Polly is watering her plants when I step into her office, a row of shrivelled-looking cacti lined up along the windowsill. I’d had a cactus on my desk at home that Mischa gave me. She chose it specially because it looked particularly obscene. Polly’s cacti do not. They look as though, if they could speak, they would plead in their tiny cactus voices for the sweet release of death.
‘Whatever the opposite of green fingers is, that’s what I’ve got,’ Polly says. ‘My girlfriend calls me a herbicidal maniac. I thought it would be different with a cactus but…’ She gestures hopelessly at the stunted evidence of her failings.
‘I kill plants too,’ I say and she smiles. ‘You need Claudia. She’s like some kind of plant whisperer.’
‘Claudia? Ah yes, your stepmother.’
I almost smile. ‘She hated me calling her that.’ I don’t add: So I did, just because I knew it bothered her.
Polly looks confused.
‘Because, you know, fairy tales,’ I explain. ‘I’d introduce her as my wicked stepmother.’
‘Right,’ she says, smiling. ‘It was a joke.’
Almost, I think, but nothing ever managed to be completely a joke between Claudia and me. There was always an undertow of effort that somehow flattened any attempt at humour into earnestness (her) or snark (me). But I couldn’t explain it to this woman. I couldn’t even explain it to myself.
‘They say it actually does help if you talk to plants,’ Polly says. ‘Is that what she does?’
‘She used to sing to hers,’ I said. ‘It was kind of annoying to be honest. She said you just had to love them. Anything you do with love you do well, she said.’
‘She sounds like a very wise person.’
‘Oh yes, she was.’
I couldn’t tell her that it had bothered me. It seems so stupid now. It did even back then. I didn’t know why it did. But I’ve had time to think about it and now I do. It was because Mum hadn’t been full of wisdom. I didn’t know much about her but I did know that. I wish I could explain it to Claudia, now I understand it. But maybe, knowing Claudia, she already knew.
‘Can you tell me what happened to Claudia, Clem?’
Here it is. The point where everything changes. The door between before and after. It shimmers in the air, a cherry-red-painted door with a brass number five on it. I must push it open and walk up the stairs to my room. The final seconds of our old life. There I am, not knowing it, just thinking it’s another day.
There I am, peering into my bedroom mirror, horrified, trying to blank out the morning noise of the house, Billie’s whining (‘But I don’t like tights, they’re itchy’), Claudia’s snapping (‘Just come and eat this cereal now otherwise it’ll be soggy and you’ll still have to eat it’)… It was still dark outside, cold even with the heating on, and I’d left it till the last possible moment to force myself out of bed. My head felt as grey and foggy as the outside world. I took a close-up picture of my nose and sent it to Mischa.
See what I mean? Literally a boil.
I dabbed at the spot some more with concealer but it only made it look worse. I waited for Mischa to reply with some sarcastic comment but she didn’t. I was probably going to miss the bus and be late for school again, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to hurry. I was wondering whether I could convince Claudia to call in sick for me (not a chance) and, mouth wide open, was trying to peer at my tonsils for tell-tale signs of illness that definitely required a day of TV-watching and ice cream, when there was a crash from downstairs so loud that I jumped and got mascara smeared across my forehead.
‘What the…?’
I leapt up, taking my earbuds out.
‘B? Claudia? You okay?’
There was shouting from downstairs, men shouting.
I froze. Dad wasn’t here. He’d left early today. So who was that shouting?
And then Claudia yelled, ‘No, stop! You can’t do this. Get your fucking hands off me—’
– Claudia doesn’t swear like that –
and then Billie, screaming –
‘Mama! No!’
Shit.
By the time I got to the stairs there was a crowd of men and a woman, all with black uniforms and blank faces, crowded in the hall. Loads of them, it seemed, with all their noise and bulk and force, though afterwards I realized it could only have been four or five. Two of them had hold of Claudia. Her hands were handcuffed behind her back. The woman was in the sitting-room doorway holding on to Billie – one leg in her tights, one still bare – as she tried to get to Claudia. My slow, morning brain tried to take all this in: Claudia, the handcuffs, the uniforms and whatever weapons were concealed in them, like a movie or something off the TV – and all of it in our hall, the family portrait Claudia had insisted on having done by a professional photographer, all of us fake-grinning down on everything from the wall, Billie’s packed lunch on the hall table.
‘You’ve got no right!’ Claudia was shouting.
It’s a mistake. They must see this is ridiculous.
‘You can’t do this. There’s an appeal… I’ll get my passport if you just let me go—’
‘Don’t worry,’ one of the men said. He was tall and broad, red-faced. ‘We’ll take what we need.’ He nodded two of the men towards the stairs. They pushed past me as though I wasn’t there, heading up towards our bedrooms.
‘Hey!’ I tried to shout, but it came out quiet and high, not like my voice at all, like a little kid’s voice.
I thought of the knickers lying on my bedroom floor, my posters and photos, my stuff—
‘Hey!’ I tried to sound angry, not scared. ‘You can’t go in there!’
But obviously they could. I heard them opening drawers and knocking things over and I wanted to go up to stop them but Billie was screaming and Claudia was almost out the door and as Billie struggled I thought, Have they got weapons? Have they got guns? I mean, they couldn’t use them, could they?
‘Please,’ Claudia said, her voice different now, not shouting. I could hear she was fighting to sound calm. ‘Okay. I’ll come.’
‘No!’ I said. ‘Claudia, this isn’t right! Tell them. It’s a mistake.’
‘Clem,’ she said, sharp. ‘Leave it.’
‘But—’
‘See?’ she said to the men holding her. ‘I’m not resisting. Just let me say goodbye to my little girl – you can see how upset she is.’
They didn’t let go of her.
‘Have you got kids, any of you?’ Claudia said, desperate beneath the forced calm. ‘Please.’
Red Face said, ‘Wait.’ He nodded towards the woman who was still holding on to Billie.
She walked forwards till she was close enough that Claudia could have reached out to them if her hands weren’t cuffed behind her back. The woman kept a grip on Billie’s arms.
‘Let go of her, can’t you?’ I said, unable to stop myself, breathless with fear and adrenalin and fury. ‘She’s just a kid. What do you think she’s going to do?’
No one seemed to hear.
‘Say what you’ve got to say,’ Red Face said to Claudia.
She took a breath. ‘Billie, it’s okay,’ Claudia said. ‘Don’t cry. Look at me, B. I’m all right. See?’ She even smiled. I knew it was superhuman, the strength it took for her to do that.
‘Mama…’ Billie’s voice was small and scared.
‘It’s all right. I’m going to go with these people now and I’m going to get this sorted out, yeah? You hear me. It’s wrong. I’m going to put it right, okay? And you mustn’t worry about me. Promise?’
Billie said nothing.
‘It’ll be okay, B. You’ll be okay. Dad will be here. And you’ve got Clem. She’ll take care of you.’
She looked up at me, her face taut, trying to hide her fear. In a low, urgent voice, she said, ‘Call your dad. Tell him what’s happened. And, Clem…’
She stopped. I realized there were tears on her face, but her voice stayed steady.
‘Claudia—’
‘Look after B for me. Remember what I said to you, before. You made me a promise, yeah?’
I stared at her. I did remember.
‘Keep it,’ she said.
‘Enough,’ said Red Face. ‘Now move.’
‘I love you, B,’ Claudia called over her shoulder as they pushed her out of the door, but Billie couldn’t see her as she said it, there were too many people in the way.
‘Mama!’ Her scream echoed the panic I felt pounding in my chest. This is really happening.
The woman who’d been holding Billie back let go of her arms and I ran down to her, holding my little sister tight as she flung herself at me.
There were heavy footsteps on the stairs behind us. The door slammed.
And it was just us, just Billie and me, her sobbing, inconsolable, though I tried, pulling her to me, rubbing her back, holding her head against me, stroking her hair.
‘It’s all right,’ I could hear myself saying, over and over. ‘It’s all right.’
I called Dad, still holding Billie to me, hardly able to find words to describe what had happened, unsure even what had happened, everything so unreal except for Billie, her shuddering breath, my arms around her.
And then—
The strangest stillness. The radio still chattering in the kitchen. Traffic moving very slowly on the M25 anticlockwise between junctions 19 for Watford and 15 for Heathrow… It’s faraway, maybe not even real, an echo of something from very long ago. We can hear it but we’re somewhere else now, in a place caught outside of time, everything stopped.
No. As I pulled Billie tighter to me, I could feel my heart thud against her. As long as she was close to me, I knew that I was still here, still breathing, that time was moving. We were moving with it, carried by it to an unfamiliar place. We clung to each other, adrift in the strange, new world we found ourselves in, the wreckage of our old life floating around us: plastic lunchboxes, PE kits, Claudia’s half-drunk cup of mint tea, Billie’s upturned cereal bowl, the milk and Weetabix mush soaking into the carpet.
I carried Billie through to the sitting room awkwardly, remembering how easily I used to swing her up onto my hip when she was a toddler, showing her off everywhere like a pet. She was too big to be carried now, but she clung to me tight and wouldn’t let go. The TV was still on, cartoons that Billie pretended to be too grown-up for but still watched every morning while she got ready for school.
Then Billie and I just sat there, staring blankly at adverts for nappies and yoghurts, waiting for Dad.
‘When will Mama come back?’ Billie said at last.
‘Soon,’ I said.
I was wrong.
‘Clem?’
I surfaced from deep blankness and saw Billie standing by my bed holding her rabbit nightlight and Luna. She looked very small.
‘Billie. You okay?’
She shook her head.
‘Can’t sleep?’
She shook her head. Dad and I had tried to persuade her to sleep in with one of us, but she’d insisted on staying in her own room. ‘Maybe she just wants things to feel normal,’ Dad had said.
‘Want to come and sleep in my bed?’ I said.
I could see she wanted to say yes but she hesitated.
‘If Mama comes back late from work, she always comes in to give me a kiss. If she gets home tonight and I’m not in my bed she’ll be worried.’
She was waiting for her mum. I remembered what that felt like.
‘She won’t be back tonight, B,’ I said, gently.
Billie frowned. ‘How do you know?’
‘It’s late now, isn’t it?’
‘Will she be back tomorrow?’
I wanted to reassure her but I couldn’t lie. After Mum left, no one exactly lied to me, but I remember the blurring of the possible and impossible, the maybes and the let’s see tomorrows. The hope just made things worse.
‘Dad might know more in the morning, okay? But, for now, we need to sleep.’
‘Where will Mama sleep tonight?’
Where would she sleep? I couldn’t imagine, or didn’t want to.
‘I don’t know, B.’
‘She didn’t take her pyjamas. Will they give her some?’
Claudia’s neatly folded pyjamas would be under her pillow, where she’d put them this morning, in that other life.
‘I think so. Come on. Why don’t you get in.’
Billie climbed in but she didn’t lie down. ‘Why did they have to take her when she hasn’t done anything wrong?’
‘I don’t know, B.’
‘What if they come back and arrest me? Or you or Dad?’
‘They won’t!’ I hugged her. ‘I promise.’
But even as I said it the thought slid into my head: did I even know that? I’d believed Claudia was safe, even after she got the letter, because things like that just didn’t happen, not here, not to us… Now though, what was impossible and what wasn’t, who was safe and who wasn’t, seemed less clear.
‘Dad won’t let them. And I won’t let them,’ I told her firmly. But now I was lying. Billie knew it too, of course. She’d seen me watching helpless as they took her mum away. She knew we couldn’t stop them.
I remembered my promise to Claudia.
‘If we need to, we’ll go and stay at my grandpa’s,’ I said, knowing Billie would love the idea. She fantasized about living in the country, so much so that Claudia used to find houses in the middle of nowhere on property websites and say, ‘Look! We could live in a bloody palace compared to here. This one’s got five bedrooms and a paddock!’
And Dad would roll his eyes and say, ‘Apart from the eight-hour commute, sounds great. And I’m sure the paddock will come in really handy for that horse we haven’t got.’
So now I told Billie how Grandpa lived in a house like that, just not as big. And I told her the village was just like how you’d draw a picture of a village, with thatched cottages and a duckpond, and how the woods started at the back of Grandpa’s house. I saw her relax at last as she imagined it.
‘You mean, the garden just turns into a forest?’
‘Yeah, pretty much.’
‘Is it enchanted?’
‘It’s like ancient woodland or something so it’s bound to be enchanted.’ I was sure it was when I was a kid. ‘I used to play out there all day. Just me and the dogs. And the witches and wolves, obviously.’
‘Can I play there?’
‘Of course.’
‘What’s your grandpa like?’
‘He’s the best,’ I said. ‘He’s funny and he knows about all sorts of weird, interesting stuff that no one else does.’
‘What weird, interesting stuff?’
‘He used to be a teacher in a university. He knows all about language and words. He’s got these huge dictionaries – they’re so big that they have their own little magnifying glasses – and they tell you all about the history of the words and when they were first used and all that. And he’s Welsh. He grew up in a mining village so he knows all sorts of things about that. And he knows about stars and space.’
‘Does he know anything about birds?’
‘Probably. But not as much as you.’
She looked pleased.
‘And he loves telling stories,’ I said. ‘When my mum went away, Grandpa used to tell me stories to make me feel better.’
Billie looked at me curiously. I never talked about my mum to her, or to anyone really.
‘What stories did he tell you?’ Billie said.
‘Old stories. Welsh myths. Greek myths. Fairy tales. But he made them his stories.’
‘Is that why you’re good at telling stories? Because he was?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Will you tell me one now?’
‘Sure,’ I said.
‘About a magic forest?’
‘You lie down and close your eyes.’
I switched off the light and held Billie close, and in the dark the forest grew up around us.
Now in my narrow dormitory bed I pull the blankets tight around us. I pull the twine necklace from under my pyjama top and close my hand around the ring with its green stone. It is warm from lying against my skin. I close my eyes and, instead of the coughs and low voices and buzzing of phones of the dormitory beyond the screens, I tell myself I can hear the whisper of the trees in Grandpa’s forest all around us, lulling us to sleep, keeping us safe.
The sisters realized they were in the deepest, densest part of the forest where no sunlight broke through the leaves, and they were scared.
‘I know!’ the older sister said. She took out some bread from her pocket and tore pieces off to make a trail they could follow. Before long, night had fallen and it was so dark in the forest that they could hardly see their way. The rainbow bird had disappeared and they could no longer hear its song.
In the darkness the sisters had the strangest feeling. They felt there were eyes watching them.
At last, they came to a wall of thorns. The spikes scratched at their hands as they tried to push the branches aside. There was no way through it.
‘It must be the witch’s castle!’ the younger girl cried.
‘We need to get away from here,’ the older sister said.
They held hands and began to run, but the witch’s enchantment meant that whichever path they took they always ended up back at the same place.
‘Keep hold of my hand,’ the older sister said. ‘We’ll find our way home together.’
But the trail of crumbs she’d left had been eaten by hungry birds and there was nothing to show them the way.
Rain pelts against the window. Polly tells me horizontal rain is an Edinburgh speciality. The cacti look like they’re dreaming of the Mexican desert.
‘You were telling me last time about Claudia’s arrest,’ Polly says. ‘Was it after that happened that you left your home?’
‘No,’ I say.
I couldn’t explain now that, as terrible as it was, we still thought everything would be okay. That Claudia would come back. That Knight would lose the election. That everything would return to how it was.
A business ally of Toby Knight took over at Dad’s newspaper.
Dad lost his job. He said he couldn’t have worked for that man anyway.
Somehow we still thought it would be okay.
Somehow, despite the shock of Claudia’s arrest, and how much we missed her, and the feeling that everything was falling apart around us, we just carried on.
What else could we do?
‘Can they even do that though?’ Mischa said. We were supposed to be in maths, but instead were huddled together trying to shelter from the rain behind the hedge at the back of the sixth-form block.
‘They can do whatever they like,’ I said. ‘It wasn’t just my dad. The new boss fired all of them.’
‘So what’s he going to do now, your dad?’
‘He’s working with this resistance network. Other journalists, lawyers, IT people… I dunno, trying to publicize what’s happening and organize against Knight ahead of the election next year. He’s kind of obsessive about it.’
‘Isn’t that dangerous?’ Mischa said.
‘I don’t know. Maybe. He’s worried about surveillance. Spyware or whatever. He has to keep changing his phone. He said I might have to too. They target people’s families.’
‘Aren’t they only supposed to use that on people they think are terrorists? Your dad doesn’t exactly seem the terrorist type, babe. I mean, he posts pictures of parkrun and weird bread he’s baked.’
I shrugged. ‘Claudia never even returned a library book late. Didn’t stop them arresting her, did it?’
‘You still haven’t heard anything from her?’
I shook my head. Claudia had phoned every week for the first month after her arrest. She couldn’t say much because there was always someone with her when she called, but she told us she was being held at a detention centre somewhere in Kent. She hadn’t even known whether they were going to charge her or try and deport her to Jamaica, even though she’d never lived there and only visited once when she was a little kid. Then they told her she was being moved and after that we hadn’t heard from her.
‘It’s so horrible, not knowing. Especially for Billie. She can’t understand why her mum’s not phoning. It’s hard for everyone but her most of all.’
‘I’ll come over and cheer her up,’ Mischa said.
‘It’s all right for you. You get to be Fun Aunty Mischa. And then you get to leave.’
‘Talking of fun,’ she said, ‘Halloween party at Belle’s. We have to go.’
‘Do we though? I’m not really in a party place, Misch. Anyway, I might have to babysit Billie. Dad’s out.’
‘Can’t she go to a friend’s?’ Mischa said. ‘We’re not missing this. It’s Halloween. They’ve dropped the curfew for once. And Adi’s going, he told me.’
‘Oh, so Adi’s why you want to go.’
‘Not the only reason. I just think we all deserve a night out and a good time. My mum’s driving me crazy at the moment. One minute she’s fine, the next she’s freaking out saying the world’s gone mad and that we’d be better off going to Poland before we get kicked out.’
‘Seriously?’
‘She doesn’t mean it. Anyway, I told her she can go but I’m staying here, thanks.’
‘My dad said one of his journalist friends is moving to France. He told my dad he should get out of the country too if he can.’
‘He’s not going to though?’
‘No way. He needs to find Claudia. Anyway, he thinks everything’s going to get back to normal soon. After the election anyway.’
The rain was getting harder.
‘Why are we out here?’ I said. ‘We should have just gone to maths.’
‘No, we definitely shouldn’t.’
The bell rang.
‘Okay,’ Mischa said, ‘we’d better go.’
She held her bag over her head and started running, swearing as she trod in a puddle. I ran after her laughing.
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘You’re right. Let’s do it. We deserve a party.’
Mischa turned and hugged me in the middle of the playground.
‘Too right, babe. We shall go to the ball.’