It’s against my better judgement but we’re only a few streets away so I agree.
Another gone. And another arrives.
You’re different from Una. Your hair is a dirtier blonde, but at least you got rid of those ugly pink streaks. You’ve got piercings, a tattoo of a butterfly on your right ankle that you try to hide and you probably regret, although you’d never admit it. You’re younger too, not as sweet or as pretty. And you’re feisty, but that doesn’t bother the old bag. She likes you. I’ve seen the way she laughs at your jokes. Or maybe it’s because she appreciates you more, knowing you might be taken away in an instant, like the others.
This time, though, Elspeth McKenzie has made the right choice.
You’re the best girl for the job.
29
Kathryn
Kathryn isn’t so sure about this new one, Willow Green. What kind of name is that anyway? It sounds like it’s been pulled from a Farrow & Ball chart. She wonders if it’s made up.
This one is cocky, loud and brash, with her tattoos, wacky clothes and nose piercings. She’s lacking the manners Una had. She reminds Kathryn of the first one, Matilde. Is that why her mother hired her? Kathryn had hoped that Una’s death would be the end of it all. But, no, the funeral was barely over when Elspeth had put the advert in the newspaper before Kathryn had a chance to try to talk her out of it. Elspeth didn’t even consult her for the interviews, although she saw one girl tripping down the pavement afterwards: curvy, dark-haired, tall. In her hot-pink fluffy jacket, she looked like she’d mugged a Muppet. Kathryn knew she wouldn’t be getting the job. She almost called after her, ‘Don’t hold your breath, you stupid cow. You don’t look like my long-lost sister!’ And then, just a few weeks after Una was in the ground, out popped another Viola carbon copy.
When Kathryn first clapped eyes on Willow, she’d been shocked. Yes, she was her mother’s type, there was no disputing that, but she was so … new agey, if they werestill calling it that nowadays. She looked like she should be hanging out at Glastonbury, not here in Clifton among the antiques and the upholstered furniture. But, true to form, no family to speak of, no commitments or ties. Pliable.
How many more ofthese girlswould have to die before her mother got the message that she, Kathryn, is the only one she needs?
Kathryn gets up early on Sunday morning. She can hear her mother chatting to Viola in her bedroom, her laugh echoing through the house. No … not Viola.Willow.What’s wrong with her? Kathryn puts a hand to her head. Her forehead is hot. Perhaps she’s sick. She feels like she’s going mad. She dreamt of Viola last night, of the years of bullying and abuse. Elspeth and Huw could only protect her from some of it. They didn’t see the rest, the tricks and the manipulation, when their backs were turned: the time Viola and her friends left her on the suspension bridge the year after the Halloween incident, or when they pushed her out of the tree house and she broke her wrist. It’s still weak now and hurts when the cold sets in. Each time she lied for Viola, terrified that if she told the truth she’d be sent back to the home. After all, Elspeth and Huw were hardly going to send their real daughter away, were they? Viola knew this and used it to her advantage. But the bullying didn’t let up until that last time. When Kathryn got her revenge.
Her head throbs. No, she can’t think of that now. She can’t think of the hatred and the bitterness that twists around her intestines, threatening to crush her whenevershe remembers. She needs to keep that in a little box inside her mind, separate from the boys and from Ed, lest it spills out and tarnishes what she has, what she’s built.
She sneaks out of the house without saying goodbye to her mother or having breakfast with Aggie. All she wants to do is get back to Ed and the boys, to normality. Nothing at The Cuckoo’s Nest feels normal, with these replica Violas everywhere she turns, laughing at her, taunting her, proving she’ll never be good enough. Since Una died, even Aggie isn’t as friendly as she once was. She’s not rude but she lacks her usual warmth, never stopping to chat, briskly saying she must get on whenever Kathryn tries to corner her for a bit of light gossip. She’s even stopped leaving extras for Kathryn to take to her family.
She drives home too fast. Luckily the roads are quiet at eight o’clock on a Sunday. Her house is equally silent when she lets herself in. She suspects they’re all still in bed, Ed snoring unattractively, one arm slung over his face, the boys buried beneath their duvets, like little moles. She wonders if she could persuade the three of them to leave Bristol, to make a fresh start somewhere else. She’s always fancied going somewhere up north. Yorkshire, maybe, or the Lake District. Somewhere rural, tranquil, far away, but even as she thinks it she knows she can never do it, despite the bad things she’s done. She can’t leave Elspeth: the Viola-clones will only let her down in the end.
She creeps upstairs and pokes her nose around her bedroom door. Sure enough, Ed is fast asleep, in exactly the pose she’d imagined. And then she tiptoes along to her children’s rooms. Harry is asleep, the duvet pulledover his head. And Jacob is … She walks further into his room. Jacob’s bed is empty, his covers thrown back as though he left in a hurry. Perhaps he’s in the bathroom. Panic swells in her chest. He’ll be in another part of the house, she thinks, as she searches each room. But he’s nowhere to be seen.
She shakes her husband awake. ‘Ed. Jacob’s missing!’
Ed’s eyes bolt open and he sits up so suddenly he nearly head-butts her. ‘W-what?’
‘He’s gone, Ed.’ She tries to keep her voice low so as not to alarm Harry. It isn’t the first time Jacob’s done this. Oh, God, it’s her fault, all her fault …
Ed jumps out of bed, pulling on yesterday’s clothes from where he’d flung them last night on the armchair. She follows him into Jacob’s room. It’s how she’d left it yesterday: his desk with his revision books piled high, his headphones in the corner, his guitar that he stopped playing years ago propped up against the far wall gathering dust.
‘Did you check on him last night before you went to bed?’ She rounds on Ed, trying to keep the accusation out of her voice.
‘Yes, of course,’ he says, looking about him frantically as though he’s expecting Jacob to pop up from behind the door with a ‘Boo!’ like he did when he was little. Ed looks flummoxed. Even more so than usual, with his jumper on back to front.
‘Do …’ She tries to quell the panic. ‘Do you think he left in the middle of the night? What if he’s run away?’ She pulls open his wardrobe but his clothes are still there, hanging tidily, neatly ironed as she’d left them.
Ed puts his big red hands to his face. ‘He can’t keep doing this.’
‘I know.’
‘He’s just a kid.’
Ed sounds like he’s on the point of hysteria. She can’t have that. He needs to be his usual dependable, slightly dull, but reliable self. That was why she’d married him. He provided the stability, the calm she’s always needed but never had. He can’t fall apart.
‘He’s got his GCSEs coming up. He’s going to ruin his life.’ He straightens, as if remembering the role he needs to play in their relationship. ‘You stay here with Harry. I’ll go and search the estates, like before …’
Her heart falls. In the last six months, apart from the odd blip, he’d seemed to settle down. No running away to join those – thoseyobsto get drunk and, later, stoned. He’d been shocked into sobering up, to getting himself sorted. To knuckling down and revising. She and Ed no longer had to drive the streets looking for their fifteen-year-old son. He’ll be sixteen next month. She’d hoped it would be the new beginning he needed.
It had started a year ago. First he’d pilfered from the drinks cabinet, topping up the booze with water. They’d only noticed it when they’d had Ed’s work colleagues around one evening and Ed had nearly spat out the gin when he’d realized it was mostly water. When it kept happening they were forced to lock the cabinet and hide the key. And then the wandering began. Coming home past his curfew, sneaking out in the middle of the night. Making friends with older boys from an estate in Shirehampton. Once, they didn’t find him for two nights while he kippedon a ‘friend’s’ floor. When Kathryn found him he’d been drinking, and was surrounded by empty cider bottles. Then she began to suspect drugs. He’d come home smelling of pot, or with enlarged pupils and a manic smile. She’d threatened him with the police, but as quickly as it had started, it stopped. He’d promised her he’d learnt his lesson and would never do it again. That was seven months ago and, apart from the odd time when she was sure she could smell booze on him, she believed he’d kept his promise.
