You Against Me

Thirty-one

The curtains billowed like sails. Sunlight flickered on the carpet. On the bed, Tom lay with his eyes shut listening to his iPod. Ellie stood on the landing watching him. He looked like a perfectly ordinary boy in a perfectly ordinary room. No padlock, no police tape, the door open wide.

Tom Alexander Parker, who she’d grown up with for years, and surely he wouldn’t let anything terrible happen?

He must’ve felt Ellie there, because he sat up suddenly and looked right at her. He took off his headphones. ‘What’s up?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Why are you standing there staring at me? You trying to creep me out?’

‘Dinner’s ready, that’s all. Mum said to tell you.’

Ellie kneeled at the dog’s basket, stroked her muzzle, stared deep into her milky eyes, said, ‘How are you, my beautiful grey nose? How’s my lovely old girl?’

‘Eleanor,’ Dad said, ‘will you please sit back down at the table and leave the dog alone?’

She sat down. Mum carried a dish of lamb chops across to the table and Tom stabbed two of them up with a fork. Mum went back to the oven and turned peas and carrots into bowls. Tom passed the chops to Dad. Mum put the vegetables on the table and Tom helped himself. Mum went back to the oven and pulled out a tray of roast potatoes, using a tea towel as a glove.

‘Any mint sauce?’ Dad said.

‘Yes, yes, it’s coming.’

‘Gravy?’

‘That too.’

Dad tapped his fingers on the table to get Ellie’s attention. ‘Are you going to help your mother, or are you just going to sit there?’

‘I suppose,’ Dad said, ‘we have to understand she must be very damaged to make up such a story in the first place. She comes from a very under-privileged background – single mum on benefits, three kids, no prospects for any of them. No wonder the girl was attracted to Tom.’

Tom waved his lamb chop in agreement. ‘She was pretty impressed with the house.’

His lips shone with grease, his fingers too. He ripped meat from the bone with his teeth as though he hadn’t eaten for days.

Ellie said, ‘What was the food like when you were locked up?’

‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

‘Was it worse than school dinners?’

Tom glared at her. ‘Did you hear me?’

‘Did you get three meals a day, or only one?’

‘Ellie, I’m not in the mood.’

‘Did you share a cell, or were you put in isolation?’

Dad slammed his fork down. ‘That’s enough!’ A spatter of gravy flew across the table and landed on the cloth. ‘If you can’t be civil, then go to your room. What the hell’s got into you, Eleanor?’

‘Take your plate out, please,’ Mum said quietly, ‘and put it in the dishwasher.’

Ellie pushed back her chair, stood up and walked out into the garden.

The grass on a warm April day smelled luxurious. Ellie lay facedown and raked her fingers through it. It reminded her of the holidays they used to have camping, how the grass by the sea tasted salty, how she and Tom would lie in the dunes and chase sand bugs with their fingers.

Mum came out and sat next to her. ‘Why are you doing everything conceivably possible to annoy your brother?’

Ellie twisted onto her back, crossed her arms under her head for a pillow. ‘Is Dad the love of your life?’

‘Of course.’ Mum frowned gently.

Behind her mother’s shoulder, the house looked like a fancy cake on a pale green lawn. Sunlight reflected in the windows, like tiny fires behind every pane of glass.

‘Come on, Ellie, talk to me. These last few days, you’ve been so quiet.’

But how do you say unspeakable things to your very own mother?

‘Before you met Dad, who were you?’

‘I was a secretary, you know that.’ She smiled fondly at the memory. ‘Dad asked me out the first time we met. I was seeing someone already, so I said no, but whenever he came to my office he’d ask again. He was very persistent. Once he waited by the lifts at the end of the day and followed me home.’

‘He sounds like a stalker.’

‘No, it was romantic! You’re always so hard on your dad, Ellie. He was lovely to me – bought me presents, told me I was special. He said fate meant us to be together. Eventually, I gave in.’

‘What happened to your boyfriend?’

‘He found someone else.’ She made a shrug with her hands, as if there was no alternative. ‘Dad wanted me more.’

The lounge was empty. Ellie turned on the TV, put the remote on the table and settled back to watch a re-run of Friends. Food and TV were very comforting. Three minutes later, Dad and Tom came in.

‘What’s this rubbish?’ Dad picked up the remote and switched channels.

‘I was watching that.’

‘The golf’s on.’

‘But I was here first.’

He gave her a tired smile. ‘You’ve got a TV in your room, haven’t you? Come on, Ellie, give us a break, there’s two of us.’

Tom shook his head, as if to say, What we have to put up with, eh? Then he sat down and put his feet up on the coffee table.

Dizzy behind her eyes, sharp stabbing pains in her head, like holding her breath underwater, as she reached for the door handle. You can do this, she thought. You have to face it some time. She pushed the door open a few inches – enough to see the new laptop, new duvet, new bed sheets, new mattress. Everything the forensic people took away that night had been replaced. It was as if nothing had happened.

She shut the door and went back to her room to revise.

Tom came in without knocking. He stood in the doorway and Ellie studiously ignored him. ‘You’re depressed,’ he announced, ‘so I bought you a Creme Egg.’

He left it next to her revision books on the desk and sidled out.

Easter eggs were officially swapped the next morning. Ellie ate both of hers for breakfast. In the afternoon, the neighbours had a barbecue and invited them. Ellie didn’t go. She lay on her bed with the window open, listening to laughter drift across the fence. She revised the collapse of Communism and ate three hot cross buns.

Later, she walked into her father’s study.

‘Ellie,’ he said, ‘I didn’t hear you knock.’

‘When you and Mum met all those years ago and you asked her out, she didn’t say yes straight away, did she?’

He turned from his desk, frowning. ‘What is this?’

‘What would you have done if she kept saying no?’

He sighed. ‘I’ve got things to do, Eleanor. Please shut the door on your way out.’

After underwear, Mum rolled on her tights, rolling them so slowly that Ellie knew she was distracted. After tights, she pulled on her skirt, then her new blouse from Boden, carefully doing up the buttons, as if care and tidiness would get them all through. After shoes, a chain for her neck. It had been a week since Easter and Ellie had something to say, had been trying to say it for days, but her courage was waning.

‘I went to look at you and Tom in your beds this morning,’ Mum said. ‘I haven’t done that since you were babies.’ She turned to Ellie. ‘Your bed was empty.’

‘I went for a walk.’

A pause, then, ‘You’re becoming a stranger to me, Ellie.’

Mum, I have something to tell you – you better sit down.

Ellie swilled the words around her mouth. How would it feel to say them out loud?

Dad kissed one of Mum’s shoulders – lovely and surprising on the stairs. ‘I popped into town and got your mother an egg,’ he told her, ‘hand-crafted and half price from that sweet shop, look.’ He showed her the box. Gold foil dazzled their faces.

‘That’s kind of you, Simon,’ she said.

‘A bit after the event, but she won’t mind, will she?’ He smiled. ‘Whenever you’re ready, we’ll be off to see her, eh?’

Ellie, in the hallway looking up at them, thought, I am wrong, I am wrong, I am wrong.

The dog could barely flap her tail. Ellie carried her outside in the basket and set her on the lawn so she could feel the sun. She sat next to her to keep her company, gave her new names – Beauty, Poor Lamb, Sweet Girl – stroked her grey nose, told her she remembered her being a puppy when Gran first got her, all those summers running together on the beach.

The dog looked at her as if she too remembered these things – such a sweetly puzzled look that Ellie leaned in to kiss her.

‘That dog’s beginning to smell,’ Tom said, coming up silently behind her.

Go away, Ellie thought. I don’t want you near me.

A perfectly ordinary room – no padlock, no police tape, the door open wide. Tom was downstairs watching TV, but here was his desk and new laptop, his chair, his laundry spilling from its basket. His wallpaper was blue. So were his curtains and duvet and pillows.

Blue for a boy.

Ellie took five steps inside and touched the edge of the bed with one finger. She closed her eyes and let memories leak in.

‘She’s drunk!’

Dad’s jaw clicked with fury and Ellie laughed. Mum and Tom looked on in horror, which made her laugh even harder.

Dad said, ‘Breathe on me, Eleanor.’

She huffed right in his face.

He frowned. ‘Apples? I don’t even have any cider.’

‘Punch.’ Ellie demonstrated with her hands – the apples she’d chopped, the little oranges she’d peeled, the vodka she’d poured, glug, glug, from his best bottle, the juice from the fridge. ‘Lots of juice,’ she slurred, pointing a finger at Tom, ‘hides the taste.’

‘She should go to bed,’ Tom said. ‘Shouldn’t she? Sleep it off.’

Ellie laughed again, arms open wide. ‘Gonna carry me up?’

The room spun, like it’d got caught in the wind, as Mum unbuckled Ellie’s belt, pulled down her zip and yanked off her jeans.

‘Silly girl,’ Mum said.

Ellie clutched at her. ‘I have to tell you-’

‘No talking.’ Mum pulled the duvet over her. ‘Try and sleep. I’ll check on you in a while.’

Lights smeared the ceiling as the door shut behind her and the room whirled faster and faster.