank’s exercise yard. And so we would pack our own cheaters with stones and powdered brick, and traipse slowly through the kitchen and the scullery – if we were unlucky, past Grandpa’s rolling eyes, his Aff tae join the chain gang again, bloody wee mentalists – and then down the scullery steps to our exercise yard. Where we would march around and around, kicking up the silver and grey chuckies, while pulling on the strings in our dungaree pockets and scattering our secrets, just like Andy Dufresne. Over and over, day after day, because Mum was too afraid for half measures. Because Grandpa might not have known about Mirrorland, and he might have been deaf as a post, but he wasn’t stupid. And the whole house was his domain.
‘Cat, will you talk to me? What the hell is going on?’
I ripped Captain Henry away from the wall, and momentarily balked at the dark hole through to the alleyway on the other side. El pinched my arm, pushed me down. We have to go! The cold ground scraped against my knees as I turned, reached for my rucksack. And then that terrible thud of the fuse-box master switch, and the lightbulb winked out, leaving a darkness darker than anything. When the door to Mirrorland crashed open, El whimpered. When the stairs started shaking, shouting, Mum screamed. And when I started pushing into the hole, I knew there wouldn’t be enough time. Not for both of us.
A roar like hot wind, like thunder, like ironwoods and banyans torn out of the earth, a landslide of mud and stone. Where the fuck d’ye think ye’re goin’? His fists, his feet, a breath before each punch or kick landed. For once I didn’t feel it, any of it. El screamed, she grasped hold of my coat before she was jerked back into space. And for a second – just one pure second – I kept on going without her, kept pushing into our escape, the edges of it rough and jagged, catching on my hair, my hands, my coat.
But after that second there was no air, no night, no autumn smells of woodsmoke or rotten leaves. No freedom. No hole. My fingers scrabbled in the dirt and the debris, but something on the other side of the wall was blocking the way. Something cold and hard and impossibly heavy. My mind imagined an African elephant in iron chain-mail armour, a tank with gun turrets and stencilled black numbers. You cannot pass.
And then I was hauled back into Mirrorland, my head smashed hard against stone. A curse, a loud and booming laugh. Mum lying prone and unmoving on the ground, a thread of light washing cold silver across her hair and bloody temple.
A deadlight. Because Bluebeard had finally caught us.
‘What was it?’ My voice is a dull, flat monotone. ‘A grit box? A garden waste bin?’
‘What?’
I close my eyes. They sting, even though they’re bone dry. I push against the wall as I stand up, and I make myself look at Ross, keep looking at him. ‘You blocked our escape into your alleyway. You pushed something up against the hole, so we couldn’t get out.’
‘What?’ His horror is palpable. ‘No! Of course I didn’t.’ He moves forwards. His gaze locks onto mine. ‘I was – I am – on your side. Always. I hated that old fucker. I helped you. I’d never hurt you.’
‘Did you hurt El?’
‘No.’
‘Did you kill her?’
His fingers dig into my arms. ‘No! For fuck’s sake, I loved – I love – both of you!’
I take a breath. ‘You’re lying about that night. I know you are. The hole was blocked from your side, Ross. Yours. And if you’re lying about that, then you’re—’
‘This is El talking. Or this house. This fucking house.’ He stops, lets go of my arms. ‘Look. It’s been a shitty few days, a shitty few weeks. Come back upstairs, and I promise we’ll talk. Just—’
‘I’m not going anywhere.’ Because here is where I get to remember, here is where I get to be whole again. And I’m not scared enough of Ross to sabotage that. Not yet.
He holds his palms up. ‘All right. Then stay here. I’ll go upstairs, I’ll unlock the doors. And then I’ll bring us down something to drink and we can talk right here, okay? If that’s what you want.’
I don’t answer. Outside, the storm seems to be waning; the roars and cracks are getting farther and farther apart, the drum of rain is no longer hard and echoless.
Ross moves closer. He’s smiling with his teeth, his eyes. He kisses my cheek, and his skin is smooth. I think of the Bathroom bell – F sharp or G flat. He shaved for me. I shiver.
He leaves me the hurricane lamp, his shadow passing over its light before I hear the resumed creak of the staircase.
I take the phone out my pocket. No signal. And no reply from Rafiq. This should freak me out every bit as much as Ross’s promise to return with something to drink; as still being trapped down here – and, for that matter, up there – but it doesn’t. Panic tries to return, but it’s only an itch, a dull suggestion. I feel eerily calm, removed from the present. Perhaps because at least half of me got left behind in this place twenty years ago. When I press my cold fingers against my cheek, I can still feel the ghost of Ross’s touch.
Annie winks solemnly at me inside the washhouse door, standing tall in her high buckled boots, alligator-skin belt, and cowhide jacket with buttons made from whalebone. Sometimes you have to be brave. Even when you’re a grand wee coward.