When her after-school netball practice had been cancelled, it had crossed Jess’s mind that her mum would expect her to find Lily, tell her that she was finishing early, and wait until her sister was free to bring her home. But as she had hovered at the bottom of the stairs that led up to the fifth-form classrooms, something had stopped her. She had thought perhaps it had been her newness at secondary school that had made her fearful of entering the fifth-formers’ territory: just a fortnight since her first day, her August birthday made her one of the youngest pupils in a thousand-strong school. But she had known, deep down, that it was really because she did not want to be at home alone with Lily.
Throughout the summer holidays, Jess had craved an escape from the tears, the tension, the hushed conversations behind closed doors. For months she has not accepted invitations to friends’ houses in case they look at her in the way they had at the end of last term when everyone found out what had happened: those looks of curiosity, pity, sympathy and horror that had made her want to shout into their faces: It’s not my fault. I didn’t want this to happen. I didn’t know how to stop it. She has not wanted to invite friends home in case they discover the truth about how her family are living now: her mum’s tear-stained cheeks emerging only rarely from under the duvet in the spare bedroom; her dad bookending his ever-lengthening days at the office with a quiet restlessness, as though he cannot sit still but does not know where he wants to go; Lily disappearing before Jess is up, often staying out all day as though the house is contaminated and she fears infection, although Jess has no idea where her sister goes, whether she sees anyone, what she does.
Jess cannot seek refuge in her friends for fear they will ask questions she is unable to answer.
She slides the key into the front door, thinking about the Wagon Wheel and mug of hot chocolate she will get from the kitchen before settling down in front of Grange Hill. Closing the door behind her, a shiver tiptoes down her spine and she fears momentarily the reprisals when her mum discovers her transgression. Having only recently celebrated her eleventh birthday, she is not supposed to be in the house alone.
It is only when she turns and sees what is at the top of the stairs that the cold trail along her spine spreads towards her ribs, her neck, her head, until her whole body is ice cold from her scalp to her toes.
Jess stares, unblinking, knowing what she is seeing yet unable to comprehend it.
It is her dad, but also not her dad. He is not standing on the landing, waving and smiling, calling her ‘petal’ and asking about her day at school. Her dad is swinging from a beam on the ceiling, the cord of her mum’s navy blue dressing gown around his neck, his head slumped forward, his legs dangling beneath him.
Jess stares, cannot take her eyes off him, even as she feels the nausea swirl in her stomach. She stares at his suit and tie, his freshly polished shoes, waiting for him to raise his head, smile at her, tell her it’s all some terrible joke. But he does not move.
She does not move her eyes from him, yet somehow she absorbs the rest of the scene: the broken dining chair lying at the bottom of the stairs; the fat double knot under his chin; the deafening silence that seems to be pressing down on her until she fears it will crush her on the hallway floor.
Jess does not move, her body remote, distinct, as though it no longer belongs to her.
And then, all of a sudden, a sound is ringing in her ears and vibrating across her skin, but it is only when she hears a key in the front door, only when Mrs Sheppard, their neighbour, bursts into the hall and gasps, that Jess realises the sound she can hear is screaming and that the screams are her own.
She is aware of Mrs Sheppard’s arm around her shoulders, of being led into the sitting room and lowered onto the sofa, of Mrs Sheppard speaking but the words feel gluey in Jess’s ears. She sits on the sofa, her whole body trembling, and she knows there is nothing she can do to stop it. She hears Mrs Sheppard whispering in the hallway and, for a split second, she thinks she has got it all wrong, that Mrs Sheppard is chatting to her dad, that it has all been some terrible misunderstanding. But above the noise of the blood pounding in her ears she hears the words ‘police’, ‘dead’ and ‘body’ and they sound strange, unreal, as though they have drifted accidentally into her house from some other time and place.
Mrs Sheppard returns and sits down next to her, holds her hand, says the same words over and over: You poor girl. You poor, poor girl. It’s all going to be OK. Jess can hear the horror in her voice, knows that what she is saying is not true. All Jess wants is her mum to be there, to hold her and stroke her hair. And with each passing second that she is absent, the panic grips tighter around Jess’s throat that perhaps something has happened to her too, perhaps her mum will never come to rescue her.
And then there are two police officers in the room – a man and a woman – though Jess has no recollection of them arriving. They are asking her questions but she cannot get their words to stick in her ears so she stares silently at her hands, watching them tremble, wishing that everyone would stop talking, that they would all go away. She senses Mrs Sheppard buzzing around the room, sees the policeman scribbling into his miniature notebook, hears the policewoman speaking into the walkie-talkie attached to her shoulder. She wants them all to leave but knows she could not bear to be left alone with what is at the top of the stairs.
And then suddenly her mum is there, holding her tight as if fusing their bodies together. Jess feels the first hot tears burn her cheeks, feels the heat of her breath pressed against her mum’s chest, feels the air scorch her throat and char her lungs. She buries herself in her mum’s cotton blouse, not knowing whether she feels relief at her presence or dread in their collective horror.
She does not know how long they stand there, her and her mum, locked inside their shock and grief. She hears more people bustling in and out of the house but will not listen to their explanations of who they are and what they are doing because then she would have to acknowledge that this is actually happening. Instead, she clings to her mum, feeling as though she is adrift in a vast ocean and that tethering herself to someone else is her only chance of survival.
She senses Lily’s presence before she sees her.
And then her sister is standing next to them, and her mum is explaining what has happened, and Jess wants to clamp her hands over her ears, wants someone to take the words away and with them the pain. And when she hears Lily’s sharp intake of breath, when she hears it exhumed in loud, potent sobs, all she wants to do is scream into Lily’s face: This is all your fault. If you hadn’t said what you said, if you hadn’t done what you did, Dad would still be alive.
Fury weaves through Jess’s ribs and encircles her heart. She had thought she couldn’t hate Lily any more than she had at the beginning of the summer but it is as though her anger three months ago was nothing more than a dress rehearsal for the enmity now coursing through her veins.
Now, she thinks. Now is the time to tell her mum the truth about what happened. Her mum needs to know that this is all Lily’s fault.
She prepares to speak, to say the words that have been eluding her all summer. But her mum begins to cry so loudly that the sound fills Jess’s ears, swims inside her head, slips down and lodges in her throat. And she knows she cannot say anything, that she does not have the courage or the cruelty – she is not sure which – to tell her mum the truth. Instead Jess cleaves to her mum and closes her eyes. But all that greets her is the image of her dad’s body looming over her like a grotesque version of the stick men she used to draw in a game of Hangman. As Jess clings to her mum, grief and fury simmering in her chest, a single thought hammers inside her head: Lily is the reason that her dad is swinging from a noose at the top of the stairs. If it weren’t for Lily, the man Jess loves most in the world would still be alive.
Chapter 17
Audrey
The illuminated digits on the bedside alarm clock flicked listlessly from one number to the next.
3.57 a.m.
Audrey turned onto her side, experiencing a breathlessness that had been bothering her for weeks, but until now she hadn’t dared question its cause.