The Safe House, page 15
Something broke in Ned’s expression. Esther expected tears and then a hug and they would stand there in the middle of the shop floor with the assistant watching on, bemused. It would be an important emotional moment, a breakthrough, something desperately needed.
Instead, Ned simply tilted his head into hers as they stood side by side. It was only a small gesture but then she felt the weight of his arm across her shoulders and suddenly she didn’t need the tears and the big moment anymore because her life was now going to be made up of these small moments, and all of those put together would eclipse a few seconds standing in this shop.
She smiled and so did he. Their smiles were almost exactly the same.
Chapter 40
A strange dinner ended their day.
Esther had never had any alcohol except in medicines or mouthwash. Mother hadn’t classed it as an essential or a luxury.
It had been Ned’s idea. ‘Just one glass, a spritzer – celebration?’ So she did. She could do anything in the Out There and that was such a hulking thought that she needed a sip or two of alcohol to even think it. She had expected it to taste better but it was surprising how quickly she got used to the tart tingle that fizzed all the way to her brain. A spritzer. It sounded glamorous.
The pub in which they sat had old beams and mismatched chairs. There was a lot of inexplicable brass hanging from the walls and hundreds of framed prints and paintings, mostly of animals and farms and weirdly proportioned pigs. They sat away from the big fire in its dusty grate in case Esther’s demon did not like fire smoke. But that ashy feel got into her mouth anyway and she could imagine the fine grit settling onto her – her hair, her eyelashes, sinking into her pores. That night before she got into bed, she reassured herself, taking careful breaths, she would get into the shower and scrub at every last inch of her to get the dirt off.
Whether they held a normal conversation was beyond Esther’s judgement. They talked about Ned’s journey here and the traffic jams and Tom, inspired by the burger in front of him, explained how to make burgers that had no meat in them at all, a recipe that Esther tried to remember for Mother. It was skating-pond chat. They zipped about on the surface and ignored the dark shapes flitting underneath the ice. Esther had a thousand questions glued up in her mind that never made it onto her tongue and though she spoke a little, she watched more.
She watched the way her father ate his food, leaving his roast potatoes until last, perhaps his favourite bit of the meal. That nugget of knowledge she stored away. She watched him place his knife and fork neatly at an angle when he had finished, and she watched as he rubbed at his chin sometimes when he was thinking of the right words to say. For her the right words didn’t come; her answers to questions were short and halting, her face on fire, but she tried to listen to what he said about his job as manager of a factory, not the steelworks anymore, about his life in his flat, no new wife, no more children.
Brothers or sisters – Esther hadn’t thought of them until now. They appeared as shadowy figures in her mind and puffed away to dust just as quickly, a dust that stung her eyes.
After a while, Ned yawned and pushed his glass away. ‘I think it’s bedtime for the old fogey, yes? Good night’s sleep, clear head for tomorrow.’ He reached out as if to smooth Esther’s loose hair but his hand froze over her head, an awkward papal blessing. ‘Lots of things to work out.’
Esther tightened her grip on her knife. What if he left, walked out of this pub restaurant and never reappeared again? What if he fell on the stairs up to his room, his ankle twisting, a tumble to the bottom, skull meeting floor?
Ned let his hand fall away, leaning over her so she could see the red etchings in the whites of his eyes and the darker shadow of stubble. ‘We’ll see each other in the morning, Esther. I’ve booked two more rooms here at the pub, for you and Tom.’
For a second, the world tilted. Esther had been expecting another car journey in the darkness and then House and Mother … and whatever lay beyond that. It had never crossed her mind that she would spend a night away. A whole night.
‘What?’ she asked, continuing to grip the knife.
Tom, who had been about to take a sip of his drink, put his glass down. ‘I thought we’d go back tonight – check on Esther’s mum and then take it from there. We probably need to involve the police pretty soon …’
‘No!’ Ned said rather too vehemently. ‘No police, not yet – I don’t know what that woman will do if we send over a police car. We can wait, do that tomorrow – it’s late, we could all do with some sleep.’
That woman. Her mother. Esther didn’t like the way the two of them were talking over her. ‘You should have asked me,’ she said to no one because the two men weren’t listening.
Ned continued, ‘It’s more sensible to stay here for the night—’
‘Yeah, but you can’t just assume that’s what Esther would want to do—’
Esther let her knife clatter onto her empty plate. ‘Hello? Are you going to let me speak?’ She heard her mother’s tone in her voice. Tom and Ned looked at her. ‘Thank you.’
Deciding to go back was tempting if only to show her father that he didn’t need to make decisions for her because she was done with people doing that but … she had spent so little time in the Out There and there was so much of it to experience. She wasn’t ready to leave it yet.
‘Exactly,’ Ned said once she had haltingly explained that. He kissed her on the cheek, his lips warm. ‘I’m off to bed but you two stay up, enjoy yourselves. Goodnight, Pips.’
And he was gone, leaving an empty chair between her and Tom.
Suddenly the effects of the small glass of white wine hit her all at once. Her cheeks flamed and the pub became spongy in a way that was actually rather nice, suggesting that, if she fell over, the floor would just gently bounce her back up again – no harm done.
‘I can drive you back to your mum, if you need,’ Tom said, his hand loose on a half-full glass of beer, his injured leg propped up on a chair.
She swirled the part-wine-mostly-lemonade and thought. Back at the House there was just chilly concrete and a mother she didn’t know anymore … and maybe didn’t even want to know. The pub on the other hand was warm and had those soft, bouncy walls that would keep her safe. It had her father, tucked up in a small bed in its roof somewhere, like a bird in its high nest, but not a bird who would be tossed away like rubbish.
‘No,’ she said, her words sounding as rubbery as the walls. ‘I don’t want to go back.’ Tom opened his mouth but she interrupted him, ‘And I don’t want to talk about Mother, or the House, or how I’m feeling either.’
He took a sip of beer. The pub was too dimly lit for Esther to catch his expression but there was a definite smile. ‘So, what do you want to talk about then?’
‘First I’d like another drink. Another spritzer but without the spritz bit please.’
‘So, just the alcohol then?’
‘Yep. That’s it.’ She could understand why people drank – it loosened the connection between brain and mouth so mouth could do what it liked while brain fumbled to catch up. ‘And then … then you’re going to catch me up on what I’ve missed.’
‘Huh?’
‘The last sixteen years.’
‘The last … umm – rightio …’
Tom gave it his best shot. He talked about technology and television, illnesses and inventions, climate and capital cities, work, workouts and what to dance to.
The pub was just scenery and the people in it merely extras who would never get a speaking part. Halfway through explaining, Tom moved his chair closer to hers and though their legs didn’t touch, merely the thought of his knee so near hers did strange things to her stomach.
‘… you know, we’re trying to learn. Mostly. But it’s an uphill struggle – we have a lot of things about pollution and the environment that we have to try to tackle. But I like to think we will, y’know – we’ll work it out because we have to. We have no choice. And certainly no one is hiding away in bunkers like your mother.’
And just like that, the mention of Mother flashed an image of her into Esther’s head: alone, unable to haul herself out of bed, in a dark room without even a glass of water.
She must have staggered when she stood because Tom was suddenly at her side. ‘Whoa there, buddy. Take your time. Are we leaving?’
She wanted to say: ‘I am not your buddy.’ She wanted to make the point that the word “buddy” suggested hand-shaking, high fives and beers after work and that was not them. It was not them at all. But her lips had become as spongy as the walls and she couldn’t trust them to say anything that would make sense.
‘I should have cut you off earlier,’ he said, breath warm on her ear.
Esther had no idea what that meant. Hadn’t she already been cut off, for so many years? Why would he want to do it again? There was too much that she did not understand, for example why women wore boots with little heels that helped you stomp but also made you wobble.
‘I think I need to go to bed,’ she managed to blurt out.
Tom smiled indulgently. ‘It can hit you all of a sudden sometimes.’
The woman behind the bar had big jangly plastic earrings and, rather alarmingly, two sets of eyebrows. Esther briefly thought this was some kind of worrying mutation until she realised that the top ones had been pencilled in just a little too high above the originals.
‘Be there now in a minute, loves,’ she called over to them whilst pulling a pint.
‘What are you doing?’ Tom said as Esther bent down.
It wasn’t obvious to him because he wasn’t wearing them but those boots with their stompy wibbly-wobbly heels – they needed to come off. Now. She pulled at one and threatened to send both of them toppling backwards.
‘Your rooms, is it?’ The woman appeared before them. Esther showed her the boot; she looked surprised but that might just have been the eyebrows.
‘Yes please,’ said Tom.
‘Lucky we had a cancellation, you are – we were fully booked until yesterday. It’s that music festival that’s set up in the field over that way.’ She waved vaguely. ‘It’s been a goldmine this weekend. You here for that?’
‘No.’ Tom caught Esther’s expression. ‘No?’
‘No …’ Esther thought she said quietly but by the way those nearest to them turned their heads, she may have misjudged that.
‘No – I don’t think you’re quite ready for that.’
There he went again, telling her what to do.
‘Probably not,’ she agreed, but that wasn’t going to stop her.
Chapter 41
Stars. Esther knew they were formed by the gravitational collapse of large clouds of cold gas and that they did not actually twinkle, it was just the way human eyes processed the light.
‘As clouds of gas,’ she said to Tom, ‘they don’t really care what humans do. But that doesn’t seem to matter to us because, y’know – wish upon a star and all that …’
She had not spent enough time gazing at them wistfully, like many of the heroines did in some of the films she had seen.
‘You okay, Esther?’
The stars were dizzying.
Currently she was sprawled over an outdoor pub bench, her feet on the seat with her back on the table. Tom was laid out in the same way at her side. She was glad to be lying down, because the sky reeled over her in a way that made her stomach lurch. There was just a bit too much of it, now she was lying underneath it and it wasn’t safely squared off by thick windows. She had the feeling that actually, the sky was blinding white and those stars were just pinpricks in the material thrown across to protect everyone below, material that was slowly weakening and tearing …
‘Esther?’ Tom said.
She made a sound.
‘Are you okay?’
She made another sound that was meant to approximate the word, ‘Fine’.
‘Because you’re gripping the table quite hard?’
Esther looked down at her white knuckles, loosened her grasp and edged up onto her elbows.
‘Do you need to go back inside? Because y’know, if the stars are too much for you then …’
Deliberate pause. Tom stared at her rather too intently, though the gloom prevented her from seeing the amber flecks in his eyes. The flimsy jacket he wore couldn’t have kept him warm, Esther thought. Next time he went searching for two people who had hidden themselves away from the world, he would perhaps dress more appropriately.
This was acclimatising, so he told her. If she wanted to see the nearby music festival – which she very much did because it was just the Out There kind of thing she should see – then she had to get used to wide open sky above her.
‘You’re missing the best bit – look.’ He shifted around to face the opposite way, Esther following his lead.
‘Oh …’
Esther had not seen the moon for such a long time. Due to their positioning, the windows in the House had shown two narrow slices of the world and that world had been both sun and moon-less. Sunrise and sunset had been merely a soft glow starting on one side and ending on the other, the edges of marvellous oranges and pinks lit up from within hinting at the glorious colour that lay out of view. Once she had left the House, Esther knew not to stare at the sun because that would have burnt out her retinas.
But she could stare at the moon. It was much bigger than she remembered and brighter too, its white pockmarked by shadow, not an eye, not a torch beam, not any of those comparisons because there was nothing even remotely like it in terms of sheer luminous beauty. Esther could understand why people worshipped it. After all, it was a whole, huge, shining world hung above their heads.
‘Know the names of any star constellations?’ Tom asked.
‘No.’
They gazed.
‘Luckily, I’m an expert.’ Tom grinned and then squinted, waving his finger at the sky. ‘Well, I think you’ll find over there is the … the … saucepan …’
‘The saucepan?’ Esther smiled and turned her head to watch him, not the stars.
‘Yep, well-known constellation, I’ll have you know. And there, just there, is the zigzag, only seen on certain nights so we’re very lucky to glimpse that one …’
Esther laughed.
‘And then finally, the jewel in the night sky is the … wizard’s hat, just there.’ He pointed again, and she saw more random stars refusing to get into any formation. ‘It’s lucky you have me with you, otherwise you’d have missed out on all of those.’
He squirmed around to lie on his side and face her as she was facing him, both of them smiling. But then, of course, they were only staring at each other, not the sky, and that became a very different situation altogether. Heat rose in Esther’s face.
‘I can’t believe I found you,’ he said. ‘You don’t remember, do you, us playing together when we were little?’
‘Oh … umm … I mean, I’m sure I do—’
‘It’s all right. Obviously I’m mortally wounded by the way I left completely no impression on you but it’s fine … fine …’ He laughed. ‘You liked the turret the best. I was a few years older than you, so I was bit taller and could do the monkey bars better, which really annoyed you. I remember you hanging there from them, desperately trying to move. In the end your dad would hold your feet to help swing you to the next rung.’
Esther could see what he was describing in her mind: a small girl in plaits clinging on to the brightly painted bars, her tongue poking out in determination, a curly haired boy encouraging her from below, but she knew she was just seeing what Tom had described – it wasn’t her memory.
‘My father is alive. And my mother tried to keep me from him.’
Tom shifted up into a sitting position, winced a little and rubbed at his leg before passing her a piece of the chocolate bar they had been sharing.
‘I think your mum is ill. Her mind. But she just wanted to protect you, like most mums.’
‘But most mums don’t lie to their daughters about the world outside.’
‘Well, no – but I haven’t really met anyone like you two. You’ve been on your own for so long. She probably believed what she was saying. And I haven’t met anyone who’s grown up in …’
‘Captivity?’
It was meant to be a joke. Esther had been aiming for light and witty and entertaining and not some strange person to be pitied and spoken to in soft tones. Tom’s face fell.
‘It’s not – I didn’t mean—’
‘No, I know!’
Esther had seen zoos, places where cities kept animals, sometimes to keep them safe, but mostly so people who’d never seen those kinds of creatures before could spend a day gawping at them in between slurping ice-cream. A lot of dates took place in them.
‘What is your life like?’ Esther asked.
Tom fiddled with a loose thread on the zip of his jacket.
‘Me? I’m pretty standard. It may surprise you that I very rarely get my leg stuck in bear traps. Got my job. Got a flat, and parents who nag me to eat my vegetables. You know, the usual.’
Then he paused awkwardly. The usual, Esther thought. He could have told her he talked to aliens on a Saturday and walked his pet fish every evening, going back to his igloo for a meal of dried feet and tree sap.
‘Tired?’
She shook her head. She had never been more alert. Maybe it was Mother’s low-level sedatives finally leaving her system, but it felt as if the edges of the sky had sharpened and that she could peel them back, see what was underneath.
She sat up. ‘Well, that’s enough sitting in the dark talking. I’ve done plenty of that already. Come on – I’ve acclimatised.’ She hadn’t. ‘I don’t want to sleep and I might still be a bit drunk … no, wait – I am definitely still a bit drunk … but I’m done sitting on this bench. Festival please.’
