Chapter Fifteen
I drove round the outside of Barndale Woods to get to the Old Lodge. The track down which Kai had driven me through the middle of the woods looked as if even a Jeep would struggle to get down it now. Pockets of snow lay, broken by bare stretches where the trees grew so close together that even snowflakes couldn’t get between them. It gave the ground a skewbald look. I parked on the road and trekked the quarter mile in.
Cerys came to the front door, breathless and led me through to the kitchen, where Nicholas and Kai were sitting eating toast together, looking remarkably domesticated. ‘And here we have the males of the species,’ she announced in a bad David Attenborough imitation, ‘conducting their bonding session with food prepared by the female.’
‘You offered.’ Kai spread Marmite on another slice.
‘I offered Nicholas toast, not you.’
I pulled out a stool and sat next to my brother. ‘You had Ma and Dad quite panicked yesterday.’
A quick flick of his head. ‘You aren’t angry with me, are you Holly?’ He’d snatched the toast up and was cradling it against him as though unsure if I would allow him to take another bite. ‘I don’t want you to be angry . . .’
I forced my voice to syrupy consistency, although Kai was frowning at me. ‘No, not angry, of course not. I was worried, that was all. Why did you stop taking your meds?’
‘I just wanted to see. Wanted to check that they were working and to see what life felt like without them.’ He looked remarkably normal this morning, slightly more fey than usual in clothes obviously borrowed from Kai, judging by the number of times the legs of his jeans were rolled up. He began eating the toast again, little snatched bites, like an animal that’s just been released from captivity and isn’t quite sure how long the freedom will last.
‘Not voices again, telling you to stop?’
‘No. More like . . . you remember when the OCD cut in big time? That kind of compulsion, like I couldn’t not not take them.’ He smiled, his grey eyes tired and slightly drugged. ‘I’m sorry I freaked you, Holl. I was pretty freaked myself. I got this itching under my skin to be back here, that’s why I got on the train.’
A hot urge to smack him rushed down my arms. ‘I knew I should have put a note in with your packing to get Mum to double check you were taking them!’
He spread his hands wide in an expression of bafflement. ‘Sorry, Holl.’
Cerys rolled her eyes. ‘For God’s sake, Holly.’ With difficulty she hoisted herself onto the stool at Nick’s other side. ‘How old is he?’
‘Nick? Thirty-two. Eighteen months older than me.’
‘And you did his packing? Were you some kind of doormat in a previous life?’
‘He didn’t ask me to.’
Kai pushed a mug of tea at me and pulled a face. ‘I think Cerys is trying to say . . .’
‘Shut up Kai. I can talk for myself. I think you baby Nicholas, Holly. Surely there’s nothing stopping him packing his own suitcase? I mean, being mentally a bit kah-kah doesn’t prevent you from checking you have clean underwear, does it?’ She turned to Nicholas, then frowned. ‘ Does it?’
Nicholas hadn’t even broken eating-stride, even though her voice was bordering on the tetchy. If I’d spoken like that, he’d have been halfway to locking himself into his bedroom before I’d got as far as ‘suitcase’.
‘Well, no. But I like to keep an eye on him. Make sure he’s taking his meds, that kind of thing.’
‘Why?’ Cerys stared around Nicholas at me.
‘Why?’ I repeated stupidly.
‘Yeah. Why? Demonstrably he doesn’t always take them, but that’s up to him, isn’t it? Surely, by checking up on him all the time and mummying him, he’s never having to rely on himself for anything.’ She looked at Nicholas. ‘Do you often not take your drugs?’
‘Not . . . really.’ Nicholas swallowed the last of the toast and began picking at the table top. ‘I mean, sometimes I don’t take them because . . . well, just because. But it’s nice, really it is, Cerys. When things get bad it’s scary and I can’t . . . can’t always see my way out. Holly talks to me and makes sure I don’t do anything stupid.’
Cerys looked triumphant. ‘Well, don’t you think that might be the reason you can’t get a girlfriend? Because the role is already taken by your sister? And, I notice, we’ve just been talking about you and you haven’t even thought to say “oy, I’m sitting right here, you know”.’
‘It’s nice here,’ Nicholas suddenly announced. ‘It’s like real life.’
‘Doesn’t get much realer than this,’ Kai agreed. ‘I’m off to Leeds. Anyone coming? Cerys?’
‘Oh God, no. I can’t bear the thought of having to sit down for an hour. Anyway, Nicholas and I have decided to watch Jeremy Kyle and heckle, haven’t we?’
Nick slipped down off his stool. His borrowed T-shirt hung nearly to his knees and made him look about seven. ‘Yep.’
Kai looked at me. ‘Holly? Trip to Leeds?’
‘I ought to get home and get some contracts in the post.’ Then I thought of Aiden, lurking around my house with his laptop full of wedding lists. ‘Although I probably could take some time off.’
‘And I’d like the company.’ He stretched and I tried not to notice his flat stomach become visible at the gap between jeans and shirt. ‘We’ll be back by lunchtime. Anything happens . . .’
‘Yeah, yeah, I’ll call the hospital. Don’t worry, Nicholas can take care of me.’ Cerys put her arm through my brother’s. ‘We’ll spend the day in front of the TV yelling at the white trash, okay?’
Nick gave her a look that only fell a little short of adulation. ‘I’ve never watched Jeremy Kyle before. I haven’t got a television,’ he said.
‘Oh, you’re in for a treat then.’ She dragged him through to the living room, leaving Kai and I standing together in the kitchen.
‘Do you really think I mother him?’
Kai shrugged. ‘Honestly? Yes, I do. And I notice that you modify your behaviour around him. How long’s that been going on?’
‘You and Cerys don’t understand how he can be. He needs someone to make sure he pays his rent and gets to the hospital for check-ups and stuff. Otherwise he’d float along, and then he’d have one of his bad days and . . .’ I shuddered. ‘And he doesn’t like confrontation, or shouting,’ I finished.
Kai pulled the battered old jacket on. ‘Have you ever thought about what it’s doing to you?’
I stopped, caught in the act of licking crumbs off my moistened finger. ‘To me ? It isn’t doing anything to me. I’m just helping my brother to cope, that’s all.’
He made a complicated face, raised eyebrows and twisted mouth, all without meeting my eye as he did up the jacket. ‘You seem very good at not showing emotion, and I’d guess he’s trained you into that. Even when . . . remember when that guy fired over your head? When I turned up you were obviously shocked stupid and halfway to screaming hysterics, but you wouldn’t let go, wouldn’t break down, even though it was only Cerys and me there, and we wouldn’t have minded. You force yourself not to show anything in case Nick gets upset, and suppressing feelings like that isn’t good.’ Another twisted mouth. ‘Trust me on that one.’
‘All right, Freud.’
‘I’m serious, Holly. You look after Nick at the expense of yourself, and that’s wrong.’
I pulled my shoulders up around my ears, felt the ever-present tension down my spine. ‘He needs me.’
‘Have you ever given him the chance to cope alone?’
I stared at him. ‘What, you mean cut him adrift?’
‘No, no. I mean keep a watching brief from a distance. Check up on him, by all means, but do it over the phone, or meet up every few days. You see him every day at the moment, don’t you?’
I shrugged. ‘Mostly.’
‘Well, like Cerys says, maybe that’s stopping him from taking responsibility for himself.’ He held up a hand to forestall my complaint. ‘It’s okay, Holl, I know. He’s genuinely ill, he can’t and shouldn’t be expected to function like everyone else. But there are support networks you know, for people like Nicholas, it doesn’t all have to fall on your shoulders, and maybe letting other people take over a bit will help him too. They can guide him into more independent living and thinking, so that he stops expecting you to pre-empt his moods and troubles.’ He stood still, hands on the worktop. ‘Although, of course, it would mean that you’d lose your excuse.’
‘What are you on about now?’ He had his back to me so he couldn’t see my carefully prepared expression.
‘You know.’
‘Do I? God, I’m doing a good job of not letting myself in on my own thoughts.’
Kai turned. ‘You use Nicholas to keep from having to build a real relationship. You encourage his dependence on you so that you can put him first, leaving, I must say, anyone else out there in the cold. Sex is so much easier, isn’t it, Holl, than having to try?’
‘There speaks the voice of experience.’
He gave a half-shrug and pushed his hands through his hair. ‘Yeah. That’s how I know. Don’t leave it too long though, to let someone in. You could find yourself like me, deep in the shit with no one to talk to.’
‘You’ve got me,’ I said, small-voiced.
‘Not really I haven’t, have I?’ He stepped closer, put his hands on my shoulders. ‘You’ve locked yourself away from everyone to save your brother from anything that might upset him. I know how it feels, Holl, to not let things out, to keep secrets and be afraid of consequences, but I’m starting to . . . Look, it’s fine to allow yourself to fall. You don’t have to always be in charge, Holly. If you let yourself go, you might find something else comes in. Some real emotion. Or have you spent so long keeping everything calm and un emotional that you don’t really know how that’s meant to go, hmm ?’ He dropped his hands from me and moved away, casually, tucking them into his jacket pockets.
I sighed. I was a bit too tired for all this psychoanalytical chat this morning. ‘Okay, Kai, give it a rest,’ I said. ‘Will Nick be all right here this morning?’
‘Goes without saying, he can stay here as long as he likes. He’s really hit it off with Cerys, and I think he’s been a bit lonely in that flat of his. Blokes he shares with think he’s a weirdo, you know that?’
No, I thought, I didn’t know that. And I saw him every day . Perhaps they were right, seeing so much of Nicholas wasn’t doing any of us any favours. I’d got too close to be able to see any changes in him. ‘Okay, thanks.’
‘Although, she’ll be back off to Peterborough in the next couple of days. Merion rang and the flat is just about back to normal.’
‘Oh. I’ll miss her.’
‘Yeah.’ Kai looked around the multi-gargoyled kitchen, which was clean and contained piles of ironed shirts. ‘Me too.’
On the way to the Jeep I told him about the men in the Land Rover with the shotgun and he froze.
‘Shit, Holly.’
‘I said we should have reported it but the others . . .’
‘Were right. Don’t go getting involved on this one, Holl. I told you to stay clear of that place, didn’t I?’
‘Yeah but, you were doing all International Man of Mystery at the time. Why should I stay away from anywhere I want to be?’
‘Because of men with guns? Just a suggestion.’
‘Yeah, but . . .’
‘What is it with you? You’re threatened, then run off the hill and all you can think of is how indignant it makes you? Why not concentrate on how dead it could make you?’ Now he bent to unlock the Jeep.
‘Who are they?’
‘Get in the Jeep.’
‘Not until you tell me who they are.’
‘Holly, I’m going to Leeds. Where I have to be. You are coming along for the ride. Which you don’t have to do. You refuse to get in and I’ll drive away without you, all right?’
‘Oh for heaven’s sake.’ I got in, but flouncily, so as not to let the side down. Kai looked across at me. The dark of the garage made him look saturnine and inscrutable, he had his hair scooped back so his face seemed to be all eyes. ‘What?’
‘Are you really not scared?’
‘No. Leeds isn’t that far and you’re not a bad driver.’
‘Of the guys on the hill.’
‘This is Yorkshire, not Deliverance country. As far as I’m aware, armed gangs of vigilante yokels don’t have the right to shoot unarmed walkers.’
‘They might do it anyway.’
‘What, for the hell of it? Nah. They’re trying to be big scary men. Probably got one testicle between the lot of them, and they breed pit bull terriers or Rottweilers, so they can go out with them on short chain leads and feel like Real Men.’
Kai put his foot down. ‘What does that make me, then? I haven’t even got a guinea pig.’
Muddy snow sloshed up the side of the Jeep. ‘Oh you must be a Real Man, you wear a leather jacket.’
‘That noise was my ego going down the drain.’
‘And shag women’s best friends.’
‘Ah. I was hoping you’d forgotten about that.’
‘Where in Leeds are we going, anyway? They’ve got some brilliant shops, there’s a Harvey Nicks and everything.’
Kai’s expression went a bit twisted. ‘I’m going to find this PI. Find out why he’s looking for me, find out who sent him.’
I watched him drive for a bit. The Jeep pulled like a fresh horse so he had to keep both hands on the wheel, but he didn’t need to hold it as tightly as he did. ‘And what if it is your mother?’ I kept my voice gentle. ‘Do you want to meet her?’
‘I thought about finding her the day Cerys was born. She was a grandmother and she didn’t even know it, and I thought then she didn’t deserve to know. But then when Cerys got pregnant and I thought, what if she’d decided to go away and have the babies and not say anything? How would I feel, my own daughter having a life like that and me not knowing?’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t know. Curiosity is a bitch.’
‘I’ll come with you, if you want.’
There was a moment’s silence, then a hand came off the wheel and grasped mine in a quick clasp. ‘Thanks.’
Fighting the urge to wind my fingers through his, I kept my eyes front. ‘So. Will there be time to go to Harvey Nicks do you think?’
‘You just spoiled a moment there, d’you know that?’
‘I’m not sure I need any more moments. My life seems to consist of moments. And, hey, have you noticed how there’s hardly any snow now? Aiden said that it all seemed to be centred around Malton, and looks like he was right. We’re, what, twenty miles away and it’s only a scattering.’
Kai raised an eyebrow. ‘Aiden?’
‘Look, you’ve got your shagging-of-the-best-friends, I’ve got Aiden.’ I remembered Aiden standing on my doorstep, priapic in my M she would look like a child being dragged away by a man-eating wolf.
‘Right. I’m off . . . home,’ I said slowly, waiting for her to invite me to come along. But she didn’t.
‘Okay. Well, we’re off to Brambling Fields. There’s a lovely guy there who has a greyhound, and he and Rufus enjoy chasing each other. He’s so nice, really adorable, all blond and sort of spiky. Great sense of humour.’
‘And you can’t say that about many greyhounds,’ I muttered.
Since I couldn’t put it off any longer, I went home.