Chapter 29
Devil’s work
I don’t know if it was the idea of the people we’d seen being Russians that hit Freya hardest, or whether it was discovering that Storm had been keeping that information from her, something she treated like the bitterest betrayal.
I never really got the knack of reading Freya right.
Not then and certainly not until it was too late.
I’d got used to her looking and acting so ravaged and worn-down.
Now I think I should have spent more time with her, even though every time I did sit or try and do anything with her I got nothing back but a steady stream of acid comments or derisive contempt.
Maybe that was just her safety valve. Maybe I should have taken it like that and pushed through it.
I certainly would have taken the snottiness and insults all day long if I’d known what would happen when the weight of all those fears finally snapped her.
But the thing is, she didn’t stay hysterical or aggressive, and after the first few minutes she didn’t even seem particularly angry at what she clearly thought was her sister’s betrayal.
It was much worse than that. She just collapsed in on herself.
Some internal structure failed, and whatever had been keeping her upright and functioning just went, like rotten wood.
Once that first flash of anger had burned out she became very flat, as if the energy needed to just talk, to say words, was all she had.
Like putting anything else into them, like emotion or conviction was far beyond her capability.
She did carry on asking questions, she didn’t stop telling us we should all leave and hide because they had dogs, and dogs could and would track us down, but she put no energy into it at all.
It was as if she saw her future, our future, and it was an avalanche heading inevitably towards us but she didn’t have the power even to try and avoid its onslaught so she just stood in the way pointing in its general direction, too tired to step sideways to avoid the inevitable.
They’re coming, she said. So we should go. We should go to the sea. We should find a boat and make it work, and we should go somewhere else. Somewhere safe. It’s what Mother did.
This wasn’t a new suggestion, but she said it now without any real power behind it.
Where she had been acid and disdainful and arrogant she was now just saying words out of habit, not out of hope, and it was much worse, this Freya, the dead-eyed and somehow boneless submissive one.
It was like when a puffball mushroom looks firm and swollen with potential one day, so plump and suddenly so full of life that you just know it’s going to burst, and then the next day it just begins to wither and sag in on itself instead, already dead, rotting from the inside
And that was how she was. But maybe she was also bearing the shame of nearly hurting the baby, of having been so close to doing it.
Maybe, like Cat said, that was the real point when she broke herself inside.
Too late to ask now. She was just lifeless that first night.
Nothing more. Not enough of anything else to even resist. She ate with us, lifelessly, she sat by the conversation, part of it but not really in it, lifelessly, she even fed the babies.
Lifelessly. And when the light left the sky, she even went back to her bed with her sister. Lifelessly.
Cat sat in the dark with me and Digger, looking up at the stars.
Tell me it all again, she said. So I did. I know what she was doing then as well. She was going over everything I’d done to see if she would have done it differently, and so calculate how guilty she needed to feel for not coming with me in the first place.
I know, I said when it was done. You’d have put the bell on the goat yourself and not left Storm to do it.
To my surprise she just shrugged.
Maybe not, she said. And maybe not putting the bell on was what saved you. If they’d heard the bell they might have come to see what it was, and found you.
Maybe, I said. That’s what Storm says.
So maybe it was a good thing, she said.
Yes, I said. If they were bad things. Bad people.
You don’t think they were Russians? she said after a beat. You said they wore the key necklace.
It was my turn to shrug in the dark. I looked up at the sky noting the giant silhouette of the tower blocking out a huge chunk of Milky Way overhead. It loomed over us like a thunderhead, the familiar shape of it suddenly ominous.
I don’t know, I said. I don’t know if wearing a necklace like that makes you a Russian. I mean I think it does, but we don’t know for sure do we? And even if they are, are all Russians bad, or just the one I, you know…
… killed, she said.
Yes, I said.
And the ones who killed the girls’ mother, she said.
I let my eye track along the white smear of the Milky Way until it hit the sharp edge of the tower overhead.
How many keys were round their neck? she said.
The question came out of the blue. I looked at her.
Just one, I said. Why?
There was another period of silence as if she was trying to decide whether to answer my question at all.
There were seven keys on the necklace of the Russian we buried, she said.
She said it as though it meant something important, but it wasn’t clear to me what that was.
So? I said.
I never told you. What was in that tin we found on the body, she said. I thought it was too… distressing.
I opened my mouth to ask what it was but she took a breath and rolled straight on like she needed to get the next words out fast or she’d never do it.
They were fingers, she said. He’d cut off people’s fingers and kept them.
Like trophies? I said.
Maybe not, she said. Because there were seven of them as well. Perhaps it’s a coincidence. Or maybe he was hunting people who wore that necklace with the key.
Why would you do that? I said.
I don’t know, she said. Maybe it’s a coincidence, but it still makes me feel weird imagining those fingers in that tin.
What I do know is that he was a bad man.
And perhaps you’re right, maybe the people you saw weren’t Russians, but were the people that the Russian hunted for his own reasons. So maybe you even saved them too.
I don’t know, I said scratching at my bandaged hand which was itching and throbbing now.
Don’t do that, said Cat. It won’t help.
I knew she was right. But her being right didn’t stop me wanting to do something about that itching which I knew was going to stop me sleeping well.
I can’t help it, I said. I mean, I can, but it’s going to take a lot of willpower and I’m pretty tired.
I felt her nodding in the dark. Then she turned to me.
So, are they coming? Cat said. You think they’re coming?
No, I said. No. They’re not coming. They didn’t know we were people. I heard them saying the dogs had spooked a wild pig in the night.
That’s good, she said.
Yeah, I said.
So why do you sound a bit disappointed? she said.
I didn’t say anything in reply. I wasn’t hiding anything from her. I just didn’t know the answer to that question. Cat did.
You liked them, she said.
No, I said quickly. Too quickly.
I shook my head, as if she could see it in the dark, and then I took the long beat of silence she gave me to think properly about it.
Not really, I said. Not liked. Was interested in is more like it.
They seemed, I don’t know, Cat… They seemed like us, more than they were like the Russian.
I listened to what they were saying and I didn’t understand what they were talking about or who the people were they were talking about, but yes…
Yes? said Cat.
Yes, I liked the way they were with each other, I said. It was like us. They cared for each other, they teased each other and…
Family, she said. You saw a family.
Maybe, I said. Maybe that’s it.
Bad people can have families, she said. Everybody comes from somewhere.
If I hadn’t seen the necklace, if Storm hadn’t shown it to me I might still think they were good, I said. I might have said hello. I might have made a terrible mistake.
Maybe, Cat said again. And maybe I’d have done the same.
You wouldn’t, I said.
Perhaps it wouldn’t have been so bad if I had, she said.
I looked round at her in surprise but could only see the pale smudge of the side of her face in the darkness.
You don’t mean that, I said.
I don’t know, Mouse, she said. I’m so tired I don’t know much about anything right now.
We should both go hunt the goats, I said. Leave the girls with the babies. Storm won’t let Freya do any harm to them and Freya seems too tired to do anything.
Plan in the morning, she yawned. Our heads will be straighter.
My head wasn’t much straighter in the daylight as the itching of my hand had kept me awake most of the night. What had begun as a maddening irritation developed into something hotter and painful, like the itch was now sitting on top of a deep ache that seemed to throb in time with my pulse.
We both knew what to look out for from First Aid and Safety for Dummies – spreading redness, veins darkening, oozing, smell. And Cat’s mum with her one arm was definitely in both of our minds as the worst case that we were guarding against.
Cat unwrapped the dressing and we decided that the swelling hadn’t got bigger, and the wound was scabbed over and didn’t smell as if it was rotten or infected, so on went more honey and vinegar and then new boiled bandage strips.
Cat said she was happy with the wound but thought we should put off going goat hunting for the day to give the healing a chance to really bed in.
The other thing that figured in our decision not to leave immediately was Freya. Her lifelessness shrouded everything, but it changed, filling out into an even more worrying, passive compliance.