The Half Sister Read online

  How to write instructions was one of the things they did in literacy class and he got a smiley face for his work. For homework he wrote all about how to feed the cat and in school he wrote all about how to make a cup of tea for his mum. It was only ever a stray cat, but his mum said they’d give him home forever and who’s looking after the cat now? Mikey’s thumb finds its way to his mouth, these are difficult words. School. Mum. Smiley face. At the kitchen table he works hard. Two or three times he has to start again before he finally gets it right. Redrafting, that’s what his teacher calls it.

  To Diana. What you have to do to get out.

  1. Write an account of what happened the night of the earthquake.

  2. When you have finished, throw it out of the window like you did the last one and I’ll find it in the garden.

  3. If it is good, I will let you out.

  She must be hungry. On films, they send in food in exchange for hostages, but he can’t do that, and anyway people live for years if they’ve got water and there’s a sink up there, next to the toilet. She might not know how to write an account. They did lots of different types of writing at school but he settled on an account for this because it has to have facts. Sometimes in class he used to wonder whether he should write his own account, but they would only have thought he’d got fiction and fact muddled up, and, besides, the teachers are scared of him now because of what he did to Aimee. The last time he was in literacy in school they were doing narrative writing. Diana would be good at that, she was always making things up, but this was his story, with only two characters and him in charge of the ending. In his proper school, the teachers used to like him, they wrote nice things on his report like ‘Mikey is a popular and helpful member of the class’, and his mum took him to Pizzaland as a treat, he chose the one with pineapple and she had the one with, a different one, he can’t remember what extra topping she chose, it is slipping away.

  Because it is a long time since Diana went to school he copies a section out of the English book the school sent home.

  Recounts are a way of retelling an important event you have experienced so that other people understand it. Remember –

  First Person

  Past Tense

  Chronological Order

  It didn’t look quite enough, so he adds:

  You have to tell the truth.

  Sign your name at the bottom so everyone knows it’s you.

  (If there are any witnesses you can write about them too and put what they say inside the speech marks like this ‘. . .’)

  The door to the nursery is becoming a bit like a mouth, sucking in everything he feeds through the gap between the wood and the carpet. The instructions are not snatched, there’s no shadow on the other side, not that he can see anyway, lying on his tummy and squinting. He can’t see anything in fact, can’t hear anything, but she has to be in there. She’s just pretending, trying to trick him into opening the door, like she tried to trick him with her note. Let her out then she’ll say sorry. She’s always thought he’s stupid, but he’s not and he’s got the upper hand now. Even so, he feels silly all over and scared as he slides back down the stairs, the rough carpet rubbing against his tummy, his knees going bump, bump, bump. At the bottom, Monty tells him he’s done the right thing and he feels better, only Monty can do that for him.

  The flowers on the hall table have dropped their petals and this reminds him of his promise to Edmund: he is chief in charge of the lilies. Come on, young man, says Monty, chop, chop. Inside the glasshouses, the green lilies line up in order like a school assembly, junior shoots thrusting up through the soil, the seniors tall with swollen buds and finally the full grown-ups, their heads wrapped in white scarves like the nuns in Sister Act, which is the only time he’s ever been in a theatre and it was their best night out ever, him, Mum and Solomon. At the end two or three lilies have come and bloomed and spread their yellow seeds onto the stony floor and are left with their leaves shrivelling and the huge sticking-out bit, bare and drooping. The sweetness and warmth wrap him up and hug him, the smell of so many different things all mixed up, jungles and the sun, the cemetery, mums at the school gates, but mostly their very own chapel. He’s not sure he’s brave enough to actually take them to the chapel without Edmund, but at least they’ll be alive for when he comes back. Outside, wedging the watering can under the tap from the rain butt and waiting for it to fill, Mikey examines the spider’s web stretching all the way from the pipe to the gutter, threads of silk caught in the sunlight, and right in the middle, legs hunched and waiting, the spider. With a twig from the vine, Mikey pokes the web, provokes the spider into an even tighter ball. Incy Wincy Spider climbing up the spout. On tiptoe, he waves his stick to see how far he can chase it. Down came the rain and washed poor Wincy out. Balancing on a pile of old bricks, Mikey tortures the spider the length of the greenhouse gutter until he hears the water splashing onto the path, then, solemnly, he drenches the lilies in honour of Edmund. On the way back through the garden, paying close attention and hardly daring to hope, he covers the length of the flowerbed like a gardener, inspecting each plant, parting the dahlias with their huge bright pompom heads, examining the soil beneath their leaves. Perhaps her account has been blown away in the wind; the ink might run in the rain, maybe she hasn’t written anything at all. In fact it’s lying on the rim of the pond like litter. The wind must have caught it and played with it, probably didn’t even realise how important it was, but Hercules does, he’s kept an eye on it. Mikey squats down and reads it right there. The first thing that strikes him is that it’s written in stupidly big letters as if he’s in reception.

  HELP ME

  My name is Lady Diana Helyarr. I am locked in the attic room at Wynhope House, Wynhope, TW73 9KJ. 01981 877577

  I am in urgent need of medical attention.

  IF YOU FIND THIS NOTE CALL THE POLICE IMMEDIATELY.

  The bronze boy tells him not to be such an old worrier, at least she’s written something. He’s got snakes in his hands, Mikey’s got her stupid note in his; together they wave their arms triumphantly. Olé olé olé olé. Solomon taught him how to celebrate a goal, not that he ever scored any. Olé olé olé olé. If he’s honest, he thinks he’s losing this game as well so he doesn’t dance for long. The soaked paper is spread carefully on top of the Aga to dry, like at school when they poured tea all over their history work so it looked like an ancient document, but that would be tampering with the evidence. On the counter, the red light on the answer machine is flashing.

  ‘Darling Di, Mikey, it’s me. We’re just heading back out into the wilderness. I’ll call you if I can, but there’s probably no signal so don’t count on it. I heard on the World Service that it’s an Indian summer in England so you’re probably outside having fun in the garden. The river should be perfect, catch a fish for me, Mikey, but be careful, don’t go down there on your own even if it looks low. You’d love it here, Mikey, just to get to the camp we took a helicopter and then rode in on horses, like cowboys. Fantastic. And we saw a swan goose, beautiful. I’ll bring you here one day. Lots of love to you both. Bye. Lots of love, Mikey. Bye bye for now. Bye bye.’

  Mikey presses seven for save and then play, again and again and again.

  What would Edmund say if he knew? What would his mum say? It’s not his fault Diana’s locked up there. It’s her fault. In some ways it doesn’t even matter whose fault it is, he can’t let her out now. The truth is he can’t ever let her out. It’s not a game, but it is a bit like chess and this is checkmate.

  As darkness slips into the house, she shouts even louder. Edmund has told him about badger baiters with traps deep in the woods and poachers with salmon rods down on the river, John says there are burglars who steal tractors from farmers, and Miss Coulson read stories at school about the ghosts at the gallows at the crossroads. They are all out there and she’s upstairs. If his window is open because of the hot night, the screams come in, lit by the moon; if he closes the window, the howls craw
l their way down the attic staircase or prise their starving bodies between the crevices of the old house. He creeps downstairs. As he opens the back door, just to make the security lights come on, a note scuttles into the house on the back of the wind.

  What you don’t understand is that you are a very sick little boy. I rescued you and all you’ve ever done is hate me in return trying to destroy everything that matters to me but you won’t succeed. You are a monster you are very cruel unless you get help you will spend the rest of your life in prison. It’s time you knew the truth.

  your mother never wanted you

  you haven’t got a father

  nobody’s tried to find you

  nobody will ever believe anything you say

  We’re all you’ve got.

  DIAL 999 TO GET HELP. YOU MUST DO THIS NOW. NOW.

  There and then in the midnight kitchen he marks her homework in big black capitals.

  THIS IS WRONG. MY MOTHER LOVES ME.

  EDMUND LOVES ME MORE THAN HE LOVES YOU.

  One by one, he presses the numbers to call his uncle’s mobile.

  ‘The mobile you are calling is temporarily unavailable. Please try again later.’

  The circus animals are so cross they want to tear up her note, but he stops them and makes them hide it away with the other notes because it’s evidence. He hopes she’s not taking it out on Gorilla. The circus animals position themselves at strategic points around the bedroom: the tigers line the windowsill, their shadows much bigger than themselves; the monkeys work with the tanks and the soldiers as a first line of defence at the door; one elephant is stationed at each corner, they are the most trustworthy of all and they remember everything.

  At some point during the night, it rains so hard he thinks the glass in the window might shatter and there will be nothing in between him and all the things he doesn’t understand.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Like the tally charts they do in maths, he imagines Diana must be marking off the days on her wall, that’s what prisoners do. He looks at the calendar in the kitchen. Two nights gone, which is a very long time. Today must be the last day. That’s when he notices it’s Monday and there is a V for the vegetable man who brings an organic box after lunch. If the organic vegetable man wasn’t so huge and horrible he could tell him what’s happened and he’d get help, but the organic vegetable man shouted at him once when his ball hit the van and laughed at him. Call yourself a footballer! So Mikey decides to write his own note to tell the veg people to stay away and everyone else. No one can ever know what he’s done. The notice is typed up in font size 58.

  Drive is unsafe. Please leave all delivries

  at the lodge.

  He spell-checks deliveries. Changes it. Prints it out in BOLD, UNDERLINED.

  One other thing on the September page of the calendar catches his eye: back to school. It must have been written a long time ago because he was eavesdropping when Diana told the headteacher that he wouldn’t be going back, he was going away to a special school, but that’s never happened. There’s no teacher calling out his name in the morning, no hook for his coat, no place at the table, no drawer for his things. At school they always talked about his aunty; he wanted to say she’s not my aunty, she’s only my half-aunty. Now he doesn’t have a school of his own at all.

  All the way down to the gates and back is a long way, helped only by the dog who is excited to be out, bringing him sticks and wanting to play; he doesn’t understand how serious this is. They avoid the drive and take the long-grass way, which means his jeans get damp all the way up to his knees. Without Edmund beside him, the park is endless and unfamiliar. The trees have swapped places in the night, marching across the park like giants. If he runs, it’s worse because nobody mows the grass here, it’s lumpy and lays traps of rusty wire. In front of the stile a dead rabbit is blocking his way and the nightmare returns. Is it really dead? Monty’s not interested in it, he’s not the sort of dog who kills things, he’s the sort of dog who brings things back. With a stick, Mikey pokes at its back legs and jumps away because it’s still soft and its eyes are open. He has to go the long way round to where you can climb over the fence onto the drive and then, finally, there’s the bridge. Down by the waterside, he calms down. The river is the only place in the park that has never frightened him; even in the beginning, he loved it. It’s everything he wishes for all in one place, it’s always there, coming and going, and it’s never boring because of the things it brings with it and the things it hides, and if you want to, you can throw things in the river and imagine where they go next. You can spend hours trying to dam it, but it always finds a way through. You can spend hours just being you and doing nothing much and the river never minds. Bit high for you, today, young man. Just like Solomon once put pencil marks on the kitchen door to show how much he’d grown, the river draws lines up the trunks of the trees which lean out from the banks, and Mikey agrees that after last night’s rain, today it would be way over his boots and nearly over Edmund’s waders, surging over the weir with such strength that even the stepping stones have disappeared and even the swans have left. Edmund told him that in the whole of England the only bird you cannot kill is a swan because that’s treason and you’d be hung for it and your head stuck on the railings at the Tower of London. Sometimes, he pretends he is a swan.

  These are the gates in and the gates out. Turn right for school and left for their silent sessions at the library on a Thursday. He’s never understood why she takes him there and why she gets cross when he wants to borrow a book, that’s what libraries are for. Beyond these gates is where all the other people are, shopping, driving, shouting, going to work. Wayside Electricians, M&M Mobile Mechanics, Wholesale Meat Products, they all speed past. It’s mostly grey out there, he thinks. It doesn’t have as many flowers as Wynhope, but it does have cinemas and bus stations and supermarkets and other people’s nans who stop you in the street to ask after your mum and other people’s mums who stop you in the street to ask after your nan. If he has to, he could probably get a bus home, go to his friend Ali’s house and live with him. He’d take Diana’s money and some food in case he got hungry and her phone (except they could use that to track him down), he would be okay. There is stranger danger, but no one is more strange and dangerous than her. Grace would be sad if she knew the lodge looked so left alone, drink cans and sandwich wrappers blown across her swept-clean porch, piling up against the front door with its orange warning tape and graffiti. If he knew where her grandchildren lived, he could go there, but he can’t even find Grace or John under contacts on Diana’s phone, they’ve been deleted. And maybe even Grace wouldn’t want him, she’s never even sent a postcard like she said she would. He could always move in here because the lodge is outside the gates strictly speaking and Diana’s rules don’t work here.

  Whoosh. A huge truck rumbles past too close – Moving U Where U Want To Go – a glimpse of the driver, high up, one hand on the wheel, one hand on the phone. Two more cars, then a motorbike who slows up, glances in his direction and then speeds past. The noise, the blast of air is like enemy fire. He ducks, holds tight to Monty, because imagine if he got run over and he realises he no longer really understands the world and doesn’t even dare ask it for help which is why they need to stay away, all of these cars and drivers and delivery men, which is why he has the notice. His Sellotape’s in the nursery with her, but string is better anyway, it doesn’t fall off in the rain.

  DRIVE IS UNSAFE. PLEASE LEAVE ALL DELIVERIES AT THE LODGE.

  Paul put so many signs on the gates at their old house that you couldn’t see the number any longer: Do Not Park In Front of These Gates, No Cold Callers, Canvassers or Religious Groups, even a picture of an Alsatian, though they didn’t have a dog, and a Neighbourhood Watch notice which meant he was watching the neighbours because he didn’t trust them either.

  It was the right decision not to make a sign saying KEEP OUT; if people saw that they’d only want to break in.

>   What if Solomon comes back for him? He wouldn’t be put off by this notice, he travelled 3,000 miles to get to England with Jesus helping him.

  Mission accomplished, Mikey saunters back up to the house, chucking oak apples at the sheep on the other side of the fence, scoring ten points for every hit and getting up to fifty. Only when he gets as far as the ha ha does he see her, leaning out of the window. Ha ha ha. That makes him laugh every time. The joke’s on you. Nobody’s coming to rescue you, I’ve sent them all away. Nanny nanny boo boo ya boo sucks. All in his head, of course.

  Diana might be trying a new strategy, powerful, up there at the top of the house, never leaving her post, not saying a word, but Mikey can do better than that, he can do anything now. He devises a new military response in return: he becomes a spy. He has made a camouflage uniform by tying small branches to his baseball cap and wearing a green jumper, his face is smeared with chocolate and half a jar of green pesto sauce he found in the fridge, and when he looks in the mirror in the downstairs loo, he sees a warrior. Monty has to stay in the house because he’s hopeless at keeping secrets. Dead pheasants are all that he’s trained to find and that thought leads to the gun cupboard and what a real soldier would do. The key’s in Edmund’s desk, it’s easy to open. Some of the guns look too big for him, but he has held the air gun before, so that’s the one he chooses.